Birth to Net Worth with Corey Geary

Join us as we unravel our deep-rooted relationship with money, from earliest memories to eureka moments and building wealth. Birth to Net Worth with me, Trystan Trenberth. Welcome to Birth to Net Worth, where we speak about the importance of money, relationships with money, and the evolution of our relationship with money through life. I want to welcome into the studio today a really good friend of mine, met through real estate. He's evolved through real estate into something he's going to talk about later on in the program. But let me welcome Corey Geary. Corey, thank you so much for joining us. Where are you joining us from today?

Oh man, I'm joining you from the beautiful country of Puerto Rico. And thank you so much for having me on today. This is an absolute blessing.

Wonderful. Bit of background, me and Corey, we met through real estate. Corey ran a wholesaling operation, was really successful, really led a lot of people to making a lot of, you know, a lot of money and creating a lot of wealth. Very inspiring human being. And, you know, his evolution through real estate into, as we can see on the screen, DeFi Crypto Alliance, another premier education product for enlightening people around the importance of diversification in investment and coming away from the reliance of cash, the common currencies, the fiat currencies as they're known. But let's dive into the story, Cory. So what was your first memory of money? Was it something you were bought or denied? Tell me about how you realized money existed and what happened.

That's a great question. I have a few early memories of money. My dad, so I'm, I've always been really good with money, saving money. Even when I was a Pizza Hut delivery driver, and this was like 25 years ago, I was able to save up $10K by delivering pizzas. I've been always good at saving money and allocating it for what I need it for just because of my dad. My dad was, You know, a lot of people would call him frugal or cheap. That would be another word. And unfortunately, there was parts of my childhood. I remember my mom and my dad, they would fight over money. In fact, it got, you know, physically abusive sometimes. That went on for a few years. And that's some of my earliest memories of money, which was also one reason why I wanted to make sure that I had— I wanted to be wealthy. So that way money was never a problem with me and my family. But regardless, he still had a very good, like, work ethic about him. He, he really valued the dollar. And I remember one time, I think I was like 4 years old. This is funny how I remember this being so young. I found a quarter in the couch. I'm sitting on the couch and, you know, probably some night after dinner and we're all sitting there. And I go, Dad, I found a quarter. All right. I'm, you know, so happy, right? I was excited. And he goes, I'm going to keep it. I'm going to save it. He's like, no, you're not. He goes, did you earn that? I'm like, no, but I found it. He goes, okay, but did you earn that? He's like, that's mine. You didn't earn it. Now, if you want to earn it, that's another story. Give it to me. I had to give him the quarter and it broke my heart as a little kid. I'm like, I thought like, because I found it. Jenny, it was mine, right? No, no, that's not the way it works. And that's one of my earliest memories. And, you know, my dad really taught me good work ethic. He taught me nothing in life that's worthwhile comes easy. It was one of his favorite sayings. Nothing in life worthwhile comes easy, son. And it was just, you know, he ingrained it in my head and he ingrained to save money. And so that was one of the blessings that I got to take with me through my life. Because of my father, even though there was some negativity in the early years, he eventually got over that, those anger issues, which was good. But it's still— that stuff is still ingrained in me a little bit. And it's, you know, that's what really, you know, has created my responsibility with money where I see a lot of people like my friends and even some of my family members who are very reckless with money. And I've never been reckless with money. Money. It's like, um, you know, it's— yeah, and that's, that's due to my dad.

Yeah, that's, that's an incredible strong memory, and, and understandably so. Um, so evolving through, you know, your dad's change of mind in, in some ways through that, you mentioned a pizza delivery job. What other kind of— it sounds like you probably had some other, um, money-earning activities that happened between you and collecting $10 grand, delivering pizzas. Tell me about that evolution.

Well, prior, when I was a teenager, I was— I always had the entrepreneurial spirit. And I mean, down to when I was a little kid, I would sell like, you know, lemonade, you know, trying to do that to all my friends, you know, instead of staying out of my house. And, and I've always had that kind of entrepreneurial spirit because of my dad. He would tell me, hey, you know, go out and mow lawns. I did that for a while where I went out I door knocked all my friends' house and mowed their lawns, you know, for $1 or $2. In my teen years, being that, you know, other than the money guidance, I didn't have a lot of guidance from my family. I was kind of, you know, a mess. And so was my family. And as a teenager, I was a real mess. I mean, I was a train wreck, you know, a lot of drugs, a lot of alcohol. And so what I— with money, I became a drug dealer. I was a drug dealer for quite a while, made a ton of money selling cocaine. And so ended up shutting that down though when I got a tip that the DEA was watching me. One of my prior associates had been arrested and he probably ratted me out. And so that's when I shut all that down because I didn't want to go to prison. Prison for the rest of my life. It's just, there's a lot of money in that particular trade or that industry, but it's not worth losing your life for the, you know, there's some things money's not worth doing. And that's one of them. Even though it could be extremely lucrative. I mean, you look at the early cocaine cowboys from Miami and, you know, those guys, you know, they Man, all of them, you know, they're multimillionaires, but it's just, there's better and a lot less riskier ways to make money in life. And so, yeah, so I wound that down and then, you know, I went to music college for a while where there I was living off of the money that I had saved up from, you know, dealing drugs. I had saved up a lot of money from doing that. And then after I got out of music college, that's when I ended up being a Pizza Hut delivery driver for 5 years. 5 years. And during that time, I used to play a lot of poker. It's during the time when poker was like right before poker got real glamorous. It was like 2004, 2003. There was a time period where poker was like in the spotlight and I was playing poker, but just like home games. And then like these, we'd have just kind of like word of mouth, people coming over. And then we had these blackjack dealers, and this was in Tucson, Arizona. We'd have these blackjack dealers come over on my poker night, and they had a lot of money, and they would lose a lot of money or win a lot of money. It's like, hey, man, what do you guys do for a living? It's like, what are you doing? We deal cards. What does that look like? What's— we, you know, they make over six figures a year. And it's because of the tips. Yeah. And it fascinated me. And I was like, man, what? How do I do that? They're like, well, you go to Vegas, go to school and come back, and then we can get you an audition. Yeah, that's what I did. I literally— I quit my Pizza Hut delivery job. I freaking flew to Vegas and I stayed out there for like 3 months, went to blackjack dealer school.

Yeah.

Came back. And it took me a few months and a couple auditions of being turned down, um, just like anything else before I got hired. But then eventually a casino picked me up down there in Tucson, a casino called Casino Del Sol. And that was the beginning of my blackjack, uh, dealing journey, which was about 16 years long. Wow.

Yeah. So what happened to the music?

The music thing, it, it I played a lot in a lot of bands around Los Angeles and Hollywood. And it just, there was no money in it. We paid to play. Like you, any of these clubs that we had to go in when we were playing, I went to school, the school cost me a grip. I ended up, you know, I was able to pay that off when I was dealing blackjack, dealing cards. It cost me a grip. And, you know, you pay to play. And music, music's still my passion. I love music. I love everything about music. I play guitar. Nice. Yeah, I play guitar. I love jazz. I love rock. I mean, I love reggae. I mean, I love music. Yeah. Passion of mine. It's just, yeah, it's a great way to change the emotional state of your being temporarily, you know what I mean? It's just, it's wonderful, especially the right kind of music. I, you know, I don't listen to a lot of angry music. I did like a lot of heavy metal back in the day, like Metallica and stuff like that, but still, it was, yeah, I love music, man. And yeah, I still own 5 guitars. They're all in Arizona. They're not here in Puerto Rico, you know. But yeah, music is amazing, man. If I ever had the opportunity to invest in a musician who I thought was up and coming, or maybe even like a recording studio, something that could tie that passion back in again, I might do it. I would just because it would be fun, right?

Or a couple 59 Les Pauls maybe.

Oh man. I love Les Paul guitars, man. I love the thickness of the tonality that a Les Paul guitar has, the heaviness. And man, they're amazing guitars.

So the reason I brought up music is, you know, in our careers in real estate, creating the conditions for the results to happen as far as making money or success, you know, music's kind of like sports in that way. Yeah, there are some people that really make it big, but the number of people that don't and the amount of effort you put in to get to that point. I love photography, but I knew it wasn't ever going to be a career, money-making career for me, like a primary income source. So I never tried to make it an income source. I love music and photographing concerts. Like here we got John Petrucci from Dream Theater.

Oh man.

On my channel from 2013.

And I got Peter, I got Slash over here from 2018 as well.

And but when we look at what we're doing with even pizza delivery, that could have made more money than a musician may have made. And you have to pay to play like the Rainbow and a lot of these places.

And you're up on those off Viper Room and the— yeah, yeah.

So when we look at now we're in, in a real estate business or we're in crypto, whatever those things are. Those metrics actually count towards the potential results. Small tweaks in your marketing sources, for example, that can make a huge difference on your conversion rates. And so, you know, talking about birth to network, so many people have dreams of music and there's nothing wrong with that. We only need to look at American Idol to see that there are a lot of scary dreams out there as well. But when we look at the effectiveness of what we should do, Your dad guided you a lot. I can tell he guided you a lot with the money and that made a huge impact on your life. You went and studied your passion and that was something that really fulfilled you. I can tell for that time.

I needed it.

Yeah. And that evolves us as a human being and there's nothing wrong with that. Tell me, tell me kind of beyond pizza delivery to then, you know, getting into the poker dealing. That was obviously a lucrative business for a while. I know we've had the conversation about the transition from poker dealing to real estate. What kind of— what made you aware of the real estate thing, that next move? And what was it that made you realize that being tipped and paid well versus creating something that was your own, in your own— you were the captain of that ship at that point?

Yeah, that's a very great question. And I've thought this question over, you you know, know, and analyzed this so many times because I, like I said earlier, I was in the business of dealing blackjack in the casinos for 16 years. To me, it was, you know, about 12 to 14 years too long. If I could go back in time, but you know, we all learn because I got comfortable. Is what happened. I was dealing cards, you know, I was making anywhere from $100,000 to $140,000 a year, working 6 hours a night, and, you know, only 5 days a week. So it was great money and it gave me the capability of just partying my butt off and drifting through life, drifting in the way of, if any of your viewers have read the book, Outwitting the Devil, A very amazing, it's an amazing book by Napoleon Hill. And that's, that was me. I was drifting through life. I was just comfortable in my, in my little bubble, making money, partying, you know, drinking a lot, drinking really heavily. I'm sober now. I haven't drank in years. But at the time, you know, I was already in the casino business. That's kind of the culture. Yeah. If you will. It's what everyone does. And I was single. I was, you know, they allowed me to take off a month and a half every year. So I would take off a month and I'd fly to like Thailand or fly to like Philippines and I would just hang out there. Literally my life was just, you know, so just free in a way, but just drifting with no purpose. And, you know, creating no value in. I don't know, man. I feel like I had the universe or God. I believe in God. So, you know, depending on what your viewers believe, they could say the universe one day dangled a carrot in front of me. I was watching, we got in the habit of watching the show Flip or Flop because I had bought a house. I bought a house there by the casino, you know, in 2013. Great time. I still own that house. I probably never get rid of it because I have so much equity in that house. I'm just like, why? I can always just pull HELOCs out. But I bought the house, was living in it, and the girl I was dating at the time, she was a part-time realtor. She was part-time realtor and part-time blackjack dealer. And so we'd watch that show Flip or Flop with Tarek El Moussa. Every, you know, every time it came on, it was HGTV, I think it was. Yeah. And it was— and I got, I got kind of hooked on it. And eventually, you know, I was saving money. I had, you know, over six figures in the bank from my dealing job. Obviously, I had a real heavy 401 too. The casinos also match your 401. It's great. Yeah, they really have good benefits. And one of these days, she's— we're sitting there watching the show and she's like, Why don't you flip a house so I can list it?

Yeah, nice, great motivation, right?

And I was like, huh, these guys are making like $80,000 in 20 minutes. I'm like, yeah, why don't I flip a house so you can list it? You know, and she was speaking from her own, uh, you know, her own, I guess, greed, right? Like, yeah, but it was not like But it was like, and so like, literally, dude, that conversation happened one night. The next morning I'm running around the neighborhood and maybe just because, you know, now I'm noticing things before I didn't notice because I didn't really think of it. But then I see one of those bandit signs. Yeah. And typically, you know, maybe we don't ever pay attention to those if we're not thinking about real estate or maybe it was God, you know, and he was like, hey, Here you go. Yeah, I saw one of those banner signs that said fix and flip, buy price. And I remember the numbers, you know, I might have been like 250, ARV 350, whatever it was. And I stopped on my run and I called that number. I bought that house. It took me 6 months to flip it and I made $8,000 and she got the listing, right? That was my very first real estate deal. So I got into the business because a carrot was dangled in front of me. And I've always wanted more. I've always wanted more money. I've always wanted more purpose. I always wanted more in my life. And I felt that deep down inside, even though I was drifting through life in my comfortable zone, it was something in there that was like, hey, you need more. You need to do more. And it took, you know, God coming down with the carrot and going, hey, how would you like to make more money? Yeah. And that decision, man, was probably the best decision in my life, even though I'll tell you about the third deal, which was like the worst deal ever did. But real estate saved my life. Yeah. I wrote a book this year, should be coming out. It says Real Estate Saved My Life because not only because I went down the rabbit hole chasing the carrot, the money, but then I got around like-minded people who were on this journey trying to level up every aspect of their life. People like yourself. Yeah. People trying to level up spiritually, mentally, physically. They were on this journey of just being 1% better every single day. And it was— it— and when you're in these rooms with these people and you make friends with these people, you can't help to— for those people rubbing off on you. And that's how real estate saved my life, because it leveled me up spiritually, mentally, physically, and financially. Those are my four pillars in life. That I'm always trying to improve on. And financial is the last one, man. I mean, if I can nail these first, yeah, I know this is going to fall in line. But at the time I didn't know that, right? The time I'm like just chasing the dollar. And so it was absolutely the most amazing thing that ever happened to me was buying that first house. Took me 6 months, made $8,000. It was painful. It sucked. The contractor sucked. But it was my first real scene. I did that all while working the, you know, the blackjack dealer job.

And she probably made more than you on the commission.

I believe she did. Yeah.

It's amazing. Like I was saying about a little earlier about creating the conditions for the results to happen— physical, spiritual, mental, or emotional— the money will follow.

Money felt in order.

That is always going to follow regardless. Yes. And I think starting with that one, these fall away.

That's the problem. Agreed. Agreed. You have to be careful to not lose sight. You know, even still to this day, you know, there's times when I'm like, where I could feel myself slacking on some of my spiritual stuff that I normally do or part of my routine. I'm like, wait a minute, you got to, you got to do a check on yourself. You have to sit down and analyze, okay, we I always want to be getting better. You know, I feel like that's what we're here to do in life, is to create value and always improving to get better, man. Yeah, it's—

I'm in that reset period right now of my kind of routine and what I'm doing in all of those areas, really. I mean, you know, last 6 months I've kind of let off the physical side of things. Change my schedule, working with a friend of mine in Texas. It's great, but it's starting 2 hours earlier, so I'm losing 2 hours of my time in the morning. I never found a place to put it later in the day or take some of it and put it somewhere else, but I'm now anchoring in a bit of meditation in the morning, a short one. And now I can expand on that as, you know, just, I think, who was it that was telling me it's, it's like Atomic Habits. I was talking to Dan Nguyen the other day. And it's just kind of anchoring it in, putting it back where it needs to be or putting it somewhere where it can be and then just building on that as a foundation.

Yeah. Everyone should have a morning routine. Yeah. You know, and that can look different for everybody, right? You know, I love meditation. I love breathwork. I love running. I mean, I love running. I ran 3.5 miles today. It was amazing. And so it's— that's part of my morning routine. Everyone should have one. And what's great is when I moved to Puerto Rico, being that we're on Eastern Standard and, you know, most of the world, you know, in Arizona, the West Coast, we're 3 hours ahead. You're like, let me— or yeah, when I get up at, you know, 6:50 AM. It's 3 AM.

And nobody's giving you any grief at that point in the morning.

No, man, I could go out and do— I have the whole morning to myself. And in fact, it's beautiful because then my daughter's waking up around 8 or 9. Yeah. And then I can spend the morning with her before diving in for what I need to dive into the day. Yeah. It's phenomenal with the time difference. Yeah, I'm loving it. Yeah.

Awesome. So you got into real estate, your first flip was not quite better than a break-even, but it was an experience. And then how soon did you take your next one? Was it right away? Did you wait a little bit of time?

No, it was short. It was right after I started going around to the, the, the local REIA back then was called ASREIA. I know they've kind of done some revamping. Yeah. And then I, I met a gentleman named Chris Iman. You might know Chris.

He's a giant.

Yeah. Yeah. He's a local there in our market. He's an OG. The guy's been around for a long time doing real estate. Like, I give Chris a lot of respect. He's taught me a lot, too. Yeah. I met him and I bought a house off of him. That one took me 3 months and I made $20K, an absolutely solid win. Yeah, absolutely solid win. The problem with that solid win was that it, it boosted my ego. Yeah. And I was like, oh, I got this figured out. Let me go buy 4 houses. Yeah, all at once. And then I can make like maybe 80 or 100K, right? Oh, man. That was— yeah, I bought 4 houses. I did it. I bought them off Chris. Yeah. And I ended up getting a new contractor because the old one, we had a falling out, but it wasn't like a big deal. It just wasn't lazy. And then somebody referred me a new contractor. I didn't do any due diligence. I didn't check the register of contractors. For your listeners, that's just where, like, where they hang the license and any complaints done against them. You can go and research it. You know, I didn't check the attorney general. I didn't check the clients. Well, that guy took me to the cleaners, man. He took me to the cleaners and I lost about $250,000. Wow. Deals. And what happened is I was just naive. He would send me pictures of the property, of properties getting updated while I was, you know, I'm working my blackjack job, I'm partying. That's the other problem, man. I was just so complacent. I was partying and I was believing him and I was sending him money every single week. And by the time I realized, like, I better go check on these properties and figure out what's going on, it was— I went out there and like nothing, basically nothing had been done. And I was running so short on money that I had to re-wholesale the deals back to the wholesaler. So I lost all my down payment. I lost the hard money. I was paying it month. I lost the money I did. So it was a lot of money. Yeah. The end of the movie. And I lost my life savings. I lost my previous flip money, obviously, and I lost my 401 loan that I took out from the casino. Yeah. And so it set me back completely to zero. And it really sucked. It really sucked. I had some— that was probably the darkest moment of my, you know, entrepreneurial journey. You know, it was, it was bad. I didn't want to give up real estate, man. I didn't want to stop. I knew if I stopped at that moment, that, that $250 grand, it was gone forever. Like, that's how I was going to truly lose that money. I knew the only way to get that money back was to push on. Yeah, I have to push on. I got to figure this freaking thing out. Like, Even though I'm broke, I still have my job. The very least, I have a good job. It's still bringing in money. And so I'm like, I got to figure this damn thing out. Like, I'm not going to just lay down and that's it, because then I lost $250,000. And so I remember like everyone at these AzRe events were like, wholesalers, you don't need money to get to be a wholesaler. You don't need money to do deals. And it's like, I'm like, well, how do these wholesalers get deals. And literally when I'm Google, I type in how do wholesalers get deals? Yeah. And guess who popped up?

Shaun Terry. The Godfather.

He was probably doing Google PPC for his course. Yeah. And I bought Flip to Freedom. That was, you know, $997. And that was the beginning of my wholesale journey. Yeah.

So tell me about that dark moment. I mean, emotionally, financially.

Suck that, bro. Yeah, I'd remember it like this.

Yeah, I bet. And I think those are some of these important things that we need to talk about relationship with money. From, you know, your parents' activities around money, finding a quarter and it's not yours, going up to pizzas to down to here. This is the thing. Us being persistent and deliberate and being committed is the differentiator between you know, the people that are going to be free financially and emotionally in every other way. How— I've heard as well, when you're at the bottom, people say don't try and climb out too quick. You got to take in the experience and gain what's there as a gift for you at the bottom before you come out, because it might be that you rise up a little bit quickly and you drop back down there or further. How was your experience of that?

I mean, I did not rise quick. It took me 10 months to get my first wholesale deal. So I was down in that bottom for a while. And like I said, at the very least, I had the job. The job was bringing in good monthly income. I mean, you can say that when I left there, I was making about $140,000 a year. So that's, you know, that's really good money for a job anyways. But yeah, it was just It was a blow to the stomach, man. I didn't sleep at night. Of course, I was drinking a lot. Yeah. And it just took me a while to get to grind out of that because I didn't have a lot of money now to go out and spend on like marketing or trying to get a deal or like, like I, what are my options? Door knocking and cold calling myself. Yeah. Oh, and a little, we did a, I remember I did a little bit of direct mail, but my budget was so small. That, that, that, you know, we wouldn't want to do too much damage. Oh, and bandit signs. I used to do bandit signs in the beginning of my, my journey. In fact, I remember I think it was my second deal I obtained was off a bandit sign. Yeah. First deal was off of cold calling. Yes. And, you know, because I, you know, I got smacked down so hard, it took me a long time to get out of that hole. You know, like I say, it was 10 months before I got my first deal and I just I kept— and I used to work nights in the casino. This is also the one benefit about that type of industry is that, you know, I go to work at 8 o'clock at night and then I get up 4 in the morning or 2 in the morning. I sleep most time about 2 in the morning and I go home, go directly to sleep and then get up, you know, 8, 9 in the morning, get a few hours sleep and then start cold calling and, and, and, or door knocking or putting out bandit signs or whatever it was. That day that I had on the schedule because I had a schedule that I, you know, I was trying to stick to it.

Yeah.

Try to draw out a business plan. And yeah, it was 10 months of that before the first deal. But the funny thing is, Trystan, is that the first deal came in, it got easier. The second deal was like, like a month later off the bandwagon. I was like, it was like a month later and then it was like another one and it was like, then they started coming. Yeah. And it was great because now I was wholesaling those deals to Chris.

Yeah.

Fantastic. Yeah. It was like full circle back, right? Like, now I'm wholesaling to him. Of course he's wholesaling them. Yeah. Which is fine. But yeah, it was, it was, it was, it was a very dark moment. It took a lot of pushing. The only thing that kept me pushing was my stubbornness in unwillingness to lose $250,000. I was not about to lose $250,000. I was going to go through hell to make sure I made that— at least made that money back. And the only way to get it back is by tackling this new niche I was trying to do, real estate. You know, it wasn't going to be like going back to the casino and working. That would have took years to get that money back. Yeah, you know, it would have been brutal. But that was the one, one thing that kept me going in the darkness was my stubbornness to unwilling to lose that money. Yeah.

So, yeah, so I was, I was just waiting for you to say that one of the bandit signs was like Jared Vidalis or Carlos or somebody because they were, they were out there hustling around that time where they get in the bank.

It worked. In fact, we used to— where we used to get the most deals at was out in Apache Junction. And so we'd put them on the on and off ramps of the freeway. We put them in Home Depots, Walmarts, you know, scattered around different, you know, intersection corners. And they worked, man. I remember that, that second deal vividly because of the story behind it. The the seller was a heroin addict and the mom— so he owned the house, but the mom was putting him in rehab, needed the money for the rehab, and they needed the money very quickly. And that's why I remember it so well, because I met with the seller and I remember at the track, the track marks all over his arms. Yeah. Mom crying at the kitchen table because all our— in the early days, we used to go belly to belly with all of our sellers. Yeah. And I remember it so vividly because it, you know, it hit me. I was like, oh man, you know? And so that was my, you know, my second wholesale deal, which was off a Bandit sign. I think I made $17,000 off that deal. I remember that. You remember that? I can remember the dollar amount of that one. But you asked me on my 7th deal or 8th deal, I can't remember the dollar amount of that one. That one I remember vividly. The first deal I made $10,000. It was an even $10,000. The second deal was $17,000. And then after that, I, you know, it gets blurry. I mean, obviously I know my biggest one I ever did. And I, yeah, that after that, it's, you know, those first deals, man, they really, because it's like proof of concept. You're like, this works. Like, yeah, I can make money doing this. And we got back into flipping. I mean, not right away, man. But, you know, probably about a year into my wholesale journey, I started flipping again and I actually made money. Yeah, do it.

And being direct to seller makes so much difference in that, in that part as well. Eliminate.

Oh, 100%. So 100%.

So, so how long were you doing traditional wholesaling for before you found, you know, from— was it through Eric that you found the Novation side of things or us? He was— there were a lot of coming around the same time with the Novation concept, so nobody really was exactly teaching it before me.

Yeah, I give credit where credit's due, but it went ham. I was— so I'll tell you the story behind it. So I was local doing about 7 to 10 deals a month, which, man, that was phenomenal. Like, I don't know what I was thinking. Like, I wanted to scale. Like, I'm always scale, scale. All the gurus are saying scale, and that's a mistake. It's not always the correct answer to your, you know, the rest of your real estate journey. And I wanted to scale and I was only doing 7 to 10 deals a month. And I saw these guys— Nick Perry's one of them. He's a good friend of mine, Nick Perry, if he's listening. And he was one of them. And I was in a mastermind with them and he's doing this nationwide wholesaling. I'm like, man, I go nationwide, I can, you know, get 50 deals a month easily. And so that's what I did. I turned all my local marketing off. Biggest mistake ever. I ran in the red for 3 months, deep in the red, almost went bankrupt from that decision before I started making money again. But I shut all my local marketing off. I switched to nationwide and it was painful because we, we couldn't find buyers and we were locking deals up like crazy. But we were used to locking deals up in Phoenix. Yeah, in Arizona. That's a different demographic of a property and a different type of investor or buyer than is in, say, Columbus, Ohio. Yeah, totally different. But we don't know that. And we're just, you know, throwing— basically throwing mud at the wall and seeing— or spaghetti at the wall and seeing what's sticking. And literally, like, maybe we're closing 1 out of every 5 deals that we lock up, maybe worse. And it was painful. And I was in a mastermind out in Florida. It was Joe Dillon's mastermind. You guys know Joe Dillon? He's great. But I was there and somebody was presenting. His name is Gabe Garcia, and I'll give him credit every single day. He was presenting on his business and he was talking about how he made $2 million the prior year and like 50% of that money came from this strategy called Novations. Well, then he dove into it. He's like, yeah, we sell these properties to conventional finance buyers. Yeah, on the MLS. And a light bulb went on because I'm going through a pain like I have pain right now. And a light bulb went on. I'm like, That could be the solution to my problem. And it was. Yeah. And boy, was it ever. And so I, you know, I picked, I picked his brain like crazy. I mean, we were there for the weekend and I think I, I didn't stop talking to him the whole week. And like, tell me how you do this, please. And I need any, any, any. And he told me, man, he told me everything he's doing now. He was doing it more of the Eric Brewer method, using power of attorney. More of a local model where you partner with the seller. I was like, there's something to this. And I went back and we did a couple in our local market. It worked out. And then we turned up, you know, we started doing them nationwide. Through that though, I had to pay my attorney, probably it probably cost me around $12K to, redraft up the contracts in the way, 'cause I wanted to both scale the model without the least amount of liability. And the problem with having an attorney and you signing the deed, it happens. There's just too many liability factors where you can get in a lot of trouble if something goes wrong. Not to say that there's nothing wrong with that method, it's just I didn't like it 'cause we wanted to get to a point where we're doing 30, 40, $1,000 a month. And, and so my attorney, well, actually was like two different attorneys. There was one in Texas and one in Arizona. And you know the one in Arizona, Sean Sankar and Brian Locker. Great guys.

Oh yeah. Brian's awesome.

Yeah. Any real estate issues you got in Arizona, man, those are the guys. Yeah. And they helped a lot with some of the drafting. These other guys Uncle Charles referred me to helped a lot with the drafting. Yeah. And we ended up with the— an attorney-in-fact, which didn't give you rights over the real estate. It just give you signing rights over the seller. And that was the biggest solution to the problem because now you don't have control of the real estate. The liability is not there and the seller is now signing the deed. So it, it gave us the capability of scaling the model And it was great, man. I mean, Novation Nation was the— if I were to go and start up a real estate business tomorrow, that's what I would do. I would do novations, maybe some seller financing like you're doing and some other stuff to long-term hold. Obviously you want to build a portfolio for that, but like for quick money that you need to get business, it was a great model and I liked it better than wholesaling. I liked it way better than wholesaling. I never liked wholesaling that much. Like, it paid the bills, it was great, it made a lot of money, but I didn't like it that much because, like, you're keeping it secret from the seller, you're not selling the contract, and, like, you're trying to, like, hide from the buyer how much you're making. And it's always this gray line that you're walking. And when you're trying to do 10, 20, and 30s a month, like, it's just, it's a big giant mess. And so like, so I never really liked it. And Novations, man, you don't have any of that. You know, it's full transparency with the seller. Yeah, it's— you're working with the realtor. You— the buyer doesn't care how much you're making because they're a retail buyer. Yeah, they don't— they don't care. The investors are the only ones who, who, who count your pennies.

Yeah.

Yeah. It's not retail.

And the seller, you're guaranteeing them amount of money that they're happy with. Upfront and they're getting what they asked for.

Right? Exactly. Exactly. And when you negotiate, you negotiate out of your end. So you're keeping the seller happy as much as you can. And man, it's just a great model. It works even when you— when they're raising interest rates. In 2022, when they started raising the rates. Yeah. All in '22, I was doing novations.

Yeah.

All through '22, man, I was cranking out novations because it's retail. Retail's never going to go away. Where your cash buyers, those are kind of dry out a little bit. Yeah, but your retail buyers, man, everyone needs to buy a house. Absolutely.

Yeah. And especially now when there's lower inventory, they want to buy a house, you know? Yeah. You know, so awesome. So what, what introduced you to crypto? Because I know you don't just find out about crypto today and right, I'm doing that tomorrow.

How did that— how did—

I know this is all about relationships and evolution and leveling up, and I know you're in a lot of masterminds. I'm in a lot of masterminds through, you know, meeting people, building relationships, building knowledge, you know, elevating with people and, you know, lifting others with you. Who kind of brought you— who put their hand down to lift you up in the crypto space? Because I know you've put your hand down to lift a lot in the real estate space.

In the beginning, it was just another shiny object syndrome type rabbit hole I went down. Like, you know, seeing people in 2020 and '21, which, by the way, the statistic of 2020 and '21 in crypto, it created more millionaires and billionaires than any other niche in the world. But it's being advertised all over the news. Crypto is the best thing since sliced bread. So I wanted to start getting involved. But my problem is I got involved the wrong way. I started watching influencers on YouTube. Buying the coins that they're shilling me, which just means that they're telling me about. And, you know, I lost six figures rather quick in the crypto space when I first entered. It sucked. But just like real estate, I didn't want to just give it up. Yeah, I knew there was something to it. And so I started going really deep and I joined masterminds. I started going to events. I started networking with other, you know, successful crypto people who were— that's what they did full time. Yeah. And I'm not talking about traders. I'm talking about people who have made true wealth off crypto trading. It's— you're not going to make wealth.

Most thing, isn't it? I think it's an emotion of the influencers selling you on emotion. Oh, you need to buy this shit. I'm going to miss out if I don't buy that thing. You can't buy it. And then it goes up and then Do you know what they want when they've sold before they tell you to sell?

Right. They have their bags packed. Yeah. We'll have a large audience. They shill the coin, and as soon as the audience starts buying, they're dumping as they're— yeah, literally every single day, man. By the evening, you know, it was massive red candles and I've lost a lot of money and it just— so I didn't want to, you know, I wanted to be a student of the asset class, just like I was with real estate. Yeah. And I— that's when, when I started taking it serious and really starting to take— put, put the time in to learn and the due diligence is really when I started having a lot of success in the space. And it took a couple of years, man. It was not overnight. No. And the whole time I'm still doing real estate. I'm doing real estate. Yeah. Real estate's bringing a lot of money in, which is always great. That's good. You know, and it ended up being like the, like the, the blackjack dealer job and real estate when I was transitioning. It ended up being like that where like, you know, I got my ass handed to me in the beginning, but I still had the real estate business. I was bringing a crap ton of money in. And I think I said I joined masterminds. I went to events, I hired private mentors, and I wanted to learn, you know, exactly what this space was all about. I knew it's You know, it's the next, you know, it is the next evolution of money. And I wanted to understand it. And man, did I go down a rabbit hole of all rabbit holes. And that's how I'm in Puerto Rico, actually. Yeah, Puerto Rico, because of crypto. It's funny, Trystan Trenberth, real estate. I was thinking about this the other day. Real estate made me friends and relationships all over the United States. I can go to any state. Yeah. And I got a real estate investor I can call and go visit him in the office and he'll show me a good time. And it's great. It was phenomenal. Crypto did that for me worldwide. Yeah, I have relationships all over the world. I'm going to Panama in February to set up a bank account down there. I mean, it's— I have people in Dubai now. It's amazing the relationships it did for me worldwide. And that's how I ended up in Puerto Rico, is because there's— Puerto Rico is kind of the crypto hub of the United States. This is where all the crypto guys live if that's what they do full-time. And, uh, I wanted to be around people who were playing a bigger game than me, just like in real estate. Like, in real estate, I always wanted to get in rooms where people were doing more deals or bigger deals, or they have a creative financing strategy on deals that Yeah, that's— I wanted to be the dumbest person in the room, right? Yeah. And I want to do the same with crypto, and that's why I'm out here. And these guys, you know, they're taking me under the wing. They're conditioning me. They're training me basically to how to be a whale and a shark, which is just meaning that, you know, they hold large supplies of certain coins and ecosystems, and this is what they do full-time. And then they're very, very, very wealthy. I mean, extremely wealthy. Yeah. And so, yeah, it— I ended up in the end of 2022, I was making so much money in crypto that it paled in comparison to what I was making in real estate. And I realized that real estate was basically holding me back on my full potential, what I could do in this space. 'Cause this space does take work. I mean, I have to do about 6 to 8 hours of due diligence every single day. It takes me about 100 different protocols of researching before I find one that's even investible. Yeah. It takes, so, and I have a family. I have a family now, I'm married. I got a 2-year-old.

Yeah.

It's amazing, she's my heart. I love her to death. I could hear her screaming out there. And so I had my family, I had my real estate business, and then I was doing crypto too, and I wasn't sleeping that much. And so I was like, I made the decision in the end of 2022 to start winding down the real estate. And yeah. And so now part of the overall mission is, is to use cryptocurrency as a wealth creation tool and use real estate as a wealth preservation tool. That's the mission that we're on. It's been phenomenal, man. We even started the mastermind around this. We have 103 members in the mastermind. They're all real estate entrepreneurs, which is really cool. You know, that's what we know. Yeah, that's who we know. And even Robert G. Allen, which most people probably know who he is, he wrote the book Nothing Down. He's from the 1980s. He's had infomercials. He was one of the first ones that was teaching creative financing. We partnered with him and we're teaching him crypto. He's part of our group.

Brilliant.

It's just been a blessing, man. Yeah, it's a blessing. But we're not done with real estate as a whole. I love the asset class real estate, not necessarily love fighting with buyers and sellers all the time and being in lawsuits and being a glorified HR department. Yeah, we run a big team, but the asset class real estate itself is a beautiful asset class. And so we just want to marry the two together where we're going to use— we're going to go after where the opportunity is at now. Right now, the opportunity is in crypto. Yeah, there is no two ways about it. It is massive right now.

Yeah. Yeah. So you mentioned your 2-year-old in the other room. Yeah. You've had— you've, you've shared your experience with, you know, money, you know, parents with money, that sort of thing. You're in a very different position now. You're, you're in a different— you're a different person than your father was at the age that your daughter is now. What are you taking forward? What have you kind of decided that is going to be your introduction to your daughter? I mean, you can't obviously make her perspective on money, but how are you going to lay the foundation for her to be, um, you know, a young, a young woman you know, a grown woman who has a healthy relationship with money and investing. And it really sounds like a very diverse understanding of money and investments and from a very different perspective than many people do.

Yep. And so many different ways or many same ways with the money relationship that my father taught me when I was young, I will be teaching her minus some of the negativity that I experienced as a young kid, you know, that, that, you know, it was unfortunate that some of that stuff's ingrained in my head. Yeah. Because of that. So minus that, she, she needs to learn the value of money. She needs to learn how to work, you know, have chores. We're going to, you know, it's going to— there's going to be a foundation we're going to lay down. And even with the money that I have and that I'm making, he's not going to just be like, hand it to her one day when she's 18 if I were to pass away. And I know we've had this conversation a couple times, which I really love that, you know, that you have some kind of the same ethos as me on— they need to learn what the true value of money is and what it means to be an entrepreneur, what it means to be, you know, build a business. Or if they don't want to go that route, okay, Maybe it's the route of going to school and becoming a doctor. Yeah, there's nothing wrong with that. And, you know, because after that they can open their own practice or whatever it is, and then you're not sure. Or still there's different ways and different roads to adding value to life. That's what we're here for. We're here to add value to our fellow man or woman in her case. And so we want to make sure that we keep that ethos ingrained in her. And that's the one thing my dad, even though a lot of the other parts, he was non-existent in my life. That was the one thing that he gave me that was truly a gift that I want to make sure that I, you know, I also hand down and teach. Because if it weren't for that, I definitely wouldn't be here living in Puerto Rico doing what I'm, you know, living That, it was that, that was giving me the capability of getting to where I, where I'm at now. Um, yeah. So that part, you know, we want to make sure we do it right, man. And cause you, you only got one shot at that, right? Yeah. You mess that up with them at the early age. Yeah. It's like you spoil them at the wrong time and it's like, yeah. Yeah. Like you said. It's— and I need— I want to— I want to— I want to learn more about that. I want to learn more. And I know you're doing some research on this stuff, but I want to learn more about how we can— if we have a lot of money, how can we responsibly take care of them? But at the same time, as they're growing up in their life, in their journey of life, how can we make sure they get the same lessons that we had to learn. We had to learn a hard, hard lessons, a lot of hard lessons. And, you know, like, it would break my heart if she came to me one day and say, hey, Dad, I lost all my money on this fix and flip. It's like, what do you do there? Do you, do you bail her out and for her next one, or do you make her do what I have to do and freaking cold call 12 hours a day for 10 months before I locked up my first record. Where, where is— I need to do more learning as she's growing because it's a new journey for me now. This is all me. Yeah. As she's growing to being a woman, I need to learn how to responsibly, you know, put that into her life.

And I think she's going to gain that from you so strongly with the, with the empathy and compassion and the love that you have as a father. And you'll share these stories with her as she grows up, and there'll be more granular stories that you share with her along the way, she's going to understand how you came to see the value of these things and understand. And, you know, some people are saying, well, you know, in my, in my demise, I'll match whatever my— I'll double whatever my kid is able to earn. So if they're able to earn $100,000, I'll give them $200,000 because they've gone out there and that incentivizes them to go make $400,000. And do you see what I mean?

So yeah, one way.

But I think some of these things are key. You're never gonna let somebody starve or, you know, any, any real, you know, any harm come to your daughter. But I think that through, through a caring and, and a loving delivery of that and understanding before that might even happen in the life, she'll know that whatever happens is a loving, caring thing. You'll never let her down or, or leave her short. Yeah, but there'll be a way that she understands that, right? I've got a problem to solve and I'm capable of solving that problem. Dad, how can you help me solve the problem? Let's do this together. Can you guide me? What could you suggest from your experience? And that will elevate her and, you know, she'll have the trust to come to you and say, Dad, fuck, I mean, you know, you told me that story about that flip. Jeez, I'd done the same thing or something. What, what would you do? I know you did that. Life's a bit different now. Shit, I've got to dig myself out of this somehow.

Yep.

What do I do? This, this, and this. And she'll be in your ear, you'll be laughing about it and having a good time, and I think it'll be perfect.

But there's so many lessons to be learned on that, that, that digging yourself out part.

Unless you touch the hot stove, you really don't know what it feels like. Now stove, you know, really.

And I'll tell you, if she's 5 years old and finds a quarter in the couch, I'm like, sorry, honey, you got to earn this. Yeah. You know, maybe go pick up the laundry, whatever it is, right? There's, there's, there's got to be an exchange of value because that's all money is. It's just an exchange of energy that we create a value. And I create this value. And then I'm going to say, hey, I would like Trystan Trenberth, come and do some value for me. And in exchange, I got this value here I can give you. Yeah, that's what money is. It's very simple. And so, yeah, it's going to be a fun ride, man. All new for me. And yeah, we're excited.

And I love that, you know, you got that consciousness and that intention around money as well, where a lot of people are just in the space of scarcity. And, you know, I think in some ways the difference between Bitcoin and fiat is that they can print whatever they want in fiat, but Bitcoin, there's that limiting and ongoing restriction of the supply of it, and the value is going to go up, and it's going to be more granular and more fractional. Yes, there'll be more currencies, but that's the knowledge that you're learning and have learned that dictates what you might invest in, what might be valuable in the long term to get now and sit on for a while. Maybe there will be some short-term plays. They, you know, looking at Warren Buffett, if he had started 5 years later, they said it had been worth less than half of what he's worth today just because of that continuous, consistent, right, sitting on those, those stocks that he's got. And there's like 10 or 12 stocks he invests in, and he's suddenly buying more of them. When it goes down, he buys more. When it goes up, he buys more.

Yep. No, he's not a trader. He, he plays the market cycles. Yeah, buys when people are greedy. Yeah, he buys when people are fearful.

Sorry.

He buys when people are fearful and he sells when people are greedy.

Yeah.

You apply the exact same ethos to crypto. Yeah. Yeah.

Well, I think we've, we've covered so much today, Corey. It's so much fun. We're going to talk some music after we finish here. But is there something you'd like to leave with the audience, you know, that you, you've, you know, thought of that we haven't covered just as a sort of a final Yeah, I'll give a couple of different thoughts.

One, you know, overall for entrepreneurship, you know, a lot of people you hear, it's like the buzzword. I love it. You know, you got to know your why. Yeah, it's, you know, and then you hear all these different answers. Oh, my why is my kids. My why is my mom. Yeah. My parents. My why is because I want time freedom. There's so many different I've heard so many different answers, and this is very controversial, but I would say all those are wrong. If your why is not that you truly don't love yourself and know that you deserve abundance, then you cannot, you could not, you know, retain or get that abundance unless you come from a place of love and knowing that you have a true deservance of that. And that is the biggest issues with entrepreneurs. That's why people give up. That's why people, you know, they just, they just don't care or whatever it is. They don't have that self-love. It took me learning the hard way, really, how to self-love myself. And it came from real estate. And that's why I say real estate saved my life. And until you— you can't even love another human being. And honestly, in my opinion, until you learn to love yourself first. Yeah. And why are you thinking you're going to be worth $10 million if you don't love yourself? You can't. It's just— it's— you're not going to be accepted into that abundance. So think about that. There's nothing wrong saying, oh yeah, my daughter is my why, but okay, but that means you love her before you. That doesn't make no sense. Yeah, makes no sense at all. And another thing I'll leave your listeners is, is about crypto is that you're going to want to start learning a little bit about this asset class because whether you like it or not, you're going to be involved in crypto one day or another.

You like it or not?

Yeah, whether you like it or not, we have a thing called CBDCs. You can look it up and it stands for Central Bank Digital Currencies. And they got approved in the United States July of this year. Right now it's just a bank-to-bank settlement layer, but eventually it will be integrated into the economy. And then one day, what this fiat thing we got, which is this— this is fiat— is going to be gone. We're going to be all digital. And the only place where you will have true freedom in your finances is in decentralized finance, which is the DeFi. I'm sorry, I mean Yup. And that's where you'll have self-sovereignty and that's where you'll have censorship-resistant transactions. It was great. My brother sent me some, some Pulse, which is just a crypto. I'm already— I'm here in Puerto Rico and it was like 9:00 at night and he sent it to me and it was in my wallet within seconds without a third party. Yeah, cryptocurrency was invented to get rid of third-party counterparty risk. Yeah, it was to teach you to be your own bank. And unfortunately, all of us, we stopped being our own bank when we stopped keeping those piggy banks under our bed and we went to the bank. We stopped being our own bank. Well, crypto puts the control back to you. Yeah, people. And that's the amazing part about crypto. It can set you financially free. Absolutely. But it would— the, the, the freedom and the shackles it gets rid of from the government, the banks, and it's, it's amazing. So it would be wise, just even a little bit of research doesn't mean you have to go out and invest a bunch of money. And when you start, you can start with like 1%, whatever you make, and just Slowly start getting comfortable with the asset class because this is the future.

So, so what are some good sources? You can Google crypto and you'll find all sorts of crap out there that might, you know, oh, it's all garbage.

I mean, most of it's garbage.

It is. So where would be a good place to go and find out?

We got a YouTube channel. Would love to, you know, if you guys want to come watch us, we, we stream Monday through Friday, assuming that we don't got nothing going on. And some days we cancel and whatever, but most days we stream. Yeah, it's about an hour long. And, you know, we talk about some of our favorite assets and some of the new emerging layer-1 blockchains that are coming out in the middle of this bear market. Yeah. So, you know, we're a great resource. Obviously, you know, there's other resources. One of my favorites, and he's very controversial, controversial, is Richard Heart. And literally watching all his old streams, all it— so much knowledge and information. It's overload. Yeah, it will blow your brain and he will teach you everything that you need to know about cryptocurrency, why it was invented, where it's going, all the myths, all the BS that's out there, because 98% of all crypto is BS. It's the Wild West. It's unregulated right now. So you gotta be very careful on how you maneuver in this space. Yeah. But one of the things he said is, if you get crypto right, you or your family will never have to work again. Once again, 2020 and '21 created more millionaires and billionaires in this space than any other niche in the world, including real estate and business ownership.

Yeah.

Another fun fact. How did you put $1 into Bitcoin in 2009, which was when it was first invented? Now I get it. We didn't know about it. What? But just for fun experiment and then sold in November of 2021, which was the last market cycle top. By the way, cryptocurrency works in 4-year cycles. It's, it's down to the T. You can predict. Yeah, the tops come and when the bottoms come for the cycle. But if you would have sold November of 2021, you would have made $6.5 million off your wallet.

Holy moly.

Well, cryptocurrency is the highest appreciating asset known to mankind, and that's going to keep increasing because of its scarcity. It is. Yeah. So it would just be wise to start learning a little bit. Richard Heart is great. Another guy who's great is the one who created the Cardano blockchain, Charles Hoskinson. Is his name. He's great. You can listen to Vitalik. He's good. He created the Ethereum blockchain. But Richard Heart is my favorite. Brilliant. Go back and start watching all his old streams and you'll learn a plethora about this asset class. And it's an amazing and fun asset class too. Once you learn how to navigate. Yeah. Landmines, because you got to be careful. It's Absolutely.

Yeah. So your pro— your masterminds, the— is it the DeFi Crypto Alliance?

DeFi Crypto Alliance is the name of the mastermind. Yeah. And this is just a, you know, a group where we're teaching real estate entrepreneurs or entrepreneurs. Not everyone in there is real estate, but like 90, 98%. Yeah, that's the space we come from. Yeah. We're teaching them how to do crypto the right way, safe, where you hold your own keys. Where you engage with the blockchain, you engage with the code. We don't use centralized exchanges. We don't use Binance or Coinbase, Crypto.com.

Yeah, because that's another third party, isn't it?

That's involved. You got it. Yeah, you nailed it. That's happened. FTX. That's why FTX was just a centralized exchange and it collapsed and people lost a lot of money. So you want to hold your crypto, you want to hold your own keys, you want to learn to be your own bank and act responsibly. There's a lot of learning to it. It's just, it's not easy in the beginning, but once you learn it, man, it's— yeah. And so, yeah, so the— is that— yeah. And it's been a blast, man. It's been an absolute blast. We do all the research. We encourage the group members to do research or You don't have to like we're bringing, you know, on a silver platter to everybody what we're investing in, why we're investing in them, how much we're investing. You know, if there's a— is there red flags? What are the red flags? Yeah. And it's just— yes, it's what I do full time now, man. It's been awesome. Amazing. The passive income from my portfolio.

Yeah.

Is that—

is that from mining or—

So there's 3 ways to make passive income in crypto. 3 legit ways. There's a lot of other different ways, and we call those Ponzi-nomics. Yeah, because it's the wild, wild west. 3 ways. One, mining. You got to be careful with that term because everyone misuses it and it's not correct because the only true mining is when you're mining a layer 1 blockchain. And so layer 1, I'll give you a couple examples. Bitcoin's a layer 1. Ethereum is a layer 1. PulseChain is a layer 1. Avalanche is a layer 1. Solana is a layer 1. There's only a finite few. There's not a lot. So mining those is a great way to make passive income. Right now I'm mining, I'm mining PulseChain. I'm making about 20% APY, which is very low in the crypto space. In the real world, it's great, but in the crypto space, it's low. But I'm earning all the passive income in the layer 1, which I club. Yeah. The second way is probably my— it's my second favorite. This is where— so you have a layer 1 blockchain. On top of the layer 1, you have protocols that are built. They're like businesses. They— people come and engage with the protocol, and they pay a fee to engage the protocol, and so they make a profit. Now, the business doesn't have an owner. There's no CEO, there's no management team, because it's centralized. It's just code and a protocol. And so where does all that money go? Where it goes to the own— the holders of the crypto that's attached to the protocol. It's like a stock dividend, right? Like if you own Coca-Cola, every quarter you get a dividend from their profit. Now it's not very much if you own Coca-Cola, but these crypto protocols, because there is no ownership of them, all that profit is distributed to the stakers of that coin of the protocol. So that's the, the second way, which is you can clearly see where the passive income is coming from. Yeah, that's one of the secrets. If you don't see where the passive income is coming from, then most likely it's a Ponzi. Yeah. Um, the third way is, uh, it's called liquidity providing. And so this is— so Coinbase, all they are is a marketplace where you can go buy and trade assets, right? You can buy and sell assets. Well, in DeFi, you can put up the assets for people to trade in and out of, and for that service, you earn fees. So people are trading in and out of your assets all day long. Maybe you have Ethereum and maybe you have like, uh, HEX, you know, and you put it in a liquidity pool, and in that pool, people are trading in and out of your assets and you get paid fees for it. And that is the third way of making passive income in crypto. Now there's different— after that there's other ways, but like I said, there's, you know, there are more Ponzi-nomics that we don't like. We want to make sure— so the way I look at crypto, it's funny, man. In real life, you provide value to get paid, right? Yeah, it's the same on the blockchain. You need to ask yourself, what value am I bringing to the blockchain to get paid for, like liquidity providing. You're providing a valuable service because you're putting up your assets. You become the market maker. Yeah, become the exchange. You become the Coinbase, right? And that's the value you bring in. The people are able to trade in and out of your crypto and you make the fees. So that's where you look at mining. That's the value you bring is huge. You hold consensus to the network, you execute transactions, and you make new blocks like your computer all does this on the server. And so you bring a very valuable service to the ecosystem and get paid accordingly. So yeah, so it's just that's how we look at passive income in this space. And yeah, man, it's been amazing. Ideally, what you want to do is you want to build a portfolio of assets that produce passive income. Hold. We're buy and hold investors. We treat our crypto like real estate. Yeah. And you hold into the next market top, which is somewhere around 2025. How do I know that? Because everything— we predict cycle, 4-year cycles. Everything revolves around the Bitcoin halving. The next Bitcoin halving, check it out, your viewers can Google it, will be in April of 2024, is the next Bitcoin halving. So this is the accumulation year. The bear market. Yeah. Once the halving happens, because that's also— think about a presidential election. Eventually they're going to start dropping rates. The money printer will come back on eventually. That's going to be all around that time. The Bitcoin halving. It's funny how Satoshi Nakamoto, who's the one who created Bitcoin, he, he scheduled the halving in our— to, to report that. It's remarkable.

Amazing. That's great. Well, we're going to put your link after this to your YouTube channel, to your mastermind, and your contact information that you want to share for your team. Thank you so much, Corey. This has been amazing value and such an enjoyable conversation.

Always a pleasure, man. We'll do a round 2 sometime.

Love it. Thank you so much. Follow Corey on the links provided. The crypto world is an incredible one. There's been a lot of emotion, as we heard, but take a look at what he's doing for long-term cash-flowing wealth. These are the important people to follow, not the knee-jerk reactions, not the emotions, but build yourself a solid foundation of wealth that you can pass through generations. Thanks for joining us. See you on the next edition of Birth to Net Worth.