Humans are designed to grow, to expand, and to solve new problems. It may be at various levels and capacities based on our uniqueness, but we all have that within each of us. With that in mind, how do you get a 10% raise for life? There are actually more opportunities to work from home or work in a place you want to live in because of how society is progressing. Everything is within your reach because of the internet. Knowing that all these options exist creates focus and ultimately a path to build your value statement. In this episode, Patrick tackles how to make more money or make the same amount of money with less time and do it every year.
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Italy – The Past, The Present And The Future
Financial Friday
I am in a different location than Salt Lake City, Utah, my home office. I’m actually in Florence, Italy. My wife has had a dream of coming here for so many years and there’s actually a conference that I’m attending so we’re excited to extend a little bit and visit a few cities. We were in Milan, then went to Venice for a few days, then came here to the conference in Florence. Then we’re headed to Rome for a few days. We’re hitting all of the hot spots. I thought what would be appropriate for this episode is to talk about Italy, the past, the present and the future, and what that has to do with you specifically in regards to the idea of compound interest. Get ready for another episode.
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Let’s first talk about the past. I’ve mentioned this in episodes of the past, but Italy is actually credited as being the ground zero for banking. It’s really the more robust organizations. They had massive influence that started here in Italy and you can still see signs of that. One of the most prominent families, probably one of the more well-known ones was the Medici family. You could see their coat of arms everywhere and it’s popular here. I learned a few different things I thought that would be interesting for you. First off, they’re the first prominent banking family that had tremendous influence during the Renaissance era. Eventually part of this line became Popes and lots of influence. From a banking perspective, here’s something that’s pretty fascinating. They’re credited with the creation of double accounting using two variables: credits and debits. The banking family also funded the creation of the opera and they also funded the creation of the piano. These are things that we look at every day and realize that they’re just a part of our culture, but they weren’t necessarily here several thousand years ago. It’s interesting to see that history behind it and that it was funded by credit, by somebody taking a loan, using that loan to make something. In this case, it was opera and the piano.
However, a lot of the early banking families like the Rothschilds, obviously the Medici family is also part of it, they lent a lot of money to the Catholic Church. In addition to these ventures, the opera and the piano, the Medici family also funded the construction of St. Peter’s Basilica, which is at the Vatican City. That’s also very interesting. Then there’s a bank in Siena, which is the oldest bank still running today and it was founded in 1472. Before Columbus sailed the ocean blue, there was an Italian bank that was up and running and it’s called the Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena. That’s essentially very instrumental in creating what we know as banking now.
Let’s get to the transition to the present. You look around Italy and it’s such an amazing culture. I’ve never been here before, but there’s beauty everywhere. The art, the cathedrals, the ornateness of everything, the food, the culture is so rich. Why don’t they have the power that they once did? They were the superpower of the world. Obviously, Rome being one of the greatest examples of a society that rose and then subsequently fell. There are many variables. If you look at why they lost so much power, I put it into two primary reasons. The first reason is the wealthy that were clearly intelligent, mainly coming from banking and being able to lend on ventures that were suitable for lending, such as the opera such as the piano, there are lots of different trade ships and the shipping industry being funded by banks. They had it going really well and there were some incredibly wealthy nobles and non-nobles.
What you started to find was that there became this idea that in order for the wealthy person to get into heaven, they had to make some pretty big donations to the church for them to be permitted to go to heaven. It was interesting. There are several different comments on some of the tours we took that talked about how much of the wealthy’s money went into funding, just these incredible cathedrals and churches, which is nice because we still have that today. At the same time, you look at the productivity and the wealth that was created in the first place, the ability to analyze and price-risk that it wouldn’t do something that really did not produce anything.
Second variable is that disruption happens. What happened in 1492? Columbus sailed the ocean blue, new trade routes were created, new trade partners were created. It no longer was the Mediterranean Sea. It really became to the Americas and slowly the Roman empire as well as Italy and their significance started to falter. It’s interesting to see how us as humans and our race, how we innovate and we’re always making things better and new things are created that we don’t necessarily anticipate. It ruins businesses sometimes. Just look at what the retail industry is becoming because of Amazon, you have disruption and you have cycles and you have new ways of doing business. It puts the older businesses, established business on the fritz. You see that quite often, especially in our day and age, and it happened back then too.
Let’s transition to today. Italy today is part of the European Union. This is the present. It’s not doing so well. However, Italy has a pretty big economy. It’s about a $2 trillion economy. It’s part of the European Union. I think it’s either fourth or fifth as far as its GDP. $2 trillion is its GDP. The issue with Italy is that from a banking perspective, they should be the experts in loans. If they’re the ones where banking originated, right now their GDP is over 150% and their credit rating is one notch above junk. Junk is considered a very high-risk bond or a high-risk investment. That’s where Italy’s bond rating is right now. One of the riskiest countries out there, one of the poorest situations, they’re in a recession. They had some negative quarters of GDP in 2018.
I’m going to give you one example of some of the stuff they’re spending money on. They’re taking out loans, you would think with a background in banking that they would know how to price the risk of different ventures just as a culture. They committed money to building this tunnel that goes underneath the Alps and it connects to France. I know the European Union has pledged money for it as well as France and a few other countries. However, Italy pledged 30%, 35% of the project and the project from the get-go has a negative $7 billion return. Obviously the point of making an investment with debt is to have a positive return. That’s the nature of debt. Oftentimes when you put debt in the hands of government politicians, they don’t necessarily have the incentive to always be profitable. It’s to do what’s good for everyone, yet there are a lot of unintended consequences with that, such as the situation they’re in right now where they have way more debt than they have GDP. As interest rates should be creeping in on their ability to go into Junk status and possibly be defunct and bankrupt. What’s interesting is the whole concept of bankruptcy originated in Italy, banco rotto, which is like a broken table because banking used to happen on a table. That’s where banco comes from.
This is where Italy’s at. I looked at where they’re priced in the market and they’re priced at a very interesting interest rate. In the United States, typically to understand the medium of short-term and long-term bonds, you have the ten-year yield. In Italy, it is basically at the same level as the US’ ten-year bond. That shows you just how mispriced the markets are when it comes to the underlying collateral, which is in this case, Italy’s government and being on par with the United States who has the best credit rating that’s out there. It’s just fascinating. The reason why it’s priced like that in the present is because you have the European Union, the European Central Bank, is ultimately going to be forced to bail them out. Who knows what the future is going to be? Oftentimes the fundamentals, the logical way of thinking as far as A plus B plus C equals this, “If this happens, then this should happen. Then this should happen.” It’s the human being’s ability to deduce and the ability to be rational and understand connections. At the same time, human beings also have the tendency more often than not to be irrational and their behaviors don’t reflect logic.
That comes down to the future. That in the future we don’t really know what’s going to happen. We can speculate but right now, Japan has been operating at over 200% debt to GDP for a really long time. They keep on going. Obviously, they have their own central bank, which is the Bank of Japan, whereas Italy does not see the European Central Bay because they’re part of the European Union. They can’t create their own currency. It would be interesting what the future holds. What this does show is that there are a lot of things that are out of whack and things are changing very quickly as far as technology, as far as the new people coming online, new technologies. That disruption is what creates companies going out of business, countries having major issues politically. What does that have to do with you? That has a lot to do with you because we live in a world that is interconnected.
The majority of American savings, which I’m assuming the majority of my audience are Americans, the majority of savings is tied to markets and markets are affected and impacted by a few things, the speculation of what things are right. For instance, the two and a half percent-ish that the Italian tenure is at as far as yield is concerned. That’s priced into expecting that the European Central Bank is going to bail them out. If they don’t bail them out, what is going to happen? You’re going to have a tumbling in the bond market, which means prices are going to go down quite a bit and the yield is going to spike to where normal levels should be for a country that has a bad rating. Right now, the expectation is that the European Central Bank’s going to bail them out. Therefore, the yield is still pretty stable. You look at other aspects of the market and what it prices and sometimes it’s rational, sometimes it’s not. The disruption and how quickly things are evolving shows that there is going to be volatility. When you have volatility, you have a much higher probability of loss when asset prices go down.
Let me hit on one more point. I look at my experience here in Italy because it’s not just the debt to GDP, which is really high, but there’s super high unemployment, almost 11%. Walking around the streets of these different countries, you wouldn’t think that there is a high unemployment rate. The people of Italy seem to be very productive. What I mean by that is they don’t open until 10:30, 11:00 in the morning, stores, cafes, restaurants, and then they close for the majority of the afternoon for like a siesta. Then they open up at night and they still are profitable. I look at the amount of youth that are on the street as well as a lot of the businesses that I have observed. There’s a lot of productivity. It’s a very dynamic people too. You look at how beautiful the hills are, the environment is the tourism that exists here. It’s incredible. Those resources are there for the Italian people. Yet oftentimes that’s not what is relied upon for things to rebound. It’s typically government who intervenes and thinks that they know the right decisions to make. Apparently that’s not working out so well for most companies, but we’re not going to have to be talking about that more than what I’ve already mentioned.
Let’s get to the last aspect of this short episode of Financial Friday, which is compound interest. One of the things that I see as the biggest misunderstanding or financial point that is made that is never questioned, which is the idea of compound interest. Compound interest is typically defined when an amount, typically money, is earning interest and then that interest earns interest, and that continues to grow. The hockey stick example is often used, exponential growth is often used. The rule of 72 applies to compound interest. Whenever it comes to something that can lose, when there is a loss available and anything that is assessed as being a compound interest, the whole notion of compound interest must be questioned. Here’s why. I used this example in the book that I wrote in Heads I Win, Tails You Lose. I hit on it a few different times because a lot of the claims in financial services with typical financial planning, is that because the market has earned certain rates of return in the past that they use that even though they disclaim that the past results are not indicative of what future results are going to be, they still use it. They use an interest rate to determine how interest compounds over time. If the market has averaged let’s say 10% over the last 30 years, then that 10% is used every single year without loss to determine what an end value will be.
Raise For Life: As you’re doing research and due diligence on what is available to you to make more money, make sure that it is fulfilling and aligns with who you are.
Here’s the problem with that is if you actually look at the nature of markets, when a market goes up and interest is earned, but then the market goes down and there is a loss, what happens next is very important. You can’t just measure the number because if you look at an average return, if you lose 50% in the market and then you earn 50% that next year, so one year you lose 50% in the next year and you gain 50%, you’re not going to be at zero. If you earn 50% and then lose 50%, you’re going to be at zero. Why is that the case? Let’s look at 2008. The markets collapsed in 2008 and the S&P lost about 40%. Math shows that if it lost 40%, it’s going to get back to breakeven if it earns 40% because negative 40 plus 40 is zero divided by two is zero. However if you have a $200,000 balance, you lose 40%, $40,000 and then you gained back 40%, you’re only gaining back 40% on $60,000.
Let me do that math for you again. If you start with $100,000 and in 2008 you lose 40%, your balance is $60,000. If you earn 40%, you’re earning not on a hundred, you’re earning on 60% which is only $24,000. You’re at $84,000 not back to a hundred but yet the average return is zero. There was an event that boil my blood because he’s talking about compound interest and talk about average returns and they were showing what the future will look like if these average returns are earned. The claim was made that if you didn’t participate in the 300% increase in the market over the course of the last ten years, then you lost out. I’ve heard that quite a bit, not just from this group. This group particularly hit home because there’s an affinity that I have with so many other of their teachings. This thing totally spun me because of the notion of compound interest and just how misunderstood even at very high levels this concept is.
I ran some numbers. The numbers show that from 2008 to 2018, the eleven-year period of time, the market losing was 38.49% in the S&P 500. The gains that it earned since 2009, if you look at the increase that it’s being talked about, it’s the level of the S&P and the level that it’s at now, which we argued that those two levels show almost a 300% increase. However, that is not how money works. That’s how math works, where you can measure those two points and show the increase but you’re missing time. Number one, you’re missing ten years there. 300% in one year is amazing. Over the course of ten years, not so much. Even if you look at a 30% average, which you just took 300 divided by ten. That’s not reality. The average return is actually only 6.74% over that eleven-year period of time if you factor in the 38% loss. If you factor in management fees, 1%, then you factor in taxes, the actual return is just above 2.5%. That is how profoundly misunderstood this concept is.
When you hear average returns, that’s something that you want to call into question. If it has to do with an account that can lose money, where your balance can actually have a loss in a year. The notion of compound interest must be analyzed at a much higher economic level where you are able to factor in the actual losses of money, not just the losses of an interest rate. I didn’t want to lose you too much. I’m going to post a video that I did on compound interest because this will help kind of go through these examples. When you think, do you like what you’re reading? Is this interesting to you? Do you like some of the history of banking? I hope that you take some action and actually go and study what compound interest is, how it works. These videos are very short, ten, twelve minutes the particular one I’m referring to. I know that it will make a big difference because it will give you some knowledge, give you some education that as you’re learning about finance and seeing how it applies to you specifically, most people will ultimately run some compound interest calculations, make so you do it the right way.
If you wouldn’t mind and if you’re not subscribed to the YouTube channel, subscribe. If you aren’t following me on social media, Instagram, Facebook, I love to connect with you. I try to post as much as possible. I’m posting about being here in Europe. It’s a fantastic trip. I hope you get to come here if you haven’t already. Also if you would do some reviews, if you review in iTunes, that really helps us get the word out, get the message out. I love to hear your feedback. Thanks for tuning into this episode of Financial Friday.
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Some say that many governments have tried various economic systems, but there’s nothing like capitalism. How true is that in today’s government and market? Capitalism is a financial system where goods and services produced are through supply and demand in a market economy. A precious metals aficionado armed with degrees in finance and engineering, David Morgan gives more precise and in-depth insights on the different types and principles of capitalism. In this world of chaos that we live in, The Morgan Report founder sheds light on the importance of being accountable and trustworthy in business as he critics the current monetary and market systems.
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The Capitalist System’s Agenda with David Morgan
We’re going to dive into some philosophy as it relates to capitalism. I have an incredible individual that’s on. His name is David Morgan. He’s an economist, a precious metals expert, a writer and is the publisher of The Morgan Report. David, thank you so much for joining me.
Thanks for asking me. It’s a pleasure to be with you.
I thought I’d start off because of your expertise as it relates to precious metals, how your perspective about the tenets of capitalism is maybe slightly different as an expert in precious metals than maybe someone with an economics degree?
I’m going to go through a stream of conscious, I’ve thought about what you asked. First of all, I adhere to pretty much the Mises Institute, so that’s the Mises.org if you’re interested. There is a huge book called Capitalism that you can get actually download or get the PDF for free off of the Mises Institute’s website. There are a lot of critics about capitalism and I would say justifiably so. Every system has been tried and nothing succeeds like capitalism. First of all, you have to define it and I’m not sure this is a textbook definition but basically, it’s laissez-faire or the free market. There are a lot of people that say, “If it’s a free market, anything can happen. You have to have rules, you have to have regulations, you have to have regulators and without this you’re going to have complete chaos.”
You can’t legislate honestly. You can legislate it but you can’t do anything but enforce it. In other words, the market itself is the purveyor of right, wrong and good, bad and that type of thing. In a free market, the idea is the sound principle is that if I create something, I can benefit myself. Capitalists are selfish, yes and no. In true capitalism or idealize capitalism, I invent something because I’ve got this idea that’s going to save me time and energy, and it works. My neighbors come over and say, “That’s so awesome. I want one of those.” You build one for them and you barter. That’s true capitalism. Real capitalism or idealized capitalism, I am benefiting myself and society at large. This is the free market. I’m going to expand from this idea.
Let’s say in the real world, that’s the idealized world. We have a situation where there’s competition of capitalism. If I invent something, it works, I start to have a market, I get my neighbors involved and they all like it. One of the other neighbors says, “That’s a great idea but I know how to make that better,” and he does. Then basically, I’m more or less out of business or theoretically, I’m out of business because my idea has been made better and away we go. The market itself has determined, “This is the better product.” I want to take that theme and explore it a little bit. If it goes way back into the early days of self-entertainment, meaning the television but then this thing came out called the VCR, where you could actually get a movie and play it on your own TV.
There were actually two main thrusters there. There was the VHS and Betamax. Betamax was the far superior system than the VHS but if you had pure capitalism, the Betamax probably would’ve won out. In our society, we have something called advertising. If you can advertise something that might be inferior but convinced the majority or the consumer that your product is better for variety of reasons, you can have an inferior product take over the market, which is what happened with the VHS. This is another example because this one that hits close to home because I was all for the Betamax. When I went to buy one, the salesperson was nice enough to tell me, “Don’t, it’s not going to happen. It’s going to go the other way.”
Capitalism
I want to point out some flaws to capitalist. Let’s go to non-classic Liberal. In some cases, they’re justified because there are people out there that only think of profit. They are greedy and basically run scams. It happens but again, you could legislate in a way and say, “You can’t do that.” In an idealized capitalism, if I make a product and it’s an inferior product, no one’s going to buy it. The market itself is going to give me true feedback and I’m out of business because word gets out. I might think that the product, but if I think it’s great and the market doesn’t, it’s useless. That’s where the real free market will work if it’s allowed to. People have this greed thing. This is probably something out there, I don’t know if I’m inventing this word or not. I’m sure it’s out there somewhere but I would consider conscious capitalism.
Conscious capitalism is where you actually take into the large picture something like the Native-Americans and the Chinese purportedly where you’re looking out four or five generations. You’re saying, “If I build this product like this, is this to the highest and best good of all involved?” Take off on that thing and hopefully you can follow my train of thought. In this day’s capitalism, there’s built-in obsolescence. You have an automobile, a washing machine, a refrigerator or whatever. A lot of these products could be made better. Meaning that they don’t have to have built-in obsolescence. It’s possible. An automobile, it’s not a good example but a refrigerator washing machine and stuff, they can be built to last 30, 40 years fairly easily.
Of course, they’re machines and they can break down and need repairs but overall built-in obsolescence is morally correct or morally incorrect. That’s a tough question. In our view of capitalism, if I build this VHS tape player and it only lasts five years, then I’ve got a market every five years because people are going to go back and you’re going to get a newer one. I have my business model so that I stay in business. If you’re a conscious capitalist, “I’m building this thing that’s going to be so good that this is going to last a lifetime.” I have to build it one time. That’s a much better use of resources. This is more conscious capitalism, more than driving out where you think it through and I could take it on a tangent if you don’t mind but this is more where the Millennials are going with the minimalist idea. That I only need one of these things, I don’t need twelve.
I only need one set of dishes. I only need one set of glass or only one set of coffee mugs. I like that idea because, we speaking to the society at large, have become brainwashed or the propaganda has got us to such a degree that rather than take what we need, we’re constantly taught what we want. Our want can never be satisfied because we always want the next iPhone. You’re taught this. In your heart of hearts, you may actually realize it doesn’t matter. It functions the same. There’s not much difference between my six and the ten. I’ve got a six and I don’t want upgrade it but that’s the idea. We’re built into this obsolescence, consume, consume, consume. Whatever I’ve got, there’s a better one coming out and I must have it. These ideas are not necessarily capitalistic ideas. They’re more bet on the propaganda machine from Mr. Bernays and teaching people what they think they should think rather than use what I call conscious capitalism. I said a mouthful. I’m sure you’ve probably got some ideas throw back at me. I’d love to hear your thoughts.
I would say the premise of humanity is that we have fallibility. We make mistakes. We make wrong calls. We have a unique perspective. Everybody has a different perspective of the world. We operate off of that, but it doesn’t mean that the other person’s perspective. I look at capitalism and the framework itself is the exploration of what you think and figuring out a way to do well, to appease that self-interest exchanging with others. Equally, as capitalism can create a lot of wealth, it equally could destroy wealth. A person may have the right idea but they bring that idea to the marketplace and to them it was a good idea but nobody else thinks the same. I think capitalism goes both ways. It appeals to both sides of humanity, our side which is brilliant and can bring value.
In the process of trying to figure that out, when we do fail, it has to equally support that. As I’ve thought through this concept and thought through some of the things that you’re saying, in the end we have to believe that. We have to believe that there’s going to be success and there’s going to be failure. Ultimately, as you brought up laissez-faire capitalism, it’s one of those things where the equality is essentially the equal protection of individual rights. I think capitalism is definitely confused.There are multiple definitions and it depends on who you’re asking. Warren Buffett has a definition for it. Everybody has all their definitions of it.
Fundamentally, I think it’s pretty simple if people would actually take time to research it and it’s understanding that, we as humans have shortcomings and we also have this notion of self-interest. It’s figuring out what is the right system in order for those tendencies and instincts to operate. That’s where I go to, whether it’s Mises and there are a lot of others like the Austrian school but there’s also the Chicago school too that understood some of the primary fundamentals of capitalism. It’s one of those things where it’s reasonable to expect that system would work now as it was assumed to work 100 years ago just because of how much perception says we’ve progressed.
It’s been corrupted so much. Most of what we called capitalism is crony capitalism. Rather than go out and let the best product win in a real free market where there’s competition, they have a defense contract, which is a good example where it’s basically favoritism and political infighting. Who’s got the best lobbyists in Washington, DC to get a given contract during a given weapons program? It might be an inferior product but in real capitalism rather than the government funding and even the startup or the initial, let’s say piece of equipment or a piece of hardware, the entrepreneur wouldn’t have to go out and get funds one way or the other. Maybe they had a big success and had a lot of capital like Howard Hughes and they want to make something.
They have it within their own means to create something new and then there’s someone else that’s a competitor that raises funds. The market would decide which is the best. Like a foot race as a metaphor, this piece of hardware versus that piece of hardware, which one function the best, which one has the longest life and which one is easier to repair? We don’t have this anymore. We have a very small amount of it. There is this true free market capitalism in existence, yes but it’s rare. Most of the stuff, especially when you get government bigger and bigger has to do with who you know and this is called crony capitalism. It’s who you know, it’s what political cloud. It’s your district. It’s like, “We’ve never gotten funds for this. We should give it to them because they need to bring up their standard of living in this part of this district, of this town, of this state.”
Capitalism: Every system has been tried, but nothing succeeds like capitalism.
It goes and it all sounds well-meaning but it doesn’t serve everybody to the highest and greatest good. The highest, greatest good is one capitalism and its real free market form and the market determining who’s right and wrong. I remember one of my earliest interviews I ever did on the internet is capitalism. It guarantees the right to succeed and the right to fail and that’s part of the process. I’m going to pick on Elon Musk. I don’t know him. I’ve seen him on TV, the internet and I heard him speak. He’s obviously quite brilliant. If Tesla was a true free market where he wasn’t subsidized, it would have failed. I’m going to add onto that. You can have a great idea who is ahead of its time, which means that you can have this electric vehicle from his Tesla motors and you can’t raise the capital and you can’t make it profitable.
Unfortunately, capitalism is based on a profit motive. That’s the way it is. If you don’t profit, then you’re basically out of business. We have crony capitalism, subsidies or whatever. He gets pushed. We need electric vehicles. It’s great and it’s wonderful. We’re going to subsidize them. He may have been ahead of his time where it wasn’t profitable at that time. He goes back to the drawing board and says, “I created a luxury car and it’s too expensive. I’m going back and I’m going to reinvent this thing. I’ve already got the basics, I’m going to go and I’m going to make the beetle, the initial Volkswagen of the EV market. That’s going to be my initial Tesla product.” It comes back out and the market’s like, “This thing is only $13,000. Are you kidding me?”
I’m not trying to pick on Tesla but everyone’s familiar with it so they can understand what I’m saying and get a picture in their mind. This is the idea of real free market capitalism. He might have failed temporarily and gone back. What does the market need? They’re awesome but is that what the market needs? What if the market needed a $17,000 EV that’s got a 200-mile range and everybody loved it? That’s what the market needed. The market comes out like, “Holy moly.” He’s only making, let’s make up a number, $1,500 per vehicle but he’s selling $12 million the first year.
There are two thoughts I have. The first one is agree with you. You look at whether it’s Amazon who is putting retailer after retailer out of business or it’s a Tesla that’s completely disrupting the auto market. Those markets were already manipulated. If you go back and look at how much GM has suffered through the years and how much political clout that they’ve built and spent. That cycle goes on forever, the unionization and how that has affected certain things. The second point I’m trying to make is our whole system has these elements of capitalism but the whole system is not based on it. This system is based on this cycle, which I think academia is part of it. You have funding for academia which bids up prices of tuition. You have students that are trained to be workers because of how our school system is set up based in the Prussian system.
You have the government that’s involved at local levels, federal levels in pretty much everything as far as who they’ll fund, what they will subsidize and what they’ll back. This entire system has been based on that vicious cycle and because of the capital markets, whether it’s leveraged by the Federal Reserve because of loose lending standards. You have a whole system which is based on these fundamentals, which is in capitalism. Still, I look at some of the fundamentals of capitalism very well would have prevented a lot of what we’re experiencing right, which I think there’s a lot of good stuff. There are also some things to be concerned about. I’m trying to figure out, where we haven’t had necessarily sound money for 50 years, 71, I believe. We never had capitalism so knowing that, what do we do? How do we understand what’s right, what’s wrong and how to understand what we do to live a fulfilling life?
I look at the study of economics and the study of capitalism, the free market system. It’s being aware of what those principles are. A lot of the unintended consequences, a lot of damage hasn’t occurred yet based on some of how our economy works but it’s ultimately going to occur whether it’s one fell swoop or whether it’s in pieces, it’s still going to happen. The awareness of these principles will allow people, to understand what to do when a lot of the chaos starts. In the past, what has ultimately been done? It’s, “Government should take care of it. I’m not responsible for that. They should take care of it. They’re smarter than me or that’s their role.” Other than that, I look at what capitalism was as far as the intention and the principles around it and what we have. I think there are some stark differences. At the same time, the notion of capitalism is still very much alive in everybody. It’s part of our instincts.
One of the fundamental principles of capitalism is property rights. You have the right to your own body. You have the right to make a living. Let’s go to a real baseline example. Let’s say we are somewhere in the 1800s and you can own land by staking it for example and you go out and you build a cabin for shelter. That is all by your own labor. Do you own that or not? On capitalism, of course you do. It was your labor, your ingenuity, you designed on a piece of paper or both and you made it. You took something that was raw, which was land and trees, you converted it into something more meaningful and of higher value. That’s an example of property rights and without that, capitalism breaks down. The idea that, “You made it but I need it more than you do so I’m moving in, you go build another one.” This is absolutely fundamentally anathema to true capitalism but this is the idea of socialism, each according to their need. I need it more than you do because I can’t work and you can or I’m too old to build one. I get it, you don’t and that’s the way this is equal. This is fair. This is what’s right.
This is a concoction of the mind is what’s fair and what’s right. To harp on it, the real capitalism is determined by basically competition and by the ability of someone or someone’s company corporations or whatever. What happens when these systems break down? This is not unusual. I want to assure everyone that there are cycles through the monetary system. It’s happening again and again. We’re in a situation where certain times in history, you have the fundamental philosophy breaks down and the fundamental philosophy is trust. What can we trust? Can we trust these big corporations to do what they say? Can we trust the government to do what it says? Can I trust my company to provide me the pension that it has promised me? Can I trust the city to pay me the pension that it has promised me?
Capitalism: In most of today’s capitalism, there’s built-in obsolescence.
What happens in a corrupt system which we’re in and have been for quite some time, is the trust starts to be questioned. First by the intelligentsia, the intellectuals or whatever, I’m not trying to differentiate. People are different. Some are deeper thinkers, some look ahead and some don’t, some don’t care. It’s something the government should care take care about. I don’t have to worry about it. The company should do it. I worked for you. All I have to do is collect my check but you cannot overcome Mother Nature. There’s Mother Nature in the marketplace and the more you distort the market place, the more you’re going to have a price to pay. This is cyclical. This isn’t something that’s just unique to our generation. The trust breaks down and the confidence breaks down. The whole system is based on confidence and the whole system is a lie because the idea is you can’t print wealth and you can’t.
If you could print wealth, Zimbabwe would be the richest country in the world and everyone would be down in Zimbabwe because they’ve printed their selves as one of the wealthiest nation on the planet. America pretends that you still can print wealth and we’ve been doing it for a long time and we’ve gotten away with it because of the reserve currency of the world that’s basically enforced our currency on everyone else that must accept it. The people that must accept it of course use it because it works still to some degree. At the top, what Mises calls the crackup boom more and more people in the market place start to question, what is the viability? What is the long-term confidence that I have in this piece of paper, in this idea, in this unit, in this thing in my account? That starts to break down and it’s already breaking down. In fact, it broke down to such a degree in 2008.
We’re a cat’s whiskers away from having to complete financial collapse. Most people don’t believe that. I’m not saying that to gain points or to scare people but it is a truth. Most people are unaware of actually how close we came to a complete collapse. The reason I say complete collapse is because when the banks give up the trust of each other, which had happened, then the whole system would freeze. As Jim Rickards says the Ice-Nine situation. He used the metaphor where everything freezes up. We’re very close to that. The only reason we didn’t freeze up because it was starting to happen, the ice was starting to freeze. It was starting to take off and the Fed intervened and said, “Bank A don’t trust Bank B’s paper. Bank B doesn’t trust Bank A’s paper. Here’s what we’re going to do. We’re going to buy all this worthless crap, we’re going to give you treasuries for it, the most trusted paper out there.” That kept the system from freezing out but we’ve got very close.
The next time, will the Fed be able to intervene, paper it over, make it better and all of that? The answer is no one knows. I don’t know. You don’t know. No one knows but the game is getting very near the end. The main thing to watch of course is the bond market, the debt markets and credit markets. Do you trust that dollar to be worth enough in the future for you to loan it for a given period of 6 months, 2 years, 5 years, 10 years or 30 years? It’s breaking down and yet the system isn’t allowed to function as a free market would. In a free market or a true capitalistic system, the right to succeed means the right to fail. The bond market would fail and these bonds would be marked to market.
They might not go to zero but it would certainly be worth less than face value almost across the board. This, of course, is allowed to happen because of the powers that we are able to basically buy up their debt. They could come in and buy up their own bonds, issue currency for it and keep the game going. Eventually, it gets to the point where enough of the market says, “I don’t trust what that dollar is going to be worth in the future. I’m going to spend it for something that’s a hard asset that I can maintain value and I am going off these dollars. I want to get rid of them because I’m not sure what they’re going to buy a month or a year.” This takes place over and over throughout the world. It’s happening in Argentina. It’s happened in Valenzuela. It’s all over the place. There are so many times it’s happened. The idea that it can’t happen in United States or the world currency, the US dollar is preposterous. This actually is happening but most people don’t recognize it. That’s what we see. Philosophically, it’s a loss of confidence, loss of trust and once that’s lost, it’s very difficult to get it back.
One of the points was this notion of accountability. That’s what you were saying when it comes to trust. Part of that human element that we have is some people don’t tell the truth and some people do it consciously. Some omission and commission. It’s one of those ideas where, what is this the standard way to protect everyone? It’s to have something that doesn’t attach to a human being that can be used as a unit of accountability. That’s where precious metals because fundamentally it’s very difficult to manipulate. You can’t create gold out of nothing. That’s I think the fundamental premise but we’re way beyond that.
We’re in this environment where the United States is that beacon of trust when it comes to any financial exchange around the world. Whether the reserve currency or whether because we have the biggest military force or whether it’s our influence on goods and so forth. It allows making sanctions at other countries. It allows us to throw weight around but in the end it’s a fallible unit of trust that we have. I was curious to understand your perspective and understanding of precious metals at a very deep level. How do you balance that with what our current system is, which is operating around the same thing in a sense like trust? That’s where the accountability is. At the same time, it’s not a completely objective trust.
I want to hold that thought but you did a great job on why the dollar still remains where it is, is it the military forces? One thing I’d add to that as the Rule of Law. The other nation states don’t necessarily operate in the same standards of the United States and also used to. The reason it is that the rule of law is breaking down. The reason there is the legal system in a lot of ways is due to business and contract. If you didn’t meet the contract, then there’s a legal remedy but that also is breaking down. The loss of confidence goes to, “What can I have confidence in that will see me through financially?” The answer there is primarily gold. Gold has stood the test of time for thousands of years. Ups, downs and in between and the value does vary but nonetheless, it never goes to zero. It’s always coveted, especially in times like these where we’re unsure of what that dollar is going to buy a year out or ten years out or whatever.
Capitalism: The society at large has become brainwashed or the propaganda has got us to such a degree that rather than take what we need, we’re constantly taught what we want.
You’ve seen the banking system actually had the largest purchase of gold that they’ve had in I think eleven years or something. It’s a massive amount that they purchased relative to what their purchase has been in the past. The public is burn out on the gold story. Gold went higher year over year for eleven years straight. That’s a pretty darn good bull market. That peaked out in 2011 and here we are years later, it’s been going sideways to down. We found the bottom, I believe. Even the gold bugs had given up. The thing about gold is I think a big misunderstanding about it. Here’s the idea that I have and it’s pretty simple. One is you buy gold, you sleep better and you forget about it. You own it because at times like these it’s a must if you can afford it.
The other part is you buy it because you want capital gains. You want to have a better life, you want to see the price appreciation so good relative to when you bought it you can basically improve your lifestyle. There’re two types of gold purchases. You have people that understand that by some enough for their protection, which is generally thought to be 5% to 10% of your overall net worth. It could be as small as 2%. It’s basically what makes you comfortable and forget about it. That is not the vast majority. Those are the true gold bugs. Most of those people don’t consider this to them gold bugs, they consider themselves smart enough to understand the nature of fiat money to hedge. The vast majority are looking to trade it or swap it or whatever make these big gains on it. When gold doesn’t perform within a certain timeframe, then they’re very disappointed.
Silver is even a different story. Silver as Professor Jastram called The Restless Metal. As he wrote that book, you looked at silver’s relationship to commodities over a vast period of time like he did with the gold constantly. He looked at gold the same manner. What he determined was that gold basically is the ultimate money and regardless of conditions, especially during depressions, gold was the best asset you can own. Silver was mixed. Some other time during the depression, silver actually did well, sometimes during depression it didn’t. Silver, the conclusion of the book was during inflationary times, nothing outperforms gold. We saw that take place when QE2 was announced, when QE1 took place, the market acknowledged where we probably need it. We saved the banking system. We’re going to get back on track.
When QE2 was announced, most of the people that are monetary savvy said, “Here comes the inflation.” The problem was that all those savvy people and yours truly included and I traded that market did very well but none of that money, none of that QE hit main street. It only went to Wall Street. Basically, it was static money. It was sterile. It was there but it was all printed. It went to a vault and stayed there. It didn’t circulate. It had no velocity. It didn’t have any meaning in the marketplace. Once that was made clear to the market, the price of silver basically crashed. Most of us, myself included thought when it was announced that we’d see the velocity of money increase. We’d see it hit main street but didn’t. That’s been the story ever since. A lot of forces going back and forth.
The idea that I think was the best that I can give to the public at large is, take the attitude of someone that buys gold, silver or both with a comfortable amount and go about your life. You can pretend that we’re not going to have a financial collapse. I think we will. I think it will occur in my lifetime but you don’t want to harp on it. You don’t want to live your life thinking about it. All you need to do is be hedged but most people that learn this think, one is going to happen. It’s almost imminent and that the only asset class to own is this one. That’s poor thinking. Energy is a very important asset to own. If you’re a capitalist as far as, “Where can I put my money and make money with it?” What is the one thing that’s gone on from 3,500 BC where have been 14,000 wars since there has? If you want to invest, buy defense stocks, buy Lockheed and the war machine continues. Chris Duane calls it the Debt and Death paradigm and he’s correct. Unfortunately, that is the real world that we live in.
I look at the complexity of the world we live in and it’s interesting. I would say at the same time you look at how concerned you could be looking at debt clock. You’d look at that and it’s like, “This thing’s going to pop tomorrow.” You also look at humanity and how much they’ve taken ideas and done some brilliant things with it. It’s one of those things where it’s always been the case with humans. There’s always been good stuff that’s going on. There’s always been some bad stuff. It’s trying to figure out how to keep a balance of it. As much as there are a lot of ways to be concerned, there’re also a lot that can be celebrated to an extent. I’ve stood back and I’ve said, “I don’t know what the future’s going to hold. I love your point about trust.People especially in times of difficulty will seek trust but they’ll seek something that they trust. Somebody or some group of somebodies failed them and did things that weren’t trustworthy.
They’ll seek trust but in the end it’s an awareness of how people work. It’s also an awareness of what principles are. I know that there’re some principles to capitalism that still are extremely relevant when it comes to personal freedom, personal capitalism. Which is taking who you are and what you know and doing something with it that’s of value to somebody else. If that is claimed, you definitely want to be aware of questions to ask and a good foundation of knowledge so that you know what they’re talking. There’re so many different definitions of capitalism. In the end, I look at it being an incredible time to be alive. It’s understanding that when you go against principle, there’s probably some sayings around, when truth or principles followed what the result is going to be. It’s going to come home to roots.
These are decisions that are unprincipled and they are decisions that have to have a price paid for them because failure means loss. There’s lots of different failure being papered over, whether QE, what the Fed’s done, government policy in general but there’s a lot of failure being deferred. It’s being aware of how to position yourself both from a business standpoint, from a personal standpoint, from a money standpoint, so then when those corrections happen, you know what to do. You’re not operating out of scarcity and emotion. You’re operating out of awareness and knowledge. That’s the most that we can do in the end.
Capitalism: What can I have confidence in that will see me through financially? The answer there is primarily gold.
Maybe we’ll do a little bit more a philosophy. The idea of founding the nation, you can work capitalism into it and the idea of property rights that we already discussed is the rights of the individual. In a constitutional republic, the rights of the individual are protected. Democracy actually comes from the word mobocracy which is mob rule, majority rules. In the constitutional republic, the rights of the individual are preserved. That’s key in a way that the system was set up initially because that protects someone to have the right to not only free speech but free thinking and motivations based on their own personal goals. If in an idealistic world, if you have an idea and make something of value to you and the market says we want it to, you can become rich. There’s nothing wrong with that, at least from my perspective.
The whole thing has been usurped and corrupted by such a degree that people don’t even seem to understand how the system could work. If you go back to the financial failure of 2008, in real capitalism all those banks that were over-leveraged would have failed, not only Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers but many others. In fact, AIG would have failed. AIG that insured all of these CDOs, all these swaps and everything else is out there in this derivative Never Neverland couldn’t make good on it. The backing of full faith and credit means that everybody that’s a taxpaying person in the United States is responsible but why are they responsible for a bank’s failure? The banks should be held accountable. It comes back to your accountability. Who’s accountable? Let’s make the people accountable. This is what most people don’t even understand. They didn’t have a clue. They think the government actually produces something. The government produces misery most of the time.
The reason of the misery is because the failure of those institutions are put on the backs of the people. It was subsidized by you. If you’re a US-taxpaying person, you’re the one that’s paying for that failure. It’s not the government paying for it, you are but this is a concept that most people don’t even get in school. I don’t think it’s even taught anymore. It comes to accountability. Who’s accountable? If you go run up to your credit card and you can’t pay it, then it’s your right to put it on your uncle because after all, that’s the way the system works. He’s more capable of paying it than you are. Let’s swap it over to him. That’s basically what’s taking place. Most people are so under-educated. I don’t want to offend anybody but I’m not here to sugarcoat it either. You’re responsible, why are you responsible? You shouldn’t be, the bank should be held accountable, but they’re not.
This is one of the biggest problems with the system at large and this is why the distrust in the currency goes to the next level. The velocity of money starts to pick up where people would rather own a jar of peanut butter that they know that’s cumbersome. I see inflation in a much higher level and many do. John Williams, I have him on my mastermind series about once a year. I read his work. The hamburger index and everything else are going off down a rabbit trail. I’m not a big fast food guy. I try to eat healthy most of the time but occasionally I do it. Here’s my point. A basic meal is $12 in there. I couldn’t believe it has been such a long time since I’d been into one of those places. I thought I misheard the guy. I thought I ordered two meals but this is real inflation. This is what mom and pop in America are facing. I think the inflation rate is squeezing a lot of people and it’s evident across the board.
You’re right but here’s the thing. Nobody knows what that means. They see higher prices, they hear the word inflation, but they have no idea how it’s created and why it occurs. It’s not a natural phenomenon. It’s like, “Why are prices going down? Isn’t that a good thing?” but yet prices are going up. It’s a fundamental question around, “Why is bed policy for things to become 3% more expensive every year? Why is it 3% less expensive?” I was in Walgreens. I had to renew my passport. I heard this older woman at the counter and she was buying makeup and she was stuttering. She didn’t know what to do. She was like, “I can’t afford it.” She didn’t pay for the makeup. She paid for some other things. People are experiencing it, but they’re not aware of what it is and why it’s occurring. That goes to everything that we’ve been talking about, which is the current monetary policy is fundamentally flawed. It’s not trustworthy but yet people are trusting it. It’s not going to be this slow process. Everyone’s buying stuff and exchanging and it goes really quick. The only thing that you can control and influence is your awareness, your knowledge and your understanding of how the system works. When things start to happen, you know how to respond to that, not react.
I think one of my main job for the public good on a global basis is to teach these principles to the people and have an understanding. Then they can go and take an action, or not take an action but at least they could explore. They don’t have to take my word for anything. Look it up, do your own research. Do some reading. Look at the grand inflations of the past. There’s so little awareness and that’s the reason there’s such a small market for the gold and silver markets because most people have no idea that they preserve wealth and there are financial asset for thousands of years. If that was well-known, you’d have a lot different percentage into those metals than you have now.
One of my most popular videos called Myths in the Silver Market. One of my pet peeves I said in the video was this idea of most of the coin dealers or precious metals dealers that you will talk to, especially those that are more established than I am. I’ll tell you why I think everyone should own a little. This goes back to the idea we talked about that everyone should know a little. What people don’t understand is how few people actually take action. In that example on this video, I said at the time the mining activity was roughly 700 million ounces a year on the silver market. If everyone in the United States owned two ounces of silver, which is very little. It’s $30 worth. It’s not going to change your life. Two ounces of silver, believe it or not, goes to $100, it won’t change your life. It goes to $1,000. It might change it a little bit but it’s not changing your life. It’s a little warm up.
If everyone in the United States bought two ounces of silver, it would take up the entire mine supply on an annual basis. The United States is only 5% of the world’s population. If we include everyone, the other 95% of the people on the planet should own a little. There isn’t enough silver for everyone is my point. Yet, so few people own it or understand it and it doesn’t have to be silver, but silver is a good example. It is my specialty and I enjoy a lot of aspects. If you go back to 1980 at the top, most of us think that the amount of gold in portfolios of roughly 2% maybe 3% and now it’s about a half a percent. If we went back to the 2%, we need a four-fold increase in the amount of gold demand that we have right now. Think about that. Think if there was a four-fold increase in demand for gold, the world would be a better place.
Capitalism: In an idealistic world, if you have an idea and make something of value to you and the market says, “We want it, too,” you can become rich.
This has been fascinating. I know we could probably keep going and all on all of this. I look at as an expert in a certain field. Historically, it has been pertinent to understanding money in general. Looking at where we’re at now, I’m sure you’re as surprised as I am. The more you learn about how the monetary system works, the more you learn about business cycles, especially if you understand about the Austrian business cycle, which shows that the Central Bank is at the hub of financial collapses or financial corrections. We’re well beyond what is reasonable but at the same time we’re still kicking along every day. The future is going to be bright, but also the future is going to be very volatile I think because of the technology that’s coming online. I also think because of how connected the world is becoming, how many people are joining the internet and becoming connected in emerging markets especially.
It’s going to be interesting to see how things transpire. I still cling to my understanding of financial principles and monetary principles in essence. Even though they may not be the clearinghouse right now, it’s a deferment of what should be clearing right now. If you understand that, you’re going to understand what those signs are when things start to get volatile. I also step back and say, “That could be totally wrong.” Who knows? They can maybe come up with some new principals. The modern monetary theory is absurd. People are advocating, some of these don’t make any sense.In the end it’s what can you do? It’s becoming aware and becoming educated. With that being said, I’ll give you the final word. Then would you mind giving out your contact information, your website, your YouTube channel, social media, so people can start following you?
First of all, money’s important but you don’t have to make it the center of your life. Most people think about it almost constantly, especially if you don’t have enough. It is part of life. There’s probably a better system out there. As it stands now, there’s nothing better than a true free market capitalism. It’s been proven over and over again. Where we are going to go in the future is very interesting because with this Modern Market Theory, which is preposterous, but I have to say with the advent of the digital currencies, which is basically everything that’s on your VISA or credit card and the advent of the cryptocurrencies. It’s not inconceivable to think that you could create more something out of nothing, ad infinitum and keep this thing going a lot longer.
I’m certainly open-minded enough to see that that’s a possibility. It’s unlikely, but unlikely doesn’t mean impossible. As far as getting ahold of me, the best place to go is our main website, which is TheMorganReport.com. If you’re interested in my new project, there’s a webinar that you can get for free. The URL is ComingEnergyBoom.com. We’ve broken it up. I think it was about an eight-hour lecture between me and some of my colleagues. They’ve got it toned down to about an hour and a half. As far as social media, I am on YouTube, I’m on Twitter. I do have a Facebook presence. The best thing to do is type in any search engine, David Morgan Silver. If you type in David Morgan then the word Silver, you’ll find the LinkedIn, you’ll find the YouTube. You’ll find all of the social media.
David, it was an honor to have you on. Thank you for sharing your wisdom and everything that you’ve studied for so many years. It’s been an awesome conversation.
Patrick, I appreciate having a conversation. Thank you.
David Morgan is a precious metals aficionado armed with degrees in finance and engineering. David considers himself a big-picture macroeconomist whose main job is education—educating people about honest money and the benefits of a sound financial system. Besides being an author of three books dealing with precious metals, he is also a much sought-after public speaker. Additionally, he consults with hedge funds, money managers, and mining executives.
His ideas can be seen in the movie Four Horsemen, a Feature Documentary. Available for free at www.fourhorsemenfilm.org.
As publisher of The Morgan Report, he has appeared on CNBC, Fox Business, and BNN in Canada. He has been interviewed by The Wall Street Journal, Futures Magazine, The Gold Report, and numerous other publications.
Additionally, he provides the public with a tremendous amount of information by radio and at times writes in the public domain. You are encouraged to sign up for his free publication which starts you off with the Ten Rules of Silver Investing where he was published almost a decade ago after being recognized as one of the top authorities in the arena of Silver Investing.
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Patrick talks about how to get a 10% raise for life by investing in yourself. People are spending their time away from their families, loved ones or even the things they love to do in exchange for money. The hard money they earned is invested in other things such as retirement plans. Instead of investing the money to other things, Patrick points out to allocate it to the most important one – yourself. As people grow and expand, investing in human life value assets will ultimately lead to more money.
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Boost Your Wealth
Financial Friday
The topic is how to get a 10% raise for life. Let me step back and explain why I feel like this is a focus that everybody should have, which is making more money, figuring out how to do that every year. First, I believe that humans are designed to grow. We are designed to expand, to solve new problems. We all have that within each of us. It may be at various levels and capacities based on our uniqueness. I see how much time people are spending away from their families, spending time away from the things they love to do, their hobbies. They do it to exchange time for money, for working. I get it. At the same time, I don’t know if individuals ever step back and analyze the process and the exchange. It’s essentially exchanging time for money. It’s exchanging time for value because the money comes because somebody values your experience, your skills, your abilities, your training. That connection sounds simple but I believe it’s very profound. The irony is that because it’s not understood, people then take a portion of what they’re making and they save it. They invest it in retirement plans. They give it to a money manager at Wall Street. They turn around and make measly returns.
Heads I Win, Tails You Lose
I believe that same amount of money, probably even so much less, can be invested to earn hundreds of percent per year in what I call the number one investment, which is you. What I mean by that is in the book I wrote, Heads I Win, Tails You Lose. This is something I covered there. I spent several pages in there discussing what’s known as the human life value, the HLV statement or Human Life Value statement. Most people are familiar with the financial statement. A financial statement is your assets, liabilities, income and expenses. I took a different approach, which is something I learned from some individuals that I have tremendous respect for, which is income comes from your human life value assets. It’s the training, the degrees, the certifications, basically what you’ve accumulated in which somebody is willing to give you money for because they find it valuable. Those assets are not static assets. Those are assets that can be enhanced or built. That is what’s going to ultimately lead to more money. As far as the hundreds of percent per year, which is essentially a billion of these assets with the investment and capital that you are allocating elsewhere.
We also have human life value liabilities. This is what’s also interesting is that when you identify what your assets are, you want to focus your time, your effort and your energy to those assets, which requires eliminating some liabilities or maybe even increasing liabilities. Increasing liabilities is essentially having others do the things that you’re not good at, that you don’t like doing. What that does, it gives you more time, energy and ultimately focus to enhance these assets. I’m not going to get into a lot of details there. Maybe a simple example is having someone cut your lawn. It’s going to cost you maybe $100 a month during the summer or shovel your snow. That’s the time that you can spend and put energy into stuff that you’d like doing or stuff that you’re good at.
I’m sure that you may be good at mowing the lawn. If you’re worth $100, $200, $300 an hour, why are you going to pay somebody $30 or why are you going to pay yourself ultimately and sacrifice the time you could have spent earning $100 an hour for $30 an hour? It’s a big loss in doing that. The idea is to invest in yourself and build your income. How you do it is interesting because there are so many ways to approach it. I would say some simple ways to approach it is to be familiar with what your market value is, your economic value. That can be easily done at Salary.com, Payscale.com. There are a lot of other sites that are popping up that will show you based on your experience, based on your certifications, your degrees, what you’re doing, your job title and so forth. What the median is, what the long tail, the other side of the bell curve, the high end, the low end. It’s going to show you other positions that may be in the same field that pay more than what you’re currently earning.
Those positions, you may have the experience for that or you may not. This is what gives you clues as to where to place the investments to build those human life value assets. It could be a management certification, a leadership certification, some leadership experience, management experience. It could be to do with software development or marketing and certification in certain elements of marketing. There’s a whole slew of things. What I would say is that approaching these types of websites, what you want to go in with is not necessarily the fact that you can make more money by having this experience. It’s also, is this a position that you would want to do? I believe that fulfilling work gives us vitality. It creates tremendous productivity. It’s getting into something simply because of money. I hear from dentists all the time who hate digging in people’s mouths but they do because they make a lot of money. That drains other elements of your life. As you’re doing some research and due diligence on what is available to you to make more money, take into consideration what I said, which is ensure that it is fulfilling and aligns with who you are.
Another investment you can make is in a different assessment. Assessments that actually tell you more objectively about who you are, what your strengths are, what your tendencies are, your instincts. This helps to understand yourself better and the value that you bring to the world. It may be engaging with people at a different level. It may be different positions as far as the style of communication that you like or dislike or how you work with groups or don’t work in groups. Knowing more about yourself is going to also enable you to work in certain positions.
Investing In Yourself: Fulfilling work gives us vitality. It creates tremendous productivity.
The approach here is simple. The approach is you’ve got to figure out how to make more money per year. Focus on 10% for now. It may cost you $1,000, $2,000, $3,000. Going to the investment return, if you make an investment of let’s say $3,000 a year and you make $100,000 a year as a salary, that’s significant but $3,000, if you can get a 10% raise because of that, that’s $10,000 in additional money. That’s a 300% rate of return more. My point behind all of this is that should be where the focus is. It’s figuring out a way to make more money or make the same amount of money with less time. I’ve written some eBooks that talk about this.
I’m in the process of doing a big research project associated with jobs, professions, contract work positions that pay more than $75,000 a year. You can do anywhere in the world. Also, a lot of it is part-time, 20 hours, 30 hours per week. My big drive when it comes to writing the book doing this podcast is to help individuals have more freedom, even more freedom than they have right now, more independence. Sometimes people wake up in the morning. They go to work. They go to an office because they think they have to. Because of how society is progressing, there’s so much opportunity to work from home, work on an island somewhere, work in a state or a place you want to live as long you have a good internet connection and do so on your terms.
It may not be available for everyone. Knowing that these positions exist can now create focus and ultimately a path to build your human life value statement to the point where you could have one of these jobs or one of these professions whether it’s contract work or a full-time position or a part-time position that’s remote. These opportunities are coming online more and more. I have a researcher that’s digging into this. We found hundreds of domestic, US-based jobs that pay over $75,000 a year. It’s exciting. We’re going to a whole book and eBook around that for your benefit. I wrote a little eBook that you can access at TheWealthStandard.com. I know it’s going to help create some ideas. It’s going to create some motivation behind doing this because I know you can.
If you’re reading this and you’re thinking about how to make more money, hopefully, these ideas have resonated with you. Some of them are repeated in this eBook. They’ve already written, which is how to make 10% more for life. Here’s what you’re going to get as a result. If you make $100,000 a year and you’re getting the customary 3% raise per year because of inflation, cost of living, that amounts the total lifetime earnings over 30 years. Factoring in that 3% raise is under $5 million, so 30 years of that. If you’ve got a 10% raise every year instead of 3%, which is totally possible. It may not be every single year but averaging it out over that course of time. The 10% a year average amounts to $16.5 million. It’s more than $11 million more just by this being the primary investment as opposed to other types of savings, mutual funds, investments and so forth. Another few ideas, hiring a coach. I have two coaches right now. I’ve had a coach since I’ve started my businesses. I’ve graduated past several of the coaches. I found that some coaches didn’t necessarily have expertise in certain areas that I needed but not in others. I’ve had over a dozen in the last several years. Right now, I have two.
These two coaches are women. They’re very experienced with the relationship, very experienced with business and personal development. It’s the first time I’ve had women as coaches. They’ve been pushing me harder than my previous coaches. The accountability is so high. It’s incredible. I’ve seen so much growth in a few months, tremendous growth. Coaches are important. What’s an idea around getting a coach? I would reach out to the most successful people in your circle of influences or acquaintances and ask them who their coaches are. I guarantee that some of them have them.
You start to interview several and get clear on what you want from a coach. For me, it’s helping me communicate better, helping me have more balance in my life as well as accountability. It’s been huge and highly beneficial. A personal coach is another way in which you can make an investment. I hope you found some value in this. Hopefully, you can do what it takes. Take action now, do something, stop contributions to this, that or the other. Dedicate some capital to making an investment in yourself because I know that it’s going to pay off. I hope you enjoyed the episode. We will see you in the next episode.
Together with Andy Tanner, we read deeper into Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt’s book, The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting Up a Generation for Failure. Andy is a renowned paper assets expert and successful business owner and investor who also serves as a coach over at Rich Dad’s Stock Success System. He pours out his thoughts and insights over what he thinks about the good, tackling how we draw the line when thinking until when protection and safety are always good and whether or not pain is bad. Andy gives a lot of important points to think about, emphasizing the ability to learn how to evaluate ideas.
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The Coddling Of The American Mind And Learning To Evaluate Ideas with Andy Tanner
I’ll get a book recommendation from Patrick because he’s always reading fascinating stuff. This one, we both were reading independently in kindred minds.
Thanks, everyone, for reading. How did you hear about the book?
The Rich Dad advisors, we do a book every six months and this one wasn’t in it. Robert had come across it and said, “Here’s another one.” We didn’t study it formally. He has a lot of books. He’s an insatiable student. He reads as much as anyone I know. He’s always got a book to recommend. I picked it up and started with the audiobook while I was on the treadmill. I found it fascinating because of the roles we have in our life as entrepreneurs, investors, coaches and parents. The one that hit me probably the hardest was the parents. When I thought about it, sometimes when you read stuff and you feel a good vibe on it, I always say, “Am I feeling a good vibe because of confirmation bias?”
In other words, “Do I believe this stuff and this guy singing my song? Am I reading it because it’s articulating a belief I already have well or do I like this because some books challenge what you believe?” Those are the best ones. The ones that say, “I’m believing differently now than I did before.” I think that’s true learning. This one is probably the former because it resonated a lot of what I believe politically already and the way I operate. Let’s put it on a spectrum. On one end of the spectrum, you have coddling, which would cause brittle bones with no resistance. The other end you have abuse, which is breaking bones. As a basketball coach, I have parents that see me on both of those spectrums. Some of them say I’m too soft, some of them say I’m too hard. Some of them like Goldilocks think I’m right. That’s very few.
All based on what you’re doing at the time. You have multiple perspectives analyzing how you’re coaching and how you’re leading. Some describe it as more toward coddling, others describe it as abuse.
In the book, it speaks a lot to academia. The idea that in academia, we’re dealing with words and ideas most of the time. Outside of academia, in the real world is where you get hit in the face. The idea is how weak our children. You can’t lump them all together into one. How do you do that? As an investor, do you want to be strong entrepreneurs? Is it easy for us? Is the world of competing and being an entrepreneur just a piece of cake where you don’t need any resistance to prepare you?
That’s the variable is the degree of what is resistance? What is the environment of learning? It says good intentions, what’s the intention? The intention is to protect. Is that a good thing? It is, but it’s in certain contexts. There has to be a certain situation, which protection is good. Is protection good always? That’s where it comes down to, where is that line? What is that environment where it is trauma? It’s disruptive or against a specific belief and how do you govern them?
Let’s talk about investing first. I don’t know how it is in other things. In the stock market and the options market, I don’t know anyone that has incurred losses. I don’t know anyone who hasn’t dealt with nervousness, fear, uncertainty and setback. You’re dealing with emotions of fear and greed and all those types of things and seeking reward one would risk. I will tell you my opinion is in that arena, you better have a strong spirit. You better have some guts and have some stick-to-itiveness. If losing money hurts, is that abusive? Losing money isn’t physical. No one has ever died because of bankruptcy. In this idea to protect the perfect little psyche, what resistance is required?
You look at sports too.
It’s a perfect analogy.
If you coddled an athlete, how long are they going to be an athlete?
They’re not going to be an athlete at all.
As far as growth is concerned, it’s an interesting dynamic because we’re trying to avoid pain but yet pain is the way. Ryan Holiday said, “Obstacle is the way.” When there’s resistance, it could be painful but that’s a catalyst to growth. Is that absolutely true?
Let’s decide this. Let’s talk about pain. Is pain good or bad? That’s the first thing. We tend to want to not have any of it. No pain, no gain. How much pain is healthy? I think it has to do with damage. Your analogy of an athlete is great. It’s as if I resist, if I do the pushups enough, I’m sore the next day. The DOMS, Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness, it’s painful. It rips it out but that’s how the growth comes. Through pain comes the gain. It’s very true. You put astronauts into space, the biggest problem is there’s no resistance. You can kill someone with no resistance. It’s as lethal as if you shot him with the gun. Here you have the spectrum of abuse on one side, coddling on the other. One causes brittle bones. Others will break even the strongest ones. That’s what we’re here to figure out and talk about.
Let’s talk about the book, what’s the point of the book? The book is called The Coddling of the American Mind. It’s not saying that coddling is bad. If you coddle your child or if you coddled a baby, it’s saying the coddling of the American mind. What is he saying with that statement?
The book deals a lot with academia. They’re saying, “Can an idea be harmful and damaging?” Do we need to protect people from ideas? For example, someone’s on one side of an issue, maybe there’s a rape victim and is going to speak. This rape victim might say, “I’m going to talk about being strong and saying, ‘You need to move on with your life and you need to understand that guy doesn’t have the power to take away your worth, take away your value. It was an episode. Get the help that you need, but don’t let that kid take control of your life.’”
There’s a big group of people who say, “If you give that message, that’s insensitive to the other rape victims.” It’s a very real conversation to have and say, “We’re going to boycott this speech because by being on campus, that validates the rapist in some way.” There were some ludicrous examples on one extreme that he gave. It’s a slippery slope into abuse. You don’t want to tolerate abuse. When you say the American mind, can words harm someone, sticks and stones may break my bones but names will never hurt me? Is that what it is or words will never hurt me? Being called names, name calling or ideas that are opposing to yours, are they harmful? Obviously his premise is no, they’re not.
Let’sgo to the growth of the American mind, whatever it’s called in the title. What’s the growth he’s referring to? The American mind, it’s growing. How does it grow? Is it the same principle of resistance that applies to athletics?
He seems to think so. What doesn’t kill you makes you weaker. If it does it give you resistance, you become weaker. When you get into society, you have to function. In real life, there’s this thing called competition. As entrepreneurs, we see this competition and it hits you. It is a fight. If a person can’t stay in the fight and fight for what they believe, I’m damaged. The other thing is that sinister is it can also be a ploy to kill the dialogue. If you embrace the idea that coddling is a good thing, that’s a very good way to kill the dialogue of your opponent as a weapon. Let’s not let them hear this because it’s too harmful. Now, information has been controlled. That’s how cults happen. Information control forms people’s beliefs. If you control the information, people will only get one set of information and they’re not allowed to address an opposing idea because it could kill them and damage them. When you look at information as something as damaging, how do you ever find the truth if you don’t have it?
Greg is the CEO of FIRE, which is the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education. Where he creates through defending free speech. The free speech idea, which is essentially the openness of people being able to share ideas and information. That’s where it’s like some information and some ideas could be harmful. At the same time, what’s the difference between being harmful and resistance or something in contrast to a person’s beliefs? It comes down to everyone’s going to have a certain belief system of a certain perspective. Obviously having an exchange of ideas could potentially ruin a person’s beliefs. It could have them question certain things. It could have them maybe question to school in this sense. The idea that the school is sharing. It can create trauma. At the same time it’s like, “How is the protection of ideas being shared going to be traumatic?” because you could justify trauma on both sides.
If you look at free speech and we isolate that idea into just words, it’s easy to find the abuse and start there and work backwards. Yelling fire in a crowded theater when it’s a hoax, obviously is not a good thing. If it’s a credible threat on someone’s life, a bomb threat, that’s my freedom of speech. That’s a credible threat. That’s harmful. You start to back that off and you say, “Can words cause pain?” He talks about in the book a lot about Veritas. That in the search for truth though, ideas are going to have to be challenged. You move from threatening people or lying to the idea of honest dialogue that may be right or maybe wrong, but there has to be that fight. In a fight, there’s going to be stress. He sees that as a healthy thing. If someone says, “I’m uncomfortable talking about this, this is causing me stress.” Is it stress or is it damage? Is it permanent?” That’s where he says, “Our intentions are good. Don’t make people uncomfortable.” There are so many issues. There are race issues, religious issues, moral issues, political and all these issues that people are attached to. Yet if you isolate people in academia and decide which ideas are healthy and unhealthy. Sticks and stones may break my bones, ideas should not harm me.
It’s interesting to look at it. I interviewed Ed Griffin as part of this season. He’s big into the idea and the protection of the individual and that the collective is an abstract. That the collective doesn’t think like the individual thinks. Look at the fostering of the mind of a young person. We have our perspectives of the world and it’s a certain way. We have certain strengths. We have certain abilities. We have certain tendencies. Our children even when they’re young, we have a sense of stewardship over them. They’re individuals. They’re going to have a different way of looking at a lot of different things. Oftentimes as parents, you want to protect them. You want to make sure that they don’t get harmed. At the same time, how are they going to discover their individual personality, their perspective, their characteristics, their strengths and their talents? How are they going to discover that without the environment in which they’re challenged?
The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting Up a Generation for Failure
Tribalism is primal. It takes seconds to happen. Certainly, from a sociological standpoint, we live in tribes as human beings. We have our political tribe. We have our work tribe. We have our religious tribe. All these family tribes. What happens is tribes do have group thinking. Libertarians, Democrats and Republicans all have a statement they make, “This is what we believe.” Any idea that opposes that is an attack on that group. The idea is to protect the people. This idea of coddling is another weapon to say, “It’s not up for discussion. I can’t discuss it because it might hurt our group or it kills the fight.” That’s how culture is a scary thing.
If you look at a Moonie’s Cult or other cults, you look at maybe a Hubbard type of figure, every one of them tries to control information. They say, “This is the information that’s good for you and this is information that’s harmful to you.” You can see there’s a trap in that is that a person will never escape into what could be the truth. Maybe they have the truth. Hopefully, they do but no one has all of it, at least we don’t think so. If you forbid conversation or information, you’ve now created a mechanism that will trap people from the truth. I can’t imagine that’s the way to protect the truth. Most of the times it’s the way to defend something it might not be or hide the truth.
When it comes to our evolution as people, as humanity, you’re either growing or you’re dying. You don’t sit stagnant in life. We’re compelled to move forward. It’s hard to argue. Then you have to define, “What is growth?” It goes to Maslow. What does Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs show? It shows you first seek food, shelter and clothing. You seek safety. Safety is found in tribes, in groups. What’s next?
The highest part is self-actualization.
You can’t achieve self-actualization unless you have a sense of safety. There are the ego and the self-esteem side of things too. It’s interesting because we’re compelled to seek safety. We’re also compelled to love and also be empathetic, which is the self-actualization in a sense. Everybody is at different stages. That’s why when you look at a tribe, it’s full of individuals at different stages. In a sense, tribes both protect but they could also inhibit. When you look at academia, you look at the purpose of school and education, it’s not to memorize multiplication tables. What’s it supposed to do? It’s an environment in which your mind grows. It’s challenged. You have new information. It grows even more. It’s challenged even more. It grows even more. That’s the thing is I look at academia and these days it’s the subject matter. You don’t need half of it. Academia, for the most part, is teaching kids how to learn, but is it teaching them the right way to learn?
I can tell you not knowledge but like toughness. Another great book is Jay Bilas’ Toughness. He talks about what toughness is and the difference between a rock and a rubber tire. In academia, what’s interesting is young students, eventually are going to have to go out into the real world eventually. If we coddle, can they survive the world? That’s the big thing. Are they strong enough to deal with the realities of setback? One of the things in the book that’s interesting as he talks about the Generation Zs and these guys that were brought up on their phones and social media where the fear of being left out is traumatic.
The fear of not being liked on the Facebook page, the fear of seeing all your friends someplace where you didn’t get there. All this stuff causes all these anxieties that maybe you and I can empathize with. We didn’t get it drawn up. If we go back to pre-Columbus, Native Americans. What was the adversity for those kids? Starving, not being able to get the buffalo and getting beat up by the other tribe. Their idea of stress and difficulty was probably much more physical than social-emotional. We have almost no physical. You’re going to have the bullies and stuff but I’ll tell you, by and large, it’s more emotional toughness and emotional battles that these guys have to fight.
I don’t think it’s shutting off the social media. I think it’s learning to deal, to face it, not hide. Facing up, manning up, womaning up, adulting up or whatever you want to call it and not hiding from these little things that get magnified. He talks a lot about that in the book too is that by creating a safe place suggest that it’s horrible. It reminds me when someone went in to get some counseling and they said, “This is going to happen to this guy. I want to talk to someone.” It’s not like, “This is going to harm you. You’re going to have to work through this. This is going to get worse. You get PTSD.” He says, “No, I want to talk to someone. I feel like talking and I think I’ll be okay.” “No, you’re not okay. You’ve been harmed.” It’s crazy.
Where does it come from? Is the intention so that they’re safe and that they’re protected, they’re protected from harm?
Where I might disagree with what he said is he says, “Good intentions and bad ideas.” I’m not so sure they’re always good intentions because if you have an ideology, you’re against and you can create and paint it as toxic that gets it out. You don’t have to address it. You don’t have to debate it. You have to prove it wrong. You say, “It’s harmful. It’s out.” You can eliminate something from the public debate and the public dialogue by labeling it as toxic and people will be trapped in the ideology that the person refers. He says good intentions and bad ideas. Is that always good intentions? Are we always calling good intentions or is this a way to keep things out of a public dialogue by labeling it toxic?
Instead of going off on tangents, in the end what did we learn from it? What are some of the things you take away and say, “What is the right thing? What is not the right thing? Where do we draw line?” It’s a very gray area and it’s very situational.
I don’t have the answers to that or I’d write another book. Part of the value of reading a book like that is the mindfulness of it. It is when we’re in a situation like let’s say I’m coaching basketball. It’s like I can say, “On this side it’s coddling and on this side it’s abuse. I might not have the answer but if I think about it, I’ll probably get closer to it than if I don’t. At least I can consider it, “Are we coddling or are we being abusive?” If we don’t even ask the question and we go, “This is abuse every time or this is coddling every time.” At least the idea of having that spectrum to consider probably will make you a better father or maybe make you a better coach. Not a perfect one, but it will probably do a better job. As an investor and entrepreneur, it’s the same thing. I don’t want to be guilty of either one. That’s what I put on my Facebook page. I don’t want to be an abuser but I don’t want to be a coddler.
It is situational. Is it possible to know exactly what to do in every single situation? Probably not. That’s why I would say dictating policy around how you deal with resistance is concerning because you’re allowing one person or a group of people that have interests, that have a bias to take away your power, take away your ability to know how to act for yourself in that specific situation.
We’re probably biased. You and I both feel the power of an individual is very strong. When I’m on my podcasts addressing difficult issues and as an educator, my solutions are to the individual. Off and on my podcast, I have people who want a systemic solution. They go to Congress and they try to lobby for this law and that law. I go the opposite way. I said, “There’s nothing you can do about what Congress says. You as an individual, you can make decisions to better your life and improve yourself.” There’s always going to be that. It’s going to be an interesting experiment. I have a little basketball team that I coach. I’ll share the story. Half the people are going to think it’s awesome. Half the people are going to think I’m an abuser.
We were playing below our potential in a game. We were down by four. We should have been beating this team by 40. We weren’t playing our best. I called a time out. I align the kids up and I said, “This is a one-minute time out. We’re going to run a sprint during the time out and we’re going to get tired one way or the other. We’re going to get tired playing harder or tired sprinting.” They ran the sprint. As soon as they went back, they got back out and played. I called my second time out, I had to do it twice. The other team cell phones are coming, “This is going to be on YouTube. This crazy coach doing this.” What was interesting is after the second time out, that’s a lot of running for two minutes, to run sprints for two minutes. I didn’t care about the game. I thought, “We’re going to lose this game because I’m going to send them out tired.”
You wanted to take advantage of the environment to teach a lesson.
What I did is I looked them in the eye and I said, “I can write effort and tired down on a clipboard. I could put it on a chalkboard. I could try to explain what it feels to be tired. How many of you looked me in the eye and know what it means to give your all now and what it feels like to go to that place? You know what tired feels like. You weren’t tired before when I called a timeout, you had energy left to burn. Now you burned it. You know what it feels like.” That’s what it should have felt like when I called. It was interesting because I had parents mostly from the other team that were booing me and this and that. After I had two or three quietly come up and said, “If you’re ever looking for a player.” They thought it was great. One of those parents, I’m not coaching his kid. What’s going to be the test is this, 30 years from now, are they going to say, “My life is a mess because I had this abusive coach. He embarrassed me in front of everybody,” or are they going to say, “I learned the best lesson when I was thirteen years old?” Running for two minutes is not physically harmful. People do it all the time. You get tired. You recover. No one had a heart attack. No one has had a broken knee. Was that emotionally bolstering to that group or is that emotionally deteriorating to that group? Time will tell. I don’t know.
The Coddling of the American Mind: If you forbid conversation or information, you create a mechanism that will trap people from the truth.
I think also you have the relevance of the person that’s controlling the environment at that time, making those decisions and influencing these decisions. This again comes down, maybe it’s the intention, maybe it’s leadership ability. You could easily have seen a person who could have been a jackass and have the kids sprint and yell at them. The example I always think of is it was like his platoon or some war movie where Nick Nolte was this jackass leader that nobody wanted to follow. You also had true leadership there as well. Why do people follow certain people and not others? I’m not sure if it’s a feeling, and knowing you, the kids felt like you knew what was in their best interest.
Maybe not, who knows? My opinion it was or I wouldn’t have done it.
It is very situational. We’re going to make mistakes. Perfection is an idea. Nothing is perfect. What’s the perfect way to deal with the situation? The perfect way is to accept imperfect but allow people to figure it out. That’s where I look at free speech zones. Maybe somebody comes on campus and gives wrong information.
How do they learn to evaluate the wrong information?
That’s my point is you have to have the experience where there are resistance and the ability for something false and something true to arise and for individuals to have that experience. If you rob that experience, I believe that it is that coddling. It does weaken an individual because they’re going to face resistance at some degree in the future and how are they going to deal with that?
The other thing it does is it eliminates gray because it teaches people to have a worldview of harmful and safe. We can categorize as, “That not safe, it’s out. That it’s safe, it’s in.” It eliminates gray and the ability to have a gray area to say not everything is dichotomist. You don’t want to have people seeing things in terms of who’s right, who’s wrong or even he’s good, he’s bad, harmful or safe. Here’s what’s interesting. He talks about a safe room. This blew my mind, he talked about announcing to students that, “I might do something that could trigger you if you don’t want to be around or go to the safe room and hold this teddy bear.”
Literally, a teddy bear is in the room. By framing that to a young mind, by saying what could happen is dangerous enough to require a bomb shelter. You’re now putting people it’s a nuclear freaking warhead. By sending that message, are we teaching people that words that sticks and stones are not only the things that break bones, but words can also devastate your soul or your spirit? It doesn’t seem intelligent to say, “Here’s information. Don’t read it,” because if that’s a policy, you’re not going to get to that veracity, that truth.
It’s not an absolute finish line. Things are always being discovered. Progress is always being made. What is true now may not be true tomorrow.
Your debate skills go out the window because there won’t be one.
That’s the thing is we have a saying that we use all the time because I’ve had experience in business where you had two conflicting ideas. There was so much resistance there. They didn’t want to be wrong and kept resisting. Those people are gone. I look for that now. I want them to pursue what’s right, but not be adamant about what their opinion is being right and being willing to be slightly wrong. That’s the thing. If you look at the dialogue, if you look at progress as an individual, we’re very limited. Having conversations, especially group conversations, where you have similar values and similar outcomes, multiple minds in there is a profound dynamic. However, if you essentially prevent people from being harmed, you’re never going to have that conversation, to begin with. The ideas will not come to fruition.
We’ve talked about it in the position of being the leader of your own investments, of your own company, of your own sports team or your own family as parents. I also thought a lot about this book in terms of whether I’m seeking out safety too often. Whether I coddle on myself by self-imposing restrictions on what I read or what I’m willing to listen to. I think no one gets out of cognitive dissonance. It’s the way we are built. Flipping that in my mind is the challenge of how open am I to have my beliefs changed and not be coddled and how might I be challenged? There are a couple of fun websites out there.
One of them that I thought was fascinating is they’ll take these severe issues like gun control or abortion or stuff and people will go there and say, “Please try to change your mind. I want to see if I can find empathy for the other side to change my mind.” It takes a lot of courage to do that because we become so entrenched. The news cycle is interesting because Walter Cronkite used to summarize everything that was important about 25 minutes and a couple of commercials. I don’t see the difference between Fox and MSNBC because I feel like both of them are telling their crowd what they feel is right.
It’s a validation of their own narrative night after night. It separates people good or bad. The tribalism that you mentioned with this idea that it’s usually one tribe and another tribe. They’re trying to limit this information coddled in their own group. What’s interesting about that is these two groups, they’re going to fight and they’re never going to have the chance to get out of that rut because they’ve lost the talent and ability to consider something else. What happens in tribalism is as soon as you put a label on a group, all of their individual merits are erased. For example, if you don’t like President Obama, he said he’s a Democrat. What type of father is he? He must be a bad one. What type of husband is he? Maybe he had some interns in there with them.
Who knows what type of cigars he smokes? He quit smoking when he was in there. What happens is when we get those divisions, we tend to erase all of the other merits that the individuals in that group might find. As I look at my friends who are Democrats, Republicans or Libertarians, I have friends in all three groups that if I was in trouble and my car broke down the middle of the freeway at 3:00 in the morning, I feel like I’d call them. Every single one of those guys would respond in the most benevolent manner willing to help even though they’re there in those different groups. Another part of this coddling of ideas is they’re bad people. They’re dangerous. You erase any merits they might have outside of that solitary issue. All of a sudden, the dean is unfit for office. All of a sudden, the dean of this college should resign because of this issue.
That’s what Greg and his organization defend with one of the authors of this book. That’s the biggest thing right now because kids going into college, think about the environment that they’re in. They had high influence based on parents, community, the city they grew up in or the state that they grew up in. They have a certain perspective of the world. They go into this environment in which it’s different because you have kids that are all different. In that environment, it’s grounds to make a lot of change because your mind is pliable. You’re highly influenced because it’s new. If you’re given one narrative, you’re given one label, then now you go into the real world, it’s going to be such a shock. It’s going to be beyond whatever crutches. It’s one of those things where it’s destroying an individual’s ability to think for themselves. They’re thinking in groups.
The evolution of the technology is interesting though because we live in an information age where ideas are thrown at you all the time. It makes sense that people that didn’t feel that’s a war because there isn’t information war controlling eyeballs and controlling ideas now that they would want to fight by saying, “This is an incoming missile. We can’t have these missiles pointed at us.” It’s such an interesting time to be alive.
The Coddling of the American Mind: Perfection is an idea that nothing is perfect.
It’s fun at the same time. There’s information overload. It’s what we experience on a daily basis relative to 60, 70 years ago. It’s unbelievable and it continues to change. I would say going back to some of the main points, “All human beings are flawed. All groups have flaws but they all have strengths.” The environment in which people where discussion can take place, where exchange can take place. That’s how you grow. That sounds Utopia-ish but at the same time, it’s one of those things where the freer a person is, the more growth that exists.
If I want to run away from coddling, the further away I run for coddling, the closer I get to the abuse. If I want to run away from abuse, the further away I get from abuse and coddling. The invitation for me in reading this book was to begin to see both of those extremes and try to come back to a larger awareness in each individual person, situation and role that I play. Try to find a healthy place in the middle where there’s enough resistance to grow the bones but not enough resistance to break them.
This is such a great point because the coddling is what shows a sense of nurturing.
Everybody is dangerous.
At the same time, if you have that intention and the idea but yet you allow for resistance. I’m talking more like a parent right now. If you allow for that resistance and difficulty because you understand how growth occurs, that’s like right there in the middle.
We usually start off talking about investing. We always come back to our kids. It’s a big challenge in this environment and yet the competitiveness of it. I see parents that schedule up every bit of their kids. “No Fortnite allowed because you’ve got to get the piano done. You’ve got to get this done. You’ve got to be prepared to get in this college.” They overtrain in order to try and make them strong enough to compete. They’re scared their kids would fail. The other end of the spectrum are these people that just coddle. I’ve seen it in sports where parents are so afraid to have their kids lose a game. It’s insane to lose a game. They’re sandbagging that goes on where teams with huge talent will go and play in leagues with almost no talent so they can get their trophy. It’s incredible to me.
We were talking previously about your boys. You talked about your experience with playing basketball. You played at the University of Utah. You had a team but you didn’t play high school. The reason why is because you said you were cut. It was interesting how they did the cuts, big cuts and then a small and then the one last person cut. You went through that for three, four times.
I got cut seventh eighth, ninth, tenth, eleventh, twelfth and once in college before I made it.
It could be described as traumatic. At the same time, what did that create inside of you? How did that start to form who you are and what you’ve pushed for?
I’m not the only person that might have tried out for play and didn’t get the lead. As investors, learning to understand that failure isn’t fatal. Failure is not the end of everything. Did it hurt? Absolutely. Did it affect my self-esteem? Absolutely. At the same time, those were gifts in a way because you learned that you don’t win every race and everything isn’t roses all the time. He talks about in this book that there’s a resilience that is inside of people, evolutionary or God-given, one of the other, to where there is a resilience built in where people can deal with the cancer diagnosis and figure it out.
You can control whether someone comes on campus to speak but you don’t control when you hear the news that you’ve got cancer or when you’re being sued by a competitor and it’s unfair. If you can’t handle a simple idea being brought on campus, what’s going to happen when you’re in a lawsuit or when you get cancer or when your child gets cancer? You can’t coddle your kid against cystic fibrosis. You can’t coddle them. There are certain things in life that can’t be coddled. What makes us think that an idea can hurt these kids when there are so many more things that are so much more emotionally severe, infertility, loss of a child, lawsuits or failures in business?
These coddlers, how devastating was it to try out every single year and get cut? It was devastating. It’s not something that I couldn’t rebuild on top of the rubble. What about a failure in business? What about a failure in investment? You get into bigger stuff. What about health failures? What happens when you lose a child? There is definitely a resilience that can be strengthened or weakened inside of us. It’s finding that point where you bend but not break. Where pain is a good thing, not a harmful thing. Too much lifting can be degenerative and cause your bones to hurt but not enough to be degenerative and cause your bones to hurt. Where do you find it? I don’t know. It’s food for thought. For every investor and parent, where are you? Do you want to be coddled? None of us want to be. I don’t know.
This probably resonates with most people. It’s one of those things where these principles apply to so many different aspects of life. We have talked about kids. We talked about sports, business or politics. It applies to everything.
We should never apologize for this podcast because resistance is going to have a business. Resilience is a prerequisite. The strong survives in a world that competes. You can’t eliminate the competition because it’s the way life goes.
The first four months of the year, we’re talking about capitalism. The reason why I wanted to get this on is because obviously, it’s a different situation but it’s a very similar principle because of the notion of capitalism. It’s one of those things where you have commerce. You have the exchange of ideas and capital. You’re going to have success and you can have failure. Free market capitalism doesn’t exist because you have political influences. You have monetary policy influences. That’s the thing is if you look at where we’re at as a state of the economy, we’ve had artificial coddling of institutions of certain businesses of money in general where people put money to invest in hope for some future. People have been coddled when it comes to commerce due to the coddling of the actual institutions that are serving them. I look at how applicable these ideas are in that instance. This comes down to maybe where we end, which is if you continue to coddle, you have very weak bones. When resistance happens, you have breakage.
Toughness: Developing True Strength On and Off the Court
What’s interesting is there are both ends of the spectrum in capitalism. There’s abuse because he who has the gold makes the rules. There’s a great way to think about it is when you think about capitalism, if you want to take the other side of the argument, talk about the evils of it if we dare do that. What Superman’s greatest superpower? He’s got an X-ray vision. He’s strong.
He can detect if the person is telling the truth.
I’ll tell you what I think it is. It’s his heart because if you change Superman’s heart, he becomes the world’s greatest villain. He is still the world’s greatest superhero. If you have capitalism and you have evil people begin to grow. You have greed. You have those things. You have no benevolence. There is a range but yet if you coddle, it’s as bad.
They’re very similar if not identical principles.
The thing that’s beautiful about capitalism is it allows for the tremendous potential for someone to be the greatest they could be. You look at a Warren Buffett and Bill Gates, you look at the amount of money, half of their wealth are given away. They both made that pact. They have that club they started where a billionaire can join and say, “We’re going to give half our money away minimum.” They will give far more than that. Certainly, guys like Steve Jobs, when I look at what my kids learned in that iPad, they’ve contributed in their products as well. There is ambivalence. On the other side, the Bernie Madoff’s of the world, they deserve to be in prisons because they have broken rules.
You have rules that protect people’s rights and that’s where you look at the environment though. You’re not going to ever have perfection. You’re always going have a Bernie Madoff.
Here’s what’s tough. Here’s probably a truth that we fight against. It depends on what your definition of because it’s an idea that’s manmade, the idea of fairness. If you go into the Serengeti and you watch any other species, do they have fairness? Do chimpanzees have fairness? The one mother who got their daughter eaten by the lion when they weren’t looking, that’s not fair? The death of your chimp is a fair game out there. We’re not willing to accept that as human beings because we’re smarter. We’re not animals but yet we are animals. It is an interesting idea that the pursuit of fairness is a great pursuit, but defining what it is, that’s tough. Every human being wants to be treated fairly.
Do you teach your child life is fair and you should expect it? Even though we all want it and even though we want to pursue it, it’s so difficult because life isn’t fair in how we’re born. Some people are born with higher IQs, some with low IQs. Some of us have to work harder for what we get than the smart kid. Other people are limited physically. The way you’re born genetically, the genetic lottery isn’t equal. Unless you want to get into eugenics someday, which we probably don’t want to do. How do you make it all fair by the nature of birth? You’re going to have abuse, coddling and unfairness in between. It’s tough.
You have the environment and humanity has amazing things about it. It also has a lot of frailties and weaknesses. That’s most fair environment is where I would say people’s rights are protected if you were able to act, learn and grow. It’s hard to find because there are lots of different circumstances and situations.
Equal opportunity is very important to fairness and yet we have an inequality in the ability to capitalize. You can throw out an equal opportunity but individuals might not be able to equally capitalize because of what they’re starting with. How do you subsidize? That’s where we start to coddle maybe, I don’t know.
The things that you can do though is essentially have certain environments in which ideas can be expressed. That was the point of the book.
You can’t suppress ideas in the name of protection.
That’s where people start to understand themselves and understand growth and what their strengths and abilities. It has to go through a refining process.
It’s a great question and an invitation for discussion is, “What is harmful and what is the power of resilience? Are we not resilient enough to withstand an idea and a speaker on campus that disagrees with us? Are we not strong enough and resilient that is abusive and breaks our bones?” He says, “Let’s put the pause button on here and understand that we might be taken this too far,” in his opinion, obviously, we have. For that reason, it’s a very healthy discussion because I didn’t realize how pervasive it was. The things he was siding and the sheer volume of cases and losing in their jobs over two words in an email that got blown up and the fear of your colleagues and being tenured. It was incredible. I had no idea what was going on in academia. I didn’t realize there were safe rooms and trigger words. My son in his school might be saying now this might cause you mental harm if you want to go to the safe room, go ahead. That’s unsettling that level of coddling. I probably liked it because I agreed with it. I confess.
My disagreement with academia in general and a lot of different aspects of it. This is the next generation of those who are going to be in the world, be producing things, starting businesses or solving problems. It’s one of those things where in order to solve a problem, you have to be able to face some adversity. If the environment of which they’re transitioning from a home life where they’re highest protected. Kids in generations to the environment which is the in-between before they get into the real world. If that is how the programming is taking place, they’re not going to be fit for most businesses. They’re not going to be fit for most for most jobs because if they cling to this notion of tribalism. This is the idea and everybody has to believe that certain way. They’re afraid of being wrong. They’re afraid of getting hurt, that person that solves problems.
That’s not resilient. It’s an awesome discussion. Thanks for having me.
Andy Tanner is a renowned paper assets expert and successful business owner and investor known for his ability to teach key techniques for stock options investing. In 2008, Andy was key in helping develop and launch Rich Dad’s Stock Success System, which teaches investors advanced technical trading techniques to profit from bull and bear markets. He serves as a coach to Rich Dad’s Stock Success System trainers and as the Rich Dad Advisor for Paper Assets. He is currently authoring an upcoming Rich Dad Advisor book on paper asset investing.
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Nothing makes us grow more than learning. Patrick takes us into his experience over the last Tony Robbins Platinum Partners Finance and Economic Summit he attended, highlighting three major takeaways that impart great wisdom that contributes to success. He shares what he learned about focusing on the positive, finding the balance between certainty and uncertainty, and knowing the emotional cycles that exist in financial markets – from the big to the small.
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Tony Robbins Platinum Partners Finance And Economics Summit
Financial Friday
I’m going to condense my experience over the last Tony Robbins event that I attended. This is a special one. This is for Platinum Partnership, an inner circle group of Tony Robbins and they do it once a year. It’s purely based on finance and economics. He had speakers like George Bush, Clinton, Bernanke, Greenspan, Ray Dalio, T. Boone Pickens and a lot of other professional investors. I’m going to give you my top three takeaways. However, you can look for the playlist or the videos I did. It basically has four videos I did while I was at the summit that goes through in detail some of the things that I was learning. I’m going to highlight the top three. The first one was interesting. This is a big thing that we all can work on and it’s always going to be the case, which is the idea of focus.
This room was filled with successful people in all walks of life. They have a few billionaires in there. I got to talk to a number of people and it’s probably the most high-level group I’ve ever been around, especially the number. There are about 300 of us there. It was one of those things where it kept coming up over and over again. It’s the notion of focus. Oftentimes, how we’re conditioned is we focus on the things that are not going right or we focus on the problems. We focus on the pessimistic side of things as opposed to what we actually can control and focus on, which is what’s going good, what’s going right. What that does is it provides a different state of mind in regards to how we analyze things, how we take advantage of opportunities, how we experience life. Ultimately, the amount of money or success that you achieve, you’re always going to have that instinctive side of you that is looking for what’s wrong. It’s protecting you. It’s looking out for danger so that you don’t get harmed or hurt. What it tends to do is affect our mind that we’re always focused on the negative, the bad, not necessarily the good. There’s always something good going on.
When the focus is there listing things, you’re grateful for or singing out loud a list of those things that you’re grateful for. Thinking about the blessings that you have or thinking about what is going right and list those, it’s amazing what type of mindset that creates. That’s one of those keys to understanding opportunity is that if you have a pessimistic attitude, you’re not going to see opportunity. Therefore, mindset is key. I know that’s general, maybe it’s not necessarily financial but in my experience, it leads to financial. I have dozens of employees. I have lots of responsibility on my shoulder. I’m a parent, I’m a husband. It’s one of those things where there’s always pressures. There’s always something that’s not going as I want. However, there are amazing things that are going on. When my focus is there, my attitude is so much different. I show up differently, I played differently. I experience life differently. Take that as my first big takeaway.
Second is interesting. This is where I’m determining as the balance of certainty and uncertainty, which I’ve talked about before. Here’s an interesting quote and it’s deeper than I thought when I actually first heard it. The quote is, “The quality of your life is in direct proportion to the amount of uncertainty you can comfortably live with.” Uncertainty as he describes it, it’s variety. It’s adventure. Those are some uncertain things. Uncertainty is what makes life exciting, not boring. Uncertainty can also be very negative if you think about it but at the same time, uncertainty is having fun adventures, surprises, roller coasters, going on trips, exploring new places, learning something new, being with new people. Those are experiences that give life a lot of vitality. If everything was the same over and over again, that repetition is boring and we don’t deal with that well.
The idea is how do you balance certainty and uncertainty? How I look at it is something that Tony uses, which is looking at your financial life with a bucket mentality. I call it a hierarchy in the book I wrote, Heads I Win, Tails You Lose. I talked about the hierarchy of wealth. It’s a very similar concept where you fill up that first bucket, that safety bucket or certainty bucket and it has assets that we’re not going to lose money. Assets that are protected and insured grow to an extent but also allow you peace of mind so that you can start to experience uncertainty and that variety. You do it in a responsible manner and the uncertainty applies to you but it could be having those adventures, doing vacations, doing fun things with your family. The uncertainty could also be pursuing a different position, applying for a new position, applying for a new job. It’s expanding your resume and being more valuable to your employer or another employer, researching things about yourself. It’s basically doing things that are different than they currently are.
That uncertainty is where I believe that he’s referring to. The quality of your life as you’re taking on these new things and you’re growing and expanding, that uncertainty is essentially reinforced and accentuated by a balance of certainty. That was cool to think through because in the end, we’re all looking for a high quality of life. A high quality of life is not redundant things that you’re doing on a day-to-day basis. It’s doing things that are exciting. The pursuit of that is always going to give this fulfillment and excitement. However, to be enjoyed I look at having a foundation, having an offset of certainty when it comes to your financial life.
Tony Robbins: A high quality of life is not about doing redundant things on a day to day basis. It’s doing things that are exciting.
The third thing was interesting. This was brought up a number of times, which is the emotional cycles that exist in financial markets, big markets but also small markets. Sentiment is vital to understand. It’s interesting how we approach things sometimes because when you’re approaching it as a third party observer, we tend to look at things rationally, analytically. However, when we’re in the actual experience, when we’re not observing, we’re actually in there. It’s more of an emotional game than anything else.
One of the speakers was a manager of I think $100 billion, $20 billion, $30 billion. His name’s Howard Marks. He went through and talked about his new book that’s out I believe. It’s one of those things where you would assume that big traders, whether it’s hedge fund traders or VC funds or whomever, that they have it together and they’re not emotional when you have volatility. He basically made the case that they always are. One of the most difficult things in their world when it comes to investment is making decisions based on fundamentals being in line. However, it’s also adding the variable of emotion. If a certain emotional state is not present, that could be a no buy or a buy signal. It’s interesting. I think we’re in this euphoric state where people are bidding up and buying for the sake of it.
An example that they did at this event was they bid up the price of $100 bill. This is a room full of successful people and Tony made the claim, “Who are my risk takers out there? Who are my ballers out there?” A couple of people raised their hand and he auctioned off a $100 bill. Somebody offered a $150, $200, $500, then it got to a $1,000 then $5,000. Here’s the catch, the person that bid the highest had to pay and got the dollar bill but the runner up didn’t get the bill but still had to pay. It was fascinating. The bidding got up to $50,000 and then $100,000. The $50,000 guy had to pay same with the $100,000 guy but the $50,000 guy didn’t get everything.
I want you to look at going from $50,000 to $100,000 the guy knew it’s a lot of money but then he didn’t know how much the $100,000 guy was going to bid after that. It could have gone to $1 million. It’s one of those things were in the actual mix, the emotions, the stuff that’s going on in your brain is not rational because the rational thing would have been not to bid more than $100 for a $100. Have your experiences some other way. These guys may have been the billionaires in the room. I have no idea. All of the money went to charity but regardless, I would rather not have that experience and paid $100,000 for that. There would be way more beneficial than that.
My point is this is where emotions come into play. With where our world exists, there is a certain emotional state collectively when it comes to assets being bid up, whether it’s real estate assets, whether it’s commodities, whether it’s stock. It’s an emotional game. The emotion is nonsensical from a more greed standpoint or fear of missing out standpoint as opposed to a sell-off, “I’m running to the hills.” Those are two different emotions. Howard Marks does a great job of talking about that emotional cycle.
This is one last thing as we get into this idea of the emotional game, which is something they made me think. I’ve looked at the fundamentals of our economy. I look at how much debt is out there, how much productivity is out there, which is not that much at all. Peter Diamandis, this guy is one of those thinkers. He went 10:00 at night, three hours long and his energy level is high as could be the entire time. It was fascinating and he talked about so many different subjects. I cover some of them on the video that I mentioned. Peter made the case that life in the next ten years, there’s going to be more economic growth, more prosperity than the previous 100 years combined. His argument was how quickly technology is growing but also the exposure to societies and markets that are not online.
The statistics are showing 4.5 billion people will be online in the next ten years. It’s fascinating to think of it, whether it’s India as an emerging market. Africa is an emerging market. China is the same thing. In the Middle East, it’s the same thing. It made me think about what my frame of references when it comes to, whereas an economy with productivity is like. What are our debt situation both short and long-term is like? What’s going to happen as a result? I don’t play markets, but at the same time, I’m curious because the markets are part of our life. They fund the companies that we all use. Looking at consumer sentiment when it comes to being alive, it’s going to be interesting to see what the next ten years hold.
From a transportation standpoint, from a communication standpoint, our lives are going to change quickly and it’s exciting to me. At the same time, it could definitely be disruptive to whether it’s companies, economies or governments. Looking at that, whenever emotion is high, especially fear and running to the hills, that’s where all the opportunity exists. The last thing I was going to talk about is Ray Dalio. Ray Dalio runs one of the biggest hedge funds in the world. The minimum investment you can make with him is $1.5 million. He’s done very well for himself but what’s interesting is his thoughts in regard to economic cycles.
He has some theory associated with economics and the best way to handle so much progress when it comes to technology and potentially the employment situations we can find ourselves in, where technology is going to take over a lot of employment. He has some amazing thoughts there. Those are on the videos of on YouTube. There are four of those videos. Go check those out. Research Patrick Donohoe in there or Paradigm Life, put The Wealth Standard and that should pop up. There are four of those, it says Tony Robbins’ Platinum Partners, day one, two, three and then day four and five. I hope you like them. Thanks for everyone.
Patrick is the President and CEO and started Paradigm Life in 2007 after learning from his mentor Kim Butler about financial strategies outside of Wall Street.
With a background in economics and marketing, Patrick immediately realized the opportunity to teach investors, business owners, professionals and families on a large scale using modern digital media and communication technology. Since 2007 Paradigm Life has worked with thousands of individuals in all 50 states.
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Run-of-the-mill advice is everywhere. But in order to achieve different results, your strategy has to be different.
In this book, you're going to learn about a hundred year old strategy that's tried and proven to give results. Are you ready to
shift the way you think about investing?
WHAT THE PROS ARE SAYING...
Once in a great while, a person comes along who can explain financial concepts so clearlu that all of a sudden,
what had been a mystery becomes obvious. For many people, Robert Kiyosaki was that person when he wrote Rich Dad Poor Dad. For me,
that person was Patrick Donohoe when he first explained what you're about to learn in this book.
Tom Wheelright, CPA
Author of Tax-Free Wealth, of the Rich Dad Advisor Series
"Patrick's book explains why every American is experiencing worry, fear, and uncertainty with thier finances.
'Heads I Win, Tails You Lose' outlines a better way to take back control and live a life you love."
Mike Dillard
Entrepreneur, Author
"Storyteller, man of honor, humble seeker of truth - these are the words I think about when Patrick comes to mind.
I've been looking forward to this book for quite a while and am pleased to tell you, the reader, it is worth the wait."
Kim Butler
CEO, Partners for Prosperity
"Patrick is someone that I call upon to learn the strategies of the world's richest people. 'Heads I Win, Tails You Lose' provides
a creative approach for managing wealth outside of the old and tired methods used by everyone else."
Ryan Moran
Founder of Capitalism.com
AMAZON REVIEWS
Book Nailed it
A should-read for anyone looking to be smart with thier money, and smart enough not to just follow the herd.
Robert K. Cunningham
Very enlightening and actionable!!
If you want a real path to Economic Independance and not a theory this book is for you.
Curtis May
Wise if I read this years ago.
Great book, made me change my thinking on my investment situation.
Justin Schmidtke
Take back control of your money
The truth about money. You will be surprised with the information. WOW!
Thomas Young
A must read
Outstanding book. Details information most people are not aware of in creating a sound financial programs.
Kenneth Burton
...a critical financial strategy
I simply couldn't put this book down, I read it cover to cover in 1.5 days! #VeryEngagingRead
Wes Atchison
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Patrick Donohoe is the Founder and CEO of Paradigm Life and PL Wealth Advisors. Patrick and his team teach thousands how
to build wealth, create lifetime cash flow, and leave a meaningful legacy.
Patrick was recently honored by Investopedia as one of the Nation's Top 100 Most Financial Advisors. He is a highly sought
after presenter and speaker at financial-based events around the country and is the host of The Wealth Standard podcast.
Patrick grew up in West Hartford, Connecticut, and attended the University of Utah, where he received his bachelor's degree in economics.
He lives in Salt Lake city with his wife and three children.
WHAT'S INSIDE THE BOOK?
THE CHAPTER LIST:
1. ORIGINS OF THE AMERICAN DREAM
2. THE PERPETUAL WEALTH STRATEGY™
3. QUESTION EVERYTHING
4. BREAK AWAY FROM WALL STREET
5. AVOIDING THE INVESTING AND LENDING TRAP
6. THINK FOR YOURSELF
7. A SOLID FOUNDATION
8. B ELIKE THE WEALTHY
9. MYTHS AND TRUTHS OF INSURANCE
10. SAVE, BORROW, INVEST, AND BUILD WEALTH
11. START, BUILD, AND PROSPER YOUR BUSINESS
12. YOUR FINANCIAL FUTURE
13. MAKE THE SHIFT
14. TAKE BACK CONTROL
Heads I Win, Tails You Lose
by Patrick Donohoe
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LEARN HOW TO MAKE YOUR MONEY GROW.
The 100+ year old investment strategy proven and used by the wealthiest of the wealthy.
Andy Tanner is a renowned paper assets expert and successful business owner and investor known for his ability to teach key techniques for stock options investing. In 2008, Andy was key in helping develop and launch Rich Dad’s Stock Success System, which teaches investors advanced technical trading techniques to profit from bull and bear markets. He serves as a coach to Rich Dad’s Stock Success System trainers and as the Rich Dad Advisor for Paper Assets. He is currently authoring an upcoming Rich Dad Advisor book on paper asset investing.
