wealth creation

The Concept Of Wealth And Winning In Life With Garrett Gunderson, Part 1

TWS 15 Garrett Gunderson | Winning In Life

 

Winning in life isn’t easy. We all want to live comfortably and not deal with pain, but life doesn’t always work out like that. We will always experience hardships. Join Patrick Donohoe and the Founder and Chief Wealth Architect at Wealth Factory, Garrett Gunderson, as they delve into experiencing life with all its uncertainties. Garrett shares personal experiences that shaped him to be the person he is now. He also talks about how he dealt with his insecurities and allowed his vision to expand beyond his comfort zone. Finally, he shares how he was able to change things in his life in order to live winning it.

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The Concept Of Wealth And Winning In Life With Garrett Gunderson, Part 1

There is a saying that embodies the idea of absolute and unwavering commitment. That saying is “burn your boats,” which is to say when you make a decision or a commitment, there’s no Plan B, escape clause, way to back out of the commitment. My good friend, has made a bold commitment. He’s made one of the riskiest moves that I’ve seen in a long time. He spent what most people would consider a fortune on training, coaching, Hollywood level film producer and production crews and other consultants to create this one-hour comedy special, primarily focused on the topic of money and personal finance. In June of 2021, I was fortunate to be invited to the live taping. It is seriously a Level 10. It met all expectations and exceeded them. It’s honestly hilarious.

Before this film is made available, Garrett is going to be doing a multi-city tour and it may be coming to a city near you. Why did he do it? Why comedy? I would say the taboo topics of politics and religion have a stepchild, which is money and personal finance. The stack of cognitive biases that prevent the mind from rationally evaluating financial strategy is pretty thick. The exception is someone having an open mind. However, the rule is what’s familiar with the status quo it’s to stay on that course.

Garrett hypothesizes that humor is a catalyst to breaking through these filters. He’s written books, three of them, one of them, a New York Times bestseller. He’s been in the space for many years. Despite what most would consider a success, his mission is to break through what keeps holding people back from living a life they truly want. He’s spoken on videos has a broad social media audience. He’s taken his message, he believes, as far as he can go. In this three-part video podcast series, you’re going to learn a few things about what he’s doing and why he’s doing it.

Number one is how powerful ideas have made their way into our belief systems with any vetting, scrutiny or evaluation and how difficult it is to go back and objectively understand these beliefs without shortcuts, such as humor. Number two, you’re going to learn a unique perspective on wealth and what people are after with their goals like retirement or financial freedom. In the third episode, we’re going to talk about Garrett’s journey where he’s put his essentially successful career and reputation at risk, and why he’s done it and everything that has led up to this point in time and decision. You guys are going to love these episodes. I can’t wait for you to experience this new content from Garrett to learn more about his tour and if it’s coming to a city near you, go head over to FreeFlow.group. Enjoy.

What is interesting about what I’ve learned from you because of this pivot that you’re making is when you have this humor, first off tapping into that, you got to be vulnerable. I’m not sure if you can fake funny. Maybe you can. I don’t know, but I feel like that’s the genuine person when they’re funny. Number one, I think it brings down those barriers, but then number two, comedy in general, talk about taboo things, off-limits things. Even if you go to Chris Rock standup or Eddie Murphy standup, they talk about hardcore shit you don’t talk about at a dinner table or a conference.

Going through rough times is okay. You have to learn how to process through pain. Share on X

Without the comedy, it’s like canceled. People are angry.

I think that’s an interesting dynamic where these experiences that you’ve had have taught you about personal finance is a challenging industry. You’re always up against belief systems, but you figure out a way where you tapped into something genuine by yourself, able to connect with people at a different level where they’re now open to talking about what was off limits before.

I wrote this poem and part of it says, “Comedy is the key when no other will do. Love is the answer but can’t always get through.” Satire is pointing out what we hide, but everybody already knew. That’s my summation of why comedy is so profound because they say that when you scare someone to death, they remember. I don’t want to do that to people. It’s almost as effective to make someone laugh. I was talking to my sound engineer. We’re doing the final processes of a special. He goes, “There are so many gut punches in this. I’m a specialist. I have to be candid with you. When they told me what you were doing, I thought, how is that ever going to work? It’s great.” It’s cool to win over some intense critics in that world with a lot of like stature and knowledge. Some of it hasn’t. Some pay me to do. It’s a joke that happened to come out that night that I was not expecting to say. It was too funny not to include, but I think that theme is there. I think that it’s going to help the masses face a topic that they’ve been afraid of.

I’ll make one more comment. I don’t want to get into some topics specific to the special but also your experience. I’d say that, as you look at humor, roasting, whatever comes to mind when Demi Moore was roasting Bruce Willis. It was fascinating because those are things without that platform. The conversation does not take place. It’s almost like society has gotten to this superficial level, which I think we’re all involved with. It’s who you are, but then it’s who you are in public.

There’s a joke in my special that my manager is scared of. You’ve heard the joke because you were there. I’m talking about kids that they don’t labor. They don’t need Labor Day off. Driving around at Uber isn’t labor. We’re going to Jamba Juice that’s typing on a Zoom meeting isn’t labor. Having a baby is labor. That’s why they call it that because it’s hard ass work that wrecks the woman’s body. Ladies, you deserve a few hours off afterward. He was like, “You can’t say that joke.” It’s a joke because it’s stupid that guys would say something like that or feel that way. That’s what makes it funny. It’s not like I’m saying it as a sexist. I’m saying it as the opposite. How stupid are we? That’s why you get a laugh out of it, but we’re a sensitive society.

TWS 15 Garrett Gunderson | Winning In Life

Winning In Life: One of the driving forces of human beings is freedom, including financial freedom.

 

The sensitivity is that conflict between who we are in public and internally. I think that gap continues to widen. These are thoughts everybody has, but nobody’s willing to express because it would violate some stigma associated with their public personality or profile.

My set’s pretty clean because it’s not made much funnier with vulgarity. I want to have a reach. In my everyday life, I swear a lot more than when I’m on camera. I’m also thinking about it like, “Does it add to it?” There’s plenty of jokes that I remember. I posted one of my comedy sets, and someone was like, “This was supposed to be cleaned. The sexual innuendos here are so Philly.” I have a filthy mind, what am I going to say? I don’t want to mute myself. I want to be able to say things that other people can’t say and that’s what makes it funny.

I also want them to remember some things that help them in life, but the goal is to be funny first. It’s not another lecture. I am truly declaring myself a comedian based upon who’s involved with the project, and I think, “Where it’s going?” I remember I did a practice run for a group of your advisers. You were laying on your side at one point laughing at my insurance jokes. I was like, “This is fun. This is good.” That’s good because I was doing a lot of Zoom at the time to prepare. Zoom is not as fun as people in the same room as you. You can only hear laughter one way a lot of times on Zoom. It’s been a challenge, but a good one.

Let me hit on something to pivot the conversation. You want to get through to people to help them, paraphrasing. When we first met, there was a sincerity and genuineness about you where you wanted to make a difference. You talked about the things that you thought were most important for other people to know. Your journey led you to the point where even though you were saying the things that would help people, there was resistance on that initial layer that they were not able to get past. Therefore, they weren’t helped. Maybe get into where you’ve come with your understanding of what wealth is. What are people pursuing? Maybe unpack why aren’t people achieving levels of life that they want, especially in a society where all the information, all the books, everything’s there to do it, but people are still stuck in a sense?

Wealth to me is knowing what your win is and living by your rules and win, not everybody else’s. We lose well when we try to conform to society, to please others at our own expense, buy into this notion that this is going to be a temporary thing, that we’re going to give up so much of what we enjoy so that one day we can find a live a life that we can love. The problem is those habits become who we are. I had this conversation with someone that said, “I’m leaving social media.” I’m like, “How are you going to do business?” There was business before social media, there will be business after, but social media is not part of my win, my wealth. I don’t want to have digital assets where how I’m viewed is based upon the number of subscribers, of likes or of comments.

It’s important to know how to show and choose love even when it's difficult. Share on X

I start thinking superficially about what would be viral or what would be controversial versus being who I am. This is a weird notion, but I’ve had like a Renaissance in my life where I decided hobbies were going to be as valuable to my wealth as my business activities. They would be on par. They wouldn’t be beneath that. I started taking courses on being a barista. My friend, my client, and I built this thing called The Roast, which has got a big bougie seat to pull up behind my e-bike. It’s got a chalkboard that you open up, an expresso machine put up there, a generator on it, and a sound system. I could roast coffee while I roast bad financial ideas. It’s almost like jaywalking would be on the street.

I’m like, “That’s fun.” I became a whiskey sommelier, and then I started learning how to fish, taking classes at Trager. I went and shot an elk with a bow. I started doing these things that weren’t anything to do with money. They were about my enjoyment. I started thinking about like, “What art do I enjoy in life? What are art forms that I would do for myself?” I write some poetry sometimes. Obviously, comedy was part of that. Some of that crossed over into a business world or a financial aspect. The start was considering my life and myself valuable enough to take time for myself for no other reason than I would enjoy those moments. Not because of validation by the external world. By doing that, I feel like I could be more connected to the world versus having the world tell me what wealth is or what my win is. That has been this revitalization of my life in the last few years. I feel more inspired, more ability to connect with people.

A lot of my hobbies have to do with satiating experiences, either meditative experiences or satiating. Satiating experiences are how I can create conversations that lead to connection? When I’m making a latte, I’m listening to someone. We sit down, have that latte and have a conversation while we sip on that latte, which prolongs that conversation. I started smoking a tobacco pipe maybe once a week or so. I ended up doing that with my dad, who grew up a Mormon. That was a surprise that he enjoys it. They texted me talking about he was having some tobacco and pontificating something about life. My mom’s like, “That reminds me of my dad. He used to smoke every Sunday.” I was like, “That’s a 30-minute smoke.” It was a beautiful artifact.

I started to invest in hobbies. I have this philosophy in life that I win when I play. I play doing comedy. Even my new website I’m writing now, I’m writing things that are funny and enjoyable that are part of that process. I created life on my rules and on what my win is. I’m not trying to retire from anything. I’m not trying to run from anything. I’m no longer trying to hide from anything. That can be difficult at times, but it’s so rich and rewarding. That’s wealth. When you know your win, and you’re living your life based upon winning all the way along, not about arriving somewhere.

That was the point I was going to make. I would say follow-up question because this is something that I think most people would resonate with. That would be nice. They look at you, others that fit that persona. They say to themselves, “I have to do this first in order to do that.”

TWS 15 Garrett Gunderson | Winning In Life

Winning In Life: Pain is a gift even if we don’t like the wrapping. It’s a tap on the shoulder so that we could do better.

 

That’s sacrifice. Unfortunately, we learned that through conversations and culture. Did you ever play the Game of Life, the board game?

Yeah.

The only way you win is by getting your college degree in that group. That creates a subtle belief about why we have to go to college. We played Monopoly. How do you win a Monopoly? Get as many things as possible. It’s a zero-sum, winner-take-all game. We start buying into that belief with capitalism. It isn’t what true capitalism or free market would be. It’s what cronyism becomes. It’s the survival of the fittest versus collaboration. I’m like, “I’m playing games that everybody else told me to play, go to college, get a degree, have a big business, grow that business,” which was always about, “I’ll take care of my health later. I’ll have time for my family later.” Those were always in the background and then the great line that all business owners never tell their spouse, which is, “I’m doing this for you,” but it’s not. It’s for our fulfillment of our narcissistic ego. There’s an unfillable void of more is better. All those kinds of things that we learn in society, especially here in America.

There is merit to some of that. There’s a lot of false reward to a lot of that, especially when we’re trying to prove something to other people. I was practicing my comedy set and I had a terrible night. It was on Zoom, had some people on, including someone who used to coach me in speaking and I had some friends in the dining room. There’s a chef in the kitchen. It was at my friend’s house. My wife’s doing her culinary homework in the kitchen. It’s noisy. They’re like, “How long can you be done in an hour?” My set is an hour and a half. The worst thing you can do is take an hour and a half in comedy and make it an hour.

The best thing you can do is go, “I won’t share a third of my set.” I condensed it. The guy said, “You sucked.” I did. That’s the truth. It wasn’t good. What was hard is not to have that be a chip on my shoulder and be like, “Wait until I do this.” What I did was I waited, and a month later, I finally shared it. He goes, “I can’t believe that it’s the same thing.” I’m like, “Yeah, I had an off night.” I definitely did. I learned a big lesson from that. The big part of the lesson was along the way, enjoying it. It’s not waiting for April 15th, but being like, “I had this set in March in Ogden at the Wise Guys theater there.” It was like, “It was an amazing set. It was one of the best nights.” I’m like, “It wasn’t. The April 15th was good.” As a standalone, that was a win. That was an enjoyment. Enjoy that moment. Extract that moment. Even leading up to that night, the last line, I thought, was awesome.

Intuition is such a gentle nudge. It's an inner note and a gut feeling. Share on X

I couldn’t wait to sit. I was like, “I want to enjoy every moment on that stage.” Often in life, we’re trying to get to the next moment. It’s a silly movie. A movie that impacted me was Click. He could fast forward through anything. He missed everything. Most people would do that without proper perspective. We’ve learned that pain is something to avoid. What I’ve learned is pain is part of the process. It’s a gift even if we don’t like the wrapping. It’s a tap on the shoulder. If we’re willing to go through it with love and compassion, the other side of that pain is always a connection and lesson. My wife walked up to me and I’m like, “What’s up?” She’s like, “I’m sad because trying to get our son in this camp, but he’s got to have certain vaccinations.” My son had an adverse reaction to a vaccination back in the day. He’s not up to speed on certain tetanus and polio, which I don’t even understand why he had to have that. She’s like, “I don’t think they’re going to let him in the camp. He’s struggling with friends.”

I was like, “If you need to call the camp and have me on the call, I’ll be on the call.” Otherwise, I was doing my best not to get sucked into thinking that I have to make her happier. That’s my responsibility or that there’s something wrong with her being sad. She was able to get a hold of the camp and they’re going to let him in. Even when she did, I do a lot of times, which is we suffer the future. We start thinking about what’s coming up, about what can go wrong with that? We start our suffering now for something that hasn’t even happened and 99% of what we worry about never is reality. The stuff that is the biggest problem is things we could have never predicted. I feel like we’re going to have the tools and have the lessons through those, even if it is painful. The people that struggle the most are the ones that try to avoid the pain, hide and run from the pain, go around the pain when going through it is the only way.

I was reading Meditations by Marcus Aurelius. The definition of a meaningful life hasn’t changed at all since then. Yet, the world has become more complex. It’s been more difficult for people to have those moments of meaning.

We are better at faking things now. We have tools to make things look and feel real.

It makes it even more difficult.

TWS 15 Garrett Gunderson | Winning In Life

Winning In Life: When we try to conform to society and please others at our own expense, we’re going to give up so much of what we enjoy.

 

Filter and social media editing, I don’t know how to describe it without sounding too crazy, but I’ll say it. I’m at acupuncture, relaxing. I have this moment of clarity. I felt like it was God say, “There’s nothing to worry about. I’ve got you. You’ve got this. When you make mistakes tonight, it’s part of the process. Make that it’ll be okay.” I didn’t make as many mistakes in Show 2 as I did Show 1. At Show 1, I forgot where I was at one point. This girl, Trivinia was laughing so hard. I got distracted because she thought the word cavemen are funny. I kept saying cavemen, but then at the end, I go, “Does anyone know where I’m at?” Everybody started laughing because I’m making a mistake. My manager yells out. I picked it back up. In the second show, the mistake is, remember the tooth bunny. I meant Easter bunny but said, “The tooth bunny.” That stayed in the special and it was a mistake, but it was funny.

I had talked about the Easter bunny. No wonder we have a problem with pedophilia. You have a stranger in a costume here. Kids go to them and they’ll give you things for free. I go, “That reminds me of a story with my wife,” and everybody started laughing because the last word was a pedophile. What it was supposed to be referencing was free because she went to spring break when we were dating instead of, “I don’t need any money because the guys are super nice. They’ll give you drinks for free.” Those were accidents. Those were mistakes that made it funnier. The fact that I went in with this knowing I was able to be in that moment without fear. I didn’t tense up. I laughed with you guys.

I rolled with the punch. In life, we try to control the uncontrollable and that creates unnecessary stress and worry. That worry starts to become who we are instead of who we really are. Everybody gets a dumbed-down lesser version. That’s not present because of how we handle pain, of what we think is right and wrong, and of how we don’t want to be judged. Ultimately, we don’t show who we are because we think that if we’re someone else that people like us more. That’s my estimation.

I’ve done a lot in my life. I don’t think you can completely avoid that. It’s part of our makeup. We’re aware of it.

I have too many windows open that are running in the background, still learning the software down. I can be like, “Why am I worried about that? I’m going to call that person. This person texts me back. Do they not like me?” I’ll call him instead of sitting there and like worry about it. I always think, “Maybe they have other things going on,” or maybe a lot happening is in their life. If they don’t like me, that’s up to them.

You’re walking on the side of the road and met a stranger. You have ten minutes to talk to him. What do you tell him? We’re all human beings. We all essentially suffer from the same programming in a sense. We’re all part of the experience where stuff happens and respond to it in very similar ways. It’s this never-ending pattern that we get stuck in. You’re talking to someone for a brief period of time. What do you say?

Wealth is knowing what your win is and living by your rules. Share on X

What would life be like if we trusted ourselves more? What would life be like if we listen to our intuition? Intuition is such a gentle nudge. It’s an inner note. It’s a gut feeling or a light feather face. It’s super easy to ignore, but the more we ignore it, the more we have unrest, even depression. We succumb to scarcity. Intuition doesn’t always lead us towards the easy path. That’s the thing. That’s why we like to ignore it sometimes. Sometimes it leads us down a challenging yet rewarding path. Sometimes because we think that we’re too alone or we’re not capable or haven’t been done before.

When I say we, I could be good at talking myself out of any of this. I had hernia surgery, November 3rd, 2020. I was in my bed for several days. I was eating gummies for pain management to go to sleep. I didn’t want to take any opioids. I don’t do good with weed at all. It makes me disconnected. I can’t even formulate good sentences. I found myself being like, “I think I could be a comedian. This is stupid. This is dumb.” That time I was like, “I think I’m going to do a special. I’d written it out.” I turned on The Zen Diaries of Garry Shandling that was done by Judd Apatow. It was him talking about his doubts of ever being good enough to be a comedian and all this stuff. I was like, “Okay.” He has some cool things he wrote in his journal, which reminded me about things I’ve written in my journal. I was like, “I’m going to do this. Can you walk downstairs because of surgery?” November 15 was when I called comedian Marcus and said, “I want to write this. Do you want to help me?”

I think we could write a special by January and then I’m very cats. My managers, chemistry starter podcast, email, somebody does it April 15th. I was considering it. All of a sudden, a brand new comedian is going to film an hour special. I started writing November 15th. I remember April 15th where most professionals are going to take a year to do this. I’m on Zoom five days a week, testing this out. You were there for one of them. I’m like walking, reciting, rowing and rewriting. It worked out great, but it was uncomfortable. I had to face so many demons of insecurity, of how to be direct with people, how to ask for what I want and to allow a vision to expand beyond my comfort zone, to make changes and to like say no to things, I could truly focus on this, how to allow other people to support me.

There were many things that had to go on for that to occur. Who I am from January 2020 to who I am now? I feel like I have to reintroduce myself to the world from who they knew in the past. I’m willing to listen to intuition. I’m willing to do the harder things and process through pain. I’m convinced on other side is love and connection. I feel worthy of love. I feel that I still have insecurities, but I still love myself even if I’m imperfect. I’ve adopted a statement perfectly imperfect as part of my life. I don’t have the answer, but I do have the question.

My question at all times, whether it’s convenient or inconvenient, is what would love choose? What would love do, how would love show up? I used to think that what was most unique about us was our abilities because that’s maybe a strategic coach concept. What makes us most unique is how we show love, express love, receive love. I’m like, “What if I mastered that? What if I invested in that?” Not in all the other stuff about more, but how to show up as love, how to choose love when it’s difficult, when I want to pout and be a victim, when someone I feel is wrong, me or said something negative about me? It’s like someone I look up to when I said, “I don’t want to be part of this anymore of something I was on the board.” He was like, “That’s going to impact us. “

TWS 15 Garrett Gunderson | Winning In Life

Winning In Life: When we try to control something that is beyond our control, it creates unnecessary stress and worries. That worry starts to become who we are.

 

I’m like, “I know, but you’ll figure it out. What am I going to do? You always found a way.” In the past, I’ve been like, “You’re right. Let me do it even though I don’t feel like I have the time or capacity or that I don’t feel like this is my calling because I want to appease you.” I was like, “We can still be in a relationship. You can even go tell people I’m an ass and I’ll be okay” because I’ll keep showing up as love and part of the time is having clear boundaries. It’s ten minutes of what I would tell someone.

What I took from that is the question you ask yourself, especially when you’re experiencing fear or anxiety or stress.

This shit’s easy when things are good.

The primal part of us shows up when things are not how we expected. Number one, it’s the awareness of it. Number two, it’s not relying on those carnal instincts. It’s strategically designing a way in which you can ask yourself different questions and catch yourself. Obviously, be more present and enjoy that moment.

I don’t know how you feel about this. The way I feel about this is I have the ultimate testing ground and having a wife and having kids because I can be neutral about things in business and not take much offense to it or not have a drag me into drama or a lot of emotion. If I don’t get my way with my wife, I can find myself on a path. I could find it harder to ask for forgiveness immediately or to not be right at the moment. That is the ultimate place because I’ve shown her more of who I am and I’ve shown anyone else in the world. There was a time where I believed if she didn’t love me, I wasn’t lovable because I’ve shown her so much. When I recognized that was a limiting belief, I’m able to even give her more love without the fear of is it reciprocated or what if she doesn’t like this about me? I joke that this is like the 26th version of who she’s been married to. I’m like the only woman that’s been married to more men with one marriage is Danielle White. Garrett White’s wife. He’s on Version 35.

It’s one of those things where I hope that’s what we all pursue. I don’t think there’s this end to our becoming. It’s weird. You have so much brilliance and meaning when you’re living in the present moments. That’s what all exists, but it’s this constant awareness that you can continue to do iterate, improve and be better, not to take away from how you are right now, but be even better and continue to improve on the experience.

Important Links: 

About Garrett Gunderson

I am the author of the New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestselling personal finance book Killing Sacred Cows: Overcoming the Financial Myths That Are Destroying Your Prosperity.

Founder and Chief Wealth Architect of the Inc. 500 firm, Wealth Factory. A regular on ABC’s Good Money, he has been on Fox, CNBC, as well as hundreds of radio interviews, and I contributor for Forbes. I also am a frequent speaker at workshops and conferences and live in Salt Lake City.

I have also been interviewed by some of the greats in the personal development space like Hal Elrod, Robert Kiyosaki, Ryan Moran at the Capitalism Conference, Dan Sullivan from Strategic Coach, the Mindvalley Podcast, Project Life Mastery with Stefan James, Joe Polish of Genius Network, Entrepreneur on Fire with John Lee Dumas, The Science of Flipping with Justin Colby, The How of Business, and many more!

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Creating Value During Times Of Crisis With Garrett Gunderson

TWS 43 | Creating Value

 

 

Today, more than ever, we all need to learn to create value for ourselves instead of relying on the system to work for our benefit. We need to rethink how we align our personal finances to achieve genuine happiness. For Garrett Gunderson, societal agreements anchored on materialism and consumerism are what hold us back from creating real wealth for ourselves. A keynote speaker, bestselling author, and the Founder of Wealth Factory, Garrett joins Patrick Donohoe in this episode to talk about what truly makes us valuable as human beings and how we can make our finances work towards that end. On top of all that, he also gives sound and practical financial advice to everyone as we brace ourselves for the inevitable economic impact of the COVID-19 crisis.

Watch the episode here:

Listen to the podcast here:

Creating Value During Times Of Crisis With Garrett Gunderson

My guest is a great friend. His name is Garrett Gunderson. He’s the Chief Wealth Architect at Wealth Factory and the author of Killing Sacred Cows, a New York Times bestseller. He also co-wrote What Would the Rockefellers Do? and The 5 Day Weekend. He is also a contributor to Forbes. I’ve known Garrett for a long time. He’s been on the show before. Knowing him for the better part of several years, I wanted to have him here to discuss what he’s seeing and his perspective is regarding the current state of the economy, where it is going, what he is hearing, seeing, and listening to? I was also curious about our response to some of his more controversial videos as well as Forbes articles. It’s a great episode. You are going to enjoy it. Make sure you visit Garrett’s website, WealthFactory.com. He also has a great YouTube channel, YouTube.com/garrettgundersontv.

Garrett, what’s up? How are you doing? 

I’m glad you’re still talking to me after I brought you to my house to work out.

I still think about that. Coincidentally, I haven’t had much of an extreme response to a workout because I got into biking. I crashed my bike coming down to City Creek Canyon. The good memories are the most painful.

One of our mutual friends I went with, I did the Wasatch Crest with Garrett White and I broke my elbow on that. I got a concussion.

We’ve got to get this story about the workout. We live close to each other and I don’t even know how it happened. You’re like, “You should come and work out at my house.” I’m like, “Alright.” I go to your house and you have this amazing set up in your basement and then you have this big blackboard. It has times on there and apparently, there’s a challenge.

It’s 60 seconds because it sounds easy when you say 60 seconds.

It’s 60 seconds of Airdyne which is those bikes that have a fan on it. How many calories do you have to do, 30 in 60 seconds?

Thirty to you get a shirt and 40 to be on the elite side of the board.

I have no idea where I landed.

You got a shirt, right?

TWS 43 | Creating Value

Creating Value: We live in an extraordinarily consumerist and materialistic society. The reality is that most of that doesn’t bring genuine happiness.

 

I got the shirt.

It wasn’t worth it but you got it.

I think it was worth it. It’s a good memory. We’re talking about it. I found myself almost passed out on your floor, your dog was looking me in the face and then I had to use the toilet. It was a great experience. Thanks for having me over. I appreciate it. We should do that again.

We are taking it a little easier these days with workout so there’s a lot more pleasant. We realized we didn’t have anything to prove and being sore all the time. It didn’t make a lot of sense. We do some functional stuff and we take it easy.

Anyone that comes in works out at your house, it’s the nature of a challenge. They’re going to do anything you tell them to do.

I did that at 2,000 higher elevation on an Echo Bike, which is worse. It’s a little bit harder and beefier. I couldn’t talk to people for twenty minutes and then when I finally spoke words, I said, “It wasn’t worth it.” That was my final comment.

Garrett, it’s awesome to have you on again. I know you’re on a couple of years ago and I have tremendous respect for you with what you’ve done with your career and your business. As I mentioned, you’re always pushing limits and trying to understand the economy, life, business, and then communicate that to others. I have tremendous respect and admiration for you so thanks for what you do. We live in a gnarly time. We were talking about how the last months have been crazy from the standpoint of change. What’s been your experience through the last couple of months? What do you find yourself observing the most?

The good part of it is my kids are listening to me more. I’m able to use the concern or the so-called crisis as a way to heighten their attention and talk about why they are afraid. If they are afraid, where does that fear come from? Is it in the present moment? Are they worried about the future? That’s been profound that we’ve been having these weekly family meetings, talking about our family mission statement and our values. I’ve bonded especially with my youngest son during this time in a deeper way. That’s been the good side. The bad side is, I called a family member and they work with hospitals and they research this stuff for 6 to 7 hours a day. The level of concern, fear and frustration. I’m like, “It’s time to change the narrative.” I don’t think it’s healthy to let the media control the narrative because their job is to be profitable. When we get clear that that’s their job, they’re not always using headlines that are accurate.

I stopped reading things about COVID for two reasons. One, the governor of California said within 30 days they were going to have 22.5 million people infected. The second thing is I read an article out in New York where it said it was an apocalyptic sight. Using the term apocalyptic is fear-mongering and there’s no doubt there are deaths. There’s no doubt that there’s this COVID and it’s tough on people to get it tougher than the flu. I went to Utah’s website and they have Utah COVID website and they said, “For every person that’s reported, there are 5.5 people that have it.” I want people to extrapolate one thing that it’s the same death rate as the flu if that’s true. If we’re only reporting 1 in 5.5 and we’re looking at the percentage like 6% death in the United States. If we look at that 5.5, it takes it down to less than 1% so it’s real. I admittedly have flown and it felt good.

I wore a P95 mask. I take those precautions especially for other people that are in my family. As much as it was quiet and sparse at the airport, I felt good. I went to this place 200 acres in Nashville, everybody’s out playing and we built a fire. If you could find a way even if it’s isolated, get out somewhere in nature and reconnect because nature has a parasympathetic context to it. When we’re in a sympathetic state, it’s fight or flight. When we’re in parasympathetic, that’s where we do a lot of healing and relaxation. This has created a lot of chronic stress and that chronic stress has people a little bit more agitated. I started yelling at my son about something and my wife was on FaceTime and she was like, “What is wrong with you?” I’m like, “I don’t know. I’ve given in to the stress and succumb to it too much.”

We all have to learn to be value creators. Share on X

It has a massive impact on the economy but I want to assure everyone, this economy was doomed already. 2020 was the year. You can go back and watch any of my YouTube videos. I’ve been saying it since 2018. I don’t know when it’s going to hit, but if it’s not at the end of 2020, I’m out. I will never talk about finance again. That was where my stand was. This exacerbated it. The problems were already there underlying. When it comes down to it, there’s one solution to all this and it’s we’ve got to all learn to be value creators. People think that someone can save them. I’m here to assure you, the government can’t save you, corporations won’t save you, and effort isn’t enough. It’s time for intelligent action. We’ve got to discover who we are, what we’re capable of, how we can serve others, and how we can deliver value. Right now, fear is bringing selfishness where people are thinking in isolated thoughts because we’re physically in isolation.

This has been in a sense from a psychological perspective, a very healthy event. It’s healthy because it’s disruptive and sometimes the system needs a shock. We all get in habits and I caught myself in very similar patterns and habits as you where I wanted things to be the way they were, not consciously, it was more subconscious. I want to go to my office and have those meetings, have my collaboration, and people hear, come home and do this. We want those habits, consistency, and certainty. When it’s not there, we get caught off guard. What’s been challenging about this situation is you don’t know. There’s so much unknown. How long are we going to be home? How long is this going to last for?

What I think it’s done for those that I’ve been speaking to and myself included, I assume you as well, which is we’re learning ways to focus on, things are going well with things that we can control. Simplicity and the essentials of life come into focus. That has been valuable for people. It’s been a breath of fresh air and hopefully, it’s given people a new perspective in a lot of ways. One, what’s happening? How much influence media does have? Where do we find an appropriate opinion so that we can hopefully find our own, not gravitate toward what the common opinion is and stick to that but learn the truth and have our own? There are lots of lessons and lots of principles throughout this entire event, including the financial ones. Everything was fragile and it kept growing and growing. This is something that’s knocked it off-kilter.

I’m happy that I learned my lessons in 2008. I was an optimist to ignorance. 2007 was such a big year for my firm and I was like, “This is always going to get better.” I had a track record since 1998 that every year did get better and it continued to grow. I had this level of ignorance that was making me very susceptible to risk. I was spending money too quickly even though I was calling it investing in my business. You saw the office I had back then, the money I’ve spent on my book, and all this stuff. 2008 hit and it was like, “I’m overextended. I’m redlining.” It was painful for six months to the point where I didn’t know who I was. It crashed my identity. I’m no longer worthy in my mind. I’ve failed my family and I got a lot of gray hair. It was this grind that I got in and what I learned was cash and cash management is so critical. I wasn’t like, “Let’s build six months of savings.” I was like, “Let’s build years inside of cash value insurance that will give me stay in power.”

Let’s be careful with our outgoing cashflow and consistently monitor it just 5 to 10 minutes a week to say, “In a mindful way, is this productive or is it not productive? Do we have enough saved up?” I hired someone right after that that they were brilliant at cash management. It was their gift. I was like cash-in, cash-out, like, “Let’s do it. Let’s go for it.” I became good at spending. This time around, it felt good that when this started to happen, I sent an email out to all my family and I said, “We’re prepared for this.” Everything from food storage makes me sound totally like a Utahn. I always felt weird about it and I’m like, “That feels good.” Having enough cash, I said, “If anyone has financial woes or problems during this, please call on us, we can support.” Instead of being in the grind and in crisis mode to be in like, “Let’s reimagine, let’s recreate, let’s re-engineer everything that we’re up to.”

Anything that I can’t do that I was doing before rather than being in pain about it, acknowledge that that’s not going to happen like I was supposed to give a TEDx Talk in New York. I was supposed to take my son to Asia for a month and do service projects in Vietnam, Cambodia, and take him to South Korea where I taught English. All those plans changed. I looked at it like, “What if this isn’t happening to me, it’s happening for me?” In that context, I now get to spend a lot of time with my wife which there’s only one other time in my life where I was home or around her for 60 days with no travel. That was when we went to Italy. I was like, “This will be our version here to go to our cabin, have a lot of connection, and a lot of time together.” We’ve had more conversations now than we’ve ever had in our life. It’s allowed us to be connected. Honestly, I’ve been doing a lot of righting my wrongs. I look back when I was an ass. I looked back when I was arrogant or stupid. I wrote five letters one time. I find that it gives me a chance to make the whole something through immaturity or whatever like do something different with it.

Life has gotten a lot quieter and you’re able to listen especially to the lessons and focus on what’s the most important. As you are going when we’re still in it, I know that things are getting better but from an economic perspective, we most likely have some challenging times ahead. What would you say are the primary lessons that you’re extracting from this?

The things that are getting concrete for me is that in society we become extraordinarily consumeristic and materialistic. Materialism almost is that feudal times of like, “Look what I’ve got.” “I’m my stuff. I’m my net worth.” Our identity gets wrapped up in this. The reality is most of that doesn’t bring genuine happiness. I had this moment in my office, I’m looking around and I’ve got pictures of my family and my wife, comedy, things that I’ve done, people that believed me from the time I was young, and I don’t have a single award up in my office. There’s not a plaque anywhere. There’s just stuff that were gifts from people or moments that were important. I feel a lot of the pain people have is the definition of societal success. When I went to Italy, the gift it gave me was I used to see my value as my business. If there was a customer complaint, I felt terrible about myself. Not about the complainant but about myself and what that said about me.

If we had a bad month, I felt like less of a human being. I was into materialism. When you and I knew each other for a few years and I built that building, that was my demonstration of like, “I’ve made it.” The reality was I had a hard time making those payments. In 2008, it was like, “We’re going to have to sell this building.” These times, we get to redefine what makes us valuable and what makes us valuable is we’re human beings. Human beings make mistakes, can show love, and in these times rather than pointing out anyone else as like, “You’re wrong with this philosophy,” it’s time to show a little bit more love, compassion, and find ways to connect.

As much as that might sound airy-fairy to the value of significance. All it means is like, “I feel whatever I do to someone else, I do to myself.” One time when I was leaving the airport, the machine didn’t work and I was all pissy with the gate agent. It’s not even his fault and there I am just having to go, “I’m still a human being and I feel bad about it. What can I learn from it?” It’s time to focus on ourselves versus the global economy that we can’t control. It’s overwhelming. When we’re overwhelmed, we check out. We go to escapism and right now is the time to connect.

The lessons that you’re learning, do you see others learning that whether it’s your audience or listeners? I know you do tons of stuff online. You write for Forbes. Do you see these lessons being learned by others?

TWS 43 | Creating Value

Creating Value: These times, we need to focus on ourselves and redefine what makes us valuable as human beings.

 

What’s interesting is my YouTube channel has hit stagnation during this. I had 87 subscribers before and then I’m about 40,000 now. It went up by 8,000 people before the COVID crisis in a month. I had three million views. I’m at a million views and 1,500 subscribers. I was like, “Am I after this for the views, or am I after this for the impact?” What’s been nice is if anyone who wants to go to my YouTube channel and look at the comments, they’re overwhelmingly positive 95% and only 5% negative, smart aleck, called me a snake oil salesman or I need to cut my hair. I see people that are coming forward and going, “I’m ready to learn.” The most positive thing that’s happened from this is people are ready to learn.

Fewer people truly listen when times are good. If I try to point out the problems with the stock market, they don’t want to hear it. If I point out the problems of prepaying a mortgage, they think that’s stupid because you can always sell the home, I’m like, “I got it.” They’re not ready to hear things. The people that are listening are listening so much more intently. Our weekly Q&A sessions are getting hundreds of questions. That’s up big time. We did a virtual Wealth Acceleration Workshop, which we’d only done in person before and we had at the lowest point three times more people online watching it than we’ve ever had in person watching it.

There are some things that are interesting that way. The gift is I’ve been trying forever not to be attached to the road. That didn’t have to be an instrumental part of my business. I think that you’ve done a much better job than me at that. This has created that opening out of necessity where if I don’t go on the road, it doesn’t matter, it’s a choice. It’s not required to feed the firm and that’s a gift. I like being around my family, that’s nice. It’d be nice to not have the kids around all the time. They’re still romance terrorists at this point so I would say my romantic life has diminished.

Our kids are roughly the same age. I can attest to that. In a couple of years, they’re going to be gone. That’s what I’ve seen and observed is people are experiencing the same thing as it relates to their most important relationships. That’s going to change the direction of society as well because things were so busy whether it’s the amount of time we worked and the extracurricular activities that we did. Now everything is simpler which is amazing.

We were a slave to our habits. It’s unchecked and unquestioned.

We were in a sense slaves to material things. Slaves to this has to happen for me to feel and experience this.

I’ve spent so much money and I don’t have any less happiness. I was spending a lot of money in January and February. I had a big December and I was like, “I’m going to buy this and that.” It’s like, “I’m not buying any of that right now.” I feel totally fine. I felt no different.

You mentioned that your YouTube views, the engagement with some of your Forbes articles, what’s received the most response and then how are you characterizing that response relative to the other articles and media you’re producing?

The articles are my best articles. They are the biggest part of who I am and my discoveries are getting very minimal views. They’re very philosophical constructs in the big picture. The articles on Forbes that get the most views are telling someone they’re doing something wrong. Part of it is the people that want to read it so they can debate. The article you know that got the most views is Paying Off Your Mortgage Early Will Destroy Your Finances. The title is a little bit click-baiting. The article doesn’t say that you shouldn’t pay off your mortgage. I’m not the moral authority on whether someone should pay off their mortgage or not, but the methodology of how they do it is instrumental. We’re getting that proven in the COVID crisis because I’m saying if you put too much money by prepaying an amortized loan, that money ends up in equity gel. If you have a time where your cashflow is weak and we’re seeing unemployment on the rise, the banks are never going to lend you the money and you’re going to be more susceptible to being foreclosed on.

People are like, “You could always sell the home.” I don’t think it’s the easiest time to sell a home. I don’t know for sure but I imagine with quarantine, that’s got to be a problem especially if you own one in New York. That got a ton of views so when I said, “Financial planning is broken and then you’re better off to blow your money.” That was the other title. That got a lot of traction like 279,000 views. The articles about the recession and the CARES Act have gotten a decent amount of views. My favorite article that I put out is one of your partners in Prosperity Economics, Todd Langford. I interviewed him and wrote an article on cash value insurance that was all about the problems of universal life. That’s the most pedal product that exists out there. It’s got 8,000 views but that I hope over its lifetime ends up getting millions. It might be a slow go and someone’s going to read it, have it catch on because it’s so important to know. Those articles are very interesting. The bottom line is the title makes such a difference more so than the article itself.

I’d love to understand how you’ve grown with being able to speak and write about hard things especially when you’re telling a person that they’re wrong or telling someone something that is against conventional wisdom. You wrote a whole book about it, Killing Sacred Cows, which is conventional wisdom. It’s what everybody does. Doing that tactfully where you’re able to, not only prove the point but do it in a way in which it helps a person think because you can easily attack in a person who’s going to defend themselves to the nth degree and not learn anything from it but you’ve been able to evolve a lot. Speak to that a little bit about how you approach those challenging topics where it’s telling a person that what they’re doing is wrong but yet you’re doing it in a way where they’re able to learn.

Social agreements are what create the pain of materialism and consumerism. Share on X

In my twenties, I had this attitude of like, “I needed to go after it.” There was almost anger right to it and I don’t think that that was effective. This mortgage article I lead with when I was in high school in a math class. I saw the math of what happens when you do a 15 versus a 30-year mortgage. When I came home, I’m like, “Mom, are we on a fifteen-year mortgage?” She goes, “Of course, we are. We’re saving all that interest.” I’m like, “Thank you.” I went to college and I had this class from Professor Hamlin on Economics and he taught me the opportunity costs and cost of money. I was like, “If you could earn the same interest that doesn’t matter but you have more flexibility and potential tax about it, then you have more control of your money.”

The big argument people give me is like, “People are going to blow that money.” I’m like, “Let’s say that’s true. They’re going to put themselves at risk if they’re going to blow that money by trying to prepay a mortgage because they’re going to blow the rest, get into it high-interest rate credit card debt. I’d rather see them pay off the credit card.” You get the picture. I admit my initial limited thinking. I start with self-deprecation of saying this is how I thought it was too. I have no dog in the fight. It doesn’t matter what the solution is. If it’s a fifteen-year mortgage and that’s the most beneficial thing for someone, I don’t get paid more or less forgiving that advice. If I use Suze Orman as one example, she is a sell-out that gets paid by sponsors. She’s been paid by the FDIC. I believe she’s been paid by Starbucks because she went from, “You shouldn’t do it,” to “You do it.” She always had a cup of coffee on her show.

It’s hard not to bring bias. Dave Ramsey says, “Everybody should do everything they can to pay off their credit card debt.” How to do it? I’m okay with all the advice on that. I’m not okay with once you do that, you put your money in the stock market because of the things that we deserve a little bit better thinking. That’s been over-promised and under-delivered. There’s too much volatility. People don’t do well handling it. It creates unnecessary stress for them. One of the articles I wrote that didn’t get nearly the traction that deserved was The Stock Market is Still Overvalued. That was when we start to see it. Here’s why. Eighty-four percent of the gains in the stock market go to 10% of the investors. What people don’t understand is, let’s say the market is done 6% over the last twenty years, and that’s more accurate than when people think it’s done ten. Ten comes from the ‘90s, what it did better than that to boost it up to ten and that’s a pipe dream. It’s never happening again because too many companies are going to go out of business through disruption. Here’s why it matters that 84% of the gain goes to 10% of the investors is because of hedge funds, options, and derivatives.

It doesn’t mean that all investors average to 6%. It means that some people got 30% and other people got nothing because it went to the few that were in the hedge funds that were selling short. I don’t think people get that. They’re investing in companies they don’t believe in. They’re taking risks that are unnecessary because the world has done a good job in making stocks synonymous with investing. I have this whole comedy bit I’m starting to work on which is about Wall Street. If we surveyed the world and said, “Do you trust Wall Street? Yes or no?” It’s got to be 90% would say no. You don’t think warm fuzzy feelings with Wall Street. Every movie about Wall Street, Gordon Gekko, Wolf of Wall Street, Jordan Belfort, there are these terrible movies about harming people or stealing money and yet this is what people are doing. My premise is, would you let someone from Wall Street babysit your child?

The answer is no because you’d come back and be like, “They’re missing 8% of their body. We lost some toes. Hopefully, they’ll grow back and recover.” It’s like, “Why do we do that with our money?” It’s because of social agreements and social agreements are what creates the pain of materialism and consumption. Social agreements have a spill less worthy than we are. I feel like we need to have what someone else has. It creates jealousy and this is, unfortunately, the consumption-based system that we’ve got into. My problem with it is capitalism has become more about taking than giving. It’s become more about competition than creation. That’s why I’m more like a free market. We’ve got to stop having an agenda for someone and telling them what to do and they’ve got to discover things. They’ve got to make mistakes, they’ve got to learn lessons, and anytime we try to so-called protect them, then we rely on a government that’s not capable of protecting anyone because they’re not functional themselves. That’s my little diatribe on that.

That’s human nature. There are so many things that we consistently observed but never understand the nature of the root. My oldest daughter was like, “Why did Donald Trump come up with Make America Great Again?” We were having this competition of questions where you have to answer a question with a question. I asked her, “Where did the word America come from?” That sparked a cool tangent. The point is, most people do not know where that word comes from but you look at it, it’s our country. It’s on Donald Trump’s hat. Everybody talks about that all the time. With the stock market, what you do with your money, there haven’t been enough questions asked around it. Why does it exist? Why do we do this? Where did it come from? What’s the end objective? It’s been preplanned for us, therefore we don’t have to think about it and can focus on other things.

The biggest issue that we face as a nation and as a world is that we’ve lost sight of how to create a vision. The vision exists within a box of well-intentioned preachers and teachers and not so intention governments and the corporations. If we left money on the side for a minute and realize that’s a byproduct and you said, “What do we want to do?” What some people want to do won’t pay as much as other things. That’s the nature of value, what people value, and what people are willing to pay for it because that’s part of a free economy. If we don’t identify ourselves as our money. If that’s only an indication of the value we’ve created in the past and a ledger of that and that snapshotting, what that means is it doesn’t dictate the value we create in the future.

What’s been lost upon people is there are two more precious forms of capital. One is our mental capital, and if we develop that by investing in ourselves to gain knowledge, insight, wisdom, tools, and strategies. The second thing, which it’s an unprecedented time to build is relationship capital. We can build relationship capital because when people are in fear, they’re looking for leadership. Here’s the secret that I’ve had a hard time learning my own life. The secret is not knowing everything. The secret is listening and then what you did with your daughter. Asking questions that moved the narrative to one that’s productive. If you could ask great questions and listen, you’ve got the keys to wealth. I feel like now is the time to ask better questions and ask different questions.

I don’t know if you remember this. This was when Killing Sacred Cows came out and we went down to Vegas and you spoke. That was the first time I heard Keith Cunningham. I love him. He’s such a cool guy.

I remember when I was speaking at that event, he walked into the room. From the back of the room while I’m speaking, “I love Killing Sacred Cows. It’s a great title. What a title.” I was like, “That’s cool. Let’s speak of it. That’s who I love.” He tells it like it is.

He’s big on principle. He’s big on questions but there’s something that he talks about all the time which is thinking. It’s the idea of listening, asking questions, but then taking time to think. This has given people a lot of time to think.

TWS 43 | Creating Value

Creating Value: People are taking unnecessary risks because the world has done a good job of making stocks synonymous with investing.

 

Is this in his new book, The Road Less Stupid?

Yes. If you’ve heard him speak before, he’s like, “You read the book.” Hear his voice. It’s hilarious because he has this thick Texas accent but the point is this is at least for me, I never asked why am I doing this? What am I trying to achieve? Sometimes we ask those questions but we only go one or two layers deep. If you keep asking yourself questions about, why do I want to do that? If I had that, why would that make a difference? If I didn’t have it, where would I be? What would I think? What would I feel? The end-objective is way more important than sticking to a status quo and gain the same end-objective as everybody else. Those are the simple deep questions. Help us understand why we’re doing what we’re doing, what we want and hopefully give us direction as to things to adjust or get rid of to get what we want. I’ve gravitated and I’m not sure what your opinion is toward Ray Dalio but some of the stuff he says is amazing.

Risk management staying with a beginner’s mind, learning, and not learn it. A lot of that is so profound.

It’s so simple but it’s the Pareto Principle, the 80/20 rule where you get 80% of everything off and 20% of effort and information. I was reading that and it hit me. I’m like, “This is like COVID where we’re getting way more satisfaction with so much less noise, activity, and busyness.” It’s profound and those are valuable lessons. I know you’re always pushing the limits, growing, and trying to be more valuable. What would you say is your intention behind some of that writing? What are you hoping people will gain by understanding more about their mortgage and market? Also, more about the idea of value and where value comes from, purpose and legacy, the stuff that you are clearly passionate about? What are you hoping others take away from that? What’s the ideal outcome you hope for them?

The one thing that’s always at the core of it is a personal responsibility. The only way that we grow. With that accountability and personal responsibility, we become less duped, less reliant, and we can learn. There’s no learning. For me, without personal responsibility, there’s no way to have a relationship with someone. If I can bring that to them because I can help them think and learn. In doing that, I continue to write in a way that is simpler and simpler. Simple does not mean discounted, it means understandable. If you look at Killing Sacred Cows, people can understand the book but even when I did the audiobook, it was too elaborate at times. The sentences were too long and they become redundant that way. I’m using vocabulary that why did Make America Great Again work as a campaign is because everyone gets to define what great is subjective. Everybody could understand it even if they were in third grade.

If I write to sound intelligent, then I’m not connected. I’m not giving the reader the resources. If I could take what feels complicated and make it understandable, they’re empowered. I don’t write for everyone to agree, but if I can at least get them to question at least one thing and go, “That’s a valid point.” The one article that has the most views, half the reason it has the most views is that it’s very polarizing and people will defend their life that paying off a mortgage is the best thing you could do in the world. My grandfather said, “You can’t be the man who has paid off his mortgage.” I’m like, “I don’t even know what that means,” but obviously, he cared about his grandfather and so it’s a way to honor his ancestors.

I think we’ve got to shake loose ancestral damage. We can honor our ancestors and be free moving forward. We have a lot of ancestral knowledge that was limiting based upon the consciousness of the time and the situation. As situations change, the context changes if we keep the content the same, then we create unnecessary pain and we don’t honor ourselves. Too many people rely on everyone else. If I can get them to rely on personal responsibility, I feel like I’ve done some good in the world. That’s where I come from.

This is profound because I look at what’s been done in the past and this is a general statement. There were good intentions and they wanted something as an end result. What’s most important isn’t the way they did it. What’s important is the end result of why they did it. I’m not sure if the result has changed that much. We live in such a modern society where things are easier. They’re quicker. They’re more efficient and they take less energy. Going into the method and then the objective, the objective is way more important to understand and be clear about before you get into methods. You’ve always preached that. What’s been awesome is to observe you over the years and how consistent you’ve been to the principles you believed in pre-crash and then post and you continue to write about the same things but it’s different.

That’s where I realized people need a certain environment to absorb that information. Be able to rewire their methods but then also understand at a clear level what the objective is. People are now somewhat humbled and I include myself in it. There are a lot of valuable lessons I’m learning through all this. When you’re in that state, that’s when you start to think about what you were doing and ways in which you can improve it. The beauty of humanity is solving problems.

We’ll make mistakes along the way. It’s part of the learning and that’s okay. A lot of pain and humanity is perfectionism. That’s why we get so stuck in what’s right and what’s wrong. It’s my way or the high way. I get it. You don’t want to make a mistake and you don’t want to admit it if you made a mistake because it shows vulnerability or whatever it is. If we can acknowledge that then we can learn from it and move on. Anything through my career is when I had a strong belief in something and someone showed me evidence of why that might not be the case. I remember my business partner, Les, and I was sitting down analyzing 401(k)s. We’re like, “If this thing got 15% in investment, nothing could beat it.” With the tax deferral and then we started going, “What’s going to get 15% long-term?” I could understand for a year because we used to think of hard money lending at that time and it was going nuts.

You thought he was being conservative. We start looking at like, “What were tax rates?” We sat in a hotel room and after three hours we were like, “These things are riddled with fees. They have penalties that keep people stuck inside of them. They haven’t managed their cashflow appropriately. How much more powerful if you’re economically independent and have cashflow to cover your expenses, then every dollar you earn can be reinvested versus only 10% of it?” This world unfolded and I’m like, “I’ve got to admit that I was wrong. I’ve got to tell people that I’m cashing out my 401(k).” That’s not comfortable. I didn’t want that news but I think that intellectual integrity is the key to the evolution of our financial world. If I learn new things that are different than what I believe, I have to be willing to say, “I was wrong.” In real estate, I’ve done wrong. I’ve made mistakes with investing.

The most positive thing that has happened from this is that people are ready to learn. Fewer people listen when times are good. Share on X

The good news is I haven’t in the last decade. People could point out that I could have gotten better returns, but the reality is my returns came in my business and I captured and transferred that into personal wealth through my cash value. That is very simple to me. I’m sitting on it because I’m going to buy some businesses through this crisis. That’s going to be good for those employees. It’s going to be good for the business owner that might’ve gotten nothing instead he got something. I feel like I’ve got a clear value system.

What advice are you giving the most or the things you’re talking about the most with your audience? What are some of the things you are advocating not to do, things to do and be focused on and things not to do and not be focused on?

It’s too early to allocate capital to investments. We don’t know how long it’s going to last so get access to cash. Do refinance and get equity. Put that in your bank account. If you have a line of credit, tap into it. Pay the interest for a few months. Put that in cash because the banks are going to cut that down. Unfortunately, I have been giving advice on how to get money from the CARES Act and the EIDL’s and the PPP because we paid the tax, they’re offering it, and it’s important for the smaller businesses. I was frustrated to find out 80% of people got the loans were big businesses and hopefully they are returning the money. There are a lot of big businesses that if they went out of business, I wouldn’t miss them for two seconds, but there are a lot of small businesses that I would care about that would suck to see them go out.

Refinancing to get lower outgo. I’m telling business owners that they should move to production-based compensation where they give minimal salary and they give a lot more upside. What happens is during good times, business owners make a disproportionate amount of money and during downtimes, they lose a disproportionate amount of money. If you can create a structure where everybody’s in the boat and they understand when it’s sinking and they all need to work towards being it rising or when it’s rising, they all benefit from it rising. That’s a big game-changer and it’s better for nowadays economy. It was okay to pay people time for money in the Industrial Age, but we’re not in the Industrial Age anymore. You can get more out of people and they can get more out of what they do too. You work together in a team format.

Those are cash-and-cash management, compensation, and making adjustments quickly. Don’t wait until it’s too late like I did in 2008. Everybody got paid but me. I wrote an article in Forbes called Are you the only one not getting paid right now?. That’s a problem because sacrifice leads to destruction. It’s important to take care of yourself during this time. Otherwise, you have nothing to give. You don’t want to run out of the room because you tried to get everybody else to be okay. When I have partners, we hemorrhaged money because we had 42 employees. I didn’t even have to tell them what to do because I didn’t have time. I didn’t have the bandwidth and I lost two people that would normally delegate that stuff. What I should have done is take a week off, sit down with everyone, figuring out what they were going to do, whether they were going to stay. All I did was pay people to mourn than be confused about what to do and then take on a burden that cost me years of my life when it came down to it.

That’s great advice. It’s advice that doesn’t come from information. There’s a difference between information and experience. One of the greatest lessons that we learned was during the times when things went haywire, we lost, and we’re not prepared. Now you’re going to protect yourself from not doing that again. It’s an example of how long the bull run was and how quickly things started to unravel which is going to continue. Let’s end with you talking about what’s exciting for you. What are some of the things you’re working on, you’re doing that lit up about?

One thing I’m doing is a one-man show. I had this dream where I was directing a one-man show, and I don’t know if you’ve ever seen the one-man show that Bo Eason did call the Runt of the Litter. That’s one of the first ones I’ve seen. Mike Tyson did one called Tyson that Spike Lee directed. Billy Crystal did one called 700 Sundays. I feel like entertainment is the gateway to transformation. If I could bring entertainment into a normally tough dry topic of money that I could help with giving people new confidence and give them an experiential way to learn how to create value. I act in it, that’s where I’m going to practice it, do a full run-through. I played four characters in it. I dance at the end of it. It’s this full expression to give people permission to have the freedom and engage in a way that delivers value. I have a director, screenwriter, and comedic writer. It’s been a big collaboration but it’s one of the most fun things I’ve ever done.

Are you filming it?

It’s a practice. We’ll run through it from beginning to end. We are recording and I’ll start listening to it. We’ve been working on stage direction, props, and the characters. I do acting. I had never acted before. I’m doing everything from a little stand-up in it to playing my guitar while I run people through an exercise. In the end, I dance as a sign of expression and I’m not a dancer. It’s like, “Let go of what people think and let’s be ourselves,” type of thing.

When is that due to?

I was going to perform it for the first time in June 2020.

TWS 43 | Creating Value

Creating Value: There are two precious forms of capital: one is our mental capital, and the other is relationship capital.

 

Is this something that’s videoed or something that’s done in live performance?

It will be live. I’m hoping I got someone on the board of Hale Centre Theatre that saw me do stand-up and said, “I would love to have you do a Hale Centre gig.” When this COVID thing is over, I’ll film it and do a full production and they’ll be right here in your backyard. I love to get a bunch of people. For me, it’s my love bomb on humanity.

Garrett, how can the readers tune in to you, your YouTube channel, your social media, follow you and keep learning from you?

YouTube channel is the way. You’re going to go Garrett.live in an internet browser or you can go YouTube.com/garrettgundersontv. Either way, subscribe, I’m doing videos there. That’s the best way to stay connected. I respond to almost every comment.

This has been enlightening, to say the least. I expect nothing less. Garrett, thank you for your time. I appreciate it. Thanks for sharing your wisdom with the audience. I can’t wait to see the one-man show.

You’re always out there as a symbol of abundance. You have always been a man who has been abundant and sharing. You are willing to tell people how you’re doing things, what you’re up to, what mistakes you’ve made, and how you do it differently. I appreciate that about you because not a lot of people are willing to share at that level. Thanks for who you are and how you show up.

Thanks, Garrett. That means a lot. I appreciate it. Take care.

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About Garrett Gunderson

TWS 43 | Creating Value

Garrett B. Gunderson has dedicated his career to debunking the many widely accepted myths and fabrications that undermine the prosperity and joy of millions of hard-working, honest business owners. Gunderson’s company, Wealth Factory, empowers its members to build sustainable wealth through financial efficiency and organization leading to clarity, peace of mind and financial confidence. You may recognize him from his appearances as a guest contributor on CNBC, Fox News, ABC, and many others.

Gunderon is the New York Times bestselling author of “Killing Sacred Cows: Overcoming the Financial Myths That Are Destroying Your Prosperity,” “Portal to Genius,” and “What Would the Rockefellers Do?: How the Wealthy Get and Stay That Way … And How You Can Too.”

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Quantum Computing, Quantum Leap Technology, AI, And More From The Finance Summit, Part 2

TWS 8 | Tony Robbins Finance Summit

 

 

In this second installment, Patrick Donohoe wraps up Tony Robbins’ Finance Summit events and shares the learnings he unlocked from it. Discussing China’s indifference about the trade disruption, he also touches on quantum computing and how diversification across different non-related assets is essential. He also breaks down Tony’s six-step decision making process and Greg Wieler’s four forces that tells the future, and recaps on Eric Prince’s segment. Find out more about quantum leap technology, artificial intelligence, and more in this information-driven episode.

Watch the episode here:

Listen to the podcast here:

Quantum Computing, Quantum Leap Technology, AI, And More From The Finance Summit, Part 2

Ray Dalio Talks About China

Thank you for reading this review of Day 3 of my experience at the Tony Robbins Platinum Partnership Finance event up here in Sun Valley, Idaho. This was by far the most packed with information. I’m going to try to keep it brief, but I learned quite a bit. There was some interesting insertion or inserting of information that I wasn’t expecting and I had heard it before, but it made an even bigger impact for me. I’m going to share that. There were some speakers who went back to back that had polar opposite views in a sense of where things were going. It was fascinating to see that dynamic and how much that not only inspired my new level of thinking, but the audience as well. Let’s get into it. The first speaker right out of the gate was Ray Dalio. He was about a good friend of Tony’s and has become successful. He wrote a book called Principles, which I’ve referenced often. There were some great nuggets in there in regards to investing business and life in general. Check that out. Ray’s message wasn’t necessarily something that was outside of the video I’ve already mentioned, which is how the economic machine works.

Here are a few things that I took away. First, he made essentially a statement around where we’re at in the debt cycle. That relates to his video that I’ve referenced a few times. He said that we’re late in the short-term debt cycle and even later in the long-term debt cycle, but not quite to the point where there are a correction and disruption. I would say it’s a QE4 in a sense, which is the Fed’s involvement in the repo market. This has to do with bank liquidity and banks have to keep a certain amount of reserves. If they don’t have those reserves, they usually will borrow it from other banks. Over the last few months or so, that liquidity has shrunk and so the Fed has gotten involved. The Fed is providing this stimulus. It’s lending against high-value assets of a bank and injecting even more liquidity into the market. It’s interesting how they’ve done that, but it isn’t necessarily manifesting in inflation and huge amounts of growth. That’s because the inflation is in the financial assets, not necessarily in goods and services. That was an interesting insight.

He made a point about China going to another topic. He said that China doesn’t care about the trade disruption that they’ve had with regards to the Trump administration. He said that’s not necessarily a big concern for them. Their biggest priority and biggest concern is technology. They believe that the leader in technology is the one that’s going to essentially control economies, the global economy. That’s where China has been focused. Also, the dilemma is that the US and China are intertwined in regards to its technology. As far as the demand, I would say there’s a huge demand for the different technologies that the US has that’s all manufactured in China, which is interesting. Also, he made mention of quantum computing. Quantum computing is one of those races that companies are similar to 5G.

Google has made some strides toward having economical quantum computing. China is ahead of the game, ahead of any company in the United States, which I thought was interesting. It’s going to come down to the power needed to have these quantum computers run, which is an exorbitant amount of power. I would say part of the race is figuring out how to make that economical. The last thing I’ll mention is the idea that China is trying to disrupt the global economy and take over leadership and that’s going to be based on its control over technology. That’s one of the things that Ray had mentioned.

The next thing was the idea of tactical investment. He said that tactical investment, technical investment trading, ride short positions and ride long positions. It’s one of the most difficult games that’s out there. He said that the average investor has way more to gain by diversification. In Tony’s book, MONEY Master the Game. One of the takeaways from his interview with Ray and what Tony had Ray help him with is the creation of a portfolio that’s called The All Weather Portfolio, which is a combination of different assets. There are bonds, gold and commodities in there. What those assets are is when one goes up, the other goes down and there are about 5 or 6 types of asset classes in that portfolio, whereas things fluctuate in the global economy, then it’s able to counterbalance in a sense. I’ve backtested that. I’ve created a whole spreadsheet with a guy on my team. We backtested for 50 years and it does work. The gross yield was around 8% and you have to net out fees. That’s an internal return, which is interesting. He not only mentioned that but also to diversify into other asset classes. He said that the ideal diversification is across at least fifteen different non-correlated assets.

The last thing he mentioned is that there’s going to continue to be more stimulus. We’re seeing in the repo markets at the same time there’s still a tiny bit of room, but he believes that there’s going to be continual printing, especially this year being an election year and then the wealth gap. He mentioned that this is one of the biggest concerns. It’s where he is putting a lot of his philanthropic focus is into this wealth gap. At this time, 40% of the United States can’t come up with $400, which is concerning. If you look at Andrew Yang pushing universal basic income and also Bernie Sanders and his message, which is anti-establishment, but socialistic is attracting the lower tail of our socio-economy. It’s concerning to him because that gap continues to broaden. It comes down to the financial asset inflation, where that is made individuals wealthy at the top, but it has not helped those that are at the bottom. Ray wrote an article on LinkedIn about universal basic income and his study.

Growth takes place in environments that challenge you not just physically, but mentally as well. Share on X

Tony’s 6-Step Decision Making Process

The next thing, not necessarily an intervention, but there was a woman who stood up and was talking about her investments, what she was taking away and what she was trying to determine as far as some of her next steps in business. Tony did something and I’ve heard this before, I’ve come across it, but he went into way more detail and something hit home to me. I’ve been talking this a lot over the last several podcasts, which is this idea of where your focus is when it comes to your future and the decisions that you make. He has a six-step decision-making process.

I looked online and there are several resources available. There’s a Fortune Magazine article that discusses it in detail. It’s the OOC/EMR. The OOC is step-by-step. The first three steps being, how to start to identify the basis of your decisions. These are all acronyms of course. It’s Outcome, Options and Consequences. The outcome is first, which is getting crystal clear of the outcome you want. What are the results that you’re after? Getting clarity, crystal clear of exactly what those outcomes, those results are. I’ll go through some of the notes that I took. What is the result you’re after? Why do you want to achieve it? Getting clear about outcomes and their order of importance, you start listing out and it’s a brain dump in a sense. That’s what he was having this woman do. Options, write down all of your options, whatever comes to mind. He says that one option is not a choice.

Two options are a dilemma and three options are where you do have a choice. It’s coming up with as many of those options as possible. He also said that it should include the maybe farfetched type of options. Options that you may think is crazy but listing all of them out and there’s a whole process to this once you’ve done it. Outcomes, all of your different options and the consequences are the next one. What are the upsides? Consequences are positive and negative consequences. What’re the upsides and what are the downsides of each option? What do you gain by each option and what would it cost you? It’s answering those questions as it relates to all of your options.

Finally, it’s evaluate. Now, you go back and you evaluate all the options and the consequences and if it does get you what you want as an outcome. Start to rank those in order of importance based on the upsides and downsides. The next one is the probability. What is the probability that it will happen, that this option will work? What that does is it gives you an idea of what is the specific direction as it relates to the decisions you’re going to make. Finally, it’s mitigate. As you review the downsides of all, you brainstorm alternative ways to eliminate or reduce the downsides, which is important because as you can review, if I have a downside, you list the downside, but, how can I get rid of the downside? How can I mitigate the risk of a downside?

Finally, it’s resolving. It’s going back through and selecting the best option based on ways in which you’ve been able to rank and categorize them. It was fascinating and this was probably, I would say at least an hour-long type of discussion with this woman in front of everybody. She had multiple breakthroughs being, she got to this point where it’s like, “I can do this.” You can see her as her mind starting to expand. It’s that whole quote of, “Mind that got you to where you are is not the mind that’s going to get you beyond.” It’s opening up that mind breaking through thresholds in being able to figure out, “What is a decision I can make that it will get me closer to the results that I’m after?” That was fascinating. I love that.

It was two speakers that were again the polar opposites. The polarity that existed between their perspectives of the world was fascinating, especially they were back-to-back. Tony did this by design. The first is Harry Dent. He has spoken at Tony’s conferences for a long time and he does it because Harry Dent has some track record issues. There are a lot of calls that he’s made in his books that has not come to fruition or were early or were late. It’s happened for several decades. Harry took a stand with Dent Research, which is a part of the Agora Network where he started writing newsletters. It wasn’t these books that he would come out with and then write about how the future looks like this.

TWS 8 | Tony Robbins Finance Summit

Tony Robbins Finance Summit: China is trying to disrupt the global economy and take over leadership which is based on its control over technology.

 

Where he’s writing through a newsletter, a publishing business would allow more accuracy. He’d be able to course-correct quicker, which is smart. Regardless, this is what Harry said regarding the future. He said, “There is going to be a downturn.” Harry has written often about demographics and the spending of demographics, their net worth and where their asset concentrations are. He said that we’re either at or beyond the peak of Baby Boomer spending. The Baby Boomers started in 1946 going to 1964. That’s the years in which the Baby Boomer demographic was born. We’re getting to that almost 60 years old where it’s the end to the Baby Boomers and their spending peak after they’re empty nesters. Their parents are finally free. That’s when they start to spend a lot of money. That’s what’s going on. That’s going to come to a close soon.

He said that plus the behavior of youth and I’ve talked about the greatest wealth transfer in history, which is a set to come in the next years amounting to tens of trillions of dollars. It’s going to be different buying behavior of this younger demographic, different assets that are also in a different financial situation, whether it’s the debt that they have or the professions that they have. It’ll be interesting to see where money flows once this wealth transfer starts to take place. He said that being in cash is a good thing. You’ll be able to take advantage of opportunities. He sees major disruption in 2022 and Dent Research has multiple newsletters. They have a free newsletter as well if you guys want to follow them.

Finally, he mentioned that a lot of the opportunity from an investment standpoint is in healthcare, specifically care to those that are aging, whether that’s nursing homes or assisted living. There are tons of private investments out there, but there’s a lot of public investment out there as well. Several ETFs or REITs, Real Estate Investment Trusts, that concentrate and focus on essentially different types of housing and real estate for an aging demographic. That was Harry. He is an entertaining speaker. He is somewhat crude in moments but at the same time, he was entertaining. One of my buddies, Matt Atkinson, I need to get Matt here one of these days. He has a distinct laugh. He was sitting probably toward the back from where I was sitting. You can hear his distinct laugh several times throughout Harry’s comments.

Let’s talk about Peter Diamandis. Here’s what’s cool. Peter essentially said at the end that all of his slides, which I already have can be made available to anybody. We can share those. I’m going to post a link for you to download those slides. Make sure you go to TheWealthStandard.com and there’ll be a link there to download. He is a thinker and I’m not going to spend a ton of time going into my notes there. I first read Peter’s book Abundance. He has Abundance and then Bold. He has a new book. It’s called The Future is Faster Than You Think.

I read Peter’s Abundance book it was about 2009, 2010 where it was a dark time for a lot of people, including myself. There were pessimistic views as far as what was happening within markets. Peter wrote a book about essentially how incredible the times were that things were much better in the past. There was much innovation going on. That the world was getting better and he had all proof of how it was getting better. I love that mindset because he knows what’s going on. He knows that there’s pessimism, but one of the quotes he used was that, “A negative mind will never give you a positive life,” which I love because it’s always been that way and always will be that way. There’s always going to be a half-empty glass.

Peter And His Ideas Of Growth

I know if the focus is there, that’s where your emotions and your feelings are going to focus and regardless of the circumstances. In 2010, those dark times was an amazing time if that’s the mindset that you had. There were tons of opportunities, whether it was real estate or other types of business investment. Since then, it’s been this huge boom. I love how Peter thinks, but the polarity between a pessimistic view of things and then an optimistic view of things was healthy. It helped broaden not just my perspective, but a lot of those that were in the room. A few of the things that Peter mentioned, you will be able to get into the slides and dig into some of the amazing innovation that’s going on.

Concentration, understanding the future, and energy information are going to create better lives for everybody. Share on X

We are in this exponentially growing a society where it was Moore’s Law before. It’s the acceleration of acceleration. It’s this quantum type of leap toward the future. That’s what growth is like. Also, it provides a lot of opportunities because he cited some polls of the simple question, is the world getting better? Six percent of the US believes that it is and 94% don’t think that the world is getting better. He had all statistics on poverty being cut in half in the last decade. Child mortality and famine were going down. Half the world is using the internet. There are almost 800 million more people in the last decade that have electricity and renewable energy. There’s ten times more solar power than there was and then he gets into the future. The future of being driven by artificial intelligence and biotech.

He said that the concentration as far as understanding where the future is going is an energy information and material. The combination of which is going to create better lives for everybody, but also an extreme amount of wealth for those that know how to ride those waves. He mentioned personalized drugs. CRISPR, which I’ve known about for a long time, is a way in which a map is created for the human genome being able to have different ways in which you can edit and improve genetic disorders. It’s fascinating and some of this might be scary as well. I know most of something you were thinking that a lot of the crowd, that’s a way in which they responded.

Tony invested in a 3D printing home building company in Mexico. He has two printers but they’re able to build 2 or 3 homes a day and they’re $10,000 each. He’s talking about rockets and how SpaceX and other companies are being able to capitalize on either putting satellites in that provides a 5G type of internet globally. Digitizing of factories, which is going to bring costs down, but also it’s going to decrease dependence on foreign manufacturing. We’re seeing that with the coronavirus and how that’s disrupted the supply chain. I don’t think we are yet to see the impact of that. Some are saying that it could be an impact last longer than a year in disruption of the supply chain. 3D printing is going to essentially help us to create factories on site where you can 3D print parts as opposed to having to manufacture in shipping costs. The use of fuel and energy for that shipping and so forth. He talked about flying cars that there’ll be Uber Copter in Dallas. He also spoke about Kobe Bryant’s helicopter going down. The older style of helicopter makes that type of flying dangerous, but the more modern ways in which Bell and other companies are creating copters with multiple blades, multiple propellers, which highly mitigate the probability of crashing.

He said that by 2021, Elon Musk thinks that there’s going to be fully autonomous flying vehicles that can be commercialized. Boston Dynamics, he posts a video about this jumping robot that Boston Dynamics has created. It’s amazing what it’s able to do. It’s a matter of bringing down costs. Next is artificial intelligence. It is going to make decision making much more accurate and the reduction of error and the reduction of time and energy spent on making decisions. Information will be provided based on trends and patterns. There’s a guy that spoke about how he’s created an unlicensed 5G network where you could put up a tower anywhere if you own real estate. If you have a building, you put up a 5G tower and it can circumnavigate buildings and so forth and create a beam of the internet at 5G quality for $6,000. for each tower and it can give access to over 500 households. He says that if you network 30 towers, you can essentially provide 5G to an entire city. We don’t know what the impact is going to be of these different frequencies and how that’ll impact the body.

Based on this guy’s innovation, it’ll highly reduce the number of towers, even reduce the number of towers that exist to provide that type of internet at those speeds. OneWeb is that satellite company and I can’t remember the name of the 5G company. He talked about quantum computing as well. It’s human longevity and what we’re being able to do there. It’s fascinating. Peter has Abundance 360 with his conference. He also has what’s called the XPRIZE. It’s essentially putting a prize out there to whoever wants to tackle that. Whoever does get some of the prices are $10 million. He has a $100 million prize.

Event Wrap Up

I’m going to wrap up this amazing event. I’ve been on the road. I’m ready to go home, but it’s been life-changing. These are environments where your mind is almost forced to expand both with what you’re being taught by the speakers and guests, as well as all the conversation that takes place afterwards. There are a lot of high-level people here. It’s been amazing. I’m still processing everything. Day 4 was no exception. Every single day has been packed full of amazing content, amazing people and ideas. They make you think differently. Those are environments that serve everyone. I don’t believe growth takes place in passive environments, environments that you’re used to. Growth takes place in environments that challenge you not just physically, but mentally as well. I’m going to go through a few of the speakers and wrap this thing up. We started around noon every day because most people would ski and so forth in the morning.

TWS 8 | Tony Robbins Finance Summit

Tony Robbins Finance Summit: Artificial intelligence will make decision making so much more accurate with a huge reduction of error.

 

We opened Day 4 with Paul Tudor Jones. This is a guy that Tony Robbins has coached for decades and is one of the most successful traders out there. For those of you who have not heard of him, he Founded Robin Hood, which is a platform that has raised billions of dollars under the banner of low fees, automation and so forth. He’s been successful with those entrepreneurial ventures but also trading as well. I want to set some context of his remarks because he was at the airport on his way to the Federal Reserve. He was on their advisory board and/or the advisory board was going to be hearing from him. He had prepared some words and some statements for them. That was his mindset. It’s interesting.

Some of the things he said are the managing or governing member of this specific panel that he was going to talk to wants higher inflation. He wants growth. What Paul was saying we’re in unprecedented times because we have the lowest interest rates in history. We have the lowest unemployment almost in history, but we have the highest budget deficits and it’s difficult to cut. Erik Prince of Blackwater said that “The US needs to go on a diet.” We need to experience scarcity to expose the waste and get rid of the waste. Paul said that the majority of the US budget is fixed. There is no discretion as far as cutting here or cutting there. He said, “78% of the US budget is fixed.” Whether that’s interest on the debt or whether that’s your unfunded liabilities, your social benefits, Medicaid or Social Security.

He said that an economy that has the lowest unemployment, lowest interest rates should be running budget surpluses, but we’re running budget deficits. It means that we’re spending as a country $1 trillion more than we bring in an all tax revenue, which is insane. That’s his mindset. He’s always looking for opportunities. He’s going to the Fed to speak his mind. He’s there to give them feedback. He’s there to give them information. He’s not going to be able to go in there and change their mind, because a lot of influential people speak to them. He goes in there with challenging their thoughts. This was a great way to do it, saying, “We are in these unprecedented times. You want all this growth, yet you’re printing your way to growth.”

He also alluded to financial asset inflation. You’re getting growth, but they’re not getting growth in the areas that they want it. That’s mainly due to those that are using low-interest rates. It’s mainly businesses and institutions. They’re not using it for productive purposes. They’re not using it to hire more people. They’re using it to push up their stock value and so forth. That’s one example. A few of the other things that he said is when he’s making investment decisions. His decision is based on a 5:1 ratio. He loses a lot. Tony has referred to this before, where Paul Tudor Jones would send him trades every day from an accountability standpoint. A lot of the times he was losing, half the time he’s losing. When he wins, he’s shooting for a 5:1 win and that 5:1 makes up for all of those losses and some. It’s an interesting way of looking at it. He also alluded to the markets. He was referring specifically to the S&P was at a 22 Price to Earnings Ratio, PE ratio. If you go back to some of the ratios that were pre-2008, pre-2001 with the dot-com crash, we were at 27:1, so there’s still some room to go.

He also made it seem that between now and the end of the elections, he also alluded to the markets being priced for a Trump win, but there’s not going to be much volatility. If anything, there’s going to be growth and there’s room to grow as well. There’s also room for more stimulus. I mentioned with regards to QE4, which is the repo markets and the fed being able to provide additional liquidity by injecting liquidity with collateral being these highly valued assets like treasuries and so forth. He said that we’re in the time where you can compare it to Arnold Schwarzenegger’s movie Pumping Iron where he was hugely jacked and boosting all these weights and veins popping everywhere. It was all based on him in steroids and doing it artificially. That’s what he said. He made the statement at the end that made everybody laugh, which is, “These are the best two hours of your life.” It’s 11:00 PM or 10:00 PM, the last hours of the day. “It’s going to be the greatest two hours.” He eluded to whether it’s drinking or partying, but you’re going to have a massive hangover once that happens, alluding to the economy as a whole.

He also got into where things are going. The demand has enhanced where he’s seeing more socially and environmentally conscious investors. He also created a fund that is backed by Goldman Sachs called JUST Capital. It’s a fund where there is a specific set of criteria for all the different companies that are within this fund there are socially environmentally conscious as well as have a more even keel distribution of resources than fiduciary responsibility to shareholders. He was alluding to taking care of employees, paying above-market wages, also being charitably conscious and forth. It’s interesting and fun. Paul Tudor Jones was a great speaker.

If you're looking to construct the way in which you invest based on the last 20 to 30 years, that is a losing strategy. Share on X

Greig Weiler And The Four Fources

I’ll get into some stuff that’s a little bit more exciting. Two more speakers and then we’re done. The first was fascinating. This guy had much energy and he was one of those resourceful people and his history has shown it. His name is Greg Wyler. He runs OneWeb, which is 5G-based. It’s more of a satellite system and Tarana. It is the biggest competitor to Comcast to broadband. His background is he laid the majority of fiber in Africa and he has deep, intimate knowledge of that country and what’s going on there. I’ve alluded to more youth in Africa than double the population of the United States. Africa is booming. It’s crazy. There’s a lot of youth. These are people under the age of twenty amounting to hundreds of millions and they know what’s going on in the other parts of the world. Once they’re connected, it gives them huge opportunities.

He’s started laying fiber in Africa, networking and connecting schools. He has a platform where you can go check out the connectivity of schools in Africa. It’s called ProjectConnect.world. He said that the youth are waiting for this. He also realized that by experiencing laying fiber throughout the country, the internet that way is not going to work. That’s where he started to get into the satellite business. He’s been there for several decades. OneWeb is one of the companies he’s running. It purchased rights for a particular frequency in space. This is outside of my realm of understanding, but that frequency is almost exclusively owned by them. He has some of the more modern satellites that can move and navigate. He said that it’s getting busy up in space and satellites are getting more dangerous because they can start to collide. That’s not good for any satellite system.

His company, OneWeb has figured out some techniques to mitigate those risks. Those risks exist for a lot of other companies that are putting satellites into space for this purpose. Tarana is this first broadband company to compete with Comcast. It’s a $6,000 a unit. You can attach it to a building and it provides a unique way of 5G connectivity. One gig up, one gig down and it’s extremely low-cost. He said that $1 million in infrastructure costs. $1 million could create 1G up and down for the entire city of Sacramento. If it’s $1 million in costs, it’s amazing. That’s where things are going.

He also alluded to this is a huge opportunity because 20 million people in the United States do not have good internet, if any internet, which is surprising. It’s a huge opportunity there. Greg was a great guest. You can tell he’s super socially conscious and entrepreneurial. The money he raised for OneWeb or one of the first satellite companies he had was $1.5 billion. There was no proof any of it was going to work, but he hustled, grinded and figured out a way to make it happen. I’m following him. He’s a go-getter but also is doing a lot of good in different parts of the world, mainly the emerging markets. The last individual I’ll talk about is Michael Smorch and he has worked with lots of different VCs and hedge funds and has been around the block. I enjoyed some of his thoughts. He said that if you’re looking to construct the way in which you invest based in the last several years, it is a losing strategy. He said everything is exponentially growing and emerging. A lot of opportunities are no longer in the US. The opportunity is in emerging markets.

He said that four forces will tell the future. First is there’s going to be geopolitical alignment and he alluded to China. All of these speakers have alluded to China, with the coronavirus, it’s going to be interesting to see how that creates disruption, but at the same time, because of that huge dependence on China, other opportunities are emerging because of this. This is the nature of capitalism and entrepreneurs and it mainly had to do with bringing the supply chain closer to the actual end-user, which is 3D printing. He alluded to 3D printing. The first is the geopolitical alignment. He said that China-based on its influence controls the majority of patents for 4G and it’s controlled by Huawei. There’s this continual alignment of these two big forces, China and America. It’d be interesting to see how that comes to fruition.

The next one is the digital revolution. It’s no longer Moore’s Law, which is the doubling of computing power. It’s Neven’s Law. It’s the acceleration of acceleration. He also alluded to that. He said that AI is coming online in many different areas. We use it in our database but AI is essentially creating the ease of some of the backend work in order to make better decisions. It’s coming in everything. Insurance, investment, school, on our device, the wearables and being able to have the information so that we know, “Eat this, stand up, do some exercise.” It is getting more and more accurate to help us live better lives, to help us to use our energy to make meaningful decisions as opposed to the stuff we have to spend our energy on, which can be eliminated. The third force is Millennials. He alluded to different studies that showed that Millennials pretty much hate all of their parents’ assets.

TWS 8 | Tony Robbins Finance Summit

Tony Robbins Finance Summit: Tony Robbins’ events can impact your ability to create wealth.

 

They hate gold, they hate the market or they want different advice, more robo advising cheaper funds as opposed to speaking to financial advisors. There was also a study that if they had an extra $1,000 in discretionary money, what would they buy? It was over 40% who would buy Bitcoin and all the other options were like a mutual fund, cash or gold. It’s a different demographic. Also, he alluded to their peak in spending is coming within the next couple of years. To give some context to that, some reference to that, if you look at the Baby Boomer peak of spending, that was in the early ‘80s. If you look at the boom and the economy in the ’80s and ’90s, these were the greatest growth years in pretty much in history. He said that’s coming soon in the next couple of years for Millennials.

The third force is the environmental change. This is interesting. I hadn’t thought about this before, but he used a great example. He said that there is global warming. One of his biggest clients is a dynasty family in Italy who has massive wineries and they can’t grow. It’s too dry in Italy and they can’t grow like they used to. They picked up a massive plot of farming land in Patagonia. He said that those that are growing are going North and also going South toward each of the poles because things are warming up. Those are the four forces. It’s geopolitical alignment, the digital revolution, Millennials and environmental change. It came down to the Holy Grail. The Holy Grail is his way of getting these asymmetric types of returns. The companies or the industries, the environments that are going to have this asymmetric growth have a growth story behind it. There has to be a massive market. The audience that would take advantage of whatever the sector was had to be massive. It also is something that hardly anyone owns, especially institutions. They’re not there yet, but it captures the heart and minds of people. It’s movement-based.

Finally, it creates forced buying, like Comcast. If you want a good internet, you only have 1 or 2 options. It’s a forced buying situation. The example he gave is number one, space, whether it’s SpaceX. There’s also an ETF that owns a lot of these space types of companies, which has a ticker symbol of UFO of all things. This is an environment where whether it’s the satellite idea. There’s a guy I met that has a company that does transportation in space, both from satellites to the space station. There’s a huge environment, whether it’s mining asteroids. There are tons of opportunities there. That’s one example. With our new military force, space force, which I could do a Donald Trump impersonation of, but I can’t. That’s another example of where things are going.

The last one is Biotech. That was another example he gave of this Holy Grail of asymmetric type of opportunities. It’s a growth story, a massive market, something hardly anybody owns already, especially institutions. It captures the hearts and minds of people and it also creates force buying. He said biotech was one of those other things where we do a lot to respond to getting sick or pain. Biotech is getting to the preventative. We know in advance what needs to be done in order to avoid that. Those are a couple of examples. This was a great couple of days for me. Hopefully, you got a lot out of my thoughts on what I learned. I encourage you to take the opportunity to come to one of these Tony Robbins events, the basic one. Come to the UPW if you haven’t been.

This is an environment that pushes you outside of your comfort levels. It’s an environment that forces you to grow. There’s much on the other side of this environment that will help you with your relationships with business. It’ll facilitate an even more meaningful life. I know that’s what everyone’s after, especially myself. I hope you guys take advantage of this opportunity. If you call my guy, Jeff, over at Tony Robbins, he’ll hook you up. It’s a little bit too late maybe for the March event, but Chicago is in the summer and then New York City is in the late fall. Hopefully, you were able to take advantage of it because I know it will impact your ability to create wealth. It’ll impact your ability to take your life, your business, your family, your relationships to the next level. I can’t wait to hear your feedback and stories about it. Thanks again and we’ll catch you next time.

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March 12-15, 2020
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