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19:40And they understand how to recognize when they're being too, too fearful or too, too greedy. We even see this all the time. And it's a mistake that we see a lot of times. A lot of things seem like they're sort of insignificant, right? Like, oh, I'm going to sign this personal guarantee. It's insignificant or probably never happened. And then you hear this horror story of that happening. Or someone say, hey, you know what? I'm going to claim a deduction on my taxes for this thing. Or I'm going to implement this tax strategy. We actually have this going on right now. where folks that did some like very, very aggressive tax strategies around conservation easements are now being called to the table and they're now having to pay back years, hundreds of thousands of dollars of tax benefit that they took along with interest and penalties.

20:21And so it's understanding it's okay to be fearful when others are greedy. It's okay to be greedy when others are fearful, but it's never okay to be too fearful or too greedy. And if you fall in that camp, you often get yourself to a really bad spot. What makes me sad about some like these conservation easements is a good example, is every decade, because you think about oil and gas, you know, partnerships, and every decade seems like they have situations where even the advisors who are supposed to keep you safe, the attorneys, the accountants, they fall into the scope and prey to this as well because they get all frothy and excited because they usually are getting a cut.

20:53And so, you know, whenever you get the money involved, it changes motivations. And so we knew a lot of CPAs that were out there pushing this stuff because they were profitable, but it never passed the sniff test.

21:06Graham Stephan:Can you explain exactly what these are? Conservation easements, oil and gas. And the recent one that we've been hearing a lot is investing in movies, which I was trying to get to the bottom of this. Well, film credits are investing because film credits are different than the actual investments. Is it film credits? I don't know. I don't know. We're from the state of Georgia and it's not uncommon. By the way, it used to be even better. Film credits used to, because realize these film industry gets so many credits from the states because they're trying to incentivize these films to be filmed in their state because it's very competitive, creates jobs, a lot of economic stuff.

21:43So it's not uncommon that you can, they have so many credits for making these movies that they sell the credits out on the market. And this is all completely legal. And usually I've seen that it's changed over the years. Last time I was buying credits, I think I was getting a five to 6 % discount. So yeah, instead of paying dollar for dollar in your taxes, you pay 95 cents on a dollar. And if you're paying enough in taxes, that 5 % delta can be a pretty good thing. That's not necessarily a scam. You might be thinking about private placements or people investing in films because we've dealt with that too.

22:18Those are like most things. They could turn out great or they could be moonshots and they could turn out bad, but conservation easements, because that was your initial question. What these things were doing back in the day when they came on the scene is that part of the tax provision was you could go take property, put together a group of people, and then you would put it in a conservation. And the government - So it's a piece of like raw, undeveloped land. Raw, undeveloped land. And what was in the brochure was is that the government is going to take the best use of this property. and since you're putting in an easement, we'll give you the tax deduction, like a charitable contribution for this higher value.

22:57So it wasn't uncommon that you'd see people putting$100 ,000, meaning an investor would put$100 ,000 on a conservation easement, but then take a$400 ,000 charitable deduction on their taxes. You quickly probably are doing the math in your head and you're going, wait a minute, that means they're getting a bigger tax benefit than even what they economically put into the deal. But they were leaning very heavily on that the government was giving you a deduction on the best use. So they would go put together, they would have all these consultants who would go do all this analysis, create these packages of paper, supposedly be all protected where they'd have attorneys and accountants.

23:31And they said, no, this property, we could put apartments here. We could put, you know, all kind of crazy made up. And, you know, meanwhile, it's just land. Or it's swamp land or watershed land that you can't actually develop on. And they were saying that, oh, you can't. You can imagine the IRS has had an issue with this and they've now come, the chickens have come home to roost and they're now going after a lot of these deals and making people pay back. The deals we're kind of having to look at for some clients that kind of did these things is you have to pay the, you know. Taxes you owe. You get to take the charitable contribution on what you put in, but you're having to pay taxes and then a 10 % penalty.

24:09So what are the worst things to do on your taxes? Lie would be a real big one. Don't do that. right? Like if you actually have something on your taxes, don't try to not report income that you had, right? Like if you've had income, make sure you report it. And then be careful taking all these crazy deductions. We'll see people who say, oh, well, I went and bought the Range Rover because I need it for my business. And you're like, okay, well, what business are you in? Oh, well, I work from home. Oh, okay. Well, do you go see clients? No, no, no. And you start going down this line. They're like, well, that's not a justifiable business expense.

24:37You don't actually operate in a business where that should have been deductible. So you see people getting super, super gray or even spinning up businesses that aren't actually business at all. They're just things that are running expenses through trying to create losses. Well, if those losses are material and you don't actually have a profitable business, then that's not a business. It's a hobby and you're not going to be able to deduct those things. So people who get so aggressive doing that, so aggressive trying to reduce their tax bill illegitimately, that's the big thing that you don't want to do on your taxes.

25:04I look at it in terms of like big mistakes that I see. honesty is a big part of it. I mean, cause I will tell you, I used to work in public accounting. I've represented clients before the IRS before and working with clients on audits is one of the most humbling things out there. Cause you're scared to death. I mean, cause then that's why, let me give some general advice. If you ever get a full audit, I'm not talking about just a letter sent to you. I'm talking about what, no, the agent actually wants to come down and see your business or see the property or whatever. You don't represent yourself.

25:33If you represent yourself, you're in a heck of a situation because the agent can ask you any question and if you're supposed to answer because you're the taxpayer if you hire somebody please hire somebody i would hire somebody for myself is because if they ask a question of your attorney or your cpa that's representing you if they don't know the answer they're going to say i'm going to go back to my client and ask the question and it stops the question right there for follow-up later but if you don't answer it you can imagine that looks shady and they you know and audits can mushroom you know they go three years back, unless they find fraud, then they can go even further.

26:07But they can mushroom from your business to your personal taxes and all that kind of. So you're in a very danger, danger situation. And that's why I always tell people, be honest on your taxes. I mean, I'm all about maximizing deductions, but don't do it so gray or so shady that as soon as you get the notice that you're under an audit, that you start crying. I mean, and that's the situation because they can take your stuff. I mean, very few things do you have to worry about just straight up your ability to functioning. That's why we are always nervous. IRS, SEC, other things we want to be as compliant as possible because they take away your ability to do business and your livelihood.

26:46So you need to take that with seriousness. Now, let's take away the scare stuff. I do think most people, if you're a business owner and you start having success, really do spend some time understanding business structure. That's a big no-brainer because there's ways you structure your business in a really good way that legally and honestly can have some long-term benefits. I also tell people that I would focus on all the different, like real estate. At some point, if you have enough success that you're even going, we always talk about step eight of the financial order of operations. We own commercial real estate.

27:20I think anybody who's like a service provider, like a dentist, an attorney, a CPA, at some point, you're probably going to want to buy the building that you have your business. It's crazy to pay rent to somebody when you go buy your own building and then you pay yourself rent. You do cost segregation, take a salary depreciation. There's all kinds of cool things. That's all completely legal. But if you don't know how this stuff works, you don't know how to maximize those opportunities.

27:46Graham Stephan:So you mentioned that a lot of people, when they start making a lot of money, get the shiny object syndrome and they want to go invest in oil and gas or movies or this sort of thing. They want to do the rich person thing because they just became a rich person. How would you recommend someone adjust their approach to finances when you take someone who's a low earner and they're just starting their journey, and then you take someone who's comfortable and they're like halfway through their journey, and then you actually take someone who's wealthy by most definitions and they're at that point now where they can afford, you know, whatever they want.

28:16Well, I think one of the things that happens is, I think the mindset is people do this like apple cart turnover. Hey, I used to invest in my 401k and my Roth IRA and I built up to a million dollars, but oh man, now that I'm here at a million dollars, I've got to do something completely different. I got to change my strategy. I got to pursue something else. And we always say, don't forget to dance with the one that brung you. The thing that got you from zero to a hundred thousand and from a hundred thousand to a million and from a million to 10 million can be the same thing that continues on. you may just start adding stuff to it.

28:45I may have a really healthy, diversified portfolio across low-cost index funds, but I want to get into real estate. So maybe I go buy my first rental property or go buy raw land or I go buy a commercial property. It's not like I'm changing the strategy. I get to kind of add onto the strategy, but the same rules apply. I want to be disciplined. I don't want to over-lever. I don't want to get too far ahead of my skis. I don't want to take on too much risk. You just do those same sort of things, whether you're at the beginning or kind of at the, I'm at the middle point or even at the end, it's not about changing strategy.

29:16It's about adjusting and altering strategy. I think it's a great question, but it's also more of a philosophical on money in general. I mean, one of the things, that's why, that's one of the things when we were designing financial order of operations is that you're going to have a change in your journey just because we could apply this to expenses too. If you have a limited net worth of, say, under$100 ,000, a 1 % on that$100 ,000 is just, on$10 ,000, it's$100. On$100 ,000, it's, and check my math, I'm doing public math, it's$1 ,000. Your expenses start changing drastically. Because when you're under$10 ,000, every dollar you spend matters.

30:00When you get to$100 ,000, now, okay, you can go on vacation and it's okay. You can eat out. When you get to your first million, okay, now your car can be a little nicer. Well, it's kind of the same way on your tax and your investment journey as well, is it doesn't have to change all at once, but you just see that your journey will change. That's why I'm telling you, you can start off simple, but complexity will naturally find you because as you have more and more success, at some point, you're going to have to look at your estate plan. At some point, you have to look at, you know, yes, you're going to be maxing out.

30:30Look at four employer plans. How often we've even had some content creators. They know who they are. They're going to watch this because they're friends of both of us because they've called us and gotten some advice. And then they follow up and then they never hire us on it, but they get the free advice from us. When we start talking about, hey, what's the difference between like a solo 401k and then when you graduate to a traditional 401k? But then, hey, how about when we bolt on a profit sharing plan? And then what's this thing about a cash balance plan? And these are all things that are just, you don't start there, but you grow into them as you have more and more success.

31:02Graham Stephan:And then what about balancing then risk and speculation versus capital preservation? When do you kind of slide along that scale to really look into asset protection at what dollar amount? And then when you are in the phase of your life, maybe you're like very young, you're 18, 19, you're starting to make a little bit of money. You could maybe scrounge up an extra$200 a month. Could you just put that in a 3X leveraged ETF instead of doing something else? There's a problem with those triple leveraged. You could do that. You could. And you could argue, hey, oh, yeah, you're young and you've got plenty of time.

31:34You can be as aggressive. But I would argue one of the big things is while you might think that might be being aggressive, what you're really doing, if you take that extra$200 you scrounge up and you're doing the 3X triple levered instead of just buying S &P 500 inside your Roth IRA, the time that you're missing out on those dollars compounding over the next 40 or 50, 60 years can be huge. Because yeah, maybe the triple levered thing works, but because of time decay, if you don't actually catch it on momentum and catch it at the right time, you're not actually going to make any money on those.

32:03They don't work. You don't think, oh, okay, the S &P 500 makes 10 % annualized per year. I'm just going to go buy a triple levered ETF and I'm going to make 30 % per year. The mathematics don't actually work that way. So how you approach risk can change. And don't mishears, there's nothing wrong with speculation. A lot of people think, oh, you can't speak. You can, but it should be with a small portion of your portfolio and not at the beginning. Like when you speculate, you want to speculate with vacation money, not with grocery money. Because if you start doing it with grocery money, you get yourself into a really bad spot.

32:33So I think that having riskier investments is okay so long as you have the foundation built out and you're doing the things you're supposed to be doing on the baseline. And then you want to add in that more aggressive. Well, and I'll even take it to life. I do think young people, I mean, When you're in your 20s, that is the time. Take some risk because, I mean, if you fail, you're already so close to the starting line. How much are you losing on that? There's a lot of endeavors and other things. And I think that you can – I don't want you to go crazy with it, but if you have something that you think you're world class in, I do think people – I mean, that's how we've ended up here.

33:10I mean, it's an oddball thing to start a podcast in 2006. It's an oddball thing to go out and start a business. So I like those things. But then I will tell you, I do like just small decisions. I'm not talking out both sides of my mouth because I say go think boldly in those terms. But I think in terms of your money, I love just index funds because it's so simple. You don't have to put a lot of effort into it. I do believe in this concept of law of accelerating returns is technology is accelerating faster and faster. And as long as we don't create the robots that kill us, we're going to make more and more money.

33:45So if you can start investing, you don't have to try to pick the winners. You just buy the market, buy the market in general, because the expansion is naturally going to create success and opportunity. But I do think as you get older, I'm unfortunately the oldest person in the room. um i'm now i'm now over the 45 age that i talk about in a lot of our content is that i think it's okay to be completely debt-free post 45 because you just don't have the multiplier effect on your money like you did when you're in your 20s and also you now if you've won the game meaning you have enough money that you could do what you want when you want why run up the scoreboard why not dial down some of the risk because if you're not if you're not missing out so like i paid off my mortgage, you know, so it doesn't mean I'm debt free.

34:27Paid off a 2.75 % mortgage. Two and a half percent. Last two and a half percent. It was down to$42 ,000. Last week? Last week, yeah. It was down to$42 ,000. Oh, 42 grand. Yeah, I mean, yeah, the benefit at that point. Look, at the beginning of the year, I was at like$100 ,000, but literally my monthly payment was knocking this thing down. It only said I saved a few months because, I mean, the monthly payment was just crushing it in the hassle factor. I understand that. Plus, you don't know our audience.

34:51Graham Stephan:This episode is brought to you by Accenture. When your advertising operations fall out of sync, everything else follows. Spotify and Accenture are working together to reinvent the rhythm of ad sales, using automation, analytics, and smarter workflows to simplify campaign delivery and access better data across the business. The result? Less time spent on operations, more time connecting brands with the moments and fandoms that matter most. Learn more at Accenture.com slash Spotify. This episode is brought to you by Google Chrome. You think you know a browser, but Gemini and Chrome, that's new. It can help you with practically anything on the web, like restoring a vintage motorcycle from a 50-page restoration block, or finally break down that long article you've had open for weeks.

35:37Graham Stephan:Gemini and Chrome is here for it. Ready to make anything online make sense? There's no place like Chrome. Check responses set up required compatibility and availability varies 18+. I get a lot of pressure going, how do you still have a mortgage? I was like, you're right. What am I doing? The hassle factor at some point, if you do the multiplication on two and a half percent on$40 ,000, the squeeze of the fruit just wasn't worth it anymore. I did that with my car. Yeah, I had a three something percent interest rate, a 3.3 % interest rate on the Tesla. And it got down to a point where just even filing that like little tax interest, it just wasn't even worth it.

36:12Graham Stephan:I just paid it off. It's so annoying. But I do think early on in the journey, 20s, 30s, 40s, you don't have to focus on capital preservation. I don't think you have to have like a super conservative portfolio if you've done the right things, right? If you have an emergency fund that can cover three to six months of your living expenses, if something were to happen in your work life where you didn't have an income coming in, I think it's okay to be a lot more aggressive with your portfolio. You can have a super heavy equity portfolio, but once it gets to a critical mass, once it's a million, million and a half,$2 million portfolio, it is a lot less about how much money you make and it's more about how much you get to keep over the longterm.

36:45And I think that's where the shift begins to happen.

36:47Graham Stephan:Although really quick, before we go into that, something I've noticed with running the podcast for more than five years now is that staying organized, especially with partnerships, is a full-time job in and of itself. Like you've got notes, emails, conversations, follow-ups. It adds up fast. But that's where today's sponsor, Pipedrive, comes in. For those unaware, it's a CRM built by salespeople for salespeople designed to make the sales process simple and repeatable. It's super intuitive. you can import all of your contacts and Pipedrive will show you exactly what to do next to move a deal forward.

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37:50Graham Stephan:Just head to pipedrive.com slash ice to get started or just click the link down below in the description. Thank you so much to Pipedrive for sponsoring this episode. So you mentioned a million, million and a half, two million. On the topic of capital preservation, I have a friend who's selling his business and he's probably going to sell it for like low eight figures. He wants to take all of that money, all of it, and put it in Bitcoin. He already owns a lot of Bitcoin. He's made a lot of money in Bitcoin. And I told him, I'm like, realistically, I feel like, I mean, I don't have this amount of money, but I feel like life doesn't change that much after like four to five to six million.

38:23Graham Stephan:And like, you should probably focus on capital preservation. If you're going to take a massive risk, do it with money over$10 million or something like that. And he's like, yeah, but I still want to put it in Bitcoin. What would you say is the optimal amount of money to have? is it four, five, six million? After what point does it really start to like degrade? Well, we have, so we have a client who is really good friends with a billionaire. And he was out having, he was having - Some adult beverages. Drinks with this billionaire. And he said, hey man, you've had so much success. You sold your company last year for like$900 million.

38:59What's rich? Like what, I mean, here you can have anything in the world, any sort of private jet, anything you want. What do you consider rich? And he said, honestly, 10 million bucks. Because once you have 10 million bucks in the bank, even if you're not very good at managing and you just make 5 % on that, it's half a million dollars a year you can make every year. And it's kind of hard to spend half a million dollars a year if you're debt free. Right? So if you have 10 million bucks, that's kind of the threshold. Now that's from the perspective of a billionaire. I think most folks, if you have a couple million dollars invested, a lot of people just don't have lifestyles that are that big.

39:28Right? So if you have 4 million, 5 million dollars, a pretty good chance you're going to be financially independent in most parts of this country and most lifestyles. Now, for your guy, I don't think it's as much about capital preservation or maybe it's a flavor of that. It's more about diversification. It's concentration risk. What if, what if Bitcoin doesn't work? What if something happens and there's some shift and all the hype doesn't pan out and you had all of your net worth tied up? And then not just a couple millions of dollars you already own, but a couple of million plus the 10 million.

40:01You've already won the game. Or if you haven't won the game, you've rounded third and you're coming close to home plate. Do you really need to start showboating between third and home? Or is the risk just not worth it? Why not diversify across real estate assets or income producing securities or diversified portfolio or just have money sitting in a high yield money? Whatever that thing may be for you, putting it all in Bitcoin is betting all of your wad on this one outcome that if it doesn't happen, why? Why take that risk? Before I went out on my own, I worked at another firm and we worked with a lot of Lucent technology executives.

40:40A lot of people probably don't even remember what Lucent was, but Lucent was the high flyer of the 90s. I mean, if you go and look it up, it was a Fortune 500. Think Palantir, NVIDIA. I mean, you couldn't lose with this investment. And I've unfortunately dealt with executives who have won the game, but because they were overly concentrated, they've watched that wealth turn to pretty much nothing. And that's what I would ask your friend is, have you thought about, because some of this is systemic risk you have for going back to poor. Why, if you've won the game, is it a responsible thing to even leave that risk sitting out there?

41:19Is that at a minimum, carve off what you would need for a safe withdrawal rate to keep that diversified and safe or even liquid. I mean, if you don't like traditional investments, that might even be something you want to consider just keeping liquid. That would be a better play because I think he's not thinking about the emotional toll it would take to go from winning the game and having tremendous success and taking it down to zero. That would destroy you.

41:46Graham Stephan:Kevin O 'Leary said on the Diary of the CEO podcast that he keeps$5 million in cash at all times. I don't always have$5 million in cash. And that's it. And he said he doesn't touch it. but that mentally for him know that no matter what happens, I got this cash. If everything would depart, that's my, and I think, and even if you're not a billionaire, I think a lot of us can, it's why we tell even retirees who have now are in financial independence and they're living off of their assets. If you can just keep like 18 to 24 months of your living expense and liquid cash, what you've done is you've given yourself a 24 month runway that no matter what the economy throws, no matter if there's a global pandemic, a real estate crash, tariffs, you know, stuff in the Eurozone, whatever that is, you've given yourself enough time that you can give your portfolio time to recover.

42:29You can weather that storm if you have that cash there. It's the same sort of idea, just on a smaller scale. So again, I don't, I think throwing it all in Bitcoin is just, oh, that's insane. I think at Kevin's level, that's probably just a nice safety net for him, for peace of mind. But I will tell, and I cover this in Millionaire Mission too, is that I think cash, excess cash, Now, don't mishear me. For anybody who's just starting a journey, just get the steps one and four, which is basically an emergency reserves. And I want you to get in the Roth and everything else. But I think once you reach a certain level of success, right around step eight, there's nothing wrong with having extra cash because cash can be a tremendous wealth builder too.

43:05Because if you keep some excess cash, what happens when everybody else is out of cash? Think about every time we've had a collapse or a market downturn because people cut it so thin. Most people are not walking around with the right type of emergency reserves. They're not, you know, protecting their levered assets right. So as soon as the oxygen leaves the room, meaning cash, people all of a sudden, the deals, that's when the deals are out there. How did we get this building that we're filming this in? It was right after the pandemic. The owner was second guessing because he got an offer the previous year.

43:40And he was like, man, I should have sold it. And we were able to come in. And now it looks like the deal of a lifetime. But it's because there was enough fear in the marketplace that that cash, if we didn't have it, it wouldn't have we wouldn't have been able to do the deal. And that's what a lot of people will look at success and think it was luck. But I'm telling you, it was it really is that intersection of opportunity and preparation. And sometimes cash, you can buy assets that you never thought possible because nobody else has cash.

44:08Graham Stephan:Do you think we're going to have another instance like that in the near future? Because a lot of people are talking now that we're in a debt bubble. The only reason the market's going up is because interest rates have been going down. We've been printing a ton of money. How long could this be sustainable for? I'm willing to say I don't know, but I'm willing to say it's happened enough in my lifetime that, yes, it will happen again. Because also, like I said, detailed already earlier, I have a buddy. We bought Apple in the Great Recession only a few thousand bucks that in his portfolio never sold it.

44:40It's worth close to half a million dollars now. that is. And so we always see when markets get detached from value, there's tremendous opportunity to make money. And that's going to happen. I don't know if it's going to be in real estate. I don't know if it's in the stock market, but having drop powder money after you've kind of won the game and other things can be very rewarding.

45:02Graham Stephan:But where do you tell people who say the market's too high right now? I shouldn't be investing because I'm going to wait for an opportunity like that. That's scary, especially if they have no financial foundation. Well, and because you don't know when it's going to happen, right? I mean, we know that every decade there's about two downturns roughly. But we do know that as we sit here in 2025 right now, we just had a major bear market in 2022 where the market was down. So we just came through a pretty big correction. And that was the longest correction that we've seen since the Great Recession.

45:31So 2008, early 2009, market was down. Pretty solid run there. I mean, yeah, we had fourth quarter of 2018 bear market. We had COVID, but it was like a very quick blip. And then we saw 2022, which is a down year, we're only a few years removed from that. So yeah, there will certainly be another downturn. But if you look at the layout, and First Trust has an amazing illustration on this that shows from the 1950s all the way till now, and every bear market and every bull market that we've seen. And it shows how severe the bear market is relative to how robust the bull market is. And it shows the tenure of the bear market, which on average is like 11 months, relative to the tenure of the bull market, which is like four years.

46:08And it doesn't even compare. It's not even close. And so what you don't recognize is that more money is likely lost trying to avoid the next downturn than if you were to actually just participate in the next downturn and stay through it and just kind of drive through it. And I think a lot of people who sit on the sidelines, they wait and they wait and they wait and they wait. And finally, right when things feel good, right when they finally say, okay, now I have an extreme level of confidence. Market just hit a new all-time high. Now I'm going to go to work. And then they invest, and then the downturn happens.

46:39Graham Stephan:And if you automate time, man. I've gotten reamed in the market. Every single time I put money in, I get absolutely rinsed. Do you know how we solve for that? I'll tell you our biggest secret in the world. You ready? Then I don't know if you know this. We know how we can solve that that will not happen to you again. Dollar cost average. Always be buying. If you automate the process, and like I said, when you're building the financial foundation, when you're loading up the Roth IRAs, maxing out your 401ks, is that what I love about an automated process, there's no emotion in it. You just automatically know what's happening.

47:10Graham Stephan:I was dollar cost averaging. The problem was that I was, I had been dollar cost averaging a certain amount for like a year and a half, two years, and my income continued going up. And I was like, okay, cool. Like I get to build my savings. Like the rates were decently high over the past couple of years. Okay, nice. That's fine. And then the savings got to be at a certain point where I was like, this is dumb. I shouldn't have this much money in cash. And so I dumped it all in in January. Well, again, here's what I would have done differently. Let's say, I don't know your number, but let's say you were dollar cost averaging a thousand dollars every month, but all of a sudden your cash built up and you need to put it to work.

47:38Okay. Increase it from a thousand to$10 ,000 a month.

47:40Graham Stephan:Right. No, I, I, I, I was like, I did five, like just deposits. And then it literally like, I mean, I, I bought at the day. My average cost was the peak. And see, that's where I think. Like down to the hour. But also, but also you're at your age right now, you are young enough. All of us. Still going to be a winner. Most of us in this room are young enough that even if you get into the very high, three of us are young enough. Even if you get at the world's worst time. Oh, I'm up since then. You don't have enough. Exactly, right? We do an exercise. We show on the show all the time where we look at what if you were the world's worst investor?

48:19And what that means is that you started in like 1980. And all you did is you built up cash, built up cash, built up cash. And then at the very peak, right before every bull market or every bear market, you invested. So I invest at the top of 2007 and then right before fourth quarter of 2018 You build up in cash and you just dump into the world's worst time world's worst time Even that investor over a 30 40 year period doing it at the absolute worst time possible Still ended up with a huge portfolio because if you can give it enough time You don't have to be right all that often. You just have to be in you just have to participate in the market And it's really hard to not be successful That's good to know

48:56Graham Stephan:So we spoke a lot about obviously high amounts, large sums of money in investments. I mean, we're talking about like four or five, six million dollars. This is all, of course, contingent upon having some sort of an income. Where would you say are the best opportunities today for anybody watching right now? They could be young. They could be middle aged. They could be a little on the older end. Any opportunity to make a lot of money. Recently, I actually had an air conditioning issue and I called over this guy and he just runs a small little operation. He's been in it for about eight years. Eight years.

49:27Graham Stephan:Eight years. Eight years. And he got into it because of his brother. Two years in, he got a job after some schooling and doing some small internships. And he was making 80K after two years. And then he started his own business. And now he says, if you're really bad at installing air conditioning units and running a small little HVAC company, you're going to be making 50K a year. If you're okay and you know what you're talking about, you're going to be in the six figures. Well, I can tell you just from working in public accounting that some of our biggest clients were service businesses. I'm talking about people because if you're really good at servicing air conditioners, you can go set up a crew and then a second crew and then a fourth crew and then a fifth crew.

50:04And then all of a sudden you have a business is worth a lot of money because it scales. And so definitely, I mean, those are good behaviors. I would look, we have this whole AI thing coming. And in this, I don't know if it's here. I don't know if Bo is going to agree or disagree. I think that what it's going to push is it's going to commoditize some forms of intelligence. It's going, but it's going to make value in community that much more. And I think it's also going to put a lot of value on emotional intelligence. You were talking about earlier sales. I completely agree with that. I think if you are a person that likes people and you like being around people and you're good at networking, that is going to be amplified in this new AI world because yes, it will be able to write letters.

50:47Yes, it will be able to answer your question on the fly. but nothing is going to be able to create human connection and community like those skill sets. And it's like you said, just Jack with the heat and air repair, all those types of behaviors are always going to be somewhat valuable until we get robots, which I don't think we're there yet. We might have artificial intelligence, but still the execution of the heat and air repair. I would be mindful of that stuff. I wouldn't go run up a bunch of student loan debt on some of these majors that I'm worried if they're going to be as viable as they've been in the past.

51:20Yeah, I think if you can do services, that's going to be a viable, valuable place to sort of plug in. But I do think artificial intelligence is changing things. It's changing what's valued out there in the marketplace. So if you had a kid 15, 20 years ago and you told them, hey, you need to get into programming, you need to get into coding, there's a really good chance they did really well. They got placed, they got into a really great spot. I don't know now that I would tell someone that that's the place to go forward because these tools that we have at our disposal have now made them, it's so much easier to do those kinds of vocations and trades.

51:50So like I have three young kids, I'm telling them, I really want them to focus on interpersonal skills. I think that one of the things that can be so viable for them growing up is if they can communicate with another human being and meaningfully connect with that other human being, I think that that's going to be a skill set that's going to be a little bit lost. So if you can teach them how to interact with other folks, I think that's going to be something moving forward that would be very, very valuable. Now, right now, today, if you want to make a lot of income, anything that even remotely touches artificial intelligence is super huge.

52:20I mean, we had an amazing guy who came and he was in that world and he came and worked here because he really wanted to be a financial advisor and he was unbelievably smart. He started with us. He was a fantastic employee, but his former boss kept calling him every day. Hey, you got to come back. You got to come back. You got to come back. You got to come back. And because of a number of different reasons, he finally said, hey, guys, they made me an offer. I couldn't walk away. I mean, it's silly what they're telling me that they're going to pay me to go do the job that I was doing. But that's how valuable, how marketable is right now.

52:49Well, Zuckerberg, what's he offering? $100 million packages? I thought it was a billion dollar packages. It might be. I think it was$100 million to a billion. I didn't want to put the range on it, but I did.

52:57Graham Stephan:Someone said it was a$1.5 billion contract. That's insane, right? There's a phase out period of that in stock, but still a compensation package of$1.5 billion. it's interesting times it really is i mean and i think you need to be very aware we're all i i am i know we make fun of my age but it is interesting i was i've been around for when the personal computer came on the scene the internet um then podcasting youtube and all that stuff and what's funny is that every time i've lived through all these big seismic shifts i've often you know the first times i just lived through them i lived through the personal computing internet i was at least old enough now to where I was like, hey, there's money being made right now on this whole internet concept.

53:40And it seemed like anything with dot-com on it was crushing it. And look, there's a lot of bad things that happened there, but there were opportunities. And then I saw the same thing. That's why I jumped on podcasting. And then when YouTube, we've seen these seismic shifts. I think there's a lot of money, potential to make money off of these technology changes that are coming. How would you do that? Well, I think one of the things that we're talking about is don't try to fight against it. Don't, in our opinion, don't be the person that says, oh, artificial intelligence is not going to touch me.

54:08It's not going to affect me. I'm inoculated from that. We think the people that are going to come out on the other end of this are people who recognize how to utilize it and use it as a tool to basically expand and increase your scope. So I don't want to be someone who says, oh, no, no, I don't need AI because I'm so good and it'll never replace me. I'm trying to figure out how can I use artificial intelligence to expand what I can do from 100X to 1000X to 10 ,000X. And I think people who figure that out are going to be able to capitalize. I mean, complex systems are about to get a lot more easier to set up and structure because you're going to have this agent through the artificial intelligence that can kind of work on that.

54:43So I don't, look, if I had all the products figured out, I would, you know, I'd be doing that myself. We do have one product, some things we're working on. It's not really for public consumption yet, but we're thinking about it. And I think the thing that I'm most proud about is that we have so much data because we've been doing this since 2006. and that's what a lot of your app creators are probably realizing. Like, think about if you're Salesforce, there's a good chance that the CRM might not be as valuable, but the data that has been gathered for these decades is going to be the product that the AI is going to be able to become much more.

55:18You've got to think in those terms because I think applications and other things are going to not be what the value point is in the future because these agents can make that for your entity because of the artificial intelligence doing it for you. Or what do you think the downsides are? Well, I mean, it's always, always, you think about when Elon was talking about the semi-truck and you think about how many over-the-road truckers there are, if we priced out, I mean, and when you started, just robots were driving all the tractor trailers across the country, there's a whole group of people that you worry, what do they do from a labor?

55:51I remember when Andrew Yang was talking about this personal, you know, income that everybody ought to be guaranteed for. I thought that stuff was crazy. And I still I'm not a big fan, but I'm starting to get why these technology and these really smart people were talking about this because there is risk that some of these things are going to be so disruptive that there's industries that what happens? And that's the part that I'm not smart enough to know the answer, but it's something we all ought to be kind of thinking about because I do worry about whole broad industries being impacted.

56:24Graham Stephan:My worry is more so that critical thinking goes out the window. And even for me, I've used ChatGPT probably 10 times a day. I really enjoy it. I'll have conversations with it. I'll get its opinion on things. But when I'm doing research, when I go in and look at those independently, a lot of times I'll find that it's just like flat out incorrect. It's stating things as fact. And then when I go and do my own research on that, I turn out, wait a second, this isn't true. And I'll tell ChatGPT, hey, this isn't true. This thing never actually happened. Oh, yes, you're correct. That didn't actually happen.

57:00Graham Stephan:Which is scary. Which is really scary. No, we have the same problem. One big, beautiful bill, the Trump accounts. So we're creating content on this. And if you use any of the GPTs, you take your choice. They all screwed up the Trump accounts because a draft of the bill initially had that education, homeownership, and starting a small business was going to have some favorable treatment. And some big accounts have come out and they put that in their car. If you actually go read the bill that got signed into law, that stuff's not in there. And we kept having the, when we were, because we were fact checking it using GPT, you know, chat GPT and stuff.

57:37And he was like, no. And I was like, give me the actual language. And then I put that in Google and it went back to the draft bill. And I was like, son of a gun, This thing is not using the real legislation. It's still going back to a proposal.

57:50Graham Stephan:So let's set the record straight because that was my assumption that you could use that towards qualified expenses and then that's taxed. It's basically going to be an IRA. Okay. That they're going to – you can put up to$5 ,000. If your child's born between what, January 2025 through 2028. Okay. They're going to put$1 ,000 in. But it's going to be treated like an IRA. Right. There's no capital gains. No distributions until 18 and after 18. All those age stratifications, they didn't make it into the final bill. Why not just do a normal taxable account for your child? So here's what's going to end up happening is that if you have a child in that window, take advantage of the thousand dollars.

58:29No brainer. Free money. Take advantage of what the government's putting together. But there's a better way to probably structure those accounts with custodial accounts, 529 accounts.

58:37Graham Stephan:That's what I thought, because then if they're under the capital gains limit, it's going to be zero percent. So I would just be continually every year. You just harvest those gains. You nailed it. That's exactly right. I think, you know, when they're negotiating tax legislation, there's a lot of horse trading that goes on. And that obviously somehow there was a funding mechanism that they were trying and it just got cut and everybody in the financial community missed it. I missed it. Yeah. And you asked another downside, I think, to artificial intelligence is I think that criminals are going to be unbelievably enterprising.

59:06Oh, for sure. I think the ability to protect your information, even protect yourself is going to become more and more difficult. I mean, it's already hard now to, you know, remember when like phishing emails used to be really bad and it was like broken English and not good. Well, now you look at the type of emails that are coming out and it's, they're pretty compelling. And I think that AI is only gonna get better and better and better at deceiving and being deceptive when criminals use it in a nefarious manner. So I think we're gonna have to build systems. And generally speaking, when advances in technology happens, the nefarious folks are always a little bit ahead of the folks that are on the up and up.

59:38So it'll take a while for companies that are trying to combat that to get out and catch up to where the criminals are. So I worry about some of that stuff, even just changing the way that we protect ourselves from the world around us.

59:50Graham Stephan:Yeah, there's voice calls. They're able to fake them. It's really wild. I've heard stories where the scammer will pretend to be like the daughter and the daughter will call the father. Hey, I need you to send me$500 real fast. I'm in a bind right now. I just need it. I'm kidnapped or something like that. And they'll send the money. It's terrifying. Yeah. Terrifying. I'm curious, which opinion on personal finance and money has gotten you guys the most criticism? Well, it depends on from what group of people. Like, you know, there's some, there's some, there's some folks who they have their guy and they follow their guy and they love their guy.

1:00:21And if you say anything counter to their guy, they're going to kind of like fight and argue against that. And I think what's really interesting is a lot of our views, I don't really think are like super, super controversial. It's just like, you know, some people say, Hey, you can't use credit cards ever. No way, no how. And if that's the way you want to operate in your personal finances, that's totally okay. We're not going to fight. We're going to say that's acceptable. Our view is that credit cards are something that can be used if you're responsible and you don't carry a balance, you understand what you're doing.

1:00:47And so it's not really something that like is controversial, but if you fall on the other end of that, you don't like hear us say that that's an okay thing for you to do. Yeah. I mean, I don't think there's anything that we've done that's super controversial other than we battle the line in the sand because look, Like there's, there's, we're, we're kind of in the middle. You got Dave over here, who's kind of a debt crusader. And I'm not, I'm not against that because I think if you're somebody who's at the beginning of your journey and you have tremendous amounts of debt on your, on your net worth statement, if you're even tracking a net worth, then yeah, you should watch every dollar.

1:01:22And you probably, if you have a bad relationship, if you look at how many people don't pay their credit cards every month, those people, if you're carrying a credit card balance at 20 plus percent, you shouldn't be using credit cards. But then on the other side, and I'm not going to give their names because I don't want to give them, you know, but we have the leverage bros that are out there, you know, telling everybody a lever, lever, lever to the cows come home. And that's just not our game either, because there's personal finance is very personal. So we try to give everybody the best path, but also tell you the.

1:01:54Graham Stephan:This episode is brought to you by Accenture. When your advertising operations fall out of sync, everything else follows. Spotify and Accenture are working together to reinvent the rhythm of ad sales, using automation, analytics, and smarter workflows to simplify campaign delivery and access better data across the business. The result? Less time spent on operations, more time connecting brands with the moments and fandoms that matter most. Learn more at Accenture.com slash Spotify. the variables that will change so that you can make the best decision. That's why we always say it depends a lot. I hate saying that, but I just, I know that everybody's, you know, structure or their accounts are going to be a little bit different.

1:02:35Graham Stephan:So who should hire a financial advisor if it's really as simple as just buying an index fund consistently? Yeah, I think, well, that's, so it's interesting. You, even the way you frame that question, hey, well, why should I hire a financial advisor if it's as easy as buying an index fund? Well, buying an index fund is just one part of the financial planning process. It's the investment part. And I think most people would be surprised here. We don't think that everyone needs a financial advisor. With all the information out there on podcasts and YouTube channels and books and blogs, there's so much great free information out there that a lot of people can self-manage for a long time.

1:03:08They don't really need to pay a professional. Generally, when a financial advisor begins to make sense, generally one of three things begin to happen. One is the gravity of your decisions become so big that you begin to feel uncomfortable. Okay. If I, if I make a 10 % mistake on$10 ,000, it's not going to change my life. If I make a 10 % mistake on a million dollars, well, now I'm starting to impact my livelihood. Now that might be more than I save in a year, more than I make in a year. So the decisions become really big or maybe life just becomes complicated, right? Like you have, you used to have a two page tax return and now you have a hundred page tax return, or you might have options and RSUs and ESPP, or you are wondering about what your state documents should look like.

1:03:50And you have all these different questions and you just don't know what you don't know. You're an expert in your field and your vocation, but you don't know all the financial planning stuff. And so you want to make sure you're talking with someone who does know that to make sure that all of your I's are dotted and all of your T's are crossed. Or number three, and we see this all the time, maybe you're super, super smart and you can do it on your own. And the complexity doesn't even really frighten you. But what you found is you just don't have time to put the energy and effort and attention into it that you would like to.

1:04:17And so naturally, because you have all these other things going on, personal finances falls on the back burner. So most of our clients, most of the folks who listen to our show, they reach out, they find themselves in one of those three places and they say, okay, I'm at this place. And yeah, I've done it great on my own, but man, I'd really love a second set of eyes. I'd love someone who's navigated this next stage that I'm going into and hasn't just done it one time. I want someone who's done it a hundred times so they can tell me, hey, what are the things to look out for? What are the pitfalls I should have?

1:04:45But if you're a brand new person starting out in your career, it's not super complicated to figure out, hey, I need to make a good income, live on less than I make, follow the financial order of operations, put my money to work. And every dollar that I can save is going to be way more valuable going into my portfolio or funding my financial goals than paying a financial advisory fee. Well, I mean, even in this interview, we've covered quite a few things from a tax policy standpoint, from a state planning standpoint, retirement structure. I mean, these are things you just don't know if you don't know.

1:05:15And then I also think about the brilliant people. We've had quite a few clients that are just geniuses, brilliant, big portfolios. They're bringing us on just because they know that if they pass away, who's the backup? Who's their spouse go to? So they've actually brought us in as almost like the insurance policy so that they can start introducing the relationship so they have coverage for the loved one.

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1:06:40Graham Stephan:Fun story here, but when Jack and I first started the Ice Coffee Hour, we had to figure out everything ourselves, from the best cameras to use, the best editing equipment, how to source guests. Every day presented a brand new challenge. That's why if you run your own business, you know exactly what I'm talking about and why today's sponsor is so relevant, and that would be Shopify. Shopify is basically your all-in-one business partner. They power millions of businesses worldwide, from major brands like Mattel and Gymshark to entrepreneurs just getting started. And fun fact, if you've shopped online in the US, there's a really good chance it was through Shopify because they handle about 10 % of all American e-commerce.

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1:07:45Graham Stephan:Turn your big business ideas into... So sign up for a$1 per month trial at shopify.com slash ICH, all lowercase. You guys can change your life if you just create that business idea you've been sitting on for the past few years. It's just$1 per month to get started. You will not regret giving it a shot. Shopify.com slash ICH or a link down below in the description. Thank you so much to Shopify for sponsoring this episode. What's the biggest account that you manage, like for a single person? I mean, we have clients that are worth over$100 million. I mean, it's and we have I mean, you'd be surprised to see that.

1:08:17Yes, we have clients with over$20 million and we're still buying index funds for those type of clients. I mean, because I think that a lot of people there is a level that where you get into family office planning and things like that, because we're not bill paying and doing other unique things like that. But we are reviewing tax returns. We are making sure account structures and everything are right and making sure people are protected from just the things that they don't know.

1:08:41Graham Stephan:And how much do financial advisors make and how are they paid? Well, it depends because there's a few different business models, right? So there are generally three distinct business models inside the financial planning world. There are commission-based advisors who are paid a commission based on some product they sell. So these are generally like people that either sell a commissioned investment products, they sell insurance types, and basically the company for whom they work or whom they represent pays them for selling their products out to the consumer. Then there's the other side, which is fee-only, and that's where we are.

1:09:10The only way that we get paid is directly from our end client. So if you have a problem or you have some solution that you need, we'll present to you solution one, solution two, solution three, and we don't care which solution you choose, because we want you to choose the one that's the best for you, the one that's in your best interest. So the only way that we're getting paid is directly from you. Well, even inside of the fee-only world, there's a few different ways to get paid. There are subscription-based models where you pay it like a gym membership. There are retainer-based models where it's like a flat fee every year on retainer.

1:09:43And then there's assets under management models where the advisor gets paid based on the assets that they're helping you manage. And we work under the assets under management and we're unapologetic about it because I think that what I've experienced when people are doing just project based is it can be good, but the people, they're trying to hurry the process. They're trying to hurry because they know they're on the clock with getting it done. And then we've also see things where how often we have prospects come to us and it looks like a quilt work. I can say, hey, you made this decision in 2017 because this is what was popular back then.

1:10:16or even I've seen where family and friends have come to me and I give them some structures and then they disappear for four or five years. And I'm like, oh my gosh, you know, we changed that whole process in 2020 and yet you're still stuck on the on, there is some value to an ongoing type of relationship. And that's what, so we're unapologetic that we like that structure. That's why we put minimums on what you need to have because it's no different. I have a concierge doctor and I pay a lot of money for this concierge doctor, but for me at my level of success and my health, it's important to have some, to know I always have access to somebody who's going to get me good guidance and keeps me from what I don't know.

1:10:54Graham Stephan:How much is that? I pay over$10 ,000 a year. I don't want to give too many details, but it's - I thought you were about to say$10 ,000 a month. I was like, oh, wow. There are - $10 ,000 a year. $10 ,000 a year is not bad. Yeah. Like when I look at my own health insurance, I pay like$700 a month with a$17 ,000. Don't say that too loud. I don't want them watching this and then be like - That's actually pretty - Graham just said we can raise it. Well, the concierge doctor thing, just - How does that work? Exactly. You still have to have insurance outside of that because they're an outside the insurance model.

1:11:23So you pay for that out of pocket. But what they are is they are a personal concierge. Like if I need to, if something happened to Danny to get in, I could text him right now and go to his office and I'm in. And I'm in and out in 15 minutes. Or if something happens, I need to call it. Hey, I need you to call this prescription because I got this going on. That's really nice. Or even if I have something happen and I go in and I see the doctor and I'm like, hey, I've got this going on. like, you know what? Yeah, this doesn't look good. You need to go get an MRI. Then you see the specialist. I'll have my assistant call and make the appointment for you.

1:11:51And then I'll be at the MRI tomorrow morning at 10 a.m. and I'll be in the specialist two days from.

1:11:56Graham Stephan:Is it cheaper to pay for things like the MRI just out of pocket in cash? We still have insurance. So we're still, you know, so we're paying this on top of our insurance. Yeah, sure. And the insurance, they still go, since they know you have insurance, they go run it through the discount platform of the insurance company. Oh my gosh. Yeah. I just recently went to the doctor for the first time in a very long time, just for a normal checkup. And they told me that my plan doesn't have telehealth. Could you believe it? So I'm doing blood testing as like a preventative sort of thing. And they say, OK, for your results, we could call you.

1:12:30Graham Stephan:But you have to make sure that your plan allows for us to call you. And I said, well, why wouldn't it's a phone call? So, well, they might charge you. I looked at my plan. Believe it or not, they charge you for the phone call. You have to go in person and it's free, but a phone call costs money. That's why. The whole system is crazy. How does that make any sense? Well, and if you, our doctor is a good friend of mine. And one of the things it says is a lot of our healthcare system in this country is set up to be sick care, not healthcare. We're really good at triaging sickness. Something goes wrong.

1:13:01I got to come see you. You just said, hey, I haven't been in a long time, but I want to go for this checkup. I have my blood work done every quarter. So that way I can actually see that and be proactive about my health. because there's no point in having all the success and trying to save money and building towards financial independence if you don't stay healthy enough for long enough to live a really, really good life for a really, really long time. So we're kind of taking the approach that when it comes to healthcare, we want to be forward thinking on that, not reactive. Hey, I want to know what's going on at this stage of life so that not only is this decade great, but am I setting myself up so that next decade and the decade after the decade after are amazing?

1:13:35It's not about -

1:13:35Graham Stephan:So I just looked this up. I pay$25 ,100 a year before insurance kicks in and pays a dime. Why are you on such a high deductible plan? Because I wanted it for the HSA. Yeah, but you don't have to go that high. Holy cow. Well, he's probably counting his insurance premiums, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. He's counting his premiums. Yeah, I'm counting the premium plus the max out-of-pocket deductible. But I'm thinking for$25 ,000 a year. It's a discount platform. I'm better off just investing it for 20 years. And just paying out of, I would gladly just pay out of pocket if I weren't concerned. Which is a catastrophic loss.

1:14:12Graham Stephan:Yeah. That's the big thing. Just a cancer scare and then it's a million dollars. That's right. That's the only thing I'm afraid of. Or a really bad car wreck or something like that. You know what I mean? There are other things that could happen. It's the unknown unknown. So you have to have the catastrophic coverage. But so long as you have a solid enough financial setup, you can do the high deductible plan. I would rather, I wish I could just pay 300 bucks a month and that's it. And just be covered if it's over$100 ,000. and like X amount of years or something like that. I'll give the perspective that I think that there's a lot of correlations between health and wealth.

1:14:45You know, if you think about a lot of the same things you can say about what you ought to be proactive with your health is the same thing with the way you take care of your wealth. And I know, look, not to get all weird about it, but I'm only three years from when my dad passed away. So you can imagine when you're that close to when your father passed away, health is very scary for me in a lot of ways. So that's why the concierge doctor and the investment, that's why a lot of people have noticed I've lost weight and other things. Cause I had a pastor, um, when I was in my thirties, he said, you know, when you turn 40, start paying attention.

1:15:19Cause you know, it's a fork in the road moment that if you're not, cause he was a close friend too. And the fact that he was like, you just, your body doesn't do everything unless you start exercising it, working it. And so I've been trying to continue to stress myself to work, to stay healthy. And I'm trying to that's why I think we do the same thing for our clients on the financial side is that we're trying to give them the best version of themselves. So you're not just having to make desperate decisions, you know, because we want you to be proactive and plan accordingly, because at some point we're all going to pass away.

1:15:48I mean, I hate to ruin it for everybody, but, you know, and so you need to plan accordingly. And I'm just trying to make sure I'm as proactive as possible to extend that as long as possible.

1:15:56Graham Stephan:That's a great idea. I like the concierge doctor. If there are any doctors out there and you're licensed in the state of Nevada, even if you're a specialist, if you're a dermatologist, if you're any ologist or anything, please DM me because I would love to talk to you. Jack is sick in the head, though. You're not going to be able to help this guy. I remember I had some skin issue or something. I just posted on my Instagram. Does anyone know a dermatologist? That's got to be scary. And, but it's good because the thing is the biggest cheat code is if your neighbor or a close family friend is a doctor.

1:16:30Graham Stephan:That is crazy. Absolutely. Because then it can be a Saturday, a Sunday. You have no idea what's happening, especially if you're a person that's like a little panicky with health stuff. Yep. That right there could diffuse any concern. Well, that's why the great thing about concierge medicine is if you do have a relationship with a doctor, it is 24-7, right? So if something happens late at night on a Saturday, you send a text, you get an immediate response from the doctor in the office that's on call. So it's like a, it's an amazing, I just sprained my ankle. How bad is it? I got a hangnail. You mentioned the dermatologist.

1:16:58I went in, I went in for my last blood draw. I was like, Hey, everything else going good. And you know, I sat down for like two hours, just kind of like going through. And he's like, Hey, when was the last time you had a dermatology screening just to check any moles or whatever? I was like, Oh man, it's been years. He's like, okay, great. I'll have you an appointment set up tomorrow. And literally called, set up an appointment at the dermatologist, go in and say, it's just that kind of service. Now, again, you pay a premium for that, but it's about being proactive. because I'm like, I don't want some weird thing that I ignore and don't pay attention to to be the thing that takes me out.

1:17:25So if I can get out in front of it and do the test and stay on top of it and watch what I eat and exercise well, I'm going to do those things. That's genius. Also, Chachupiti,

1:17:34Graham Stephan:great for medical stuff. Generally speaking, you upload photos. But anyways, that's the size of it. It's great to take your doctor. Every doctor in the audience just roll their eyes right now. Go see a professional. He doesn't love it. It's funny. I've used it for the same thing. Oh, I read it too. But anyways, that's besides reddit r slash dermatology questions or whatever like that's pretty good if you have like a questionable mole or something i don't know do you remember when you usually go on webmd and you start reading the symptoms you're like oh my gosh i have i thought i had early onset dementia for a while from webmd that's the problem when you go unfiltered in the internet and chat gpt again because because it says things so definitively oh well you said this and this and this and this that means that ah you have tuberculosis you're like no no i just I have a sore throat, right?

1:18:16Like, and it's a really hard thing that you want to be careful.

1:18:18Graham Stephan:I ask at odds. What are my odds of this? Oh, okay. And then it gives you - Viction level 100, like 1%. Yeah, exactly. Okay, got it. Because it could give you, well, the statistic is like 4 % likelihood that you have this. And that makes me feel about that. But haven't you heard like, some people are like leaving their spouses because of chat GPTs giving them bad advice on like relationships and stuff. Are you serious? There's articles out there about this, you know, where you have to be careful. I had not thought about relationships. You have to be careful because a lot of people are using it as counselors and other things.

1:18:47I've used it as counselors.

1:18:49Graham Stephan:But then again, it's pretty good. Yeah, it's fantastic. It's able to see things in a way that I would never have seen myself and reframe it. But it's centered on what you were telling it. And it wants to make you happy. Have you not noticed how it wants to make you happy? But if I tell it to be objective, take me out, take out any bias, look at the situation objectively, give me the harsh reality. It's still gentle. Yeah, but sometimes it'll say you're overreacting. You're doing this. You're doing that. Or sometimes it says, no, this is this is this is true. And this is it. And again, you ask for its conviction level.

1:19:21Graham Stephan:But then again, if someone's leaving their spouse because of what they read from chat GPT, I think that signals bigger problems. And maybe the spouse is better off without the type of person who would leave them because of chat GPT. So I would argue it's a net benefit at the end. I still go back to the one beautiful bill and how just definitively it was accurate. And I was just like, come on, I'm telling you you're wrong on this. And it kept saying, nope. And I was, you know, so we do all need to be a little careful with it. Can I tell you a really interesting thing? A good buddy of mine, he did this, is one of the things he used his chat GPT for.

1:19:52He said, hey, I want to create a board of advisors and I want to create a board of advisors across a number of different subject matters. So I want, hey, here's all the people who I really value what they think from a financial perspective and from a medical perspective and from a faith perspective and from a psychology perspective. And so he had these six different things and he spent like 200 hours refining these six different proxy individuals. So now whenever he goes to make a decision, he'll say, hey, Chad, I want to ask my board, what do you think about this? And he will get six different responses based on these proxy individuals that he met.

1:20:25So he's created a board of advisors to help him get a well-rounded like, hey, I want to know what this person, this person, this person, this person, this person, this person, all consolidated with the same ideas. What do they think about this? And so he's using that to solve a lot of his business problems and a lot of like the hard, higher level creative thinking things that he's doing. It's fascinating. I've seen him do it. It's pretty wild.

1:20:45Graham Stephan:I also am curious how ChatGPT could compete with you guys as financial planners or advisors. A lot of people, when you think about you are the CEO of a seven, eight figure enterprise, if you think about what your 401k and everything was, a lot of successful people out there, what you pay to kind of expert, you know, and give you a CFO or somebody who's going to, you know, help you bounce ideas off of. It's just, it's better than you throwing up against the wall and asking the computer to give you the answer. Now, maybe it keeps getting better, but I still think we're at the point where most people at that level of success, they're willing to pay that slight, you know, headwind to, to, to make sure that they're in good hands and that they have access at all times.

1:21:27Graham Stephan:That would be a phenomenal YouTube video though. If you guys got questions and then like a couple of people that wanted to come to you guys for free financial advice, like three people and then they had a conversation with you and a conversation with chat GPT. Oh, that would be fantastic. That would be a phenomenal. I would love that. Yeah. The money versus chat GPT. Yeah, because financial planning. You know, when it first came on the scene, we tried it, but it's gotten much better. So that would probably be better than it was originally. Yeah, a lot of it, like you said, really just comes down to the prompts.

1:21:54Graham Stephan:Like there are certain things that I've asked it where I've run the numbers myself and realized, oh, wait, I forgot to tell it that I'm in this tax bracket and I have to take this into consideration. And I'm like, like little nuances that have been. And now you're getting to the bigger problem. When I used to do taxes, I did tax prep for 16 years. I used to compare and contrast. Like if you went to, now there's a bunch of brands that you show up with, whatever you show up with, you're going to walk out without a tax, with a tax return because they're just, they're, they're kind of burn and churn.

1:22:23You come in there, you know, here's what I got. Whereas I used to go through, and one of the things I prided myself is I was trying to find enough deductions for my clients that I was preparing that I would pay my fee. You know, I would ask them questions. I would probe. That's not, that's the thing. Because you're making a great point, Graham, is that you don't know what you don't know on the questions you should ask or the prompts you should put in there. And it's just not, it's not to that point that it's replaced the experience level.

1:22:50Graham Stephan:But I would give it like three years and it's going to start asking you questions to give you a more correct answer because it's going to see these mistakes. But again, there's still some, all right, you can go ask, uh, chat GPT. How do I replace a radiator in my automobile? And it can give you like step-by-step instructions. Here's how you do it. Does that mean that you feel prepared to go take apart your automobile, pull the radiator and put the radiator in? There's something about a professional who knows what they're doing, a mechanic who actually understands, Hey, if something goes wrong in this process or something is unexpected, I know that I have someone that can help me navigate and guide that so that I don't ruin this automobile or in your financial life.

1:23:26so that I don't make some cataclysmic mistake that I didn't recognize. There's not some blind spot I didn't account for. Well, I mean, you make a good point. The consolidation, like if you talk to our administrative team, bringing assets over from other custodians or moving 529 assets, consolidating 529s, it will drive you mad dealing with all these different custodians trying to work on the actual transactions. And I think that's why sometimes when you see the one-off advisors that will pay a flat fee to do, If they don't actually execute or handhold the actual transaction, does it actually happen?

1:24:00Because that's a part of what we're, it's just like we were talking about, like you get into real estate. How long does it take a real estate person to find the good plumber, the good electrician, you know, all the service providers? It takes a while to build up your book of Rolodex. I'm old school. I'll say Rolodex or your contact of all the different people. It's the same thing in the financial world, too, is that we actually execute the not only give the implementation ideas, but how do you actually execute it? And by the way, also shepherd the process. I mean, because that's something that I don't know that I think that the machines are going to be able to tell you.

1:24:35But are they actually going to execute maybe down the road? But I don't think we're there yet.

1:24:39Graham Stephan:So when you manage your high net worth clients, do they ever think like or act in such a way of like, OK, you know, I have 10 million dollars with you guys. I'm just going to take like 500 grand over here and put in like Pepe coin. Or do you stop them from doing that? Do you ever see anything like that? All the progress we made, it's all gone. It's all gone. Again, a lot of the folks who actually come and work with us, listen to the show. So they're like fans of personal finance. They love this stuff. They live and breathe this stuff. So a lot of folks like the idea of having this little play account.

1:25:09Hey, I want to go invest in Bitcoin or I want to go do micro strategies. I want to go buy individual stocks. And we're totally okay if you want to have that with a portion of your portfolio and you want to have that be a play account. We have no fault with that at all. Where it becomes an issue is when that becomes a large part of what you're doing because now you're putting your actual financial plan at risk. So it's not uncommon for clients of ours to have like a side play account where they're still able to get the utility they get from trying to implement those strategies. How often do you say no?

1:25:40When us say, I'm sorry, when us saying yes would breach our fiduciary duty to the client. So if a client says, hey, I appreciate all this guidance you're giving, but what I want to do is I want to take 75 % of my portfolio and go buy Bitcoin. What Will says, hey, at the end of the day, you're the CEO. This is your money. You're in charge of it. We are the CFO that you employ to help you navigate your financial strategy. But I cannot in a fiduciary capacity say, hey, it's in your best interest for you to take 75 % of your portfolio and put it in Bitcoin. So perhaps it does not make sense for us to work together.

1:26:13And that's okay. And you'll break the... Yeah, because we are not going to do something that's not in our client's best interest, even if they tell us it's what they want to do. Or, hey, I want to sell all of my portfolio. I want to go buy a$20 million dream house. Okay, you can totally do that. But if you're going to do that, you're not really following our guidance. There's no reason you should pay us for advice that you don't want to take and you don't want to implement.

1:26:36Graham Stephan:And how often do they actually sever that after that conversation is had? Again, our clients are pretty astute. So we don't run into this a lot. You know, this is a fairly, we'll have clients ask us questions, then we'll walk them through why we think it's not the best thing. And normally they're pretty pragmatic. They'll arrive at that same place. We tell people you vote with your feet. And the fact that nothing keeps our clients here every year, they don't, it's not like they have to stay with us. We have to add value or they don't stay. Have you ever given any bad advice? No. It's, you know, it's looking back in hindsight.

1:27:09It's an interesting, when you say bad advice, what do you mean? Like advice that the client did not like?

1:27:13Graham Stephan:Because like this advice that maybe turned out to be incorrect. Well, you can't say like, because look, we all could look. I'll just spot check something right now. If you sold, if you got a client and they had a fully concentrated portfolio of NVIDIA. That's the one I was going to say. I mean, and you tell them, hey, the right thing to protect your long term net worth is let's start diversifying this. Is that a bad decision or is that the right decision? You know what I mean? Because it is. We all know what's happened now. I mean, the last three years have been a rocket show. Does he ever call you and just be like, hey, remember that time he told me to sell NVIDIA and now it's 20X?

1:27:48Every time I meet with him, we have that conversation. But we put together a plan to slowly divest. We still has a lot of exposure there, just not as much as he would have had. And yes, he likes to remind me of how much he missed out on. But it's back to that Lucent executive. But he's still with you? Yeah, absolutely. But you think about those Lucent executives I used to work with, we've seen the other side of that. We all, you know, it's easy in hindsight. It's kind of like we reacted to a video where they put up every FANG stock, you know, is out there. Plus, you know, they added everything that's been a high flyer and said, why would you buy the S &P 500?

1:28:22And the guy loved his response. He's like, and if you grew wings, you could fly because nobody knows hindsight always looks one way. All we can do is take the variables we have, give you the best advice, and we make the decision together. But of course, things like that where a concentrated portfolio, you always run the risk that that concentrated portfolio could do very well. But you're helping the client protect the core that they're not going to go broke and go back to poverty because they were overly concentrated. I have a very, a very dear client who he began working for this startup. And early on as part of this comp package, he was given options for this startup.

1:29:00Started up, startup ended up doing very well. This is before he was a client. startup ended up doing very well. He ended up with those options being valued at over$5 million. But he was like, man, this thing is going to go to the moon. This is only the beginning. This is only the beginning. And he held them. A year or two later, company ended up tanking, ultimately went out of business. Options expired worthless. So we went from$5 million worth of options to worthless. And he recognized, he hired us after all this happened. He recognized, man, I'm never going to do that again. I recognize that even though I had won the game, had I begun to diversify, had I begun to liquidate, I would be at the financial independence point.

1:29:37But because I didn't do that, now I've got to start. I've got to go retrace that. So even like with the client in NVIDIA, if you would have left it all in NVIDIA, yeah, he'd be 20X, 30X right now. But if it didn't work out, he would not be financially independent. Whereas now he's still - It's that balance of fear and greed. That's right. The fear and greed is a legitimate thing that humans struggle with immensely.

1:29:59Graham Stephan:So that was kind of alluding to what I said earlier in the conversation. It's like, at what point would you say the law of diminishing return really hits? You said$5 million. Would you say that's about winning the game? After that amount, you really shouldn't like - It depends on, so we have clients who are financially independent, who live and who do everything they want to do the way they want to do it. And they have less than a million dollars invested because that's where their lifestyle is. Think about teachers. Think about people with pensions. I mean, you don't have to have a huge portfolio and have an incredible life.

1:30:27But then there's other people that they just spend a lot of money. I mean, I know - We have clients who have$10 million with us who are not yet financially independent and are not close based on the lifestyle that they want to live. So it's very much subjective and it's very much personal for that person. So what we try to figure out with our clients is, okay, what's the standard of living that you want to live? Like when you think about financial independence and where you want to be, what standard is that? Is that 15 a month, 20 a month, 10 a month? What's that number? Okay, then once we get to that number, we're beginning to approach that number, we kind of lock in.

1:30:58okay, at this point, there's no point in taking excessive risk that could potentially derail the plan and us not be successful.

1:31:06Graham Stephan:What would you guys say is your kind of number that you want to hit in monthly income if you're fine saying it? You're talking about for us personally? Yeah, for us personally. Yeah. Is there like an amount that you'd feel comfortable with? We're building more, not so much in the pursuit of financial independence. We're building because of the impact we're able to have both through the show as well as through our employees. You know, and it used to be there were three of us, right? There was, you know, the us two and there was an admin. And now we have 40 folks and eventually we'll probably have 100 folks.

1:31:36It's really fun. You already alluded to this, getting to see our people buy houses, start families, advance in their careers. So for us, that's more of the motivating factor now and being able to help more clients and more people to the show than like personal financial independence. I don't mind sharing that I don't have to work anymore. I mean, I'm kind of at the point where, I mean, I paid off most of the debts. I've got everything on a good place. But I think about the fact of how much joy I get from life, from my people. I come in here, but everybody knows I'm the vortex of slack, meaning that when I show up in your office and I talk to you, productivity just goes to the tank.

1:32:14I mean, I just love walking around, talking to the folks here. I love watching, like I said, when people get married, when they have babies, when they buy houses. Because there's something really good about that. And how often do you hear about, I mean, what was it? All over my social media feed is this thing. I don't even know if it's true, but the guy who invented Minecraft and he got the billions of dollars. And now he supposedly went through some depression because he got two and a half billion dollars and then didn't have the thing that brought him so much happiness. Money is only a tool.

1:32:42And that's why I always try to. And I think that's why we're good shepherds or good stewards for people is that when people think that the number is going to be what makes them fulfilled, I'm always there to be the counterbalance and be like, I think you really need to focus on what you actually get value out of in life. What's happiness? Because if you're just doing it for the number, I can tell you once you reach that number, if that's all it was, you will find it's very empty. And I don't mean to make light of that, but it's one of those things where, for me, the enterprise of watching to see what we can create and the impact we're having gives me more fulfillment than beyond the dollar signs at this point.

1:33:21How do you feel about the future of the U.S. economy? I mean, it's back to that law of accelerating returns. I really do believe as long as we don't create something that destroys us all, there's going to be opportunities. because everything I've ever experienced in life is that the pot's not getting smaller. It's actually expanding. I mean, that's why it's not a zero-sum game. There's actually opportunities out there. I mean, 20 years ago, 20 years ago, there wasn't an iPhone or an iPad. And think about now, there are like billion-dollar businesses that are run off of iPads or that are run off of iPhones.

1:33:5410 years ago, artificial intelligence was not what it was now. Three years ago, AI wasn't what it was now. And so it's just, it's moving so rapidly. I think that there's going to be a lot of opportunity. I mean, yeah, the world is getting smaller now. You know, it used to, the way that we're able to interact in a global economy and transact with other people and other individuals and other businesses all across the world is getting smaller and smaller and smaller and easier and easier. But I still think the U.S. economy has bright days ahead. I think, I mean, one of my favorite hobbies is reading Berkshire Hathaway's annual shareholders.

1:34:23You know, it's going to be sad whenever we don't get those anymore. But I'm like Uncle Warren. I mean, don't bet against America. I mean, if you look at all the things that have happened over the last 20 years, it is amazing, the resilience and then the V-shaped recoveries and the opportunities that have come from that. Now, what do you think about government spending?

1:34:44Graham Stephan:This episode is brought to you by Accenture. When your advertising operations fall out of sync, everything else follows. Spotify and Accenture are working together to reinvent the rhythm of ad sales, using automation, analytics, and smarter workflows to simplify campaign delivery and access better data across the business. The result? Less time spent on operations, more time connecting brands with the moments and fandoms that matter most. Learn more at Accenture.com slash Spotify. This episode is brought to you by Google Chrome. You think you know a browser, but Gemini and Chrome? That's new. It can help you with practically anything on the web, like restoring a vintage motorcycle from a 50-page restoration block, or finally break down that long article you've had open for weeks.

1:35:29Graham Stephan:Gemini and Chrome is here for it. Ready to make anything online make sense? There's no place like Chrome. Check responses set up required. Compatibility and availability varies 18+. I think that we're on this unsustainable path where there's really no turning back. Well, I mean, I come from a unique perspective. It's actually worked in government, too. I mean, because there was a period of time where I was a school board chairman and then I was a county commissioner. And so I see how you have to be careful with government. It's because government is powered by the taxes and property. For when I was a county commissioner, it was the property taxes.

1:36:02And there was always this thing where expansion was I would love to do more parks and more things. But what people never understood, and this is something I had to explain with the accounting background, is we go set up this park. It's going to be great, but then now somebody's got to cut the grass on this park. Now we've got to put four employees that are going to be full-time there to kind of be at the park at all times. There's great cost to this. Yes, now we have to just weigh to make sure that we have the tax revenue and we have the ability to fund all this versus the fun thing is to go put a park and then name it after yourself and feel all really good.

1:36:38But I want things to be sustainable. And so there's an equal balance. Their government is very important to the economy. We need to have guardrails. We need to have, you know, to make sure that the game is fair, to make sure people's rights are protected. But there is a balance there. And the good news is, as everybody knows, the Money Guy Show doesn't do politics and we don't do religion. Now, unfortunately, because tax policy is a very political process, but it's also a very financial process, we do have to cover tax policy. But we always try to stay true so that no matter what your political affiliation is, you can watch our thoughts because we're going to try to balance out that take so that you once again get the balance of how much government do we need versus how much growth or the economy so that this thing stays healthy.

1:37:24Graham Stephan:And what about when it comes to real estate right now? Do you think today is a bad time to buy a house? I think it's really, really hard to buy a house. Now, when it comes to house, primary residence, we think that that's more of a life decision than a financial decision. Should you buy a home right now? Well, is it part of the plan and part of your financial goals? Are you trying to establish roots? Are you trying to start a family? Is it something that's gonna be part of your longer term plan? Well, then yeah, by all means, go out and buy a primary residence, but it's difficult. House prices have kind of run away from you.

1:37:53You know, interest rates are super high. It's really, really difficult to be able to do that. So I would approach it less from, is it a sound financial decision? Is it one of my top financial goals? Now, from an investing standpoint, again, I think it's really, really hard because if you look back four or five years ago, prices were much more muted than they were now across residential, commercial, all types of real estate and interest rates were a lot lower. So it was a lot easier to quote, unquote, make money a few years ago. That doesn't mean that there aren't still opportunities to buy real estate.

1:38:24I mean, we bought a commercial property here recently, but it happened because we had a really good opportunity at a really good price and we had the capital to be able to do that. So I think for folks who are in that position, they can, it's just a harder path than it has been historically. Time is your friend though. This is not, if it's a three-year decision, you know, if you, because one of the things I had, I had a really smart attorney come visit us and he was asking for career advice. I was like, go find who does what you want to get into because it was a very specialized part of law. I was like, and go let them mentor you.

1:38:55And he's like, well, that's, I just bought, I'm house hacking. I just bought, I was like, you know, you know, maybe, because I love house hacking. It is one of my favorite things. I know that's one of your, part of your success story too, but you can probably even admit that somebody who's like in a very specialized thing, like a specialty in law, that's probably the earning power is going to outweigh the house hacking benefits. So I always tell people, if you're making a decision, And if you know you're going to move in the next three or four years, that's probably not going to be as easy for buying a house.

1:39:24But if you're 10 years and you've got kids and you're trying to set down roots, I think that spreading out that timeline or if you know you're going to be in the property will smooth out that purchase price.

1:39:34Graham Stephan:I could be totally wrong here and feel free to push back on this. But my recent hot take when it comes to real estate is that it's going to be the new college in a sense that we're going to look back 30 years from now and say, I wish I didn't buy a house. And I think a lot of people now are realizing that they didn't need a college degree to get the job that they wanted. But now they're saddled with like$50 ,000 of student loans. I could see there being a case in the future that people are saddled with these mortgages and these overheads and these expenses they never needed when rents right now are pretty attractive compared to buying.

1:40:11Graham Stephan:And you don't need to buy a house when you could be as mobile as you can be today. I agree with you on the economic sense, but you didn't realize probably that you're talking to two guys from South Atlanta. So we didn't even know you can make money on real estate until we moved to the state of Tennessee. Because, I mean, my first house that when I sold moving up here, all the prepayment I made was to pay all the negative equity because we lost so much money on the move. is, but I still look back. I'm glad we lived in that neighborhood because my kids made memories with a lot of the neighbors and, and, and, you know, and I still, I go on annual trips with a lot of those neighbors.

1:40:49So community was very valuable. Now, this was such a big financial transaction that it derailed my entire life. That's, that's one thing, but I think there are some benefits to homeownership outside of just the financials. Well, could you say the same about

1:41:03Graham Stephan:college, though, that there are benefits to going to college and socializing and, you know, figuring out what you want to do. It's the same rules, though, as long as it doesn't blow up the corpus of what you're trying to do. And a lot of people, and that's why we always give the guidance on like student loans, if you're transitioning, if you're talking about that, don't run up more student loan debt than you're going making your first year salary. Because how many people are out there getting, you know, running up$100 ,000 of debt in there and they're in these these majors that they'll be lucky if they make$50 ,000 coming out of school.

1:41:32Graham Stephan:And I think it comes down to just being intentional about it. And I worry that a lot of people now have been told that buying a house is what you need to do. That's where the problem is. I do agree with that. Yeah. I think your analogy holds. And I think it's a great analogy that there are a lot of people that went and got a college degree and that college degree was incredibly valuable. You know, I went and got a college degree in financial planning and it's worked out swimmingly well for me throughout life. So by all means, it was the right decision. But if you're someone who went out and got a college degree that was way too expensive in a field that you do not work in, was not the most prudent, pragmatic decision.

1:42:05It's no different than someone who goes out, okay, I'm going to buy my first home simply because I want to be in a home and it's more than I can afford and it doesn't make sense for me. Then yeah, they probably are going to look at it the same way. But there are going to be a lot of people who said, man, I wanted to go buy that first home and I got in the home and I started a family or I set up roots and I established that. I was there for seven, eight, 10 years and I built equity in that house and I was able to sell that house and go to the next house. I think that that's still going to work, but I agree with you completely.

1:42:29The idea that you have to buy a house to be financially independent or that it must be part of your financial plan. I think that's completely wrong. Just like I think the idea that you have to go to college is completely wrong. I think there's a lot of folks who do not need to go to college and are not going to need to go to college to be able to have tons of success in life. You said taking an active role. What was the way you termed it, Graham? You just said. Intentional. Intentionality. You have to be intentional. Because let me tell you this. I'm talking about education. If you look at the percentage of people who work in their field of study, we found if you just go look at the population of student loans and others, 72 % of people come out of college not working in their field of study.

1:43:10We survey our millionaire clients every year because we create content off of it. And you can't make up how close this stat came up. 73 % of our clients work in their field of study. That's intentionality, the definition of intentionality. So that's why I think it's the same thing with a house. Do the math and you have to weigh. And that's what personal finance is personal is that, yes, there's going to be an economic and a math side of an analytical side. But there's also going to be the decisions of what's best for your family.

1:43:38Graham Stephan:But what's also interesting is that when you look at college tuitions, they've risen alongside government subsidies. Oh, yeah. And when the government is providing all of this money, colleges figure out, well. I'll just charge more. I'm just going to charge more. Because they're going to pay it. But a similar thing to a certain degree is happening with housing. When you see FHA loan limits increase and all of a sudden you can put zero to three and a half percent down and the government's willing to give you$800 ,000. Well, what do you think the seller is going to charge? They're going to charge what they can get.

1:44:09And I'm amazing how the appraisals always come in at whatever price.

1:44:12Graham Stephan:It's exactly the thing. Now, for the appraisals, technically, that's the market value of the house within a certain degree. Because that's what someone for you may have. You know how the appraisal come back other than$1 ,000 of the sale price? I mean, maybe in the Great Recession. A great recession you did, but every other deal I've ever dealt with, they always come back. Yeah, for the most part, you're always within a few percent. Right there, spot on. But I agree with you. It is a problem. And that's why, and for most people, the single largest financial decision they will ever make is purchasing a home.

1:44:37Like it's the largest thing that they will ever spend money on. So you better make sure you're making it right. And you're being wise about that. And you're only doing it if it actually makes sense.

1:44:44Graham Stephan:I'm just starting to see all these stories crop up, especially on Reddit. People saying buying a house was one of my worst financial decisions. And we did everything correct. We went and we were told buying a house, we got a house, we saved for a down payment. But we're underwater from what it's worth. They're in Austin and values have dropped 25%. and they have to come out of pocket 70 grand. And they're asking, what can we do? Because I don't have the money to sell the house and it's not going to cash flow if I rent. It's a problem. And I'm stuck here. That's right. And the common advice is, well, you either have to take on a job to pay for the, you know, a second job to pay for the house or rent out rooms.

1:45:24Graham Stephan:Or prepay the negative equity. Believe me, like I did coming out of South Atlanta. But I think this story is going to be a lot more common. And we were even talking to someone recently who believes that housing prices are going to come down so much because of artificial intelligence and from robots being able to build a property at scale really cheap and really quick. You're going to be able to automate the entire property. But how far away are we from that, do you think? 10, 15 years? You think so? That's what land is going to be the expensive thing. Yeah, but the cost of land could also be cheap because you don't need to be physically in an area anymore to make a ton of money.

1:45:59Graham Stephan:Like, we could theoretically do this anywhere. anywhere in the world. Like it helps to be in person. We've always said, look at your house as a use asset. That's why when people build their net worth and always we even caution people, if you're if you have a seven figure net worth, but it's all in your home equity. Do you really have because you can't eat that house in retirement. So that's why I mean, we're highlighting the point that, yes, I think homeownership can still have an element in there, but it doesn't need to be the economic driver of your success financially. I'm seeing it now almost like a good collectible car, like buying a house where you might make some money off it.

1:46:36Graham Stephan:And if you do, it's going to be probably alongside inflation. But there's also a chance it might be going down in volume for the next 10 to 20 years. He says all of this while he looks at me. He's like, buy the house, Jack. Right before we even turned the cameras on, he was telling us about your new place. We completely forgot about the strongest leading indicator of a bad housing market is Jack buying. But it's funny. But in Jack's case, it makes it because he's able to buy this property for business use and, you know, with the podcast and everything, take bonus depreciation and his savings. As long as the market doesn't drop 30 percent or more, his savings are going to outpace any potential downside in the housing market.

1:47:23Graham Stephan:And it is a use asset. There's a lot of value to that. So I would see this as asymmetric upside where, yes, the downside is there, but the upside is so much greater than the potential loss. So I see that as a good. I don't disagree with your premise except for the fact that, OK, am I not going to make any money for 10, 12, 50? Because I do those things. Even if we were to see some reduction in home prices like what you've seen in Austin, by and large, real estate homes are likely going to keep up with inflation. They may not make a ton, but they're going to likely keep up with inflation, two and a half, three percent.

1:47:52So if you have a long enough time horizon and you can be in the house, you know, we say we want you to be in the house for seven to eight years, but maybe because of where prices have gone, you might have to be in the house for 10, 12, 15 years. I don't think it's always going to be a loss. It's going to be something where you always aren't going to be able to get your money out.

1:48:08Graham Stephan:I think when you account for 7 % mortgage rates, 1 % property tax, another 2 % between insurance repairs. But surely we don't think mortgage rates are going to stay at seven, right? Like we're going to see some reprieve on that at some point. Now, hopefully what happens is the house doesn't take in value and you can't refinance. You have some sort of optionality there. If you've been paying, you know, and again, if you kept your house in the affordability range, you had an appropriate down payment, you inoculate yourself from some of that. But there are likely going to be things down the road that if you are in a home, you're going to have opportunities so that it can become more and more affordable as you live in the home.

1:48:41And ultimately, again, maybe it's not going to make you a ton of money, but you're not going to likely lose money over the long, long time. I like to bring it back to the historical location, location, location. Because, I mean, it's one of the reasons we wanted to own this building is that I couldn't believe they even let us have access to buy this building because it's right in the middle of the square. It's a beautiful location. In the middle of, I mean, so no matter what happens, it's, it's. Good spot to be. It is like the Fifth Avenue of Franklin, Tennessee. I mean, this is going to be very valuable property.

1:49:10And that's what I would tell anybody because I made the mistake when I bought my first two homes in South Atlanta is I remember I was working in Marietta, Georgia. If anybody knows anything about the city of Atlanta, Marietta is here. And then I bought my first house in Stockbridge, Georgia, which was outside the perimeter, South Atlanta. And the reason I did it was it's so affordable. And I was like, you know, that 40 minute commute, that won't be that bad. I can handle it because I'm getting such a great deal on the property. No, that's horrible because the location was not great. I ended up, and then I doubled down.

1:49:43I started my first business down in McDonough, Georgia. And I bought another house. And that's the thing is that the location does matter. And I think that that's something that everybody should think about. I mean, we've seen here in Williamson County, Tennessee, now beautiful homes are getting torn down because the land is worth, you know, if you've got an acre property or three quarters of an acre property, people will pay over a million. just to tear your house down and then put a brand new thing. So the land does have some value. So I would just tell people to focus on where and then the functionality of the use.

1:50:17I mean, because are you getting, and don't bet the farm literally on the farm if that's not how you make your living. Because I think that's a problem. A lot of people who have, we've seen it with the FRED data. The Federal Reserve data comes that the only way Americans are growing their net worth right now is through the equity in their house, which that's, we're trying to get people to get outside of that and build up wealth and value outside of their just their equity in their homes.

1:50:42Graham Stephan:How much of all the gain that we've seen, though, is simply because of loose monetary policy? And I do see an argument that ever since the 80s, that they've started really lowering interest rates. Everything has slowly gotten more expensive. They've printed more money. And that's somewhat the reason why the market's gone up consistently for the last four years. America is not the only country that is all the central banks have gotten with this loose money. And that's what we're all kind of interconnected in this this strange game that we're doing. And that's what you know, it scares you if you start thinking about.

1:51:17I mean, I was look, I don't mind being transparent. And Bo knows what I'm going to say. I was wondering how long is it going to take for this to come? First election I ever voted in, I voted for Ross Perot. The reason I voted for Ross Perot was because, what was that, 1996, that was George Bush, Bill Clinton, and Ross Perot. Ross Perot was out there every day telling everybody, our country is in debt for$6 trillion, and we are straddling our children with the debt of our country. And I remember thinking, oh, my gosh, I don't come from any money, but I don't want the debt of my parents and grandparents straddling me at six trillion dollars.

1:51:59And then here we are decades later. He wasn't wrong, by the way. I mean, now look at where's the where's our debt now? Aren't we getting close to 40? Yeah, we're getting close to 40 trillion dollars.

1:52:11Graham Stephan:50 trillion dollars in 10 years. In my lifetime, we were all the hundreds of years this country's existed. We got up to six trillion dollars in 1996. And now think about where we are. We've gotten way too comfortable with debt. I mean, that's that's that's concerning when you think about just in my lifetime what's happened. Yeah, we've only ever had one surplus year in the last 30. I remember they cut the clock off. I mean, they cut the clock off. One year and it was just like a little bit where they just didn't lose. I think it actually encouraged them to go spend more. And by the way, that's bipartisan.

1:52:46Listen, both parties have spent money. It's equal. It's not like one is a hawk on the budget and the other one's not. They're the equal opportunity on running up the debt of the country. So is there any solution or is it we just have to hope that if you were financially advising, let's just say the Treasury. It goes back to your original question. What happened? It created inflationary pressure. So, I mean, what do you do to protect yourself from inflation? You own stuff. I mean, that is the cruelty of the system. This is something I caught on at a young age is I realized, hey, because I grew up in a household.

1:53:22My parents were the most disciplined people in the world. We just had more love than money, but they never invested. CDs was what my parents did. You don't really own anything if all you're doing is CDs. You've got to start buying stuff so that you can curb some of these risks.

1:53:37Graham Stephan:But wouldn't that then lead over time to a huge disparity between the haves and the haves? That is what's happening. That's exactly what's up. And artificial intelligence could make this even worse. But over 30 years on that trajectory, you're going to have either really, really, really wealthy people or really, really, really poor people. Well, that's what is going on. And then there's an uprising. But even my understanding is the have-nots also technically are living much better than the haves of like 50 years ago. Oh, for sure. Because a lot of the standard of living has increased. I mean, even technology on construction.

1:54:10Graham Stephan:A lot of things are deflationary, like televisions and technology like that. I mean, if you go look at any house built back when I was a kid, I mean, you didn't have open floor plan. It's because they needed to be load bearing. Now we've got, you know, structured support where you can. I mean, there's things that, I mean, in cost of construction has gone down. There's all kinds of things where I agree that, and that's what I'm reading some, you know, some stuff right now is that somebody who has. Now, look, you've got to be able to survive. And then that's the part where you see all these happiness studies.

1:54:40And I know it's the whole talk about it's$75 ,000 a year that or$100 ,000. There's all that research on what's the level of happiness. But there's something once you cover the ability to pay bills, there's not much different from somebody who's got a few hundred thousand dollars net worth to somebody who's got a few million dollars in net worth on what they can do because you're covering the basics.

1:55:03Graham Stephan:I just think eventually, 30 years from now, we're going to be hooked up to some sort of electrodes. And there's going to be some sort of like, you know, like gelatin that you just eat that has all your nutrients. And you don't need that much money. Here's the Matrix. This is a great movie with Keanu Reeves you ought to check out. I could see that being a thing. And you just plug into your whatever, you know, you basically could plug into your reality. I'm so glad I'm the age I am. I mean, when I hear stuff like this, this is when I'm glad that I have one foot in the analog world and then one foot in the digital world.

1:55:34Graham Stephan:But how do you know you're not in a whole digital video right now? He's not in a simulation right now. You could be right now and not know it because it's that good. And I think if we get to a point in the future where you have people that could basically just live whatever life they want to. Makes sense. I bet a lot of people would take it. It's interesting. It's an interesting thought exercise. But what I do know is right now, right now, I got to do the best I have. Somebody will make money off of that structure. A hundred percent. And that's why if you just buy the S &P, you'll be part of that.

1:56:08Graham Stephan:But then you don't even need money at that point, because as long as you have the hundred dollars a month to plug into your reality and play the video game. But so while that could happen, right, like that's certainly a viable outcome. And I'm not. Who am I to say that it's not a viable outcome? If it doesn't happen, I probably want to do things today. They're going to set me up, probably going to eat my vegetables. I'm probably going to exercise. I'm probably going to save. I'm probably going to do all these things until I get the gelatin and the hookup so that if it doesn't happen, I'm still going to be in a good spot.

1:56:35Even if I'm a brand new young person starting out, I'm going to figure out, okay, how can I increase my income through my vocation? How can I live on less than I make? How can I save it for a down payment? How can I get in that starter home? How can a house hack? How can I get on the other side of the equation so that I can start benefiting from some of the crazy stuff that's going on? Would you want the hookups?

1:56:55Graham Stephan:No. I would want to do a trial. I would try it out and see just how great this thing is. Have you ever had a cast on your foot? A what? A cast on your foot, like injured yourself. No. Do you realize how fast you lose your ability to walk once you put on it? Because your muscles and everything, I mean, it atrophies very quickly. So I would be scared. Oh, no, I'm not signing up for that. In a dream, you can live like, you know, years. You could live like so much longer than the actual time that's elapsed in real life. And so you could probably say the same thing. It's like you tune in for two seconds, but then you live 20 years.

1:57:28I want to be honest, guys. I don't think I'd do it. And here's why. Life is pretty good. I'm kind of enjoying this spin right now. I don't need some dream reality. I think things are pretty good.

1:57:38Graham Stephan:But what if you had a mega yacht? That'd be cool. But a mega yacht and a John boat, you're still floating on the water. Sun still comes up. Sun still goes down. But it would be so good that it could give you the right amount of challenge. The right amount of push-pull. Cruise? No. I mean, that's why I don't know if I want a mega yacht either. Because I always think about the things. Have you not seen that Netflix? What is it? The cruise ship that broke down and they couldn't get off of it. What happened? They were stranded in the ocean for how long? Well, you would think that when a cruise ship breaks down that they would probably pull up another boat to let all the people off.

1:58:13No, they dragged it. Because there's like 4 ,000 people. They dragged it for four days. So these people. And it filled up the. Well, plumbing wasn't working. They couldn't evacuate. way none of that stuff was going on i don't know that i want to yeah it's a lot of i'm just saying

1:58:25Graham Stephan:that you could have your own in this you know fantasy world that we're talking about that's i'm saying yeah because that doesn't back up you don't even use the restroom in this fantasy world when you look in the mirror and you flex in the you see a stronger bicep peak that your genetics won't allow for right now you could have everything you've ever wanted no doctors on call that you have to i don't know i'm not signing up i would rather build the life today that's the life one day i dream about you know what i mean i'd rather do those no i i agree with you yeah because in a perfect life, then you don't have anything bad to compare to.

1:58:53Graham Stephan:So you're probably going to be less happy. I'm just pretty grateful. Life has turned out. I mean, it started out. Oh man, I would have never guessed that the end, that where I'm at now would be where I started. Ah, I'm pretty happy. I mean, to be the old man in the room, I do think it's interesting. We have all this technology, but yet loneliness is probably at the highest levels it's ever been. If you, when you look at national surveys on people that feel separated and lonely, I get nervous about things like that because I think human connection, and it's back to, I'll bring it back full circle to kind of some of our conversations.

1:59:25I think at the end of the day, even when the AI and everything gets better, there is something about the human connection. I mean, I will tell you one of the greatest gifts I got from a, like I'm trying to remember why my wife gave it to me, but she knows I'm a big Hans Zimmer soundtrack thing. And they did this candlelight service up in Nashville at the Parthenon. They did it at the Parthenon. And there is something about the human condition that when you hear live music and you're there with other people, it touches something that is outside of you that I don't think the simulator can do. And I've experienced that when in college, I got asked to go to a concert for a singer that I just had no interest in seeing, but seeing this person in real life perform and play this instrument and then sing, I left a fan.

2:00:15And, you know, and I think that that's that it's that X factor that makes us humans different, that that's why I want to talk to my doctor. That's why I think successful people are going to want to talk to us is because, yes, the box can probably give you an answer, but there's going to be something in the human condition that wants more. I just I feel that in my soul. And I think that that's probably the answer is that and that's why we can get all this free stuff. the machines still need our soul. They need our humanity. And we ought to really think long and hard about what that is. I love that.

2:00:48Yeah.

2:00:48Graham Stephan:I like these discussions because for me, for me, it's the banter that Jack and I have back and forth. You know, what, what if this and what if this would you do that or how much like how much? I gotta tell you, a little part of me was getting sadder and sadder hearing some of those things because it just, I don't know. And I am a sentimental person at this stage. here. Yeah. I've watched, I've watched tons of Hallmark movies, you know, in the Hallmark movie, the dad walks in from work from a long day and the kids run up and jump on him. And as much as I love watching that, it pales in comparison.

2:01:20And when I walk in my front door and my kids run up and jump and hug that, I'm just never gonna be able to replace that. You know what I mean? No matter, I don't care how good the simulation is. There's something real, real awesome about that. So I'm going to enjoy that for as long as I can before I plug in. I know we're probably coming and closing on some of the time of things, but I did want to bring it full circle back to opportunities. And I know a lot of people are feeling like the system stacked against them or whatever, but I did a stat that comes up every year. And by the way, this isn't, we're not the first ones to talk about this stat.

2:01:50I think about Millionaire Next Door. 80 % Millionaire Next Door, when Dr. Thomas Stanley and Danko did that, it was like 80 % of millionaires are first generation. You're like, wow, that's an interesting stat. Because I always, I remember when the high school teacher told me about the$100 a month could make me a millionaire. That's kind of what lit the fire. And then Dave Ramsey has his survey of millionaires, and he's right around there. I think it's like 79 % of millionaires are first generation without inheritances. We survey our millionaire clients. It comes consistently in the high 70s every year that less than$10 ,000 of inheritance, it's all first generation.

2:02:28And that gets me excited. People should be optimistic of opportunity because it also, I'll bring it back full circle. In addition, for that stat to be true, second generation has to squander third generation. And we know that stat's true too. Second generation, 70 % of the time, they squander the money. If you're born into money, there's a good chance you're going to squander it in second generation. By third generation, that stat goes up to 90%. So if you're somebody who feels like the system is rigged against you, There's a natural cleansing process that's just happening. I just say don't get caught up in the negativity.

2:03:05Figure out how to be an optimist because that's the other thing. The majority of Americans, if you survey Americans, pessimists rule. The majority of people are pessimists. If you then survey to say how many are successful people, and you might say, well, this is because they're successful, they're optimists. And I think that that's always tell people don't get caught up in how bad things are. try to figure out if there's little small decisions that you can chisel out that actually create some positivity in your life. And I know that sounds so hokey, but I am in this decade of my 50s where I'm sentimental and I'm just trying to get out as much information as possible because I see what's worked for me and I don't like all the negativity that I see out there.

2:03:43I want people to actually experience and feel that they can do this. And yes, maybe it's real estate is the headwind, but that doesn't mean that that has to be what defines you. There's going to be other ways to make money and create success too.

2:03:54Graham Stephan:We got a few rapid fire questions just to wrap up the podcast. Are credit card points a trap for broke people? Yes, for broke people, for people who know how to use credit card points and can do rewards, not a trap can be a hugely valuable tool. Yeah, I mean, that's exactly right. I mean, I wouldn't let that be why you use a credit card is just for the points. But I mean, as a person who's got over a million American Express points that I plan on using. Yeah, I mean, I would be a hypocrite if I said that I don't pay attention to points. Should people with a net worth of less than$100 ,000 be able to buy crypto?

2:04:29Yes, free market. Well, I mean, yes, but is that the, I mean, I still stand by the financial order of operations. Should they know? Should they be able to, yes. Cryptocurrency would probably be a step eight thing for people, and so there's a lot of one through seven. There's a purpose there. Is there ever a scenario where it makes sense to go into debt to invest in the stock market? I don't like, I mean, no. I mean, I think about the fact that if you're starting a business, you'll run debt sometimes to start your venture and that makes it risky as a whole. But to go buy the S &P 500 on margin or something like that, that's something that I would not tell the typical person to go do.

2:05:09No, never a necessity. How many income streams is too many? Oh, that's - No such thing. Because you hire, we're the perfect case study and you can hire somebody when your life gets so complicated from all the different streams. Just if you've got resources, hire somebody to help you manage it so that you have more diversification and more income. No such thing as too few or too many. Well, there can be two. I mean, you can be concentrated. No, income streams. If you have one income stream and you make like, you know, a million bucks a year, you're doing pretty good. If you have a hundred income streams and a million bucks a year, you're doing pretty good.

2:05:44what's the most irresponsible thing you do with money um i just i don't ask questions on how my my spouse uses her he spends the money i treat it all as no questions i mean i let her do we do whatever we want because i i think that you know we've we've created this and i just i don't i just

2:06:05Graham Stephan:let it go would there be a certain you know point where you'd be like oh well plus i've been married I've been married 27 years, so it's not like there's any surprises. But if there was an expensive designer purse or something, it's not like that stuff blows up the system anymore. So go have at it. So that's probably the most irresponsible because it's just out there. We just did a large renovation on the back of our house and added a really nice pool. And it was very expensive. It was not economically justifiable, but lifestyle justifiable. It's amazing. We're in every single day. God, your answer is so much better than mine.

2:06:41That sounds so much better because now my wife's going to see this and be like, why did you say me? That is not what I'm saying. That's the most irresponsible thing. I hope nobody mishears that and that doesn't come back. We heard it crystal clear. No, that is not what I'm saying. Basically, let me try to clean this up. We don't talk. What is mine is hers and what is hers is mine. There's no limits on that. And that can be seen as irresponsible, but I think it just shows commitment.

2:07:09Graham Stephan:Do you believe in the man paying for the first date? Yeah. Yes. I mean, look, I'm at my age. If somebody might, I mean, yeah, for sure. I mean, I have a college-age daughter and I should have asked. She was on a date this week and I should have asked if he paid for her coffee. You should have asked that, you think? What would it tell you? Well, just out of curiosity, because then he could give you the anecdote here. Well, here's what the young kids are doing these days. I don't know what the, I mean, it's always, because look, even though I was poor, I was still trying to pay for, I paid for all my dates.

2:07:39But it's not a, would I pay for the first date? Absolutely. Is it an absolute necessity? Not necessarily, but I think it's a great touch. I've been off the market for a long time though. I'll tell my son that when he goes on his first date, hey, you should pick up the bill, son. And what if she wants to split the check? Well, if she wants to, then that's fine. I mean, again, I would encourage him, hey, don't, you know, try to do it. But if she says, hey, this would make me feel good and I want to value paying half of it. All right. That's okay. You don't have to, but that's okay.

2:08:08Graham Stephan:What if she's putting on a credit card or a firm? Hey, let me get this one. It's no different. She's going into debt. You put out cash. There you go. I like, you know, you'll be out with a couple and maybe somebody picked up the rounds or something and you try to buy the mill. If you can tell that there's discomfort, you back away from that and you split the bill. And I think that's the way I was. If I was giving guidance to my son or daughter, I'd say, look, you know, yes, try to pay the bill. But if you can tell there's discomfort or the person doesn't appreciate what you're trying to do or because you're maybe breaking some feeling they have, then yeah, just split it.

2:08:43Graham Stephan:What are some things you're still surprisingly cheap on? You're asking, you should be asking my wife. She'd probably have a lot of, I don't like, I drink water at restaurants when my kids order, but when the kids order sweet teas or Cokes and And I'm like, they're paying$4 for that. For some reason, that bothers me. I'm trying to think, because my wife just recently says, you're so cheap about some of the weirdest things. And I'm trying to think of what she meant by that. You know, you're practically my daytime wife. What's some things I'm cheap on? If he wants to buy some, I'm actually going to answer this.

2:09:21If he wants to buy something online, he can never just pay flat retail. He always has to figure out, is there a way that I can get some sort of deal? Is there a discount code? Is there something I can do? I just, and I'm like, Brian, it doesn't matter. It's 20 bucks. Just pay the 20. Matter of fact, pay him 25 bucks. We're literally losing money trying to wait for you to pay for this thing. Just let it go. But he has to, he has to always feel like he gets a deal. The journey is half of the fun of the preparation and the thing. I think that's why I'm a good planner is I love actually, it was like vacation.

2:09:50What's more fun, the actual vacation or the preparation for the vacation?

2:09:53Graham Stephan:So what's the most of time value you've ever lost spending like copious amount of time I'm researching something to save a few dollars. Is there anything that you just think back on? You're like, okay, that was way too much. No, because I just keep repeating it. I mean, I'm researching dehumidifiers because it's so humid here. And I still haven't bought the one because I keep going and price shopping and trying to figure out what's the best way to do this. That's 50 bucks. Yeah, I mean, so it's not worth it, but that's what I would say. We see this with our clients too, by the way. There's a reason.

2:10:22One of the biggest things we do as financial planners is it's not the Susie Orman saying no to everything. We actually try to encourage our clients to unleash our release and actually enjoy what they've built. Because I'm guilty of this, too, is that, you know, you get caught in your ways because you're rewarded for all these decades for being tight. And there comes a point where you probably should focus on the memories and what your money can do as a tool.

2:10:47Graham Stephan:So how do you use AI to get better deals? I mean, like if you want to. He just got excited. No, if you want to think about this. Like my wife, we found a pair of shoes that I saw. They were like these Disney shoes that they did at this run Disney event. Well, you can't buy them anymore. The only thing you can do is buy them on StockX or eBay and all these. You can go on AI and have it actually be the filter to start looking for all the different places that are selling it by the size. And then I've even used AI for coupon codes. I've used it for coupon codes. I've even asked it. I've said, because some products are price controlled.

2:11:23You know, you know when you buy, I'm trying to think of something that is like a Sonos speaker or something like that. You know that it's going to be no matter where you buy it, it's going to all be the same price because I think that's how they're structured. But you can go on AI and say, hey, I know this product is price control, but who's offering like coupon codes or discounts or rebates or gift cards? And it's kind of good. It's really surprising at how you can use AI as a shopping agent. You can say also what's the cheapest way to buy this item. Oh, I know. I had a Patagonia rain jacket I was trying to buy.

2:11:54And I said, hey, this thing is the same price everywhere. And it said, hey, go to REI and here's some coupon codes. And I was like, hot dog. So I ended up. And then when I logged in, because I actually have an REI down the street. When I logged in the account, I also had like$15 that was just sitting in the account from a previous purchase. Look at that. So, yeah, you can use like that hack has worked on Veoria. If I'm saying that right. Veoria. Veoria, yeah, whatever. I'm old. You know, all these brands that are price controlled, Patagonia and all these things, you can sometimes find sellers that then have coupon codes and AI can help be your agent on that.

2:12:29Do you see how excited we get on little things? Do you think that moves the needle? But it does from an emotional standpoint. It's just this is why we're good at what we do.

2:12:37Graham Stephan:Do you think that'll never change? No, it will never change. Never. Even if I was in the jelly vortex that y 'all were talking about, the Matrix. You'd program it the same way. I would be looking for a deal. You'd spend infinite money, but you'd still spend like 30 minutes of your precious time. I'd still be drinking water in the Matrix. Awesome. Well, thank you guys so much for coming on the show. Thank you. Really great conversation. Thank you to the team also for helping out with this. Very nice of you all. Thank you very much. And we'll link to all of your information down below in the description, by the way.

2:13:04Graham Stephan:I highly recommend check out the channel, subscribe, hit the like button, do all the things. Guys, we've had a blast. Thanks for having us along. Till next time. Till next time.

2:13:17Thank you.

2:13:48Graham Stephan:The audiobook's out now. Give it a listen.