#267 Rob Luna - 50-Year Mortgages, Government Band-Aids, AI Job Cuts and the Middle Class

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29:57Max$100 cash back per month. What about this child savings plan? What is that? That's a new thing. Yeah, so it's kids that are born this year. Basically, they're getting$1 ,000 of free money that you can put into a child savings account that that money grows tax free. And so look,$1 ,000 in and of itself is not a lot of money. However, if you get them invested in something like the S &P, and we did a little thing on this to where if even as a parent, you can contribute another$3 ,000 to$4 ,000 on this, by the time the kid's 25 years of age, they could have almost a million bucks in there. One of the secrets to investing is the earlier you start, the returns are usually the same over a long period of time.

30:41It's a smaller amount of money that you have to put in to compound into a very large amount of money. And so the magic of compounding works for you. So what do people want to do though? Complain, it's only a thousand bucks or it's only this or it's only that. Take it, put it away, invest because you know what? That's a thousand dollars more than most parents are putting away for their kids right now. if it is going to be a challenging economy and our kids are going to need a leg up to help them buy a home or help them educate themselves or start a business you might as well take this money now so i see any any look and this this is i hate socialism but and so people are socialism no it's our tax dollars that are going to this i'd rather have my tax dollars going to something that our kids could actually get a benefit from new parents their kids could actually get a benefit from than paying for all this other shit that we've been paying for years that we get absolutely zero benefit from.

31:35So I'm a, I'm a large proponent of it. So is this every child that's born? Every child that's born. Yeah. I don't know exactly what dates this year. It has to be this year, um, that they're born. So anyone that was kids were born in 2025, like my son does, it doesn't, it doesn't work for, uh, but yeah, you get a thousand dollars. It goes into a tax free account that you can invest in basically the equivalent of the S and P 500, which over a long period of time is returned about 10%. Could we open an account? So you would open this account. You know what I mean? Can you open the account and invest in it without being penalized for your kids?

32:08Yeah, no, it has to be used for certain things like education. You have to hold it for a certain period of time. But yeah, I mean, it's basically free money. Now, is there more that people should be doing for their kids? Yeah, we can talk about that, especially if you're a business owner. There's a lot more things. But as of right now, is it political, whatever? Yeah, but the way I look at it is it's$1 ,000 that we're paying in taxes that gets put to a much better use than what we're spending most of our money on. That's good. I mean, I feel like that's a good thing. Yeah, I don't see anything negative about it.

32:38All right, this is probably the biggest topic that we're going to talk about today. Artificial intelligence in the business world, in the job place. What is going to happen? I mean, we talk a lot about middle class being wiped out. AI is going to take a lot of jobs. AI is also going to be a force multiplier to type A players. I mean, what are we looking at? What are you seeing already? Yeah, well, that's the thing. It's not like what's going to happen. It's already happening, right? And it's not that AI is going to take most people's jobs. It's people that understand finance and strategy and scaling that are going to use AI to take the jobs for most people.

33:25So that's really what it is. It's not this thing of AI. It's how are you utilizing AI or not utilizing AI. And if you're not, you're going to be wiped out, right? It's kind of like the horse and buggy. You've got to upgrade. You've got to learn new skill sets. And you've got to be able to do that. And the problem is I think there's a lot of complacency that still doesn't believe in what's going to be happening with AI. And we've got this Baber boomer generation where they don't even want to learn how to use an iPad, let alone how to put AI into their world. And the problem is with society today is you have to be more innovative.

33:55You have to be more entrepreneurial. You know, I have entrepreneurs or people ask me, everyone asks me whether they want to start their own business or not. What is the skill set I need to learn? You have to learn to be an entrepreneur. Why? Because every entrepreneur, including you that I know, wants to hire entrepreneurial people, people that can come in, critically think, take a division, run it themselves, understand it themselves, work their ass off, do the things that they need to do. And do that. If you can do that using AI to leverage yourself to get the power of 10 people, you are going to be very, very successful.

34:27And so what everyone needs to start learning is how can they create, first of all, a valuable skill set? How can they connect with people? And how can they use AI to be able to multiply that? I use AI on a daily basis. My productivity personally versus what I always was 12, 18 months has gone up significantly, right? And so when you talk about this just practically, most of the time what I do is spend time with businesses like yours. Everybody, Sean, is saying, okay, what do I need to do for my business to be able to win, succeed, pivot today? How do I build a business? And really, it comes down to a couple things.

35:04It's first of all, you need a small team of all-stars, right? And I'm talking about billion-dollar businesses. And when I say small team, to put that in perspective, like eight to 10 people. To find eight to 10 really good people right now, no matter if you're Apple or if you're Sean Ryan, it's very, very difficult to find those people. So you got to find those people and put them in a position to succeed. Then you need all-star processes that they're following, that they're scalable. And then you need all-star technology to be able to develop and scale all that. And so what people are doing today is building flat organizations with really high-quality people, high-quality processes, and high-quality technology.

35:43And so the middle management is getting cut out. The average nine-to-fiver is getting cut out. Somebody who just shows up and dots the I and cross the T is getting cut out. And those people are becoming unemployed. And businesses are becoming better. They're faster. They're leaner. They're more profitable. And at the end of the day, as a capitalist, when I invest in a business, this isn't a socialistic endeavor. It's I want to invest in businesses that are good. They're solving a problem faster, better, cheaper, and they're doing it more efficiently. And that flows to the bottom line. And that's exactly what AI is doing.

36:14So you figure out like, well, how is that killing the middle class? Well, the middle class is not ready to adapt to that. And the biggest problem I have with that and why I worry about this country and all the debt is, you know, when you think about pensions, for example, you know, what my grandfather had, maybe our parents had working for General Electric or all these companies, Boeing, pensions are gone. There's no more pensions anymore. So when you retire, if you didn't put money away for yourself, if you don't have a skill set to maybe have to work longer because with AI people are actually living longer now, people are going to be in a lot of trouble.

36:50And so the debt that we have, the savings that people don't have, the lack of financial literacy, and if people are not understanding that AI is here, it's not going to happen, it's happening. I'm consulting, my firm's consulting every single day and one of the first things we look at is what are you guys doing? Who are doing that? Who's doing that? And we're getting rid of people, right? I mean, just being honest, Sean, we're getting rid of people that don't serve a purpose anymore and the people that serve a purpose have high specialization. They understand that it's not gonna be a nine to five anymore.

37:21They have to be critical thinkers. They have to pivot and adapt. They have to use technology to leverage what they're doing. They have to demand more. They have to have that entrepreneurial mindset to understand and know that this person is hiring me because they want to make more money. How do I become more efficient, more specialized, and become an asset, not a liability to the company? If you're a liability, AI is going to wipe you out. Wow. Wow. So what is going to happen? I mean, let me ask you this. Do you have a percentage of the workforce that you think will be wiped out? I don't. you know, I haven't done that work and I'm just not a guy that comes up with random numbers.

37:57I think it's a lot though. I think it's a lot of people because, you know, you talked about it before and you talked about like this analogy of your son walking up the hill. There's just a lot of average people. And this goes back to, you know, everyone gets a trophy, you know, this whole woke situation, right? Where I guess one of the things I do love about this administration, at least we don't hear about that shit anymore. Right. It's like people just don't want to work hard anymore. And it's every single service that you need, whether it's financial services, whether it's getting your dog's hair cut, whether it's getting someone to come out and fix your electricity, nobody answers the phone.

38:37Nobody wants to show up. Nobody wants to work hard anymore. And so I think, okay, if that's the median, then what are those people going to do? I don't know. because it's not just like retooling their skill set, it's retooling their mindset and understanding to be able to succeed. That shit's not gonna fly anymore because that's who you are. I can easily put an algorithm, a robot, a trophy. I'd rather deal, I'd rather walk into a Chase Bank today and deal with a kiosk than I would talking to one of these people who doesn't know shit, who doesn't wanna work, who doesn't wanna make a second call.

39:11They're just there as a cutout basically to deter me and nine out of 10 times, I'm going to have to leave and call a customer service number anyway. That's Southwest Airlines. That's everything these days. I'd rather just deal with a robot. That's me at 51. My daughter's never grown up without technology and an iPad. She's 18, getting ready to go to college. Think about that with the millennial generation, which is larger than the baby boomer generation. They want to deal with robots and technology. They don't want to deal with Joe Blow, who has no value and is wasting their time. I mean, what does it look like?

39:42I mean, what does that look like with the middle class wiped out? AI is going to, you know, if AI wipes that many jobs, I mean, obviously it means a lot of government assistance. Yeah. And that's great. That's great, right? No, that's horrible. What I'm saying is that's great. Entrepreneurs, like, cool, you got a bunch of A players, AI, you know, fucking jet launched, you know, a force multiplier for you. Business is going great. Cool. Who's going to buy your product? Yeah, exactly. And we're still - Because everybody's broke. Exactly. It's a real question. I mean, it's a question. No, and it's a great question.

40:18And the answer is, who's going to be able to afford your product is the people who can afford it, which is going to be a smaller subset. And so this is why I believe that I've spent time, you spend time out of this country in India. You've got ultra wealthy. I spent time there where I watched basically a castle, gates open up, Rolls Royce pull out of there, kids out there trying to squirt it and wash it, who live five feet away where they don't even have running water or sewage, right? That's kind of, I mean, that's maybe a little bit polarizing, but that could be close to what our country comes or how do you solve for that is through socialism.

40:52And see, that's why I'm really worried going, I hate to keep going back to this whole New York thing, but it's the canary in the coal mine, right? Because this narrative, and we've seen And the way he won, very smart, he went as far left as possible. And he stood there because what his message does is it resonates with those people who don't want to work, who aren't going to have jobs, who are going to be flushed out. And how are you going to solve that? Free handouts, free sales. And so that will continue to spread throughout the rest of this country. And socialism is what's going to kill the American dream.

41:27And you think about our deficit, how are we going to get out of that? We can't grow our way out of that. You need to have like eight, 10 % GDP. You know how we're going to get out of it? Higher taxes. Higher taxes will kill the American dream. We're already paying enough in taxes. But hey, tax the 1%. We don't care. You make$500 ,000 a year for some people. That's so far removed from what they're making. Tax those people. Tax those people. Tax those people. That will get passed and will become uncompetitive. And you won't be able to work or live here anymore. Or you just, you know, you become Europe.

41:58And that's what I'm afraid of.

42:03I mean, I hope there's something different, but what happens to those people? I mean, they've got to learn and adapt, but I don't think it's going to happen quick enough. It will happen eventually. New York will come back in 20, 30 years after it burns down, just like we saw in the 80s before Giuliani came down. Once it hits the bottom, it will rebuild. But how long does that take and at what cost?

42:26Do you have any good news for us, Rob? yeah i mean look i think like that's what i told you at the beginning we get a thousand dollars if we got a baby yeah hopefully that works um but like that's what i kind of told you at the beginning right i've never been more optimistic because i know i'm gonna win i know you're gonna win i know all my clients are gonna win and that's why every business sean that i'm dealing with today is they're going up market. How do I deliver services to people who could afford those services? Because even if it's a smaller percentage of people, it's a higher price point.

43:06And what do you need to do is you need to look at wealthy people. What's their most valuable asset is this time. So how do you find a problem that gives them time that you can solve that gives them their time back? They're willing to pay for that because that's their most valuable asset. So every single business I'm talking today is going more and more towards that, more and more towards leaner, flatter organizations, more and towards cutting middle management out, more and more being a fit. All these things for businesses are very, very highly profitable. Investing in the businesses. If you look at CapEx spending of all these big technology companies, where is all their spending that they're already telling the market about going?

43:38To AI, to robotics, to artificial intelligence, to increasing productivity, increasing profits at the cost of what? Their highest input cost, which is labor. So if you can get labor out, look at your P &L, look at my P &L. I've never seen a P &L where labor wasn't the highest cost. So if you can reduce that, and I believe, again, going back to the Chase example, not only, when I consult with businesses, it's not about how do we just get rid of people and get more profits? It's about how do we get rid of these mediocre people and create a better solution and service for your customers so what they're getting is actually better and faster and a better experience and at the same time you have higher profits that's a win-win and so it's not just like let me put this money in my pocket no it's like how do I reinvest that into technology and solutions to make it a better outcome so that I can compete at the highest level and that comes at the cost of these average people so I mean that's the truth Sean it's just going back to like you just got to figure it out and I'm just somebody, Sean, you know my background.

44:43I grew up super poor, like my, you know, food stamp type of poor, horrible. I had every excuse in the book to be a loser and fail and not win. My brother and I, same situation. He's in prison. I'm where I'm at today. It's mindset. It's realizing that nothing's fucking going to be handed to you. You got to work your ass off. The environment's always going to be changing. You have to pivot and adapt. You have to find out what the skills are that are valuable today. It's never comfortable. It's never going to be easy. You're never going to sit back and be able to pound your chest and win. You're always going to have to go out there and grind and add value.

45:16And that means I'm 51 years old today. I'm on my second business. I'm in a pretty good position financially. When you call me, do I answer the phone? Yeah. It's what you have to do. I don't care if it's Sunday, I'm shopping, whatever it is. You know why? That's your expectation. And it should be. That's just not America today. We need to get back to that. I don't know if that's going to happen. It has to. And it's not for everybody and probably not fast enough. And that's why when I look out into the future, when I look at the list, the laundry list of things that we need to do to save this country, I don't think people are going to get it and do it in enough time.

45:56When I look at the flip side of what we need to do to let New York expand and proliferate throughout the rest of the country, it's very easy. So we have to battle against that in everything that we do, how we raise our kids, how we vote, how we hire, what our expectations are as CEOs for the rest of our employees. We're investing our dollars in unless we make those decisions. And that's why, not to beat up on the 50-year mortgage, I hate Band-Aids. I'm tired of Band-Aids. I'm tired of, I mean, think about that last time we tried to do something for home ownership. On the other side of the aisle, Barney Frank and Nancy Pelosi, everybody should own a home.

46:32Liar loans. How did that work out? Collapsed. Everyone short sold their home. In their government and their infinite wisdom, what did they do? They gave them actual debt forgiveness. So before, if you short sold your home, that$100 ,000 or whatever, you had to pay taxes on this. I said, oh, no, let that go. You know who paid the bill? Me. Because you. Because my house sunk in value. And I stayed there and I continued to pay the mortgage. It took me six years to get out of that. What about PPP loans? All that shit during COVID. to worry. You know what? We just sucked it up and worked. I didn't take any of that money.

47:04I could have took a million dollars free from the government. They offered it to me. I didn't take it. Why? Because I didn't need it. But you know how many assholes took it and bought Lamborghinis and Ferraris and Rolex watches? True story. I could point to them. Some of them are in jail, but not enough of them. This is the shit and the moral hazard that we're creating with all these things that we need to get away from. But you know what? Soundbites sell. The way politicians run today people want easy fast they don't want to really fix the problem i don't think trump or anyone else not that they can't fix the problem it's what it's going to take to do that and be honest with the american public they're never going to say because it'll never get them vote voting in they're not that stupid sean they know what it takes i'm not smarter than them but i can get it fixed but you know what no one would ever vote for me yeah yeah i mean it's just We could talk about that with the economy.

48:00We could talk about that with the energy grid. Exactly. Yeah. Talked about a lot of things. Yeah. But they just, transportation. Yeah. The roads, you know. Yeah, to your point, I mean, I know finance, and that's kind of the lane that I stay in. But money's pretty important, right? But when you think about the military and all, like, your expertise and experience, you see the same shit there. This whole mentality proliferates through everything. And yeah, not just that, but again, going back to New York, the NYPD, like when I grew up, when I went to New York, you know, I was born in New Jersey, and I didn't move to LA until I was nine.

48:40Like the NYPD, wow, that's something you really wanted to be. You felt safe when the NYPD was there. After 9-11, NYPD, fire department, you go there today, and it's like, crap, no one wants that job anymore. You're looking at like, I feel like I'm going to have to go save these people if anything goes down. These aren't the people that I can protect. And you talk to them, they can't recruit anybody anymore. Nobody wants to do that. So this whole mindset, this softness, this weakening of America, not wanting to take our medicine, which I think tariffs are. And I think other things that we need to do to take a step back in order to take three steps forward, it's just very hard to get those things done.

49:21And it frustrates me, Sean, because I look at every single thing that happens, the PPP loans, the short sailing, all these things that we do to reward mediocrity. And then what we want to do is we want to take the 1%. And the 1 % isn't billionaires, guys. They always point to these billionaire assholes. The 1%, the people that are making$800 ,000,$900 ,000 million a year, trust me, guys, that's not ultra wealthy. That's not private. Those are people like me or you that grew up, busted our ass, that lived within our means, that had sacrifices. There's a reason I'm on my second marriage, Sean, because I wasn't there.

49:57I missed birthdays. I missed everything. I sacrificed to build a business that was able to put myself in a position. Do I regret any of it? No, because my daughter wouldn't have gotten to the schools that she's going to. That's just the shit it takes. If you want things in life, you have to give other things away. And I hate to keep going back to that, but it's every single thing. So when I say the American dream is dead, this is what I'm talking about. We got to fix the mentality. We got to start taking our medicine. We got to understand that it's not going to just be a magic pill that we're going to be able to take and everything's going to be okay.

50:32But that's what politicians, that's what gets people voted in. That's why most people vote off 30 second news clip. Like you can't even, no one even wants to watch more than 60 second reel anymore, right? It's amazing how well you're doing with this long form content that people actually watch the whole show. I can't even get people to pay attention for 60 seconds anymore. Rob, I want to be wealthy. I want to, cool. I could teach you how to do it. I just can't do it in three minutes. They don't want to spend the time. Yeah.

51:03Man. How about the national debt? We're approaching 40 trillion. Trillion. Yeah. What is that? I mean, we keep talking about this. What are the actual implications? Who do we owe the money to? Yeah, well, to bondholders, right? Some of them to China and other countries. And internally, we hold that debt. So yeah, it's a lot of debt that we have. The big problem about it also is the vast majority of it is short-term financing, which is another thing. When we had near zero interest rates, I don't know why we just didn't look to refinance all our debt at longer-term zero interest rates, because now as interest rates tick up, the debt that we're having to pay is much higher.

51:42So now we're paying over a trillion dollars in just the debt service, which is more than we spend on defense just to service that debt. We're still with this administration running annually near a$2 trillion deficit that we're just adding on to that. So when then you start thinking to the point I was making before, like, well, how the hell do we get out of this? We can't grow our way out of it. Like you have to do eight to 10 % GDP. We're at like 2 % GDP. And we're already adding to that. The only way that you get out of it is you start cutting entitlements like Social Security and all those things.

52:14You start raising taxes. You start doing all the things that we don't want to happen. So Social Security is pretty much almost bankrupt, right? So all of this, so the implications are is that social systems will fail. Taxes will have to go up. The U.S. debt could be downgraded again, which means we'd have to pay even higher interest in that. The US dollar is the reserve currency right now. Does it stay that way forever? Well, not necessarily if people lose faith in what's going on there. It's just like an individual, right? You can keep racking up debt and living beyond your means as long as you can finance that and put that, you know, people are, you know, credit card debt, I think is an even bigger issue.

52:53We've got$1.3 trillion in credit card debt that the average American has right now. They're paying 24 % interest on, not four or 5%, 24 % interest. How are they going to get at that? By the way, that's an all-time high. And by the way, we've had the highest delinquency rate we've had since the Great Recession in 2009. By the way, just the last 24 months, that delinquency rate has doubled. There's real problems out there, Sean. And these are the same people that are racking up credit cards to get by, to have their experiences or whatever they're spending that money on right now, they're probably the same people that are not going to have jobs.

53:28And so what I'm thinking is, you're not going to hear this. The people that are not paying their credit cards are probably the people, the companies that I'm working for that are getting fired, that don't have jobs because they don't have value to add to an organization. So this gets worse. Shit. And I'm an optimistic person. Sounds like it. You know, I know I am. I am. I'm just, but what I'm not optimistic about is the largest part of the US, which is the middle class, adjusting and adapting and doing what it takes for them to be able to win. So it's just a smaller subset of people that will win, but they'll win bigger than ever before.

54:02So you got to, as an American, you got to choose which one do you want to be, which one do your kids want to be? Well, I mean, the thing that I don't, the thing that's just not computing for me is if we lose the consumers, then there's nobody to buy the product. Yeah. Well, look, I mean, if you're selling cheap product, if you're Procter & Gamble and you're selling toilet paper and people are still going to find a way to do those things, right? But it's kind of like the middle. Those middle levels of services to the middle class are the things that are going to be wiped out. If you're selling, you know what, Ferrari's still doing good and Rolex watches are doing good and our firm's like having mega years.

54:37Like we're doing way more in our first year of business than I did in the first 10 years of business in my firm before. Why? We're dealing with successful like-minded people like you who are going to just make shit happen. And so that's who we're selling to. If I was creating a business right now for the middle class, I wouldn't be creating a business right now for the middle class, not what I'm looking to do. If you were creating a business, what sectors would you be looking at? I would be looking at sectors, again, that are solving problems for people who don't have a lot of time. And by solving that problem for them, we're willing to pay for that.

55:12And that can be just about anything from financial services to, like, I talked about it before when I was saying, when I say anything, it's from personal experience, getting someone to come and groom your dog. These people are booked out four, five, six months to be able to do that. We don't groom our own dogs. It's not cheap. Every time they come, the dog's like 250, 300 bucks to get groomed. There's clearly, just in our neighborhood, a demand for these services. There's no supply. So there's a problem. We don't have the time to cut our dogs ourselves There's no one who wants to show up and do it.

55:48Why not do that? Why not go out there learn how to do it? Be the person who does it yourself then hire somebody else to get the second Van out there going and the third it's almost anything pick anything sean But it goes back to are you willing to do what an electrician plumber? Like you can become a i've worked with multi multi millionaires close to billionaires in everything plumbing landscaping, pest control. All these are services that people with money are willing to pay for. And if you understand how to build, scale a company, use technology to motivate that, you can really go out there and win today.

56:24So I'm not going to say like the big thing is be an AI consultant. Yeah, maybe, whatever. But just do anything on scale and show up. That's really what you need to do today. You know, we're talking about all the, just going back a little bit, I was just thinking about things. And we're talking about unmotivated, average folks. Yeah. But, I mean, you... That's a choice. Of course. You know, and so, I mean, for business owners, you know, how do they motivate their staff? Can you, because that's another, we're sitting here talking and we're, you know, we're attacking, you know, a large percentage of the workforce.

57:13Yeah. But, I mean, how can you incentivize them and turn them into a motivated employee, motivated team member? How do you do that? Yeah. Well, I think, first of all, I'm not somebody who needs to be motivated. Well, I'll tell you what I'm getting at is back to Valtrion. So been a bit of a crisis here, and we worked together, and I needed to know how to incentivize my people here. Yeah. And the vast majority of them, there's not very many of us. I mean, pretty much everybody here is a fucking killer. Yeah. And otherwise, they wouldn't be here. Right. Right. But, you know, when, when, when, when I hired you and your team to come in and do an assessment and do some consulting and stuff.

58:09And, and, you know, one of my big things was how, how can I incentivize these guys? And you put that structure in place, you put that incentives instead of incentive bonus structure in place. and you know end of the year now approaching the beginning of the year and we always do end of the year reviews and you know when i tell them about the new bonus structure you see their eyes light up immediately yeah and they're like oh shit and it's already fucking working it's already working i mean one guy phenomenal editor fucking phenomenal editor and you know told him i need him hey you know here's a new structure i'd like you to get to know cameras you need to learn how to run a camera a little bit better guess what two fucking days later i come down here he's working on fucking cameras immediately and so that it works and so i you know i think that it i guess what i'm trying to say is you know there is also ways yeah for business owners to not just go oh you know you're fucking lazy oh you're not working right you're not doing this good point you can you can incentivize them and you prove that to me you know uh through your company and and and it's been i mean i just started those this week yeah yeah rolling it out yeah and they're not even finished yet and they're already fucking pumped i can see the fire but but yeah so let's talk about that and let's and let's share with the audience what it is because i think there's either there's a lot of entrepreneurs that listen to you and a lot of people that want to become entrepreneurs.

59:41But I think more importantly, Sean, most of the people that I've worked with over my career that have become very, very wealthy were actually entrepreneurs. They were people who work within a larger organization, but they were really on. The best people I know that have made a lot of money inside of other organizations, small, mid and large, could have themselves been entrepreneurs, but they had a better opportunity to go in somewhere else where there was a team in place that could allow them to leverage their skillset. And for most of them, that was a smart decision. I always say I started my own firm primarily because the person I was working for before kept that carrot of, hey, you're going to get this or get that.

1:00:19And then it was always like, sorry, can't get that. No bonus. No that. It was just finally, it was just like, I'm never going to be able to grow here. So no one ever gave me the opportunity to have my work rewarded. So I went out and started my own thing. For most people, they don't have to do that. And so when you talk about this, first of all, going back to how you build businesses today, small team of all-stars, all-star processes, all-star technology, part of the all-star processes is how do you reward and compensate those individuals? and a lot of entrepreneurs, it's like, especially the first few years, like you, it's like, head down, let me just work.

1:00:56When I did your show, I was episode 42 the first time. Like, I was so shocked when I showed up. And you're like, come over here, take a picture, Rob. I'm looking for the, like, where's the camera crew? There's no camera crew. Like, everything. Oh yeah, it was just me and you back there. It was just me and you, dude. And now it's like this. Like, dude, there was nobody else. But like, that's kind of what it takes, right? When you start, same thing, when I started my previous, not this firm, I'm a little further along now. The first firm I started, dude, was just me. I was the guy who traded the stocks and did the business development and mailed the applications and all those things, right?

1:01:27And so here's the thing, though. You can do a lot of things to go from zero to a million bucks. It's just work your ass off seven days a week. But to go from a million to five million to 10 million to 100 million, which is what everybody wants to do, especially if it doesn't take any more work, especially if it could be less work, if it's just done within a strategy, like this whole world's word scale. Everyone says scale, scale, scale, scale. I went back and did an MBA at 38 because I didn't know what the fuck scale meant, right? And I'm not advocating that for everyone, but I needed to understand what that was.

1:01:57And then what I understood was it's like, oh, it's just processes and it's just transparency and it's just alignment and it's just actually really simple. And wow, if I do this, it's actually easier to run my business this way, but it took me 20 years to get that knowledge and information. And so for most entrepreneurs, they're just head down buried in the sand. And then what happens though is you hit that proverbial glass ceiling and you can't grow. And then you're like, man, is this a business or did I just buy myself a job, right? And that's ultimately what it becomes. And the problem there is you can't increase cash flow because you can't scale.

1:02:29You don't grow any enterprise value. So your business isn't worth anything. And then what it is, it's like, okay, now I've sacrificed missing out on my kid's life. I'm constantly fighting with my wife. I'm in constant stress. And all these things that being an entrepreneur, it's like, is it really worth it? It's not unless you can get past that hurdle. And so that's kind of what I do is like, I just take what I learned, right? And then I come in with your team. And back to your question, how do you incentivize average people? You don't. You don't. You fire average people. You hire exceptional people.

1:03:00And what I found interviewing your team, these are exceptional people. These are great people. But now the idea is, okay, if you're a business owner, the hardest thing is to attract talent. And because a lot of your success, it's brought the best people to you. The second hardest thing to do is to be able to develop talent. And the third hardest thing to do is be able to maintain talent, right? Because you got to get them to come in. No matter who or what business you are, you still have to develop them to understand what is your culture and how do you get there. And then once they do that, Sean, is the grass greener on the other side?

1:03:34And this is every business. Do I go and leave? How do you get them to stay? because now you've invested tons of money and time on them. Do you want to train people to go out to a competitor and be there? No. And so I always tell entrepreneurs when you hire, we put these all-star processes and we hire these all-star people, we have to incentivize them to be here for a long, long period of time because your ROI is not going to be in the first year or two years. You're actually losing money. So you got to keep time on them. You got to spend money on them. And the last thing you can do, the most expensive thing for an entrepreneur, the most costly mistake is hiring wrong.

1:04:11So it goes back to, we've worked on your hiring process, setting job descriptions that are right, bringing the right people in. And then when they come in though, a lot of times people are like, oh, this person sucks. No, you suck because you didn't have clear expectations. You didn't have clear processes. They didn't know what the hell they were doing and their compensation and their incentives weren't in alignment with the goal that you were trying to achieve. So what we do with you, and this is what every entrepreneur can do, is we figured out first and foremost, where are we trying to go? So what is our revenue we're trying to get?

1:04:41What are our margins? Who's our target customer? And then we figure out that, what are all the activities we need to do to make that happen? And who are the people that do the activities to make those things happening from answering the phone, in your case, editing, all those things. They are the people within your organization that play a role. So then the question I always ask people is, okay, here's what you want them to do. How are you compensating them. And what I find out is the compensation is almost never in line with the incentive. And then they wonder why are they not doing the activities they want because they're not rewarded for doing that.

1:05:14So what you have to first do is figure out the strategy, figure out what you want from that person. And then you need to structure compensation and bonuses and incentives for them to be able to do that. And there's two components I use with every business, including our own. First of all, KPIs. We've been talking about this key performance indicators, like what are the activities that you need this individual, individuals, and they're usually different to be able to do to get you towards that goal because everyone's playing in a role to getting there and they should know what their role is and what that ultimate goal is.

1:05:42So that's one thing. And that's an individual. So your individual should be reported or rewarded based off of his or her own contribution. So if you got someone who's crushing it, they're doing their part, but Joe's asleep at the wheel and sucks and he's got family problems, isn't showing up, doesn't want to work. Should they be penalized because of that? No. So you might not ultimately hit your revenue goals, but Joe shouldn't be penalized because everybody else sucked. He should be rewarded. So that's number one is make sure individuals are rewarded for their contribution. And number two, what I always like to do is incentivize the group as a whole for hitting those big top line goals.

1:06:21Because every business, your business, my business, every business I work with, it's not altruism. We need to hit a top line and we need a bottom line to be able to pay and do things and give you raise increases and buy more products and have a better, create better products, all those things. So what we then do is have a bonus for everybody. Hey, if we hit these guys, goals, guys, we all get more money, right? We all get more incentive. And then if we crush it, like I'd like to reward for overachieving, right? Stretch goals. If we crush it even more, more money. So what I always tell people is you have to remember once you educate them, get them straight, they have a couple of options.

1:06:56They can go work for a competitor. They can do it themselves. What are you creating? What type of environment culture, which I think you do better than anybody else here, are you creating to maintain that talent? And what type of incentive compensation do they have? And what I was always able to do in wealth management and kind of start with my own background is I was able to create a situation to where it's like, why would I go out and start my own business at 10 or 15 % margins when I know right now I'm making 20 or 30 % margins, have the headache and the hassle and leave this great team that I know makes me better because being on my own as an individual, probably not going to be able to compete.

1:07:31But these guys were playing, especially that's what's so good about you right now and why you're at where you're at is your expectations are super high, super high. Everyone, anyone that's ever achieved anything good that I work with, I work with some of the best athletes in the world, best entrepreneurs, best entrepreneurs in the world. You don't need to motivate them. You don't need to, they are harder on themselves than they will ever be on you. You will ever be on them, right? So your team is already there. This culture is phenomenal. You're the number one pot. Like everybody wants to be here, which creates that competition also.

1:08:07But what I can say about you also and every client that I personally work with is you want them to win. You want them to buy that next house. You want them to be incentivized. Every time I talk to you, it's like, I have to stop you sometimes. Like, how do we get them to make more? It's like, okay, Sean, and this is everybody. This is like, I won't work with them if they're not like that, because if you want to succeed as an entrepreneur, you have to get joy from watching your team win. And when I see you with your team, nobody cares more about their team winning than you do. So when you think about all these things, Sean, it comes back to what I said, hire all-star people, put all-star processes in place.

1:08:45Most people don't know how to do that. Fine. Get yourself educated and find how to do that. Give them the all-star technology to be able to replicate themselves because you're not going to be able to find a thousand of them. You don't need a thousand of them anymore. That's the great thing about AI. Our firm we're building today, when we first started three years ago planning for this, like we're numbers people. So year two, we're going to hire this many people and three, we're gonna like we're at today like we're like we've cut like 70 percent of the hiring that we thought 70 percent 70 percent why because there's just roles that are being eliminated and these and but you know what the type of people we're hiring is different most of those people like mediocre average people we're like no no let's just hire the best and give them the best technology and let's 10x their own individual productivity versus having a bunch of mediocre people just sucking the air out of the room.

1:09:35I hope that answers the question. I'm pretty long-winded. I'm sorry sometimes. No, that's perfect. That's perfect. But thank you. Let's take a quick break and when we come back, I want to ask you why the hell gold's at$4 ,200 an ounce. All right. I used to hate shaving. Every razor I bought dulled fast, irritated my neck, and somehow I was paying like 30 bucks for refills. It's a total scam. And that's why I switched to Harry's Plus. And the first time I shaved with it, I immediately noticed the difference. Smoother, no tugging, way more control. The handle is solid metal. Harry's heaviest ever, and it just feels better in your hand.

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1:12:43know we got a patreon account it's a subscription account and um you know they're the reason that i get to sit down here with you today so we offer them the opportunity to ask every single guest a question this is from steve lanthier if 50 years old the company i work for is closing with eight months severance with eight months severance pay and a little over a hundred thousand dollars in this 401k how can i set myself up to retire and cover expenses till i can draw my military yeah let me look um so most people know if you've got a hundred grand people want to know what does that mean in terms of income it's usually about five to six percent that's only going to provide them about five to six thousand dollars in income so more than likely not going to be enough hopefully social security and military when that kicks in will will help them get there.

1:13:35But look, I mean, it's just one of these things where he's going to get up eight months severance. I think at 50 years of age, hopefully we talked about it before, he's got a skillset that's viable today. He's just going to have to work more. I mean, at 50 years old, I think no one's going to be retiring at 50 anymore. He's just going to have to figure away how he's going to work. Because with 100 grand and eight months severance, I'd love to give him a magic pill, but it's not. He's just going to have to find another company to slip into or look to start his own thing if he thinks he has a skill set to be able to do that yeah yeah well thank you yeah thank you all right gold why is it at forty two hundred dollars an ounce what's silver is it is it at 60 yeah yeah yeah yeah well i mean i think the thing about silver and gold is silver typically follows some increment of what gold does so silver is done just that this year however it's done even better why because of the industrial use of silver and everything ai that's going on right now so you've got this whole concern about okay is there going to be inflation because the fed's probably going to have to cut interest rates again because of all the things that we talked about and all the debt that is piling up we didn't even you know we talked about the national deficit but real estate debt over a trillion dollars that needs to be financed next year so there's a lot of worry out there right now and i think when you have that type of worry um you'll have people talk about bitcoin being a hedge and maybe we'll talk about that i think it's not gold over 5000 years especially over the last hundred years has proven especially during inflationary periods to be a very good hedge uh and so i think you've got gold doing what it typically does during this period of time of uncertainty it's doing pretty well and i think silver is just following man i started buying gold in 2020 because uh you know yeah i started buying a lot of different yeah 2020 today yeah toilet paper yeah but uh but uh i mean i i think when i started buying gold it was 1200 an ounce yeah yeah yeah five years later it's 4200 an ounce no it's done silver was i think 22 23 maybe an ounce yeah now it's 60 something an ounce yeah gold gold is one of those assets i think over when you're everyone should be putting together a diversified portfolio right you know, when all your eggs in one basket, that's pretty, pretty common saying, but it's true.

1:15:55The question is, how do you diversify those eggs? And so when you think about gold as an asset class, I think everybody should have between about five to 10 % of their overall portfolio in gold. So if you've got a hundred thousand bucks total, five to 10 ,000 of that would be in gold. I prefer using actual gold bars, coins versus like the GLD ETF that you can access. And maybe that's second best, or if you've only got a 401k and you have GLD in there, that might be the way. Same thing, SLV is an ETF. I'd rather hold the silver because it's just more of a hedge. The challenge is that it's a little bit harder to get in and out of gold and silver.

1:16:36There's very few places that do it. There are some good ones out there. But look, I think long-term, it's a hedge. If you're so inclined to be able to time it a little bit around inflationary periods when you think those are going to be happening, it tends to do a little bit better versus as deflationary periods. But arguably, with what we're getting into, which I think the Fed will have to cut interest rates a lot more aggressively than they're telegraphing, a lot more aggressively than even the market thinks, I think that is a really good backdrop for precious metals to continue to do well. So it should be part of every portfolio, in my opinion.

1:17:08Why has it gone up so long? I mean, it didn't do this before, did it? Yeah. I mean, there's been periods. I mean, it's always held up well during uncertainty, 2008, 2009, during the dot-com crash, during COVID, gold has held up exceptionally well. So that's the thing I love about gold too. Like I said, it's been around 5 ,000 years, but you just look at the last 100 years, there's a track record. Unlike cryptocurrency, like we've only got 15 years of crypto. When you think about data sets, and I'm very big on data, 15 years is nothing. You can't make any determination. But gold has been very, very reliable over that period of time.

1:17:43And I just think with tariffs, all the uncertainty that's going on. All the things that crypto was supposed to do and hold up well during, which it hasn't, I think 2025, pretty much everything's down, right? Bitcoin's down significantly during that period of time. Gold has done what it should be doing. And so I think during of all the alternative asset classes to stocks and bonds and real estate, I do like precious metals. And I don't have enough. I wish I would have bought more. Should people be buying it now or is it going to come back down? I think, look, it's very hard to time any market. And so one of the things about investing in general, the shorter your time horizon is, the harder it is.

1:18:25The longer it is, the easier it is. Think about the S &P, the largest 500 companies. Over any 10-year period, it does well. Over a longer period of time, it's always done 10%. But it comes like this. If you needed to know what is the S &P going to do in the next 12 to 18 months, I have no idea. So if what you're investing for, those needs need to be liquid in 12 to 18 months, I wouldn't touch the S &P 500. Longer period of time, five, 10 years, absolutely. Same thing with gold. If you're trying to time it over the next, if you need to take this money out of gold and buy a house in 12 months, I would say don't touch it, especially after a big run.

1:19:00It should pull back. Nothing, trees don't grow to the sky. It should pull back. I wouldn't be going all in on it now. If you have no position, maybe buy a little bit right now. I would look for a little bit of a pullback, which I think could happen. Um, but I think longer term, again, five to 10%, if you've got more than that, also the thing about gold is it doesn't pay a dividend. The only way you make money on gold is you buy low, sell high. So someone like yourself, if now you've seen that it was 10%, but it's become 30 % of your portfolio, the corollary is it might be time to take a little bit off the table of that.

1:19:31But if you don't have any, it might be a time to start a small position and try to look for some pullbacks. Okay. Okay. What about crypto? I mean, I've had a lot of crypto guys on here. Yeah, yeah. You despise crypto. Despise is a relatively strong word. Okay. You're not a fan of it. I don't own any. I have owned. None? Zero now. I closed the last of my cryptocurrency out, which was not a lot, about six months ago. I sold all my Bitcoin a year ago. The crypto bros are not going to be happy with you. Anytime I told you before, if I talk about penny stocks that I don't like, or I talk about not liking crypto, like the cult comes after me.

1:20:14They want they you don't know shit about crypto or neither do you. So and that's the one thing. Look, about cryptocurrency, Sean, my view, only it is, is my view. What I believe is. There is no way. And I've asked multiple people in terms of the technology of it and blockchain. And even if you talk about really, really smart people and some of the vulnerabilities and potentially with blockchain and crypto, with supercomputing coming out that everyone's closing their eyes to. But just say the technology and all those things are solid. As a substitute, which still people say it could be a substitute to the dollar, never going to happen.

1:20:51There's not enough liquidity. It's way too volatile for that to happen. There's still a lot of problems with nefarious types of things being done through cryptocurrency. So governments are finding very hard to regulate. How do you value cryptocurrency? The truth is it's only worth what someone's willing to pay for it. You can say the same thing for the dollar, kind of true. But if you look at the usage of the dollar, if you look at the reserve currency status of the dollar, if you look at trading in currencies, the dollar has actually increased over the last 10 years. So as bad as we talk about the dollar, it still continues to be the gold standard, if you will.

1:21:25Cryptocurrency, again, the big problem I have with it is how do you value it? What's the intrinsic value? I can do that with gold, even with silver, because there's a use case for it. There's no utility for cryptocurrency. So now, can that change in the future? Can this be adapted by more people? Potentially. But in terms of, again, who I work with myself, we build multi-asset class portfolios, gold and real estate and private equity and stocks and all those things. And so what would be the reason to put cryptocurrency in there? Now, if you maybe had a small idiot bet, you're like, I just don't want to be proven wrong.

1:22:04I want to have two to 3%. And this is why I bought it before, right? Two to 3%. Yeah, maybe. But the truth is like the people that got in in 2008, 2009, like that run, like that's done. That's not going to happen. Right. And so everyone's saying, oh, you still got to be in crypto because Bitcoin might go to 150 ,000. All right. So you don't know how to value this. There's a tremendous amount of risk in it. I can't touch it. I can't feel it. It might go to 150, but I've got multiple AI small cap stocks that are up over 300 % this year while you sat in an asset class that lost 18%. So like, I don't see it's like not a great speculation.

1:22:42It hasn't worked out super well. I can't really use it. And then the one thing I just want to talk about is I think, you know, the crypto bros or whatever you want to call them, they always come back. All of a sudden, the guys who are investing in this stuff because they hate the industry and they don't want to bank. They're now using Bank of America as offering it to their clients, Rob. Are you smarter than Bank of America? Yeah, I am. You remember Bank of America in 2008 was essentially bankrupt because they also backed SunPribe Mortgage and me and you had to bail them out with our tax dollars.

1:23:15Now they're all of a sudden the authority on risk management and how to allocate assets. And oh, yeah, but what about them, the biggest ETF company in the world, BlackRock, now offers Bitcoin. They would offer a turd if they could put in an ETF and put a fee around it. And that's what they're doing. They're collecting a fee and it's very, very profitable. And the biggest problem I have with cryptocurrency is that when these big organizations validate it and they make it available to more people to put in portfolios and other things, it then could create a systemic risk, just like subprime housing did.

1:23:45And so people who didn't get in in 2008 and make all this money are just sitting in it now and bought the Bitcoin ETF and are actually negative. Now, if this gets infiltrated and over levered inside of other organizations, does it become a systemic risk where that's the next bailout to now we have to worry about cryptocurrency because there's some systemic risk to it? Again, I'm not in it, but am I going to have to pay the tax bill for it at some point if it continues to spread? Probably. That's just kind of the path that we've been on with all these things. Jeez. Jeez. Can't wait to see the comments.

1:24:16I'm an idiot, dummy, don't know anything. I'm missing out. Boomer. Are you tracking bricks at all? Brazil, Russia, India, China, the currencies that are going on there. Yeah, I do. And it kind of, again, it goes back to if you look at the dollar, its reserve status, how much is traded. Yes. Some of those currencies have gone up. They have great and greater depreciation. The one that's done the worst is the euro. Like money's just flowing out of the euro. And I think we kind of all know why there. Why? Because of socialism. because of unrest that's going on there. And like the government's continually, like socialism destroys countries.

1:24:53It really does. And that's the reason, right? When you look at voters, and I'm half Cuban, and you look at Miami, right? These are immigrants that came here. Most of them vote Republican. Why? Because they know the problems with socialism, right? They know what it does to countries. You look at Argentina, you look at going back to places like Russia in 1998, going back to systemic risks and smart people knowing what to do. Nobel Prize laureates started a hedge fund of trading currencies in 1998 called Long-Term Capital Management. They didn't think Russia's currency can go to zero. When it did, collapsed.

1:25:29The rich people, yeah, maybe they lost some money. But then our government again had to come in, backstop banks that were doing this. And taxpayers once again had to be able to do it. So, you know, what I would say is the dollar as of right now, from what I could see, is still a very safe place to be. I just talked about all the deficit and the long-term sustainability and all these things. And I think it is a house of cards. The big question that you and I always have to answer, and especially because every, I've been on TV 17, 18 years. I have to go out there and make an opinion. When I made those opinions, though, my clients are like, is that consistent with the things that you're doing for us?

1:26:07So there was always hundreds of millions of dollars that had to be accessed and put to work through my opinions. I don't have the luxury of 300 year bets because my clients don't live to 300, right? And so if I sit here and say, Bitcoin is great, guys, in the end of 2024, when I was on your show a year ago and say, hey, go all into Bitcoin. And you just lost 18 % this year, why small cap stocks skyrocketed, nuclear stocks skyrocketed, some of these, we talked about some of these psychedelic stocks skyrocketed. If we missed out on all of that, because I was so in on this one strategy, I would have gotten fired, right?

1:26:43And so what we have to do is be aware of the risks. And I started as a risk analyst. I always look at what could go wrong first, right? We have to be aware of the risks with bricks and all these different things. But the question is, in putting our money to work, are we willing to take a bet on that, that collapsing and those things? And I would say, as of right now, no, that's not where I want to put my money. I came in the market as a professional in 1998. And I was hearing the dollar is going to collapse, all valid arguments, right? Why this guy was pretty much 100 % in T-bills and he did have some gold, but very little in the stock market, very middle in private equity.

1:27:21And what happened during that period of time? S &P hit. The thing about the S &P, which is, I say S &P, it's the US. It's the largest barometer the US economy, the largest 500 companies here, 100 % of the time, every time there's been a dip, it's been a buying opportunity. Not 99, not 98. For 100 years, every time it's been a dip, it's been a buying opportunity. So if you just bought every time it declined, you're going to do well. So when you look at that, that's consistent. Gold, consistent over time. But when I look at something, and I've learned over 28 years of doing this, my opinion doesn't mean shit.

1:27:57All that matters is what is in front of us, what are the risks, what are the opportunities, and what does the market as a whole believe? And that was why am I out of crypto? Well, I understood why it went to where it was. I understand why was it there. But then what I also talked to you about is last year, I said, okay, if you're going to be in crypto, have a small amount. Why? Because I believe this administration is so crypto friendly and the narrative that they've been putting around crypto and the investments that they have in it. If anybody can get this to run and get enthusiasm around and that's what you need from an asset class is enthusiasm.

1:28:29It's going to be this. So then I looked at it like, if they can't get it to go, then what's the next? I'm always looking at what's the catalyst. And when you start running out of catalyst, then you start thinking of, am I going to just sit in something with the hope and praise strategy? Or am I going to go to something that has intrinsic value? It's discounted and there's going to be some catalyst where at least I'm putting myself on that side of the table. And that's kind of why I sold my crypto. Makes sense. Does make sense. What about real estate realist i feel like real estate market since 2020 has been really just really weird because yeah and i say that because before that it seemed that it was the country the country's doing good the real estate goes up the country's doing bad it goes down you know now i don't i mean i'm not terribly familiar with all the different markets but i mean you know we kind of mentioned it before i mean you know polymarket predicted a million people leaving new york after that election i mean california it's been an exodus of people coming out of there you know and i don't know if that's slowed down enough but it all but washington oregon i mean and and you you travel i travel yeah you know you can every everywhere i go they're complaining about the influx.

1:29:51And so I would think that there's markets in the US that are skyrocketing. I would think there's markets in the US that are plummeting. And I think that is the result of a very, very divided nation. Am I right? You're 100 % right. But essentially, that's how real estate has always been. It's always been market by market. Some of the same markets that you're talking about plummeting now for a long period of time did exceptionally better, exponentially better than Tennessee, for example. What would you rather have done 20 years ago, buy beachfront California property or Tennessee property? Well, maybe not now, but five years ago before COVID, you definitely would have rather had those beachfront properties.

1:30:41Now, I think especially after COVID, for a lot of reasons, all those things have changed. So I think the real estate market today, going back to your, you know, you were saying this before, is it's market by market. It's really dependent on where you're looking at. And just like I said, this is for any investment, what's the catalyst for it to go up? And so the catalyst for Tennessee or Texas or Florida real estate to go up is there is an exodus because the reason my wife and I left California wasn't just because of taxes, it played a role in it. But I stayed there a long period of time paying an exorbitant amount of taxes because the weather was nice, right?

1:31:20And I had the beach there. I lived one house off the bay. Like that's pretty nice. But when I couldn't wear a Rolex watch to the mall and I was worried about my daughter's safety, there's no climate out there that I'm willing to not feel safe in. So I moved out of there. So the catalyst for real estate here is that. So a lot of it, yeah, maybe it's political, but it's also economical. Because when you look at all these big companies moving out of California and Tesla going to Texas and Oracle now opening their health headquarters here in Nashville. So what does that mean? People are leaving, jobs are coming here.

1:31:58You don't have to be a rocket science or an investment analyst to understand, well, supply and demand, that's going to cause real estate prices to go up here. So back to your point, follow, like Gretzky said, skate to where the puck is going, not to where it's been. And so that's the funny thing, Sean, my wife and I talk about this all the time and you talked about it. So my wife came here from Kazakhstan when she was 19 years old. She's 38 now. She spent her whole life primarily in New York City for several years and then lived with me in Los Angeles. Like that's all she knew of the U.S. Not too much unlike me.

1:32:33If you would have ever asked her about living in Tennessee or anywhere in the South, she'd have been like, what the hell are you talking about? But now, and I don't want to shout too loud about this, is it's like, this is a luxury. Being careful. Yeah. To live here. And you hear about, I was just reading about a little town in North Carolina. It was just, I forgot where I even read it a couple of days ago, but small town, like 800 people, but the amount of billionaires that are moving there is like, it's huge. So people are starting like places like, and again, I don't want to mention towns. I don't want them here, but places like that are the new New York city and the new Los Angeles.

1:33:14It's just retraining your mind. And then like I told you the other day, we spent some time together and it's like, and I've been out of California for two years now. And it's just like, But surrounding yourself with people who have good values, right? And they're put God first. And when they look at you, they're not sizing you up to what do you own and what do you have? And they just want you to win and they want to win and they just want a good place to raise their kids. Like, that's a luxury. And I think that's worth overpaying for. And I know your question was about real estate, but I think there's certain places in this country that have become more and more desirable.

1:33:54And they're not the New York cities and they're not the Los Angeleses. They're the places where real people, real Americans who care about their families, who care about the dream and who put God first. I think those are the areas where the money's going to flow. You're saying values are coming back. I think so. And I think so. I know so. They are. Man, that's good to hear. But there's a war though. You go back to this division, it's a division on values. I mean, at the end of the day, Christian values, family values, traditional American values. There's people who are now speaking out and speaking up like you and me and don't really give a shit.

1:34:31But at the same time, Sean, I think like that's the opportunity. We always all want more money. But when you hit a certain amount of money, it's just like, okay, I don't have to be in fear of losing my job right now. And like, hey, maybe I'll make no more money, but it's more valuable for me to say how I feel, to say what I believe. Because I think at the end of the day, whatever we collect here is all bullshit. Our real reward comes after this life. And I want to be able to go up there and say, hey, I did everything that I believe was right. And when you're in places like we talked about in California, I think sometimes you can be the most ethical Christian person on there.

1:35:09But when you're constantly surrounded by shit. You turn into shit. You turn into shit. You do. So I try to get shit out of my life. Damn good job. What do you think about Ohio? I mean, Vivek's running there. I don't know. I haven't checked in a while, but the last time I did check, he had a pretty good lead. Yeah. And he's talking about taking the state tax-free, and Dural Headquarters is there now. I mean, he's done. It's a catalyst. it's a catalyst i think you've got more traditional values there you've had vivek on your show here before i think the things he's talked about conceptually right we only we can only vote what they talk about whether they go in there and they're able to execute or want to execute on that we don't know but conceptually like you said with anduro with vivek going there the prices are pretty low right now in terms of national standards that's what i'm talking about is it guaranteed you buy real estate in Ohio and make money?

1:36:07Of course not. But there's every catalyst for that to happen. So would I rather buy it there than New York or California? Of course I would. So that's the other thing. Everything we're talking about is a shift in mindset. And that's what I said earlier about New York real estate always comes back. It's not coming back this time. I believe that. And people, again, just like the crypto, you don't know anything about. Okay, we'll see. I hope I'm wrong. My son was born in New York. My wife lived there for a long time. My grandfather helped build that city. I loved the idea of New York, but it wasn't the buildings in Central Park.

1:36:43It was the people, the culture that built that and made that great. Now that they're gone, it's been replaced by a whole new immigrant that doesn't care about this country, that doesn't care about Christian values, that's tearing it down, that's out to get what they can and pilfer New York in this country, and then they'll leave once it's all gone. That's not going to allow real estate in New York to come back. So good, so good, so good. Spring styles are at Nordstrom Rack stores now, and they're up to 60 % off. Stock up and save on Rag & Bone, Madewell, Vince, All Saints, and more of your favorites.

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1:37:57Visit samsclub.com slash yes and for details. yeah yeah there's no culture there there's no culture it's just just buildings sky like lights on sat on fifth avenue i don't know it's not enough for me and you said something earlier you know and i've been thinking this for a long time but you know there's this this you know well you get what you vote for and and you know i've been i've been guilty of this it's like oh you fucking voted for that you live in that yeah yeah yeah and you know now i don't feel like that and now i'm like this shit is way too close to home and it is spreading just like you're saying it's percolating it's getting bigger and i mean you see it here in certain parts of tennessee already yep unfortunately nashville yeah so in nashville yeah but um yeah people really gotta start paying attention and you can't you this is i mean everybody warned me about diving into politics now i get it it's all connected though man it's not just politics you're right you know i know maria bartroma she left cnbc years ago to fox and they criticized her like for making a political move and talking about politics and she's like you don't think politics drive the economy and the stock market, you think you can totally disassociate yourself from that?

1:39:25It's all connected. Politics is the way you feed your kids. It's how safe or not safe that you feel. Your healthcare, are those three things not important to you? But yet we make political decisions based off of 20, 30 second news clips. And like you said, the thing is, as I get older, I realize how much I don't know. And I start to realize that that it's the world is a lot more gray than it is black and white. And you have to be comfortable living with uncertainty. And whenever you vote for somebody, you're not going to get 100 % of what you think you're going to get, right? Whether they can't do that or they don't want to do that.

1:40:06So you have to make people going back to investing. Might not even get 1%. You might not even get 1 % of it, right? Yeah. So is that frustrating? Of course it is. So what do you do? You just crawl into a ball and leave? Like I love this country and I've been into a lot of other places and every single time i'm really happy to come back here no matter i mean i'll tell you what you do you fucking figure it out you figure to find another way just like we were talking about earlier you you quit putting all your faith in a fucking political prostitute yeah you make shit happen for yourself instead of thinking instead of fucking voting for a handout or voting for somebody to come save your ass that motherfucker isn't gonna save your ass you're gonna save your ass yeah you You got to find your way out.

1:40:48You got to find a new way. That fucking retard isn't going to do it for you. On either side, Sean. That's what I'm getting at. That's what I'm getting at. Yeah, on either side, right? And I think in a lot of that, even like I said, coming to Tennessee and you're part of that decision. I saw how you were living and I was like, it's just that, right? Like I said at the beginning, I don't need shit from the government. I don't want shit. I just need them to stay the F out of my life and let me create things for myself because I'm capable of doing that. Now, does everybody in America have that opportunity?

1:41:23No. If you're disabled, you're mentally ill, you're a veteran who's come back and you're destroyed because of the situation. I think we should help those people. But I think there's things in place that could be better to do that. But the vast majority of Americans are just getting soft and lazy and they don't want to take the hard medicine. and they don't want to work. And I've got a problem with that. And so when I came here, this is like the opportunity to where like I look at things like you have of farmland and plays like, hey, let me be responsible for my family. Let me surround myself with friends and family who are like-minded, who put God first.

1:42:01And at the end of the day, we might not be big enough, but we're going to put up a damn good fight if something happens. And I'm not relying on anyone to protect my family or feed my family. And I never will until I take my last breath. I will work. I will work to get better at everything I'm doing. I don't need shit. And I only surround myself with people that think that way. Yeah. You can still make it happen. Yeah. Yeah. Well, Rob, did we miss anything? Taxes? Well, you got to vote taxes. It's kind of like off the topic now. We could end it. Hit it. Is there anything? We got any good news? We getting some tax cuts?

1:42:40tax stuff. Should we hit that? Is it for everybody or just the top?

1:42:46Yeah. I mean, if you got money is where, well, here's the thing about taxes. If you don't make money, you don't pay taxes anyway. So who really gives a shit? That is a good point. Yeah. We have a progressive tax system, right? So the first 40, 50 grand, you don't pay any taxes on it anyway. Right. So if you're making money, right. And like, dude, my goal in being on this show, right. Which is a huge opportunity for me to be on here. Why? Because I'm fighting for the American dream. I'm fighting for Christian values. And what you've created is a platform for people, whatever their message is, is to get that out to a larger audience.

1:43:20And so we talk about how do we change things as you fucking speak up and you give people tools that are going to allow them to be the type of American and create this country that's going to get us the ability to compete. And so the tax system, look, you've got to use it. If you're making money, do you want to give more to the government or less than the government. So you have to be proactive. And so when you think about some of the tax incentives that have come back, you talked about real estate. So there's a couple of things with real estate. Number one, there's something that's called cost segmentation, bonus depreciation.

1:43:52So when you buy a piece of real estate, there's really three different components of what make investing in real estate good. There's income that you can get off of real estate. There's appreciation that you can get off of real estate over time, whether it's raw land or a single family or a commercial building. And there's also tax advantages of depreciation that you can get from real estate. So all in all, when you take 5 % from a piece of real estate versus 5 % from a government bond, real estate is better because you don't pay taxes on that full thing. So you're getting actually a higher yield.

1:44:25So two things now with the new administration that I will give them credit for, a lot of it may be self-serving because they own a lot of real estate. But you get bonus depreciation now reset back to 100%. So instead of having to, let's say, depreciate a building over 30 something years, right, there's a big percentage of that now that could be taken in year one. And so that'll dollar for dollar help lower your income. So it makes investing in real estate more attractive now. So if you're starting to make some money, you're going to be able to lower your tax basis. So you get to buy an asset, not pay as much to the government.

1:44:57That's one thing. What I also like about in terms of how do we create and incentivize people to do more, build the economy, there's something called opportunity zones, where if you go to disadvantaged areas, pretty much in any state where there's not a lot of economic growth out there, and you invest in qualified opportunity zone funds, which there's companies like Cantor Fitzgerald that are out there that put them together. I think Blackstone will probably create them next year. Now that this back because they can make some money off of it. If you want to do it yourself, you can set up your own LLC.

1:45:29If you buy in those areas and you invest money into those properties, two things that are really cool. You can roll capital gains into here. Meaning, let's say you bought a property 10 years ago for$100 ,000. Now it's worth a million in Tennessee. That's happened, right? You've got $900 ,000 in gains. You could pay taxes to the IRS on that if you want. Probably don't want to do that. Or you can roll it into this opportunity zone fund, kind of like a 1031 exchange, but you don't pay taxes on that money that you made that 900 grand. The other cool thing is when you put it into this fund, if you hold it for 10 years, now you've, let's say have a million dollars that goes into this opportunity zone fund that grows to$3 million.

1:46:10That$2 million, if you hold it for 10 years is tax-free. You never pay$1 on it. You put it into a fund or you buy real estate. So you're buying real estate, but it has to be structured a certain way. You can do it as an individual. We do it for clients. You set up an LLC that's structured to meet all the requirements. But for a lot of people, if it's a smaller amount or they don't want to deal with that, there's companies that structure those funds out there for you. So you can invest in alongside other institutions and still get that same benefit. The difference there is you don't have as much control over doing that.

1:46:42So this is something that's come back that was gone in 2022 that you're starting to see people now. So two things, if you're a real estate investor, again, to your question, should I invest in real estate? Now it's more attractive, especially if you do that than it was before in terms of investing in real estate. So is this, where are these zones? Is this Memphis, Detroit, Baltimore, St. Louis, Chicago? It's pretty much, yeah, it would be probably like Memphis, maybe in Tennessee, it would be areas of Los Angeles. There's zones that you can go. New York. Yeah, the whole Manhattan. But basically, you can go look it up, use chat to be able to kind of break down maps of these zones.

1:47:24You can go to some of these large sponsors. I don't even know if they have them open right now. But now that this has just been passed, I'm sure you'll see in 2026, all these big companies will be coming out with new opportunity funds. I mean, what do you think about that? When you're talking about New York and you're saying this isn't coming back. Yeah. You know, and I would, I mean, I guess I shouldn't make assumptions, but I am assuming that, you know, the majority of these places are in areas that probably aren't coming back. I mean, when you look at Detroit, St. Louis, these areas, I mean, manufacturing left, Ford's gone, McDonnell Douglas is gone, Boeing is gone.

1:48:02I mean, St. Louis is fucking destroyed. Exactly. There's going to be some areas that - There's no industry coming back. Yeah. Yeah. I think there's going to be some areas like even in Tennessee, and I don't have the map in front of me, where you've got all these values and everything that we're talking about. There just hasn't been a lot of economic growth there. So those could be opportunities in those areas to where it's like, hey, Williamson County is maybe a little bit more expensive, but let me move further south into some of these areas, which still have a lot of the same benefits. There just hasn't been as much economic growth or investment in those areas.

1:48:35Okay, so it's not necessarily. It's not just all the shitholes. Okay. There's a lot of that. It's not all the most dangerous cities in the country. Most likely to get killed opportunities. No, it's a lot of that. But again, back to doing your due diligence and doing the investment and hand-selecting it and making sure that there's a viable strategy and catalyst for this to work, you can look at that. But for everybody, the bonus depreciation of now being able to write off a lot of that, especially if you're having a good year, you're selling an asset, a business or something, you're selling some Apple stock that you bought 20 years ago, You could take some of that profit and put it into real estate and use that to offset some of that.

1:49:16Interesting. Now, there's caveats around all this stuff, so talk with your CPA and everything like that. But these are things that people need to be aware of. Another one I want to talk about. That's pretty cool. I like that. That's pretty cool. Yeah, I like that. I'd rather invest in these areas versus just give people more social programs, right? The other thing that's really, really cool that we've talked about is for small businesses, qualified small business stocks. I think it's section 1202. You can set up a C-corp today. So, hey, you're going to start a new business. I talked about, hey, I think there's huge opportunities in plumbing and HVAC and dog care and, you know, all these things, right?

1:49:52To get in there, work your ass off scale, under promise, over deliver. And you can build real businesses today. Well, the cool thing is, again, this is why knowledge is power. If you set that today up in the right structure, it has to be a C-corp, right? Again, talk to your CPA about it. You can set up this company. If you hold it for five years, so you set it up today, you put$10 ,000 to get it started. In five years, you build up this great landscaping business. You build up this great pest control business or this mobile dog grooming business or fencing business, whatever it is. You get offered by somebody.

1:50:32And I think there's going to be a lot of M &A, mergers and acquisitions, people buying businesses going on in the next five years. you build it up to a$15 million asset,$10 million asset,$5 million asset. Anything up to$15 million is tax-free. What? Tax-free. Wow. As long as it's structured that way, the first 15 million, there's some caveats around there, but it's not really that difficult. The main thing is before you start making money or you have some other entity set up, it has to be structured the right way from the beginning. You have to hold it for five years. Now, I think after two years, it's like 50 % tax-free.

1:51:06but at five years, 100 % of that is tax-free. And that's huge for small businesses, right? Versus giving 20 % of that to the government plus whatever your state is. So if you're in California, 34 % of that go to them. If you're in California even, you'd have to pay the California tax, but the federal on that is zero. You pay zero federal tax on that. So that's something a lot of people don't know. The other one that I just want to hit on is R &D credits have been restored back. Now, R &D credits a little bit more complex, But every business, your business, my business, all has research and development.

1:51:40We're trying to expand new products, especially with AI. We're trying to see how can we use AI to create new processes or procedures. And so there's some metrics that need to be established. So if you talk to your CPA, a qualified team, we're doing it. We have tons of work in R &D right now. Everything from the products you buy to the big thing for people we talked about is labor cost. the percentage of time that your people are spending on that, that can be associated towards this R &D credit. There's no limit on that. It's as much as you need to offset your taxes. If you're just starting up and you're not profitable, the only thing you could really do is offset payroll taxes.

1:52:19And there's a half a million dollar, I believe, exemption there. But what you'll see is a lot of what everyone's doing today, their time, what they're spending on does qualify for this. A lot of people don't know about it, don't talk about it. CPAs don't know how to do the work. What you will see is you will say, you talk about how are we going to save you some taxes? R &D credits are huge because they're credits. And the difference between, if you don't know, a tax deduction and a tax credit is a deduction. If you get a$100 ,000 deduction for buying real estate, okay, what you get to write off is your own tax bracket.

1:52:55So if you're a 30 % tax bracket, you don't get to write$100 ,000 off the taxes you owe. You get to write off$30 ,000 off the tax you owe. $100 ,000 R &D tax credit, it's$100 ,000 to offset income. So you get$100 ,000 of that. And there's companies we're working with right now when you start taking the percentage of people's salary and the things that they spend in new locations, there are hundreds of thousands of dollars of tax credits that are not available that and reset back that people should be looking to those R &D tax credits. So again, there's never been a better time. That's the one thing I would say with this administration too, the barrier to entry, the ability for M &A to happen, the taxes.

1:53:36Taxes aren't going any lower, guys. If anything, if you look at the deficit and all these things we're talking about, taxes are going higher. So you want to structure that. And then that's the tax work, but there's estate planning work that we've talked about that you can do trusts to maybe double that$15 ,000 exemption where your trust owns some and you own some. Now it's 30 million. But this is the idea, like I said before, Sean, of the people that are going to win are the all-stars, just like they always have. The all-stars in sports, the all-stars in business. And you want to be working with the A-list.

1:54:07Do you want to be working with Joe Schmo in the shop who doesn't have any resources and just telling you, just be grateful to pay your taxes because you made money this year? Or do you want to work with a team who kind of understands the code. Do you want to self-educate yourself to make sure that you're taking advantage of these things? Because the difference between people who are poor and people are wealthy isn't because they're doing anything that much different because they have knowledge, right? And that knowledge is power and it turns into dollars. So the tax code is there for everyone to access.

1:54:35It's up to you whether or not you know how to use it and if you want to use it. And again, if you're not making any money, don't worry about it. It's not going to help you. Don't listen to this. But if you're making some money, you probably want to pay less in taxes. man great interview thanks man lots of knowledge there thank you yeah it's interesting you said that because that's what my last guy told me this is the price of success congratulations yeah it's funny i said yeah wrong answer you're fucking fired yeah exactly yeah well but well rob seriously man thank you for all the knowledge and uh yeah What a really good discussion.

1:55:13I think this is a perfect way to kick off the year. And as always, man, I wish you the best of success. Good luck with Valtteri. Same to you. Thanks, man. Cheers. Thanks. Thanks.

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