Budgets Don't Work, Automation Makes You Rich | David Bach

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3:12sure to follow right now to stay up to date on the latest and greatest. Welcome, everyone to the School of Greatness podcast. We've got the inspirational David Bach in the house. I've heard your name for many years. You've written how many nine, ten New York time best selling books back to back to back. You've been on the New York time best seller list for 40, 50, 60 weeks. I don't know. It's something crazy. You've been on Oprah six times. Today's show 100 times. You've been on every other media outlet there is. So I've heard about you. I've seen your work. The automatic millionaires, something that a lot of people talk about in the money finance space. So you're here now and I'm here now in by the way, because I'm a fan of yours. So like it's a mutual love, Fester. Like I've watched all of this, by the way, it's as cool as you would imagine is. It's fun. So it's really neat to be here with you live in LA because like West Hollywood where this all happens is pretty, pretty special. And you're living Florence now in Italy. Right. Going to I'm going to leave after July 22nd and go live in Florence. I live for you.

4:13It's amazing. You got to come over really. I'm going to come and visit. I'm going to come visit. And you got this new book out. I mean, you've written a number of books. You've got a new book out called the Latte Factor. And why you don't have to be rich to live rich. Now we were just talking before this started and you were saying that there's, you've got some controversial things that you do with money that other influencers with thought leaders do differently. For example, you said that there's two things that everyone needs to be doing at a young age if you want to generate more wealth. Completely. Two things are investing in stocks and real estate, is that right? Yeah. It's a two primary escalators to wealth escalators where you can grow your your money, your investment, your money can work for you as opposed to sitting in the bank. Completely. It's like the game of monopoly. I was just literally explaining this to my kids yesterday. I said, you know, when you on the game of monopoly, you go past, go and you get a paycheck. And if you just go around the properties and you land on them, you pay rent. Right. And you can't win the game in up unless you buy one green home, then two green homes and three

5:18green homes and four, then a hotel, right? Like you have to be an owner in the game of monopoly. The ironic thing is that the game in upways is a great lesson for all of us for life. Yeah. You have to own assets that make you money while you sleep, that grow while you sleep. And the challenge for most of America is that the stuff is not taught in school. Like this little book, the latte factor, I wrote it as a parable to reach the 98% of people who will not normally read a financial book. They've got my other stack over here. But like most people won't ever read a financial book. So I thought if I write it as a story, you can read it less than 90 minutes. And I can teach you these life lessons, the importance of paying yourself first. Why you don't need a budget, like we'll talk about that a little bit, like for this budgeting, everybody says you need to budget and budgets totally don't work. People hate them. They hate them. They hate them. It's like dieting, right? Like you try to go on a budget and you're married, you will fight about those budgets. People go on them. It's totally frustrating. So do you believe in budgets or no? I don't. No. What I believe is you need to have a system that does require discipline,

6:20does not take time. See, this is the part that's different. The secret to everything I've taught, like you've got my other book here, the automatic millionaire, is it the real secret to building wealth? How ordinary people in this country have built real wealth is automation. They're saving money automatically. They're not thinking about it. They're not stressing about it. They're not stressing about it. They're not writing checks. They're not putting cash in little buckets and envelopes carrying these onwards and a thing and being like, okay, I've only got a little bit left. Look, my grandmother, when she started at 30, she had nothing and she used to literally save 50 cents a week and put it in a coffee camp. At the end of the year, she took that coffee camp down to a brokerage firm and started investing in stocks. That's what changed the entire destiny of my family. Was that my grandmother at 30 with no college education, working at Gimals department store in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, got tired of being poor? There's some people watching today that are there, right? They're watching this or they're listening to this and they're tired of being poor. My grandmother was frustrated and she came home to sit at my grandfather on her 30th birthday.

7:26Jack, this is not working. When you're the guy and you hear that, you're like, what do you mean? This isn't working. My grandfather said, what's not working? She said, we're broke. We don't have any money. To my grandmother's credit, she decided to do something about it. She literally brownbagged her lunch. Every day, she brownbagged her lunch so she could save that money and go invest. The way the story turns out, Lewis, is my grandmother without my first book, Smart Women Finish Rich was dedicated to her. She didn't become rich over night. She built wealth over her lifetime. I always say it's decades not days. People who try to get rich quick stay broke long. It's true. Show me those banner ads on how to get rich quick and I'll show you a way to stay poor forever. So my grandmother realized like you invest in great American companies and you just keep investing and you leave it and you leave it and you leave it and she helped me buy my first stock at age seven in McDonald's. Wow. And that was seven years old. It was like she taught me, she taught me three lessons about money at seven. That to

8:29this day, I still teach, which I can share with you. What's that? So at seven, we're sitting in McDonald's and she says, you know, David, you can get rich in McDonald's. I looked at my grandma, I'm eating my, you know, my, my cheeseburger and my french fries that I have my apple pie. I said, what are you talking about? And she's like, I'm not having a gig in a job here. She's like, see those people over there. They're working for what's called minimum wage. And I think back then minimum wage was like a dollar and she said, it's very hard to make a living on minimum wage. She said, then there's people like you right now, like all these people are coming here and they're eating and they're spending money. That's called a spender. And she said, then there's some people who own this place and owners get rich. And she said, and I love to play my an athlete at seven. That was my thing. I go to my grandmother and she played my anoply with me. And she said, I'm going to teach you how to play an anoply for real. And she took me home that day. She opened up the Wall Street Journal. She circled MCD. That's the symbol still to the day for McDonald's. And she said, here's how much McDonald's is. She put me in front of a television screen and said, watch the

9:32ticket tape. She taught me how to read that ticket tape. And she said, just call out the price on MCD. That's the price McDonald's. And she said, tomorrow I'll take it on her brokerage from it. We'll open up an account and you'll, you'll buy one share of that stock. And then every time you go there, you'll know your make you money from yourself. Wow. That is a wow, right? And it's funny because I'm here in LA with you. But I just went to Disneyland two days ago at my son, who's not my son, who's nine. And Disneyland. You buy Disney? I bought Disney. That was my second stock. That's amazing. So like literally at nine, I'm at Disney with grandma. And I'm like, hey, Mickey, are you guys public? Like, you know, because she taught me to think as a child, like an investor. Now I'm doing the same thing with my kids. Now my kids don't want to own McDonald's. They want to own Shake Shack. Right. So my son owns Shake Shack. Right down the street. I'm a brand new one, right? My younger son after Disneyland's like, I want to own Disney. His older brother owns Disney. It's doubled. He's like, well, I want to own Disney. My kid's own Amazon.

10:34So, you know, they're, they're learning like I learned. Now this stuff should be taught in school. Today, this is the school, right? Like today, what we do is another way to teach people. So, but those are simple lessons I just gave you that were passed to me. And we just did that in a matter of minutes. And like this book, The Latte Factor, everybody thinks I'm trying to take away their coffee. And I'm not. But there's a, this, we'll talk about the story inside this book. It's about a, you know, a 20-something young woman who learns that she's richer than she thinks. And she actually learns it from somebody who works at a coffee shop. Wow. And one of the lessons that the person teaches her is, ironically, it happens in Starbucks. He says to her, you know, the five dollars that you're spending in Starbucks, you could also be buying Starbucks stock. And we have the numbers in the book or how like a thousand dollars in Vesson Starbucks would be worth over a quarter million dollars today when it went public. Wow. So, I always say like, look, if you don't want to give something up, like that five dollars at Starbucks for your coffee, then buy the company stock.

11:38Right. Invest in where you spend money. That's interesting. If you go there every day, you put five dollars a day into buying the coffee, put five dollars a day into the owning the company as well. And now there's so many companies that make this easy, right? Like I'm an investor in a company called Hey Corns. Vesson's growing financial service company and really in America today is covering five million accounts for millennials. You can open up an app on your phone and in less than 10 minutes having an account, go click, click, click and be saving change. Right. Into a diverse five portfolio and it costs like a dollar a month. Wow. So, technology is making it all much easier for everybody. With a few clicks, you can be investing in stocks. There's so many great resources like 20 years ago. This was complicated. You would have come into my office at Morgan Stanley. And I would say paperwork. You have to. Yeah. Eleven pages of paperwork to save $50 a month automatic. Oh my gosh. Today again, you open up an app, you go click, click, click and it's done. And it's all automated. Right. That's going back to this idea of like, you don't have to do it manually.

12:38Like you've got your pad of paper and I always tell people, you know, in the back of this book, you've got a little sheet and track where your money goes for a day manually. But there's also a lot of great websites and apps can help you do that too. Yeah. I love these lessons about your grandma early on and investing in the places you're spending money out already. And I think of two influencers. So you say there's two things that really generate wealth and that's real estate and stocks, the fastest way. And we haven't gone to the real estate bar yet. Right. And it's funny because my friend Remi's safety always says like, don't give up your lattes. I know you're not saying that. Yeah. You're not saying that. He's like, don't give up your lattes, but invest in things, you know, automatically as well. Yeah. And uh, well, I'm funny. We're meeting our buddies. Yeah. He's great. So I go, I'm like, buddy, I know you're always making fun of my life thing, but it's not about a lot of days. It could be bottled water. It could be cigarettes. Right. It could just be eating out lunch every day. Right. Right. Like we put out a little meme yesterday. I'm saying like, you know, make you say you don't have enough money going on a trip. But if you just made your lunch at home for the next 90 days, you'd have enough money to go on a trip. Right. Like the way you get

13:43your freedom and your dreams is you buy them. Right. Exactly. You buy them. You don't borrow for them. You buy them. But too many people do is they actually borrow for them. They want to go on a trip and then they just put it on their credit card. Yeah. And then instead of that trip being a $15 or a trip, by the time they pay interest, it's a $3,000. Oh, gosh. Yeah. This is the Dave Ramsey model of like never putting anything on your credit card. It's like, so we got the latte and we've got first stocks and we got real estate as well. And I've heard I've seen so many studies online of like the pros and cons of buying real estate for people that own real estate and they're getting checks every month from renters great. But what if those renters leave and you have to fix it up and all these costs and taxes and fees and these these things that you have to pay on real estate that you're not really aware of until after the fact or some time to disaster. They're like, this is stressful. So you got the grant card own model, which he says, you never live where you own.

14:44What does he say? He says rent where you live and own what you rent and rent what you own or something, right? So it's never live where you actually own something is his model. Yeah. But he's like, you need to be in real estate and own lots of other things that you're renting out. But don't own your own home that you live in because you're not paying yourself. Right. You're not getting paid from that investment. So what's your thoughts? So we'll leave brand out of this. Let's just go to the core concept of I'll go back to a lot to factor book. What happens is I wrote this book as a parable again because like my 15 year old just read this book cover to cover two hours and was like wow, you know what I actually need to do this. I need to open up an IRA account. We've got this chart that shows a young person how they save $2,000 a year at the age of 19 $2,000 a year at the age of 19 years. So 26. You know, from 19 to 26 by 65, they have over a million dollars in savings. It's crazy right here. It's crazy. I don't know if you can even show that later on on a camera shop. But and if you started at 27, $2,000 a year, does it all the way till 65 that person. So they've saved

15:46way more money, right? They've saved their basically their entire lifetime. They end up with 805,000. No, crazy. Still a lot of money, right? But my 15 year old son looked at this chart and goes, dad, I'm 15. If I get this 15, I'll have more than a million dollars, right? By the way, pretty smart, right? Like, yeah, actually, you'll have more like two million dollars. It's like, well, and then he takes his calculator on his phone and goes, that's $5.41 a day. I go exactly. That's why I didn't want you by the bottle water when we were all to skiing yesterday. That's why your dad had the free water and you went about the stupid water. Right. Because that's enough money to do every day to have an IRA account. He's like, well, then we need to do that. At Staples, easy means professional looking prints ready as fast as same day. Plus 25% back in points on custom print orders of $100 or more now through October 31st from signs and banners to business cards and presentations. Staples prints it all so you can get more time back

16:49in your day. Don't choose hard. Choose Staples. Exclusions apply. See Staples app for details. You know how people sometimes invest in something that seems incredible at first, but then it doesn't live up to the hype. Like, when everyone was convinced NFTs were the future and people were buying them for thousands of dollars and now they barely have any value. Marketers know that feeling. They optimize for numbers that look great like impressions, but then they don't see revenue. LinkedIn has a word for that. Bulls mend. Instead, you can get the highest row as of major ad networks with LinkedIn ads. Cut the bullspend. Abortize on LinkedIn. Spend $250 and get a $250 credit. Go to LinkedIn.com slash Lewis. Terms apply. If you're a small business, you know one great hire can change everything. Maybe it's someone to keep the day running smoothly, find the right producer, or take work off your plates. You can focus on what you do best. Finding that person matters. Indeed, sponsored jobs get you quality candidates when you need them most. Join the 3.3 million employers worldwide that use

17:51Indeed to connect with quality talent that fits their needs. Listeners of this show will get a $75 sponsor job credit to help get your job the premium status it deserves at indeed.com slash podcast. That's indeed.com slash podcast terms and conditions apply hiring now. Then this is a job for indeed sponsored jobs. You know, these lessons are so critical. So what I do with this book and I'll get to the real estate here is that I wanted to teach these core lessons that there's three secrets to financial freedom of this book, which are pay yourself first. First person gets paid as you the match. So don't pay the bills first. Don't pay the bills first. Don't pay taxes first. Don't so most people they pay taxes first. They go to work at nine. They work until 12 o'clock to pay taxes. I mean, you can hear in California for sure. Yeah. Right. Then they go to them from 12 30 to one it's lunchtime and then from one to three three 30s housing costs,

18:51car costs and then from 3 30 to five it's everything else. And what what most people hope through budgeting is that somehow they're going to have a little money left over at the end of the day to save completely wrong philosophy. You carve out the first hour day for yourself. You become financially selfish. So in this book, Zoe Daniels, who is the main character, a 20-something millennial, she's living paycheck to paycheck. She lives in Brooklyn. She's traveling in New York City on the subway. She's working in the Freedom Tower. She's a pub. She's an editor of a travel magazine, but she never travels. She takes no money. She's working seven hours a week. Exactly. And what happens to her is what happens to so many young people in big cities. She's making a little more money each year, but she's not saving more. Her expenses just keep going up. So six years in, she's totally depressed and she goes through this building called the Oculus and she sees this LCD screen. This is all real this is all real place. And she sees this LCD screen. That's a football field long. It says on the LCD screen, if you don't know where you're going, you might not like where you

19:55had that. And this is all on her ground. And she takes this escalator up to her office, which is the Freedom Tower. And she's thinking about this. And as she comes up, she's by the 9-11 Memorial, because that's what's next to her office. I know this place very well. Yeah. I live across this street from yeah. And so I walk through this every day. And so she comes up. And for the first time in six years, she actually sits down and looks at the Memorial because she's always normally just turned right and gone into her office. You know, she's busy. She's in New York or what, crushing to work. Today she stops, sits on a mobile bench, looks at the 9-11 Memorial, sees people crying, thinks about the people who died here and says, sends to herself. Where am I going with my life? Can go into the office depressed. And then proceeds to tell her boss that she's like, she can't afford anything. And then through the look, she gets these mentors. And she learns about paying herself first. And the magic and the miracle compound interest, tough five to ten dollars a day

20:56could start to free her. And then later on the book, she learns about the importance of owning real state because she's renting. And she thinks she could never own. And one of the mentors Henry teaches her, you know, the amount of money that you're spending on rent, you can make a mortgage payment. And you could own an asset. And she has critics in her life where like, oh, none of this stuff would ever work for you, right? You can't make 10% rates of return. You know, it's you don't want to own real estate. But then she's surrounded by some people who are older, and wealthier, and wiser, and they show her how to get there. So when I go to home ownership, which I took away to hit your it, question, the bulk of wealth is built in America's built in real estate. So France's not wrong, you should buy real estate. But guess what the easiest real estate to buy at first is your own home. Yeah. First of all, it's the easiest thing to qualify for a loan for because you're living in it. Yeah. Right. So the bank will loan you money to buy at home. Second thing is it's tax deductible, right? You get tax deductions on your interest.

21:58Third thing is you have to live somewhere as long as you're alive. So you can only eventually frame clear and have very low regret next to nothing besides taxes and maintenance fees. Or you can rent for the rest of your life and never have your expenses go lower. The myth is that you want to rent because you don't want to have to pay maintenance and insurance and taxes. Guess what? They're all passed on to you. Right. The landlord passes those fees on. The landlord doesn't say, oh, you're a renter. I don't want you to pay those things. No, the landlord charges you by escalating the rents. What? I used to live in LA in 1985 to 1990. Much cheaper than that. I went to U.S.D. All the real estate here was like probably one fifth what it is today. Right. And so I'm in a friend's house in the Hollywood Hills. She bought it in 1994. Right. Out of college, she did all the things you have to do to save. She bought the home. There's a total fixer upper. I'm sitting in this home overlooking all of Hollywood last night.

23:02With this beautiful pool that she's put in, with one of the edge pools. I don't know what homes work today, but I bet it's worth five million. And I bet it's gone up three to four million since she bought it. Wow. And you only have to do that once in a lifetime to build a wealth forever. So if you don't own real estate, you don't get in the game building wealth. There was somebody who was on CNBC their day comparing how well they actually used Brooklyn as example, which is ironic, because Zoe lives in Brooklyn. They said, you know, if you rent in Brooklyn, it's $25 a month. It's not by the way. It's more than that. But if you did, if you rent for $25 a month, he said it would cost you. It could cost you $4,500 to own. And he said, and you know, so if you didn't do that, you could save the extra $2,000 and you could put in a diversified portfolio. And you could make a better rate of return. And I'm watching this and I'm thinking, no, that's wrong. And here's why it's wrong. I believe in the stock market. I give examples of earning 7, 8, 9, 10%. And I know stat wise, meaning like statistically, the rates of return

24:07in the stock market have been higher than real estate. But it's misleading. The reason it's misleading is if you give me $100,000 and you put in mutual funds and I earned 10%, my $100,000 grew to 110. Follow me so far. And the next year. And the next year, right? But if I put $100,000 into real estate, I didn't put $100,000 in real estate. I put in probably $20,000. The bank loaned me 80. So when that $100,000 grows to 110, I just made $10,000 profit on $20,000 investment. That's a 50% rate of return. And if I bought it as a personal residence, which is what most people do first, I can sell it. And if I'm single, I can make up to a quarter of a million dollars tax free. Wow. After two years, it is. Wow. It's the only thing I can buy and sell and get tax free money. If I'm. You don't have to pay taxes on the money from selling a home on the first quarter

25:07of a million dollars. If I'm single. Why the first quarter million? That's just that's just the government law right now. The first quarter million. The first quarter of a million. In profit. In profit. You don't have to be taxed. Wow. That's just saying it. If if I'm married, if I'm married, what half a million? Wow. Seriously. You don't pay taxes on anything. See the hair on my skin. You don't pay taxes on any of that. On the first half million dollars. This is all across the US. All across the US. So like my home in Manhattan that we just sold because now we're moving to Florence. And I'm not going back to New York by New York. So the first, the first half a million, you don't pay any taxes. You can keep a half a million tax free. Legally. And I can do it over and over again. So I've now done this three times. How much do the tax you pay on the other profit? Then you pay a long-term couple of games. Yeah. So I had a home in San Francisco. Same then moved to New York, sold it, got all that money tax free. But my first home in New York sold it, bought a bigger home in New York, got that money tax free. Third home I've just sold, got that money tax free. I can never do that in mutual funds.

26:09Unless it's an IRA account. That's a different game. Again, I want people to use retirement accounts. Yeah. And then I want them to own real estate. If you have those two vehicles, you pay yourself first. You save money automatically. And you own real estate. By the way, I'm not against, I want people on rental properties too. I own rental properties. With my wife, she's got a rental property in our building. Wow. But the way you get usually your first rental property, you buy your first home, then you rent that home out, then you buy a second home, living that for a while. It's like an employee. It's like an employee. Then you rent that home out. In the automatic millenia, I say three homes over a lifetime and you're done financially. Don't need to worry. Yeah. Two of them you've rented out, you've got rental income, the third one you've paid down. You have no debt. And now you're in your 50s or 60s and you're not dependent on social security. Yeah. And those two homes should be paid off by then. And then they're just paying you every month. And we get people posting our website all the time with one day or day, you know, 10 years ago, I had nothing in now about five rental homes because I did exactly what you talked about. Wow. So it's, it's, these are not pie in the sky ideas. I'm not telling people to go

27:10buy homes and flip them. Like I was listening to some radio out on the way over here and I thought those are the things that don't usually work. You go to one of those seminars and they're free. And then next thing, you know, they're putting you into a $30,000 coaching program to flip homes. I'm just talking about basic simple stuff. Pay yourself first. One hour day of your income, don't budget, save money automatically and get yourself into a piece of property and then pay the debt down. So buy home as early as you can is early as you can. And the thing is when you're young, what you, what happens is you think you're, you, a lot of times you'll come to a place like L.A. or San Francisco or like I can't afford this. And you go, I can't afford it. So you know what you do is you buy something and then you get two or three of your friends to be the ones that rent from you. And they help you make mortgage payments. My first home, I bought my best friend from growing up. It's a complete dump. It needed, we needed sweat equity. We put every dollar that we had into it. I had less than six months of expenses to set aside. And I was in real, I was in real state. I was in commercial real state commission only. I remember calling my dad and going, you know

28:11what? I don't have enough money after six months to pay mortgage payments. What am I going to do if I don't make money in my job? He's like, well, son, and nothing will motivate you like that. Yes, true. As I'm cold going, he was right. Yeah. And we rented bedrooms to friends to help us make mortgage payments. Crazy. So do what you got to do. Do what you got to do. That's how you get started. That's it, man. So how much should someone put down on a home? Should they put as much as they can down first or should they put the minimum amount down? The most important thing when you buy a home is to make sure you're going to afford to buy them. And so whatever the bank, I'll start with whatever the bank will loan you, borrow less. Barrel less. Yeah. So the bank says all loan you to $200,000. Barrel less than $200,000. Because they don't really care as much as you need to care. So borrow less than you think you can, you know, people always try to get the next level house. Get the house you can afford or lower. Your first home is rarely your dream home. My mom actually cried when she came to see my first house. Because she couldn't, she's like,

29:14oh, God, you don't know what you've done. I'm like, we didn't actually know what we had done. There's a lot to be said for being young and stupid, right? But we thought it would be fun to fix all this stuff up. It was a lot of work. But I think you want to buy less than the bank will loan you. I kind of described it as a foreign buffer, right? Like a girl fashioned down payment, 10 to 20 percent. More is better because your payments are lower. But one thing is you need to have six months to a year worth of mortgage payments set aside. I would not recommend somebody do what I did, which was only have like a little window of, I think if you can have a year's worth of expenses set aside, you're better off. You're more prepared to buy your home. But I will say one thing is that people think buying a home is risky. So it's renting. I like, if I buy a home, I've got to pay the bank. If I rent, I've got to pay my lease. If I don't pay my lease, my landlord can evict me. If I buy a home and I don't pay my mortgage payment, it's a lot harder for the bank to get me out of that home. Really? Yeah. So I'm not suggesting people I hold my bank payments when I'm suggesting is

30:20the same discipline it takes to pay rent is the discipline it takes to make a mortgage payment. But owning real estate long-term frees you, especially if you're lucky enough to be a market that are going up. Well, now I feel like I've been doing everything I can, maybe not yet because I don't own real estate. But I've invested at a young age in maxing out my whole life insurance policies for the tax deferred and all those things. I've got 401K's, Roth IRA's, defined benefit plans, all maxed out every year for many years. I invest in my own business. I invest in my personal brand. I invest in learning new skills. I invest in people, my team. I invest in new projects that we own assets within my business. I'm investing in real estate funds. I'm investing in all these things. And what would you say is missing for me that I can be doing? I put a lot of way every month.

31:22Well, I mean, first of all, listening to you, I'm like, you're doing everything right, right? And a lot of things you just said so quickly that people don't know what you're talking about. I like to find a benefit plan. Single-grade vehicle ever for a self-employed person. Okay. Who doesn't have a bunch of employees? Right. Because you can put up over two hundred thousand dollars tax deductible into that retirement vehicle. Now most people don't set those up until they're in their 50s. And a lot of people say, oh, you can't do this. You really don't want to do until your 50s because of all these different requirements. Totally wrong. You can go and max out a defined benefit plan for two or three or four or five years. Then just shut the plan down. Then if your income doesn't stay the same, then roll that into an IRA account. You can get a fortune put away tax difference. It's all about taxes. I don't want to pay taxes if I don't have to. Right. Legally. That'll be smart. That'll be smart. But that's what people who become wealthy do. They focus on not paying taxes legally. So when you put a hundred thousand or two hundred thousand dollars into a defined benefit plan for the last four years, yeah. You didn't pay

32:24taxes on that money. Right. Now critics will go, oh, yeah, but you'll have to pay taxes later. Fine. I'll have my money grow for next two, three decades and I'll pay taxes later. I like that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Because eventually you got to pay taxes on something. Whether gross tax deferred or eventually when you go to when you go to take the money out of these retirement accounts, you'll pay taxes on it. So what? I'd rather pay taxes later than now. Now you mentioned a Roth IRA. I love Roth IRAs for people who can fund them because the money you pay taxes going in, but it grows tax-free forever coming out. So they're both great vehicles. I like insurance for the right person. You don't have any, but you're not married. You don't have any kids. So the ironic thing about insurance usually insurance is designed to be a death benefit. Absolutely. It can also be an investment vehicle, which is how you're using it as a sophisticated investor. Yes. So with everything that you just said to me and you're probably invested in privately in companies too, right? Yeah. Yeah. Of course. So what's that doesn't make many money, but those are just risky. We call that the hopeful semi-pile. I don't know about any money

33:24in the last eight years of all eight startups that I've invested in, but. It's a hard way to get wealthy. Nobody really talks about that. It looks super sexy, but usually you're putting your money in and you're lucky to see it back in 10 years. What I would say not knowing how you organize everything, because it seems to me like doing everything, right? It's all about having this on a dashboard, because as you start to have all this stuff, what happens is we're all busy. And if you're not tracking everything, that's the big thing. I just started doing that like seven, eight months ago, because I was like, I don't even know where all these accounts are. They're all in different portfolios and plans and companies. And it's like, where's all my money? So whether you use, you know, there's all kinds of tools you can use, but even just a simple spreadsheet, which lays it all out. So also, God forbid, something happened to you. Your family would know where everybody is. They know where everybody is. Yeah. Because if you die and your family doesn't know where the stuff is, they may never get it. Really? Because like, let's use a, let's use an example of investing in a startup. Okay. You know, God forbid, some of you

34:27have been to tomorrow. Your family doesn't know that you have, you have private equity in a startup. Yeah. They're not coming looking for you. You know, if you have money in old 401k plan, there are billions of dollars in old 401k plans that people have died that the family doesn't know what's there. And it's just seeing there an unclean asset all the time this happens. So having it, like, it's all sitting there. It's all organized. You know, you have sister, right? Yeah. I've got two sisters in a brother. Two sisters in a brother. Like somebody in your family you trust is like, like, here's where all the stuff is. This is something happens to you. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So have it organized. And would you recommend me investing in real estate? See, I invest in real estate funds because I'm like, I don't want to manage a property. I don't want to deal with it. But I know I'm investing in real estate. First of all, you're renting this apartment? Yes. I mean, so you've got to buy a place here in LA or you're staying in LA. Yeah. So I'm buy a place. And then by the way, I'd rent part of this, like, this is an office here. Yeah. Yeah. I'd have your company, your LLC, or, you know, the other thing I do, I buy a condo in a separate LLC. And then I have your business

35:33rent the condo and pay my pay the business. Yeah. That's legal. Totally. Interesting. You still have to pay taxes somewhere on it. But the point is your business, your business is paying the rent to another piece of property that you own. Ultimately, how business owners get rich who don't do what you're doing. Because you're doing things under the exception. Most business owners don't have to find benefit plans. Don't save money on a Mac. They aren't actually investing like you are. Give you all the credit in the world. Like, a lot of influencers are broke. Yeah. They are. I mean, you know this, right? Like, you see all the bleeding glades make a lot of cash and they spend it all. They have nothing to show for it. It's like pro athletes. It's really sad. I spent nine years in Morgan's jailing. My well, my clients who became wealthiest, I always said they became wealthiest by accident. They owned a business and they bought real estate that the business was in. And 20, 30 years later, that building was worth millions, sometimes tens of millions of dollars. The business wasn't worth anything. The building, the asset was so. And then if the businesses worth something and you can sell the business,

36:34you can make the buyer turn around and have to do a 10 year lease with a building that you own and you're collecting rent. You don't even sell the building. You just stole the asset. Right. So you should totally buy something. Okay. It's always been like the the piece of mind and the freedom of like, I don't want to deal with the logistics. So I'd rather pay a premium to have freedom of a piece of mind. And like, someone can fix this and take care of this. I just want to do what I do best, focus on that. But I've got a condo and doubt in this area. There's no logistics. I've had a condo for most my time in New York, right? Like, I don't do anything. I don't know how to do anything. My wife says, you know, you're totally useless. Right? Like, that's why we have the guy downstairs. You just call him and he does it. Right. Exactly. My friend, I hope you're enjoying this episode. And the School of Greatness drops new conversations every Monday, Wednesday and Friday around money, mindset, healing, manifestation and relationships. And if you're not yet following the show, then you're missing all of them. Please tap the follow button right now.

37:36And you'll get notified the moment every new episode drops because the next one might be exactly what you need. Now let's get back to the conversation. With the US bank, smartly visa signature card, you earn an unlimited 2% cashback on every purchase. No quarterly activations, no categories to track, just unlimited 2% cashback on every purchase. Think about those bigger everyday purchases, travel, groceries, things for the house where afterward you realize I could have earned cash back on that. That's the kind of opportunity that adds up over time. Visit usbank.com slash smartly card to learn more. The creditor and issuer of this card is US Bank National Association, pursuant to a license from visa USA Inc. Some restrictions may apply. As a loyal listener of this show, you're always challenging yourself to grow, to be better, to keep learning. And Southern New Hampshire University can help. Southern New Hampshire University offers over 200 career focused degree programs online. Plus Southern New Hampshire

38:39University has some of the lowest online tuition rates in the US. So balancing school, work and life actually feels achievable and affordable too. Find your degree at smhu.edu slash greatness. That's smhu.edu slash greatness. So there's two things that you need to be doing, real estate stocks. And I have been doing index ones for everything that I've been doing because I tried doing like individual stocks and betting and guessing and I'm like, close to this stuff. So I'm just like Warren Buffett model. Just put my money in if it grows seven to 10% a year on average or whatever. Just like, it's not sexy. That's what I've been doing. Is that what you recommend as well? It's a great way to go. By the way, I invest in Warren Buffett too. I own, you show in Berkshire Hathaway. Okay. So I invest in Warren Buffett. I own Berkshire Hathaway also in index ones. I run a registered investment advisory firm. I think I was telling you that earlier that you're my co-founder of a firm that literally today, we just went over seven billion dollars

39:39on the platform. Amazing. So I sit on our investment committee. So I've got a lot of different things. Right? I've got mutual funds and ETFs, index funds and individual stocks. But if you're not somebody that's excited by individual stocks, like you heard me talk about how excited I was when I bought McDonald's for Disney. If that doesn't excite you, then put in index fund. Warren Buffett told his wife when I die, take the money and put in this Vanguard index fund. That was his advice to her. I'm like, you know what? Because you can't really go wrong owning an index fund. If you don't want to spend a lot of time on it, I think the real key to managing money is diversification. You shouldn't have all your money in the S&P 500. You shouldn't be all stocks. Even though I say you would need to own stocks in real estate, I own bonds. I've got a diversified portfolio. Our clients have diversified portfolios. Because I actually am shooting to get the return that you just said earlier, my goal for my money is somewhere between 7, 8 and 9% annually. And the reason that is is that

40:40I'm not looking for home runs. I'm looking to double my money every 10 years. There's a rule called the Rule 72. It's a great formula to learn. The Rule 72 you take the number 72, you divide it by the rate of return the journey. And it will tell you how long it takes double your money. So if you're getting 7% or 10% rate of return, you divide that by 72 and it will give you the number. So 72 divided by 7 will come out right to like 10 years. 72 divided by 10 will come out right to that 7 years. So that's double your money. If you're in a bank account earning 1%, you're going to double your money in 72 years. So get your money out of a bank account savings account. Only your emergency money should be in a bank account. And even then it needs to be at least earning today 2%. There's all kinds of online savings that be across the day that are earning 2%. And so don't be earning 0th at the typical bank account. How much should you have in what's an emergency fund? You know, it's like if you got a lot of cash, how much should you have in savings,

41:41checking, and then the rest in stocks are real estate. Okay, so if you and I were having this conversation, nobody was watching right now. All right, like I'd say, I'd say, well, I would say to you, Lewis, how much money do you need to have in terms of expenses and a side to feel safe, to sleep well? For how long? Expenses for just in general for like 6 months or something or but so I would ask you personally, what's the what's the amount of money? Probably got 100 grand. Oh, I wasn't even asked a dollar now. I would just ask you like in terms of how much months, how many months? Yeah, 6 months or something. Yeah, maybe I don't know. Okay, so so that's your answer. So for you, I probably got, are you sure? 6 months, I would probably go like if I was your advisor, I probably like figure buddy, like maybe I've more than that. Like if I lost everything and this is all I had left, I was saying. See, everybody's different in terms of how they sleep at night. Like for me, I want two years of expenses set aside in cash. I sleep better. Peace of mind. Peace of mind. Most Americans don't even have three months of expenses set aside. In fact, what led me to write

42:43the latte factor was about three years ago, the Federal Reserve came out and said that four, four out of 10 Americans can't get their hands on $400 in case of an emergency. Six out of 10 Americans can't get their hands on $1,000 in case of emergency. Seven out of 10 are living paycheck to paycheck. They're men and eight out of 10 women are living paycheck to paycheck. Wow. So when I say, oh, I need two years, that's really extreme, right? Like I would love to get the average American to get $1,000 in saving set aside. Which by the way, if you just saved ten bucks a day in a hundred days, you've got more than six out of 10 Americans. So when I go back to the latte factor metaphor, I'm like, you know what? Yes, five, 10, 15, 20 dollars a day can change your life. Because in a hundred days, you could have more money than the average person walking down the street. Yeah, and 40 years here, a million. You got a million bucks. And again, people go all won't, 40 years, million dollars won't be worth a lot. Guess what?

43:46It'll be worth a million dollars more than zero. Exactly. Which is what the average American's working towards. And you know, I was thinking about one other thing on the way over here because things get me fired up. Like the dumbest thing Americans spend money on are new cars. So when you borrow money, you borrow money to buy assets that can go up in value, like a home. You don't borrow money to buy assets that go down in value, like a car. So the average American buys a new car constantly, right? Like the car industry is just starting, it was on CNBC yesterday saying that the car industry is getting nervous that people are going to buy less cars. Good. People should buy less cars. Millennials are starting to use Uber everywhere. My kid doesn't even want to drive his license. The average American's car payment right now for a new car is $533. Crazy. A month. When you factor in insurance and God forbid you have to pay for carcass. It's almost a thousand bucks a month and the average American is spending three months a year to make their car payments. Wow. And when you think about it that way,

44:50and you're buying an asset that goes down in value, the moment you drive it off a lot by 20, 30, 40%. It's just the wrong place to put your money, but we're marketed to get the new lifestyle. The new lifestyle, the new car, the new special thing. And we're basically trapped by marketing. We're trapped by, you know, when you succeeded, you should have this. And so we've done for a lot of young people as we've gotten them and we haven't talked about student loans yet, but like, you know, Zoe Daniels has got student loans in this book and 100 grand, 300 grand, whatever it is. We are trapping an entire generation, two generations now with student debt that they'll never build payoff. And it's sad because if you go to college and you're first of all, you don't even know better, right? And you take out a hundred thousand dollars of student loans. It could take you 20 years to pay those loans off. If you're lucky and you can't walk away from those student loans, literally the laws are set up that you can't get away from student loans. It's the only thing in life that you can't get away from through a bankruptcy or student loans.

45:53That's because the government got into the student loan business. They should have never been student loan business. I went to school right down the street here in USC. That was a super expensive school to go to when I was going there back in 1985. Today it's a fortune. It's like 50 grand a year, 60 grand a year, right? It's crazy. And I just go, you know, how do you afford to pay that off? It's just so hard. And I think, you know, I would tell anybody, is young today, don't get trapped by these debts. Like go to junior college for two years. Yeah. Actually, like, find it in an expensive way. Go to junior college. Transfer to school. Go stay at school. Transfer into the school you want to ultimately be out when you're a junior senior. Take on as little debt as possible. We're just not preparing people properly to realize how we're not we're not explaining correctly that these are handcuffs. And so people are getting out of school with these handcuffs that aren't a year too long. That's what it used to be. It's now decades long. And so I don't know. I mean, I guess unless you can learn how to build wealth faster, you're not going to pay that off. You're not going to pay it off. I mean, imagine if you and I had an online course and we said it's a hundred thousand

46:56dollars to join. We have absolutely no way to guarantee that you'll ever make money from it. We're not even sure we'll improve your life. But it's, by the way, we know you don't have a hundred grand so borrow it. And then it has massive interest. We would go to jail. Right? Like, like, literally, like, but that's what the university systems are like. So I'm not against college. I want my kids to go to college. I just don't want people to get these debts. It's crazy. It's interesting. My dad never bought new cars. He would have like 10 year old cars. We had a 1989 Oldsmobile. I don't think Oldsmobile is out of business now, but he would drive that thing. He would run his business and drive that thing. And he would just save his money and invest it. And the challenging thing is, you know, I look at my mom now. She went through divorce some of the 20 years ago with my dad and she bought some real estate properties and made some money renting them out. But she had a lot of expenses of her own and she really didn't have a lot of savings. Right? She had the money to live off of from the divorce. She was working to pay for

47:58stuff. And I look at it now. She, you know, she's going to have her, what is it? Social security that she can take out now or if she waits a couple of years, it's a little more money that goes out. And then she's got a retirement from working at the company. Yeah, pension plan. Yeah, pension plan. But they're both like what? One's like a thousand bucks a month. One's maybe 800 or 1200 a month. $2,000 a month and she just moved to LA. She got a little apartment down the street. That does even pay rent for the rest of your life, right? You got $2,000, $3,000 a month. Doesn't even pay that much. Challenges. It's like, what do you do that? You know, it's like, then you can't save anything. You don't want to go keep working, you know, you're working part-time at that age, maybe. It's, this is why like 80% of poverty is tricking elderly or women. Wow. What you just described is the single biggest financial challenge. This is what women face. When I wrote smart women finish rich, it was because I saw all these women being hurt financially. Yeah. They had gone through divorce. They had gone through widowhood. 80% of women die, die widowed. 80% of men die married.

49:03So what happens in the real world in marriages is that a lot of times the wife has delegated the financial well-being to the husband. And she's not educated then. She hasn't learned. I tell this book, Zoe Daniels, basically the mentor says her Prince charming is not coming. You need to be your own Prince charming. And in this book, the mentor who's also, I don't want to give all away, but like one of her mentors at work turns out to be extremely wealthy and doesn't shed no idea. And she says to Zoe, you need to be in charge of your finances. I don't care who you marry. Local bank president has a woman. You have to take charge of your financial life. Because what you don't want to do is turn, I mean, I hate to say this. You don't want to turn around 68 and figure this out. Because 68, you're like you just said, just want to work anymore. A lot of people are having to work in their 60s because they don't have enough money. Yeah. And unless they have families that can support them and pay for them, but you can't rely on that is for everyone. You know, she's got me. You need to put your mom in the payroll. She's got, she is. She is, trust me. So she's, I mean, she's fine. Yeah. But it's like if she didn't have me

50:05or someone in the family that I could help out, it's like then what? No. And and and and I'm not blaming her anything. She did what she could. She saved her money in the best way she had retirement. She, you know, she's still working. But it's like it's still not that much money. You know, it's not that much money. When you know, I would go back to when you know better, you could do better. Right. Like this little book, which I hope will go worldwide, I was inspired to write it by Paulo Cuello. He's my hero as far as a writer goes. And he's right. And I went to Geneva to meet him and have dinner with him. I want to meet him someday. You know, I've had him because you should. Brendan is Brendan. I went over to have dinner with him. And my wife goes, you're going to go to Geneva to have dinner with him. Paulo Cuello. He wrote the alchemist. He's been working all time. She goes, you're going to go to dinner to have, I mean, go to team from dinner. I go, yes, I am. And right. This is also the importance of like, you know, when you get a chance to be in front of somebody that you respected Meyer and want to learn from. Yeah, you get on playing. You go. So we go out. We close this restaurant down. Paulo Cuello is amazing. We go to, we have drinks.

51:11And we basically stay out. Paulo likes to stay out. So we're, I'm like, I'm staying out. Paulo's latest. Paulo wants to stay out. I don't know, two or three in the morning is handler's like, okay, we gotta get going. And he says, and he says, let me ask you a question, David, for, for I leave, like, what's the book that you haven't written yet that your soul desires to write? Right? All right. Paulo, I want to write this book like you've written like a parable. I want to write a little story that will inspire people to realize that they're richer than they think, that they have more strength than they know, and that the dreams can still come true. I don't want to pack and jump these financial lessons in a little story that anyone can read. They'll transit all the world. And he goes, then David, you must write this book. Then he walks away. And then he leaves. And then literally, Brian's like, what did he say? So we're leaving this restaurant, you know, pitch blackout. We're totally buzzed. And I'm like,

52:11he said, I should write the book. Right? So I'm like literally on cloud nine and I get home and I go, you know, I get home, I'm all jet lagged. And the first thing my wife, she says, so what did Paulo say? I go, he said, I should write the book. And she goes, well, I've been telling you to do this for 10 years. And I go, I have a little Paulo. So, you know, that was the end of 2012. I've been one who's book for 14 years. And finally, I parted with John Mann who wrote this great book, The Go Giveer. And said, let's try to write this parable. But let's write it until it's perfect. And then we'll sell it. It's the first time I ever wrote a book without a deadline. Wow. That takes, yeah. You know, I just, I spent two years working on it. Now we spent a year getting ready to market it. So look, I thank you for having me out because you've such a big community. I hope this will reach some people and, you know, I got on a planet come see you because you've got one of my favorite podcasts in the whole world. I appreciate it. It was super cool to be with you. I appreciate it. For a week, when you turn to me and said, Hey, man, let's have you on the podcast. I'm like, okay, I'm gonna plan and come see you. Yeah, yeah.

53:12Support for this episode comes from Ring. Whatever shows up around home this holiday season with Ring, you're protected. The holidays get busy fast. You're running errands. Gifts are showing up at the house. Maybe you're traveling and that's a lot happening at once. One thing I really like is being able to check in when packages are arriving at the front door with battery doorbell 2k when you've got gifts being delivered and you're not always home when they show up indoor cam is small and easy to set up. Just plug it in and place it pretty much anywhere inside. An outdoor cam plus gives you retinal 2k clarity for your yard and outdoor spaces. Ring helps you stay connected to what's happening at home. So you can spend more time enjoying the holiday moments that matter. With Ring, you're protected. Shop cameras, doorbells and more at ring.com. This fall, LL Bean is celebrating the moments people look forward to all year. The first school

54:12drop off, the first sweater weather day and the first chilly evening around the fire pit. For over 100 years, LL Bean has been part of these traditions, crunching leaves and main made bean boots, cheering from the sidelines in Scotch plaid flannel and walking the dog in a rugged field coat. So grab the layers and people you love and get outside. Visit llbean.com to shop the fall collection. LL Bean be an outsider. I appreciate you coming out. Make sure you guys get the latte factor. I've got a few collections left for David. Make sure you get this super short. You can get this and read it in a couple hours. Even I can read this quickly and it's super inspiring. Plus, it gives you a lot of practical things you can do at the end to really manage your money. What are three steps people should do right now? Whether they get this book or not. Yeah. They can start doing today. If you did these three things right now, it could help you set you up for financial freedom later. So number one thing, make a decision today to become financially

55:16selfish. Okay. And here's what I mean by that. Make a decision today to become financially selfish. Decide today to pay yourself first. So like if you were going to have like little kairans, it would be like your first thing is become financially selfish. Pay yourself first. The formula to pay yourself first is one hour day of your income. If we could get everyone watching to make it a goal to save one hour day of the ring and whatever they're earning an hour, you'll be earning minimum wage literally like you get a $15 an hour job. If you could save $15 a day, $15 a day, yeah. $15 a day. Your first hour day of your income, especially in your 20s, you'd have financial security by time you reach retirement. You've just said 15 bucks a day for seven years. Well seven years. I mean like I'll go back to charts, right? Because it's not, it's always a compound interest over decades, right? So if you look at like I've got these great charts back here, like let's just use $15 a day. In 30 years at 10 percent, it happens beats $1 million, $17,000. So $15 for 30 years? Yeah. In 40 years, it's without my glasses on

56:212.8 million. Wow. And 10 years, it's $92,000. Still a lot by the way. It doesn't seem like a lot of 10 years of savings. And but here's the thing, these decades go by like this. If it's automatic, you don't have to think about it. You don't think about it. So I would say if you got a 401k plan just from this podcast, go sign up for it and save one hour day of your income. Happens to be the math on that is 12.5% of your gross income. With your companies match, which you probably will have, you'll be saving 16% of your income, which is like four times with the average Americans. Huge. Huge. If you don't have a 401k plan, go open up an IRA account, fund that. Or if you're self-employed, do a set by IRA. Second thing I would say is. Just pay your self first. One hour day of your income. Second thing I would say is track where your money is going but don't budget. So I would download an app. And like what are a couple of you? So I would use like an app that I was an investor and we sold the company to Goldman Sachs. It's called Clarity Money. Clarity Money is my favorite app. You can it's like mint.com on steroids, but mint's good too.

57:27Same as better man similar stuff. No, because better man's for investing. Gotcha. So so a dashboard. It's a man. You hook up a thing like Clarity Money. And in minutes, you'll see where all your money's being spent. You can put your credit cards in there, right? So one of the great features of an app like Clarity Money is that it'll show you not just where you're spending money, but it'll show you where you're spending where you're spending money automatically monthly. On all your things. All your subscription fees. Seekestock canteen. Yes. And there's a cancellation button in the in the app. So what happens is I call this the piss you off factor. Oh my god. You're like, I've been spending this much for years. You look at you also you don't realize it right? Because we didn't use to have all these subscription services. And so when they're summarized in your phone, you got 30 of them, you're like, wow, I'm spending three, four, five hundred dollars in these and I'm not using a lot of the stuff. And then there's a little but that these companies hate this right? Because we were talking about how people sign up for things and then they unsign up, but you go click and then you unsign up. Well, you take a typical

58:28$50 a month box. It's being sent to you, right? Like you're based trying to send you these boxes and stuff. And you turn that off. Well, that's $600 a year. It's not $50 a month. It's $600 a year. Fastest way to change your life financially is get rid of some of these fixed expenses. So the way to do it, use an app like ClarityMoney, mint.com. Then I would go back to this idea of saving money automatically, right? Because besides your 401k plan, there's other ways other things to save for like your dreams. Like I want to go take a trip. I want to go start my business. I want, you know, a lot of people I want to get married. I want to do whatever it is. Whatever it is. So I would use another app like an acorns acorn. Acorns is a co-r and acorns.com. And there's no, you know, I'll give you multiple ones. So because acorns, I'm also an investor. Okay. Yeah. So I got invested in acorns three years. Robinhood. Robinhood. Robinhood. Acorns. Robinhood. Stash. You talked about betterment. These are some of the bigger players and automated investing. But

59:31but they're not for one of them. Go sign for one of them. Companies like Acorns or Robinhood.stash make us you can put very small amounts of money away. Put 15 bucks a day. Pick a number. Whoever you want because everybody's different, right? But come up with something that you're going to say about a month. I want to buy some month, 200 bucks a month automatically comes out every money. In the book, Zoe Daniels Henry, her one of her mentors says, Zoe, you know how you get your dreams, you buy them. So like having a dream without a payment plan is a wish. Having a dream we're saving for automatically, that's how it becomes real. Like in her case, she wants to take a sabbatical and she wants to travel. She's a travel editor who's never traveled. And he teaches her how to like save for this break. And then later in the story, I don't want to give it all away, but she like starts to take these trips. Well, she got there because she saved for them. Then it just happened magically. Didn't just happen that? It's just like unfold. Your people, the thing is you have such a great audience and people come here because they want because they're great and they want to get greater,

1:00:32right? School greatness. And and some of the things that you say is there ever a point in which you feel like you don't need to grow anymore, right? I'm like, no, right? Because what got us to where we are is we're curious and we're growers. Like, we're, you know, we're this mastermind again, Puerto Rico, right? And everybody's usually successful with that mastermind. And we were all there to grow. We were all there with our journals, taking notes on every single word they were saying because we're still learning. So there's no finish line in life. I think that's a big thing that I try to convey in this book is that it's about living rich. Yeah, but there's no finish line. Right? So whatever age you're out right now, your mom is 68. Forget the money for a second. I'd be talking your mom about what is she excited about? Because the problem at 68 is that people get depressed. And like, your mom at 68, the next 10 years, the most important of her life. They're going to be the healthiest of her life between 68 and 70. She's not going to healthier from 78 to 88. So I've been sitting on your mom and being like, Mom, what are you going to do in the next three years

1:01:33that you haven't done yet? Let's work on a dream plan. I had this guy David Bach on the show and I came home and thought, you know, if anything that you're not doing that you want to do, like, is there a way you want to go that you haven't gone? Can we just start planning for? Go take a trip with your mom. My mom told me she wanted to go on a safari. And my mom tells us also getting worse because she's 70. I'm going to say, my dad's 70 and she's 76. Her dream trip was a safari, which we went on last summer. And I'm like, well, they're almost gone. Because like, if we don't go now, I don't know when we're going. So yeah. Yeah, it's good advice. What's missing in your life right now? Wow, I don't. Probably at the very moment because I'm on tour. Is my route is is is sleeping my routine in exercise. But you know, I actually have a lot of routines. I'm one of those people gets up very early, meditates. Does my positive focus normally exercises. But I'm living a pretty unbelievably plus life right now. And also I know like when you

1:02:35put out a book, like, I'll do a hundred podcasts and I'll be on the road for two months almost. We're doing a nationwide tour with this book. But then I'll be done. Right? I mean, I you do all this work. You want to get the message out. You've got to go to the work. There's a finish line. There's a finish line. Then I'm going to go to Florence early and spend a year in like, you post and drink one and hang out with friends when you come visit me. That'll be amazing. You got a guest room for me. You know what? I will find a guest room. I'll tell my wife like, don't tell me we have a guest room. It's used to come out to Florence. Yeah. Bring your girlfriend. Yeah, that's it. Oh, that's it. The reason I'm taking a year to go to Florence right now, even though I'm right co-founded for big business and got a lot of other businesses. I've got a 15 year old son who's going to be a sophomore. And what's about to be missing in my life is this kid's going to go to college in three years. So because I want to live my home, the principals I teach, I want to live them. I said to my wife, you know what? The last year I can take this kid abroad as a family is his sophomore year. So let's go live abroad for a year. And let's take the kids to go see the world.

1:03:37And let's have them learn another language. A lot of work to go pull this all off. But we're almost there. Like we're leaving in 92 days. Crazy. Crazy. And it's like, you know, it's exciting. So I feel blessed that we've been able to do it, but we didn't just snap our fingers and do this. It was like a two year plan. And I just say that to anybody too. Like when you see the greatness, right? Like this incredible wall over here with all these people who have done so many amazing things, they worked on it for years. Most people by the time they end up on a school of greatness podcast, they've been doing it for decades or longer, right? Like I used to always joke like, yeah, yeah, I was easy. I was a 15 year overnight success story. I like stuff takes a long time. You were kind of an over, but you really weren't, right? Like how many years did you work before you were like, my God, people don't know who I am. That's probably about 10 years. Yeah. It's like close to 10 years, working hard. I mean, depends on the industry I was in. I was playing a sport for my whole life, mastering myself and a craft to be great as an athlete. Then transitioned. 2007 got injured playing professional football.

1:04:44I wrote a New York time best seller about 10 years after the fact I started in the business. It took a while time. It was easy, right? And this is, we're six years now, but it's like three times a week, every week for six years, almost 800 episodes. It's every day showing up and not every day is fun. You go through weeks and months and years where like, I started this one episode and won this one. And you're like, I was anyone going to listen to this. And the one list was your mom, right? Exactly. And then it's like, and then it gets too listening. She tells a friend and tells a friend. Exactly. And I never, I didn't know what I was doing. I didn't have any skills as an interviewer or doing a show or I know clue. I just want to have conversations with smart people and share the wisdom. Yeah. And so I'm curious for you, what's the best money advice you've ever heard if you give one piece of advice you've ever heard? If you've heard from all of them. It's a funny phrase, but it's called benign neglect.

1:05:48And it was given to me by somebody used to run to the winner. And he said to me, because I used to ask this question a lot to young people. I'm the young person. I would be running all these incredibly successful people in their 60s and 70s and I asked that question. And he said, benign neglect. And I said, what do you mean? He's like, by quality investments and leave him alone. He's like, I can't tell you how many things I've sold over my lifetime that went higher. Oh, by quality investments, the by quality and leave it alone. And I was like, huh, okay, that was super powerful. The second, I'll give you two. The second thing was I came to financial service in a street and I had all these successful financial services. I asked for mentorships. Tell me what you learned after being the business for 30 years. And these financial services would say to me, if you invest for yourself the way you invest for your clients, you'll be extraordinary wealthy. This is the problem and they were all joking.

1:06:51They're like, the problem is when we got, we went when you're in the business of managing money, you think you're so smart that you take a risk with your own money, that you wouldn't take for a client. If we didn't talk about the issue being a producer, but like when you're a producer, you have this massive responsibility. You can't not put the client's interest first. And but a lot of people when they become wealthier and more sophisticated. And the income starts to roll in. You start to take these, you take additional risk with your money. And so keeping this, keeping it simple, buying quality, leaving it alone, not going off and doing a bunch of crazy things to try to get rich. That's going to start up so you're going to get like blow up a thousand times. You're crypto currency. I've tried all this stuff and I lost all my money. I'm like, luckily I never spit a lot of it in this. I just like play it with a little bit. I'm like, okay, I'm willing to lose 50 grand or 20 grand. But then you're like, what was I thinking? I don't use that money in part of the year. So I'll give you one more nugget, which is people call it play money. Yeah. I put my play money in a Bitcoin. My play money in the

1:07:54crypto currency and I go, you know, did you play to make that money? And they go, what do you mean? Like, did you play? Like, did you got a lot of side and kick a ball and some of you have you money to like, so that you could then go invest it? Because if you didn't, then it's called work money. Never refer to your money as play money. It's work money. You, you just talked about, you did three podcasts a week. You worked for your money. And then we turned it over to somebody else to go and play with it. And it goes away. Right? Like one of the things you said early in the show is that you invested in you, which is by the way, why you've been so successful. You have one of the greatest websites, one of the greatest quality podcasts. You put money into your brand, your business invested in you. Smart, right? Because nobody cares about your brand more than you do. The next thing you know, you see a great idea and you're like, oh, here's 50 gram. Well, it doesn't matter until it doesn't come back. And then you do 10 of those and you're like, believe me, we've all been there. I have so many friends. We talk about this now because we're like, we've all put money into 10 or 15 or 20 of these deals. And then you go, 50 grand of pockets of

1:08:57a million dollars. And now it just didn't come back, right? And then we all help one of them to come back. Right, right. And make all our money back. Right. Right. Equal it out. So meanwhile, it would just rather have been in an index fund. It's liquid. I could sell it tomorrow or bought one more condo. So this is called the three truths. I ask it at the end. Imagine it's your last day on earth as long as you want to live. But at some point you have to die. It could be 200 years from now, right? And you've written multiple more books. You've done everything you want to do. You've lived your dreams. You've seen your kids do what they want to do, grandkids, whatever you want. You've created it. But it's time to go and everything you've created you've got to take with you. So your work, your messages, your videos, audio, virtual reality. What are you created by then? It's got to go with you. Okay. But you get to leave behind a piece of paper and you can write down three things you know to be true about all the lessons you've learned in your life. Wow. And this would be kind of your commandments to the world. And this is

1:09:59all I would have to remember you buy. It could be on anything, but your greatest lessons, what would be your three truths to the world? Okay. Now that's that's deep. And I'm thinking about my kids, right? Because ironically, I just I've been working on a book of life lessons for them, which makes speeches for them. My first truth would be to love fully. Don't hold back on love. You know, like we've all been there when we were kids. I know you're going to book about being I'm going to blink on your mask. Yeah. But like, you know, a lot of times when especially guys like people like we're sometimes like when you're young, you're afraid and they might be in love with somebody, but you're afraid to tell them. Right. And oh man, I want to make it. Don't be afraid to tell somebody love. Yeah. Love fully. Love fully in the relationships that you're in. You know, I was unfortunate last week in a hospital with my wife,

1:11:00thinking that she's having a stroke. And had eight doctors around her in the emergency. Wow. And I'm like, wait a minute, we're going to Italy like in 94 days. She can't be having a stroke. Like, like, this is how life works. And then she had to go have an MRI and I'm waiting in the waiting room for hours. This is Wednesday. And I'm like, oh my god. Like my whole life has just changed. Her life has potentially changed. My whole life has changed. That's how life is. And I started thinking about our last 11 years together. And it's amazing because I told my wife I loved her and wanted to marry her and have told Jesus actually for me. I told her I loved her. I loved her. Want to marry her and have children with her before I kissed her. Wow. Which is insane. But it was and you know, we've had an amazing 11 years together. And I had not fully done that in the past. And I was like, this is the girl I got. I got to love. I got to not hold back. But sitting in the emergency room, I was like, okay, what are we even focused on that doesn't really matter?

1:12:03Like, I got to keep going back to like, it's the love, love, love. I'm fully. So that would be number one. And is she doing okay? She is doing okay. You know what? She came out with a complete clean build health. And I think it was stress related. Oh my gosh. Yeah. It's changing your whole life around. You know, we had just gotten back from Florence. We just got our lease signed and this was a lot of stress. Because by the way, sometimes going through dreams is stressful. It's a second thing I would say. It's actually the core of this book, ironically. My grandmother, the very back of this book is a lesson from my grandmother. My grandmother shared on her deathbed. At age six, my grandmother was broke. And I didn't know she was going to die. And I was finishing smart women finished rich. And I asked my grandmother because she knew I was dedicating the book to her. I said, Grandma, do you have any regrets in life? And she proceeded to go through her regrets going back to being a teenager and she went through five of them. Oh my gosh. And in those regrets,

1:13:04she said, it's not about the individual thing. She goes, my regrets were, I came to a fork in the road. And there was one road that had more risk, which is where all the gold wasn't the other the road. It was what I really wanted to do. And then there was a safe route. And she said, every regret, I took the safe route. Wow. And she's like, I know. And she's like, I'm sitting here now at 86. And she said to me, and I'm, I'm going to die. I'm not going to leave this bed. And I was like, no, Grandma, I'm getting married in 90 days. You're totally getting out of here, coming to the wedding. She's like, no, I'm not. And she said to me, I'm here to tell you that you're young. I was in my 20s. She said, if I can give you one last lesson in gift, and she's like, you should share with other people. And I do a lot from stage. I said, she said, tell people when they get to a fork in the road. There's going to be the little boy or little girl inside of them wanting to take the risk. Like you're going to get to these forks in the road. And there's going to be a little boy inside of you that wants to go take this risk. And then there's going to be a big boy inside of you who doesn't. And she's like, let, listen to the little boy. Let him come out and play

1:14:09so that you don't turn around 86 and wonder what you should have done with your life. So that would be lesson number two, which is like, listen to your little boy, a little girl, and and it's hard to take the extra risk in life. But I'll go back again to my wife. I'm sitting in the emergency room last Wednesday at Presbyterian Hospital, and I'm thinking myself, God, willing, she's okay. This is why we're going to Florence. This is why we're taking a year, moving abroad because I'm 52. And maybe I'll live 50 from more years. But who knows what can happen? So we got to take the risk and go live the life now, which is all about living rich. And yeah, and then the third thing I would say, this is probably the hardest one, which is forgive the people you're mad at. That's so true. And if you need to say you're sorry, I just say you're sorry. And I,

1:15:10and there's so many things below that. But like right now, someone, everybody watches this for the most part, for somebody in your life that you're not talking to. You had a falling out. And it hurts you. Still, like it could have been 10 years ago. And a lot of times it's family, which is the saddest thing. And people typically, wait until the person's dying if there's a deathbed part of it, where they show up at the hospital. And try to say I'm sorry, or I love you. And they've lost out on the 10, 20, 30 years of lifetime I saw this as a financial advisor. The thing that was insane to me being a financial advisor, because you get to know clients better than a therapist knows them. It's how many clients we had that weren't talking to their kids. They got all this money and they've had falling out with their children. And the children don't speak to each other way more often than not. And we would try to help these clients make up. You know, I'd say in meetings, are you sure you can't have a conversation with like you have

1:16:14seen your grandkids in five years. Are you sure? How about we just reach out to them? Like we a lot of times we'd have both generations of the accounts. I'm like, I could call them right now. Like I just saw them last week. Your grandkids are gorgeous. And people get stubborn. They're afraid to say their sorry or they're just, and then what happens is the person gets sick. Then they, then it's like an hospital when my dad's dying. So I would just say, I'm gonna say, forgive and say you're sorry. And if you're not going to actually bring this person back into your life, then figure out a way to forgive them on your own. So that the pain that it's causing you can go away. Because if we hold on to that resentment, that pain eats at us. That's where disease comes from. Like I mean, we could do a whole segment on health, but like that's where the pain of life comes from. And that's why a lot of people get sick and die. Because there's this spot that they're holding on to.

1:17:17Where they're so angry with somebody that did them wrong. And you know, we've had told you, so you had told your robins on his shows three times. He does an amazing thing in one of the seminars where you get you to take that thing that you're so angry about and turn into like, how did that help you? And it reframes you. I mean, how did it happen before you? Yeah, Dean and I were together. And you did, you had Dean here too. Dean and I were together at a ton of robins event. And we both had our journals. And we were writing out whatever it was. And because everybody's got this, right? And then we wrote our whole big thing. I like, well, this is what I gained from it. Like there's always something positive that can come from the pain. But if you keep holding that person or that business or that thing inside of you, and you don't let it go, then the person who's who you you're making yourself continue suffering. Yeah, yeah. It's like drinking poison and trying to it's like trying to poison someone else, but you're drinking the poison. Yeah, you're mad at someone, but you're feeling the pain. I like this last three questions. I'm hopeful. Yeah.

1:18:18This is going to be the theme of your next book. So I'm setting you up. Getting you ready, David. Make sure you guys get this book. This is really going to be powerful. Get it for your friends, get it for your kids, get it for your parents, super quick read the latte factor while you don't have to be rich to live rich. We've also got on our website. We got a website for the book, like obviously, but it's called the latte factor.com. So we've got, I don't know when you're going to error this, but we have a bunch of bonus on this. So when you buy the book off our website, our classic, we do it with Create Alive because you've done a classic chase. We've got a 19 video class called Starlight Finish Rich. That's free. When you buy the book from us, you send us your receipt. You get that, you get that course. So we've got like $200 of the bonuses on that website, a lot of the factored.com. People are loving the book. And so I just thank you for having me on. Excited, man. I want to, before I ask the final question, I want to acknowledge you, David, for showing up with a lot of energy in your life at 52. Thank you. 52, right? Yeah. You've got a lot of, you've got a child like joy inside of you that

1:19:18radiates. And the fact that you keep showing up and create meaningful, you don't have to be writing these books. Yeah. You don't have to keep serving people to help them heal the pain and the stress and anxiety of finances, but you're doing it in such a powerful way and you're being innovative to reach different people in different ways that will resonate for them. Thanks. So I really acknowledge you for taking the time to go on a two month book tour, even when your wife is going through some health challenges and just show up to serve people. I think that's the greatest thing you can do. So I appreciate you, man. Thank you. Appreciate you, man. Final question is, what's your definition of greatness? Why is my definition? So I believe, I believe in God. I believe in higher power. And I believe that everybody is given God, given gifts that we're all given whoever your God is, right? Like we're given these gifts and they're inside of us. And the most important thing we have to do all around this

1:20:20planet is listen to what those gifts are and then go use them like bring the gift out. So I think greatness is listening to your soul. Well, truly listening to your soul, not your head and going, okay, I was given this gift. I know I want to go do this, but it's so scary in getting that gift out into the world, whatever it is. It could be the gift of being a mom, it could be the gift of being a good dad. Like we're all given these gifts. But when I think about why I've done what I've done for 26 years, I think what my gift was, I was giving this talent, trying to free people financially to actually use their God-given gifts. It's actually not about the lot today. It's not about the million dollars. It's not about the real estate. It's about the financial freedom to use your God-given gifts. And I think what happens is we become trapped financially. When I tell you that six or seven or eight people out of a minute America are living paycheck to paycheck. Every ten is very hard to hear your soul and hear a higher power.

1:21:20If you're worried about money every day and how you're paid the bills. And so I think the way you get your greatness is you're free yourself, but you've got to listen. You've got to listen to your soul. And we do a lot to not listen. Right? Some of us are working, working, working, working to not listen. Some of us are drinking to not listen. Some of us are cheating on our spouses to not listen. Like you've got to listen to your soul. And if you don't listen to your soul, the thing about the soul conversation is that it doesn't go away. It's just like it's just weird thing. And I go, that's because it's a higher power that said, I gave you this, then you're not listening to it. And so that's the people find like, well, I tend to find that there was six years. So I'm like, okay, fine. Right? So I think, I think greatness is listening to your soul consciously as much as you can throughout your life and making space for that. That's great. They were back. My man, thank you.

1:22:22My friend, I hope you're enjoying this episode right now because we are on a mission to impact a hundred million lives every single week. And every follow here on this podcast helps us reach more people. Make sure to hit the follow at the top of this show's page right now. It's a single biggest thing that you can do to support the show and the impact of us reaching you every single time we have new episodes. I appreciate you. And I can't wait to see you in the next episode. I hope you enjoyed today's episode and it inspired you on your journey towards greatness. Make sure to check out the show notes in the description for a full rundown of today's episode with all the important links. And if you want weekly exclusive bonus episodes with me personally, as well as ad-free listening, then make sure to subscribe to our greatness plus channel exclusively on Apple podcasts. Share this with a friend on social media and leave us a review on Apple podcasts as well. Let me know what you enjoyed about this episode in that review. I really love hearing

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