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How to Get Rich in America · Reasonably Happy with Paul Ollinger

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_01: Real money in capitalism is made meeting someone else's needs.
• 0:03
  SPEAKER_01: That's the first advice I'd give your kids.
• 0:05
  The second thing I would tell them is you're going to have to
• 0:09
  get up and go because
• 0:11
  SPEAKER_01: most Americans,
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_01: the whole story of America is people who got up and went.
• 0:16
  You live in the greatest,
• 0:18
  largest,
• 0:19
  most successful free market zone in the history of the world.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_01: There is opportunity for you somewhere.
• 0:29
  Now you may have to get up and go find it and it might not be
• 0:32
  near where grandma
• 0:33
  lives and that's hard because family matters like we have we
• 0:35
  have very real roots
• 0:37
  in places but most of American history is a story of people
• 0:41
  willing to go to go
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_01: ahead
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_00: We've all heard this before Capitalism is rigged,
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_00: cry the masses Nobody gets ahead anymore,
• 0:49
  says the mainstream press And 60% of young people believe that
• 0:53
  the American dream
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_00: is dead But my guest today calls this hogwash,
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_00: baloney,
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_00: codswallop,
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_00: twaddle,
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_00: malarkey,
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_00: and unmitigated piffle That's right Joseph Moore is a historian,
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_00: entrepreneur,
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_00: investor,
• 1:06
  and the author of a new book called How to Get Rich in America
• 1:10
  300 Years of
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_00: Financial Advice That Worked and Didn't
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_00: Paul Ollinger
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_00: Joseph wants to give us the answers.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_00: His book is part history, part playbook, and part reality check.
• 1:48
  He brings lessons to life with rigor that is deeper than an oil
• 1:51
  well and a wit that
• 1:53
  is drier than the Texas plains and in so doing demystifies the
• 1:57
  past in order to
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_00: clarify the present for anyone thinking about money,
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_00: success,
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_00: and what it really means to make it in America.
• 2:06
  This is Joseph Moore You're never going to be perfectly happy
• 2:11
  all the time The best
• 2:13
  you can hope for is to be reasonably happy Reasonably happy
• 2:20
  Most of the time What
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_00: you think you want to do when you hit that number
• 2:26
  ends up not working out as well you know like and so I thought
• 2:29
  I'm gonna learn
• 2:30
  Spanish you know when I make my money and then and then I took
• 2:32
  Spanish lessons and
• 2:33
  I remembered why I stopped taking Spanish it was like because
• 2:35
  it's hard you know
• 2:38
  and so our idea of what it's gonna be like on the other side of
• 2:42
  making it doesn't
• 2:43
  always work out I mean I cashed out went home no more committee
• 2:48
  meetings no more
• 2:48
  academic crap whatever I'm there for like four months six
• 2:51
  months maybe and my wife
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_01: sat me down she's like
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_01: I need you to find something to do.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_01: Because I don't know who Foucault is.
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know why you hate him, but I need you to stop talking about it.
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_01: So it's like you need faculty colleagues.
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_00: Ladies love a little discussion of Foucault.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I mean, why not?
• 3:10
  I saw this New Yorker cartoon where there's this guy who's
• 3:14
  dressed like a juggler.
• 3:16
  Sitting alone in a living room and his wife is talking to her
• 3:19
  friend in the
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_00: background and he says,
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_00: ever since he quit yodeling,
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_00: all he does is sit around not yodeling.
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_00: And so that's, you know, you got to have something to do.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_00: Let's start with this.
• 3:35
  I want to throw some facts back at you okay since you shared so
• 3:38
  many in the book
• 3:40
  since the 1970s median income has risen by 50% adjusted for
• 3:45
  inflation since the
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_00: 1990s God they were great median earnings of high school
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_00: Paul Ollinger paulinger
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_00: So why do 60% of young folks say the American Dream is dead?
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_01: Well,
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_01: first of all,
• 4:22
  I can find people saying the American Dream is dead like about
• 4:25
  300 years before I
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_01: can find the phrase American Dream.
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_01: Really?
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_01: So it's like 1676, right?
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_01: It's 100 years before.
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_01: 1676?
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_01: America doesn't even exist yet.
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_00: 1676 is 100 years before Hamilton.
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_00: It's the Dirty 13 Colonies.
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_01: Hamilton's 100 years away from rapping on Broadway.
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 4:41
  The colonists of Virginia burned the capital to the ground
• 4:45
  explicitly because
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_01: nobody can get ahead anymore.
• 4:49
  In the 1800s,
• 4:49
  there's speeches all across the country and they use the same
• 4:52
  line over and over.
• 4:52
  It's the rungs on the ladder to success were sought off by the
• 4:56
  people who got ahead of you.
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_01: But in 1980,
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_01: 1980,
• 4:59
  there is a bestselling book and there's headlines in like all
• 5:02
  the newspapers
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_01: saying,
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_01: it's so sad that the baby boomers will never be able to afford to retire.
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_01: All right.
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_01: God, that sounds familiar.
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_00: Just replace millennial baby boomers with millenniums.
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_01: So, okay, so why do we keep doing this?
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_01: And my theory is very simply this.
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_01: I think it's what I call big woe.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_01: Big woe.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_01: Big woe.
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_00: W-O-E. Woe is me.
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_01: Woe is you.
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
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  There's a despair industrial complex that produces negativity
• 5:31
  for a living.
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_01: There are no clicks for journalists.
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  SPEAKER_01: There are no votes for politicians.
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  And there is no tenure for academics telling you things are
• 5:40
  getting better.
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  But they can get every one of those things if they tell you
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  somebody broke it,
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  SPEAKER_01: they know who did it,
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_01: and they know how to fix it.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_01: Hmm.
• 5:47
  They are rewarded for telling you everything is broken and
• 5:52
  you'll never get ahead.
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_01: You are not rewarded for listening.
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_01: But for the generation we have today,
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_01: and especially because information is more available than it's ever been,
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_01: every single person in every place of authority is saying it sucks.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_01: Why would we not expect that?
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_00: On both sides of the political eye Yes,
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  right and left Everybody agrees that it's broken It may be the
• 6:12
  only thing they
• 6:13
  agree on They don't agree on whose fault it is or what to do
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  about it Although
• 6:18
  increasingly they seem to be like bending into the same kind of
• 6:22
  mirror image of
• 6:23
  each other What I take from that is people have decided they
• 6:28
  cannot act on the
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_01: world because people have told them they cannot act on the world
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_01: Here's the problem.
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  SPEAKER_01: The locus of control is external.
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
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  SPEAKER_01: But it's just not true.
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  SPEAKER_01: You can't act on the world.
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_00: So go to Frederick Douglass, the great abolitionist.
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_00: This was something that surprised me.
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_01: Frederick Douglass, the great abolitionist.
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_01: See, I did read your book.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_01: That makes two of us.
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
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  SPEAKER_01: Until this podcast.
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_01: I know.
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_01: It's going to go viral.
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  So when people hear this,
• 6:54
  though,
• 6:55
  I say Frederick Douglass,
• 6:56
  what do you think?
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_01: What to the slave is the Fourth of July?
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  SPEAKER_01: We teach it.
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  SPEAKER_01: We should teach it.
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  SPEAKER_01: I've taught it.
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_01: I'm glad we teach it.
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  SPEAKER_01: Not even close to his most popular speech in his own lifetime.
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  SPEAKER_01: Everywhere he went across the nation,
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  SPEAKER_01: white audiences,
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_01: black audiences,
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  SPEAKER_01: they begged him to give this speech.
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  SPEAKER_01: It was called Self Made Men.
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  And the line in that speech that everyone was excited to hear
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  was when he said,
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  SPEAKER_01: our motto is go ahead.
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  SPEAKER_01: And he's living in an era.
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  His audience is like half people who used to be slaves What
• 7:27
  year is this?
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  SPEAKER_01: 1860s,
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  SPEAKER_01: 70s,
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  80s And his crescendo line is Maybe I can't be president But I
• 7:35
  can be prosperous
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  Now if that audience is hungry for that message In that moment
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  What do we have to
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  SPEAKER_01: complain about?
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  What I ask people Because everybody's political Everything has
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  become political in
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  SPEAKER_01: this era And what I ask young people Middle age doesn't matter
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  SPEAKER_01: It's not a question of what type of economy you would build.
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  SPEAKER_01: It's a question of what you're going to build in this economy.
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  And that matters because the Consumer Financial Protection
• 8:02
  Bureau ran a study.
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  SPEAKER_01: They found that the single greatest predictor of financial health,
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  SPEAKER_01: it out did income and it outperformed inheritance.
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  SPEAKER_01: was a positive attitude combined with a habit of saving.
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  SPEAKER_01: Just like a baseline level,
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  a belief that you could do something good and a simple set of
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  behaviors after that.
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  SPEAKER_01: Then they did a follow-up study, same thing.
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  SPEAKER_01: Then someone else did a study, 150,000 people.
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  SPEAKER_01: They found that was strongest for the poor.
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  The poorer you were,
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  the more your belief that you could get ahead matters.
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  So my response to Big Woe is not only are they wrong
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  statistically,
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  they're hurting people.
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  SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.
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  SPEAKER_01: And that to me is why we've got to confront that negativity.
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_01: So let me give you a stat.
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  SPEAKER_00: No, I...
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  I agree with you a hundred percent that a lot of the people
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  that claim to want to
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  help poor people are actually handicapping them by by preaching
• 8:57
  victimization and
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  not saying hey you can the world needs you the economy needs
• 9:02
  you it's but you got
• 9:04
  to go and do it yourself disempowering to hear that over and
• 9:07
  over and over and that
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  SPEAKER_00: doesn't mean it's going to be easy it doesn't mean that you haven't had
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  SPEAKER_00: disadvantages but like
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  Don't wait for the government to pull you up to financial
• 9:16
  autonomy Right This is
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  SPEAKER_01: You go to the 19th century,
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  SPEAKER_01: the 1800s
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  America is the place where more people are getting ahead faster
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  than anywhere else
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  SPEAKER_01: on the globe.
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  And in the average city in America,
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  the upward mobility rate is like 20 to 30%.
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  So like people born at the bottom,
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  roughly a third of them are getting out of the bottom.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_01: Globally.
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_01: No, in America.
• 9:38
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, America.
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  And that is blowing past what anyone else is doing anywhere
• 9:42
  else on earth.
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_01: Because yes,
• 9:44
  it's hard to be a Chinese immigrant in San Francisco with the
• 9:46
  racism and the
• 9:48
  SPEAKER_01: economy and all the things that are blowing in your face,
• 9:51
  SPEAKER_01: the headwinds.
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  SPEAKER_01: But you're not a peasant back in famine-plagued rural China.
• 9:57
  SPEAKER_01: You're not in Scandinavia.
• 9:59
  SPEAKER_01: You're in Minnesota.
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  And so the experience of Americans was far and away the best on
• 10:05
  every single measure.
• 10:06
  SPEAKER_01: It doesn't matter which one you use.
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_01: Median wealth, mean wealth, landholding, everything.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_01: Today, it's twice that.
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_00: The rate of going from the bottom up.
• 10:16
  So if you're in the bottom,
• 10:18
  6 in 10 will get out if you're born at the bottom.
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  SPEAKER_01: 4 in 10 become middle class to upper middle class to wealthy.
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  SPEAKER_01: 1 in 10 goes all the way to the top.
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  SPEAKER_01: Who replaces them?
• 10:25
  SPEAKER_01: New immigrants?
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_01: Well, people fall down.
• 10:28
  Do you know that the downward mobility rate of the richest
• 10:30
  people in the top 20% in
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_01: America is almost the exact,
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_01: it actually is exactly the same as Denmark,
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_01: which we think of as a socialist utopia.
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_01: So the same amount of people who start at the top fall out.
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  SPEAKER_01: as do in most major European nations.
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_01: So people fall out.
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_01: They move down.
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_01: People make bad choices.
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_01: People, you know, we forget inheritance doesn't go on forever.
• 10:51
  SPEAKER_01: So you can only,
• 10:52
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 10:53
  coddle the next or second or third generation so long before
• 10:55
  they have to make
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_01: their own choices.
• 10:57
  SPEAKER_01: So people rise up all the time.
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_00: You know, you said something before.
• 11:01
  SPEAKER_00: It's not about what economy would you build.
• 11:03
  SPEAKER_00: It's what are you going to do in this economy.
• 11:04
  But if you were going to build an economy,
• 11:07
  how would it look different from what we have today?
• 11:09
  SPEAKER_00: in the United States.
• 11:10
  If I were to build the economy,
• 11:12
  I'd run away from that job because that sounds scary.
• 11:13
  SPEAKER_01: But what I would want for people is the chance that I was given,
• 11:18
  SPEAKER_01: the chance that hundreds of years of people have been given,
• 11:21
  the chance to find what you are good at and become very good at
• 11:25
  that over time and
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_01: be rewarded over time for being very good at that thing,
• 11:29
  SPEAKER_01: whatever that thing is.
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_01: What that would mean is
• 11:34
  Not so much regulation to get in your way of trying to
• 11:37
  establish a business or a
• 11:39
  SPEAKER_00: certain amount of regulation.
• 11:41
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I don't have a kind of libertarian utopia in my head.
• 11:44
  My attitude on the idea that the government used to not be
• 11:47
  involved in capitalism
• 11:48
  SPEAKER_01: and now it's,
• 11:48
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_01: is and that's somehow new.
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_01: I call that the seven up theory of pure capitalism.
• 11:54
  SPEAKER_01: Never had it, never will.
• 11:55
  SPEAKER_00: You're going to have to update that for some of your younger readers.
• 11:58
  SPEAKER_00: That's true.
• 11:59
  SPEAKER_01: I haven't seen a 7-Up since the guy from The Shining died.
• 12:03
  SPEAKER_01: Here's the problem with 7-Up is because they went against,
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_01: they were like,
• 12:06
  we'll never have caffeine and then monster energy drinks and
• 12:09
  everything came along.
• 12:10
  SPEAKER_01: It's like they got on the wrong track at the wrong moment.
• 12:13
  SPEAKER_01: But that idea of this, oh, there was a pure capitalism...
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_01: Back in the day.
• 12:18
  SPEAKER_01: And here's the reality.
• 12:20
  Thomas Jefferson,
• 12:21
  president,
• 12:22
  1800,
• 12:22
  he runs on an anti-government platform.
• 12:25
  Like,
• 12:25
  we're not going to get the government involved in things that
• 12:27
  shouldn't be involved.
• 12:28
  And even before the Louisiana Purchase,
• 12:30
  he turns the federal government into the largest
• 12:32
  SPEAKER_01: You know
• 12:51
  That Is The Government Getting Involved So I Have No Problems
• 12:53
  With That The
• 12:54
  Government Is Going To Be Involved Sure And It's Best To A Hope
• 12:58
  That It Does Good
• 12:59
  Things Not Bad Things And B Know What It's Doing So You Can
• 13:03
  Respond To That Okay
• 13:05
  But If You Had Fill In The Number A Million Five Million
• 13:08
  Dollars Whatever Ten
• 13:09
  SPEAKER_00: Million Dollars To Invest In
• 13:11
  SPEAKER_00: real estate or development or something,
• 13:13
  you would decide to invest it in a place that was friendly to
• 13:16
  the development
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_01: community.
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_01: You wouldn't come to New York City and be like- Oh, no.
• 13:22
  SPEAKER_01: If you're in the New York ecosystem,
• 13:24
  you live in a world that is so different than what is often
• 13:27
  called the flyover
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_01: states,
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_01: but not just flyover states.
• 13:29
  SPEAKER_01: It's like all the other states except the ones on the West Coast, right?
• 13:32
  SPEAKER_01: You could not do what most developers do.
• 13:35
  SPEAKER_01: I live in Georgia.
• 13:37
  SPEAKER_01: And
• 13:38
  SPEAKER_01: I'm telling you like my ride to get my kids to school.
• 13:41
  SPEAKER_01: There's a new development of housing or retail or something all the time.
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_01: It's been like that for as long as I grew up there.
• 13:49
  SPEAKER_01: That's right.
• 13:49
  SPEAKER_01: So like Atlanta just grows and grows and grows.
• 13:52
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 13:52
  SPEAKER_00: Where you live
• 13:53
  SPEAKER_00: was not considered Atlanta when I grew up.
• 13:56
  SPEAKER_01: That's correct.
• 13:57
  SPEAKER_01: Atlanta just was.
• 13:58
  SPEAKER_01: It's still a stretch to call it.
• 13:59
  There's a joke that eventually it's going to hit the South
• 14:01
  Carolina line and have
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_00: to decide what to do.
• 14:03
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 14:03
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 14:03
  And so,
• 14:04
  but that is something that is just unknown to people in
• 14:08
  economics.
• 14:08
  SPEAKER_01: Ecosystems
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_01: Which is where most Americans started for most of time.
• 14:37
  SPEAKER_01: People were showing up here.
• 14:38
  If the idea is that you want a dynamic economy and to actually
• 14:41
  help the people at the bottom.
• 14:43
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 14:43
  SPEAKER_00: If you actually want to help with affordability,
• 14:45
  SPEAKER_00: you wouldn't be doing what the politicians up here are doing to help with
• 14:50
  SPEAKER_00: affordability because it doesn't make it less expensive to live here.
• 14:54
  SPEAKER_01: So this has happened once before, by the way.
• 14:56
  SPEAKER_01: So if you go back to the 1910s and 20s,
• 14:59
  SPEAKER_01: The primary mortgage payoff strategy,
• 15:01
  SPEAKER_01: the way most people who showed up in America,
• 15:02
  SPEAKER_01: and I'm thinking specifically about New York,
• 15:04
  SPEAKER_01: specifically about Brooklyn,
• 15:05
  SPEAKER_01: especially Harlem,
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_01: the way immigrants would show up with very little to their name,
• 15:12
  SPEAKER_01: find a way to scrounge together a down payment,
• 15:15
  SPEAKER_01: get in on a house,
• 15:16
  SPEAKER_01: and you can see this at the Tenement Museum.
• 15:19
  SPEAKER_01: As soon as they could get the house,
• 15:20
  SPEAKER_01: the first thing they did was start renting it out to people.
• 15:23
  Husbands and wives would live in the smallest back room renting
• 15:26
  out all the other
• 15:26
  SPEAKER_01: rooms to try to pay off that mortgage as fast as possible.
• 15:31
  SPEAKER_01: Why do you not do that?
• 15:32
  Y'all had the Airbnb moment before it got regulated away but
• 15:35
  the reason it didn't
• 15:37
  exist from say the 1920s to the 2010s is because moral
• 15:43
  regulators came in and said
• 15:45
  SPEAKER_01: this isn't good for you.
• 15:46
  You shouldn't be doing this and so they made it illegal to have
• 15:50
  more housing.
• 15:52
  I'll absolutely take one room or one bed in one room beside
• 15:55
  another guy and rent
• 15:55
  SPEAKER_01: from you so that I can get ahead and it helps you get ahead.
• 15:57
  SPEAKER_01: And that's the problem with these regulations is they end up taking
• 16:16
  what could be an opportunity for people and say,
• 16:18
  well,
• 16:18
  that's not good for you.
• 16:19
  SPEAKER_01: We're not going to let you do that.
• 16:20
  SPEAKER_00: So one of the interesting,
• 16:22
  very interesting themes that's woven throughout the book is
• 16:25
  that what's old is new.
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 16:27
  That like these things that we think we've invented,
• 16:30
  whether it's crypto,
• 16:31
  whether it's Airbnb.
• 16:33
  And you give a few other examples that I would read if I could
• 16:35
  find it on my notes right here.
• 16:37
  SPEAKER_00: But basically, it's like we've seen everything before.
• 16:41
  SPEAKER_00: We've seen most of this before.
• 16:42
  SPEAKER_00: Now,
• 16:42
  SPEAKER_00: there are some things that are new that we actually think are old,
• 16:45
  SPEAKER_00: but let me start with the things that we think are very new.
• 16:47
  SPEAKER_00: So talk crypto, right?
• 16:48
  SPEAKER_01: What could be more new than the crypto economy, except it's very old.
• 16:53
  SPEAKER_01: At the dawn of the Civil War,
• 16:55
  SPEAKER_01: there were about 10,000 separate currencies issued by different banks,
• 16:59
  SPEAKER_01: companies,
• 17:00
  SPEAKER_01: individuals.
• 17:01
  SPEAKER_01: People were issuing currency all the time.
• 17:03
  SPEAKER_00: In the United States.
• 17:04
  SPEAKER_00: In the United States.
• 17:05
  SPEAKER_01: 10,000.
• 17:05
  SPEAKER_01: About 10,000 with well over 1,000 issuers.
• 17:08
  And this was absolutely normal for individuals or businesses to
• 17:14
  issue their own
• 17:15
  SPEAKER_01: currencies that would circulate as currencies.
• 17:18
  SPEAKER_01: Individuals could issue their own currencies.
• 17:21
  SPEAKER_01: It's basically a floating IOU.
• 17:22
  Fartcoin existed in 1864 Well this is exactly what it would be
• 17:26
  like imagine that
• 17:26
  you went to work and I went to work and you got paid in
• 17:28
  fartcoin and I got paid in
• 17:30
  dogecoin the first thing both of us are going to do is spend it
• 17:32
  as fast as possible
• 17:33
  because we know it could go up but it's more likely to go down
• 17:36
  So people actually
• 17:37
  SPEAKER_00: Steve McLaughlin You actually had an incentive to not save.
• 17:39
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 17:40
  Steve McLaughlin To get rid of cash and put it in land or gold
• 17:43
  or some other more
• 17:44
  SPEAKER_00: reliable commodity.
• 17:45
  Steve McLaughlin Or food in your belly because it's better than
• 17:48
  it going to zero.
• 17:48
  SPEAKER_01: And this happened to people.
• 17:49
  People would get paid in this kind of money and then that
• 17:51
  business or that bank
• 17:52
  SPEAKER_01: would go under,
• 17:53
  it'd go to zero and suddenly you're sitting on this money that
• 17:55
  you thought you were
• 17:55
  SPEAKER_01: saving and it's gone.
• 17:56
  SPEAKER_01: Steve McLaughlin Like Zimbabwean currency.
• 17:58
  SPEAKER_01: Steve McLaughlin Or yeah, just it's literally worthless.
• 18:00
  SPEAKER_01: And so
• 18:02
  My absolute favorite example of this is a runaway slave from
• 18:06
  Kentucky named William
• 18:07
  SPEAKER_01: Wells Brown Brown,
• 18:10
  SPEAKER_01: very ingenious guy,
• 18:11
  SPEAKER_01: he gets out of Kentucky,
• 18:12
  SPEAKER_01: he makes it as far as Michigan,
• 18:14
  SPEAKER_01: and he gets stuck He has no money,
• 18:17
  SPEAKER_01: he has no friends,
• 18:17
  SPEAKER_01: he knows no one,
• 18:19
  SPEAKER_01: and he is on the run from the law And a local landlord says,
• 18:23
  SPEAKER_01: look,
• 18:23
  SPEAKER_01: I can give you this space and rent it out to you,
• 18:25
  SPEAKER_01: and you can open a barbershop
• 18:27
  SPEAKER_01: Which is a fabulous idea with only three problems.
• 18:29
  SPEAKER_01: Number one, he has never cut hair.
• 18:30
  SPEAKER_01: Number two, he does not own scissors.
• 18:32
  SPEAKER_01: And number three, no one in town has money to pay him with.
• 18:35
  SPEAKER_01: Now he solves the first two problems.
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_01: He doesn't tell anybody he's never cut hair.
• 18:38
  SPEAKER_01: And he borrows some scissors.
• 18:40
  and then he goes to a local printer and he says will you print
• 18:42
  money for me in
• 18:44
  small denominations and he takes this money goes around town he
• 18:47
  says look this is
• 18:47
  basically a coupon for exchange at my barber shop and you may
• 18:52
  not need this much
• 18:53
  haircuts but some of your customers will and so he uses it to
• 18:56
  buy food he uses it
• 18:57
  SPEAKER_01: to buy lodging before you know it
• 18:59
  This Is Circulating Through Town As Regular Money It's
• 19:02
  Basically Barter But It's
• 19:04
  Sort Of Like A Promissory Note For Barter Intermediated But
• 19:08
  There's More Than One
• 19:08
  Of These Going Around They Kind Of Double As A Coupon Or An
• 19:13
  Advertisement For The
• 19:14
  Store But They Carry Value They Are Stated Value And There's
• 19:16
  State Laws In Every
• 19:17
  SPEAKER_01: State About How To Do It And So This Is Floating Around
• 19:22
  Eventually,
• 19:23
  he's able to exchange it for,
• 19:25
  quote unquote,
• 19:25
  harder money,
• 19:26
  right?
• 19:26
  SPEAKER_01: Gold-backed money or land-backed money.
• 19:28
  SPEAKER_01: And he does get out of town,
• 19:29
  SPEAKER_01: at which point his money goes to zero because all self-issued currencies,
• 19:34
  SPEAKER_01: and this is the thing I would tell young crypto bros who are determined,
• 19:37
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 19:37
  SPEAKER_01: enjoy staying broke,
• 19:38
  SPEAKER_01: man.
• 19:39
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 19:41
  SPEAKER_01: All self-issued currencies go to zero eventually.
• 19:45
  SPEAKER_01: Uh-huh.
• 19:47
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, okay, so because there's nothing behind it.
• 19:49
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 19:50
  SPEAKER_00: And so we did,
• 19:52
  SPEAKER_00: and one of the conclusions that I,
• 19:54
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know if you stated so much as you just let the reader decide it,
• 19:57
  SPEAKER_00: is that our banking system is very young.
• 19:59
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, like, we think of it as like, oh, it's
• 20:02
  SPEAKER_00: Right, and we're still experimenting with it.
• 20:03
  SPEAKER_00: We're still learning.
• 20:04
  SPEAKER_00: I think we're getting a lot better than we used to be.
• 20:07
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, some of the banking crisis of the 1870s,
• 20:17
  SPEAKER_01: Because it's the 1860s that gives us the greenback,
• 20:19
  SPEAKER_01: the dollar you think of kind of as the dollar.
• 20:22
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 20:22
  And then immediately you have like all these crises over and
• 20:25
  over as in essence,
• 20:27
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 20:28
  there's not a lot of institutional memory on how to use this
• 20:32
  single issue currency
• 20:34
  SPEAKER_01: called the U.S.
• 20:35
  SPEAKER_01: dollar.
• 20:35
  And so it goes through,
• 20:37
  you know,
• 20:37
  waves of adoption,
• 20:38
  but also has problems.
• 20:39
  SPEAKER_01: And so it ebbs and flows.
• 20:40
  SPEAKER_01: I think we're probably in a good place now.
• 20:42
  SPEAKER_01: I don't want to go back to the era of self-issued currency.
• 20:45
  SPEAKER_01: And the lesson of history is
• 20:47
  SPEAKER_01: Probably neither should you.
• 20:48
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 20:50
  SPEAKER_00: Okay,
• 20:50
  SPEAKER_00: so one of the things you're talking about is like,
• 20:52
  SPEAKER_00: let's recognize what's new and what's old or what's neither.
• 20:58
  SPEAKER_00: Like what's true across the centuries or across the decades?
• 21:02
  And one of the things you do to demonstrate this point is to
• 21:05
  talk about the sacred
• 21:07
  SPEAKER_00: cows of financial wisdom,
• 21:10
  SPEAKER_00: right?
• 21:10
  Like the stock market's a great place to start because probably
• 21:16
  100% of the people
• 21:17
  SPEAKER_00: who listen to this podcast own stocks.
• 21:19
  A significant amount of stocks or a significant amount of their
• 21:23
  net worth is tied
• 21:24
  SPEAKER_00: up in equities or mutual funds,
• 21:25
  SPEAKER_00: right?
• 21:26
  SPEAKER_00: But that's not always been the case.
• 21:28
  SPEAKER_01: No.
• 21:28
  SPEAKER_01: In fact,
• 21:29
  SPEAKER_01: for most of American history,
• 21:30
  SPEAKER_01: nobody got ahead with stocks unless you were a very small niche.
• 21:35
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe we have to rewrite a lot of histories about those people.
• 21:37
  SPEAKER_01: But most people didn't own stocks.
• 21:38
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 21:41
  SPEAKER_01: Let's start with what you would hear if you walked in today.
• 21:43
  SPEAKER_01: Somebody would say,
• 21:44
  SPEAKER_01: well,
• 21:44
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 21:45
  SPEAKER_01: buy an index fund and it'll go up over time because of compound interest.
• 21:49
  SPEAKER_01: That falls apart on a host of points.
• 21:52
  Number one...
• 21:52
  Standard economic...
• 21:53
  Let me read this because this is great.
• 21:54
  SPEAKER_00: Because all these things that we talk about, like...
• 21:57
  SPEAKER_00: portfolio theory and investment theory, all this kind of stuff.
• 22:01
  SPEAKER_00: Standard economic theory assumes lab-like conditions.
• 22:05
  SPEAKER_00: No job loss,
• 22:07
  SPEAKER_00: abundant willpower,
• 22:08
  SPEAKER_00: desires that don't change,
• 22:09
  SPEAKER_00: the ability to predict the number of kids you will have,
• 22:13
  SPEAKER_00: and a risk aversion temperament that never shifts.
• 22:17
  SPEAKER_00: I'm 55 years old.
• 22:18
  My orientation towards the market,
• 22:20
  towards risk aversion,
• 22:22
  et cetera,
• 22:23
  has changed
• 22:25
  SPEAKER_00: changed 180 degrees since I had children.
• 22:28
  SPEAKER_01: My favorite example of this,
• 22:29
  SPEAKER_01: and you've probably had this experience,
• 22:30
  SPEAKER_01: I think most of your listeners have had this.
• 22:32
  SPEAKER_00: Did I say I'm 55?
• 22:33
  SPEAKER_00: I'm 57.
• 22:33
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I heard 40 is what I heard.
• 22:36
  SPEAKER_01: 41.
• 22:37
  SPEAKER_01: And everyone's had this experience.
• 22:39
  SPEAKER_01: I think this is one
• 22:40
  SPEAKER_01: I'm
• 22:55
  $10,000 invested in 1929,
• 22:58
  held and reinvested for this many years would be $10 million.
• 23:02
  SPEAKER_01: And I, the financial advisor, am here to help you get wealthy this way.
• 23:06
  Now,
• 23:06
  this is supposed to go very well in these meetings,
• 23:09
  and mine went really poorly.
• 23:11
  SPEAKER_01: It's because your guy was 22.
• 23:13
  Well,
• 23:13
  and didn't know history and thought that I was seeing a history
• 23:16
  chart.
• 23:16
  SPEAKER_01: I was like, this isn't a history.
• 23:17
  SPEAKER_01: First of all,
• 23:18
  Houses Did Not Cost $10,000 In 1929 So You're Telling Me This
• 23:21
  Person Put Their Life
• 23:23
  Savings Into The Stock Market In 1929 Lost 80% In The
• 23:26
  Depression Fought Nazis
• 23:29
  SPEAKER_01: Feared Nuclear Armageddon
• 23:31
  went through double digit inflation got an AOL account cried
• 23:34
  when Ross and Rachel
• 23:35
  got back together never once touched the money that's not real
• 23:38
  life that's not what
• 23:40
  people actually do with their money if you've got money that
• 23:44
  you don't have to
• 23:44
  think about that's a perfectly wonderful thing to do with it
• 23:47
  now the other problem
• 23:48
  with this is most Americans never lived long enough for
• 23:51
  compound interest to be
• 23:52
  SPEAKER_01: helpful to them I think the stat is 90
• 23:56
  SPEAKER_01: I want to say it's 99%.
• 23:57
  SPEAKER_01: It may be lower than that,
• 23:58
  but it's well over 90% of Warren Buffett's wealth comes after
• 24:01
  his 60th birthday.
• 24:02
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's insane.
• 24:04
  SPEAKER_01: That is an age most Americans never saw.
• 24:07
  Not to mention,
• 24:08
  most Americans' wealth was in land,
• 24:10
  which doesn't compound.
• 24:11
  So all of these foundations that we think of the way everyone
• 24:14
  always got wealthy are very new.
• 24:18
  SPEAKER_00: My father lived to 93 years old.
• 24:20
  And he wasn't a terrifically wealthy man,
• 24:23
  but he had some dough by the time he died.
• 24:25
  SPEAKER_00: But the reason he had it was because for the last 20 years of his life,
• 24:28
  SPEAKER_00: he spent $12 a month and he had four different,
• 24:31
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 24:33
  SPEAKER_00: checks coming in from Social Security,
• 24:34
  SPEAKER_00: the Navy and all these different other sources.
• 24:37
  SPEAKER_00: And all the big expenses of his life were in the rearview mirror,
• 24:42
  including putting six kids through college and paying for
• 24:44
  weddings and parts of
• 24:45
  SPEAKER_00: weddings and stuff like that.
• 24:47
  So it's like yeah it's great in theory but when you're sitting
• 24:52
  there paying your
• 24:53
  SPEAKER_00: bills every month and trying to put kids through school
• 24:56
  SPEAKER_01: Theory goes out the window.
• 24:57
  SPEAKER_01: It's not the real world.
• 24:58
  SPEAKER_01: And not to mention, the real world has changed a lot.
• 25:01
  So much of what has happened is the laws and the incentives
• 25:04
  have driven towards the
• 25:05
  SPEAKER_01: stock market,
• 25:06
  SPEAKER_01: which is fine.
• 25:07
  SPEAKER_01: Please don't hear me saying something against the stock market.
• 25:09
  SPEAKER_01: But if you had gone back to,
• 25:11
  SPEAKER_01: say,
• 25:11
  SPEAKER_01: the 19-teens and 20s,
• 25:12
  SPEAKER_01: you could not buy an index fund because to buy it,
• 25:15
  you'd have to literally buy 100 shares because they wouldn't
• 25:18
  sell it in odd lots,
• 25:19
  SPEAKER_01: really.
• 25:20
  you'd have to buy 100 shares of every stock in that index which
• 25:23
  would have been a
• 25:24
  million dollars back then which is like 20 something million
• 25:26
  dollars today nobody's
• 25:27
  SPEAKER_01: doing that so this was not something on offer to most people
• 25:32
  Another point that you made with the same kind of eloquence
• 25:36
  that you just talked
• 25:37
  SPEAKER_00: about,
• 25:38
  SPEAKER_00: the history from the Depression to Ross and Rachel,
• 25:41
  is that from the founding fathers until the release of Michael
• 25:43
  Jackson's thriller
• 25:44
  SPEAKER_00: in 1982,
• 25:45
  SPEAKER_00: which I remember quite clearly,
• 25:47
  SPEAKER_00: by the way,
• 25:47
  SPEAKER_00: dividends made up 96% of total stock returns.
• 25:49
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 25:52
  SPEAKER_00: So what implication does that have?
• 25:55
  SPEAKER_01: So the stock market,
• 25:58
  SPEAKER_01: the value of the stocks,
• 25:59
  SPEAKER_01: the price chart on those stocks,
• 26:00
  SPEAKER_01: didn't really go up that much over time.
• 26:03
  SPEAKER_01: In fact, the stock market, if I'm remembering this correctly.
• 26:05
  SPEAKER_00: And so to get that appreciation, you
• 26:07
  you would have to reinvest 100% of those dividends and not
• 26:11
  spend it on the shit
• 26:12
  SPEAKER_00: that you got to pay for on a monthly basis.
• 26:13
  SPEAKER_01: You're literally getting a quarterly check or a deposit or something,
• 26:17
  SPEAKER_01: coupons,
• 26:18
  SPEAKER_01: whatever it's going to be,
• 26:18
  and then you have to go back and put that back in the market in
• 26:21
  order for that.
• 26:22
  SPEAKER_00: Which you didn't do on E-Trade.
• 26:23
  SPEAKER_00: You got a physical check and you had to take it back to your stockbroker.
• 26:28
  SPEAKER_01: Or he had to call you and say, I've got this check here for you.
• 26:31
  SPEAKER_00: From EF Hutton.
• 26:33
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, that's a deep pull.
• 26:34
  SPEAKER_00: I love that.
• 26:35
  SPEAKER_00: That's like your 7-Up reference.
• 26:36
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, there you go.
• 26:37
  SPEAKER_01: We're going to see how far it did.
• 26:39
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, man.
• 26:40
  SPEAKER_00: I watched a lot of television from 1977 until, well, earlier today.
• 26:48
  SPEAKER_01: I'm willing to fight and lose,
• 26:49
  but I think the real thing that happened for people was that
• 26:55
  they were experiencing
• 26:58
  SPEAKER_01: the rise of the stock market really post-1980s roughly,
• 27:03
  SPEAKER_01: when the Thriller album comes out,
• 27:06
  SPEAKER_01: as the rise in prices.
• 27:08
  before that it was here's this money what do you want to do
• 27:11
  with it and for most
• 27:12
  people the answer was feed my children right or buy a house or
• 27:16
  invest in real
• 27:17
  estate start a podcast that's exactly what they were doing
• 27:21
  right about the 1920s
• 27:22
  was when that really got go actually believe it or not because
• 27:24
  you had the first
• 27:24
  radio shows can you imagine I'd like to see a chart if you
• 27:27
  started a podcast in
• 27:28
  1920 how many followers would you have so far ahead exactly
• 27:32
  you'd be bigger you
• 27:32
  SPEAKER_01: would be a Kardashian totally totally the um
• 27:35
  SPEAKER_01: That's a great analogy.
• 27:38
  SPEAKER_01: That was what people did with stocks.
• 27:40
  SPEAKER_01: If you had them, which by the way, wasn't most Americans.
• 27:43
  SPEAKER_01: I don't mean like was 40%.
• 27:44
  SPEAKER_01: It was like 10 to 20% at most at their peaks.
• 27:49
  We don't get to the point that 50% of Americans owned stocks
• 27:51
  until almost the
• 27:52
  SPEAKER_01: 1990s,
• 27:52
  SPEAKER_01: early 2000s.
• 27:52
  SPEAKER_01: Wow.
• 27:55
  Now what happens in the 80s and 90s because of some regulatory
• 27:59
  changes because of
• 28:00
  one of the big shifts is away from pension plans into 401ks
• 28:04
  people start having to
• 28:05
  put money in the market the prices begin to go up and that and
• 28:10
  there's tax
• 28:11
  advantages to not issuing dividends obviously so that the high
• 28:16
  income taxes were
• 28:16
  part of this but all this to say the price of the value of the
• 28:20
  stock price goes up
• 28:21
  SPEAKER_01: and up and up and
• 28:23
  What I point out in the book is that means most of your gains
• 28:26
  are not passive.
• 28:27
  SPEAKER_01: They're speculative.
• 28:28
  SPEAKER_01: Meaning this is a supply and demand issue.
• 28:30
  SPEAKER_00: It's not reflective of the underlying value of the company.
• 28:33
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 28:33
  And I mean,
• 28:34
  you know,
• 28:34
  I'm a fan of- So you're saying my net worth is a whole bunch of
• 28:38
  hot air.
• 28:39
  Well my opinion on net worth is very simply it only matters
• 28:41
  three times it matters
• 28:42
  when you need to borrow money it matters when you die and it
• 28:44
  matters if men want to
• 28:45
  impress each other to see who's as bigger right like past that
• 28:49
  net worth is the
• 28:49
  most irrelevant stat I can think of in personal finance right
• 28:52
  because you can't do
• 28:53
  SPEAKER_01: anything with it
• 28:54
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and we always overestimate it, right?
• 28:56
  SPEAKER_01: Of course.
• 28:57
  SPEAKER_01: It's always pre-tax.
• 28:58
  I've never heard somebody take out the tax from their 401k when
• 29:02
  estimating their
• 29:02
  net worth unless they're in trouble with somebody and try to
• 29:05
  get out of it.
• 29:05
  SPEAKER_00: Your home is not valued at what Zillow says it is.
• 29:08
  SPEAKER_00: No, you've got realtor fees.
• 29:09
  And you've got all kinds of transaction fees before you ever
• 29:12
  see a dollar of cash
• 29:13
  SPEAKER_01: out of that thing.
• 29:15
  SPEAKER_01: Mm-hmm
• 29:37
  So I work on this for like what I thought would be a couple of
• 29:39
  days became a couple
• 29:40
  SPEAKER_01: of weeks became almost a month became what am I doing?
• 29:42
  SPEAKER_01: What is GitHub?
• 29:43
  SPEAKER_01: How do I do this?
• 29:44
  SPEAKER_01: But I'm eventually I figure out how to get this coin into the world.
• 29:49
  SPEAKER_01: And I made 1.1 billion coins
• 29:51
  Billionarily and then I went in and created basically a swap or
• 29:56
  a pool where I swap
• 29:58
  for my this is all me by the way I'm not selling this to
• 30:00
  anybody this is just I put
• 30:01
  a hundred dollars of USDC in and I put a hundred billionarily
• 30:05
  coin in and it
• 30:06
  registered on the market exchanges as therefore all of these
• 30:11
  coins are worth one
• 30:12
  dollar because there was a dollar put in and a billionarily
• 30:14
  coin in and I've
• 30:15
  SPEAKER_01: checked my wallet value and it said 1.1 billion dollars
• 30:20
  SPEAKER_01: And I just sat there and I thought, honey, we're billionaires!
• 30:26
  SPEAKER_01: And at this point,
• 30:27
  SPEAKER_01: she has seen enough of my antics with this project that she was like,
• 30:30
  SPEAKER_01: that's great,
• 30:30
  SPEAKER_01: but the kids are at track and somebody has to go get them.
• 30:33
  SPEAKER_01: But that's what net worth is.
• 30:35
  It's this imaginary figure that we can create in all kinds of
• 30:39
  ways or disappear in
• 30:40
  SPEAKER_01: all kinds of ways.
• 30:43
  SPEAKER_01: If we want to go after Jeff Bezos as well, that's fine.
• 30:46
  But understand that when you divide it all up,
• 30:48
  we're all going to get about 500 bucks.
• 30:50
  SPEAKER_01: I am,
• 30:50
  SPEAKER_01: by the way,
• 30:50
  SPEAKER_01: glad I did not do that,
• 30:51
  SPEAKER_01: A,
• 30:51
  SPEAKER_01: in California,
• 30:52
  SPEAKER_01: and B,
• 30:52
  SPEAKER_01: after they pass whatever this wealth tax is going to be,
• 30:54
  SPEAKER_01: because I would have literally owed,
• 30:56
  SPEAKER_01: I mean,
• 30:56
  SPEAKER_01: in theory,
• 30:57
  I could have owed millions of dollars in taxes because I made
• 31:01
  myself a billionaire
• 31:02
  SPEAKER_01: with 100 bucks.
• 31:04
  SPEAKER_00: Crazy.
• 31:06
  So what should,
• 31:09
  what metrics of financial health would you encourage people to
• 31:12
  point to?
• 31:14
  SPEAKER_00: or think about.
• 31:15
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 31:15
  SPEAKER_01: No.
• 31:15
  SPEAKER_01: Well,
• 31:15
  SPEAKER_01: I think first,
• 31:17
  SPEAKER_01: so number one,
• 31:19
  SPEAKER_01: the financial advice industry,
• 31:21
  which is so big and we can't not get told what to do with our
• 31:25
  money by somebody.
• 31:26
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 31:28
  If you really listen to it,
• 31:29
  most of it is about trying to solve your own problems.
• 31:32
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 31:32
  SPEAKER_01: Should you buy lattes or is that a waste of your money?
• 31:34
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 31:36
  SPEAKER_01: Well, that's fine.
• 31:36
  SPEAKER_01: That can certainly help you not splurge on too many lattes.
• 31:41
  SPEAKER_01: But it doesn't really get you wealthy.
• 31:43
  You're not going to get rich not buying lattes would be my
• 31:46
  argument there.
• 31:46
  And by the way,
• 31:46
  I can find that exact idea,
• 31:48
  the latte factor idea,
• 31:50
  in beer from the 19-teens.
• 31:53
  SPEAKER_01: I can find it in tobacco.
• 31:54
  I can find it in that idea of if you just didn't spend this
• 31:58
  money on tobacco,
• 31:58
  SPEAKER_01: then you could be rich.
• 31:59
  SPEAKER_01: But it doesn't work.
• 32:00
  SPEAKER_01: That's not how people really got rich.
• 32:02
  SPEAKER_01: You got rich and you still get rich solving someone else's problems.
• 32:06
  So first and foremost is if you really want to get ahead,
• 32:09
  if that's your goal in life,
• 32:10
  you're gonna have to solve somebody else's problems and the
• 32:13
  bigger the problem or
• 32:13
  the bigger scale at which you solve it the better that's why I
• 32:17
  point out in the
• 32:17
  book like small businesses to this day we have more
• 32:20
  multi-millionaire small
• 32:21
  businessmen than we've ever had even adjusting for inflation
• 32:24
  and women and women
• 32:25
  because they're they are building things to solve other
• 32:28
  people's problems so you
• 32:31
  start with the question of am I just trying to solve my own
• 32:33
  latte problem or do I
• 32:34
  want to go solve somebody else's problem make real money well I
• 32:36
  think I think the
• 32:37
  SPEAKER_00: latte thing I think is useful
• 32:39
  SPEAKER_00: at the much lower existential levels of, especially for younger people.
• 32:44
  SPEAKER_00: When I was 23, I watched the Manosphere thing.
• 32:49
  SPEAKER_01: Did you see the Manosphere?
• 32:50
  SPEAKER_01: I haven't seen it yet.
• 32:50
  SPEAKER_01: It's everywhere in my feed, and people are talking about it.
• 32:52
  SPEAKER_00: It's worth watching because...
• 32:55
  what struck me first of all is the first guy he talks to is 23
• 32:58
  years old and it's
• 32:59
  like this guy his brain isn't even fully formed yet and when I
• 33:03
  was 23 years old my
• 33:05
  father had done me the service of saying you're on your own I
• 33:10
  got you a college
• 33:11
  degree with no debt I chipped in on it too but you know he was
• 33:15
  like we got you out
• 33:16
  of college with no debt go for it you know and it was difficult
• 33:21
  to figure out and I
• 33:22
  SPEAKER_00: mean I had some days where I'd get paid
• 33:25
  months I get paid I'd have $14 left until my next paycheck now
• 33:29
  I probably should
• 33:30
  have gone and gotten a second job waiting tables at night after
• 33:33
  my you know clean
• 33:34
  indoor air-conditioned semi-corporate job but like you know a
• 33:40
  latte would have was
• 33:41
  not in the cards for me and if I had tried to make it in the
• 33:44
  cards I just would
• 33:45
  have ginned up another $240 worth of credit card debt you know
• 33:49
  at that age and so I
• 33:50
  SPEAKER_00: do think at that level you've got to have
• 33:54
  good advice for those people who are just trying to get,
• 33:56
  but that's not going to get you home.
• 33:58
  SPEAKER_00: You're not going to raise a family on no lattes.
• 34:00
  SPEAKER_00: But it can keep you out of the ditch.
• 34:01
  SPEAKER_01: Don't hear me, you know, and the same thing with all kinds of bad habits.
• 34:05
  SPEAKER_01: Not bad habits, but just habits in general.
• 34:06
  I mean,
• 34:07
  smoking and drinking is like,
• 34:08
  there's real financial cost to those things.
• 34:11
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, and not just in what you spend, but in what you don't make.
• 34:15
  SPEAKER_01: So one of my favorite examples of this.
• 34:18
  SPEAKER_01: is the modern family budget.
• 34:20
  SPEAKER_01: What I'm supposed to say here,
• 34:22
  SPEAKER_01: if this is a financial advice idea talk is,
• 34:25
  SPEAKER_01: well,
• 34:25
  SPEAKER_01: you should have a budget.
• 34:26
  SPEAKER_01: You should get your butt on a budget.
• 34:27
  SPEAKER_01: You hear this everywhere.
• 34:28
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, fine.
• 34:29
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not against budgets, but let me tell you the history.
• 34:32
  They're about 100 years old And like Cubist art They're very
• 34:36
  hard to follow And
• 34:39
  what you find is About 100 years ago Progressives Especially
• 34:42
  home economics
• 34:43
  professors Many of them in New York Decided on this idea What's
• 34:48
  wrong with the
• 34:48
  American family Is they aren't strict enough With their money
• 34:51
  And so we're going to
• 34:51
  create This system that they can follow And this is what we
• 34:54
  call The modern day
• 34:54
  SPEAKER_01: budget
• 34:56
  I've looked at these I've held them They're wildly complicated
• 34:59
  I mean like 60
• 35:10
  five categories and this is some woman at night after the kids
• 35:14
  are finally asleep
• 35:15
  with an oil burning lamp trying to keep track of every string
• 35:19
  bean that she has
• 35:20
  expended on okay so they teach these families this right and
• 35:24
  then they go out and
• 35:24
  they do this big survey because it's like oh we're going to
• 35:26
  show how effective this
• 35:27
  is they survey these families who are using them versus not
• 35:31
  using them and they
• 35:31
  find there's almost no difference in how much they're saving
• 35:34
  over and over the
• 35:35
  families that actually saved money they had the same thing that
• 35:37
  they checked
• 35:38
  SPEAKER_01: avoided liquor
• 35:39
  SPEAKER_01: That was the number one thing that they said they saved money from.
• 35:43
  SPEAKER_01: So it can keep you out of the ditch and keep you out of problems.
• 35:46
  SPEAKER_01: It's not going to get you ahead.
• 35:47
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 35:49
  SPEAKER_00: I was going to ask you what advice,
• 35:51
  SPEAKER_00: this is before I was,
• 35:52
  SPEAKER_00: I read your book a month and a half ago,
• 35:54
  SPEAKER_00: I think.
• 35:54
  SPEAKER_00: And as I read,
• 35:55
  SPEAKER_00: I take in the Kindle app,
• 35:57
  SPEAKER_00: you can,
• 35:58
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 35:58
  SPEAKER_00: annotate what you're going to check up on.
• 36:00
  SPEAKER_00: And then yesterday or this morning, I'm looking at all my notes.
• 36:04
  And even before I got to the notes,
• 36:05
  I was like,
• 36:06
  what should I ask this guy?
• 36:07
  SPEAKER_00: Like, what would be interesting?
• 36:08
  SPEAKER_00: And the first thing I was going to ask you is,
• 36:10
  what financial advice would you give to my teenagers but you
• 36:13
  just answer the
• 36:13
  questions want to be rich add value you must solve problems to
• 36:19
  get rich you must
• 36:20
  meet someone else's needs yeah I think that is so fundamentally
• 36:26
  clear and yet so
• 36:28
  fundamentally overlooked and I you know in the comedy world I
• 36:33
  talked to a lot of
• 36:33
  SPEAKER_00: younger people 28 30 they just don't seem to have this
• 36:39
  SPEAKER_00: knowledge that the world isn't going to provide for them,
• 36:43
  but they can provide for themselves if they are willing to help
• 36:46
  other people.
• 36:47
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 36:50
  SPEAKER_01: I know capitalism has somehow become a dirty word,
• 36:52
  SPEAKER_01: but at the core essence of what capitalism is- That's what capitalism is.
• 36:55
  It's a system that rewards people who find a way to meet other
• 36:58
  people's needs.
• 36:59
  And if you look at most financial advice or most huckster kind
• 37:01
  of guru stuff
• 37:02
  SPEAKER_01: That's the
• 37:32
  SPEAKER_01: The whole story of America is people who got up and went.
• 37:36
  You live in the greatest largest most successful free market
• 37:41
  zone in the history of the world.
• 37:46
  SPEAKER_01: There is opportunity for you somewhere.
• 37:48
  Now you may have to get up and go find it And it might not be
• 37:52
  near where grandma
• 37:53
  lives And that's hard because family matters We have very real
• 37:57
  roots in places But
• 37:58
  most of American history Is a story of people willing to go To
• 38:02
  go ahead The other
• 38:04
  SPEAKER_01: thing I'd tell them
• 38:06
  is be willing to risk more because we've become weirdly risk
• 38:09
  averse as a society
• 38:10
  SPEAKER_01: because it's never been safer to risk.
• 38:12
  I mean,
• 38:12
  if you think it's risky now,
• 38:14
  you should hear about the 1920s or the 1870s or the 1830s.
• 38:18
  Like if you if you make a mistake and you go broke in the
• 38:21
  1800s,
• 38:22
  you mostly never come back.
• 38:25
  SPEAKER_01: You can bounce back today.
• 38:27
  SPEAKER_01: You can insure your house and your spouse.
• 38:29
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, every single thing that you have, you can protect.
• 38:32
  It's never been less risky to risk,
• 38:34
  but most of the reward comes from taking the risk.
• 38:37
  SPEAKER_01: And that's for some reason we've become less and less willing to do that.
• 38:41
  SPEAKER_00: You were an academic, still teach some, right?
• 38:44
  SPEAKER_00: Some, yeah.
• 38:44
  SPEAKER_00: Okay,
• 38:45
  SPEAKER_00: but you became an investor,
• 38:47
  SPEAKER_00: a real estate investor,
• 38:48
  SPEAKER_00: real estate entrepreneur you could say.
• 38:50
  SPEAKER_00: What did you learn from your foray into the dirt and nails and cement?
• 38:57
  I learned very simply that specifically about real estate that
• 39:01
  it is a business and
• 39:02
  there's this idea that real estate is an investment class right
• 39:05
  as if well do I
• 39:06
  want to buy Coca-Cola stock or do I want to buy real estate
• 39:08
  like they're the same
• 39:09
  they're not the same but they are both businesses and the
• 39:12
  reason Coca-Cola has done
• 39:13
  well is they run a really dang good business and if you want to
• 39:16
  make money in real
• 39:17
  estate it is there's all these mythologies about real estate
• 39:20
  number one people
• 39:21
  SPEAKER_01: think that
• 39:22
  SPEAKER_01: Investing in it is passive.
• 39:25
  SPEAKER_01: They think that it always goes up in value.
• 39:28
  And number three,
• 39:29
  they think that this is how the really big fortunes are made.
• 39:33
  SPEAKER_01: No, it isn't.
• 39:34
  SPEAKER_01: No, they didn't.
• 39:35
  SPEAKER_01: None of that is true.
• 39:37
  The most of your real money in real estate is made being active
• 39:41
  in it and turning
• 39:42
  SPEAKER_01: it into a business.
• 39:42
  SPEAKER_01: And that's what I realized very quickly is, oh, I have customers.
• 39:45
  SPEAKER_01: They're called tenants.
• 39:46
  SPEAKER_01: They have expectations.
• 39:47
  SPEAKER_01: They should have expectations.
• 39:47
  SPEAKER_01: They're paying money for a service.
• 39:49
  And so we got really good at providing them that service,
• 39:53
  figuring out where we could
• 39:55
  where we could find market opportunity to give people what they
• 39:58
  wanted at a price
• 39:59
  SPEAKER_01: that made sense for everybody.
• 40:01
  SPEAKER_01: Now, I almost went broke in the process.
• 40:02
  SPEAKER_01: I came like this close to having to declare bankruptcy.
• 40:06
  SPEAKER_01: I remember sitting in my kitchen.
• 40:07
  SPEAKER_01: My wife's asleep.
• 40:08
  SPEAKER_01: I'm like, I'm going to go broke.
• 40:09
  I owe millions of dollars in real estate loans that I have no
• 40:12
  idea how I'm going to pay it back.
• 40:13
  SPEAKER_01: You know, which reminded me of the Mark Twain quote.
• 40:15
  SPEAKER_01: He said, I think it was in the Gilded Age.
• 40:19
  SPEAKER_01: A few years ago, I wasn't worth a cent, but now I owe $2 million.
• 40:21
  SPEAKER_01: You know, so, you know, debt is involved.
• 40:24
  SPEAKER_00: How did you get stuck in that hole?
• 40:26
  SPEAKER_00: Where did that come from?
• 40:27
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 40:29
  SPEAKER_01: Well, it initially started in all honesty when I was doing the book.
• 40:32
  SPEAKER_01: I was like,
• 40:33
  SPEAKER_01: if I can find something in the past people try to do to get ahead,
• 40:36
  SPEAKER_01: I'm going to try it as best I can.
• 40:38
  So if they were making their own money,
• 40:39
  I'm going to found a cryptocurrency.
• 40:41
  SPEAKER_01: One of my favorite examples is in the 19,
• 40:44
  right as the space race is really starting to become a thing in
• 40:46
  people's minds,
• 40:47
  SPEAKER_01: people started to rush to see if they could claim land on the moon.
• 40:50
  SPEAKER_01: I bought an acre of land
• 41:05
  Land on the Sea of Serenity that was advertised as having
• 41:08
  phenomenal earth views
• 41:10
  SPEAKER_01: and zoned tourism.
• 41:12
  Because I guess,
• 41:12
  well,
• 41:12
  if it was zoned industry,
• 41:14
  then it would ruin the earth views.
• 41:15
  SPEAKER_00: In 25 years, it might not sound so crazy.
• 41:17
  SPEAKER_01: Well, you know, there's people trying to do this.
• 41:18
  SPEAKER_01: And I was like, do I have a claim here?
• 41:20
  SPEAKER_01: But I would try these things out.
• 41:22
  SPEAKER_01: And one of the things that happened in the inflationary 60s,
• 41:24
  SPEAKER_01: 70s,
• 41:25
  SPEAKER_01: and 80s,
• 41:25
  SPEAKER_01: and it crescendos in the 80s,
• 41:28
  SPEAKER_01: the higher inflation went,
• 41:29
  SPEAKER_01: the
• 41:30
  the more people tried to buy real estate because it was going
• 41:33
  up with inflation and
• 41:35
  SPEAKER_01: the less they tried to buy it with because that would juice the return.
• 41:38
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 41:39
  SPEAKER_01: This is back in the day when all interest was tax deductible.
• 41:43
  SPEAKER_01: And I thought, oh, and interest rates were astronomical.
• 41:46
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, yeah.
• 41:46
  So people were getting 16 percent mortgages and and higher in
• 41:50
  the investment community.
• 41:52
  SPEAKER_01: But the idea was,
• 41:53
  SPEAKER_01: well,
• 41:53
  you want as little money in as possible because if it's going
• 41:55
  to go up 10% a year,
• 41:57
  SPEAKER_01: right,
• 41:58
  SPEAKER_01: like all you want to do is hold on for it to rise.
• 42:00
  SPEAKER_01: So he's levered up.
• 42:01
  SPEAKER_01: So I decided, well, let's try this.
• 42:02
  SPEAKER_01: Well,
• 42:02
  SPEAKER_01: I originally decided to do it like one house,
• 42:05
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 42:05
  SPEAKER_01: and then I eventually bought a small apartment building.
• 42:08
  SPEAKER_01: I said, let's see what this is like.
• 42:10
  SPEAKER_01: And it could not have gone more wrong.
• 42:13
  I had hoarders who lived in one of the apartments and they
• 42:15
  pulled a shotgun on me
• 42:16
  SPEAKER_01: when I asked them,
• 42:17
  SPEAKER_01: which then led to rats,
• 42:18
  SPEAKER_01: which then the rats were infecting the other people's apartments.
• 42:20
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know, I can't let these people have rats in their house.
• 42:23
  I'm like,
• 42:23
  I'm sorry,
• 42:23
  you can't be a hoarder in this apartment because it's affected
• 42:25
  the
• 42:25
  SPEAKER_01: People in that apartment and they pulled a shotgun on me.
• 42:27
  SPEAKER_01: I had to literally run.
• 42:28
  I literally leapt off four stairs to try to get to my Volvo as
• 42:31
  fast as I could.
• 42:32
  SPEAKER_01: It's like, please don't pull the trigger.
• 42:34
  It was like a,
• 42:34
  what was that old,
• 42:36
  give me three steps,
• 42:37
  the Allman Brothers?
• 42:38
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 42:38
  SPEAKER_00: It was like, no, no, that was Leonard Skinner.
• 42:39
  SPEAKER_01: Leonard Skinner.
• 42:40
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 42:40
  SPEAKER_01: It was give me three steps, man.
• 42:41
  SPEAKER_01: I just want to get to the Volvo.
• 42:44
  SPEAKER_01: And I was driving away thinking, I think I may have made a mistake.
• 42:47
  SPEAKER_00: And then- Because why?
• 42:48
  SPEAKER_00: You underestimated- How active it was.
• 42:51
  SPEAKER_00: Or you-
• 42:53
  SPEAKER_00: You misinterpreted human nature on some level?
• 42:56
  SPEAKER_01: Well, definitely.
• 42:58
  When you live in academia for 10 years,
• 42:59
  I come from rural working class America.
• 43:01
  SPEAKER_01: These are people that I understand.
• 43:03
  SPEAKER_01: These could have been my cousins.
• 43:04
  SPEAKER_01: I would have known these people.
• 43:05
  I would not have flinched to engage with these people at church
• 43:09
  or in the places I was raised.
• 43:12
  SPEAKER_01: But after having spent almost 15-ish,
• 43:15
  SPEAKER_01: gosh,
• 43:15
  SPEAKER_01: it was getting close to 20 years in academia,
• 43:18
  you kind of get this very naive view of the world and you start
• 43:22
  to lose touch with
• 43:23
  SPEAKER_01: what people's real incentives are,
• 43:25
  SPEAKER_01: how people really operate,
• 43:27
  SPEAKER_01: how mentally challenged many people can be.
• 43:32
  SPEAKER_01: So it was definitely an eye-opening experience.
• 43:35
  SPEAKER_01: The house that I had renovated, this wonderful woman came along.
• 43:38
  SPEAKER_01: She said, I would just love to rent your house.
• 43:39
  SPEAKER_01: Now,
• 43:40
  SPEAKER_01: I own a house in another part of town,
• 43:41
  so I'm just going to rent it because I've got a new job out
• 43:43
  here and I just don't
• 43:44
  SPEAKER_01: want to be commuting.
• 43:45
  SPEAKER_01: She was lovely.
• 43:46
  SPEAKER_01: We're like, this is great.
• 43:48
  SPEAKER_01: And out of nowhere, we never saw her car again.
• 43:50
  SPEAKER_01: But there were like 20 people in there.
• 43:53
  SPEAKER_01: What is going on?
• 43:53
  SPEAKER_01: And she worked for a staffing agency,
• 43:55
  SPEAKER_01: which I learned later is can be,
• 43:57
  SPEAKER_01: not always,
• 43:57
  SPEAKER_01: but can be code for human trafficking.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, nice.
• 44:01
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, because there's a lot of lithium mines in North Carolina.
• 44:04
  And they were bringing in people from Haiti by the truckload to
• 44:08
  work these lithium mines.
• 44:09
  SPEAKER_01: Good gosh.
• 44:10
  SPEAKER_01: And we had like 25 people living in one three-bedroom house.
• 44:13
  SPEAKER_01: And immediately wanted to evict them.
• 44:15
  SPEAKER_01: We told the police.
• 44:15
  SPEAKER_01: The police said, wait, let's call the FBI.
• 44:17
  SPEAKER_01: They called the FBI.
• 44:19
  SPEAKER_01: And they said, will you let us sit on it?
• 44:21
  SPEAKER_01: Because we know there's multiple.
• 44:22
  SPEAKER_01: We want to be able to track them.
• 44:24
  SPEAKER_00: And so we're like, okay, that sounds like the right thing to do.
• 44:28
  SPEAKER_01: And they just destroyed that house.
• 44:30
  SPEAKER_01: But they did catch them, which was the good news.
• 44:32
  SPEAKER_01: But you didn't get paid that.
• 44:34
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, no, I lost $20,000 on that house.
• 44:36
  SPEAKER_01: Sorry, how much did you lose?
• 44:38
  SPEAKER_01: $25,000 actually.
• 44:39
  SPEAKER_01: We had renovated the house and they ripped it down.
• 44:43
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 45:05
  so that happens we have then I decide I'm just gonna go all in
• 45:09
  like this let's see
• 45:09
  what happens here like if I instead of running away I'm gonna
• 45:12
  lean into this and do
• 45:13
  the best that I can and then another house where some couple
• 45:16
  had a big argument
• 45:17
  they tore down the house and I showed up and I just stared at
• 45:19
  this destroyed house
• 45:20
  and I thought I've dealt with human traffickers a shotgun now
• 45:24
  this I got in my
• 45:25
  Volvo and I didn't turn on the radio I just drove in silence
• 45:28
  back to the campus by
• 45:29
  the way where I had like grade papers you know probably on Karl
• 45:32
  Marx who I had
• 45:33
  SPEAKER_01: assigned
• 45:34
  SPEAKER_01: And by the time I got to campus, I was like, oh, I'm a capitalist.
• 45:38
  SPEAKER_01: I actually think this system,
• 45:41
  SPEAKER_01: because what I was doing with my real estate was I really saw it as like,
• 45:44
  SPEAKER_01: oh,
• 45:45
  SPEAKER_01: solidarity,
• 45:45
  SPEAKER_01: not charity.
• 45:46
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not trying to get rich on this.
• 45:47
  SPEAKER_01: This is all a social experiment for me.
• 45:50
  And what I was doing was I was charging too little because I
• 45:52
  thought that made me better.
• 45:53
  SPEAKER_01: That made me morally superior.
• 45:55
  SPEAKER_01: The problem was people break stuff.
• 45:56
  SPEAKER_01: People tear stuff up and you have to fix it or it's not habitable.
• 46:01
  SPEAKER_01: And now I was caught in a cycle.
• 46:03
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 46:28
  And I realized I actually had to run this thing like a
• 46:30
  successful business.
• 46:32
  SPEAKER_01: And that's what I did.
• 46:33
  SPEAKER_01: And believe it or not, it was better for everyone.
• 46:35
  SPEAKER_01: Not just better for me,
• 46:36
  but it was actually better for the people living in those
• 46:38
  places because they were
• 46:39
  SPEAKER_01: habitable.
• 46:39
  SPEAKER_01: They were nice.
• 46:40
  SPEAKER_01: We could fix anything that broke.
• 46:42
  And that was the moment where I realized actually running a
• 46:46
  business does more good
• 46:48
  SPEAKER_01: for people,
• 46:49
  SPEAKER_01: even common people,
• 46:50
  SPEAKER_01: people who raised in the trailer parks of the South,
• 46:53
  SPEAKER_01: the people that I come from.
• 46:55
  SPEAKER_01: It's better for them for me to run it as a business than as a charity.
• 46:58
  SPEAKER_00: What percentage of your tenants were unreliable or didn't pay rent?
• 47:04
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, that's a great question.
• 47:05
  SPEAKER_01: I'd have to go back.
• 47:06
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I'm sure I could statistically call, but it would be...
• 47:10
  you know low double digits to single digits but they call it
• 47:12
  it's those people
• 47:13
  cause a disproportionate number of the problems right there 99%
• 47:17
  of the problem but
• 47:19
  10% of the people because they don't pay their rent everybody
• 47:21
  else's rent or their
• 47:24
  conditions in their home are worse and I think that's the issue
• 47:27
  that in New York
• 47:28
  City I don't want to make this all about New York City but like
• 47:30
  New York City is
• 47:30
  sort of like the epicenter of what's going on and I've just
• 47:32
  moved back here two
• 47:33
  SPEAKER_00: years ago so it's like
• 47:34
  It's kind of mind-blowing to see how the government is
• 47:38
  vilifying landlords.
• 47:40
  Yes,
• 47:40
  because if they're charging that much,
• 47:41
  obviously it is hurting you and benefiting them.
• 47:45
  And what people don't understand is it's actually hurting
• 47:48
  everyone when people don't pay rent.
• 47:49
  SPEAKER_01: When people sit in, and I don't want to go after rent control.
• 47:52
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not a New Yorker, so this is y'all's issue.
• 47:54
  SPEAKER_00: It's 48% or something like that of the supply.
• 47:58
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 47:58
  SPEAKER_00: And it's a million units.
• 48:00
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 48:00
  SPEAKER_01: And this happens over and over.
• 48:01
  SPEAKER_01: Rent control, this happens over and over.
• 48:03
  SPEAKER_01: There's this moment in the 1960s or 70s,
• 48:06
  SPEAKER_01: I can't remember,
• 48:08
  SPEAKER_01: called the People's Republic of Santa Monica.
• 48:09
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I live there.
• 48:11
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah,
• 48:11
  SPEAKER_01: like people like,
• 48:12
  SPEAKER_01: we're not going to,
• 48:13
  and it just deteriorates housing and everything that you can
• 48:16
  buy becomes wildly
• 48:18
  SPEAKER_01: more expensive.
• 48:18
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 48:19
  SPEAKER_01: And nobody can find a place to have affordable housing.
• 48:21
  SPEAKER_01: So I thought Tyler Cowen nailed it recently when he said,
• 48:25
  SPEAKER_01: and this is a few years back,
• 48:27
  SPEAKER_01: but he said,
• 48:29
  We are living in an era when all the bad ideas from history
• 48:32
  came back all at the same time.
• 48:34
  SPEAKER_01: And that's what's happening on both sides, right?
• 48:36
  SPEAKER_01: Tariffs.
• 48:37
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah,
• 48:38
  like here's some really bad ideas that the right has found and
• 48:41
  thinks they want to
• 48:41
  SPEAKER_01: play with now.
• 48:42
  SPEAKER_01: And here's these other bad ideas that the left has in their sandbox.
• 48:45
  SPEAKER_01: And sane people are kind of left going,
• 48:48
  can we find some of the good ideas that work that actually got
• 48:51
  us where we are?
• 48:52
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 48:54
  There's a couple more things I want to talk about that we got
• 48:56
  to hustle out of here.
• 48:57
  SPEAKER_00: Debt.
• 48:59
  SPEAKER_00: Is debt always bad?
• 49:02
  SPEAKER_01: Debt does not make you rich.
• 49:06
  SPEAKER_01: Opportunity makes you rich.
• 49:08
  SPEAKER_01: But debt lets you grab as much opportunity as you can when it shows up.
• 49:13
  SPEAKER_01: So there are different types of debt.
• 49:15
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 49:16
  SPEAKER_01: And let's just I like to break them in three basic buckets,
• 49:18
  one of which we don't talk about because it's kind of more of a
• 49:20
  social political
• 49:21
  SPEAKER_01: question,
• 49:21
  SPEAKER_01: which is I call them debts of despair.
• 49:23
  SPEAKER_01: And that has been around forever.
• 49:24
  The number one reason people end up declaring bankruptcy in
• 49:27
  every century has
• 49:28
  SPEAKER_01: generally something to do with just bad health or bad luck.
• 49:31
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 49:31
  SPEAKER_01: So you put those to the side.
• 49:32
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 49:32
  SPEAKER_01: People end up in debt for things that happened to them.
• 49:36
  And those are social problems Then there's what I call debts of
• 49:40
  dumbness I'm going
• 49:41
  to sit on this couch I'm paying 21% interest on And complain
• 49:45
  that I can't get ahead
• 49:47
  SPEAKER_01: The couch might be the problem
• 49:50
  So debts of dumbness absolutely are bad in every scenario with
• 49:54
  very,
• 49:55
  very few exceptions.
• 49:56
  SPEAKER_00: How do you know if it's dumb?
• 49:57
  How do you know if you're like as a real estate developer,
• 50:00
  what's the optimal level of leverage?
• 50:02
  Because it's,
• 50:03
  you know,
• 50:04
  right now,
• 50:04
  I mean,
• 50:05
  today's the best day in the stock market in months.
• 50:08
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 50:08
  SPEAKER_00: But like.
• 50:09
  you don't see 20 to 2008 coming until it's on top of you right
• 50:14
  you can be over
• 50:15
  levered even on good on the third bucket which would be 2006
• 50:18
  it's like dude you
• 50:19
  should be taking more love you should be levering up I think
• 50:22
  and 18 months later
• 50:23
  SPEAKER_00: you're like
• 50:25
  SPEAKER_01: A really good rule of thumb,
• 50:26
  SPEAKER_01: though,
• 50:26
  is when people who don't know what they're doing or telling you
• 50:29
  how smart it is to
• 50:29
  SPEAKER_01: lever up,
• 50:30
  SPEAKER_01: it's probably time to gear down,
• 50:32
  SPEAKER_01: right?
• 50:32
  SPEAKER_01: Because now we can tell there's froth enough everywhere that,
• 50:35
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 50:36
  the guy who used to be your personal masseuse is now investing
• 50:39
  in five rental
• 50:40
  SPEAKER_01: properties.
• 50:41
  SPEAKER_00: I don't have a dude as a personal masseuse.
• 50:43
  SPEAKER_01: I don't have any personal masseuses, in fact.
• 50:46
  Strangely enough,
• 50:47
  actually,
• 50:48
  I've interviewed so many people about their finances.
• 50:52
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't just read dead people's mail.
• 50:54
  SPEAKER_01: I went and met Avon ladies and trailer park investment seminars.
• 50:58
  SPEAKER_01: I've seen so many weird things that people are doing with money.
• 51:03
  SPEAKER_01: But all that to say, back to the debt question,
• 51:06
  SPEAKER_01: Paul Ollinger paulinger
• 51:26
  SPEAKER_01: But we have this idea that everybody,
• 51:28
  there's kind of smart people who handle debt and the rest of us
• 51:30
  are just dumb.
• 51:31
  SPEAKER_01: We're all dumb with debt.
• 51:32
  SPEAKER_01: We've all done it.
• 51:33
  SPEAKER_01: You've done it.
• 51:34
  SPEAKER_01: I've done it.
• 51:35
  SPEAKER_01: Benjamin Franklin did it.
• 51:36
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, Benjamin Franklin was so levered up.
• 51:39
  SPEAKER_01: We think of Franklin as like, oh, the wise old man who don't go.
• 51:43
  SPEAKER_01: Penny saved, penny earned.
• 51:44
  SPEAKER_01: Don't go spinning on things you don't need.
• 51:46
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 51:46
  SPEAKER_01: Franklin was so in debt that his first wedding proposal was
• 51:52
  SPEAKER_01: to a woman involved, how big will your dowry be?
• 51:55
  SPEAKER_01: And the family was like, we don't have that much money.
• 51:57
  He's like,
• 51:58
  well,
• 51:58
  this is how much debt I have and I need the dowry to be that
• 52:00
  big or bigger.
• 52:01
  SPEAKER_01: And they were like, we don't have it.
• 52:02
  SPEAKER_01: He said, I have a great idea.
• 52:04
  SPEAKER_01: Mortgage your house and I'll marry your daughter.
• 52:07
  SPEAKER_01: And they said no, so he married somebody else.
• 52:09
  SPEAKER_01: That's how much debt Benjamin Franklin was in.
• 52:12
  And to the point that,
• 52:14
  we know this for a fact,
• 52:15
  they were going to repossess his printing press.
• 52:17
  The people who had lent him the money for the press were going
• 52:21
  to repo it.
• 52:22
  So he had to go to two friends and beg them for another loan to
• 52:25
  pay off that so his
• 52:26
  SPEAKER_01: press would not get repossessed.
• 52:28
  Achieve financial Yes Solvency in this life Yes he was one of
• 52:31
  the richest Americans
• 52:32
  of his generation Eventually Eventually Right Because he
• 52:34
  levered up Now his Can you
• 52:35
  imagine if some dude came to you to talk about marrying your
• 52:38
  daughter and said
• 52:39
  mortgage your house I think I would throw him off the roof of
• 52:44
  my house that I own
• 52:45
  outright Which as the father of two daughters is a perfectly
• 52:49
  reasonable suggestion
• 52:50
  100% If I'm on the jury for that murder trial I'm like I think
• 52:53
  this guy's innocent
• 52:54
  SPEAKER_01: You just murdered Benjamin Franklin
• 52:56
  SPEAKER_00: All right.
• 52:57
  Well,
• 52:57
  speaking of marriage,
• 52:58
  how important is marriage in one's financial fortunes?
• 53:03
  SPEAKER_00: All right.
• 53:03
  SPEAKER_01: Here's an unpopular opinion.
• 53:04
  It is the single most important financial decision of your
• 53:07
  entire life,
• 53:07
  period.
• 53:08
  SPEAKER_01: And it not only was it, it still is.
• 53:10
  SPEAKER_01: If you go back to all of your American history,
• 53:13
  marriage advice was the number one piece of financial advice
• 53:16
  you would get for men
• 53:17
  SPEAKER_01: and for women.
• 53:19
  SPEAKER_01: when people would ask about their finances,
• 53:20
  SPEAKER_01: their careers,
• 53:21
  SPEAKER_01: the first place you started with was,
• 53:22
  SPEAKER_01: who are you going to marry?
• 53:23
  SPEAKER_01: And I had found- But it was a different,
• 53:25
  SPEAKER_01: it was like,
• 53:25
  SPEAKER_01: you need to marry some girl who's got money or some guy who's got money.
• 53:28
  Sometimes it was for a certain segment of society,
• 53:31
  but not everybody has money.
• 53:34
  In lieu of money,
• 53:35
  look for the types of traits that will help you earn it over
• 53:37
  time.
• 53:38
  SPEAKER_01: Which are?
• 53:38
  SPEAKER_01: Which are hard work, which are being good at what you do.
• 53:42
  SPEAKER_00: Stability, emotional stability.
• 53:44
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, exactly.
• 53:45
  SPEAKER_01: There's a men's business manual.
• 53:48
  Old businessmen giving advice to young businessmen in the 1870s
• 53:51
  or something like that.
• 53:52
  SPEAKER_01: And they're like, a sprinkle of ugliness is perfectly acceptable.
• 53:55
  SPEAKER_01: And then they list all these.
• 53:57
  SPEAKER_01: I was like, the sprinkle of ugliness was the line that caught me.
• 54:00
  SPEAKER_00: But I mean you would have chapters How important is your faith?
• 54:07
  You would have chapters be like here's why you should marry a
• 54:10
  woman who's stable,
• 54:11
  SPEAKER_01: who's smart,
• 54:12
  who's hardworking or like in the men's manuals and then like
• 54:15
  the next chapter is
• 54:16
  here's how to calculate interest rate tables like that's how
• 54:19
  important it was now
• 54:20
  we think well that's back then right I mean they went to church
• 54:24
  in wagons certainly
• 54:25
  SPEAKER_01: that doesn't apply to us today
• 54:30
  SPEAKER_01: The single largest predictor of failing financially is bad marriage.
• 54:34
  And marriage confounds every single category you can throw at
• 54:39
  personal finance.
• 54:40
  SPEAKER_01: Married black men earn more than single white men.
• 54:44
  SPEAKER_01: Married moms earn,
• 54:46
  SPEAKER_01: not their husbands,
• 54:47
  SPEAKER_01: no,
• 54:48
  SPEAKER_01: married moms on their own earn twice what single moms earn.
• 54:54
  SPEAKER_01: Married men who never divorce when they retire are worth 10x
• 54:59
  What Single Men Or Divorce Men Are Marriage Is The Single Most
• 55:04
  Powerful You Don't
• 55:05
  Choose The Family That You Start With So The Family You Start
• 55:10
  Is The Most Powerful
• 55:11
  Thing In Your Control Because Capitalism Is A Team Sport It Was
• 55:14
  Then It Still Is
• 55:16
  And Two People Working Together They Can Cover Down On Each
• 55:19
  Other Back To That Stat
• 55:19
  SPEAKER_01: About Married Moms Earning More Why Is That
• 55:23
  SPEAKER_01: Because like the dad can be like,
• 55:24
  SPEAKER_01: yeah,
• 55:25
  SPEAKER_01: yeah,
• 55:25
  SPEAKER_01: I'll take the kids out tonight because you got to work late,
• 55:27
  SPEAKER_01: right?
• 55:28
  That promotion that she gets because she can do something the
• 55:30
  single mom can't matters.
• 55:32
  Now,
• 55:32
  there's all things that goes into that and there's all these
• 55:35
  conversations.
• 55:36
  SPEAKER_00: These are on average.
• 55:37
  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't mean that single working mothers are not disparaging anyone.
• 55:42
  It's just in life happens and people die and people turn into
• 55:46
  creeps and all kinds of stuff.
• 55:48
  Addictions Addiction But on average A good marriage Is going to
• 55:52
  pay out Financially
• 55:53
  better Than almost any Single thing I could Possibly tell you
• 55:56
  to do So if you're
• 55:56
  already married Invest in that marriage First Make it a good
• 55:59
  one If you aren't
• 56:00
  married And everybody in the Manosphere is telling you Don't
• 56:02
  get married She's just
• 56:03
  going to Take you for money Or everybody in the Other sphere is
• 56:06
  saying It's not
• 56:07
  SPEAKER_01: worth it You go girl You go You go be boss lady Yeah
• 56:12
  What I encourage people to say is You don't There are a lot of
• 56:17
  bad people out there
• 56:18
  That you don't want to marry But that's You only need one So go
• 56:21
  get that one You
• 56:22
  only got to trick one woman into marriage You got to find one
• 56:24
  good one That's what
• 56:25
  my father said to me Just trick one Yeah All right A couple
• 56:28
  questions And we'll get
• 56:29
  out of here Which of your financial proclivities annoys your
• 56:32
  wife the most?
• 56:35
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, that's a great question.
• 56:37
  I'm so glad she is not here to answer that because we would be
• 56:40
  here all night.
• 56:40
  SPEAKER_00: Well, what would she say?
• 56:41
  SPEAKER_01: Because you know she knows the answer.
• 56:44
  My wife once gave me a mug and it was right in the middle of
• 56:47
  all this when I was
• 56:48
  SPEAKER_01: like,
• 56:48
  SPEAKER_01: what if I just try all the financial advice out from the past?
• 56:51
  SPEAKER_01: What if I Airbnb all the rooms in our house?
• 56:53
  SPEAKER_01: And she was like, oh my God, this man.
• 56:55
  SPEAKER_01: So she got me a mug and it says, hold on while I'll overthink this.
• 56:59
  Yeah So I think just my ability to like look at it from every
• 57:02
  angle and what about
• 57:03
  that well what if we do that what if we do and she's like just
• 57:05
  make a choice yeah
• 57:07
  you know so I think my ability to overthink and overanalyze
• 57:10
  everything all right
• 57:13
  which of your neighbors is a hip-hop star oh oh I don't know if
• 57:17
  I can out him um
• 57:19
  I when I made it right when in this gets told the book the book
• 57:24
  is really about
• 57:24
  what people in the past did and what you can learn from about
• 57:27
  your money but along
• 57:28
  the way I kind of tell the story all these experiments and
• 57:30
  eventually these things
• 57:31
  start like I started to get good at some things and realize oh
• 57:33
  I kind of know what
• 57:34
  I'm doing now and one thing led to another I ended up
• 57:36
  financially successful enough
• 57:37
  to retire early which I find to be a wonderful experience
• 57:43
  highly recommended if you
• 57:43
  SPEAKER_01: can do it but
• 57:45
  SPEAKER_01: We moved into an affluent neighborhood in Atlanta.
• 57:48
  SPEAKER_01: And it's a gated golf course.
• 57:51
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, you've been in Atlanta.
• 57:52
  SPEAKER_01: There's many of these.
• 57:53
  And it's odd,
• 57:55
  though,
• 57:55
  that there's a whole other set of gates on the inside.
• 57:57
  SPEAKER_01: There's like a gated community inside of another gated community.
• 58:00
  community and at first I thought that was odd and all of a lot
• 58:03
  of the Atlanta
• 58:04
  Falcons live there professional athletes and a lot of rap stars
• 58:07
  because Atlanta has
• 58:08
  a very big rap community well a young rapper an up and coming
• 58:12
  rapper moved in I'm
• 58:13
  SPEAKER_01: not going to name him sorry but he moved in
• 58:17
  SPEAKER_01: and he did
• 58:32
  determined to figure out where that was would probably piece it
• 58:34
  together with the
• 58:35
  all-knowing internet before we yeah but uh he but I mean he was
• 58:40
  he's big he's big
• 58:41
  is he a good neighbor he was a great neighbor because he had
• 58:44
  permanent security at
• 58:45
  all times my kids like outside of that one incident right like
• 58:49
  like there was
• 58:50
  literally an armed guard sitting in the you know in a car at
• 58:53
  all times just making
• 58:54
  sure nobody showed up so the kids were great except for that
• 58:56
  diet with the drive-by
• 58:58
  SPEAKER_00: everything everything was
• 58:59
  SPEAKER_00: It's great, except for the drive-by.
• 59:00
  SPEAKER_00: If you could give up one of your financial hang-ups, which would it be?
• 59:07
  SPEAKER_01: I am from rural upcountry South Carolina.
• 59:13
  SPEAKER_01: The people who raised me who are good, salt-of-the-earth, amazing people.
• 59:17
  SPEAKER_01: But they will always have it.
• 59:19
  SPEAKER_01: They have,
• 59:19
  SPEAKER_01: as many,
• 59:20
  SPEAKER_01: many millions of Americans still do,
• 59:22
  SPEAKER_01: this idea of debt is kind of this dangerous thing that we don't touch.
• 59:25
  SPEAKER_01: And really, the only real security you can have is just not to have it.
• 59:29
  and that to this day is my core being like I would just be debt
• 59:33
  free and have very
• 59:34
  little and be very happy but along the way I had to learn how
• 59:37
  to manage debt and so
• 59:39
  I think I would love to give up that kind of angst about debt
• 59:42
  that I still carry I
• 59:43
  mean I literally bought a house at one point this is like a
• 59:45
  personal residence like
• 59:46
  I bought my house for cash it's a million dollar house I'm so
• 59:50
  proud of myself like
• 59:51
  SPEAKER_01: I have done it
• 59:54
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 59:54
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:00:17
  SPEAKER_00: Well, Morgan Housel writes about that.
• 1:00:18
  SPEAKER_00: He says,
• 1:00:19
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 1:00:19
  SPEAKER_00: it's like,
• 1:00:19
  SPEAKER_00: look,
• 1:00:20
  it's all the financial books say that you shouldn't pay off
• 1:00:22
  your mortgage.
• 1:00:23
  SPEAKER_00: I did it because that's what felt right for me.
• 1:00:24
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, he sleeps well.
• 1:00:25
  SPEAKER_00: And I tell you what,
• 1:00:26
  SPEAKER_00: as soon as mortgage rates go back below 4%,
• 1:00:28
  SPEAKER_00: knock on wood,
• 1:00:29
  SPEAKER_00: I'll mortgage the devil out of my place.
• 1:00:32
  Lastly,
• 1:00:33
  of all the financial gurus in history,
• 1:00:35
  who was the biggest bullshit artist?
• 1:00:37
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, that's easy.
• 1:00:39
  SPEAKER_01: Napoleon Hill.
• 1:00:40
  I saw a guy I knew you were going to say that because I read
• 1:00:43
  the book which you
• 1:00:43
  should read too it's called How to Get Rich in American History
• 1:00:48
  I saw a guy on the
• 1:00:49
  subway yesterday reading They Can Grow Rich It's far and away
• 1:00:54
  among the top selling
• 1:00:55
  books in American history now nobody puts it in that
• 1:00:57
  classification because it's
• 1:00:58
  kind of looked askance at by the people who keep those records
• 1:01:02
  but no Napoleon
• 1:01:03
  and Hill writes this idea of I was a boy reporter and I went
• 1:01:07
  off and Carnegie told
• 1:01:08
  me to go and interview all the successful men and so I did it
• 1:01:11
  and then he publishes
• 1:01:12
  SPEAKER_01: it and they're all dead and he interviewed none of them.
• 1:01:14
  SPEAKER_01: He made it all up.
• 1:01:15
  SPEAKER_01: He was on the run from the law for securities fraud.
• 1:01:19
  SPEAKER_01: His sex life is a whole other podcast.
• 1:01:24
  SPEAKER_01: Oh yeah?
• 1:01:25
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah,
• 1:01:25
  I mean the dude was absolutely I mean he absolutely believed if
• 1:01:29
  you think it and
• 1:01:29
  believe it you can make it happen and he did that both with
• 1:01:32
  Money and the Ladies.
• 1:01:33
  SPEAKER_00: So,
• 1:01:34
  SPEAKER_00: okay,
• 1:01:34
  SPEAKER_00: Napoleon Hill,
• 1:01:35
  SPEAKER_00: hey,
• 1:01:36
  SPEAKER_00: a pretty good friend of mine,
• 1:01:38
  SPEAKER_00: that's one of his,
• 1:01:38
  SPEAKER_00: like,
• 1:01:39
  SPEAKER_00: he worships the guy.
• 1:01:40
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, it is a foundational touchstone of getting wealthy in America.
• 1:01:44
  SPEAKER_01: Everyone has read that book.
• 1:01:45
  Everyone is told to read that book because it's this idea of
• 1:01:47
  mindset is bigger than
• 1:01:49
  SPEAKER_01: anything else.
• 1:01:49
  SPEAKER_01: If you get your mind right, then you can go anywhere.
• 1:01:53
  SPEAKER_01: Now, here's the irony, right to where we started.
• 1:01:55
  SPEAKER_01: Actually, mindset does matter.
• 1:01:57
  Sometimes a broken clock is right,
• 1:01:59
  and that broken clock on that particular issue is right.
• 1:02:03
  Your belief in yourself that you can achieve something actually
• 1:02:06
  has measurable
• 1:02:07
  SPEAKER_01: impact on whether or not you achieve it.
• 1:02:09
  SPEAKER_00: All right.
• 1:02:10
  SPEAKER_00: Great place to end.
• 1:02:11
  SPEAKER_00: Joseph Moore, thank you.
• 1:02:12
  SPEAKER_00: His book is called How to Get Rich in American History,
• 1:02:15
  SPEAKER_00: 300 Years of Financial Advice That Worked and Didn't.
• 1:02:19
  SPEAKER_00: You got a website?
• 1:02:20
  Yes Joseph Moore Books It's a Substack It's free Come over Love
• 1:02:25
  to share ideas And
• 1:02:26
  anybody who signs up Gets the first chapter Of the book for
• 1:02:28
  free To see if they
• 1:02:28
  even Want to try it out We will put a link To that in the show
• 1:02:31
  notes AndSubstack
• 1:02:32
  folks Hey I got a Substack too It's called
• 1:02:34
  words.paulollinger.com You should check
• 1:02:37
  it out Put a lot of fun stuff up there Hey it's great to meet
• 1:02:41
  you Joseph I really
• 1:02:42
  SPEAKER_01: appreciate you coming in Paul thank you so much I've really enjoyed it
• 1:02:45
  SPEAKER_00: Paul Ollinger
• 1:03:12
  SPEAKER_00: Can't say it enough.
• 1:03:13
  SPEAKER_00: Attitude matters.
• 1:03:15
  SPEAKER_00: You see it all the time everywhere.
• 1:03:18
  The people who believe in themselves and believe that
• 1:03:21
  improvement in their lives,
• 1:03:22
  SPEAKER_00: in their economic outlook,
• 1:03:24
  SPEAKER_00: in their families,
• 1:03:25
  SPEAKER_00: in their health,
• 1:03:26
  SPEAKER_00: they believe it's possible.
• 1:03:28
  We're not talking about faith We're talking about belief The
• 1:03:30
  way you decide to see
• 1:03:31
  the world Will determine what you get from it And can't say it
• 1:03:33
  enough Secondly,
• 1:03:35
  SPEAKER_00: reading this book Was a reminder that We're not that smart
• 1:03:52
  SPEAKER_00: We're not that special.
• 1:03:53
  SPEAKER_00: The ideas we have,
• 1:03:55
  SPEAKER_00: the schemes we dream up,
• 1:03:57
  SPEAKER_00: the technological innovation that we think makes everything new again,
• 1:04:02
  SPEAKER_00: it's not to say that it can't open new doors.
• 1:04:07
  But the ideas are all playing on the same software between our
• 1:04:12
  ears that we've had
• 1:04:14
  SPEAKER_00: for tens of thousands of years.
• 1:04:16
  SPEAKER_00: And so the games we play, they're not new.
• 1:04:20
  SPEAKER_00: They're old.
• 1:04:22
  And I think having a little bit of humility about our own
• 1:04:25
  instincts and our ideas
• 1:04:29
  SPEAKER_00: to make a quick buck,
• 1:04:32
  having some humility around those things will serve us well in
• 1:04:35
  the long run.
• 1:04:36
  There's not a quick buck to be made unless and this is insight
• 1:04:41
  number three you
• 1:04:41
  follow his rules you follow the rule that if you want to get
• 1:04:44
  rich if you want to
• 1:04:45
  make money you got to help other people and you know it's funny
• 1:04:48
  there was this
• 1:04:49
  rabbi I had on in year one of the podcast and he said that you
• 1:04:54
  know money is holy
• 1:04:56
  and the reason it's holy is that the only way you can get it on
• 1:05:00
  a consistent basis
• 1:05:01
  SPEAKER_00: is to serve another child of God and
• 1:05:07
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that's true I think that Yeah,
• 1:05:10
  SPEAKER_00: you can rip off a couple of people now and again And you can,
• 1:05:13
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 1:05:13
  in the short run You can run a scheme or whatever But if you
• 1:05:16
  want money in the long
• 1:05:17
  run You have to create value for other people You have to solve
• 1:05:21
  other people's
• 1:05:21
  SPEAKER_00: problems
• 1:05:23
  There's no other way to do it I'm in this studio today Because
• 1:05:26
  Mike Albanese The
• 1:05:27
  guy who's listening right now Decided he was going to create a
• 1:05:29
  service For people
• 1:05:30
  who want to make podcasts And he wants to do it as well And at
• 1:05:33
  as fair a price as
• 1:05:35
  he can do it And earn a fair return for himself That's the way
• 1:05:38
  you build money over
• 1:05:39
  time That's the way you build wealth over time By solving other
• 1:05:41
  people's problems
• 1:05:42
  SPEAKER_00: By helping other people There's no other way to do it
• 1:05:46
  Sorry Alright that's it guys Thanks for listening Hope you
• 1:05:50
  enjoyed it Check out
• 1:05:51
  Joseph's book I hope the markets are treating you well But
• 1:05:55
  think long term See you
• 1:05:56
  SPEAKER_00: next time