Transcript of How To Kill Your Limiting MONEY Beliefs To Unlock Abundance | Mark Matson

The reality is that those are all flawed methodologies of investing because they're based on prediction of the future. When you think about that, that's really insane because number one, no one can predict the future. The best investment you can make is in yourself, not your portfolio. That's the way I see the American dream. Mark is the founder and CEO of Mattson Money and the author of this book, Experiencing the American Dream. Mark Mattson. Thank you so much, sir, for being here. Money doesn't work like that. It's got tentacles, and it's like a thread that goes through the carpet of your life. It touches everything.

Wow. Powerful, man.

These money demons, which we all have at various times in our life, they take us over.

What questions did you ask your partner before getting married? To make sure that you're at least setting yourself up on the right track?

One of the things is...

Welcome back, everyone, to the School of Greatness. Very excited about our guest. We have the inspiring Mark Matzen in the house.

Good to see you, sir. Good to be with you, brother.

Another Ohio guy who is teaching people how to really understand the neuroscience behind investing and how to build wealth so you have your own American dream. You've got a book called Experiencing the American Dream: How to Invest your Time, Energy, and Money to Create an Extraordinary Life. There's a few things I want to talk about really quick. One is you shared a quote off camera that said, Our brains are not wired for investing. Investing. Our brains are not wired for investing. That's one thing you said. That's right. I saw a quote online, a statistic online says, According to Lending Tree, 64% of Americans are living paycheck to paycheck. Many people view money as a source of survival and struggle with a scarcity mindset. What I'm curious about is you've done so much, three, four decades of research around the neuroscience of investing, but also the data and the facts of investing as well and how not to use feelings when it comes to investing. But I'm curious, when people are living in a scarcity mindset, when they're in survival already, or 64% of Americans are paycheck to paycheck, and they can't think about the future beyond tomorrow, next week, this month, how can people start to shift out of a scarcity mindset into abundance thinking when they're just fight or flight, survival mode, daily?

This is a great question, and I'm I'm so glad you asked it early on in our time together. I was very lucky to have a dad that believed in the American dream. He built into me, psychologically, the ideals of the American dream. He gave me Thinking We're Rich when I was 10 years old and said, Read this at least one time every year of your lives. But we came from the hills of West Virginia in the Hollars, and the hollers. My grandfather did not believe in the American dream. He worked in the coal mines, he worked in the factories, the chemical factories. He basically believed that money was a source of evil. He believed people that had it were greeting. He believed he was entitled to money that he didn't create. He always viewed it as anybody that had money was a crook. My dad rejected that. My dad, by the time he was 10 years old, was an entrepreneur three times over. He sold newspapers, he sold Cloverine sav to the miners where their were cracked, and he signed shoes. So he believed that if you created value for other people, that you would be rewarded with wealth and prosperity, and that people that had money weren't crooks, but they actually were really hardworking and dedicated.

And he loved this country and the values that it stood for. So the mind... Every summer, we'd go back to West Virginia, and I'd see the people living in the poverty, and they didn't have physical shackles. It was a mindset. I call it a screen by which they saw themselves as victims. Screen? A screen, a psychological screen made out of language, language that you're taught. Then there's the language or the screen of the American dream. Most people do look at money as a form of survival. That is largely in our DNA, too. I mean, for thousands of years, people had a real hard time surviving, and so money was in property was a form of survival. But now we live in a relative world of abundance and creativity. If you can get that screen of the American dream, you can start to escape that terrible bonds that really imprision you almost in a world of scarcity.

Two things here. One, can you explain what the screen is? Is it a framework of thinking and language around what money is?

Yes. It's language. The The way that people can think about it, sometimes you create that language on purpose. If I'm going to go be a doctor, I spend many, many years developing language around what a doctor is, so they see the human body as very different as someone who doesn't have that language. Well, we have all kinds of conversations in our lives about money, about the world, about how money works, how money is created, our place in the world and our relationship to money. Ironically, having a lot of money doesn't mean you're going be happy. As a matter of fact, I've seen a lot of really, really wealthy people, tens, 20, 30s, millions of dollars. And history is rife with people like Elvis Presley, Marilyn Monroe, Howard Hughes, Prince, people with a lot of money, power, theme, but it didn't do them any good. It actually helped seal their fate in the end and became very destructive.

And there's another thing that you mentioned just before this was there's two different mindsets. Your grandfather, who worked in the coal mines, who worked really hard, it sounds like on a daily basis, but didn't understand how to create more value, whether in his coal mine or somewhere else, and therefore was given what he received, correct? Yeah. Versus your dad, where it sounds like How did your dad break that mindset from his father, who he saw probably miserable or unhappy in the minds, dirty every night and sick and coughing? How did he say, I want to change this without a model of someone showing him abundance?

Well, that's great. And go back to my grandfather once. His screen was so strong. It was like they lived in two different worlds, the two different dimensions of reality. His screen was so strong. When he was offered an opportunity to grow at Union Carbide. He was offered to be a foreman and have a crew underneath him. He told them no. Why? Because he didn't want to be part of the machine.

That's evil and bad.

He didn't want to be evil and bad in his eyes. So he proved it to himself that he was doomed to be our money. I call these money demons. These money demons, which we all have at various times in our life, they take us over and preclude us from doing things that could actually save us. So he never took that raise. He never took that opportunity to save his family, even when it was offered to him. I've asked my dad, I said, How did you? I mean, This poverty, this abject poverty, they would cut the tops off of instant carnation milk cans, and they would hammer it to the baseboards in their shack by the railroad so that the rats wouldn't come in their house in the wintertime. That's how much poverty my dad came from. He only had one pair of shoes a year right before school started, and then they were barefoot all summer long. I mean, this was true abject poverty. He said, I saw a couple of examples of people that did have a little bit money, and they were nice, and they helped me, and I went to work for them.

I noticed that my dad was wrong, that people that had money weren't evil, and they weren't bad, and they were actually willing to help. I had a couple of good teachers in school that taught me about that. But deep down, my dad had, and I don't know where he got it, he had a deep-seated belief in capitalism and entrepreneurship. Yeah.

You mentioned money demons. What are money demons? And do we all have them?

We all do to a greater or lesser extent.

What is a money demon?

I'll give you an example. When I started my company, I wanted to help a lot of people. We managed $11 billion for people all over North America, 500 advisors. But when I started, I only had three employees. I had a demon belief. It's a belief created in language that then we don't realize that it's only just a screen. We take it one as reality. That reality was that employees suck, and they're too expensive, and when you hire them, they don't do a good job. The other money demon I had was that I'm not a good manager, and I don't know how to manage people, so I'll just do it myself. Now, money demons are so pervasive because when we have them, we make their self-fulfilling prophecy and we make them come true. We don't look for opportunities that violate our screen. I had to look at what I was getting out of it. What was I getting out of that screen? Well, I got to play small, didn't have to hire people. I got to be self-righteous. I got to be condemning. You were right all the time. I'm right and righteous. I got to gossip about other people, character assassinate.

I got to be a victim. I mean, it was juicy psychological payoff. But I also had to realize that if I couldn't change those screens about the world, that I was going to be doomed, never to fulfill my mission, which was to help more people stop speculating with their money and fulfill their American dream. Then you have to do a cost-benefit analysis and say, Okay, am I going to keep this That demon belief because there is payoff. I can live a normal ordinary life, not full of greatness, thorough set of the best, quiet desperation. Or am I going to break that belief? I actually call it due violence to the belief.

Interesting.

I have to actually kill it. I have to kill that belief. But the thing about money demons is when you kill them and have more money, they don't disappear. They often morph.

How so?

Well, so after I became successful, then I went through a divorce, and then I started eventually dating after some therapy and counseling. I started dating, and I started getting one string of really relationships after another. I developed a belief, based on the divorce and dating, that I'm not really that attractive, I'm not really that sexy, I got a lot of money, and that's what women really want from me, and so that I'll never really have someone I really truly love and really truly loves me. Then I had a string of dating examples that created that. I had to do violence to that belief.

How does that look like? In your mind, how do you kill off the old limiting belief or the demons that keep you small or hold your back?

You have to look at the benefits you're getting out of it. The benefits, and I know it doesn't seem like there are benefits, but there are benefits to being right and playing small and not taking risk in life. And being a victim, too. And being a victim of being the martyr, getting set in my own shit, if you would.

What is the biggest benefit? What would you say is the biggest benefit of being a victim?

You don't have to take risk in life. Or responsibility. You don't have to be responsible for your own results in life. You get to blame others. Well, it's not me, it's the government, or it's not me, it's these employees, or it's not me. It's this girl, or this is not me, it's somebody else. I'm just fine the way I am. I don't have to change. I don't have to grow, I don't have to do anything. It just takes you off the hook and lets you complain about other people. Behind every complaint is a demon belief. I eventually, the way I did... And then the second part of doing battle with it is to realize it's not true. You just made it up. There's no tablet that said, Employee sucks. From the mount. I just made it up. If I made it up, I can make up something else. I can start looking for evidence that it's not true. Look, there's companies with 10,000, 20,000 employees. So It can't be that all employees are bad. Well, that's just silly. I've known people about the money demon with the relationships. I knew people that had great relationships where it wasn't about money.

That couldn't be true either. I need to slow down and actually take my time and find someone that's caring, loving, and kind. Which was funny because then when I met Melissa, she had a money demon, which was guys that had money are jerks.

She saw that right away with you and it was like, repelling Yeah, she almost didn't say yes to that date at Starbucks because she thought, Oh, it's just going to be- You got a ton of money? You must be a jerk.

I must be a jerk, yeah. I must be a total jerk.

Interesting. So when you start to violently kill this psychological belief, Of the old self, of like, Okay, this old self, maybe there was some benefit here. It got me to this level, but it's not going to help me get to the next level in my life of freedom or peace or abundance, right? That's right. It got me these results, but it's not going to give me what I truly want next. That's right. It fulfilled a purpose in my life. Did you have a hangover after that for months or years? When you actualized it and started to kill off the demon, was it easy after that? How did you stay on track and not rebound?

Well, I did a lot of therapy. I did a lot of counseling. When I met Melissa, we did a lot of therapy, and we did a lot of counseling together. We both had been in relationships, hadn't worked, and so we were and spent a lot of time working on each other and working with each other and ourselves. But being on the look out for the new demons as they pop up.

What's been a new demon for you as you let go of old...

Oh, my gosh.

As you As you're creating new numbers of success, now there's new demons, right? Yeah.

We had a house in Montecito it got broke into. We had video of the people breaking into it, and there were three of them, and they had hoodies in there. I'm thinking, my gosh, what if we were there? There's been a lot of break-ins where we lived in Paradise Valley, so the idea was we were going to buy a bigger house. With the guard shack and the guards and protection. Full-time security. Yeah, security 24/7. So we start looking, and then Listen, we find this house that was way more than I wanted to pay. Long story short is I had a couple of real estate deals that I didn't make money on houses. So I made a money even in my head that I'm bad at real estate.

Because these things didn't work out. It's not going to work out for me.

I bought a house for six million. I sold it for four and a half million. So I'm bad at real estate. Right.

That stinks.

Obviously, if I buy this new house, I'm going to be making another emotional mistake. So I was being a jerk about it. The reality was I did want the new house, but I just wanted to enlisted it to all the work, and I just wanted to bitch and moat about it. Right. It's a really, really nasty stuff. Wow. So I finally, when I was teaching a class from the book about money demons to my advisors, and in preparation for the class, I'm sitting in the parking lot thinking, I got to teach money demons today. And I'm like, Right in the middle of one, right in the middle of one right now. Wow. And so I called Melissa on the phone. I was like, Honey, I've been making you wrong. I've been a jerk about this whole thing. I haven't been helpful. I haven't been supportive. I know you've been doing a lot of work on the house and even the financing and even the furniture and the decoration. I'm just, I want to apologize. I've been a real jerk around this whole thing. She goes, You're getting ready to teach a class, weren't you?

Yes. You got to confront your demons when you teach others. You got to be the example, right?

She said, You know what? I accept your apologies. I'm glad you saw it.

She's like, You need to do more classes more frequently. Teach more frequently. That's right. How do we start to... In the book, which I love, you talked about this because you advise how many different, I guess, advisors would you say? Roughly 500. 500, and they're managing portfolios of what type of range.

Oh, gosh. We try not to have a minimum because we want to help everybody, but there's portfolios up to 70, 80 million. Sure.

Okay. But you have this part of the book, page 73, called The Destructive Cycle of Wealth. You say, yes, it's cliché that money can't make make you happy? Songs have been written about it. But why can't money make you happy? Shouldn't it make you a little bit happier if you suddenly stumble into, say, $100 million? You say the answer is no, and it sounds counterintuitive, but I firmly believe that to be true. And if money isn't making us any happier, and most of us have much more than what we need, why do we work so hard to make more of it? Why do we spend so much of our lives thinking about money without even realizing it? We are stuck in the destructive cycle of wealth, and learning about this cycle can help you better understand some of your decisions about money. You say it has five phases, beginning with our most basic human needs. Can you talk about what this destructive cycle of wealth is? Yeah. Why it's important for us to understand it, and what we can do to make sure we don't stay in it?

When I realized that I had clients with a lot of money that were very unhappy, that was my next question. My dad, one of the One of the key strategies in the book is to ask a good question. Don't try to rush to get the answer. Take your time and really let it work on you and your subconscious and really think about it. It took me years to think about this in that The reason it can't make you happy is because it doesn't feel anything in your spiritual nature that can bring happiness.

It fulfills the survival nature, right? Yeah.

We all want things, and things for our survival. That's instincts, food, clothing, shelter, who loves, that stuff. Then we go out and we obtain things, and we obtain those things, most of us. But then we want more. Toyota even had that commercial, Oh, what a feeling when you get the Toyota. You don't just want a new car, you want a really nice car. You don't want a new house, you want a really nice house. Then when you do get something, whether it's the computer or golf clubs or a purse or whatever it is, you have it for a while, you obtained it, you felt good about it for a little while, then you start comparing it to what everybody else has. I had a boat I bought in Florida when we had a house down there, and it was a 37-footer, 300 Yamaha Motors. I loved that boat. I had tons of fun on that boat. It was adventurous, really great. Then one day, there was a 180-foot yacht, and their dingy was bigger than my boat. I'm like, This ain't no boat. I got to give me a bigger boat. Really? Yeah. But whether it's the size of your portfolio, the size of your house, you buy the perfect house, you think it's perfect, then six months later, you're looking at the kitchen going, These cabinets really suck.

We really need to rip these out. It's just human nature. Then it brings us around to comparing it to other things. Sometimes in technologies this way, they always come out with bigger, better, faster, cooler technology we want. Then it leads you back up to this top of wanting stuff. It It doesn't fulfill at a deep, meaningful purpose. And that leads you back to what you mentioned earlier, which is survival. It's about survival.

So if I'm getting us right, we go through the cycle. And you know a lot of people who are mega millionaires, maybe even billionaires, who are unhappy still. Would you say the majority of millionaires or billionaires are unhappy, the ones that you've been around or experienced?

I don't know about the majority, but I do know there is no correlation. I know it from my personal life, too, because- To happiness and having money. Right. Because there's been times where I had a lot of money, was very unhappy, had no money, and was pretty happy.

But you also had a lot of money and been happy, too.

I would take the latter, the money and the happiness at the same time. That would be great. You've experienced that, too. And I have. Yes. But if it's not the money, then what is it? What I've found is it's having a purpose in life that's greater than money itself. If you think throughout history, the people that have changed the world, whether it's Ronald Reagan or whether it's Martin Luther King or whether it's JFK or whether it's Walt Disney or the Wright brothers, or you think about These people that have changed the world, they've all had this deep sense of purpose and value in their life, so much so that they've even laid their life. Dr. Martin Luther King laid down his life for his purpose. That's how strong purpose can be. If you'll have a purpose first, then use it to create value for other people in a line with their purpose, and then the more money you have, great. Because then I can align how I use that money with my purpose in life, and I can do great things with my money. That brings me joy and happiness and freedom and fulfillment with other people.

But if I have the money without the purpose, it just becomes a burden.

Really? It becomes empty. It's so empty. I need more money, more money, more money for what?

It's an addiction of itself.

It sounds like the greater the purpose you have, the more fulfilled you'll be with or without money.

Absolutely. As a matter of fact, if you have a strong enough purpose, you don't even need money. You're like Mother Teresa, saints.

Because they feel taken care of by the community or they know they're going to be provided for. They're happy with whatever they receive each It's about their purpose in life.

If I don't have... Look, you can live in America for very little money. Even if you only have $40, $50,000 a year, you live better than the king of England did 500 years ago. You have chocolate, you have air conditioning, you have food, you have running water, you have health care. It's a miracle. Everybody should wake up every morning in a miracle going, It's a miracle. It's a miracle. I can't believe I live here. Of course, they don't. But But it's a miracle that what we have, and if you only have a little bit of money and you have a friend in the hospital, you can make a card with a crayon or a pen. You could go to the hospital, you could sit by them and hold their hand, and you could express your love and affection. That's going to be more fulfilling than a Ferrari. I'm not anti-Ferrari. I got one.

It's part for an hour, but it's not...

I call them cookies and toys. You say you got these toys, and they're fun. Okay, fine, great. I'm not saying that they're bad, but they won't make me happy. Then food, it's anything you ingest that try to change your mood about yourself and feel better temporarily. But they're not permanent.

This is powerful, man. I love this. You mentioned early on that people have these screens. Just so I'm clear, is a screen It's like a framework. It's like a framework of thinking towards money or towards life. Is that your definition of a screen?

It is.

A model, a way of thinking.

It's a mental model that you have, that you... Here's the critical part, that you don't know you have because it just appears like the truth and not something that you just made up. A story. Yes, something happened. I lost money on a house, but I have a degree in finance and accounting. I'm bad at real estate, really? That's just being a wimp. It's the story that I make up about whatever. A lot of it's money, relationships with money. It all comes down to, when I run these exercises with people, first you make a list of your complaints. What's all your complaints about money? Then what demon belief or relationship do you have based on that complaint? Then where did it come What happened when you were eight years old, the first time you heard your mom and dad yelling about money, that gave you that story that you have about what money is? Because something did happen, but then what you made it mean is not what is just a story you made up. You can start to do battle with those and start to untangle them over time. Then it's like the demon in it.

It morphs into other things. It only hides for 17 years, then it comes out as something else, and it changes usually into what your greatest fear is.

Can you give me an example? If you were doing this exercise for yourself, and I'm assuming you've done this a bunch of times, or you have an example of something, a story that you had, a money story or a moment or a memory that caused a belief within your screen that, I guess, you made decisions based on for many years until you became aware of it and killed off. What would that look like for you? If you give one example of your daddy or grandpa or whatever that might be.

There's screens. People like to try to compartmentalize things in their brain like, Oh, this is money, this is my relationship. This is my life. This is my whatever. But money doesn't work like that. It's got tentacles, and it's like a thread that goes through the carpet of your life. It touches everything. When I have a money demon, I also usually I have a relationship demon. When I went through divorce, I thought, Okay, you're going to lose half of all your stuff now, including your company that you built. So that was less than ideal. That was a money demon. But I also had another money demon or a relationship demon related to that is that I had grown up most of my life as an atheist and took classes in college about how there's no God and all this garbage. And so then when I went through the divorce, I was gutded. It was dark. I'm a bad father. I wasn't seeing my kids. I'm going to lose my company. It's going to be like, this is going to be the worst thing ever in my life. I got depressed. Then I was talking to a buddy on the phone.

I lived in a world, a screen, because there is no God, and I'm talking to a buddy of mine, and he's probably crying. He's like, Well, are you ready? I said, Ready for what? He said, Are you ready to admit there's a God and it's not you? I'm like, Yeah.

Or you could have said, See, there is no God because I'm divorced. Half my money is gone, my business is gone, my kids don't like me. You could have also gone and stayed in that belief.

Yeah, I could have just stayed there.

If there was a God, why would he let this happen to me? Yeah.

Well, I knew because I was a sinner and I didn't believe in God. But you know what? All of the... And the screen sometimes can change slow or sometimes it can go fast. But I knew instantly I could not live in a world without a God anymore. I just did. It was empty, it was devoid, and it was hopeless. I didn't have any doubts or questions. All the intellectual gymnastics I had been doing my whole life went away. He said, Get on your knees and let's pray. I was in that hotel room and started praying. I went from a screen, a world of no God to a world of God. It's made all the difference, like the master screen that fits into the other screens. But screens are powerful. People will literally die to keep their screens like my grandpa did. He came to visit us only one time at our house. Since in Cincinnati. It was August. It was a cool for August. He walked in the front door. We had about maybe an 1800-foot-square house. It wasn't huge. He said, How many... He looked on my dad in front of his whole family.

He said, How many people did you have to rip off to get this out?

Oh, my gosh. That was his That was the first thing.

That was the first thing out of his mouth.

Jeez. His screen, his framework, his mindset, when he saw something, he said, You did something wrong to get this. Yep. There's no way you could have done something good to be able to afford something like this. That's right. Man.

I know my dad wanted to be proud of him. That's tough. Right in front of his whole family, and he said, George, Mary Lou and I, we're in a real business. We work really hard. We try to build a good family for I have a good house for our family and a nice home. He said, Well, you can tell yourself whatever you want that lets you sleep. Oh, my gosh. He said, But all I see is a big shot. You think you're better than me? It got really heated after that for about five minutes. He left. He never came back. And three months later, he was dead in his little tiny shack he lived in West Virginia.

How old were you during that time?

About 13. Wow.

I mean, that's a memory that still alive in you today.

I'll never forget that day.

47, 48 years ago, right? Mm-mm. That was a memory that your grandfather had with your father and your family. What psychological screen did you create in that moment that stuck with you, that benefited you, and one that didn't benefit you? Yeah. Well, because money, essentially, your dad tried to break a model of his father's to do something good, but it hurt the relationship with his father. That's right. It caused him, maybe he could think it caused him to die. Maybe not, but it could be like, It was so bad that he died alone because he had no family and he didn't want to be around me. Whatever he made up in his mind. So what was the benefit from you in seeing that experience versus a negative benefit?

The benefit in that was that dad stood up for his family. That's powerful. And stood up his values and what he believed about America and about freedom and about entrepreneurship and about helping other people and never expecting anything free or that you didn't earn. That always stuck with me. On the other hand, when I was a kid, I did go through some stuff. I had trouble studying in school and trouble reading, so I made up I'm stupid. I'd ask a girl to the dance, and she wouldn't say no. I'd think, Oh, I'm not handsome enough, or I didn't get to be the captain on the football team. I started like, I'm dumb, I'm not handsome, I'm not attractive, I'm not man enough. That was early on. That was like eighth grade, and I got bullied in school. I had all these... In my strategy, I heard your podcast with Pivot. My strategy was not unlike yours, which was to win at all cost. Whatever I was going to do, if it's going to be sports, if it's going to be if it's going to be drama club, if it's going to be whatever, I got to have the lead role.

I got to be the captain. I got to win state championship in discus. I got to do all this or I'm not worth anything. It got me through a little bit in life, but it ultimately would be a failed strategy. Right, exactly.

You mentioned beforehand that your first marriage, you married for 16 years, roughly 16, and now you've been married in your second marriage, hopefully your last, for 16 years. What would you say are the lessons from your first marriage to your second marriage about yourself? What is different within you to make this more harmonious than the first marriage? Oh, my God. Not about the other person, but within you.

Right.

Well, boy. And part two of that, what money lessons did you learn that you would have applied to the first marriage? Before getting married?

Yeah. Well, I think for me early on in the first marriage was it wasn't a loving-caring relationship, and that's on me. I picked out a relationship that wasn't loving and caring and healthy. Even from the very beginning, there were a lot of fighting and a lot of, broadly enough, jealousy and a lot of difference in values in the world. The whole thing was just, I'm surprised it lasted as long as it did, actually. But the second time, I took the time after I went through the divorce and I went through the depression because of the kids and the business and all the other things I was going through, I took time to actually work on me. To heal. And heal instead of just trying to, not that I didn't try to rush into relationships. I did, but that was failed, too. So finally, I was working with my therapist. I'm like, Okay, what now? She goes, Well, you'll get a kick out of this. So we created a project. It was called... My therapist said, You're a genius in business, but you're like an idiot, Savard. Because when it comes to relationships, you were so bad.

Why don't you come back next week and come up with the strategy like you do in business? I came back and I said, Okay, 10 Friends Project. She goes, What's 10 Friends? I said, Well, what I do is I meet 10 women and just be friends and nothing more than friends. Then after that, I'll learn something about relationships and about friendships, and then we'll see what happens after that. She said, I think that's a pretty good plan. I'd go out and I'd tell the girl, You're not going to be friends. You're number one. This is going to be platonic. We're going to be friends, and that's it. They go, Oh, really? When are you going to get done with all 10? I'm like, I don't know. It was a weird situation.

How long did it take?

Them as friends, went on casual dates. It's friend dates, I guess. It's activities or four months.

I love that, though.

Then it was just friends. Then finally, number seven, who owned a salon shop, said, I think she wanted to be anything more than this until I meet 10 different women and just have conversation, hang out. Interesting. In between, there's a lot of childhood therapy stuff and a lot of other healing stuff along the way. Sure. Wow.

When did you learn about money the second time you got married?

Oh, well, the second-Because you had made money on your own, then you got married, you made a ton of money.

Then you got divorced, lost money, made money. Then you got married again. So what did you learn about your money wounds or money and being in a relationship on how to make it work?

It was so counterintuitive to me because I thought that the money was the only thing that would make it work prior. I actually wrote out a vision statement about the woman that I wanted to meet. Funny, athletic, caring, kind, not driven by money. I remember when I met Melissa, we would go out and she goes, I almost didn't go out with you because you have a little bit of money. I was really afraid of that. Anybody that went out with it had this. I want you to know that I don't need a lot of money, and I don't even want your money. I'm taking care of my family, and I'm taking care of my kids. It was really completely different than what I had experienced in the past. But she really, really didn't care about the money at all. That's the way she is today, too. Finding someone that once... When I found someone that really wanted to be in a relationship with me because of my life experiences and what I've been through, and then being able to share that and then go into therapy and counseling together and sharing all that together. It was really great.

It was really great. Yeah, we still had conflict about money here and there, but it wasn't from a place of she was wanting just the money. She really, really loved the relationship.

That's beautiful. What would you say are some things people should talk about before getting married about money conversations? What questions did you ask your partner before getting married to make sure that you're at least setting yourself up in the right track of a healthy, successful marriage?

One of the things is I think both people would want to define what their purpose for money is and then make sure that those are synergistic and they work together.

Give me an example of what maybe yours was during that time.

Mine was love, to create love in the world. And hers was family, love close second. So they were very synergistic. They worked really well together. She had a belief that her value as a human being was determined on her working, and that if she wasn't working, that she wouldn't have any value.

Interesting.

That was something we had to work through because I wanted to be able to travel. I wanted her to be able to do things with the kids. I wanted her to be able... But her job, she was a physical therapist and went from the home physical therapy, but she couldn't take time off.

Without thinking she's not valuable anymore.

Well, she would lose her job if she If she took as much time as I wanted to take off, she would lose her job.

If she wasn't working, she was thinking, I'm not valuable. I'm not valuable. Interesting.

That was a money demon we had to work through.

Now, I guess she might think, I'm not valuable. I'm not for myself, but also the fear could be, Well, if I'm not working, he met me when I was working and providing for myself and independent. That's what turned him on, potentially. So if I'm not doing that, will he still be turned on?

Yeah. And what if I turned out being like her last husband and then left her, and then she had given up her job, and then she has three kids to take care of. That fear. So that fear of being left, being abandoned. And then what would she have?

I mean, it's It's a real fear, though, right? It's a real fear. She has to have a lot of trust in you that, Okay, I'm going to leave my job, and you're not going to leave me. Yeah. How does a woman trust a man in that position who's already been divorced and been wounded, who's already been abandoned, who wants to make sure that doesn't happen again, who wants to provide for their family? How does a woman trust and have faith? What can she say to the man to feel safe?

I think it's a... Well, it was another interesting thing. So her ex-husband had told her that, and this just gutded me when I heard it the first time, had told her that because she had three kids, that no one would ever want her. Talk about a gut punch. I mean, that was just... The first day we went to Starbucks and had our first date together, we talked for three hours.

Just as friends? Yeah, just as friends for the first time.

That made me so mad. I don't know why, because I never really thought about getting divorced. Maybe it was subconscious. But even from the time I was in college, I thought if I did ever marry somebody that had kids. I would love their kids the same way that I love them, and I would never let that be an obstacle to having a relationship. So when he was manipulating her like that and trying to control her and making her feel bad and really depressed about the whole thing, it really made me mad. But that was another one of her money demons was that she had kids and no guy was going to want to take that on.

How did she learn to let go of that and trust you and have faith?

I think it was just tons of time and therapy and just lots of discussions about things.

Probably your actions matching your words consistently for her, right?

Most of our therapy had to do around the kids.

I'm sure.

This kid is doing this, that parent is doing this, this kid needs that, and this kid needs that. Then working through all of those, working through all of those. We had a therapist once time tell us, three years to get it all really aligned up and make it feel like one's family. I was like, 10 years, maybe? Ten years, yeah. It takes a long time. We have a lot of players involved.

Now, but also when you got divorced, I'm assuming it affected your financial situation or your business. You had to either split or give up a a large portion, I'm assuming. Unless I'm wrong, let me know. But how did you manage that money demon of, Man, I worked so hard for this, and now I've got to give up half or whatever it was? How did you overcome that? And how you, instead of being a victim to that situation, how did you start to shift and say, and use it for good, that scream?

Once I came out of the sadness and some of the grief part of it, I was like, Okay, Now, what am I going to do to make this mess into a message? We had a negotiator that helped negotiate the divorce, the mediator. Part of the mediation was, Look, this is my company. I built this company. The income you're getting, the benefits, the money, everything you're getting is because I'm keeping this company running. And without me, there is no company. I'm not going to let you double-dip. I'm not going to give you half the company and half of all the other stuff in addition.

Because you could just stop running the company.

I'll stop running the company and I'll run it into a ditch. And then I'm not very great at negotiating, but I was firm on that. But you're getting a really great deal. You're going to get going with your life. You got lots of great resources to go on and be happy, do your own deal, but I'm not giving you my company. I kept the company. That was intact. In retrospect, that was really good.

But you gave a lot of your other... Or you gave a lot of your other assets and cash.

A ton.

How did that make you feel, though? That scream to just say, You know what? This is creating freedom and peace for me, and I'm okay with this.

I just felt like it was worth it. I was like, Whatever it's going to take to get through this and move on with my life, it's just worth it.

Now, going through a divorce one time, did you have these conversations with your current wife before you got married? Oh, yeah. About like, Hey, is there financial agreement conversations? How do you navigate that when one person has been wounded from a previous relationship and been told, You're never going to meet anyone again and has to work full-time now. You got wounded by your own stuff. How did that money conversation happen beyond what sounds like a money values conversation which you had, which is what was your purpose for money in life? How did you get clear on that?

She made it really easy. She said, I don't want your money. She said, I just want you. And I'm like, Wow, that sounds great. But we put stuff in like that. Well, we would keep things separate for a little while. But then if we start putting real estate in her name and different assets in her name and different stuff like that. So it took a little bit, but now she's fully invested.

It's fully invested. There was no renuptial agreement or anything?

There was initially.

But then you're... Once everything's going so well-Yeah, I was 17 years in. Yeah, it doesn't matter anymore. That's great. Interesting. What advice do you have for people who are in their early 20s who don't maybe have a ton of money yet, who are looking to get married, when you become a completely different person in your 30s and 40s, it sounds like, what conversations should they have around money before marriage in their early 20s?

Gosh, that's such a hard one. In my 20s, I didn't have any money. I think the conversation is, Can we be happy without money? Because the customer is going to be hard. I think I made $20,000 my first year. The first condo I bought was $40,000, and it was a thousand-square-foot condo. The Cincinnati?

Yeah.

I just didn't have much. I expect things to I think so many kids in their 20s today, I think, not everybody, but they want to start at the top. They think they can get on Instagram, be an influencer, get on TikTok, do this and that, and you'll be making fat stacks and be worth a million bucks in a very quick trip. But my experience in life isn't that. My experience is digging it out, grunting, working 70-hour work week sometimes, working on the weekends, even now to promote the book. I'm just all over the place working like crazy. It's never been easy. It's been fun, it's been challenging, it's been awesome, it's been fulfilling, but it's never been easy, and it's never been fast. I always tell my kids, Look, I'll give you a shot at working in the company, but you got to be the best employee here because if you're not, your name's on the building, you're going to come to kick you out of here. Wow. I've done that.

Really? No, yeah. That kids come work with you that just slacked off or felt entitled or didn't It didn't do our work.

It just didn't work and had to part ways. There's no regrets now when we know it all went the right way for everybody. But I tell my kids today, if I had to start over and I had no money, I'd go to work for somebody, and if I had to, I'd take the lowest job in the company. I would work my rear end off and I would prove my worth. Then the boss would see me in there before everybody. They'd see me leave after everybody. They'd see me take on responsibilities that people didn't tell me to take on. I would always be asking my boss about what can I learn to expand myself. I would outwork every single person at that company and take every advantage I could get and prove my worth. If I had to start, there's a chapter, it's on Whispers. It says, If you have nothing, great. Start with nothing. But don't expect to get it overnight. Because if you're expecting it to get it overnight, you're going to be sadly disappointed. My dad told me a story. He said, Look, there's a king, and he sends all these wise men out to the world.

He says, Bring me back all the wisdom. And he brings back a whole library, like the 4,000 books. And he goes, Too much. I can't read it all. Cut it down. Then they come back 10 years later with 500 books. He said, Too much. Cut it down. Comes back with one book. He says, Too much. Cut it down. They come back with one sentence. In the one sentence is, There ain't no free lunch. You're not going to get something for nothing. You're going to have to your sour heart, your soul, and your passion into something and prove that you're better than the next guy. If you don't want to work for somebody, then work for yourself and be an entrepreneur, which is, I think, the highest expression of being in the American dream. People misunderstand entrepreneurs. They think they do it because of greed. Even Adam Smith made that mistake in his writings. I know a lot of entrepreneurs, and they don't do it because of the money. They do it because it's an expression of who they are. It's like an artist would create on a canvas. An entrepreneur creates their company through a self-expression of creativity that serves others in the forms of products and services.

But the most successful ones are not the ones that are doing it for cash. They're doing it to make the world a better place and to express who they are as a human being. I read of that. Wow.

What is the American dream in your mind?

The American dream is a way you the world that you're willing to take a stand for and that you want to see for your family and you want to build into your family. It's investing your... That's why my publishers are like, Well, this is an investing book. I'm like, No. It goes, Well, it's a personal development book. I said, No. They said, Well, what the heck is it? I said, It's a type of a memoir, so you can learn from the storyline, but it's a personal development book, and it's an investing book. That's why it's investing your time and your energy and your money. The best investment you can make is in yourself, not your portfolio. If you invest in yourself first, then Yeah, there's a lot of science about investing. There's a lot of brain stuff you got to learn about investing. But you're the greatest investment you're going to make. That's the way I see the American dream. Investing in yourself, challenging yourself, asking profound questions, on your purpose. When people say, Well, how do I create my American dream? The easiest way for you to create your American dream is to help other people create theirs.

Was that Jim Rohn maybe said that or something like that? Or Zig Zigler said, If you want to achieve your goals, help everyone else achieve them. I'm sure I ripped it off from somebody. You've got a lot of references to Thinking, Growth, Rich, and Here. I do. Which I love that book and just the whole idea of really creating that mission and that purpose for for yourself and seeing that and visualizing it over and over again. After 61 years of life, a lot of ups and downs and a ton of financial success, and now family and relational success and health as well. What is the best investment that you have yet to make in yourself?

Have yet to make?

You've got a lot of things. You've got the family, you've got the book, you've got the things in motion. But at this season of life, how can you pour back into you to keep investing in you?

I think I should take some time off. I think I should take a little bit more time to rest and relax and meditate. I'd like to increase my spirituality and my faith. That's something I'm focusing more on now than I ever have before. But I think, and with so many kids and with so many things going on, I think more time with Melissa, just time together to share time. I think that's important. Some rest, some meditation, spirituality, a little bit more time with Melissa because I'm hitting it on all cylinders on most of the other stuff.

What would it take from you to take those actions and for the next six months, really invest in what you're saying?

I think I need to go home right down on the plane and talk to Melissa and say, let's just look at the next six months and set this out, because I know she's a big fan of doing it, too. So sitting down with her and making a full game plan out.

I'm going to text you to see how it does this weekend. All right. By this weekend, I want to see the game plan. You're on. For six months. I love it. Of how you're going to say no to more things so you can say yes to you in time with her.

That's what I want to do.

And rest and fitness and all these things. Because you had a heart surgery a year and a half ago. I did. And then you launched a book and you're all these other things and building the business. You don't need more of these things. No.

I was dead for 16 minutes. People asked me, Did you see anything? I'm like, Oh, I wish I did. That'd be a great book, wouldn't it? Yeah. Nothing. Heaven in 16 minutes. Nothing to report. Must not have been my time.

Nothing, no. No. No visions. You didn't see yourself or anything, not in your body.

But I'll take you on. I'll get your phone number, get your text message. I'll even come back in six months and give you a full report.

There you go. That's interesting. Well, I think for me, I've had tons of billionaires on this show and mega millionaires and people with exited huge companies and top sports stars and all these different things for people to accomplish a lot. Created a lot of value in the world, achieved their dreams, been number one in what they do, top scientists, all these different things. But I think with someone who has created so much at this season of life. That's why I asked that question. You said the best investment is in yourself. So I wanted to throw it back at you and see how could this have value to you to reflect in the middle of it all, book launch and all the things you're trying to create still, but how could you pour into you that you haven't done yet. It seems like for the last 40 years, you've been running on multiple cylinders of achievements, success, family, kids, blinded family. It's just been nonstop. It has. And so I I think this is a great time to invest in. I'm not saying you have to stop everything, but more time, more scheduled time for you guys.

I think that is great. I know we just met each other, but it sounds like great insight from a friend.

For sure.

I I appreciate that.

Yeah, of course. Well, something I've taken away so far from you is whether you're just starting out at some company or you're in your 20s or you're restarting in your 30s or 40s or whatever it might be, and you have these limiting beliefs or these demon beliefs beliefs, whether it be around money or relationships or your health or whatever it might be, and you don't think you have value to add to anyone. What you can do is work really hard. You can also add a lot of value by listening to people. When you listen to someone, I could have no other skills. I could have no platform or audience or money or nothing. But if I can listen to someone and pay attention to what they're saying and what they're not saying, if I can just be present to your energy and hear you, Okay, the best thing you can do is invest more into you. Then just reflect the question back to you, What do you need to invest in yourself? It's a great way to add value to anyone, whether you think you have value or not, whether you're a billionaire or broke, if you can be present and listen to people and reflect back what they need and be of service with a question, you could change someone's life.

I'm not saying this about me. I'm just saying this about this is something I like to do. It's brilliant. I think anyone can do it. I don't need to be an investment guru to do that. I don't need to be the world's number one athlete. I don't need to have a billion dollars to be present and listen and just see what I can reflect back for someone to be of service to them. Hopefully, that adds value. We'll see in the next six months. Yes, we will.

We're willing to do that.

But I think a lot of people, like you said, doubt their abilities, doubt themselves. They have these demons that hold them back, that keep them playing small, whatever area of life they're in. But if you can be willing to do everything you said, like I'm going to show up early, leave late to situations, I'm going to take on things that were not required of me. I'm going to have a positive attitude the whole time. I'm going to do whatever it takes, and I'm going to be a great listener. I think you can add a lot of value in the world. You don't need to be talented, but you can do those things. I agree 100 %. I have a couple of final questions for you. This has been really fascinating. We haven't really talked about investing at all. That's part of your book. That's a third of the book. This is what you do. You teach people how to make scientific investment decisions without emotion, essentially, by using data, human behavior, and science to win over the long term. How can people... I mean, you have a whole book about this, but if people aren't able to dive into it just yet and you are saying, Okay, here's my investing philosophy over the last 30 plus years with all the research and the science that we've had and the Nobel Prize winners that have been researching this and all these different things.

Here is the investment philosophy in 2025 and beyond. What would you say that is for people?

So just like there's screens in money and relationship, there's screens in investing. And most people operate out of a screen called investor prediction syndrome, where they feel like they need a prediction about the future to be successful. That leads them to ask questions like, What are the best stocks and when do I get into them? What's the market going to do? What are the or political things that are going to happen, therefore dictating when I should get in and out of the market, or who were the greatest managers in the past, and I should give them my money and they'll continue to beat the market moving forward. But the reality is that those are all flawed methodologies of investing because they're based on prediction of the future. When you think about that, that's really insane because number one, no one can predict the future. It If they could tell you exactly what stocks were going to be the best stocks, they wouldn't tell you. They keep all that information for themselves. All the knowable and predictable information about the future is already factored into the price today. Therefore, only unknowable and unpredictable information are going to change the prices going forward.

That means stock picking, market timing, and track record investing are all forms of gambling and speculating with your money. So number one is don't speculate with your money. I'm not making a moral thing where if you get on DraftKings and drop 100 bucks on the weekend, that's up to you. But I'm saying if you're trying to invest for your American dream and you're going to need $2 million for your future, then don't gamble and speculate. The second thing is you want to use academic studies to then build your portfolio. What academic studies tell us to do is is to broadly diversify in over 100 countries, so that we're not all in one country.

Countries or companies? Countries. Countries. Yeah, countries. Diversify your money in 100 countries.

Yeah, All over the world.

In their businesses?

In their markets. Really? Yeah. In their markets, in their bonds, and build a globally diversified portfolio. Then once you determine what your mix is, don't stock pick. If I want to buy small US stocks, I buy a structured fund or an index fund that will buy just that segment of the market, and I'm not going to be churning it and burning it and trying to predict and forecast. And then I'm going to rebalance. What that means is if I put half in equities and half in fixed income, and like in 1998, 2008, 2009, the market crashed 50%. Well, now my stocks are way under allocated in my portfolio. I can tell you what most people do because I've been there. They don't call me up and say, Hey, can you sell my fixed income and buy more stocks where they're on sale by 50%?

That's when they shouldn't do that.

And that's what they should do. So they need to force themselves. You said the thing about emotions. The problem with emotions is they can't be controlled. They can be controlled for. The way that they're controlled for is through a control system, decision control system, usually by someone who's already demonstrated that they have that discipline. These things like AA or Gamblers Anonymous or that stuff, those are decision control systems that keep people from doing addictive behavior. Well, the same thing goes for investing. You can actually work on a system within that's coaching and training you not to actually gamble with the money when you want to do it the worst. Then the other thing is no toxic investments. What does that mean? Toxic investments It would be like Bitcoin. There's no there to Bitcoin. You're not investing in a company. You don't get stock, you don't get intellectual property, you don't get bonds, you don't get real estate. There's nothing, literally nothing. The right price for Bitcoin is zero. There's no economic theory behind any value for Bitcoin. It's all gambling and speculating. Things like hedge funds. Hedge funds are pure gamble and speculation. It costs you 2% of your money every year and then 20% of any of the gain.

The hedge fund managers open up 20 different hedge funds knowing darn well that they don't know which one is going to get lucky. But then the one that does get lucky, that's the one they tell you is the best one. But it's just like flipping coins. They don't know which one is going to get lucky. That's why they need 20 of them. And if they actually knew how to make 40 or 50 % a year, they wouldn't give it to you for 2 and 20. That's insane. Peer-to-peer lending, toxic investing, hedge funds, toxic investing, Bitcoin, Commodities in general. Gold, terrible investment.

Why is gold? I mean, there's a lot of people out there who are saying crypto and Bitcoin and decentralizing it. So it's not the feds or the banks, and no one's controlling it. You have more control, and it's decentralized, and blockchain, all that stuff. Gold is the standard because when everything else goes down, gold is going up. There's all these different experts out there that talk about the benefits of these things. How is that not true?

I'll give you the skinny on gold. I can do this one real quick. Okay. 5% rate of return with the same volatility as stocks. Stocks have a 10% rate of return, double the rate of return with No volatility. Plus, gold is high. They say it's a hedge against inflation. When inflation only moves up even in a bad period, 6, 7% a year. But gold has a thousand times the volatility of it. Really? Of inflation. How How can I think that if I'm trying to hedge my inflation, it's going up by 3 or 4% a year, but I lose 40% in my gold, how can I possibly think that's a good hedge against inflation?

Why do people say gold is the way, though?

Hucksters, scammers.

But if it's a physical good, though, it's an asset, right?

Great for jewelry, bad for your portfolio.

Okay. But what do people say, Well, stocks are just pieces of paper, a digital paper. I really don't have any value in that. But gold, I can actually... It's like a real estate in a sense. It's a physical, tangible thing.

Well, it's a tangible thing, but it only has worth if other people are willing to pay for it. When I own a company, I don't just own paper. I own a piece of that company. So if my company that I bought makes new products, does new innovation, if I buy an S&P 500 fund. I own a piece of 500 companies. Those companies have intellectual property. They have assets. They have factories. They have R&D.

They have teams, they have- They have teams, they They have massive amounts of research and development behind them.

You're buying something that grows. Gold just sits there and you're safe and does nothing. Besides, if you buy a good diversified portfolio, let's say, of the S&P, you got gold anyway. You got mining companies, you got jewelry companies, you got distribution companies. You're going to have gold in there. You're just not going to double down and bet on it because it has a low return with massive volatility.

Okay. Anything else in this philosophy? I don't know if I cut you off at one point.

No, it's all great. It's great because I'm sure you've had many experts talk about how great hedge funds are and how great peer-to-peer lending. The idea that they perpetuate is that if you want to be a billionaire, invest like a billionaire. But for every billionaire out there, there's thousands, if not millions of people that tried to do the exact same thing they did and lost everything. They never tell you about those people. If you want to invest for your American dream, you need to use science and math, not just speculating and gambling on what some billionaire says that they did.

Say I got anywhere between $50,000 to $100,000 right now. Someone watching, say they have that, or they got anywhere from $10,000 to $100,000. Let's say that. You're starting out, you got $10,000 to $100,000. You have no idea where to put it. Do I trust a financial advisor or fiduciary? Do I do it myself? What do you do with that $10,000 to $100,000 today? And then let's say you have $500 a month for the next 25, 30 years to put it somewhere. What would you do? And you don't want to think about it. You don't want it to be stressful or overwhelming or daunting. And you say, How can I set myself up for success the next 20 to 30 years? I got 10 to $100,000 now and 500 a month. What do I do?

Well, at the risk of selling me self-serving, buy the book. But basically, what you do is, the first thing you have to do is determine how much risk you're willing to take.

Say I'm willing to take a moderate amount of risk.

Moderate amount of risk would be- I'm younger.

I'm in my 20s and 30s.

If you're in your 20s, you probably, if with the right education, could take an aggressive amount of risk. Because large stocks that have averaged 10% have a volatility of about standard deviation of 18%. That means within one standard deviation, you could be 28 or you could be negative eight. It's volatile, but you're starting off with that first 50 or 100,000, and then you're putting in that 500 a month. That's dollar cost averaging. If it does go down, Then you're putting in more and you're buying more shares while it's down. That gives you a lot of volatility, plus you got time. I mean, a lot of ability to take advantage of the volatility, plus you got time to let it grow with compound interest. I would build a diversified portfolio of equities using combination of index funds, structured asset categories. I would diversify globally. I would own emerging markets. I would own Asia. I would own Europe. I would own the United States, of course. But I would globally diversify that thing. Then I would rebalance on the... I would also own small stocks and value stocks, not just the S&P-type stocks, large stocks. That's the other mistake everybody makes.

Then I would eliminate toxic assets from my portfolio.

Which are?

The crypto, the period of peer lending, the commodities. Commodities have made, by the way, zero return over the last 15 years. That's one of the things that Robin hood... Look, most people have their cell phone. They got their Robin hood right next to their DraftKings.

Just gambling.

Just gambling. There was a recent study that just said more people trust their gambling app on their sports than they do their stockpicks. Really? Yeah. Because no one's taught them how to use academic science to do it. So obviously, most people have tried stock picking. Most people have tried Bitcoin. Most people have tried these things, and a lot of people have had pretty massive losses along the way. Once you get burned, then you start saying, Well, there's no prudent way to do this. But they just didn't take time to learn the science part of it.

Everything you just shared right now, picking all these different asset classes in Asia, New and US and this, for me, I'm like, I don't even know where to start with that. Okay, if I'm not educated in investing, what you said to me sounds like Japanese. I know. Is there a fund that does all of this? Is there S&P 500 that does most of it?

I give this example, and I'm glad you brought this up.

Or should you just not do it on your own?

I got this example for you. You know the movies where the pilot gets sick and somebody from the back of the the dozen of new. There's not a pilot lands the plane.

That never happens. Yeah, but in the movies, yes.

In reality, it's never happened. And pilots will tell you there's zero chance of it ever happening.

Of them landing. Some random person had to land. Yeah.

It's impossible. But if you interview men, what percentage of the men would you say they think they could land the plane as long as they were talking to the tower?

A lot of them.

Yeah, 50% say that they think they could land the plane. So the moral of the story is there are some things you shouldn't probably do alone. Investing is probably one of them. But you can make the right decisions as long as you have a good coach to walk you through the process of how to make those decisions.

People shouldn't be trying to invest on their own unless they've really studied and educated themselves. So where do they go? Because there are a lot of financial advisors out there that are not doing the right things. Is it a coach? Is it an advisor? Is it a fiduciary? Where do you go to find the right team to support you?

Number one, you want to eliminate commissions. That's the first thing. Number two, you do want to look towards a fiduciary. But the problem is that the fiduciary, I've trained a lot of them, make the same mistakes that the investor makes. Because how are they going to seduce you about buying their portfolio? They're going to seduce you with the things that have been that have shot up over the last two or three years that look hot and sexy I see. Then I'm going to tell you, look, you can make 40%, you can make 80%, you can make whatever. Even though they're fiduciary, there's nothing to stop them from doing that activity. What I think people should be looking for is, number one, a fiduciary, number two, someone who actually understands the academic principles that have been taught largely at the University of Chicago and in some other places. Then they need a coach that has a proven track record and not panicking when things have been terrible. Like 2000, large US stocks lost 50%, they didn't make money for a whole decade. Tech stocks, which is what everybody owns right now, in 2000, That period, following 2000, lost 75 % of all their value.

And where is everybody investing all their money today? They're investing in large stocks and tech stocks. Have no idea how much danger they really have in their portfolio. None whatsoever. So As markets do crash, and they will eventually, we just don't know when, they can lose more money than they can possibly estimate because they're not globally diversified. Then you have to have someone that is willing This is the hard part, to lose you as a client. Let's say you have $2 million and you come in, you're down a half a million, you're like, I went out, or I went this, or I went that. The money manager knows is that if he tells you the truth and says, We're not going to do that, that you're going to move your money. Then they're going to be out of whatever fees they were charging, roughly 1%, so that'd be $15,000 a year on that million and a half. They're like, Are they going to lose you and tell you the truth and refuse to facilitate a destructive strategy, even though that's how they're going to keep the money? Or are they going to be professional enough to say, You know what?

That's destructive. You're going to hurt yourself, and I can't be a party to that. If you can find that person, that's the person you should have coach with you.

Something I don't like about the financial advisory or money management world, and maybe it's just a money screen of mine, money deep in. I don't like... You tell me if it's a good one or a bad one. Maybe I just feel like the The money industry is broken in some ways. I have a chapter. But I don't like how a money manager or an advisor, whatever you want to call it, makes money, whether you go up or you go down, and they don't lose money with you. I wish like, Hey, if you're going down, I'm going down. I'm losing. I don't get any commission. But they keep getting paid. Why should they get 1% 15 grand versus 20 grand at 2 million? Why should they say, You know what? I'm I'm actually getting nothing for this year until you come back. For me, the model is broken. That's what I don't like. Maybe I'm wrong?

Well, you're definitely right on commissions. Something shouldn't change. It's just totally insane to get commissions with the market goes up or down. But the manager has very little, most of them will tell you they do, have control. They'll tell you that, Oh, we'll get you out of the market before it goes down. No, you don't know.

They don't know.

They have no idea.

No, cool.

Sometimes you're harder to keep discipline after you lose 500,000. It's actually harder to coach you if you lost some money recently than it is when you made a lot of money. If you just made 20% when you're 2 million, you're up 400 grand, you're super easy to coach.

Yeah, kill us. Keep doing it. Dental down. We're in risk here. It's growing. I would rather find... I get doesn't work like this. But I would rather say, Hey, I'll pay someone, whatever, 2 grand a quarter to do a couple hours of coaching with me. Yeah, that's a flat fee.

That is good.

I'd rather do a flat fee or a thousand bucks a call, whatever it is. We do it once a quarter and say, All right, where do I need to go? And you just help me facilitate it or you make the facilitation based on what the plan is for this quarter. Where the political space is at or not. We just set it and forget it, and it has its own markers for the next 20 years, I guess. I guess. But then they just keep getting paid for doing nothing.

The trick is it's got to be rebalanced. If they're good, the thing you're paying for is in your darkest moment, your emotions will take over and your instincts will take over. If you have part of your portfolio that's maybe made 5% your fixed income, but your stocks are down 50%, your emotions are going to mess with you. But your instincts are, too, because your instincts are going to want to make you run from the thing that just hurt you.

But that's when you need to go into it.

That's why it has to be discretionary because you're not going to pull the trigger on your own. No. They're going to have to do it for you.

You're bleeding. They're like,. Aren't the software and the tools so sophisticated now that they will recalibrate for you? Oh, this is great. Are there different tools out there and these companies that already recalibrate your portfolio for you. This is great. It triggers you. When this goes down, we can calibrate and just So another way to ask that question is, why don't we automate it?

And an algorithm is great, and we use an algorithm. But the algorithm is only as good as the human behind the algorithm. So that's why you can't go to Vanguard online or Robin hood online. You can go and build a model, and you can hit a button that says rebalance. But when you look at your statement and something's down 50%, There's another button right next to it that says, Don't rebalance. It's the cell. It's the give me out. So the algorithm, there's nothing wrong with the algorithm per se. But the button next to the algorithm, that's the problem, and That's a human problem. That's why I don't think there's ever going to be a robot that coaches an NFL team to win a Super Bowl. That's a purely human function. Isn't that interesting?

Because you need to make decisions based on science Science and data, not emotion, but people are moved emotionally to take action in sports or relationships or their health. They're moved with emotion as well to live their purpose.

You got to harness that emotion, not avoid. You can't be like Spot because you're never going to be like Spot. You have to harness the emotion so that it's powerful and does the most for good. But you can't pretend that it's not there because it's going to be there.

Yes. If you're in my position, I'm 41, right? I'm not going to say everything I have, but let's say if you went back to 41, 20 years ago, and it's 2024, going into 2025, and you want to set yourself up for the next 20 years, who would you hire? What would you do with your current portfolio? Or who would be on your money team?

Well, another sameless plug. I would buy the book. We have a two-day workshop that I largely wrote off the book, and we do it on Zoom. We have one in October, and then we have one in live in Scottsdale, which I teach personally and live in our facilities. It takes some time learning because it's just not a quick fix. There's some things in life I talk about in the book that there's no hints and tips in the book because hints and tips don't work. If it was that simple, everyone would have already figured it out. A little, so some study, the book, two-day workshop is like doing a 12-year thesis on PhD, but it's fun. I still having it fun. You break the no talk rule. We didn't talk about that today, but there's a no talk rule about money. You get your purpose for money. You see the screens by which you see the world of money. You learn the academic investing principles. You learn, I only gave you a couple of the biases. You learn what more the biases are, how they affect you. It's really a journey into self. The coolest thing about investing is not the portfolio piece.

The coolest thing about investing is what it ultimately tells you about yourself and what you can discover about how you're wired and put together and what's really, truly important to you. I'd love you to be my personal guest. It's cool.

I love to try to come sometime. I'll see about January if I can. But let's say we do go through the workshop someone watching or listening, they go through the workshop and they get educated. Do they still hire a coach, a fiduciary, a money manager? Who would be on their team once they're educated, do you think? They didn't want to do it all on their own.

You want someone to run you through the process. Once you understand the academics, there's eight different academic principles we go through. I give you the evidence and you say, Okay, I believe... You don't trust anybody.

Trust the evidence.

Yeah, trust the evidence. Trust the science. Trust the science and look at the science and say, does that make sense to me? Okay, this step, this step. Okay, I got that. Okay, I get the science part of it. Then you want to analyze your existing portfolio. Once you say, Okay, this is the science, now I want to look at what I got and see how it stands up to the science that I believe. It would tell you how much volatility you have, how much risk. I asked you, for example, in your model, what's the worst three-year period you could go through historically? How much money could you lose? You don't know.

Not sure.

Nobody knows because it's never been analyzed. What's your worst two-year period? How many times over the last 30 years could you have lost 40% of your money or more over our two to three-year period? As a couple, you talked about things you talk about as a couple, together in our portfolio, how would we feel, honey, if we're looking at this thing and we got our million and now it's down 40% and now we got 600. Is that going to meet our sleep factor? If it doesn't, then I have to, you working with your coach, redesign the portfolio so that it doesn't have that risk exposure. But it shouldn't be a mystery. You should know exactly what the volatility could be based on how you structured your portfolio. You want to analyze it scientifically to see what's really going on underneath the hood, what's really in there. Because your investments have all these names, growth fund, value fund, international. But that doesn't mean that's exactly what's inside of them. That has to be analyzed like an MRI to actually see what's going on inside of those funds. I spent $5 million creating a piece of software that actually analyzes what's going on inside of the portfolio.

Then you have enough knowledge to go, Okay, now I understand it. Then you can make the decision, Well, do I want to try to do this myself? Do I want to do this with somebody else? Do I want the added discipline? But the first knowledge is power. If you start with the knowledge piece first, then those type of decisions will get clearer for you.

Are there like, Matts and approved coaches that you have, too?

Yeah, we have 500 of them all over the country.

That have gone through your system.

Gone through our training. I've had some of them that have been with us for 30 years.

Got you. Those are people that are probably on your website that people can look at and reference and call and ask questions to. Yeah. See if it's right for them or whatever as well. Interesting. That's cool. This is really exciting stuff. I'm sure there's a lot more we could go into, but I think this is a great first conversation. I've got a couple of final questions for you, but I want people to get the book. It's called Experiencing the American Dream: How to Invest your Time, Energy, and Money to Create an Extraordinary Life. But really, it's like a psychology to your beliefs around money, your relationship with money, and how to break free of those things that hold your back in life, which is interesting because I just finished a book. I turned in a few months ago that is called Make Money Easy, and it's all about healing your relationship with money.

Oh, my gosh.

So I wish I interviewed you before. That's awesome. I wish I interviewed you before because a lot of this stuff in here has some similar tones to what I've talked about. And it's not an investing book. It is a relationship to Money and healing book. Because I'm not the expert on investing, and I have the experience you do. But I interviewed a lot of money experts and a lot of therapists and relationship experts. And I blended the three on how to have a deeper, intimate relationship with your money and relationships with others around money. So you're not avoidant, you're not too attached, you're in a secure relationship with money for yourself and with others. Because I think money is a big driver for people, but it also hurts a lot of people and their relationships. And if we can seal our relationship to money, Have new... Men those money wounds from our past, that wound of your grandfather speaking to your father and him die a few months later. We can men those wounds. You talk about Viktor Frankl in your book a lot, and we create meaning from those memories. Reconfigure and integrate those lessons and start to heal as an adult from the past, then we can have a new relationship to money, and we can master it as opposed to it being a master of us.

I love it. That's something I'm excited to bring out, too. But it sounds like you teach a lot of this stuff as well for people in your workshop, which I'm excited about. Get the book, Experiencing the American Dream. You can check out your website also, which is just essentially your name, Nats and money. Com, which has a lot of other content and resources I saw on there as well, talking about the science of investing. Check out your workshops, which sounds like you do a couple of a year, but also over Zoom, people can take it or virtually as well.

We do it six times a year, three times live in Scottsdale, which is my favorite. That's great. And then I really went all out. I talk about the space in the book. I have a Berlin Wall, a piece of Berlin Wall Exhibit. I have a science exhibits about the scientific theory and how it applies.I have an inspiration alley. In Scottsdale? In Scottsdale. Really? I got to check this out.

That's cool. How big is the facility?

Fifty-thousand square feet.

Fifty-thousand? Yeah. Holy cow. It was like an exhibit. It's not just an office where-Oh, no, it's a full experience.

Really?

I got to check this out. In Scottsdale or Paradise Valley?

In Scottsdale, yeah.

Really? Okay. Next time I'm there, I'm checking it out. I'm calling you up. This is a question I ask everyone to towards the end of our conversations. It's called the Three Truths. I'd like you to imagine a hypothetical scenario. Mark, you get to live as long as you want, but it's your last day on Earth. You're as old as you want to be, but eventually it's the last day. And you get to accomplish everything you want from this moment until then. These three dreams that you talked about all come true. You see your kids and grandkids, and it all happens for you. But on the last day, you have to take everything with you. So no one has access to this conversation. This book is gone. You're a dream center. Everything is gone. Hypothetically. No content on social media, your website, any information about you is gone. But on the last day, you get to leave three things behind, three lessons. I call it the three truths. And this is all we would have access of your information, your content, are these three truths behind. What would be those three truths for you?

Me, I'm putting the hot seat. For me, God is real. That Love is the thing that really bonds families together and makes life worth living. It's probably not going to be the big things that you said, all the books or the Dream Center or any of that stuff that's going to matter. It's going to be the relationships in love and intimacy with people. I guess if I had a fourth, it would be the vision of freedom as a universal principle that creates better lives for people all over the planet.

That's beautiful, man. Before I ask the final question, Mark, I want to acknowledge you for your vision and bringing this message to people all over the world. I think this type of content is what we need most. And so when I saw this book, I literally had already finished my book a few months earlier. I turned it in, and we're going through the edits right now. But I was like, this is exactly the stuff that is exciting to me because I feel like families get broken apart because of money, marriages get broken apart because of money, kids abandon their parents. It's just nasty stuff can happen with money in relationships. But I also think dreams and missions and purpose can come fulfilled as well with the right use of money under the right screen or mental model that we have. When we can change our screen or our mental model around using money for good, creating value to generate money, being of service, helping others accomplish their their dreams, that's the most rewarding thing that we can do. It's the most fulfilling thing. It's the most selfish thing in a sense is helping others because you get more from it than just someone helping you by yourself.

The money or whatever resources you need will come from that. Whether it's millions of dollars or just an abundance of peace, you will live a rich life. I'm grateful for you. I acknowledge you for really mastering this the last 30 plus years, 40 of your life diving into this, diving into the academics and the science of this, not going off of emotion yourself, but going into these other areas that have been researched to create a more understandable lens around money and the American dream. So I acknowledge you for what you've created with this. And I acknowledge you for taking this weekend to reflect on how you would take time for the next six months for yourself. You got it. And then to give back to you and invest in you. I love I love it. My final question, Mark, is what is your definition of greatness?

Oh, wow. In our core value documents, we actually have a statement in there about greatness, inspiring others to greatness. We had a long debate. There were 50 of us in the room, and we wanted to hash out every single word and agree on every single word.

Like the Declaration of Independence.

Like the Declaration of Independence. That's what we did. Two or three people in the company were like, No, we can't put that in there because we can't inspire people to greatness, and that's too big of a thing to take on. Greatnesses to me, is living an extraordinary life where you've made a difference for other people, and you've left the world a better place. If I can leave the world a better place, and then I came into it. I'll consider that a win.

There you go. Experiencing the American dream. Mark, thanks so much for being here. Thanks, brother. Appreciate it, man. Thank you. I hope you enjoyed today's episode, and it inspired you on your journey towards greatness. Make sure to check out the show notes in the description for a full rundown of today's episode with all the important links. And if you want weekly exclusive bonus episodes with me personally, as well as ad-free listening, then make sure to subscribe to our Greatness Plus channel exclusively on Apple podcast. Share this with a friend on social media and leave us a review on Apple podcast as well. Let me know what you enjoyed about this episode in that review. I really love hearing feedback from you, and it helps us figure out how we can support and serve you moving forward. And I want to remind you, if no one has told you lately that you are loved, you are worthy, and you matter. And now it's time to go out there and do something great.