Side Hustle Friday: Make millions with For-Pay Community with John Lee Dumas and Kate Erickson

Transcript

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This is the James Altiger show on the choose yourself network. Today on the James Altucher Show. We think everybody's got a better life and it's right on our phone, whereas it used to be keeping up with the Joneses. And the first thing I would just tell anyone who's feeling like everybody else's life is better than yours is that, first of all, it's not true. If people knew how much pain everyone was living in, we would all be nicer to each other because the thing that I've learned having, you know, been in the public world now for over 2 decades is like because people tell me their life stories. Probably you too. Right? People are in a lot of pain. Yeah. I think the average person is like Zoe or like this fictional 27 year old who who doesn't know what they wanna do in their lives, and they think they've already failed because they're 27, and they haven't started on this incredible journey that they think is waiting for them. But they took a wrong fork, and now it's too late. They they they they oh my god. They think it's I wrote this book Start Late, Finish Rich to reach people over the age of 50 and who ended up reading it were 20 something. 25 like 35. So they think that they're starting late. So often we create financial anxieties in our mind that are not true. Right. I agree with that. Because because I I've spent the first 9 years of my career as a financial advisor. Some people come in your office, they think they're in great financial shape and they're completely wrong. Right? Like, you actually look at their financial picture and you're like, you're not actually in great shape at all. Other people come in and they think I could never afford to retire and you're like, yeah, you could actually retire today. Well, and that's the other thing too is I think people think themselves into a hole. Like, you can't you can't actually think yourself to actions. You have to act. Yeah. You know, people don't actually like, people always ask me, what's the number? What's the number you need to retire? And my so by the way, I'm talking to David Bach, author of The Latte Factor, which we're gonna talk all about. It's it's such a quick and easy read, and it's basically, just like many of your other books, not not How to Get Rich. I don't like calling it that. Yeah. But this is a methodology that can be used and a philosophy that can be used to to essentially turn just about anybody into a millionaire, if that's your goal. But but that that might be the wrong way to describe it. I don't even like using the word millionaire there. Even though your biggest selling book was called The Automatic Millionaire. We did a podcast about that, I think, in 2014. Yeah. And I think that's about 5 years ago. Right before you had before you had the studios here, you know, in in the comedy club that you now own a piece of, which is super cool. Thing. A 100% of the things in my life have changed since our podcast. Which is you know, I'm I'm excited to hear what you're up to too. I mean, I I know you're I'm getting to be interviewed today, but, you know, this is fun. Like, this this book was totally different. This is the first this is my 13th book. It's the first time I've written a book that was a story. Right? This is a this is a parable. I I tell everybody it's a story because a lot not everybody knows what parables are anymore. But It reminds me of that. What's that, the greatest salesman that ever lived? Oh, Augie Brandino. Yeah. It reminds me a little of that. Yeah. You know, I I want when you think of some of the books that influenced my life, like Who Moved My Cheese by Spencer Johnson. Was it just a great little business book? You could read it in 30 minutes. Yeah. That kinda taught, like, the importance of change. Right? And Paulo Coelho was my hero, and he wrote the book The Alchemist. He still is. Like, he's the writer I always The Alchemist is such a great book. I think it's the greatest book of all time. Do do you do you find with Paulo Paulo Coelho? I don't some of his books and I'm not being critical of Paul. I hate critics and everyone, but just my own personal experience. I love the Alchemist. Like, let's say it's in my top ten favorite books of all time. That's how I am. But some of his books, I really don't like. Well and you know what? Again, people have written he's written so many books. Right? I haven't read all of his books. I've run I've read a handful of his books, but The Alchemist is like a similar seminal book. Right? Yeah. And I always thought to myself, I wanna write a finance first of all, you you started in financial books too, so I know you're gonna relate to what I'm about to say. This is my 13th financial book. It's actually my last financial book. I'm not gonna write any more books on money. Good good for you. I I I don't think you need to. I think you've you've said it. I've done it, and there's 7,000,000 books out. And so, you know, why why did I do this book? It was because 98% of people will never read a financial book. Yeah. So even though I've sold so many books, I know that most people won't read financial books. Well Including our kids. Right? We have young kids. Yeah. My kids will never read one. And I have a 5th I have a almost 16 year old, and these books have been stacked by his bed for, like, the last 5 years where I'm like, come on, Jack. Read the book. Read the book. He never he would never read them. This book, because it's a story, he read it on a plane flight home from a ski trip with me in less than 2 hours, turned to me. This was like the best moment of this entire book process. He turned to me and goes, Ted, this is an amazing book. This is an amazing story. And then he turns to the truck. There's a chart in the back of the book, and he goes, you know, this chart, dad, this one right here, you've seen this chart before. Right? So that shows you the power of and basically opening a $2,000 IRA account. And it shows a kid that starts at 19 and puts $2,000 a year away until the age of 26, never puts another dollar away. So they saved $5.41 from the age of 19 to the age of 26, never puts another dollar away. And by the time they reach 65, they have over $1,000,000. And he he turns to me on the airplane, took a picture of this. He turns to me on the airplane flight, and he goes because, dad, is is this real? Like, I know you explained it in the book how compound interest works, but is this is this real? Because he goes, first of all, you need another chart because I'm 15. If I do this, I'm gonna have, like, $2,000,000. Right? And I go, yep. He goes, well, I can save $5.41 a day. Yeah. And, also, if he makes a little bit more, he can save $3,000 a year till he's 29, and that makes a huge difference. Yeah. Like, that's the amazing thing about compound interest. And this works and you kind of allude to this in the book. Compound interest is an amazing thing because it's so obvious with money that, oh, if I put $1,000 in the bank and it gets so much interest a year, it's gonna double every x number of years. And if you do this for 40 years, it doubles enough to make 1,000,000. So so and, you know, you talk about this in all your books. Particularly, I think the the automatic millionaire, it's a very important concept. But in in the Latte Factor, this book that we're discussing is a very important concept. But I like the idea of compound interest in life as well. And I'm, like, really immune to this in in the book, that if you, let's say, like a hobby and enjoy what you're doing and get 1% better a month at that hobby, you're gonna be the greatest person in the world at that hobby in 20 years or 10 years. It's the compound effect. You know, people have always asked me like, I've been on the road for 2 months with this book, and I just told you you're you're my last interview before I get ready to move to Florence, Italy. But I've done, like, hundreds of interviews. Right? And I have been consistent about pushing my message every day for 2 solid decades. Right. And and and and people always what what's the secret? How did you do this? I'm like, there was no one secret. There was a thousand things that I've done over 2 decades. Right. And it and it works because from my perspective, you were on Oprah quite a bit before before I was interested in the finance space or or when I was not really fine following personal finance. And I read your your your books, to prepare for our 2014 podcast, and then I just read this one now. But I didn't I knew who you were without having seen you or read any of your books. Like, you had built a brand by doing stuff every single day. You kinda compounded your brand and your message. And, you know, we before we went live, like, we were talking about, like, the importance of loving what you do. Right? Because because you can't do anything consistently for 20 years Yeah. If you don't absolutely freaking love it. Like you said, like, the reason you wanna do these podcasts face to face is it's more fun for you. Yeah. And and and that's such a thing for young people, especially. I wrote this book to reach young people, to reach millennials because so many millennials are giving up hope. They're coming out of school with, you know, tons of student loans. They've got credit card debt. They've started work, and work's not turning out to be as much fun as they thought it was gonna be. And they're not seeing themselves get ahead financially. And they asked me for advice, and I'm like, first advice, I know it's a cliche, but, like, to find something you love to do because because life is short. Alright. So It goes by like this. Right. It's And you've gotta love your life. And if you don't, someone just went into my Facebook group a second, like, about 3 hours ago, and it was like Was that an allusion to the fact I'm 3 hours late? No. No. No. Wait. Wait. Like, this is kinda giving me chills for a second because I look. It's I've got this huge insider group that helped promote this book. Right? There's, like, 4,000 people that joined my insider team. And we have a face a private Facebook community, which now these 3,000 people from that group are inside talking to each other, and it's become incredibly self supportive. Like, I'm I'm in there, but everybody's cheering each other on. And this woman posted earlier today. She's 53. And she said, you know, I'm a teacher, and I hate my I hate I hate being a teacher. I'm totally burnt out. If I work 7 more years, I have a full pension, but I hate it. More or less is what you said. What do you think I should do? I I know everybody thinks I should work 7 more years for the full pension, but I said, well, first of all, you know, we need teachers to come to school to be super inspired to teach our kids. And when you're a kid and you're being taught by a 50 53 year old burnt out teacher who hates their job, Like like, that sucks. So, you know, think about it in 2 ways. 1, you're doing those kids a disservice, but more and then for you, be selfish. Like, you know what? You don't have to go put 7 more years in just to have a pension. You you've gotta figure out what it is that's gonna light you up. Now I would, if I knew her personally, I'd like, there might be ways to to light yourself back up being a teacher. But what happens is people get to these points in their life where they're burnt out, and they think they just have to stay with it. Yeah. And and and It's like this sort of sunken cost fallacy. Completely. Or or just the I should never give up. I'd I I can't give up. Like Or or and also they see an opportunity cost, which is in this pension in 7 years. But 7 years is a long time. 7? Years is like what is that? It's like 23 100 days. Also, like, one thing that I've been talking a lot about because I've been on the road, on the tour, and I keep telling people, you know what? The next 10 years of your life are your most important 10 years, and let me tell you why. They're gonna be the healthiest. Statistically, your next 10 years in life are the healthiest, because because most people don't get healthier later in life, so your next 10 years are gonna be your healthiest. They're gonna be the next 10 years with the most energy, and the next 10 years of your life, they really matter. So stop treating these decades like I see what you're saying. I I missed it at first, but just to explain. The next 10 years are the healthiest of the let's say I live to be another 40 years. The next ten, by definition, are gonna be the healthiest of those 40. Absolutely. And I'm gonna have the most energy in those next 10 of those 40. So if I were thinking of, if I was thinking of wasting 7 of these 10, that would be a horrible error. So I happen to be almost the same age as when I'm 52. And, you know, most people try to retire in their sixties, and they hope to retire in their early sixties. And if you're lucky, you have a a decade in your sixties where you're still healthy. You have energy. You have your spouse. You have your friends. You have your you have your kids. The people you love are still around you, if you're lucky. Life goes down dramatically, quality wise, health, in your seventies. In your eighties, it's even lower. Like, we keep telling people you're gonna live forever. I have a registered investment advisory firm. We have now we started a business 3 years ago. We have we just approached $8,000,000,000 under management. And all your clients died. No. But I'm out talking to retired clients all the time, and I tell them, look. There's there's 3 stages to retirement. The first stage is the go go stage. Like, from 60 to 75, you got tons of energy, you got money, and now you've got time affluence. You can go do whatever you wanna do. That's the best decade. The best 10 to 15 years is right then. Then from 75 to 85, it's the 2nd decade. It's the slower go decade because because your health starts to deteriorate, and then from 85 to a 100, it's often the won't go decade, especially for men because it's the men who get sick first. Well, the audience, when I when I do this for our clients, they really get it. Like, they know it's true. Right? They they they they see their lives changed. They can feel it. They feel it, and then they also see their friends who are in their seventies getting sicker. Like, my dad's 79, and he's his health's deteriorating, like, dramatically in the last 2 years. And my mom still got tons of energy. How old is she? She's 78. 70 7. Sorry, mom, if I'm getting your age wrong here right now. But she's coming to Florence, and, like, she just before you got here, she was FaceTiming me, and she's like, I'm coming to Florence in, like, 6 weeks. Like, she's meeting me in Florence. But my dad's not meeting me in Florence because he's walking around with a cane now and a walker. And they had a very robust retirement. But where I'm going with this is that fifties are a golden decade. You don't always have to wait until your sixties. There's a whole movement for people trying to retire early. Right. And and and I I'm sorry. Go go ahead. No. No. I'm I'm an interrupter. So Yeah. Yeah. No. And I also don't wanna talk over you because But is this why you're moving to Florence in a few weeks? This is what so why I'm picking up and move to Florence at 52 is, first of all, I I I don't wanna assume that it's I know how important this decade is, and I also want my kids to grow up and spend some time abroad. So I've got a 16 year old son that was this is gonna be a sophomore year, and it was my last chance to take him abroad before he's gotta buckle down for junior, senior year. And I said to my wife 2 years ago, let's go abroad. Where do you wanna go? Anywhere in the world? Let's go abroad for a year. And as I think about this next decade very consciously, because after Florence, I wanna go live in the mountains because I'm a big skier. And my wife said, well, what about the beach in California? And I was like, honey, we can live on the beach in our seventies. I don't know if I'll be skiing in my seventies. I know I can ski right now. So it's just about not taking what you have today for granted. My big so much of what I'm really teaching is about the spirituality of living a rich life. Having your I love yous in check. You know, making sure the people you love, they know that you love them. Letting give letting go of the pain that you've got where if you need to forgive someone and not waiting anymore. Like Okay. So let me I know I'm going all over the place. No. No. No. But I I like this philosophy. I try to live it by it myself. I know you do. What what do you say to someone who's well, like this woman, she's really stressed and anxious about her job. You know, the woman who's the teacher, She's she she feels like I've gotta solve this job anxiety, this which is related to money anxiety, which is related to retirement anxiety, career anxiety, maybe responsibility anxiety. Like, she might have kids she's still raising and mortgages she's still paying and student loans she's still covering. So she's anxious about money, and and that's, you know, a a serious it's like having an illness. And she says, I can't even think about getting my I love you's in check. I I gotta figure this out. Yeah. Well, so a person like her specifically, she was sitting right here. First, I'd say, well, let's let's actually figure it out. Let's figure out, first of all, whether or not you even have a financial problem. Right? Because so often, we create financial anxieties in our mind that are not true. Right. I agree with that. Because because I've I've spent the first 9 years of my career as a financial adviser. And, you know, people come in and they some people come into your office, they think they're in great financial shape, and they're completely wrong. Right? Like, you actually look at their financial picture, and you're like, you're not actually in great shape at all. Other people come in, and they think, I could never afford to retire. And you're like, yeah, you could actually retire today. So the first question is, like, you know, she really would need to go through sit down the financial planner, run her numbers, and see really where she stands. Then the next question is, okay. Well, how much would things really change if you work 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 more years? What are you giving up? What are your you know, what kind of health care rights do you have with your job? What kind of pension would you really be giving? And then then there's the whole spirituality of it. Why did you become a like, I would go like, there's the money over here, and then there's the real part of life, which is your soul. Like like, this this book actually starts with Zooey Daniels downtown where I live walking through the Oculus. And she's a 27 year old millennial, and she sees this LCD screen that says, if you don't know where you're going, you might not like where you end up. That's what begins her spiritual journey in this book. That that question, if you don't like where you're going, if you don't know where you're going, you might not like where you end up. You you can ask that question at any age. Right? So the person who's 53, she's asking herself this question right now. She doesn't like where she's going. And I would start with a question saying, how did you get here in the 1st place? What why did you become a teacher? What what did you why did you become a teacher? What did you like about being a teacher? Before you started hating it, what did you like? What did you love? To try to see if it's something that she can actually recenter herself around spiritually and place was like, well, I actually like this, and I actually like that. Can you get that back? I don't know what her answers would be. Her answer could be, you know what? I can't get it back anymore. I hate the principle of my teacher. I hate the principle of our school. People just change. They their why changes. Their why changes or or or they've stopped growing. Like, one of the things that happens a lot of times when people are, we know people who are really successful and they stop enjoying their success because they've they've stopped growing. Yeah. And so if if she's at a point where she can't grow more at what she's doing, first of all, it's usually not true. Right? Usually, there's always something that you can do to keep growing where you are. But if it's really not true that she can't keep growing where she is, then what else could she do to grow? What else could she do on the side? Right. So for instance, she she can take her current pension. And by the way, all her costs will be reduced, like, on gas and lunches and, you know, clothes for work and so on. So she has a whole bunch of costs that are reduced, but also her pension's reduced. So so and then, potentially, she can find, well, I really love photography now. I could take a photography class for $2,000 and start making an extra 6,000 a year just doing weddings or whatever. Like, this this What When when when once people have free time, if they're still energetic and creative, they're gonna fill up that free time. And if they wanna make money, that's you know, I always tell people, give it a year. Right. And you'll if you love something, you'll figure out how to make money doing it after about a year, year and a half, 2 years. But it'll be enough to to do well, to make up what she's missing in the in the pension. But but I think that where where you were heading also is, in each case, you want her to to she's got this she's qualifying by saying, I'm unhappy, and I hate my job. But you want her to quantify by by saying, well, how are you measuring your happiness at this job? And can we change this metric somehow? And you're also saying, let's also measure your actual financial health. Because if it's not measurable, you can't make a decision. So so I think you're very much about and I agree with this. You're very much about, let's let's let's measure things. Let's let's let's see what the numbers are. Because without that, it's just guesswork. Without that, it's just guesswork, and you can't move what you can't measure. Like, when when you when you look at how you, like, manage a company or you lead a business or a team, you have everything has to be measurable because you can't move what you can't measure, and you also can't manage it. Right. And you know Those are the 3 m's, manage, measure, and move. And, you know, so So so tell me what does manage and move mean? Well, so this applies to anything in life. Right? Like, when you think about managing a company, it's you have measurable goals. Right? So once you've got measurable goals, you can lead your team and you can manage your team, and that moves the dial forward. Whenever you see things aren't that aren't being moved successfully, it's because it's not being measured well. Right. You I mean, you can apply this to anything. But but but anything in life like physical health, it's hard to do spiritually sometimes, but you could do physical, financial. Think about anything that you're trying to do in life. If you're not measuring it, it's very hard to move it. Well, you know, some things are hard to measure. Like, let's say you wanna be a a famous painter. It's hard to measure your skill acquisition there, but it's still possible. I think there are still metrics you can find and use, like, just even if it's just measure ranking your joy with a painting from 0 to 10 each time. Or or measuring how much time are you spending on the art. Mhmm. Right? But you're right. There are certain things that are hard to to measure. But like an artist, let me say, you know, I really wanna be a professional artist. Okay. Well, how many hours would you have to put in to be a professional artist? I don't know. But I know this that there are things that people want and they spend a lot of time talking about it. They don't actually do the work. Right. Right? Well and that's that's the other thing too is I think people think themselves into a hole. Like, you can't you can't actually think yourself to action. You have to act. So so for instance, for this teacher, she has to get her numbers in place and show you or show someone and present them. She has to take an action about her numbers, which could be done in a day, and then she knows. She can list all the things she liked when she was 18 and see, oh, do these any of these things light her fire store. She can go to a bookstore. She can go to, Coursera. She could listen to podcasts. Yeah. She could watch YouTube. I mean, the thing is we live in She could also look into places that are cheaper to live. So instead of let's say, hypothetically, she lives in New York City. Instead of spending 7,000 for a 2 bedroom apartment, she can move 60 miles away and spend $2,000 for a 2 bedroom apartment. To Florence, Italy and spend, you know, a third and live abroad. Right? Like, a lot of people Italy that much cheaper than you? It it yeah. I will ask me about this in 6 months, but I can tell you our housing costs are gonna drop by, like, in half. And, you know, you live abroad. The health insurance for living abroad can be as whatever we pay here a month is equal to that for a year. So, it'll be interesting to see. I I think it will be a lot less. A lot of people are moving abroad to retire because it's cheaper. But, I mean, again, we're I've never done a podcast where I'm so all over the place, but if you take this woman's you take this woman's story and you go back to Zoe Daniels in this book, Zoe Daniels was 27. At the end of the day, her problem was that she'd been she lives in Brooklyn, and she's working in New York City. And for 6 years, she keeps making more money, and she's still broke. And she has a job that she actually loved in the beginning. It's not that dissimilar to this teacher. Right? She's she's working in publishing. She's working in the I keep calling it the Freedom Tower. My wife says I can't call it the Freedom Tower because it's called One World Trade Center, but, originally, they were gonna call it the Freedom Tower. Oh, I I didn't know that. I mean, it's not called the Freedom Tower. I always call it the Freedom Tower. Refer to it as the Freedom Tower. Steve, is it called the Freedom Tower? I think people still call it the Freedom Tower. Call it the Freedom Tower. So she works in the Freedom Tower, and, she works for a travel magazine. And and in Zoe's case, she got into the travel magazine business because she wanted to travel. Now the ironic thing is she's not traveling at all because she's working in the 1 1 World Trade Center, and she works 50 hours a week, and she writes about travel. She didn't even have a passport in the beginning of the book. And so she starts looking at, you know, she's taking a a different job. Should she take a job uptown where we are right now and make so she can make more money so that hopefully she can start saving. And what she learns as she meets these mentors is that actually she makes plenty of money. She just needs to pay herself first. She needs to learn these three critical lessons to being wealthy. And then she learns from those three lessons that, it's actually not about the money. It's about living rich now. And, you know, so I think that's I think that's a critical thing that people don't realize. I think people conflate net worth with self worth. And and I know I've done it for many years in the past, and it just doesn't it doesn't work. In fact, if anything, your net worth will go up if you're if you focus on self worth first, which seems which is hard for people to to grasp. Like, you asking her first, what did you like about teaching, is more about self worth than than money than net worth. And, like, if a 27 year old came to you, if Zoey came to you and said, look. I don't know what I wanna do with my life. Is it too late for me to figure out what I wanna do in my life? What what would you say? Like, how would you guide people to figuring out you know, everybody thinks this myth that they have to have a single purpose. But what's if someone just says to you simply, what should I do with my life? I don't know. I don't have my passion. What's, like, the first step they could take? You know what's so interesting is that what you just asked me, there was an entire article about this, like, 2 days ago in the paper that I read about specifically was a therapist here in New York who specializes in millennials. I don't know. Did you see this article? No. And so this article was written from a therapist who became he's he's like, I didn't intend to become a millennial specialist. It's just all my clients have become. This is here in New York City. All my clients have become millennials, and they're all and then he went through what the themes were of why these millennials were unhappy. And I found it fascinating because I wrote this book, and I've been spending all this time reaching out to millennials. What the ones he's working with that, their issues or course issue that they're circling around over and over again is they're not sure what to do with their life. And and and they're so overwhelmed they're so overwhelmed with this issue of I don't know if I chose the right thing. And, you know, and they're spinning with this. Like, there's because, you know, you're on your phone and you see people living in a good life. They're not acting. And I you know, it's so it's funny because I I think a lot of this is as a result of social media, but it's just life. Right? The reality is because we can be on our phone, like, apparently, Instagram went down today for a couple hours, and people were flipping out. Like, oh my god. Oh my god. Where's Instagram? We think everybody's got a better life, and it's right on our phone. Whereas it used to be keeping up with the Joneses was the person who drove up to you next to you at your house. Right? Now now today, the Joneses is all of our friends in our on our phones, and we think everybody's life is better than ours. And and the first thing I would just tell anyone who's feeling like everybody else's life is better than yours is it first of all, it's not true. Like like, if if you actually real if if people knew how much pain everyone was living in, we would all be nicer to each other. Because the thing that I've learned having, you know, been in the public world now for over 2 decades is like because people tell me their life stories. Probably you too. Right? People in a lot of pain. Yeah. I think I think the average person is is like this like Zoe or, like, this fictional 27 year old who who doesn't know what they wanna do in their lives, and they think they've already failed because they're 27, and they haven't started on this incredible journey that they think is waiting for them, but they missed they took a roll out the wrong fork, and now it's too late. They they they think they oh my god. They think it's I wrote this book start late, finish rich to reach people over the age of 50, and who ended up reading it were 20 year olds. 20 something. 20 to, like, 25 to, like, 35. That's smart because if you're teaching people to start late, imagine if you start when you're early. Yeah. So they think that they're starting late. So, you know, I I would say that, like like, that's why I said it's Zoe in the book. Like, first thing is you gotta realize that if you're trading your time for money, let's say, you know, trade your time for money, you're gonna go work 50 hours a week or 40 hours a week. The first thing is you have to become financially selfish. So before we focus on whether or not your job is perfect or your career is perfect, let's just get serious today. You're gonna go to work from 9 o'clock to 5 o'clock, and the 1st hour day of your income, you need to keep it. You need to use your job and your income to buy your freedom. And that's the first lesson that Zoe Daniels learns in the book is, like, he doesn't tell her, oh, you can't drink your lattes. What he says to her is, are you saving anything? Are you keeping anything? And she's not. No. I like how I like how, you know, towards the end when she's kind of, using this this advice I won't I won't give anyone but I like how it's not about giving up the extra frothy latte. If that's what gives you pleasure, do it. But she gives up, for instance, her seldom used gym membership. She gives up the premium cable channel. She never watches. There's a lot if you do a real audit of your life and I I noticed this at one point in an extreme way. I threw out everything I owned and just And you have that. Black, little, black. Yeah. Yeah. And I was able to see, oh, there are so many things I never needed that I was paying for. And it was really kind of refreshing to see the 100 and 100 of things that normally was just a routine cost in my life that were didn't exist anymore. Oh, by the way, so, I'm curious to you. I I follow you too. So, like, when you did that, it had to be very freeing. Right? To do Yeah. But it it was I mean, it wasn't freeing in the sense that, oh my god. I have no responsibilities anymore. Like, I was still working hard and and working at everything I do. It just was freeing in the sense that I didn't have to worry about things like where am I where are what chairs should I buy or what blankets I should buy or how am I gonna pay the electricity or and all that was taken care of by Airbnb. So all those costs were supposedly baked in to the Airbnb price, but not really, actually. Because, you know, Airbnb is a competitive market. So it's cheaper than if you'd rented a similar place and paid for all these things. It was certainly cheaper than if you rent a place, buy all the furniture, you know, get all the channels, Wi Fi, all that stuff. I I was paying similar to what rent would be for a similar sized place. So I was saving money. I just go to I guess, where I was going with this is that, you know, we we we make this money and we accumulate all this stuff, and we think this stuff is also important. And then all of a sudden you realize, like, it's actually not that important at all. No. It's it's it's that that's like, when you when you can get your stuff in a bag and then just go live, you're like, oh my god. I don't actually know. And my example of this, because I thought about you coming up here today, we're we're we sold our home, and in 2 weeks, we're putting we're we're going to Florence, Italy with each of us are carrying 2 bags. That's great. So so, like, we're putting the clothes that we're gonna need, and we each get 2 bags because we're bringing them on the plane, and we're not shipping anything there. And we rented an apartment that's fully furnished. Perfect. And we don't need to do anything but bring 2 bags of clothes. Now the crazy part is I have 2 things to do this weekend, figure out what clothes I'm bringing, and everything else is going into storage. Now now here's what's fascinating about that process. You start to ask yourself, well, am I gonna even want this stuff in a year or 2? Like, I'm gonna store this stuff, and we're gonna come back. Are we gonna are we gonna still want it? And then you realize, like, none of the stuff actually even matters to me. All the stuff that we're gonna go in the store, all the stuff that we accumulated, I'm just excited to be with my family and go have a year of experiences in Europe. And and when we went through that process too, because that's a mind shift. You know, when we were first thinking moving to Europe, my wife is like, well, so are we gonna put all the stuff in a container and all of our furniture and our artwork and, like, what are we gonna bring? I'm like, we're not bringing anything, honey, but some clothes. We're bringing us. We're bringing the family, and we're gonna go have experiences for a year. We're gonna focus a year on traveling and experiences. Yeah. And I I agree with that, like, in the sense that I one thing I learned in in my own process of this was that experiences are a lot more valuable than things. People would say to me, oh, it must be so freeing to get rid of everything. I missed things. Does and and people were, like didn't like that response. You're not supposed to be unhappy ever if you if you take an approach that is supposed to be, you know, enlightening somehow. So but, like, no. I liked missing things. Yes. I had some photos of my kids as babies that were actual real photos instead of digital ones. I had photos of me as a baby or a kid and my parents, and I didn't have these things anymore. I missed them. But it's okay to miss things. It's a melancholy is is a normal human Totally. Nostalgia is a normal human emotion. So if we try to protect ourself from everything negative, what's gonna happen when something really bad actually happens? Like, I was living a great life. Like, why do I have to worry about Yeah. These photos? I can miss them, and that sucks, but I still have a good life. It doesn't subtract from my life. I I I I so get it. I mean, I I've been in New York 18 years, and I'm getting emotional about moving. Like, I wanted this was a dream to move to New York City. I'm from San Francisco, and I came here to write you know, to spread the message of these books, and and it worked. Right? Like, I came I came I was the classic example. I came to New York to do national media. I knew if I was gonna really, like, really change millions of people's lives, I had to be in New York City. That was true back then. Like, I could go on the Today Show. I could go on all of CNN and all the morning shows. That's what helped me build this platform. It was before the days of podcasts. And as you mentioned, you've sold 7,000,000 copies of your books, which is really enormous. Like, that in today's day and age is almost impossible. Yeah. Like, maybe one person, not counting fiction, but, like, maybe one self help person will be able to do it every couple years. And it's rare to do it for, honestly, for do it for for 20 years. Right? Like, Smart Women Finish Rich came out for an updated edition, 20 year anniversary edition. That book sold a 1000000 copies. It's selling more this year than it sold 10 years ago. Your first book was, like, 1996? 19 Smart One Finish, which came out in 1998. Okay. And then Smart Couples Finish, which came out after that, and that also just came out for an anniversary edition. Then we did The Automatic Millionaire. That came out in 2004. That book just came out for an anniversary edition. Do you think like, obviously, there were other people writing then about finance. I think Susie Orman, Dave Ramsey. I wasn't really I didn't I wasn't familiar with that space then. But, what do you think attracted people to your your first couple books that really kind of propelled you? You know, hey, Oprah. Oprah's saying come over here. Yeah. Well, I mean, I think what was very unique when I started my first my first book, first of all, Smart Women Finish Rich, the book was unique in the fact that I taught people the process that I use as a financial advisor, which was value driven, about meaning that your financial life should actually be created based off your values. So not value investing, but, like, your personal values. Like, a really good financial planner, if they do their job right, before today, they call it holistic based planning. Back then, I just called it values based planning, purpose focused financial planning. You need to look at what what do you value most in life, what are your dreams, and build your financial life so that they they match up. So that you're not spending money in conflict with your values. You're investing money that aligns with your values. And that whole concept of, like, spiritually awakening awakening yourself to what really matters most to you, I think that that's really what resonated with people. And then I chunked it down in a way with stories and simplicity that got people to take action. You know, like, simple things like you basically need 3 I call it 3 basket approach. You had a a basket for retirement, and then you had a basket for security, and then you had a basket for your dreams. And so I think this I think this simplifying is what attracted people, you know, because everybody thinks you know, we we grew up thinking, oh my gosh. To be a millionaire, that's incredible. Like, that would be the most amazing thing if there's no path. We were never taught a path to get there. And I think you showed, hey. If you just do this little bit of math, it's actually fairly straightforward, the path. 1 a path. There's many paths. You you give a path. Completely. And, like, like, like, this little book, The Latte Factor, basically, this is what should should have been taught in school by the time you got through, like, 10th grade. Right? Like, even the simple idea of, like, the latte factor was originally like, look. If you cut out a $5 latte, if you don't think you have the money and you took $5 and you invested it and you start in your twenties, by the time you're in your sixties, you could have over $1,000,000. Right. So so And it was just a little idea. It was like, or it could be bottled water. So so let's do the math. So so $5 every day is, like, $1825 a year, and compounding at 10%. And it Now here's the the exact math in the back of the book is, you know, this little picture we've got here is, like, you know, if you invest $5 a day, and we rounded everything here, but it's, like, $5 a day is $35 a week. In 40 years, and I use 10% because that's what the market's averaged since 1926, that would be worth $948,611. And and then I show you other forms of math. Right? Like, what if you did $10 a day? What if you did $10 a day, $300 a month, and you start at the age of 25? $10 a day by the time you're 65 could be worth $1,000,000,913,000. Like, this little chart right here is worth the whole price of the book, just showing, like, the the miracle of compound interest and then what happens if you wait. And I think I think that the beauty of that is too is it's not so much the specific numbers. Like, you and I can sit here and argue for 6 hours about, is it 10% Completely. 4%. Is it 5%. Plug in whatever number you you believe in and then figure it out. Or or And that's why we give we also give you all these different rates of return, and we tell you and then, like, and, like, the her mentor says, look. You know, here's where 10% could come from, but it could be 5%. What what happens is the here's why people don't do these things because because there's all kinds of critics of this. Like, first, they go, well, a $1,000,000 won't be worth a lot of money in 40 years. Well, it won't be worth a lot more than 0. Right? Like and also like Also unclear. Right? Like, wages versus in you know, in inflation's been going down. I kinda think, actually, right now, I could be wrong, but I kinda think, if you really dig up the numbers, it looks like more deflation than inflation in the economy to me. But, certainly, wages have been going down and and a versus inflation, so that will eventually lead to some kind of deflation. It's unclear to me that, you know, inflation spiked when we went over the gold off the gold standard. It spiked for 2 decades. I don't know. With with the Internet and and new forms of productivity, it's unclear to me that inflation is not just gonna be 0 for for the next 40 years. When when you go off on the on the the tangent of inflation issue, the the the two things that are out of control, cost of education and health care. Right. So Those are our two primary forms of inflation. Right. So so cost of education is higher education. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. College. We're specifically I know you've ripped on college costs. Right. Right. Like, it's it's arguably the biggest scam that's ever been perpetuated on the American public is the cost of a college education. Right. And and right now and this goes this number goes up every year. 44% of college graduates take jobs after college that do not require a college degree, And 94% of all new jobs created in this economy are not employee jobs. They're just contractor jobs with no insurance and no other benefits. So, presumably, they're just about the skills. They want you to they're contracting you to do some skill work, and you don't need a college degree for that or for most of those probably. So I don't know. I'm not I if if it puts you in financial danger, which it clearly does, like, Zoey starts off with student loan debt, and she's not you know, it's a hard thing. It's a hard I have people when I'm doing stand up downstairs, sometimes I fool around, and I ask people, like, who you know, there'll be someone in the audience who's quitting wants to quit being a lawyer. And I'm like, what's your total student loan debt? Oh, $363,000. Because if you the average student loan debt's much lower, but if you go to, like, a good 4 year school and then a good 3 year law school, you're gonna be over $300,000 in debt. You're screwed. We had somebody post this on our Facebook group yesterday, $300,000 of student loans. And and I thought to myself, god, there's so much money borrowed on an asset that you can't hope's gonna go up in value and trade. Right? Like, I literally was thinking about real estate. Like, you borrow $300,000 in real estate. Put down a 100 and you buy a 400,000 RFPs property. 10 years from now, you're pretty likely that property would be worth more, and you can just sell it and pay off the loan, and you've made the profit. Right? Like, that's why when you borrow money to buy assets that go up in value, you have the ability to get rich. The problem when you borrow money to buy anything that goes down in value is you start off in a hole. So the the the the belief was always, well, you go get a college education, you'll make more money, and so it's worth it. Ten people used to use these formulas. Like, it's worth 10 times what you what you borrowed. Well, that used to be true. It's a completely different society. Right. It used to be true. And and, Georgetown did this one kinda seminal study on this where they said, oh, if you get a college degree, you'll make this much more than if you just have a high school degree. But they're using data from people who graduated when we graduated because that's the only data you have where you can see, oh, where were they 20 to 30 years later? There's no other data. And the the job first off, the Internet wasn't main the web didn't exist when we graduated college. The Internet wasn't mainstream. Productivity still required human hands doing many jobs, which no longer those jobs don't even exist anymore. So the data is is so wrong that I can't stand these studies. And, of course, they're always put out by colleges who charge super high tuitions. I just you know what? I go back to what I want people to do is buy their freedom. At the end of the day, like, Zoe learns how to buy her freedom and put herself first, and I think, you know, when people start to, like, tell you why things won't work, like, saving small amounts of money won't work. It's the government's fault that you're poor. Look. Here's the reality. 6 out of 10 Americans have less than $1,000 in savings. Yeah. I've been doing these shows. I've been saying, you know what? If you save $10 I did The Breakfast Club. We were just talking about, those guys. I said, if you save $10 a day for a 100 days just think about this for one second. You save $10 a day for a 100 days. It's a little over 3 months. You're now wealthier than 6 out of 10 Americans. So, you know, it's interesting, though, but I think like, I was talking to someone the other day who was a chain hoist technician. So there's a big event at a stadium. He runs a device that lifts up big things like a speaker and puts them on the stage, and he does this, like, 11 hours a day. And his wife is a waitress at a fine dining establishment. So 2 incomes. They have 2 kids. He was telling me, though, 2 out of the 7 days a week, they're they're at 0 in their bank account. So some people just aren't making enough money to make ends meet. And he's not living in a city. He lives in a suburb of Dallas. So I think, also, because wages have been going down for young people versus inflation, some people really are having a hard time with that $10 a day. Some there there is absolutely no question that some people aren't receiving a living wage. Right? Like, I had somebody the other day say, well, what if I'm making 20,000 dollars a year? Does will this work for you? I'm like, man, if you're making $20,000 a year, I I don't know. I I don't know. I don't know how you're gonna save $5 a day if you're making $20,000 a year. But why are you making $20,000 a year? Right? Like There's okay. So there's gotta be something else you could do. So this goes back to the 27 year old who wants to know, well, what can I do? Am I too late? What what's the first thing that person should do? I I the first thing that person should do is, number 1, if you got a job, you have to pay yourself first 1 hour a day of your income. What job should they take? They don't know what they wanna do. Well, most of these kids are already working. I'd go get a job. Go to work. Like like, you're not gonna have your dream job be your first job. Right? So so if you're 27, probably you're already working. Now the question is where you're working, are you able to learn something in what you do that can make you better? Are if if you spend a year point to. Massively focused on how do you add more value where you are, and are you learning something? Then that's a great year. Right? The problem is when you have a job where where here's what happens, people. They they end up working somewhere where they have the number one reason people hate their jobs, by the way, is because they hate their boss. So if you have a toxic boss, that's a core problem. Right? Like, if you're listening right now by the way. See, again, measurement is everything because that tells you for half the people you talk to, it says, oh, I hate my job. Okay. Take the same job with a different boss. Right. Because and and literally, when you look at even why people retire, in general, if they retire in their fifties, it's because they've they they got they're working somewhere. They may like where they're working, but at some point, someone got above them in management, and they just can't stand that person anymore. And as they get older as as we get older, our tolerance for bulls**t reduces. So there's, like, you know, you can put up with a lot of pain when you're young. It's just, like, you it's true. Like, you you're going you're hungry. You're driven. You you can put up with stuff, and you should quite frankly. You get older, you a lot of times you don't have that same ability. Right? Which this tends to be when you talk to people who retire early, and you go, why did you retire early? Oh, man. I just got tired of this guy who was, you know, I I the politics lots of things that say the politics. In general, it's because something stopped being fun. So work's not meant to be fun every day. That's why it's called work. But, man, in your twenties, you should be focused on what can you learn in the next 10 years that can make you better at what you do. Yeah. And I and I think also what you know, in general, the percentage of your day doing things you hate should go down over time. It doesn't have to be eliminated. Just the direction has to be in in good shape. Again, don't take more time from things. Don't don't take more time from things you love to do more of things you hate. I think it's very important. But I wanna go through Yeah. Your your is it okay to mention the 3 secrets of financial freedom? And then and then there's also the 16 rules, or the 16 yeah. The 16 rules of financial health on davidbock.com, which I think is fascinating. But let's go through this first. One is pay yourself first, which you talked about. And you could and and this is related to number 2, so I'll go right into number 2. Don't budget. Make it automatic. Because if you're the one who has to kind of write a check to your special savings account, you're gonna do it for 3 weeks. Just like a gym membership, you can do it for 3 weeks, and then you're gonna stop. So if it's automatically deducted from your paycheck and put into a 401 k, then that's you don't even think about it. You start thinking of your salary. People live according to what they get in in the bank. And and and if you don't think about it because it's already in your 401k, it's, like, automatically being saved. Your whole point there is that the interest starts compounding pretty fast. One could argue with the 10%. I'm conservative. I use 4%. Mhmm. But does it matter? I All day long, you get 4%. Absolutely. No question. No brainer. Right? Oh, just municipal bonds. Yeah. You get 4%. 5% right now. I I feel like I feel like I'm just off I'd say 10%. You're right. That's the historical performance of the stock market. But if you the the year you retire is 2,008, you're suddenly 50% down. Yeah. You're gonna have to wait a few more years to retire, whereas municipal bonds are are steady. So it depends on how steady you want it to be, and, you know, there's more risk for more reward. Totally. And then your third secret, which is, of course, the most important, is live rich now. And I think I think people underestimate their current lifestyle, meaning your current lifestyle is probably pretty good in America. Right. So so the question you have to ask is, well, what if I didn't have a job, but I wanted to maintain this current lifestyle? So so let's say you're making 60,000 a year. You live in Kansas City. Your take home is, what, 40,000, 45,000. So you're living on roughly, I don't know what that is, 38100 or 37100 a month, or let's just say 45,000 a year. And you've kind of then only need half a $1,000,000 to retire. Because on your thing with 10%, you need and if inflation's minimal, you need a half $1,000,000 to retire. And I say only, but but that might not be so hard to to save by the time you're 30. You can retire for 30 if that's your numbers. So he so what you just said is so dead on. There there's 2 parts to live, Rich, but let me first focus on what you just said because it's ironic because you said Kansas. Because the financial service company that I'm a cofounder of is based in Topeka. So we have 550 employees at that at that headquarter office, mostly millennials. Here's what's so fascinating, James, because we're here in New York City. Right? It's so freaking expensive. Yep. 50,000 could be a monthly expense instead of a salary. You know, like so but, like, it's really hard to have a lot of the American dream things when you live in an expensive city, like buying a home. And I know you're not a big home buying guy, but, you know, a lot of people wanna buy homes. They wanna get married. They wanna have kids. Hard to do in a big city like like Manhattan or Chicago or LA when you're young. In Topeka, like, when I spoke to our our employees, and I'm like, how many of you guys own a home? Like, 80% of the room owns a home in their and they're in their twenties, and that's because you can buy homes in Topeka for less than a $100,000. Yeah. And and and and and also they're most many of them are married and having kids. They're they're actually living in a way the American dream, like the American dream was lived 20, 30, 40 years ago, because it's affordable. And there's a movement now across America that a lot of millennials are starting to move to these Midwest cities because they're realizing, I can't actually have the things I want right now living in a city like Manhattan. Well and also quality of life, you could say, well, I don't wanna live in Topeka, Kansas. But I bet you with all the millennials moving there and and and, you know, cultures moving into all these places as well. Totally. Like, you know, I used to I went to grad school in in Pittsburgh, and they had great museums, great theater. There was no Pittsburgh's building. Yeah. So and I think every city or area will. Like, your company is based in Topeka, and 500 young people who are interested in things other than corn live there. So Right. So so that's why, like, this You Could Live Rich Now, that's true both financially and in a psychological way. So you kinda mean it in a psychological way, like, hey. Do this focus on the things you love. Really measure what makes you happy and what doesn't. You could probably make a lot of choices that you that are unsuspecting to you right now that will lead to a happier life. But I mean it also financially. You could kinda calculate, okay. I I like my current lifestyle. Here's exactly what I would need to retire with this lifestyle. Maybe I'm gonna amp it up a little bit. Alright. Let's add a little bit to what I need to retire to get that 10% to how I'm gonna amp up my lifestyle. And I think people overthink this. Well and I also think it's too when you start to focus on retirement, you're focusing on being done. I think part of living rich, there's these 2 buckets. You've got a retirement bucket, basket I call it, where you're putting money away for retirement. Well, that could be 40 years from now. Between now 40 years, you got all the stuff you wanna do. Like Zoe in the book, she wants to travel. She wants to live abroad. And so her mentor, Henry, says, well, you need to have a travel abroad account. And he teaches her to save money automatically for her dream account, which is what pays for her to take time to go live abroad. And in her case, she works out a deal with her I don't wanna give the whole story away, but she learns how to take this 6 week break. And she works out with her boss, and she takes a sabbatical and which is a huge thing that young people wanna do today. And, also, older people wanna do it too. And I think when you learn how to take breaks where you which you don't have to make a bunch of money to take a break, a person who's listening to this right now who says, you know what? I wanna I wanna I wanna take 2 or 3 weeks off next year. Chances are, if you've got an ordinary income, you could save enough money to take 2 or 3 weeks off next year. Average American takes 5 days a year off. Right. And I think, to to your point, I bet you you can also take 6 weeks off a year. You just don't have like, I think the idea of the traditional job where you only have a 2 week vacation is going away. Because, like like I mentioned earlier, 94% of jobs being created today in this economy, are contractor jobs. You don't even have vacation. So you make your vacation. You you probably make a little bit more money because you have to take care of your benefits, but you could use some of that money to, have your your your travel bucket. And you have to it's so funny. You have to choose to live rich. Right? So I took an Uber up here. We were talking about how bad the traffic was, and I I love talking to people. I'm just I'm that's how I am, and I start talking to the Uber guy. His name is Ralph, And he's like and he hears me on the phone saying I'm going to go do this podcast. Oh, what book are what book are you going to talk? And I I've got the book in the back of the car with him. And so I start telling him about the book, and I start asking him about how long have you driven for Uber, and he's like, I've driven for Uber for 4 years. And and I and I go, was you know, is is today gonna be a good day for you? And he goes, every day is a good day. He's like he's like, there's always money to be made driving Uber. He's like, I I I go, do you drive full time? He goes he goes, yeah. I go, do you just use Uber? He's like, no. I use Uber and I use Lyft and somebody else used. And he goes, because I'm I'm busy all day long. And so I said and I had already signed I go, I'm gonna give you a book. He's like, I'm not gonna buy a book. I know I'm gonna give you a book. So I came with 3, you know, there's 2 here. I gave him 1. So I signed it to him and I said, live rich now. Enjoy your life fully. And I signed it. And he doesn't know that that's what I signed. And I said to him, so tomorrow, 4th July, is that is that a good day? Are you working tomorrow? Is because I've never in New York City normally on the 4th July, and I am tomorrow. And he says, no. I'm not gonna work tomorrow. He goes, I'm gonna enjoy I'm gonna enjoy my life tomorrow. I'm gonna have and he said and this is what he said. He goes, David, I could work every single day of the year. I'm self employed, but I have to enjoy my life. He's like, I know too many people that never enjoy their life, and then they're dead. This is what he says to me, which is basically the core of this book. Yeah. And he goes, no. So tomorrow, I'm not working. I'm enjoying my life. You know? And as I was reading this too, I was I was thinking of, you know, the time I and I'm sure everybody thinks of different things, but I think about the time I spend with my children. And, you know, we're that kind of special period where you can have good, you know, sort of adult friendships with your children. It's only a short period because soon, I'm either too old or they're off starting families. Yep. And, you know, you can't you can't waste any of that. Like, I work really hard, but I have to sometimes remind myself. You gotta also focus on things that are super important that you're not gonna regret later. And and everybody says, oh, I have no regrets. I also wouldn't be where I am today. But as your grandmother tells you, there's there's regrets in life. And it's not so much the regrets themselves. It's why you have these regrets. It's how you spent your time as opposed to the specific things you regretted, kinda what the root causes of those regrets were. You know, that's interesting. But, you know, it's so interesting because I love this topic, and I'm particularly on your 16 this is your 16 Financial Rules, on your website. It's fascinating. There's so many things I agree with and so many things I would love to argue with you about. I know. We said we we said we'd argue. Right? Like Not not for the sake of winning. I just wanna I just think it's interesting. Like, you know, we we we could spend our time on inflation. We could spend our time on the 10% versus 4%. We could spend our time on homeownership or college. But the reality is everyone out there could eliminate expenses. Everyone out there can make choices about what they're doing. Right now, they're kind of, I think, people are programmed Conscious choices. Yeah. People are programmed since eleventh elementary school. I gotta go to this school, and I gotta go get this kind of job. And then they're 30, and they're unhappy and miserable and $300,000 in debt. So I think taking control of things you can measure, like, in some way, try to measure your happiness, in some way, try to measure job satisfaction, salary, really get an accurate picture about what you need to have the lifestyle you want. See look at the globe. See if there's any place in the world where you can actually have that lifestyle without spending as much money. You know, money is a a fluid, imaginary concept. So what you need in Lisbon, Portugal is different than what you need in New York City, New York. So and, you know, you mentioned Zooey goes on a sabbatical. She also could be working remotely. Like, this is a new Right. Work. And she does work remotely too. Like, so so this is this is the thing too is that, oh, I'm gonna quit my job, quit that cubicle. Well, it doesn't mean you're stopping working. There's a 1,000,000,000 remote jobs you could be doing in in this world. There are websites now just built just for that. I mean, like, networks and organizations that can help you work remotely all over the world. Well, did you ever have you ever used, like, Fiverr or Totally. What what have you used Fiverr for? So funny enough, we use Fiverr, to do latte factor, like, fun billboards. Right? Like, so, like, we had a jet. I'll say, like, we had a jet that comes down, and it's got don't buy stupid s**t dot com on it, and it's got a picture of the Latte Factor book cover on the on the jet. People thought I actually had this jet made. I'm like, no. No. It was cost me $12 on Fiverr. Where did you where on Fiverr did it Oh, you know, I went to we did, like we had everything. We had we had the the balloon with the we had a we had a big balloon blown up with the cover on it. We had billboards made. You know, anything you want. I don't know. Is Fiverr a sponsor of you guys? No. No. No. I wish it was. We should get Fiverr. It was a sponsor. Anything you want done, you can go into Fiverr and find it. Can I tell you what the last thing I did on Fiverr? Yeah. So I I think it cost me about $25, and I had someone, like a graduate student in English. I had someone rewrite from beginning to end, but making every word a synonym instead of using the actual word, Fifty Shades of Grey. So I took the best selling book in history, and I had them write a new version with no plagiarizing scanner can figure it out because it's all synonyms. So no words are the same. And you did that for $25? On Fiverr. Yeah. And and I have read that, using all synonyms is plagiarizing. Yeah. But I'm still debating publishing this book just for fun, you know, under a fake name and seeing what happens. That's hilarious. Like with Fiverr, a, somebody did this in, like, a week. And, yeah, they only made $25, but I forget they weren't from this country. I forget what country they were from, like Singapore or Malaysia or something like that. And and, b, you can keep doing things to to maybe something you do makes money that you that you build out of Fiverr or Freelancer. Like, for you, what are you enjoying the most right now? Because you've got you've got the podcast. You've got your comedy that you're gonna do a comedy show here tonight. You own a piece of this business. Like, what what I know you've got your newsletter. Right? Like, you're doing a bunch of different things. What what's for you, what's the most fun? So so there's a thing that I make money on, and there's the things I have the most fun on. And there's some overlap. I don't hate anything I do I do. And all the things I love doing, I don't love them 100%. Like, they're difficult to prepare. And, you know, writing, sometimes you have writer's block. In comedy, sometimes you you bomb on stage. But I love, comedy, podcast, writing, not necessarily in that order. They all kind of are connected. And I just love them. And I and I don't make any money at any of them, and I love it. And then I make my main income from investing because, as you say, you know, you better to own than to rent. Now you're talking about houses. Yeah. For me, I'm talking about I like to own pieces of Of businesses. Of businesses that are good companies. I totally believe in too. I mean, the whole key is to own put your money in things that make you more money. Yeah. I think I think money has it's a cliche, but money has to work for you. Yeah. You have to the word spend is important. You have to you have to you have to always spend money on things that get you more money or or or get you valuable experiences, or you spend time on things that get you greater pleasure out of the time you have in front of you. So so the word spend is very important to me. But then I I don't love as much the investing and and my business, like the newsletter business and so on, but it it makes a living. It helps people. I I feel happy with the businesses I'm invested in are all I have values. So I've I've invested according to my values, and and, you know, I've tried to make sure each who who is being helped by each business, and that's a good way to qualify if it's a good business or not. And Do you are you are you still actively investing, out of curiosity, in new businesses, or you sort of shut down on taking on new things? I would say, like, in 2 from 2,009 or from 2,007 to 2,011, I was investing making a lot of angel investments. Mhmm. Now it's about 1 a year. Yeah. It's gotta be, like, really great. I have to get a good deal. It's gotta be, like, I'm taking as little risk as possible. I don't I don't believe that investing is the same as risk taking. So I I believe you you you mitigate the risks in order to become a better investor. So, like, for instance, you wouldn't buy a home you wouldn't buy 5 homes in Detroit right now because you'd have to understand a little bit of, is Detroit gonna come back as a city? Maybe it will. Maybe it won't. But maybe you would buy 5 homes spread out all over the world in countries where the GDP is having double digit growth. Maybe that's a less risky investment than buying all 5 homes in Detroit. So you you take risk out of of your investments. But you obviously but you want the same kind of returns. Yeah. So there's ways to do that with diversification. So, so look. I firmly think people should read this. I love the story. I love the allegory. I like you know, we haven't talked about Henry, but he's kinda like, you know, the what was that, what was that Steven Pressfield novel? The Legend of Bagger Vance. He's kinda like this Bagger Vance kinda character. And, he's he's clearly made the dream and is really is really happy. And you you see that right from the beginning, so I'm not I'm not giving away any spoilers. Great story. Great concepts. Again, I think you and I would have a fun time talking about the specifics, and I think that can get really in the weeds. And it would be it would be more it'd be fun and informative, but I conceptually believe everything. Like, yeah, compounding is important. I think savings are tricky because another thing you can do is just make more money. So, like, if you're in an industry where like, if you're an entrepreneur and you know you wanna be an entrepreneur, you don't necessarily need to save every day because at some point, you'll start you'll get better and better as an entrepreneur. At some point, you'll start a business that will dwarf what you would have saved. Here here's the challenge for entrepreneurs, though, because I've I am 1. I've been 1 almost my entire life, really. And I'm in a group I've been a group here called EO, Entrepreneurs Organization, for, like, 17 of my 18 years in New York. I just did a keynote for them, all like a going away keynote. And I've seen a lot of entrepreneurs bet on the come that they're gonna sell their business someday. And and then their business is not salable, and they never get their exit, and their business doesn't work out, and then they have no money, and they're 50. And I I said to these entrepreneurs, you know, and they were young there's now younger entrepreneur. I started, you know, when I was young. Right? 30 years old. I said, listen. There's 3 ways to have wealth as an entrepreneur. 1, money comes in. You gotta keep some of that money and turn into an asset that makes other money. So money comes in. It's gotta go either into a retirement account. 2, you should buy another asset like real estate that you then rent. Your business should rent back the real estate. That's the second leg. And then the third leg is you have an exit. But too many of you are just counting on the exit. And the biggest problem biggest problem with entrepreneurs is they get these accountants that are teaching them how to always run their expenses through their business. So I've had lots of friends here in New York. They're making 200, then they're making 300, then they're making 400, then they're making 500, but they keep growing their lifestyle and running all their expenses through the business. So at the end of the year, the accountant goes, hey. You have no taxes. And I go and that's great, which just means you're still broke. Yeah. Right? Because if you didn't pay any taxes, it means that you didn't save any money. And Unless you're Warren Buffett. He doesn't pay any taxes, but it's worth 80,000,000,000. But because he's got a holding company. Yeah. Right? So I just, you know, implore self employed people to don't believe you if you're gonna you're gonna someday make more money, make more money, make more money, and be rich unless you keep some of that money. Well well, I agree with you. Like, some some of my angel investing is a different beast than stock market investing, and people don't really realize that. Like, if you're invested in a good private company, you're probably gonna be in that investment for at least 10 years. It's gotta grow. At least at least. Right? 7 to 10 years, and then most time, the money doesn't come back. Out of the 20 companies I've invested in, 4 have had exits, and 16 are in their 10th year of or And out of 16, how many you think will come back? Well, I think they they they all will, and I'll tell you why. Because when you're the other thing about angel investing is your bad companies disappear your bad investments disappear in a year or 2. So a bad company is just gonna die. A good company, if they're around 10 years, they they they're over the hump, probably. But the problem is then it's like your the the third challenge, which that you mentioned is you gotta and I try to make sure of this before I invest. The CEO has to know how to exit. That's a skill, and not all entrepreneurs have that skill. And not all entrepreneurs even that's like what Donald Rumsfeld would call an unknown unknown. Like, not all entrepreneurs know that they need to have this skill in order to make money, and it's a different skill than all the other skills of entrepreneurship. And some businesses are built to be exited before the business is built. Right? Like, literally, some entrepreneurs go into businesses saying, I'm gonna build this to sell it to this company. I just had this conversation yesterday with a friend of mine last night after many drinks, who's building one of these businesses, and I'm like and I gave him an example. You won't remember this company. But back in 2000 and and back in 2000, there's a thing called demo. Right? Where you're you're a tech company and you demo your companies, and so this was this was demo in San Francisco. And our booth was next to another booth with a company called half.com. Oh, I remember half.com. They bought a city. Yeah. I I the the guy who Josh something. Yes. Yeah. I I I met that guy once in California. So so, you know, you have time between your boos. Hey. What do you guys do? They were just launching. He goes and basically goes, I'm building this company, and I'm gonna sell it to Amazon. I mean, like, he he like, he's like, we're gonna get all these things on I don't we're gonna have all these company all these products, and we're selling for half price. But I'm base basically, he knew he was building a business to sell it to Amazon. And he did. Right? And he did. Or did he sell to eBay? No. I can't remember. We're right. It was either for 400,000,000. Yep. Exactly. I think it was 5 even. 4, 8 years. I think and I think you're right. I think it was eBay. I think and I so I'm telling the story. He knew who he was gonna sell the sell to. Like, we should go back and look. Yeah. And I don't know whatever happened to that company, but he was like and he did it quickly. Yeah. And I was like, man. But that's a skill. He had that skill. Yeah. And I don't know if he went off to do more companies like that. He may not but but that's a skill set. That's a that that's a thought process. Right? Like, I have a company I'm invested in right now. They literally have a monopoly. They're profitable. They're a great business. They're growing. But the I almost don't want them to sell because I could see the CEO hasn't quite created the perception that his business should be valued at a huge, huge number, and I'm afraid of what happens if he tries to sell. Because, you know, part of the skill of exiting is creating the perception. You know, valuation is is more art than science. It's something you trade for 20 times sales, 20 times earnings, 20 times EBITDA. Per or or flat out or or flat out perception. I mean, I look. I've been an investor in a couple of companies without a lot of time and energy was spent on the perception, and it worked. Yeah. They got another company to buy it because of the perception. Yeah. No. That's thank god for perception in some cases, and I'm scared about perception in other cases, but that's a skill too as part of the exit skills. The exit skill has many skills. It's negotiating. It's perception creating. It's, presenting your company in the right way in terms of professionalism. It's knowing networking and knowing who to talk to and and how to, how to you know, it's a tricky discussion. Like, when someone asks you, well, why do you wanna the first question they got is, why do you wanna sell your company? You can't just say, because I wanna make a s**tload of money and then get the hell out of here. You can't say that answer even though that's the truth. You have to say, well, I I feel like I we would grow with a bigger team. We were taking on a lot of new clients. We need help help in infrastructure, which is true also, by the way. So just because the CEO leaves doesn't mean the company leaves. There's just there's some I again, I probably have never done a podcast where I've been all over the place, so for that, I apologize to your listeners. No. I've been all over the place. I I think, there's so much opportunity. Like like, we're living arguably in the greatest time in life. Right? Like, there's just opportunity everywhere. I could talk to you for 5 hours about opportunity, and your guy now wants to wind this up. We're just talking about one little side of the business. Like, I I just got back from this retreat. It's like it's like a, since it's called the Blue Pearl, and I basically went hiking for a week. 1 of the guys I hiked with, you know, you talk to people when you're doing your hikes and as you're suffering together on these hikes. And, what do you do? He's like, oh, well, he he built this huge business. And part of what he does is he's a professor who teaches at Stanford. Oh, well, what do you teach? We teach people how we teach these MBA kids how to buy businesses. So, you know, rather than start a business, you know, it's a lot easier to buy a business. So we teach them how to buy businesses between real roughly 10 to $25,000,000, and then we have a fund that funds these kids. I'm going out of school. This is he's right. This is a class he teaches at Stanford. He goes, then we have I have a fund separately with my partners, and we so we teach this class that teaches them how to buy these businesses, and then we fund them. And and I go, walk me through that one more time. Like, this is just a quick little hike. Right? He goes, well, look. A lot of these businesses are you know, which is happening across America. You've got people who built these businesses, and now they're in their fifties and their sixties, and they wanna retire. So they've built these businesses. They're doing 10, 15, $20,000,000. And, like, he gave me example of an ambulance business. He's like, you know, so, like, we just helped this kid buy this nice $15,000,000 ambulance ambulance business. So we put the money in. He's gonna run it. He gets a percentage of it. And I go he's explaining this to me, and I go, I I bet the return on these investments is is is really good for you. Right? Like and and and more consistent. He goes, oh my god. Completely. He goes, he's like, versus doing these startup businesses where maybe you get your money back. We're putting money into businesses that have cash flow. They're built. Yeah. And then we teach these kids how to clean these businesses up, run them, and then sell them again. And he's like, so we make money. He's like, every time we're buying these business, we're making money. And I go, so now I start asking more questions. Right? Because I'm like you. I'm totally curious. So what age are these kids that you're backing to buy these businesses? He goes, like, you know, between 2532. I go like, because he's super specific. Right? Well, what if what if you're 35? Because 35, it's too old. Really? This this is what this was his belief. You guys we we we need them coming out of school super hungry, and so it's 25 to 32. I go, so what if you're 5th like, I'm like, what if you're 52 and you wanna go buy one of these businesses? And he's like, okay, David. For you, maybe. But the point is, like, they dialed in. We're gonna teach this program. He's like, and we don't we don't handpick everybody from this cla*s. We but people learn about what we do. And, like, you know, for every 10 people who come to us, maybe we pick one of these guys and we back them, or gals. And I just thought there's a whole another path on how to build wealth as an entrepreneur. Yeah. You know, there's so many paths out there. Oh, yeah. People will miss out on that completely. Like, what take take what you described to another level. You don't need 10 to 25,000,000. You can buy a laundromat here, a laundromat there, a laundromat here, pay for new equipment at a cash flow. Now the business is worth more. Combine them all together. Now you have a roll up of laundromats, so that is worth more. So now you've done 2 things to increase the multiple. Now you just sell it. So pay the bank the bank the money back that you borrowed, and now you have a cash to buy it. Do it do it again. Yeah. And I just I think realize wherever you are today, if you don't like where you are, you can change it. Right. There's a thousand things to do. There's just there's nothing that can't be figure out figured out. You're probably friends with Marie Forleo too, I would imagine. Do you know her? We we email. We haven't, you guys gotta meet each other. She she wants to she mentioned she wants to come on the podcast. She she she come she should come on your podcast with her I read the book. It's amazing. I gave her a testimony for it. It's called, Everything's Figureoutable. Right? Like, and it's such a great concept because the truth is that everything's figureoutable. You know, like Tony Robbins used to always say, like, anything you wanna do, somebody's already mastered it, and you can just model the master. Yeah. That is that is totally that's why I do a podcast. And and this is what you've done to get better at everything you do. Like, I know you're big you're huge in chess and, like, you studied the masters. Yeah. You probably should have studied people on how to be great at doing podcasts. Yeah. Yeah. And now you're studying people on how to be a comedian. Right? We've had tons of comedians on the podcast. Yeah. So that's great. Hey. I appreciate you having me on the show. I know you gotta wrap up. It's we're gonna go home and do our 4th July stuff. So Well, David, thanks once again. 2nd time on the podcast, or the first time was 5 years ago, I think. You know, the book is The Latte Factor. I definitely think this is you know, whether this is an intro to you or a conclusion to you, this is a great book for people to just pick up and read. It's a very quick read. It gets all of your principles. You know, I can go on about the automatic millionaire as well, but I also think people should just check out your website, davidbock.com. And, particularly, I like your your your 16, rules for financial health. Again, I think it would be really fun on a different occasion to have a a a devil's advocate sort of debate on this one. I'll I'll do that for you from Florence. Yeah. We'll do that over Skype. That'd be fun. You know? And the last thing before I forget because I'm so bad at pitching things. But before I forget, we've got a podcast on the Latte Factor. So your listeners can go over to the Latte Factor podcast. I did a very a stand alone podcast for this book. The first three chapters, you can listen to it for free. There's 8 podcasts there. It's all the Latte Factor with David Bach, and then, we have a website, the lattefactor.com, where there's a big book promotion. You buy the book. We give you, like, a free course I created called Start Late, Finish Rich. It's, like, 10 hours of content, and that's all at the lattefactor.com. And I will say and this we started talking about this before the podcast. I think what you should do is another podcast. Each episode's just 5 to 10 minutes. It's just you. And I think the podcast should be called the 500 most important rules of financial success. And you do an episode a day, 5 to 10 minutes for 500 days in a row. It sounds like a lot of work, but I I also go, like, you know It's just 5 to 10 minutes. You probably wake up in the morning thinking, you know what? I don't I don't really need to make make the bed. That was 15 seconds of my time or it takes waste 2 minutes of my time where I could be writing my first book. I'll take it up. I'll think about it. And then, you guys, let me know if you like that idea. Maybe I'll go wrong with that. James, you're awesome, buddy. It's good to see you. And, by the way Thanks, David. I brought you books for your kids. Oh, excellent. I'll sign them for your kids. Yeah. Thinking about getting health insurance or switching? With Irish Life Health, you'll get 1 month free on our my plan range. Search Irish Life Health, a better life with Irish Life Health. 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