Transcription
Have the privilege of having with me in studio today the one person that I can think of, and I know a lot of people in personal finance, who if they said, "Myron, I think you should do this," I would do it without question. I have with me the best-selling author of "What Would the Rockefellers Do?" and "Killing Sacred Cows," now "Money Unmasked." He's absolutely brilliant when it comes to everything personal finance. If you desire to create wealth, it's a pleasure to have in studio with me, none other than my friend, Garrett Gunderson. Garrett, glad to have you here today, brother.
It is such a pleasure.
Yeah.
Our last conversation was my favorite conversation that I've ever had around money and wealth. The space that you create, the way that you listen, the additional things that you say. And even listening to you this morning, you were teaching something that I was writing about yesterday that I was blown away because you were teaching straight from the Bible. And I was just like, "Oh, I'm so glad I'm here. I'm so glad I'm hearing this right now."
Wow. So cool.
Yeah. Like the interesting thing, and we were talking about this this morning, the interesting thing about principles is they are immutable. They've always been what they will always be, and they've always been that way. And so when two different people from two totally different parts of the world discover something around the same topic that's truth, oh, it's going to be the same truth.
In finance, we've yet to find something we disagree on.
100%. I concur. I literally concur. So it's interesting. I don't know if you know I tell people this or not. I'm so maybe I shouldn't even say this, but and maybe you're going to tell me, "Don't do that again." Hopefully not.
Okay. Anyway.
We'll find out.
We'll find out.
Yeah. So, like when I have people that I'm coaching who are in the financial services space, and they say, "Like, how do I get more clients? How do you get more customers?" I said, "Model Garrett Gunderson. Write financial books that teach financial literacy. Make them your client first before you introduce them to your insurance company, which is your vendor." So, I tell them to model you. And I don't know if I stated that accurately. And if you don't want me to tell people that anymore, I won't.
Keep telling them.
I... Okay.
Here's here's what happens.
Here's what happens.
I don't have any idea what he's about to say right now.
Financial professionals can license my content. So if we align philosophically and share the same values, then I'll write a forward. They can write a forward for my "Rockefeller's" book. And then every link inside of the book points to their website with our test that actually schedule the appointments for them. And every article I've ever written, they can put their name on, take my name off because in the world of abundance, you want to serve people. I don't necessarily need the credit, but I do like the cash. So, I'll take the cash.
I love that. I don't... I don't want the credit, but I'll take the cash.
It's really interesting. So, you said something. You said, "In the world of abundance." That's five very, very powerful words. In the world of abundance. One of the problems, if you're struggling financially right now, one of the problems that you're having is that you believe in infinite scarcity. And when you like, you believe that scarcity must be overcome. But the reality is, scarcity could not exist without abundance, but abundance can exist without scarcity. And I believe in the principle of infinite abundance. And here's, here's how I state the principle of infinite abundance: There's more than enough for everybody to have more than enough, and there'd still be more than enough left over. Stop thinking that you're in competition with other people for a limited amount of resources because there's not a limited amount of resources. In fact, there's an ex... You are the... God is the source. You are the resource. The stuff that you think is a resource is nothing more than an asset. It might be a depreciating asset. It might be an appreciating asset. It might be a self-replenishing asset. But it's just an asset. So stop... Don't buy into the lie that things that are valuable are scarce. It's one of the things that causes people not to find things that are abundant that are right in front of them. Would you agree with that?
100%. The first book that I ever wrote, and the first chapter in that book is called "The Finite Pie," which is the myth.
It is. It is a myth. And people think if one person takes too big of a slice, there's less pie for someone else. Not understanding... If we went back in time, come on. And we could see King Louis the 14th. He's living in the Palace of Versailles. And there's people today that are middle class that live a richer life than him because we have plumbing, for one.
There you go.
And refrigeration.
Refrigeration.
Indoor.
Yeah. Plumbing.
A variety of food.
Variety of food.
Air conditioning.
Yeah. Air conditioning. That was... We're on the same wavelength here. I mean, and and yet, and if you wanted music back then, you had to hire a quartet.
Right.
Anyone could just grab it like this. So we continue to have more wealth, not less.
And there was a philosopher, Thomas Malthus, who believed in scarcity and said that we would run out of food. At first, I was like, "Has he never heard of reproduction?" Like, animals reproduce, right? Plants grow again, right? And so he had a belief 400 years ago that we would run out of food at a much smaller population than we have today because he believed that resources were something that couldn't be replenished and that once someone had something, it was something the other person couldn't. It was only win-lose.
And that belief is nefarious because it has people believe that money has intrinsic value instead of people.
So good. And the thing is, people are the ones that have intrinsic value. Money is just a byproduct or a receipt for the value that's created so that we could store that energy and use it again. Because if I do something for someone that I don't know, and they're like, "How can I repay you?" Well, if we were in the bartering times, that would be very complicated because they'd have to... If they didn't have what I wanted, they'd have to find someone else, and it could be this very tedious, long type of transaction. But they could simply say, "I will give you this money." And I say, "Great. I'll take that money because now I can store that energy and I could tap into using someone else's energy." And in finance, unfortunately, in finance, people are being taught the way to wealth is to store more money, not deploy it.
It's so insane. It's so... That's so insane. It's... It's so interesting. So, you were talking about this limited pie thing. And so one of the principles that I share with people, I didn't say it the exact same way, but I said the exact same thing that you said, and that is, like, the economy is not a pie. And the reason we know the economy is not a pie is because God's ideal environment for man is not a bakery. God didn't put Adam and Eve in a bakery. He put them in a garden. And you may say, "Well, what's the difference between a bakery and a garden?" In a bakery, consumption creates lack. But in a garden, consumption creates the potential for reproduction. If I eat an apple, it exposes the seed. If I plant the seed, it doesn't grow an apple, it grows a tree. And so that's why we don't run out of food because we live in a world where God created an expanding and self-replenishing universe that reproduces more than we can consume. That's why a garden is God's ideal environment for man, not a bakery. And there's no such thing as an economic pie.
I love that. And I just wonder if financial people never read about the parable of the talents.
Um, many of them have not, I'm sure.
Right? Because the person that buries them is the slothful servant. And yet most people are taught, "Set it and forget it."
Right.
Does that make any sense? Save, sacrifice, defer, delay while that money rots because it's losing value because it's not deployed.
Yes. And it's losing value, and you're losing time while that money's not deployed. You're losing the time that you could be using that money to create more wealth. Like, in my "Trash Man to Cash Man" book, I said it like this: The primary purpose of money in the mind of a wealthy person is to turn it into more money. I like to hold on to my money long enough for it to get pregnant and have some babies. I want to have a money maternity ward. So, it's just giving birth, giving birth, giving birth, giving birth. I don't... I don't ever... And then I said this because I think I'm funny. Um, I don't ever spend the mama money. I only spend the baby money. So, so yeah, I... I agree with... And you... And you also talked about people think that accumulating, like, store, set it and forget it. It's always a mistake to think of money as a tool to be viewed versus a tool to be used. It works so much better. It's... It's like, I don't... Have you ever been to Israel? Because when you go to... You have been to Israel. If you go to Israel, it's amazing because at the north of Israel, you have the Sea of Galilee. Then you have the River Jordan that flows all the way down to the south, and it flows into the Dead Sea. Right? And the Dead Sea is interesting because fish can live in the River Jordan. Fish can live in the Sea of Galilee, but fish can't live in the Dead Sea. Now, why can't fish live in the Dead Sea? Well, that's right. It's salt sea, but it's a mineral... mineral-heavy mineral deposit. But here's the reason: Because the difference between the Dead Sea and the Sea of Galilee, the Sea of Galilee has inlets and outlets. The Dead Sea only has an inlet. It has no outlets. And when your money doesn't have an outlet, it becomes stagnant, and nothing can live in there, and nothing can reproduce.
So, let's break this down in financial terms because there's a balance sheet. A balance sheet is simply your assets versus your liabilities. That's your balance sheet.
Okay.
And most people are taught that net worth is this big indicator of wealth. But here's the thing: Nobody knows what your net worth is, and you can't buy anything with it. Yet so many people try to protect it at the expense of building the one that matters, which is your human life value, not your property value. So if you invest in yourself first to grow the exponential skill sets, allow you to serve, solve problems, and add value, you'll actually grow that balance sheet exponentially greater. But if you only look at the balance sheet, that's like the Dead Sea.
You have to look at the income statement.
That's your income versus your expenses. And if you're in a mindset of, "I've got to just scrimp and save," you start to minimize expenses. But there's more than one type of expense. And the expense most people miss is a productive expense. There are no budgets for productive expenses. A billionaire isn't going to say, "What's our budget for this?" They're going to say, "In the command center, what allows us to grow this?" And while it's growing, let's keep going with it. And a budgeter would say, "Well, I've got to cut back. I've got to reduce." And no one shrinks their way to wealth.
So even if someone...
Never has.
No. And even if someone were to have millions of dollars in their bank account, if they got there through the habit of sacrifice, they don't flip a switch one day and say, "Now I'm abundant. I'm finally going to enjoy my money." They continue to think, "What if I outlive it? What if the market doesn't perform? What if interest rates change? What happens with taxes?" Because they're not in control of the outcome of their income.
They're not in control of the outcome of their income. Say that. We are indoctrinated to accumulate while institutions accelerate.
Accumulation is...
And they accelerate with our money.
Exactly. So when they say, "It takes money to make money," it doesn't take their money to make money. It takes your money for them to make money. When they say, "High risk equals high return," you take the risk, they get the return. We'd have a revolution overnight if people had to write the check for the expenses that come out of their funds rather than just have it automatically taken out without their knowing.
Because people go, "Wait, you mean I lost money and I'm still sending you a check?" Why?
Right.
But we've lost accountability because if we get stuck in net worth mindset, we neglect the accountability of cash flow. And income statement is about cash flow. And the way that we look at it is, how can we get our assets to create income so that our money is having babies while we're sleeping, right? But where people get really confused is they think, "I've got to minimize my liability so I have less expenses." But guess what? That's not true with a productive expense. The productive expense that most people don't take the leap towards is investing in themselves because...
They go, "What if I'm not good enough? What if it doesn't work out?" Well, I could just have that money show up in the bank account. And all of the indoctrination is retirement plans. Just fund that. And then one day, someday, when you're too old to enjoy it, you can finally enjoy it.
But you... You don't enjoy life along the way. And if you don't enjoy life along the way, you cannot be wealthy.
Well, because wealth is about one thing: your ability to be present. And when you're present, you can connect, you can create, you can listen to God, you can do all the things that matter. But in finance, they're saying, "If you'll just do the things that you hate now, you'll be able to live a life that you love one day." But one day and someday never comes.
It never comes.
And so this accumulation doctrine says, "Hey, wealth is a function of how much money can you set aside." And when they tell you, "It takes money to make money," I want you to realize it doesn't take money to make money. It takes relationships and ideas. It takes value and exchange. Then they tell you, "High risk equals high return." But you actually get returns by learning how to mitigate risk through knowledge and skill. And then they tell you, "In it for the long haul." But you don't have to wait for the long haul if you become financially independent, which is, "How do I get my assets to create income? How do I make sure that my liabilities are as productive as possible?" Because you don't get assets without liabilities.
Oh, that's so good.
You don't get assets without liabilities. You don't get a home without property tax, right? Because the law of polarity makes it so. For every action, there's an equal and opposite reaction. For every negative, there's a positive. Every positive, there's a negative. So, you have to be aware of that. So, if you know that, you can... You can literally make adjustments to what you're doing.
For what you just said.
Well, and this is where I think that you are the ultimate philosopher is you turn expenses into profit centers.
Profit centers. That's... That's one of my main mottos. Like, if I can't turn this expense into a profit center, maybe I shouldn't have this expense. Because you can turn any expense into a profit center. This building that I bought four years ago, five years ago, four or five years ago, I paid $625,000 for this building. But I record my YouTube videos here now. This... My two YouTube channels pay me between $50 and $75,000 a month. This mortgage on this on this building is $6,000 a month. So...
Tax write-offs, appreciation, and... and... and the building pays for itself. It's an expense that pays. I just bought a... I just bought a... a $2.5 million house. Put another half a million dollars in it. Um, I won't mention the size of the mortgage, but it's large. But one of the things I did in that house is I bought a golf simulator. The golf simulator, for before I could put the golf simulator in, had to have a contractor come knock out one of the back walls to make the room big enough to put the simulator in. So, just getting the room ready was about $10,000. And then the golf simulator was $128,000. Like, "Well, how's that go? How you going to turn that expense into a profit center?" Easy. I'm... I'm literally in the process of starting a golf channel, a golf YouTube channel, which will eventually pay for that entire house.
Well, and here's the thing. If someone's has a high W2 income, they get might be paying 37%, you know, federal income tax. But let's break down what Myron's doing here. He's got this building. You can cost-segregate it for depreciation, which accelerates the depreciation, which would offset other income. It will appreciate in value, which you don't pay tax on the appreciation other than property tax. There's no income tax because it's a capital gain asset. If he chose to sell this, if down the road he said, "Hey, Garrett, I'm looking to sell this building." I can say, "You're one of the more charitable guys I know. So, what if instead of you just selling it outright, we donated it to your favorite charity? Is there a church that you would love to donate this to?" He says, "Yes." I'm like, "Okay, we're going to donate it to the church. You're then going to sell the property. It's going to fund a trust, but it's a charitable remainder trust. So, you're the first beneficiary. The church is the second beneficiary. So, you pay zero tax on that sale. You actually get a partial tax deduction you can take in that year and up to five years afterwards against a certain percentage of your income. And then what happens is you get a lifetime income off of the trust that you can invest. And when you die, you just have to leave around 10% to the charity or more, depending on how you want to do it and how much tax advantage you want. But essentially, we could boost your cash flow 30% upon the sale by using a charitable trust. And because you already have life insurance, the insurance will replenish tax-free to your family. The building or the funds in the trust will go to the church, and you will have spent 30% more than if you would have sold it outright while you got the write-off.
I would have spent 30% more or made 30%?
You would have... You would have been able to enjoy 30% more cash flow because less tax and the full amount for you.
This is why Garrett is my financial dude. Y'all get it? Okay, now y'all picking up what I'm putting down. So, like stuff like that. Now, I'm... I'm relatively savvy financially. I mean, I ain't no dummy now, but I didn't know that.
Right.
And the... And the issue is, a lot of people don't. And if you're not in a place where you're like, "Well, I don't really have a way to do that," the seed has now been planted. The apple has been eaten. The seed is there. So, now you can say that's a possibility. Because I'll have people come to me, "Hey, I just got a letter of intent to sell my business." I'm like, "I wish you would have got with me before because we could have done certain things." Like right now, I have clients that are going, "Hey, we're starting a new business." I'm like, "Great. I want you to consider a C-corporation." Which most people go, "Double taxation? It's more expensive." Well, the rule is there's a thing called Section 1202. That if you own that business for at least three years, you can sell it for up to $15 million tax-free. In three years, you can sell it for half of that. Within five years, the full $15 million tax-free per partner. We know Myron has family members, so those all count. We can also set up a trust for you. That would be another partner because you don't own that. The trust does. But then when the trust is funded, you could benefit from proceeds of the trust. So, I just had a client that sold $70 million tax-free because they set up the C-corporation.
Now, most people are thinking about tax strategy as a, like, "Hey, can I write off my home office? Can I rent out my home for 14 days for the Augusta rule?" Like...
Those things are helpful.
But the bigger picture things come from coordination.
And the big difference I saw by studying wealthy people. When I was really young, I was in a coal mining town. My great-grandfather was a coal miner. Both my grandfathers and my dad. And their belief was money was something you had to hold on to because you didn't know if the mine was going to go on strike, and you didn't know when the next dollar was going to come. And my great-grandfather was separated from his wife because he couldn't put food on the... put food on the table in southern Italy. So he came to America while she was pregnant and didn't meet his daughter till she was a couple years old. So that impacts you at a cellular level. Like, it's a folklore that gets handed down for generations. Like, "You got to hold on to what you got." But that's a form of scarcity. And there's no greater destroyer of wealth than scarcity.
100%.
No luck. Go ahead.
That... I get excited because it reminds me of something. Of course. But it reminds me of the biblical principle that the very first temptation in the history of the world was the temptation to focus on lack. So Adam and Eve are in the Garden of Eden, and God says to them, "Of every tree of the garden, thou mayest freely eat." So, every and freely. Are those lack words or abundance words? Those are abundance words. And then, um, but God said, "But of the tree that's in the midst of the garden, thou shalt not eat of it, for the day thou eatest thereof, thou shalt surely die." So the tree, how many is the...
One.
So they had everything for free except one thing. And then it says in Genesis chapter 3, "Now the serpent was more subtle than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made. And he said unto the woman, 'Yea, hath God said, Ye shall not eat of every?'" So he added the word "not" and took out the word "freely." Does that change the meaning? Absolutely. And the woman said, "We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden." She took out the word "every" and the word "freely." Which God said, "Of every tree, freely." She said, "We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden." That's not what God said. He said, "Of every tree, eat for free." Okay. "We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden, but of the tree that's in the midst of the garden, God has said, 'You shall not eat of it, neither shall you touch it, lest you die.'" Well, God never said, "Don't touch it." But she made the same mistake that humans make today. She thought her willpower was going to help her not eat the fruit. Satan, the serpent, knew that he didn't have to get her to touch it in order to eat it. All he had to do was get her to pay attention to it in the first place. And he said, "You shall not surely die. For God doth know that the day you eat thereof, then your eyes will be opened, and you shall be as gods, knowing good and evil." And then he says this, "And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food." So what happened? Paying attention, focusing on the lack. The only thing she lacked was that one tree, but she started focusing on the lack. She lost sight of all of her abundance. And it says that the tree that... that tree of knowledge of good and evil that they weren't supposed to eat, the only thing they lacked was in the middle of the garden. Which means in order to even get to it, she had to walk past and ignore all of the abundance she had just to get to the things she lacked. It literally... You are 100% right. Nothing perpetuates lack like scarcity. And financial planning promulgates scarcity. It says, "Save 10% of your income through budgeting, through reduction. Wait for 30 years before you enjoy it. And if you didn't start early enough, shame on you."
Right.
So, it's coming from guilt and shame.
And then what it has to do is go like, "Hey, I feel behind." So, people do one of two things.
They tighten down even more, creating more constraint, frustration, which is very difficult in a marriage. They start blaming the partner for spending too much money and vilifying them. And a lot of the spending is coming from a reaction to this notion of scarcity.
Or they just start working so hard that they're distant. And here, hard work with the wrong philosophy still leads to lack. Hard work is part of the problem because people are working in the wrong things. They're trading time for money instead of using their time to build skill.
So good. And it's because they don't want to spend that money on themselves because they're taught they have to put that money in a retirement plan that's locked away till 59 and a half, that they think they're going to save tax. And here's imagine this: They say you can live off 70% of your pre-retirement income. Now...
I don't know about you, but I never want to live on less than what I'm making now. I want to continue to have more because the luxury once enjoyed is a necessity.
100%.
You know.
It becomes a new standard. And so it... It's coming from... Financial planning is somewhat communistic because it says the ends justify the means. You living a life of scarcity and lack and the grind, and you know, investing in everyone's dreams but your own. Because...
When you put money in the stock market before you funded your own skill set...
Well...
You're saying, "I don't trust myself. I'm not good enough. I'll give it to the people that use really big words and Wall Street." Which... Why would we trust Wall Street with anything?
Well...
Would you take your grandkids to Wall Street daycare?
No.
No.
No.
No.
You getting on Wall Street Airlines?
No.
Me neither. But we somehow give the wolves of Wall Street our money...
Because they scare us enough that we think that we're not capable. And when we lose financial confidence, we be... we get into financial bondage. Because we say, "I don't know." And we relegate it, not delegate it. We hand it over, cross our fingers, hope for the best, and miss out on the most precious moments of life. Because if you follow that system, and they say, "When you're retired, now you can go live this great life," you will have shown all of your family members that work the top priority, not them. And now when you have the money to take them somewhere, you don't have the connection, and they watched you, so they're working too hard to actually enjoy it.
Wow.
Well, real talk right there. Bro, it's interesting that you said that, um, that they lack the confidence, the financial confidence. But the reason they lack the financial confidence or, um, I think you said they lack the financial confidence is because they lack the financial competence. You didn't learn about how money works so you could learn how to work your money. Like most people have been taught to work hard for money and have not been taught how to have money work hard for them. The whole idea, "I work." I'm... I'm a hardworking guy. When I'm working, I'm working hard. And by hard, I mean intentionally and intensely while I'm working. I'm just not going to work all the time. I'm just not doing that. Like, I mean, you know, it's 12 noon. This is a long day for me. Right. And... and I... and I work sometimes when I'm not here. But my life is not consumed with work. My life is consumed with life. People ask, "What do you do for a living?" Can I ask you a better question than that? What do you do while you're living?
That's way more important than what you do for a living. But maybe the reason you don't know what you do while you're living because you don't have a time to do anything while you're living because you're too busy doing what you do for a living. And often financial institutions and marketing are telling you the definition of wealth instead of you choosing what wealth is for yourself.
100%.
And if they're choosing it, it will be a negative or scarce or, you know, there was this commercial that Fidelity used to have where someone was walking and they... the Fidelity green line... and they see this collector car, and they... the music, like they love it. And then out comes the adviser. "Uh, uh, uh, stand on the green line." My first question is, maybe they know how to buy collector's cars and sell them for more than what they bought it for.
Exactly. Maybe they buy a collector's car and actually goes up in value instead of buying a car that goes down in value the second you take it off the lot because it's like just something that nobody really cares about. Anyone could get at any time. And so they discount the investor DNA of the individual.
Mmm-hmm.
I have a... I have a client that when I met him, he was reading, uh, Dave Ramsey and Susie Orman books, and he's worth $100 million. And so he and his wife were like, "I think we just need to cut back on our travel." And I... and I was like, "Cool. Uh, let's talk more about that." And then they're like, "We're really upset because they had a million dollars in their 401k, and it had been down 10% that year." And they're like, "It's so frustrating." I'm like, "So, you lost, you know, $100,000 of a $100 million net worth. What percentage is that?" And they calculate. I'm like, "But how much time do you think about it?" And it was like, every day consuming their thoughts because they're losing money. And I said, "You own so much art that is world-renowned that you could sell for a ton of money. You are really good with, like, you know, structures and your business." And so he ended up cashing that out, investing in a coffee business that just got a $70 million valuation, which is a lot better than what the 401k did during that same time because it was who he was. And I... I just had to say, "Stop being afraid. Stop putting money into things that don't make sense to you." I... I personally, I'm in finance, and I've been since June of 1998, but I have zero dollars in the stock market because I own a business. And if I have a vision for that business to change how finance is played, to help people that are on the way up that would never get the sophisticated advice for the uber-wealthy, and say, "I'm here to help you, not the people that are already getting the amazing help," then I have too big of a vision to waste the money on someone else. Like, when I say someone else, I mean, like, Apple's not going... We're flushed with cash. Let's put it in Microsoft.
They would never do that.
Right. But we're told to diversify outside of our knowledge.
That word, diversify.
And prematurely divorcify our money so that we have no idea what's going on, which loses confidence for us. And when we listen to the people because they sound so intelligent, and they're using words that are very confusing, and that kind of jargon, we're like, "I guess I'm just going to trust this person." But the problem is, if you don't learn yourself, not having the financial knowledge is a permanent penalty.
You lose every day without the financial knowledge. But let me give you the best news: 80% of what you think you have to know in finance is irrelevant, and you don't need to know it. Because once you know your investor DNA, once you have a vision you can dedicate your life to, once you can start to invest in skill sets, whether you're employed by someone else or whether you own your own business, you go, "I've got to focus on making more money first." And the way to do that is to exponentially grow my skills. Then you learn how to keep more of what you make. There's four eyes to do that. Too many people tip the government. That's the IRS. Too many people overpay interest. That's the second eye. The third is investments. There's hidden fees that confiscate wealth, or there's not downside protection. And we're talking about a less than 1% fee can make hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars of difference because of the compounding cost of the fee. Like, an example, if you're in an index fund versus a managed fund, after 20 years, 92% of the time, the index fund beat the managed fund before the fees.
Just... It did better than the managed fund. When you add the 1% fee, you're 22% behind.
Wow.
After 20 years. Over 10 years, 85% of the time the index beats, you know, the... the managed fund because there's a shorter period of time. There's a few that beat it. But...
What if you had a 2% fee? You're 54% behind.
That's crazy.
Because that's compounding cost. And then the last eye is insurance. A lot of people just have duplicate coverage, improper structure, inefficient. They're... They're paying for inconsequential things like low deductibles and not having consequential things like umbrella policies that transfer catastrophic risk. And so those four eyes: IRS, interest, investments, and insurance. You... In the investment world, you probably only need to know 10% of what you think you need to know.
I know enough about options trading to know I would never do it because I don't play win-lose games. One person bets it goes up, the other person bets it goes down. One person gets the money, the other person doesn't. I'm in the world of value creation. How do I win? How does whoever give the money to win? And how does the market win? And if it doesn't pass that test, I don't need to know about it.
So good, Garrett. So good. Win-win all the way around. If everybody doesn't win, nobody wins ultimately.
That's the abundant thought. And it's how we have so much more wealth today than even a few hundred years ago. And I know there's still plenty of poverty because poverty is a consciousness, and it's a state of mind, and there's still lessons for people to learn. But there's far less of it today, even with a much bigger population, as a percentage.
Right.
And poverty is not an external trap. Poverty is an internal trap.
Yeah.
And what I mean by that is, I was born into a poor family. I was born, grew up poor. I've never... I never saw my parents buy a new car the whole time I was growing up in their house. They had seven kids. Like, there's no... There's no universe in which you're going to get me to believe... You could not convince me if you had a hundred thousand years that, "Oh, but there are people who are poor that they can't do anything about it." Maybe there are some people in some parts of the world where the governments are uber-corrupt that don't have anything they can do about it. Maybe. I don't... I don't even know that. I know that possibility exists. So I'm not saying it's not the case. But in the United States of America, if... if you think the reason you're living in lack is because of something outside of you, you are delusional. This is... This is where people are so delusional. Is there... I can't tell you how many people are saying, "Billionaires shouldn't exist."
That's insane.
If we take billionaires away, and then they also say they should give away all their money. My first question is, where?
Where? Because if they earned the money, they're the ones most competent to figure out how to deploy the money. And if they were to just give it away, who knows if they could handle that windfall because they didn't develop the skill set.
Skill set. 100%. You know, when people say, "Well, you're rich. You should give away your money." I say, "Okay, cool. So, basically, you're telling me that I should give my money to a cause that you care about." Here's my question: How come you believe that I should give my money away, but you don't believe in the cause enough to learn how to create enough wealth for you to give your money to it? It's so easy for us to know what somebody else should do with their money because all we have to do is say something. And it's easier to talk a good game than it is to play a good game. Had a... Had a really close friend say, "I can't believe you bought a Bentley. You could have given that money to charity." And I said, "Well, who's to say that I can't give money to charity and own a Bentley? Like, why... why is this mutually exclusive?" And you know, he's like, "Well, that's money is now gone because it went to the car." I'm like, "Yeah, but I also, if I got rid of a car and didn't drive, I would make less money for one." Yeah, it doesn't have to be a Bentley, but I do like rewarding people for greatness instead of mediocrity. Anyone can make something worse and cheap. And, you know...
Anyone can make something worse.
I... I made the mistake one time in my life. We were just, uh, you know, we were overleveraging real estate, and I was like, my wife's like, "Let's go to the Black Friday sales for Christmas." One time I've ever done this. So, we set an alarm for 3:00 a.m. I didn't know that you had to... out at the front of the store. And so, we go, and it's back... This shows how long ago it was. We go to Walmart, too. I'm... I mean, and... and we went in there. I bought a CD player, a portable CD player from Westinghouse. It was $20, and it worked for two hours, and it no longer worked again. So, it wasn't saving money because the time is valuable because the thing is a piece of junk and doesn't work. And so, this is a big, big deal with people's money is if you can actually pay the people that are the very best at things, you get exponential return versus someone that's doing something cheaply.
100%. And you know what's else is interesting about that? Is when you... Now, I know y'all are going to find this difficult to believe, but I'm going to tell you. I... I learned this. I... I learned it kind of. I wasn't looking for it. I just kind of stumbled upon it. When you splurge to do something for yourself that's way... When I say "way," I mean universes outside your current spending comfort zone. You all know we all have a current spending comfort zone, right? And so when you decide you're going to do something that's way outside your current spending comfort zone, which most people never do because it's outside our current spending comfort zone. But I made a decision to do something that was way outside my current spending comfort zone because I didn't know how much it cost, but I decided I was going to do it anyway before investigating the cost. And that was when I decided I'm not flying commercial anymore. I had no earthly idea how much it cost to fly private. I had never looked into it. I had never even really thought about it before other than to think about, "Oh yeah, some people fly private." But I had a couple of unpleasant experiences on... We'll inconvenience you at our convenience airlines.
You say which one's that? Name one.
"We're not happy until you're not happy."
Exactly. Exactly. And boy, that is so true. And... and I just said, "I'm not doing this to myself anymore. This is dumb. I like me. I'm not going to punish myself because I want to go somewhere and serve people. I'm flying private from now on." Now, I had no idea how much it cost to fly... fly private. So, I had an event coming up in a couple of weeks in Las Vegas, Nevada. I live in Tampa, Florida. I said, "Okay, well, I've got a friend who has a jet." He used to have a jet. He didn't have it anymore. I'm like, "Hey, dude. Um, Gary, you got a jet, don't you?" "Well, I don't have a jet, but I have access to one." "Okay, I need to fly me and some of my clients, some of my team to Las Vegas, Nevada." And I'm thinking, "Can't cost more than $25, $30,000 round trip." He says, "Yeah, I can... we can make that happen." I said, "Cool." He said, "It's going to be $60,000." I said, "It's going to be how much?" And then he said to me, "Yeah, you got to put your big boy pants on if you're going to fly private." Now I'm mad. Why are you mad, man? I only have big boy pants. I only have big boy pants. Get the jet. So, I decided to do that. And I had two choices. I can either take some of the money that I have and pay for this jet and all the other jet rides I'm going to be taking because I'm not flying private anymore. When I make a decision, it... it wasn't a choice. It was, "I'm done." So, and I had one little caveat unless I'm flying internationally. The only airline that I will fly internationally on anymore, at least that I know of right now, is United Arab Emirates. The rest of them, I could care less.
I already knew what you'd say when you said...
Right. Yeah. Yeah. It's like... It's like flying private for one-tenth the cost. First class in Emirates is like flying private for one-tenth the cost. Anyway, so, so I decided, okay, I can take my money that I've already worked for and take it out of play that's making me money, and I could just go pay for this trip to Las Vegas. I said, "I'm not doing that." I'm just going to make an offer. So, I created a new offer just... I created an offer because now I know how much private air travel costs. I made an offer. I created an offer that I only use for private air travel.
Expenses become a profit center.
Expenses become a profit center. And I made that offer, and it was a $200,000 offer. Two people bought it. Then I made it again at a live event. 16... I told them I was raising the price, and I was raising the price. 16 people bought it. I made... generated initially, um, $3.6 million from that offer. That year, I only spent $1.7 million flying private. So, while other people were paying to fly commercial, I was getting paid to fly private. Now, here's... here's... here's the big takeaway, though. It was the making the decision to buy something that was outside my current spending comfort zone that gave me the ability to tap into the level of creativity that was necessary to create an offer that could pay for my private air travel. I've spent since that time probably $6 million on flying private flights, and I... That's terrible. How could you spend? Might have been terrible for you. It wasn't terrible for me. And... but I've generated that offer has made me $14 million.
This is right back to the balance sheet, assets, liabilities. Build your human life value such that you could make an offer like that, and then you get to turn that liability into income.
Because without liabilities, there aren't income. Yes, a liability directly associates to an expense, but productive expenses are one. It's the destructive expenses that people have to get rid of.
Exactly. It's the vices that are out of control. It's the... the things that they use to escape. It's borrowing to consume. Those are the destructive expenses.
So good, Garrett. So good.
So, but you... but it's just...
Good, that you demonstrated with a real story exactly what we're talking about. Exactly what we're talking about.
And and so when I look at a liability on my balance sheet, I go, okay, if that's a constraint or liability, how can I be resourceful to turn that into an asset or give connect it to the asset? How can that asset then create income? And this is the game. If your assets are creating enough income to cover your lifestyle, every active dollar you earn can build more assets, and you get to be more creative because you go, I want to create this thing, but it might take longer than you expect or you're not sure how it's going to go or all the things that might have normally been an escapism. You're like, it won't change what we eat. It won't change what we drive. It won't change what we wear. It won't change any of that kind of stuff. So now you have the freedom to swing for the fences towards your vision because extraordinary vision is created profit could be mimicked and modeled, but extraordinary, you know, vision is created from someone's intuition. It comes from their mind. It comes from the divine purpose, and they, when they bring it into existence, it may have never existed before. So you can't necessarily validate it. But if you're financially independent, it's okay if it takes longer or if you shoot for the moon and you don't get all the way there. You're going to be so much further ahead than the person that only lived by a goal. Hey, I've got this goal. So good. I'm going to accomplish this goal. You could do on your own. And there's small where a vision requires other people's help to support you. It's exponential. So you need other.
And this is the thing about billionaires. Billionaires know three things that I, and when I spoke to 20 of them, I watched it firsthand. They're all billionaires in the room, 20 of them, but they're all raising money. They have the money, but they're raising money for their ideas. And they're using other people's money, other people's time, and other people's ability. So, good. They're not going, "Okay, I'm going to just do this all myself." So, because if you want something done right, you got to do it yourself. And I'm and I and I and I'm just going to work out. I'm going to work harder than anyone else in the world is going to work. Well, you miss out on all the joy and richness of life. Yes. Yes.
It's interesting that you said, um, that's the game, like when you were talking about, um, like turning at, um, um, expenses into income, etc., etc. That's the game. See, if you don't understand, poor people and middle-class people work for money. Rich people play games for money. And then we play the money game. And if you don't know how to play the game, I promise you, you are being played by the game. Yeah, that's the game when people are being played is the opposite of the other game. Not different, the opposite. So when you give money to an institution, they're in the game of cash flow, but they tell you to play the game of accumulation. Opposite. They tell you to take risk, but if you've gotten a loan recently, when you go get a mortgage, they want a down payment. If you don't make a big enough down payment, they want private mortgage insurance. That's for them. They want an appraisal. That's for them, but they make you pay for it. Right? They want seasoned money, which is a certain amount of money in the bank account. They want a certain credit score. These are all ways for them to mitigate and manage risk. That way, if you default, they own the real estate, but they're going to make sure, are you qualified to get this real estate? I don't care if you found the best real estate deal in the world. You've got you've got, you know, millions of dollars of equity in this thing, but if you are not showing up properly on a cash flow report or you don't have a good credit score, they don't want the real estate. They're in the cash game. So good.
And so we have to recognize, okay, if they're playing the game of cash flow, why don't we play the game of cash flow? So, why not play the game of cash flow? And and people say things that are erroneous, but I understand why they say it. And so I'll break that down. They'll say, "Those who understand interest earn it. Those who don't pay it." But what they're leaving out is the people that make the most money pay a lot more interest than other people because it gives them access to assets they wouldn't have otherwise had, like buying a business. And we're in, we're really kind of backwards in this country right now where anyone could get a student loan regardless of what they're going to school for. It's insane. It, it, they just sign up, they get the loan, they don't understand it could be negative amortization, which means if they're making a payment, it could still be going up in balance because the interest isn't covering the entire amount that's owed, right? They're they're paying half of the interest, so it's getting added to the back of the loan. They're like, "I've been paying on this for so long." Yet, if you're owning a, if you're going to start a business and you're brand new, it is really hard to get that loan. But at least you can bankrupt out of it if you make a mistake. You can't bankrupt out of a student loan, which means that we're putting a lot of onerous on these kids that didn't know what they were getting into at an early age. You can get a student loan at 18. You can't even get to a bar at 18. You can't even rent a car at 18. You can't, you know, like there's all these things that you can't do, but they're saying, "Sure, take this money to go when you don't even know your major." So I think that, but the way that that works in finance, there's a lot of people that borrow to invest and they have no business doing it because they don't know what they're investing in. Right? They heard about some investment from someone who isn't even that connected to it and the story sounds so compelling and you got to realize most money is lost through poor, through masterful storytelling that's not true. Well, it's like, "Oh, that's a good story." And why do we do it? Because we, we're behind and we want to get ahead and we want to get lucky and we just hope that this is the thing. And then guess what? It ends up being a lot of bitterness and anger and frustration and judgment. And then what happens is people get stuck in their head being like, "How could I have been so stupid and I should never try this ever again because I could hurt my family?" And then they just really get in that lack of confidence. And what it does is it creates uncertainty. And uncertainty is the enemy to happiness. 1,000%.
So, I have so many questions and so many comments, but here's the qu here's the question I want to ask you. I know you wrote Killing Secret Cows, which I thought was fantastic. And What Would the Rockefellers Do, which is also fantastic, but you have a new book out called Money Unmasked. Yeah, this one took me seven years. I haven't read that one yet, but I'm looking forward to it. Oh, it took you seven years. How long did it take you to write the other two? Um, well, Killing Sacred Cows, I, I wasn't confident in my skills yet. So, I hired a ghostwriter. Okay. And but Money Unmasked, I, I, I just decided I'm a writer. I'm going to do the writing. And which meant I got to learn the lessons personally and go through it. So, that's why it took so long. It's like, oh, because it's really about the two forms of scarcity. Playing not to lose, which is the, you know, people that are either in a miser mindset or overly conservative where they're so analytical that they can't take action, or the more tricky one, playing to win. Playing to win is always about the future, never enjoying the present. So, it's still a losing game because it's like one day, someday. But the entire premise of the book is if you design a game worth playing, you've already won. Mmm, so good. That the win is actually in the work and the journey, not just the destination, which goes against financial planning that says the ends justify the means. I'm like, no. It's all about the process. What if you built a life that you love? What if you created the life you didn't want to retire from? And the very first question in the book, is interesting because my own mentors asked me this question, never having read the book. The first question is, "What would you do with a billion dollars?" That's the that's the opening line of the book. Because it's super confronting if you're in what I call the consumer condition, where you're looking to take more from the world than you give to it, which is a form of scarcity. It breaks your brain because you're like, "How could I spend a billion dollars?" But if you're in the producer paradigm, where you're looking to create more value in the world than you take from it, you go, "What kind of value would I have to create to do something with that billion dollars?" And it used to haunt me in my 20s when I had asked that question, and then one day I just realized a billion dollars is small if we're going to transform the financial industry. It's insignificant. It's just a start. But when I was thinking about houses and cars and, you know, whatever, a billion dollars was too big. So that's the beginning question. And then it goes through in that book and and helps us heal our relationship with money. So good. And when you can heal your relationship with money, you see it as an asset and an ally, not an enemy. You stop lying to yourself. And so good.
It's I, I'm not judging anyone lying about money. It's just what we've been trained in society. We've been trained at this layer to protect ourselves by saying things that are not true, but we don't actually, we don't believe them deep down, but they're subtle. So, it's not like we feel like we're lying. Like I have people that unintentionally lie to me all the time because of this protective nature, but that protection is actually preservation. It's, it actually prevents wealth. It doesn't actually support it. Because people will tell me, "I don't need this. I don't need that. I don't need this." I'm like, "What does need have to do with it? What do you want?" Right? And they're telling me what they don't need because they're embarrassed of where they're at. Because so much of the money story is guilt and shame driven and scarcity driven. And what I want people to do is if you could find just one person you trust in the world. Like if Myron had any of this mindset, I don't think he does. He's done all the work, but he says he trusts me. So that would be the most important thing for them to trust me with is if you're telling yourself something that you don't ever speak out loud to anyone else. If it's the own recess of your mind where you're like, you know, uh, I, I, I don't think I'm capable. I don't think I'm valuable enough. I don't think I'm worthy. Like whatever those stories are, if you are saying them, but then you have a different story that you're telling other people, that disconnection is where the lie exists and it's where the trap exists. And it's this simple and this hard. When you find someone that you can just say it, it lightens because it's no longer trapped in your head. So good. And here's the bigger piece. Then we can peel back the third layer, which is the blind spot. It's the stuff that you don't even see or understand that's actually governing where you think you can go with money. And you'll never get past it unless you remove it. So, it's more about how we remove it than it is about doing more work. It's just recognizing what we can't see. Well, how do we do that? You have to talk out loud and find someone you trust about the things that you're saying about yourself. And here's what some people might say is if I can't provide for my family, then maybe I'm not lovable. Because people confuse love and money. And the unmasked part is if we stop seeing everything as money and we see people, we actually make more money. Because if you love people and use money, that's the formula. If you use people and love money as your priority, that's out of whack and that's where it's inauthentic and that's where people feel pressured or pushed or there's something off about that person. And part of it's when you actually open up and share, people are more endeared to you that are the people you want to spend time with. They don't judge you more. They just feel more human around you and they trust you more because you're not faking. I, when I find someone who's extraordinarily arrogant, I have a lot of compassion for them because they're just really insecure. And what they're saying is, "I want you to love me more than I love myself." Wow. And I have a very simple, like if someone's really arrogant, I just go, "Where can I become this person's biggest fan? Where can I root for them so they don't have to ask to be rooted for? I could just volunteer it." So good. Because everybody else is labeling them for their insecurity. And when we label someone, we have them live into that through our own eyes and we actually create that energy. Part of the reason when I come up here with Myron, it feels magical is because the space that he creates is from gratitude. It's from abundance. It's from helping me grow and level up and not him being like insecure and say, "Well, I'm Myron and you're Garrett and I've got more followers." It's like there's a beautiful spot, but you got to realize there's a lot of that out there. I used to host a financial study group in my early 20s and people would come to it because I was so young and they want to know how I was doing this much business and I would share everything. I held nothing back. I would be like, "I'm doing this and this and you know what, if you want to come watch, you could just pay to shadow me and you can see exactly what I'm doing and here's, you know, the whole system." And people would come up to me. This one guy, he's like, "I just don't understand why you do that." I'm like, "What do you mean?" He's like, "I would never share that." I'm like, "How successful are you right now? Are you where you want to be?" He goes, "No." I'm go, "That's exactly why." I'm like, "Everyone comes up and they go, 'Do you know about this tax strategy? I want to share it with you.'" Because they want to give back. And part of the reason why people don't give fully is because if our question in the back of our mind, deep in the recesses, is, "Am I lovable?" Then we protect. So, we never put ourselves out there. And if we don't put our best self out there and we get rejected, they didn't reject us because it wasn't the best foot forward. Or if we don't fully give our heart over to our spouse and just fully immerse in love, then we always have this excuse of why it didn't work out. But it didn't work out because we were never abundant enough to give of who we are. So you just, if you start giving more, you get more. And yes, there will be those people that come in and they only take. You just get to draw boundaries. You know, I think you can love someone and not like them and you can love them from a distance. But if you start souring on humanity because someone took advantage of you, the first thing I want you to recognize is when someone does that, it's actually not personal. It feels really personal, but it's their own issues that have been manifested that you happen to be in front of. And whatever they're blaming you for is their own projection of insecurity that they haven't handled. So, this is the simplest advice I can give. If you don't forgive, you become a victim. If you forgive and love, it doesn't mean you have to put yourself back in the situation or circumstance, but now you're free to create instead of complain.
Well, so good, Garrett. So good. I, wow. Yeah. Yeah. That's clappable. That's probably, um, and like, y'all know I don't, I, I don't, I don't hype people up. I don't hype me up. Um, but I'm going to say that I would recommend that anything that you can get from Garrett as far as a book is concerned or a course is concerned. Like, I am personally, he's my guy. We're gonna be doing a whole lot of my personal finance stuff, looking at my own personal finance stuff because I, I used to be in financial services. I know financial services people are salespeople. Right? And there's nothing wrong with being a salesperson, but I don't want a salesperson who's broke selling me a wealth client. Yeah. Actually, if they go to gargunners.com/myronbooks, you get Money Unmasked, Killing Sacred Cows, and What Rocks. I think it's my tax. That's what it says over there. That's the other thing. If they go my tax, then you get My Tax Navigation. Oh, you got two Myrons on your website. Got two. Just going for it. You know, I have two on my website. What's better than one? It's two. That's great, guys. So, so Garrett, if, if you're going to share something with our studio audience and our YouTube audience, like some some final words, and the only reason we're having final words is because I'm hungry. I'm going to be, I'm going to be really transparent. I'm hungry. I gotta get brother man, gotta do something. Okay. Um, so, um, if you had some some final words you would share with our studio audience and our YouTube audience, what would they be? If you choose the path of investing in yourself, there's going to be ups and downs. You'll make mistakes, it's part of the process. You just have to understand that you're worth it and you're valuable. And don't let someone else who's really knowledgeable in an area that you're not make you feel lesser. And don't discount what you're great at because other people can't do it. Like I just see all these rappers want to be basketball players. All these basketball players want to be rappers. I'm like, just embrace what you're great at instead of looking at what you're not great at and realize when you have a lot of money, you get to leverage and utilize their talent instead of do it yourself, which means more flow, more energy, and more growth. So if you try to grow your money through the scarcity mindset of setting it and forget it and delaying and deferring and sacrificing, your money could grow. But if you don't grow with it, that gap is called risk and it will actually reap the rewards, not you. Someone else will have gotten that advantage. But if you grow yourself and grow your money, that's where it's sustainable. So good. Like I, I can't, I can't say anything on top of that other than this, what he just said. Boy, that was great. One more time. Give it up for Garrett Gunderson, y'all. Thank you.