Transcription
Financial advisers do not know how to make you wealthy. The average financial adviser makes $111,000 a year. They have no personal wealth, which is a $340,000 profit after 40 years. By the way, you have to pay income taxes on it. This is what advisers are good at. I think it's an absolute scam.
What's your best advice to somebody who has an IRA right now? Well, my first thing is what it is.
Brad Lee: Back again with another episode of Dropping Bombs. Today in the studio, folks, I got a real treat for you. Ben Oberg in the house. What's up, Ben?
Ben Oberg: What's up, Brad? Good to be here.
Brad Lee: Folks, if you guys don't know who this dude is, he's an author. He's a basic genius, I would say.
Ben Oberg: Yeah.
Brad Lee: I mean, you've went through some hard times to learn this. That's the genius level.
Ben Oberg: I don't know about genius. Then I'd be Elon.
Brad Lee: Well, that's how you—Well, again, Elon's definitely considered a genius. Have you ever taken an IQ test?
Ben Oberg: No.
Brad Lee: So, how do you know you're not one?
Ben Oberg: I don't. I I mean, I got like a 2.3 GPA.
Brad Lee: Pretty sure.
Ben Oberg: So did I.
Brad Lee: Yeah, but that doesn't mean anything. I was tested with a 151 IQ. That's—That's up there. That's genius level.
Ben Oberg: It is. Although I did it a while back, like maybe a year ago, and it was only 142. So—So you're getting—you're going down a little bit.
Brad Lee: Well, maybe the one I took in the first place wasn't even a real one. You always take those ones. I've never really taken a real one at a college or anything, but I'm smart. I know that. And—and that has nothing to do with like, you know, I think IQ means that you can figure stuff out quicker than most. And I know that I have that talent.
Ben Oberg: Absolutely. Like I can look at a problem and situation and—and see things people aren't even noticing about it.
Brad Lee: Yeah. I can look at like word searches and find words just by scanning it, right? Like to—to the best, right? Like it's unbelievable. But anyway, enough about me. Everybody knows Brad Lee on the podcast. We're trying to get them to know Ben Oberg, author of American Mediocrity and founder of the Capitalist Network. Tell me about the Capitalist Network. It sounds like something I want to join.
Ben Oberg: Right. So, basically, it kind of got a backlog a few years because I started in the car business. That was my first formal job.
Brad Lee: Okay. What did you do?
Ben Oberg: I was—I was sales. I started on the floor and then they told me, "Hey, I—you don't have a beard. Like, you can't go into finance yet." I was 19. I'm like, "Well, you know, let me try to grow one." Actually, in the book too, I talk about it, cuz the day that I showed up for an interview, I went to a tech school briefly to learn to build cars. And then I was like, "Well, I'm going to get paid like n bucks an hour to sweep floors in a hot rod shop. I want to build cars. I don't want to sweep floors." So, I'm like, "Well, if I can't build cars, I'll go sell them." And I still have my resume, which sucked. And I had long hair, never worn a suit. And I walked into the dealership. I'm like, "I'd like to have a job." They're like, "Trim your hair, wear a suit." And I came back the next day to the manager's office. And he just stared at me like, "Who—who are you?" And I'm like, "I'm the guy who said you'd give me a job." And that told him what he needed to know. And within two years, I was the top guy at that dealership. And then they finally put me in finance. And they would give me all of the cash deals and the stuff where it wasn't a chance and I still did really well. But then they said, "Well, the grass isn't greener anywhere else." and I started to kind of question and that's when I took all those skills and then started my entrepreneurial journey and—and left.
Brad Lee: Well, I think the car business is a killer boot camp for people that want to get started in something but don't know what it is.
Ben Oberg: Absolutely. I—I made my son go sell cars for a year.
Brad Lee: How do you like it?
Ben Oberg: He—he—he did all right. I mean, I don't know if he liked it, but you know, he said it was killer education, right? See, people don't realize, man, you got to get thick skin. And when you're going to be an entrepreneur and build your own business, you need thick skin.
Brad Lee: Yeah. You need to be able to handle rejection. You need to be able to think on your feet. And—and I think the car business does that all day long. And you get either good at it or you quit and you don't polish your skills. My dad will be able to say the day that he joined the Marine Corps, the day that he was in Vietnam, the day he left. And I'm the same in the car business. I know it was February 13th, 2013 to November 4th, 2016 and it was my four years of college minus the debt and I learned a lot more.
Ben Oberg: Yeah, car business is great. You know, I started out in the car business.
Brad Lee: Yeah, I had a—I had a fire fighting job or at least I thought I was just a grunt on a work crew. Got poison oak. They told me as part of the job. I'm like, "Are you crazy?" So I quit. I'm not getting poison oak. So I opened up the newspaper. Boom. Saw a job at Williams Wilson Pontiac Volkswagen.
Ben Oberg: Wow.
Brad Lee: I went in there and they freaking had demos back then. You're a youngster. They didn't give you demos, did they?
Ben Oberg: Yeah.
Brad Lee: So when I was doing it, dude, they'd give you a car to drive for free and I couldn't believe it. I'm like, "Son of a dude. This is awesome." And you know, uh, started selling cars and crushing it. Everybody else was kind of lazy and older, you know. I was all eager and running around with a smile on my face, greeting every customer. And dude, I just started selling cars. I was making six—I think my first month, which was only like two three weeks of—of the month, I sold—um—I don't remember how many cars I sold, but I made about six grand. And that was more than anyone in my family had made in—in three weeks. Like if I had a full month, man, I'd do better. So, I fell in love with it and said, "Man, this is awesome. I'm going to do this forever." And I did it for quite a while. But, you know, eventually I got out and it's the foundation that I think set me up for success in entrepreneurialship.
Ben Oberg: I completely agree. I literally—that's one of the lessons in this. There's literally a chapter—Jack Carol Scadget Hyundai. That's where I worked and that was the—
Brad Lee: Entrepreneur—is that in Alaska?
Ben Oberg: No, it's uh Washington State. It's halfway between Seattle and Canada.
Brad Lee: Yeah. Scadget.
Ben Oberg: Yep. There's Scadget, Washington, isn't there?
Brad Lee: Scadget Valley.
Ben Oberg: Scadget County.
Brad Lee: Yeah. Scadget County. Yep. Yes, sir. The old car business. I miss it, dude.
Ben Oberg: Do you? Parts of it. You know, I got calls sometimes where it was like, "Hey, uh, we want you to come back or like just come in once in a while."
Brad Lee: How—How far did you make it up the ladder?
Ben Oberg: I went, uh, all the way to finance. I went from the floor to the internet department to finance and then you know I was working 63 hours a week there and I'm like, "Man, I—" the first two years I loved it—two years in I started to want to start my own business and I did on the side and in retrospective I've—that could have taken off and I would have been fine but I was working 63 hours a week at the dealership—45 hours for myself—going to bed at 5, 6, 7 a.m. and then back to the dealership. And I just reached a point where I could see that I wanted to do more. I—I hit the ceiling in that environment. And it's like anytime I've hit the ceiling, I need to grow again. And if I stay where I'm just tapped down on that ceiling, I start getting depressed. I start getting anxiety. I start itching. So I left and I quit. I had $731 in the bank and a mortgage and a car payment. I was like, "I'm going to figure this out." And that's when I started my own online thing, you know. So, it gave me the foundation. But at this point, I wouldn't go back. But I'd recommend anybody trying to become a business owner or an entrepreneur or an investor, anybody. Like, you got to go into sales. Car business is one of the best.
Brad Lee: Dude, if someone wants to succeed in life, number one, write this down, folks. Number one, get in the position to receive commission. Has to happen. There's so many people out there with shovels in their hand. They got—they're operating heavy equipment. They're police officers, teachers, paramedics, hardworking, good, solid people putting in killer weeks of work. And they're never going to make much more than they're making now.
Ben Oberg: True.
Brad Lee: If you want to succeed in life, folks, get in the position to receive commission. That's step one. If anyone is not in the position to receive commission, brother, I'll bet you—you are so far from being financially successful, you can't even imagine. And it's so easy to do. I can't believe that—why people are so afraid of it. But now you're teaching people how to obviously invest money, make money, invest money, etc. And that through taxes and all that, but you got to have some before you can invest some. So that's why I tell people like, "Go get a job in sales." If you have to start in the car business, get a job selling cars, learn, get your skin thickened up a little bit, and then hopefully that gives you a little confidence to go out there and—and take your shot.
So what gave you the confidence? You just figured, "I'm tired of it," or you thought, "Man, I got—I can do better than this."
Ben Oberg: It was depression. It was one of the most depressing points of my life because I recognize I want to do more. I recognize I can't in this environment. I have an idea of what I want to do, but I don't have any mentors. And the advice that I'm getting, which is the only advice they could give, is like from my dad or mom, that's like, "Hey, you're making $110, $120,000 a year. You're 21, 22 years old. Like, you've got it good. Just be happy. Be content." And I'm like, that just made me more mad. So, I just straight up quit. And I'm like, "I got to figure this out." And that back then I wasn't in finance. I wasn't in investing or anything. I was just—I'm going from being a business person within the car business to being a business person for myself. And so I started doing a lot of social media marketing. I would make logos for people. I'd make websites. People would be like, "Hey, can you build me a website?" I'm like, "Yeah, of course I can." Then I'd go watch a YouTube video and try to figure it out, you know, which is a philosophy that I have is like, "Say yes and figure it out along the way," but don't say yes unless you're simultaneously making a promise to yourself and that person that you're going to keep it. You—I'm not going to say yes to something there's no way I could possibly do. But I started doing all these different odd jobs online and I had my computer and a coffee table and that was all I had. And I started making money, doing well, and that transitioned into a marketing agency. And come 2020, we started working with financial advisors where we had 50 something different clients in all these different industries and generating them leads, generating them appointments specifically. It was mostly service-based businesses where you need an appointment. You sell a service that is maybe $5,000 plus that requires you to be on a sales call or a Zoom meeting. So, we're doing all the marketing for that. It just ironically was that out of those 50 clients we had, two were advisors. And one thing I learned was like when you have to do videography and scripting and there's environments you can't control. Some stuff's being shot outside, some stuff's inside. Um, you have to script in a certain way for this industry. This industry is harder with compliance, getting ads through Facebook. This industry is regulated. This—this one needs disclosures. It is hard to put your energy in all these different directions and be great at marketing for everybody. So, we niche down to the financial space. And that's where completely by mistake, I started learning about how the financial world works. And I got my degree in economics, I guess you would call it, of really understanding that financial advisers do not know how to make you wealthy. The average financial adviser makes $111,000 a year. They have no personal wealth, and they're regulated by the SEC and FINRA. And the things they're licensed in, whether you get a series 6, 7, or 65, is stocks, bonds, annuities, insurance, and they know the stock market, which averages historically 11% a year. And all these paper assets you're going to pay capital gains or you're going to pay income taxes on. And so I'm literally marketing for these advisors. Some—some of the biggest, our clients are probably the top 10% of advisors in the United States. Some of them manage half a billion bucks. Some of them manage dozens of billions of dollars. And they will brag if they say, "Hey, during the last recession, our clients were happy. They only lost 8%." And I'm sitting here going like, "I've literally never invested and lost 8%." Like, I haven't. I've been smart and I've looked at what these advisors are doing on paper assets in this very limited scope of financial advice and then learning from multi-millionaires and billionaires that I do business with daily and going, "Well, what are you doing," you know, in—in 2008 all the real estate crashed, all right, people weren't buying real estate, uh, what did they go into? Well, gold went up 25% in '08 and then it did again in 2020. Well, what happened in 2020? You had COVID and then oil got very manipulated, did shortly after—well, what happened with that? The Keystone XL pipeline was shut down, they decided not to do it, so you couldn't go into oil. Well, gold went up again. And so I started learning about hard assets. I started learning about taxes. I started learning about oil and real estate investing and I'm—got that in one hand and then I'm looking at things like, "Okay, well what do advisors do? They teach you—you get a retirement account. Let's look at a traditional IRA where dozens of millions of Americans have traditional IRAs making 7 to 10% annually." And I'm just doing this math. I'm smiling because it—it's literally funny. This is a fact. If you invest in an IRA, very common for an advisor to say, "Hey, do an IRA, or you could do a self-directed one, or you can do a Roth IRA conversion." Let's just say I put $10,000 a year away in an IRA, growing at 7% a year, and I do it for 40 years. So, I'm going to put $400,000 in over four decades. All this red tape, I can't touch it without fees until I'm 59 and a half, um, unless I want a down payment on a first home or I'm taking it out for more education for another degree because the first one didn't work. So all that happens and you go, "Cool, I put 400k in at 7%, it's worth $1 million, $1.2 million after that." Let's just say I'm—I'm 60 and by the time I'm 60, let's just say the average American's making $100k a year by the time they're 60 and they go to retire, so they got $1.2, $2 million in a retirement account, $100k earned income, they're going to pay taxes on $1.3 million, 37%. That means they're going to pay just under $500,000 in taxes. They're going to have $740k left over, which is a $340,000 profit after 40 years. This is what advisers are good at. Or they say, "Hey, go put your money in an annuity. It's safe at 7% a year. By the way, you have to pay income taxes on it." It—It's just garbage advice. That's my point.
Brad Lee: Well, it's better than putting it in the bank.
Ben Oberg: It is better than putting it in the bank, but I sit here and go, "Okay, so bank, yeah, they half a percent a year in a—in a savings account." And somebody might say, "Well, right now they're up a bit." They're up a bit. Okay. So, the largest financial influencers um on social media are uh Jenzers. They're, you know, I'm 31, so I'm not, you know, as old as maybe a lot of people that are talking about, you know, anything financially related, but you look at what's the most viral content on TikTok, Instagram, YouTube in the financial industry. It's not Charles Schwab, it's not Raymond James, it's not LPL, it's a 21-year-old that's never owned a business, never been sued, never had liabilities, responsibilities, probably doesn't even know what a credit card statement is. And those are the videos that people are consuming and I've been through a little bit so I'd like to think I know some stuff and I go, "Well, you know, I keep my money where it grows at 10%." And I compound that interest and it's insured and it—I pay very little tax on it. I don't keep my money in the bank. I keep enough to pay bills, but I've learned to lower my taxes and be tax literate. I've learned what assets I can go into that allow me to pay less taxes. And then I've learned strategically how to speed up those deal cycles where I can get my money out of deals, go repeat the process, keep the cash flow, and not have that red tape where I got to wait 40 years.
What's your best advice to somebody who has an IRA right now and they want to get out of it?
Brad Lee: That's a great question. Well, my first thing is I'm not a financial adviser, so I can't—can't say anything, right? It's all educational purposes. But the problem is if they have an IRA right now and they are not 59 1/2, they're—they're going to pay penalties on it to withdraw it early. So it's going to be situational depending on if somebody's got half a million bucks in there or a million bucks or whatever the case may be. They need to look at the opportunity cost. So, if they've got, you know, half a million bucks in and they're not 59 1/2, like a lot of people, then if they pull out, they got to look at how much in penalties am I going to pay—$10, $20, $30, $50k, $100,000 relative to what they can go into. So, are they going to be able to recover and offset that—that penalty going into something that is a little bit more secure or hedges inflation or tends to be stable during an environment like what we're in now? And I know that might sound confusing for some people, but one of the things I talk about, and it's not because I like—love gold, but if you look at gold during every bit of economic uncertainty in the last couple decades, like I said, in 2008, it went up 25%. In 2020, it went up 24%. If we look in the last 18 months, gold's gone up 65%. I have a lot of gold. I have a lot of silver, and I've got a line of credit against it. You know, any—if I bought $100k of gold in 2021, that's worth $165,000 today. My line of credit has superseded what I paid for it four years ago. You can't get that kind of leverage in a savings account or in your IRA. And gold has stood the test of time. It's hedged inflation. And if you look at where money migrates to in like interest rate environments where stuff's going up like '08 or even right now or with the uncertainty people have around these tariffs, which I support and believe in, you see it shifting over into non-yielding hard assets. So that's one of the things like gold or silver.
Brad Lee: What about ammunition?
Ben Oberg: So ammunition's funny. If you take a Tomahawk missile, you know, one of the missiles that we develop, uh, it has 17 to 18 kg of silver in a missile. So, what you could do, you could probably go to a military base. You could probably steal some missiles. You'd probably have to explain obviously, you know, but they've got a lot of silver in them. Those are things that we don't know. Ammunition. Absolutely.
Brad Lee: Well, the reason I say ammunition is because if anarchy just broke out—
Ben Oberg: Mhm.
Brad Lee: And you came to me with a bar of gold that weighed what a bar of gold weighs? What is it—like 200 troy ounces?
Ben Oberg: Depends on how big your bar is. But yes, a standard bar is like—
Brad Lee: How much does a standard bar of gold weigh?
Ben Oberg: A standard gold bar weighs approximately 400 troy ounces, which is about 12.4.
Brad Lee: Yeah, it's a lot of—lot of weight. Yeah. 400 troy ounces, 20-some pounds sitting in my—your hand. And all I had, and this is anarchy.
Ben Oberg: Mhm.
Brad Lee: All I had was one box of 9 millimeter shells. You have a 9 millimeter with no shells, but you got a bar of gold. I got to club you really fast. I have a—I have a 9mm and a box of ammo. Which one do you think's worth more?
Ben Oberg: Well, like I said, it's speed. It's—is—is my bicep developed enough to throw this gold at you and knock you out? You know—the ammo. So that's why I tell people—you guys are prepping, if you guys are doomsday preppers, folks, trust me when I tell you your gold—I don't believe is going to be worth as much as you think it might be. Because when someone tries to give me gold for food or water or ammo, what do I—what am I going to do with the gold? If—if—if it's just gold, it's just metal. But it's for a different purpose. You're talking about doomsday. And I completely agree. That's anarchy. Let's get back to reality.
Ben Oberg: I agree about that. You know, stocking up on food and—and ammunition completely. It's more of—it's more of—creating leverage. I don't use—I don't go to the bank and get a loan and say, "Hey, I have a 730 credit score. Give me—give me a loan." I look at—okay, you have this earned income, whether you are a business owner or you are a W2 employee, you're a contractor, you have this income that you're earning, then you have these living expenses and hopefully—and a lot of Americans are—are bad at this because we're big consumers—they make $100k, they take home 65, uh, and then their living expenses are—are 60, right? They don't have money to invest, so they have to either increase their income or lower expenses or do both. But then what's left over is just the information that they know, which is the stock market and—and maybe have a TDI trade account, maybe have a CD account. And that's easy, right? And it's easy because people aren't getting the knowledge about—well, what else exists out there in the financial world that I have access to. So once you have a little bit more tax literacy and you understand that if you are a business owner or you are an investor, you have a whole different set of tax codes that you can start operating out of. Once we know that and once we know, "Hey, increase income, lower expenses," now I need to be disciplined in investing smartly, not just going into the stock market that averages 11% and hoping you get lucky, right? Actually having strategy behind it, then it's—I go into hard assets or I go into things that generate me a larger return that I can borrow against and go create cash flow. So what I do is I've got two sort of uh entities that are my—my own bank. One of those is gold. I stack up on gold. I stack up in silver. The reason being is because I can stack up on that. It continues to go up in value. I get my line of credit and then I go into real estate or I go into other assets like oil that pay me cash flow. I also use—and this is—this is key. This is kind of exposing to the financial world here. You—you've heard of IULs—index universal life policies or VULs—variable universal life insurance, right? 95% of life insurance policies sold in the United States are IULs, VULs or term insurance. Only 5% are what's called whole life. And then whole life is the wild west. There's all these car carriers like Primerica, right, which is like an MLM-based insurance company. Um, very low dividend, very low guaranteed return. If you're going with carriers that are A+ credit rating, and ones that are older than Bank of America, Wells Fargo, Chase, like uh Mass Mutual, you can get into what's—
Called an institutional grade life policy. And I don't get anything for saying this. I'm not an adviser. I don't get a commission or anything. Institutional grade policies are what the banks use, what the banks are invested in. There's only a handful of advisers that even have access to these type of products or know anything about them.
You can go into a what's called a HECV policy, which stands for high early cash value life policy, and people have been skewed. It's just like, uh, you know, gap insurance in the car business. They think it's a scam or they think it's a joke because we have mismarketed the value that that product can provide. Same with life insurance. So you get into what's called a HECV policy. It's a high early cash value policy. What you're doing is you're not looking at the insurance benefits or the death benefit; you're looking at it as an investment vehicle. You get as little insurance as possible and you tuck as much as you can into the cash value side of it. This grows typically at around 10%, give or take. It can vary on the person. But what happens is you get a guaranteed return, which is usually two to like 4%. And then you get what's called a non-guaranteed dividend. So long as the company stays solvent, it's profitable. So like my policy, for example, is a 6% dividend and a 4% guaranteed return. It has never been less than 6% in the last 50 years. And this is from a company that is literally older than Wells Fargo, 1851, Mass Mutual. And this year, the dividend went up to 6.4%. It's not taxed. Dividends can't be taxed in life insurance because they're not guaranteed. So I get a little over 10%, 10.4%. I compound that back into the policy, and as that builds up, I have a line of credit against it at four, four and a half, 5%. Much less than you'll get at a bank on a mortgage or anything like that.
So I've got this policy growing in cash value every year. I have a line of credit, 100% loan to value. If I have 100k cash value here, I've got a 100k policy or 100k line of credit. This keeps going up. I just do this, and I literally take this line of credit and I go into real estate and I go into oil, the two assets that I have found allow me to pay the lowest amount of taxes, and I get cash flow and I get exits where when these deals sell, I get a big, big payday. So that's what I do, and I just keep repeating that cycle.
So how do people learn this? Is that what the ICN is? The capitalist network.
Yeah. Yeah. I said ICN is TCN.
TCN. Yeah. I don't know what ICN is, but investors capital network, but it's the capitalist network.
The capitalist network. Exactly. And and and that network of people all share investment strategies. So it's very, very strategic. What I did is I went to I had all this information over here with the financial advisors. Then I had the people that I was choosing to personally learn all these strategies from, and I said, hey, like people need to know more about this. I'm going to create—I'm not going to ask permission—I'm going to create this community, and it's going to be step by step where I literally flew around to every single one of my partners and said, we're going to record all this training, lower taxes, make you understand how economics work in the US, showing the last 100-year history of the dollar and how it works and what it's pegged to as a global currency and get you that foundation. Then we teach you, now that you start understanding taxes and know how money works, then we start teaching you, okay, how do you use a dividend-paying whole life policy, know what the right one looks like, know that 95% of what is sold out there is dog, and the advice you've been given is probably not accurate. So now we teach you how to use that as a mechanism, the life insurance, as well as gold or silver to go into cash-flowing assets. We teach you the real estate. We teach you the oil. We teach you how to passively invest in real estate. If you want to be an active investor where you're going and you're going the single-family route or duplex, we teach you that as well. But it's a toz. We're not just giving you the course or the information; we're providing you the funds to go into oil deals to go into, multifamily deals to go into, and we're providing you what?
Like vetted?
Yeah. We have all the partnerships already in our program.
Do you have any liability for that?
No, because, for example, when it comes to the real estate, I am a fund manager for a company called Oak IQ. So I am one of the fund managers through their fund. It's a fund of funds. So all the paperwork, all the K1s, all the legal forms are directly with their attorneys there. I am just the entity that raises the awareness, acquires the capital, and then manages the relationship between me, the investor, and them. When it comes to gold and silver, we're partnered with one of only 27 licensed resellers of the US Mint, which essentially means anytime you go online and you buy gold or buy silver, you're getting it at a marked-up rate because it's already been taken from the mint, sold to a reseller, put online, sold to you. And so we are able in the Capitalist Network to give anybody that's a member access to gold and silver at a discounted rate that they wouldn't see online. We're able to provide them—one of the few people that can actually sell these institutional grade policies—and we have preferred relationships with the banks. So if you were to go in off the street and say, "Hey, my name's Bob. I've got a policy. I want a line of credit," you get a lower rate because of the relationships we already have. So it's really all my partners are in the top 1% of their respective fields. And I was very careful in putting this together because my reputation means everything. I don't want people working with people that aren't reliable or don't follow up, have no follow-through. And so all of my partners I'd already been doing business with for several years, I just put them all in one community and said, "We need to teach, but we need the handholding there. When somebody asks a question, they get an answer same day." And we don't want to leave them to just go it alone and go, "Here, we just sold you a course like everybody has. Now go figure it out." We're providing the opportunities in every single asset class. You might as well get licensed and sell it to them, too. I could get—I could get licensed as an insurance advisor or something like that as well. I absolutely could.
Thought about it.
I don't like tests.
Not good at them.
You're not good at tests. I told you I got a 2.3 GPA, man.
Yeah, but it sounds like you've been tested your whole life.
I have. I have. I've been going through some trials and tribulations as tests.
Yep. So, if I'm an investor listening to this and I don't have any gold, would you say, "Brother, you need to buy some gold."
Number one. Number two is Swiss America. Is that is that the name of it? I was talking to someone the other day. They're like, they're like huge into gold. That's what they do. Gold. Swiss America. I think it was called Swiss America. I'm not 100% sure. Who's the big gold place where I can buy cheaper gold than normal? So if I if I join your your uh capitalist network, I get discounts on gold.
Yeah.
Even why wouldn't everyone just join for that reason? It pays for itself. So uh Andy Sheman, Miles Franklin, that is a company that's again 27 licensed resellers of the US Mint, which is an appointed position. They are one of them. And so he is able to give the same exact price that he pays—friends and family discount—to TCN members. So if I go to him, I say, Andy, I want—you don't have to buy much—be 500 bucks, 10,000, 100,000, doesn't matter, but every single asset class we have put in there if somebody says, hey, I've learned about taxes now, I realize my accountant is not good, well, we have a partnership for you where you can go use my accountants that understand things like depreciation and cost segregation and how to write off vehicles even if they don't weigh 6,000 lbs like a G Wagon, like how to get really strategic with your taxes. You don't have to—It's not just getting the knowledge and going, "Now, I got to find an accountant." We got one for you. You want to get into the insurance, we've got the guy for you that's literally in the top half percentile of advisers in the entire United States, that actually is a multi-millionaire, that actually owns 60-plus rental properties, that actually does what he says he's going to do. If you want to get into real estate, I'm able to give higher preferred returns as a fund manager with our real estate syndication than you would if you just went off the street. So, every single asset class, we strategically were like, we have to have some sort of perk for everybody coming in that more than rationalizes joining. So, that's what we did.
What makes you passionate about this? Like what what do you—Sounds like you put together a little vetted network. So, if anyone's going to, you know, invest and, you know, you got the safe and the best places to go, what what what made you do that? Because I know what it's like to shake hands with somebody, have them go back on their word. And ironically, you know, I've spent a lot of my time in the financial space, so I've learned what's good, what's bad, and a lot of my connections are there. And out of the 900 shitty connections and people I would not do business with, I met 7, 8, 9 people that are worth a—that stick to their word, and they're all in the financial space. And so on one hand it's—I think unless you're a doctor, lawyer, engineer, college is a complete waste. I think it's an absolute scam. And at when you're 18, you don't know—most of the time you do not know what you want to do. You're not the same person at 18 as you are at 28, 38, whatever. You're constantly changing. You go to school and you just follow. That's why there's sheep on this book. It's we're just—
That's why there's what?
There. That's why there's sheep on this book right here. It's a cool cover.
Thank you. Appreciate it. It's we all just listen. We don't ask questions. We just conform. And I remember being the kid that is like, "Why am I learning irrational roots and imaginary numbers and about Edgar Allan Poe?" I do not give a about English and and all this old poetry. I don't want to write a haiku. Like I want to go make money and I want to grow and I want to learn and I feel really held back by this. I'm not going to go to college and learn from a business professor—which the majority don't own successful businesses—about how to go in business. So I see all of that and I don't—
What about getting laid?
Oh, in college. I mean, I guess uh—I don't know. You can go on Tinder for that now, can't you?
Yeah, probably. Tinder's—I wasn't around for Tinder. It—Tinder was—Tinder. I wish I had Tinder when I was a kid. Boy, that would have been nice. Much better than college. I was. But I tell people go to college for the experience and the relationships—cuz dude, if you go to college and you establish some good solid lifelong relationships, that helps you more than the degree will in the future. The degrees, they're not really panning out much unless, of course, it's one that is required for a career of your choice. So again, someone wants to be a doctor, absolutely go to college. But I would recommend that kids go to college anyway for at least a couple years just for the experience/relationships. I think it's it's like a finishing school almost or a preparatory school for life. Just like car business, man. If someone said should they go to college or the car business? Both. Go to college for a couple years and sell cars on the side. And dude, you'll get out of that everything as long as you're in there to establish relationships and build a network. You know, your your uh capitalist network is valuable because you spent the time putting everybody together, right? Like, dude, you can do that in college.
Sure. If you if you have the intention and you're, you know, yeah, you're the right plan. If you think if you think you're going to college to get an education so you can get a good job, that's the scam part, right? Like your education isn't going to get you a good anything unfortunately. It's the, you know, oldest trick in the book if you ask me. And what's crazy about the government, like they will loan you money to go to school, but they won't loan you money to, you know, get a house or start a business. And I mean, I I take that back cuz there's the SBA, but you see what I'm saying? Like, dude, it's a it's a it's almost like a machine. They want you in debt. If you get a car and you have a loan on it, the bank has an asset to take back. If you get student loan debt, it's not collateralized by anything because it's debt on a job that you might not get or have or where the money's not there.
Why is it so easy to get a loan then to in college?
Yeah. You know, I don't know. But I do know that the largest—historically the largest—asset in recent years of the United States government has been student loan debt because it's over $2 trillion. So if you went back to 1967, and this is reason I go back to 1967 is like my dad's 75 and might be able to kick my ass. Like he's Marine like this. He's he's a beast. And uh he went to Vietnam in '69. If he had gone to college just prior. I looked at data in 1967 and I looked at the wage that a 17 or an 18-year-old was earning in 1967 working part-time. And I looked at the average college tuition. And if you had gone to school for 4 years, you would on average make 2 to 3x more than what school actually cost you. And now you look at what a student working part-time, same hours, makes on average going to college in relationship to what that degree cost. And it's the complete inverse. And I think at some point, and it's not a conspiracy, this is just my opinion, is that we looked at this and went, "Oh, there's a business here. We can we can monetize all of these kids that have no clue what they want to do. They're probably going to change their degree two times," and um yeah, we can we can get these 30, 40, 50, $80,000 student loans to them and see what happens. But it's arrived at $2 trillion of student loan debt. And it's not the—I don't care about debt. Like you have to spend money to make money obviously. And there's good debt and there's bad debt. And there's times where you need to take risk and and not worry too much and just go all in. It's just the exchange of value. And like you said, if you don't have the right intention, then the curriculum itself's not going to do anything for you.
Yeah. Or—
Yeah. Well, again, I think everyone's up on that now. I don't know anybody who recommends college except for a few, you know, holdouts like professors.
Mhm. But again, if anyone asks what's Brad Lee think? Well, Brad Lee thinks you should go for fun, for experience, for relationships. Like, I want my kids to go.
Mhm. Just for the fun and the experience and the relationships. I don't really care if they get, you know, 2.3 GPA, right? And I'd still pay for them to go.
Sure. And I would want them to finish. At least get your damn degree. Not that it's worth anything, but it's worth your mental fortitude to know that you can finish—what you achieve something.
Yeah. But other than that, man, if if someone said, "Brad, aside from all that, what would you—I'd say, don't go to college, dude. Go get a job selling cars. Get your skin thickened. Get your skill set down. Pick up a few mindset books. Get your mindset rock solid. Getting into abundance. Understand quantum physics and that that we're all an energy. Understand that energy and that frequency. Get your mind right and your skills in sales, communication, marketing, relationships, and personal branding and dude, you're unstoppable. Throw in a few good habits. You know what I mean? Like habits, health habits. You mentioned earlier in the uh Capitalist Network, you guys talk about health and whatnot. Why why why do you talk about health in capitalist network?
No, that's great. Um, you know, I have learned quite a bit in my journey. Um, you—I've been through a lot of stuff, you know, and everybody goes through something. Everybody goes through something hard. So, I'm not going to like make victim mentality out of it. I've been, you know, I've had $13 on a Christmas where I was like, do I feed myself or do I feed my dogs? I thought that was bad. I've also had like $250,000 leans on my accounts—on every single account. Um, you know, another year I've been sued. I've been in multiple lawsuits at the same time. And I've learned like what?
Oh, that's fun.
Uh, okay. I own a home in uh Leadeds, Utah, which is just north of St. George. It's beautiful home on 4 acres. I took six juniper trees off the property and the neighbor sued me.
Six—
Six juniper trees. Took six large bushes off the property and they appointed—for the first time ever—more people to the architectural control committee which ex u consisted of one person prior to that, and apparently this is the most important thing in their life. So, the juniper tree.
Juniper tree.
They're very—they're sacred. And so, um yeah. Uh that um what else? I had uh I had an adviser one time a long time ago. I had an adviser say, "You didn't get us results. I'm suing you or you can refund me." It was like between us and his marketing, you'd spend about $100,000. And this is a very, very important lesson I've learned is like I'm a very ethical person. If I shake your hand and I say I'm going to be somewhere at a certain time, I will be there. If I say I'm going to do something, I will do it. It doesn't matter if it's if it's hard or easy. The easier thing to have done in retrospective would have been refund his money. Ethically, no. Because when we did services with him, he's the only client to this day that didn't allow us to shoot the video sales letter. We've got 10 ads that all point to this one video. This is the video that gets the appointments. He wrote his own script, which was—He gave two different calls to action: one to a website, one to a 1-800 number or some phone number, which we couldn't track. And our script's very intentional. It is an algorithm. I wrote it myself. I know exactly the formula for it, how it works, and it's 12 to 13 minutes long. So, we polished this turd. We end up being able to get him like 22 appointments.
I'm going to sue you, Ben.
Go ahead. Because for 100 grand—for 100 grand. Well, he went after more. So, 100 grand and then uh $1.5 million of of consequential damages, all this other which we were able to prove that that was—that was—And then they finally wanted to settle when they realized all the stuff they were trying to get through to trial was not going to go through. But the amount of stress that a lawsuit takes, I've also learned that like in business, something's going to happen. You can be ethical, you can be the best guy, you can do what's right, but something's going to happen. Whether it's a legal dispute or a relationship ending, obviously, that was something else I went through pretty recently. And you're big enough.
I agree. It was—and you know, it's a good—I take it as a good sign because I know where my conscience is. I know I do right. And if somebody's screwing with me or or trying to get one off on me, you know, I'm ethical about it. And I accept that things might be hard. And there's been many times and quite recently where I'm like, "Wow, this is a lot of stuff to be going on all at the same time. I still wrote the book. I still got it out. I still got it done." But health—because if you don't do things for the right reason and you're not focused on the right thing and if it doesn't align with you, you are going to get burnt out. I believe that because I went in a direction where it wasn't that I didn't love it, but I was like at the time it was easy to, you know, make money and do this, but like I didn't love doing it. And when it did get hard, there's a lot less motivation there to keep going. But if you love what you're doing or what you've created, and it will get hard, usually you'll see that through. And at the end of the day, sometimes to me with the amount of stuff I've been through and things I've faced, I want peace. And peace to me is like if you are taking more than you're giving, if it's a grind to try to be around you, whether you're a person or, you know, in a relationship with, if I just don't get the sense that it's right to do business with you or something, I'm not doing it because I'd rather have peace and make $5 million a year than have chaos and make make double that. It's just not worth it to me because I'm looking at how do I feel mentally? How do I feel physically? Uh, do I have the money to put the right things in my mouth that are, you know, not all these processed foods, you know, all of that's super important to me. And as I started growing older, I guess, and experiencing more, I just realized that um happiness is what matters most to me. And that's different for everybody, but for me, it's what does my life look like? What does my life feel like? What creates that feeling? Am I doing that? And is there anything blocking it? So I just try to live in alignment from a 360-degree view, and health is a lot of that. Not only that, dude, lose your health and you'll give everything you got to get it back. And people underestimate the value of health unbelievably.
Yeah. I've done it my whole life thankfully. You know, God gave me a pretty resilient body and I'm as healthy as I would have been had I not eaten the—all my life. But I got lucky cuz I got to taste the flavors and and and do the stupid and still end up with my health. But now that I'm older, buddy, healthy—important. Everybody needs to pay attention to it. And if you can tap into a network that can teach you all the things for anti-aging, longevity, huge.
Absolutely. Anti-aging and longevity, that's a hell of an investment opportunity as well. Like, dude. I mean, I I keep thinking like, man, I want to open up something that keeps people looking young and feeling young because everybody wants that.
Did you see, you know, Modair?
I've heard.
Yeah. Okay. So, it's like this large MLM company that just went under after 23 years. And I know some of the top affiliate marketers in there. And it's interesting. So, like hyaluronic acid, you have hyaluronic acid and these other uh sort of uh fluids that your body produces. And hyaluronic acid—like you can take in pills, you can you know put hyaluronic acid like oil on your face and stuff. Uh your body naturally produces it, but as you get older it sort of depletes. And the problem that people don't understand is like all these skin products and stuff—they all come—it's like it's like scotch or like like wine; there's different levels or different grades, and uh your body does not recognize hyaluronic acid that is like produced in a lab as its own. So even though there's skincare companies doing all the marketing and showing all the beautiful people and whatever marketing it, if it's not as close DNA-wise or molecularly to your body as possible, your body won't actually like take it in or accept it as its own. And so Modair, I don't know when they discovered this, but they actually
I figured out how to, uh, create this drinkable hyaluronic acid that they found like some sort of joint. I think it was in like your knee where HA existed that they could like mimic to where the body actually was like, "Oh, this is my own hyaluronic acid. I can absorb it." And like I was drinking this stuff. They just decided to go out of business. But why drinking it? No. Why did they go out of business? I don't know. I haven't I haven't bothered to look at this; this was like 96 hours ago or something. Yeah. Well, maybe they maybe they they didn't do it intentionally, I'm sure. Go out of business. Yeah. They probably like because most MLM companies are are overcharging for products because they have to facilitate the comp plan, right?
So, that's the bad thing about network marketing. A lot of people always ask me, "Is network marketing legit?" Number one, yes, it is legit. It's just a marketing technique, right? You know, but the problem with network marketing is a lot of the products, not all of them, but a lot of the products have to be inflated because you have to compensate for all those levels and all of that marketing, right? So, you got to look for an MLM that has like exclusive products. Mhm. And so maybe their exclusivity went away, and now you can get it at freaking Costco for eight bucks instead. Maybe it was some stuff might have been produced like even just like the bottles overseas, and now you've got tariffs that just because of that comp plan and just wiped them out. I don't know. Not by that much. Maybe not. I don't know. No, they just raise the price. Tariffs just cause the prices to raise. They don't stop anything, right? You know, you think people are going to stop buying Rolexes and all the foreign just because there's tariffs? No. And it usually doesn't affect the the higher-end stuff anyway cuz the people with the money don't really care.
Well, this is the thing, too. Like, I've had a lot of people cuz I'm pretty opinionated, you know, on on my social media. Instagram took away my account for six months way back because of—well, I had auto-posting software that we created that got us in trouble, and uh, I ended up kind of becoming friends with their attorney, and finally they're like, "Look, there's only two people—well, you're the second one that we've ever given the account back to. You are the second one. This is not like a practice of ours, but we'll give it back," and it was only because I had a software that contained the word "Graham," uh. So anyways, I make all these—Yeah. So when Facebook bought Instagram, they didn't actually own the trademark at the time they bought Instagram. And so they trademark Instagram, Insta, and then Graham somehow, even though there were companies like Moneygram and stuff like that. And I owned a uh posting software that we had created called Blitzag, bought the website domain, and I was in the trademark process for that ahead of Facebook, but they expedited it and did whatever they did, and then they came after me, and I'm like, so when I say like legal stuff, I'm like, holy like I'm just trying—I'm not screwing people over; I'm just being honest and trying to grow, and I'm like 23 and getting sued by Instagram. I'm like, what? And so uh I'm like, I can't afford an attorney at that point. This is like eight years ago. So like I'm going to be my own attorney. I'm going to make friends with this guy. So I finally get the account back, and they returned it, and it just kind of had really crappy engagement. But I'm making all these posts, you know, about money and stuff.
And one of the things to tariffs is we were founded as a tax-free nation. We did not have an internal revenue service until 1913. And then something came out called the 16th amendment, which was about taxes to our own citizens via revenue. So we literally existed for several hundred years without taxes, without income taxes. Then the 16th amendment comes out, and now these tariffs are going into play. We're just going back to a system that we did have for a very long time. But we're—it's a shock to people because you're literally changing the way taxes work in the United States in a very large way for the first time in 112 years. What do you think people would say if Donald Trump got on the microphone and said, "We are going with tariffs, but we are going away from taxes." From income taxes. Yeah. He has hinted at no income taxes. We've heard him hint, but he ain't done—question is if he said we're doing away with taxes, income taxes, but we are going to go heavy on tariffs, what would you say? What do I think people's response would be? Yeah, I'd think there's always going to be haters. There's going to be the last—What would you say? I would say yeah. So would I. Why? Well, because dude, listen. Yeah, you pay more when you buy—But if you don't have to pay taxes, the only way I'm for taxes, cuz I am for taxes. I believe—even though people think I'm a right-wing weirdo, which I'm not, but let's just say I am more conservative than I am libtarded. Right. Same. But but I I I agree with some of the liberal thoughts like welfare, you know? I think we should take care of our our our sick and old and young. What are your pronouns? I don't have any pronouns. Pay pay me. That's my pronoun. But but like dude, I I'm I'm generous and I'm also kind. Like if someone's hurting and they need some assistance, we're a rich nation. We should assist the person. I agree. And nobody should be hungry, and nobody should be without. I don't care if they're a United States citizen. They shouldn't go without. Period. We We all have enough to where nobody needs to go without. So like on that side I'm more left-leaning, and then on the right side I'm more, you know—but with that being said, I don't want to catch you selling your food stamps for weed cuz if I do, you're on your own, right? So I mean it's it's like I'm right in the middle with some of these things, but when it comes to tariffs, all it means is when I buy this—thank you for this, by the way, absolutely—when I buy this, I pay 100% more. Okay. I don't have to buy it though. That's my choice, and that's what I'm about. Freedom. Absolutely.
Income taxes, dude. Every—I always ask people, "Hey, do you have any partners? You who owns your business, by the way?" Uh, my my holding company. Well, who who owns that, though? Do you have any partners? Yeah, you do. Oh, what? The bank? The US government. I—The US government is everybody's partner. Sure. So, I always ask people to screw them up. Hey, you got any partners in your business? Oh, I own it 100%. You don't own it 100%, bro. You have what's called a partner. They're like, "No, I don't want to bet $1,000." And every time we're done, they're like, "Well, yeah, I guess you're right." The government is everybody's partner. Isn't that crazy? Mhm. I don't like that. Like, dude, and if I were okay with it, well, then I want transparency. I want to know where all the tax dollars go. So, so the roads and the hospitals and the sick and the elderly and the and the social security and the schools and all the places it's supposed to go. If it was going there and we were building up into this unbelievably strong kick-ass nation, I'm fine with it. What I'm not fine with is getting built out of all the money constantly only to find out these two politicians made some deal. So his brother got a $200 million contract which should have cost a million dollars. We funded it. Us taxpayers. I don't like all that backroom dealing. Yes. And so and so like Elon Musk is in there with Doge just ripping the covers off saying, "Look, look, look, look." And you got all these people on the left going, "What is he doing? He can't do that." Like why are they so offended by exposing fraud? And that's what it is, fraud. You know, one of the things—or waste, one of the two. I—So I just came from Sedona. I And I'm going to go back there after this. I It's like a detox place. No, no, I just came down there for a few days. I keep hearing wonderful things about Sedona. I—two areas I love geographically: the place where my home is in Utah and Sedona. I think they're freaking beautiful. Also, Telluride, Colorado. For me, I definitely am a little bit more libertarian. I tend to lean conservative, same as you. There's certain things that I'm maybe a little bit more left in, but I know that how I speak—like I can't get capitalist. I can't get—I'm a capitalist. I can't get along in Portland or Seattle. Uh, Sedona, it's like you got to just know that you got the hippies with the coexist signs with Subarus and patchouli oil, and that's part of it, but it's it's beautiful. And um you know, I just uh I agree with the tariffs. The tax issue is—yes, transparency. It's—why do I want to pay taxes to a government that—like a homeless person gets a brand new iPhone that's better than mine, or like all this other stuff can get done, but you're not seeing—"Oh, here's the budget for this; this is going to go to making this road safer, or this stoplight where there's DUIs happening, we're going to, you know, do this as infrastructure in the city, or this hospital right here tends to have patients that are waiting for the ER for like 10 hours; like we need to, you know, have more staff"—whatever—like you're not seeing where it's being spent. So, I'm all for that like social responsibility, but if there's no trust in the government and it's grown so big, like we don't know what's going on. We have no clue. So, like I just want to trust where my money—like everything you buy, like you go to the grocery store, you are making that decision. You buy a car, you're making that decision. You buy a home, you made that decision. Taxes, they say, "Hey, we're going to audit you." Oh, you haven't paid your taxes. Kate, we'll find you, or we'll throw you in jail. Um, but if you pay your taxes, we won't. But as soon as it leaves your hands, that's like the one thing that you spend money on every year, and you have no say. So, I would just like to see like what's going on cuz Elon's saying, "Hey, yeah, we're we're buying sushi here and K-Cups, you know, $4.2—$2 million went to that last year. But, you know, we have people in the street that have alcohol abuse problems or maybe are decent human beings that have had a lot happen to them, or maybe they're veterans, you know, with a ton of PTSD, and maybe they need a little bit of freaking help, you know, and I used to be a little bit harder on them. Like, you figure it out. Like, I've been through some—Like, grow up. But as I've gone through more—where I've really gotten close to my breaking point a couple of times, I'm like, man, like everybody everybody's going through something, and just be kind. Don't be an, you know? Don't don't have an ego and just try to help, you know? That's the formula. That's the formula, my friend. You've graduated to wisdom at 31. 31. See, it took me till I was about 46. Isn't that crazy? At 31, dude, I was running around as a jackoff. Really, dude? I was stupid. I I still am a little bit stupid, but I can tell you guys, man, pay attention. You get wisdom as you start to learn and reflect and think, and the wisdom usually is traded for youth. Sure. Usually don't get someone wise in their years at at your age. That's good to hear. I appreciate that. Yeah.
So, listen guys, go get this book, American Mediocrity, Ben Oberg. You can find it on Amazon or wherever books are sold. If nothing else, just the cover, man. The cover is cool. Did you design that? Yeah, I worked with uh I worked with one of my guys on it. We went back and forth on it, but he ended up putting in—putting it together for me off my ideas. And then and then join the capitalist network if you guys are interested in making money, saving taxes, understanding the real way to build wealth and and establish health. Yeah, it's wealth and health, right? You you got to throw some love and happiness in there. Then you'll have health, wealth, love, and happiness. Everyone will join. It's true. So, dude, where are you going from here? What's your goal? How can the Bomb Squad help you? My goal, I mean, I want to get as many people into this as possible. My go—My goal is that it's a global community, you know. I'm going to do TCN on tour this summer. So, I'm going to pick areas because when you join, you can see where everybody is, so you can start networking with them and connecting with them. And um I'm going to do TCN on tour. Uh, we do events, masterminds, conferences, retreats; active members actually have a way of going to one annual event per year for free, and it's it's the capitalistnetwork.com. So it's—that's where you can go—capitalistnetwork.com. But um yeah, where do they where do they follow you on Instagram? It's just Ben Oberg, and I just like it sounds, folks. B O Berg. Yep. Ben Oberg, and it's the capitalistnetwork.com. I just want to grow it, man. I want I want to help people with this. And like this is fun for me. Like literally, this is going to sound stupid, but all I've wanted to do my whole life is build cars. That's what I love doing. And when I went in the car business, I'm like, "Okay, now I got to—I got the money to build cars, but I have no time." And I took the time that I had and I started a metal fabrication business, and I was making bars and backrests for motorcycles, all this stuff. And I've been able to acquire a lot of cars, which I brought one if you got some time after. And uh, man, I'm like, I just want to build cars and all the hobbies that I love doing like gold panning and hiking or finding hot springs and stuff. I'm like, all these retreats, all these masterminds, conferences, the one thing I see that happens all the time is everybody comes in with an ego. Everybody rolls up in a Lamborghini. Everybody comes in, they're this big hot shot that got rich in crypto in Miami, and they're bringing their girlfriend. It's going to be a different one with different plastic surgery the next week over, and everybody's got an ego. And I'm like, we're going to go do archery. We're going to go ride horseback. All you Miami boys have never even been on a farm. Like, we're going to go do stuff that deflates the ego, get everybody on the same page. We'll put some business in there. We'll have some speakers there. We'll we'll we'll talk about money and finance, but like you might be taking a cold plunge, you know, and sleeping like in an ice igloo, you know? So, it allows me to really live out the things that I vicariously just enjoy doing. Cuz I I really feel like if you look back to the things that made you smile as a little kid, we stop doing that as adults. Then we get all these excuses. Oh, you can't do that when you're older, or you know, you can't when you're married, or happy wife, happy life, or you know, you can't do that when you have kids. And it's like, no. If if you're working at being aligned in every area of your life, there's not going to be this constant like push or against the grain—like things should flow. Not that it doesn't take work, but if you are aligned, I think that you can have a business where you achieve all those things. So, we're teaching people money and finance and investing, but they might end up doing some gold panning as well, you know. Dude, it sounds like an actually fun clip. The capitalistnetwork.com. Yes, sir. Ben Oberg, and the book is American Mediocrity, Bomb Squad. You know how you can help the guy. Share this out. Get him some members. Go join—at least check it out. Go to the capitalistnetwork.com. Appreciate you coming in, my man. Appreciate you. And until next time, folks, keep it real.