What Would the Rockefellers Do with Garrett Gunderson

Most money advice tells you to grind harder, save more, and wait. We don’t buy it. Brad sits down with author and entrepreneur finance expert Garrett Gunderson to talk about a different target: financial independence, where cash flow covers your life and work becomes optional. Along the way, we get real about the cost of living on “someday,” and why building wealth should improve your quality of life now, not just your net worth later.

Garrett shares what he learned studying generational wealth and the Rockefeller strategy, including the practical moves families can borrow even without billionaire money: trusts that carry instructions, life insurance used for liquidity and tax-efficient legacy planning, and a modern version of a family office where advisors actually coordinate. We also dig into the human side of wealth, like investing in heirs through family retreats, building shared rituals, and writing a family constitution in your own words so values travel with the assets.  (I LOVE THIS)

Then we take on retirement planning, 401(k)s, taxes, and the hidden drains Garrett calls the Four I’s: IRS, interest, investments, and insurance. The GE pension story is a sharp lesson in stability, sequence-of-returns risk, and what happens when greed replaces good structure. We also talk “investor DNA,” why taking bigger risks isn’t the same as getting better returns, and why investing in yourself is often the highest ROI move you can make. (key take away)

If you’ve ever wondered how to create generational wealth, protect your assets, and still enjoy the life you’re building, this conversation gives you a clear starting point. Subscribe for more real-life money talk, share this with someone building a family legacy, and leave a review. What would you change first to make work optional?  #garrettgunderson #bradweisman #thebradweismanshow #rockefellers #weatlthtransfer

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Welcome to The Brad Weisman Show, where we dive into the world of real people, real life, and everything in between with your host, Brad Weisman! 🎙️ Join us for candid conversations, laughter, and a fresh take on the real world. Get ready to explore the ups and downs of life with a side of humor. From property to personality, we've got it all covered. Tune in, laugh along, and let's get real! 🏡🌟 #TheBradWeismanShow #RealPeopleRealLife 

Credits - The music for my podcast was written and performed by Jeff Miller. 

Transcript

Cold Open And Show Setup

SPEAKER_02 0:30

This is gonna be a good one, Hugo. The Brad Wiseman Show. Real people, real life, and everything in between. So, what do your kids think of this?

SPEAKER_03 0:40

Oh, they ask so.

SPEAKER_02 0:41

In order to be unstoppable, you simply don't give up. You get knocked down, you get back up again. Where curiosity opens the door to genuine connection. Men really struggle with their emotions. They really struggle with even understanding what's going on. Unfiltered conversations with the people shaping our world. What kind of show is this? And there's red quilted leather all over the wall. There's a swing hanging from the ceiling.

Meet Garrett Gunderson

SPEAKER_01 1:09

I don't sweat you. And now your host, Brad Wiseman. All right. Hugo. Hello. How you doing, buddy? Good, good. I'm excited about this episode.

SPEAKER_00 1:21

Yeah, me too. I'll tell you, I've been watching this guy for quite some time, and I have to tell you that the thing that caught my eye, and you'll see it when you when you meet him and when everybody else sees him is he looks like Jesus.

SPEAKER_01 1:32

All right.

SPEAKER_00 1:34

I mean, how could you not want to interview, you know, somebody that looks like Jesus, right? I mean, and then I got into it, and he's written several books, and and a lot of it's about wealth. It's about it's all about different ways of looking at wealth and how to make money. And that's the part that really got me. And I thought this would be great for our audience to look at things in a different way with making money and how to save money and also how to have generational money, passing it on to your kids and having them pass it on to their kids, which is a different concept. Yeah. And it's all about what he talks about is the Rockefellers and how they do things. So that's what we're gonna do. Talk about that for the next uh 30 minutes. So, yeah, so Garrett Gunderson is our guest tonight. Garrett, how you doing, man? Glad to be with you, man. Awesome.

SPEAKER_03 2:16

I just love your energy. We're gonna have a good time.

SPEAKER_00 2:19

Yeah, yeah. So, yeah, so now everybody has seen him. If you're watching the show, you see him. So you know when I said he looks like Jesus, that this is a real thing.

SPEAKER_03 2:27

And uh Jesus, you know, the guy biggest selfie with that Whole Foods or Disney Jesus, you know. That's exactly that's hilarious. Someone I tried to like, I called him a nerd, and he's like, Well, you're like GQ Jesus, thinking that would offend me. I'm like, Well, thank you. That's that's a great compliment, man.

SPEAKER_00 2:44

What a compliment. You should have just walked across the water at that point, you know. That would have shut him up. Yeah, but no, I'm super excited about the show. You know, I'm not usually what's funny, I'm not usually geeked out by wealth building and and and you know, obviously I love wealth and I love money, but I've never usually like there's times where I look at some of these guys and they're just like the way they talk, the their mannerisms is just not fun for the show. But I started watching your Instagram page and I got like totally drawn in because you have a personality that goes with the numbers and goes with the the ideology that you have on this whole thing. I you know, it's really, really cool. And it's something that's not usually paired together is personality. And I'm not trying to be mean, I'm just saying that people that are into numbers and wealth and all that sometimes get a little boring. You are not like that. And I and the first thing I'm gonna tell everybody out there in the audience is if you want to check out his Instagram page. Usually we bring that up at the end, but I want to make sure I make a point of this, is check out his Instagram page. It's Garrett B. Gunderson, G-U-N-D-E-R-S-O-N. Amazing Instagram page. It has a lot of content and a lot of short, short little videos that you'll sit there and go, oh man, that's interesting.

SPEAKER_03 3:56

So uh she's even watching it now. What's that? Wife watching my Instagram. Okay.

SPEAKER_00 4:02

That's good.

SPEAKER_03 4:03

Last time, she's gonna be careful because last time she said I was kind of funny. I ended up doing a comedy special on Amazon Prime. Like I get, you know, be extreme uh for sure. But yeah, she says that she's enjoying the videos on Instagram. That's the the test. Can I pass my wife's test?

SPEAKER_00 4:16

You know, what's if you could let me know what you did to get her to watch your videos, I would love to be able to get my wife to do that.

SPEAKER_03 4:22

Yeah, I think I just sent her enough in the DMs, you know, like all these other videos that it just started like the rest of them start following her around and she goes, yeah, these are good videos.

Why Study The Rockefellers

SPEAKER_00 4:31

Cool. Awesome, awesome, awesome. Let's dig in a little bit here to some of this. You know, you have some interesting concepts, and I and it's I think a lot of it is probably concepts that have been around, obviously, since the Rockefellers. You wrote a book called What Would the Rockefellers Do, which I think is probably one of the more popular books that you've written. You've written several. You have, I think, three that were for the mainstream people, and then you have one that you wrote for kids, which is called I Am Money, and we can talk about that a little bit later on. But the one that caught my eye, and it probably catches a lot of people's eyes, and it's not that it maybe is your best book, but it's the book that grabs your attention. What would the Rockefellers do? How did you come up with that? Where did where did this come from, this concept?

SPEAKER_03 5:10

I was writing a book on insurance, as boring as that is. Wow, yeah. I was doing a webinar to I like to talk out the content sometimes as I'm writing the outlines. And then this woman was on the webinar named Sheila, who was a CPA for the Rockefeller Family Office. And she said, I'd like to talk to you because what you're talking about here, there's a lot of what the Rockefellers do here. And I was like, wow. So I had to restart the whole book once I began that conversation because I was like, Yeah, that's what I want to figure out. These guys are six generations of the time I wrote it, seven generations now passing on wealth. What's the formula? And then I found out the people that work for them have been passing on wealth for those generations as well. So it was and then I just took the the thought, how can I make this apply to a lot of people versus just the oh uber wealthy? Because yeah, sure, when you're there's ultra high net worth, there's certain things that only they could do. But then I found out there's things that any of us could do. And if you do that, you're gonna stack the odds in the favor of your family passing on wealth for generation to generation instead of debt. 70% of people leave nothing behind or uh debt. So that's you know, I want to flip that around, have a million lasting legacies.

SPEAKER_00 6:17

And very true. I I know that firsthand because of being a real estate, you know, we see a lot of homes being sold. That's their state, their estate homes. And and you know, some of the families are struggling and making sure that there's enough money to clear everything with the sale of the house, you know. And that's a shame, you know, because people work their whole lives in in you to own that home. And then it turns out that you know they really don't even have that much money left after it's sold. So it's it's I I I agree with that completely. There's definitely uh something going on there that we need work on.

Five Tools For Lasting Wealth

SPEAKER_03 6:46

Yeah, it's pretty interesting that the Rockefeller family versus the Vanderbilt family, because it was a similar era. Yeah. I mean the Vanderbilts came a little bit earlier, but completely different outcomes because the Vanderbilts, well, Cornelius passed on 90 plus percent of his wealth to his eldest son, William Henry, who doubled the estate in nine years. But when William Henry died, it was the last time that estate grew. And in 1970, there was like 120 Vanderbilt people that got together for family reunion, not a single millionaire in the room. Wow, that's incredible. You know, the Rockefellers when when John D died, they're worth 1.4 billion, they're worth 11 billion now. So it's actually grown and continued, and they just did really five things really well. One was they set up trusts because they Rockefellers always had this idea own nothing, control everything. So the trust removes it from the estate. The Vanderbells didn't have those trusts, so they had to pay tax when people would die, and then they spent the money because there's no set of instructions where you can have a set of instructions in the trust. The second thing is the Rockefellers just bought insurance that would be around a day longer than them, so the death benefit would come in and fill the trust back up in case maybe the businesses didn't work out, or there was a high inflation time, or interest rates weren't cooperating, or taxes got high because that was a way to pass that on tax-free. And then they just had a family office, which was a financial team that was cohesive, comprehensive, and communicating, which I mean, when people have that, it's just who can afford that? You had to be a billionaire to afford it back in the day. But thanks to AI and technology, we are we're able to provide that for people at a fraction of the cost so that you know someone that's just maybe only doing a half million of total revenue can have access to something that used to be a half a billion dollars of revenue was required. So, and then the next thing is a family retreat, just investing in your heirs, having the right rituals, which are the daily things that reinforce your belief systems, it's the traditions that bring the family together to have a deeper dive and conversation. And then the symbols. Every business has a logo. Why not have a family logo? I have a family crest, and in today's world, it's really easy to design those. I'm just a nerd, so I have a you know, metal one above my mantle that my kids can tell y'all about. We have it on our cornhole games, we have the little crest, we have it on our coolers, you know. So it is it's like almost like, hey, we have a we have cornhole and we have a crest. It's like white trash meets wealth, you know what I'm saying? I mean, it's just that's pretty funny.

SPEAKER_00 9:06

That is pretty funny. As your beer cup is off to the side, you know, and you're playing or whatever. Yeah, that's funny.

SPEAKER_03 9:11

The final thing is just the family constitution, which is things in your own words that say, here's the sign hosts and guardrails I want from generation to generation, why we started the trust, why you know what we hope to have happen with it, so that people know who you are. They know what's important to you, they know the main philosophies, and it's not just written by an attorney, it's in your own words.

Retirement Plans Versus Real Freedom

SPEAKER_00 9:30

So those are that's interesting. That's interesting. It's almost like a a vision statement for the family. Or or you know what I mean? That's really interesting on how this is how the wisemans expect the family to be running this this trust or whatever it is. That's pretty interesting. And you know, my thing, the thing that I think every time I I I think about these things, and it's only been a couple times where we've had somebody on that talked about you know the life insurance policies and how you can how you can work your investments through there, and there's a lot of tax benefits to that. You know, the thing that I think is you know, everybody's told from the time we recently in the past 30, 40 years, is the 401ks and the 403B for teachers and the and the you know doing the Roth IRAs and all this stuff. Are you saying don't do that? Are you saying do that, but then also have some discipline or have some other ways to to protect the wealth as you grow it?

SPEAKER_03 10:27

For the hands-off stuff, it's not the worst idea to just have those kind of things, but I I teach a lot of entrepreneurs, and I think entrepreneur finance is a little different. Absolutely. I believe that entrepreneurs, their their business is their wealth engine, and you wouldn't see Microsoft say, you know what we should do, we should diversify in an index fund. They buy capabilities, they buy companies. Even Warren Buffett, who some people think he's a stock market investor, he's not, he buys businesses, they're just big enough that they happen to be a public company, and you know, and then he uses his methodology to improve the overall return long term. So I'm not really a big fan of an entrepreneur diversifying prematurely, taking good money from the business before they brought the right people and processes and putting in things they have no control or influence over. I agree. I've got people that, you know, there's just people that maybe they're W-2, they're on a fixed income, and they're getting a match. And so that's kind of nice to get that match and have something. I just wouldn't want to see all the money there because there's no financial independence in retirement plans.

SPEAKER_00 11:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 11:27

I don't really believe in retirement as the main construct. I believe financial independence where you're working optional. You have enough cash flow from assets to cover your expenses. Now you have choice in what you do. If you don't, they get stuck in that. I gotta save 10%.

SPEAKER_00 11:39

Yeah, you're slave to your occupation. Nobody wants, and that's the thing. You know, I was just thinking about this this morning and probably before when we were talking about the show. And you know, I more and more I the word retire for me doesn't even make sense. Means to take out a service. What's that? It means to take out a service, like someday you do to a cow behind the barn. Yeah, I I exactly with a gun, usually. But I mean, but it's seriously, it's like I just the word retire, but he's like, what when do you want to retire? And and more and more it kind of like ticks me off. I'm sitting there going, and then you actually feel embarrassed sometimes to say, well, you know, I really don't know if I want to retire. I don't mind doing what I'm doing. I think if it's not work, then you're not retiring. You know, like I I could do this every day, all day, and it's not work, it's fun, it's it's it's enjoyable for me. And if I can make money at it, that's even better yet.

SPEAKER_03 12:28

Yeah, there's blue-collar people that want to retire. Like my dad was a coal miner. Yeah, I did that, but you know, podcasters, like we're in a world where we're not in the industrial age anymore. So it's a different time. Yeah, and so we're still playing by the old rules sometimes. And here's the problem with retirement is people spend so much time trying to prepare for retirement, they miss out on life along the way.

SPEAKER_00 12:48

Yeah, that's to me, and and it's so true. It's so true, is that you're so you're so consumed with with you know saving money, getting it all together, and then thinking, oh, this is gonna be great. When I get there, when I'm 75, I'm gonna have a great time, gonna be able to do whatever I want. Well, guess what? What if you don't make it to 75? I mean, that's the reality of anybody. Yeah, we're living longer and longer, but thinking you know, saving up in a car accident and died, you know.

SPEAKER_03 13:15

Yeah, exactly. Oh, wow. We don't know what's gonna happen. And yeah, and if you miss out on memories along the way, you can never buy back those memories. Absolutely. I think the quality of life really should be at the forefront of finance, not as an afterthought one day, someday. Yeah, part of it's just that a lot of financial people just think, oh, well, it's it's just gotta budget harder, you gotta save more, you gotta scrimp, you gotta sacrifice. I mean, you miss out on all the memories, you lower your energy because you're exhausted, constantly just trying to set money aside instead of investing in yourself, growing your skill set, enjoying life along the way, so you have more energy and being responsible financially. It's an it's not an either or, it's an and it's it's an and, yeah, it's right.

SPEAKER_00 13:56

It's yeah, yeah, it it's it's balance. I mean, we all talk about balance all the time, and it's balance. And with balance, that means that there's you're always doing this. Oh God, I hate doing that because I think six, seven right away, and then my kids go nuts. And you know, I mean, I shouldn't even do it. And they think, and now if I say six, seven at home, they're dad, you're a geek because nobody says that anymore. So I'm sure you've had that in your household maybe at one point.

SPEAKER_03 14:15

I I had my youngest explain what the whole thing was, and I couldn't believe how convoluted the explanation part.

SPEAKER_00 14:22

I think though, I gotta tell you, Gary, I think every kid makes up their own shit. Because every time I've heard an explanation, the my daughter says one thing, my son says another, and then I listen to another kid, and they're like, oh, it doesn't mean anything at all. Then I'm like, okay, well then who's like who came up with it? Somebody started it. I mean, it doesn't make any sense. But we'll stop there. We're not gonna keep we're not gonna keep talking about that. Let's get into some of the other stuff here. When you're talking about the the Vanderbilts and the and the Rockefellers, you know, that to me was interesting because you had two seriously wealthy families. Like, we're talking most wealthiest in in the world at at that time. And the differences there is that one was the the Rockefellers were already doing something that that nobody was doing. Is that really what are they the first people to do this whole process?

SPEAKER_03 15:11

They're the ones that there's I was in a documentary called Trust Me, and they there were some other families that were doing somewhat similar things, but the Rockefellers really made it famous. Like they really popularized the family office with having a financial team that worked just for them. Yeah. Um, you know, but other families were using trust before, and that was really important. And you know, there's there's there's some evidence of that. It's just it was nice to compare those two families that are both so well known when you hear the names, you know who they are. But there was a family that was like passed on wealth for 14 generations, which is really hard to do because that was before the time of like having you know the trust that we have of today, and you know, just we're talking about different countries over time, yeah, a lot of stuff. So they're not as famous, so not quite as uh appealing of a story.

SPEAKER_00 16:02

And a lot of times you you see the greedy kids or the kids that are entitled that will spend the money and it's gone.

SPEAKER_03 16:08

Yeah, it's because the parents did a bad job, you know, like entitled kids. My youngest has been moments where I'm like, he seems a little entitled, and then I realize that's on me.

SPEAKER_00 16:16

Of course it is. I I've been there.

SPEAKER_03 16:18

Lots of boundaries, it's yeah, you know, not giving them to it's giving them too much and not you know letting them struggle with certain things. But the good news is he is a good kid and we had the meetings and we made the rules and we made the changes because it was a reflection back on us, because I was too busy to deal with it at the time. And if we don't deal with it, it becomes very expensive in the future.

The GE Pension And Insurance Story

SPEAKER_00 16:38

Oh, absolutely, absolutely. So then let's go into the some of the other stuff here. And I actually want to get into because I think the GE electric story, the General Electric, the electric general electric story was was really good. And it kind of parallels with the Vanderbelts and what they were doing. Let's go into that story because I thought that was really cool. Because most people know who GE is. I mean, it's one of the biggest companies probably in in the United States.

SPEAKER_03 17:00

Yeah, it's pretty fascinating that in 1947 they were wanting to recruit other talent to become number one in every category that they're working in. But in order to do that, they'd have to give something unique to these people because they were already working for their competitors.

SPEAKER_00 17:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 17:14

And so what they offered was a pension. And so if you come over here, we'll give you a pension. And so if you work for a certain number of years, we'll go ahead and pay that. And they're like, well, that sounds great. And the way they funded the pension was they bought life insurance on that person. And so the cash value could maybe supplement it depending on how they long they worked and how big the pension was. It just depended. It wasn't, it wasn't the main part of the plan. Yeah. But what they did know would happen is GE would be longer around longer than that person. So when they would die, the death benefit would come back in tax-free and replenish all the money that was spent. By the way, the thing called dead peasants insurance that that's what not my name for it, but that's what they call with Walmart because Walmart had in their contract that every single people person that worked there, they would go get insurance on them. And a lot of people are like, Well, how did they do it without their permission? I'm like, Well, it was in the contract when they signed up, and a lot of times it's smaller policies because they're not getting blood work done necessarily, they're just filling out the basic information. So I'd be guaranteed issue. But there's a lot of a but it was interesting to offer this pension. And then Wall Street came in to GE and said, This is insane. Why are you only getting these like really low returns with life insurance? I get that it's tax efficient, but you could do better in the market. And this was in the 90s, and the market was just crushing it. I mean, the market was just doing so much better than these policies, and then the year 2000 came, 2001, 2002, straight negative years, and they had to still pay out the pensions, which started to really harm those pensions. And then we saw so many pensions went bankrupt because they didn't manage them properly. Because there's a thing called disinvesting. When you pull money out when the market's down, it double dips it, right? Because it's only gonna go out, and even if the market comes back, there's less to come back. And so not having that stability was a major cost. And we just saw that a lot of the companies kind of abandoned this initial process that GE used because of greed. And then what was worse, they said, hey, we'll just put it on the employees, we won't provide it. Okay, so you have world-class money managers because you have billions of dollars in in your pensions, and now you're gonna give it to someone that's got$140,000, they're not gonna have access to the same level of managers. Yeah, and with the great managers, you weren't able to do it. Now we expect the average person to be able to do it. It's kind of a broken system.

Taxes Fees And The Four I’s

SPEAKER_00 19:21

It is, it is, and what it's interesting because pensions are pretty much a non-issue now. Well, the thing with pensions now is that you know, the taxpayer, if typically it's government, and typically if it's not funding itself, they just raise taxes and we pay for the pensions. I mean, that's kind of how it works now. It's a wholly different system now that the government got involved, of course. But yeah, I thought that was an interesting story.

SPEAKER_03 19:42

I don't like money in retirement plans because I don't want to defer taxes. I like to save, not delay taxes. There are times it makes sense to delay tax, like cost segregation where you're taking your accelerated depreciation. Yeah, take that. Because you could always just roll that to another property, you could always borrow against it and not pay tax. You could even do a charitable trust and sell it tax-free and get a lifetime income off of it because you have strategy. But in a 401k or SEP IRA, how do you offset those taxes you delayed? And when people tell me, Brad, they've got to be in a lower tax bracket in the future, you better hope you're not in a lower tax bracket because you inflation alone means enough money to just live the same lifestyle.

SPEAKER_00 20:22

That is so funny because that's the live people say they they do say, Oh, I'll be in a lower tax bracket, so everything'll be great. Well, no, it's not, it means you're making less money. I mean, yeah, yeah, I mean, if you're a lower tax bracket, that means you're making less money. And then and then if you're making less money, that's yeah, it's just like a whole vicious cycle.

SPEAKER_03 20:37

People say, Oh, well, I won't have to save for college anymore. Okay, I won't have to put my money in savings anymore. Right. But I live in a in a place where they just raised property taxes 20%. Oh my gosh. There's a lot of people that have lived here for decades. They're out. And they're and we've talked, they said that they're paying more in property tax than their initial mortgage 30 years ago. Oh my gosh. So the property taxes are higher than their mortgage. So if we plan on something and it's a moving target, and we think, oh, we can have less. Like people just think they need less because their advisors have failed them in actually how to provide more. Yeah. And the best way to get more is save on tax, not just delay it. Save on interest, not just pay it. Save on non-performing fees with investments, and you can get your familiar to go further, faster. And design insurances where you don't have duplicate coverages or improper structure. And those four things, IRS, interest, investments, and insurance, is where a lot of money could be put in the bottom line without having to budget, without having to work harder, just using a little financial savvy and being efficient.

Risk Myths And Investor DNA

SPEAKER_00 21:32

Those are your four eyes that you talk about. Yeah. You just did them. Look at you snuck them in there. You snuck them in there. Well, it's funny because I had a I had those in my notes here. Let's go back to your your then. You have three books. So the first one was The Killing, Killing the Sacred Cow. Let's talk about that a little bit. I mean, that was pretty interesting. It says one of the things I wrote down was the you're in it for the long haul, the idea that you should sacrifice today's quality of life for a distant, uncertain retirement, which we talked about. So that a lot, a lot of what we talked about is in that book, Killing Sacred Cows. The other thing I thought was the dangerous dogma that you must take big risks to sub to get substantial rewards. That is something we hear a lot. That the reason these people are so risk rich is because they they they have the guts to do it and they're they're they're putting everything out there and that's why they're making money. And and you're saying that that's not always the that's not always true.

SPEAKER_03 22:20

Risk means chance of losing. So how does increasing our chance of losing help us win?

SPEAKER_00 22:26

True.

SPEAKER_03 22:26

It's I actually think they're masterful at mitigating risk, at managing risk, at lowering risk. You know, because if I can have an asset create cash flow, that's less risky than saying I'm gonna hold on to this for 30 years and hope it pays off in 30 years, because I can tell if it's working or not. The money's coming in, I can keep it in motion, maybe saving tax. That's gonna be a lot less risky than trying to double return on a retirement plan. So I think that risk, the less we know about an investment, the riskier it is. And risk isn't even in the investment, it's in the investor. So, what kind of investor is the person? Some people are just brilliant at real estate, which means they do well with it. Other people aren't. Some people are brilliant at business, other people aren't. So I think if people figure out their investor DNA, which is what are their values, the things they deem important, their competencies and abilities, where they have that aptitude, and then finally, where do they have the drive where they're willing to learn about it and focus there? And so pick an asset class, get really good at that asset class versus spreading yourself thin, and you can start to reduce the risk.

SPEAKER_00 23:39

Yeah, you said it there about invest in yourself, I think was one of the things I heard you say on one of the on one of the the uh clips that I saw on Instagram. And I thought that was really that's interesting. You know, and one thing too about when you say about invest in yourself, it's the one thing that nobody else can be. You know what I mean? If you invest in yourself, you're unique in your own way, and and if you invest in yourself and what you're good at and what you're what you do best, you know, you're it that's what you should be doing.

SPEAKER_03 24:06

Yeah, I I mean if we get in this miser mindset where it's like I gotta save money, but we do it at the expense, where I say people a lot of times will spend time to save money. And I'd rather spend money to save time so I can continue to add more value. And so if I take money and put it into myself first, grow my skills, then with more skills, add more value, dollars follow value. So instead of just taking the dollars immediately putting into savings, put it into myself first, grow my income, and then with that growing income, then learn to invest. Too many people are just in a in the wrong mindset where it's just save, save, save. They spend their time and then they're exhausted and they don't have any time left over for the most important things.

SPEAKER_00 24:47

It's yeah, it's that's it's very true. And you know, and it's something that it's it's leveraging too. I mean, that's what it's about. I mean, I always said this, my neighbors make it, they make fun of me and they've done this for 20 years, and for many reasons, of course. For the one reason is is I don't mow my own grass and I haven't for 20 some years. And they don't understand, like they're like, well, why don't you do it? Do you not like it? And I'm like, no, I don't mind it. I just I know that that for$35, I can have my yard mowed and trimmed and cleaned up every week,$35 to$40. And why would I, why would I spend an hour and if I hate it, why would I spend an hour and a half of my time out there doing that when I could be inside doing something that I'm good at, which is selling real estate or or a podcast or working on a book or whatever? It's just fine. Some people can't see that, but I to me, I don't understand why I would be out there mowing grass, you know, if if I don't like it.

SPEAKER_03 25:40

Right. I mean, it's because it's just another thing to occupy your mind if it's another to-do list. Yeah. Yeah. And even if you just spent the money to have that done so you can just have some leisure, there's yeah, value and leisure and enjoying life. I think that if you could create a life you don't want to retire from, that's the ideal. Oh, I love that.

SPEAKER_00 26:02

That's great. That's great.

The Family Bank Home Strategy

SPEAKER_03 26:03

Start delegating those things, you're like, yeah, I don't want to do that long term. Yeah, I think that many people sacrifice becomes habitual. Like they just wear it on their like a badge. Like, I'm just gonna keep doing the things I hate to do so that when I'm too old, I'll finally enjoy my life. You know, finally take that trip when I'm like all those memes where they're falling asleep in the boats. Yes, yes, uh dentist, you know. Yeah, yeah, I've seen those. 20 years too late, 30 years too late. We we did a summer in Italy and it changed our lives. Oh, that's cool. How to have leisure, I learned how to enjoy myself, I learned how to have long dinners. I was so used to just working all the time, it gave me like it rewired me a little bit.

SPEAKER_00 26:41

That's good. Good for you, man. That's awesome. Yeah, we we did some. I was on the longest trip I've ever been on, and it was only two weeks, and that was uh last summer, and we went to Ireland for two weeks. And I'll tell you what, I never thought I could go away for two weeks, and I did it. And then you know what? I loved it. We had a great time. It was a really good, really nice country to look at to watch and see everybody there. So let's talk about the uh other things that I had in here, which was the family bank. I mean, go go into that a little bit because I was on your Instagram and you had like all these different pages that kind of explained it. Maybe you can just touch on that a little bit before we wrap it up.

SPEAKER_03 27:13

Years ago, my wife was like, Do you worry about inflation for our kids? I'm like, Yeah, but we've prepared. So, you know, if someone goes and they get a mortgage, they're gonna pay a loan origination fee, they're gonna, you know, they're gonna pay title and other closings, they're gonna pay appraisal fees, there's gonna be a lot of stuff. I'm like, what if we just financed our kids' homes and they paid us interest to the family bank instead of to the other bank? So we just start getting the interest, and then every time they make a payment, that payment's helping their kids out. That's great. And then we just finance the homes with the family from generation to generation. Now, the hardest part is the first generation because you know, do you have the money to do it? Yeah. But when we die, we're gonna have a big death benefit that comes in that could go into a trust that could be a part of the purpose of our family constitution, is we're willing to finance assets. Now, we're not willing to like fully finance a business because we think it's important for them to have some skin in the game and consider bootstrapping it. But when it comes to a primary residence, we have a few rules and restrictions with it. You know, they don't have to make 20% down payment, but they have to make some down payment. Or we'll we'll cover the down payment, but they have to finance us through us. And then if they sell within the first five years, we get some of the gains back into the trust. If they sell after five years, they keep it fully because we're gonna give them a preferred interest rate. We're gonna make it easier on them. And so that's just kind of exciting. And then I just love the thought of like my kids paying for a mortgage, knowing that that's going to help their kids out. I think it's awesome. It's gonna finance their home. I I just I remember the first time I thought of that, I was like, this is cool. I'm excited about it.

Teaching Kids Money And Final Offers

SPEAKER_00 28:43

That to me is such a unique idea, and maybe just because it's the first time I'm hearing it, but I think it's really cool. And I think it it really makes things possible for your legacy, too. You know, a lot of this stuff is, you know, when we're gone, you know, we're not here anymore. You know, it's nice to know that your family, what you left behind. Now what they do with it after that, you can't control because you're not here anymore. But at least you know, going out of this world that you've done everything you could to get them set. Not set for life, whatever, but they're set to be able to do what you did, you know, to be for their kids. It's teaching those lessons and whatever. And uh I think that's really cool. Is that kind of what is in the the book that you have for kids called I Am Money, which I think is great that you wrote a book for kids, because I think we we tend to think that kids don't understand this stuff or that they're too young to grasp, you know, anything about finances. And I think we're we're we're not right on that, which is not correct. I think that a lot of times kids can soak up a lot more than what we think. So tell me a little bit about the kids' book, and then we'll we'll wrap this up.

SPEAKER_03 29:44

It's about how to make money, how to save money, how to, you know, basically give your money away, like how to how to be charitable. So it's earning savings, it's being charitable. But the main message of the book is they are their greatest investment and invest in themselves. And you know, and if they take care of themselves, then they can be generous, but if they don't, then they're gonna be in scarcity. So it's teaching them responsibility and the fundamentals. What's cool is if if a grown-up reads it, they're gonna learn from it, right? So earn it, save it, spend it, and most importantly, how to give it away, you know, and it's about money itself is the character, and it's it's got these fun little characters because Julia Cook, my co-author, is a phenomenal children's author. Oh she made it, she speaks kid. So she speaks kid. When I when I wrote it, I was like, okay, yeah, this isn't gonna be the most readable thing. And she just flipped that around immediately. It was amazing.

SPEAKER_00 30:43

Yeah, it's amazing. I'm working on a book right now, and it's and when you do have I have a ghostwriter that's helping me write it because it's it's it's a lot of work. But it is funny how you know they know they know what they're doing, you know. When somebody is good at that, we once once again, do what you're good at and and and invest in yourself, and that's what they're doing. A ghostwriter or anybody that's helping you, they're investing in themselves, and that's how they're making you know a good good living or a fun living, too. So uh is there anything else besides we want to go back into the the Garrett B. Gundr Gunderson is your in this Instagram, correct? What about your web your website? Garrettgunderson.com.

SPEAKER_03 31:17

Okay. And then, you know, if people want what we talked a lot about what would the Rockefellers do. So if they just put family bank in my DMs, I'll give them an audio book of uh what would the rockfellas do? My most popular book. So we'll hook them up.

SPEAKER_00 31:29

That's awesome. And is there anything else that you that you want to tell about any kind of their services that you have or anything that you do coaching? Do you do any of that stuff?

SPEAKER_03 31:36

Yeah, we work with we work with entrepreneurs on their finances, get their financial house in order. It's financially fit, it's financial freedom, which is the mindset, which I'm teaching right after this. Oh, cool. They get one-on-one coaches, but we have attorneys, we have accountants, so we have that full comprehensive planning, and we usually start with a discovery session where to get to know them with a report of findings from exactly what they could do to improve their cash flow and where they have you know holes or their assets aren't protected. And then about 70% of those people end up hiring us after that process, and then we build out the team for them. So doing it, it's it's becoming so affordable from what it used to be when I started. You know, we've been able to get priced down thanks to technology, AI, and and be able to add more value all the time. And so it's a fun process because I want to help create a million lasting legacies. That's what I'm here to do. When I talk legacy with people and they start doing that work, it lights them up, it lights me up. I get to know them in the most deep level. So that's what I really enjoy.

SPEAKER_00 32:34

That's awesome, man. Well, thanks so much for coming on. I really enjoyed talking to you. You make building wealth and talking about money very interesting, and you have a good personality along with it. So it's actually very, very fun. All right, that's about it. Thanks so much. I appreciate it. Thank you so much. All right, there you go. Garrett Gunderson, guys, you gotta look him up seriously. His Instagram page is really, really cool. It's easy to listen to, you'll learn a lot. He's got uh several books out. It's uh What Would the Rockefellers Do? He's got Killing Sacred Cows, he's got Money Unmasked, and I think he's also got I Am Money, which is for the kids. So uh check it all out. It's uh very interesting stuff, and uh it could definitely help you. All right, that's about it. Thanks for coming to see us every Thursday at 7 p.m. All righty.