He Made $110M in Life Insurance… Then Faced 28 Years in Prison (Ep. 267)

A guy can build an unbelievable career in the life insurance industry and still get blindsided by one decision. James Catledge did everything the “success playbook” promises: sold hard, built a monster team, earned millions through financial services, and lived big. Then a real estate deal went sideways, the headlines got ugly, and the federal government put a number on his life: 28 years if he fought, 11 years if he surrendered.

We dig into what that kind of pressure does to your mind, your marriage, your friendships, and your identity. James walks us through the darkest moments, including the night in his garage when he realized he had to choose between quitting or deciding, once and for all, who he would be on the other side of the storm. From there, we talk about the practical survival tools that actually held up: fitness, staying busy, refusing victimhood, finding a therapist, and focusing on lifting other people when your own world feels like it’s collapsing.

On the comeback side, James shares what prison camp taught him about trauma reframing, emotional freedom, and dropping dogma so you can build a life you chose, not one you inherited. We also get tactical on insurance recruiting and agency growth through Real Financial: seminar-based marketing, client scoring, AI-guided recommendations, and why real trust still requires real time in the same room. If you want lessons on resilience, leadership, team building, and wealth habits from someone who has lived the extreme version, hit play, then subscribe, share this with a friend who needs it, and leave a review with your biggest takeaway.

*****DISCLAIMER****** 

Results mentioned in this content are not typical and are not a guarantee of future performance. Individual results will vary based on a number of factors, including but not limited to experience, market conditions, product availability, and individual effort. Any examples, case studies, testimonials, or income figures shown are for illustrative purposes only and may not be representative of the experience of other individuals. Past performance is not indicative of future results. Insurance and annuity product guarantees are subject to the claims-paying ability and financial strength of the issuing company. FFL USA does not provide tax, legal, or accounting advice. Consult your own tax, legal, and accounting advisors before engaging in any transaction.

Transcript

James Catledge’s Insurance Origin Story

SPEAKER_07 0:46

Hello, everybody. Thank you for joining us. Today we have James Catledge with us. Thank you for coming in.

SPEAKER_02 0:52

Great to be here, Andrew.

SPEAKER_07 0:53

All right, you guys are in for a treat. Uh, we have spent hours talking about James Catledge's story. And you guys are gonna be shocked. But the reason I wanted him in here, even though he's not working with Family First Life, you started in life insurance how long ago?

SPEAKER_02 1:12

1993.

SPEAKER_07 1:14

And what was your career like in life insurance?

SPEAKER_02 1:18

It was phenomenal. It's the it's the greatest career of my. I mean, I I can't imagine a better career. Um net worth$110 million, 100% of it in financial services, 100% of it in team building and financial services, airplanes, houses, per the family was in your 30s. In my 30s, by 35.

SPEAKER_07 1:42

And you worked with who?

SPEAKER_02 1:44

Hubert Humphrey was my direct mentor. Uh Monty Holmes, Schwan Wynne, Rich Thalley, Ed Milette, Patrick Bett David. Uh, these are my peers.

SPEAKER_07 1:54

You recently saw Patrick Bett David.

SPEAKER_02 1:56

I did. I was back at his uh sales leadership conference.

SPEAKER_07 1:59

And he was learning from you at one point.

SPEAKER_02 2:01

Uh well, it's interesting. I was nine, I'm nine years older than Patrick. He entered the business when I was at my peak over at uh World Financial Group, World Market Alliance. He he arrived in the business, got his licenses, and uh was a go-getter animal beast from the beginning. And so he was studying all the legends, studying all the greats. He was studying Ed Milette, Jeff Levitan, James Catledge, and all the others that had come before us. So Patrick uh was gonna be great.

SPEAKER_07 2:30

Now, through us talking for hours and hours and hours, because I've been so interested in this story. Yeah, uh, I've learned a lot about the beginning days of life insurance, which I still believe it's the most beautiful industry ever created.

SPEAKER_03 2:45

Yeah.

SPEAKER_07 2:46

Uh, and we're gonna talk about that. Uh, by the way, this is the shirt you got me.

SPEAKER_03 2:51

Right.

SPEAKER_07 2:51

And this Trans America got me this hat last year, and you gave me this shirt from the Masters last year about just about a year ago.

unknown 2:59

Right.

SPEAKER_07 2:59

Decided today would be a good day to wear it. Yeah. Um now you we're gonna get into this, but I was interested when I met you because you were at the peak of your career with how many kids do you have?

SPEAKER_02 3:15

Uh six kids.

SPEAKER_07 3:16

Six kids.

SPEAKER_02 3:17

Yes.

SPEAKER_07 3:18

Uh you're all grown. You're in your thirties.

SPEAKER_02 3:20

Yep.

SPEAKER_07 3:21

You have a plane. Drew, can we pull up this plane?

SPEAKER_02 3:24

Uh this is my airplane. When you got my airplane?

SPEAKER_07 3:27

Yeah. When you showed me that you had your own airplane in your 30s and you were traveling around, so you got this King Air, how much this thing cost?

SPEAKER_02 3:37

Uh three and a half million to purchase it. And we put a million on the interior and a million on the exterior with engines and paint.

SPEAKER_07 3:44

All right. When I saw this picture right here, go back, Drew. How young you were. That's an over killing it in life insurance.

SPEAKER_02 3:53

Yeah, look at my Blackberry on my belt. Tell you how old that picture is. Yeah.

SPEAKER_07 3:58

Okay. Now, life is good. Yeah. You're doing great. Yep. And the reason I've been so interested in your story is because you've you had some terrible things happen, misfortunate things that most people wouldn't recover from.

SPEAKER_01 4:14

Right.

SPEAKER_07 4:14

But you turned it around and made it something good.

SPEAKER_01 4:19

Yeah, right, for sure.

SPEAKER_07 4:20

So you're at the peak in your 30s. Yep. And what happened?

SPEAKER_02 4:25

I'm I'm 35 years old. Uh uh, World Marketing Alliance has been sold. Hubert sold the company to Trans America or Aegon, the parent company. When he sold it, and he was my mentor. We are uh uh it's a father-son type relationship. We're that close.

SPEAKER_07 4:42

For those who don't know Hubert Humphrey, who is he?

SPEAKER_02 4:44

Uh he's the founder of the business we're in. I mean, he's the one that made uh uh the the ability to override other insurance agents possible. He's recruited 1.8 million people through uh our AO Williams organization, World Market Alliance, WFG, HGI. He's now managing partner at integrity. He's the guy, the guy, the guy is the last how old is he? He's probably 80.

SPEAKER_07 5:08

And he's full of life and energy.

SPEAKER_02 5:10

Totally. He just hosted uh 150 contest winners of Hawaii for HGI.

SPEAKER_07 5:15

Yeah, he's not stopping.

SPEAKER_02 5:16

No, no, you'll bury him before he stops.

SPEAKER_07 5:18

The few conversations you told me that you had with him were so impactful, which we'll talk about, but you're working with him, you're 35. What happens?

SPEAKER_02 5:27

All right, so he he sells the business, and I decide that this is my time to go. I'm not interested in a corporate environment. I'm an entrepreneur. I don't like uh shareholders being the focus. I like the entrepreneurs being the focus. So I know I need to leave. My people, the people that are following me, I've got 8,000 licensed agents on my team. Their opportunity has now shifted because distribution, which is the salespeople, is now owned by the manufacturer of the products. It's a complete conflict of interest as far as I'm concerned. And I could see that in my 30s that if you if you work for the manufacturer of the products, you're gonna sell a contaminated product. It's the one that's ginned up for shareholders, not for the client, and certainly not for the agent. So I broke out on my own, formed a company called Impact Networth. I wanted to impact people's net worth. So lots of people follow me out of World Marketing Alliance. Litigation follows because I was the biggest guy to ever leave that company.

SPEAKER_07 6:28

Okay, so you get sued.

SPEAKER_02 6:30

I get sued. Uh, I respond with a lawsuit because I think they're interfering with my business and my freedom to run a business, you know, as an entrepreneur.

SPEAKER_07 6:39

Typical leaving IMO.

SPEAKER_02 6:40

Yeah, right. Yeah. So so we we end up selling the lawsuit. They end up paying me for my code number. Uh, and and they paid me for several years the overrides on my code number while I built my business. So that was our settlement because I was right and they were right. And so the settlement was you built this, we would normally buy it from you, uh, we'll just buy it from you now that you're gone. So that was the agreement. They paid me for several years. Uh, they basically financed the build-out of Impact Networth. That ends up being about 8,000 agents. Again, uh, we it's it headquartered in Las Vegas, we're doing great. We buy the plane about year one or two in because I already had substantial savings and networks.

SPEAKER_07 7:25

You're recruiting and selling IULs.

SPEAKER_02 7:27

I am recruiting and selling variable universal life insurance and variable annuities, and uh index is just kind of coming into vogue.

SPEAKER_07 7:38

Okay. So index annuities were not just coming in.

A Real Estate Bet Goes Wrong

SPEAKER_02 7:41

It's just coming in. People starting to understand it, uh, not quite understanding it, uh, how participation rates work, all that stuff. But it's there and it's it's on the menu of options, but we really know the VUL and the variable annuities. So we're selling, we're selling that stuff, and I get approached. Now, this is this is where I make the mistake. This is this is my error. And this is a lesson, I think, to anybody listening who who thinks they're a high flyer and they're getting after it, and and and maybe thinks they're beyond beyond uh you know scrutiny. So I'm running and gunning, running my own business, making the decisions. I've got a wonderful executive staff that that together we run this company. Really high-qualified, great people that were with me prior. So they rolled with me out. Um, I get approached by a real estate developer who builds hotels in the Caribbean. They've partnered with Maxim Publishing, Maxim Magazine, the men's magazine. Maxim wants to build hotels for their celebrities.

SPEAKER_07 8:41

Is that the magazine you were reading in the plane?

SPEAKER_02 8:44

No, no. Well, that magazine may have been on my lap. Yeah. Maxim's a big part of what we were doing. So, Maxim, and you know, every everybody's familiar with Maxim because you've seen their magazines on the shelf. They are not a developer. They're a great brand who wants to be in the hotel development business. I don't know anything about hotels. What I'm great at is building leaders who sell financial services. What ends up happening, Andrew, is we sell for this developer$180 million worth of condominiums. They build three hotels for Maxim. They're called the Maxim Bungalows. You can Google them today. You can go stay in them today. In year five, we did this for five years. We made a lot of money selling real estate as a part of the mix of our financial services. This was the mistake. We're we're selling real estate with insurance. It's like we don't have any background in this. I'm trusting the partner, the developer. Well, they quit paying our investors their yield. So I have to sue them. It's this is it takes months for me to decide this.

SPEAKER_07 9:52

But I think that's so Dirk, you're raising money.

SPEAKER_02 9:54

We raise$180 million in five years. They built the three hotels.

SPEAKER_07 9:58

They built the three hotels, but they stop paying the investor.

Feds Close In And Plea Pressure

SPEAKER_02 10:02

They have a yield that goes to the investor, and they they quit paying that yield. So the investors are naturally concerned and they look to us. Uh to we take them, yeah, we take them to this investment. So they don't really know or get involved unless it's with us. Well, in the end, my lawsuit where we sue on behalf of the investors, I spend the money, I pay the money for the lawsuit. 644 clients are with me in the lawsuit. It's a federal case in Miami. In that lawsuit, the judge rules I don't want to proceed with the salespeople suing the developer they were selling for. That's a contaminated lawsuit. It's it's filled with conflicts. I believe something's gone wrong here financially, and I don't know if it's the selling or if it's the developer. I don't know. So I'm referring this to the Department of Justice, the SEC, and the IRS. And so that's when my world shifted forever. These three government agencies decide that the developer and I should be the target of the investigation.

SPEAKER_07 11:15

And what happened? Um it it I'm not. Well, first of all, what were you thinking when this happened? Well, I'm thinking that that surely You're gonna get it you'll be okay.

SPEAKER_02 11:26

Yeah, surely people will read the emails and flip over the documents and realize that this was all lawyered up properly, all the documents are right, the consumers are protected, the the clients themselves, I protected them by paying for their lawsuit. I mean, I'm doing everything I can in my mind to protect them. So this can't turn into much. IRS flies in, IRS enforcement to my CPA's office. My CPA stands in the box and says, not this guy, he pays his taxes. I'm happy to review anything with you. So they spend two weeks in his office with badges and guns, going through all my tax returns over a three-year window, because that's the law, and we get a clean bill of health. So we're clear from the IRS. SEC says this could have been a security, and and your people aren't securities licensed. Therefore, you may have been selling a security without a license. So that's a risk. And they would like to sue on that count. You know, everything's a securities without if you don't have the license, right? They deem everything as a security. So they're gonna sue. They just haven't yet. But the big one, the dangerous one, is the Department of Justice. That's the FBI, that's the prosecutors, that's you know, that's heavy. That's jail time if it doesn't go right.

SPEAKER_06 12:46

And what happened?

SPEAKER_02 12:48

Well, I haven't done anything wrong, so I'm not about to uh acquiesce to the government's wishes. They they they actually uh begin investigating, and and they the way the an investigation works is they start at the perimeter. They don't call you if you're the target. They they call everyone you know and they work their way in slowly doing interviews. And after all those interviews, they then reach out to you or your attorney to talk to you. When we never get there, I hire a criminal defense attorney here in Las Vegas to proactively reach out to them and say, Why don't you just set up a meeting? Let's just help them understand what happened, let's sit with them. And he said, James, that's not a great idea. You're you're gonna basically give them all the ammunition to indict you. I said, Well, I haven't done anything wrong. So there's no ammunition. I can't load a gun, you know. I there was no bullets. So there's I'm not worried about that. He goes, You don't understand how it works. You're naive. You have no idea how this works. They need an indictment. People lost money. You're the richest guy in the enterprise. Your partner also has dirty hands. So we you're going to, they're coming for you. And by going and giving them all the information, it's just not a good idea. And I said, Well, I just totally disagree with that. I know you think that way because every day you deal with dark people, every day you deal with people who have done bad things because you're a criminal defense lawyer. I've not done anything wrong. So since you work for me, would you set up the appointment, put me in the room, and if you want to defend me, you come in the room with me and let's have the conversation. So I demanded the meeting. And against his wishes, and I mean he really protested this. We spend 14 hours in a San Francisco federal office. I've got a name tag on that's got red and white stripes on it. Everybody else's name tag's normal, and it's clear I'm the problem in the room when we get there. Literally it's a different name.

SPEAKER_07 14:53

How old are you at this point?

SPEAKER_02 14:54

34. 34. Scary. Six kids. Six baby, little baby. I think my I think my oldest is in fifth grade. I mean, it's it's scary. Okay. And of course, you know, my wife, you know, I call her mama, but my wife at the time, she's not wired for this type of activity. This is not this is not for her. Okay. This is this is hard. Any update in this case here. Absolutely not. No. She, no way, no way. Not not a chance. No. She does not think that to this day, doesn't think that. Yeah. And and so here's where we go. We do 14 hours in the meeting. Everybody's transcribing the meeting. We've got a forensic FBI agent. I've got a prosecutor in the room, assistant U.S. attorney, and the two agents assigned my case. Young, young men, you know, about my age, maybe a little younger. And I just get the feeling like, you know, if we could just get to it, you guys understand what happened, and you can get on with going after where the money went.

SPEAKER_07 16:04

Yeah, go after the bad guys.

SPEAKER_02 16:05

Yes. Because all checks are made out to the developer, all the money spent by the developer, our commissions are paid from the developer to us. Yeah. So it just doesn't seem like there's any way in the world to twist this thing into we did something wrong. That's my belief. At the end of 14 hours, uh, I leave, we debrief over uh coffee. My attorney and I said, How'd you think it went? He goes, terrible. Terrible. I said, and I I just felt completely the opposite. I said, What do you mean terrible? He said, James, you just gave him everything. I said, What should I hold back? I mean, what are we here for? He said, Yes, you should hold back. You told him everybody to interview. He goes, Some of those people will be threatened and told they too will be indicted, unless they go along with the government's theory. You gave him every name. You gave him everybody to call. You gave him your top guys, you gave them your second-tier guys, you gave them your corporate staff. How many of those people want to go to jail? I said, none. And they shouldn't. They've done nothing wrong. He said, Well, some of them probably will now. Because you've given all their names and they get to choose, save you and tell the truth, or dispose of you and go along with what's being suggested. So you you're gonna find out what you got. You're gonna find out where these people stand. You're gonna find out they're gonna do a hundred interviews based on what you just did here over 14 hours. They're gonna do a hundred interviews now. This will take a while. So we leave that meeting, and I I try to get back on to running my agency, get back on to doing the things we're doing to make money, and all these people's lives are in this. They they're counting on a living and mortgages, you know, all the things that it takes when you're in the insurance business. They're trying to make a living. And uh, but but it's a it's a dark cloud, Andrew. It's a dark cloud, it's heavy.

SPEAKER_07 18:02

Now, how were were you how concerned were you at this point?

SPEAKER_02 18:07

Well, my attorney keeps scaring me. He does keep scaring me, he's very effective at scaring me to death. Um, I just think he's so in that world, he sees through jaded lenses. That's my view of it. So I I'm an optimist.

SPEAKER_07 18:22

Are you losing sleep?

SPEAKER_02 18:23

No, I'm not yet losing sleep. Not yet. This this begins in 2008. No, excuse me, 2009, I sue. 2010, the feds begin investigating. 2012. So two years later. 2012, they call and say we'd like a meeting with your client. The feds do. And uh, so it's gonna be on a kind of like a Zoom call, but it's not Zoom back then, it's something else. It's some of the video ability to all see each other. And we have this call, and I'll never forget my son's working out. I've taken him, he's on the football team, so he's in a private workout with a coach, and I'm in the parking lot waiting for him, and and I scheduled this call knowing he's got an hour in there, and I've got an hour for the call. And I'm we get on this call and I'm thinking it's gonna be, hey, we figured it out. Your interview is very helpful. We did all our interviews, your story lines up, you know. If you'd help us with the Elliots, that's the developer partner, if you'd help us with the Elliots, that'd be greatly appreciated. Here's the roadmap from here. That's kind of what I thought the call was gonna be. Uh, the call was not that. The call was uh your guy is uh equally responsible. A lot of people lost a lot of money. And if he takes this all the way to trial, he's gonna get 28 years in federal prison. And um, if he takes it all the way to trial, we're gonna make sure he goes to prison because he has hurt a lot of people. This that's the way they express it to me. And I I I'm literally taken back by this. Totally taken back. It feels like like they're acting like there's no way This is real. Yeah, there's no and there's no way you believe this. There's no way what you're saying you believe. It just feels so contrived. And uh it's like if you ever had a conversation with somebody that feels like they're on another planet, like we're just not communicating. That's that's what it feels like. And they said to me, We're willing to give you 11. 11 years if you'll uh say yes, I did this, that you defrauded all these people, and that you stole, I use the word stole, stole these, you know, we earned commissions for selling selling condos, but you stole all this money and we'll give you, and then you have to admit to a judge that you did all this, we'll give you 11 years in in a federal prison. And and you've got 24 hours to make that decision, and it only goes off from here. That's the threat. That's the that's the phone call. And I I am flabbergasted. I my my attorney says, Don't say anything, James. He says, Don't say anything. We'll talk after. So he calls me after, and I said, David, what is going on? I thought I thought you were busy talking to them about what really happened. It sounds like you two are not communicating at all. He goes, James, this is the world we're in now. You're not understanding. This is the world. They they're going to get a victory. And either we give it to them.

SPEAKER_07 21:38

And what's the conviction rate?

SPEAKER_02 21:40

98%.

SPEAKER_07 21:41

98%.

SPEAKER_02 21:42

98%. Look, look that up, 98%.

SPEAKER_07 21:44

And your attorney's telling you they're gonna win. And is this with a jury?

SPEAKER_02 21:49

Uh yeah, you have it's a jury trial. It would be a jury trial.

SPEAKER_07 21:52

But they but they still get 98%.

SPEAKER_02 21:55

Hundred percent they get it. There's 15% of men at men and women in prison that are innocent.

SPEAKER_07 22:02

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 22:03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_07 22:04

So what are you thinking you're gonna do?

SPEAKER_02 22:06

Well, I'm not as clear on these stats then as I am today. Right. Right. I I'm real uh tur tuned up now on all these statistics. But at the time, I just keep thinking, there's nobody wanting to put away an innocent guy. I mean, it just doesn't make sense to me that the government's interested in that. Doesn't make sense that we're wasting all this time on this. I mean, these people have lost money because we've now shut the hotels down because of this federal lawsuit. So there's no money coming in now. So it just seems like we've lost track of the victims here, and we're now really keyed in on taking guys down that didn't do anything. And so he says to me, James. The he my attorney calls me David. He says, Um, I've got I've got Richie and Robert here too. These are the other two attorneys in the firm. They always do it together. He says, We think you should take it. I said, Well, I I I don't think I should take it. That that sounds like you're all crazy. Well, no way. I won't do a day. I tell I won't do a day. I said, tell me how much time I should agree to as an innocent person. Give me that deal. Whatever the innocent person deal is, give me that deal. And and they they said, James, you're you're just you know, it's not seeing things clearly. You know? We'll we'll we'll tell them no. Is that what you want to do? Tell them no. I said, yes. Tell them emphatically no, and that we're gonna go all the way to trial. Just make sure they know that. And again, I'm operating in, I don't know. I'm a young, I'm a young guy. I don't know. I'm just and I feel like they're not really good advocates.

SPEAKER_07 23:40

Say then.

SPEAKER_02 23:41

Oh, I don't I do not debrief her in all these little meetings. No. It would crush her emotionally. She couldn't operate as a wife and mother. She could not operate. So I've done one sit-down in the living room with the older three and her, where I explain dad's been accused. This is what I said, dad's been accused of something he did not do. He's gonna fight it, and uh uh it won't affect you guys at all. Uh, but dad's gonna be fighting uh case you may see it in the newspaper, your friends may bring it to you from the newspaper, and I'm gonna be meeting with your principal uh tomorrow. She's coming over to the house, and I'm gonna explain it to your principal what's going on.

SPEAKER_07 24:22

Now, was it in the newspaper?

SPEAKER_02 24:24

It's in every newspaper. It's in the Wall Street Journal, it's in the New York Times, it's in every newspaper that prints. Yes, it's in the newspaper. The government makes sure it's in the newspaper.

SPEAKER_07 24:33

Now, everybody is assuming you're guilty when you're not going to be able to do it.

SPEAKER_02 24:37

If you read it, there's no way you're not, I'm not guilty. If you if you read this story, it's terrible. It's terrible. A Ponzi scheme is the other one. It's now a Ponzi scheme. It's turned in such a crazy inflammatory word that immediately means he did it. So that's in everything.

SPEAKER_07 24:54

You were successful, so people were probably like, I knew something was uh right.

SPEAKER_02 24:57

He's young and rich. Of course, he's in a Ponzi scheme. Yeah, that was the other one. My own success is the enemy here in my alibi. Okay. It's bad.

Garage Night Decision To Survive

SPEAKER_07 25:07

Interesting. So how did you navigate that? How did you navigate everybody thinking you did it, walking around at the school?

SPEAKER_02 25:16

Yeah, I'm I'm taking you back a little bit, but I uh I recorded a podcast on this very subject, uh, almost like a healing thing called Inside Out with James Catledge, where I go through this very emotional time. It it was very intense. I I'm a mentally tough guy. I'm I'm mentally prepared for difficult things. I I think the reason I'm successful is is I am mentally strong.

SPEAKER_07 25:42

Do you ever crack? Do you ever have to course correct?

SPEAKER_02 25:46

Yes. And I'm feeling in this moment when when they tell me you should take the deal, I'm feeling alone. My wife's really not a person I can invent to.

SPEAKER_07 26:00

Because you don't want to hurt her.

SPEAKER_02 26:02

It would crush her, it would totally crush her. Uh we live in a 10,000 square foot home in Rancho Santa Fe, which is where I want to live. It's it's an amazing place to raise children. Right now, the school, there's one school, and I've got the principal on my couch in my living room explaining to her that the Catledge kids uh have been told by their dad that he's been accused of something he didn't do. And I just need you to know, because the school teacher's gonna read this in the Rancho Santa Fe news. And so this is heavy. And I'm I'm one of the announcers at the football games in the booth. So my kids play football on the high school football team in that town. I'm in the booth, I'm known. My my wife is the team mother. This is not like we're silent behind a gate somewhere. We're kind of involved in our church and in the school and the whole thing. So, and and now you have a choice. I would tell you, if you know somebody that faces something like this, you have a choice. I I'm a better friend today to people who have something happen like this because I I've lived the other side of it. Many, many people choose to hide because they they don't really want a friend that's involved in something like this. So they just avoid. But there are many people that do that come in and get close and say, I'm here for you. I know you, and that this does not affect you and I, and I'm here to support you. I had many friends drive to air from Rancho Santa Fe to San Francisco, which as you know is five, six hours, drive me to all my court proceedings. Friends from the club, friends from the school, friends from church, from work, just just there for me and my family in in ways that I I may not have been that good if it had been my friend. I would be now, but I had friends show me what friendship looks like through that experience. It was really amazing.

SPEAKER_07 28:09

Uh and you had friends completely just stop talking to you.

SPEAKER_02 28:13

Sure, just when they weren't friends, but I thought they were. They'd been on the plane, they'd been to Augusta, they'd been to Super Bowls with me, people who I thought were in my inner circle that were in my inner circle because I was wealthy. And that gets fleshed out real quick. Uh I will tell you though, the the the lowest moment, because this is this is a profound pivot for me. I'm doing what I can to stay busy, which I recommend if you're under tremendous stress. Stay busy. Don't let it spiral.

SPEAKER_07 28:41

So good, dude.

SPEAKER_02 28:42

Yeah. Stay, stay very busy, productively busy. I I did two things. I I got real fit where you could actually see the the abs. Okay. Okay. Uh Andy Elliott fit, where the where the abs are visible. Yeah. And I and I was at the gym uh several hours a day. And then at night I would end with two hours of racquetball. I had found some racquetball buddies, and from 9 to 11 p.m. every night at LA Fitness in Encinitas, California, we are closing down the LA Fitness at 11 p.m. every night. Yeah, like crazy. So I I I arrive home, my driveway is about a hundred yards from the from when you clear my gate, it's a hundred yards up top of the hill to the house. I drive up top of the hill, all the lights are off. And it's it's it's in the heaviest, darkest period. I pull into my garage, and I don't want to get out of the car. I stay in the car a little longer, the garage door shuts behind me, and eventually that little light does click off. You know, the little garage light will click off. It it's now I'm completely in the dark, and and I thought to myself, one day this will be over. And what will that look like? Because I was a proud, confident, arrogant, successful young man. And I and I I I wanted to be that, and I built that guy, and and now I'm afraid it's being dismantled. And it is, it is actually being dismantled in reality, and I'm still grip holding on to fragments of that guy, but I'm feeling it slip away, and I'm actually feeling my spirit get weak, my ability to fight get weaker, and I and I'm in that garage thinking I really only have two choices. One is to take my life, these are the two choices. One is to end it, quit, which is quitting. And the other is to decide tonight in this garage that you'll take no more uh abuse, you'll take no more beatings, you'll take no more damage against your spirit, you'll take no more enemy fire. And that's a choice uh that I'm making and deciding in the garage, literally. I'm making the decision to buoy myself, strengthen myself. And in that garage, on that night, I decided it is over. It is over. And I will now deal with this reality on a calendar basis. If there's a court proceeding, I will go. If there's somewhere I need to be on a conference call with my lawyers, I will go. If there's a meeting with my lawyers to discuss the case strategy, I will go. But outside of those calendared required events, I will not live in this soup anymore. It's killing me. It literally was choking out my soul. And so on that day, I decided that the same guy that that existed prior to all this mess is the same guy in this mess, and he will be the same guy on the back side of this mess. And my friends will say, I'm sorry you went through it. My non-friends will have long gone, and the strangers won't say anything because they don't even know what happened. And so I just went to the end of the race in that garage and decided I can live with whatever happens. And I'm gonna be strong and I'm gonna be proud of the guy on the backside of this. I want to like that guy. I want to be proud of how he responds in this storm. And that's when I decided. That was the lowest point. And I know it because I marked it with this incredible moment, private moment in my garage. So I get out of the car.

SPEAKER_07 32:43

That's like a scary rock bottom moment.

SPEAKER_02 32:45

Very scary. It it was a uh give or take. It was uh the choice, it was a decision. I hit the garage door, and enters into my home.

SPEAKER_07 32:58

My kids are inside sleeping.

SPEAKER_02 32:59

I'm about to tucked in. Yeah, I'm going room to room. I opened each door and looked in, they're all asleep. And I made a private commitment to each of them while they're sleeping that dad's gonna be here, dad's gonna see this thing through, and you will always be proud of your dad because of the decision I made tonight. Just kind of a private decision. And I can tell you, from that day on, it got good. Now, there was a lot of headache ahead, a lot of grief ahead, but I was ready for it. I was ready. And I was able to adapt, I was able to adjust. It was gonna now be a new journey. But the the sentiment I held on to, Andrew, was I want to be proud of the guy on the backside of this. I want to be proud of me on the back side of all this. So I've got to make what would the guy do. I literally had to get outside myself and say, what would the guy, what's the right decision here, so that on the back side of this, I will look back with pride about that choice. And every decision that was tough, that's that's how I made it. From that point forward. Up until then, I was choking.

SPEAKER_07 34:13

So if you're going through something, you're and it might not be as bad, it could be worse because people are going through all kinds of stuff right now. Yeah, right now watching this, right? Yes, but you're saying you kept thinking about it's gonna be over and who are you gonna be when it's over.

SPEAKER_02 34:28

Yeah, and who you're gonna be is not just the person on the other side. Who you're gonna be is the sum total of the decisions and the choices you make in the storm. It's in the storm where the character gets built. It's it's in that storm where the the guy on the other side gets developed. It's in that storm, and I I see it clearly now, but I had to make the decision in advance, or I'd have made a lot of inconsistent decisions. I'd have made a lot of survival decisions, existential decisions, decisions that were selfish in nature, decisions that, you know, I I had to have the long-range context because I had already had such great experiences in my life that I knew I could get back there if I operated like that. But I knew for certain my attorney used this phrase with me, and I love it. It's it's a phrase that I still use today. He said, James, you need to understand several lethal bullets have been fired. You may survive them, but you're going to take on wounds. There will be bullets arrive at your torso, and your ability to survive them will depend on the choices you make, on the way you see this, the perspective you have during this. So lethal bullets were fired, and now what?

SPEAKER_07 35:53

All right. I want to go back to the car. How did you not waver later and let those things creep back in and bother you?

SPEAKER_02 36:02

Uh it's it's a great question. I I I don't really know that answer fully. I just know that I was so broken that night with the heaviness of it. It was heavy, man. That I made a I'm a pretty stubborn guy. You know me. I'm a stubborn, rigid, firm, confident guy. So if I'm heading in a direction, it's really gonna take a lot to move me off of it. Uh, so I just made the decision of that car that there was a lot of people counting on me. I was counting on me. Uh, and and I I just the consequences were too dire to not proceed with boldness in that direction. And, you know, each meeting thereafter, you know, I think built the confidence that this was the right path. I mean, I met with the principal and she said, hey, we'll take care of the kids. We'll meet with the teachers and let them know. And I want you to know I believe your story, she says, which whether she did or didn't, I don't know. Uh, it doesn't really matter, but it felt good to know that I had people that believe me. I in a moment like that, you just need people to kind of be with you. And uh so that so I found I found those people. And uh I all another strategy I found along the way is if you remain a lifter and an encourager, someone who's actually optimistically trying to help other people, just literally lifting all the time. And you know that's my personality anyway. Uh it it it makes your stuff lighter, it makes the stuff you're dealing with much less significant. And I just found great energy. Yeah, you could say it like that, but it sounds a little religious or it sounds a little um altruistic or whatever.

SPEAKER_07 37:48

It just gets your mind off yourself.

SPEAKER_02 37:50

That's it. That's it. It just in the in the rawest sense, if I can be interested in helping you, because you're down or you and I usually see in the eyes if somebody needs some encouragement or needs a compliment or needs something from me. I just began to get good at looking for that because it from a selfish standpoint, it helped me. Just helped me. I not I know it would help you. That's the obvious benefit, but it was helping me.

SPEAKER_07 38:16

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 38:17

Yeah, this became my survival strategy.

SPEAKER_07 38:19

If I yeah, like if you can focus on other people, you can't worry about the things you're worried about because 100% right and it's fulfilling for for sure.

SPEAKER_02 38:29

There's uh there's some juice that comes from that, some some chemical release, dopamine, serotonin.

SPEAKER_07 38:35

Along with them working now, along with these other right, right.

SPEAKER_02 38:38

I did go see a therapist uh uh during this too because uh my attorney recommended he said, go go see somebody, get an executive physical and go see a therapist and and and share with them what you're going through and see if they don't have some type of strategy for you. And one of the strategies was get extremely fit physically, get extremely fit physically, and get yourself involved in a project that you're passionate about. She says, if you're an artist, if you're a writer of music, if you're in business, if you're all of those things. And so so that's what I did. I used that strategy too. It was very helpful.

SPEAKER_07 39:12

That's awesome.

SPEAKER_02 39:13

It lasted a long time.

Guilty Plea And Sixty Months

SPEAKER_07 39:14

That's awesome. All right. Now I've asked you a lot of questions because I've been interested in mainly in the way you responded to everything, and then where you're at now. Yeah. Um, and then also where you were. That's a whole nother topic we're gonna talk about, like how you got into insurance, what recruiting, what real recruiting was like. Yeah. Um, but what happened after that? Because when I heard this story, I was like, dang, that's a crazy story, and then it got crazier. Yes. Drew, what do you think about this? Right. You watching this?

SPEAKER_05 39:52

Oh, yeah. Are you kidding me? Yeah, it's uh my eyes are like wide open while I was good.

SPEAKER_07 39:59

All right, what happened next?

SPEAKER_02 40:01

Well, I'm not guilty of anything, so I refuse to go along with that plea deal of 11. So they come back two years later and say, they've indicted me now. They indicted me October of 2012. They come back two years later in 14 and say, we'll do, we'll we'll do eight. And I said to my attorney, I said, I thought it only goes up. Why is it going down? And he said, I don't know why it's going down, but I think we should take it. I said, I'm not doing a day. I won't take eight. Get me down to the probation, get me down to the uh deferred prosecution, get me down to the he didn't do this stage because they're still locked in on the narrative. It's they're locked in on the narrative. Eight years, eight years. So I'm not no way. So they go away again. Prosecutors replaced, retired, new prosecutor comes in, doesn't even know the case, catches up on the case. This is now 2000.

SPEAKER_07 40:59

Guys, this is still so were you relieved when the prosecutor retired? Yes. You're like, oh, I might it might be over.

SPEAKER_02 41:05

Someone with reason may enter into the picture here. It really was a like a hopeful moment. Like, thank goodness, this is the break, the final break I needed. Uh, no, not not not true. And and by the way, meanwhile, I'm living my life. I have a full life now. I've developed a new company called Search Control that manages search online presence. I've developed a technology called ISO.

SPEAKER_07 41:27

Weren't you allowed to be in?

SPEAKER_02 41:29

I sold the agency.

SPEAKER_07 41:30

Okay, you sold the agency.

SPEAKER_02 41:31

Sold the agency, the insurance agency.

SPEAKER_07 41:33

And was during the indictment, I'm assuming they didn't want you selling variable products.

SPEAKER_02 41:38

Is that yeah, yeah. The SEC wanted my licenses. Okay. So yeah, I'm not in a position to actually sell financial services. So I developed this technology. My brother-in-law is running the company. We're making money. I'm I'm now I'm involved in a life, okay? And I'm making money for my family. And uh, we've moved from a big home to a home that overlooks the ocean. It's not as big, but it's a little more affordable. Um, and so we're we're still in the same neighborhoods, kids are still in the same schools, they've not been afraid, they're getting older. Everybody now understands dad's in some type of lawsuit. You know, it's turned from newspapers now, quit writing. It's we're be we're beyond all that now. It's not exciting anymore. No, it's things apparently gone by, but I'm still living with this dark cloud, but I'm now healthy. I'm making great decisions about this. I'm I'm thinking creatively, I'm thinking about my future. Yeah, yeah, I'm thinking about my future. Uh I'm thinking this could go away.

SPEAKER_07 42:38

Um, pause real quick. I went to Patrick Bed, one of Patrick Bed David's conferences, um, and he brought his family on stage. Yeah. And he uh asked each kid what they're looking forward to. And his whole message was you have to find something to look forward to, or you can get in real big trouble as far as uh seeking happiness and fulfillment. And one of his um, I think it was a niece or something, he said he asked her at home and she said, I don't have anything to look forward to. And so he worked with her on finding things for her to look forward to. Yeah, and you saying that made me remember that because you just said, now I'm healthy, now I have things to look forward to.

SPEAKER_02 43:34

Yes, yeah, that's right. And that's literally the way I felt. I mean, I'm hopeful that uh things are gonna work out. It's different, but we're making we're surviving. And and it looks like uh, you know, I I figured out who the friends are, I figured out who the friends are not. I'm now reading what they call 302s, all the hundred interviews that were done. I can kind of see what people said in these interviews, which is quite revealing. These depositions the 302 is an FBI deposition with a witness, a potential witness. So if they went and interviewed all my salespeople and they interviewed many of them.

SPEAKER_07 44:07

And you're seeing it doesn't look that bad.

SPEAKER_02 44:10

I I'm I'm thinking a lot of them were manipulated. I can see the way the questions are and them trying to avoid their own prosecution, you know, saying it the way they needed. But I I can see that there's not much of a case here. They're gonna have to just say that because he's rich, he probably did this. That's kind of the case. The guy's rich, plays golf a lot, has an airplane. Surely he did this. I mean, that's gonna have to be the whole trial. And that does work. It's quite an effective strategy because very few jurors, you know, have a hundred million dollar net worth. So they're gonna think there's no way this guy has that net worth without some type of cheat.

SPEAKER_07 44:46

But really, it was mainly from the insurance industry.

SPEAKER_02 44:49

Yeah, I I mean I made$22 million on the real estate project. So there's there's I'm making money. Okay.

SPEAKER_07 44:55

But what did you make in insurance?

SPEAKER_02 44:57

Uh$110 million is my lifetime earnings from life insurance.$110 million in commissions.

SPEAKER_07 45:05

Yeah. So you know how to recruit and train.

SPEAKER_02 45:08

Yeah, I'd say$85 to$90 million of it is team development overrides. Which we're going to talk about. Yeah. So if you're if you're just selling yourself and selling a bunch of policies by yourself, you'll never get into that spectrum. That kind of money's not available. If you're a great salesman, and I was a great salesman, that's how I started, three and a half years of sales alone, making I think I think in 1994, my second year in business, I made$300,000 selling, just selling insurance. And so I was good at selling insurance. I figured out how to sell the higher ticket items, the longer-term products, the retirement planning stuff. And then I found my way into team building, and then I realized I could transfer those skills to others, and I could still sell and have a team selling. And now I've got unlimited clocks, unlimited time that's out selling. You got 8,000 people selling. Some new developments have occurred. My attorney has been in touch with a controller corporation. The developer's controller financial person.

SPEAKER_07 46:34

Got it.

SPEAKER_02 46:35

They're our witness. They know I know nothing to do with the internal identity. They also know the Elliots kind of stipend or skimmed some of the money.

SPEAKER_07 46:46

And they have proof of this.

SPEAKER_02 46:47

Yeah, well, they're the controller. Yeah.

SPEAKER_07 46:51

Did the controller go down?

SPEAKER_02 46:53

No, he's a Swiss citizen who lived in the Dominican, married a Dominican lady, and he's still in Switzerland protected by the Swiss government. And we have to get permission. US government, the Swiss government have to authorize a federal judge's order to come to the US and provide a video deposition for me to use it in my trick.

SPEAKER_07 47:18

Yeah. Oh his mic went out. Oh, there it is.

SPEAKER_01 47:30

Plug that thing in.

SPEAKER_04 47:34

How long has it been out?

SPEAKER_07 47:37

Not long, is he? How long has it been out, Drew?

SPEAKER_04 47:40

Just like 30 seconds.

SPEAKER_07 47:42

Good catch, Drew. Two hours of not recorded, I would have lost video magic. Good job, Drew.

SPEAKER_02 47:53

You know where we left?

SPEAKER_07 47:58

Let's go back to video video deposition. Yeah.

unknown 48:01

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 48:02

Is that is that a good spot? Yeah, yeah, way better. Okay.

unknown 48:05

Video deposition.

SPEAKER_02 48:06

Yep, yeah. So so Thomas Ewley is this guy's name. Uh, I'm not allowed to talk to him. Um, so I don't really know what he's gonna say, other than my attorneys have been speaking to him, and they're confident that he's gonna say the truth and that he's not scared, and that he he's beyond uh the statute of limitations on any of his own exposure, and his own government has made sure that that's the case before they allowed him to get on an airplane. So he comes in, the government meets with him a day early, which is unusual and maybe inappropriate because usually our defense has to be there.

SPEAKER_07 48:42

Let's just say they don't all parties don't play fair in these situations.

SPEAKER_02 48:48

That's right. And and your government is rarely gonna play fair.

SPEAKER_07 48:52

They don't play fair, they play to win.

SPEAKER_02 48:53

That's right. It's yeah, it's right. That's right. So so Thomas, when we meet up with Thomas in this conference room in the main courthouse in San Francisco, the the judge has authorized this. She wants this testimony in case Thomas is unavailable for trial. We have a binder with tabs of things we're gonna ask Thomas because he paid our commissions to us. He received all the client money, he paid all construction budgets. He's in the loop on everything. The government has about three pages on loose leaf paper of stuff they want to ask, almost like they did it this morning. So it's like they're totally not ready for trial. Like we are we have trial preparation binder here. So that's to me a sign that they're trying not to go to trial. Well, we're in there for several hours, and Thomas is basically saying what I've been saying all along, which is beautiful to hear. And now I feel very close to Thomas as I'm listening to all this. And it's kind of emotional. You can't even imagine the emotion, like your government's against you, USA versus James B. Catledge. I mean, and I'm a guy, I'm an Eagle Scout. I got the flag stuck to the side of my house, okay? I am a flag guy. I'm a guy that gets upset if the flag touches the ground, okay? And here I am, my government's coming after me for something I didn't do. Well, this guy, Swiss citizen, is standing in the box and he's doing the right job, and and I'm feeling so good about this. My my attorneys look across the table and said, Guys, what are we doing? And the lead prosecutor, I won't use his name, he says, David, let's meet out in the hallway. And I said, You're not meeting out in the hallway without me. I go, I want to hear what's being said. I go out in the hallway and they're upset. Both of them are upset I'm out there because it can't be loose. It's got to be real up and up. It can't be a gentleman's understanding, which goes on a lot with this type of stuff. And uh, well, you heard him say that Catledge really negotiated hard for those commissions. And I said, Yeah, guys, commissions aren't a crime. Commissions have nothing to do with criminal conduct. You guys have accused me of stealing money from people. That didn't occur. And you just heard it from Thomas. And they said, Well, we've got plenty we can go on and we're prepared to go to trial. And my attorney goes, Are you? You got three loose leaf sheets of paper in there. Is that your trial work for this witness? And he said, No, no, no. We didn't bring the binder in. So, but you have a binder on him, but you didn't bring it into the room. He goes, I don't, I don't believe that. I don't believe that. So I could tell things are shifting rapidly. So we leave, I leave San Francisco, I head home, I report now to my spouse that I think things are good. I think we're we've turned. It's been years now. We're 2009, we're at 2015. We're at 2017 when this deposition occurs. So this has been eight years. We've spent around$8 million so far in legal fees, which is unbelievable. But that's where we are.

SPEAKER_07 52:15

$8 million.

SPEAKER_02 52:16

8.3 was the total. All civilies.

SPEAKER_07 52:19

You're just bleak writing checks like crazy.

SPEAKER_02 52:22

Yeah, it's all about legal fees.

SPEAKER_07 52:23

My you can't write those checks.

SPEAKER_02 52:26

Uh the criminal guy has to stay. The civil guys can withdraw. Okay. The judge won't let the criminal guys escape. So the criminal guy gets not have to do a good job. Not only does he not have to do a good job, he's paid up front. So he gets his money in two tranches. He got his money. The civil guy gets billed by the hour. The criminal guy gets a check before indictment and a check after indictment. And now he's fully paid through all appeals and everything. He's your guy. So he's going to be there for the whole thing. Well, I feel very optimistic about this meeting with Thomas. It's not a week later. David calls me. We're probably a month from trial. And I'm feeling like, man, I not only do I feel good about trial, I feel like I can win and I could be acquitted of all this. And I've got great witnesses. My own controller who paid all the commissions to our salespeople, he's in my corner and he's a former Air Force retired guy, 24 years, just a really good guy that's not going to vary. Oh, I've read all his 302s, they're real solid. So I'm prepared to go to trial. I get a call, I'm on a speaking engagement, oddly enough. In Hubert Humphreys' company, I'm back in Atlanta at a speaking engagement, speaking to his agents. When I get a call on my phone, call us. It's my attorney, call us, like a text, call us. So I go back to my room and I know something's broken here in the story. So I'm alone in the room, and and he says, Um, James, I I think now's the time to go for five years. I said, go for five years. Go go where for five years? He said, let me negotiate a sentence of five years. I said, I I thought I thought we're going to trial and we're gonna win. He said, James, we're not gonna win. Don't don't dilute yourself. The government always wins. The government won this the day they filed the indictment. We had a shot before they indicted. After that, it's 98 to 2. 98%.

SPEAKER_07 54:38

You got 2%.

SPEAKER_02 54:39

2%.

SPEAKER_07 54:40

Now could you get out? Did he say you could get out before five?

SPEAKER_02 54:43

Here's what we negotiated on the phone in that room. I agreed to give him the opportunity to negotiate from zero to five. Five was a cap. No matter what the judge does, if the judge tries to change it, we go to trial. But we're going to agree to zero to five. We're going to argue for zero because we have the evidence to say that.

SPEAKER_07 55:05

Now, does the judge make the sentencing?

SPEAKER_02 55:07

Judge sentences you.

SPEAKER_07 55:09

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 55:09

So the judge could say, I don't like this.

SPEAKER_07 55:12

And say you're good. Go.

SPEAKER_02 55:13

You're going to trial. Your facts deserve a trial.

SPEAKER_07 55:16

But what if she says one and the other party says no?

SPEAKER_02 55:18

No, it's okay. Judge decides. Judge decides. We're going to argue zero to five. They're going to argue five. Prosecutors can argue for five.

SPEAKER_07 55:25

So it just narrows down what can happen.

SPEAKER_02 55:27

Five is the cap.

SPEAKER_07 55:28

And and the judge, this isn't decided by jury. This is decided by judge.

SPEAKER_02 55:32

This is a plea deal where I have to agree to a set of facts. This is the other part of the arrangement. Have to agree to a set of facts that are a crime. And it is that crime that she can agree to the plea deal.

SPEAKER_07 55:47

Which what were those briefly?

SPEAKER_02 55:49

Mail fraud, which is crazy. They they went into the book.

SPEAKER_07 55:53

What is mail fraud?

SPEAKER_02 55:54

Mail fraud is use of the mail while a fraud is being conducted. Okay. And here's here's how funky rule. It's the catch all. It's it's mail fraud, securities fraud, wire fraud. Wire fraud is if you used an email in the perpetuation of a fraud. That's wire fraud. An email. So here's mine. We had to agree to uh uh what they call a statement of facts that would be read into the judge that has to meet the four corners of a law. And if that is a break of a law, break the breaking of a criminal law, then they can find you guilty and and you can do a plea bargain to say I did that, and you know, please sentence me. And so if you if you refuse to say you did something, they can't send it to you. We have to go to trial and let our jury decide. But if you're willing to say you did something, then we can go zero to five.

SPEAKER_07 56:49

That's right.

SPEAKER_02 56:50

So I agree, and they show me emails, and this is really cool. They said, You told the Elliots what to say when they mailed the checks to clients. We've got the emails where you said show the clients pictures of the upgrades, show them pictures of the up the development, show them pictures of the rooms, all the up updates.

SPEAKER_07 57:09

Close the deal on the back end. You were telling them how to close the customer down.

SPEAKER_02 57:14

Well, they're mailing money to the client on a quarterly basis. They're they're saying give them updates. Give an update, give them a newsletter. And so I'm perpetuating the fraud by constructing the email language. That's mail fraud.

SPEAKER_06 57:27

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 57:28

And so I agreed I did that. And I agreed to that in a statement of facts. And that had a tendency to lead people to actually invest their money.

SPEAKER_07 57:36

Hold on. I got a question. Drew, what do you think happens next? Um he gets off. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 57:48

I don't know. The way this has been going, I think with a 2% chance, I think it's gonna go to trial.

SPEAKER_07 57:54

Well, okay. All right, keep going. I just met like you heard this story so far. Does he get off or does he go to jail?

SPEAKER_05 58:04

Well, for that, for that statement of facts, I don't know. I I'm on I'm I'm on your side right now, James.

SPEAKER_02 58:11

So I agree. Thank you. Yeah. He thinks you You want me off. You want me to get off. Yeah. So do I. So here's where we go. Um, we agree to the statement of facts. It's almost like uh playing wordle with the feds trying to figure out which words mean enough to actually be a breaking of a law.

SPEAKER_07 58:32

For the judge to be okay with it.

SPEAKER_02 58:33

Yeah, well, and the prosecutor knows that they can't take a weak, soft plea and never.

SPEAKER_07 58:39

So they want it to be worded properly. You want it to be worded properly. It's gotta be, yeah. Somewhere in the middle.

SPEAKER_02 58:44

It's gotta be, yeah, it's gotta be something that I can say I did, because I don't want to swear to a judge under oath that I did something I did not do. That's the other thing I kept telling my attorney. Hey, listen, you can't ask me to tell a judge that I got in a smoke-filled room and talked the Elliots into stealing a bunch of money. That cannot be what you want me to do. What if I what if I change my mind and decide to tell her the truth? What happens to you? That's what I kept thinking.

SPEAKER_07 59:09

I wonder how many people just have taken that though before. Many, many. Dude, I can't do this anymore. I did it and they may not have done it.

SPEAKER_02 59:17

A lot of people. There's stories written all the time. I now track stories like that because the the qu it it it's real to me. So it really matters to me when people say they did something and they may not have. Don't just go with the idea that somebody pled guilty, therefore they are. They may have pled guilty to survive. They may have pled guilty to finish their life with their children. They may have pled guilty to get to their daughter's wedding. You know, people plead guilty for all sorts of things. And sometimes they're guilty, and so they plead guilty. But it's not just, oh, well, he pled guilty, therefore he is. That's not true. Yeah. So, so here we go. Um, we've got everything done. I am now have to go in and enter a change of plea because I pled not guilty immediately in 2012 or 2018. I now have to go in before the judge and same lady, same judge, federal judge. After eight years, this woman has seen me every month for eight years. She has heard me declare my innocence strongly through motions. Same judge. Same woman. Yes.

SPEAKER_07 1:00:27

How old is this judge? 78. Okay, so she's seen it all.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:32

She's seen everything. She's seen everything. She's seen the Ponzi schemes, she's seen the manipulators, she's seen the narcissisms, she's seen people that are good at deceiving people. She's been there the whole time. But I got the feeling through years of being in front of her, that the way she questions my attorney and questions the prosecutor, I think she gets it. I think she understands what's occurred here. I feel like she understands the story. She really does. And it's complicated and it's long and it's many years. So I go in, she says, I understand uh we're doing a change of plea today. Is that right, Mr. Catledge? And I said, It is. She says, Are you sure about this? And I said, I am. She goes, Okay, very good. Uh we we go through what they do a change of plea. It's a formal process where you say you are pleading guilty. She says, I've read the plea. Um, I'm not comfortable with it. And I'll tell you, I'm not comfortable with it. You've said you were innocent for eight years. The government wanted to put you away for 28 years on this much money. You know, this kind of money requires that kind of time. They're willing to let you have zero to five. Something softened on their side, and your attorney is willing to let you go zero to five. It looks like he's worn out. I said, she said, I don't know if this is what justice looks like. You may need your facts, your good facts in front of a jury. They may see things correctly. Our constitution was designed for a jury to be a judge of the facts. You're you're basically giving up because of the length of time this has taken, and it looks like a compromise situation. She says, Here's what I want you to do. I want the prosecutor team and Mr. Chesnoff's team to go out into the ante-room and rethink this thing. Come up with something that actually looks like it's the truth instead of this. She says, You've even got a wishy-washy plea here. I don't, I mean, I I'm not even sure this looks like the case. It's mail fraud. Which we we don't talk about mail fraud from the beginning here. It's very strange what's happening here. So my guys go out in the hall, I go with them. They both look right at me like they know me.

SPEAKER_07 1:03:04

What kind of adrenaline is happening here?

SPEAKER_02 1:03:06

I got all my family, my friends, my loved ones, my character witnesses. If I had known you then, you'd have been in the room. Uh, I've got people who've lost money in the room, vic victims. They're there. You're going down. Oh, yeah. They're they're hoping to put me under the prison. Yeah. And my family, of course, is looking to see this.

SPEAKER_06 1:03:26

Are you kids or no?

SPEAKER_02 1:03:27

No, no. I didn't want my children to see this. I didn't want this memory of their dad in their memory bank. Yeah. So I chose not to have the kids there. How old are the kids now? Uh oh, I got one in college at that time. Uh, the rest are in high school and middle school.

unknown 1:03:44

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:45

But they're older. They're they're old enough to know this is not a good situation for dad.

SPEAKER_07 1:03:49

This is what year?

SPEAKER_02 1:03:50

2018.

SPEAKER_07 1:03:51

So 10 years after this all started.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:54

Yes. Nine nine years. Yeah. Okay. So I'm out there and they look right at me, both of them, barrel, their eyes barreling into mine, saying, Don't even think about it. I said, think about what? See, I'm thinking it should go to trial. Because the judge kind of said that. The judge is pushing you to it. And I'm thinking, she, you know, plus she's in charge of sentencing after trial. So I'm thinking she knows the truth.

SPEAKER_07 1:04:20

And and if they, if you, if you lost in trial, could she give you five years instead of 28?

SPEAKER_02 1:04:25

Yes. Yes. She's a sentencer.

SPEAKER_07 1:04:28

But she follows the book. She does. The guidelines.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:36

The jury's found him guilty, therefore. She'll look at the guidelines and give me something in there. But they said, James, you're close. We've negotiated hard. This is a fair deal. You argue for zero to five. We're arguing for you to get five. Let's go. This is done. Do not let her get you 28. Because she's a constitutionalist. That's kind of the way they put it. And both of them are saying they're both like on the same team, looking right at me. And once again, I feel alone. I mean, it's like there's no advocacy here. All right. And what did you do? I said, okay. I said, okay. I think in my mind they know. They're too determined. They know. And I don't know.

SPEAKER_07 1:05:23

You're too convincing. You can feel it.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:25

Yeah, man. They do know. And I and I know all along I'm a little delusional, a little optimistic. I lean on the side of optimism. I err on the side of believing the possible, not the impossible. So I'm going to go with their judgment here. And so I go back in. She looks right at me, not them. She says, What are we doing? She takes her microphone, moves it aside, and said, Come up here. Moves her microphone aside, leans over her bench and says, What are we doing?

SPEAKER_07 1:05:58

I like this lady.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:00

I said, I said, I'm ready to plead guilty and accept responsibility for what I've done. She said, Very good. Pulls her microphone back up and begins the formality of the procedure. She says, Mr. Catledge, step back by where the defendant's podium is.

SPEAKER_07 1:06:21

Do you get put in cuffs at this point or not? Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:24

No. She goes through a whole thing about the law. Uh he's he's pled guilty. Uh I hereby find him guilty. He will re he will he will serve time in a minimum security prison uh for sixty months. So be the court, so it is. Boom. Slaps her gavel down.

SPEAKER_07 1:06:45

She just gave you 60 months? That's correct. And you were hoping maybe 12.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:51

I was open, maybe zero. Twelve months. I was open zero.

SPEAKER_07 1:06:55

So she goes, okay.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:56

If that's what you if that's what you want, that's what you've agreed to.

SPEAKER_07 1:07:00

She didn't like say I need to go think about it.

SPEAKER_02 1:07:02

No.

SPEAKER_07 1:07:03

Nothing.

SPEAKER_02 1:07:03

No, it's it was done seconds.

SPEAKER_07 1:07:06

Now was it 60 months and you can get out early?

SPEAKER_02 1:07:10

No.

SPEAKER_07 1:07:10

Just 60 months.

SPEAKER_02 1:07:11

So where it works. She doesn't decide to get out early. My behavior will decide that, and the Bureau of Prison's rules decides that.

SPEAKER_07 1:07:19

Okay, so do you get put in cuffs now?

SPEAKER_02 1:07:22

No. Uh if if you are um a white-collar criminal, then that's what they consider this crime. Um that unless you're a danger to society or uh a flight risk, and after eight years, they know I'm not going anywhere. Uh you're allowed to go home, get your fares in order.

SPEAKER_07 1:07:43

Kiss your kids.

Self-Surrender And Life In Camp

SPEAKER_02 1:07:44

Yeah. Get your get your stuff in a storage unit, go see your dentist, go get a physical, whatever you need to do to get your how much time do you have to do this? 60 days.

SPEAKER_07 1:07:53

All right, Drew. Did you think this is where this was going? No. No.

SPEAKER_02 1:08:00

Yes.

SPEAKER_07 1:08:01

So that's where you're trying to tell your kids.

SPEAKER_02 1:08:04

I said, Dad agreed to end the lawsuit and worked out a deal with the judge. I'm gonna go to what they call a camp and help other men for the next five years. And uh, you guys will be able to come and see me every month.

SPEAKER_07 1:08:18

Dude, what was that like?

SPEAKER_02 1:08:19

Dude, you cannot. It's the it's the worst. It it the garage and then this conversation are the two worst moments of the entire thing. It's terrible.

SPEAKER_07 1:08:28

Now, were they like what'd they say?

SPEAKER_02 1:08:30

One, I had to go to see my son at college. He's at the University of Utah. I had to go sit with him personally, have this discussion. The others, I was able to have it all at our home. Um they, you know, what do kids say, man? Okay, Dad.

SPEAKER_06 1:08:46

Damn.

SPEAKER_02 1:08:46

Yeah, that's that's what they said. And you you have different relationships with different kids, right? Some are deeper, more philosophical, some are more surfacey. You know, you have different relationships with your kids, right? When there's six of them, it's six different unique relationships. And uh uh one son, Nathan, who I'm very, very close to, uh, he's actually the trustee on my estate, Nate Nathan. Um he's my little buddy, right? So and and he's 15, 14, 15, right in there. And I've I've basically, because of my uh pretrial activities, I've been in these kids' lives constantly for the last eight, nine years. I mean, there's been no dad traveling, there's been no away on business. I have been in I've been at every school function every for nine years.

SPEAKER_07 1:09:43

I basically Which is amazing.

SPEAKER_02 1:09:46

Amazing, because it's not available for most guys in business. Unless you get into insurance and and make it make it an intention, uh yeah. And in this case, I was basically sidelined. It sort of forced it.

SPEAKER_07 1:09:58

So either you're sidelined or you build a company where you are able to do so.

SPEAKER_02 1:10:02

That's right. Yeah. But even uh just me, I mean You would have been working because building I'm a fly, I'm a goer. Yeah, yeah. This forced me, this forced me into pit row. Yeah. And I was able to be with my kids and Okay, so what's this 60 days like? It's all about this. It's a lot of tears, it's a lot of preparation, a lot of calling credit card companies and banks and your friends and going to Last Suppers. I mean, I bet I did 30 last suppers with people, with friends, and yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_07 1:10:33

And you don't drink alcohol.

SPEAKER_02 1:10:34

I don't, no.

SPEAKER_07 1:10:35

So you didn't have any coping other than sobriety.

SPEAKER_02 1:10:39

No addictions or anything like that. Yeah.

SPEAKER_07 1:10:40

No tobacco, no alcohol. You never drank.

SPEAKER_02 1:10:43

Never.

SPEAKER_07 1:10:44

So all of this was just sober reality.

SPEAKER_02 1:10:47

Yeah, just dealing with it straight up. Yeah, which I recommend. If you got trouble, deal with it straight up. I think your coping mechanisms are clearer, cleaner, more clarifying if you deal with it straight up. Yeah. Make better decisions.

SPEAKER_06 1:11:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:11:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 1:11:01

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 1:11:02

So uh I now need to what they call self-surrender, which means I'm going to drive myself to a federal prison facility that I've been designated to.

SPEAKER_06 1:11:17

Check in.

SPEAKER_02 1:11:18

And I'm going to check in. And I'm not taking luggage and a in a travel kit. You go with the clothes you plan on never seeing again because they're taking them. And they're going to issue you clothes, and that is your new life. So my mother drives me there, my brother goes with us. It's my mother, my brother, not my kids. I don't want them to see this. My mother, my brother, and I drive from Las Vegas. I fly into Vegas, stay the night with my mom.

SPEAKER_07 1:11:43

Did your mom sorry to interrupt you? But did your mom through this process uh She was a rock. Because that's how my mom is. Like if something's wrong.

SPEAKER_02 1:11:52

Total rock. Yeah. She she's the one that gave me the courage to say yes to the five-year deal. I called her and I said to her, Um they're willing to give me five if if I'll do that. What do you think? She said, son. I feel good about it. I thought, how can a mom feel good about it? Dude, that's amazing. But the fact she did let me find comfort in the idea that it's over. Yeah. And I can do five. I mean, I can, you know, I could probably.

SPEAKER_07 1:12:24

Did she say you could do it?

SPEAKER_02 1:12:26

Yeah, yeah. She, yeah, you can do five. It'll be a good thing for the guys in there. You'll you'll you'll find purpose in there. It'll be great. Just you're ready. It's over. Let's just end this. Let's get you back to your life. And so I didn't.

SPEAKER_07 1:12:41

Now, did you say how early can I get out on good behavior?

SPEAKER_02 1:12:45

Yeah, I did all the math. I started meeting with uh prison uh there's prison consulting guys.

SPEAKER_07 1:12:50

Is there therapists in there?

SPEAKER_02 1:12:52

There are, but you don't want to go to them. They're they're like the lowest rung of therapists. Like the people who may be smoking throughout therapy training uh in the back.

SPEAKER_07 1:13:01

Okay. Uh these are not like that'd be a good place to be. These are not the best therapists. The therapists are probably the other people in there.

SPEAKER_02 1:13:08

That's right. Yeah, you become a therapist. You'd be a therapist. I was a therapist. Yeah.

SPEAKER_07 1:13:13

Or maybe you were getting therapy from talking to other people you didn't have to do.

SPEAKER_02 1:13:15

Lifting and encouraging, receiving the benefits of that. Yeah. Well, so here's the deal. Were you scared? Um, after I met with I met with two consultants who had done time. One did 26 years. His name is Michael Santos, and his whole life today is dedicated to helping guys like me prepare to do that time. And so I flew to uh I drove actually to Newport Beach where he lives and spent a day with him. And after that, I just felt totally confident after that. He gave me, he said, This is this is your um a lot of people uh take time off and take nine months and do what they call a sabbatical. This is your sabbatical. You're gonna write, you're gonna communicate to your family, you're gonna get in touch with yourself again. There'll be no digital interruptions, there'll be no internet, no cell phone, no black internet.

SPEAKER_07 1:14:08

You've got an iPhone by that time, I'm sure.

SPEAKER_02 1:14:09

Yes, yeah. No black, none of that. You won't have any of that. You'll just get it, you'll get real fit, stay real fit, and you'll write a lot, meet a lot of great people. You'll be surprised at the quality of the people you'll meet in there, and uh it'll be it'll be a good experience. You'll leave there having you'll feel younger, more refreshed leaving there than you did going in there.

SPEAKER_07 1:14:30

More grateful.

SPEAKER_02 1:14:31

Oh, yeah, totally. So I did, I checked myself in. I will say day one is the roughest uh because you are the new guy. And uh you're in my case, I went to a prison camp in Taft, California, federal prison camp. Uh it's a you sleep in a cell?

SPEAKER_07 1:14:51

Yep. So you're still in a cell, it's called a camp, but you're in a cell.

SPEAKER_02 1:14:54

Yeah, in our case it's cubicles, but it's um there's not a wall with bars that they shut. Uh we're locked in to our housing unit. It's like a dorm. It's like a dorm. It's the way it's like a barracks if you're in the military, or like a dorm if you're in college. Uh, and we're locked in, we're all dressed the same, and I have a roommate or a cellmate, and uh, you're assigned the worst bunk on day one because that's what's available. It's right across from the toilets, the lights on all night long, so people can get up and go to the bathroom, and you're toilets flushing all night long, the lights are on.

SPEAKER_07 1:15:29

Oh, I didn't think about that.

SPEAKER_02 1:15:30

Oh, yeah. It's like an airport bathroom. All night long it's open, and you're sleeping right outside the door of the airport bathroom.

SPEAKER_07 1:15:38

So, what's going through your head the first night?

SPEAKER_02 1:15:40

Not a lot of sleep. You're just you're just reflecting on how did I end up here, right? Like, how did this happen? How did and then and then you're careful not to pull the string too much because you realize wait a minute, this could go into victimhood real quick. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You could spiral. Yeah, you don't want to be pulling that string and get down that road. I'd warn you on that. If you're feeling sorry for yourself for much longer than 30 seconds, you got to stop. You got to move into, all right, I'm here. What do I do? Now what? Yeah. This is my reality. Now what? And so I found great uh encouragement from the other inmates. I've found uh a great fitness routine with guys that had done lots of time. They knew they knew all the tricks how to work out. There's no weights, it's all rocks in bags, horseshoes strung together, crates with a stick through it with rocks in it. Yeah, pull up pull-ups. I literally lost both biceps, tore both bicep tendons to pull-ups while there.

SPEAKER_07 1:16:37

Now, were you shredded when you got out?

SPEAKER_02 1:16:39

Yes. I was already fit going in because of my pretrial survival workouts. Using that. Yeah, and then and then inside there you go you go you go to another level because the food's terrible too. So you're not eating. You're not overeating. Not overeating, yeah. Yeah. Okay. So great, great experience, actually.

Reframing Trauma And Dropping Dogma

SPEAKER_07 1:16:59

What were the positive things?

SPEAKER_02 1:17:01

Uh I I would I was a Mormon missionary uh for two years back when I was 19 years old, and and I would compare the two experiences. This sounds really weird. Uh, I believe I gained a lot from my Mormon mission. I believe I gained more from my incarceration. And I'll tell you why I gained more. I I've I've closed out a lot of um in our life we have open doors that aren't resolved, issues that are not resolved, past traumas that are not resolved.

SPEAKER_07 1:17:33

And everybody has them.

SPEAKER_02 1:17:34

We all have them. And I got to walk the track 10 miles a day and uh close out those doors on those traumas and reframe them in a way that would serve me instead of harm me.

SPEAKER_07 1:17:47

Now, how can somebody do that if they're not in jail?

SPEAKER_02 1:17:50

Uh, you got to get yourself to a quiet place, a lake, uh, a gym, uh, a walk around your neighborhood. And it's got to be somewhere where you can really think clearly about your trauma and what's hurting you. And you know if it's trauma because it keeps coming back, it keeps haunting you.

SPEAKER_07 1:18:05

Or it's just always in the background.

SPEAKER_02 1:18:06

Yeah, it just keeps resurfacing. So if that's happening, you've got to get to a quiet place and decide that the current framing you've got of that trauma, the way you framed it, the way it's wrong. You have to you have to acknowledge the idea that probably your memory's a little off because our memories are not great, especially if we've been hurt. Our memories get real jaded and real specific and real toxic and contaminated. So you have to decide not only is it wrong, but it's not serving me. That's the big part. It's not serving me, it's not helping me in the path forward. So I've got to go back, I've got to open up that box and I've got to reframe it in a way that helps me. So let's, as an example, if my dad was abusive to me, he wasn't. I'm not gonna cover one of mine, but let's just say dad, dad was abusive, and he's a bad man and he beat the hell out of me, and I didn't deserve that. And I was just a little kid and I didn't know any better. Well, if that's your trauma, you got to go back and reframe it and say, I will never be a dad like that. That's the kind of man I don't want to be.

SPEAKER_07 1:19:10

He taught me, so I won't be like that. That's right. So or so I'm aware of that.

SPEAKER_02 1:19:16

Exactly. So it's clear. So you move forward with a fixed frame versus a frame that's hurting you. And uh, we use these frames, uh these trauma frames, as excuses, by the way. Truthfully, that's what they are. They're excuses that allow us to remain the same and not grow because we get to point at that. It's more comfortable to point at that as the reason we're not growing. And I I just decided I'm gonna fix these two or three. I had three that needed to be repaired. So I went through and did that privately, close those doors. I just felt so free from it, too. I gotta tell you, the freedom. You I even wrote in my journal how free I felt incarcerated. I had never felt that level of freedom emotionally, ever, ever while incarcerated. Because I I think dogma, which is living someone else's expectations, whatever your parents put in you, or maybe your minister, or maybe your church, or maybe the way your religion needs you to do things, that's called dogma. And if your whole life is constructed around other people's expectations of you, it's not your life. And so I needed to go deconstruct some dogma too. And what do I believe? Like the Mormon church, what do I believe? And what was told to me to believe? And they need to go deal with that. Like, what do I believe? What is my belief about this? Have I just taken on others' beliefs and now I've got my whole life built around other people's thoughts? So I needed to disassemble some of that garbage.

SPEAKER_07 1:20:51

So everybody has that, by the way.

SPEAKER_02 1:20:53

Yes, we all do.

SPEAKER_07 1:20:54

Our whole life I see you. You sometimes you see yourself the way you think other people see you.

SPEAKER_02 1:21:00

Yes. Yes, you see your yeah, that's right.

SPEAKER_07 1:21:03

And you're saying that went away. Oh, yeah, I I deconstructed it. Now, without going to jail, how do you do that? You because I don't think people are getting away.

SPEAKER_02 1:21:14

Yeah, yeah, I don't suggest you go commit a crime to get yourself into this frame, but it it did help. I I think the key was quiet, intentional uh dedication to fixing it. Like you have to first admit that a lot of my life is dogmatic. A lot of the things I'm doing stem from my mother and father's expectation of me. I'm a doctor today, perhaps, because my mother was a doctor and her dad was a doctor, and damn it, I don't even like medicine.

SPEAKER_07 1:21:44

Or I think I'm addicted to this because my parents were addicted to it.

SPEAKER_02 1:21:48

We're all smokers, yeah. All cat legitimate smoke marijuana. Yeah, that's right. We all drink we're all alcoholics.

SPEAKER_07 1:21:54

Yeah, it's in our genes.

SPEAKER_02 1:21:55

Yes. Well, it may not be.

SPEAKER_07 1:21:56

But you're saying it could just be dogma.

SPEAKER_02 1:21:58

Yeah, it's I believe it is dogma. I believe most things are dogma if you didn't personally choose to believe it. Yeah. So you got to ask yourself, what do I really believe? And it's a little, it's a little uh scary because you start pulling away at the board you're standing on called your life, and you may find yourself kind of not knowing who you are, because you complete you're completely a construction of other people's opinions and what they think. Yeah, but I don't think you're free unless you do this. I mean, I don't I don't believe you're free. I don't believe you're happy. I don't believe you can chase your potential, which is my goal, you know, to chase down potential. And I I and that's what I do today. It's what I do at Real Financial, is help people chase down their potential. We're gonna talk about I don't believe you can do that if you're not free of dogma and free of trauma frames, wrong trauma frames. And the reason I say they're wrong is not because those things didn't happen to you. It's the framing that you chose to adopt.

SPEAKER_07 1:22:59

What do you think those things did to you?

SPEAKER_02 1:23:01

Yeah, that's right. They didn't do them to you. Something happened, you framed it a certain way because you weren't emotionally prepared yet to frame it in a healthy way, so you framed it in a bad way. Yeah, or whatever, or maybe your youth, your child, maybe just protection, emotional protection.

SPEAKER_06 1:23:19

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:23:20

So whatever the reason is, we framed it in a way that's not helpful. And so the key is to get now that you're mature, now that you know, you have an obligation to go back and reframe it.

SPEAKER_07 1:23:30

Now you said you were walking uh 10 miles a day. 10 miles a day.

SPEAKER_02 1:23:35

Three 3.3 miles for breakfast. Yeah, breakfast, lunch, and dinner. It was great. How big was the loop? Uh one 1.1 mile per loop. So we we do we do three three laps to get us the 3.3. Big dirt track. Dirt, not pavement. Dirt. Is everybody walking? No. Some guys are stuck in their cell thinking about their sad lives.

SPEAKER_07 1:24:02

Okay. So some of you guys were walking, talking.

SPEAKER_02 1:24:06

That was my office, walking and talking.

SPEAKER_07 1:24:09

I do that now.

SPEAKER_02 1:24:09

Yeah.

SPEAKER_07 1:24:10

I walk and I'm on the phone with people working.

SPEAKER_02 1:24:12

Yeah, I love I love to walk. It's great. Yeah, I I find uh I find it to be real healthy to to walk. Yeah. Yeah, not just physically, just mentally. I I see things clearer.

SPEAKER_07 1:24:23

Now, once you got rid of all this dogma, what was there? What did you find out about yourself? Uh uh two things.

SPEAKER_02 1:24:30

I like me because I built me. It's easy to like yourself if you constructed it. I would throw one in.

SPEAKER_07 1:24:36

Yeah. You you definitely are not backing down to a challenge.

SPEAKER_02 1:24:40

No, yeah. Well the the other thing is what what can you do to me now? What what what can you still here? Yeah, what possible threat can you throw at me that's gonna have any substance at all now? So you're afraid of virtually nothing. On the back side of this, the feet fear is not in the equation, which is pretty liberating. You know, what what are you gonna do? Put me in jail? I mean, come on, I've done that. And that turned out pretty good. Worked out pretty good. And I've got great friends. I have an alumni of great guys from jail, yes, that I still communicate with. I help them with their portfolios and I help them know what stocks to pick and I help them think clearly about opportunities. And yeah, man, I love these guys. They're my friends.

SPEAKER_07 1:25:28

I had an agent come in here today. We have a lot of new agents here.

SPEAKER_02 1:25:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_07 1:25:33

And he came in and he said, I don't want to come in here because the agents in here are not that good.

SPEAKER_01 1:25:39

Okay.

SPEAKER_07 1:25:39

And I go, bro, why don't you make them better?

SPEAKER_01 1:25:42

Yeah.

SPEAKER_07 1:25:42

Well, you if you think you're so much better than them, why don't you come in and help them?

SPEAKER_02 1:25:46

Yeah, exactly. Lift and encourage.

SPEAKER_07 1:25:48

I threw him off a little.

SPEAKER_02 1:25:49

He's a uh Yeah, yeah, because you reveal there's a selfishness there.

SPEAKER_07 1:25:53

Yeah, yeah. Um, all right, so a couple things. One, when we first met, somebody told me, you know, don't talk to that guy because of his background.

SPEAKER_01 1:26:06

Ponzi schemer.

SPEAKER_07 1:26:07

Uh right. And my answer was he didn't do anything to me. Yeah. I at least can talk to I and the other my other answer was, dude, I like people that have gone through stuff.

SPEAKER_01 1:26:21

Yeah.

SPEAKER_07 1:26:22

Give me a bunch of people that have gone through stuff, yeah. And let's go, we could take over the world with that.

SPEAKER_02 1:26:27

And that's your I mean, that's your you got you got very high character, Andrew. You you see with wise eyes. I think you understand life better than most your age. And it's probably because you've dealt with thousands of agents, so you've seen a lot. Uh yeah, but you're you're wise.

SPEAKER_07 1:26:42

Yeah, so if you're watching this, if you've if you're going through something or you've been through something, yeah, we want to work with you.

SPEAKER_01 1:26:51

Yeah.

SPEAKER_07 1:26:52

And I love the underdog story, which is why I like your story.

SPEAKER_01 1:26:55

Yeah.

SPEAKER_07 1:26:56

Which you've told me multiple times, and I'm always asking you about it.

SPEAKER_01 1:27:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_07 1:27:00

Um now the other thing that I love that you did is when you got out, you used it as a tool to help other people by sharing and not holding it all in. Yeah. And that's real I don't know if you know how powerful that is. But the other thing is like, how can people not like you if you just tell them what happened?

SPEAKER_02 1:27:26

Yeah. Yeah, well, for me, it was a again, it's a selfish thing on my part. I I just needed to get it out. I uh when I was home, I got I got home by the way, after 14 months.

SPEAKER_07 1:27:37

Okay, so you only went in for how?

SPEAKER_02 1:27:39

Yeah, COVID, COVID-19, the great COVID pandemic.

SPEAKER_07 1:27:43

You're out?

SPEAKER_02 1:27:44

No, they said uh there are certain of you that qualify from a security risk standpoint to do your time from your house. And so uh the Attorney General of the United States wrote a letter and allowed 27,000 of us to go home and finish our time at our home. So the greatest with an ankle bracelet? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, literally literally in the home. Not like in the neighborhood, in the home. What about the gym? Uh any movement from the home required paperwork, approved by the Bureau of Prisons. And so I was at the gym every day. In my case, Orange Theory, that's my thing, every day. And then church, and then walk. I walk.

SPEAKER_07 1:28:29

You were allowed to walk.

SPEAKER_02 1:28:30

Yes. Yeah. But I I literally had to show the map of where I'd be walking, and it all had to be approved by paperwork.

SPEAKER_07 1:28:35

Do you still walk?

SPEAKER_02 1:28:36

I still walk.

SPEAKER_07 1:28:37

Every day? Every day. How far?

SPEAKER_02 1:28:40

Uh, usually two to two and a half miles. It's not crazy.

SPEAKER_07 1:28:44

Every day when I get up. I walk a two and a half mile loop. Sometimes I do it twice, but I love it.

SPEAKER_02 1:28:51

I do too.

SPEAKER_07 1:28:52

And if I don't do it for some reason, I do it in the afternoon.

SPEAKER_02 1:28:55

You feel lazy.

SPEAKER_07 1:28:56

Like you know in the evening when I get home and I'll take the kids.

SPEAKER_02 1:28:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_07 1:28:59

Um, but it is I love it, man.

SPEAKER_02 1:29:02

It's cathartic. It just feels great. Yeah.

SPEAKER_07 1:29:05

Yeah. So you do orange theory and you walk.

SPEAKER_02 1:29:08

Yes, for sure. And I'll lift weights too. Uh I have weights in my home that I'll lift as well. But uh so I only did 14 months. So at the end of the 3.5 years is the amount of time required on a five-year sentence if you own good behavior. So 3.5 is the amount of time you end up doing. So at the end of 3.5, so from 14 months to three and a half years, I'm in home confinement. At the end of that period, I'm free.

SPEAKER_07 1:29:38

Yep. And you have a podcast called Free at Last.

SPEAKER_02 1:29:42

I do, which has nothing to do with this. I have a podcast called Inside Out with James Catledge. If you find this on Spotify or Apple, you can hear all these stories. And it's just you though. If you do the audio, I tell the whole story from beginning to end. If you do the YouTube, I'm interviewing inmates and people that I met in prison. And it's a cool story.

SPEAKER_07 1:30:07

Are you bringing these memories back from your journal?

SPEAKER_02 1:30:11

I kept a daily uh blog, they call it. It's a journal, but it's a blog entry. And I did it for my I had 114 people that would receive this weekly. It was a consolidation of the week's blog, which was kept daily. And 114 people, and the reason I know the number is that's how many people uh my mother would send that to weekly. So they did time with me, those 114 people. Everything going on. They met all the characters inside, they heard all the crazy stories, they did it with me. So when I got out, they were a little sad because the stories were over. They were keeping up with these great stories. When I these are all my great friends, and when I when I go see them today, and they're all over the United States, but when I go see them and travel today, that they're bored by my life today. Now it was so exciting to hear.

SPEAKER_07 1:31:06

How do you judge somebody that went to jail now? Yeah. Opposed to before you went to jail.

SPEAKER_02 1:31:14

Well, there's there's there's that's a great question. I I do see it differently. Uh there's two two ways I view that. Uh most people did do something wrong a crime, right? So the way I view it is most of those men are feeling shameful and feeling like they'll never be who they were before or better. And they also there's these deteriorating emotions that most men who have done time have. Um, like I I did a move recently where I needed help from a moving company. The movers I could just feel had done time. And so at the end of the move, I tip them and I set them down on my expensive couch, and I said, Guys, how much time did you do? And they look like guilty. They just look guilty, right? They're not in jail now, they're working for a moving company. Yeah. He says, Well, I did six years and he did three years. Why? I said, Well, I did time too. I just want to talk about it. How are you feeling today? You feel like you're over it? I don't even care what they did time for. I wanted to encourage them to know that they could still chase their goals, they could still pursue their aspirations, they could still be ambitious, and don't let that thing dis define who you are for the rest of your life. And so I the way I view people who did time is this uh I don't judge them. They've done enough of that themselves. Their peers have done enough of that to them. Their spouses probably, their mothers probably judge them harshly. So it's not my place. But uh violent criminals should be in jail. That's what jails are for. People who've done violent crimes. The rest, I say, man, less time is better. Get them back, help them rinse the shame away. I'm not judging anybody. No, I don't. I don't. Number one, well, yeah, who am I? Come on. What are we, you know, what are we doing? I I I think we're all better if we're chasing our potential and we believe in ourselves. And I anything that would disrupt someone's self-belief or hope, I think is bad.

SPEAKER_07 1:33:33

What's the biggest uh comeback story of somebody that you know that was in jail and they're out now besides you?

SPEAKER_02 1:33:42

Yeah, I'm in the middle of constructing that story right now. Um you know, I I won't say his name, but uh I I I did Time of the Brain Surgeon who uh went in for billing fraud because he was giving discounts to his customers doing procedures at a specific hospital, and he was giving the money to the customer, and it was it's a federal billing thing when you're when when the feds are involved in paying for that person's care. So it was a non-issue in my in my book, but he did time, and he was so ashamed. This is a man who spent 16 years educating himself to be one of the best brain surgeons on earth. And when we were in the halfway house together, this guy is on his iPhone with a tripod, sitting cross-legged in his cubicle, doing a broadcast to Dubai, because he's a world expert on the brain. Teaching somebody. Teaching a symposium, a conference in Dubai had gathered, and he's the guest speaker from the halfway house. He's got me sealing off the other guys in the halfway house so they don't disrupt this broadcast. And then so this is my friend who's a who's a who's a world-renowned brain surgeon, and I love this guy, and I respect him immensely. And every time I'm with him, I remind him of how great he is, but he still is a little bit ashamed of the fact that that occurred and that it happened to him and that it tarnished him in some way, even though I don't think it did. He thinks it did. So I think he's probably the greatest because today he's in regenerative medicine, he's one of the great stem cell uh doctors in the world. He, if you if you if you need um regenerative medicine, this is the only guy I would ever go to. Uh, but but I'd say he's probably the greatest story I know. The guy that did time and completely uh rebuilt. But I I know him, I know his spirit, and and I I'm rooting for the guy.

Real Financial Seminars Replace Cold Leads

SPEAKER_07 1:35:49

Awesome. Okay. Now as of now, and we're gonna go back in time a little bit too. Okay, but as of now, you are consulting young men in life and women in life insurance as a coach of just let's say uh success. A coach of success.

SPEAKER_02 1:36:12

Yeah, I'm a strategy coach for folks who are trying to be successful in in a career in life insurance.

SPEAKER_07 1:36:17

With real financial.

SPEAKER_02 1:36:19

With real financial work, work alongside Brad Lee at Real Financial, which is under the umbrella of FFL. Yeah.

SPEAKER_07 1:36:26

So we're rooting for you guys.

SPEAKER_02 1:36:28

Absolutely, yes.

SPEAKER_07 1:36:29

And I want you to talk about um some of the things like it the way you run things is different than the way we run things, yeah. And that's okay.

SPEAKER_02 1:36:39

Sure.

SPEAKER_07 1:36:40

Like they could both work, right?

SPEAKER_02 1:36:42

Yeah, yeah, they do. And they both make a lot of money.

SPEAKER_07 1:36:44

Yeah, but your strategy is not lead-based.

SPEAKER_02 1:36:48

It is not, no, that's right.

SPEAKER_07 1:36:50

Can you tell us, like, because someone might like this strategy and they might want the opportunity with you guys?

SPEAKER_02 1:36:56

Sure, sure. I think first of all, let me just say I think leads are great. And I I think leads are probably the quickest hack and shortcut to actually making big money in insurance. Let me just put that on the table. And with that said, I've never used them. All the money I've made in this business, I've never used a lead. Now, here's here's the difference. Um, what what Real Financial is doing is we do weekly seminars called BPMs. And we do a virtual, we're doing a virtual one tonight at 5 p.m. Pacific. This is where people from all over the United States attend an orientation on what Real Financial does. We teach, in one hour, we teach the net worth secrets of the wealthy. What are the wealthy doing that most will never know unless they attend this seminar? And if they attend this seminar, they fill out a survey card. If it's a virtual meeting, they use a QR code. If they're in attendance at one of our offices, they fill out a physical survey. That is a lead. We then follow that up with doing an FSA or financial scoring analysis where we score the client on retirement readiness and tax efficiency, and that leads us to a myriad of products that they could purchase. If they're interested in an opportunity or career with us, that's also an option on the survey card. We interview them to hire them. And if we hire them, we also score them. And by scoring them, we we find out if there's blemishes in their current plan. Either they have a plan or don't have a plan. And we want to get the way I look at it, and the reason my teams make a lot of money is we want to find all the nickels in the couch. I just don't want to sell one thing. I want to I want to sell them multiple transactions for the rest of their life. I want to be their financial advisor. And so by scoring them, we find all the opportunities that are available.

SPEAKER_07 1:38:47

So you guys use an AI scoring model.

SPEAKER_02 1:38:49

We do.

SPEAKER_07 1:38:50

And that's asking the customer 27 specific questions. And this is recommending X, Y, and Z.

SPEAKER_02 1:38:57

Yeah. Based on the way they answer the 27 questions, the AI will make specific recommendations that fall into our product mix.

SPEAKER_07 1:39:05

Love it.

SPEAKER_02 1:39:06

It's great. It makes a lot of money per agent. They don't leave any money on the table, and the client leaves feeling they understand what they have. Which is great.

SPEAKER_07 1:39:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:39:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_07 1:39:15

All right. Now you are teaching people leadership. You are teaching people old school real recruiting. Yes. Because that's what you know. That's right. Um, I want to pull this picture up, Drew, and I want to talk about this. It's a little off topic. Sure. But, Drew, can you pull up this picture at the beach that we sent you? Real quick.

SPEAKER_01 1:39:39

He's pulling it up.

SPEAKER_07 1:39:41

And I want to share this with you for two things. This is a real estate hack and also uh something else. But what it where is this picture being taken place?

SPEAKER_02 1:39:51

That that's our beach house um in uh oceanside, California. Uh that picture was taken uh four or five days ago.

SPEAKER_07 1:39:59

Okay, so four or five days ago, you did a leadership retreat.

SPEAKER_02 1:40:02

Leadership summit, that's right.

SPEAKER_07 1:40:04

For the managers that are building at Real Financial.

SPEAKER_02 1:40:08

We ran a contest uh in the month of March, and you had to do 50,000 in paid commissions to you in March to qualify to be at this. I had seven bedrooms, so we had room for seven on the ocean, and so we we had seven qualify and they got invited, and we went knee to knee with me. Uh, we could have done it in a storage unit, but we chose to do it at the beach, so the background was better. But we were in my living room knee to knee for eight, nine hours. Okay.

SPEAKER_07 1:40:36

Now, a couple things here. Um, I told you this before. Yeah, I think you have to spend 40 hours of one-on-one time before people truly trust you. Yeah. Or consider you a friend.

SPEAKER_01 1:40:47

That's that's probably right.

SPEAKER_07 1:40:49

So if you're building teams, you have to have these experiences to put the time in, to build the relationship, to get people to trust you to really build. Right. Right? Yes. Um, so that's one thing. So awesome event. It's great. Which I wasn't there, but the pictures look great. Yeah. And the guys posting about them that win, they loved it. They're fired up. Yeah. Uh you don't drink, do they drink?

SPEAKER_02 1:41:13

They do not drink, and they don't drink with me. So if I if I'm in charge of the event or in charge of the event, there's no alcohol at the events.

SPEAKER_07 1:41:23

And so what do you guys do? Because usually people out of boredom, they go, We need a drink.

SPEAKER_02 1:41:30

Yeah, I I think uh the this event was so content rich, you know. I'm trying to teach them how to get their mind right to make tens of millions of dollars, not thousands of dollars. I'm trying to help them not just do the next transaction, but to actually build a life they're proud of. I I believe if you're gonna reach the summit of your life, it's probably gonna make you're probably gonna make a lot of money. But money's a sideshow on the way to your potential. And I think money chases those who are busy solving lots of problems. And and I I needed my key leadership team to understand that you can chase the cars, you can chase the watches, and I've had all of it, uh, or you can chase your destiny. And if you chase your destiny, you'll have everything you want. But don't think the symbols of money are the end.

SPEAKER_07 1:42:21

It's actually a recipe of misery. Yeah, it's it's it's did you ever experience that when you were making all your money, or were you you were building your company, you were still chasing that purpose?

SPEAKER_02 1:42:32

Yeah, I I think because I was so young when I left the World Financial Group and and began building my own company, I kind of got lost in the climb. I I was not and there wasn't really an Instagram where there was a need to post uh all these symbols of success. Yeah, yeah. I would there wasn't a voyeuristic uh social media climate back then.

SPEAKER_07 1:42:55

It was your opinion of that and not having any of that in jail.

Why Trust Requires Time Together

SPEAKER_02 1:42:59

Uh it was really cool uh to just we we would have conversations, Andrew. Uh let's say you and I met in prison. We would have a conversation that would start today, it would end at night when they do count, and then you would come back tomorrow, we would pick it up where we left off, and we would go all day, we would eat our meals together, same same conversation, same deep debate over something, and we that we we could get shit resolved, we could get things done because we and I really get to know you really fast when it's not a one-hour lunch, when it when it's not a transactional relationship, but we're living here. So I I I think you what you said is so wise about the 40 hours with somebody. I'm convinced if you can't touch them and you can't you put your arm around them. Zoom ain't gonna do it. Zoom is a Zoom is a trap because it's so convenient. You can even turn the camera off and be in your robe and have these meetings with just your audio, and it'd be so ineffective. If you want to be effective, you gotta touch people. You gotta, they gotta know you can't, you gotta look in your eyes and feel your energy. Energy can't be transmitted through Zoom. Energy is in this room when we're having this conversation, and it's in the it's in the room at the beach house, it's in the room when you have people on your retreats, you and Sean. So I I'm just convinced that that Instagram, social media, Zoom, these are traps that will limit and put a ceiling on your potential. Use them uh uh because you you're geographically diverse, you're dispersed geographically, but hold summits, hold meetings, get them in a room. And uh I think if you'll do that, you're more likely to reach your goals.

SPEAKER_07 1:44:48

Okay, now um back to this photo, Drew. Pull this up. Do you care if we talk about how you bought this?

SPEAKER_02 1:44:56

No, I don't I don't care. No.

SPEAKER_07 1:44:58

Okay. So you bought this property on the beach with a part in a partnership. Okay. Now I'm gonna do the same thing because you told me that. So I I have two people that told me they want to do it, so I need one more person. Yeah, but tell us this is so brilliant. Yeah. And when you told me that, I'm like, why don't we do more of that? Yes. Uh, but tell us how you bought this.

SPEAKER_02 1:45:22

Yeah, you you typically uh the structure is you put an LLC together and buy the property. In this case, we bought an older home and it needed to be scraped off. And then uh one of my partners is a builder, a general contractor. And so he took the responsibility of getting the approvals and the permissions to rebuild a home, a beautiful brand new home on that same lot. And so that was seven, eight years ago that was done. And uh and that partnership takes turns using it. We we we own it.

SPEAKER_07 1:45:56

So we each get 90 days, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:45:58

It's uh well, we get three months. I get three months. So there's four of us, we each get three months.

SPEAKER_07 1:46:03

Yeah, because like the problem with going and buying a five million dollar beach house is if you're not gonna be there all the time, you can feel like you're it's empty. You're you feel like you're wasting all our taxes, in taxes and deferred maintenance, yes. But if you split it with four people and get a way cooler house, it's always full because uh we could even send friends to it. And dude, you can send friends to it.

SPEAKER_02 1:46:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_07 1:46:27

So I pitched my friend on it. I said, dude, our kids will be using this. Yes, our grandkids will be using this, and they'll be like, We have three months to go enjoy this beach house. Our parents can go for absolutely you send your parents. You can do a retreat with with agents, yes, and and show them what you can do. And the people that I work with, there's so many people making so much money. Yeah, one of my goals is to start doing cooler things like this, like what you're talking about. Yeah. Opposed to just keeping money or maybe spending it, but not on things that will last who knows how long, right? That your family will use, even you know, if you're if you're not around anymore.

SPEAKER_02 1:47:11

Well, you you know it's funny, is once you've made a lot of money, as as you have, uh there's a tendency just to kind of accumulate things over time, and and it ends up feeling, you know, once you once you've got your needs met, you're now just accumulating things. And it's it's not it's not as cool as it sounds. It's not. It takes a lot of emotional and mental energy to and to manage it, and there's just a lot to it. But if you're able to use those assets to further perpetuate your purpose, not not your money. Your money is a byproduct of all the great work you do. Purpose is what we're perpetuating here. It in your your ability to transfer your mindset into the lives of other men and women, that's the purpose.

SPEAKER_06 1:47:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:47:59

Because that sets them free. It's like teaching a man how to fish or give him fish. Teaching him how to fish gives him the ability to feed himself forever. That's what you're doing when you have these summits. So use your assets to do that.

SPEAKER_07 1:48:12

So, one thing I want to do, we have so many people making money is us collectively do cool stuff like that. Yes, collectively. There's a lot of young people that I work with that make a lot of money. Right. And imagine what we can do collectively.

SPEAKER_02 1:48:26

Yeah, nobody you don't need to have 20 people with a five million dollar house.

SPEAKER_07 1:48:29

No, no, no. But you if you got four, and you can do it again in Scottsdale if you want to use Scottsdale. You could do it in Cabo. Now I'm I like what you're saying, is like is your purpose being fulfilled, which would be like you're you're using it for retreats, you're introducing people to a new way of life, you're letting them grow, think bigger, all these different things. I do like that, and I like it for quality time with family. Yes.

SPEAKER_02 1:48:59

Um it's not a bad tax deduction.

SPEAKER_07 1:49:02

And it's not a bad tax deduction. Yeah, dude, it's a home run. I was doing the math. So, like, even if you financed a four million dollar property, everybody would put 250,000 down. Yes. The payment for each individual person isn't that crazy. No, I stayed. I want I want to see your house at some point because I rented a house two years ago. Every year for my son's birthday, we go to the beach, we rent a huge house, we bring like 15, 20 people, yeah. The whole family. Um, we get a a place right on the sand. We stayed in Carlsbad two years ago. The pier caught on fire when we were there. Right. I don't know if it's a lot of people.

SPEAKER_02 1:49:44

That Ruby's Ruby's uh Ruby's dining right at the end of the pier. I know the spot. Yeah.

SPEAKER_07 1:49:49

Yeah. So we're like sitting on on the back porch and the pier's on fire.

SPEAKER_02 1:49:53

Right. I know right where that is.

SPEAKER_07 1:49:55

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:49:55

And uh, but man I can see that from my back deck.

SPEAKER_07 1:49:59

When you told me how you bought that, I was like, dude, I'm doing that.

SPEAKER_02 1:50:02

And and by the way, you and I need to do that with an airplane. That's my next move.

SPEAKER_07 1:50:06

You can do it with an airplane, you can do it with a boat.

SPEAKER_02 1:50:09

Yes.

SPEAKER_07 1:50:09

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:50:10

Any asset that you know is uh it requires high net worth to to have it, and it doesn't quite make sense uh without feeling like a waste of money, you do that in a collective with really people you trust and you know respect.

SPEAKER_07 1:50:27

Yeah. So I'm gonna do that with a lot of things. Yeah. Um but I love that. You shared that with me. I'm like, why am I not doing that? I called one of my friends, he's like, Why are we not doing that? Totally need to do that. And then he's like now the funny thing is if it's with people you like, yeah, you could really go. More than three months because you've been there. Some of my friends, I would be there with them anyways.

SPEAKER_02 1:50:50

Yeah, that's who you travel with.

SPEAKER_07 1:50:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:50:52

That's right.

Sharing A Beach House By LLC

SPEAKER_07 1:50:52

So it's like, okay, like, I don't know, it's a home run. But I wanted to share that with you guys because I think that is a really cool hack and a really cool goal.

SPEAKER_01 1:51:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_07 1:51:02

As you're like we talked about what Patrick Bed David said, you gotta have things to look forward to. That's right. If you're making good money and you're young, what's next? What are you looking forward to?

SPEAKER_02 1:51:12

That's right. And stay stacking up money is not a bad idea either. I I couldn't have left World Marketing Alliance and formed my own company had it not been stacking up money. Stack up your money. Save your money. Yeah, save as much as you can. I remember being in my late 20s and having$700,000 in my checking account. I remember the back then you may remember that it was a first interstate bank. Wells Fargo has ended up buying all the first interstate banks. My first bank was first interstate. These same people used to cover my insufficient funds checks when they would bounce. You know, you would get an NSF notice. They charge you$35 because you check bounced. These same people watched the same guy put in a million bucks a year in actual income. It's the same the same bank tellers dealing with the same guy that used to have to cover his bad checks, watch this guy put millions of dollars in. So yeah, you want to put lots of money in the bank.

SPEAKER_07 1:52:10

Yeah, and um no one really told me this early on, but it's not a bad idea to buy some stocks and let those things grow. And we've talked about this a lot. And you and I we've talked about NVIDIA, what that has done. A lot of people got NVIDIA, thankfully.

SPEAKER_02 1:52:29

I could put on the floor mat when you walk into the house, it's got Cat Lich on the doormat. I could put NVIDIA there.

SPEAKER_07 1:52:36

Yeah, me too.

SPEAKER_02 1:52:38

For for what NVIDIA's done, they could have built the home.

SPEAKER_07 1:52:41

Yeah. NVIDIA base dude. I looked up how many. Check this out. Hold on. You might know the number. How many millionaire employees from employee-owned stock?

SPEAKER_02 1:52:53

It's gotta be 20,000. Hold on, let's find out.

SPEAKER_07 1:52:58

Chat, how many million employee millionaires were created from NVIDIA stock?

SPEAKER_00 1:53:08

NVIDIA estimates that about 76 to 78% of its employees are now millionaires, largely thanks to stock-based compensation. With roughly 36,000 employees, that suggests around 27,000 employees have reached millionaire status. Some surveys also indicate that nearly half of them have net worths over$25 million. However, these numbers are based on voluntary surveys, so they are indicative rather than exactly 13 to 15,000 of their employees worth over 25 million dollars.

SPEAKER_07 1:53:37

Yeah, yeah. That gets me excited for a lot of reasons.

SPEAKER_02 1:53:40

That's awesome. I saw a very expensive hypercar uh in Scottsdale, Arizona, and the license plate said NVIDIA.

SPEAKER_07 1:53:49

Dude.

SPEAKER_02 1:53:50

And I'm thinking, okay, that's obvious what happened there.

SPEAKER_07 1:53:53

Yeah. Uh in 2020, I think Clay, the guy that helps me buy stuff, who's awesome if anybody needs a financial planner. Clay. Clay is the man. Uh, but he told me in 2020 you should buy NVIDIA. Wow. Because they're doing video game chips. Yep. And video games during COVID are going to be very a very popular thing.

SPEAKER_03 1:54:21

For sure.

SPEAKER_07 1:54:22

So he buys me a bunch of NVIDIA and that thing just exploded, dude.

SPEAKER_02 1:54:27

It is the gateway to the AI. It's the railroad tracks for the AI.

SPEAKER_07 1:54:31

Now, what do you think it's going to do?

SPEAKER_02 1:54:33

Uh get out at 300.

SPEAKER_07 1:54:35

Oh, you think get out at 300?

SPEAKER_02 1:54:37

300. I did a total addressable market research study for myself, for my own portfolio, to figure out what the total TAM is if all the data centers are built, all the companies flipped over to NVIDIA chips, everything's running AI. At 300, you're you're talking about a$7.5 trillion company. So if they reinvent themselves and become the robotics company, then then you could go three to$500. But at$300 is the current total addressable market on those NVIDIA chips.

unknown 1:55:09

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:55:10

$300. And you're at$200 today.

Stocks, NVIDIA, And Wealth Habits

SPEAKER_07 1:55:12

Yeah. Okay. So if you're young and you not not if you're young, if you're in insurance and making money. And making money, obviously you have to reinvest back into your company.

SPEAKER_02 1:55:23

Open a Schwab account. Open a Schwab account. And diversify your money, even if it's one share of, I'll just throw some out. Tesla for sure, Microsoft for sure, Meta for sure, Google for sure, um, and uh NVIDIA for sure. SpaceX will go public. Uh SpaceX may merge with Tesla at some point. That's my belief. I believe uh Elon will be focused on Tesla, uh SpaceX specifically. But I would build a portfolio even if you got five grand.

SPEAKER_07 1:55:50

Yeah, but but it's important though. You have to still feed your business.

SPEAKER_02 1:55:55

Yes.

SPEAKER_07 1:55:56

And you you can't take all your money, not have any operating capital to run an insurance.

SPEAKER_02 1:56:01

You need an assistant.

SPEAKER_07 1:56:02

You need an assistant.

SPEAKER_02 1:56:03

You have to have an assistant.

SPEAKER_07 1:56:04

Okay, dude, I had an assistant when I was 18.

SPEAKER_02 1:56:06

Me too. I've always had an assistant.

SPEAKER_07 1:56:07

I was selling two policies a week. One sale paid the assistant, the other sale.

SPEAKER_02 1:56:12

And and I couldn't always keep her busy in the beginning. Now I got too much going on to keep her, you know, it's too much. I have multiple people now helping me. But in the beginning, the assistant made me look more successful than I was yet. And I needed that.

SPEAKER_06 1:56:29

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:56:30

In the beginning, it gave me credibility in my young age to have a staffer handling calendar and phone calls. So I think in the beginning, that's kind of what it's about. And then they let them help you with the paperwork. But eventually, you you can now think about big things and not so much about the advanced.

SPEAKER_07 1:56:47

Have you ever heard of the book uh The Secrets of the Millionaire Mind?

SPEAKER_02 1:56:51

No, sure, sure. Read the book.

SPEAKER_07 1:56:52

Yeah, okay. Yes. So when I read that book, it talks about like invest 10% of your income, give 10% of your income away. And if you can't do it with a dollar, you can't do it with a million dollars. So don't say, don't say I don't have enough money to do it. If I had your money, I would do it. Don't say that. Just start doing it with what you have.

SPEAKER_01 1:57:10

That's right.

SPEAKER_07 1:57:11

So I did this little formula, just like it said, and I invested most of it back into my insurance company. But I did do the 10% giving, 10% into savings, 10% into investments, and followed the formula on there.

SPEAKER_01 1:57:28

Awesome. Yeah.

SPEAKER_07 1:57:29

Awesome. But it I agree. Like if something goes wrong and you don't have any money, yeah, you're screwed.

SPEAKER_02 1:57:38

That's right. That's right. First order business, stay in business.

SPEAKER_07 1:57:41

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:57:42

And cash flow is king and stake to stay in business.

SPEAKER_07 1:57:45

And this is such an amazing industry. So I want to talk a little bit more about that.

SPEAKER_02 1:57:49

Okay.

SPEAKER_07 1:57:51

Uh what is the opportunity at real financial when it comes to recruiting?

SPEAKER_02 1:57:56

Yeah. That that that is the opportunities to build a team. I mean, the objective at Real Financial is to, we're looking for leaders, winner, winner mindsets who want to build teams. So I'm a I'm a team coach. That's what that's what I do. I'm an expert. If you wanted to work with me, I wouldn't just teach you how to sell, although I'm pretty handy at that. I would teach you the mindset of building a team that respects you, that will follow you, that will do thousands of transactions that you'll override. So the opportunity real financial is to come into business for yourself, but not be by yourself and have a chance at building that million dollar a year income plus plus. And I the only reason I stop at a million is because most people stop at a million. See, if you're wired to not stop, it it continues to perpetuate. It's most people, once there's enough coming in, they shut the engines down. If you're not the type to shut the engines down, the opportunity is tens of millions a year. So I my my suggestion is if you're interested in just selling, don't come to real financial. It's not a fit. We're looking for people who want to build large agencies that belong to them and cash flow from large agencies. And you'll also sell. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, Brad Lee, you know, social media influencer with 32, 35 million uh impressions from his social media weekly. Uh, he actually feeds people into our what we call our realback office, our RBO, and they get fed right into our associates. Once you've reached a certain income mark in our company, you're fed those social media their leads. And then you get them to a BPM, virtual or otherwise, and then you do their scoring, and then you recruit them. But he's talking on his podcast and all these beautiful social media outlets about being in business with him.

SPEAKER_07 2:00:03

But you guys then give that person to a team.

SPEAKER_02 2:00:07

Oh, yeah, they're assigned a teammate.

SPEAKER_07 2:00:08

They're assigned a teammate. Yep. So essentially, somebody can come in and they'll be given recruits to train and develop and help.

SPEAKER_02 2:00:17

Yeah. Once once they reach a certain benchmark, we need to know they're in it for the long haul. We need to know that they're culturally a fit. We need to know that they're tr coachable and trainable. And then once those benchmarks have been met, we feed them leads. Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_07 2:00:30

It's a different kind of lead than than the ones you're using, but but these are organic leads coming from Bradley. Social media.

SPEAKER_02 2:00:37

From social media. Yeah. People want to be in business with Bradley.

The Real Financial Recruiting Path

SPEAKER_07 2:00:40

All right. So now let's go. So if like if what these guys are saying fits you, you can call them, you can work with them, you can see what they're all about. For sure. Um, but let's go one, I got a few more things. What what has your experience been with your relationship with FFL, Sean Mike, everybody?

SPEAKER_02 2:01:06

That's a great question. You know, when I first started working with Bradley directly, and and he was introduced to me by Ed Milette, uh, a legendary guy in financial services.

SPEAKER_07 2:01:17

Most people know him.

SPEAKER_02 2:01:18

Yeah, yeah. He and I go way back all the way to WMA together. We were peers in WMA. So he's the one that introduced me to Brad and said that we should be working together on real financial. So uh when I first met with Brad, it was really important for me to understand who he's in business with. And he he said he named all the companies and he had named uh a company named GFI, he named FFL, and I said, I need to meet with the people in charge of those companies because if I'm going to be here operationally helping you, I've got to know who we're in business with. And uh when I met, I don't mind telling you, when I met with the GFI guys, I was not impressed. Uh that even though the the background was similar uh to mine and team building, that kind of stuff, the leadership concerned me. It really concerned me. Some of the things I was hearing, some of the things that that I researched, I just I was uncomfortable. And so I let Brad know we will not be continuing that relationship. And and then you came in representing FFL initially, and we just hit it off. I mean, we just we just like each other, we hit it off. And the thing I like most about you is you just do what you say you're gonna do, and you do it. I mean, if you make a commitment, you completely follow through with it. And I love that because you can't build anything sizable without that type of commitment. So that mattered to me, and then I had not met Sean yet. And Sean was concerned about this crazy background I've got, and uh, and he had let Brad know he was concerned about that. And of course, hell, I'm concerned about it, right? I mean, geez, you should be concerned about it. So I totally get the reaction. I mean, I I would judge harshly a friend who said this happened to them. I really would. Um, but when I met Sean and I got a chance to sit with him and tell the story, I mean, I found a kindred spirit. I found a brother who who who has his own stuff and has his own background and totally understood. And so you guys have been 100% in our corner from the beginning, and it's meant everything to Brad and I. And it's allowed Real Financial to find its footing and traction and begin to attract the great people from the marketplace.

SPEAKER_07 2:03:35

Now you guys are, I would say, very early stages.

SPEAKER_02 2:03:40

Yeah, I would say a year, I would say a year under the new leadership.

SPEAKER_07 2:03:44

But you're getting ready to are you getting ready to go on the road and tell this story of what you guys can do?

SPEAKER_02 2:03:50

Absolutely. The dates are set and the cities are set. Yes.

SPEAKER_07 2:03:53

So you're going not on Zoom.

SPEAKER_02 2:03:55

That's right. That's right. You're going on the road. Yes. Tonight is the kickoff, 5 p.m. Pacific Standard Time. If you go to realfinancial.com, you can get yourself on that virtual BPM and enter the funnel and see what we're up to. But we'll be taking that exact meeting into cities like Dallas, Salt Lake City, Fort Lauderdale, Florida, Detroit, Michigan, uh, right here in Las Vegas. Uh there, there's 20 of our leaders who have already opened up offices and are doing this seminar on a weekly basis.

SPEAKER_07 2:04:28

Love it.

Hubert Humphrey’s Tough Love Mentorship

SPEAKER_02 2:04:29

And we'll be visiting those cities. Yeah. Love it.

SPEAKER_07 2:04:31

All right. Now I want to go back in time. Okay. You told me a story that you were a top salesperson early on. Hubert Humphrey said, called you and had a conversation with you. Can you share that?

SPEAKER_02 2:04:42

Yeah, that's good. Yeah. I um let me sit up here. I'll feel I'm keep sliding down in the chair. So my first year in World Marketing Alliance, Hubert's the CEO. I'm running an office in Las Vegas. Hubert's in Atlanta, Georgia. And I haven't really met him. He's a distant mentor at this point. And I've made$288,000 and won an award in my first year in business there. And this is 1993.

SPEAKER_07 2:05:13

Do you think you're the man?

SPEAKER_02 2:05:14

I totally think I'm the man. Uh this is 1993, so I'm 26. What'd you do before that? Uh sold insurance for a beneficial life insurance company. When before that? Uh Miracle Ear Hearing Aids for Miracle Ear. Always selling. Always selling. I've only, yeah. Even in college, paid my whole way through college selling advertising for a radio station.

SPEAKER_06 2:05:37

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 2:05:37

Always selling. Yeah. So I get this call from Hubert Humphrey. My assistant Elizabeth says, we got a call from Hubert Humphrey. Should I patch him through? I said, of course. So I go in my office, I shut the door, and I literally have my feet up on the desk. And I said, I think he's calling to congratulate me on a great 12 months.

SPEAKER_07 2:05:57

Pause. Listen to this if you're building teams. All right, continue. Okay.

SPEAKER_02 2:06:03

So he begins with, Congratulations, Catledge. Quite an impressive 12 months. We're going to get you the ring. I've earned this ring, this championship ring that they give you once across 100 grand, and I've blown through the hundred and I'm current closing on 300. So they're going to send me the ring. He's congratulating me on the ring. And he said, uh, he said, uh, you you you do understand that you're operating on about 5% of your contract. And I I did not know what he's talking about. I I thought he meant there may be more carriers available, more insurance companies I can sell. And so I'm just listening, you know, I'm still basking in the glow of the congratulations, thinking about how he finally knows I'm the man. Literally, this is my arrogant young mind. And and he says, Do you do you understand what I'm saying to you? And I said, Not really. He says, Well, let me break it down for you. You think you're a hot shot because you can sell a lot of policies to a lot of people. You probably think you're a team builder because you've got five people within yelling distance in your office. And let's face it, you probably close their sales too. So look, you're not in business. You're a salesman. You're alone in business and got some guys taking orders, and you're closing their sales too. Um, he says, this opportunity is so much bigger than that. He says, let's play this out. Let's just do what you're doing another year. You're probably gonna get to 350. Let's do it another year. You're gonna cross 400. Let's do it again. We're three, four years from now, you're half a million bucks. Congratulations. Is that where your life is meant to be? With your skills, your potential. Are you a half million dollar guy? And I I I'm really taken back because I I'm just figuring out how to get to 300. But I realize he's saying a deeper message to me. He said, James, do you want do you understand that you you you have every skill it takes to make millions and millions and millions of dollars a year? He says, but you're gonna squander them. I know you. You're arrogant, you think you know everything, you're not coachable, you haven't even opened a format manual that actually teaches you how to build teams, you think you got it figured out, and and you haven't. He says, and yes, you should pat yourself on the back for about 30 seconds. But if you would work with me and let me teach you how to change the way you think, completely transform the way you think about building teams and transferring the skills systematically, not through persuasion, not through a great personality, but through a system. If you would let me teach you, you can make millions, James. And next year we're talking about seven figures, and then we're talking about how to get to three million a year, then we're talking about how to get to five and ten million a year. He goes, that's what you're capable of. He goes, and I see it now in you, but you've got to let me do this. And I I'm taken back because it's turned from a congratulations into an insult. An insult into a coaching experience, a coach, a training opportunity. And and I'm I'm you know, I'm clear enough, even at that young age, I'm clear enough to understand that this is a coach and he wants me to be bigger. He sees more in me. And I gotta tell you, when you see more in somebody than they see in themselves, you're drawn to them.

SPEAKER_07 2:09:37

What's that called? Is it dogma? It's it's mentoring. It's not dogma, but what is it?

SPEAKER_02 2:09:42

It's it's a uh a form of dogma? No, and no, when they see more in you than you see in yourself, it's it's it's what your creator sees, it's what your maker sees. It's a it's a they draw you in like a magnet. You you will not you won't let anything get between you and those people. So if somebody, your parents, if someone sees more in you than you see in yourself, it's a magnet. So he drew me in on that phone call, and I made it a point from that point on, and he will tell you to this day, I'll I'm sure I'll speak at his funeral. This is the kind of man who got in my head and changed me forever. I sat side seat on his Gulf Stream for eight years after that point. I was his passenger on his golf stream for the next eight years. I went with him everywhere he spoke. He would bring the plane to me, pick me up at signature right here in Vegas, and we would fly all over the United States seeing teams while he transferred his mind to my mind. I am who I am today, honestly, from my mother, a little bit of my religion, and a hell of a lot of Hubert Humphrey. And of course, your choices and decisions and the the things you've got to choose to do.

SPEAKER_07 2:10:55

Dude, it's funny because like what you're describing is like my relationship with Sean Mike.

SPEAKER_02 2:11:00

Same thing. Yeah. He got in your brain. Yeah. Yeah. Change the way you thought. And because you were gonna see less.

SPEAKER_07 2:11:07

And even when I was doing, which was a huge deal, a million dollars in a month in sales, yeah, he was like, bro, uh why aren't you doing two?

SPEAKER_02 2:11:18

You're capable of more.

SPEAKER_07 2:11:19

And then it's funny because now we're doing forty-five million a month in sales, like our team. Yeah, yeah. And I see that it's not a lot now.

SPEAKER_02 2:11:30

Yes.

SPEAKER_07 2:11:31

You know, his eyes because I see I know it can be much bigger.

SPEAKER_02 2:11:37

Yeah, you see it all now, like he did then.

SPEAKER_07 2:11:40

Like he did then.

SPEAKER_02 2:11:40

Yeah. That was it. That's what Hubert did. He had a better perspective of what I was capable of that I just didn't possess yet. And and he he constantly told me, James, once your vision is stretched sufficiently, it will never return to its old shape.

SPEAKER_07 2:11:56

Yeah, I'd love to get him in here, honestly.

SPEAKER_02 2:11:59

Uh uh, he he does his convention in July. We should work on that together.

SPEAKER_07 2:12:03

Yeah, and it's funny because he runs a competing company. Sure, inside integrity. Inside integrity, but dude, I don't feel like I'm competing with people anymore. I totally agree. And you're really not. I feel like there's so much opportunity and insurance that I'm not worried about it.

SPEAKER_02 2:12:21

Nobody should feel threatened by these competing companies. Yeah, no, it there's such a brain trust at the top. You wanna you wanna share it?

SPEAKER_07 2:12:28

You want people to win.

SPEAKER_02 2:12:30

Yeah, exactly. That's how I feel.

SPEAKER_07 2:12:32

But I've not always been like that. Yeah, I've been like, no, we gotta crush this company, we gotta do better than them. But now I'm like, bro, this is the bit best industry and opportunity ever. Yeah, like, and and to be honest, dude. All of us combined haven't scratched the surface. Oh, that's right. We have not.

SPEAKER_02 2:12:49

I mean, and that's how Patrick Matt David feels too. He and I had a long conversation at his home in Bay Colony, uh, Fort Lauderdale, just 10 days ago. And and he's actually consulting with me on Real Financial. I mean, he's the he built PHP, People Helping People. He built that company and sold it to integrity. Yeah. He's now consulting with me directly on to help you. Yes. He wants it to go the way it should go. He wants to help us avoid all pitfalls that could possibly be in the way. Yeah, so we all should think that way. It's an abundance mindset versus a scarcity mindset. And I believe abundance always wins. 100%. But Hubert fixed me in that call. I hung a poster. It sounds a little weird, but I did it. The more delusional you are, the better, by the way. The more delusional you are, the better. They we know from science that if you if you are a little bit delusional, you're more likely to accomplish more. So don't be so set on being a realist. Realists aren't paid as well as folks with a little bit of delusion. Okay.

SPEAKER_07 2:13:52

Yeah, it was funny. Um early on, I thought the things that I was told to do were corny to be successful.

SPEAKER_01 2:14:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_07 2:14:02

Okay. And it was go in the mirror and practice. Right.

SPEAKER_01 2:14:08

Yeah, role play.

SPEAKER_07 2:14:09

Say your affirmations. Yes. In in the mirror. Say say your affirmations. Um get around other people and like ask them all these questions. And I I would always say that it was corny. And then my friend was like, okay, do you want to be corny and rich? Right. Or do you want to be cool and poor? Poor. Yeah, that's right. Exactly. But then what I learned, dude, is it's not corny. Not corny at all. Healthy.

SPEAKER_02 2:14:36

Yeah. It's how you install change.

SPEAKER_07 2:14:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 2:14:39

It's it's what's required for the brain to rewire itself to success.

SPEAKER_06 2:14:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 2:14:43

Yeah. The br the brain is dying. It's it's design neuroplasticity, that that scientific formula about how we can rewire our brains. Yeah. The brain is designed to be rewired. Just most of us never do it.

SPEAKER_06 2:14:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 2:14:56

And and the hard becomes easier once we begin that journey of corny.

SPEAKER_07 2:15:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 2:15:01

Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_07 2:15:02

But I always laugh at that because now I'm like, dude, I'll do all the corny stuff.

SPEAKER_02 2:15:05

Like, yeah. Sit up front.

SPEAKER_07 2:15:07

Yeah. Sit up front. Speak boldly. Do your affirmation.

SPEAKER_02 2:15:10

Walk faster.

SPEAKER_07 2:15:11

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 2:15:11

Yeah.

SPEAKER_07 2:15:12

Get to the point. Be humble and ask questions. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 2:15:15

Ask all the questions. No dumb questions. Say you don't know. Yeah, that's right. I don't know. I'll get back with you.

SPEAKER_07 2:15:20

Uh get rejected in front of people.

SPEAKER_02 2:15:22

That's right. Role play. Role play in front of people.

SPEAKER_07 2:15:25

Role play in front of people. Get rejected in front of people. Tell people if you're worried about something.

SPEAKER_02 2:15:30

That's right.

The Eight Mile Plan For Truth

SPEAKER_07 2:15:30

Um, I want to I want to wrap it up with this. Yes. Something that Sean's always done, which I th have always admired, is he calls it the eight mile plan. And he's talking about the movie with Eminem.

SPEAKER_02 2:15:46

Sure. Eight Mile.

SPEAKER_07 2:15:47

And at the end of the movie, I don't know if you remember, but he does his final rap battle and he tells them, I he did, you know, he says, This guy did hook up with my girlfriend or sleep with my girlfriend. Yeah. And I do live in a trailer with my mom. And I am broke. And I am this. You have a dog. And I and yeah, all this stuff. And then he gives the mic back to the dude and he goes, So tell them something they don't know about me. Okay. And then the dude with the mic is like, he has nothing to say because he said it all.

SPEAKER_01 2:16:19

He did.

SPEAKER_07 2:16:20

So what Sean's always said is he's like, yo, I'm gonna shamelessly tell my flaws to where people can't use it against me. And what it does is it you, or if you do something wrong, you say it, yeah, and then other people don't have anything to say. Yeah. And the reason I'm bringing this up is because your story reminds me of that because you had something crazy happen. You came out, yeah, and you and you go, I'll tell the story. I'll tell it. I'm not gonna, I don't need other people. I lived it, and then I'm gonna turn it into good and make it a good story.

SPEAKER_02 2:16:56

That's right.

SPEAKER_07 2:16:57

Even though it's an insane story.

Podcasts, BPM Invite, And Closing

SPEAKER_02 2:16:59

It is insane. And if you don't mind, I'll tell the audience again when they can listen to it. It's not free at last. That's my current podcast for Real Financial, where I interview entrepreneurs like you who are successful. That's free at last with James Catledge. Inside Out is this crazy journey through the criminal justice system that it's a lesson. Everyone should actually listen to this, the audio version of this, because if you want to avoid, you're not beyond uh tough things happening. Nobody is. And they will happen. They will, they will have, they're coming for you. Tough times are coming. Our life is full of seasons, and and sometimes winter comes for all of us, and we have to be prepared for what to do when winter comes. And I guess the the the good news is um spring always follows winter, and and we we all got a shot at rebuilding in the springtime, and that that's what I'm in the middle of now. And I'm I'm grateful you'd have me here today.

SPEAKER_07 2:17:57

And I'm excited to see what this turns into.

SPEAKER_02 2:18:00

Yeah, me too.

SPEAKER_07 2:18:01

Because it could be pretty big. It could be pretty big.

SPEAKER_02 2:18:04

Yeah, thank you.

SPEAKER_07 2:18:05

Love it. Well, dude, thank you for coming in. I think this is a awesome relationship we have with you guys. You're a great dude. I've enjoyed hanging out with you. Yeah, I've enjoyed picking up things you've done in the past. Yeah, learning about your life, and thank you for being transparent. Because I do believe everybody's going through something, and the transparency helps other people relate.

SPEAKER_02 2:18:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_07 2:18:27

And then they go, Oh, I could do this too.

SPEAKER_02 2:18:29

Yeah, for sure.

SPEAKER_07 2:18:30

Thank you, bro.

SPEAKER_02 2:18:30

Yeah, thank you. Thanks, Andrew.

SPEAKER_07 2:18:32

See you guys.