Buy Gold, Build Discipline, Create Freedom Ep 41

#soundmoneypodcast #soundmoneysoundprinciples #soundmoney #7kmetals 
In this episode of the Sound Money, Sound Principles Podcast, Josh Anderson and Zach Davis break down why central banks around the world are continuing to buy massive amounts of gold — including the reported 244 tons purchased in Q1, China’s continued gold accumulation, and Poland’s recent increase in gold reserves.

Josh and Zach discuss why gold is being treated as a non-liability asset, why countries may be losing trust in debt-based financial systems, and what everyday people can learn from how central banks protect their wealth.

The conversation also covers Turkey selling gold into its own private market, the importance of liquidity, why precious metals can act as a safe-haven asset, and why gold and silver may still represent a major opportunity.

In the second half of the episode, Josh and Zach shift into this week’s Sound Money Principle: discipline. They explain why motivation is not enough, why discipline matters in business, how entrepreneurs can build better habits, avoid distractions, schedule their time, and create more freedom through consistent action.

If you care about gold, silver, sound money, business, entrepreneurship, discipline, and building long-term financial strength, this episode is for you.

Share this episode with someone who needs to hear it.

Timestamps / Chapters

00:00 Intro: Sound Money, Sound Principles Podcast
00:24 Gold prices, central banks, and why this episode matters
01:06 This week’s Sound Money Principle: discipline over motivation
01:45 244 tons of gold purchased by central banks in Q1
02:15 China, Poland, and the global move toward gold
02:40 Why central banks may be losing trust in debt-based systems
03:28 The U.S. debt problem and rising concern from other countries
04:00 Turkey sells 70 tons of gold — why didn’t the price crash?
05:00 Why headlines can mislead people about gold
05:35 Turkey’s gold stayed inside its own economy
06:15 Why citizens should pay attention when governments buy gold
06:45 Gold and silver as safe-haven assets
07:15 Why liquidity matters in a financial emergency
08:05 Lessons from the 2008 financial crisis
08:45 18 years of central bank gold buying
09:25 Why families should think like central banks
10:00 Gold as a non-liability asset
10:35 Why central banks care more about stability than short-term yield
11:30 The danger of trying to time the market
12:15 Dollar-cost averaging and buying consistently
13:00 Silver market movement and opportunity
14:00 Don’t get distracted by short-term headlines
15:00 Inflation, economic data, and market signals
16:00 Why Josh says it is a buyer’s market for gold and silver
17:00 The “buy baby buy” message for precious metals
18:05 Switching gears: discipline in business and life
18:35 Why motivation can be unreliable
19:15 Discipline is the real currency of business
20:00 Doing the hard work when nobody is watching
21:00 The unsexy tasks that build a business
22:15 Daily tasks entrepreneurs must stay disciplined with
23:00 Why business owners should understand every part of the business
24:00 Learning problems, bottlenecks, and customer needs by doing the work
25:00 Morning people, night people, and getting hard tasks done
26:00 Having discipline to stop doing tasks you enjoy
27:00 Habit stacking and using your time better
28:00 Why entrepreneurs try to conquer too much at once
29:00 Start small and build little wins
30:00 Accountability partners and telling people your goals
31:00 Why accountability helps you follow through
32:00 Removing distractions from your environment
33:00 Scheduling focused time and protecting your attention
34:00 If it is not on the calendar, it does not happen
35:00 Discipline, family, and the entrepreneur lifestyle
36:00 Discipline creates free

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:02

Introducing Zach Davis and Josh Anderson with the Sound Money Podcast.

SPEAKER_01 0:13

Hello and welcome to this week's episode of the Sound Money Sound Principles Podcast. Josh Anderson here with Zach Davis. How are you, Zach?

SPEAKER_00 0:19

Hey, good, Josh. I'm awesome.

SPEAKER_01 0:22

Great. It's a great day to be here. We're super excited today. You know, uh, gold price, why gold price fluctuates? Central banks just bought a massive 244 tons of gold in Q1 of 2026. The highest quarter total in the last six quarters. Uh, China on its 17th straight month of purchasing gold, Poland adding big. Uh, that's, you know, these countries are starting to treat gold like it's a lie, like it's a non-libility asset. And uh, so we want to dive into that today. There's a lot of exciting things to look at there because the numbers and the math um in the gold side don't really add up uh what we're seeing today. And then uh on the back half today, Zach, we're gonna jump into a sound money principle this week, uh, where we're going to be sharing with the listeners a little bit about how powerful it is to be disciplined and uh what how you know discipline usually outweighs even motivation if we use discipline in our business, in our personal lives and in our business, and what discipline has looked like for you and I. And so we're super excited for today's show to take a few minutes and to dive into some of these topics. Zach, I'm gonna throw up a graphic from this week's uh infograph from the sound.money news page. If you haven't tuned in there, jump on over there, sound.money, click on the news tab. We put out a uh comprehensive report every single week with uh corresponding infograph. And uh this week, right? The big news back for us is 244 tons. Why central banks are doubling down on gold uh in the first quarter of this year? Buyers like China, 17 consecutive months of purchasing, um of purchasing at least five tons a month of gold. Uh Poland up 33 tons this year. And uh Turt and so I want to jump into that, Zach. You know, what are we what are we seeing, right? Gold gold prices even dipped the last two weeks just a little bit, you know, inconsequential. Um, but uh what are we seeing and what's this driving for? So what do you kind of see here is what what should we read between the lines when we see for the 17th consecutive quarter, the world governments have increased their holdings of gold. What does that tell you?

SPEAKER_00 2:39

Yeah, this is a it's a trust issue. This is a major trust issue in the relationships. I mean, the the problem is none of these countries trust any of these other countries to be fiscally responsible. And the number one culprit being the U.S. And when you have as much debt as we have, when you have interest payments that are over trillions of dollars on the debt that you currently are trying to service, interest rates are going to go up. I mean, these countries are not, you know, they're not dumb, but they they do have to function and they have to have they have to get uh uh dividends isn't the word I'm looking for. But when you buy bonds, you have to get a yield, right? You need to get you need to get something out of them. So they buy all these other countries' bonds and they buy debt because they get interest payments on them. But uh these countries are getting nervous that the United States is not fiscally responsible. And so what you're seeing is all these central banks in these countries saying, we're going to take our liquidity out of those countries and out of those debt instruments, we're gonna put it into gold because we trust gold more than we trust the business decisions and the economic decisions of these countries. Major shift.

SPEAKER_01 3:48

Yeah, major shift, right? One of the things that I'm um I was kind of blown away by, and I think this is really cool for us to understand today, um, is that we saw in Q1, we saw the first time we ever saw this phenomenon where Turkey they sold off 70 tons of gold. I want to think about that, right? In the first quarter, we sold 200, the world sold 244 tons, but Turkey sold off 70 tons. So, what Zach should that do to the market if one buyer, one holder of metal sells um one-third of all the holdings that are going to be bought in the quarter in one single month, what should that do to price?

SPEAKER_00 4:31

Well, it's supply and demand, right? I mean, it's price elasticity. What we should have seen is a huge supply of gold hit the market, so it should have really driven prices down a lot. That's not what we saw. That's not what we saw, right?

SPEAKER_01 4:46

And this was really interesting, right? So uh, if you just if you're a headline reader, like I hate this, Zach, you know, if you just go to MSNBC or CNN or Money Watch, or you go to Yahoo's financial page, you see these headlines throughout the day, right? And uh man, they're just a bunch of BS most of the time, right? So the headline was Turkey dumps 70 tons of gold price uh what is gold falling, right? Is it is the sky falling out of gold? It's like gold's a bad asset. Get rid of it. It was crazy. But what happened, the price didn't even move, like it did not even move when that happened, which should never happen, right? When that many out when that many tons hit the market. But what was the real thing there that when you dig into it, right? We do this for the Sal Money report. We dug into this and went, hey, the actual metal never left the country of Turkey. It stayed. The government had a liquidity problem, and so they sold off the gold holding 70 tons of gold, but they only sold it into their private markets inside of Turkey. And guess what? It stayed in the country, and it actually went to the citizens. The citizens of Turkey bought it up, which, hey, we've been preaching this every day, right? If the goal, if if the countries of the earth think it's a good idea to hold gold, its citizens should absolutely hold gold as a protective, for preserving asset class. And what that's what we saw, those 70 tons found their way into the hands of the common men and women of Turkey. So we saw no price difference, right? Uh price didn't move. Um, which I think Zach is awesome. I love that Turkey, you know, in their liquidity problem, did that, that they unloaded it, but that they kept it inside of their own ecosystem, inside their own country for its own citizens. What is your take on some of that, Zach? And what uh how we can maybe relate that at home?

SPEAKER_00 6:41

Well, it's I mean, it's the exact purpose of a safe haven asset, right? That's why you buy gold and silver. It's why Turkey has been buying up so much gold over the years, is because you do run into some financial problems. And so when their currency softened and all of a sudden they had to have a bailout, well, they had something that had real value with liquidity that they could sell so that they could back everything that they had to back. And if you think about your own household, that it's the very purpose, not only for a country, but it's the very purpose for a household. When you get into a financial crunch, if you're sitting on a safe haven asset that is protected from inflation and it has some liquidity to it, when you run into problems, even though you don't want to sell, I promise you, Turkey didn't want to sell that gold. No, they had to. But you know, in your own household, when you run into problems like that, you need something that has liquidity that you can take care of your problems. And that's the real power of precious metals, is you can you can do it with land too, but pretty tough to sell, right? When when you're in a pinch, is I just need to sell this little corner of my land. Hard to do, got to get it rezoned and all the stuff, right? But when you're sitting on precious metals, which is exactly why these central banks, and it's exactly why these big countries of the world, it's why they buy it, and it's why they've been buying it for 17 straight years, is because they know that they need it because they're gonna have liquidity problems because of the economy.

SPEAKER_01 8:12

I I love that you brought that back to a couple things like real estate, right? So, you know, hey, I was a younger entrepreneur in 2008, Zach, and uh I was crushing it. Made my first five million dollars net profit in 2006 and seven. And I thought I was on top of the world until 2008 financial crisis happened and it was taken from me in a day, right? In a in a matter, not a day, but in a matter of a 90-day period, right? It was gone. And uh I I put up the infographic again because I think it's really important for our listeners to understand that the long-term structural case for gold is really impressive, right? To your point, we've now had 18 consecutive years of net buying by central banks of the world. That 18 years encompasses the 2008 financial crisis. What did the governments of the world do then and the central banks? They bought gold, it encompasses COVID-19. That whole period, their net buyers during COVID-19, and the present crisis. We haven't named this crisis yet, Zach, but we are absolutely in a financial crisis. Like it just hasn't named yet. Okay, like, but we've but my point is to your point, it it's been 18 years of net buying by these large central banks and governments of the earth. About time that the common man and woman follow suit and take advantage of it. And so, you know, we we preach every week here that the most important thing that you can do for your family is that, right? Uh protect your family like governments and central banks protect their families. And so um, and the liquidity of it, right? That's why that's why Turkey didn't buy up large swaths of land in the Philippines or in uh or in in uh some other country as a safe haven. They bought it in gold so that in the moment of liquidity need they could quickly liquefy it, and it's what they did. So I just I I love that, right? It's gold is is a non-libility asset now, right? These institutions have taught us that. And uh man.

SPEAKER_00 10:21

This stat oh go ahead. Go ahead. And and I think even though it doesn't pay a derivative, uh, which is you know, all these bonds and and and treasury bonds and all that, they do. So these countries and and banks like to have money in those because it does pay a derivative, but I but I think these same countries and these same banks are signaling to us that what is more important to them is the long-term stability. And it's not a short-term game, right? It's not like they're not buying here for a couple months thinking I'm gonna time the market and then I'm gonna sell here. This is like for them a long-term play. They have no intentions of selling this. That's my that's the same with my strategy, right? I have no intentions of selling. I hope that I go to my grave and my kids get it all and they can figure out what to do with it. But the it's the long-term strategy. If I ever need it, it's there.

SPEAKER_01 11:14

So I'm glad you brought that up because uh back to the infographic Zach. Think about this for just a minute. Q1, first quarter of 2026, 244 tons of gold bought by central banks. Crazy number, right? During that time, we saw our all-time high of gold, right?$5,600 an ounce. We saw that come all the way off to$4,200 an ounce, and it settled around$4,800. Did central banks ever try during Q1 to time the market and buy and go and buy at a certain moment to get a good deal? No. No, they they dollar cost average it every day. They buy every day, they buy when they have the fiat currency to convert into sound money. That's the reality. And that's a lesson for all of us, right? If because the individual human tries to time the market, do all these crazy things and go, hey, you know, I'm gonna see, is it gonna drop this week? Maybe I'm gonna wait and see if it drops this week. And then it doesn't drop, so you hold it longer. If the central banks of the earth never do that, never do that. They they dollar cost average, they buy when they have the liquidity to buy. And I'll even say they buy when they have the debt to buy. That's the reality, too. But but if it's good enough for them, it should be good enough for us, right? It's a lesson there that uh of how to actually buy. And so, really, really quite powerful. And this week, Zach, we're we're gonna see a lot of um fun things on the silver market this week. Uh we've we've seen a tremendous bounce. Like this is we you and I have talked, we won't get into this at length. I'm sure we'll cover it next time. But this is once again, we're defying the odds. We've been talking for weeks about the physical demand on silver and how we're so short on it as a as a world. Um, on the physical usage of it, we're we're down, but we kept seeing silver drop, right? We kept seeing price drop. Um, and we actually saw a coalition between when when oil would go up this last little while with the Soran problem, um, we saw silver go down, right? But we kept saying to the listeners, we kept saying, this is false flags, this is false news because it should be rising. We have such a shortfall. It was the paper traders again playing games. Uh we're back at$87 today in silver because you can't cheat the market when there's this much physical demand out there. And there's just a massive shortfall. And so if you're a silver stacker and you tune into us every week because you're a silver stacker, great time to be alive. Great time to be alive. And uh you doing what we all love. Yeah. Um, any any final words today, Zach, about uh gold and silver this week or what we should be what you're looking for, uh what you're excited about.

SPEAKER_00 14:04

Yep, I just think don't get distracted by the headlines, don't get distracted by the short-term news. There's gonna be events that are that are gonna happen and it's gonna push gold and silver either way, right? I mean, in in the in the report, it talked about uh the price of gold being more expensive to get out of the ground, and there was a whole hoopla on that. That that was just it's just the royalties, right? It's like no big deal. But it just pay attention to what's really going on with the economy. Like what's real so we're we're recording this uh podcast on what are we, Tuesday? Tuesday the 12th. So tomorrow, some big news drops. Uh it's gonna be really interesting to see. You're you'll probably already have heard the news by the time you watch this. Um, but tomorrow's gonna be some some big news in the world, and you just need to watch what the inflation indicators are, you need to watch the national debt of the country, and you need to watch what these countries are buying. In my opinion, if you keep your eye on that, then smart money follows smart money, right?

SPEAKER_01 15:08

Don't you don't you think, Zach? Like we've all we've all watched the little game where there's a uh a marble or a nut in three cups, and we switch them all around and we and we do a little circle and a dance, and then we go, well, is it under one or middle? That is what the world does to the average person every day when it comes to their finances. They have to keep it a shell game, they have to hide from them. And what you just said is the most valuable thing, and that is watch what they actually do with their money, watch what the central banks, watch what the governments, watch what the financial institutions, what do they do with their money? And you should absolutely follow suit. Don't do what they tell you to do.

SPEAKER_00 15:52

That's where they make all their money.

SPEAKER_01 15:54

Yeah, they they tell you to do to do uh a couple of different crazy things, and then that's not what they do. And right now, this giant number of 244 tons of gold being bought by them in the first quarter tells you everything you need to know. It is a buyer's market today. It is buy, baby, buy, baby, buy. You know, this is like Donald Trump, drill, baby, drill, baby. No, no, no. Buy gold, silver, buy. Buy baby buy. Buy, baby, buy. This is it. Like these these days aren't coming back, Zach. Uh, they're not coming back. So we will have a future episode. We'll look back and say, do you remember back then in 2026, in May of 2026, we we talked about how silver was was at$86? Can you believe we told the listeners to buy, baby, buy, baby, buy, and they and those that did crushed it. And those that didn't, these days aren't coming back to the table. Uh the indicators are what they are.

SPEAKER_00 16:45

And so no, hey, I I I I remember my grandpa, my dad's dad, back when I was high school, college age telling me you need to buy gold. I'm like, uh, you know how. I remember getting on, I mean, it's the internet had just come out and it was like the dial up, you know, the page loads a little bit at a time and reveals, you know, and and I remember looking, going, oh, okay, there's buffalo, there's like buffaloes, there's eagles, there's one ounce, there's half everything's priced different. I got so confused. I'm like, I don't even know if I'm buying real gold here, so I'm not gonna buy anything. My my and my grandpa had already passed on, but in the back of my mind, I could always just hear him saying, You need to buy, right? It was like it was$400, Josh.$400. And I thought that was a lot of money. And it was a lot, I mean, to a college kid back then, it was a lot of money. But now you look at it and go,$400? Holy cow, I wish I'd have bought then. Um, but I'm not gonna make the same mistakes over again. And depending on what the report comes out tomorrow, and like I say, if you've probably already heard it, but uh, we're gonna print the inflation percentage tomorrow. Uh and depending on what happens with that and the signal of where interest rates are gonna go, like it guys, it's just not getting better.

SPEAKER_01 17:59

No, well, it's getting better for for stackers, for the sound money community, those that understand the power of gold and silver and God's money. It's getting better every day. So awesome. We we just love the space, we love what it does for people, and uh, we think it's really cool how you can take control of your personal future finances with it. Uh, and I love that the people around the world are doing it. So thanks for all the listeners who who do that every day. We want to switch gears for a minute, Zach, kind of dip into uh this week's business principle. Um, and some people, you know, god I've had people take offense at this in the past. Uh and I'm just gonna say it, right? Uh oftentimes motivation is actual garbage. It's it's it's really um discipline is the real currency of business. Motivation gets you started, right? Discipline is what keeps you going. Um it's motivation is the thing that helps you set a goal or a target or or make a plan, but discipline, the grind, the daily minutiae sometimes of business is what gets you across the finish line. I I wish sometimes, Zach, when we have when we've been blessed um because of our discipline, we've been blessed to have some major wins in business. These you know monster winners. We've had monster losers too. But I wish people could actually see the daily discipline that goes into it, um, not just the end result. Because it seems like I've come to this common theme in my life and in yours as well, that it's the little things that we do when nobody's watching every day. It's how we lay out our day, it's how we break things down that make all the difference. And so uh Zach, let's let's jump in for a minute and talk about uh the core the core principle and business of discipline. What does that look like, right? What are some ideas that we could maybe share with the listeners about how we use discipline in business?

SPEAKER_00 20:11

Yeah, so you mentioned the the word motivation is a it is a uh funny word because you hear that a lot, right? Like, oh, he's just not a motivated person, or you got to get motivated. Well, motivate motivation, I look at motivation as it's like a feeling, but it's not a doing, right? Discipline is the doing, even when the feeling is not there. So, you know, you mentioned when nobody's looking, it's really easy to be disciplined and to be motivated when people are watching and you know there's some accountability, but real discipline happens when nobody else is around, nobody else is watching, and you still have to do the hard thing that you didn't want to do when you were carrying all that feeling of motivation, right? It's the daily grind, is you know, what some people would call it. But it it really is that repetition of doing the things that you don't necessarily want to do on a daily basis that get you where you're wanting to go. It's the consistency. So, I mean, the the some some of the things that I think entrepreneurs have got to be disciplined in is you you need to know what your your market is doing, right? So if you're not looking at uh articles or reading articles, if you're not reading books, if you're not listening to podcasts that are specific to your industry or the industry you're trying to go into, if you're trying to build a business, well, that to me is one of those disciplines that even if you don't like to listen to podcasts, I I've I've had lots of people that are like Zach, I want to build a business, I want to do the thing. I'm like, Oh, do you like to read? And they're like, Oh, I hate reading. I'm like, Oh, well, I was gonna send you a really good book that you could read that would like help you. And they're like, Yeah, I probably wouldn't read it. Oh, okay. I'm sorry, even if you don't like to read, like that is discipline. It literally is discipline. You you just still have to do it. So I think keeping up on uh all the industry things that are going on in your industry, in your business, looking at the numbers. I mean, there's a lot of things that are not sexy about building a business, but you still have to be disciplined to do those things, even though nobody else is gonna applaud you for them, right? Nobody's gonna give you an award for them, nobody's gonna take you across the stage, or uh, but you still have to do them. Like you still have to be disciplined.

SPEAKER_01 22:30

Well, and I always go back to um if you're a young entrepreneur or new uh or starting a new business or you're just getting you're you you've had one, you're trying to grow it, there's certain tasks that have to be done every day. And some of them, it makes much more sense for you to do them to pay than to pay someone else. And sometimes they're not very fun tasks, right? And they might even be things that we greatly dislike. But the quicker you can embrace that it's it's a necessary part of what needs to be done to succeed, then you build uh a life routine around it so it just gets taken care of. Uh and you know, that can be anything from maybe you don't like to do the paperwork of the business, but you got to go do it. Uh, you know, for me, you know, when we're bootstrap people, you might know what listeners might not understand what that means, right? But when we start a business, we do we ever just throw money in a business tech?

SPEAKER_00 23:28

No, we just do it all.

SPEAKER_01 23:30

You wear all the hats. When when every time I've thrown money at a business and we've just said, hey, we're gonna hire five people or start this business, we're gonna hire five people, we're gonna pay them big salaries, and we're gonna have them do everything. We've never, never won. We've never hit a home run with that, we've never won. All those businesses have cost us money, we've lost money. All the winners have a core common theme of us doing every task in the beginning. And part of that is because our belief system that if you do every little thing in the beginning, you find out all the problems really quickly. You find out what's important and what's not important, you find out what the customer will pay for and not pay for, you find out where the pinch points are, where the bottlenecks are. Like daily you figure those things out. So we do them all, right? When we start a business, now we hope to win enough that we don't have to do them forever, but that's a core belief for us. But in order to do that, you got to the discipline. In my case, I'm a you know, Zach and I are opposite. We've talked about this. I'm a morning person, he's more of a night person. So I get up early and I work on tasks that suck in every new business that I don't want to do, but I do them at 6:37, 8 in the morning before the world gets awake. Zach has those same nasty tasks that he doesn't want to have to do for our new businesses, and he does them sometimes at 8, 9, 10, midnight, 1 in the morning sometimes. We don't do them then because we want to. We do them then because it doesn't. It's the discipline. We use valuable minutes to do valuable tasks, and we use non-valuable minutes to do minutiae tasks, right? It's the discipline. But I promise there's a little voice in you that says, I don't want to do that thing right now, but you got to go get it done. And it's oftentimes what separates winners from losers in that process.

SPEAKER_00 25:25

Yeah. Uh and I and I and I would say too, Josh, it it works the other way too. Like we have had we have had businesses before where we kept doing things too long. Yes. Right. Because we we either we liked doing those things or we felt like we had some sort of control when we did those things, or we didn't trust anybody else to turn those over. So you also have to have some discipline to let other people go to work too, and to stay out of those things. Sometimes your skill set is very valuable someplace else, and you are doing tasks all day long that aren't very valuable to the business because that's just what you like to do. But sometimes you have to get really disciplined to say, okay, I'm not gonna do these tasks, even though I really like doing them. I'm gonna turn it over to somebody else, and I'm gonna do other tasks because my time's more valuable, right? It's sometimes it is really hard to stop doing the things that you love in the business because it's the reason you built the business in the first place. And then you watch somebody else do it, and you're like, I really like doing that. But you need to be paying attention to something else and have discipline.

SPEAKER_01 26:33

Yeah, you know, I think you can even put that kind of into the perspective of uh this principle that you and I have shared lots in our lives around with as we mentor people in business around this idea of habit stacking um and then accountability, and then uh how you kind of set up your work environment, right? So if we're gonna talk about habit stacking for a minute, you you gotta start, you can create a new habit that's going to be good for you or for your business or for your personal life. And then as soon as that becomes routine, you pick a new habit that you integrate into your life, right? And these habits begin to stack one on top of another in such a way that pretty soon you're getting exponential benefit in your life because you're stacking a habit on top of a habit on top of a habit or all good things. For example, something so simple. If you're a person who has to drive in the car and you got to drive 30 minutes a day, an hour a day, what are you gonna do with that hour? Right? Uh how what kind of habit are you gonna build then? And you mentioned it, Zach, whether that's an audiobook, whether that's uh industry podcast, whether that's um something that's uh spiritually uplifting for you, that motivates, that gets you to think and to think higher than yourself and engage. That's a that's a small habit that if we use that time differently, all of a sudden it stacks and it frees us up to create another habit that that we can utilize. And so both of you and I are firm believers that we should fill our day with as many positive good things as possible and the least amount of frivolous, meaningless things. And uh any any thoughts around habit stacking and how you've used it in your life, Louis Zach?

SPEAKER_00 28:31

Yeah, I I actually think that one of the biggest challenges that business people have and entrepreneurs have is they want to conquer the world, right? They they they want, we just want to win and we want to build and we want to move forward, we want to be the best at everything that we do, but sometimes that can really create a huge problem because then you start making this list of, oh, I gotta do this, I gotta do this, I gotta do this, I gotta do this. You might even be doing it right now, right? You listen to this podcast going, oh, yeah, they're talking about this, and I'm, you know, I'm I I need to do this, I need to do this, I need to do this. And I think the principle of stacking is extremely important because this is where everyone gets burned out because they make this list of 20 things that they want to do and that they need to do, and they they need to get better at. And then which one do they actually get better at? None of them, because they try to go after all 20 at the same time. When really what should happen is you should make that list of 20 and then figure out what is the one most important that will make the biggest difference for you right now. And then you should just erase all the other ones and work on that one until, like Josh was saying earlier, you got it figured out. And then once that becomes a habit and becomes second nature for you, then go grab the next one, right? And then go grab the next one. Don't try to pile it all on all at once because you'll just be super frustrated and you'll get burnt out, and then pretty quick your hands go up in the air and you go, Yeah, I can't figure this out. Like I'm I'm never gonna get this. And you just stay frustrated all the time. So you you gotta stay, and then you gotta have the little wins. Like when you when you do those things and you start conquering those and make those habits, like you got to recognize them and give yourself the little wins along the way. Nobody else is gonna, so you're gonna have to.

SPEAKER_01 30:13

Yeah, and in that in that kind of vein, um, I've always felt like having a for better lack of a term, an accountability partner or somebody that you're accountable to. Um, and if you don't have somebody that you're accountable to, just put it out there to people. So if you're trying to accomplish something, whether it's working out in the morning, whether it's uh reading a book, whether it's um an audio book, whether it is uh a task that you need to get done at work or a goal you have in mind, tell someone. I I don't even care, right? It can be it can almost be a random stranger. I don't, but get it out there and tell people what you're trying to do because then you become accountable to yourself and to them to accomplish it. And what I found was when you're accountable to somebody, it's a lot easier to do to have discipline, right? The motivation takes you so far, but the discipline will get you there if you've told someone about it, right? If you've if you said, like, for example, hey, Zach, you came to me. You you uh you got a special opportunity, you're gonna go hunt some stone sheep in uh in Canada this year. Uh you immediately told me, hey, I gotta, I'm gonna start my workout program again. Uh to get ready for August to be able to climb the mountains and get out to the stone sheep. Well, I know you. You you you put that out there to me, not so I would know, but so that you would be accountable to me about it. It's how it's how it works, because then that makes the discipline happen.

SPEAKER_00 31:41

So I mean you gotta put it out there, right? And I know every once in a while he's gonna be like, hey, you're looking fat. Are you are you are you working out? Are you getting ready for your sheep hunt? I'm like, Yeah, I gotta get back at that. What's up with those things?

SPEAKER_01 31:55

Yeah, yeah, skipping leg day. Those are the things, and then and then lastly, right, in this vein of uh of discipline in business, you really got to make sure that your environment around you it is free of the major distractions, right? So if it's a day that you gotta get something really accomplished, what I can't do is I can't turn and put up uh golf on the big screen TV in my office, right? Because pretty soon I'm watching to see if we're already gonna hit that shot, right? Now, it could be a lot of things for for people, right? But we got to avoid the distraction. So sometimes that means setting up our work environment a little bit in a in such a way that we're not that we're not distracted every day. And uh, and that helps us to be able to compound some of those, some of those things.

SPEAKER_00 32:45

Um yeah, and and I think and I think some of those things have to be scheduled, Josh. Like when you know you have something really important that you need to do, that part of the distraction is the rest of the calendar and the rest of the things that have to go on, right? So I think scheduling it and saying at this time is when I'm going to go work on this, right? And we we have a lot of stuff going around on at the office, several different businesses are running in and out of here, and our kids coming in and out and friends and all the types of stuff, right? Well, there's some times when you're working on a project or you're listening to a podcast and you really need to digest it or you need that information, that it's better to just go sit in the pickup someplace or go for a drive than it is to actually come to the office because you know if you go to the office, the door's gonna get knocked on, right? Or that some crisis is gonna happen and employees are gonna try to knock on your door. If you're not there and you're really trying to get that thing done, now you've managed your time, you've scheduled it, you've put yourself in an environment where you can seriously really focus on it and you can get it done, right? And you can just put all the other distractions out.

SPEAKER_01 33:53

Yeah, you know, there's uh in our world, if you if it doesn't get put on a calendar, it doesn't happen. This, right? We could never sit down and record this without putting it on a calendar. Ever. Uh and and other things sometimes take precedence in your life, but if you put them on the calendar and you go, and then you have the discipline to follow it, you can schedule your time in such a way that you can get an immense amount accomplished in a day. And uh, I've always said uh real entrepreneurs, they know how to schedule their time, they know how to prioritize what's most important and what's least important, and they have the discipline to do the things they don't want to do, but that have to be done. And so I know it's kind of sounds like a downer today, right? Talking about things that they want to do. Dang. Oh, business sucks.

SPEAKER_00 34:45

I gotta have discipline. Yeah, well, sometimes it does suck. Yeah, but you know what? Here's the beautiful part. Here's the beautiful part. I was, you know, it's funny because as you as you get older and you do things, and and I mean we're not that old, right? But but we we've seen a lot of things and we've done a lot of things, and we've seen a lot of people get old and hear their perspective. And I was actually just having this conversation with my wife the other day, and I'm like, man, kids are leaving the house. You know, I got a 19-year-old that's already out and gone, I got an 18-year-old that in here in two months is taking off and leaving, and I got two more kids at the house, and you start thinking, man, have I spent enough time with them? Are we am I teaching what I should be teaching them? So I was having this conversation with my wife, and I'm like, man, I just I don't feel like I'm being a good enough dad, right, in that role. Because you, as a business owner, you wear lots of different hats. And my wife had to remind me that like I was thinking about all of the times that we have like been in the trenches and doing the thing and home late for dinner or out of town for weeks on end or all these other things. And she and she said, Yes, but how many dads get to take their kids and just not even put a time stamp on it and take a trip and come back when you want to come back, or take them to this island and do this, or go right. She just reminded me of all the things that I've been able to do with my kids. And it might not be that I get that quality time with them every single day. Like yesterday, I never even saw any of my kids yesterday. I was gone before everybody else was up and move and I came home and they were already in bed, right? But I also a week ago spent a full week with them uninterrupted and had awesome time with them. So even though it can sound like a little bit of a downer to be disciplined, that discipline is what creates that type of opportunity, though, where you can get to kind of decide how you want to spend your time.

SPEAKER_01 36:47

Yeah, you know, for these entrepreneurs listening, um I go back in my life to to a singular moment when everything changed for me. I uh and this analogy might might bring it resonate with some of our listeners and it might not with others, but uh I had I've had uh in my whole life, I had two W-2 jobs, Zach, um, in my entire life. One was when I was uh when I was um in high school, I worked at a ski lift uh for two winters for like a day or two a week. I got a W-2. Okay. The other time, for a five-month period, I was a school teacher. And uh I received a W-2 then. Outside of that, I've made all my own money my whole life, right? And uh which is a little scary sometimes, by the way. Um the best way I can say it when I was a school teacher, I felt like I was a bird in a cage. And maybe some of our entrepreneur friends that are listening can relate with that. But that's the very best way I can I can state it. Uh excuse me. I felt like I was a bird in a cage, and the the cage door was closed, and uh and I couldn't fly out of the cage because from seven in the morning until 4:30, I had to be in the cage. And to your point, entrepreneurs, if they do it right and they set up real discipline around their themselves, they are never, ever in a cage. They may have to like you yesterday, not see get up well before the sun and come home well after the sun and not see your children for the day. But that's that's the life of an entrepreneur. But at no time during that day did you feel like you were in a cage. Okay, you were free as a bird to fly wherever you wanted. It was the discipline that got you to fly to the right place for the day. And that's what all aspiring entrepreneurs need to understand. Uh, you are an eagle, you're a beautiful hawk, you're soaring in the sky, but you dang well better have the discipline to not just go around in a circle, to go get the tasks accomplished that need to be accomplished at the exact moment they need to be done, and not to procrastinate and put them off. And uh man, been lucky enough to just know a lot of great entrepreneurs who are able to master these skills. And when you do master them, they they are life-changing for you. And so if you're a bird in a cage, get out. Just get out of there. If you're if you're an eagle who's soaring, make sure you you got the right destination, you're not just riding the wind. Have some discipline. Deal, Zach, I'm gonna give you the last word today for the listeners on uh on either of today's topics.

SPEAKER_00 39:35

Yeah, you know, I so we talk a lot about owning a business, being an entrepreneur, right? And there's a lot of people who are not entrepreneurs, and they're not business owners, and they don't want to be. And they're happy with their job, and they're really good at their job, and they like the idea of leaving, you know, going to work at eight o'clock in the morning, coming home at five, and having all that structure, right? Which is awesome. Um, but I would, I would say this I would, I would, I would put this challenge out, even to those folks in the day and age that we're living in today, every single person should go out and figure out a little bit of a little side hustle. Because I think it would be exhilarating, even for those who like that security, to all of a sudden have this little taste of freedom where you got this money sitting out here that doesn't have to go to every bill because it's so budgeted because you know your W-2 income is exactly this, right? Uh, I think every single person ought to at least go out and try it. And there is so many ways that people can do that now in the world today without having to put up large amounts, large amounts of cash, or any cash at all for that matter. I mean, there are so many different opportunities. So even if it's not like bread in you and you're not like wanting to conquer the world, I would say 90% of the people that I talk to, even ones that love their job, are like, I just wish I had a little bit more money. And if it's nothing more than just to make a little bit more money so you can start putting it away where you want to put it away for your future, maybe so gold and silver, or invest into the future, then I think you ought to do it. Today's the day, just start. If you've got an idea kicking around in your head, just go get it done. Just go start, see what happens and see where it goes. I love it, Zach.

SPEAKER_01 41:14

I love, I love just just get started, right? We're and we realize not everyone, not everyone should start a bit, not everyone should be an entrepreneur. A lot of people need the the security of a job, but to your point, oh start something. I believe firmly that we were sent to this earth by a creator who created the earth, and we were sent here to create, whether it's a garden, whether it's a plot of grass, whether it's a home, whether it's a a business, whatever it is, we were sent here to create, whether it was life, like, and so to your point, there is great joy in the in the creation process, and uh we get a chance to do that. So, yeah, to your point, go go find a way to create something today. Start something, and uh you'll find the new renewed, a renewed sense of purpose. Typically, you do it. And I'll just close with this man, don't miss out on the opportunities that are before us right now in gold and silver. These are days never to be forgotten. Uh the silver the shortage of silver is real. The central banks of the earth purchasing endless tons. I I wish people could understand how many 244 tonies is of gold. Like now's the day. Great opportunity. And so we appreciate you listeners. Can't wait to be back with you next week. Guys, have a great week. Uh, we wish you the very best in all your endeavors. And if you've had if you're enjoying the Sound Money podcast, do us a favor. Share it with somebody. Tell somebody, hey, I just listen to something great, and send them a link. And uh maybe it'll maybe it'll make a difference for them like it did for you. So appreciate everybody. You guys have a great week. We'll see you next time on the Sound Money Sound Principles podcast. See ya.

SPEAKER_00 42:59

All right, see ya. Love you all.