The Journey from $374K to $5.5M

Ever felt like money's a chain holding you back from real freedom? In this episode, we sit down with a battle-tested entrepreneur who's built empires in restaurants and investments, sharing how he broke free—not by chasing riches, but by letting go of the worry that comes with them.

We get real about the grind of providing for a "family" that spans 12 employees, their households, and even vendors across five states. It's not about hoarding profits; it's about reinvesting every dollar to create jobs, bonuses, and stability—turning potential losses into wins for everyone involved. He pulls back the curtain on the squeeze small businesses face: skyrocketing insurance, taxes doubling overnight, and regulations that could bankrupt you if you're not watching the numbers like a hawk.

But here's where it gets personal—we unpack his faith-fueled decision-making: gathering facts, praying for clarity, getting neutral on big calls, and waiting for that 24-hour nudge from above. Whether it's spotting market crashes or "God winks" like a flood of Hawaii-themed signs before launching a new venture, he shows how tuning into something bigger keeps you grounded amid AI job threats and economic gloom.

We challenge the "greedy owner" myth, exposing how socialism traps people in dependency while America's real edge is choice—work hard, save ruthlessly, and build without a king calling the shots. From bootstrapping at 12 to turning $374K into $5.5M through smart asset allocation, his story flips the script: true wealth is contentment, not a Forbes list spot.


📌 Key Topics:
✅ Busting the myth of greedy business owners—reinvesting profits creates more opportunities for all
✅ Navigating rising costs: insurance, taxes, and regs that could sink your operation
✅ Faith as your decision-making edge—pray, neutralize bias, and act on divine timing
✅ Building financial freedom: Save aggressively, take calculated stock bets, and scale without sacrificing family
✅ Why America wins: Freedom to choose your path, from stocks to side hustles, beats government handouts every time
✅ Lessons from the trenches: Hard work, contentment, and giving 90% away for lasting impact
What if your next big move started with less worry and more trust? Hit play, then ask yourself: Where's money chaining you down, and how can you break free today?

00:00 The Multifaceted Identity of a Provider
02:52 The Burden of Business Ownership
05:51 Profitability and Employee Welfare
09:11 Navigating Rising Costs and Economic Challenges
12:04 The Impact of AI on Employment
14:51 The Role of Government and Regulations
17:47 The Importance of Personal Responsibility
20:45 The Flaws of Socialism and Economic Growth
23:57 Decision-Making in Business Profitability
27:05 The Journey of Entrepreneurship
30:01 The Value of Hard Work and Contentment
41:01 The Impact of Youth Sports on Character Development
42:30 Transitioning from Sports to Business Success
45:19 Early Work Experiences and Lessons Learned
49:19 The Journey to Becoming a Broker
58:04 Faith and Personal Transformation
01:06:12 Reviving a Failing Nonprofit through Divine Guidance
01:07:09 Balancing Neutrality and Opportunity in Decision Making
01:20:24 Navigating Market Trends and Personal Decisions
01:22:21 The Role of Faith in Financial Decisions
01:25:12 Understanding Market Dynamics and Predictions
01:27:41 The Importance of Prayer and Neutrality in Investments
01:30:23 Learning from Past Mistakes in Philanthropy
01:32:52 Evaluating New Investment Opportunities
01:34:17 Recognizing Signs and Coincidences as Guidance
01:39:16 Pursuing Financial Freedom: A Practical Approach
01:51:36 The Path to Financial Independence and Entrepreneurship

Transcript

well Dean

I appreciate it we've been uh

wanting to get you on for about a year now

so we finally got you here

appreciate you coming here

I know you uh

I met you through soccer so as a soccer coach

as a grandpa as a dad

as a husband as a Christian

as an entrepreneur as a broker

so I know you through all these different lenses

as a mentor um

so all these different things

how would you classify yourself

what what

what do you call yourself out of all those things

I'd say in many ways at at

at different days and seasons

I'm all of those things but I would

I think I Learned from my father

to work hard and be a provider

I probably you know

that's not the lens

I necessarily want to be thought of as

but that's the way I think deep down inside

my motivation comes from the provider role

just providing for your family

yeah providing for my family

but it's gone beyond that now

I have over 12 employees

I'm in four different businesses

in five different states I provide for my employees

I provide for their families

I provide for the vendors that sell us things

um I provide food and

and drink to my customers

so I'm I'm I was at first a provider for myself

and then a provider for my family

and now

my family's much bigger in the respect of the world

and so uh

I think that's why I think

I never thought about it before till you asked

but I would I would say I'm a provider first

and I think sometimes uh

you know you feel like you fall short

and that even as successful as I've been

so I wanna ask a question

cause I I

I think this is often um

mis characterized as a bit for business owners

so some people say oh

business owners are greedy

they make millions of dollars off the back of people

but you said you have over 12 employees

12 families

that are dependent on you to provide for them right

I guess just kind of speak to that and

and uh

the burden cause I think it's a burden

like if you don't show up and you mess something up

you could potentially you know

throw a domino effect

put 12 people out of the labor force

so yeah well

I think a good way to talk about that is

the businesses you have

and whether it's one store out of the

you know 29 Jimmy John's I own or uh

one of the concepts

you know

where I have five or six of them and as a group

they're not profitable yet right

so as we look through the lens

of profitability from a business perspective

the the place where we get this greedy moniker um

if we have six stores and in there we probably have

let's call it 100 employees

just for sake of conversation

round numbers it might be a little more than that

we have 100 employees

and they're all counting on making money

when they show up to work

and if the business is losing money

and you're just kind of laissez faire um

we love one another we care about each other um

the bottom line doesn't matter because of the kind

even the type of business

that we think that's OK to do that in

and so you don't look at the numbers

you don't attempt to adjust the numbers well

you can only subsidize that for so long

and at some point you shut down and you close it down

so now the

the person who's renting the property is out

maybe have if you have time left on your lease

and you set up LLCs and so you bankrupted them

and you don't have a personal guarantee

if you do well

you're gonna be paying for it anyway

so now you're trying to help them rent it

but if it closes the landlord's out

the employees are out the suppliers are out

if anyone's owed money and you declare bankruptcy

the lenders are out it's just lose lose lose

lose and I believe in win win

win so if in this business

um there's a lot of transactions and there's tips

we give 100% of those tips to the non management people

not one red cent goes to the ownership

or to management which is the law

we're just following the law right

but it's also the right thing to do

if we're starting people at $17 an hour

in a world where minimum wage is 12 and a half

so I think that's where we're at

um and they get an extra $5 an hour in tips

they're making pretty good money

but if my management

is not paying attention to the bottom line

and they let people work the entire time

you're open from 6 in the morning till 9 at night

cause they need a quote unquote livable wage

now our labor is running

say 46%

and we lose a couple hundred thousand dollars a year

on six stores

now when you go look at a well run operation

that's in retail food

coffee what have you

you should be running somewhere

and I'm talking all in with uh

uh payroll tax and payroll processing cost

you should be running somewhere around 33 to 36%

so let's just use 36 as a round number

the high end of that where you in my mind

you might still be 10% high

but you're okay

based on the culture you're trying to keep create

you have a little bit higher labor

so 10 percent's okay 46

36 that's 10 points if you have 3 million in revenue

that's 300,000 in lost profits

because you're 10 points too high

if you bring it down to 36

you're letting people get hours

that they really shouldn't get

because you're not running efficiently

but your culture says that's okay

and we do that in in lots of cases

but so everyone's making the most they can make

we're running almost as efficiently as we can run

and now instead of losing 150,000 a year

we make 150,000 a year and you go

oh yeah see

business owner you made 150,000

off all those poor SOS that work for you

well

they're making way more than minimum wage in this case

starting

employees are making double the current minimum wage

that's not a good thing

everybody in the process is getting paid

what they require from their business

from their service from their action

they're getting paid appropriately so they win right

now check out the hundred and fifty grand

now that I have 150 grand in profit

what can I do for my business if I'm smart

not me

take that hundred and fifty and run out the back door

I can reinvest I can create more jobs

I can give raises

which I couldn't do while I was losing money

I can give bonuses

I can create a 401k I can create a college fund okay

so the good businessman

and the non

greedy businessman is not gonna run out the back door

with that hundred and fifty

he's gonna reinvest it first and foremost in his people

then in infrastructure and additional locations

if the market will bear it

which again

is taking the money that I rightfully earned

and reinvesting in everybody else

well

I take all the risk cause if I go out the back door

that's in my pocket I'm not taking additional risk

so that's the issue with government coming in

with regulations

especially if they're nonsensical regulations or tax

one of the issues we're going through right now is

everything you look at

personal and business related to insurance

is going through the rough

it's going through the roof

most of us can't afford it

I just got a new Bill on my ranch home

I was telling you about in Idaho

when I bought that just 14 years ago

my annual insurance Bill was 10 grand

it went to 22 grand

and I went from no deductible to 10,000 deductible

last year they wanted to take it from 22 to 37 grand

I took 1 hundred thousand dollar deductible

to bring it all the way back down to 13

nine this year despite 100,000 deductible

and found out

they added a one percent hail and wind damage

on top of the hundred

so it's bigger than 100 deductible

they want 48 grand this year

because of the fires in California

they want to pay for that

right so

I'm at the stage where I'm actually thinking

about my family legacy property

because of how expensive it's getting to hold on to it

and that can't help valuations

because someone else has to make the decision

that $48,000 for insurance is a good

idea right

so now you you

you take all the insurance cost

if you're a

if you're an owner of businesses and you rent places

or even if you own them

rates are already high insurance is going up

now property taxes are going up

we just went through 5 years covid

post covid where the government's given everything away

and now they the

the chickens have come home to roost

so they want to pay for it

so you you

all during that time

where there was not money available

the levies went up to keep their revenues up

so they can spend the money

but now property valuations are going up

and a lot of the people that work in government

weren't going to work all during Covid

and some still haven't gone back to work

from what I hear

they're now returning to work

and they're doing their jobs well

they've got five years

where they didn't raise property values

so now they're raising property values

I have in my roughly 45 businesses

either 45 leases or properties I own

so I pay tax on all of them

triple net lease the person who rents pays it

and if you're not renting it out

you're using it you're paying it

so I have 45 properties that my taxes on average

this is just property tax on the real estate

not the property inside that they also tax every year

has gone from an average of 12,000 per property

to $26,000 in one year

so that difference of 14,000 * 45 properties

cause one way or the other I'm gonna pay it

just just like that I I didn't do the math

but let's call it $600,000 of profitability

just disappeared on real estate taxes

and you know what changed in the last year

if I had negative sales comps

my sales went down overall

it's not like my sales went up and they're saying oh

he's doing really well that greedy business owner

so we're going to raise his taxes

cause he can afford to pay more

my sales might have went down

and yet I had this huge

hundred and forty percent on average

increase in property tax now

if the valuation goes up

even though I'm paying the taxes

what does the landlord think

Mr Hodges is doing well in business

he can afford that and that's what the state says

my property is valued at

if I'm gonna get an 8% return on my property value

his rent's too low now if I have a lease

at least until the end of the lease

and any options I have

I'm safe uh huh but the second my lease is up

they're gonna make up for all those years

they didn't get the rent that they wanted

and they're gonna Jack it now

if they don't have anyone else to take my place

and I I I call his bluff and say we're leaving

we're gonna go find another place um

they have a decision to make

but a lot of people who are

looking to make that extra money

might make that decision

if they succeed in getting someone in there

good on them but if it sits empty now

they're paying that out of their pocket

so things start to go backwards

and that's how you get into a recession

that turns into something nastier than that

and we seem to have a whole lot of things coalescing

that are not good for business

and if business isn't in a good place

it's not good for individuals

and then you have the whole AI thing coming on

and the potential loss of jobs

particularly at the lower unskilled uh

places

I've heard worst case scenario

like people doom and gloom

saying we could see unemployment in the 80

90% range yeah

in the next 10 to 15 years yeah

just based on yeah

like there's there's probably not a realistic number

but it's not but it's something to be concerned about

I mean we've been in the 4 to 6% range

most of my 67 years of life

we've had a few outside liars

and it was kind of end of world at 10

11 12%

so let's say those numbers you're saying are

are hyperbolic and and not realistic um

what if it's what if it's 20

yeah I mean

what was it during the Great Depression

in the high 20s maybe low 30s

I think yeah okay

well

my my argument is the same as I mean when the you know

the 90s hit and internet boom was coming

people thought they were gonna lose a lot of jobs

from the internet but then

what was created was more jobs

to sustain that internet right

so that made change we have to change as a society

I mean you could go back to the cars

like when Henry Ford came out with the car and put

put cars in everybody

like there was somebody sweeping the streets and

you know like picking up the uh

the horse poop and stuff

like those were real jobs back in the day right

and there's millions of jobs now

there's million jobs supporting the vehicles

and we got

um you know Uber and all you know

so

that's why I don't think that it's gonna get that bad

where I mean

unskilled labor is probably the first thing

that's gonna be replaced or at least uh

right supported by

where one employee can do the job of 4

with the right support of AI yeah

and I don't know the specifics how it'll all go down

but my my point is this if you don't attempt to plan

for future outcomes

based on changes that are around you

the big macro changes that are going on

you might not be around to see it today

increasingly

the small mom and pops are getting squeezed out

not because we're greedy

and we're taking all their space

it's happening because they're not prepared financially

to fund the operations that they have

and you have to expand and in Jimmy John's

which is my biggest thing

I started in 0 5 and and we were up to 38 stores

we did sell nine in Colorado Springs a year ago

so we're at 29 stores um

increasingly the the regulations from the government

and the things we just were talking about taxes

insurance those kind of things

and then what are our corporate sponsor is

is basically putting in place to protect us from

you know full foodborne illnesses

not in the sense of protect us from it

but being able to point our finger to the

to the supplier right

they're doing things that cost us money and uh

raise the price of our produce

for example and all of these things

collectively happen from about 10 different directions

and they squeeze profitability

and if you have large amount of com uh competition

you you don't necessarily price in elasticity

you can't raise your prices

just to make up for all these costs

so you take less and less profit

well if you continue to have cost rising and we

we've had food cost we've had energy cost

we've had labor cost

and then now insurance and tax cost um

if you can't keep up with it

you're gonna go away right

and so I see a world in just the next five to 10 years

why this AI stuff is happening

and have no idea how that's gonna impact us um

you're gonna have more and more people in the

restaurant business

go broke but if AI also takes away jobs

you're gonna have fewer places

for the unskilled workers

that they've been letting flood into our country

aren't even gonna be available for either AI

reasons or the number of restaurants that are closing

now for the people that can survive

you may get pricing power back at some point

but if the very people that eat your food

don't have jobs

maybe you don't have pricing power

so I can see a scenario that gets very gloomy

and

I'm really thinking about the brighter side of things

I'm an optimist

I'm always thinking about the glass almost full

not half full or half empty right

and so you I

I think the majority of business people that

that put kind of work first and have a work ethic

and then care about others more than themselves

and that's where my faith comes in

and where I believe that

that I'm no more important than you or you

or any of the people that work for me

for sure in fact

many of them are more important than me

I want them to have success

but just because you walk in there at 16

and you fill out an application

and I say yes to hiring you

doesn't mean you get my share

you need to learn your way

you need to work you need to put in the time

relative to the value

you're providing to the marketplace

that's that's right

and that's the greatest thing about the US experiment

and our republic

we have opportunities that in Europe and other places

it was always about the king

the king made all the money

and everybody else was subservient to the king

and sometimes you had a a bad king

and sometimes you had a less bad king

I don't know if you had good kings right

it was all about them

we have a free society

you can choose to work at that restaurant

or not work at that restaurant

you can choose to go to school and get an education

and try to get a a better job

you can choose to go to school

and get a little arts degree

and then have nothing you can do with it now

you're still living off your parents

I mean

I know those all sound like judgmental statements

and to some extent they are

but you have freedom to choose in America

the outcome is never guaranteed

and where we're going in some of our politics

the the far left and what's happening now in New York

we're gonna have a a guy that's a foul communist

he admits he's a communist

now he's walking some of that back

because he wants to get elected

but what's gonna happen in New York

if you have free food and free housing

and everything's controlled by the government

it's the capitalistic capital of the world

and we're gonna change it there

it doesn't work anywhere else in the world

it has never worked anywhere in the world

but people are willing to listen to it

if they've been taking care of by their parents

taking care of by their parents while they're in school

taking care of their parents

till the parents can't take care of them anymore

and now the government can't take care of

that is the culture that we have been creating

for quite a long time that's not freedom

you have freedom from nothing

you're an indentured slave

to whoever's providing your way

so what

what do you say to the people that it'll be like

the reason why socialism has never worked is because

in the last hundred years

every time a country Venezuela

um Cuba um whatever

pick your poison

America has always gotten involved politically

and done something to try to overthrow them

putting embargoes on Cuba as an example

and that is why it has never worked

so we've never given cause

cause that

that's one of the arguments is that what a joke though

that's one of the arguments is that

what a joke is that we have never let it work

we've never given it enough time

so let's take Venezuela

cause that's the one most in our purview right now yeah

what does Venezuela sell the rest of the world

and mostly us that now well

two things right

oil yeah

the reason they have money is oil

so if you have a government that's for the people

they would take the profits from oil

and the jobs that were created

and then create nice paved streets homes

grocery stores businesses

they would grow their economy

much like the Free USA

has done over the 250 years we've been a country right

they would do that so

if you're not gonna blame the despot

who's stealing all the oil money

and then making drugs to make even more money

right he's not sharing with the people

now I'm not saying he should take the

the revenues from the oil

and just give it to his people right

but he could create economic prosperity

through creating jobs and growth

right I mean

it's just like the adage that and

and the idea that Nancy Pelosi had a few years ago

for every dollar we give to um welfare recipients

they spend that money

and it creates a dollar 72 of economic growth

there's actually some truth in that math right

but for the person who's getting it given to him

what do they do with their spare time

which they have plenty of

nothing because the dollar that they get

well the dollar they get

is not enough to live the way they wanna live

especially looking through the lens of social media

at how other people live they want more of it

well if they can't earn it cause they're not working

they're gonna take it

it's no different with a Venezuela dictator

he's rich off of oil

and he's stealing it from the people

because he's not sharing it

through the process of production

and growing the economy so they

he steals it well

that's not enough for him because guess what

he's gotta pay a lot of that money out

for his own Protection he's gotta pay the army

otherwise he's going away or some other bigger

meaner despot with a bigger stick

is gonna hit him over the head and take it from him

so he's got to make more money

wow look at this

America loves drugs let's sell them fentanyl

so when Trump is stepping in

he's trying to stop the killing of Americans right

and at the same time

if somehow America takes out that despot and

and again it's never worked

us taking someone out

and putting in a better government

that government ends up being as corrupt

or let's call it almost as corrupt

and so it goes the same way

so you don't create freedom the way we've tried to do

it I think we're learning though

we we haven't taken out Iran right

right since the last time

but when they're harming the rest of the world

and particularly us we're gonna spank them right

that's what we did

we took out their means of destructing the rest of us

right they're sending boats over at this stage

we're not going into Venezuela

we're not taking them out

we're not replacing them

and you can say these are the first steps

maybe they are I don't know

but we're taking out boats full of drugs

are gonna kill our kids

is anyone opposed to that

really opposed to that

I'm not yeah shouldn't be

no so do you have a

a decision making matrix

for when there's profit in a business and

you know reinvesting it

that can I reinvest it into the employees

or when do you take a payout

cause in that scenario obviously

you got six stores

if you're actively involved in business

I'm assuming that

hundred fifty is after paying yourself a salary

but for a lot of small business owners

the profit is their what do you call it

the SDE discretionary earnings

they they're not paying themselves a salary

and it's phantom profit right

it it it changes obviously different seasons

but you're

you're looking at the business that you have

and so

if you take one of my businesses with six stores

that are not profitable yet

and when you look at the numbers

and you see that the labor's off by that much

you have to attempt to fix labor

so you go to the management again

I'm not browbeating people

I'm not threatening people

I'm just showing them the why

for they're in the position they're in

but at this stage

you want to open store No. 7

and you've got this fabulous location in central Omaha

downtown West Side wherever it is

you've got it and everything measures up and you go

yeah I think that's great

OK we're losing 150,000 a year

are is this one gonna change that

cause we have to either inject cash we have

or borrow the money to invest and take another risk

what you've got already is not a proven concept right

so what you do is you start by fixing the labor

46 is at least 10 points too high and maybe more

so you fix that you get to where you're profitable

now we'll talk about the seventh location

so there's no consideration of a seventh location

whereas another one take Hawaiian Bros for example

we committed to a five store development

or they wouldn't have signed us up

they weren't going to let us open one well

that initially is committed to four in Omaha

one in Lincoln

now they want us to do a another five store deal

which would encompass the rest of the state

to entreat us to do this

and not look at competition coming in

right away

they said

you really have the whole state with your first five

and we won't put anyone else in

we'll let you do your first five

but you get close to five

probably after we have four

they'll come back

and they'll want us to sign another agreement

before we do the fifth well

you open a store in Grattana and it's doing very well

we just opened three weeks ago at 100 and 14th in Dodge

in the old Boston market that sat empty for 12 years

not paying wages and income taxes and property taxes

and and paying all those vendors

we've spent several million dollars to

to convert that and open that up

we're doing very well so far

in fact so far

all but about two days we've done better than Grenada

and it has taken some from Gretna

which sometimes happens and sometimes doesn't

but they're both collectively very good

so we're working on a third one

that will open in Elkhorn sometime next year

but we are committed to five stores

and then beyond

that will depend on how we're doing

closer to the end of those five stores

um

so when we're reinvesting the money

we reinvest all of it

we're just basically living off the income that we have

and I've paid myself around $1,000 a month for forever

you know at times I've

during Covid I went to zero

first two years I started

I was at zero

the most I've ever made in a year from salary is 104

now we are sub s and the profits

are distributed to the shareholders

and it's an interesting thing

when you're growing and you're building new things

you get tax deductions

for the things that you spend money on

so you can be growing

and not owe as much tax during that time

because of depreciation and things like that

but we've been in a season

where we purposely weren't growing

for a number of years

and all of our depreciation has gone away

we've been making about two and a/2 times

what we're distributing

so

the distributions I get are less than the taxes I owe

everyone says you know

the rich don't pay taxes it's not true

it's absolutely not true there's things you can do

but they involve taking more risk

uh growing

taking more risk I'll say it again

right and creating opportunities

and the government has ways to incent you to do that

or they don't they take them away sometimes

but they incentivize you through risk

well you have to take more risk to and

and spend money to create new opportunities

not only for yourself but for everybody else

and the only way it really works long term

that I see is win win win right

um I'm not in this

to be one of those guys that's on the Forbes 400

or whatever those lists are called

I don't care right

I want everyone

that comes into my purview to have an opportunity

now if they choose to take it

they're gonna have every means possible from me

in terms of education learning

advancement opportunities

those kinds of things

if they show up one out of three shifts

if they're late all the time

if if uh

if they steal from us I mean

there's a number if they treat other people hostily

if they bring politics into the workplace and

and Liberal doesn't like a conservative

or conservative doesn't like a Liberal

those are all reasons to try to educate you

and get you to straighten up

but if but if not

you've got to go somewhere else

we want a safe environment for everybody

and where everyone has peace and joy

you know so um

so so it sounds like when they're

the first question that you ask is

is there profit in this in this business

and if so can I reinvest it

if not then can I support my team right

and so once you get down there

what is the responsible way of compensating yourself

through that growth

or is it that you compensate yourself

as little as possible until the exit opportunity

I again I think I think differently

my early lessons in life live within your means

pay yourself first now

that was before I knew god

and the whole thing with tithing

if you want to bring faith into this

I told my wife when we first got together

we make X amount of dollars

and we pay X minus 20% or whatever it was

so we could save 20% of what we make

now that was only $400 at the time OK

it's not like 20% was a big number

we had 400 extra dollars

so what we did was when we got paid

each of us kicked

I think I kicked in maybe 1 hundred and fifty

and she kicked in 50

and then the next pay period 150 and 50

something like that we might have been closer to even

but we would save that 400

now initially we had no savings

so first thing was

our expenses over the course of a year are X

if we save this 400 a month at eight months

we're going to have X

so now if something really bad happened

one of us lost a job both of us lost a job

we could pay for one year's expenses within this money

we put somewhere very safe

then after that I said you know

I don't know much about the stock market

and I'll start to learn but let's go there well

then I became a stockbroker

I Learned a whole lot more which was helpful but

the the plan up front was that overtime

either because of our experience or we worked harder

we worked smarter we got new jobs

we got raises whatever

that we would make more overtime

and also knew that most people

even if they could save once they made more money

they spent more money I was okay with that

but I didn't want to spend all that I made more

so I said

here's the other deal we're gonna do start with 400

but every year no matter what

we're gonna increase the amount we save

by two and a half percent of what we make

so we took that initial amount

and turned that into a percentage

which let's just say it was five

so the next year to start the year

we're gonna save

seven and a half percent of what we make

if we don't make any more money

we're gonna have to tighten our belt a little bit more

to save the seven and a/2

but seven and a/2 is a hard

fast number now

there were some years where it was tougher to do

the two and a half point increase

so maybe we did a two

but then because we worked hard

or we got lucky and got the raise

we made more money

the next year we we we didn't go from seven to nine

we went to 10 we'd maybe jump to three anyway

we did that all the way till the the

our kids were graduating high school and gonna go off

one went to college one went out in the workforce

they left home and uh

suddenly we realized how much money our kids cost right

cause we were able to save 40%

so there was a period of time

even as we adopted a new baby

and started that expense train

we were able to save 40% of what we made in around two

from 2000 to 2006

well suddenly your coffers are really

really filling and that was the thing that allowed me

after the internet bubble crash of 2000

I made so little money from 2000 to 2000

everyone was scared to death

and everyone was just holding on to what they had

I managed my customer base in the brokers business

very well didn't lose any accounts

but I didn't make hardly any money for four years

so I lived off of what I had saved right

so now I wasn't saving 40% I wasn't saving five

I wasn't increasing it but I was in a different season

where it was just hold on to what you got

really cut your spending and at the end of that

I had an opportunity with Jimmy John's

when I discovered that to invest in it

and I thought well

I don't even have enough cash to do the first two

stores

in my savings

cause I had gone 4 years without adding to it

I Learned about and I should have known this

but I'd never heard of it something called A72T

you can take money out of your IRA under a 72 t

before you're fifty nine and a/2

and you don't pay the 10% penalty

and what happens is you take the money all at once

but you pay taxes over an average of four years

and if you do that you don't pay the 10% penalty

so I actually had 800,000 in my IRA at that point

and that was a lifetime of saving

and I 72 t it and that built my first two Jimmy John's

hmm okay

and then they did so well

the first two

that the taxes I had to pay almost equaled 800,000

the first two years

so I lent the 800,000 to my company

and then with the success of those first two stores

I distributed the 800,000 back out to pay the tax

so I have no money invested in my organization

0

and we own 45 different restaurants in 4 states

cause we sold Colorado

yeah so you took a big bet on yourself

huge in 2005

five but I didn't give up my job

I worked 80 hours a week at the broker's business

that's solely responsible for my success

I'm not any smarter than the average guy

not even close I worked my butt off 80 hours a week

when I started Jimmy John's

I cut back to 50

OK on that job

I picked up 50 in the new job

so you plus

so I went to 100 hours a week

and during that three year period

I actually coach two soccer teams

10 hours each a week so 20 hours a week I coached

so I did go and people say BS

and I know it but I worked hundred

twenty hours a week for three years

that was some of the funnest times I've ever had

and it and I think

the thing that people don't understand about business

people and how hard they work with it

are there greedy people out there

yes there's greedy people that don't have money

there's people that are hugely successful

that are greedy no question okay

I would say

the majority of people that had to bootstrap it

and work their butts off care more about other people

and starting with their employees

but then their charities or their church or their

whatever they care about they really do care

and I think that gives you a freedom from money

you don't care I've not ever chased it

chased chased it

chased wealth I've never

I really didn't when I was young and poor

I did want to be rich

and I thought when I had a million dollars

I'd be rich you got a million dollars today

how much income can you create off that million a year

on an after tax basis you are not rich

you are not even close now

if you get a million from a lottery

and you're happy with your life and your job

and things like that

and you got an extra million net of tax to spend

you're gonna be rich for a little while

if you get a good return well no

I mean you're gonna be rich till it's gone

cause you're gonna spend it

and you're gonna be a rich person

for a very brief period of time

I don't think you're truly rich

until you're satisfied with where you are in life

and you live within your means

and guess what you can do that at the beginning

of your pursuit of success right

and it also says that in the Bible

being content if you're content with where you're at

it doesn't matter

how many zeros are behind your net worth

it absolutely doesn't matter

right and I like in this to sports

when I coach soccer and I did that for 16 years

and most of the time I was an assistant coach

cause the guy who came over from England is fantastic

he still still in our club

still coaching teams in fact

he's coaching my granddaughters now

but um Alex

Alex Mason yes

um oh yeah

you would know that um

but what I had to say was

we would prepare for a tournament

particularly a big tournament like Kansas City

or Saint Louis or Chicago

and the team we had was very good

and so we were very competitive

but we would get ready for it

we'd work very hard and we'd go and if we won it

and we I wouldn't say we won it easy

cause

we never had any of those bigger terms that were easy

but if we won it

we were kind of elated

but we couldn't wait to get out of there

get home and get back to practice

to work on the one or two things we did wrong

if in a semi final

or even trying to qualify for the playoff part

we lost to a team one nothing

and we

let's say we dominated the game and we should have won

but we lost

and there was either a mistake in not scoring

when we could or a mistake that gave up the goal

like one mistake in a game that you should have won

four nothing

and you lose one

and now you don't even go to the semi finals

you don't go to the playoff part

we couldn't get on the bus

and get back home fast enough

it's almost like

we want to go straight to the training field

and do a practice

when we pulled in at 10 o'clock that night

you know we didn't do that

but as coaches we wanted to right

so then

all we did was work really hard

on all those things that we didn't do well there

and then the team that won the tournament

we'd find out where they were going next

and we would go to their

their city so that we can play them again

and I think and I could be wrong

I think every time we did that

we won and now that's all over and we look back

fondly at those memories and those victories

and those good times

the good times were practice and competing

those were the good times

and the times when you could share with kids

and when kids would mess up and

and your their parents would make them come to you

you gotta go talk to coach'cause

unless we work this out you aren't playing anymore

and they'd have to tell us what they did wrong

and then we not as parents

but as coaches with the with uh

you know parents locked arms

would met out some additional punishment

besides what they got from the family

to get them straight and so

we help straighten out a lot of young men and women

over the years in our coaching

by locking arms and joining hands out of love

you know and doing the right thing

and I I think that's the most important thing

I would argue

youth sports have probably saved more lives than uh

many good willed people right

you know just by the

by the nature of it sure

you know what teaches discipline

that was the thing about my oldest son

I didn't think he'd ever be worth a hill of beans

because he didn't work while he was going to school

because he played soccer full stop

24 7 all year long right

and when he got finished with school

he's everything

I expected out of someone who started working

when they were fourteen

cause he

really had a job the entire time he went to school

so it can take the place

but if you just go to school part time

and part time study

you know I've uh

made this argument quite a few times on the podcast

that two of the most successful groups of people I've

come across

um obviously those that wanted

but military has a high success rate

success rate and people that played

uh collegiate sports yes

so at least you can done high school at a high level

but if you didn't make it to the collegiate

I think that's kind of the right

the defining there ends up being a disconnect

yeah I

I wanted to touch on this

the there's something in the water on Wall Street

because every former broker

like before pre internet days

when you actually had to make phone calls

when they leave the brokerage industry

and start a business

all those businesses perform at a different level

from just right

startup solo shops and I don't know what it is

and to that point I want to ask you why that jump

like I I think they

oh yeah

trade in my suit and a cocktail hour at 1 o'clock uh

was not anything anyone I knew thought I would do

I think for me

it might have been a little bit different

I started working when I was 12

believe it or not and I worked in a restaurant

uh in Plattsmouth

Nebraska and a month before I turned 14

which I could legally work

someone turned me in for

cause I worked in the restaurant till 10

but my ride back to Bellevue was a bartender

she worked till two so I would just sit in the bar

but I got bored cause I did all my homework at school

I didn't have any homework so I'd sit there bored

there was no TV we didn't have little Game Boys

we didn't have internet I mean

this is a long time ago this is in the early 70s right

so I started like seeing tables that needed cleaned

or glasses that needed picked up

taken back to the bar

and then I seen lots of dishes that needed done

and empty ice bins and and

you know beer coolers that were going empty and so 12

13 years old I just started doing the work well

the bartenders didn't mind

they didn't have to do it

and they the other thing that they Learned from it was

we got out of there earlier

I was okay I was getting home at 2:30

having to get up go to school by seven right

so that's also where I Learned that

I didn't need much sleep but um

they got out of there quicker too

and so I did all that and

and then the bartenders did start to feel bad

that I was doing all their work

and not getting paid

cause they couldn't put me on the clock

so they started sharing some of their tips

well then

they started feeling bad that I wasn't getting enough

or that they were having to share their tips

they felt worse about that right

so they made a mistake they put me on the clock

I was almost 14 they put me on the clock

someone was in drunk one night and they kicked him out

he turned them into the state

the state fired me well

they fired me but because the state and they got fined

and I think it was at that time

it was like 20 five hundred dollars

which was holy cow which was big

I mean minimum wage was like a buck thirty five

I think it might have gone to one 65 no

I think I was 14 when I went to one 65

it was one 35 minimum wage 25 on fine

and then I'm also not there anymore

and I was I was doing good work

so a month later the Ramada Inn

which is no longer in Bellevue opened brand new

and I went to the school and got my worker's permit

and I went down there and got a job

and so I worked there for a couple years

and I went to Bellevue Queen

so I worked in the restaurant business

from 12 to eighteen

and at 18 I worked out at Miller Airport

on the line was kind of

a glorified gas station attendant for airplanes

I did that for a couple years and

till I became a broker at age 22

how'd you get into broker

well again

I was living within my means

and the first thing I Learned about

when my brothers turned me in

for the pile of cash

I had in a little box in the bottom of my closet

along with all my own cash paycheck

my parents didn't get mad at me about the money

they were shocked that I had that kind of money

cause they didn't have that kind of money saved

they uh

they want to know

what I was gonna do with all these expired checks

like what do you mean expired

well they're only good for six months

you got checks here going back looks like over a year

well what am I supposed to do with it

well if you put it in the bank

I go I don't wanna give my money to anyone else

no they hold it for you

son and by law

at that time

they had passbook savings at five and a/2 percent

they had to pay you five and a/2 minimum

you know that's even when rates

interest rates if you borrowed money were lower

you were getting five and a/2

once I found that out all my money went in there

and I made sure every time I got any money

I went to the bank and put it in

so that was kind of my first lesson

and then when I got called into the office

cause I worked for a ice cream shop at that time

and the uh

Ferrell's Ice Cream Parlor was owned by Marriott

and I saw these things on my pay stub

I didn't even know about a bank to go deposit my money

you could buy shares at a 25% discount

to the low price during the quarter

so the quarter's over you look back and the low price

you can buy it at 25% less

oh wow so

I started buying shares in Marriott in the early 70s

hmm yeah that's like 1974 when we

we actually moved to Seattle

for a brief year and a half anyway

um so I Learned about stocks

so then when I was about sixteen

I thought airlines would be a good buy

there were a bunch of airlines that were merging

and then utilities were a big deal

but they were talking negatively about um nuclear

and I thought well

I don't want to own anything that's nuclear

but I want to own utilities because they pay these big

fat dividends that are better than my

five and a/2 percent

and I want to buy airlines because they're merging

and so I went and found a broker that would open

account for a 16 year old

cause you're not of age of majority

they shouldn't do that but Joe Ricketts

you know who he is right

I assume Pete Ricketts brother or something no

his father father

he was a 19 year old broker at National Securities

the first uh discount brokerage firm in the country

it's downtown I open account with him

I bought an airline stock and I bought a utility

well it turns out the utility I bought

Gulf States Utilities was half nuclear

and after Three Mile Island all that got shut down

that thing went to cents on the dollar of what I put in

airlines quit merging at a point

and the one that I bought into was doing the buying

and then airlines got grounded

and so I lost about half of my money in that

so I thought well Joe didn't give me any advice

let alone good advice these were my ideas

they weren't his fault but that's a discount

so I turned 18 and I had extra money

I went and got a account at Piper Jaffray and Hopwood

and I came in and they gave me the oldest

grayest looking

nearly asleep looking guy down at the big end office

cause he was broker of the day or something

and he looked at me like you probably got no

not enough money to spend time with me

and I said forgive me sir

but see that young guy over there can I go talk to him

cause yeah go on

so he shoot me I was

I go over there what turns out it's his son

his son came to work there

all his brothers were lawyers and doctors and dentists

and he decided to become a broker

he was considered the black sheep of the family

but he was following his father's footsteps

and he was one of the most successful guys in town

and I told him what had happened at national

we transferred the little bit of money I had left

I told him how much money I had each month

and he started to help me

well one of the days

not long after I gave him some money

I asked him how he became a broker

and he said well

see that guy that you initially talked to

that's my dad so we had a laugh about that

and about that time the manager walked by

and he was an ex Nebraska football player

and he says you need to meet Danny Morrison

and Danny said I don't have time to talk to you today

he goes meet me at the press Club for lunch tomorrow

out the door he goes what's the press club

so he tells me what the Press club is

I think that's pretty cool

so I meet him the next day

I got no idea what I'm gonna say

I don't know

I had no idea I even wanted to be a broker

at that stage

I was just going to meet him and learn about it

staying curious saying yes instead of no

I've done that my whole life

so he comes in sits down and the first grade

he's barely got comfortable in his seat

he says so what do you think about um

what's the guy

that was the senator Barry Goldwater from Arizona

he was running for president again

he had lost before

I'd never heard of him no idea who he was

knew nothing about politics

he says Barry Goldwater has proposed selling

national lands to pay off the debt

the debt at that time was nothing compared

and a lot of people were in favor of that

in favor

in favor of selling national lands to pay off the debt

interesting yeah

had they done it and then kept the debt off

it would have been okay but anyway

I uh

I had no idea how to answer that

and he seemed like

that was a question he had strong opinions about

because that's the first one he asked

so I said you know

I've thought about that quite a lot

but what do you think

he talked for an hour straight

so he just kept talking he talked for an hour straight

and he talked about a lot of things just like I have

right so I never had to answer

he's looked at his watch said

well lunch is done

I gotta get to an appointment

he goes I'm gonna have you go back and see Pat Ruffner

in the office

and she's gonna give you a little psychological exam

and that'll tell us

whether we want to send you to Minneapolis or not to

for further testing and again I'm like

I have best friends that live in Minneapolis

if they pay for me to go to Minneapolis

I'm gonna have a three day vacation on them

how cool is that

so I said yes I go take this test

and it was 20 questions just like this black

white salt pepper you know

you had to put down the thing you thought

and you and they gave you four choices

and the answer was always there

it's like I must have to really have whacked out

thinking to fail this test right

so I barely get home

and this Pat Roughner calls me says

you aced it you aced it you look great

I'm thinking I didn't want this job before

but this must be an easy job

right yeah

so they set this thing up

I'm going to Minneapolis February 11th 19

I think it was 82 and

I it was like fly up see this Sigmund Freud dude

and I swear he looked like Sigmund Freud

and you had to do a 400 question psychological test

that's the Minnesota whatever personality test yeah

whatever it's called oh yeah

I've taken it oh yeah it's a it's a bear

it's a bear but just as in short

the crazy thing I Learned about it was

the first 50 questions really count

and you gotta really focus on those

the middle 300 are the same question

just regurgitated a different way

and then slightly different answers

but gets to the same 50 and then

the last 50 are exactly the same as the first fifty

and it was just weird because I didn't

I don't know if it was the plane ride

or I just happened to get it

but I got a sinus infection

that I didn't discover till I was up in the air

I got all stuffed up

it felt like my head was gonna explode

I couldn't blow it out of my nose

it was all up in here and so I go in there and

and you meet a person first and then you take the test

and it takes a long time to get through 400 questions

especially if you feel bad

at one point

I answered about 100 of them without reading them

and put my head down and took about a 10 minute nap

and then got up and the last 50 I

I focused on again but you give that to them to grade

and then you go and see the psychologist

this guy had his leg crossed

he looked like Sigmund Freud

he had a a pipe

I mean I don't think he was still alive in 1982

but it was him and the first thing he asked me

why do you hate your mother and father

what I don't hate my mother and father

I mean I actually got mad at him

and then he asked other questions like that

and I think one of the biggest questions he asked and

and I thought I answered it good

he said wrong and later that

the territory guy at the senior VP

of hiring asked me the same question

and he said BS

that's that's no answer that a kid

wet behind the ears and green of sales would say

but they asked me you're in Nebraska right

yeah okay you get invited to the kitchen table of a 60

year old farmer and his wife

what are you gonna say to them

I go

if a farmer that I didn't know invites me to his table

he already trusts and likes me

so I've already earned trust

so all I gotta do is ask a question

what do you need how are you invested

and then from the things I Learned about

if I become a broker

I can offer him solutions to his problems

I thought that was pretty good

for a 22 year old that had never sold anything

didn't know anything about

I knew something about investments

but not not very much um

they both well

he went on his pipe and the

the senior executive he said BS and screamed at me

um but anyway I got through all that

I stayed there for three days

I changed my ticket

stayed with friends had a good time

um I got home I'm still living at home my mom says she

some guy Danny Morrison

calls every day yesterday he called three times

where have you been I didn't tell her where I was going

what I was doing you know

I was 22 then right

so and I was up there and he calls me in and

I think she invited me into his office

he was in the bathroom or something

anyway he comes back

he's all excited he goes

are you sitting down I go well yeah

it looks like it goes

where have you been what have you been doing

I said oh

I cast your

I took it in and stayed for three days

oh he high fived me

he thought that was that was the greatest thing ever

and then he goes you really check out

and he goes Dan Lastovich

he goes and this guy was 6 6

born on the Duluth Iron Range

his dad was an iron worker

and he I mean

five out of six words in a sentence were cuss words

I mean it was

it was it was actually horrible

and they offered me a job

so then

I changed the whole direction of my life

on being curious about how you become a broker

hmm and so you did that 25 years

25 years yeah

and God's the one that got me out

and I unpack that hahaha

I knew you'd ask that if I said that

um it was 0 7

my wife was really sick

she had been diagnosed with an illness

and we were in the early stages of finding out about it

my youngest son had uh

uh suddenly we discovered he was having seizures

we're going through the process figuring that out

and we uh

we just had a whole lot of bad things going on

and I I laid down on a Sunday night to go to bed

the news was on the TV didn't hear a word they said

then Seinfeld came on and we normally watch that

and laugh before we go to bed

and the first monologue comes on and my wife laughs

and I don't laugh and she's like

why aren't you laughing I go

I don't know I

I said I have a knot in my stomach

I'm just so stressed about all these

these things that are going on

and I said do you know where my Bible is

and I hadn't opened it for several years

and she told me it was this King James Bible

which isn't the easiest to understand even today

but I zipped it open and I pointed and it says

do not worry and I read Luke

I mean it's in Matthew too

but it was in Luke 12

26 to 30 all about not worrying about your life

you know the birds of the air are

are fed and they neither reap nor sow

you know those kind of things

yeah and so the

the second I finished reading it

this not almost felt like a dissipated melted

but it went down like to my feet

and then from my feet I got this warm

wet gel that came back over me and enveloped me

and I thought it was

like getting slimed by Slimer and Ghostbusters

and uh

I actually thought maybe I wet myself

so I looked under the covers

wasn't wet but I had this warm

comfy feeling I didn't hurt anymore

and I felt this incredible peace and safety

and so I think the second I read that

and knew that there was no reason to worry

I think that's when the Holy Spirit finally came out

and I accepted Christ before that

but I don't think hard

I did it in a group setting where we were

we were told the gospel

and then we were asked to accept him

and one by one we all did

and I don't know heart of hearts that I actually did

you know what I mean

I didn't think about it at the time

but I think when I prayed

heart of hearts prayed for real

and then he gave me an answer directly through his word

which is the way he seems to communicate to me

and then I believe that the Holy Spirit came on me

and that was the safety and from that point on

I have I have uh

known things I shouldn't know

as an example I would

I would uh

pray about something go to sleep

didn't have a dream didn't have an apparition

didn't hear voices when I woke up

nothing weird which I

I believe those things can happen

they haven't happened to me

but I know stuff I shouldn't know

even to the point where I keep a notepad by my bed

and I'll start writing what I know in the morning

like when you wake up in the morning

when I wake up one time

I was praying really hard around the same time

in fact it was just a few days later

was on my knees my wife was in the hospital

the little baby we had adopted was at daycare

and he had never been watched by anyone even one night

and uh

I came home late after seeing her at the hospital

and I got on my knees and I prayed really hard

and I fell asleep with my knees on the floor

my head on the bed and we've got kind of a higher bed

and I woke up two hours later

and I felt incredible peace and incredible relaxation

and like I had slept eight hours

I stood up my legs were asleep

I fell over

I laughed a little bit about myself

and they had that from knees down

all that tingliness you have when a limb goes numb

and I had to lay there and rub them

you know it took a little while

I got up I went in

I think I went to the bathroom

I brushed my teeth I got in my bed clothes

went back to bed

slept for five more hours

just the best most peaceful sleep

so now I got seven in total

which is more than I normally get

I woke up and I grabbed this pad

I wrote 19 pages

about how to save the soccer club from bankruptcy

cause they had I just found out that week

they were in a negative net worth situation

they just built a brand new indoor facility

which you've had your kids probably play at

yep

they didn't have two nickels to rub together

they didn't have enough money to finish buying nets

and balls or turning the heat on

and they owed four and a half million dollars

and didn't have one red cent left over

after the money they bring in

to pay for this non profit soccer club

I wrote out 19 pages

I put it away I went to a meeting

I fired I wasn't even on the board

I fired the entire volunteer board

no authority to do that

I then went around and found businessman

you're gonna be president

I had to talk you into it

cause his last daughter was just finishing at the club

he wasn't gonna be there

cause his kids weren't even better though

he's well yeah

but he said yes I got a guy that was the uh

second in command

of finance at Ameritrade to be the treasurer

all volunteer hired all new board members

and I said guys

I've got too much at stake

between my

Jimmy John's business and my broker's business

to be on this board if it fails

but I'm gonna give you all the tools you need

and I laid out everything God had told me in my sleep

that I wrote on that paper

I didn't bring the paper by the way

a number of things happened over the years

and in the crash where uh

Drexel Burnham Lambert went broke

this note that never had a dime paid on it

kept getting downsized and resold

downsized resold

Drexel Burnham had it they went broke

Sheriff put a padlock on the place

the next day we went cut it off

went back to business

Drexel goin broke

they sold the note again to a Oklahoma cash investor

investing those kind of things

but it had gone from four and a half million

seven or eight 9 years of no payments

now it got sold for 1.3 million

we merged then which was also in those notes

with Gladiator which had an endowment fund

from all the people that were in gladiators

back in the 70s and had been

come successful in business

and donated back to the club'cause

that's where they Learned their discipline

to be successful in business

they had 750,000 they joined our club

we paid that the note was 1

3 but he paid way less than that

I don't know exactly what it was

we went to him and offered him the 7:00 50

faded off nine years almost got shut down three times

never missed a single day of operation

ended up owning it for 7:50

they've been sitting growing over 25 years

35 years in this

and they didn't know what to do with it

and now they're

and one of the problems with that indoor center was

Arsenal was the owner of the facility

and the biggest club in the state

nobody wanted to play there

or practice there'cause their competitor was in it

well when Gladiator them joined

that kind of opened up the doors

and everyone loves to go there and use it

and it's not just a soccer facility

I mean the

right semi pro

right football

football they mean they play in there

yeah yeah

so a lot of so they did a

a a deed burning party at 9 years and they invited me

cause they they gave me a lot of credit

I didn't do anything but listen to god set it up

and I got the heck out of Dodge

right and I brought with the 19 pages of notes

everything that was ever done

was in those 19 pages of notes wow

so we've

I've talked to you many times about the

when you were doing stock broking

and not dollar cost averaging

asset allocation side right

I don't I mean

we've also had conversations

about getting neutral in decisions

how do you balance that

getting neutral with opportunity cost

and I I know that you're definitely not one that holds

many regrets but we talked about a few

I I think just to go over that again

and it's it's real quick and simple

I'll try to keep it short um

I Learned this from a book I I I can find it for you

I don't remember the

the title or the guy's name at the moment

it's more my age I think and I read it a long time ago

and when I say a long time ago

probably about 12 years ago

so I didn't have this process before

I had something similar but neutral is kind of a key

I didn't get neutral I would gather the facts

I would process those facts

and then if I wanted to do it

I was doing it come hell or high water

I was gonna figure out how to get the money

how to do it right and you know as well as I do

sometimes

we can let our own pride get in the way of our success

and it can lead to failure

because we do things we shouldn't do right

wouldn't it be nice to have an advocate

they could tell you ahead of time

whether it's gonna work or not work

and even to the extent that if on occasion

you felt like he was in it and he wasn't

and it didn't work

but you were meant to learn a lesson

but it didn't wipe you out you know

lessons are good right they're like

for the guy who doesn't go to college

and he spends $20,000 on a problem

that if he had gone to college

maybe he Learned a lesson

he didn't have to lose the 20 grand well

I spent way more than that to go to college

so

that 20 grand might be well spent

to learn a lesson that you never repeat again anyway

so the way this works is I gather the facts

when I have a decision to make

now

I'm trying to learn to do it in all aspects of my life

and I'm getting better because of learning this lesson

but you gather all the facts around the issue

that you're looking at

or the decision you need to make

and in business it might be open another restaurant

getting another concept uh

moving into another state or city

and so gather all those facts

I'll say again

and then you pray to God whether he's in it or not

whether I should do it or not anyway

you want to pray you're basically bringing God into it

to help you decide he's the advocate I'm talking about

okay

now you get neutral and I'll circle back in a minute on

on how I Learned this lesson

but you get neutral

it simply means I'm super excited about this deal

I wanted this deal no matter what I wanna do it

but I don't care if I do it or not again

that's easier said than done right

so I'm gonna I'm saying it that way

I really wanna do this

so my bias now is everything I see says God's in it

and I'm gonna do it because God's in it right

you can twist things and spin things

just like they do the news right

so you really have to get neutral

and one of the ways I do that is

I'm waiting for God to answer

that's the fourth thing fourth step

God has to answer now how does god communicate with me

I already told you most cases

I pray and the next day I do a devotional

I have anywhere from 3 to 7 at any given time

things I read the Bible itself

or I read other things that people wrote that are

that are scripturally based

and they and they point to scripture

they might have three or four verses at the bottom

you have to go find in the Bible

they're not there for you

some of the ones I have will have a one sentence

scriptural verse

and then they'll have a page where they're telling you

kind of what they think about that

or how it fits their story that they're telling you

they're all interesting they're all good

you can learn from all of them

but ultimately

I end up in the Bible on every verse that said

even if they spell it out

I wanna see what my Bible says

cause my version might be slightly different

might mean more to me

god might pull the veil down a little bit more

so I understand it so what I have Learned is

if I don't hear from god within 24 hours

he's not in it

I might as well tell the people that I'm talking to

the decision is no because if I wait another day

30 days whatever

I'm kind of avoiding those people

and I'm not gonna answer them right

cause I don't know and you

you always feel bad when you can't give people answers

so if it gets 24 hours I don't have an answer

I usually call up say hey

God's not answering and almost nine out of 10 times

let's give it more time

here's what happens I pray before I go to bed

I sleep about five six

sometimes seven hours that five to seven hours

if I get up and the first thing I do is my devotional

I'm gonna get an answer there

now there's other ways he answers

and you're familiar with one Hawaiian Bros

and we can talk about that if we have time

and you want

but but essentially the answer is in the word of God

and I know it I know it now

part of that is once the Holy Spirit lives in you

and he's looking out for you

and he's protecting you he wants good for you

which is what the Bible says about the Holy Spirit

even if you don't have this daily commune with him

and you don't feel that he's really in there

cause I still struggle with that a little bit

it just seems like a weird thing right

but I believe it

because I've had it proven to me again and again

and again but in this case

when I wake up

and I know how to fix a failing non profit business

that has no extra money

and they're four and a half million in debt

and nine years later

they still haven't even been able to make a single

payment

and they're saved one

it would take someone god size to do that

but at the beginning of it

based on prayer immediately when I wake up

I write 19 page I'm talking the yellow legal pad

19 pages of what to do and how to do it

and then without rereading it go do it

and then after it's done

go back and see that the roadmap was right there

I mean it's just

that's kind of crazy stuff

so it's the same thing with asset allocation

when I first started in 83

and I had this client with $374,000

they wanted me to invest and they were invested

40% in big oil companies and utilities

and 40% in technology companies

and 20% in some other industry

and they were all down

and they were losing their butts

and they were old and

and they just wanted to know that their money was safe

and gonna grow

I had no clue what to do it was my first client

I had no clue

I hadn't I had Learned how to sell investments

but I hadn't yet Learned about the stock market

or the bond market or asset allocation

I hadn't even heard the words asset allocation

so after prayer

and this is before I knew about okay

I've gathered facts well

the facts are I don't know anything okay

I prayed to God I've got neutral well

I went to sleep

I didn't know what getting neutral was I went to sleep

I wanted answers and I thought

I'm gonna wake up

and I'm gonna have to go find these answers right

I'm gonna have to go do research

and I gotta get it done inside of 24 hours

cause they're coming back

and I gotta tell them what to do

I woke up and I knew all about asset allocation

so I go to that meeting with nothing prepared and I

I gave him a plan 60% stocks

40% bonds the bonds are gonna be in a bond ladder

for one to 15 years we're gonna buy all tax free bonds

lock in rates for 15 years when one comes due

we roll it over at one year

and if if rates come down like they were

the portfolio is gonna go up in value

but the while we get a lesser rate I'm sorry

I said that wrong when the one year comes due

I'm gonna invest at 15 years and at that time

the short rates were down here

long rates were up here

so if something came due and you invest at one year

you didn't get very much return

but even though rates generally came down

this one that came due

got to reinvest at a higher rate

so there was a period of time

even though rates were coming down

the average return was going up for this person

but all the other stuff that was 14 years now 13 years

they were locked in really at sweet rates

the 60% in stocks we said look

you're getting killed

cause you're in just three industries

and all three of them are bad

at the same time

we need to be in at least 10 different industries

we want no more than 5% in one industry

we want no more

than two and a half in one individual stock

we're gonna buy for the long term

but that's not gonna preclude us from selling

why would we sell okay

this is coming out of my mouth right

I've not read anything

or heard the word asset allocation

but it's coming out after I prayed the night before so

what we decided on the front end was

if we're 60% stocks 40% bonds

that's the optimal place to be

if the market goes up so much

that this gets more than 10% out of balance

so we'd have to get stocks going up faster than bonds

go up

more than 10% worth so it could be

particularly bonds are going down or holding steady

could be a lot

so we didn't say we have to do this every quarter

like most asset allocation people do

which again I didn't know yet

but I said we'll just every once a while

we'll do a review of your portfolio

not even necessary at the end of a quarter

might be on a given day

because the stock market's gone up 19 days in a row

I wonder if we've hit our target

so I would then do the asset allocation

and the first time we did it

we were at 69%

wow we're way over

so then you look at the portfolio

at which industries have gone from 5% to over ten

well the first one was cause rates went down so much

the utility portfolio exploded to the upside

well

this is exactly the kind of thing they wanted to be in

they used to be in 40% utilities

so I went and I said

I think we should sell

enough utilities to get back down to 5%

so it's a little more than half our utility portfolio

and this old lady who read the Wall Street Journal

before I got out of bed usually

and I got up early she says well

if we're gonna sell sell it all

we were at all time highs on the utility index

the day we sold

six months later when the portfolio

which we had put back to 60% fell to 54

which is 10% too low

which was our trigger to buy back in utilities

were one point from their something like 10 year low

so we just bought utilities back

that was our first move we got out of utilities

paid long term capital gains

we bought utilities back

the extra money we had by selling high and buying low

we added to the bond portfolio so that we were 60

40 so now the bond portfolio is growing

it's almost like making money

turning rocks into gold

we took money from the stock market and added to bonds

so cause

bonds basically

promise to give you your money back when they come due

and interest along the way

so the interest is accumulating on the bond side

and counts on the bond side

and then the money we added goes in the bond side

and so when we made the allocation back into stocks

to go from 54 to 60

that's when we made the allocation from cash

back into the bond portfolio

and we'd always buy at the long end

so we're getting the best

kind of deal we could at the time

so long story short

from 1983 to 2000 when the second of the two died

we never had a losing year

even in the crash of 87 or the crash of 98 or the well

we didn't live to be in the technology part

but the last allocation out

we sold all our tech stocks at the end of 2000

and put them back in to where we started utilities

but because she was sick and dying

and we knew the kids weren't gonna keep it invested

they were gonna take it

one went to the bank and one spent it all

we gave the kids five and a half million dollars wow

from 374 17 years

never took more than 60% risk in the market

except for what it went up to

we sold out back to 60% five times

and bought back in five times in 17 years

that's all we did

and do you do you know what the return metrics that

that strategy met you don't remember

no I mean

you could go back and back out they

they took very little money out

occasionally took 5,000 to give to someone as a gift

or the kids or something like that

couple times I think we did five each

I'd say out of the three 74 we we uh

we probably took 40,000 out maybe

and then

there was one year when we had our best year ever

but we had more transactions than we ever

had cause we were buying smaller companies

cause the blue chips were going down

and the small caps were going up

and they couldn't take it

and the husband convinced her to move away

for one year we had 300,000 in cash

and a year later when they came back

the 300 cash was lost by the other brokers

cause they went back into blue chip stocks

so

we even have a year where we had nothing to do with it

they lost 300,000 instead of making money

and we were making bank that year

so it could have been a better return

if it not for that one year

but yeah it I mean

money should double at 9% every 8 years

rule of 72 if you know that so um

let's call it three 75 to make this easy seven 50 um

in eight years and another eight years

almost puts us at the seven huh

no go ahead

well I was just gonna take seven 50

one point five was what you're starting to say

1.5 million was 5.5 million

and we had one year that we got screwed

and lost 300,000 and had nothing to do with it

so you were 600 400% up yeah

of what you should yeah

and the other thing I would say about this whole thing

I've only done this three times twice I listened

once I didn't with god and the market

I've been concerned about where the market was and I

pray about it so again my research is okay

the market's way up it's overvalued

it's high pray to God get neutral

I'm either gonna get out or stay in

that's as neutral as you can be right

wait for an answer twice

they've given me the answer

once was in 0 7 which was the end of my current

the reason I retired I told you earlier

I got out because of God

I had already been three years in Jimmy John's

it was doing well it was doing great in the market

I had thousand sixty nine accounts

and 365 million under management

I was making 600,000 a year as a broker

plus making money in the market

um

had my finger on the pulse cause I was right there and

my wife was sick my youngest son was sick

we had this new baby and uh

I did that that prayer and I woke up and I knew

I went in I sold my my book to my junior partner

I told the manager

I said I'm gonna spend the next three months

call every one of my clients

get them out of the market

so from October 11th to December 31st 9 2007

I got all my clients 100% out of the stock market

January 1st or 2nd Finland fell

and then Norway fell

and then the whole the whole world fell

and then I had 5 of my clients that were all over 80

and still married

called me all on the same day to thank me

and they all five had the same question

this was on January 17th of 0 8

they wanted to know when they should get back in

I said how do I know

well you knew we should get out

well God told me that

but I didn't ask about when we should get back in

I said oh

wait a minute I do know

I said Obama gave a speech

and he's the front runner to take Bush's place

when he's done at the end of this year

I said we are gonna get creamed

all the way until the inaugural address in 0

9 and I said

the market's gonna be at a bottom

Obama's gonna promise us

the world he's gonna do all these things

spend all this government money to put us back right

and the market's gonna believe it for a moment

and we're gonna rally into March

end of end of February for sure

but March 8th, 2009 I said this on January 17th

0 8

it just came out of me

right now I'm not a prophet

I don't prophesize I don't see things

I don't know what's gonna happen before it happens

right this is very specific

concerned about the market

prayed God told me

I woke up and I knew and I I

I obeyed

could not have been the

a better decision made about my career

or what I did for my so I left a hero

right so now

I tell these guys when the market's gonna bottom

and how it's gonna bottom

we'll have a we'll have a low

we'll have a bounce because of what Obama says

and then we're gonna make a slightly lower low

and I even said

I don't know where it goes from there for sure

but if it if it undercuts this low

and they either close above it

or very quickly the next day goes above

that's cause yeah that

well that's over the

these guys bought thinking this was the low

and they had bounce they said oh

look how right I am

and they'll have stops underneath this so the

the market makers can go back

clean those stops out

cause they'll make money on the fall being short

but then they go long at the bottom and everyone else

all the shorts come rushing back in

that's one of the things going on now

we announced about a month ago

7.4 trillion all time record in money markets

and I I would guess

I don't know if this is right

Democrats who hate Trump are not in the market

and there's a whole lot of them that really hate him

that think they're sophisticated

they're short the market

and they're probably short in Vidia

Planterra um

Tesla Amazon

um Google

they're short all these things

and every day

the market's going higher and they're getting squeezed

so as people get convinced they've made a mistake

and they've missed it and they come back in

and as the shorts cover at some point

we're going to get squeezed to it straight up

and then when you get a report

maybe that there's only 4.8 trillion in money market

you know it's all back in the market

and that's when we'll get killed hmm

well so I think the answer to the opportunity cost is

part of getting neutral

is that when God's not in something

and obviously

opportunity cost much easier to see in hindsight

but because

some of the opportunities that you've talked about

where you missed out on a real estate deal or

you know should have bought this stock and hell dog X

y Z yeah

but if God's not in it to begin with

then you I think

you're more at peace with missing out on those things

right I'm comfortable

I'm comfortable with the outcomes

because I know the inputs

and I know where god wants me to land

but that was the same thing just from a

a charity standpoint

I think I might have told you the story

a gentleman that calls me once in a while

for charitable dollars for whatever he's got going on

calls me one day and says

we're putting a church at 20th and Lake

right in the heart of uh

downtown North Omaha and he said he needed uh

chairs for this this big kind of empty room

basically for parishioners to

to sit in I thought well

that seems pretty worthy I said

what do you need well

nine grand it's a really big place

we need a lot of chairs that's what it's gonna cost

I go okay you got it

didn't use my thing at all

didn't didn't did

I mean again

I have already got the facts

they're that simple they want this many chairs

they cost nine grand he wants nine grand

I didn't pray about it not even on the moment

I didn't get neutral I just okay

I got the money I'll do it

I gave it to him month later he calls me and I go

oh no this was the ladder part sorry

he calls me and says I'm not there anymore

I go why not

he goes

it turns out this guy and both these guys are black

but the guy who came to him and brought him into it

is racist

hates white people thinks all white people

even though in North Omaha

25% of the population I've heard is black

75% is brown or white but most mostly white

most people don't realize that uh

this guy's right there trying to run a church

but hates white all white people are devil

all white people are rich

two things that aren't true

right and that's what he's gonna preach on Sundays

so my buddy who doesn't think that way leaves

so I'm thinking wow God

one month and I know that doing this

without you is a huge mistake right

so fast forward about nine months

he gets involved with the Hope Center

and he's working at the Hope Center this whole time

I didn't know it and he's gonna do another church

it's gonna be a Hope Center church

they need chairs I said dude

I messed up last time I did not go to God on this

I'm truly going to go to God

my phone in my pocket's ringing anyway

I'm gonna go to God and I'll let you know

he calls me roughly 30 days later and I had nothing

and this is the part where I found out

I know within 12 hours 24 hours at most after that

I don't I'm pretty sure God's not answering this

I'm not even praying about it anymore

and so I don't answer

I feel bad so I called him right back and I said hey

I'm sorry I didn't answer cause I

I didn't have an answer for you

what are you talking about

he goes I'm just calling to see how you're doing

I wanted to take you to lunch

and thank you for getting me the chairs

say what

he goes yeah

he goes you called PT at Love Church right

that's where I go and that's my pastor I go

no I didn't I go

what are you talking about

he goes well

you guys open a new church in Elkhorn

you were gonna use the chairs

you saved from Miller North

but you bought new chairs

so you've been paying for storage

and right after I hung up from you

PT called me and said we got chairs in storage

if you come and get them

you can have them I go I got nothing to do with that

but you're welcome I'll take that one okay

so the first time I got spanked right

chairs now maybe in the long run it works out for good

don't get me wrong I mean

everyone can have a transformation right

but it doesn't seem like my money went to a good thing

there

here I feel like I should give him the money again

this is definitely a better situation

but I'm waiting on God I got nothing

well God went around me

someone else that he had talked to

talk to PT at our church

I didn't know we had these chairs tell you the truth

and they were donated

an hour after he got a phone with me

so he thought I did it

cause he knows I go to church there

and I didn't so God took care of it without me

and that's that I mean

I've seen so much more evidence

and we could talk all day about it

but but that formulated my

neutral stance right

first you gotta do the prayer right

you gotta ask God are you in it not in it right

but then you gotta get neutral

and so like we have an investment right now

we have a chance we've never had before

with a franchise

our franchise is offering us to buy into the franchise

my initial feeling is that is a home run

that's a no brainer at some point

they'll sell to a big private equity firm

or they'll go public and I'll get seven to 20 times

whatever it is we put in it

cause that's how the how much more valued

they value things in the public market

versus the private market

so it seems like a no brainer

but I've gone through the process

that actually took me a lot longer

to get all the facts

I needed a couple months worth of fact gathering

that's the longest I've ever taken to find the facts

it's interesting

because the search and some of the answers

I don't like have formulated a very neutral stance

I'm incredibly neutral now

the issue in my senior management

my CFO

is taking in the negative things

and doesn't want anything to do with it

doesn't want the risk

my oldest son knows what I've taught him over the years

about this potential opportunity

he's willing to do less and less and less

from what we originally said our interest was

to what we actually do but he wants to participate

even if it's just to be a part of

you know we're

we're opening restaurants

we're in it together with them if it works

shouldn't we benefit by it and

and shouldn't we show that we're in it with them

he's not totally wrong but we have enough risk

and what we're putting into each of these stores that

you know he could still be wrong

and then my younger son is

says whatever you guys wanna do

you know so I just finalized the fact gathering

it's been like I said

a couple months I meant to pray about last night

and had other things on my mind I was praying about

so I did not take it to the Lord

so my goal today or tonight is to give it to him

I'm already neutral so that part's easy

and we'll see hmm

we'll see what happens and so

and so what are the other ways that God speaks to you

you've mentioned one point

where you just open the Bible

and the verse was right there jumping at you

other times as people yeah

I I'd say again

most of the time I don't know the percentages

I read in his word the next morning

other times like the situation with Hawaiian Bros

and that might speak to this a little bit better

um

we had gathered all the facts on it

I had prayed and got neutral just the night before

and I can't remember if I think it was

it was

cause I I'm trying to remember it right

but if you remember you called me at about 9:45

the cold call at that yeah

you called me 9:45

cause you were looking at one of my properties

and your wife who comes from Hawaii

and you were in Hawaii

you were looking at doing a Hawaiian lunch plate

restaurant small

and we have this little small space that's about

thirteen hundred and 60 eight square feet

next to our Jimmy John's in a building we own

we had already decided we're putting pizza there

you didn't know that so

so you called about that

somewhere during the night before I got your message

I had given it to god my decision making process

and I get a call from you and I call you

we have a nice

and I apologize because I was calling you at 10:15

you called me so late I figured it was okay

you said it was you told me and I said okay dude

you're pimping me about Hawaiian Bros and you said

I don't know what Hawaiian Bros is

I've never heard of it right

and so okay I mean

what's the chances of you calling me about MySpace now

I wasn't putting Hawaiian Bros there

but I was in the process of making the decision

about Hawaiian Bros

and you're gonna do a Hawaiian lunch plate

which I had never heard of

till I looked at Hawaiian Bros right

so so there was that conversation

the next morning I got up and I turned the TV on

and I was switching to 42

to see how the markets were gonna open up

I just kind of have it on

while I'm getting ready to go about my business day

and the first commercial

after Joe Kernen was talking on on

you know CNBC was a vacation in Hawaii

which maybe it was on every day I never noticed it

all day long I saw this even on other channels

I saw advertised about Hawaii and the peace

they resist once within 12 hours of this

I'm at the office it was probably about 9:45

I meet with the people

I say hi to and talk to and stuff like that

now I'm gonna go to the store and the HR director says

hey wait a minute

I want you to meet someone so he in

she introduces me to a girl that she's just hired

just announced that she's hired

she's gonna work

and she's hired her to work part time in the office

but she's gonna work in the training part

for Hawaiian Bros

OK it gets better

and and I don't know if you remember this

but her family

now it's just like ants and uncles and cousins

started in Taylor'sville Utah

the first LNN

they had a restaurant that was their restaurant

they had originally been from Hawaii

now lived in Utah

started a Hawaiian lunch plate restaurant called LNN

LNN is the first publicly traded

and big company that's in that space

someone coming through there

tried it loved it

tried talking them into taking it public and

and helping them open a restaurant in other cities

and they said no we're old and we don't wanna do that

and we don't wanna take this off

so they sold them the restaurant

and the rights to do that

and LNN isn't in every state

but they're all over the country

they're bigger than Hawaii bro Hawaiian Bros at this

this point in the game and now she works for me

that was all within 12 hours of giving it to the Lord

all of it it's crazy

so so sometimes I get direct kind of intervention

if you want to call it that and let's call it signs

uh people would call these coincidences

I call them god winks

and there is a book by an attorney

that was a non believer

who figured out about God and wrote a book called

God Winks Square Rush though yeah

just good good stuff right

so I had read that before

so now I look at coincidences in a different light

I look at them as signs from God and they truly are um

so there's that

so before we get you out of here

I know we're probably low over but um

if someone's young let's say throw an age 25 years old

they got a decent job the investing in their 401k

but they want more so they they you know

they're like hey I want freedom

you went from investments in publicly traded companies

to investing in your own

privately trading custom companies right

talking about private equity

maybe selling out to earth

maybe selling out is not the right word

but selling out to uh yeah

to uh Wall Street uh

what would you tell someone that is looking to pursue

financial freedom

would you tell them go all in on the stock market

401k Roth IRA

that route yes

so they're making 80 to $120,000 just for some kind of

yeah numbers there or would you say hey

one one thing I've heard you

why I haven't highlighted

but one thing I've heard you focus on

in your personal life is your savings rate

mm hmm

would you say hey get your savings rate up

save up some money and then invest in yeah

something like Jimmy John's or something

something along those lines

I had this happen recently

I had a a gentleman who's 39 okay

married wife stays home with the kids

they have three kids and a fourth on the way

next February I guess

he has a really good job

a job similar to what you described

I didn't ask him what he gets paid

but he's a VP

of sales of a company in the medical industry

that just recently

actually within the last month went public

so he has some stock so he's

he's made some money there

he's fully funded and got uh

contributions from the company in his 401k um

he's done very well

just recently bought a big new house

so he's got a big mortgage

so he needs a job he needs to be able to pay the bills

he's got three almost 4 kids right

wife that doesn't work he can't

give up the safety and security of that paycheck

now he loves his jobs not that he dislikes his job

but after 15 years in the sales world

and having sales quotas and things like that

he's just not as enamored as he once was

and he has heard about me

he has seen the things I have he loves the concepts

he loves the food or the coffee or the whatever

and he uses them all and he

he asked one of our managers who I was

and could he get a word to me

that he wanted to meet me

again I'm no better than anyone else

and if I got breath in my lungs and time in my day

I'm gonna contact you

so I get a a text from my manager

I text him like right away

so this is only a couple hours

after he left the restaurant

and not quite as late as you and I talked

but um I wouldn't be answering

I told him to either text me questions

I gave him my email

you can email me questions or call me phone rings

he calls me and the first thing he can't get

over is that I like somehow I'm great

I have no time for you peons right

you called me yeah

you wanted me to call you why wouldn't I call you right

so we have a nice conversation

we agree to meet the next morning

9:30 at Storage Coffee 156 out by where he lives

more convenient for him okay

I'm trying to go more than halfway meet him

we spent three hours together

it was wonderful time and there's a side benefit

I ended up getting that I had no idea

I'll tell you about that too

but I told him I said look

you do not want to start something

that you're not 100% in

so if you want to do a restaurant

you want to do a coffee shop

you want to do some other kind of retail

it will require your time

so if you're willing to to give up in this season

time with your kids time with your wife

I don't know how many hours a week

you work at this job

I kind of imagine it's probably only a 40

45 hour because I probably about 45 I go that's fine

you could put 35 hours in your new business

if you're willing to put 80

hours into two businesses your job and your thing

you can go into this eyes wide open

find something

that is within the realm of the investment dollars

you have that won't put you in jeopardy of your family

but you've got to be willing to sacrifice something

you've got to sacrifice time in this case right

but I said before you do that

I would say that you have to find something

that you can be passionate in

now most advisors say

find your passion and then go be successful

I have a tweak on that

if you're passionate about everything you do

and you're willing to put everything

into whatever you do you can be successful in anything

you don't have to find that thing

it's a lot harder to find the thing you're passionate

about

but if you're passionate about painting oil paintings

usually you gotta die after being very good at it

to make any money right

so you can be passionate about something like

I know people in the coffee business

that wanna have their nice

little coffee shop and they wanna work it

and they wanna love their people

they wanna make it really homie

how many times do you hear about this great

new coffee shop

and six months later you go there and it's not there

I don't know the one on the corner I hear is killing it

but it hasn't been six months

I just went there for the first time

I love it it's great

they're gonna do fine

and they look like they've minimized their cost

of what they put in there

which is really smart uh

but it's also connected kind of to the church

right there in the neighborhood

it's in the right place I think it's gonna be good

but there's a lot of them that aren't right

and I think something like 90% of

businesses die in the first year

and 95% of them are in the restaurant business right

so if he's looking at me and what I've done

if he wants to be successful

he better have a nice pot of money to handle

a period of time

losses and mistakes and lessons he needs to learn

but in doing so

he has to also be able to fund a household

a new house near Saint Patrick's in northwest Omaha

and four baby kids

if he can't fund a period of time

and I would say

three to five years of losing money here

and trying to learn and then taking care of this

you don't want to take that chance

so what I advised him was keep doing what you're doing

so far you've been just putting money in the 401k

and everything else is going into savings

which is earn more learn about the stock market

start taking

five and ten thousand dollar investment chances

in things that you really kind of believe in

and you could see having a long runway

and I and I said what I've Learned is probably

if you had 100 chances in your life at 5,000 a piece

right you'd

you'd over your lifetime

invest 500,000 in 100 different companies in total

that's a lot of money not everyone has that option

I get it

it can be any amount of money it could be $100

it could be $1,000

it could be 50 chances you give yourself

but

going with the idea that you're gonna really be slow

to pick but when you do it

you're not gonna sell it no matter what

because in a lifetime of 50 or 100 chances

you might have one or two that goes to zero

and even if it goes to zero

you lose $5,000 in this example

but if you only have one Berkshire Hathaway

one Nvidia one Intel when it was great one apple 1

just need 1 out of 50 or hundred

and I've just told you

a handful of the ones that I've done

I I could tell you about 25 more that I've owned

that I would have made

hundreds of thousands of dollars in

if I just left them be right

I've probably taken a thousand chances

maybe even 15

probably because you sell and you buy something else

right but the one you sold does great

and the one you moved it to now goes to zero

and you might not have bought it

if you didn't have any money at that time

if you were looking out for God to advocate for you

right so

in his case if he wants this financial freedom

that having enough money will give him

he needs to take care of the security part first

which he has with his current job

instead of creating another 40

50 hour week job

he could spend 10 hours a week

learning the stock market

and actually investing and again

if he does it

where he does all the work on the front end

and then just doesn't listen anymore

and holds on to it he's gonna have some huge winners

and what'll happen is he'll grow into that

as a secondary career which you can do five 10

15 and if you really want to dig in the weeds

you can spend 25 hours a week easy

and I'm not talking being tied to your computer trading

I'm talking 25 hours of serious research

make that your second job

if you get good enough at that and you have a

in his case he's 39 he's 50

let's say he's had the success in the stock market

I didn't quite get even though I was very successful

because I didn't do what I'm now advising

right he does that

maybe at 50 he retires from his sales job

and he just manages his money

what kind of freedom you got then

ultimate hmm right so I think anyone can do it

now this sounds easier than what it is

it's not easy don't get me wrong here okay

um when I started I was twelve

my parents were poor

they worked 2 and 3 jobs each bartenders

3 striper in the Air Force cocktail waitress

they worked all those minimum wage jobs right

but they want to make sure they had no debt

that we had food on the table

and they paid their rent they paid their utilities

okay

tremendously beholden to my parents

it's not that I didn't want to live that way

I still work that way and the last five years

as much money as I made

and I'm not going to say that out loud

I had so much more in tax

that I had to live off my investments

the last four years and I'm hugely successful right

so you're never necessarily out of the woods

depend on how you live and what you give away

and my goal is to give away 90% of what I make

OK so you have to get comfortable how you live

and if you're 25 you're no longer

I suppose some people are

no longer living under your parents roof

and they're paying for everything

if you happen to still be at 25 and they have a

you have a good job

and your parents aren't charging you any rent

aren't charging for the food and drink

that you're taking out of the house

you should be saving almost all of your money right

so if you want to change your life

you start saving investing

learn about investing first not day trading

learn about investing

when you get enough of an nest egg

and you have an idea of what you wanna do

you go do that if you wanna go into real estate

you don't need employees you just gotta get a license

and then you gotta work really hard

and you gotta stick to it long term

like you guys know right

but you can do that but you could

you could not be a real estate broker for other people

but just do small deals yourself

you buy a house

with a little bit of equity that you saved

while you're living at home

and you buy your first house and you rent it

and you figure out how to fix things if they break

right you take care of that house

and when you have enough money from your job

you buy a second one

and you could go that way and end up being a fabulous

rich real estate baron

but you worked it and you you you saved any

every penny you could

by doing that bathroom tile yourself

right until you were good enough

and had enough income

that you could hire someone to do it

but there's so many ways in America

we are the land of opportunity

you just have to say yes

but it starts by living within your means

whatever they are

now if you're you've already made mistakes

you're a single mom

and you have three kids and you're out on your own

and you have to pay the rent

and you have to put food on the table

and you have to buy diapers

and you got no one looking out for you

your fate might already be sealed

I don't know what I can tell you

you have to find a way to get enough of an education

to get a good enough job to make enough money

that you can save a part of what you make

and even those people can do it

or they can come up with an idea

I don't know women come up with things all the time

the lady with the headbands for hope

giving hundreds of thousands

if not millions

of headbands to poor children that are fighting cancer

have lost their hair

to give that many away she had to sell that many

so she turned that into a good business

well along the way

the real thing that she's doing now

that also empowers women and again

her name is Jess Extram

she started a business called Mic Drop

now what would you think that was if you heard Mic Drop

some kind of recording

recording thing or a what

what is it when uh uh

artists go and they gather together

and they play music at a venue

uh open mic night

yeah that's what comedians do that too

that's Mike drop in my mind right

what she had to do was get very good at speaking

because she went around

trying to raise money for this headbands for hope

and then she had to go on shows and sell her program

to get people to buy her headbands

so that she could give headbands away

she got very proficient at speaking

and some guy she wouldn't say who it was

but it was someone like a John Maxwell

and she happened to be on the same thing with him

said you're really good

you're funny you're relatable

you're authentic all the things you would want to be

she really had no idea she was just being herself

you should do this professionally

and I can help you get set up for that

so he did wait

wait no

take it back the first story was she kept waiting

she told her mom she told her friends

she told her boyfriend

she was gonna be a professional speaker

and get paid to speak now

guy never called her

that's why she didn't want to say it

and I don't know it was John Maxwell

so don't take that to heart

but it sounded like it was someone like that

someone really good really

Tony Robbins maybe I don't know

they said we'll

we'll call you never called

so she figured out how to get there herself

and she got very good at it

she gets paid very well

travels all over the world speaking

she started her own with the idea in her mind that this

so and so

and she gives him credit for her

actually going to do it cause she got mad right

just like the guy I told

that was cussing at me and telling me I couldn't sell

a farmer that already invited me to his table

he was wrong right

you have to question collective wisdom

and you have to keep saying yes

and I'll give her credit for that

but she did that

now she has a professional business called Mic Drop

and she hires women all over the world and

and brings in women that are already good at speaking

she helps teach them and train them

and then

she's got this platform where you need a speaker

oh this one will be good for that

she hooks you up and sends women all over the country

and all over the world professionally speaking

interesting yeah

so you could be a single mom

and all you do is know how to hold down a job

pay the bills and take care of your kids and

and you've got your kids in schools as they age

and you've been successful at it

you got a story to tell and that's the thing

tell your story

and that's the coolest thing about the internet

I'm not on social media at all

this is the closest I've ever been to it right

and it scares me

but the guy at my church who does this for a living

has millions and millions and millions of followers

now

he's got a business helping people do this very thing

and one of the things he said

and the whole reason I called and said yes to this

again god moment

at the same time you're asking me about this

I go to this thing and

out of all the things

I could have picked for a breakout session

I picked capchat filled

how to use Social Media to build your brand

and I was scared to death just sitting there

and as he started talking about it

he's saying the same thing we're seeing Charlie Kirk

God moment you have these wonderful leaders out there

who are afraid to lead because society

and the government and the schools tell us

you've got to take god

and separate him away from business right

and she's got all these natural

born leaders out here in the world

who have faith and belief

and care about other people more than themselves

all the people that they're saying

are greedy businessmen we actually care about helping

our world be a better place

but we're afraid

to step out in faith and expose ourselves

for fear of half our customers

not coming and buying our product

cause he likes Trump or he likes Trump's policies

or he loves God I'm not going there anymore

I mean Dan at coffee just got one this weekend

cause

he's so incensed about the praise for Charlie Kirk

and he said it in his email and said

I don't come to your coffee shop

because you sell alcohol in the evening

I just found out this week that out of 3 million sales

we have $10,000 a year in alcohol sales

we're not a bar

women drop their kids off at dance and want to come

have a wine glass of wine and visit

it's not end of world

there are fundamentalists that think

all alcohol is evil

and they have a right to think that

but some people can have a glass and quit

have a glass and tolerate it right

but um you know

if it doesn't make sense business wise

which we talked about this morning

maybe it makes more sense not to have it

and if you give that person that reached out to you

and yelled at you credit

who cares it's not the reason we would quit

but it's the sensible thing to do

well that Dean uh I don't know how

I don't know how you can piece this all together

I do appreciate it so uh

like I said we've been talking the last few hours yeah

got a lot from it so hopefully yeah

hopefully someone uh

watching this gets something from it too yeah

so well I'm old

so above all else I have experience

and

one of the biggest things I've Learned in this whole

EOS entrepreneurial operating system thing

is you have visionaries and you have operators

I have Learned from experience

to be a very good operator

I don't know if I'm visionary where I have vision

it comes from the father it comes from prayer

trusting obeying

so my vision comes from my advocate from heaven

and those are the things that I think

really help me be successful

as an operator

I see things that are wrong and I know how to fix them

but that doesn't come from vision

that comes from experience

so if you had to have one or the other

I'd rather have the operator

cause visions eventually gonna come

even if you don't have the Lord

you know you're gonna that doesn't work

that doesn't work that doesn't work

I think he's doing looks like it works

I'll try that oh

that works

okay that's my vision

if I need vision I go to the Lord

if I need answers decisions

I go him

on that note I think we'll leave it there thanks

a pleasure thank you guys thank you

that's fun