No Bad Days: How to Build Freedom Through Discipline & AI

Jeff Holz didn't wake up one morning and decide to have "no bad days." At seventeen, holding a knife to his wrist, he made a choice that changed everything. Thirty years later, he's built a life most people only dream about—and he's not gatekeeping how he did it.

In this episode, Jeff walks through the unfiltered blueprint: how he went from losing $6,000 a week as a bankruptcy attorney during the Great Recession to retired in six years. But more than that, he reveals the daily discipline that actually creates freedom, why your mindset about "bad days" is costing you money and opportunities, and how to structure your life so you're getting paid to do what you'd do anyway.

You'll also hear his thoughts on AI reshaping wealth, why your car might be worth nothing in two years, and what the robot economy means for your next move.

This isn't motivational fluff. It's the real framework—tested for 30 years.

Links: Jeffrey Holtz:
jeffreyholtz.com
@jeffreyholst on all platforms

CHAPTERS

0:00 – Intro: The Choice That Changes Everything 
3:15 – At 17, With a Knife: The Moment That Started It All 
9:45 – "No Bad Days" Isn't About Positive Thinking 
14:20 – Freedom Requires Discipline (The Counterintuitive Truth) 
19:50 – Bankrupt to Retired in 6 Years: The Real Blueprint 
26:30 – The Autotelic Life: Getting Paid to Do What You Love 
33:15 – How to Structure Your Life When You Have Total Freedom 
39:00 – Travel, Purpose, and the 100 Things List 
45:30 – AI, Opportunity, and the Next Wealth Transfer 
52:15 – Real Estate's Future in a Deflationary World 
58:45 – Your Car Might Be Worthless in Two Years (Here's Why) 
64:30 – Building Wealth Fast: The 5-10 Year Blueprint 
71:00 – The Robot Economy Is Coming (And You Need to Move Now) 
77:30 – How to Start Winning Right Now

#NoBadDays #FinancialFreedom #EntrepreneurMindset #RealEstateInvesting #AIandWealth #PersonalDevelopment #WealthBuilding #TheDept #FreedomFighterPodcast #Retirement #DeflatableEconomics #Bankruptcy #BankruptcyToRichness #CareerChange #MindsetShift #SuccessMindset #PassiveIncome

Transcript

I've had tons of
more freedom than I ever had in my life
and that actually takes a lot of discipline
to create artificial structure um
is really useful and that can be something as simple as
I always go for a walk at
you know 9 in the morning
it doesn't matter what it is
but it can also be like
I have a reoccurring meeting and I do have this
I have a reoccurring accountability meeting at noon
on Mondays and I'm always there
cause I lead the meeting and I don't have a choice
that's really important to create that structure
cause if I don't do those things then I run
well Jeff welcome
I appreciate you joining us
you I want to get you on
you kind of wrote the book on no bad days
and kind of
want to talk to you about the mindset that it takes to
go into that and
just how you had to change your mindset to
fit your surroundings and stuff
you mind kicking us off
tell us a little bit about your story
and the book you wrote
um yeah sure
uh it's
obviously
a bigger topic than we can cover in a single show
but the super short version is I believe that um
we get to choose how we perceive the day
um the way I would look at it is um
you know somewhere in the world right now
someone's having the best day of their life
somewhere else in the world right now there
there's someone having the worst day of their life
so therefore this day that we're living in
this moment is neither good nor bad
it's just how those individuals are thinking about it
that controls how they're receiving it
so it's almost like
how you perceive the day is how you receive the day
and once you recognize that
and then you apply um
what I call radical um responsibility
this is a concept
I kind of borrowed from various people
but it really hit home when I heard Hal Elrod
you guys know Hal Elrod the miracle morning guy
yes so Hal quote where he says um
the moment you accept 100%
responsibility for everything in your life
is the moment you can change anything in your life so
you know I got leukemia a while ago that
that was objectively not awesome right
but but it wasn't
and it wasn't my fault that I got leukemia
but it was my responsibility
I had to accept
responsibility for the situation I found myself in
and make the decisions
that pointed me in the best possible direction um
so that concept applied to this idea that we get to
decide how we perceive things that are happening to us
bad stuff's gonna happen to you
probably good
and bad stuff will happen to you
every day for the rest of your life
and when good stuff happens to you
you need to stop and be like oh
that was great you know
embrace the day and there's neuro science behind that
there's a guy his name is um
I think it's Richard Hanson he's a PhD
he wrote a book called Hardwired Happiness
or Hardwiring Happiness and
and he proved categorically through neuroscience
that if you use the same neuro pathways enough
it becomes easier to use them
this is the same concept that like
Tony Robbins calls the reticular activating system
but it's basically like
your mind defaults to the familiar
so if you stop
when you walk outside and feel the sun on your face
and think wow
it's a beautiful day
it becomes a beautiful day for you um
and if you do that enough it becomes subconscious
it just happens so for me um
giving up bad days was literally as simple as saying
today's a good day over and over and over again right
and then the second part of that is
when the bad stuff happens to you
which it will
you're gonna hopefully not get diagnosed with leukemia
I don't recommend that but
but you're gonna have stuff happen to you like that
in your life people are gonna die
you're gonna get hurt you're gonna have sickness
you're gonna have financial setbacks
you have to stop and say what can I do about this
and I I borrow this from the Dalai Lama
so the Dalai Lama talks about um
the concept of worrying and he says
it never makes sense to worry
because either you can do something about it
or you can't and if you can do something
you should just go do that
and if you can't it doesn't help to worry
so I I kind of apply that to the
the junk that happens the bad things
I say is there something I can do about it
and if so I need to go do that right
so I get diagnosed with leukemia
I wanna go find the best doctors in the world
I can do that but I can't make the
I can't wave a magic wand and make it go away
so to the extent that I have no control
once I've done the things I can do
I have to just accept it
and then I take it one step further and I say
you know if you're gonna be going through pain
you might as well grow through the pain
so then I start looking for the lessons from it and
and I just apply that systematically
to everything in my life
i'mma go out on a limb and say that
that hasn't always been your mindset
what had to change was it just repeating over and over
and visualizing every day is a good day
or what's that yeah
I mean um yeah
of course it wasn't I didn't wake up at
you know I didn't
I didn't wake up at 3 years
old
and the first words out of my mouth were no bad days
I wish I was that cool but um
I didn't but I did start relatively early so um
I actually gave up bad days when I was seventeen
I'm gonna turn 48 next week
so that's more than 30 years without a single bad day
so I know this stuff works right
I I know it for sure I've had a lot of hard days
I've had a lot of crappy things happen to me
that I didn't love
but I haven't let a single one of those ruin my day
so I know that you can make this choice um
what happened to me though was I was 17
my parents were going through a divorce
I broke up with a girlfriend I was feeling sad anxious
uh all this teenage angst
I it's so foreign to me now you know
30 years later that um
it's hard for me to even process
but I walked into a bathroom right
with a
with a knife and I held it against my wrist at 17
and I like looked in the mirror
and I felt the blade on my wrist
and I thought this is kind of dumb
like why do I want more pain
like cause it was a serrated blade
I think if it had been an unserrated blade
it might have been a worse situation for me
but but I felt this like bite on my wrist
and I thought I don't like pain
why would I want to give myself more pain
to get rid of pain
and I threw the knife away and I said
you know I'm going to um make sure today is a good day
like
I'm young and relatively healthy and live in America
how bad can my life be
and I'm just gonna tell myself out loud
10 times while looking in the mirror
that today is a good day
I don't know where this came from
I have no explanation you know
maybe it's inspired by god
I don't know
but I literally just said today is a good day 10 days
10 times in a row and I walked out of the bathroom
and every time for a month that I saw a mirror
if I was by myself
I would say today is a good day out loud and um
if I was not by myself
I would think it to myself 10 days in my head
10 times in my head
and I do that hundreds of times a day
cause you see mirrors all the time
it's insane how many mirrors there are right
I became neurotic about it
I would just constantly be saying today's a good day
and then one day I walked into a 7 11
this is probably a month or two later
guy behind the counter says to me
hey man how you doing today
and I go I never have bad days and I literally went
holy crap I never have bad days
I realized I hadn't had a bad day in like
a couple weeks a month
and I was like hey
this stuff works
so I just into it and this is like in the 90s
this is before YouTube
I didn't know about Tony Robbins and affirmations
I just fell into this and you know
not everyone's lucky enough to accidentally
fall into it but the cool part is
you don't have to accidentally fall into it
you can just start doing it
like if you guys want to give up bad days right now
all you have to do is say today's a good day
that's literally the entire secret
which makes it a really boring book if you uh
only write that one
I put a little bit backstory in but but you know
the book would be really short if it was like
one sentence so I honestly
that should that should be its own version of
you know the the updated version
just all the pages say today's a good day
just like just today's a good day
well I actually thought about making um
a no bad days journal
it just said today's a good day on the top
and then people just wrote their things
they were happy about in it
like a gratitude journal oh yeah
that's an awesome idea I think that's a good idea
but then I thought I don't
you know people can just write that in a notebook
so you guys can go steal that idea if you want
promise I can't
I might have to no bad days
it's too uh
it's too broad anyway
so well you
you said that you
you don't know where it came from and maybe it was God
and and throughout the whole first part of your story
it I just
it just kept
jumping out of things that I'm trying to implement
that I I fail every single day at
but it's like the Serenity
prayer and waking up with gratitude and
you know um
we we talked a few times on the podcast about like
it could be raining outside and the
you know the baseball team is saying ah
it's a bad day today
but the farmers been praying for this rain
so I I love that you talked about objectivity
like your your diagnosis
you know was objectively
you know awful
but it's the the mindset around it
and I I mean
I think defining what a good day is as a choice
more than looking as a reflection of
did only good things you know
happen today I think that is the first key to
to implementing this yeah
I mean that is the basis right
because at at the core
good and bad stuff will happen to you
and I say every day but even if it's not every
day you will have bad stuff that happens to you
like hundred percent certain of it
but and actually you know
we can take it even a step further back
and say that bad stuff doesn't actually happen
because we're actually assigning value to that
stuff happens and we decide if it's good or bad
so like I got diagnosed with leukemia
which you know as I said objectively kind of sucked um
but also
was probably one of the best things that ever happened
to me um
that's the day that I decided
I didn't want to be a bankruptcy attorney anymore
that's the day that
set me on a path to a life of ridiculous freedom
you know I um
for people who don't know my story
I was a bankruptcy attorney in Michigan
um when I was diagnosed with leukemia in 2,008
I ended up being forced into personal bankruptcy
so I went from like
in the middle of the Great Recession
doing awesome
because everyone needed to file bankruptcy
and we had money coming in like crazy
I even had a television ad right
like I was like The Better Call Saul of West Michigan
practically or at least on that trajectory
like I was gonna be everywhere
like we had filmed three different TV commercials
and we'd already released one of them
and then all of a sudden I couldn't work
and I had all these advertising contracts and
obligations in the office
and I was
went from making you know
a pretty nice amount of profit
to losing five or six thousand dollars a week overnight
I had another attorney that quit at that time
so I went from 2 attorneys to 0 um
in a in a 2 week period um
he quit gave me his 2 week notice
and I got diagnosed with leukemia a week later
like that's really comically bad timing
like that's like not good at all
um but in reality
that was a red rag
that put me on the path of buying real estate
it put me on a path of
of going from literally bankrupt to retired in like
6 years you know that and
and in the middle of a time
when everyone else was afraid to do anything
I was like I need to figure out how to make money
and I want that money to come in
even if I can't work and I die
because I need to protect my family
and the only thing I could think of was
I need to buy stuff that pays stuff right
so real estate is the thing that made sense to me
and so I started buying real estate in 2,011 and um
using all of my spare time
and energy and cash to do that
and I got to where um by 2,016 right
I was able to quit my corporate job
and never go back to work
and I mean literally bankrupt
to retired in like six years
it's insane
and I would have never done it had I not got leukemia
so I could sit here and be like wow
that leukemia diagnosis was terrible
but in reality it's probably
one of the best things that ever happened to me
because now I just spent the first half
or the first quarter of this year um
traveling you know
I've been to we're as we're recording this
it's April right of 2026
and I have been to the Netherlands Belgium Luxembourg
Tanzania Guatemala
Puerto Rico like five times and
and we're five months into the year
not even five months into the year
and I'm going next month to Ecuador um
I would never have been able to do that
if I was a bankruptcy attorney right now
and I would be way less happy
I'd be like I wouldn't be having bad days
cause I gave up bad days way before that
but I I would be like a marginally fulfilled
you know boring no bad days guy in West Michigan
so before we got started recording
I made the comment
you're probably one of the most free people I know
like you you just alluded to it with
you're constantly traveling
you spend a quarter of your time
or 30% of your time in Puerto Rico
what switch from being a bankruptcy attorney
filing for bankruptcy to becoming free
how did you financially free
how did you set up your life to be able to do that
and what what kind of change there
you know some of it was accident
um when I
um when I went bankrupt
I took a job in Chattanooga
so I moved from Michigan down to Tennessee
um and the job paid OK
but it had a potential for some really big
profit sharing bonuses
and so
I took those profit sharing bonuses to buy real estate
which was great um
and uh
you know stuff was really cheap then
so I I had
but I but I was working a full time job
so I couldn't manage it day to day
so from the very beginning
I always had partners
and I always had third party management
and I always had somebody else handling
the day to day stuff so then when I quit my job
I quickly realized I don't really have anything to do
um and so I went
I went actually um
I went down to my dad's condo in Florida right after I
um
I got a six month Severance and I told my now ex wife
I said you know
hey if I have the same amount of money in the bank
six months from now as I do now
I'm not going back to work
that was literally the whole thing
so I'm like I gotta figure out how to
make my Severance stay the same for
you know that way I don't have to go
back to work and she was like
alright whatever
and I went down to this condo
and I sat down by the pool
and uh
I uh
was talking this you know
Florida retirement folks home and I'm 39 years old
and they're like oh
it's so nice you're visiting your family
and I'm like oh
you know my dad's at work
he's back in uh
Tennessee right now working his job or whatever
you know and they're like
oh so you're just like taking a vacation
I'm like no
I retired and they're like
and these are like you know
80 year old couples and they're like
that doesn't make sense you can't retire
I'm like I don't have a job
I'm not looking for a job
I don't ever plan to look for a job
so I I guess I retired
and it wasn't even really like a decision
it was more like I don't wanna go back to work
I hate working in corporate
you know I have an MBA and a law degree
so I could get that job but I didn't want that job
right and I haven't ever gone back since
you know so it's been so last
it's been wow
yeah it's been 10 years since then
so you in 202026 it was May March 2026
so a decade without a job is pretty good
and then the thing is I didn't I
I got bored in like a week
and so I started doing some other stuff
like syndicating deals and helping people um
by coaching and stuff but I really quickly Learned
I don't like trading time for money
I took the like
I don't know if you guys know MJ Demarco
but he wrote this book called The Millionaire Fastlane
I read that in the first couple of months
after I quit working and um
I wish I read it earlier but the basic concept is like
you know the worst
worst deal we make is trading
five days of our life for two days off
or 50 weeks of our life for two weeks off
and I didn't want to do that anymore
so I've kind of created a life where
I get paid to do stuff I would do anyway
so you know I help people make money
I like that it's fun
I do things like
I have this thing we call the Adventure Club
where we take people to really cool places
around the world and just hang out with them
we just got back from the Serengeti
Tanzania doing like you know
seeing the lions and elephants and all that stuff
we have a really sick trip coming up to Egypt
next year we're gonna see a six and a half minute
total solar eclipse in Luxor
at the temple of the sun
God Ra take a group of like 25 people and and go there
and then I make money doing this stuff
I get a free trip to Egypt and I make money doing it
and I get to hang out with really cool people
cause I don't like broadly advertise it
I mean I might mention it on a podcast or whatever
but it's mostly like business people
real estate people
because the people that are gonna hear about it aren't
like getting a push at
on Facebook
I'm not advertising to like random people on Facebook
you know
I might post it on my personal Facebook but again
my personal following is gonna be leaning towards
people that are doing more
interesting things so it works out really well
we've been having a great time doing that um but yeah
so I don't know um
I don't know if that answers your question or not
but freedom to me
is getting paid to do the things that you'd want to do
anyway
well that's great
and I still am thinking about the diagnosis
it's been something that has come up in multiple books
lately
and the most recent one I read was getting to neutral
and it was I think
it was Russell Wilson's performance coach
that wrote it or something like that
and he was very adamant about not using the C word
and he called it the C word all the time
and he and talked about how when you say the word
it gives it power
and I'm just not gonna acknowledge it
and he went up beating it
you know
eventually passed from other health complications
but um
how how much
through your journey have you Learned
the power of the tongue and
and what you speak can give power to yeah
so um
so I heard a story a long time ago
and I later think it's been debunked
but I I like it so much I'll tell you anyway
so you know the word abracadabra hmm yeah
right so
so a mentor of mine told me and I don't think
like I said I don't think this is accurate
so so if you guys are listening to this
don't say Jeff said this was true
just said it's instructive
so he told me that it came from ancient Aramaic words
abra and kadabra okay
which literally means as I speak it is right
and I started thinking about that
and I did a whole presentation about this
at one point for a mastermind
I used to used to run
I think the video is around on my YouTube channel
somewhere so if people really get creative
they might find it but but
but it I started thinking about that concept of
speaking things into existence
which you know this is not um um
this is not something that I original to me obviously
like you hear this in the self help world all the time
the secret and all this stuff
but I started thinking about it from like
a biblical perspective
not to get like overly religious
but there's a passage in the Bible that says
in the beginning was the word and the word was God
right it's in James uh
our first John I mean
and and so I thought about that a lot and I went
you know there's
there's really a lot of power to words
and so I started thinking about that
and I realized that the reason I don't have bad days is
cause I say I don't have bad days right
so I came up with this whole concept that
sort of an offshoot of this um
concept which is essentially saying that um
we can dilute ourselves into truth like
and I call it hashtag effication
so and I was gonna say to you
you were saying earlier like um
that uh
that that
you have trouble sometimes
sticking with the things that you're doing
like you get up in the morning
and you wanna do the Serenity prayer
or gratitude journaling or something
and you don't do it I think most of the time
it's because we make the stuff too complicated
like it's really easy to have a rule that says
I never have bad days
it's hard to lean into that cause you gotta create a
that mental fortitude
and some of it is like going to the gym
just doing it over and over again
you get better at it but
but another part of it is making it really
really really simple um
James Clear in his book
Atomic Habits talks about habit stacking
like if you're gonna let your dog out anyway
you might as well like get your
you know sun exposure at that point
so go outside without your shirt on and absorb the sun
right like if that's something you wanna do
if your goal is to get more sun exposure
why not do it with something that you're already doing
and stack it together so I think part of it
like that mirror trick that I had is
I'm gonna see mirrors
so I'm gonna stack it as a trigger
I'm gonna say when I look in the mirror
I'm gonna say today's a good day
but I like this idea of mental hashtagification right
so this came from that same concept
no bad days right
if I say no bad days it I wrote a whole book about it
it's clearly more than a sentence
like
we can talk about it for the whole hour and a half
we're on or whatever
but but I also know that if I say no bad days
when something's challenging happening to me
all of that mental framework just kind of populates
right like it happens automatically
so with your gratitude stuff or the Serenity prayer
it's great to do those things
but it's really important to have
a personal self identifying statement
because I think whatever
that self identifying statement that you have is
controls who you are like
I can't have a bad day if I wanted to
I couldn't have a bad day at this point
because my book's called No Bad Days
and I have it tattooed on my arms
in two different languages
you know like
and I'm like
I go to the I go like to the store and and you know
people walk up to me and say hey
do you see they have this sticker over there
it says no bad days you know
like I have like not that I'm like super famous
but people are buying me stuff
and sending me stuff that say
no bad days on all the time
so like if I like
and please don't send me any of that
just so y'all know like
I don't need any more like I give this stuff away
I have no bad day
coffee mugs and magnets and license plates and
and it's cool and I do appreciate it
but the point is like
I've fully identified myself with that concept
and so I think that like
how we identify ourselves matters
almost more than the words
we speak'cause it's internal
there's a um
definition of integrity that I like
and I feel like I'm in lecture mode
so you guys feel free to interrupt anytime
but this definition of integrity that I like
is that you're fully aligned in integrity
when your words
your thoughts and your actions are the same right
so if you're thinking oh man
today sucks but you're saying today is a good day um
probably not living in integrity right
or if you're acting as if the day is a bad day and and
and the thing is
the negative tends to overpower the positive
so you you really need to focus on whatever
one of those things is out of line
and get it back in line
because if you start acting as if the day is bad
you start thinking the day is bad
you start saying the day is bad
but what were the three things
can you repeat the definition
yeah so
the definition of integrity to me
is when your inner thoughts
your words and your actions are aligned
and and I think the good part about that is
they tend to align to themselves
so if you say today's a good day enough
then you start thinking today's a good day
you start acting as if today's a good day
and then it becomes a good day
and it's the same thing with gratitude
it's the same thing with hey
I'm a successful real estate investor
it's the fake it till you make it thing right
doesn't matter if it's true
if you believe it long enough
and you act as if it's true long enough
it becomes true so so there's two concepts here
1 the word has real power right
the word is God in in the definition of the Bible right
and and God is the word
so there's and we're and
and if you believe like I do
we're made in God's image
we get to
we get to speak things into existence just like he does
not not with as much power obviously
but but we get that because it's
we're an extension of him and um
and then the second part is that
we convince ourselves of something enough
then we act as if it's true
and if you act in a certain way
then that's what your results are gonna be
if you do all the things that Elon Musk did
his entire life you become the richest man in the world
it just happens right
like I mean
obviously you can't perfectly emulate anyone
but but the point is still the same
if you do the things that if you
it's like Jim Rohn's quote
like you're the average of the five people
you hang out with the most
you go hang out with drunk smokers all day long
you become a drunk smoker
cause that's
you're just gonna do the things that are around
and it's the same with with
with anything if we do
if we act as a drunk smoker
we become a drunk smoker
but if we act like a real estate investor
we hang out with real estate investors all the time
then we become real estate investors
and and I think that's true of every concept in life
yeah I
I love what you said there
cause you are I'm going back to biblical words
but in the beginning God created
so you are creating your own reality by
first you think it then you say it
and then your actions become it
so I I think that's really great
uh it kind of brings your whole thing full circle
yeah and I do believe that like
if you ask me I would say
we're all very powerful creators of our own existence
because we get to choose how we
respond to the things that happen to us
we can't control everything that happens to us
but by choosing how we respond to things
we have um
a whole
infinite array of opportunity that we wouldn't have
otherwise and
and you know
there's another thing with opportunity
people always say opportunity knocks
but that that's bullshit
excuse my language it's just not true
opportunity doesn't knock
it's there
it's just waiting for you to like open the door
like grab and hold the handle and open the door
there's opportunity everywhere right now
you can make money in real estate
you can make money in in um stocks
you can make money in AI
you can make money selling coffee on the street corner
I don't care there's so many opportunities
but it's not just about making money
the some of the best opportunities in our life are
meeting the right person having a
a fulfilling romantic Mark
relationship or partnership
with someone that matters to you um
raising children
traveling and experiencing other cultures
all of these opportunities are available to everyone
and we only get this one life right
and and
and I really believe this
I believe that we owe it to not only ourselves
but to our friends our family
our community and even really the entire world
to live the best possible version of our life
because whatever I was put here to do
if I don't do it no one can do it for me
so
if I don't do the things that I'm feeling called to do
I'm being selfish
I'm not giving the world what they deserve
so I have this recent calling
I called the Billion Good Days Project
and I've been kind of slack and lazy on it and
and the
idea is to create a billion good days in my lifetime
so like if I I'm not gonna live a billion days more
I mean I hope I do
but it's unlikely right
uh most people live about 80
90,000 days in their lifetime um
but but if
if if I can find a billion people
and I can have each one of them have one good day
that they wouldn't have had
I've created a billion good days and the
and the ripple effect of that is amazing
but it doesn't have to be a billion people
it can be a million people with 1,000 good days
if you guys both give up good days or bad days today
right and then you live another 30,000 days each
I think I can claim you know
I I create helped create co created 60,000 good days
so do that I need your days
I think
I think you need an app to track all this just to yeah
I know and I've been working on that actually um
and I have a website I'm developing now too
but I've been like I said
I've been slack on it
because I wasn't sure how to track it
and I think it needs to be kind of self reported
you know like
I think people need to like
we need to create a community
to report the good days that people are having and
and and like a pledge
like I decide to give up bad days today
and then you know
and then you can report back if you if you fail
cause you will fail I mean
like don't get me wrong
like if you decide today to give up bad days
tomorrow might still be a bad day
it does take some mental fortitude to get to that
it doesn't have to be you
you know you can do it
but but it might take you three weeks to get on the
on track you know
or something like that just
just banging your head into the no bad days philosophy
until you have no choice but to live it um
and I think that's um
I think this would be really cool
and I envision it like old school
McDonald's hamburger counter
you know I have a sign on the website
it's like a billion good days
you know it's like B
G d or something and then
and then like a fake golden arch with like a
you know a billion hamburgers served
it's like you know
700,000 good days and counting
now that's awesome I
I'm visualizing an a website where
you know you just have a thumbs up and thumbs down
how was today and when you go to the thumbs down the
the button moves oh yeah
we could do it with like a push notification
we could do it with a push notification on an app too
right like people like once a day it just says how was
how was yesterday thumbs up thumbs down
I like it well
and one of the things that you said was
was on my mind about fake it till you make it
and so I wanted to ask
what do you think is the balance
between fake it till you make it
and be your future self now
yeah I mean
the concepts are obviously pretty similar right
um and I think um
so if you're really I I'd like
be your future self now better in a lot of ways
because like faking it implies that it's not true
um I think it just it's helpful
like from a mental construct
to use the terms fake it till you make it
because it's really like saying hey
go act as if and if you act as if long enough
it becomes true right um
it's not really faking it because
you know if you get up every day and go to the gym
you're not faking a healthy lifestyle
you're just not healthy yet
cause you just started yesterday right
you're actually doing healthy things
so I
I don't know if fake it till you make it is really fair
but but being your future self now also isn't 100% fair
right
you can act as if you've accomplished a bunch of stuff
and in both cases
it can go horribly right or horribly wrong
you know if you um
say hey
I'm a billionaire and so you call up some jet company
and charter a private jet to take you to Hawaii um
so that you can have breakfast on the beach
and then you take the jet back and
you know
and then you decide to go to Paris for the weekend
and you're putting this on your credit card because
you know it's no big deal
cause you're a billionaire in your mind
you know
you're acting as your future self as a billionaire cool
except for you're gonna be bankrupt in like 3 days
you know like unless you actually are a billionaire
that doesn't work
so there's always the risk that you take it too far
right you don't want to get into this
keep up with the Joneses stuff
where you're wasting a bunch of money look
I travel a lot but I didn't travel 100 days a year um
when I was one year into um
retirement even
I didn't have the resources to do it
I had to still work I was retired but working right
like it's fake
like but
but I was acting as if I was retired
I was I was um
being my future self right
but I was still doing things that produced income
now I'll be honest
for the last couple years
I didn't do a lot of stuff that produced income um
and and that's very unfulfilling
so I got back to doing things that I think are cool
um and I believe that um
we get to construct our life however we want
it's back to the powerful creator of your own existence
right um
and I think that there's a lot of wisdom to
just figuring out who
where you wanna go and act as that person
but just be cautious about
you know taking it too far
so Jeff someone's listening
they said you said you hadn't worked in 10 years
but now you're saying that you produce income
what is the difference
well like I was saying earlier
if you're getting paid to do stuff you would do anyway
like so I wrote the book
no Bad Days didn't make any money
but I would write another book
in fact I am writing another book called
The Extraordinary Life Formula
and I'm writing another book about my experience
cause the no Bad Days book is really a memoir
it's like my life told as a series of life lessons
up until right around the time of Covid
now it's been you know
six years since then and um
and uh
and and that was a coincidence
I just happened to finish it before Covid
it wasn't like a oh
I know Covid's coming
so I'm gonna write a book about pre covid
and post covid or whatever
but but the point is
I've had a lot of life experience since then
and so I'll probably write another memoir
a follow up book um
and I don't care if I make money on those things
right now if I happen to make money on them
that's cool and I kind of felt the same way like um
when I was setting up apartment building deals
like
we were syndicating apartment buildings for a while
it was like I think it would just be really fun
to own an apartment building
like I remember like talk about
talk about like um
self actualization manifestation
stuff like that
I would drive on my way to work every day
down this one street in Chattanooga
and they were building an apartment building
and I would say to my my now ex wife
once in a while I'd say hey
someday I wanna own something like that
I didn't own any apartments
we had about 20 single family homes
I was like someday I wanna own something like that
and I would point at this specific apartment building
over and over again when I quit working my um
partner from old fashioned real estate
Brian called me up one day and he said
hey I have this apartment building under contract
do you want to take a look at it with me
maybe we can raise some money and buy it
and I go sure
and he sent me this email
and it was that exact apartment building
like the one that I was driving by every day going
someday I want to own something like that
I ended up buying it
owning that exact freaking apartment building
like how wild is that right
like that's just nonsense
I didn't go look for it
it like literally fell into my lap
so I know there's truth to this stuff
but the thing is opportunities there
like I said and it's about grabbing it
so like
that's why I started writing the Extraordinary Life
Formula book
which the super short version of that is
inspired thought
plus the right action equals extraordinary life
and extraordinary is really an extraordinary word
it's really two words extra and ordinary
so if you're living like an ordinary life
and you do just a little bit extra
then you get extraordinary
and extra is exponential thought
E x right
from extra and then t E x t exponential thought
and then the right action is the second part of it
so once you have like a big thought um
and then you take the right action towards it
that's the little bit extra
that creates extraordinary life and uh
and when combine that with like no bad days
and the belief that we have no choice
but to live the best version of our life possible
it gives you a framework for living your entire life
and that's what I just keep trying to do
and and as a result of that
I end up doing really crazy things
like building sailboats in Puerto Rico
and having my own cigar line and
you know just stuff that I think is really fun
and then it turns out it makes money and how so
how much of this do you think
is rooted in just being content with what you have
because everything that you talk about
it's not like a like I I felt this lack
and so I had to go out and make more money
in this desperation but instead
just enjoyment for
the fulfillment that you're getting
out of the activities and
and how important do you think it is
to just be comfortable and happy with what you have
no matter what level you're at
I'm really glad you asked that question actually
because um
before we were recording
we talked about a word that I love called Autotelic
and autotelic is from the Greek
it means like like auto
like self
like autobiography means you wrote it about yourself
right
so auto means self and telic comes from the word tellus
which is the action so this is literally self action um
what autotelic really means is um
doing something for the sake of doing it
that's really what it means
and I believe that
the most interesting people in the world
the people that do the coolest stuff
do it because it's cool no other reason
they do it because it sounds fun
and they just want to do it and and
and if they make money at it
that's cool you know like I don't believe guys like um
you know that that wrote famous books like Hemingway
who crashed two separate planes in Africa and like
you know was fishing from Cuba all the time
I don't believe that a guy like that did those things
cause it made good stories to write in a book
he wrote the books because he liked writing books right
he needed to pay for his life somehow
but he did those things because they were fun
because he enjoyed them
he did them for the purpose of doing them themselves
and that's literally what Autotelic means
is something that's done for the purpose of doing it
and I love this
concept and that's kind of what you're asking about
it's like
how much of it is just for the enjoyment of it itself
and the answer is ideally all of it is for that reason
the more in my opinion the more autotelic you can be
the
the more interesting and fulfilling your life becomes
because I think that like
if we accept that we were created for a certain purpose
if we follow the things that are interesting to us
then we're we're working aligned in our own purpose
especially if we get that definition of integrity right
so that we're not overriding our inner thoughts
you know if you're having like um
I'll be super extreme
if you're like sitting around all day thinking about
like how you wanna travel the world
and then you're talking to other people about
you know how great it is to be a farmer
you're not gonna feel aligned right
like you're just not gonna be happy um
but but you you
so you've got to figure out how to get into alignment
and you know
there's um
there's all kinds of ancient wisdom about this
you know you have the Japanese concept of
of finding the place where
where your passion and what you can get paid for
and what you're good at all
all intersect right
have you seen that
like that Venn diagram thing that they do
like that
it has some Japanese name that I'm not even gonna
attempt to pronounce it starts with an I but
but but these concepts are all the same right
um we gotta figure out um
what it is that we're called to do
what it is that's fulfilling to us
and then
figure out how we can get paid to do those things
hmm
so how do you structure your day around that
what what
what does your life look like based on that philosophy
yeah well
um
the last few years I haven't I've
I've just like I've had tons of
more freedom than I ever had in my life
and that actually takes a lot of discipline
cause it's really easy to just like be like
I'm gonna go smoke a cigar
and drink some Bourbon at 2 in the afternoon
and you can do that once in a while
but you can't do that every day or you don't
you lose your productivity you lose your edge right
um but for me it's uh
making sure I always have something on the horizon
that I'm excited about and
and that keeps me motivated to do stuff um
so you know
the Adventure Club stuff is really big
like right now
planning my Egypt trip is like huge for me
so I'm spending a lot of time talking to like
you know people in Egypt
and I have a friend who's an Egyptologist
that we're taking with us
and so
I spent a lot of time just dealing with that right now
but once that's done
I'll have something else that I'm interested in doing
and and that motivates
me to keep focused on the things that are important um
and then the other thing is
to create artificial structure um
is really useful
and that can be something as simple as
I always go for a walk at
you know 9 in the morning
it doesn't matter what it is
but it can also be like
I have a recurring meeting and I do have this
I have a recurring accountability
meeting at noon on Mondays
and I'm always there
cause I lead the meeting and I don't have a choice
I gotta be there so I have a small group of people
I I show up I
you know
once in a while I might be on a plane or something
we'll have someone fill in but
but like that's
that's really important to create that structure
cause if I don't do those things
then I run the risk of not doing anything
and I've had periods of time where like
I'm like oh
I'm gonna spend this time writing
and then I go to a beach somewhere
where I think I'm gonna write
and I just don't write you know
so like it's not a perfect system
but I
I think when you have the flexibility to be able to
just chill or just travel or
or work on a project it's really useful and
and and it doesn't even have to be
something that makes you money right
it doesn't even have to be like something productive
like for a while I was writing a lot of poetry
I don't expect I'll ever make any money on that
although I did sell one poem
which was kind of fun I made five bucks or something
it wasn't a lot but
but it was cool
cause like they put in a magazine and stuff
you know it's like
that's pretty cool again
I got paid to get my poem in a magazine
but um
but like another thing is like
uh when I was planning on climbing Mount Kilimanjaro
I spent a lot more time like hiking right
cause I need to get ready for it
and so like just having that goal
I wanna be able to climb Kilimanjaro
forced me to like change my priorities
and so lately I've been thinking about doing um
the Camino Santiago do you know the Camino Santiago
so I've heard of it I don't know exactly what it is
so it's like a it's like a thousand kilometer
700 mile hike across rural Spain
the northern part of Spain
it goes from the French border to um
Santiago in Spain um
and it's like a Catholic pilgrimage
I'm not Catholic but um
I kind of feel like I wanna learn more Spanish
I wanna get healthier um
and I um
and I like adventure and you know
I want to work on my own spirituality
so I feel like going on a long walk across rural Spain
seems like it checks a lot of boxes for me
so like I'm thinking like
how do I find a month to do this
it's a month long process
and a lot of people don't have that flexibility
but like if I wanna take a month
I can take a month to do this and I
I will do it in the next year
I just gotta figure out what month I'm gonna go
and there's weather constraints and whatever
but like part of it is like
just knowing that I wanna do that
is already motivating me like yesterday I was like oh
I don't feel like doing anything and I'm like
oh man I don't have very many steps today
I better go for a walk you know'cause
'cause I know
if I want to walk 15 miles a day for a month straight
I need to be able to walk 15 miles a day
for one day straight
and I'm not walking 15 miles every day
so I need to like um
you know start putting some time aside for that
now the good part about it is it's
you know relatively flat
it's relatively easy and 15 miles sounds like a lot
but you know if you walk two miles an hour
which is pretty slow um
it's seven and a half hours and if you don't
have anything else to do
it's just about putting one foot in front of the other
and just keep moving right
um so it's possible
uh to do that and I started thinking about that and um
and that's the same philosophy
that I use in a lot of stuff in life
I call it 10 more feet
it's like when you're really struggling
don't worry about
how do you get to the top of the mountain
just walk 10 more feet and then figure it out
just keep doing 10 more feet over and over again
eventually you get to where you're going and um
and so I wrote a piece on that actually
and stuck it in the back of my no Bad Days book
so if people want to read about that
read about climbing Kilimanjaro at the
as an appendix to my book
which I threw in at the after I wrote the book
so doesn't really fit in it's good though stuff
so how do you find all these things to do
I mean kill Majora
I know you went to uh
I wanna say Alaska Antarctica
yeah well
I've been to both how do you find all these things
yeah um
part of it is just having really
you know good goals like um
so one goal I have is called the 50
50 57 goal it's 50 states
50 countries seven continents before I turn fifty
um and so I'm turning 48 next week
I've got two more years I've got the States done
I've got the continents done
I need seven more countries
so I had two years to go to seven countries
so now I have this this timeline on this goal right
it's kind of like smart goals
you know it's specific time bound attainable measured
you know that kind of stuff right
whatever that I just butchered their acronym
but you get the idea like
it's like
if you have goals that have deadlines on them
then then that does kind of force you to think through
but if you go back to the extraordinary life formula
where the first question was exponential thought right
that's the first part of the formula
and I have like a sub routine for that
and I I ask myself these questions almost every day
and I think these are really valuable
I call them empowering questions
there are obviously a whole
series of them that you could ask
but the two that I like the most are
when is the last time you did something
for the first time
I love this question
when is the last time you did something
for the first time
and then the second is a follow up question
which is how you get the action part of it
and that is what can you do right now
or this week or today for the first time
like so
when's the last time you did something for
the first time and then what can I do right now
that that I haven't done before
if you if you ask yourself questions like that
and then you surround yourself
with people doing cool stuff
I have friends who travel a lot more than me
I know
that sounds crazy when you hear how much I travel
but then I have friends
I have one friend who has been to 89 countries
and he's never been to Europe
think about that for a second
that's so long freaking hard
like he went to Europe last year for the first time
so that is actually his 89th country with Spain
and I was like man bro
like you kind of waited on Europe and he's like yeah
well
I figured I'd get the hard ones out of the way first
it's been to every country in the western Hemisphere
except for one like
you know just crazy stuff like that right
I was just gonna say that too
cause I mean to get your
your last nine countries or whatever you need
or you said I think there's seven more
I know seven more 7 more that's a day trip in Europe
I mean you land in Germany and you go on a road trip
I mean
people think they don't realize how small Europe is
yeah well
the the problem is when you get to um
40 countries or whatever
you kind of hit the ones that are like
the easy ones already on accident
you know like
like so I went
I said that earlier this year I was in Luxembourg um
I went to Luxembourg specifically because I was
I have a friend who has a place in Rotterdam
and Rotterdam in the Netherlands is where they do the
um Dutch national fireworks for New Year's
so I went to New Year's in Rotterdam this year
just
cause I thought it'd be fun to hang out in Rotterdam
I never really hung out there and I'm like
well I'm here anyway
I might as well go to a new country
so I'm looking at the map and I'm like
where can I go so I ended up in Luxembourg
but the point is like I had to pass through
you know Belgium to get there
not because I mean
I stopped in Belgium too while I was there
we spent a couple days in Antwerp
which is a really cool town but um
but
but the point is still the same like it becomes harder
like it's not like
I can just drop myself in France and be like
oh I'm gonna go to seven countries real quick a second
because all the countries around France
I've already been to you know like
like I mean yes
I could go to like Macedonia or something and like
hit some stuff over there that I haven't hit um
and and and I mean
in reality
seven countries seems like a lot for most people
but I go to more than seven countries every year
so I'm not super worried about it
I'm pretty confident I'm gonna hit it um
you know I'm going to Ecuador next month
that'll be 44 so then I'll have six more
and I'll have just about two years
it's three a year I think it'll be fine
but I have to pick them carefully
now you know
when I first started counting out countries
it was like oh
I'm gonna go on a cruise
and I'm gonna stop at four countries
now if I went on a cruise in the Caribbean
I would be stopping at four countries
but there four I've already been to
you know and uh and that's fine and um
I also I'm like picky about what I count
so like I only count UN recognized countries
like I don't count like you know
like if I go to Aruba
technically that's part of the Netherlands
so that doesn't count as a new country
that's fine but like that's just my own random rule
I mean went to Bermuda last year
I thought Bermuda was a new country
and I was like really excited about it
and I put it on my list and I told one of my friends
hey I put Bermuda on my list
I'm at I'm at 44 now and he was like
Bermuda's part of Great Britain and I was like what
and then I went
and looked it up and it is and I was like
dang it all you know
so like I don't regret going to Bermuda though
I didn't go there to check off the country honestly
that's the other thing about it is like
it's easy to like create these kind of goals
and then have them be obsessive
like if I was obsessive about it
I would have been done a long time ago
I went to Tanzania four times in the last five years
I went to Egypt five times in the last 10 years
or 12 or 15 years something like that
and I've gone to Puerto Rico like piles of times
of course
Puerto Rico is part of the US not a separate country
but
but the point is I go back to places I love and then
you know
if I have a chance I go pick up another country
you know that while I'm there
and I think
I'll probably try to make something in North Africa
my 50th country like maybe Morocco
cause I haven't been to Morocco before um
but but I'm not really sure yet um
but I have two years and I'm gonna
I might try to get it done this year though
just to be safe you know
like give myself a buffer year
you don't wanna get sick or something or
or find out that one of the countries you tracked
it belongs to someone else yeah yeah
I'm pretty confident in my list now I um
I actually ran it through AI after that
cause I was like wait
did I miss anything
like like a couple different times
and then I pulled the UN country list and I was like
yeah uh
yep you were wrong about Bermuda
but the rest of them you're good
so so what
uh out of all those countries
which one has been your favorite
obviously you name listed a couple that you go back to
and why is it your favorite huh
um you know
that's really so that's really complicated
I mean honestly
my favorite place in the world is still Puerto Rico
that's why I go there 100 days a year
um I love Puerto Rico
the culture is fascinating
but like if we're talking about like
actual separate countries from the US um
I do really love Tanzania and Egypt
which is why I go back to them somewhat frequently
uh if I had to pick between the two um
and by the way Australia is a close third in there too
I really like Australia
even though I've only been there a couple times
it's just a really cool place
it's just so hard to get there
you know so far away
um
what I what I like about
about Egypt is the history
and also it's like the first really crazy place I went
like I mean I was 21 and I
or maybe 22
and I spent five weeks in Cairo studying Arabic um
and like you know
just touring the country and I made really good friends
and so I would go back and see the same families
over and over again and
and there's just so much history and culture in Egypt
that's really fascinating
um and I think that
it's just really interesting to be there
so that's why I like going back
but I also like miss it if I'm gone
but I feel the same way about Tanzania
for different reasons
the people in Tanzania are so nice um
and the wildlife is so spectacular
you know
there's a place called Ngorongoro Crater in Tanzania
that might be the most beautiful place in the world
it's a um
I think it's about 30 miles across a volcanic caldera
um and it's pretty deep um
several hundred feet deep and you drive down into it
um and it's like a self contained ecosystem with um
um all of the big five
you know it has rhinos and elephants and
and the buffalo and you know
and so you have this
like bizarre situation with lions and
and everything
like just all sort of stuck in this crater
and it's like going into the lost world
you know it's like
like I really it's very surreal and it's very beautiful
and then you have the wildebeest migration which
you know if you've seen that on TV is like the wild
like 2 million wildebeest traveling in a single herd
which is I've seen it twice now in four trips
and it's like
I could go see that every time and be happy
so yeah so one of those two is probably the place
but the thing is I love um
getting to know a place more than a specific place
you know like that's what I love about Puerto Rico
it's not that Puerto Rico is better than Tanzania
or Egypt it's that I've gone there so much
that I feel at home there
and it's like I have friends there
and when when my plane goes to land
and I see the island for the first time
it always makes me feel happy
you know like every time I land there I'm like
oh thank God I'm back in Puerto Rico
and I feel the same way when I touch down in Egypt
or Tanzania but honestly
I feel that way whenever I go somewhere new also
or I go somewhere that I've been before and I love um
and so I'm always if I'm chasing anything in life
I'm chasing like the excitement of of
of getting to really understand what's going on in a
in a in a new and interesting place
so what is it about those places
is it the culture is it the animals
the scenery the history
what is it all of it what what drives you there
well um
you know the thing is the places that I really love
I wanna share with other people
and I think what drives me
there is this belief that I should
I should
live my life in a way that inspires other people
so like I'll go to Tanzania and someone will be like
wow once in a lifetime trip
and I'll be like hmm no
I go to Tanzania once a year
you know like
you know that's what I do now
it might be once in a lifetime for you
but it doesn't have to be right
so part of what I do is is
is because I feel called to do it but
but another part of it is I
I just like experiencing new and different things
so yes culture is part of it
if I go to Egypt I don't read Arabic I
I don't speak very much Arabic
but at least
I can understand a few words here and there
but like I don't read squiggly lines
like I don't know what it is
like I
I I can't tell a hospital from
you know from a fast food restaurant
other than by looking in the window
and seeing if they're doing surgery
or making burgers right
like you know like
like if it's in Arabic I can't tell what it is
and I think there's something exciting and and
and um
difficult about that
that makes your life more interesting
and if I'm chasing anything in my life um
you know
we we talked briefly about self identifying statements
and I'm I
you know I
I did for a long time
consider myself the no bad days guy
and that that's that's how I identified myself
but but later I changed it to um
I'm living as if I'm the most
interesting man in the world
like the DOS Equis thing
and I framed questions through myself like
like what would the most interesting man do right now
and and I've lived my life that way
long enough that sometimes people walk up to me and
and they they
they say oh
I wanna introduce you to my friend and they'll say like
this is the most interesting person I know
you should meet him and I'm like
thank God
like I'm living my life exactly how I want it to be
so
like my self identifying statement for myself is like
I'm the most interesting man in the world
and I know it's not literally true
but it doesn't have to be
it's it's about living as if right
like what we were talking about earlier
and I think
some of my passion for travel comes from that because
you know what the most interesting man in the world
has more than one place he lives
and he goes to Tanzania five times a year
or something stupid like that
you know I don't actually go five times a year
although who knows I might soon
I have a friend there
that
would really like me to spend a lot more time with her
so it might happen who knows
it's funny everything that you're saying about
you know the alignment in your thoughts and your the
you know words you're speaking
and your actions and all that stuff
I I
I just keep thinking that
your next book needs to be called
Gaslight yourself
I think that that will blow up yeah interesting
um yeah
so I mean like I said
I'm writing two books right now kind of simultaneously
one is the Extraordinary Life Formula book
which I'm really happy with how it's turning out
but I kind of got distracted on it
cause this is
the problem with not having structure in your life
is you can like
get halfway done with something and then go oh
you know what I should build an AI agent
that'll be fun and then like
you build an AI agent and then you're like
oh I should start traveling more or whatever but
but that the Extraordinary Life Book is gonna be out
probably next year sometime
and that that one's gonna be really good
um but gaslight yourself
that's interesting I was actually leaning towards um uh
hashtag effication as the name of the next book
but uh
we'll see um
I I do think it's like um
there's there is some truth that just like
you know I'm sorry
somebody's like
WhatsApp in the crap out of me right now
that's how you blowing up
yeah I don't normally you know honestly I I I um
forget that I have WhatsApp on my computer
I never used WhatsApp on my computer um
but lately I've been doing so many like
video calls on WhatsApp
that it's just easier to have it on my computer
so I forgot to mute it so sorry about that guys like um
and it's the same person sending me two word text
you know they're like hey
how are you what's up
like him like and it's actually the
one of the guys I know from Egypt
so he probably just like woke up and was like
oh I should start talking to him right now
he heard you talking about him hahaha yeah yeah
well he's an Egyptologist
and I've known his family for more than 20 years
actually I met his uncle back in 2,001
um and he has a doctor this
this guy Omar has a doctor of Egyptology
and he's actually um uh
weirdly focused on sun based religions
that's like one of his things
and he's the one that's gonna
come to the solar eclipse
with us in Egypt
so it's freaking wild it's gonna be one of the most uh
it's a once in a civilization experience
you guys should come actually
I've like seven spots left
so let me know if you want one
I'll I'll get you the info
hey I I would be uh
interested for sure how
you've talked about traveling all these places
obviously you say you don't speak Arabic culture
uh communication becomes an issue
how do you navigate all of that
especially spending as much time as you do overseas
yeah well
so I mean
I do try to learn a little bit of their language right
so um
you know at least please and thank you
and where's the bathroom and stuff like this
um I try to do that whenever possible
my Swahili is not very good
but you know
I'm trying so
you know get that
but uh
but you know
it's easier now than it's ever been
because if you have the right phone plan
you can have data anywhere in the world practically
and you can use Google Translate
so it's not difficult but also if you make friends
um with people that speak your language
that helps so like Omar that was just texting me
like he speaks English so I don't need to speak Arabic
I can talk to him
and he can make sure I get what I need and whatever
um but I've been studying Spanish
so like I've been going to Puerto Rico now
for about four years maybe
I mean I've been going for like 25 years but
but like I've been like
I had an apartment there for the last four years
I rented one for three and I bought one a year ago
um a condo
on the beach and it's like freaking beautiful actually
it's really nice and I I wanna be there more honestly
but um I thought if I'm gonna be in Puerto Rico a lot
in last year when I bought the condo
I started studying Spanish um
first I did Duolingo for a couple years before that
and it didn't really help that much
but then I hired a one on one tutor online
and I do like three hours a week with her
so like my Spanish is getting passable
you know I can I
Puerto Ricans speak so fast that like
it's hard for me to keep up with Puerto Ricans but um
I went to Guatemala um a month and a half ago or so
and had long conversations with Uber drivers
and had no problems
so obviously I know some Spanish now
I just can't speak Puerto Rican Spanish quite yet
but we'll get there
they're so fast and they drop a lot of letters
and mash their words together
and it's hard to understand them
but
but it definitely helps to learn some of the language
but I like I said
I think it's less and less relevant you know
in tourist areas
I almost always find someone that speaks English
English is um ironically the the lingua franca
you know like
they used to say that
French was the language that you had to know
if you want to travel the world
but now it's really English
like most most places you can find an English speaker
so
so I mean you talked about the doing something new as
as you get more in practice of that what
what kinds of things have you been finding to
to be the new skill or you know
other than just languages
yeah I mean um
lately I've been really geeking out on AI
I think AI is really fascinating
the world's changing really fast
um so I've done things like
build my own AI bots and stuff like that um
and and I just
I again I haven't really monetized it
I haven't like sold anything regarding it um
but like I'm
I can like I'm coding apps and stuff for my own use
like I have a country tracking app on my computer now
it's like I just did it to see if I could do it
you know things like that
it's not even like it's just a local app but um
but I'm not a coder like I'm using AI to do this stuff
and it's really fascinating
and I find that really interesting
um but I'm always like um
trying to inspire myself by reading
usually
autobiographies of people that did really cool stuff um
that's like to me that's really useful
but also biographies of people um
you know I recently
read three different biographies about Ben Franklin
I read one about Mark Twain
I actually find um
speaking of Mark Twain I think people who write um
for a living are usually really interesting
so I I really like reading autobiographies of authors
like even if it's an author I don't care about
like I read James Patterson's autobiography recently
and it was fascinating like
the type of person that makes a living by writing books
even apparently drivel books
like James Patterson writes um
is still living a really interesting life
and I find the same about actors and actresses actually
um because people that have a lot of time freedom
but are ambitious you know
like an actor will work
they'll finish a movie and then they'll have
you know seven months off before their next project
but they're now
they have resources and they're obviously ambitious
or they wanna become a successful actor
cause it does take a lot of work
to me it's not like a random magic trick
you just get discovered right
you work your butt off um
in most cases I'm sure there's exceptions
but they tend to be doing really interesting stuff
like Matthew Mcconaughey's book was amazing
like right
I mean everyone knows that The Green Light's book
like everyone was like wow
this is great but Matthew Mcconaughey is the rule
not the exception Bryan Cranston's book
a life in parts is fascinating
like it's a really good book
Ryan Kranston's the you know
the guy from um
what is it Breaking Bad right
like the the
the guy who's in Breaking Bad and um
you know and
and it's true of like every one of those like James A
Michener who used to write these really long novels
like Hawaii and the Caribbean and stuff
um and he
he died in the early 90s
but he was super popular in the 80s and the late 70s
um his book
The World Is My Home is like life changing
and no one read it cause people wanna read his novels
they didn't wanna read his autobiography
but like you guys should go read it
and Michael Crichton um
who wrote you know
Jurassic Park and all this stuff um
fascinating guy Harvard trained medical doctor
um but never practiced medicine
I mean that's weird in and of itself right
um he's the only guy ever to have the No.
1 best selling book on the New York Times list
the No. 1 TV show
and the No. 1 movie all at the same time
that's fascinating right
like like he created er like
like the impact of somebody like that is fascinating
but but his book isn't about oh
I wrote Jurassic Park
it's about like learning to scuba dive in Fiji and like
you know and almost getting eaten by a shark and like
you know exploring like Southeast Asia in the 70s right
you know just like crazy stuff
and like I read his book travels
which is fascinating some of it
I think is really weird and like super New Agey
like strange stuff
but the book itself is fascinating and
and I knew and then I read it again
several years later and realized that it inspired me
Kreiten climbed Kilimanjaro
Kreiten became a scuba diver
what do I do I love scuba diving
and I climbed Kilimanjaro
and I realized I might have never done either of those
had I not been inspired by Michael Crichton
so is Michael Crichton
the most important mentor in my life
no he's dead
I never met him like I'm obviously not going to now um
but but you can be inspired by all kinds of things
listening to a podcast
hearing me talk about scuba diving
might make you decide to try scuba diving
I think you should
it's a great time if you don't like it
you're dumb I don't know um ha ha ha you do like right
and then the other thing I do is I keep a curated list
I call the hundred things list
and it's like a life list
it's not a bucket list
because it's never intended to be finished
it's not like I'm gonna do these things before I die
and in fact right now I have 86 things on the list
sometimes I have 90 sometimes I have 70
but like when I cross something off
I try to put something back on
I try to keep it as close to 100 as possible
and sometimes it's like you know really
crazy stuff that I might never accomplish
like the No. 1 thing on the list
not that they're prioritizing that order
but the first thing I wrote down is go to space
I have not been to space I hope someday to go to space
like if I have the opportunity
I'm going to take it
because I think that would be really cool
but like if I don't it's not like my life sucked
you know like
but but having 100 things on the list means it's okay
if I don't accomplish that one
another one on the list
it's not always like travel related
another one on the list is to live long enough
to have a real
meaningful relationship with my grandchildren well
I don't have any children and I'm like nearly 50
so like what do you think
the odds of living long
enough to have a meaningful
relationship with my grandchildren is
pretty small
but I'm not gonna take it off the list cause you know
it's a cool aspirational thing
it might cause me to decide to be healthier
or maybe it will decide me to
to find someone that wants to have kids
and see if I can live long
enough to have a relationship with my grandkids
you know like who knows
and um
you know I I have
you know a whole bunch of things on there
and some of them are big things like that
and some of them are really small things
like I was on a plane a few years ago
and I was telling this
young lady that was sitting next to me
because we were stuck on the like
runway for a long time in first class
and we were drinking and so we were talking about um
we were talking about my hundred things list
for some reason and I showed it to her
and I had about 80 things on the list then
and she goes you need to add um
the butterfish at Roy's in Honolulu to this list
and I'm like why
she's like it's really good
it's the best fish I've ever had
you need to put it on the list
and I'm like you know
whatever I got room
I'll throw it on there right
so couple years later um in um Singapore
right I'm hanging out in Singapore at a cigar lounge
I'm talking to this guy um
Sanjeev Chopra who's Deepak Chopra's younger brother
right so
and Sanjeev is a Harvard trained
um uh hepatologist
he's a liver expert right
he's one of the world's foremost liver experts
and I'm sitting there and I get a phone call
hey can you come to Maui
and I'm like it's Brandon Turner right
he wants me to come to Maui and film his podcast
and I was like sure
when it's like a week and a half from now
because somebody cancelled
and I'm like alright yeah
why not I'll go to Maui
why not I'll do it
I'm in Singapore I'm like halfway to Maui anyway
like I'm not anywhere close right
so I buy a ticket from Singapore
I have a layover in Seoul
and I end up in Honolulu
for one night before flying to Maui
and I called a friend of mine
I said I'm gonna be in Honolulu for one night
we should meet up and he's like cool
what do you wanna do
I said I wanna go get butterfish at Royce right
so I go and have this fish and you know what
it was pretty good although in fairness
he had like
a swordfish
that I thought was way better than my butterfish
so I I disagree with her assessment
but the thing is
I had this beautiful experience that I would never had
because it was on my list and um
I might not have even thought to call anyone and go
I would have probably just been like
well I'm only in Honolulu for a day
I'm just gonna like
chill out at the hotel and like walk around and leave
but I had it on my list so
it's a very long answer to your question
about how you can be inspired to try new things
but um it's just about exposing yourself to ideas
and if you do that
you do new things and some of them are really
really small sometimes you just drive a different way
to work honestly like
just take a different route to your office
and see something you didn't see
and that
you never know what opportunities will come up
you might see a development being built and go whoa
I should be buying around here
you might see a piece of land that's for sale
and decide to build your own development
if you're not in real estate
you might learn about a new coffee house and say oh
I think I should stop for coffee there sometime
and then when you go stop for coffee there
you might meet your future spouse
you know who knows right
um she might be the barista or something um
and you just don't know
and it's just about being open to that all the time
so Jeff someone's watching this
talk about inspiration and stuff
and they hear everything you're saying
they're like wow
I'm inspired however
what you're saying sounds expensive
how would you
structure your life how
what
what small thing can they do in order to say they're
well just pick an age 33
they're 33 they're inspired to say hey
15 years I want to be living a life like this
as a bankruptcy attorney you know
finance person yeah
what's a
what would be your your direction
well I mean
if they woke up right now
they should be retired in like 6 months
like honestly it's super easy to make money right now
the AI stuff like if I was motivated to make money
I would just be raking in money like crazy
like spend like two months getting really good at AI
and and then just go build a whole bunch of businesses
I have a friend who built a
a personal AI agent took him about a month
um I mean
he's been paying attention to AI for a couple years
so he has a head start on whoever this random
33 year old is but he built an agent that's like vibe
coding businesses for him
he'll be like hey
I got an idea for a business
let's do X y and Z
and the AI will come up with the whole plan
it will tell him every step of it and it will say
do you want me to do it and he goes yes
and it goes and registers a domain for him
it creates the stuff he's selling
it sets up a stripe account
it opens a bank account for him
it opens a freaking LLC for him
everything
all he has to do is say yes
and now he has a new business like
and it doesn't have to make that much money
that business makes him $500 a month
and you can create a new one every day
you know
that's just one example of ways to make money in AI
um I
I I could come up with 100 ways to make money in AI
right now honestly
so like I I think if someone really is motivated
there's tons of opportunity
but but like if you're not into AI or whatever
and you're not called to do that
I mean the reality of it is um
just go back to the basic rich dad poor dad principles
you know like um
one of the things Kiyosaki said
that I think is really smart
is that
he he
he said
how many houses can you buy that cost you $100 a month
right and then he's like
the answer is like a few you know
five
six something like that after a while you can't do it
so you buy something for hundred thousand
it rents for a thousand bucks a month
but you're all in expenses after mortgage is 11 hundred
you can buy a couple of those
and you might even come out OK in the long run on that
right
because over 20 years that house might be worth 200,000
it's paid down to 50 and so you made a nice return
and it was a decent return
but you can only do so much of those
but if you find things that give you positive
cash flow you can do an infinite amount of those
so you can buy an
unlimited amount of houses that pay you 100 a month
but you can't buy an unlimited amount of houses
that cost you 100 a month
which is where he gets that definition of whether
it's an asset or not is like
does it feed me or does it take money from me
um and I think it's the same
not just in real estate though
it's the same in vibe coding an app
if you vibe code an app uh
using AI and that app costs you $100 a month
you can do it it's fine
but it's a hobby it's not a business right
but if it makes you $100 a month
and it doesn't take a lot of your time
it's fine and um
so I think if you apply that principle
um consistently over time uh
you can retire and it doesn't matter what you choose um
and I don't think it takes 10 or 15
years'cause it's exponential um
everyone I know
that's consistent with their investing strategies and
and is disciplined
it takes them between five and 10 years to retire
everyone I've
I've never known anyone to do it in less than five
I've never known anyone to take more than 10
if they stayed consistent on it um
and I think AI might accelerate that
so you might be able to do it in two or three um
or even six months like I was saying
I was being a little facetious
but I do think you can do that um
but not in real estate real estate is slower than that
right yeah
if you want to do it fast
you've got to do you've got to speed up somehow
business is clearly the easiest way to get super rich
but it's also the easiest way to waste your entire life
not getting rich at all
because a lot of people have businesses that are like a
a poor paying job so
you gotta be careful about how you structure your time
and you gotta guard your time um
Brandon Turner said to me once
that the secret to being a good business person
is figuring out how to give away your
responsibilities to someone else
as soon as possible
so if you can do that using people great
but if you do it using AI even better right
so if you take some task you're working on now
and you automate it
so you don't have to think about it anymore
it frees you up to make more money somewhere else
and and that's the same with
if you hire someone to do that job
um the
the less responsibility you have
the more creative you get
the more productive you get
the more money you make cause at the end of the day
the world
the universe
the economy whatever you want to call it
it rewards productivity the more productive
productive you are the more money you make period
like um
the reason Elon Musk's super rich is cause he's very
very good at leveraging other people's productivity
and right now with AI
we can essentially create unlimited productivity
we're very close to
a period where the productivity curve breaks
all of human history
whenever a new technologies come out
and productivity is increased
net wealth has increased
they invented the assembly line
and there was more wealth in the world
after the assembly line
a lot of people like lost money during that time
but a lot of people made money
and it wasn't just Henry Ford
Henry Ford made money yes
building cars but also so did Firestone making tires
and people that started gas station chains
and people who Learned how to pave roads
and people who Learned how to stripe paved roads
all of those people made money that didn't
and none of that money would have been produced
if it wasn't for the fact that we had a lot more cars
because of the assembly line right
um now it did hurt some people
if you were a horse and buggy manufacturer
and you didn't pivot to something else
it hurt you so there's a transfer of wealth that occurs
but there's also a massive creation of wealth
that occurs when productivity increases
and productivity is increasing right now
faster than it ever has in human history
and it's exponential
and it will keep increasing faster and faster until
at some point
all productivity is divorced from human productivity
when the AIs can do everything
and between now and then
huge amounts of wealth will be created
and so right now is the best time to make money ever
and five years from now
it might be impossible to make money
like that actually may be a thing like it
we may get to a point where
all the wealth that can be created
has been created by humans
and the rest is just AI created
unless you own the AI you're
you're out of out of luck
so you need to stay on top of that curve
and need to be ready for massive
changes that are gonna occur
over the next five years in the next 10 years
I mean listen
and I
I have these conversations with real estate investors
but I have them with Uber drivers
I was talking to a guy the other day and he goes oh
the reason I drive Uber is uh
it's a safe job
and I don't have to worry about anyone firing me
and I'm like have you been to Austin Texas
you know like I was in Austin
Texas earlier this year took seven Ubers
five of them didn't have drivers
you know like
you know and
and that's coming really fast
but that's coming for all of our jobs
yeah they said uh
Elon Musk said next year
that they're gonna be releasing those
cars without steering wheels
and it's like 30,000 or 35,000 is the base price
and so you can literally have your own car
you buy for 30 35,000
it'll drive you to work and then when you get to work
you hit a button and it turns into a taxi
and anybody else can rent it out yeah
it's just well
and then absolutely crazy and think think about this
so assuming that Elon Musk releases at scale
self driving cars that can be robo taxis
when you're not using them
who would buy anything other than that
because you buy a 30 thousand dollar car
and your payments you know
800 dollars a month or whatever
and your robo taxi is making you
fifteen hundred dollars a month
2,000 a month
so now you're getting paid to own that car
why would you buy anything else
and if you wouldn't buy anything else
what does that do to the other car manufacturers
what does that do to their margins
and for that matter
what does it do to the value of used cars
I have a 30,000 dollar used car
it's a nice car
it's a Avalon Hybrid you know low mileage
it's relatively new it's a beautiful car
I love it but you know what it doesn't do
it doesn't pay me to have it
so what am I gonna do when the robo taxi comes out
I'm gonna buy one of those
and get rid of the freaking Avalon
I'm gonna dump it for nothing
so like I'm thinking about this today and I'm going
maybe I should sell my Avalon now and just rent a car
ha ha cause like I don't wanna lose all that money
like if I thought it was coming out this week
I would already be selling my Avalon
you know like
you gotta stay ahead of these curves
because there is gonna be a huge transfer of wealth
and you know if I sell my Avalon for $25,000 today
and I rent $5,000 worth of cars over the next year
and then my Avalon's worth 2,000
because no one wants them anymore
because of the robo taxis right
that transfer of wealth hurts someone else
a lot more than it hurt me
you know
so part of me wants to go buy a junker somewhere
so like I have no value tied up in a vehicle
but I like my car too much
so I'm willing to take the risk that I time it wrong
cause it doesn't affect me
but if but if
if you have a 30,000 dollar car
and it's like 50% of your net worth
you're stupid right now for a couple of reasons
you shouldn't have a 30 thousand dollar car
if you're not worth 60 grand
but also if you have a 30 thousand dollar car
with a car payment on it right now
and you don't have any net worth
which there's a lot of people in this world like that
you need to be getting rid of that thing
because it might be worth 5,000 in two years
and you're still gonna owe 20
and then you can't get rid of it and you're stuck
paying a mortgage payment on a car
that's losing money every day
and everyone else is getting paid to have cars
which category do you wanna be in
and
and that's the thing that people are missing about AI
is that the world's gonna change so rapidly
it's the same with you know
he cut two of his car production lines to make robots
now when we have humanoid robots that can like
you know do our dishes and mow our lawn and stuff
like what does that do to like
you know regular people that want jobs
your housekeepers your uh your lawn maintenance guys
and when you have a self driving car and a robot
you don't even go to the grocery store anymore
you just tell your robot to get in your self
driving car
go to the grocery store and pick your stuff up
what does that do to Doordash
like what are you gonna do
you gonna go pay Doordash to deliver
or you just gonna send your robot in your car
that didn't cost you anything
cause you already have it
it's insane we're gonna be walking
around grocery stores in five years
and half the people there are gonna be robots
the world is I'm and it might be 10 years
but this stuff is coming and like
we're gonna live in a SCI fi world
and we need to accept it well
and I love to use the example of the
the carton buggy manufacturers
we've we talked about this a lot that
you know every single revolution
those people had to just pivot I mean
and and you you said to yourself
that if you're not pivoting and ready for the next
you know the next new technology
then you're gonna be left behind but on the
on the flip side
I think that people need to remember that AI is a tool
and just like I mean
AI has been around for a long time
I think spell check is a version of AI and granted
his spell check might get a lot more work than mine
but when when people are using it irresponsibly
there perfect example and this might
you know
be close to home as a former attorney in in Omaha
there was an attorney that got in trouble for citing
fake case law because they used AI to write up um
I can't remember what the paperwork's called
but I mean
what what is your perspective on using it responsibly
well I mean
it's no different than using an employee responsibly
you know people are only as good as their training
and their inputs you know
if you hire a VA from the Philippines um
and you tell them to make you YouTube videos
but you don't specify what kind of YouTube videos
you're gonna get a bad result right
um
and uh AI has a couple of unique challenges
one is the hallucination thing where it'll
if it wants to please you so much
it'll make stuff up but it's also like a yes man
it'll just agree you'll be like
hey
I have this idea to start a business and it'll be like
yeah that's a great idea
we should do it
and here's how much money you're gonna make
but there's no one telling you like
wait a minute it's a little bit harder than that um
although these things are getting better all the time
so part of it is just being
understanding that like anything we do
it's potential to be good
it's potential to be bad you know
nuclear power can be really useful
but it can also be really bad
you know it's a tool right
like I love nuclear power
I think we should do more of it
but I I don't really like nuclear bombs
and they're pretty much the same power source right
I mean little different refinement
but it's the same with AI
like I use um
AI to write investor updates just yesterday for for
for some of my syndications
now did I just say hey
write me an investor update
of course not
I took my last quarter update and I fed it into my AI
and I said okay
here ask me questions about what's changed
what's up like
like you know
let's make sure we understand it
and then of course
I read the output to make sure I agreed with it
before anyone else saw it
and then I sent it to my partner and said
here's my draft like you take a look at it
now it took me a whole day to do 5 updates yesterday
um which is actually amazing because before I had AI
it would take me a whole week to do 5 updates
cause I would do about one a day
you know so I love this
I think that was a great use of AI
now I could have done all of the updates in 15 minutes
I could have I could have
but I would have had bad work product
I I know
because I spit it in there
and it gives me a draft immediately
and then I read it and go
no no no that's not at all what I want to say
like I need to clarify the tone
I need to you know
I need to make sure that the data is right some
you know and I've got to like
you know verify numbers and stuff like this
um so I think that's the thing with AI is
is recognizing that it's a very
very powerful tool but um
like all powerful tools it can be abused
if I put a drill to your head
and drill into your skull
if I'm not a brain surgeon
um that drilling is very effective
but it's not great you know like
like it it the tool isn't the problem
it's how you're using it that's the problem
absolutely and I
and I think the most important thing there is that
you're your ownership of the results
and like
I use AI for putting together investor pitches or
you know um
just cost models like whatever
but I own the results so I'm gonna check it
I'm gonna verify that the numbers make sense
anytime it sites information
I ask it you know
so um but yeah
no I I love that
so Jeff I got a quick question
you talk about syndications
and investor updates and stuff like that
I know that's kind of
the area of real estate you play in
and you're raising money right now for one of Math
Faircloth's funds
but what what do you think the future is
and kind of tying in AI
do you think there is a future in real estate
as an investor
um well yeah
I mean real estate I look
one of the reasons I got into real estate originally
was I was working in a transportation company in
in Chattanooga
and I had an opportunity to buy the company um
made a lot of money
could have made a lot of money doing that um
but I looked at the future of technology and said
this 50 truck company
isn't going to compete when they're self driving semis
like it's not possible and I can't scale
fast enough to get ahead of that curve
because I know what we pay our drivers
and I know the economics of having to stop every
you know eight hours and rest and you know
have required breaks and stuff
and when the self driving semis are out
they're not gonna have required breaks
they're not gonna have drivers
they don't need to rest
like they can work 24 hours a day and they're
the labor cost is zero um
even if the truck cost $250,000 more
I'm gonna get that back in one year
like it doesn't it just doesn't matter
like the economics are done
so I looked at the world and I said
what is something that um cannot be automated away
that will always be a demand
and the only thing I could think of was residential
real estate like I
there may be other stuff but like
like movies can be made by AI
books can be written by AI um
experiences can be created by AI
we can have virtual reality stuff
but at the end of the day
someone needs to lay down and go to sleep somewhere
now AI
could certainly reduce the cost of that
by making cheaper materials
building houses with less labor
so there's there's a risk of some deflationary effect
to real estate but the real estate itself exist
it's real and people need a place to be
we're always in real estate
doesn't matter where we are
whether we own it or not we're always in real estate
you know like there's always real estate under our feet
um and so as a result of that
I think there's gonna be a future in real estate now
what that future looks like
that's a different issue
I personally think we might see massive deflation
about 4 to 5 years from now because um
as labor inputs are reduced
and the cost of intelligence trends towards zero
which we know will happen because we know like
what happened with microchips
people don't realize this
but it happens with technology across all time
I can get into a little
small lecture that I find fascinating
and you guys might be bored
but I'm gonna do it anyway
so do you know what
the most valuable technology in the Middle Ages was
iron paper paper
yeah yeah
yeah like
uh to write something on a piece of paper was like
it was like a month's salary to have a piece of paper
right now we crumple the stuff up and throw it away
we use it to wrap our sandwiches in whatever right
like paper's nothing it's essentially free
but it was a very valuable technology
because it was a place to record and store data right
and and it was expensive to make
and very few people understood how to use it
and that over time became essentially trash
and that's what happens with all
technologies that are insanely useful
like paper especially information storing technologies
so microchips uh
when NASA landed on the moon and 1969
were essentially non existent
but to the extent that they existed
computing technology was extremely expensive um
now our iPhone from the actually
iPhone one
had more computing technology than all of NASA
did in 1969 and that was 15 years ago right
now um we have playing card are like um
hallmark cards that you can open up
and when you open them up
they like sing a song to you
that's a microchip that's doing that right
that's a freaking 2 dollar card
and we're just throwing it away when we're done like oh
that was cute and then we toss it in the trash right
that would have been that technology in 1969
would have cost a billion dollars
and I'm not even exaggerating
and we're throwing it away
so this is what is going to happen with AI
is it's going to trend to free
because that's what technology does
when it's insanely useful
it gets better and better and better
and entrance to free and we see this with monitors now
you know flat screen TVs twenty years ago
were like
obscenely expensive for like a 30 inch screen
and now you go to Walmart
and you get like an 86 inch screen for like $2
I mean it's ridiculous right
and and pretty soon we're gonna have like
you just paint like a screen on the wall and then like
I just turn the wall to invisible
and I can see the outside
cause like image technology is getting so much better
right like
and and
and this stuff is gonna happen with technology
over time and it will happen really fast with AI
because it's so useful so
what that means is
we're gonna have a really big deflationary effect um
now it may be offset
by the power of the federal government
and what I say that is I mean
they may just not want deflation to occur because
you know um
deflation is really hard to uh
deal with in an economic sense
especially if you have a huge national debt
that's paid in dollars
right so like if you have a lot of
you owe a lot of dollars you don't want deflation
you want inflation so
our government has always
tried to keep inflation in check but
but but
but is terrified of deflation right
so as a result of that um
we may very well um
you know we may very well um
see the government
just keep printing money to keep deflation in check
but if deflation occurs from the natural
in component cost
it could lower the price of real estate dramatically
which means
if you have a lot of debt on your real estate
you have a problem
so like if I were being super conservative
which I'm not right now
but if I was gonna be super conservative
I would sell almost all of my real estate
I would deleverage my portfolio and I would keep
you know
a few million dollars in free and clear real estate
because the thing is if you had a couple of million
dollars in free and clear
real estate and the value went down
it doesn't matter if it's real deflation right
let's say you have a a piece of property
that throws off $100,000 a year in expendable cash
and then you have deflation
so now
it only throws off $20,000 a year in expendable cash
and it's no longer worth a million
it's worth 200,000 it doesn't matter
if that 20,000 can buy
five times as much as it used to buy
it's the same purchasing power
um people think in dollars
which is why deflation is complicated
but the reality is if you don't owe dollars
deflation doesn't hurt you at all um
because your purchasing power stays the same
it's only when you owe dollars
that inflation and deflation actually matter right
like if it's really pure like
you're gonna make more in an inflationary environment
and make less in a deflationary environment
than the dollar amount doesn't matter
it's just that um
it's that we're pricing stuff with stickiness
that matters
and the biggest stickiness is 30 year mortgages right
if we have um
jobs are sticky cause you know
you only get a raise or whatever
once a year or something like that
so like it's you know
there's a stickiness to it
but it's not like completely stuck
like a 30 year mortgage is
so anyway so I don't know the answer to any of this
but I do think that there's a lot of risk
points in the future but tons of opportunity
and so I would just you know
stack up the opportunities
and it's just like that worrying thing
it doesn't do any good to worry about it
you can either do something about it or you can't
and so if you can do something about it that is
you know make some more money
go do that but to the extent that we can't control it
there's no point in worrying about it
we'll see what happens and you know what
I know one thing um
my life is gonna be good no matter what
cause I love being alive
and I'm gonna do really cool stuff
and uh you know
if I end up bankrupt I did that once before
it wasn't the end of the world
I still found a way to live
and I think that you know
residential real estate
will probably prevent me from going bankrupt
and you know even if there's a huge deflation
I think the government has an incentive to create
like more Section 8 vouchers
and like keep people in housing
cause people need to live somewhere
so so unless we're in like a Terminator situation
where the robots are killing us all
in which case we can't do anything
about it anyway um
cause they'll kill us faster than we can respond
it won't be like a war it'll be like um
they're smarter than us and we just don't wake up
one day we won't even see it coming
hey man well
I appreciate all that uh
someone watching this they hadn't seen you before
and they wanna get a hold of you
or wanna go to Egypt or whatever
go on one of your crazy trips
what's the best way to get a hold of you
yeah well
of course
now that we just talked about Terminator and stuff
people think I'm insane
and they're not gonna have any interest
but uh
but yeah we talk about all that stuff when we hang out
uh Jeffrey holtz.com
this is my name.com is my website
but I'm at Jeffrey Holst everywhere
like Twitter TikTok
be real it doesn't matter
I'm on all the socials um Instagram
uh Facebook
um any of those
if you reach out to me
I try to respond to everyone wherever I can um
and I'm the only one that does the responses too
so if you get a response from me
it's not an assistant it's not an AI
it's me
can't promise it'll always be that way
cause every once in a while
I change my mind
and let someone else do it for a while
and then I get annoyed cause I run into somebody
I'll see Ryan he'll be like hey
remember that conversation we had last week
and I'll be like no
yeah that was fascinating
I do now you're right
I did agree to come to your house for a barbecue
ha ha ha ha ha
you know
yeah well Jeff
I'm easy to find and I'd love
I'd love to people to reach out to me
so I appreciate appreciate catching up with you
it's been a minute since I've connected
and so uh yeah
got to learn a lot more about you
and yeah Egypt sounds fun
have to convince the wife
she says I already travel too much
I travel nowhere near as much as you
so well
you can take her
you know then
then then she won't feel jealous
you just be like hey
let's go I would absolutely have to take her on
on stuff I uh
I'm going to Arizona here next month
and it was a quick conversation
normally she's like well
I wanna go I wanna go
she's like you wanna go to Arizona in may
she's like you can have fun with that one
so like she didn't want to touch that one
so so we're going to Egypt in August
which is like the worst time to go there
but I can't pick when the solar eclipse occurs right
yeah um
but but honestly though
I and I don't want to go too far on this because
you know we're wrapping up but
but this trip is 11 days three days uh
three nights on Nile River boat cruise
um pyramids the
the the Egyptian
New Egyptian Museum in Cairo
Coptic Cairo Khan Al Khalili
which is a 12 year old um
spice market um
and then of course the valley of the Kings
Karnak Aswan
Abu Simbel all included
um all you gotta do is show up so it's pretty good time
I'm I'm sold
I'mma have to I'mma have to talk
have the conversation so
but you got anything on the no
no we'll see you in Egypt haha
yeah yeah
I'll see you both there and and
and your respective partners as well
who knows uh
maybe we'll uh
expand the trip and everyone listening can come too
we'll just have a giant party in Egypt
probably not though cause that would be unwieldy
and I don't think I could handle that
so no
no I don't think so
so right on well
thanks for having me on appreciate it guys thank you