25-01-2024
2024 Threats To Your Wealth - 167
Hey there, passive traders, I got a really special treat for you today. Recently, we did a special presentation. And the feedback was amazing. And so we decided, hey, we need to share this. So this is why we're putting it out there. Okay, the two things that we talked about in this presentation, were number one, we talked about what are the things that are coming down the pike in 2024? What are the threats that we should be aware of now there are two different types of threats, there's first order threats, and then second order threats. First Order threats are the things that we all know about. We see him in the media with him in the news, all that stuff, those we cover some of them the ones that are really important, but we also go over the second order threats. Now, second order threats are things that are not covered in the media, they are the result of other things, those are the things that are really scary, and we really need to be worried about. And these are some of the things that I am most concerned about right now for myself and my family. And that's why I went through them. So you would be aware of them as well, you will see the signs of what's coming. And you could take action, but not everybody can take action. So that's why part two of this presentation was very important, because I go over that there is a actually elite group of people that are insulated enough that they do not have to worry about these threats as much as the rest of us. Okay, they are, I don't know, lucky, hardworking, whatever you want to call them. But they don't have to worry about them as much. Now some of the things they do, but they can insulate themselves, so that these second order threads do not affect them as much. And then I go into who these people are, and how they're insulated, and then how we can insulate ourselves from these second level threats. So that's the gist of this video and presentation. I hope you enjoy it. And I hope you take notes and implement what you're going to learn. Thing is that whenever we talk about trading, right, everybody says I want more money. That's number one, like I just want more money, I want to be free, I want to have more time that it up. But when you do, when you go deeper into it, it's more about the way you feel. And it's more about being happier, being more carefree, having less stress. Don't you agree. I mean, money is great. But you can't eat it. Right? You can buy stuff with it, you can make yourself feel better. But it's all about the emotions and the feelings and how we feel because you know, you can't take it with you. So what's the point of it, while we're here, we need to use it to make ourselves feel better. And so when it comes to these feelings when it comes to the way we want to be perceived, according to Tony Robbins, there are six basic human needs, that we all need to live a fulfilled life, right, and you can see the six there. But the first one, the very first one and the core, human need is certainty, without certainty, without being sure without being, you know, knowing what's happening, you will never feel safe, you will never feel protected, and you're never going to feel happy. It's not it just doesn't happen. Without that basic layer on the bottom. That certainty if you don't feel that, you know, if you're if you're always afraid of what's happening, or what's coming or you know, you're uncertain, it's very stressful for the body, stressful for the mind, and you never feel protected or happy. But when you think about the current state of the economy, what do you guys think? Do you think you feel certainty with the economy? Or do you feel a certain certainty about the economy? Most of us, at this point, are feeling uncertainty, and a lot of it. And 2024 is going to be dishing up a lot more than we had in 2023. A lot more than usual. Because Americans right now are living more in fear than ever in recent history. You see, like Robert says, right? He's uncertain, but not just about the economy. Right? And I don't want to dwell on this too much because the point of the workshop is going to be to help you create a plan to help you not be affected by all these, but we need to know what we're dealing with. So I want to ask you again, what is keeping you up at night? So a lot of you guys said that you are feeling uncertain. You are feeling that? You know, there's stuff there that's bothering you. What is it what is keeping you up at night? What fears are you dealing with right now? And I really would like to know the answer to these to see if we can address them. Right? What do you see coming down the horizon? Like stuff that's happening? You know, we're gonna go over some of them. But if there's something specific that you tend to be worried about, so Joel is saying lack of funds. That's a good one. I often hear people saying, you know, the health issues are a problem. Having enough money for retirement, somebody said that they wanted more money in retirement supplemental income, right, that's another one. So the first thing I want to do is show you how many of us have stuff in common. And then I'm gonna go over a few that you might not even be thinking about, I'm talking about the fears, right? So Jen saying making sure she has enough money in the future, even when the market goes down, or stalls, this is great, because those things might be happening, they might be coming, right? So here are the top fears in 2023. The top fears that Americans had this year, now, there's a bunch of stuff on there, you take something as simple as drinking water now, where I live, which is outside in the suburbs of Houston, right? We don't even think about drinking water. It's like a non thing. Like if our drinking water wasn't safe, there'd be like an uproar. Right. But the people in Flint, Michigan, you've heard that stories, they still don't have clean drinking water. Right? And I hear people asking, Well, you know, if they don't have drinking water, why did they just move on, or they just fix it? Well, I bet they would love to, but they're not able to probably because they can't afford it. And then you got other stuff on here. You know, cyber terrorism, biological warfare, government, corrupt officials, there's so much stuff out there, that these are neither just the top 10. And these are not even the ones that most of the ones that I had identified. So here's some more, you know, Social Security for those you guys who are worried about retirement or getting close to retirement, and those of us who are paying into Social Security, the administration itself this year, said that it's not going to be able to pay the full amount of benefits. After 2033, In 10 years, right? In 10 years, Social Security might be bankrupt or might not be able to resolve it. In a Gallup poll this year 57% of working adults said that they're not going to have enough money for retirement, that's more than half the people in this country are not going to have enough money for retirement. And then, you know, obviously, they're expecting Social Security to bail them out. But then we just saw Social Security might not even be there, when we're in might not be able to give all of it that it's supposed to. So we got some big issues coming. Now. They asked the AARP members, what are the things you're afraid of? And so these are them some of their answers. So number one was inflation. Right? And it's inflation is the number one reason that people are pushing back their retirement years. So they're supposed to retire this year, they're gonna retire next year, the year after two years from now. That's horrible. That's scary, right there to push back. Number two is fear of Social Security. being wildly it's not going to be there. Right. That's the the main source of income for three out of five retirees. So what is that I don't even know what the percentage is, like 60 Some percent, or 70% of the people that are retired retirees, most of their money comes from Social Security. And they've sat there, geez, look out, look out below, right. They're afraid of a volatile market, I believe Jen said the same thing, right? If you are on a fixed income, then any shock to the stock market is going to be a problem is going to be an issue. And this is whether you're younger, older, retired or not. Number four, this was a weird one that I had never thought about. But it's fear that the kids won't leave. So whatever the reason, and we're gonna get into a bunch of reasons, a lot of kids are going to be coming back home or they're already home, and they're not going to leave. That's another one. And then fear of the unknown. So we had different things happen this year, bank failures, layoffs, all that sort of thing. It's going to get worse. Right? So what else is coming? Well, the recession still hasn't come yet. According to statistics, com, there's a 56% chance that the recession will be coming next year, September, if you remember, right, all the guys on TV, all the pundits are like, Oh, the recession is here. It's actually needed and then never showed up. And then they were like, oh, yeah, and now there's no recession coming, what what happened, right, but the data definitely shows that things are slowing down, that things are not as rosy as they say on TV. And also, we're expecting massive layoffs, not just a little layoff because in 2023, the bright spot, the thing that everybody was pointing to was the tight labor market, meaning if you wanted to get a job, you could originally there were two jobs out there for every one person looking for a job. That's not the case anymore. And in 2024 92% of companies are expecting layoffs 92 It's like everyone, every single company is expecting to layoff people. That's nuts. right? So if you have a job right now, yeah, you need to be re-examining that. It's like how secure where what kind of situate If you deny it, then if you don't get laid off by the economy, there's a good chance that you might just be completely replaced by artificial intelligence. And these are just some of the jobs where people have already been replaced by AI. And you have designers, you have lawyers on this list, you have doctors, accountants, truck drivers. I mean, I don't know if you guys know this, but they have self driving semi trucks all over Florida, where there's nobody in the cab, there's nobody there. Like, and that's, that's coming across the country. All the images that you will see in this presentation, we're done by AI, I did not hire a graphic designer to go out and create these images. I went over to Bing typed in what I wanted, and it gave me the images for this. And you'll see some of them are freaking amazing. Is your job on this list? If it's not, unfortunately, it probably will be sued, if it's automated at all in any way. And so guess what else we have? And coming in 2024, we have a presidential election, and according to a lot of Republicans, the last ones to push it over? So who's gonna know who knows what's gonna happen in this one? Right? And whether you agree with that or not, I mean, in my case, I believe that we have one candidate who I have serious doubts about if he's even going to be alive at the election time, and the other one who might be in jail at election time. So it's definitely going to be a circus, something to watch. Unfortunately, it's going to impact us one way or the other, it's going to be a major impact. Now, what about interest rates? Aren't they coming down? No, not really. According to Jerome Powell, the head of the Fed, he says they still might go up again, and they're not going to come down and flail inflation is at 2%, which should happen sometime in 2026. So we still got another three years before rates come down. And if they don't come down, then again, shrinking the economy. But the rates themselves cannot go down. Because the US Treasury needs to continue selling large amounts of debt, to pay for the bills, the US is running, right? Currently, the US debt is over $33 trillion, $33 trillion, is what our debt is, and it just continues to grow. And those of you who are like Dave Ramsey fans, probably not gonna like this fact. But the government collects $5 trillion in revenue, that's how much it gets in taxes and all the other stops, but it spends six and a half trillion, so we're going negative every year, that's just didn't spend it. Forget about the debt, this is just a spinning back, we already have a lot of debt, we have to pay interest on it, this is several separate, so they won't be able to lower the rates, because they're gonna have to keep the rates high, because otherwise nobody's gonna borrow the money from the US. It's not now as you probably already know, this something that's going to hit us right in the wallet, right? We already know food prices have gone up. But not only do food prices have gone up, but companies are making the food smaller. So you see this package of Oreos, this used to be the original size. Now it's like this. I mean, you're probably getting how many left fewer cookies are you getting. And then over here, this with the ketchup packet, that's a Whopper Jr. A Whopper Jr used to be pretty big. Now it's smaller than your fist. I mean, it's incredible. And even if inflation goes down, even if inflation goes down, like the prices go back down, the size of the food and the size of the packaging will not go back to where it was. Because companies are higher are happy, right, their costs are less, but the prices will be high. So they are not going to change, we will still be ending up paying more just to get the same amount that we were getting before. And so the government will keep spending more money, it will keep borrowing more money and paying higher interest rate to borrow their money. More and more people are gonna get laid off, people are going to cut back on spending because they're getting laid off or they're afraid of getting laid off as much as they can. Which means that companies will sell less, and they will make more profit, which means stocks will go down. And everyone's gonna go crazy over the election. And that's, that's just I'm just getting started. Unfortunately, if that wasn't bad enough, I want to go into the things that I'm most scared about. I'm not even worried about these things. I'm looking at the things that I'm most scared about. And these are issues that are not so obvious. But they will definitely impact all of us out there. I mean, doesn't matter, right. And they're already are impacting us. So number one, we talked about the federal debt and the continuous spending. Well, what do you think happened? Are you What do you think is going to happen? When that continues? Where do you think the government is going to get the money to pay all of its bills? There's only one place it can get the money. And that's us. Yeah, more printing? No, no, Rob, it's coming from us. Because they already printed a lot. They can't print more. There's nobody else there's gonna be he's gonna borrow it. They're gonna get the money from us. You and me. You can bet your bottom dollar that your taxes are going up. I don't care which party is in charge. They will raise taxes, income tax, state tax, property tax, sales tax debt tax inheritance tax, they will raise tax on the companies. And the companies will then just what turn around and raise prices on everything. So we will be ending up paying that tax as well. So that is coming. Number two, war with China. I think this is pretty much a given. The question is when the why doesn't even matter could be Taiwan, it could be trade, it could be something who knows? It's going to happen. Because if you look at history, that's the way it works. Right? Now, if you know want to know the exact reason, then there's a book out by a guy named Ray Dalio, who explains it in detail. He is the founder of the world's largest hedge fund. So the guy's pretty smart. He's got a lot of assistants that did a lot of research. And they looked at all of the empires in the world going back hundreds of years, and what they have together, and what makes one go up, what goes down. And so that's it, you have the Empire of the US. And then you have the growing empire of China. And the only way for China to overcome and overtake the US and being the dominant is through war. That's the way it happens. So the war is coming. The threat is real. And so for the US to stay on top to be the top empire of the world, right? We cannot spend less money on our military, especially the Navy, and the Navy is the most expensive branch of the armed forces. So we can't spend less, especially when you add in the fact that over 50% of our youth cannot even serve in the army because they're too fat. This blows my mind. It gets really scary. Like, what happens if we go to war, and half the people can't even go to war? Because they're too fat? So does that mean there's going to be a shortage of soldiers? Yes, obviously, what do they do then? Are they going to have a draft? Possibly. And for people like me, and for many like you, if you have boys or brothers or whatnot that are going to be of draftable age, you know, anywhere from like 16 or 18, up to 30? In the next few years? It really makes me scared. It really makes you wonder I don't want my kids going to war in a situation. But if it's not, you know, for defense, I don't know. Right? To me, this is the biggest fear I have. But when you have money, there are choices. Okay, I hope that the war is avoided. But if human history is any indication, it's a matter of when not if. And then the last thing that I'm worried about is probably the largest. And that's climate change. So I don't care if you don't believe or, you know, you if you do believe in global warming, if it's man may not may, man, whatever, the world is getting warmer. And that's affecting everybody this year, on record hottest year ever, right. And there are three major changes happening right now because of warming. Number one is migration. So we already have an issue with illegal immigrants at the border, it's only going to get worse, because most of the migrants that are coming from those countries sit on the equator, right, where it's very hot, people will do whatever they have to do to survive. And that means a lot of them will move. So you can see how many people what percent of the population is already moving around the world. And it will affect us in the US as well. The coasts are already seeing flooding, and massive beach erosion, adding the wildfires adding the droughts, the water shortages, and all the major rivers like the Colorado and the Mississippi, and you have, you're gonna have massive migration, you're gonna have massive people moving from one part of the country to the other, just like all over the world. And then there's the second thing that I want to go into anybody know what this country is? Let me know in the chat. Anybody have any guess what this country is? I'll give you a hint. It's run by this guy. Okay. Kentucky, no It is Syria, Syria. This guy. Assad has been in power since the year 2000. So he's been in power a while. But then in 2011 11 years after he took over. There was a civil war erupted. And it's still going on. It's still not over. Right. So what was the tipping point? What caused 1000s and 1000s of peoples to take arms against the government to fight back and risked their lives? Do they just wake up one day and be like, oh, man, hey, it's a good day to die today. Let's go fight somebody, or was it something else? Right, probably. Here it is. There's something else was that the country suffered a massive five year drought from 2006 to 2011, which resulted in agricultural failure, mass poverty and joblessness. So, yeah, warming led to drought, which led to crop failing, which led to migration to the cities, which led to not enough food or jobs, which led to civil war. Anybody see a pattern there? What we just went through, right? I mean, the US is not there yet. But there is something to keep it If Syria might just be a few years ahead of us, and maybe not with all this stuff, who knows what's gonna happen with the war? I mean, we're getting close to, you know, people fighting. So I don't know that social upheaval. That's another thing that's coming. Now I have a pop quiz for you guys. Keep it fun, right? Keep it light. No, sorry. Which is the most deadly animal to humans? I'm sure somebody's gonna get it. But what's the most deadliest animal to use it? Do you think it's sharks? Bears? Lions? Tigers, humans? Humans? Yeah, we gotta go. No, it's not exactly humans. But was it? Greg, Greg nailed it. Greg nailed it is the mosquito. Because of all the disease that these suckers carry, right, you got Zika, Dengue fever, West Nile, I don't even know what the heck that is malaria, yellow fever. In the past, you only had to worry about these diseases. If you visited Africa or the tropics, not anymore. Many of these diseases are appearing in the US because the mosquitoes now have a much larger and longer survival season. Because in order to kill mosquitoes, you need to have a very hard freeze. These are becoming fewer and fewer as the years go on. Now, I remember back in 2004, while back almost 20 years, when I got married, we took our honeymoon in Alaska. And all the tour guides up there were complaining about mosquitoes because it was like the first year they ever saw mosquitoes up there. And that was 20 years ago. Right? So this is a map of the US and all the all the orange ones are where we've had West Nile virus impacting people. And just about almost every state has had a West Nile virus infection. And I mean, you cannot protect yourself from getting bit by a mosquito. Right? This stuff is scary. And it's getting worse. So to summarize, what are the things that we can be afraid of? Well, there's the continued inflation and inflation, there's a presidential election coming up, there's the recession, that's going to be happening. There's the massive layoffs which are already coming, they're already happening, you just gonna be more, there's going to be higher rates for longer, there's going to be higher cost of health care. That's been going up year after year. But if you get sick, if you get a disease, if you get any of these issues, right, costs of healthcare is gonna go up. And we're already running out of doctors and nurses and all that stuff. So I mean, I don't even go into that part. There's so many things that we were living out and coming soon that higher taxes, possibly world war three, Social Security failure, more climate migration, more illnesses, pathogens, pandemics. Yeah, Mark saying the possible government shutdown, there's so much. And as I read this list, you know, all the things that are coming, I'm just, I'm getting stressed out. Right now I can see some of your faces you guys are you guys are getting stressed. Right, Tony, you jumping off a bridge? No, you might feel the stress, just building my body. But there is there is a solution. Maybe not to everything, but at least the things that we can control. There is a solution to that. And I want to share that with you. But there is plenty to be afraid of. And I would like to know, maybe in the chat, you know, what are the things? are you most concerned about? What are the things that are bothering you the most that is going to have the hardest impact on you? Or the largest impact? Let me know in the chat. Because I mean, there's there's plenty of uncertainty around us all the time, and it's only going to increase next year, I think it's gonna get worse. And that's why I'm doing this presentation. Last year, I didn't do it. Right. This is the first time I'm doing this. Because I'm like, man, there's there's a lot of stuff coming. The general public is scared. But that's not what I want for you guys. That's not what I want for us. Because fear. It only makes our problems grow. Right? When we're afraid of something, it leads to more issues, once you're afraid leads to stress leads to mental issues, health issues, families, harmony, all that stuff. So mentally, we need to acknowledge these possibilities, but we can't be paralyzed by them. And the more we dwell on them, the more power they have on us. And the first step to overcome our fear is to recognize what we can control and to shift our focus. Right. So what do we do? What do we do to shift our focus? What do we shifted to? That's a great question. So you want to shift your focus to where you want to go? Not on what you fear. So we talked about all these things to be afraid about. Now, most of them we can't do anything about right. So whether we're having a recession, whether we're having laid off, whether you get laid off or not, whether you get sick or not from the mosquito biting or whatnot, there's nothing we can do about those things. So being afraid of those things doesn't really help us. So as Tony Robbins says you focus on where you want to go. You focus on the things that you're driving towards the positive the growth right and So let us not worry about we cannot control. You guys with me here. Does it make sense? Let's focus on what we can do right now. So that we don't have to be afraid anymore. And so this is the reason why I created options genius in 2009 was to help share what I learned about options trading. So people that live a better life, but I had no idea how important this stuff was going to be, until I saw it in 2024. I mean, it's more important now than ever before. And it has really reenergized me, to help me keep fighting and keep spreading the message, and maybe more committed to be helping you guys so that you don't fall victim to what's happening out there in the world, you guys do not need to be the three out of five people that are relying on Social Security, that are afraid that is going to fall and have nothing, you know, they have no back, nothing to back it up. That doesn't need to be you. So that's why we started option genius to help, right? Because out of all this stuff, we need a solution. Because lack of money as a solution, you can grab more money, but we do also need hope. And so at option genius we really want is for all of you guys to have everybody to have a true state of independence. And this is not just like, you know, Patriot independence. It's like real independence, individual on a personal level. So after teaching for 15 years, and coaching 1000s of traders to understand what they really desire, what they really want, and how to help them, I've discovered that there are three main ingredients necessary to achieving true independence. First of all, we've already mentioned this, people wanted this one is financial freedom, right, this is the first one we think about. So you have more than enough money coming in then what you need, so that you're not worried about Social Security, you're not worried about taxes going up, you're not worried about inflation, because you can have the financial wherewithal to withstand it and withhold it. And actually, people with more money actually make more money in time to have inflation, because their assets go up in inflation, so they actually enjoy it. Second, we need time freedom, so that the time that you're spending are yours, and you get to spend them on the things that you want to do. Right. So nobody's getting, there's nobody telling you what to do and where to be, you make those decisions. And then number three is choice, choice freedom, so that you're not limited by anybody else's rules. You make your own rules, like those people in Flint, Michigan, right? They are reliant on the government shipping and water, fresh water. And if they don't fish ship in the fresh water, what do they do, they have no water, if to use the junk that comes out of the pipe until they have to wait around until those pipes are fixed. If they're ever going to be fixed. They have no choice. If you have independence, you have the choice to say you know what, that's not good enough. That's not good enough for me. And for my family. We're out of here. And that's what I want for you. And coming up, we want to be looking at a plan to help you achieve all three of these. So stay tuned. So let's see how this would work for you. Now, this is where we start to leave the fear behind and to move into our potential. All right. So now, again, let me know in the chat, what are your goals? So your homework was to post your number one financial goal in the group? Those of you who did it, I'm gonna applaud you and say, hey, look, you are way more likely to achieve your goal because you took action. And the others maybe not so much. They quit dreaming, right? Maybe they're jaded. They didn't do that. But we need to end that right now. Because before you can achieve your dream, you need a destination that excites you. So let me know in the chat guys. What is your number one financial goal? Could be for 2024 It could be longer. And if you have more than one go ahead and share it like let's go ahead and let's be limited Alright, so I know Connor you had posted Yours Yours was a good one. I forgot who else posted somebody wanted a Corvette I liked it. That was amazing. You know, so anybody else want a new car? Right? It doesn't have to be like serious stuff right let's have some fun too. This is the on the right that's what did the Lexus TX I'm actually going to be test driving that one to see if we get that one. It hasn't come out yet. But they have some for test driving. Anybody here? Oh, Eric's Eric's called Eric was the Corvette. All right, cool. Anybody want a new house? And when you want a house with a pool, maybe as it's getting hotter climate change, right. You're gonna need to clean off. I would advise against the pool maybe though? Yeah, like, we use our pool and our house like maybe two maybe three times a year. Max. What about a vacation? Anybody looking for family vacations, exotic vacations, anything special. My wife took some of my gains that I've been making from our new strategy that we call market power. And she booked us a Disney cruise. We just got back on Saturday. And the thing was awesome. Like I couldn't believe how nice it was. They have people on the Disney ship. They have people standing at the bathroom in the common areas. Straight, they have come in, they haven't standing at the bathroom. You go into the bathroom, you come out as soon as you come out, they go into clean everything. It was amazing. And it wasn't just like a one person bathroom. After that I went to the bathroom at Orlando airport. And my god, I was gagging. It smelled horrible. There was like, pee all over the floor. And I was like, Well, it's a big difference, right? How about some of you could maybe this was a funny one. But some of you guys, maybe you could use some new teeth, or maybe some new hair? Or maybe even both? Right? It's, it's amazing what money can do. If you just ask Elon, right? This was before money after money, right? Big difference. So Geez. See? Well, I'm gonna read some of you guys off here. Financial Independence Remainer the Corvette for Eric uncommon traitor for Ralph. Bernard saying maintain financial independence. So that's it. Okay, that's awesome. Once Mark wants to make a million dollars, awesome. Trisha wants a new house. Financial freedom, income, financial freedom to travel with no second thoughts. Yeah, that's that's like the choice freedom, right? It's like, hey, I want to wake up. I want to get on a plane and go. That'd be awesome. Matt. 10k a month for Matt. All right, Matthew, be my own boss, make my own schedule, quit my job work from home. Job. That's that's the dream, right? That's the dream. A lot of people have that dream, not only because they want to quit their job, but because they're afraid or they don't like their job. And I was talking to somebody today. He was like, Man, I can't leave my job. It's like, I hate my job. But I can't. I got 15 years to retirement, but I'm not gonna make the most the same amount of money somewhere else. So I'm kind of stuck. It's a horrible way to live. Replace my salary, then double it. Continue with the education start a scholarship. Oh, Jen. That's an awesome one. I love that one. Or actually, I'm actually gonna be doing that this year. So that's awesome. William wants to make 50k a month. Great. It's possible. Traveling while I'm working the markets. Awesome. Great. Cool. I mean, these are great. So now that you have these goals in mind, right? You guys need to ask yourself, like, what is it going to feel like to achieve this goal? What does that mean? Like? What kind of difference would it make? It's easy to just say, oh, yeah, I just want to make 50 grand a month, but you got to feel it. Right? What's the difference to your spouse? What's the difference to your children? What's the difference to your community, once you make it, a desire strong enough, there's nothing that's going to stop. There is nothing gonna stop you if the desire is strong enough. And just want to give you like a picture, I want to give you a picture demonstration. So imagine you're driving down the road in your brand new convertible, or Corvette. That's cool with the top down your thick hair blowing in the breeze as you leave your brand new mansion and head to the airport to jump on your private plane with your closest friends on a two week trip to Europe for skiing, sightseeing, wine tasting river cruising all that stuff. Right? For me tell you a personal story. For me. It took a little less than 10 years to go from being totally broke, to being able to do whatever I wanted. Financial Independence pretty much, right. And since then, I have been lucky enough to be crossing things off my bucket list left and right. You know, two years ago, we started a private foundation to give back and Jen. Next year we're going to be we're not going to be doing a scholarship. But we're working with a particular university where you know, we're gonna give money and set aside a thing for that. This year, I launched a hedge fund, which was also a bucket list item for me in a couple years, I plan to climb Mount Kilimanjaro, with my whole family, we just need my daughter to be a little older. Before we do that, and if a college dropout, a two time college dropout, like me can do these things. There's nothing really stopping nothing at all. Now, I know that you were not born yesterday, right? This is not your first rodeo, and you're not stupid. You've set goals before you've dreamed before. I bet most of you even taken action. And you've tried to reach those goals. But for some reason, it didn't work out the way you want it. So it'd be I'd really appreciate it if you'd be open enough to share with me in the chat. What have you tried in the past? or what have you thought about trying to get to your financial goals? Let me know in the chat, please. Because I mean, I know that I've tried a lot of things before I found what worked for me. I started off the first I think the first thing I started was network marketing and if you guys know what that is like Amway you know where you selling stuff and then you get people under you I wasn't an Amway was something else that was given out catalogs, bothering my family, you sign up under me, and then eventually people just stopped returning my phone calls. At one point, I was a realtor and a mortgage broker. And I realized that I really hate selling things and I am a severe introvert. So going up to somebody in a grocery store and being like, Oh, hey, are you doing you want to buy a house today? Yeah, that's not my cup of tea. I was trading stocks in college. Not doing very well. I tried this chain letter thing once. I don't know if you guys have this. We haven't. I think those died. You know when people started using the internet, but it's a basic level. You get a letter with a list of 10 people and their addresses And you mail $1 to each of the 10 people, okay, then you take off the top name, you add yours to the bottom, and then you print out those letters, and you send them to as many people as you can. So I sent 500 letters, so that was 500 for printing, postage, the envelope all that, because I'm thinking, you know, I'm going to send 500 letters back, I'm gonna get like a lot of money. I'm gonna, you know, at least $500 back. I got one. I got $1 back. And people are surprised that he got $1 back. Oh, man, I bought rental houses before for quote, unquote, passive income. Yeah, no, that doesn't work. I've tried Airbnb ease, we had three at one time. And that turned into more than a full time job. Because you have people at like three in the morning texting you saying, Oh, hey, I need more towels. It's like, I'm asleep, you know, but you have to reply to them within an hour, because that's their rules for Airbnb. So it's not so we got rid of those. I tried. I tried Jeopardy or trading futures. When I was I forgot what it was. It was. It was I think this was the between the first and second time I dropped out of college, and we'd have any money and I wanted to get into trading and my dad didn't want me to get into trading. So he's like, You know what, I'm going to borrow this money on a credit card, and you're going to lose it and then you're never going to trade again because it's going to be so painful. So when he borrowed eight grand, he gave it to me. And I had bought this mini course on how to trade futures and I had done all the technical analysis. I done everything I waited for the perfect time. And then I bought one contract of Japanese yen. And it was supposed to go up. It was perfect. The next morning I wake up I checked the prices and whoa Yen is up. That's awesome. That's great. Then I go and I check my account and my check my account had like $6 in it and I'm like what the what happened? Jen is up when what happened? Then I looked at it and it the Yen had opened low on the day it opened down on the day below my stop so my stop had gotten hit. And it just took the whole account the whole $1,000 and then the yen went up for the next several weeks. So I would have made money but no that's I didn't know how to trade so it's crazy even had to stall at the flea market for a while you know I missed out on my family he killed my back I could go on and on. So it's not I'm going to read some of these cool what you guys did Amazon FBA Yep. Didn't have tried that one. Network marketing, affiliate marketing. Options trading took a major hit car sales. Oh, okay. Yeah, that's I definitely could not do that. I need to figure out another way to maintain or increase my money. Wholesale real estate, property network marketing lots of scams for Rob Oh, geez. crypto. My God. Rental Property Amway customers want consistency but prefer traded me futures? Okay. Oh, well, Bernard. Yeah. So I think based on all this, I think Rob, I think you had the hardest time. So no, oh, no. Was it? Actually Joel, I think we're gonna give you we're gonna give you a t shirt drill. You here for doing car sales. So that's like, I think at all that that was probably the hardest thing. At least for me. Anyway, so Joel, we're gonna get you a t shirt. Just for just for being awesome. And sharing. So thank you all for sharing. I know. It couldn't be easy. But yeah. But yeah, Joel. So judicial official message you and get your information. So now, this is why we're here tonight. Right? We're trying to overcome the fear. And we're trying to arm you with the tools and the strategies to put you on the path to achieve your goals and your dreams. Because we are moving from fear to freedom. We know what we want, right? We already we have our goals. You guys did that part. We did it together. We know
