First and Future
Your paycheck is the fuel; ownership is the destination. Join us on First and Future as we explore the strategies, mindsets, and investments required to bridge the gap between earning a living and owning your future.
First and Future
The Leverage Cycle | How the Wealthy Make Money Work for Them Ep.6
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In this episode of First & Future Finance, Dibbs and Liam break down the concept of leverage and why building wealth is about much more than simply making more money. From using debt strategically and investing excess cash to understanding social capital, attention as currency, and the relationship between money and influence, they explore how assets, businesses, and even reputation can compound over time.
The conversation covers investing, real estate, cash flow, taxes, entrepreneurship, Elon Musk, SpaceX, credit cards, wealth preservation, and the hidden connection between politics and money. They also discuss why consistency matters more than timing, how the wealthy recycle resources through a "leverage cycle," and why mastering one thing before expanding may be the key to long-term success.
Whether you're building wealth, growing a business, investing for the future, or simply trying to understand how money actually moves, this episode offers a different perspective on ownership and financial freedom.
00:00 – The idea of “unf***ing your life” and gamifying personal finance
01:21 – Tracking debt and turning money into an RPG
02:07 – Living on commission and managing irregular income
03:03 – Using credit cards, rewards, and making your cash work harder
04:03 – Good debt vs bad debt and understanding leverage
05:24 – Why leverage only works after reaching a certain level of wealth
06:39 – Emergency funds, savings accounts, and cash reserves
07:52 – Stock market returns and why 25% is actually incredible
08:50 – Crypto, volatility, and why losses hurt more than gains help
10:33 – The K-shaped economy and why timing matters
12:00 – SpaceX, Elon Musk, and trillionaire valuations
14:34 – What does being a trillionaire actually buy?
16:16 – Media companies, influence, and controlling the narrative
16:52 – Attention is the new currency
18:26 – MrBeast and the genius of modern marketing
19:17 – Turning audiences into cash flow and sponsorships
20:10 – Why every extra click loses customers
21:29 – Leveraging social capital and building trust
24:14 – The “Leverage Cycle” and turning trust into revenue
25:24 – Buying back your time with leverage
25:42 – Elon Musk’s business flywheel: PayPal, Tesla, and SpaceX
26:38 – Research and development and why businesses reinvest profits
27:13 – The tax code as a wealth-building manual
28:02 – Why most people quit too early
28:57 – The One Thing and mastering one skill at a time
30:00 – How long should you stick with something before giving up?
31:31 – Money, politics, and the idea of oligarchies
34:26 – Why understanding politics is necessary to understand money
36:12 – “If you want to save the world, you need some coin”
37:32 – Capitalism, socialism, and the role of taxes
38:48 – Economic systems and fair trade
39:39 – Bread and circuses in the modern world
40:33 – World Cup culture and the experience of America through foreign eyes
44:37 – World Cup predictions and closing thoughts
This Podcast is not sponsored. Any Products, Tickers, or brands mentioned are for educational purposes only.
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Dib, start us off. I know you said you had a thing you wanted to talk about. You want to talk about unfucking your life, right?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, well, I was watching YouTube of all things. Nice. We're on YouTube.
SPEAKER_01Subscribe.
SPEAKER_00And there's like this this faction of people that are obsessed with strategy and uh getting the right system in their life to just make everything easy. Right. And you can go down a rabbit hole and just unfuck your life. Oh yeah, it's easy. And the guy that stood out to me, he's 22 years old. He's $58,000 in debt. Doesn't tell us what the debt is, doesn't tell us um, you know, how he got there. Just that he's in debt. He's been an adult for four years. And he's and he's almost 60 grand in the hole. How do you let that happen?
SPEAKER_01Like that. That's at 22, him being in that much debt, that's more than my net worth was at that time with no debt. And me working full-time, investing and saving money for three years at that point. What are we talking about?
SPEAKER_00So we're going through these guys, I'm going through the rabbit hole. I'm watching this guy dig his way out of the hole day by day. And he just gives us a breakdown of okay, it's day one, I'm $58,000 in debt. It's day five, I'm $56,000 in debt. He goes to work, he lives out his day, he tells us how much he spent, how much he earned, and how much the debt went down. Okay. And I was like, what a clever way to like gamify your life.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00And measure it day by day.
SPEAKER_01It's like an RPG.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, like day by day. What's my inventory?
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00How much did I earn today? What's coming in? What's going out?
SPEAKER_01What new loot did I find?
SPEAKER_00What's in my treasure chest? And I was like, I should start doing that. Okay. When I get paid, because we don't get paid, you know, traditional hour hourly salary. Nah, we get paid commission. Irregular as hell. And sometimes that isn't even, you know, promise to you. You think you're making one commission, and by the time the deal closes, it it could be whittled down to three bucks. If the deal closes, too. So I thought that that would be a really interesting experiment to take my check with my commissions and like just net it out.
SPEAKER_01Okay. Yeah. You know what I mean? Like where you're putting it, what investments you're in, where your money's gonna go. I I feel like I've always done that, but never consciously. I've just kind of been like, okay, I got paid this much today. I know I want to put this much towards this credit card, this much towards gold, this much towards silver. I just made um a big purchase of silver as well. So that's like we got paid, so I'm like, I'm gamifying that immediately. Where I'm like, okay, I see the markets down. And we we talked about this earlier of like, I think when you have, especially when you have a more of an income and you're making more money, that's when you should use credit cards the most. Um, because then you can get the rewards. Like I have a Delta card, the MX, the Platinum card referral link in the in the bio. Um there you go. Give me some miles. Um, I use that because if I spend, I think it's $10,000, I get a free ticket to the Caribbean every year. Yeah, I might have the $5,000 or whatever cash to buy my silver, buy my investments, but if I can put it on a credit card and get a free flight out of it, why would I spend the cash? I'm losing money by using my cash. And that is what we talk about with our investments all the time of making your cash work for you every step of the way, whether that's in stocks, bonds, real estate. It's the same way with your debt. You have to make your debt work for you. If you're 58K in debt and it's a car, credit cards, student loans, they're not really doing anything for you unless you have a job that you use with that degree, or you're renting out your car on Toro. Like that, that debt is just sitting there, not helping you or benefiting you.
SPEAKER_00It's just dragging you down. Yeah, man, you're talking about leverage. Exactly. So you're talking about taking something that you have plenty of cash. Yes. Right? And levying that against, hey, I can borrow this money, keep my cash, and make more on the money that I borrowed than I owe for the amount of cash that I have. So you're at a net positive either way.
SPEAKER_01And that's like what we were talking about with uh last episode with wealth preservation of like, if you have, let's say, 500k in cash, why would you go buy a Lamborghini? Like, you're gonna spend half of it, and now your money is sitting in a depreciating asset, which I think it's crazy we call it that. It's just a liability. That's all it is. And you could really keep that 500k invested, take out a collateralized loan of your assets at that point, your real earning money assets, and take a loan out on that Lamborghini and have those assets monthly pay you if they're dividends or real estate for that Lamborghini, and then you still have all your cash.
SPEAKER_00What you're talking about is high level. This is this is something that you do when you have hundreds of thousands of dollars in the bank. Yeah. You know, if you've got 10 grand sitting in a savings account, go buy your car. Like we're not telling you to leverage um, you know, your your your 401k to go buy gold and silver. But definitely the idea of hey, I don't have to spend the cash that I earned and worked for to make money on it. Yeah. That's that's a hard concept for people to grasp.
SPEAKER_01Because I think the average person, the person with 10,000 in their bank account, they their primary focus needs to be minimizing their outgoings, minimizing their liabilities. Because yeah, you could leverage your 10K and get a loan on the Camry or whatever. Right. But why would you do that when you can just buy the Camry outright, have the cheapest insurance, have the cheapest car payment of no car payment, and maximize the amount of money you can save and put into assets. And it's really when you hit a threshold of cash, I don't know what that number is, I'm not there yet. But you hit a threshold of cash liquid, you need to invest that money. It's just gonna be wasting away sitting in a bank account.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I mean, I'll I'll reiterate what what I do is I keep enough liquid cash on me if you know all four of my tires get slashed. Yep. If I need the total, I'm gonna test that theory tomorrow.
SPEAKER_01Yep.
SPEAKER_00Slashing all your tires. So I'm gonna I'm gonna put I'm gonna put you know two grand into a savings account that's that's getting four percent interest over at SoFi. Yep.
SPEAKER_01Referral link and bio.
SPEAKER_00Always there. Um, you know, I'm gonna have my my bills account. Yep. Money's going over there. I know what my what my floor is. Um and I'm gonna have some discretionary spending, stuff to eat pizza and get get drinks with. Absolutely. My fan duel money.
unknownFanDuel money.
SPEAKER_00No, I'm not gonna add my link in the bio.
SPEAKER_01I'm adding my if you're not. Mine's going there. Um I have no not financial advice. My fanDuel app is in my finance folder on my phone because it helps me like you know, really prioritize and put the good finance brain into gambling instead of just throwing money at it.
SPEAKER_00Oh man, you discredited us. Oh, these guys are a couple of bookies. No, but really, like, like the the stock market is up right now. Like it over the last year, I think it's up like 23, 24%. Ridiculous, dude. You could have made a quarter on your money. 100,000, it grew to 125,000 in the last year. Crazy. If you're not happy with those gains, then yeah, you you need to just open a fan duel account, start playing blackjack because you it's not getting any better than that.
SPEAKER_01And that's the big problem I think a lot of people run into too, is they're not looking at, oh, I made 25% of my money. They're like, oh, I only made 25 grand, I wanted 50. They're not even thinking about the percentage. If a stock is up 25, yeah, that's amazing. Like it's kind of I feel like we're jaded a little bit because we see crypto go up 60 and down 60. So we think 25 isn't a lot. But historically in the market, if you put your money in something, anything, and you're making 25% on it, that's good.
SPEAKER_00And and what's what's strange to me is this mindset shift since um since crypto investing has been been like a a thing, is that now people think the volatility is a good thing. Volatility used to scare the shit out of investing.
SPEAKER_01Volatility means I can make a lot of money, but it also means you can lose it all. No, no, investments always go up. We've been over this.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah, we've been over this. So, but so so if I'm losing 60% of my 100K, yeah, right, I have to gain 120% to get that back and make the profit.
SPEAKER_01Yep, that's a big number. Like people don't realize that's a huge number.
SPEAKER_00You your account has to triple in order for you to make the money back that you lost. Yeah, let alone growth. And you know, I'm I'm keeping this simple because I know everybody isn't a math nerd, but if I if I if I've got $10,000 and I lose half, I got $5k left, right? That's 50%. If I gain 50%, I only have $7,500. So you have less to play with. You get what I'm saying?
SPEAKER_01My favorite representation of that is if you go on FanDuel with my affiliate link, you see there's a game called Stock Market. And uh you put your money in, you just bet on it going up or down.
SPEAKER_00Oh, you showed me this game. I lost so much money.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. And you can put $10 in, it goes up 15%, you get your gains, but then you go down 60%, you lose everything. And when it goes back up 15% again, there's less in your pool to earn that 15%. It's the quickest way in real time, I think, to see what that is. And yes, it's gambling, don't gamble, but it's such a good representation of what that looks like on a small scale in the market, like so quickly, you know.
SPEAKER_00Well, that that that takes me back to, you know, I don't even know if we talked about this on the show. This might have just been me and you talking about the K-shaped economy. Yeah. Where you and I both can invest at the same thing, but at different times, and have completely different results. Which is crazy to think about.
SPEAKER_01It's SpaceX is a perfect example. If you bought SpaceX five days ago, you're up 60 bucks per share. If I buy it today, I don't know where it's gonna end up.
SPEAKER_00Which I I we we got a couple days more to find out whether I'm right or not. That's true. The rug pool's coming, it's been five days. It has. Let's see if the sell-off holds on.
SPEAKER_01I think it's at 212. Today is five business days, right? Because we had Sunday, so today would be five business days.
SPEAKER_00Yep. We lose tomorrow for uh for the Juneteenth holiday. So trading resumes on Monday. I'm saying 186. I'm calling it now. So let's put that on there. 186 is the is the floor for we're at 174 right now. Oh, I won. I won. It went from 211 to 174. Yes.
SPEAKER_01Yep. Did you uh put anything in that? No, I didn't. Oh, it was at 218 at the peak.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, so I told you.
SPEAKER_01But you're not buying at the peak.
SPEAKER_00I was like, you know, the the only reason that we have, you know, a level of support here is because of the built-in interest. You've got, you know, however many thousands of employees that own those RSU units.
SPEAKER_01I saw somebody, I don't remember who it was. It was a hedge fund owner. They own 1% of or 1.5% of SpaceX. They said they're never selling. They just came out and said that yesterday.
SPEAKER_00Okay. That's fine. That's money sitting there. If he's the last one and a half percent, I'm cool. The only people I'm concerned with selling, Elon, hedge funds. Like, but but I knew what the what the play was from the beginning. They wanted to, you know, they they wanted to legitimize this as much as they could. They got it in the index funds, they made it instantly one of the biggest companies on the market. The retirement thing we talked about, too, 401ks are investing in it now. Now it's a part of the index, it's going to be forced into your portfolio. Yeah. How much exposure you have is going to depend on what company you're with. Yeah. But at the same time, when you're just looking at it as a company, we don't know enough information for it to be considered a blue chip or anything or anything of value. We just don't know. It's too new.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Okay. Also, I had this thought the other day, and you might just shut me down immediately because math, and I didn't really think too much into this. But Elon is now a trillionaire on paper, right? Yeah. What was different a week and a half ago? How is he not a trillionaire a week and a half ago? Because it's not like this money just went in from SpaceX directly into his pocket. The value of this stock was already kind of like he was already sitting on private equity in a sense. Was he not already a trillionaire technically just on paper? Are there not other trillionaires out there in like open AI with Sam Altman? Is he not going to be technically a multi-billionaire trillion? Is it just because we haven't put a US dollar denominated value in the stock market on that asset yet?
SPEAKER_00You you answered your own question. Okay. So what what how do we value your company? In US dollars. Not just in US dollars, but we value your company by what's verifiable and quantifiable.
SPEAKER_01Yes.
SPEAKER_00So if I can't quantify how much SpaceX is worth without a public valuation, I can say anything. Trump put on his tax returns that his buildings were worth a billion dollars.
SPEAKER_01And that being said, then is it safe to assume there are multiple trillionaires in the world right now? We're just not talking about them. Yeah, because they're private.
SPEAKER_00There's no record of them. I'm pretty sure there are some African trillionaires that are sitting on minerals and resources that we just don't talk about because it's not a publicly traded entity. So why does it matter? Like, why does being a trillionaire matter so much? There you go. That's that's that's the question. Like on paper, what does that get you other than more leverage?
SPEAKER_01Yeah. And what are you gonna buy with that? Because like even a of let's say someone with 500 million in value, they can have whatever they want. They can have jets, they can have yachts, they can have status in other countries, they can buy citizenships, they can get, and this is again high-level stuff we're talking about. This isn't the average guy with ten thousand dollars, right? Like, if you want to get a citizenship in Portugal, it's gonna cost you 500k that you have to bring into the country. Um I was looking into that for a while. Um uh, but yeah, like what are you gonna get? What can Elon get now that he couldn't get before? Like, my point in saying this is like money's not real. Where are we at right now?
SPEAKER_00Reverse it. Reverse it. What did he do to get what he got? Yeah, that's that's the that's the real question that that I will be asking because like I've said it, I'll say it publicly. I can't wait to buy my first senator.
SPEAKER_01He probably owns the house at this point, you know what I'm saying?
SPEAKER_00The the influence that you get from holding US dollars, yeah, from from being able to leverage that much money. It's not for him. It's the it's the influence that he holds with that much money that he can do for others that gives him so much power and why it's important that he's now someone with infinite money. You can't you can he can spend 27 million dollars for the next 100 years and still not be broke.
SPEAKER_01I saw a thing yesterday, he can lose a trillion dollars today and he's still the richest person in the world. Yeah, lose a trillion and he's still the richest.
SPEAKER_00But that's what happens when you leverage the companies. People thought that he was buying, you know, Twitter. They're like, oh, it's a dumb move. He's firing all the people. It's a media corporation. He controls the narrative on anything that he puts out, right? Yeah, Trump saw the power in that. He started his own uh, what is that, True Social? Yep. He started Truth Social, these media companies where you can put out your own story, tell your own story and monetize it by having people advertise to the people that you're telling the story to.
SPEAKER_01And this is what we talk about all the time. It's exactly that. This goes back to different forms of currency. Attention is a form of currency now. Yes. When you're watching one of our shorts on YouTube, that is currency, like we've bought your attention for a minute, 30 seconds, whatever it is. And somehow there's a wealth denomination to that that YouTube or whoever figures out and pays us a cent or whatever.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, that's that's that's valuable to be able to garner someone's attention for 60 seconds at a time in a time where you know your generation has an attention span of like a minute. Less.
SPEAKER_01Way less.
SPEAKER_00I was being generous. But it's it's like if you can entertain someone, if you can keep them engaged, the formula hasn't changed. Yeah, the the medium in which it's being delivered has changed. We used to, I used to watch commercials on VHS tapes before my movie came on. Yeah, it's crazy. You know, I pop it in, they show me a commercial about a movie that's coming out, and you know, I rewind the tape, I watch it again, the whole thing. It's got me sitting there for two hours. Yep. Now I know the Hanes theme song by heart because I watched the movie, I've consumed it so many times. Yep. Now, how do you get to kids? They're watching YouTube, they put the ad right in the video. It doesn't cut out anymore.
SPEAKER_01Before you before you can even get in the video, you have to watch the ad. You can't skip it. And you have a mid-roll ad, then you have the end ads.
SPEAKER_00So that was the workaround. I got the pay-for-the-premium plan. I'm never letting it go.
SPEAKER_01Never.
SPEAKER_00And the influencers or the YouTubers that I watch, they've smartened up to where they cut 30, you know, 30 seconds out of the video and just pitch you the product. Yeah. Instead of it cutting away and you get the little yellow bar, they're just like, hey, you know what else is new?
SPEAKER_01Did you see uh that was a big Mr. Beast thing for a while? Is he um he did the same thing, but he put his own bar in. He had it move really quickly at first and slow down into the ad. So he's like, oh, it's 15 seconds, I'll watch it. And then it starts going slower. And you're like, it's a two-minute ad. Yeah, that guy's a genius. No, actually, marketing genius.
SPEAKER_00Marketing genius, bro. He's Mr. Beast come on the podcast. I I think he's probably, you know, close to a billionaire on paper. Probably. You know, but it's privatized. We don't know what's in his bank account. And I don't believe he's, you know, he's got a lot of cash, but I do believe his businesses. He's got cash flow. Yeah, exactly. His businesses are self-sustaining to the point where they're generating income. The advertisers are paying for, you know, to get onto his platform because he's getting so many eyeballs for making good content. And that's another type of leverage. I don't have the money, but you have the money. So let me create what I know your audience wants to see. You use my platform and give us money for. You pay for all of this.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, and that's ad sponsorship. That's when people get the ad reads for FanDuel or the ad reads for HIMS, whatever it is. Like we know that your audience, because we've looked at the metrics of your audience, would use this product if advertised to. Yep. What's the dollar amount that's being quantified for your reach, the percentage of people you will reach, the percentage of people who will buy the product, because um I talk about this all the time uh with my buddy who has a website, uh, clothing brand, all that. I think every page that you click through, every click you make, is you lose 50% of your audience. So if I get an email from you and it's saying the buy in my product, you have a new drop that came out. And I have to click one item to see the like one button to see the shirt, and then I have to click three more buttons to buy that shirt, actually. Yeah, I feel like every button, every page you have to go through, you lose 50% of your audience.
SPEAKER_00It's I mean, make it easy. Make it easy. One one click, one button, one sale.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00The more steps you most that I'm gonna do on my website is hey, thanks for clicking this. Are you sure you want it? Yep. It'll take you to the next page, and then you can check out. Exactly. That's all it needs to be. Daryldibs.com is self-sufficient. Shout out Daryl Dibbs.com.
SPEAKER_01Shout out Tim Rios.
SPEAKER_00That's my guy. That's my guy. Um, but yeah, he's it's it's the world that we live in, attention is a currency, US dollars are our currency, but the real play is once you have the revenue, you have to leverage it. Yep.
SPEAKER_01In order to leverage something with your platform, you can't just let it exist. Like I just did um, I DJ'd an album release party for Maserati Ken 2009. It's out now. Um, me and him are also dropping a project soon. Um, but we uh got a high noon rep to give us a bunch of high noons, and we took pictures of it. They asked for two pictures, I gave 'em a folder of like a hundred.
SPEAKER_00Bro, you got you you got you guys owe me like two cases. I've been waiting for my cases of high noon, and my fault. You know, they're they're probably like boiling in your trunk right now. Like I need You got you got an invite. That's all I'm saying. You got an invite. No, I got I got the album. Somebody sent me a link to the album. There was no invite attached. So I listened to the whole album in my car. I was rocking out and then see the pictures later on Instagram on Perspectives page that there was a party associated with the album. Alright, that's my fault.
SPEAKER_01I thought I said to you. But yeah, my point bringing up the release party is we had the high noon rep. He brought 144 high noon. Shout out high noon. And he asked for two pictures and a video. I made a whole reel. I made uh over 200 pictures. Shout out John with all the photography. And we got um, I haven't gotten the repost yet, but they commented in our on our picture. So now it looks more professional and makes other brands be like, oh, he works with this person. I do a lot of DJing for Lululemon. So when more events come up, let's say uh another brand, like an Allo, which nothing will be said about that. But if Allo ever decides to hit me up, they can see what I've done with Lululemon. I can leverage the resume that I've built for myself with these other brands, with um my collaborations, and show that if other brands trust me, you should also trust me. And that's the same way that you leverage your dollars, or the same way you leverage your attention. Yeah, you can't do that.
SPEAKER_00So what you're talking about, that's social capital. Yep. So now this person that I know, this brand that I know, like, and trust, trusts Liam with doing this. I should trust them too. Yep. You're you're you're you're verified by association. Exactly. So, and that's that's really like I I built my real estate business on that through we do it too, referrals.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Oh, you know this guy. Well, I just did this for this guy, asked about me.
SPEAKER_00Yep. And then once you get that, once you get that validation from somebody that they already know like and trust, you kind of inherit that.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, because they trust that person, so they have no reason not to trust you.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and then they can see the work. If you publish it on Instagram or Facebook or TikTok, they can see the evidence of the work that you did. So it all comes full circle.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Which turns the social capital turns into the trust, the trust turns into a transaction, transaction turns into cash flow revenue, which you can then leverage to repeat the cycle.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, and grow that cycle as well. It's not just staying the same, it's a beautiful thing. Now can I maybe expand the company, hire people to do that for me?
SPEAKER_00Somebody adjusted my chair. I'm I'm like too low and too high at the same time.
SPEAKER_01We have to adjust the table or something for you. Um I lost my thought. So we're talking about the circle of leverage. Oh, yeah. Like that brings me to the full circle of like again, my favorite form of currency is time. And when you speed up that cycle of your leverage cycle that you're calling it, we're coining that TM. Um if you uh expand and speed up your leverage cycle and use that to like grow and expand that cycle essentially, you can make more money, which gets you more resources, exactly like you're saying, but you can get more time out of it. And that's the big thing is if you leverage so much, you can buy your time back to put it into other things to build another leverage cycle. And to get more money, more capital. That's what Elon does. If we're if we're circling back, that's what Elon does. He built up Tesla, that made him so much money that became a self-sustaining business. When it became self-sustaining, he can cycle that money into SpaceX, into Neuralink, into Dogecoin if he wants to put money back there again. Like it's not his, but he's he's gonna throw money there.
SPEAKER_00Well, so I uh when when people say that, I always hear the argument well, Elon was already rich. You already had this, you already had that. It all started somewhere. Okay. So, yes, Elon came over here from South America already rich. South Africa. South Africa, my bad. Yeah, he's he's not Portuguese or Brazilian. Uh, he doesn't have the the melon in his skin for that. But he came over from South Africa already rich in minerals and and cash flow. For sure. Gets into PayPal, he's a partner in that company, exits, takes that money, invests it into another company, becomes the CEO. Right? Now it's his. He's not working for someone, he's his own boss. Yep. So now he's taking that money. They and and Tesla operated at a loss for so many years. All their profit went back into RD. Most companies do. That was the cycle. So you got this heavy cash-flowing company that's RD for those Right. Research and development. Yep. So they're they're taking the money that they're making and they're putting it into testing products, building products, learning processes. They're just putting all it means is they're reinvesting the money that they make back into the business to make it better.
SPEAKER_01Yep. And that's why they can show no money on taxes because they didn't actually receive that money. It stayed within the business. That's why you see a lot of rich people show zero on their taxes because the money that they earned, quote unquote, was spent to earn more money.
SPEAKER_00What essentially? Tax code, the IRS tax code.
SPEAKER_01I thought you knew it by heart. I thought you about to flip off the numbers.
SPEAKER_00That would have been impressive. But no, I was just gonna say the tax code is a manual. It's a it's it's for you to get to zero income.
SPEAKER_01Yep.
SPEAKER_00If you are going to help the government in, you know, providing housing, providing uh business, jobs, all of these things that are listed in the tax code, they will help you get rich.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00All right, it's written.
SPEAKER_01They make it complicated because they don't want everyone to do it, and that's the biggest. I feel like everybody won't do it. That's the yeah, that's true. But I feel like that's the biggest factor with someone like Elam. He's been working at this for like 30 years almost, give or take. Like just starting from PayPal to now, it's been almost 30 years. A lot of people quit after one. Yep. And they think like, oh, well, it's not working. One month. Yeah, literally. They people don't even make it a year sometimes. And like you need to I'm and this is like I think a better way to explain my point about everyone's gotta struggle. It's not that everyone needs to struggle or that you need to have iced soup for a week or like eat ramen forever, but you need to invest your time into something, I feel like, until or your money, if that's the resource that you have at the time. Yeah, you need to put your time or your money, your attention into something. Your currency needs to go into something until it can become self-sustaining and earn that same whatever currency you want to denominate it in for itself, and then you can use it to start your leverage cycle. But it can't start a leverage cycle if it doesn't have anything to leverage, it needs something to spring off of, like a podcast, for example.
SPEAKER_00I read a really good book on this. It's called The One Thing. Uh I can't remember the co-authors, but uh it's a it's a book. Uh Gary Kettler and uh Jay Papasson. Yeah, Jay Popison. Uh yeah, that's his name. Um and they talk about a singular focus on getting really good at one thing, leading with revenue, uh, leveraging that thing, and then building on it once you're good at that one thing. Interesting. Okay. So once you're good at the one thing, you have to find out whether that one thing is income producing or whether it's admin work that's not worth your dollars per hour. Right. Right? So if it's not worth your dollars per hour, you hire somebody to do it. Right. So you can put your time into something that's more valuable. Building another thing. So you're on to the next thing after you've mastered this thing and you've hired it out, now you're on to the next one thing to master.
SPEAKER_01So how do you quantify? I'm I'm sure there's an equation you can figure out. How do you quantify how much time or money or attention or whatever your currency is to put into something until you deem it's not worth it? How long do you think you should try it? Something there's a there's a phrase time.
SPEAKER_00There's there's a phrase that says you got to work something for 10,000 hours to be a master at it, right?
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00And you know, the average person works if you're doing something 40 hours a week, that's 2,080 hours a year.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00So you can say it's about five years into the thing before you become a master at it. Right. Could take you less time. I'm just using that number because that's what the phrase is 10,000 hours. Yeah. It's 2,000 work hours in a year. So five years. Doing give give the thing five years.
SPEAKER_01Right. If you're really gonna invest into something and stick by it, you gotta give it at least five years.
SPEAKER_00Yep. Yep, give it five years to work. You know, a year to build, a year to plan, a year to implement. Um what's the rest of the the product cycle? I think there are two more steps. I don't remember. College was so long ago.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah, man. So long ago. I'm like a year removed now, actually. Yeah, it's June. It's been exactly a year since I got my game.
SPEAKER_00Congratulations.
SPEAKER_01I appreciate it.
SPEAKER_00I still haven't finished mine. But it's coming.
SPEAKER_01But yeah. Um, wait, you never finish yours? No. Associates, nothing? Nothing. I never knew that. And he knows more than me about someone who went to school with a bachelor's American education system.
SPEAKER_00Oh man. But but no, that's not what it was designed for. We know American education was to create employees. That's true. It hasn't changed in like a hundred years. I went to my first semester of college, I figured out what I wanted to. I told you I wanted to be a senator so that I could inside a trade. Then I found out that, you know, the power structure is the people with money. We call that type of government an oligarchy. Yep. Right? So the people with money control everything, they influence everything that goes on. We don't say it, but you know, Democratic Republic needs money to function.
SPEAKER_01I was about to, that was gonna be my question of like what defines an oligarchy? Because we always look at Russia as an oligarchy because they have a lot of people with money who control everything. They have a public council. Like Roman Abramovich, I didn't even know about any of this stuff until uh I was into soccer. Uh because I grew up watching soccer. Um, Roman Abramovich was the owner of Chelsea, he was like a Russian oligarch billionaire. I didn't know he was like homies with Putin and all that until after, but he's like right in that circle. And like I didn't realize until the Ukraine war, because that's when I really understood the political side of it. And I have a rant about that in the dollar, but I'll get into that another time. Where he got he was forced to sell Chelsea because of his ties to Putin and his ties to the Russian government. So if we define Russia as an oligarchy, as this council of people who have money, who fund the ongoings of the country, if a Democratic Republic needs that, yes, we can vote. I have a take. A lot of people don't like my take. Um if we need money to function, how are we different?
SPEAKER_00Uh because of the vote. That oligarchy over in Russia decides everything. What Putin says goes.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, you don't get a choice.
SPEAKER_00So we vote for representatives, which is the democratic part. Uh the republic part is that those representatives are supposed to represent our vote.
SPEAKER_01But does my vote matter if you don't buy the senator out and you have a different take than me?
SPEAKER_00There's money coming from both sides.
SPEAKER_01Right.
SPEAKER_00And who's to say the person that's contributing more money always wins?
SPEAKER_01That's true.
SPEAKER_00So so it's it's it's supposed to balance itself out because both sides have an equal opportunity to buy and earn that money.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00None of this is confirmed. We're not no, we're just we're theorizing. We're theorizing. So so yeah, so you know, it's supposed to create an equal playing field and market, you know, capital. You if you believe in capital markets, yeah, then you have an equal opportunity to to buy these legislators lunch. Right. Buy lunch. And buy lunch and attack trade off if you have a business as well. And pitch your case. Um, so that's why we create these political activists uh uh coalitions. Um that's that's why you you know you go to the to the ombudsman or the councilman and express your concerns so they can take it up to the representative.
SPEAKER_01I never have your caucus. I never realized until I was like a couple years into my financial journey how much of an overlap there is with money in politics. Like if you didn't, if you were getting into money and you didn't have even like a basic understanding of the political structure, at least in our country, I can't speak for other countries, you don't understand money. You can't. I mean, the 10-year treasury is a great example of the inflation and unemployment rate that's dictated by a government house with the Fed. If you don't understand that, you don't understand money.
SPEAKER_00You can't politics got me into money, got me, and money got me into you know the inner workings. Our whole country is run on money. See, that's funny because money got me into politics.
SPEAKER_01Like, I I didn't want to get into politics, but I'm like, I need to learn this to understand money.
SPEAKER_00You you can't avoid it because it's literally the system that our country was built on was capitalism.
SPEAKER_01Yep. That's why I never have like too strong of a take, which again, people don't like my take on this. But like I've gotten a lot of pushback on it. But like people don't like my political take of like I don't care too much because the money is what I'm focused on, because it's not it's not about what the correct, like if you look at objectively, yeah, it's not about what is the morally correct take or what we should do or shouldn't do. It's who is funding the thing we are doing. That's always what's gonna win. So why do I get so emotionally pro Why would I get emotionally pressed about a political topic that some billionaire is funding the opposite thing of, and there's nothing I can do about it no matter what I say.
SPEAKER_00Except raise more money than them. That's that's your recourse. It is every so and and this is the the funny thing about anything. Uh there's a uh what is what the guy say he's like if you want to save the world, you're gonna need some shekels, you need some coin. Like everything is run on money, like Save the Well Foundation, WWF. Um uh everything has a political backing, and then they have a purse. Yep.
SPEAKER_01If you don't have a purse, then you don't have a cause. Even nonprofits, nonprofits need the fund, they need to pay people to work there.
SPEAKER_00They need to the reason they're nonprofit is so that they can funnel more money into the cause. Yeah. That's that's the definition that you again, something else in the in the in the tax code 501c3. I know that one. There you go. That's tax code. Nonprofit is tax code. This is this is all written down. So it's it's a the system is designed to keep the government running without them having to ask citizens for money. Yep. That's what your taxes are for.
SPEAKER_01But if citizens want to put their time in to a 501c3, to a LLC, to an S-corp, yeah, and they want to grow the country in their own way and create jobs or create whatever it is, they have the manual of the tax code.
SPEAKER_00So Bernie was what he was the closest one. He was the closest one on the Democratic side to almost get people to flip to another system.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00And he called it democratic socialism, but it was just socialism. It was flat out.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00We're gonna charge you more in taxes so that we can pay for X, Y, and Z. It's socialism. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Like a government run found like how do we word this? Like a government with tax the citizens because the government needs its money to run and operate how it should. He's gonna take care of everybody. Which I feel like the average person wouldn't mind paying taxes if they directly saw it going to something. Like, I never care about I don't get mad about money coming out of my check for taxes. I get mad when money comes out of my check for taxes, and then I drive home and hit a pothole. I'm like, I can't have both of those things.
SPEAKER_00Well, call the ombudsman, the councilman, the buy one. Like, hey, I sent you $500 last week, and there's a pothole on my street. I need it fixed. It needs to be filled today. I'm gonna write a letter, strongly worded letter for you to fill this pothole.
SPEAKER_01Have you um, because I feel like this is more of um uh traditional education side of things, maybe even a little, but I could be wrong here. Have you looked in like economic systems, like if you're like more of um an Austrian economics or like a Keynesian economics or it it was my my favorite class was economics.
SPEAKER_00Not so much the the terminology, but I am definitely a fan of fair trade. Yep. Bartering should probably come back to the market.
SPEAKER_01Where's the mercantile class?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah, it it's it it's a it's an interesting thing as inflation grew and people pursue more you know dollars to buy things instead of investing in infrastructure and and you know living, yeah. Um you know, it's like you can't it's like you say, like we we we really invested more in the circus than the bread.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. So we have the best circus in history, though. Oh, yeah. We can't even argue. Me and my buddy were talking about it last night. We were watching the World Cup. We have two TVs uh in our living room. We have one and then we have another one on top of it.
SPEAKER_00How American of you?
SPEAKER_01Right. So we'll have you know Uzbekistan Columbia on the bottom TV. Then we have I have two phones. I got both of my phones in my hand. I'm scrolling Twitter, doing whatever, texting people. Second TV's got a different sport on, like cornhole or some random stuff. Yeah, we have four circuses ongoing right now, let alone our conversation. If you want to talk about the attention span. Yeah. And and we were saying, like, I can sit on this couch and have food delivered directly to my door from any cuisine in the world that I choose at any time of day, pretty much. So there's this. We have amazing bread and circus.
SPEAKER_00There's there's two things to that. Like, I uh my buddy owns a bar downtown.
SPEAKER_01Um I say the name of said bar or no, because yeah, yeah. Shout out speaker box, right? Yeah, because I I almost went in the other day. I got nervous.
SPEAKER_00I didn't come on.
SPEAKER_01Shout out Catrell, I guess. He has Bevyette.
SPEAKER_00My boy KT and uh and and and the crew down there. And uh so we go down there, and there are a bunch of people here for the World Cup. Yeah, like just traveling America. Oh, yeah. So I heard a lot of different accents. I'm asking where you're from. Oh, we're from Liverpool, and uh, this is our first time in America. Scousers, yeah, and and these people are like first of all, I don't know what they've been doing or why they don't have a ranch overseas. Yeah, but apparently this is a thing. They're taking ranch or trying to sneak ranch back on the plains. Oh, yeah.
SPEAKER_01I was in England a few years ago. They're like substitute that I see a lot when like the way they use it is mayo. Like I have I've seen British people have pizza. You know how like we have pizza with ranch, they have pizza with mayo.
SPEAKER_00That's disgusting. Agreed. Um, but yeah, that they're like the food over here, um, they've they've never experienced anything like it. There's like there's so much seasoning. There's there's oh yeah.
SPEAKER_01British people don't season their food. I'm British, I can tell you.
SPEAKER_00God, they're like, they're like, what is this? I've never peppered.
SPEAKER_01Pabrika.
SPEAKER_00This this girl was eating uh, she was eating a quesadilla from uh uh from parlay. She's like, I've never had anything like this.
SPEAKER_01Parlay is fire. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00And I'm like, it's just it's just cheese and bread. Like there's a little bit of chicken in there, but it's just it's just cheese and bread with some with some some peppers in it.
SPEAKER_01Peppers? Yeah.
SPEAKER_00And she's like, it's delicious. I've never had anything like this in my life. And you know, they're here to watch the World Cup and enjoy. And I'm like, wow.
SPEAKER_01Were you at the game then? Uh the at the bar watching the game, the Croatia-England game. Was that the one you were watching?
SPEAKER_00No, I can't remember which one was on. That was a good game. Um I can't remember which one was on. I think it was uh no, oh okay. I remember now. All right, it was uh it was Curacao.
SPEAKER_01Oh, yeah.
SPEAKER_00And I had never heard of Curacao before, so I was like, where is this place? I was calling it Caraco. I was like, where's where's Caraco? Yep. So it's a it's a small island off the coast of South America. Okay, yep. And um apparently it was a big deal. They were they were getting their ass beat uh by Germany, but they were like super excited because they scored a goal.
SPEAKER_01So I guess first goal ever in the World Cup. First girl ever. So that's a big deal. Oh, yeah. I don't watch FIFA. Like this is like that's their first time their country's been in the World Cup and the first goal they scored. So this was like a huge deal.
SPEAKER_00They're getting their ass kicked. Oh my god, yeah. Like like 7-1. Yeah, they did like but but you would have thought you would have thought they were winning, they had won the whole thing. The way that they celebrated that one goal. Oh, yeah. Even the announcers were in there. This is a this is a huge deal for Kerstell. This is the first goal in their condemnations history. Like, like they had won the game. And I looked at the score, it was like it's seven to one. So I'm like, how does this work? Why are they so excited? Like, real passion. It's a different animal, bro. The the the FIFA World Cup fans, like, they're they're like here. They're in Houston, they're in Atlanta. I didn't even know this was going on, and apparently it's that it's here for like the next month. Oh, yeah, until July 19th, I think is the final. Yeah, I'm gonna get I'm gonna get into it. But oh, we're going to a bar, we're watching a game, watching an England game. But I gotta find out who to root for now. I gotta pick a team.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, you do.
SPEAKER_00What's your background? Bro, I think I'm Venusian.
SPEAKER_01They're not in the wrong.
SPEAKER_00I don't but you know what? That's another thing. Like, you know, because I my my ancestors I can only trace back so far. Right. Um we gotta wrap it up now.
SPEAKER_01We gotta get back to work. Is it that time? It's 1 30. Wow.
SPEAKER_00So subscribe. I know, right? Yeah, like and subscribe. Comment who you're voting for, or not voting for who you're winning what?
SPEAKER_01Who's gonna win the World Cup?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, who's gonna win the World Cup, man? It's my first time watching. I'm voting for the or I'm I'm rooting for the carousel.
SPEAKER_01They won't win. They won't win, they won't win. Another like plus 20,000 odds.
SPEAKER_00Bro, I'm putting I'm putting the dollar on it. FanDuel link.
SPEAKER_01All right, let's do it. Put the link in bio. Everyone subscribe. See you later. Deuces