Welcome And The Four Jobs

SPEAKER_00 0:00

All right, what's going on, everybody? Welcome to uh Next Level Human. And this is uh Substack. I am actually going live on Substack exclusively. Normally we go on YouTube and a couple other places, but I have a very good friend of mine, Brandon Belk, with me today. And one of the things that Brandon and I have been uh, you know, we're we're two people who get together every once in a while, but the last couple weeks we've gotten together a bunch. And a lot of us getting together is really about me trying to unpack something that I'm not very good at, that Brandon is just excellent at. And I'll break this down for all of you. We have four jobs that we can do in our lives, right? And this is what next level humans are all about. We have health and fitness, we have personal relationships, we have purpose and meaning. And then we have the job that scares a lot of us and is very confusing for a lot of us, which is finance, money, career. And this is uh where Brandon comes in for me. Um, he is sort of my go-to person uh on this. And so uh follow him over at uh at Brandon Belk on Substack, and I think you can find him here. But my brother, welcome uh to Next Level Human and this Substack Live. I appreciate you being here. We actually met in person the last couple weeks, so now we're doing it so everyone can kind of listen in on the conversation.

SPEAKER_01 1:27

So absolutely, Jay. Thank you for the intro. It's a pleasure to be here.

SPEAKER_00 1:31

Yeah, man. I'm glad I'm glad we agreed to do this live for everyone to uh I think there's a delay. Do we have a delay between us? Are you getting me? Am I you're kind of you're a little delayed for me. Oh, there we go. You're back. Cool, cool. Yeah, I got a delay for you too. So we'll try to see if this can this can work. Um, all right, man. So let me let me sort of um get everyone caught up on uh sort of what you have kind of done for me. So I'll just kind of tell this story and then I want you to uh kind of educate us. Um so about uh what was it 2022, the end of 2022, beginning of 2023, maybe it was 2023 around this time. It's been about three years, right?

SPEAKER_01 2:17

You think just it for you since we first started talking and then and then uh working together, I think it was falls the end of 2020.

SPEAKER_00 2:34

Yeah. You know, Brandon, I think we're I think what I we don't have a good connection, so why don't you jump off and come back on? I'll you know, just basically I'm gonna hit jump off, I'm gonna send you an invite and jump back on because we're not we don't have a great connection. Um, but jump off, I'll send you another invite just in case, and then just come right back on.

SPEAKER_02 2:57

Good deal. Cool.

SPEAKER_00 2:59

All right, just hang on, everybody. We're gonna have Brandon back with us in a minute. I don't know if you all could um get him, but I was having a very difficult time hearing him. And I really want you to have a chance to be able to speak with him or at least hear him uh talk because he has been someone who has really been helping me allay a lot of my confusion and a lot of my fears um regarding this job of finance. And I just think it's really important that we um have this uh conversation. And while I wait for him, I will kind of set you all up on sort of uh the story uh behind what happened and um sort of my journey with um Brandon and then allow him to give us a chance to uh talk to him and be educated by him. So probably about three years ago, I think, um my complete business uh collapsed. Barry's back. So I'm I'm telling the story, Brandon, about uh kind of how we met. So this was about three years ago. My business, metabolic.com, kind of collapsed, and I went into a tailspin of uh pretty much losing everything I had immediately. I'm one of these people who has not been, I'm always the person who's like, you know, I can earn and I earn well, but I've never learned to manage and save my money well. Some of you may be able to relate. When I think about finance, I tend to think about you've got to earn, we got to save, and we've got to manage, right? I've done real pretty well with earning, but I did not save and manage. And so when my business collapsed, I lost everything starting over at 50. So I'm 53 now. And right before that happened, right before that happened, um, Brandon and I were talking and he was telling me a little bit about what he does. And I gave him, I think, 6K to, you know, sort of invest for me. And I forgot kind of all about it, right? And I went through this whole process, and there's been some pretty stressful times. And uh I was kind of telling him, this is like a couple years later, I think two years later, I was telling him, look, man, like if money's really tight and this and that. And he's like, Well, I've got, you know, I've got this

Business Collapse And The 10x Wake-Up

SPEAKER_00 5:16

money set aside for you. And I'm thinking in my head, right? I'm like, okay, well, what's $6,000 gonna do? And he goes, and so he goes, haven't you been looking at the reports I've been sending you or whatever? And I'm like, no, I haven't seen them because I don't pay attention. So he sends them to me. I open it up, and there's about 60K sitting in this account. So he essentially 10x my money for me in basically two years. And this blew my mind because I had never really invested before or done anything. I'm always just like, okay, let me earn. I don't know much about the other stuff. And this kind of blew my mind and then sent me on sort of this uh sort of journey and really trying to understand from him when I talk to him, what exactly is he doing that is different and how he sees finance, and really just constantly, you know, sort of picking his brain to educate me. And the final thing I'll say, Brandon, before I let you jump in here, is the latest conversation him and I had was a conversation that kind of blew me away because he was like, I don't really understand why everyone is so afraid right now. Well, I understand it, but they probably shouldn't be because there's so much opportunity right now. And that also kind of blew me away. And then he was educating me on why. And so I wanted you all to understand why uh from his point of view. And so what I want you to do, Bran, is just kind of uh, you know, get us started in sort of how you see this. Um, I don't know if this is, you know, typical results in terms of what I got, you know, um, but you see things very differently. And certainly I wasn't, you know, technically, and at least I don't think you can educate me in the stock market the way most people are in terms of what you did for me. So wherever you want to start, I would just love for you to have the conversation that you've been having with me with all of these individuals.

SPEAKER_01 7:15

Well, thank you so much, Jade. Yeah, that's a good, good, good uh tee up there. And I, you know, I think the first most important thing to say about the success that you had, you know, because a lot of that is all about, you know, a lot of this opportunity exists because of how early we are in, you know, what many are calling the fourth industrial revolution, right? Whether that's on the backs of AI, crypto, you know, digital finance, you name it, the writing's been on the wall now for um, you know, several years, and now it's kind of hitting the mainstream since uh, you know, I would say late 2024. But going back to 2022, you know, um, what you did is really the ideal model, which is you want to be, you know, earlier is better than late, you know, and then also um not watching it day to day, you know, because it is the markets are incredibly volatile, and that, you know, by design does kind of play into human emotions, you know, human emotions kind of kind of mirror that that volatility. And so you walking away for a period of time, given that, that, that, that growth to occur, you know, allows you to kind of reap those benefits from a relatively, you know, passive, kind of, you know, stress-free mentality. And and then also on that, I think that, you know, where this really connects into you know the next level human framework that you talk about is you mentioned the word fear a few times there, you know, and so did I. And you know, I'm of the belief that

Why The Fourth Industrial Shift Matters

SPEAKER_01 8:40

oftentimes fear is pointing us to that kind of next level of power that may be available to us if we, you know, uh keep the calling, so to speak. And so um using fear as a guide of where t where to move towards versus away from is what in my belief, in my experience, has led to greater and greater expansion. Um and so, you know, there's a lot of fear going out right now, like you mentioned, you know, whether that's through the mainstream media or on social media, um, you know, X and that sort of thing. And a lot of that is, you know, um it's it's valid, you know, it's the emotions that everyone is having is very valid, you know, based on the information that's presented to us. And just the, you know, I think it's a testament to um just the massive scale of structural changes that we're seeing taking place at a lot of different levels. Um, and it's happening so fast, you know. So change tends to scare people anyway, you know, or or brings up a lot of emotion. And when you amplify that or increase the velocity of that change, it's gonna feel even more like fast energy, you know, and so the most important thing for us to do right now is see this change as an opportunity in order to, you know, really benefit and position ourselves, you know, in the way, I guess, of where this change is moving. Because in every great um transition point in the economy, that's where the most financial opportunities exist. You know, we we can look to the past for for plenty of examples. You know, most recently in our lifetime, you could look towards um, you know, the dot-com bubble, right? And so also very volatile, right? And so there's these waxing and wanings that occur in those transitions where, you know, if you have the courage to pay attention and swim and catch the wave, then you know, you could change your life and those around you, you know, and that's something that you've gotten a taste of. But, you know, we are still early. That's the fact, you know, the window is still open somewhat, you know. We've seen a lot of um, you know, explosive moves in the AI sector, uh, but it's not over, right? Why? Because the world is still in in transition, right? We're still, we're still navigating how to modernize, you know, and it whether it's uh the infrastructure of our energy, energy grid, right? Or whether it's the infrastructure of how of of how money gets transferred across the globe. Um, so many important uh infrastructures, you know, especially on the technological side, are way outdated. You know, for for how fast that we've evolved as as a society, um largely on the heels of technology, the infrastructure just can't hold it now. You know, you know, a lot like the you know, we talked years ago about how you know I was I was primarily focused on the internet of value that's being built right now, right? And this modernization of the financial system because you know, the way that money gets transferred presently, that technology was built in the 1970s, you know, and that's why money is very expensive to uh, you know, it's very expensive and slow to transfer. So we're watching all of these important changes, just like we saw during the dot-com bubble, that revolutionized how we communicate, how we consume information, you know, how we connect to people all over the planet that, you know, either think like us or think very different from us, you know.

SPEAKER_00 12:09

Yeah, you know, one of the things you pointed out to me that it was interesting to me, and I want to talk about this first, is this idea of the infrastructure. Like one of the things you were pointing out to me, and I forget what company it is, but you were talking about just to give people a flavor, and it's also just what's interesting to me, you were talking about this idea of um, you know, these data centers that we're all seeing pop up everywhere, and that energy is, you know, needs to drive sort of this AI revolution. And you were essentially saying what we want to be looking at is we want to be looking at what's going on sort of underneath that. You know, there's these big, big companies. And of course, I might get this wrong because I don't understand it, so I want you to correct me, but there's these big, big companies that I think we normally think about like, oh, I'll invest in Apple or I'll invest in, you know, uh Microsoft or I'll do this kind of stuff. And what you were telling me is there's all these things kind of underneath happening that are building, you know, sort of the infrastructure. So it's kind of like owning the railroad ties, you know, of the rail industry before it became, you know, the railroad industry kind of thing. And so one of the things that I thought was really interesting is you were talking about one potential direction things might go is this one company that's releasing these little energy boxes that you could stick in your home to essentially be almost like driving some of the energy that can

Betting On The Infrastructure Layer

SPEAKER_00 13:34

help with the AI revolution. And we actually have these things in our home that could feed back energy. And to me, these kinds of things are exciting to me. It almost feels like, you know, the Uber of AI, right? Where we all have our own data center sort of in our house that we're feeding back out versus these, you know, sort of big data centers. And I'm sure it's going to be, you know, a combination, but you're you're always seems to be thinking about and pointing out things to me that I never would have thought about. Another example would be, and correct me if I'm wrong on this, is this idea of with this money infrastructure that you're talking about is very old, that we have a brand new money infrastructure now that's coming along, and there's certain companies and certain ways of building this infrastructure that if you know you can get in early to be part of that new money infrastructure. And so I would really love for you to just educate me again. I'm sure you're gonna have to do this multiple times with me, like over and over again, but also uh educate everyone else on kind of how you are seeing this and thinking about this, even in these volatile times. I know there's a lot to be afraid about, but I'm just curious for you to tell us when you think about this idea of infrastructure of energy and infrastructure of money movement, and what other places should we be looking at in terms of what is happening? Because it seems like there's a sea change underneath that not a whole lot of people are paying attention to these components that are building the infrastructure.

SPEAKER_01 15:09

Right. That's a good point. Yeah, and and you know, there's there's a lot of, you know, our society has gone through phases in our evolution, right? So you go back, you look at that dot-com bubble, and ever since then, that's not, I would not call that necessarily or primarily an infrastructural upgrade. That was just kind of like a reaching of the full potential from the original rails that the internet was built on, right? And so we had the infrastructure the internet built in the 80s and the 90s that allowed or kind of provided that scaffolding for the mega tech boom that we are familiar with, with you know, Microsoft, uh Amazon, Apple, Google, uh, Facebook, right? All of those companies that have done um extraordinarily well since the 2000s. And those have become um the largest companies in the stock market, right? Like Nvidia is another one. That's the company that that that you were referencing a minute ago with the the those kind of portable data data boxes, right? Data centers, right? And um, and they're really, I would say, probably the the most significant company in this AI infrastructure build out. They're manufacture of of microchips that are used in the training and programming of the AI platforms that we're familiar with. And so it kind of goes hardware and then the software layer on top. And then once that reaches a peak, right? So we've seen that over the last 10 years. Now, what we're seeing in this new infrastructure build-out to go to the next rung on the ladder with AI, you're seeing all these companies that have been that have been made very wealthy over the last 20 years from the first dot-com boom. And that's, you know, like I said, Microsoft, Apple, Amazon, Google. Um, so they're the that's where the money's coming from that is now funneling into it's basically moving from software to hardware again, right? So that's why we're seeing all the semiconductor stocks go up, all the microchip stocks go up, all the energy stocks go up. We're seeing um, you know, even like the chemical company that designs the liners of like fiber optic cables, right? Precious metals last year went crazy. Like gold went from under $2,000 a couple of years ago to now it's it's it went as high as it went over $5,000 uh at the beginning or end of last year, right? We saw silver from last fall, it went from $35 all the way up to $120, Jade, in just in less than six months. And it hadn't it in the history of silver trading, it had never gone above $50. It only achieved $50 twice. And now we've saw it just blast past that, right? Over up almost like more than double. Why? Well, silver is used in just about everything that's related to technology, right? Solar panels alone, right? Solar companies alone can get enough silver to meet demand. Satellites, silver, um, GPS systems, silver. I hate to say it, but like this every missile, every Tomahawk missile, right? We know there's a lot of conflicts going on in the world right now. Every Tomahawk missile uses 500 grams of silver. Every single one. And so the demand for all of these commodities, all of these basically base inputs for the infrastructure, it just it dwarfs the amount of supply that we have. We can't mine them fast enough. And

Scarcity Trades Energy Metals Commodities

SPEAKER_01 18:46

so that's really what's uh what's creating the uh disruption, supply chain disruption, and opportunities that we're seeing today, you know. And so back to your point on the on the um on the opportunities there, you know, it's in my belief, it's aligning with that that gives us a chance to play offense and defense. Because that helps, that kind of helps me balance my my mental body, you know, where it's like, hey, I'm not just in it to, you know, to go after go full offense and make a bunch of money, which is great, but also defensively, you know, when you own those base resources that that have scarcity, that are limited in supply, and we know that the demand cannot be satisfied, you know, then um that gives us a bit of you know sovereignty over our own domain as well, right? And ability, so not just ability to profit, but also protect and have ownership of this future.

unknown 19:39

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 19:40

Am I right in saying that when you think about things this way, right? Like instead of like betting on a particular company, you know, you're essentially going, all right, where are the hard resources that are needed to build out this, you know, sort of thing that is happening, and it is happening, but rather than just betting on a single company, it sounds to me like you're going underneath and saying, what are the actual, tangible, you know, hard substances, if possible, that I can deal with that are going to shield me from the volatility sort of up top. So that's what you mean by sort of infrastructure. So that's like energy and silver and you know, that kind of stuff.

SPEAKER_01 20:25

Right, digital assets as well, right? Building the infrastructure of the financial system, um, things like XRP that we've talked about, you know, and that's that's the that's the thing. You know, we talked about just if if you look if you look you can look to nature as a as a good analogy here, right? Like everything, in my belief, seeks balance. And so, you know, in a world of inflation, right, when we know that the US dollar has lost 96% of its value in the you know since since the Federal Reserve was created in 1913, right? So, so a dollar to so what a dollar would buy then now takes $26 to buy. Okay. Uh 20% of the value has gone down. So we've lost 20% of the purchasing power just since COVID. Right? Five years. Wow. That's the equivalent of if if you if you had a hundred thousand dollars in a savings account, that hundred thousand now buys eighty thousand dollars worth of goods. Right. So that's taking a twenty thousand dollar hit on your purchasing power in just five years. And so as a result of that, right, all of these, all of these institutions, you call it, you know, kind of smart smart capital or or inside insiders, they're they're seeking scarcity, right? When there's high inflation, lack of scarcity, that money is going to seek scarcity to preserve its value, right? And it's all a balancing act. And so what what our job from just like a philosophical standpoint is to follow that natural flow towards scarcity, right? Invest in it's because if if these megacons. Companies that have all the all the money, right, need these base resources to not just survive, but continue to expand and build the next phase of growth, then us positioning accordingly puts us in a in a position to benefit from that, right? And so yeah, that's where the money's coming from. It's it's it's moving, you know, that that's where the investments are coming from from those big companies into into that next that next scale.

unknown 22:27

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 22:27

You know, when I hear this, like it makes complete sense to me when I hear it. And then every time I kind of go, I get then I get mixed up after, you know, after I'm not talking to you, where because because I don't, you know, fully understand the flow of you know, sort of capital. But like one of the things that happens whenever I try to talk about this to anyone is they will focus in on something. Like they'll be like, oh, so you're talking about like Bitcoin, or they'll focus in on something that they think they know about. And then of course I can't kind of explain it like you do, but like one of the things, and and I'll just re-explain this to you so you can then correct me and educate us all. But so one of the things I think I uh have understood is that let's take, you know, I guess the blockchain technology, which runs Bitcoin. So it sounds to me like, okay, so Bitcoin would be the shiny object that we can see, but underneath that is this sort of new technology. And that new technology has uh expanded and evolved pretty significantly since, you know, the the sort of introduction of Bitcoin. And that new technology has fundamentally changed the way that we are going to do finance. And there's certain aspects of that blockchain technology, the aspects or like, you know, let's call them programs or potential coins or infrastructure, like you talk about, that may end up, may end up being, you know, sort of the the railroad ties of the railroad industry, right? Like, you know, before the railroad industry was a thing, if you could get into railroad ties or lumber, I guess, or whatever they were doing, you would make a huge amount of money if you could have predicted that whole process. And this to me is where some of these things start to confuse me because something like is it XLM and XRP, these kind of blockchain, I think, technologies, right? Um, they are doing what? How are they infrastructure, right? Because that's the thing that people like I get confused on that because I think of these as like, well, they're computer programs, right? You know, and how is that infrastructure for sort of this coming financial revolution? And are these the things, because there's so many of these blockchain technologies, how do we make sense on which ones are going to be part of the infrastructure and which ones are gonna go away? Like, for example, back in the dot-com era, right? I remember being out in Seattle and being a personal trainer there uh while I was in medical school during that whole process. And I was training all these very young, successful dot-com people who were starting all these businesses. And by the time I left Seattle, right, all of a sudden I just saw them one after the other. They would, I would be training them and I'd be like, like, what happened to like what happened to Mike? And then it's like, well, his business collapsed. And they, all these people's businesses were collapsing, but then these other businesses emerged, like these ones that sort of won, like Google and Amazon and the ones you're talking about. And so I want to know which of these, how can we make sense of which of these blockchain technologies slash infrastructure infrastructures are gonna win? Is there is there a way to decode this? Is it like just reading, is it reading the tea leaves, or is it actually doing data and saying, oh, these big companies are investing in this, or oh, the government is paying attention to this? Like, how are you figuring that piece out? That's a big long question, but I'm just I'm curious how you think about it.

SPEAKER_01 26:02

It's great. You know, two two key points here. Number one, I'll start, I'll kind of work backwards. So how? How do we know? We have access, fortunately, in today, we have access to the data that allows us to answer that question, right? The data that we have available to us today is it's just it dwarfs what was available back during 2001, right? Even though we had the internet, it was very basic, right, at that time. And what blockchain also provides is on-chain data. So you can monitor in real time. These are, you know, blockchain uh essentially is a dis is distributed ledger technology. So it's a live feed of all activity on the network. And so there's there are many platforms that can aggregate that data and show us the flow of the capital, shows us where the attention, the currency is flowing towards, right? And so so there's all kinds of data that you know, whether it's technical data or you know, um patents that are being filed, right? Right, we can we can see, like, for example, um the DTCC, you know, we talked about this last week. They are the um basically uh mega entity that is responsible for the settlement layer of all capital markets. So think of them

Reading On-Chain Data And Adoption Signals

SPEAKER_01 27:27

as the clearinghouse for the stock market, the commodities market, uh, the bond market, all all trading, right? They settle close to five quadrillion dollars annually. That's how much money is, that's how much is processed. So they're it's kind of like I can't even fathom that's like 17 zeros, 15 zeros, something like that. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. So, so that's like the plumbing. Those are the pipes, right? And the and the and that's how much is flowing through that pipes, that network, right? And so the DTCC, uh, this is one of the reasons you mentioned XLM. XLM last week went up 30% because of a just a simple headline that uh where the DTC announced that they were selecting XLM as one of their primary partners for the tokenization of real world assets. And we'll get we can get to that maybe in the next point. But so there's all kinds of information out there, right? But the problem is that most people are um, you know, uh distracted by the deluge, right, of all kinds of information, right? We in this day and age, we have no shortage of of information or facts. It's all about the focus required and the embodiment that we can do as a result of that. And so, so the data is there to know, right? We have the receipts. And um and then going back to the your first point about, you know, um, is this, you know, how do we know what survives or not? Okay, so so one thing to clarify is that the last internet boom that were, you know, back in the dot-com bubble, that was internet information, right? So at that time, that was at the software level, primarily, right? The internet rails were built by Cisco and some of these other kind of Oracle, right, decades before. And so all those dot-com companies, right? The like you mentioned, some of the clients that you had in their businesses, those were website, right? It was like any business that had a website, like the famous example is pets.com. You know, pets, anything with a dot com at the end of it got venture capital money, right? But but yet they didn't have any earnings, right? There was no, there was no actual revenue. There was no actual business model. It was just an idea that was piggybacking on a trend, right? And so that's what makes a bubble. And that's what people I think is causing a lot of PTSD because people are conflating. Oh, the last time we saw an internet boom cycle or butt or bubble cycle, um, it didn't go so well, right? It popped and and and this, that, and the other. So I would argue that the difference this time is that the earnings of these companies at the hardware level, like there's revenue, right? There's revenue that's being made. The earnings are multiplying at a faster rate than the price of the stocks are, right? Or the price of the assets are. And the reason being is because it's a supply crunch, right? It's a there's a there's scarcity now. There's no scarcity in spools spinning up a website, right? Anybody can spin up a website and call it a business. You know, there's no there's no limit there, right? But but there is scarcity on how many chips, microchips can be produced in the next year, right? And so what we're seeing is these, like I mentioned, these, these uh, in order to survive and expand, companies like Microsoft and Google, they're contracting five years out in advance, right? So they're the orders that are being placed with these, with these microchip and semiconductor companies today will not be fulfilled for another five years. That's how far behind we are. So, so the growth, and I when I say growth, I mean like like actual dollars, like revenue, right? Income, like income growth is way out in the future, right? And so that almost guarantees that that demand, right, in the in the in in the face of this supply crunch. And so it's a it's a whole different structure and dynamic than what we saw back in 2000 and 2001. And so talking about blockchain and weaving that in, um these these uh these these assets that we talk about, right? XRP, XLM, um Bitcoin to a certain extent. Uh, you know, uh just real quick, Bitcoin, in my opinion, was it's it's kind of like the prototype, right? It it got it, it was it was uh it was built in 2009 when we were all using the iPhone 4. And we're talking about technology, right? So I don't know if anybody knows you can't even use an iPhone 4 anymore, right? But the the apps don't work. Yeah, exactly. And so so Bitcoin, very important as a precedent, as kind of a beta test, right? Like what does it look like to have blockchain and being able to send peer-to-peer without a middleman, you know? So it was just kind of a a good testing ground for what has now evolved into a utility, right? Into an actual um real-world problem solve, right? And that is what I like to call on-demand liquidity, right? And that is the problem that XRP and XLM others are solving, is that they're able to transfer money in in seconds for cents as opposed to days for dollars. Okay. And that, when you scale that to the tune of 500 quadrillion, or excuse me, five quadrillion, you know, that that that that step change or that that that orders of magnitude differenced in the velocity of money, then businesses get paid that much faster, right? Um uh uh businesses get paid faster, they can reinvest faster, right? Customers get they're get get get fulfilled faster. So as everything moves faster, then it then the the the all tides rise, if that makes sense. Right? Yeah, activity rises.

SPEAKER_00 33:11

This is interesting because so I have um, I think you know I'm like I I have my AI team is in Switzerland, and so I have to uh and and they of course they contract out with people in Pakistan and other places, but so I I'm constantly wiring them money. And that money takes so so this is this what you're talking about? It takes about four days, right? I'm like, have you gotten the wire yet? Have you got no wire yet? So are you telling me that this is essentially the technology that things like XLM and XRP are solving, which is confusing for me because then I just go, oh, that's interesting because that's an issue. And then there's an issue of you know, the the fees between, you know, um, you know, uh the US dollar and say the pound, right? You know, and then there's the issue of these things I thought were also coins. So I'm confused on like what we're actually talking about here, right? Because when I think about like a blockchain or a technology, I'm like, okay, what am I doing buying a digital asset that I actually own? Like it's like a dollar, so I have a coin of XLM or something, but then it's also part of the infrastructure that it we're gonna build this new fine, you know, world finance thing off of. So can you just help me understand that? Because I always get confused with this, Brandon. I'm just kind of like, I don't quite get so what is it? It's a coin, but it's also, you know, um, a technology, and it's also and what's the technology doing, right?

SPEAKER_01 34:38

That's a great, yeah. Thank you, you're keeping me in the rails. This is perfect. Perfect. Um yeah, so it is confusing, I think, mostly because when we think of the word coin or token, we think of money.

unknown 34:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 34:57

Right? We think of a quarter, we think of a dollar. Yeah, like a dollar in my wallet. Right. And and it's a bit misleading in that way, in my opinion, right? So I'm gonna do my best to try to bring some clarity to that. Because this ties into how it's infrastructure primarily and and then what it actually is that you own in that form of that token, right? So if the network itself is what we're replacing, right? We're going from the network, the Swift network, like you experience, right, where it takes four to business days. And honestly, Jade, six percent of all Swift

XRP And XLM Explained Simply

SPEAKER_01 35:31

transactions fail. That money just gets lost. Wow. Six percent, six percent, you know, of a hundred dollars, it doesn't seem like much, but six percent of a hundred trillion dollars is a big deal, you know, especially if you're a multi-billion dollar business that's sending those things, right? And so there's the real problem there too, and and and amongst others. But anyway, back to your question. When you own a token of say XLM or XRP, you are owning a piece of the protocol. You are owning essentially the gas or the oil that runs across the network. And so all of this is back end, right? When this when when when we're fully into this new paradigm, most people probably won't even notice a difference other than things just move faster and cheaper. They're not gonna need to there, most people aren't gonna have to fool with like, oh, I need this token or I need that token. You're not gonna need a token because essentially the token is what runs on the back end and acts as like, think of it as a shuttle, right? Or a ferry, right? A like a boat, right? A ferry that goes across a you know a channel. Okay. And so on one side of the channel of the channel, you have you have the US dollar, right? So so if we're sending dollars, like you were mentioned, from maybe the US to the UK, I have it in dollars, I have my value in dollars, I owe somebody money in the UK. So I'm going to send my dollars across the call it the XRP ledger, right? That network. And so, and there will be an app on top of this infrastructure, right? So there'll be an it'll be, think of it as like the next iteration of Venmo, right? And and you know, for us here in the States, like this problem isn't quite as big as it is in a lot of places, right? We're we're very fortunate to have things like Zell and money, kind of domestically at least, money moves pretty quickly, right? But it's not the same internationally. So, so you've got this value that you send, you're like, okay, I'm gonna send my dollars, and that dollar on the back end inside the app gets converted into XRP. It's gets it loads onto the shuttle, and that's what allows it to move across the network through those pipes, through that, that, that, that, um, that infrastructure, three to five seconds, it arrives on the receiver's app, right, in the UK, and he wants it in in pounds. So he just receives the pounds automatically because it it basically goes from dollar to XRP and then back into and then into the UK pound within three to five seconds. And the two users on either side have no idea that XRP was involved. That's it's just the shuttle. It's the ferry that took it from one thing to another in a matter of seconds. And it's instantly settled. It's finalized, it's on the ledger, there's no waiting at, there's no pending transactions. And so that that's that's really what these tokens are is they're just little like ferry boats that move value from one place on the planet to another very quickly, very cost effectively.

SPEAKER_00 38:46

And okay, so that this is starting to make some sense to me, I guess, then. So so I guess in the Swift network, right? It's almost like, okay, so I've got this dollar, and let's say there's, you know, there's no real ferry there, or the ferry is way, way slower, and along the way, they have to kind of make sure Jade's actually got the dollars, and this other person actually has the infrastructure to receive this money. It sounds like what you're saying is with these, this technology, it automatically knows I have the thing. It automatically knows this can receive, and it's it doesn't have to do all these checks, so it moves way faster. Is that close?

SPEAKER_01 39:30

You're right. You're right. And in fact, with the Swift network or kind of the infrastructure that we're all familiar with, there is no very um it's actually not a network of value, it's a messaging network. Okay, so so so hang with me. The way that money currently gets transferred is actually it actually doesn't at all.

SPEAKER_02 39:56

What happens is you have your bank that you're sending the wire from, and they have their bank that they're receiving it from.

SPEAKER_01 40:06

In order to facilitate a swift transfer, your bank has to have an account with their bank and vice versa. And when you initiate a Swift transfer, it sends you you fill out that form, right? You put in all the information, that's that goes on the message that gets broadcast across the Swift network. It's a message, it's like an email. And that message is a memo that when it's received by the other person's bank, they read it and they say, Oh, okay, we're gonna debit this much out of that out of your bank's account with us and then credit it to this customer. So what that means is that for every dollar that gets sent across the Swift Network, two is required because that dollar has to exist at this at location A and location B at the same time. And then they have two separate ledgers that they then have to both mark separately in order to settle. And that involves, um, like you mentioned, that involves um, you know, um foreign exchange transfer rates that are happening in real time. So in four, in four business days, the fluctuation or that exchange rate is going to fluctuate quite a bit. And so there's a lot of volatility there and a lot of money that gets lost both in fees and that slippage. And so that's that's another thing, too, when we talk about velocity of money or just making things more efficient. We'll no longer need $2 to send every dollar.

SPEAKER_00 41:43

Well, we need the banks. I'm curious. Like, you know, can I, you know, when this is all said and done, right? Because this was, I guess, the the dream of Bitcoin, right? That you and I could do, you know, it's decentralized, and you and I can just deal with each other, and you know I've got it because of this technology, and I know that you've, you know, you can receive it or whatever. But I'm wondering now, do we need the banks for this? Are they gonna hijack this? You know, this is where it starts getting into all this stuff where it's like, do we still need this middleman that's gonna come in, governments or companies or whatever, and you know, get involved and, you know, you know, take their cut still, or is this gonna turn into something where you and I can deal directly one-on-one? I mean, I see the potential of it now, right? I see now, like, oh, okay, I can actually do business with someone in Sub-Saharan Africa, you know, quickly. They can have dollars. I could see how this could transform the world, but I'm also wondering, you know, sort of the the pessimist in me and the way that, you know, you see these power things, this new technology, is it is it already been sort of hijacked and controlled by the powers that be? Or is this gonna make things more egalitarian? I'm just curious. Uh, another great setup, yes.

SPEAKER_01 43:00

Um, first I want to start off with something that's uh another important framework or personal philosophy of mine, and that is uh what I call a meta trend, right? And one of the biggest meta trends that I pay attention to is that of decentralization.

SPEAKER_00 43:16

What you said meta trend? Meta trend is a good thing.

SPEAKER_01 43:19

Meta trend, meta trend. And what I mean by that is that in my mind, when I reflect, if I go all the way back in human history, like if I just stretch and look to the past, and no matter what I'm looking at, whether we'll start with uh knowledge, right? So so you go back to antiquity, right? Knowledge was only in the monasteries. And oftentimes it wasn't even written down in the spoken language. So the common man, in order to gain knowledge, had to go to the monastery, or was that the wind, right? So so knowledge was very centralized. Okay. And then as we move through history, right, we get towards uh the Enlightenment era, right? And it goes from just the monasteries to maybe the aristocracy and then the aristocracy to the universities, right? And the universities start to expand, right? And then you go all the way back to like yours, your lifetime and mine, where you know, just about everybody goes to some form of university or some or formal education,

Do Banks Die Or Adapt

SPEAKER_01 44:23

right? And so knowledge, and then you keep going, right? Now it goes from universities to now, like most that's kind of on a decline, right? Now you've got with with with Chat GPT and YouTube and and and and and coaching and courses and all these things, like you don't act, you know, some of the most valuable information and knowledge is that you have in the in the palm of your hand.

SPEAKER_02 44:45

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 44:45

Everybody, all over the world. You know? And so so knowledge has been comp there's been just this constant meta-trend of decentralization. And it's not just knowledge, it's power, right? It's we went from a predominantly like uh emperors and monarchs, right? To then we went to democracy to now, you know, and so it's just kind of like this evolution to now like people are able to businesses, right? You look at the the last industrial revolution, right? Where it was like the Rockefellers and the Carnegies and the Vanderbilts. And now we've got the first billion dollar solo business, right? We saw this guy, I think you and I talked about it last week, where with the assistance of Chat GPT, you've got a guy that that that started with $20,000, right? And and and is able to scale and now has a company that's worth $1 billion. He's pulling in $420 million in revenue and just hired his first person, his brother, as a lawyer. And so, so what we're you know, so business is decentralized, right? And and money is becoming decentralized and value. And so, so that is where um going back to your original prompt with the banks, you know, banking very concentrated and has over the years we've watched it decentralized in our lifetime, right? We've seen kind of the hybrid model between what you're talking about, you know, with with what crypto kind of offers the promise of maybe not even needing a bank, right? But we've we've been slowly weaning off the dependency of, you know, the local savings and trust, you know, or credit union, through the form of uh, like I mentioned, these fintech apps or fintech platforms like Venmo or Robinhood or um uh even Ally Bank. You've got a lot of banks now that don't even have physical locations. They're all technology based. You can now with Coinbase, another um cryptocentric company, right? Uh uh, one of the the most popular places to invest in crypto, they're offering people that you can direct deposit your paycheck into your Coinbase account. And now through Coinbase, you can get uh 5% yield on your cash savings, better than the bank. You can get you can now invest in tokenized stocks through Coinbase or crypto, right? Or prediction markets. You know, that's another popular thing right now. And so a lot of people now don't even, you know, a lot of younger generations like Gen Z and even Gen Alpha now that's coming into the economy, uh they have no reason to go to a bank. But but it doesn't mean that the banks are going anywhere anytime soon, right? Because that's we're talking about maybe 10 plus years into the future. They're all what the banks do provide and what they've continued to kind of like uh um focus on more, right, through this process of of decentralization is service, right? And confidence. For most people, most people feel much safer keeping their money in a bank than in a hole in the ground, right? Or on their cell phone or or whatever, right? They they have somebody they can go to, there's customer support, right? There's there's all these things that they're very familiar with. And so it's all about the relationships, in my opinion, if when it with the the success of the of the banks in the future is going to come down to customer service, the relationships they're able to maintain with their deposit holders, and you know, the um convenience and savings that this new technology that they can, you know, co-op, like you mentioned, kind of provide or integrate into their back end, and then also, you know, use that as greater service to their, to their to their account holders. And so the banks I think that are gonna win versus the banks, there will be banks that go away, right, that'll that'll get passed on just like Blockbuster did when Netflix came out, right? And so we're gonna see that happening. But the banks that are gonna be the most successful in the future are the ones that are actually partnering with this technology because the banks are, you know, they can benefit from this this efficiency as well, right? You know, if they're if it costs them less to transfer money or facilitate those services, then they could, you know, they could cut people's fees in half and still make a ton of money, right? I told you it's going from, you know, to send a wire transfer, it costs us right now, what, 35 bucks? Something like that. Yeah. And and to send $50 million in XRP, it costs about three cents. That's nuts. Okay. That is absolutely nuts. So if the bank's doing this, again, this is back end infrastructure, and there are banks that Bank of America mentions XRP in their patent. Okay. So so they're already integrating as we speak because they know that if they can if they can if they can service these transactions for pennies on the dollar, then it gives them a marketing advantage. They can say, hey, look, we cut your fees in half, and they look like the good guy, and they're still making more money than they were in the old system. So I think it's a win-win if, you know, for the smart ones.

SPEAKER_00 50:03

Yeah, you know, it's interesting when I when I have two more questions and then we can start wrapping up. But it's interesting when I hear you talk and versus everyone else, like everyone else, it seems like doomsday scenarios. And then when I hear you talk, it's it doesn't sound like that to me. And I so I guess the first question that I would ask is why are you not or are you worried? Like, why, why are you not worried about like what everyone else seems to be worried about? Like, like think about what's going on in our world right now. Oh, it's becoming authoritarian. Like there, everyone, you know, the rich are getting richer, the poor are getting poorer, wealth is being consolidated. So all of this kind of stuff, do you worry about this, or are you truly like optimistic that this is going to be uh, you know, sort of a true opportunity to, you know, equal things out, or is that even something that you think is possible?

SPEAKER_01 50:59

No, that's a that's an important angle that we for us to cover because you know it is not all pie in the sky, right? It isn't, it isn't, you know. I am the most optimistic, and maybe the reason why I've sounded like that so far is because we're we're painting broad strokes. I'm very zoomed out. Yeah. Right. I'm about as zoomed out right now that as as possible. And so from that altitude, it is very exciting. It's very optimistic, right? Over, you know, across the bridge is a is a better

Inflation And The K-Shaped Economy

SPEAKER_01 51:32

tomorrow, just like it's always been. Right. Throughout history, I mean, you've heard this before, right? It's like we're at the most abundant, most peaceful time in human history, even but it doesn't feel like that in the short term, right? Relative to maybe last year or certain parts of our lives, this may feel like the most chaotic part of a person's life, right? There, and I feel that too. I feel the I feel the energy, you know, I feel, I feel, I feel the stress of it all, right? So, so I think that it's like in the in the when you're when you're zoomed in on the headlines or the or the current you know, rural state of world affairs or geopolitics or the you know the narratives that are getting that are getting spun up and and and and and and spreading, um, there are things to be concerned about. And um, and so on that note, you know, as we move across this, you know, through this transition, transitions tend to happen through um a quaking, right? It's it's it's a bumpy road, right? Across right the dot-com bubble was not fun for a lot of people. The Great Depression was not a lot, was not fun for a lot of people. World War II was not very fun for a lot of people. So we are experiencing, you know, it's nothing new under the sun. There's going to be conflicts, there's going to be travesties. You know, that's just the nature of this realm. And so what I will say is that if we can zoom out and kind of see where things are going, then it helps us navigate the chaos and the volatility in the short term so that we can position ourselves on the other side of that and be and just have a good context for it. So, you know, one of the things that worries me the most, you know, like you said, the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer. And that is because for whatever reason, right, like most, most um, you know, middle class or below or kind of, you know, if you're not in that kind of elite class, you don't understand the importance of owning assets, right? A lot of people we weren't taught this in in primary school or or high school. And so um, if you're if you're under that kind of good, you think you're a good person because you're you save your money, right? I'm a responsible person. I I live within my means, I save my money, I've got a nice savings account at the bank, right? And you think that by accumulating dollars, that that's the responsible thing to do. And the and the and the and the tragedy is that the system is not designed to reward savers. The system is designed to reward investors, right? It is an asset beneficial economy right now. Why? Because inflation, it it was this is this this financial system is is debt-based. New money gets created by issuing debt, right? And so in that natural inflationary environment, owning the asset, we talked about money seeking scarcity, right? So the people that aren't investing in scarcity, the people that are that are hanging on to their their white knuckling onto their cash right now are actually getting poorer every year, right? And so we're that's what you when you hear this term, the K-shaped economy getting tossed around, that K, the upper, upper arm of the K is the asset holders, the rich, getting richer, because as the dollar gets inflated, right, it takes more dollars to buy those assets. So the prices of those assets keep going higher. So if you own a bunch of assets, and I mean real estate, I mean precious metals, I mean stocks, right, crypto, whatever it is, right, the more scarce the better, right? Then it's going to appreciate. And meanwhile, if you're, you know, again, just to be repetitive, holding dollars is the bottom end of the K, right? And that's that's probably going to accelerate as we go out of this.

SPEAKER_00 55:01

Let me ask you about that real quick, because this is where someone like me who does not have a very strong money acumen, you know, I came up lower middle class, you know, exactly what you're talking about. The, the, the, the thing was go to college, right? Um, this is what my parents told me and what they did. They didn't get to go to college, so they're gonna send me to college. Get a house, right? Like that's the thing. Go to college, get a house, save your money, right? And so for me, right, it's hard because, you know, I in my world, the psychology world, and I talk about mud, misguided, unconscious decisions. This is sort of like cultural mud. And what mud does, these misguided unconscious decisions, they are unconscious. And so we slip back into them again and again and again. And so what I hear you saying is that is the wrong model, but so many of us, that's our cultural mud. So that's our default. It's almost like it haunts us and surrounds us. It's like a, it's like a virus in our software, our psychological software program that forces us not to look in this direction. So this is why I want to, me and you, to have more conversations in public, because then I just go, okay, what's the antidote to that? Because, you know, when I when you say assets to me, like I go, okay, what is that? A house, right? And then I go, you know, so I'm wondering, why don't you just walk us through real quick before we wrap up? Like when you think now, when you're like, okay, we've got this K-shaped economy, there's certain people who are trying to hold on to money, save, budget, all that kind of stuff. And then there's these other people investing in assets. How do we determine what is an asset? Like, is a house? Because I've heard that it's, you know, I've heard two things as I've kind of walked into this world, right? It's like, no, having a house, Jade, is not an asset. Other people say that's an asset. Like, how are you defining this and how are you making decisions for your clients when you handle their money about like, here's where we're gonna go seek assets? I I'm I'm curious.

SPEAKER_01 57:10

Sure. Yeah, and I love first I love the the mud, the mud framework, you know, and and what came up for me was, you know, if for those that are stuck in the mud, that's this tsunami of change that's coming, this wave, is they're gonna get crushed, right? They're gonna get crushed. And those that can get out of the mud and surf that wave will ride, will have a chance. There's an opportunity here for every single person, right? Everybody. Like, that's the beautiful thing, is even the person that's like lower middle class right now or below, or whatever, right? If there's a chance to kind of like move from that bottom of the K to the top, right? There's a chance to get out of the mud and ride the wave over these next two years, right? This is a very important, this is a they talk about it's the greatest transfer of wealth we've ever seen.

SPEAKER_00 57:56

Yeah, you before you finish this thought, so uh just tell us, tell them why and and remind me, why is the next two years, you know, I guess the two questions. The one is that why is the next two years so important? And then the other one is the same question as before. How do we in the next two years, you know, start those of us who are not very money smart like myself, start going, okay, I got two years, this whole tsunami is coming, you know, there's this thing that's, you know, coming. I want to know why. But then also I want to know, okay, what kind of assets?

SPEAKER_01 58:29

Well, I'll start with the why, you know, and and and and kind of dance around the what. So I think most people by now understand the debt problem that the United States government has, right? We are close to $40 trillion in debt at this point. And and that's a number that's so big, so big that it's hard to comprehend, right? We were about $9 trillion in debt at the beginning of 2020, I believe. Right. And so it's ballooning. And so that debt is unpayable. Right now, the interest on the debt is about one and a half trillion per year, larger than the current defense budget. And so we can't print money fast enough to just pay just to stay afloat of this debt, this bird, this ballooning debt, right? So, so the idea of like balancing the books is it's an impossibility. It was never even on the table. It was never meant to be, right? That's again, this is a debt-based society. If you stop issuing debt, the whole system collapses because new money can't be created that way. And so as the debt continues to balloon, it takes, it creates more interest. So there's this exponential growth on the debt side, right? And every dollar, like I said, is a is is essentially debt. So the more dollars you hold, the more government debt you hold that'll never be paid back. And so what are they gonna do, right? If we just, if we just at this rate, you know, with with ballooning debt, you're gonna have, like I said, a liquidity crisis. There's

The Next Two Years And 2028

SPEAKER_01 59:59

money is gonna lock up and there's gonna free, or there's gonna be a loss of confidence in the dollar because it's just getting more and more worthless, right? And so they're the government right now, and this is, I believe, why Trump was brought in primarily, and and kind of where you know the people that he's put into place, this is kind of their, I call it the Hail Mary strategy. There's no way possible way to pay off the debt. So what they're planning and what they are doing presently through this new policy, and and this is the you call it the maybe maybe you've heard of the Trump doctrine or the Dunroe Doctrine, it's his version of the Monroe Doctrine. Okay. It's all it's all detailed in this, by the way. Um they're planning to print, it's like one last mega print as the tsunami. Just print as much as possible, run the inflation hot in order to fuel the growth, right? So print, that's why we're seeing the government now invest in these technology companies. We're seeing the government partner with IBM, Intel, right? Uh Apple, right? The rare earth mineral company. Uh there's a stock called U.S. Rare Earth Minerals, and the United States is funding this company. So there's this weird, almost like nationalization that's occurring or a partnership between the public and private sector, right? So they're they're taking the money printer and using that to fund this technological expansion. Why? The reason that Trump said he wants to make America the crypto and AI capital of the planet. And while we're seeing this global arms race, predominantly between the US and China, towards energy and towards AI, right? It's a race to dominate tech. The reason being is because technology is inherently deflationary. Think about it. The more technology you've integrated into your business, the larger your profit margins, right? We no longer have to hire an account, a specialized accountant on our books. We can just have QuickBooks, right? And there's so many examples of that. So the bet is invest in tech and that will solve our problem. And because AI is kind of like, you know, this like exponential on exponential tag, right? It's like it's there, you know, and it's it's growing faster than even their own um internal models can keep up with. Right. And the AI agent wave now. So so their their bet, the big bet um is that really it's either Mad Max Society or we throw, we throw all, we go down with gunsblaze and throw everything at tech and AI with the assumption that the deflationary effects of that is going to offset the inflation of that funding process. And that's what that's what the next two years are going to be dominated by. Now it's going to create bottlenecks. There's going to be volatility, there's going to be corrections along the way. And those are the opportunities for us to invest in more assets as the market from a zoomed-out perspective continues to go higher to meet that new demand. Right. And so that's, you know, in 2028, um, and maybe this is another conversation for a different day, but every seven years, if you go back to pre-Civil War, right, and you look at the charts, um, every major financial crisis or reset, whatever you want to call it, just event, um, has occurred within a year or so of what's called the Shemitah year. And this has to do with the old Hebrew agrarian calendar, right? The next Shemitah year is 2028. The last one, 2021, right? Around COVID. The last one before that was um 2014. That was the EU crisis with Greece and Cyprus. They had the bank bail-ins. Seven years before that was the 2008 crisis. Seven years before that was the dot-com bubble. Seven years before that was the bond crisis of 94. Seven years before that was uh Black Monday in the 1987 stock market. Seven years before so I mean, you Nixon took us off the gold standard in a in a in a Shemitah year, right? The Great Depression, 1929 Shemitah year. So that's, you know, it that's not the only data set I'm using, but it's that paired with, you know, what we're seeing as far as um, you know, the new monetary policy that's being unveiled by not just Trump and the Treasury, but also his new man at the Federal Reserve. So now we're seeing a co um a collaboration for the first time in our lifetime between the Federal Reserve and the Treasury.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:27

Okay, so that that's interesting. So you're seeing lots of different signs and symptoms that are pointing to this coming thing. And then you're also looking and being like, all right, there's also this, you know, sort of historical trend that I'm paying attention to, and you're reading the tea leaves in terms of what companies are doing. And this is why you're kind of picking 2028 is sort of like the thing, give or take, where this is all gonna culminate. And I'm gonna lie, is this a good time then? Is that why you go leading up to this after 2028? It's not as good of a time, you know.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:03

Well, there's there's there's in those two years prior to a Shemitah year, that's typically the melt-up phase. Like we had the the end of the roaring twenties. Those last two years before the 1929 uh depression was the the blow-off top phase. They call it the melt-up phase. Same thing we saw in 1999 and 2000, right? The same thing we saw when they gave us every everybody's stimulus money in 2020, right? And the stock market and crypto both went parabolic, right? Because that's the point where um, whether it's through stimulus or through a change of the narrative, you know, right now everybody's scared because the media is while the media is scaring everybody to be sidelined, we're watching all of these institutions and the banks partnering with this new technology and getting in early. And then typically when you enter into that last year or two, that's when they look to have exit liquidity, right? So that's when they start to change the narrative and make the public FOMO into the market at the top, right before the bubble bursts. And so So it's our job to kind of like, you know, be on the early side of this, ride that melt up, and then take profits when the institutions did.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:08

Yeah, it's a it's interesting. I'll just share this with everybody because this is what you said to me last Friday, where I basically said to Brandon, I was like, all right, dude, if I could come up with $10,000 and hand that to you, you know, what could you do with that? And you were just like, all right, well, look, first of all, these two years, I can do a lot with it. Within these two years, I could probably 10X that based on what's happened. And that blew my mind. I was like, are you kidding? So, you know, 10K right now turns into 100K in two years. And you were like, yeah. And I was like, how certain are you of that? And you were like, very, very certain. And that kind of blew me away, but it also, I at least experienced that from 6K to 60K. And so this is why you are uh sort of predicting that. I guess my last question, because it's getting long here and I got to run, but I my last question is educate us all just briefly on then what do we in, you know, invest in? If we don't have a you, which obviously, you know, they can have a you, I guess. You're you're open for business, right? So I guess they could come and talk to Brandon. But if we don't have a you in our corner, right? Like, what should, you know, sort of the takeaways of this talk be where it's like, all right, everybody, look, regardless of where you are, you know, um, and what you're thinking, and maybe talk to someone like me who's not in the stock market, pretty much has started over in his business. I own nothing but my house. Well, the bank owns it, but I I'm here and I've got some equity in it. What do we do? What kind of assets should we invest in? How should we be thinking for the next two years?

SPEAKER_01 1:07:43

I mean, it really comes down like like the most basic approach or kind of lens

A Practical Contrarian Playbook

SPEAKER_01 1:07:48

that I would encourage everybody to try to try on is the most successful investors are oftentimes contrarians, right? They're there's a bit of a counter-narrative lens, right? So when you know, when the media or when everybody was or when the price action of of something is convincing you right that it's it's the wrong move, it's oftentimes the best move, right? It's better if this goes back to that kind of you know basics of like buy low and sell high, right? And most people buy high and sell low because of confirmation bias, right? It's human nature to need to see proof in order to feel safe, right? So most people um need to will wait until those higher prices and they buy at the top. And so what I would encourage is to invest in scarcity, right? Invest in a lot of things that we've talked about, whether that's you know, gold, silver, um certain digital assets like the ones we mentioned that that actually have a utility, right? That's it. That's XRP, XLM, silver, gold, these kinds. Anything that's aligned with the infrastructure build-out of technology, right? So, so think not software, right, but hardware, right? This the the molecules, right? Energy, right? Anything that's going to fuel or kind of build out this new technological infrastructure, those are the things that are going, you know, what is Microsoft investing in? What is Google spending all their money on? Right? That's where we want. We don't want to buy, we don't want to invest in the spenders, we want to invest in the receivers, right? Rare earth minerals, right? So, so there's a lot of clues here, but it it boils down to anything that is that that that is um undersupplied, right, that is scarce and has infinite demand, right, in order to solve the biggest problems that we see right now. And so, you know, see through the fear, understand where this is going at a large scale, and just know that like, you know, we I say the next two years, I mean, that's me trying to be conservative, right? But again, zooming out, 10 years from now, these things are going to be valued higher than they are two years from now. I just see that in the short term, again, the more kind of zoomed in you focus, there will be moments that feel scary. And when those scary moments occur, right, right right now, the stock market's due for a short-term correction. And that's a great opportunity. You know, so when the market, the next time people see the market having like a crash or a dip, that's when you want to have the, that's when you want to make your moves. That's when you want to get in. Because if you look over history, it just it's a V-shaped recovery. The market always goes higher. And especially when it's uh when it's like I said, when it's scarcity and when we were talking about things that the demand cannot be satisfied.

SPEAKER_00 1:10:38

I love it, man. I'm like so uh just before we wrap, uh, tell them how to get in touch with you. If someone wanted to work with you or wanted to talk a little bit more about this, you know, um, what's the best way to get in touch? You know, it's funny. I'm getting more and more DMs and messages on Substack now, which is interesting that it's but it's typically not a place, but I am experiencing that more and more, which tells you I think Substack is growing. Uh, you know, but but where should they, what's the best place for them to contact?

SPEAKER_01 1:11:06

Yeah, I'm super new to Substack, but but I am present now. I just I was just telling you, Jade, I just threw up the first two articles. But um so outside of Substack, uh my website is growinner outer.com, and that's got links to my socials. I'm on Instagram a good bit. Um yeah, and then you know, email links to email is on there as well. So so yeah, growinnerouter.com is is a good way to to to to find me and my stuff there.

SPEAKER_00 1:11:32

Cool. Grow inner outer.com for Brandon. I appreciate everyone uh showing up and hanging out. Um I want to have more of these discussions with Brandon selfishly. I appreciate you, man. Thank you for, I mean, I know it's complicated and I know I don't understand it. You're probably gonna have to explain it to me 10 more times, but I appreciate you, brother.

SPEAKER_01 1:11:51

Oh, it's so good to talk to you, Jade. Yeah, these conversations are a blast. I I could, you know, you know me, I could talk for hours. We got a we got a lot more we could cover, maybe down the road. So it's perfect.

SPEAKER_00 1:12:01

All right, Brandon. All right, everybody. Thank you so much for hanging out. We'll

How To Reach Brandon

SPEAKER_00 1:12:04

see you next time.

SPEAKER_02 1:12:04

Thanks, everyone.