Coffeez with Joe Shalaby - Crypto Serial Entrepreneur Brian Decker | Coffeez for Closers with Joe Shalaby Ep. 13

Episode Date: April 5, 2024

This Week on Coffeez for Closers: Brian DeckerDive into this week's exhilarating episode of "Coffeez for Closers" where we're thrilled to host Brian Decker, an extraordinary figure whose expertise spans public speaking, brand consulting, marketing, and beyond. A serial entrepreneur with a keen eye for cryptocurrency investments, Brian's journey is a testament to innovation, strategic acumen, and entrepreneurial zeal.🔹 About Brian Decker:Brian's diverse career is a beacon of entrepreneurial success, marked by significant achievements in various sectors:🚀 Serial Entrepreneur: Brian has launched and nurtured multiple ventures, showcasing his versatility and business acumen.💼 Marketing Maestro: Renowned for his groundbreaking strategies in marketing and brand consulting.🏠 Real Estate Visionary: Transforming the real estate marketing landscape with innovative approaches and insights.💬 Public Speaking Pro: A compelling orator, Brian engages and inspires with his insightful talks.💡 Crypto Investment Pioneer: Ahead of the curve in cryptocurrency investments, Brian has both foresight and success in the dynamic crypto market.🎙 What's on the Agenda:Brian's journey as a serial entrepreneur and the lessons learned along the way.Deep dives into his successful forays into cryptocurrency investment.Strategies and insights from his extensive experience in marketing, real estate, and public speaking.Prepare for a session brimming with wisdom, inspiration, and entrepreneurial strategies from none other than Brian Decker. His story is not just about achieving success across different domains but about the relentless pursuit of innovation and excellence.👉 Hit Subscribe!Make sure to subscribe to "Coffeez for Closers" for this must-listen episode. Engage with us through likes, shares, and comments to join a community eager for growth and learning.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

What's up everybody? Welcome to Coffees for Closers, a show about visionaries, entrepreneurs, and of course, closers. Here we talk about their wins, their failures, and ultimately the story of their success. Welcome to another episode of Coffees for Closers, the podcast where industry giants reveal how they built their empires over a cup of coffee. In today's episode, we chat with the mortgage legend Brian Decker, who rose to the industry. from humble beginnings in 2004 to a top 10 loan officer and serial entrepreneur. He was the number one top producer at two publicly traded companies before launching his own company modern lending. Beyond mortgages, Brian turned a $500,000 cryptocurrency investment into $7 million in just 18 months. He's the president of SOR Solutions and boasts a huge investment

portfolio. Without further ado, we welcome Mr. Brian Decker. I'm proud of you. you. I'm really, really proud of you. I'm proud of Tarek. And as I was telling you, I grew up with Tarek. So Tarek, if you're listening, you know, I'm stoked what you've done. And we've always been competing since high school, so keep it up. I know, right? The two white kids that basically with Egyptian, kind of in Lebanese, kind of behind you guys, right? We were the two white Egyptians, the only two white Egyptians that I ever met in Southern California. It was like, the only two I know. Yeah. Yeah, so that's all you know is.

It must be a successful trade in there because you guys are both super successful two for two right there, man. You know, I say this, we have a lot of really successful Egyptians also. You know, Daniel Iskander, Westcapt landing. And there's a bunch of us, you know, a bunch of us CEOs. So it's a good little tight network. Yeah. Yeah, man. But it's been a wild ride.

I mean, it's one of those things where I know when I got out of college out here in Orange County in 2004, you know, I remember, I think we all don't have dreams as big as. our realities end up being if we put in the grind, you know. And it was, it's funny because we were driving in here. And I lived in Orange County from 2004 to like 2014, 15, after college. And he went to college in this area. And I was driving by through. And it was kind of like nostalgic. I was driving by places and driving by houses and, you know, driving by Fletcher Jones. And remember as a kid, I was like, oh, I hope someday I can buy a C class. You know? And then now it's like, you know, It's funny how that the bar that we deem we've reached it is a never extending bar that we always find it outside of our reach no matter what we do, right? That's what I'm so.

You know, I really admire that about you, Brian. Like you always seek higher goals. Like you accomplished number one loan officer. Then you're like, you know what? I'm going to start my own mortgage company. Then you start your own mortgage. You know what? I'm going to start my crypto company.

Then you start crypto charge. Then you, you know what? Yeah. I'm going to start sore. You know, I'm going to start this Airbnb. B portfolio. You know, it's funny because I think it's a disease, as my wife says. You know, it's, uh, I think for me, I've always had a hunger and learning. Like, ever since as a little kid, I mean, my dad was a forklift driver. You know, my mom worked swap meets on the weekends to make

extra money. Uh, we lived in Chino Hills, so we couldn't even afford to live in Orange County. Um, and so I just kind of grew up with my mom and my dad just working their tails off and never having the chance to ever really take a risk on anything because they got married young. and they had two young kids, you know, they had to work all these jobs. And so kind of growing up, I always just kind of felt like anything was possible if you worked hard, you know. And so my parents always told me, you know, there's going to be a heck of a lot more people that are smarter than you out there. But the one thing that you have, and it was just taught in our household, like in the Decker household, nobody outworks the Decker. Like it was just ingrained in us

as a kid. And even today, you know, working at every company I worked, there's a heck of a lot smarter people at every one of the companies I work for, but, you know, nobody outworks me, even still to this day. And that's, that's something that I can control. You can't control your IQ. You can control your work ethic, and you can control what you focus in on. And so I think it's just like you. I mean, you know, you've blown up with your content. You've blown up on all of this five years ago when you and I originally met, I remember you were talking to me and you're like, hey, man, do you think you can like kind of teach me some social media stuff? I don't know if I ever want to be on a camera, but you took the time, you focused on it, you actually kind of

cut the safety net and we're like, hey, you know what? I'm going to free up some time. I've built this amazing organization. I'm going to put myself in a position that I can still make the decisions that I need to make for the vision of the company. But let me kind of pull out of some of the day-to-day stuff a little bit and teach people. And look what you've done in this period of time because you've just put in the work and tie yourself it, you know? You know, I'm going to honestly say you've been an inspiration and I give you kudos And that's, you know, I think at this point in time in our life, one of the biggest goals for both of us, right, is like just to inspire people. Oh, yeah.

Yeah, absolutely. And I think it was, I was speaking at an event right before this. And somebody came up to me and they were just like, you know, you know, how does it feel to have this or that or all these things? And I said, honestly, I'm not content with it all. I was never really been content. Like, I remember as a kid, I'd play with Hot Wheels, right? And we had a 1987 Astro minivan that we had for like ever, right? you know, I was always embarrassed of it because it wasn't a nice car, especially when we came

up to Orange County and stuff like that, everyone had really nice cars. And then, so my dream is always to get like, you know, a Ferrari or Lambo or do all these things. And they're fun and they're exciting for like a week or two weeks or a month. And then you're like, dang, why am I paying all this insurance for this car? I don't even drive it that much. It kind of loses its luster. And everything in my life really lost its luster. I mean, the only two things I never did was, one, my faith. And two, finding purpose and teaching. I love to teach. I love to take people. that are younger than us and actually take the time to try to cut their learning curve, right? And it just gives you this sense of joy and passion and purpose in life that just cannot be filled with an extra zero on your bank account.

At this point, you know, honestly, and I know this sounds cliche, but like money really doesn't matter. It's like we're not going to take any of this with us. No. And we know. I mean, if you look at a house you lived in 20 years ago and a house you lived in now, if you would drive, you know, old Joe 20 years ago, you know, you picked him up and you took Joe to the house you live in right now, you would be like, there's no way I could ever live in that house. This is insane. Now you go home to your house and you're like, well, you know, my neighbor's house is a little bigger. Like, you don't even care anymore, right? But what you will remember is a loan officer that you recruited that was making five grand when he recruited him and you'll remember the first check you wrote him for $10,000 for a week. And you see him, his face and you'll like that's ingrained in your memory and your mind and you got you know that he did this with your direction and you believed in him when he didn't even believe in himself and that purpose becomes a drug that's more powerful than anything you know people are like how are you friends with your competitor like i help my competitor i helped them get there you know that's why

it's i was there i was there for his journey it's my honor it's my joy to empower somebody yeah you know i honor because you live in a mind of a bunch of a bunch of right? You know, and it's that old cliche where, you know, people that are really successful, they become less and less enemies with their competition because they realize there's such a massive market share out there. You're never going to dominate it. We're never going to have another, you know, countrywide that's going to have a 30 to 40 percent market share now that, you know, we have the internet and digital disruption and all of that. So why not collaborate with other people like yourselves and share things? Because many times,

if you share something with a so-called competitor through the law of reciprocity, they're going to feel like they have to give you something in return of value. And so they've just shortened your learning curve on something that maybe you would have taken longer to learn. And once you kind of understand that, you realize that you're all in it together. Our problems as founders of companies, doesn't matter what our industry is. We're all fighting the same battles. So if we can understand that and actually help each other and realize we're on the same team, you know, and it's much better to be that. I mean, we know we're in some of the mastermind groups. We know who shares openly and we know who's just there to take notes and never share anything. Like, you know, and once you kind of get into

that founder circle, those are the people that like stick out like a sore thumb. And it's all of us that share everything so openly, that's the normality when you get to the founder level. But on the employee level, it's the opposite. You're like, I don't want to show them how I'm doing this because what if they take my job, you know? And it's funny because you would think it would be the opposite, the more money you made. funny it's like you always know the guys who are willing to give and live in an abundance mentality i think we're in two different mastermind so it's it's awesome to just see you always partaking in that always just open like here's my here's my playbook this is exactly what i do on a day to day and uh and i

appreciate that about you you know um one thing i i i want you to share with the with the people listening is uh you know like when you you've been through so much in your journey like I remember you when we were like kids going out at night, you know, like, you know, we were out going out. Like, what was like that aha moment? You're like, I can't do this anymore. Like, I got to like. Yeah. I need to be the best.

Yeah. I think for me, what it was in, I was never the smartest in high school. I was never the best at any sport I played. And I ended up making an investment with my friend's dad. And it was a little bit of money I had saved up. I was like 27 at the time. and this was, I don't know, 2007, 2008 timeframe. And I was able to save up like 100,000 bucks,

which was more money I never thought I'd ever have in my life, you know, at that age. And I invested it, and the investment started paying me money. Like, it was paying me like 15 grand a month on a $100,000 investment. Like, 150% annualized returns. I was like, oh, my gosh, you know, we were going out to all the nicest restaurants here, Mastros, all these different types of things. and I got a taste of the finer thing in life. Well, after about nine or ten months of doing that,

it ended up, he was running a massive Ponzi scheme here in Newport Beach. And he got arrested by the FBI, ended up embezzling like $17 million from people here in Newport Beach. I lost all my money, lost money, my dad who didn't have much money put in like $200,000 bucks. And I really just had my back against the wall. And most people could either blame, you know, John DeMar, I'm not going to hide your name.

So, you know, you're so in jail. I'm so in jail. So, you know, I could either blame him for that or what I took from it was two things. One, I really liked the nicer things in life. And it opened me up to a crowd of people that they weren't smarter than me. They just honestly worked harder and they were more focused than I was. And I think it made me realize rather than the mindset of let me try to spend two years and sell debt consolidation and sell, spend two years. years and sell loan mods and it just kind of constantly moved through all these different like

side hustles what the people did that were really successful is they became an expert at something an absolute expert developed a skill set that made them so valuable to other people that people walked over to them and were like hey you know what man you have an unbelievable talent you know in computer engineering and computer design hey i'm starting a company would you mind helping me out with this and I'll give you some equity of it. And so I took from it as one, I didn't have a real skill set that stood out from the crowd. So I needed to really develop a skill set. I had to put blinders on to everything else that would come at me of the shiny object syndrome and become an absolute expert at mortgage lending, financing, understanding accounting. And if I did that

and I didn't get distracted, I believed in myself that if I worked hard enough, I would have and a skill set that would then eventually open up some of these opportunities to me. And that's exactly what I did, is from, you know, that point on when everybody else left the mortgage industry in 08 and 09, I moved into an apartment in San Diego, maxed out my credit card to do marketing on it and didn't pull my head up from the mortgage industry until really 2019, you know, and just focused on it and ended up winning all these awards and, you know, kind of doing it that rather than spending two, three years in a bunch of different industries just to make a quick buck.

I just went through the highs and lows of it and developed a skill set. And that skill set is kind of what opened up all the other opportunities. Wow, you dominated a craft. Yeah. Absolutely dominated a craft. So I'll stick on the topic of mortgages, then I'll transition to crypto here because a lot of people are like, I want to hear about crypto or Airbnb or whatever. We're going to get into all that.

So like you were in retail. And then you became the top below. I think it was two years in a row consecutively in the country. Yeah. And then, I mean, I know you were plagued with the misnomer about wholesale. Oh, yeah. So how did you mentally go, I'm going to leave my Cush, $2 million your job here and then go completely independent start my own company? What were you thinking?

So, yeah, I spent a lot of time. I got recruited over to guaranteed rate in like 2012 and actually got recruited over there as kind of the leftovers, as I called it. Ben Anderson, which was my partner at there, or a buddy of mine at my time, where a college roommates. He was like a $300 million year producer, and I'd only been in the industry maybe like three or four years. And so he left, went over to guaranteed rate, and I just came as a member of his team. And when I went over there, I was at guaranteed rate, and I was like, okay, this is an opportunity at the time to get around Sean Bonozy and Joe Cadabiano and Ben Cohen, all these beasts in the industry that were four or five years older than me. So I started just really absorbing from them and really learning. My gift was always kind of marketing.

And so I really understood marketing really well. And so I spent a lot of time over there on the retail side. End up being top over there doing $400,500 million in production a year. And then I got recruited over by Anthony Shea over at Lone Depot in 2017 and was kind of being groomed to run that company. I mean, I was in every board meeting with all those guys on. Every time he took his yachts out, I was into that whole world with him spending time over at his house.

And what changed it all for me was they accidentally screwed up. and they sent me a copy of my profit and loss from the division I was running, right? And so they, in the retail world, basically, I was getting paid, I think, 120 basis points at the time per deal. And I was very heavy government focused. Purchase VA, FHA, writing $300 million a year on it. And, you know, in all transparency, you've made about $3 million bucks on my W-2. Well, I found out that when I would ask them for something simple, like, hey, can I get a $20,000 month marketing budget this month. I really want to expand, take on this new office, X, Y, and Z. They were always like, no, you got to pay that out of your own salary. Well, they screwed up

and they ended up sending me the monthly profit and loss statement for my region, and I saw a bunch of stuff on it and found out that the year to date, and this was maybe in like September of 2018, and I saw that that year to date, I had made them like $7.5 million of net. I had made them like $7.5 million of net, net, net, net profit. I'm talking after paying all my LOs, everything else, because I was a heavier originator of government volume. And so I was like, whoa, okay, you wouldn't give me a $20,000 budget, and I just made you $7 million just this year,

let alone spoke at all your conferences that you wanted me do as the poster child for your entire company. I was like, man, I want you to make some money on me, but if I'm going to ask you for 20,000 bucks, and I just made you $7 million. Like, I know me as a person, you know you with your LOs. First off, off your LOs, because we can't ever.

We make peanuts. If you were in that position, you would be like, bro, here's $200,000. Like, you know? I don't think we've made even a fraction of that with all 900 of them. Yeah, exactly. And so I realized that.

And so what had happened, so I started, I was like, hey, you know what? I'm not a person that quits on anybody. So I actually devised a plan. I've actually never spoke about this before, but I devised a plan that said, hey, we have a bunch of really top originators at Loan Depot that are in essence running their own companies within this company. So Loan Depot had a wholesale division at the time. So what I did is I modeled it all out and said, hey, you got two choices. One is you're going to keep losing these loan officers to moving over to the wholesale channel because they eventually discover what I discovered.

but I was just such a company man. I just took me a while to discover it. I said, so why don't this? How about you just make 60 basis points off me and let me run my entire entity as my own? You can make 60 basis points off me on it. I'll cover everything, run my own P&L, do everything on it for you.

You still get to make 60 basis points on me. I take all the risk of bearing all my expenses and how about you do that? And so the board was like, this is a great idea. This is a great idea. This is a great idea. And so I left this meeting

and I had prepared for the meeting for like three weeks. The whole board was there, everything else. My business partner now at the time was a loan officer named Taylor Rupert worked for me. We get in the car. We're driving back from Orange County back to Tumacula where I lived at the time. He's like, Brian, you crush that meeting, bro. I'm fired up. Like, well done, blah, blah, blah. Next day I wake up and I'm fired. Straight up fired. Straight up fired. Articles ran about me in Housing Wire, everything else out. I figured out I became a serious threat to them. Because if what happened is, is even though it was a brilliant idea, if they created this separate channel where top originators could go in an essence franchise, you know, this thing,

they would be losing 200 basis points on me. They were making 200 to 250 basis points on me off all that government business. So if they exposed, they let me do that. They were worried all their other top 30 or 40 entrepreneurial originators would want to do that too. So rather than giving us that opportunity. they basically, you know, didn't want that to be, they didn't want that risk. They didn't want that because it messed up their whole retail model, right, at the time.

And I'm not saying every retail company is like that. But they did it. They eventually did it. 100% they eventually did it. But this was 2018. They didn't do it in 2018. What year was it that they made the switch? I think 2020.

And so. You paved the way. I literally paid the way by getting fired, you know, right? And so what ended up happening was after that happened, kudos to Matt Ishby. Matt Ishbia picked up the phone, called Shelby Elias, who's a good buddy of ours, and said, hey, there's a guy in SoCal. I think you and him would really hit it off. He's a big time originator. And this is before anybody made the move from big originator. I was the first big originator to move from retail to wholesale. Yeah. And so Shelby called me up and was like, hey, man, I know the world kind of hates you right now because of everything that's being ran about you and all. Because they wanted to bury me because I was a threat, you know, at this point. And he's like, hey, Matt Ishbia, the owner of, uh, UWM wanted me to reach out to you and I just want to tell you like if you need any help I think you should look at look at doing this and so I ended up basically just starting modern lending with my team over there made that switch and then started my own company so it was kind of out of necessity at the same time too and then you know that led me on that my that entrepreneurial journey you know you really mold you are the biggest catalyst

for retail originators to transition. And you gave retail originators like that confidence. Like I can make this transition realistically without like an interruption to my paycheck. So God bless you for that, Brian. It's been, you know, now it's a big initiative of the entire broker community. I think now we've formed our own, you know, brokers are better committee within, within our, you know, that group that basically focuses on go, broker now. That's the name of the committee. Go broker now. And all we focus on within that

committee is retail originators. And that committee really wouldn't have existed without guys like you. And guys like Jonathan Haddad, who's now the president of AIM, wouldn't have been where he's at and wouldn't have even realized he can make this transition. Yeah. And I think a lot of times, too, is I think in many industries, there's a lot of hate where there's alternatives for it, right? Like, if you look at the car industry, right, you got car industry where people all walk in and They just want to walk into Fletcher Jones and they just want to buy an automobile on the lot. Then you got their internet division. And then you got the fleet division.

You got all these divisions. And in the car industry, you know, people that are in that industry, all those separate channels within that business, they work harmoniously together because they understand different clients want to interact in a different way. But yet within the mortgage space, it's always been like, I hate retail or I hate wholesale or I hate wholesale or I. I hate Consumer Direct or I hate this. And I think there's a place for everything. And now what my personal belief is is probably not the likes of the retail world, but I think a lot of retail or retail, you know, kind of industries or retail players, they worked fantastic in an industry before it became really disrupted by people like Matt Ishpia,

that you really could provide a better level of service, a better speed, a cheaper price to originate. And retail was really the only place you could go to get trained, right? Like if you were going to enter in the mortgage space, you weren't going to go to the mom-and-pop broker shop and get any training. So if you really wanted to break in the space, the same way when I graduated to become a CPA, my goal was to go work at Deloitte and Touche back then.

Now it's just Deloitte. Massive accounting firm, get unbelievable training. And then once you got that training for the big firm, then you moved to the boutique accounting firm and you made all your money there. Well, retail served that purpose of like training some of the, very best loan officers in the country, whether it was quicken loans or guarantee rate or loan depot. You cut your teeth. You had massive amounts of volume to be able to deal with. And you were

willing to not make as much money because you weren't taking any risk and you were just being trained. But nowadays, within the broker community, thanks to UWM and thanks to places like what you guys have done here at E Capital, like basically what you guys figured out is, hey, through the power of Matt Ishby at UWM, we are able to take this multi-billion dollar giant and basically leverage their training, leverage their speed, their platform, their technology, and actually provide the training for a relatively new loan officer to come on board, get the training at this massive scale of this firm with the power behind it, but not give up 95% of your paycheck to do so. And we've actually taken it a step above. And one thing we really pride ourselves on is

like we use all of the back end and we get additional love at UWM because we know we're their top banking partner but in addition to that we spend over a million dollars a month on our technology, our marketing, our data aggregation, our tech stack to give to the folks, all of our training and coaching like we basically amplify it at a micro level so we could really take any retail originator plug them into our ecosystem. They hit the ground running and with it. There's like seamless. They like they'd even know that they switched cell cell. Because you're not greedy. You win on scale and volume.

That's the only way you win. The only way we're winning, and we're purely a volume shop, we charge nothing. Like our target demographic right now is broker owners. Yeah. Like a broker owner is 10 times better off piggybacking on an ecosystem like ours, the state licensing, the audit, the compliance, the surety bonds, them, the onboarding, the accounting, the payroll, everything handled for you. For what?

A measly 10, 15%. Like, what do they spend on that stuff? Oh, yeah. And they'll never do it at our. scale. Oh, no. And people don't realize how much that cost. I mean, I know. I mean, I, you know, when running modern lending, you know, day to day of it for four years, people have no idea the cost to actually originate a loan, providing all the technology. And the only way you drive down that cost is that scale, right? Like, once you've built out a system and you've spent

a couple million dollars building out technology, adding an extra seat is not, it's no big deal. But when you're doing 50 units a month and your tech budget is $50,000, $50,000. a month on that, that's $1,000 per loan of your profit that is getting eaten up by just building out something that technically is really built to be able to handle 500 loans a month. But once you guys have figured out is you've reinvested in your company to get it to this point. You built the roads before you had the cars there to drive it down. And we're fortunate, both you and I, it's like, we don't need to make money. I can invest all day just to win.

Yeah. You know, and Matt Ishby has the same way. He's the same way. He's like, I don't care about money. Elon Musk, same thing. You can pay him a zillion dollars to advertise and he'll be like, F you. Because he wants to win. You want to win.

Like, that's what you want to do. You want to win. And by win, it's not personally win. You want to win to be able to know that you are providing the absolute best service, the best experience for your clients, best experience for your employees, and disrupt something. do something that is different. That's the only reason why I get up in the morning still and I'm so fired up is because I'm disrupting different things.

I'm actually paving the way. Yeah, it's way harder to hike up a mountain not using a trail, but it's way more rewarding when you get to a top that the trail can't reach. That's right. Trailblazers is only, baby. Exactly, brother. That's right. So we'll talk, we're going to dive into that now.

You've made such a big risk. You took such a big risk taking 500K in crypto in a, super volatile crypto market. I remember when you put that 500K and it's like, Brian's crazy. He's going to lose all that money. Like, I can't believe he just put all that money in there. What made you, like, what gave you that foresight to go all in on crypto at that time? Yeah. So my brother, one. So my brother is like, like Elon Musk brilliant. Like I'm like 160 IQ like just and my brother had been a blockchain like developer, machine learning developer, understood code, and I've always been like a math guy. Like, you know, I've just always

understood math. And so what most people don't understand is they, cryptocurrency, just like, you know how mortgages and mortgage loan officers, we were so afraid to tell somebody that we were a mortgage loan officer in 2008 and 9 and 10 because we killed the world, right? We collapsed the world. And when people used to ask me, I said, oh, I'm in finance. I would be afraid to say I was loan officer because it was the get short movie had come out all those types of things well nowadays with all the licensing and regulation and all these things like it's a it's a proud thing to say like oh you know yeah I'm you know I'm a mortgage originate I'm licensed in X Y and Z states part of NBA whatever that may be and so what I understood about cryptocurrency was once I got past the fact

of you know everyone's saying it's a Ponzi scheme and what most people just happen is they know four friends that lost their life savings in Bitcoin or they bought Bitcoin or they bought Bitcoin when it was... I lost a bunch of money too. I'm still disgruntled. Everyone has that. When in reality, that's no different than a homeowner going in and the first time they ever bought a home, they ended up buying a home and get a loan through a mortgage loan officer who threw them in a NGAM loan. Are they never going to buy a home again? Of course they're not. They're going to buy a home again. They're going to do it because they understood that, hey, this was just a bad experience. I myself was not educated on mortgage products and I

I got taken advantage and I just believed something without doing any of my own research into it. So what I did at that time was I ended up selling out of a cannabis company that I got invested in, which was another huge risk. I took my signing bonus for guaranteed rate and threw it in. And well, you live here. So you know people's right here. So that was my my cannabis company. I started with my business partner. We were the original founders of it. So I had gotten through my signing bonus, all my signing bonus from guaranteed rate, which was like 95% of it. my net worth into a cannabis thing. And that ended up coming out and I ended up walking with a couple million bucks from it at the time. So I had that money and this was like in 2019 and I said,

okay, I really don't want to just go put this money in the bank and earn 1% interest on my money. Let's buy some real estate. But I'm young enough where I can take a risk. And anybody that really makes big wins takes a risk. And at the time, I was like, whatever, 37 years old time. I'm like, you know what? If I lose all $500,000 of this money, I can recuperate. Am I going to be happy? I mean, it was probably 40% of my liquidity at the time.

But I also understood if I really researched this, I'm just going to open my mind to it. And what I understood was a very simple concept. Real estate in Newport Beach is valued at what it is because of scarcity, right? scarcity. They're not building any more coastline, and they're sure as hell not building any more coastline with the most amazing weather in the world. And so what I understood about Bitcoin was, is it wasn't like some fake coin, right? It's not what it actually was, was it's building a network. And we understand banking, right? We know what a pain in the butt it is. If we want to go and we want to send a wire, we could have $5 million in our account. And if you and I want to send a wire to an

account we have never sent a wire to in, let's just say, France, it's going to take us three or four days to get it there. The bank's going to call us from a fraud report. We have this middleman, aka the bank, that we are taking our own money and wanting to send it to another source of money. We verify everything. They take their time. They do their due diligence. They take money from us. There's all these other process. Well, what basically Bitcoin's network was, was it is a banking system that created a new network that basically I no longer needed a middleman for. That I could take US dollars, convert it into Bitcoin, immediately send that Bitcoin to whatever account that I wanted to send it to in Bitcoin, they could receive it and

immediately exchange it into whatever currency that they wanted at the time. And to do that, I didn't have to have the permission from anybody. And when that went through that network, you had thousands. Thousands and thousands of independent computers that would validate that. Okay, does he really trying to send it to this address? Yes. Okay. Does he really have the money?

Yes. And they were able to go ahead and do that. So it kind of changed the banking system. Well, what I then also realized was there's only ever going to be 21 million Bitcoin. They'll never be anymore. And of that 21 million Bitcoin, about four million of them lost. Because when it was originally found, people bought it for pennies and they lost it on USB drives or whatever that may be. And the way it works is, imagine what would happen is the way Bitcoin worked was, is every single

time that these people who worked on building the network, right, like worked on coding the network, they're known as miners, but basically worked on a network, they were given 50 Bitcoin for accomplishing a certain task. So they said, hey, you got to do this task. And after you do this task, here's 50 Bitcoin. And that's how Bitcoin ended up starting getting into population. supply. Well, what happened was is it was programmed into the system that every four years, the amount of Bitcoin that was given to people who were working on securing the network got

cut in half. But the problems got more difficult. So just like anything else, if I have to put more effort into getting half of something, well, guess what? The price of that something, if it has a fixed supply, is going to go up. It's way more difficult to buy a house in Newport Beach today than it was 50 years ago. You had a lot more options. It was land. You could do everything else. Well, just over time, more people bought this land up and you had less and less land. And now, if you want to go buy a house anywhere on the water in Newport Beach, you have one, very limited options to be able to do it. And number two, it's very rare that one of those options if it comes up for sale and meets your specific needs. That just happened over time.

So I understood in the Bitcoin network, okay, if right now there's 95% of a supply, but over the course of time, there gets less and less and less supply. So to give you a case and point right now, you got something like 94% of the entire supply of Bitcoin has already been issued, somewhere around 94% of it, right? And so now what we have happening in April is instead of getting, now it's six and a half Bitcoin for doing all this work, you know, that's going to go down to just a little over three Bitcoin. So, and it's way more complicated to be able to do it. So what changed it for me was, is when I understood the concept of one here's an asset at the time had already been around for 10 years here's an asset that

there's only ever 21 million of them here's an asset that can't be inflated away by any government by any printing of money by anything they could be doing and at the time you had about a hundred million users on it and was growing faster at an adoption rate than any other technology in human history so we look at the internet and the internet the way it was growing was roughly about somewhere between 50 and 80% growth per year. Bitcoin and the amount of user adoption has been growing at 130% per year. Okay?

So it's a fastest growing technology. Wow. So I understood this. Once I actually did the research of it, I'm like, okay, this seems kind of like a no-brainer to me to be able to do this. What's the worst that can happen?

It's already been like slammed down in price. And I know, we know what real estate, you and I know exactly how real estate works. It's very easy. If I told you tomorrow, real estate interest rates, mortgage rates are going to drop from 7% to 3%. What happens to house prices? They go up.

It's going to skyrocket. So what if I told you in Newport Beach? Hey, we have 40 houses for sale in Newport Beach. And I know next week, 20 of those houses are going to be sold. And there's only going to be 20 houses left available for sale in a week. What's going to happen to those prices? Again. Go up.

Right? So Bitcoin is no different. I know once every four years, the supply of Bitcoin gets cut in half. Number two is, I know right now, 70% of all the Bitcoin that is in people's wallet has not moved in over a year. Then compile with that fact. Now, for the very first time ever, they got passed by the SEC in January, institutions are allowed to own Bitcoin and hold them on their balance sheet because

of the spot Bitcoin ETF. So to give you an idea, an ETF for people that don't understand it, but you all likely own ETFs, it just basically stands for an exchange traded fund or an electronic traded fund. All that basically it is is saying, hey, if I want to buy gold 15 years ago, I had to physically go to a store and buy gold and store gold, right? Well, in 2004, what happened was a gold ETF was launched that said, hey, rather than buying gold, buy this stock, GLD, and what we'll do is for every dollar you buy in this stock, we will go and buy one dollar of gold for you and store it. Okay? It made the accessibility to the asset very

easy. It's way easier to buy a stock with a click of a button than it is to go down to the jewelry store and buy an ounce of gold. And, but yet, it still has the same effects. I buy $1 of this stock. I am pulling $1. I am pulling $1 of supply off the market, right? So what a Bitcoin spot ETF did was it got passed in January of this year. And the no ETF in United States history, which there's been 5,500 of them launched,

has ever had a billion dollars of investment into it within the first 30 days. It doesn't matter if it's a 10,000. tech ETF, a gold ETF, a silver ETF, never happened. Within the first 30 days of Bitcoin spot ETFs, guess so much money flooded them, flooded them if not one of them had ever done a billion before? $5 billion. $10 billion in 30 days. You had four of them, one of them, which is Black Rocks, did $5 billion in 30 days.

Fidelity did $4 billion. Arc investments did a billion, and Wisem Tree did a billion. And there's a bunch of other ones that did that. So that doesn't just tell our people here that Wall Street doesn't kind of like Bitcoin. Wall Street effing loves Bitcoin because they understand one thing. We assume that real estate goes up in value. We assume stocks go up in value. They don't necessarily go up in value.

What happens is we denominate or how we value real estate is in dollars. but let me change somebody's perspective. So today, say Bitcoin's $50,000, right? If I want to buy a million dollar house today, it's going to take me 20 Bitcoin, right? So if I have a house in Costa Mesa today that costs 20 Bitcoin, and I price it in Bitcoin, I'm not a lot of price real estate in dollars and I have to price it into Bitcoin. So a house in Costa Maker's 20 Bitcoin. Well, let's say a year from now, Bitcoin goes up to $75,000. Now that house, is only cost me 15 Bitcoin. Did that house go up in value?

Not according to Bitcoin. It actually is cheaper. I need less Bitcoin to buy this house. However, look at United States dollars. If I have a dollar, that house is a million dollars, and in a year from now, it went up to $1.2 million. Did that house really go up in value? Or is it just dependent upon what I'm measuring that against, right?

Well, why does the things priced in dollars always seem to go up? in value over time because we inflate away the power of the dollar, right? Federal government can just print dollars. You mean, think about it, it took the U.S. government 220 years from George Washington to George W. Bush to get into debt of $7 trillion. $220 years of government spending put us $7 trillion in debt. From Barack Obama to Joe Biden, okay? So we look at that over those 16 years, we've added $27 trillion to our debt.

$7 trillion for 220 years, $27 trillion in the last 16 years. So when I understood that basically the government can just make supply whenever they want, by ever how much they want, I sure as hell want to put my money into things that they can't do that with, right? Which is why I believe in real estate, gold, cryptocurrency. So once I understood this concept, and this was prior to the Bitcoin Spot ETF, that $500,000 investment was the safest decision I've ever made of an investment. And you put it all on Bitcoin. I did Bitcoin and Ethereum.

So I bought like $200,000 of Ethereum and $300,000 of Bitcoin at that time. And that was in, I want to say, probably sometime in late 2019. And it went up by, what, no, October of 2021. So in 18 months, went to $7.7 million. And then I cashed out about $3 million out, put it in my bank, let the rest of it ride, which looking back, now I've really learned the cycles. But it's very easy. It's a very simple concept.

You buy Bitcoin prior to the having. You stop buying Bitcoin about three months after the having or cryptocurrency. You sit. Then what you do is you wait about nine to 12 months and you sell out of it all. And it goes into a bear market for about a year and a half. then it trades sideways for about a year. You spend about a year buying it. It goes into a halving again, and it repeats the cycle.

It's done this over and over and over and over again. Where are you at in the stage right now? So right now, Bitcoin halving is in April. So what I've done is I basically, that $4 million I left on the table, right? Had $7.7, pulled $3 million out, right? So it was about $4 million. It dropped to about $1.1 million in value in November of 2020. I remember that.

So everyone's like, oh, my God, you lost all this money. First off, I put in 500 grand. I walked with three and I still had all my Bitcoin and Ethereum. It just wasn't priced as much in U.S. dollars. Well, what happens is, is that same value that was down to 1.1.1.1.2 million is already back up to about 3.4 million bucks. We haven't even had the having yet. So for every single person listening to this, do yourself a favor. spend money and buy cryptocurrency, stick to the safe ones, your Bitcoin, your Ethereum,

your Salon. To give you guys a case and point, Bitcoin's a trillion dollar asset. This is not like buying a penny stock, okay? There's like seven companies in the world that have a bigger market cap than Bitcoin. Okay. So you're dealing with, or even Ethereum, it's worth hundreds of billions of dollars, okay? So I would sit there and I'd say, buy Bitcoin, buy Ethereum, buy Salana, buy XRP, buy render and buy chain link those are six easy projects and they all serve a different point and just

like now we know that if you're going to buy something that has a really big market cap meaning like something like bitcoin it takes a lot of money to move the needle of it something's already worth a trillion dollars there's got to be a lot of money flowing into that to move that price up yeah so if bitcoin's 50 000 bucks today it'll probably be worth in 12.000. to 16 months from now. Worst case scenario, 100 grand, best case scenario, 150 grand. Okay, let's just call it that.

You got something like Ethereum, that's probably going to be able to three or four X your money. Something like Salana, which is like a $100 billion project. It's like $100 today. It's probably going to get to like $5 or $600. That's like a $5 or $6.

So that's what you want to diversify because, you know, it's almost a 99.9% certainty that Bitcoin is going to take out its all-time high by the end. of the year. I've been right about this long enough. I'd be willing to bet my entire net worth on it. And so now I know this cycle, I'm playing with all house money. I left some of my profits in. And that house money, if it's worth 3.3, I mean, conservatively, I think, and by this time next year,

it's worth 10 to 12 million, probably. Man, you're making me motivated to start, like, again. It's like, I lost my tail in in, like, 2018. I'm like, why did I pull out? I could have been like time, just like anything else in real estate. You buy real estate in 2004. you sell it in 2008, you lost money. You buy it in 2004. You sell it in 2022. You'll get you the greatest real estate investor of all time. It's all timing.

You're absolutely right. So I want to dive into this just because this is really important. It's on my heart to talk about this. And I've really just kind of been tracking your journey on this. It's your spiritual journey, which I really am like really impressed by it. Because that's really what moves the needle, right? That's really what moves the needle. And I've noticed you've totally, since you moved to Arizona, and I don't know why, but you're on fire for God.

You're on fire for the Lord. I noticed you're doing your quiet times. You're praying. You're like, you know, your money is like not important anymore, right? It's your journey. It's your faith. It's enriching your kids' spiritual journeys. What was the catalyst for that?

What really inspired that? What was the moment that caused that for you? Yeah, I think for me, I grew up in a Christian home. and when I was younger, you know, I was definitely a Christian. I, you know, was, I abstained from sex until, you know, I was 20 years old. I wasn't a big drinker, wasn't a big partier, went to a private Christian college, and did all of that. And then when I got into, call it the real world, one, living here in Orange County during the mortgage boom,

you get sucked into social things, right? I got into partying and going out and things were kind of just coming easy to me in life, right? I didn't really feel like I needed God at all. Like I, you know, kind of people, you know, sometimes people, if they're financially, like if you're, if you're in Africa and you're starving, you need God to provide the next meal for you is kind of the way you feel. For me was I kind of got to this arrogant mindset of I didn't need God. Like, you know, like I came from nothing and in my mind's the wrong way of thinking. it was like, I did this. Look, I did this.

It was my hard work that did this. Look, so what if I'm out drinking and partying and doing these things? I'm not, I didn't wake up dead. You know, I'm not in hell. Like, you know, I just kind of got in this mindset of this arrogant mindset. And then what ended up happening was is we all know, you know, in 20, call it 2020, end of 2022, basically at that time, I got my clock cleaned on my crypto account, right? I went from $4 million down to like a million bucks at the time.

Mortgage industry started going, I mean, rates raised on us like a crazy person, you know, went from making several million dollars a year to having to put in a million dollars plus a year. And so for the first time in a long time, I ended up going from thinking I had it figured out to in a very short period of time, nothing I could do could fix it. I couldn't make interest rates drop no matter how good I was at marketing or how good it was at investing in crypto or how I was it buying real estate or whatever it may have been, I couldn't outsmart what was going on with me in life, right? And so I went from thinking,

oh, shoot, I have a $20 million net worth to shoot, my net worth is $5 million in a matter of a year, right? You know? And so, which most people's like, oh, that's still a lot of money, try losing 75% of your net worth in a year and you tell me how you feel. It doesn't matter what that dollar amount is. Yeah, it doesn't matter. It just, and so it kind of put me up this point of, man, I'm not any happier that I have all these things that I never thought I would have. I'm actually sadder because they're now a drain on me. I've worked my whole life to get all these things. And one, they're being taken away from me. And number two, they never brought me the joy that I thought they would bring me. And I just really just became kind of a bitter person. I started not being a very

good husband. I mean, not that I was ever unfaithful. I've never been nothing at that, but I was just grumpy at home. You know how it is. And during that time, we're getting kicked in our teeth every single day, no matter how hard we had to work, right? And then to go home and try to be a good dad and a good father and do all these things and put on a smiley face while you're losing hundreds of thousands of dollars a month, even though you've worked as hard, you've never worked as hard ever. And so I ended up one of the guys that worked for me in my office, this kid's names Daniel Garcia. He's not a kid, I guess. He's in the mid-30s. But he was like, he's a really hard poor Christian, like really, really good at the time. And I had completely fallen away from my faith

for like 15 years. And so he would always come in and talk to me, do you know about? And he was, I'm like, dude, this guy, how is he so happy and joyful all the time? Like, you know, he doesn't have all the things I have, you know, he's like, you know, kind of has to work his face off to just kind of make ends meet. Like, how is he so joyful and happy? And so he told me about a church to go to, and it was called Orchard Church. And every, I was never a fan of going to. I was never a fan of going to, to church when they've just, you know, you've been growing to, they give you those just kind of like, you know, hallmark card sermons. Like, love your neighbor. Like, don't, like, it's just, it's all fluff. I like people when they stimulate me educationally. Like, I want somebody to be like, yo, you know,

don't watch porn, man. It's going to ruin your sex life with your wife. Here's what God has to say about it. You know, like, like, for an example, like, real, they're not, they don't give those hallmark sermons. So I ended up starting to go to. Orchard Church. And this was probably in about April of last year, April of 2023. And really just started to realize, like, why am I attaching all my joy in life to physical things that don't even bring me joy when I acquired them? So it really made me start to look. And so I started to open up my Bible again. And I really started to read it. And my wife and I had been kind of fighting because I was being a jerk and just being grumpy all the time. And she started going with, you know, with me to church. And So we started going that and I started, even though my finances weren't necessarily turning around, I started like becoming more of a joyful person. And then we ended up when I had to take this gamble, I kind of, for the first time ever prayed about something I was doing the business and just kind of really prayed about

sore energy and everything I was doing with TARC versus like, okay, am I going to turn my mortgage company over? Am I going to take this risk? And I just really kind of felt God leading me to Arizona to do it because I just refused to ever build another big company here in California. I just didn't, you know, morally aligned with a lot of what California was at the time. I felt like it was really putting a lot of pressure on my wife and I. She's from Texas, so she really wasn't, you know, aligned politically with it here.

And so we started going out to Scottsdale. And when we got out to Scottsdale, there was this pastor named Mark Driscoll. You were in Trinity Church out there. And we went there, and I've never, ever just felt like the presence of God like I felt in this place. like people were just on fire for God and he just spoke and he just wasn't afraid to like speak his mind. Like he wasn't afraid to address things in our culture today that have just become normalcy, right? Like whether it's, you know, ads we see that are pretty much advertising child pornography or we make it weird to be a white male and you should feel guilty and you shouldn't if you were transgender or. on everything. And like we've kind of flipped society and I feel like a lot of times in I'm not talking

negatively. Well, child pornography, I'm definitely talking negatively on, but I just felt like for the first time ever somebody was taking a sermon and basically, you know, kind of speaking directly from the Bible and basically being like, yo, it's not okay to have adultery and cheat on your wife. Like they were speaking about real things in church where a lot of times at church I had felt like it was sweeping under the rug, put on your Sunday school clothes, and let's everybody go be fake at church, right, like for an hour to make ourselves feel better and go home. He was like calling you out, but in a way that made you look at your life and really evaluate your life and become better and not, and realize that we, you're never going to feel good enough to be a Christian. You're

never going to feel good enough. You can't earn your way into things. And so he just challenges you to really spend time in the Bible every single day. You know, I would find time to, you know, you know, spend that extra 30 minutes on a social media post, but I wouldn't find the time to spend 10 minutes praying at night with my kids. So I just started making it a routine. I'm going to read the Bible every single morning, even if I don't want to. I'm going to pray with my kids every single night. I'm going to stop being afraid to say I'm a Christian because it was going to hurt my social media following

or it would cause rift at my company or whatever that would be. You know, I just kind of really put my faith in God with it. And then my wife and I and my kids all got baptized. and I just made a really a public, you know, affirmation of that. And I'm nowhere near what I hope to be someday. But 2023 was just one of the most joyful years of my life. And it had nothing to do with my career. It was the hardest year of my life for myself career-wise and decision-wise, you know?

You know, and I myself, I'm starting, I've been deep in faith, but I'm doing a lot of introspection. and I'm starting to really try to work on my own faith. And I've been in church adamantly every week, two, three times a week. And it's part of our culture because we're Coptic and we're killed for being Christian. But you don't really realize how far you are from God until you do that deep introspection. And what you really, and what you're saying is so powerful even to me. you know, because, you know, am I reading my Bible enough in the morning? Or am I praying with, I'm praying with my kids, but I've got to go in every room and pray

sometimes and I'll get to do it all at the same time. Yeah. Yeah, you know, and I think it's a, I think, too, it's, it's one of those things as a father. One of the things that really hit home for me with Mark is, I think we live in a society where the man of the house, we take the responsibility financially. We take all these other responsibilities, but for some reason we leave out the responsibility of being that example to our wives and kids on how to lead a godly life and to bring him to God. Right. We're supposed to be the priests.

We're supposed to him. But yet, for me, when he had said that, I was like, okay, I'm, I definitely, I know I'm a good father. Like, the second I get home from work at 630, I don't look at a phone on, do anything. I am with my kids, helping them. Like, I know I'm that. and I'm working on date nights with my wife and I'm doing that and I provide for them financially and you know, I'll sacrifice, you know, anything it comes to for any of my family or my kids, but why do I completely just not try to be the leader spiritually in my house?

Like, just because maybe my wife watched me party or my wife make me make poor moral decisions or my kids saw me come home after a night of drinking or something like that. Like, who cares? like Jesus spent time with prostitutes and sinners and lepers, you know, and because those are the people that really needed it and he watched their lives transform. Like, so don't be ashamed of your past. Only be ashamed once you've identified what your past is and not make that change once you know what you should be doing, right? And so I think for me, I just, I'm nowhere near where I need to be, but I just made that decision of stop being the financial leader and start being the spiritual

leader in my house. that and that is a huge huge takeaway for everybody listening guys that's what we all need to strive towards and that that acknowledgement of humility in your life is is really the beginning yeah it's the beginning of your of your wisdom yeah no and i think uh that's where where it really comes down to is is um surrendering your ego right you know and i think it's the enemy it really is i mean you know i mean 20 years ago you were the smartest one of your friends right and you were like 22, like, I'm going to be more successful than these guys. I'm, I get good grades. I get this and that. Now at 41, and the rooms I'm in, I'm like, poof, these dudes are so much smarter than me and so much,

you have this level of, you like, literally do a 180 as you get older and you realize, and then that just brings you a level of humility, you know, and a lot of times if people are arrogant, they just happen to be the smartest one of, or most successful version of their small circle of friends and they're afraid to leave that circle because they're no longer the alpha in that circle. And once you actually surrender that and you actually start to see this, you get this level of humility about you. You become really willing to give, you're really willing to do all of these things. And that right there, you know, when you compile that to, you know, spending time with God

and you understand that if the most powerful being that has ever existed and is the, you know, ultimate creative of it all, sent his son down to die on a cross and get crucified, and he in one second could make the entire world disappear. And he was that humble. It's a new perspective on what type of humility we should actually become, you know? It really is. It really is. One thing I like to ask every podcast guest that comes on in the show, and I ask this

for myself and I ask this for everyone else out there is your goals. and it's about what is your personal goal that you have what is a family goal that you have and what's a business goal yeah you have so a family goal for me personally is um i've been a notorious workaholic for 21 years right just who i've who i've been so family goal for for me personally is i want to spend at least one week a quarter on vacation with my family not paying attention to a phone or a computer right because actually spending quality time um with them and that all started with me just putting my phone away at six 30 what's your strategy for that because i i suffer from that matter of fact i think i got an argument about my phone this morning you know that's how bad it is i still my kids were calling me phone boy like my kid and they like my you know and so my buddy my business partner shelby elias same way and we started talking about it one time and i was just like man like my kids i could get away with being on the phone when they were two, three, four years old. Now they can't. Now my kids are eight and nine.

They know. My kid called me out of baseball practice the other day. You know, and so for me, the way I've, and I'm, trust me, I'm still not where I need to be, but I'm dramatically improved, is the way I end up thinking about it is, is we all know that father that we know that's around, that work too much, made a bunch of money, and his kids turned out to be drug addicts, right? And I'm not saying it's because he was on his phone, but I'm saying because he wasn't a present father. He can build a great company, but if he's, we all know, we know CEOs, we know people that have built massive companies and their kids are all drug addicts, their kids don't have work ethic, they have this. And that is their problem. That is the mother and

the father's problem. So great, you help the thousand of your employees create a better life to themselves, but you didn't do that for your kids. Like, what does that say about you as a man? Right? And that only comes from spending quality time. So one of the things I started doing is shooting content with my kids, right? I saw that, yeah. And because I figure, you know what? I'm going to force myself to make sure that I'm spending all this time teaching other people.

Now my kids are old enough. Let me teach them. Let me teach them and be able to do it. And I know if I put it in the regimen of shooting content, it really forces me to do it on a consistent basis with them to be able to kind of spend that time. And so like I said, it's not perfected. But I think one of the things that we have to do is the way you do that is you replace yourself at the office.

to a certain degree. You realize we're in mortgage or energy fishing, you're crypto, whatever, you're in, no offense. If it takes you four extra hours to answer that email, is anybody going to die? No, they're not. We're not heart surgeons. We're not ER doctors. We're not, we're finance guys. You know, like, we have put this burden on ourselves when this burden really doesn't exist. And we've put our level of importance on the wrong things, right? Like, you know, my daughter came home, crying home from school. because boys were being mean to her yesterday, right? And the only reason why she felt comfortable pulling me aside last night and talking to me about

it is because I've been more present with her and her life and building that relationship. Whereas a year ago, I know she would have never done that. She would have pulled her mom aside. Yeah, and that's what my daughter is doing now. You know, and that just comes from, I pray with them every night in their bed. You know, we do, we go around, ask for their prayers. You know, I make sure to try to go to all, you know, all their practices and this and that. And, you know, just ask them how they're day.

was, like, who their best friend is. Like, I kind of thought to myself, like, shoot, I don't even know my kids' best friends, you know, a year ago. Like, I don't know. These kids would come over for the birthday party and be like, who's that? They'd be like, oh, that's Christopher. He's Slater's best friend, you know? And I'm like, uh-uh, I have no clue.

I've never even heard him say Christopher's name, but yet my wife knew and she's in the house, you know, with me. So I think it was a lot of that. That's awesome that your daughter pulled you aside. That says a lot. Yeah. You know, and I think, especially to me, you know, you have daughters. like it's easy to get like for me with my son it's so easy we like the same stuff we like soccer

we like wrestling we like cars like it's very easy for me to bond with him but i grew up in a family of all boys um and i'm a pretty masculine dude so my daughter's into dance and makeup and skin care and all the other things you are when you're nine which aren't really the things i'm into right or or don't know a lot about so i just have had to learn how to to connect with her on other levels And it's, you know, and I was like, and you'd be surprised. The power of what it did as a father is like, you know, she had told me all the boys were mean to her. And I just like, hey, trust me. When I was a boy, I was mean to girls too, you know, like as boys were immature, we usually pick on the girl that we like.

And you need to know inside yourself that you are beautiful. You are smart. You have to have that inner sense of confidence. I said, dad gets roasted on social media all day long. Do I let that bother me? No, I don't even care. Why? Because I know who I am as a person. I know I'm not those things. So it doesn't even bother me. So my job for you is to make sure you know that you have the confidence as a woman that when people say those things to you, you look at it the same way that I look at those Instagram comments. It's just somebody trying to probe me and get a reaction out of me because they're insecure. You know, that boy making fun of you, he's insecure. So he's trying to bring you down to his level because he knows that you aren't those things. So he's trying to get your attention to do it. And she was just like, oh, that helps me so. much dad, you know, this or that. But it's just, if I wouldn't have spent that time,

I know she would have never pulled me aside. And that's, in fact, mind you, this is the first time she's pulled me aside, you know, ever in my life, which is a bit, that's why I'm, you know, obviously talking about it. And I'm not where I am. So I'm not saying this is I've got it figured out. I mean, I've really only started in the last six or seven months to try to make this change. So, yeah, I still got a long way to go. I feel like I just started to make the change in the last 30 days. Yeah. Yeah. I got a huge road ahead of me. Yeah. You know, but it's not too late. Your kids are young. I mean, your kids are 10 and under. They ain't too late. You know, it's not like your kids are 18 years old.

It's crazy. People look at us like, you've accomplished all this and that. And like, we have so much to do. So much to do to humble ourselves. And this is why I asked this goal, just to get perspective on my own goals. Yeah, exactly. And so for, you said with the other one is personal business and family. Yep.

So personal for me, you know, truthfully is to, I want to a year from now. I want to have the ability of running and leading a Bible study of entrepreneurs because I I'm not there yet because, you know, I'm still newer in my journey. So one of the reasons, and not that I think you need to be like some crazy pastor to be able to do that, but I need to get my biblical knowledge up. But one of the things I think is really lost in the world of entrepreneurs is many people think the only weight of the top is to cut corners, be shady, take the kind of fast, you know, fast way there. And so for me, I really want to kind of pull together an assembly of entrepreneurs in Scottsdale area that we can really link up with and really be proud to integrate our faith into our business. Because you know, it's very hard as a business owner because everybody wants to sue you for everything, right? Like, you know, like it doesn't matter. But I've just kind of made that decision personally at every company I have.

Not that I'm saying, oh, I'm only hiring Christians or anything like that. But no, like, I want people at my company to know that I'm a man of faith. My dad has done a fantastic job with that, you know, with his stuff. So I really want to make that known within my profession and in my business that I'm going to say no to things that in the short term can probably make me a lot of money. But in the long term could pay, you have serious consequences from a disbelieving or from a, you know, upsetting God or making an immoral decision on that. So once I feel like I've gotten that down, I really want to kind of pull together like an entrepreneurial kind of Bible study on that. And then business-wise, I want to have a big exit. Like for me, I've built a couple small companies, but now with sore energy and what TARC and I did, we just had 45% of our company acquired by a major, major firm with some of the founders of like Terminex and Dish Network and this really big home services company.

And so we already have basically a end buyer that has already approached us. We just have certain things we got to do over the next three years to get to that goal. But my business goal is I want to have an exit and I want to have a large exit so that I can really use that money. Because my ultimate dream is to be able to go around and do something like how like an Ed Milet or Tony Robinson did, but completely different. I want fathers and sons or mothers and daughters or fathers and daughters to be able to come to a place and to be able to run like a one day or two day workshop in different areas of the country and teach kids how to become entrepreneurs. Teach them what they should be learning in school. Like teach them, hey, come in. I'm going to teach you guys about, you know, how to use content marketing.

How if, you know, if you want to be able to utilize AI, here's how you understand business and finance and entrepreneurship and then people that, and do it. at a way that all we're doing is covering the cost and then also having sponsorships. If you're a mom and you don't have any money to do it, I want to have the money that I have set aside for my exits to pay for you guys to go there, to really, the only way we're going to change this next generation and get them out of this generation of, it's okay. Everybody can kind of do what they see is right in their own eyes, right? The only way we're going to change that is by changing that generation behind us and

teaching them the right things that we learn in school. Because right now we're letting public school system teach our kids whatever they want. And the public school system has definitely changed over the last 50 or 60 years. It's brainwashing our kids to depend on the government, to basically depend and make it understandable that, I mean, we're pulling things out of history just because we don't like what history said because it's not culturally okay today, right? And so what I want to do is basically create a community and to create a way that that parents who don't know these things can take their kids. It doesn't matter where you're financial thing.

If you have a kid that has that ambitious spirit or that entrepreneurial spirit, take them to a place and we can teach them to do this thing so we can actually make that impact. And the only way I'm going to really be able to do that is to get, you know, to have this exit. And I want to know I can accomplish it. God bless you, Brian. You've been an amazing guest today. Thank you.

God bless your journey. Cheers to copy for closers. And thank you guys all for watching. Thank you, Brian.