Digital Social Hour - The Truth About Hedge Funds, Private Equity & Wall Street Lies | Mark Matson DSH #1227

Episode Date: March 9, 2025

🔥 Mark Matson on The Truth About Investing, Financial Scams & The American Dream 🚀 In this eye-opening episode, we sit down with Mark Matson, founder of Matson Money, to expose the biggest investment myths, hedge fund scams, and the truth about financial freedom. Mark shares his journey from struggling entrepreneur to managing over $11 billion in assets, while revealing how Wall Street misleads everyday investors. We dive into: ✅ Why hedge funds & private equity are riskier than you think ✅ The biggest investing mistakes people make & how to avoid them ✅ Why Bitcoin & crypto are pure speculation ✅ How Wall Street manipulates investors & sells false dreams ✅ The secret to building real wealth through disciplined investing This episode is packed with hard-hitting truths, money strategies, and insights for anyone serious about financial independence! 📲 Follow Mark Matson & Learn More: 🔗 Website: MatsonMoney.com 🔗 Instagram: @MatsonMoney 🔗 Book: Experiencing the American Dream – Available on Amazon ⏱ CHAPTERS 📌 00:00 – The Truth About Hedge Funds & Investing Scams 📌 03:15 – Why Most People Lose Money in the Stock Market 📌 07:30 – Crypto & Bitcoin: The Ultimate Speculation? 📌 12:10 – The Real Way to Build Wealth (Not Get Rich Quick) 📌 15:45 – Wall Street Lies & How They Manipulate Investors 📌 20:20 – Why Most Hedge Funds Are Designed to Fail 📌 24:10 – Investing Myths That Keep People Broke 📌 28:40 – How Mark Matson Built an $11B Asset Management Firm 📌 32:15 – The Importance of Diversification & Global Investing 📌 35:00 – Why Most People Chase the Wrong Investments 📌 38:45 – Mark’s Advice for Anyone Wanting Financial Freedom 🔥 Apply to Be on the Podcast & Business Inquiries: 🎙 APPLY TO BE ON THE PODCAST: https://www.digitalsocialhour.com/application 📩 BUSINESS INQUIRIES/SPONSORS: [e-mail]

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Speed slower above 40 gigabytes in details. You look at hedge funds, for example. They'll tell you, you can make 20, 30% a year, 40% a year. But think of the math. And they charge you 2% of your money that you invested, and then 20% of the gain. But if these people knew consistently how to make 20, 30, 40% on the money,

they would go to the bank, borrow it at six, make the 30%, pocket the rest of it, and they for sure wouldn't tell you about the best deals. It's the garbage that ends up in these things. And the way these hedge fund managers work is they'll open up five or 10 different hedge funds. One will get lucky, put tons of leverage in it, and then they'll advertise that one while the majority of the funds do just absolutely terrible. All right guys we got Mark Mattson here from Mattson Money. Thanks for coming on today man. Great to be with you Sean. Yeah you enjoying Vegas so far? Yeah well I just got here this morning but yeah we're gonna stay through the weekend. Got a fun trip planned? Yeah.

It's always a blast here right? You gonna hit the slots after this? No. That's part of what I do is I help people not gamble with their money. I go to shows and enjoy all the entertainment here, but stay away from the gambling. You stay disciplined, right? Yep. What about any risky gambling like crypto? Oh, since you asked.

Yeah. Crypto in the book, Experiencing the American Dream, is under the section of toxic investments. Toxic investments are things like hedge funds, private equity, and Bitcoin is very dangerous. It's nothing but pure speculation. We're hitting the ground running here. We're getting straight into it.

And the reason is because there's no there there. When you buy a stock, you own a piece of a company. When you buy a stock, you own a piece of a company. When you buy a bond, you own a guarantee from the company to pay you back. When you buy a Bitcoin, there's no there there. So you're really buying just electrons on the internet, hoping that somebody, I call it the bigger fool theory, P.T. Barnum said there's a sucker born every minute.

The only reason it goes up is if someone's willing to pay higher price for nothing that you just bought. So it's extremely dangerous, highly speculative, and if you're trying to focus on your American dream, I would advise people to stay far, far away. So when you see guys like Michael Saylor saying, I'll hit a million one day, does that scare you? No, I mean, there's people that thought

tulip bobs were gonna to go until they busted. People sometimes have a very short memory when it comes to investing, even tech stocks in general. Remember, from 1995 to 2000, tech stocks were at 45% per year for five years running. And then they lost 75% of their value almost overnight. Wow. So and you see companies that were

giants in their industries, companies like Kodak, companies like Blockbuster back in the day. And they just get destroyed and eventually go away. Boeing was another great example. It's only half of what it was trading for before a bunch of disasters hit them. There's always somebody saying, pumping something. I don't listen to people like that.

Yeah, Dell was another one too, right? Oh, yeah, Dell. Oh, yeah, big one. When I was a kid, Dell was huge. Microsoft was huge too when I was growing up. Every computer in the school used to, yeah. You've got to be adaptable, I think, is the key. Yeah, I mean, one of the biggest purveyors of Bitcoin,

a Bitcoin billionaire recently bought the banana, just remember this picture, the banana stuck to the wall with a piece of duct tape for $6 million. So if you're willing, if you're stupid enough to buy a banana stuck to a wall for $6 million and you're supposed to be the Bitcoin king, it just tells you where these people's values are.

So you don't collect any art, do you? Well, I do have some art, but it's not a banana on a wall with duct tape. Art's always tricky, too, because you never know what's going on there. I just buy what I like, what I like to hang in the house. Yeah. You mentioned hedge funds and private equity earlier

weren't the smartest investments. No, well, if you look at hedge funds, for example, they'll tell you you can make 20%, 30% a year, 40% a year. But think of the math. And they charge you 2% of your money that you invested, and then 20% of the gain. But if these people knew consistently how to make 20%, 30%, 40% on the money,

they would go to the bank, borrow it at 6%, make the 30%, pocket the money, they would go to the bank, borrow what is 6, make the 30%, pocket the rest of it, and they for sure wouldn't tell you about the best deals. It's the garbage that ends up in these things. And the way these hedge fund managers work is they'll open up five or 10 different hedge funds. One will get lucky, put tons of leverage in it, and then they'll advertise that one while the majority of the funds do just absolutely terrible.

One of the biggest investing lies out there is that if you want to be a billionaire, invest like a billionaire. And the reality is that for every billionaire out there, there's tens of thousands if not millions of people that went bankrupt and lost all the money they needed for their dreams. Wow, yeah, when you put it that way, that's perspective, right? Yeah. Looking for the ultimate online casino experience? Step into the BetMGM Casino app, where every deal, spin, and goal brings Las Vegas excitement

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Hey, I'm Ryan Reynolds. Recently, I asked Mint Mobile's legal team if big wireless companies are allowed to raise prices due to inflation. They said yes. And then when I asked if raising prices technically violates those onerous two-year contracts, they said, what the f*** are you talking about, you insane Hollywood a*****? So to recap, we're cutting the price of Mint Unlimited from $30 a month to just $15 a month.

Give it a try at mintmobile.com slash switch. $45 up from payment equivalent to $15 per month. New customers on first three-month plan only. Taxes and fees extra. Speeds lower above 40 gigabytes in details. People think they could just follow people's trades or whatever and make a ton of money, but it's not that easy. No, it's not. It's not. And hindsight is 20-20.

Just because somebody got lucky over the last 10 or 15 years doesn't say anything about their ability to continue to beat the market in the next 15 or 20 years. And if they did know, they wouldn't tell you. Right. Is that a goal of yours to try to beat the market in the next 15 or 20 years. And if they did know, they wouldn't tell you. Right. Is that a goal of yours to try to beat the market every year? No. The goal should be, because most people lose to the market by 3% to 5% a year, once you allocate your portfolio, what

you want to do is target the return from that asset category. For example, small international stocks. You want to own stocks in over 70 different countries. And then you want to equally weight your portfolio. So you're not trying to pick the best stocks. You want to own stocks in over 70 different countries. And then you want to equally weight your portfolio so you're not trying to pick the best stocks. You own the market instead of playing the market. And that's the way to fulfill with getting rid of a ton

of risk that most people take. Got it. What do you think of the VC world? Super risky, right? Absolutely. Any private lending, private equity, hedge funds, Bitcoin, all this stuff.

Look, if anything says you're going to get rich overnight, you can also lose your money overnight. True. So you don't believe in get rich quick? No, absolutely not. I mean, it took you a lot of time. I opened my company up when I was 27 years old. It was 1991.

And I went from zero assets under management to over $11 billion under management. When I started out, I had an overhead projector and a legal pad. That was my marketing material. None of this awesome stuff you have today here. Wow. What was that breakthrough year for you?

What was that moment where you kind of broke the barriers down? Well, I broke the, I went to work as a financial planner, doing traditional investing, trying to beat the market. Different mutual funds, different partnerships. It was the 80s. It was the Wall Street. Remember the movie Wall Street?

And so it was try to beat the market. Greed is good, all that kind of stuff. And after about three or four years of doing that, I discovered that the broker dealers didn't care about their clients. All they wanted was the money. They didn't care if people didn't repeat their performance. And I discovered at a very young age

that instead of helping people prudently invest, we were stock picking, market timing, track record investing, and that was all just gambling with my client's money. And I discovered that in 1991. And I vowed never to do that again and fight the problem, not be part of it. Wow.

That's respect, man. Yeah, you could definitely sense it. My mom had a little money manager for a bit, but he didn't care about her. No. You know? No. He just wanted his 1%, 2%, or whatever it is.

Yeah, and they, you know and it's basically based on lies. Markets are extremely, I know that you have a lot of capitalists, a lot of entrepreneurs, young people wanting to make their mark in the world. Capitalism is wonderful. It's a great creator of wealth for people that are willing to add value to other people. And when you look at individual stocks,

all the knowable and predictable information about the future is in the price today. Therefore, only random and unpredictable information will change the prices going forward. So anytime someone says, oh, I can pick you the best stocks and I can get you in and out of the market at the right time, you should run the other way because either they're delusional or they're lying.

And they definitely don't understand the academics of investing. But for most people, that's what they think investing is. That's why they watch the news programs and the investing programs. They think that if they can somehow get a prediction about the future, that'll allow them to pick all the best stocks today.

But there's no academic evidence supporting that at all. Really? So you don't trade on the news at all? No. Wow. No, because it's already in the price. If it's something that you know is going to happen, it's already in the price today.

So it's only random and unpredictable information that changes prices going forward. Now, the good news is you don't have to do any of those things to be extremely successful. So S&P 500 stocks historically has averaged over 10%. Small US stocks have averaged over 12%. Small value stocks, which almost nobody owns, has averaged over 14% since 1928.

So if you look at long periods of time, if you own dimensions of the market instead of trying to beat the market, historically the returns have been quite good. And then you don't have to worry about trying to beat the market. Historically, the returns have been quite good. And then you don't have to worry about trying to predict the future. Mm, that is interesting. 14% is great.

I'll take that every year. Very few people ever see anything close to that. Yeah, especially with your AUM. It gets harder and harder, right? That's right. Well, if you're one of those people that tell you or tell others that they're going to pick the best stocks, the more money you have under management, the harder

it is to find those so-called deals out there. Right. And that's what happened with my mom. She was so sold on, oh, I'm going to get this percent a year. The guy told me he's going to pick all the best stocks. And they got her, man. I mean, that's one way they get them. Another way is they just get them in straight up Ponzi

schemes, like Bernie Madoff. Yeah. You know, I'm going to make you 10% a year. I fell for that, too, when I was younger. It's not going to be volatile. You're just going to get consistently good returns. The investing industry as a whole is probably one of the dirtiest, darkest industries

that are out there. I got wrecked on a Forex one. Oh my gosh. I'm sure you hear about the Forex scams, right? Oh, yeah. Oh my gosh. I got played so bad. They even had a dashboard that showed you

how much you were making and stuff. It was all just thin air. Forex industry. That's a tough space to make money in. It really is. So volatile. The prices are changing every second. Yeah.

Yeah, I don't know how day traders do that stuff. No, most of them don't. If they're selling a course, I mean, what are the odds they're actually... Well, that's... Oh my gosh. So you sell a course for $250 a month or whatever, a newsletter or a course for $10,000. So think of the insanity of that. I mean, the idea that you're going to make $10,000 and you're going to be a billionaire, right? But we're going to take 10,000, we're going to 10X it to 100, and you're going to be a billionaire, right? Yeah. But we're going to take $10,000, we're going to 10x it to $100, then we're going to 10x it to $1 million, then we're

going to 10x it to a bit. It's all smoke and mirrors. Yeah, it is. It's not true. They knew they wouldn't tell you for $1,000. Right, yeah. I see these Facebook ads. It's just crazy to me that Facebook

allows that to be an ad. Yeah, and Instagram and everything. Yeah. How much real estate is in your portfolio? Well, that's an interesting question. So we own over 20,000 holdings in 70 countries. So what that means is that a lot of those companies have real estate inside of them.

But we don't specifically carve it out and say, OK, we're going to put 10% just in real estate. Got it. There's no academic research that shows that real estate has a higher expected return than, let's say, S&P 500 stocks over time. People love real estate. I view real estate more of a business,

because if you go buy an apartment complex, or you go buy a building, now you've got to manage the building, you've got to lease the building, you've got to take care of the building. So I know that people can make a lot of money in it, but I view it more of a business than I really do an investment.

I agree, I agree. I just bought my first house and it might appreciate over time, but I'm also spending so much repairing it and doing stuff. Even if I sell it for more money, I already spent that money. And you used to be able to write off the interest rate.

So if you had like $2,000 a month in interest payments, you used to be able to write that off. Can't do that anymore. You can't take deductions for it like you would an office building. So house was a great emotional thing. Hopefully it goes up in value. But maybe not a great investment.

Yeah, not at all. I didn't view it that way when I got it. We just wanted a safety net. Absolutely. People always say, oh, my house is worth this much. But yeah, how much have you spent in between the time you bought it and now? That's right.

You're not making as much as you think. Oh, by the time. And then when you want to improve it, oh, we need a new kitchen. Oh, we need new curtains. Oh, we need. Let's talk some investor mistakes. Because I believe over 90% of people lose money

on stocks and crypto, right? Yeah. A majority of people. A on stocks and crypto, right? Yeah. A majority of people. A majority. I don't know if it's 90, but it just depends on the time period, right? So from 2008 and 2009, if you owned large company stocks, the S&P lost 50%.

If you owned tech stocks, you lost 75%. So I think a lot of people have gotten lackadaisical because we've had five good years in the road in the market. I think there are a lot of them are over weighted to the magnificent seven. You know, you got Tesla, you got Microsoft, you've got Apple, you got Nvidia, you know, these large, huge companies,

they're way over weighted. The S&P itself is over-weighted. Almost 30% of the value of the S&P is just 7th companies. Wow. So it's not really, people tend to think of it as a lot of diversification, but all those stocks tend to be very highly correlated. So when they crash, they crash together.

And I think people have largely forgotten what that kind of pain feels like in the 2008, 2009 period. Right. It's been a good amount of time. And then, of course, in the COVID in 2020, when it hit for three months, three months in a row, the market was down almost 30% to 40% depending on what stocks you were in.

Are you trying to predict these crashes, or how do you approach potential crashes? All the studies say that the market actually is the best predictor of the crash. So it's going to go down before the crash on average. It tends to go up before the recovery. So what you have to do is, since you can't accurately predict it with anything like confidence,

you have to look at how much risk you're willing to take and say, OK, this is how much I'm going to put in equities. But to the extent that I can't take a full equity risk, maybe you're 60 or 70 or 50, and you don't want to lose half of all your money in equities. So then what you have to do is you have to use high quality short-term fixed income. And then that offsets the risk.

So when those equities crash, the fixed income is up. Then you sell the fixed income to get back to your portfolio target, which ensures, without having to predict at all, that you're constantly buying when things are low and you're constantly selling when things are high. So when COVID hit, the market crashed. We sold our clients ballpark around $300 million

of fixed income, put it in their equities. Then the market came up 50%, 40%, 50%, 60%. When that happened, we sold the equities back into the fixed income. So you're constantly rebalancing. And that controls your risk with getting the highest expected return. Because the name of with getting the highest expected return. Because the name of the game is highest expected return

for whatever risk you're willing to take. And most people have no idea of how to measure risk. Inside baseball, we use standard deviation. The academics use standard deviation as a way to measure it for your statistics majors out there. So there is a science to doing it, but most people just end up guessing about what risk they have.

I don't see anyone calculating their risk ever when they're investing. No. Do you believe in diversification? Absolutely. You do? Well, yeah, absolutely. There are certain risks you get paid for, and then there are certain risks that are certain risks you get paid for,

and then there are certain risks that are just risks that you don't have an expected return for. So if I'm gonna buy, put let's say 10% of the money in small company stocks, and there's 2,000 in the US market, you should own a structured piece of that portfolio with all 2,000 stocks in that portfolio, because you don't know which ones are gonna go big, but you also don't know which ones are going to go big, but you also don't know which ones are going to go under.

So you want to diversify that. And that's why we're in over. And you want to also diversify internationally. You don't want all in the US. That's a big mistake I find people doing right now. Oh, yeah. Is they have way allocated towards US. Almost everyone does all US, I feel like.

It's almost all US. And they're chasing performance. One of the things I write about in the book is the cognitive problems that all human beings have about how the human brain is put together. Some of those are, for example, hurting bias. And that means that human beings figure it's safe if other people are doing it. And hurting is great for zebra, really bad that human beings figure it's safe if other people are doing it.

And hurting is great for zebra, really bad for human beings when it comes to investing because they end up all dumping all their money and what everyone else is doing. And that's how bubbles get created. So, and you have things like confirmation bias. Once you think something's going to happen, you start looking for evidence to confirm your bias and ignore the way to ignore the

information that would prove your counter hypothesis. 100%. I've been victim of that for sure. Recency bias, whatever's been good recently. We like to we weight that more heavily so we tend to buy and chase things that are hot. Yeah. And then you have instincts which are largely different by pain and fear and pleasure. So you tend to chase things that make you feel good and you get afraid when things go down. So those and there's over a hundred different biases that human beings have relative to how they invest. And most people don't even consider

that their brain could subconsciously be building their portfolio instead of what they're, they're not Spock, they're not data from Star Trek. They're more like Bones or Captain Kirk, just emotionally going off. So what's some techniques to kind of put those biases to the side, I guess? Well, that's a great question, boy.

So the first thing is you've got to acknowledge that you have them. That as a human being, when it comes to investing, investing is relatively new for human beings. It's not like you can go to a cave in France and see cave drawings of standard deviation portfolios, right? So it's relatively new within the last couple hundred years. But one thing that, so you realize I do have biases and emotions and instincts that hurt me.

The second is to have a purpose for your money and for your life that is superior to, bigger than, your tendency to speculate and gamble. Because without a purpose, the default position for money is just more money. The problem with that is money alone can't make you happy. There's nothing inherent in money that actually makes you a happier, more fulfilled person. In fact, I've seen a lot of people the opposite.

The bigger their portfolio gets, the more worried, the more stressed, the more anxiety. They can't handle the stress. It makes them feel bad. And then of course there's greed and fear. So to have a purpose that's greater than money itself then gives me the ability to say, this is what my life is about. Maybe it's about freedom, maybe it's about joy, maybe it's about being of service to other people,

but it's gotta be bigger than the money. Then I can use my money and invest it to fulfill in that purpose, not the other way around. That helps me to protect against speculating and gambling. Love it. Because if I see, look, because if I can come to, so for me it's helping people fulfilling their dreams by experiencing the American dream as a phenomenon in their life. So I look at that and say, okay, I would never speculate and gamble with my money. You mentioned Vegas coming in here. Yeah. I would

never speculate with my money because that's in direct violation of my purpose for my life. So that helps me stay strong and not fall prey to the gambling, the speculation, and all the diatribes and all the Ponzi schemes in the investment world, which is so easy to fall into. Yeah and I know you have purpose. You got eight kids my man. I do. You got some purpose for sure. We're not even Catholic. Oh, yeah? Yeah. Wow.

Well, she had three. I had three. From our first marriage, we got married. Then she said, we agreed. No more kids. Then after we were married for a couple years, she was like, I love you so much. I think I need kids.

I said, OK. It happens, right? So that's how we ended up with eight. I love that, man. You probably I need kids. I said, OK. It happens, right? So that's how we ended up with Ape. I love that, man. You probably learn a lot from having those kids. Oh, yeah. Still learning. I heard they're a mirror of yourself.

You kind of learn a lot about yourself. I got one that's spitting image of me. But we have one going all the way up to 34, all the way down to nine. Wow. Got every little age bracket in there, you know? Gen Z, millennial, all that. That's cool, man.

You just spit so much fire out on me. Oh, I did want to ask about, you mentioned bubble earlier. So the AI industry, you're probably hearing about it every single day, every single hour. Do you think that's a potential bubble? I don't know. I don't know if it's a bubble, but I am fascinated by it. Truly fascinated.

And if you look at, we were talking about the internet earlier, so you've got the internet, and now you have this situation where you've got AI, and you also have quantum computing at the same time. So a regular computer is about a million times faster than a human brain. A quantum computer is exponentially higher than that, roughly a million times faster than a regular computer.

So if you connect quantum computing with AI, and you just have unbelievable futures, and then you combine that with potentially robotics. We got in a Waymo the other day, the self-driving car. I saw that. And Scottsdale. I've seen them here. I think they have an office here or something.

It's crazy. It's surreal. You can't even hardly believe it's happening. You watch this car drive itself. You're going somewhere. So it's going to be fantastic. A lot of the book talks about how you can fulfill in your personal American dream and so when I think about all these new technologies, what I think about for people, especially

young people just starting out to create a business, I believe it's going to be more and more the point that only things that are inherently human will be a business model in the future. Yeah. Especially for aspiring entrepreneurs because if it's not if it's not human like for example coaching and content what you're doing right now, creativity, if it's not something that's I don't think a robots going to coach and we got the Super Bowl coming up tomorrow, I don't think a robot's going to coach anytime soon, even with AI and quantum computing.

I don't think that's going to happen. I think that's a purely human thing, human reaction, human interaction, feelings, emotions, intimacy, love, all that thing, the chaos of being human. I think that human beings are gonna have to focus more and more if you're gonna be a successful entrepreneur, you're gonna have to use AI, you're gonna have to use quantum computing,

but the real value I think will be created like we're doing right now, human being to human being. Agreed, yeah, it's gonna be hard for them to replicate emotions for now at least. Yeah. I think, could be Syria in the future, we'll see, but could go terminator. I wanted to get your opinion on this guy's one of the biggest podcasters, Dave Ramsey. Yeah. His whole philosophy, what do you think about being debt-free? Look,

I think, I think, I don't know. I had two problems with Dave Ramsey. I'm sure he does a lot of good things. Number one is I don't think that you should lead with God. I think it's sacrilegious, quite frankly. You know, it's said don't use God's name in vain. Using God's name to make money, I think, is counter to scriptures, and I think it'd be better if you didn't do it. But number two is, look, when I started my company up, we managed 11 billion dollars, I have 70 employees, 500 advisors, 72,000 accounts, money in over 70 different countries. But when I started out, I started off with $30,000 of debt. I had three credit cards all three maxed out. Wow. And I took my retirement account and I cashed it in. I've borrowed

money for houses you know when I you know for my family. So I'm not a staunch don't ever have any leverage don't ever have any debt, I don't believe in it. The other thing that Dave talks a lot about is he talks a lot about beating the market and constantly earning 12% and being able to try to find the active managers, which I say is gambling, and I think he hurts people doing that. And then the final thing that a lot of people don't know is he uses his radio show to make money by handing out leads

to other advisors that sign up underneath him. And he gets a percentage of the commissions and the fees that are charged. So he's using his platform to send people to these advisors. And I don't think he's very above board about actually telling people what's going on. Wow. So here's my little diatribe one day.

No, I mean, I agree with a lot of that. I think overall he's a net positive, but he definitely has some of those things you mentioned. Yeah, for sure. People can get over leveraged, and people can get massive credit card debt and a bunch of stuff. And it'd be better if they didn't do that for sure. Take a little bit with the good with the bad.

Yeah, I've been over leveraged, man. Has that happened to you ever? Well, when I first started out. 30,000. Well, it worked out. It worked out. It worked out. Yeah, that's cool, man.

So you just had the conviction in yourself. You were confident it would pan out. Well, I had no choices because I knew that I could never go back to gambling with my client's money, stock picking, market timing, track record, investing. I knew it was wrong. I knew I was hurting people.

I knew my broker dealer didn't care. So it was either create a new business model at the time that had never been tried before or just go out of the business and do something completely unrelated. And there was no business model at the time that would allow me to do what I've done today. But my moral conscience, I had a state change when I learned that that was all gambling.

And I just had a commitment where I would never go back to that again. Wow. That's deep, man. So you put ethics before money is basically what I'm hearing. There's a lot of, it's much easier in the investing industry to kind of fool people, bait them, seduce them, than it is to actually educate

and train them to think critically about investing in their choices and their true purpose for their money and their life. It's a lot easier to just show them, hey, this has made 40% over the last three years. Don't you want some? I agree. That's what most people do.

Yeah, because money is very emotional for people. Because 62% of people live paycheck to paycheck. So you tell them you can make them some money. They're all ears. They're all in. Yeah. Wow, that's cool, man. What's your advice to just, I guess, regular people making

$1,500 a year on how to start investing? The number one thing is to start. Start now. That's another thing you talked about, Dave Ramsey. I don't believe you should wait to invest until all your credit cards are paid off. If you have $10,000 or $20,000 in credit cards, and you're not putting in $400 a month in your 401k,

you're not putting $500 away in your own investment account or your IRA, look, if you start doing it now, your dollar cost average, you're going to have massive amounts of money. If you wait 10 years to get everything paid off before you start investing, I think that's a huge mistake. So number one, start. Number two, start in something that's low cost.

Don't stock pick. Don't market time. Don't put Robinhood on your phone. Too many fees, right? Don't be getting buzzes in your pocket and trading. Avoid all that stuff. And then create. If you're making $50,000 50 or 100,000 in a company,

what you want to do is look at your boss, look at the CEO. If it's a smaller company, you know the CEO. And find out what's really going to be value for that company. And don't be afraid to start at the bottom. So many people want to start at the top now. Because good talent and hard work will be seen by the entrepreneur,

will be seen by the people in the company. And you can end up being, almost running the company, being the president of the company. But some of my early jobs, cleaning carpet and college and dog runs, cleaning dog runs, and a lot of physical labor. I bet. You had a humble beginning. Oh man, we were born in West Virginia up in the hills and the hollers and we really came from a lot of destitute poverty. My dad grew up right by the railroad tracks. Wow. They had to take the tops off of instant carnation milk cans in the winter and nail them to the baseboard

so that the rats wouldn't come into their house. Geez. I mean, it was, they had one pair of shoes a year. Holy crap. Right before school started, then they'd run out and they'd outgrown by the time summer would end, it'd be barefoot. Dad worked in the coal mines and the chemical factories.

Wow. And so, my dad gave me the American dream as a screen, as the way you see the world of freedom and opportunity. We live in one of the greatest, I think actually the greatest country that the world has ever seen. The American dream is much more possible now than it was several months ago.

I agree with you on that. But it's an honor to be in this country. And we should be grateful every day to have the freedoms to create a company, the freedoms to speak your mind, the freedom to create whatever happiness and joy you define it as. You don't have that in Iran. You don't have it in Russia.

You don't have it in Cuba. You don't have it in Venezuela. There's so many countries. You don't have anything like that. We don't have it in Russia, you don't have it in Cuba, you don't have it in Venezuela, there's so many countries, you don't have anything like that. We should be the leader in the world of freedom and capitalism and free markets. And I see what's happened over the last couple of months as a big move back to that. And you should also be able to create your company

and your values in the world without it being confiscated in the form of taxes. Right. You know, you can easily, with Social Security and other Medicare taxes and regular income tax, you can easily pay half of your income in taxes. And then when you buy real estate, like you mentioned the home, then you gotta pay more taxes. They want half of it when you make it, earn it,

you invest it, then they want half of it if it's dividends when when you get the returns and then if you die without good estate planning, you know, their goal is to get half again. So half, half, half, half. So it's confiscatory, it's detrimental to capitalism, and it's, you know, people coming in say they, the government says they can know more, Sean, of how to spend your money than you do. Yeah. And how to create a bigger difference.

I don't believe that. I don't know if you've seen what Doge has found out already about some of the money spent. It's horrific. I did. Yeah, with the USAID. Yeah, those are our tax dollars. Oh, it's horrifying what money's going for.

That's hard earned money people work for, going to that. And you create it under the Biden administration, massive inflation. People don't think of inflation as a tax. But inflation is a form of a tax on the people that can least afford it. If you make a million dollars a year, you're only going to have so many cheeseburgers.

Only fill up your gas can so much. Only going to eat so much food. That really hurts the people that are in lower class and lower middle class. But if you have wealth and you have inflation, your value of your house might go up. Your cars might go up. Your business value might go up.

So it hurts the people. The worst. Inflation is a terrible form of tax on people. No, that's a good point, man. My grocery bill has probably doubled in the past three years. Just like that. Just like that.

I mean, eggs are $12 now. And I was asked on TV, what is the inflation transitory? And transitory is just a fancy word for is it short term. Inflation is never short term. Because once it gets in there, it's not going back. That year that was 9%, it's not going to go down 9%. That's mean it was short term, right? Once it goes up, it stays up.

Now, you might slow the rate of inflation, but inflation's here to stay. Historically, it's been about a little over 3%. 9% is three times the average is. But I remember in 72 and 73, 74, inflation was up 13, 14%. Damn. So we better keep the spending under control.

I hope Doge works well. I hope they get more spending out. We have to pay our bills. We have to balance our budget eventually, or we end up going into massive inflation. Yeah. Are you offended at these tariffs Trump's

imposing on other countries? Well, it's a fascinating question. In theory, I'm not a fan of tariffs, because I believe in free trade. However, Dr. Art Laffer, who helped engineer the Reagan recovery, is on our academic board. He works directly with Trump and his team. I think it's more of a Leverage on it. It's a leverage ship and you can see it's already working

It's working on Mexico when you say look we're gonna charge We're gonna give you a 25 percent tariff if you don't shut down the border if you don't you know Stop all of these people coming in over the border with crime If you don't help us stop these cartels and look what Canada and Mexico did almost like that. Media. They're like, oh, okay, okay, okay, okay. So I don't think he really thinks they're going to stay in place. I think he's using it as a way to say, hey, stop your nonsense. Stop what you're doing. America's borders are free.

Our country's free. And people can come here, but they have to come here the right way. No countries exist, not Rome, not Carthage, not the Ottomans. No civilization exists without firm borders. And that same thing goes for the United States of America. Yeah, if there's anyone I trust to negotiate on our behalf, I mean, Trump's up there.

He's the boss when it comes to negotiation. He wrote a book on it. The Art of the Deal. Yeah. I think I read that in high school. Same. Classic, though. Still applies to this day.

He knows how to negotiate. He does. You've got to give him that. Are you worried about BRICS at all? Not really. Not really? No. No.

Look, Europe is, Europe, I think as Trump puts more and more pressure on free markets here and lets the world know that we want allies, but at the same time, we want strong allies that are going to trade with free trade and help with these wars and things. I'm much more focused on, we have to stop the wars. We have to stop the war of Israel and of terrorists,

and that's what they are. They're not Palestinians, they're terrorists, sponsored by Iran, who hates Israel, who hates America. Their goal is to destroy Israel and destroy America. Wow. And that's clear because they say it, death to America, death to America. It's pretty obvious what they want to do.

But you've got to stop that and you've got to stop Russia. And I think you do that by making the world a more free place. And nobody wants to go up against Trump. It's like the crazy kid at school. Nobody knows. It's like dancing with the cobra. Nobody knows exactly what he wants to do

or what he's going to do. So I think world leaders are afraid of him. And I think probably rightfully so. I'm with you on that. I know they say war is good for economy and stuff. But no, I'd love to see some peace. No, peace. We've got to have peace.

Peace through strength. Reagan said it. Reagan achieved it. And I think that my hope is that Trump will achieve it, too, before his term is out. It's looking good already. I mean, ceasefire, right, within the first week? Ceasefire, hostages coming back, Russia kind of pausing

a little bit. I don't think anybody wants to mess with them. I really don't. I love that. Obviously the US dollar, they printed a ton of it during COVID. Are you still confident we can remain the number one currency over time?

I am. But I don't think that's that important. And the reason is because every market trades in all different currencies and they're fluid. So already, the US currency is a standard by which we go by. But in reality, there's so many different currencies. That's another reason you should diversify your portfolio, because you don't want all of your stocks

just in the US dollar. You want it in different currencies all throughout the world. That gives you better diversification. Smart. I never thought of that. But I know the euro has had its issues too in the past, right? Well, you had people abandoning it.

Brexit, remember, they left it. So every book, your currency is going to be strongest when you don't have debt, when you don't have too much debt, when you're controlling your spending, when your government can be trusted. That's when your currency is gonna be strong. When you have massive spending on programs that produce nothing,

and you have massive taxes associated with that, and deficits, that's when you're gonna get into a weaker dollar, that's when you get into inflation, and I think that's to a large extent why people voted this administration in and through the last group of bums out. I mean, our debt is crazy. Holy crap.

It's insane. I mean, I don't even know what it's at now, but I know it's stupid. I mean, hopefully Doge can help. I don't know how much help they can really do, but they're there. People are warning. I mean, I it's pretty good. Set down whole departments right now. Well, de is gone. That's a good start, man.

That's history, bro. Yeah, that's why I like the I never made sense to me because as business owners, we care about performance. I told I told my employees, you employees, and we have a lot of diversity in our company, but I always tell everybody in our team at team meetings, I said the best way to get diversity is to hire the best people. Because if you hire the best people,

you'll have great diversity. And then everybody in your company will know that I'm here because this is the best Mark could find. And I'm part of an elite team based on merit because being an entrepreneur is a contact sport. It is more like war than it is just competition. There's a guy out there, there's a girl out there trying to create a business that's going to take your business out.

They're trying to mutate your ideas. They're trying to evolve. They want to take market share. They don't care if you lose your mortgage. They don't care if you lose your company. They don't care if you can't send your kids to private school. And so you better have the best team you can possibly field, especially as an entrepreneur,

because if you don't, you'll get your lunch handed to you. And if you're the federal government, maybe you can have some bureaucracy in there, but you can't, you'll get your lunch handed to you. And if you're the federal government, maybe you can have some bureaucracy in there, but you can't as an entrepreneur. And so all of my employees know that they are there because they're the best I could possibly find. And I think we have wonderful diversity in our company, but it's not because we went in there

and artificially made it happen. Right. There are so many brilliant, awesome people in the world. Just hire the best ones based on merit and You'll have a great diverse company. Well, that's why America is great because we got the best of the best from every country You know nobody's leaving America to go to Mexico. Nobody's crossing the border to go to Canada Nobody's getting on a rickety boat to go to Cuba You know people that call our country, you know racist or misogynistic or whatever they want to call us,

but everybody wants to come here. Ha ha ha. My mom did it, man. Came here with 20 bucks. Where'd she come from? From China. She scrubbed floors in the kitchen, didn't know English, worked her way up

to become a self-made millionaire. Total American dream. Isn't that crazy? Same with my dad. Total American dream. Yeah, you can't do that in many countries. Oh, no. Maybe you could count it on one hand. You'd be lucky. Yeah. You'd be so lucky. And I see people on social media complaining about living here. I mean, it was under Biden. So that

I'll give them that I haven't seen much lately. That's what I love about you. When you first DM me, I was like, who is this guy? Let me check it his. And I was just like a young guy, dynamic, got all this great stuff set up, and totally looks conservative to me, and blew me away. I think, dude, you're doing a great service by helping young people understand entrepreneurism, capitalism, working hard, the work ethic, you're a role model. Yeah, that means a lot, man.

I can't wait to read your book. Work with people watching this. Find your book and keep up with you, man. Yeah, that means a lot, man. I can't wait to read your book. Where can people watching this find your book and keep up with you, man? Yeah, so Amazon, you can get it. It's called Experiencing the American Dream. Rob Lowe wrote the introduction for me. Arnold Schwarzenegger, Greg Sinise wrote part of the book, the section about the American dream.

So got a lot of people on board with it. Also have an audio version. You can get an audible in any place you want. And I'm really proud of that because they wanted an actor to do it. I said no no I'm doing it myself. That wasn't easy. Oh it was like 38 hours. Holy crap. In the studio just hammering it out. Damn. It adds down to 11 but it was 38 in the studio. So if you like to listen instead of read, guys, check it out. Yeah, check it out, guys. I'm going to listen to it and post my thoughts on my Instagram.

So definitely stay on the lookout for that. Thanks for watching. Hey, I'm Ryan Reynolds. At Mint Mobile, we like to do the opposite of what big wireless does. They charge you a lot, we charge you a little. So naturally, when they announced they'd be raising their prices due to inflation, we decided to deflate our prices due to not hating you. That's right, we're cutting the price of Mint Unlimited from $30 a month to just $15 a month. Give it a try at mintmobile.com slash switch. $45 upfront payment equivalent to $15 a month to just $15 a month. Give it a try at mintmobile.com slash switch.

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