The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Manifest Destiny, a Novel by Zach Daniel

Episode Date: November 26, 2022

Manifest Destiny a Novel by Zach Daniel zachary-daniel.com Digitaledgewm.com Facebook.com/zachary.daniel.50 Linkedin.com/in/zachary-daniel Twitter.com/zachdiddydaniel Left unreconciled, the stories of our past will become the harbingers of our future. Nick Jacob's father meant the world to him. Murdered during an apparent robbery, the loss of his only mentor, friend, and idol left a crimson stain on the pure fabric of Nick's teenage life. Carrying the unimaginable burden of grief into his 30s, the haunting events of the past stir a new sensation deep inside of him. Fueled by anger and a sense of injustice, he begins a dark crusade to avenge others who have been similarly wronged. The traumatic events of the past puppeteer Nick toward a destiny that he never chose for himself. Expecting to obtain solace, Nick begins to uncover the truth of his father's murder. He soon realizes that he isn't only in a fight with his inner demons, but with what is unearthed in the investigation. A fight that stands between him and the future he desires; which may cost him everything. Manifest Destiny injects readers into a world filled with depth, drama, and timeless wisdom. Nick's story of a desire for justice shows the gravitational pull that the past exerts on our lives. But unfortunately, seeking vengeance for his father's murder only condemns his future. Left unforgiven, the dark stories of our history are doomed to play on infinite repeat. But as we beseech the world seeking growth and change, we need only lay down our past as the necessary sacrifice.

You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast, the hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show, the preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. The CEOs, authors, thought leaders, visionaries, and motivators. Get ready, get ready, strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms, and legs inside the vehicle at all times, because you're about to go on a monster education roller coaster with your brain. Now, here's your host, Chris Voss. Hi, folks. Chris Voss here from thechrissvossshow.com.

Are you ready for the roller coaster of the whatever this is, the podcast, thechriss Chris Foss Show podcast.com. Anyways, make sure all hands, arms, and legs are securely in your seat. Otherwise, you might hurt yourself. We don't want to have you hurt yourself. Otherwise, those FAA flight attendants will come down the thing and they'll slap you silly and then have you dragged off the plane. But it isn't that kind of a show. So as always, we certainly appreciate you guys being on the show. We have an amazing debut author on the show. He's going to be

telling us about his new book coming out December 6th, 2022. And the beautiful part about this is if you started seeing the Black Friday sales sales uh for that great christmas gift you can get to people this makes a great christmas gift so you want to take and purchase this thing uh get it pre-ordered when you can of course you always want to pre-order books when they come out because you know what the nice thing is you get that baby in the mail and then you get bragging rights in your book club to say i'm the first one to read it i got it before you guys you know you always want to be the one who reads the hot book first because you can hey, I'm the first one to read it. I got it before you guys. You know, you always want to be the one who reads the hot book first because you can say, like, I was the first one, and it helped get hot for me. So you want to check this book out.

I'll be talking to him here in a few seconds. But in the meantime, you know, the drill, refer the shirt to your family, friends, and relatives. Go give us those lovely reviews on iTunes. Somebody just put up two the other day. Two people just put up one each the other day, and they were beautiful, and they made me cry. And if you want to make Chris Voss tear up, just feel loved, please go put a five-star review on iTunes. We certainly appreciate it.

Go to Goodreads.com, for instance, Chris Voss. YouTube.com, for instance, Chris Voss. LinkedIn, see the big LinkedIn group, 130,000 people. All the LinkedIn places we have, all the Internet. It's's crazy where we are we're just everywhere except for snapchat no we won't do you uh the chris fos show pictures that's not gonna happen folks it's not this kind of show that's on that's i think that's on an of uh channel but we don't have a channel there so na na na na there you go anyway guys he's the amazing author of the new book that's coming out December 6, 2022. It's a novel called Manifest Destiny, and it's by Zach Daniel.

Zachary Daniel is on the show. Zach, are we going with Zach Daniel or Zachary? You know, Zach is less syllable, so we can go with that. It's easier to say. We just want to give people those search terms to look for on Amazon. Yeah, Zachary. Yeah, if you want to search it google amazon barnes and noble zachary daniel there you go so the book's under zach daniel zachary daniel is a midwest native he graduated with a degree in nuclear medicine wow before pursuing his passionate finance wow that's

well i have to find out what happened there. Starting his own digital edge wealth management, he is now a registered investment advisor, leading a new way given his expertise in Bitcoin. He recently came out with his debut fiction novel, Manifest Destiny. He's a man of simple taste, beer, book, and Bitcoin. That sounds like a slogan there. Beer, book, and Bitcoin. Kind of a mouthful.

There you go. So welcome to the show, Zachary. You've been here all along, but welcome to the show. We certainly appreciate coming by. Yeah, well, thank you, Chris. Thank you for having me very much. And, you know, I wouldn't mind seeing you cry, so I might have to leave a really glowing review.

Please do. Just for that. I'm going to start reading him on the the show i've been meaning to read them on the show and i always forget and i start the show and i'm like damn i was gonna read it you know read one on the show and uh there might be some crying there but i and i don't have the tissue box so you know whatever but uh yeah i mean i it makes me feel special i get a little tingly inside and my eyes water a little bit i and i'm like if people love me they love me they really do uh which is different than my mom who just uses my name as the four-letter word anyway moving on so congratulations on the new book uh give us any dot coms you want people to track you down on the interwebs to stalk you um yeah. You can check out the book from ZacharyDaniel.com, Zachary-Daniel.com.

Otherwise, it's available in all major retailers. And if you're looking for that Black Friday sale on Blackstone.com, it's 30% off. There you go. That's the one deal. Yeah, it's a debut novel, but it's off on sale on Blackstone. So go check it out. So order up the book. I mean, get one of those. Right now, this is the

time of year where I'm always looking for gifts to give people, and I have a lot of friends that I like to give gifts to, but you're not spending a lot of money on them, like a wife or girlfriend. So you want kind of like that gimmick sort of thing where you're like, here's something that means something that's really good, but you're not worth spending 50 bucks on.

That's a very polite way to put it. I have friends right now listening to the show going, is that me? Is he referring to me? Exactly. Is he referring to me? No, or you combine them you give them like a couple copies of the book to give away to the family and her friends and relatives and then maybe some roses and i don't know some uh the thing of champagne so you just stack it even i think that's called stacking the presence

i don't know if that's really a term i'm just making shit up at this point so uh let's talk about a few different things uh what motivated you to write this book what was the catalyst uh that's a good question uh on the bio i said uh it came over a glass of rum and that is kind of true i did come home uh in college actually and i thought about this idea for a movie kind of honestly the the main character would have been like an edward norton looking type and uh i had this idea for a movie, and I'm like, I'm broke. I can't do it. I can't make a movie. I have no expertise there, but I can write a book.

There you go. That's what I did. All right. I had this idea for a story, a great mystery thriller character-driven novel, and made it happen after that. That was kind of the catalyst. And then I spent probably, oh, six years on this. Six, seven years.

Six years writing it. Wow. Yes. I spent a lot of time and a lot of thought. And so, yeah, end product. And I'm very excited to get it out. And, you know, you're right, getting that feedback from people, it is very warming. Yeah, it is.

I mean, did you run it through the editor yet? Sometimes the editors are mean to you, though. Yeah, I ran it through a couple editors. And the first editor beat me up pretty good. They're good at that. They tear out your soul and they stomp on it a few times. They do. No one was a harder editor than when I did my first draft i sent to my dad

he got through four chapters and he said nope this needs more work this isn't for me um but that was obviously probably year one so it's had a lot of work since then yeah six years man you've been putting in the time and effort and stuff. So did you write when you were younger? Did you just, boom, this just became your thing? Or was there a kind of lead up to it where you're kind of always kind of thinking about these sort of things? I've always been creative. I always have kind of had a creative mind and active imagination. But I really didn't get into writing until early in college. I was in a, it was a weird class. I was in a creative class,

beginning intro to writing class. And it was just me and 16 Chinese exchange students in this one class. So I was the only English, I was only, you know, natively English. And the teacher just made me start liking writing and like, just kind of teaching me some fundamentals and kind of seeing that you could really build a whole story and narrative just from a few words, how kind of powerful they could be. And that was kind of her emphasis. So that really kind of got me thinking about writing in a different way, that it was kind of just a different medium. I hadn't thought before and so when it came time to have this story in my head that's kind of what brought it to fruition but i before that i hadn't really been uh super involved in you know writing or um i kind of like poetry a little bit, but this was definitely a different breed. There you go.

There you go. Now, you've kind of weaved a few different pathways here. You know, what is nuclear medicine? Is that where I – didn't they used to do that in the 50s with the girls who would lick the paint before they'd wear the watches? Is that nuclear medicine? The radium dials. Radium. Yes. No. The girls who would lick the paint before they went to watch us? Is that nuclear medicine? The radium dials. Radium.

Yes. No. A little bit different. Same premise. Nuclear. Is that Chernobyl sort of medicine or what's going on there? No. Yeah. Basically straight from the reactor into your veins and you start glowing.

That's how I grew that third arm. Yeah. Homer Simpson style. No, yeah, nuclear medicine is really kind of a niche field of the imaging department. So you get MRI, you get CT. Nuclear medicine is a niche of that. Basically

how I would describe it is CT and MRI, you kind of look at body systems, the bones, the ligaments, the tendons, the structure of the body. Nuclear medicine kind of looks at the function. So we use nuclear isotopes. That's where the nuclear comes from. Combine it with a pharmaceutical, and it goes to different body systems, and we can image it that way.

So the cameras pick up on the radiation, we're able to, able to kind of diagnose from there. So it's kind of like when I go into, you know, I always go in the hospitals, we used to have a career company that would go to the hospitals to pick up samples and, and to take them to the labs. Uh, but I, you know, we'd always see, you know, the radiation, Hey, there's radiation in here, you know, on so stuff like that right yes yes exactly um a lot of yeah we ton of different tests but probably our most popular would be uh in nuclear medicine would be like the PET scan for cancer you know okay uh so if anyone's had a PET scan that's nuclear medicine oh so uh you, you know, it's really, it's really interesting. I loved it when I was in it. So, yeah. So, uh, you've also done a few things. You started your own company. Uh, what made you

decide to start your own business? Um, yeah, I, I think I got my first taste for running my own business when I was actually intern in nuclear medicine. I was big into Bitcoin, still am, and that is kind of a subspecialty now. But I got really into Bitcoin, started a Bitcoin ATM business with a partner. Out of my public housing, it was quite the time. But that really got me my first taste. It was like the kind of freedom and exercise that running your own business provides, you can really make it your own. Um, and you know, I've always had a thing with sometimes authority figures or, uh, you know, rules that don't make sense, but we have to follow.

I'm like, why are we doing this? But if you own your own business and the rule doesn't make sense, you're not following it because it doesn't make a good business. Yeah, you just change it. Yeah. You just change it., you're not following it because it doesn't make good business. Yeah, you just change it. Yeah, you just change it. I'm sure you know. You know. Oh, yeah.

You're a guy that – I do not work well with others. Yeah, I have issues. So, you know, I started my first company when I was 18 and I'm back. And, yeah, I can never work in a corporate environment. I think when I was younger, I did some stints in some corporate environments to help finish off my CEO training. And, yeah, I learned early on.

I learned that you work at places and you're like, this is dumb. What we're doing is dumb. You guys are doing dumb stuff. This is dumb. And they would be like they'd be like shut up i remember one one company i i worked for that was a car dealership they go they go uh yeah well the owner spent two million dollars to build this company so why don't you take your little idea there and go get two million dollars and go do whatever the hell you want and that uh that probably was

an important thing to say to me at the time because I was like, yeah, that's probably what I should do. Yeah, okay, sure. So they probably thought you say that and you just fall in line like, yeah, okay, I guess. So let's touch on what you do for clients. And I want to come back and tie this into the book. What do you do for your clients and how does that that work uh in the in the crypto thing and uh being an investment advisor and and yeah the

specialty in digital currency yeah it's almost uh ironic right investment traditional investment advising and then bitcoin or or digital currencies i would say nuclear ironic see nuclear iron radioactive i don't know that doesn't work you tried you tried this is why you went to college for nuclear stuff and i went to public school uh hey don't knock public public i love public school it's kind of a joke we do around here i don't know um but yeah no uh uh so what i do for clients is you, I'm a traditional investment advisor. So managing investments for people. But my specialty is in digital currencies or assets. So I kind of have a niche field of developing portfolios that have exposure to the digital currency space, either indirectly or directly.

And kind of trying to build a kind of high growth long-term model for clients based on their needs. And so I would say my practice niche is people have their 401k generally, and I do have some 401ks under me for their general retirement, but most people have their 401ks or their employee pension plans, but this is a kind of different subset of investing for a kind of little extra exposure. And, you know, I kind of came to this because I've always loved investing in finance. That was what I spent my time and hobbies on and, you know, eventually obviously became my career. But, you know, I've taught about Bitcoin and cryptocurrency and investing. I've done classes and workshops on it. But I've even given people some, but it never seems to work out.

You know, the market's volatile. People get emotional. There's a lot of misinformation and scams as has been recently, you know. Excuse me. We'll get to that in a second. Yeah, that was an interesting couple weeks. But bottom line is there's a lot. This space is tough.

And it's just easier to be like, you know what, I want to get exposure. I think this is the future. I don't know what to trust. But here, let me, you know, talk to someone who's been in it for seven years and uh and lives it and then i don't have to worry about it right you know you're exposed to it and you know i'm taking care of it uh so you don't have to worry about that's why you that's why you want an advisor you know any sort of investing is hard i've done day trading at dynastek level two back in the day i i was day trading during the dot-com era.

You know, you pull in $50,000 in 20 minutes and then go lose it again in another 20 minutes. Casino on steroids. Yeah, it was casino on steroids back then. I mean, if you played it right, I mean, you literally just anything that would launch. I think I made 50 to 50 grand off of Earthlink, you know, but I was a pretty good player. I trained to be a stock market when I was in, uh, I think 20 and, uh, I've been studying wall street for a long time. So I kind of knew the play, but it was, it was a crazy business. I think most I ever lost and I never lost 50 grand in one deal, but I think 20 was the most I lost. But I, I think it was, most I lost. But I think it was on something

where I had made 20 and lost it, so I kind of came out even. But I never took any brutal losses. And then I was smart enough to recognize what a recession was. I own a mortgage company, so I was smart enough to recognize what the Fed was doing in recessionary times. So when the dot-com boom went bust, I recognized the top of the market, pulled out, and watched everyone else roll down. I just sat there with my cash going, yes, I got out of that thing. I milked it and got out. But no, it's stressful. Kind of that meme where he's sitting at the coffee table, sipping his coffee, and there's just fire around him, right?

Yeah, just fire. You're like, this is fun. This is fine. Yeah, yeah. And I would call people up and I'd be like, are you still in the market? And they're like, yeah, I'm just trying to write it down. You know, they're trying to do what people were doing on crypto recently where they're trying to, you know, they bought at 60 at the top of the market

and they've been trying to buy the ride down, which is normally what you do with stocks that have value. But you hope that there's a buy down bounce but by buying it down you you know whatever that's a tech yeah dollar cost average down but you need you need advisors you need help you need guidance because it it it is an emotional thing i mean when you see your your money or your investments or something going down even just like it was a tick for a day like down one or 50.5, you know, you're like, hey, where are we going?

You know, you never know if you're going to curve up or down. Yeah. I come back from the stock market days where you didn't have the internet. You'd literally pay to have this paper thing magazine delivered to you with 5,000 charts in it. It was expensive as hell. That's wild. Yeah. And by the time you

got them it was already you know yeah it's like two or three days outdated and you know you got different trend lines going but that was crazy days so um what uh let me ask you this because i want to pull back to the book a little bit we're going to weave in and out so uh did any of this sort of experience that you've been going through where you nuclear and then you went to finance, did any of this play into the book? Is any of the plot of the book or did it contribute in the book in any way? Yeah, that's a good question. Well, the book takes place in the 90s, mid 90s. So before, unfortunately, before Bitcoin and crypto, so I can't do any self insert there. Um, but I would say that, uh, kind of my general creativity and, uh, my general creativity

and, you know, the way I think about things in a manner does shine through in the book. Uh, but it is a very, you know, fictional, self-contained story. So I would say there's some elements of my medical background that I use, not nuclear medicine specifically, but just some medical or, you know, the way hospital or, you know, nursing home procedures go. But in general, there's not too much crossover between the nuclear medicine the finance of the book there you go there you go uh so uh uh what what who are some of the characters in the book and what are some of the uh plots uh you know you can't give us too much

of course with the novel what are some of the anything'd tease out on the book that we can get to know about? Yeah, I would say the general plot, the main character, Nick, that's no spoiler or anything. His father was everything to him as a kid. His idol looked up to him, wanted to be him, and his father was murdered in an apparent robbery. This left, obviously, him pretty traumatized, and it kind of carried into his future. And fast forward to present day, and it's basically Nick's trying to figure out, with his friend Chris, who's a police officer, uncover the murder to kind of put this all to rest, to kind of get some closure from the whole, from the whole ordeal. And in the nineties was when DNA came out. So, you know, now they have DNA technology that they can use, um, to try to break open the case.

But during that whole process of, you know, trying to figure that mystery out, uh, Nick's having a kind of a character journey through, journey through kind of rediscovering his family and improving his life and moving on from the past. And he has some demons. We'll just call them demons that come into play quite a bit during the story. So, yeah, it's quite the character journey and definitely has some twists and turns during it. You know what you could put in the book is somebody is going to invent this crypto thing and everyone should buy it.

A paradigm shift. Yeah, there's going to be a paradigm shift in the money supply the monetary policy foreshadowing and then book you can do uh bitcoin or something i don't know yeah there'll be a sequel yeah you always got to plan these things out you always got to plan the sequel evidently at least that's the way it works in movies and stuff so uh this is pretty interesting was there some people that you had in mind? There's very few people that write with, like, some Hollywood actors in mind. Like, this person would play great in the thing. Sometimes they pick characters from their lives or relatives or something or people they hate they want to get back at.

They may be a murder victim. Anybody you share? That's a good question. You know, I don't want to say anything. I might not have a couple of friends. Why did you kill me in your book? Okay. I can't do spoilers, but there is someone in particular.

They know they're watching. They read the book, and they're going to be like, you killed me? You killed me? Is there like some deep-seated hatred? What did I do to you? Yeah. Remember that time you gave me books for Christmas? Those Black Friday books you got on sale?

You bought me five of that one guy, that new debut novelist. I'll never forgive you. I'm just kidding. It's a good callback, Joe. Yeah, there's no references to anyone in particular in my life. No characters based on anyone. You know, it's a conglomeration of my imagination. Obviously, people influence it around me.

And as far as Hollywood actors, like I i i kind of when i made the story i pictured edward norton playing the main character oh really uh if that was you know that that was kind of the who i envisioned playing the main character so that leaves any impression for your audience but there you go uh i mean he's a great actor. I think I saw his big debut. I mean, he'd been, I think, in a few films. But Primal Fear, I think it was called. And I just about crapped my pants at the ending of that movie. I've seen it about three or four times, and every time it just gives me the chills.

Yeah, he's good. And I've liked everything that he's ever been in. Oh, yeah. And then Fight Club. Oh, uh, I've liked everything that he's, he's ever been in. So, Oh yeah. And then fight club. Oh my God. Fight club. Oh, what a,

what a movie. Fight club is one of my favorite top movies of all time. And, uh, just, just crazy. Um, the,

um, just crazy, the concept behind it and stuff. So, uh, nothing really tied into Bitcoin. Um, any nuclear stuff in the book, I guess, that you're nuclear.

No, no nuclear, no Bitcoin. You know, that's a big part of my life, but not in the book. Not in the book. Kept it all self-contained. So give us an overview of the book. What's happening in the book generally? Just kind of give us kind kind of a 30 000 foot view generally i would say uh you know the book the underlying plot is finding his father you know

finding his father's murder and he goes on a series of steps to find that with his best friend who's a law enforcement officer um and the beginning of the book, I would say, has a lot more flashbacks and kind of a little bit of darker tone, a lot because, you know, the main characters living in the past kind of held on to this grief and anger from his father being, you know, taken from him. And then, you know, he starts to move on. So middle of the middle to the towards the end of the book, you know, he starts to move on. So middle of the middle to the, towards the end of the book, you know, he starts to move on from that, you know,

reconnecting with the family, kind of improving his life, viewing past events a little differently than maybe they would have happened. And, you know, there's adventures along the way. But, and then at the end,

I, you know, obviously you don't spoil the ending before the book, but there, a lot comes together. And I guess it was like the title of the book, The Manifest Destiny. So it's a play on the old – it was a historical term about how the U.S. colonists were going to go from the East Coast to the West Coast. Nothing could stop them.

It was our manifest destiny. So that's kind of a play on what the main characters experience. Now, that was a question I had for you is why you picked that title and what sort of meaning it had. Yeah. Did that have any personal resonance with you, that whole manifest destinyest Destiny thing? Or just it with how you wrote the book? I think it just fit with how I wrote the book and how I wrote the character.

The old historical term was the colonists couldn't get, or weren't able to be held by the Mississippi River. Basically, there was a Manifest Destiny that we were going to go past the Mississippi River, and it's going to break open and go to the Mississippi River. Basically, there was a manifest destiny that we were going to go past the Mississippi River and it's going to break open and go to the West Coast. Well, that's much the same with the main character

as far as his grief and anger and holding on to the past. It can't be held back. So that was the kind of play there. And it was just a little bit ironic because if anyone knows me, I have no harbor of this past or anger or angry person, grief, anything like that. So it was kind of – at some points I really had to get into character just to write certain sections because generally that's an antithesis to kind of who I am. So there were points where I had to get, you know, a little in character and, you know, maybe a little booze was inspired in that

to really hone in on, you know, what this character was feeling. There you go. It was a fun process. Would you call it a, well, you know, I mean, Hemingway used to, what was the old line from Hemingway? Write drunk and edit sober? Yeah, there were a some loud nights of that. Yeah, I've done that before.

And, you know, it was interesting one time we went to Hemingway's grave in Jackson Hole. And we went to visit his grave and we pulled up and someone had a shotgun shell sitting at the base of his grave it was very macabre we were like wow okay we're not going up to his house now yeah um yeah that's that's like too weird but so would you build this as a suspense as a thriller as a mystery yeah you know under the broad sense of mystery thriller, but psychological thriller, very character-driven. Suspense, especially towards the end. So yeah, that's kind of the broad umbrella I put on.

Any plot twists or M. Night Shyamalan stuff going on there? Yeah, there's some plot twists. And you know what? There's a lot of layers to the story. So the kind of deeper you read on it, the more you're going to understand about the dynamics. And you might be able to predict, uh, you know, some of the plot twists and figure out exactly kind of what the,

what the whole dynamic was that spurred this. So how deep it goes, because at the surface level, I think it's a great read. Um, but the deeper you go, I think the more layers, more layers you get into it.

There you go. There you go. That's always good to, that's always good to have because, uh good to have because people love novels, man. We have a lot of novelists on the show. And people love novelists. They love the whole aspect of adventure, thrillers. People just love that stuff.

It's something that people love and they eat it up. In fact, I wrote a business book and I've seen all the novels that we have on the show and they come it up. In fact, I wrote a business book and I've seen all the novels that we have on the show and they come back all the time. I think we had some novels on about four or five times now for their books. They're really

prolific. They write like every four months. I don't know how. That's a skill to that. Oh yeah. I got people that come on the show. They got like 50, 60 books and they've come back a bunch of times and and i'm just like 50 or 60 books i you know it took me 53 years to write my first one um it's probably gonna take uh you know the next one will be out in 106 i guess

you'll be on your deathbed and publishing your last book but oh yeah totally i totally. That will probably be my last book that I'll publish, and I'll just be like, screw you people. I'm out. Elvis, you left the building. I hated you all the whole time or something. I don't know. It'll just be something progressive maybe. Yeah, Beacon's a leadership, right?

Beacon's a leadership. My second book will be like, whatever. I'm out. I'm dead. I'm gone. I liked only half of you people. Yeah. And it's not the half you think.

It's not the half you think. I like that. That could be like a title for a book. Ooh, that sequel. It's not the half you think. There you go. Only Ooh, that sequel. It's not the half you think. There you go. Only like half of you. It's not the half you think.

That's a pretty good trademark. Copyright trademark. There you go. I mean, there's the byline for it, right? John, what happens when you find out that you're not the half that someone likes? I don't know. Some sort of plot twist there. I did like your section

in the book, especially about the nine dots. Oh, yeah. Isn't that a great thing? I thought it resonated really well. Being in the crypto and Bitcoin space originally, starting a business in there is like...

There is no guidelines. In any box you try to fit it in, you're going to have to go outside. Yeah, you know, there's so many social norms when you're born. You come in this world and it does that. So I'm glad you like that part. I mean, you actually read the book. That's what's amazing. So many people buy it and I'll be like, you read that thing yet?

I'm like, I'm getting to it. I'm the same way too. My friends will send me their books. If you read every book that your, your friend or guest sends you, you might not be able to do anything. Yeah. Plus we do two shows a day and I'm like, I can't read everything. And, and, um, but so let's get back to, let's go back to your business and what you do for advising and counseling and stuff. Do you want to talk anything about what you think about the FTX? Right now, for those of you who might be watching this 10 years from now,

the FTX meltdown just happened where, I guess, $30 billion just went into poof, man. Yeah, just completely. Do you want to comment on that at all or give us some of your thoughts? Yeah, sure. You know, this is probably the hardest, craziest couple weeks I've ever had in this space. And that spans, you know, six, seven years. So all the way back, you know, people remember last big boom and bust. Bitcoin went from $20,000 to $3,000. The whole world was falling apart.

I think this last FTX thing was the biggest probably since mount cox yeah just all the way back in 2014 i remember that 50 of the bitcoin was hacked from mount cox and it was bitcoin's price went from like a thousand to like a hundred dollars but anyway um i it's just you know it's there's you get so resilient in this industry because it's just crazy. But I would say the kind of breach of trust and the kind of setting back from the public narrative that this caused is massive. A lot of crypto platforms have failed this year, and some of them were just flat-out frauds. And this is the biggest of all. But what made it so much worse is there weren't as many warning signs quite before. I mean, there's always warning signs, but they weren't as evident as some of the other platforms that went down where it was like, you know, you could check their balance sheets or their loan book or, you know, their leaks or their public persona. Like everything was kind of leading up to this FTX, the kind of way it was ingrained in the regulatory space and with celebrities and endorsements and also the huge capital that was behind it.

People might not know, but there were huge venture capital firms from Silicon Valley invested in this company. Silicon Valley was into it, yeah. A1Z, Sequoia capital um pension funds sequoia took a huge hit crazy um and to see when this collapsed and to see that there was no board meetings due diligence and anything like i mean this is the political donations everything is just i think the fallout from this will kind of scar the overall crypto industry for a long time. And, you know, it kind of serves as a separation between, you know, I kind of like to think separation between Bitcoin and the rest of the crypto industry. You know, there are, Bitcoin is a technology and a medium of exchange and a monetary unit. It's different than exchanges or the crypto industry at large that, in this case, perpetrated that fraud, FTX.

But it is a crazy time, and it's tough to know who to trust and how to keep your assets safe when the platforms are just going down. And you're like, well, now I'm out of whatever I stored on there. It's rather crazy. Yeah, I mean, and a lot of the fluff seems to be these tokens. Yes. Where they were just making tokens and then they would fluff them and play games internally with them to puff them up.

Yeah. It's kind of like Enron, basically, or something, where they're puffing up shell companies. And then cross-collateralizing and making out loans against the value of those puffed-up pieces. Yeah, that's something that's been happening in the crypto space

for a long time with all crypto projects in general that are not Bitcoin. You keep a low float, so come out with a token with 5 billion tokens. You keep, you know, 4 billion, 500 million locked up either from founders funds or VC firms or, you know, keep it on exchanges, but kind of don't let it to be, don't, you know, don't let it be sold.

And then you just leak out just a little bit, get the hype train going. You know, you get some influencers on YouTube to say, look at this next coin. It's going to change how the power grid is distributed throughout the United States. And all of a sudden, you got plebs with their retail money throwing $100 at this thing. It's going to go to $2 million. But

that's just enough to get that token move from 10%, 50%, 100%. And then the feedback loop starts kicking in. Whoever owns most of the tokens, whether it's an exchange or project, starts to leak out just a little bit, not to mess up the price too much.

And, you know, eventually, obviously, that equilibrium fails because there's nothing really behind the project. And this has just kind of been an unfortunate factor of the space for, you know, ever since I've been a part of it. So this isn't, it isn't new. It's always repackaged something differently. This time I think it was more the, the DeFi and the NFT train that drove it.

Last time it was the ICO and initial coin offering. Not to say that the NFT space doesn't have a future. I think 99% of it is garbage or is going to go to zero. But I think there is something there with NFTs, and I do see some actual use cases for it. Yeah. Now and down the road. Yeah. see some actual use cases for it yeah now now and down the road so yeah and so i mean bitcoin has has always seemed to be like the cadillac of rolls royce of all the other stuff that's out there

and it seems to be the most i don't know if most stable might be the right word lately but it it takes hits when it does uh you know everything else fails in the marketplace of crypto and nft but you know the one thing i learned a long time ago, and this is from training to be a stockbroker, is you don't want to be buying when everyone's buying. You don't want to be selling when everyone's selling. You actually want to buy, you know, when there's opportunities in the market. And so whatever the news is of the day, you know, Russia does this or, you know, war, you know, Fed interest rates, whatever the thing is, stocks go up and down, whether it's Bitcoin or stocks trading, and you're looking for opportunities. And you never want to buy

high and sell low. You want to buy low and sell high. So you're looking for opportunities. You know, there's people that, you know, that made a lot of money when Black Friday happened with the crash of the stock market. Or was it Black Monday? Black Monday. And they basically waited for the bottom to hit and they bought at the bottom and figured, hey, it's got to bounce and it bounced so you know there's going to be a time where where crypto is going to go back up

again and people are going to have faith in it again might be a little bit of crypto winner maybe i don't know some people talk about that what do you think about a crypto winner yeah i think it's been a crypto winter here for a bit um yeah um yeah you You're exactly right. It's easy to say buy low, sell high, but during this time, a lot of people are definitely selling beer. It's interesting. I kind of say

that people are greedy at the very top of the markets and the very bottom of the markets. The same people that were screaming at the top, you have to buy now because it's going to $200,000. You screaming at the top, you have to buy now because it's going to $200,000. You have to buy now. You have to buy now. It doesn't say

this is different than say it's Bitcoin is at $60,000 and you're like, I really do think Bitcoin is going to be something, continue to grow down the road. I have no exposure to Bitcoin at all. Maybe I should start getting some. That's fine. Get a little bit of exposure

just so you have some. But at the bottom, it tends to be the opposite or the same as far as the greed. So it's like, well, I think Bitcoin's going to be something. I think it's going to stick around and be more valuable down the road. It has useful utility as a technology. But I think

it's going to go to 12,000 or to, you know, you know, there's something lower. And, uh, I think that's where people get greedy at the bottom. They're like, Oh, it can just get a little lower. I can just get a little bit more. But if they kind of look at, well, what do you think about the longterm? Well, is that 5%? Is that 10% going to make the difference? Um know or or people you know i i've seen i've just seen it at the tops and bottoms you know back in 2017 2018 bitcoin was sitting about 4 000 for six months everyone a lot of people were saying well i'll wait till it goes to 2 000 yeah and it's like well what do you think bitcoin could be in five years? Well, they're like $30,000, $20,000.

It's like, well, what do you – so it's always the same. Now, that's not to say – now, again, I kind of have to say this as a registered financial advisor. This is not financial advice. I am not your investment advisor. Now, if you would like that, you can contact me outside of this medium and we can talk shop. But don't take anything that I say here and go trade off. There you go. I was going to make that thing.

How do people get in touch with you and talk to you about working with you? Yeah, they can, you know, look me up. Digital Edge Wealth Management is my firm. You can look me up, you know, make sure I'm legit. You can go on the FINRA and sec and look up, uh, that I am a registered investment advisor. I'm compliant with, uh, all regulators, but, uh, yeah, reach out to me through the website. Uh, my phone number, you can probably Google digital edge wealth management. Uh we can we can go from there so there you go there you go so uh you know you're registered and you have oversight as opposed to ftx yes you're registered and have oversight and i don't keep clients funds uh so i make sure that i custodian clients' funds with the most trustworthy of kind of fiduciaries

and not things that are just going to collapse. And you're not hiding in the Bahamas either. No, no. I'm here in Oregon. That's true. I'm here in Oregon. That would usually be my first tip off. What, you're operating out of the Bahamas?

I think I see what's going on. I'm pretty familiar with what goes on down there in those nether regions for the reason people hide their money down there. I mean, Putin hides his money down there. I mean, if you've ever seen that. We've had authors on who blew up in the Paradise. What was it called? The Paradise Papers?

Oh, yes, yes. What do you want to call it it called, the Paradise Papers? Oh, yes, yes. Whatchamacallit, was it the Paradise Papers? I think so. The Panama Papers. Panama Papers, yes. I can't get my references right on a Tuesday, what can I do? Anything more you want to touch on or tease out before we go?

No, I mean, we covered a lot of ground here, and I appreciate your time, but yeah, we covered a lot of ground here. Yeah. I appreciate your time. But, yeah, definitely the book, passion, and it's something. But, yeah, so book, cryptocurrency, investing. And I want to make the caveat, obviously my specialty is in digital currencies, but I handle all investment types. So like normal stock market stuff?

Yes, yes, normal stock market stuff, normal inter-retirement stuff, Roth IRAs. And it's not, you know, you don't have to be exposed to Bitcoin or cryptocurrency in any necessarily portfolio. It's just that's a subspecialty that I offer that's different than probably, at least I've seen any advisor in any of the states I've operated in. So you're an advisor who actually knows how to deal with crypto because a lot of advisors are like really old guys with pocket protectors. Yeah, they don't know the first thing. They work in Wall Street and they've got cocaine and Victoria's Secret models all day long.

Yeah, no. No, I've been on the ground floor. I've done mining and I've done everything. There you go. At least I know what I'm talking about. Well, Zachary, it's been wonderful to have you on the show. Give us your.com so people can find you on the interwebs there. I will.

I appreciate you having me. It was awesome. There you go. Throw me the.com if you would, please. www.digitaledgewealthmanagement www.digitaledgewm.com or if you want to look for the book Zachary-Daniel.com There you go. Otherwise, Google for either will work.

Google for either. That'll work. You always got to get the plugs in. Thank you very much, Zachary, for coming on the show. We really appreciate it, man. Yeah, thanks. Thanks, Chris. Thank you. And guys, check him out. Order up the book.

It makes a fine gift for this holiday season. You always got to have those backup gifts. In fact, you know, one thing I do is I always have like spare gifts like this where I buy them and then that one person you forgot or somebody like that, you normally don't give gifts to like they show up and they give you a gift and you're like, oh crap, I got nothing.

I got nothing. And they just gave me a gift. It's always good to have like a backup gift and you wrap it and you're like, this is for any weird stuff that goes on. And then, you know, somebody shows up and gives you a gift. You're like,

wow, I didn't know you liked me. I've hated you for years. Uh, but then you you're like, wow, I didn't know you liked me. I've hated you for years. But then you can be like, hey, I've got this gift. I planned it and everything for you, and you can hand it to them. That's brilliant. See, I think this is – you've got to watch out. That's a public school.

That's a public school. You know, in my world, you think everyone hates you and you hate them, but then sometimes they show up and they go, Hey, I like you. And you're like, really? Okay. And then they give you a gift and you feel like so stupid. I,

and I think people do that as a passive aggressive thing sometimes too. This is where you got to watch out for these people. I'm doing some counseling here. So, you know what they do is they're like, ha ha ha. I bet he didn't get me a gift. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to be an asshole, and I'm going to get him a gift

and then make him look bad and give him extreme guilt. See how this goes over. But no, as long as you got a backup gift, they're ready to go. You know, you need like three or five of them, depending upon how big your family is. So order up the book. Order up the book just to read the damn thing and enjoy it, people. But also buy like five copies so you can have that back up whatever we do for comedy on this show jesus christ anyway guys thanks for tuning in we certainly love my audience we love you so much go

to itunes and leave some five-star reviews make chris cry um maybe that'll become a segment on the show make chris make that could be a segment at the show make Chris cry that could be a segment at the beginning of the show I don't know it's kind of a dark way to start the show I don't know if it'd be funny or not but people will be laughing at me crying what kind of sick audience are you what kind of sick fucking people are you

well you haven't listened to the show for 13 years hey guys thanks for tuning in we really appreciate you youtube.com forward says Chris Voss goodreads.com forward says Chris Voss. Goodreads.com forward says Chris Voss. And what else is there? There's a big LinkedIn group and all that stuff. Thanks for tuning in. Be good to each other.

Stay safe, and we'll see you guys next time.