The Entrepreneur DNA - How the Rich Actually Stay Rich (Family Office Secrets) | Kristian Mtetwa

Episode Date: October 13, 2026

In this episode I sat down with Kristian Mtetwa, a wealth advisor who leads Synergy Private, a multifamily office serving athletes, entertainers, entrepreneurs, and executives. We start by busting the biggest myth about the rich: they aren’t hoarding money, they’re obsessed with adding value because that’s the only way to keep it. Kristian explains what a family office actually does, why giving anyone power of attorney over your money is a massive liability, and the numbers ($10M liquid net worth or $1M in annual income) where it starts to make sense. We dig into ambition vs. envy, why you focus to get wealthy but diversify to stay wealthy, how to avoid shiny object syndrome, and why liquidity matters more than most people think. I also share my own hard lessons from 2024, what I learned in my mastermind about using lines of credit instead of long-term loans, and how I use whole life insurance like a personal bank. If you want to build wealth that actually lasts, with long obedience in a specific direction and aggressive patience, this one’s for you. Guest Bio Raised in the suburbs of Nashville, Kristian is a Zimbabwean immigrant to the US and a nationally recognized wealth advisor specializing in advising the ultra-affluent. He entered financial services at age 18 before earning a Certificate in Financial Markets from Yale and becoming an Accredited Investment Fiduciary. He has held leadership positions at several financial institutions and now leads a Black-owned multifamily office with clients across the country. That firm is Synergy Private, a boutique wealth advisory firm operating as a multifamily office that offers bespoke financial guidance for ultra-affluent individuals and their families, available by invitation only. He was named 49 Financial’s Advisor of the Year for 2022 after nearly tripling his personal client roster. He is also a speaker on career development, entrepreneurship, and financial planning, and has been featured in Financial Planning, ThinkAdvisor, WealthManagement.com, and Yahoo Finance. Kristian Mtetwa +5 Connect With Kristian Website: https://kristianmtetwa.com LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kristianmtetwa Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/share/192zZu3Ywq/?mibextid=wwXIfr Instagram: @kristianmtetwa About Justin: Justin Colby is the host of The Entrepreneur DNA and The M.O.R.E Show podcasts and a best-selling author. He is a serial entrepreneur and a seasoned real estate investor with over 20 years of experience. Driven by a passion to help entrepreneurs thrive, Justin created the Entrepreneur DNA community to support business owners in building wealth, systems, and long-term freedom. Through his podcasts, books, education platforms, and hands-on mentorship, he continues to help entrepreneurs scale with clarity and confidence. Connect with Justin: Instagram: @thejustincolby YouTube: Justin Colby TikTok: @justincolbytsof LinkedIn: Justin Colby Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

The rich are not concerned in keeping poor people poor and keeping everything from themselves and hoarding money. The rich are obsessed with continuing to add value because they go that's the only way to keep their wealth. When you're creative or an athlete, you're so focused on your craft that managing all this stuff becomes overwhelming. If you're giving someone the ability to move money on your behalf, that is a massive liability. So I tend to tell people, look, you should be empowered by the people supporting you, not using them as a crutch. But one of the risks people don't realize is what they want to have happen out. their talent, their gift, even their life, all of that stuff goes in shambles if you don't have the organization. In the worst case, they pass without having this level of organization or any kind of a state plan.

Christian Tetua is a wealth advisor who helps athletes, entertainers, entrepreneurs, executives, and high net worth families make smarter decisions with their wealth. His expertise includes private investments, tax strategy, wealth management, and family office planning. Sometimes people get to this point where it's like, man, I've made this much money. I'm clearly this valuable to the marketplace. I have to keep achieving and I have to keep growing. And to a degree, I think that's important. You're either growing or you're dying. Right.

But you can grow in multiple areas. It doesn't always have to be financial. You know, it's interesting. They say to get wealthy, you focus on one thing, but to stay wealthy, you got to diversify. How do people who are getting rich? How are they different than the people that are looking at creating generational wealth? What is up? The Entrepreneur, D&A.

We are back. Now, we all like to make money. So this show, this guest is going to teach us what we want to be doing with that money. Also, every episode is always brought you by the Entrepreneur DNA Club and community where we, myself, and hundreds, if not thousands of others, learn from advisors just like we have on this show. If you have not yet joined the Entrepreneur DNA community, go to the EntrepreneurDNA.com and be a part and interact and ask questions and learn what people like my guest know so much of. Now, Christian Metatwa is here from Synergy.

This is a family office, and you know a whole lot about money. I try. Money management. Yeah. How to allocate money. We try to keep up. There's a lot to manage sometimes. Happy to have you.

Thank you for having me. So what would be the first lie or misnomer people have about the rich? Man, number one is that they're out to get you, right? The rich are not concerned with keeping poor people poor and keeping everything from themselves and hoarding money. Candidly, the rich are obsessed with continuing to add value. because they go that's the only way to keep their wealth. Yeah.

They have to continue adding value to the marketplace. Now, a lot of people don't understand the concept of family office. They've probably heard it somewhere. Yeah. Talk to us, what is a family office? Yeah. So a family office, simply put, is an entity that exists to support the business and financial affairs for a single family.

Most large families, Jeff Bezos, the Walton family, Elon Musk, they have dedicated family offices where their own tax strategies, their own attorneys, their own financial advisors work exclusively for them. Okay. That's not realistic if you don't have billions of dollars. right. So a lot of people that are starting to enter into this new spectrum of wealth, they'll join a family office, like a multifamily office, and share those resources with others. So if someone comes in, I'm just going to make the numbers up, right? They come into a $20 million

exit, right? They're like, oh, what do I do with this? They can join another family office, almost like it's a fractional family office. Yeah, that's right. Yeah. And some family offices are fractional, meaning they don't do everything or have the capacity to support all aspects of those business and financial affairs. Ours is a true family office. office, right? So from accounting to tax to legal work, obviously I'm an investment advisor, we can do all of that in-house, even though we might in some cases have to go out and find attorneys and bring them in, things like that. And so someone, entrepreneur, athlete, well-to-do entrepreneur who's exited, they can go to you and actually become part of your family office.

That's right. That's right. Yeah. Most family offices, you're setting up with the intent of getting a grip on everything going on in your world. The way ours is set up is we don't have the capacity to support everybody. So his invite only, typically if somebody's going through something like that, we'll hear about it. And we have a couple of months to figure out if we're a good fit for each other. Now, you and I were just talking off camera about just an example I thought of Antoine Walker, basketball player. Back in the early 2000s, he made over $100 million and then having go bankrupt. If he would have known someone like you, would have been a good play to invest into a family office to protect some of his downside? Absolutely. We represent a lot of active athletes and

entertainers for that very reason. When you're a good play, creative or an athlete, you're so focused on your craft that managing all this stuff becomes overwhelming at a certain point. Well, you're not an expert at it. Exactly. You're an expert at the sport you're playing or whatever may be. Right. Then you go focus on that. Exactly. Christian focus on his expertise. That would be the goal, right? The key is, and sometimes people get into the trouble where they trust the wrong people and they think they're setting up a family office or getting a good business manager. But accreditation, licensure, and obviously experience is the thing that you have to be looking for. Yeah, I was going to say, how can someone look out for like what are they

looking for to make sure it's the legitimate good family offices, you know, especially with so many people out there trying to do financial advice. For us, we don't take power of attorney. I know there's a lot of business managers and financial guiders out there that try to say, hey, I can manage everything top to bottom. I think that's a big risk. If you're giving someone the ability to move money on your behalf, that is a massive liability. So I tend to tell people, look, you should be empowered by the people supporting you, not using them as a crutch. And those are the kind of things I look for. So what does the financial, what does the family office actually do? So use me, I'm going to say, hey, Christian, I'm going to give you $10 million.

Yeah. What are you doing within the family office? What's the reporting like? Are you making investment? Like, give us the broad scope of financial office. So we know that we're not everything to everyone. We represent some families where they already have external accountants, attorneys, you name it. And we're just the quarterbacks.

So it's really data and project management. It's half the battle is we've got to keep everything together. Because when they go get a loan, they're like, okay, give me your PFS. Give me your financial statement. It's like, oh my gosh, let me pull all of my entities together. You know how many- All of this is real estate? Literally, I've interviewed hundreds.

I've coached thousands. Yeah. They don't have a PFS. No way. Sward of God. Tens of millions of net worth. Don't know where it's at. No idea.

Insane. They just don't organize. And the point of talking about what we're talking about is like, this could be, it's not an option for everyone. You probably have minimums things that nature, but like just understanding those simple things. They're like, oh, yeah, I don't know, 2,000 rental properties.

Oh, goodness. Okay. the PFS. Like I don't, you know. I don't have that. No, I have my LCs. I have all the LCs and all the addresses and their rental income and you're like, that's not a PFS. I don't know if I could sleep night. It is common. It's rampant. Yeah. I mean, that's why I'm excited to have this episode is because even if someone's not where you would want them to be as a client, I mean, people need to understand the things that you're doing. 100%. Talk about like the downside risk. I mean, I think most people who make money, athletes, we see that, I mean, you use athletes because it's so out in the media about

how they lose their money and how they're, they have 30 friends on payroll and they're buying these ridiculously lavish things. It's insane. How does something like this help people so they protect their downside? Totally. Well, you mentioned getting organized. That's the first part. So when they want to get something done, they're not met with tons of friction getting that

done. But one of the risks people don't realize is what they want to have happen after their talent, their gift, even their life, all of that stuff goes in shambles if you don't have the organization. Good examples are Aretha Franklin, Bob Marley, Michael Jackson, plenty of these athletes and entertainers, in the worst case, they pass without having this level of organization or any kind of an estate plan. And so that's another reason why, whether it's a family office or as simple as a financial advisor, having somebody that

has access to all of the things that you've got going on and the things that you want to have happen after you're done, it's extremely important. Where's the level of someone needing something like this? I mean, you know, if someone makes a quarter million dollars a year, like an advisor like this necessary, probably not. Where do you think there's a benchmark of earnings, you know, wealth, you know, accumulation. Where do we want to start thinking about reaching out to companies like yours or other advisors? Yeah, it's a good delineation because we do look at it at both lens. One is income and one is liquid net worth.

So a liquid net worth of 10 million allows you to start justifying the fees that a firm like ours would charge, plus all the other people that you're going to have to pay, like attorneys and accountants, you name it. But underneath that, it becomes a little hard to, one, have that level of complexity where you need the support, and then to be able to justify that fee. The other is a million net income every single year. Now you're starting to think about your payroll. So what I tell people is if you're considering a family office like ours,

it's not so much, hey, what's their fee? It's what's the alternative. If the alternative is hiring a dedicated chief of staff or a really, really good controller or an executive assistant that knows everything about your financial life, that's going to run you $150, $200,000 a year. Right. So why spend that when you can fractionalize that

and join a family office where you're sharing those costs with other people? What do you know everything to me at least on the outside social media creates this admiration viewpoint like I want to be like them I want to have those things right and I actually think that is a massive break in our society right I just made a story about ambition versus envy I think a lot of people go and buy things we're just talking about or watch it whatever and they put it under ambition as a as like a topic but I actually a lot of times think it's envy right You see Christian has the watch. You see someone.

And it turns out like, well, I want that. I want, I want. Versus I worked hard to get something and I want to celebrate what I got. And that's my own internal validation. It's a great point, right? Talk to us about how, you know, most of the wealthy people, the athletes and the individuals that you work with, what are some of the misnomer's misconcepts

that some average people would think about what they are actually doing. Yeah. Relative to how more of the average human is like working in the shadows to say, oh, it's ambition, I'll do whatever it takes. Yeah. But really is envy of seeing the rich and the famous client that you might have. Right, right. What are they not know?

I think a lot of them don't realize how human these people are. At the end of the day, they struggle with the same things that all of us do. Yeah. One is that envy in some cases, two, is not realizing what the value is behind what they're doing. And three is getting off the hamster wheel. Sometimes people get to this point where it's like, man, I've made this much money. I'm clearly this valuable to the marketplace. I have to keep achieving and I have to keep growing.

And to a degree, I think that's important. You're either growing or you're dying. Right. But you can grow in multiple areas. It doesn't always have to be financial. Absolutely. So the misnomer in my opinion is that it's always about making more money. It's always about me, me, me, me, and my, my, my.

A lot of times we have to help people shift through the thought process of, I'm done playing my sport or I'm done entertaining people or I'm done running this massive portfolio. How do I transition to family philanthropy, some of the other things that they might care about? What would someone want to do right there? Like what would be some piece of advice? Someone's kind of done with, whether it's just their time's up, like an athlete, like, they're done. They're right over the hill, so to speak. What are pieces of advice that someone can jump into without like all in type scenarios, right?

I mean, I think there's another downside, you being the more the family office financial advisor, but I see it. They go, okay, this run is done. I'm all in on this. Yeah. Yeah, but if that's not your expertise either and it goes bust, you just drop 50 million, it's gone now, whatever the case. How do people limp into that next transition? I think the key is what you said. You got to limp in, put a toe in, don't dive straight in.

And that's hard because to be successful at anything, you kind of have to go all in. So, you know, it's interesting. They say to get wealthy, you focus on one thing, but to stay wealthy, you got to diversify. And those are the things that we like to preach. It's if you're worth $50 million liquid, don't put all $50 in something new when you transition. Start with a couple hundred grand, maintain your lifestyle, maintain your portfolio. And when you find that thing that scratches that itch or adds more value to the marketplace, then you can start to invest more towards that.

A lot of smaller entrepreneurs tend to do that a little bit too much. Agreed. Right. They get the shiny object syndrome. I'm doing pretty good here. So now I can take on this, oh, I'm Justin Colby doing the entrepreneur DNA.

Now I can go build a family office. Right. What? Just because Christian, right? Yeah. So how do you bridge that gap between too much shiny object in diversification? Yeah.

I think you have to know what your needs are. To your point, the envy or seeing other people do certain things, it might sound sexy on paper. But you have to take stock of what's going on in your actual life. If you don't have the complexity of three different types of businesses, a massive portfolio, or a family or whatever other reason you don't want to manage this stuff, there are very wealthy people that don't need a family honest or an outsourced family always. They might have one or two people on payroll and they can handle everything. So if that's

the case, why pay the fees to just go and have something? Well, you don't need that something. So that's the way I think about it. So I'm one of those interviews, 100% in paying your fees, right? Because to me, it is not my highest use of time of managing my own money, understanding where it's going, how am I getting returns? Sure, there are simple things that you can go, you know, S&P 500 or some bonds and it's just a classic 4% return fine. But any type of upside, right? You know, understanding the risk of upsides. Yeah. Where does Angel investing play into your world? It's massive. A lot of the people we represent end up being approached with really cool opportunities. Shiny Object syndrome, like you said, is hard. And sometimes it's not even just the business

or the idea, it's the people behind them. They're like, oh, I want to be partners with that other athlete or that other entertainer, and they're backing this. So shiny object syndrome is hard, but to us, it can also be a good portfolio diversifier. We've seen the SMP obviously do well, but what goes up tends to come down. And at the same time, there are less than half the public companies today than there used to be 20 or 30 years ago. So if that's the case, there are less investment options.

Private equity, venture capital, private credit, real estate. These are the private asset classes that we believe could add a layer of, in some cases, or lowering volatility and diversification in a portfolio. Now, I've done real estate now for 20 years. And so what's your belief system? What's your strategy currently in the real estate cycle we're in? Right? Because as cycles change, you have to change, I have to change.

I did a massive transformation into where I'm at now, running a P.E. firm for large apartments. But how have you viewed the real estate cycle when dealing with your clients? It's interesting. We're big fans of Warren Buffett. He says when others are greedy, get scared, when others are scared, get greedy. In COVID, people were really scared about office.

And funny enough, we invested in like flagship, Class A, New York City, amazing, beautiful office. Yeah. J.P. Morgan goes and builds one for billions of dollars. So our thesis there was, this has to come back. What are they gonna do, tear all the buildings down? Or like, not take the tax dollars, or let all the loans on these buildings go to zero.

It can happen. So I think that was a bet that many could make and maybe not get right. But at the same time, people always need a place to live. And it's always going, you might experience volatility, both in the income and the valuations, but whether single family or multifamily,

larger or small scale, there's always a place for real estate. It just depends on your specific strategy. Now, I want to take your mind out of the high level, someone 50 million. Let's drop it into someone's on their way. Someone's making some good moves. What do you advise that person right now

that they're on a role, they're catching that momentum. They may not have the 20 million, whatever the number is, but what would you advise that person to do to get to a place of stability? I believe, by the way, and then I'll get back to the question. I believe most business owners, they run in what I would call growth mode.

And what I mean by that is a lonely place because you're not quite stable with stabilized revenues and understanding money and being able to make certain investments, creating, you know, jumping into family offices. But they're in this growth and they got something special. What would you advise those business owners to do? Number one, be cautious of your liquidity. Don't spread money where you're, when you end up two things. from a liquidity standpoint and to make sure that you're sustaining what you're building, right?

You can run, run, run, but if you have to keep increasing your payroll, if your expenses go up, lifestyle creep, all these things can catch up to you in a way that you will look up as a doctor, as an attorney, as a business owner and be like, whoa, I've been making this much money. Where is it? Right? So we were talking about watches earlier. There are some things you can get into where it's fun, you enjoy it, but it's kind of a store of value. It doesn't completely drain you.

But be really, really cautious of keeping your emergency fund solid, building the habit of investing could be a hundred bucks. I'd invest $250 a week in the S&P 500 or like my managed investment. It's not a ton of money, right? But it's not a lot. It's not nothing. But over time, you're really creating something. The next question I was going to talk about is how do people who are getting rich,

how are they different than the people that are looking at creating generational wealth? Yeah, it's an interesting, interesting thought process. I think the people that are creating generational wealth are doing so intentionally. They're structuring what they're building. a way that supports future generations or causes. People that are just getting rich and the people that just want the money, they're going to make it and spend it just as fast as they made it. So they're acting completely differently. It's candidly the difference between somebody that engages a family office and somebody that just makes a bunch of money and spends it all.

Yeah. But even you mentioning, even yourself, $2005 a week, nothing sexy, not life-changing economic for you. Yeah. Also not growing life-changing wise. Of course. But over enough runway, If you actually, one of my coaches says this, and I basically have just adopted it, is long obedience in a specific direction with aggressive patience. Aggressive patience, I like that. And I love it, right?

His name's Ben Newman, big shout out to Ben Newman, Lovey, Bud. And I've really adopted it. I used to say it a little bit different in terms of just having no time expectation on your result. Yeah, yeah. But I love the long obedience in a specific direction with aggressive patients,

because in the world of making money, you know what people, aren't willing to be patient. That's that. I want to make it fast. I'll spend it fast. I'll get the new car. I got to get the yacht.

That to me, that's the self-centered ego, right? This is where I'm trying to impress others versus being content with myself. Right. And I think there's a vastly different thing. Why someone should go to you, everyone with the right number

should be reaching out to Christian. Because it's really about being happy. If I'm content with myself, then I'm going to give you my mind. money because I don't need to I don't need the thing right I want my money to work harder than I exactly and that's the idea I mean you just said it we talked about Warren Buffett earlier he said most people want to get rich quick and most people don't have the discipline to get rich slowly at the end of the day that's what leads to this level of peace that you're talking about where you can

delegate have confidence about what's going on your life but also still do the things that you enjoy yeah what do you what do you want some of the people that what do you want them to learn about money that you see a lot of very wealthy individuals. What do you want someone to learn about money now? I think people need to change the way they think about money as it is essential and don't get me wrong. Everybody needs money. But money is a tool.

It's supposed to be fluid the same way that your tires can't just sit. I'm in the process of buying a car. I haven't had a car for many years. I travel so much that I'm either on a plane or in an Uber most of the time. And the kind of car that I'm getting, it's the kind of car you don't drive and put tons of miles on. So the people selling it to me were like, well, you got to realize, like the year of these tires might matter, how much air in them matters. It's not just the tread and it's not just how they look. If you leave a car not in motion, the tires, although

brand new, great tread, they just age out. They get old. So money is the same way, right? You've got to treat this as a tool that can either help accelerate the impact that you have, of course, the wealth that you build and the peace that you can have. But it's not something that you should consume you. What's something that people do with their money that they think is smart? Saw it on social media, but really is actually really detrimental to them.

I think following fads, you know this, my business partner is a tax strategist, and we've built an incredible brand. He, I shouldn't say we, he gets all the credit for that, educating people on how to leverage the tax code in a way that benefits their lifestyle and their businesses. I think a lot of people can look at that with Shining Object syndrome

and take things like buying real estate or home office to do. or Augusta rule or buying big cars and saying, oh, I can do that. It'll save me money on taxes. Right. Do you actually need the car? Right. Right. Like, are you going to use it for something? Right. And what happens if you get audited? Can you justify the 100% deduction that you just took? That's right. So don't follow fads. Do things that actually make sense. Yeah, they can be great ideas and strategies, but do they actually fit for your situation? I think that's a big topic. Does it really fit for, this is where I go. Like, I think people need to be looking at internally. Like, you're doing it because the fad. You're doing it because

you saw it, but does it change you or like I would rather pay tax than go buy a car just so I can have a tax record. See what I'm saying? Yeah. Why would I do that? Like it now I have another thing that you don't keep up with. And it's going to cost me money. Yeah. Yeah. Maintenance, tires, all this stuff. Oh my God. Right. So what I think some people make investments because of fads. And then they're ill liquid. Yeah. Talk to the danger about being illiquid. Man, you're a real estate investor. So you know this. I do. Rates get too high. You get too high. You get over leveraged, vacancies start showing up, whether it's a short term or a long term kind of rental situation, you can end up in a really precarious spot if you don't manage your

liquidity well. Even for us as investors, we invest in funds that lend to people like you who are going to try and buy real estate or improve real estate or just hold it for the cash flow. And those are things that we ask. It's like, well, what's our LTV here? If we're going to invest in a pool of loans, we don't want to be lending at 90% LTV, 80% LTV. We want enough cushion to if we have to either go and raise more cash or whether the storm of, you know, vacancies or a COVID situation got in bed, we could handle that. What do you believe about leverage? And I'm going to be more specific. What do you believe is the right way to use leverage? Good question. I grew up in Nashville, Tennessee, not far from where Dave

Ramsey's got his home base. And listen, Dave says good things about managing your financial discipline and getting disciplined about your financial life. But from a leverage perspective, I think his rule is 15 years on a place you live and nothing else. I probably everything else. cash. I think, you know, to our point earlier, that's a good way of getting rich slowly. But again, money is a tool, right? Do you want your tires to be sitting there deflating and, you know, collecting rust and getting stale over time, or do you want it to be fluid in doing what it was built to do? So to me, money is a tool that leverage, if you're structured properly, can be a way that you accelerate, the returns you get, the use of your capital. You can deploy your personal

dollars in multiple places by using other people's money to support certain projects. If you do it with discipline, it can be really helpful. I just, I'm in a, high-level mastermind, and we were talking about, we have a member of our mastermind that's $63 million in single-family assets. Wow. Now, in single-family, that's a really large number. It is, right?

Sheesh. And what they were teaching us in the mastermind is they use lines of credit. They don't use acquisition loans. They don't use long-term loans. On the whole portfolio? That's so smart. It was mind-blowing to most of us

who were in the real estate space, right? Not all of us are in the real estate, but we all were like, oh, my gosh. Now, specifically in the single family space, it really worked well. But the reason why I mentioned that to you is because the liquidity of that. Totally. Relative to a 15 or a 30, you talk about Dave Ramsey. Yeah.

Fine. Say what you want about Dave Ramsey. He's speaking to a very specific part of our country, the demographic that needs that advice. It's solid, solid advice. Is it a advice for me or you? Probably not. Right. And I respect that.

So what this really enlightened me on, is using things that have a rapid way to pay it down. Right. And just line of credit, right? Whether it's on your home. Like I'm sitting here and I own a very nice home here in Pinecrest, or Pinecrest, Florida. And I have a lot of equity.

Right. Now, I like the line of credit model because I'm also an investor. Yeah. To your point, I can put that money into something to get a better return so I can take my money to go do something else, right? What's your belief system in having? these lines or credit across business lines or credit. I mean, I really like this. Honestly, we have them. You don't even have to use them. Some people think if you go and apply

and you get this line, I've got to go and spend this million dollars I've got a system. Or think about the average person. I've got to go spend the $30,000 of equity I have in my home. No, you don't. You just have it in case you need it, just like the credit card in your pocket. Now, can that be tempting? Of course. Absolutely. Of course. But should you go and expect to spend every dollar you have access to, that's just being indisciplined. It doesn't matter how much money you have. Yeah, I mean, so I like the line of credit on my home. I'm a lot more reasonable in my older age. I have two kids.

I're not going out to use it on a Ferrari. I'm not going to do what some people might be caught up touring. But being to have access to things that can pull the trigger that has liquidity, what are your thoughts about like retirement accounts? We have them. I advise some people to have them. They can be really good tax advantage investment strategies. But at the end of the day, I don't know anybody that's gotten rich using now exclusively.

I think they're a tool again in the toolbox, but it's not the thing that's going to get you to the promise land. So I agree with that. What's your like number one suggestion these days? And I'm sure through through changes in the economy, you might offer a different suggestion depending upon a little rat. Right now, what are you talking a lot about? Discipline. Number one is you have to keep going. We don't know if the market's going to stay up, keep going up, come down or turn flat. So you have to build and maintain the muscle, right? I used to be an athlete. My partner is more of an athlete than me. And he's like, man, we got to get you back in the job. Jim, I'm like, yeah, you're right, because now I'm traveling so much, I'm working so often, and I used to be this high-performance athlete. Diet is probably not the same. Let's not talk about that, but I used to be a certain way and now I'm acting a little different. The point is, if I don't use it, I'm going to lose it. Yeah. So whether we know the market's going to go up or down or it could change, you have to keep the discipline of continuing to put money towards any investment.

Could be the real estate, could be the market. And then you have to keep the discipline of staying liquid, right? Not extra. Do you have like a top two, three or four things that you say right now in today's world, as we are sitting here with all this uncertainty? Yeah. Here's a couple things that we are leaning on is a good resource, whether it be the stocks, whether, I mean, crypto. I don't know if you lean into crypto, real estate, whatever. There are a couple things, compliment that you've been talking a lot about.

Anything income producing. This is an investment advice. I'm licensed. I got to be careful with what I say. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We're connected with the Cardone group and the other things grant is said publicly is cash is not king. Cash flow is king. That's right.

There's multiple ways to get cash flow. Yeah. People think it's just real estate, but I like cash flowing businesses. Absolutely. So one of the things about PE and VC is, you know, yeah, you can go public, but the end of the day, can every company go public? And once the companies do go public, will they stay valued at them in the place that they go public? Probably not.

So I like the idea that I own a piece or a whole business that can cash flow and pay me, whether I wake up or not. Same thing with real estate. Same thing with people, right? Sometimes investing in people is even better than investing in companies. I think that you just said something. I actually just got shivers because it's thinking it. Sometimes making it, cutting a check to learn from yourself, to learn from Carlton,

to learn from the people. Yeah. That can just show you there's just better ways, right? Like I got hitting the teeth in 2024. I've done real estate now for almost 20 years. And 2024 was by far my hardest financial year ever. Even outside of COVID. Oh, yeah.

Wow. Yeah. COVID wasn't as hard after the first three to six months and you got a little rhythm of what you were doing. Okay. Change the business model completely. Were you in multifamily at the time? No, I was in single family. Goodness gracious.

Yeah. That's pretty good. And so, but it's because I've had a long enough runway to say, okay, I know how to adapt. I know how to change. I know how to, you know, transform into. whatever the model needs to be. So I did that. Challenge in 2024 is I got ahead of my skis with how good I am versus how good my team was

versus, you know, allowing people to make. I just posted this because I heard it from a friend Dean Grasiosi. One of the biggest mistakes you can make is other people to make financial decisions that they don't have the same consequences you do. Wow. And like, and so I did that with my team. My team would be able to green light things and not come to me. Wow.

I'm the one that has that financial consequence. stay down right i say that just to bring up like there's a lot of people that right now really should be working with yourself working with carlton tax strategy uh working with me understanding this because you brought up cash flow right um this whole topic i'm talking about this helox yeah i love that and the reason being is i also just learned in the same mastermind if you set up a life insurance policy yep i believe this to be true i know where you're going yeah with an LLC i believe i believe You can take a loan from the LLC to fund your life insurance policy. Oh, wow.

You get a tax right off on the interest you're paying for the loan. This is true. You get the life insurance from the policy. And because if you structure the life insurance policy correctly, it spits out enough cash to pay off the loan. Wow. Which you're describing, I thought you were going to go down another avenue, but this is actually a form of what we call premium financing. But instead of taking a personal loan, you're talking about getting a business loan,

which thing you can deduct the interest on. That's genius. Yeah. I just learned this, by the way, so I've not implemented it. look into it, of course. Absolutely. But let's talk about what you were talking about, premium financing for the life insurance. Yeah.

So premium financing is really interesting. If you have a need for a significant amount of life insurance or you want to leverage, again, your dollars going into the policy, whether the intent is growth or preservation of capital, you can get a loan for that. People don't realize back in COVID, loans were zero, or like basically zero. So you could take a loan at God knows whatever the number is. If you're earning, let's say, six, seven, eight percent. Now you're playing the arbitrage game.

That's right. And that can go into a life insurance policy that you can loan against later on. and now you have tax-free liquidity. That's right. Now, the challenge of this moment, I would guess, lending is not at that 5, 6%. Yeah. So you might be ahead of your skis.

That's right. But again, if the life insurance is spitting out 6% and you're paying 7%. Yeah. That's cool. You're basically funding your loan at 95% without your money. You're using 5% of your money to do that.

And I just go, that's incredible. Now, the extra layer of that LLC part, I was like, that's incredible. Yeah. You're getting called Coley, so corporate-owned life insurance. I didn't even think you could put this kind of strategy or that kind of wrapper around this strategy. That's what I think he was, I didn't know if it was called something.

Yeah. And again, I'm not a financial advisor. I'm not a wealth. I don't own anything. So this is not direct financial advice, but he was telling me this. So I'm going to look into it. You should. You should.

I would, you know, because I have them. I believe in them. Talk about liquidity. I believe, specifically I have an I-U-L and have a whole life policy. I'm able to pull. against both. The whole life policy is so easy. It's a click of the button

it's in my bank account in like 24 hours. Literally, right? I think it might be the best financial tool for the small to medium-sized income earner doing pretty well. Yeah. For liquidity. Totally, totally.

If you structure it well, there's a lot of salespeople out there that'll just take buy anything and buy a big one because you never know if you're going to make more money. Buy what's right for you at the time. 100%. And like you said,

it can be a great store of liquidity and the dividends that you get from some of these life insurance companies better than your bank account. And the other layer of this is you're protected. Like, no one can come after your life insurance. It's true. So it's a store of like wealth.

That's right. Right. Cash is probate. Don't have to worry about that. Nothing. I just think it's such a smart tool for everybody. I mean, you know, at some point, I guess, I mean, does it matter how much you make? Like, if you're making $5 million a year, it's still a good idea. Listen, the Gerber baby grow up plan.

It was a whole life policy that most people didn't know about. Gerber was seller life insurance for little kids at $25,000 for the policy amount. Now, you and me might have six figures or millions of dollars in life insurance, but you can start this kind of plan. This is $50,000 going into, or sorry, a $50,000 policy. Yeah. I have a friend, you may know Chris Noggle, but his whole point really is use it like a bank, but you got to be very diligent. And you got to have great, you know, habitual, you pay yourself back. That's right.

Right. So his point, and I love it, and I've used it in this way. Two years ago, I bought a range rover. Okay. Whole Life Policy paid for it for 150 grand. Nice. And then I paid so you got a loan from your own bank. That's right.

And you're playing arbitrage instead of going to chase or wherever you'd go. So I'm like, this is so brilliant. It's great, right? Right. And in months that I'm like, I might be a little tied or I'm waiting for this big pay. Okay. Yeah.

I don't have like, like there's no like need. Yeah. It's a loan. It's true. But it's a loan that doesn't require me to pay the month. Right. It's like it's a little tricky. Like I said, you gotta be very diligent. You have to have good,

a habitual way to make this happen. But I just think it's discipline at the end of the day. And I don't think a lot of people have discipline with the money. No. To your point. I don't think people ask. No one's hitting up Christian. Say, I need some advice.

No one's hitting it. Well, a lot of people nowadays are hitting up Carlton. 100%. DEMs are flooded. Yeah. And I like that. Yeah. And that's how it should be.

Absolutely. Leave us with how you would start all over again. I would start all over again. High income skill. You got to prove yourself valuable to the market advice. I got pretty good at sales early on. I don't do too much of that now, but sales is what got me to a position where I knew I could put food on the table. Yeah.

And if you get really good at anything, it could be that, could be medicine, could be the law, you'll find yourself needing to build the discipline of saving, investing, and doing the things that's going to get you to a point where you look up and like, okay, 100 grand. What do I do with that? $200,000, $500,000, $1,000, $5 million. Whoa, I have a portfolio that I could sell out of multiple, which is very different than what most people are thinking. Most people are thinking 20 years, you know, a couple thousand bucks a month into my 401k, I'll retire and okay. That works for some people. But I think you and I have larger aspirations and the habit that you build, if you do it the right way, you won't realize that eventually you'll be in a spot where you can come out really pretty on the other side. So if you were going to go, I got to go make a quarter million dollars this year, starting from zero.

What would be your focus? Where would you go? What would be the skill set you rely on? Yeah, sales for sure. I don't know what I'd sell, though. There's a lot of people. We represent some of them. You could sell insurance.

You could sell real estate. You could sell cars. I asked Grant the same. I interviewed Grant Monday. And he said, uh, AI. I'd become an AI consultant and go sell. Yeah. AI consultants to small businesses, larger business.

People that don't get it, they don't look into it. Totally. We had a conversation about that yesterday. I think every business is about to become a media business and a tech business. No matter what business that you're in. So to your point, if you can sell those two things to businesses that aren't adopting that, you're in a really good shape. Yeah.

And then you take the money and call Christian and say, hey, what do I do? with this let's do it get really mean that i want everyone listening and what like whether they're in your profile or not i think they need to have a resource because i think people start to make money and just like we mentioned the beginning yeah they start to compare and then it leads to well i need to get the watch right christian has one or justin has one or i need to get the yeah and then they don't actually make the the right decision you'll end up on a hamster role that way yeah can't have that so yeah discipline is the key find the right people stick around them by the way it's not just the people you pay it's your friends and associations you just talk about three times you're in

mastermind surrounded by people who are teaching you things and you're probably not paying them directly for it you're paying to be a part of a community and sometimes the community is just as good as the advisors you're you're engaging absolutely Christian metatwa it's me here from synergy again please where can people find you reach out to you anyway Christian metatua christians with a k so mom mom made me different but Christian metatua is pretty much all my social is christian matatua.com synergyprivate.com I'm not hard to find yeah reach out to him get get the knowledge you really need And him, myself and Carlton, will be doing some special stuff here over the next year or two

or maybe for the next decade. Oh, no, stay tuned. Let's do that. Stay tuned. Reach out to him. This is the entrepreneur DNA. I am Justin Colby. This is Christian Metaithwa.

And if this was pretty good and you have a friend or two that might need to hear some of this information, please share that with two of your friends. We'll see you on the next episode.