The Full Story Of Dave Ramsey | Inside the $700 Million Dollar Empire

So, Dave Ramsey probably doesn't need an introduction, but for anybody who's been living under a rock, his show, The Ramsey Show, is the second biggest radio talk show in America with over 1 billion downloads. He's written two New York Times bestsellers, has over 2.5 million subscribers across two YouTube channels, and owns over $600 million cash worth of real estate. Dave is actually somebody who I've personally looked up to now for 10 years, and if you don't believe me, I literally have a cat named after him because I found the cat for free. And I have a life-size cardboard cutout of him in my family room. Needless to say, Dave Ramsey is the king of all financial entertainment. Well, we got him for an exclusive 1-hour long episode here in The Iced Coffee Hour, and couldn't be more excited to show you. So, if you're a fan of this content and you want to see more, subscribe because we have some pretty incredible stuff coming out in the near future. But, first we want to thank our sponsor, Wealthfront. With all that's going on in the market right now, investing can be seen as very risky. And it would be incredible if there was a guaranteed way to get a high interest return on your money. Well, thankfully there is, and it's by using today's sponsor, Wealthfront. Wealthfront is a saving and investing app that can help you earn more on your money and start building wealth for your future. That's because the Wealthfront cash account gives everyone a 2% APY interest rate, which is 20 times what traditional banks pay. Wealthfront only takes a few minutes to sign up, and you can start earning 2% APY immediately. They've been a company that I've been personally using for a few years now, and at 2% interest, it's pretty much higher than almost every other option out there, so I would highly recommend them. And if you start now, you get a free $50 bonus with a $500 deposit. There are already nearly half a million people using Wealthfront to save more, earn more, and build long-term wealth, so why wait? Start earning 2% on your cash today by visiting wealthfront.com/ich. The link is down below in the description, or again, it's wealthfront.com/ich. This no-brainer good news has been a paid endorsement by Wealthfront. Thank you so much, Wealthfront. Once again, link down below, and back to the podcast. I'm George Kamel. And I'm not. I'm Dave Ramsey. And this is the Ice Coffee Hour. And so far this podcast Wild Guess has made $260,000. Now you're officially our closest guest. Congratulations. Actually, usually we just say this, you know, if you're within, you know, a little bit, but yeah, $258,700. You're $1,300 off. Is Right, I would have won the dishwasher. $1, Bob. Well, thank you guys so much for doing this. And Dave, the hospitality of everyone that I've met on your team is insane. Just how passionate everyone is, how much they really want to be here, how excited they are, how nice It's like I am blown away. When we drove down here and saw We were asking your driver or your head of security actually. I said, "Is this all Dave's?" He said, "Yeah, the whole thing. And it's all paid for. It's all owned outright." And I'm I'm like, "Does he sublease any of it? Surely there must be like other like medical buildings or office No. I am blown away. That's wild. Insane. Now, for those unfamiliar, but most people are familiar with your story. Could you give us a bit of a background in what you do, your philosophies, and how you were able to to go from being bankrupt in your 20s to owning everything? It's incredible. I'm I'm truly at I'm owning everything. I'm at a loss for words here. Yeah, I like hanging out with Graham. Good ideas. Uh now we uh uh like you said, we started with nothing. Mom and Dad were in the real estate business. And so I know your background, of course. Uh your parents weren't, but you got into it at 18. I got my license when I turned 3 weeks after I turned 18. And still got my license. And a thousand years later. And so uh I went and got my degree in real estate, came out, Sharon and I got married at 22 years old in 1982. And um went through a couple jobs, and then I quickly started buying real estate. Nothing down in those days. It was a big deal. Before there was before Chip and Joanna were born. You know, and so It's a long time ago. And I got rich. I had a million dollar net worth, made about 200 I think I made 250,000 bucks at 24 years old. And that's 1984. Mhm. So, that's that's Like making 600 500,000 now, you know. So, it was for a kid from Antioch, Tennessee. I mean, where I came from, that's called rich. And so, everything was going great, but I did a lot of 90-day notes cuz I was doing flips. Lot of short-term notes. And our bank got the the largest bank I had a million two out with them got sold to another bank and outside of the state of Tennessee. And some guy looks down in another city and said, "Hey, there's a 24-year-old kid owes us a million bucks. This is scary. Let's let's limit this relationship, which is banker talk for ruin his life." And they called our notes. Another banker got word we were in trouble, called another 800,000. So, we had two million we had to come up with in 120 days. And so, a lot of real estate. You can't get out of it that fast. So, it started a crash that that I couldn't recover from. And we spent the next two and a half years losing everything we owned, being sued and foreclosed on and finally with a brand new baby and a toddler and our marriage hanging on by a thread, we filed bankruptcy in September of '88. And it was a not a good ride. But, we uh uh we were new in our Christian faith, baby Christians, and I started studying what the Bible says about money, which was just common sense. Get out of debt. Stay out of debt. Live on less than you make. Live on a budget. Have a plan. And I started doing that stuff. And that evolved into people asking me, "Okay, how are you recovering from your bankruptcy? It seems like you're doing okay." And I'm like, "Well, we're doing okay. It wasn't fast. But, um uh we finally sat down with some friends and helped them do a budget cuz they were in trouble. And then pastor called from the church and said, "Hey, this guy's in foreclosure. Can you help him I went yeah I used to buy foreclosures and then I was one so yeah I can probably help him. So we sat down and did a you know did a workout plan a forbearance plan with that mortgage company for him and I started doing forbearance plans for people that were behind on their mortgage started helping people that were struggling so they didn't have to file bankruptcy they thought they would have to go into chapter 13 or to save their house and then that evolved and start teaching a little Sunday school class and there's about four people in there and looked up and there were 300 people in there. And it just there was such a need people were they gravitated to my story of stupidity my PhD and DUMB B and uh they were hurting too and it gave them an authentic place to get help by somebody who actually knew the pain and knew the stress and from there we I went on a broke radio station that was in chapter 11 bankruptcy a lot of bankruptcy in the story but the uh and uh they let us work for free which is exactly what we were worth and we were horrible Darrell and his other brother Darrell on doing talk radio it was nasty and um you know we were able to sell some a little bit of that first book I wrote out of the trunk of my car and uh start doing some events with overhead projector and a bad suit and you know fast forward all of that to this massive thing starting all that stuff was about 30 years ago. Starting the radio show is 30 years this year. How were you able to turn that into a business though because it seems like at the beginning you were giving free advice just helping other people out from the church. How did that evolve into making money from it or being able to grow that and hire so many people? Well we started I mean I started the first thing I did was I thought okay I can do counseling we now call it coaching but um uh counseling's got legal implications in the word, but the coaching had people in their finances. And so, I would charge $250 or $750 to help somebody and just meet in a conference room and sit down and help them do that. Uh outside of church, I mean, it just word got out, you know, a guy uh at a local restaurant heard I was helping people and he sent one of his employees over who had an IRS lien and was getting ready to IRS is getting ready to tag his house and so, we were able to get that get an OIC working on that and um so, I just started coaching people, helping them with their budgets and avoiding a foreclosure or repo or whatever. All stressed stuff, all hurting stuff. And then I went on this little radio show and we weren't making any money on it. We didn't make money. The radio show wasn't profitable for 10 years. But it was I mean, we didn't make $258,000. I can promise you that. Um Uh and uh but the uh there were a lot of people listening and it became a a megaphone, a way to get to the to acquire customers. So, they would come in and do coaching and we could sell books and then we started doing events that we charged for and then we opened up uh a thing called Life After Debt, which was a 26-week course on money to get out of debt. It evolved into what's now known as Financial Peace University, which is now 9 weeks, mercifully. You know, that grew, the events grew, the publishing grew, the speaking grew. Uh and finally, the radio show became profitable. We were able to actually sell some ads uh in the in our talk radio slots other than just trying to promote our own stuff, which was kind of infomercialish, really. But in every case, we just figured out a different medium or media to help people and then was there a way to monetize that, too, where we could help people make a little money and you know, if you sell a $10 book and you make $8 on it or whatever, that's good, but if you're selling a million of them, it's better. Yeah. And in that beginning phase, when you were just getting started, did you guys do any marketing to try to grow these different businesses that you were in or was it mostly just word of mouth and people telling their friends and their family, "Hey, you should listen to this guy. He's got some great financial advice." Yeah, entertainment. Yeah, entertainment. It was mainly word of mouth, but we had this wonderful microphone of this radio station and the little radio station ended up getting bought out of bankruptcy and by then we had marshaled a following. We didn't even know we had ratings cuz they never told us to say the call letters. We were in bankruptcy. It was like It was like a Saturday Night Live skit. I mean, it was bad. And so then this professional radio people come in and start teaching us to you say the call letters. You're kind of illegal if you don't say them once an hour, you know, and so and so we started using them in and out of every call and and so the radio show ended up building the the critical mass from a marketing perspective. We didn't have any money to do marketing. We were just surviving. Uh making payroll on Friday. And so the first guy I hired was a another financial coach cuz I was maxed out logistically. Uh then I hired a lady to help us in the office and uh you know, and then Financial Peace University started taking off. We put it on video and quit teaching it live and boy, that went to scale quick. It's now been taught about 10 million people been through it in 50,000 churches. But that you know, it when we put it on video, that enabled on VHS, okay, later DVD, now, you know, obviously digitally delivered. Yeah, it was uh when we changed the mechanisms of the delivery, we started seeing the scale kick out on the different things. And then we started getting more radio stations to add, start syndicating the show, meaning we would try to get other cities on to carry us and so forth and um you know, we just I remember when we got to 10 radio stations. I thought, "Oh my god, I'm in 10 cities. Wow, am I a big deal or what?" You know, and now it's 670 or something like that. It's crazy. Is there a reason you did radio over TV? Yeah, I've got a face for radio. No, hey, nobody nobody would let me on TV. I mean, I I get them news media hits here or there. When we did a book tour, I would got I got on the Today Show the first time with that first book uh when I sold it to a publisher and then we went we reissued relaunched it and they uh I got on the Today Show. I thought, "Oh god, this is it. It's over, man." I just just check that box, man. And uh nobody even knew I was on there. It's great. It's not you know sold some books though. We got it on the New York Times and um then People magazine picked it up and so we you know, we ended up get kind of in the pub business, the publicity business. We start figuring out, "Oh, that's like free marketing. Hello." And so if we can provide content for them, they'll have us on their shows and doesn't cost a thing. They benefit, we benefit, the viewer listener benefits. But I wasn't good at TV. I did a when Fox Business first launched their their uh initial launch, I was one of the first I was the show in the evening. I was a primetime show. We did a 1-hour show on there uh that aired in the evening um and I learned a lot. TV's a lot harder than radio. It's a lot and um people talking in your ear while you're supposed to be talking. My brain's not that good. I'm not smart enough to do that. So but we got through it and I we did that for 2 years and uh Fox Business shifted their aim at a different demographic. Our demographic's pretty young and Fox Business at that time was a very old demographic. And so we we weren't That makes sense. point. So anyway, but I did a little while, but I really wasn't good at it. I'm I'm really good at like the 3-minute interview thing. You know, like on Fox and Friends, I do that all the time from here. We've got fiber into here. They're friends. We They The [ __ ] that's funny. Fox and Friends are friends, but then George and I do that. You know, all the Ramsey personalities will jump on and do those. I'm really good at those, but the long-form TV thing is just What do you think that is? I don't I think there's just so many things going on and you have to concentrate and you know, you have to look at the camera properly and I just talk. It's funny that's long but he does a 3-hour radio show for 50 I was just thinking that. An hour of TV is just too long. Because like taking like a Dr. Phil format for personal finance and finding really just extreme situations but helping them through that I feel like would be so interesting. CBS had us do a pilot when the nanny was hot. You remember the nanny? Oh, yes. Yeah, she would come in and fix their mean kids or whatever. What was that show called? The English It was the English lady. Yeah, yeah. So they about that time I did a we ran around all over the country. We had three families to do it shoot this pilot and their idea was that we would be like the nanny but in finance we'd come in and swoop in and help this couple and so forth and it was it was really bad. It was awful. You didn't like the way it turned out? No, it was they they didn't mean they didn't even air the pilot. What? It sucked that bad. Someone find that. It's got to be on the internet. I would It sucked It sucked It really sucked and it was it was me. Was it just boring do you think or what? Yeah, I It's It's just I mean well I mean it's real The funny thing is reality TV has absolutely nothing to do with reality. Like I remember walking up to the doorbell these people's house and ringing the doorbell. I did it like 17 times before they got the take they wanted. I'm like it's ringing a doorbell. This is supposed to be real. I just ring the dad blame thing. Reality TV. It's 17 takes to get the doorbell right. Yeah, I'm like I screw this. I'm not I'm not even good at this. But see at this point you would be able to produce your own show if you really wanted to and it would be a hit. Where you could ring the doorbell once. Yeah, I actually actually we're going to do that with George. Oh my god. Are you actually way less intimidating. If Dave Ramsey shows up at your house and hits that doorbell you're like oh crap. They would be quivering in fear. Why? Why am I a fearful character? hey these people are with money you show up and they're like oh gosh. Yeah, like what did I do? I'm I'm going to get it now. More of a golly. More of a Gordon Ramsay. I was about to say yeah. The The kitchen Was it Kitchen Nightmare where he He in the restaurants and fixes the restaurants but he you got to be shouting half the time, yelling at them and berating them. I am not going to. And you're going to be doing that? I don't know yet. I don't know if I have that kind of energy. No, you don't think so? Me yelling is a different vibe than Dave. Got it. Okay. yell. What's wrong with you, Joe? Yeah, listen to the radio show today. He will be yelling. That's interesting. How many people now do you have working with you? Uh we got about 1,200 in the building. Wow. Now, I've heard and I've listened to other interviews you've done that the uh the interview process to work with you is pretty stringent. How many How many people uh apply for a job versus how many people get one? And what what's the process like for you to hire somebody? Well, I I don't hire them. I mean, they're hired inside. Our leadership team does the hiring. Uh the chances of me I'm not very good at interviewing people. So, I'm they don't let me do it. The idea just being that we want people that are on mission and on crusade and that align with our values. And that's who we want in the building. We have had really bad experience with people who were here for what they could get rather than what they could add. They're takers rather than givers. They don't add value. And people that add value generally are people that are aligned on our values. They add value if they're excited about the crusade of helping people with their mental health or their career or their money or they want to help with that. And even if you know, it's a a creative, they want to do their creative work for something that matters, you know. But if you're just looking for a J.O.B., we want to weed you out before you get in here. Or if you're crazy, we'd like to find that out before you get in here. Um and so we don't just open a open a a wreck for a hire and just whoever can fog up a mirror that looks like they have a good resume, let's get it done and get them in here. No, it's pretty stringent because we've had bad experience with having the wrong people in the building, you know, people that aren't are here and unhappy. It it distracts from all the work cuz you have to stop and deal with the drama queen instead of getting your work done. You know, so we don't want we try not to let drama in the building if we can help it. I mean, sometimes people have bad things happen. We want to be there for them, but the somebody who's in here to as a taker, that's where we've had the worst experience. So, yeah, you go through a whole series of interviews to weed that out. And you can't figure that out in 30 minutes. People can they can be psychotic and you know, completely fool you for 30 minutes. They can fool you anyway, but Right. but you know, one 30-minute interview, you're not you're going to you're not going to get a good team. But how do you filter that? Is there a question? Is there a process that that breaks that down so you're able to see maybe what what an intention is or whether or not there's a good fit? You just talk to them and you know, listen to them. If you just spend enough time and put them in different put people in different situations, then you'll get a feel on it. You'll get a vibe on it. We all I mean, we all read people pretty well if we just would let ourselves. Yeah. And so just we're just sitting here going, do I really want to spend a lot of time with this individual? Cuz this is a small business, even at 1,200 people it's we spend a lot of time together. We and we work hard. We work really hard. We go home at 5:30, but we work really hard while we're here. And so and I do. And so we just want somebody that's aligned with that and we ask a lot of questions and talk about who we are and watch their reaction to this is who we are, you know, and you want to is that who you want to be around? I don't know, I think that's kind of crazy. Okay, then we've kind of figured that out, you know. Or they give you some indication of that that feeling or that vibe. Sure. Now, I'm really curious of your work schedule because you have grandkids now and how do you how how is that shifted over time with spending time with family versus working versus helping people? How do you divvy that up? Do you have The hardest time was the early days um cuz we didn't have the help and we're trying to get the critical mass of the business moving. Trying to make payroll Friday, you know, that kind of stuff. So, I would you know, I would come in at 7:00 and work all day and then go to a 3-hour radio show, come home from that or come back to the office from that and then go set up the screens and the overhead projector across the street at the local hotel to run Financial Peace University that night. Those were 16-hour days. Uh my wife will tell you those days she was a single mom for a while. But it that ran about I guess at that schedule it was only about 2 years. But we were able to get critical mass and then quickly you quickly I wanted to delegate some of that. And so anything I could get off my plate that would allow me to be freed up uh and cuz I I don't mind hard work, but but I do do not want to set up a something that's not sustainable. And working like that for 20 years means you don't have family. Yeah. Working like that means you you lose your health. And working like that's silly. But doing it for a period of time to get something moving, well, game on, you know, get ready. You're getting ready for the Super Bowl, you better get ready, you know. Yeah. And so we did that, but nowadays it's evolved and uh you know, the my joke with the team has always been if I hate doing something it's going to be real bad cuz I'm just going to stop doing it. Yeah. And that means that something you were working on I might not be doing anymore. Somebody else is going to do it or we're not doing it at all. So, like I mean live events we used to do uh you know, 40 or 50 those a year running around with me. Mhm. And then now we've got Ramsey Personalities that do a lot of those. And I'll go and do 10 you know, or 15 or something a year. Uh which really isn't that hard to just run into a city doing an event, run back home, you know, it's not not like I'm gone continuously Right. or something. Like I've got friends in Nashville in the music business, they live on a bus. I'm not doing that. Yeah. At what point did you bring on the personalities? Like uh you know, I've been watching George and this is something for me where I've noticed maybe 3 years ago was it? Going to be 2 years ago you started bringing on other people and you changed the name of your channel from The Dave Ramsey Show to The Ramsey Show while bringing on other people. It's interesting to see that for the most part, at least from what I saw, you did everything yourself and you were the main face. And as soon as you brought on personalities, I read all the comments and then some people were mixed about it, but I think over time people really enjoyed uh having different perspectives. How much of that was strategic and why did you choose to bring on other people with you? Uh I'm 62 today. I'm back to my schedule when I turned 60 I quit working on Fridays. So uh and and we all pretty well work, you know, from you know, 7:00 to 5:00 or whatever around here and we all the whole place I mean, there's nobody in the parking lot at 5:30. With the personalities, when I was 48, 14 years ago, um I got started getting around some business people who uh were talking you have to have a succession plan. You have to have a plan to hand this thing off. Otherwise, it just dies when you die. And all the effort and everything you put into this uh dies. And uh it seemed kind of silly. If you're going to teach financial responsibility, you ought to be responsible with your assets, you know? So um I uh we started going, "Okay, we need to have some other we need to train the next generation of Ramseys to be wise owners. We need to make sure we have leadership in place that can lead without me in the room and without me alive even. Um Then how are we going to hand off the brand? And the brand those two you could find best practices on. Training up the next generation to be wise owners or build quality leaders. You can find best practices, but it's very difficult to find someone who had handed off a a brand, a singular name brand like that to someone. And the one-to-one hand offs had the worst. So you had like, you know, father left it to the daughter or the son and it just didn't work. There was too much weight on that next generation. Uh and it was um there was too much risk involved. So we'd kind of felt like God showed us to uh diversify that and have a one-to-many handoff on the brand. So, literally 14 years ago, we started hiring and training our first ones. Rachel Cruze my is my daughter, and she was doing some speaking, and we had other people doing some speaking at the time. We start We first We had horrible names for them. We're like, "They're message bearers. They carry the message." It's like a little message, you know. They carry the It was awful. I mean, we were But we knew we knew where we were going. We just weren't talking about it intelligently. And uh uh then later they became brand somethings brand brand uh ambassadors or or something like that. It was No, no, they were just called brands. We just called you brand called them brands. And they weren't a brand. They were a person. There's brands like uh you know, Every Dollar the app is a brand. Financial Peace is a brand. A person, you know, Yes, Dave Ramsey's become a brand, but that's really that It was It was confusing everyone. And so, finally someone came up with the idea of personalities, and we named them personalities. So, now I have multiple personalities. But yeah, so we we, you know, we uh Rachel and uh you know, we've got eight now or nine um as of today. And uh you know, many of them have had uh number one bestsellers uh carrying their They're getting tremendous speaking fees, speaking all over America. Uh they they are high-quality communicators and thought leaders within their own right. And but the last piece of that was the actual radio show. So, we had a r- long before 3 years ago. We had a solid base of these things happening. Uh I think Rachel had the first number one bestseller. Uh and that was fly. And uh it's great. Land on my nose. But the uh yeah, she had the first uh number one, and gosh, that's probably 2014 or 2012 or something like that. But yeah, so we've had books going out and other things and including them in the Smart Conference and other events where we were doing multiple people. But then the radio show, we had the plan we we didn't know what to do with it cuz we weren't sure it could hand off. We thought it might die with me. But then COVID and we went, "Okay, Dr. John Delony talks about mental health and loneliness and anxiety and boy have we got some right now and George and Rachel Cruz talk a lot about hope and they're fun and funny and God help us in the middle of quarantine and everybody needed that. So I just started I said let's just y'all get on the air with me and let's do this. And the mistake we made at first was they were uh treated like a guest. Yes. And that was that was more awkward chemistry and didn't work well and we've evolved that into a co-host and then the more comfortable they've gotten sitting in the co-host seat the more effective they've been and the less hate we're getting on it. Yeah. But you know I told her guys I said guys are coming in comments people don't like it. They don't like it. And I said well what are they going to like static? Cuz that's what they're going to get when I'm dead. Yeah. So they might we might as well try something you know I don't really give a crap if they like it cuz Static static's your other option. Very opinionated. I read all the comments so I watch all your videos. or Yeah. Comments comments are what people are saying and they're in the beginning people aren't used to it and they don't like what they're not used to. Yeah. I remember when Jack first came on the comments I don't like Jack something about it Not all of them not all But but it's You know it was Jack screenshot I can't believe it Jack. We read into this be like his body language suggests he's like you know Yeah people were like diagnosing me with certain things they were like oh he's a sociopath I know Jack I think he's a narcissist. That's my favorite he's a narcissist. Yeah I don't know. It was hilarious. But then over time now people say I I don't like Graham on here I prefer Jack on the podcast. And it's interesting to see how it's shifted over time. It hasn't shifted you're doing great. That's how I feel most too now they go I prefer George over Jack. Yeah yeah yeah Yeah we get that a lot. Yeah so much. George is nice. Rachel they do like Rachel. Rachel's actually very nice. Yeah. They like Rachel. I've got a mean bone in me that comes out occasionally. It's good. You have to. You're that guy. I don't yell. It's a calm mean. Okay, it's passive-aggressive. Yeah. Snark. There we go. How did you guys meet? We met when I started working here as an intern back in 2013. I kind of snuck in the door. I didn't have to go through 19 interviews cuz as an intern, which I don't even think we do those anymore. No, we don't. They're just like, well, he's an intern. That's why. He's a temp. He's here for 10 months. You know, we'll get him to he'll do the work while someone's Someone's on maternity leave. This guy knows social media. We'll have him do some things and then he'll be out of there. And I went, "Hey, I want to stay here." and they went, "Well, could you have a Do you have any skills?" And I went, "I could do this role over here." So, I jumped into email marketing. Hm. For about 2 and 1/2 years, went back to social media for the personalities. That's what drew me here was our personalities with a message to share that was creative and gave people hope. And so, I wanted to help them spread that message through social media and marketing and email and all those things. And over time, they had seen me on the stage at our Battle of the Bands event, which is one of the ways we have a great time build culture here. Internal team members form bands. Lot of failed musicians around here in Nashville. I play drums, by the way. So, if you need a drummer, just let me know. Guest appearance. He's actually successful. You were like on tours and stuff. Yeah, he had he had $2 royalty checks. I heard about it. Oh my gosh, yes. I haven't gotten a royalty check in a while. The last one was probably like 60 cents. like 30 bucks a month from my music career. So, I'm beating you in that regard. So, I started doing that and they went, "Well, we should have him MC and host." because Ken Coleman, one of our personalities, was stepping into that role. And so, I started hosting events and the video channel for the show and curriculums, you name it. And last year, back in 2021, I was knighted personality because of how much I cared about this message and wanting to teach it and create content around it, especially for the younger generations. Wasn't aware we knighted anyone. I don't know. I mean, there It an official knighting. It was more of just a meeting where they went, "Hey, you're going to do this now." And I went, "Okay." You know, which I've had about six or seven jobs here at Ramsey. I like that. It's got a ring to it. Stick with that. You know, actually Jack and I are both lords. Technically. Technically. We did one of these certificates where we own a one-by-one plot of land. You can be a lord for like 30 bucks online apparently. Yeah. You can own a star, too. I have a star. Yeah, you have a star and a plot of land and you're a lord. It's an NFT. It's an NFT. This is This is pretty incredible. Y'all really accomplished it. What was it like, by the way, for your first show? Oh my goodness. Cuz are they filmed live? Yeah, everything's live. Or I guess with the delay. Yeah, with this it's like, well, we can edit it out if I do a big flub. And so, I was live I think it was August 2nd of 2021. And I had just launched my very own podcast called The Fine Print helping people avoid the traps out there with money. And so, I was on air with Dave. And there was It's a lot of pressure. It's a lot of weight to be on, you know, the second largest talk radio show in America next to Dave Ramsey. Um, but at that point I had done so many other things in front of cameras and mics. And so, I you know, at first you're nervous and then you get on air and Dave does the intro and you're like, "Holy crap, I'm I'm in it. I'm inside of the matrix right now." And we just had a good time with it and over time you get more and more comfortable. There's not as much nerves anymore, but your body keeps the score. Your body knows you're live on air in front of millions of people. Don't screw up. Don't say the wrong thing. And by the way, this is then on YouTube for the rest of time. So, my kids will go back, you know, 20 years from now and watch old clips of me saying stupid stuff. But, you know, Dave led the way. He was doing that. So, Saying stupid stuff. Yeah, exactly. What qualities did you see in George that made you feel comfortable putting him next to you? In all of our personalities, we're looking for you know, obviously a strong intellect because a lot of the stuff we do is quick react. And you do not have time to think about the next day what you wish you had said. It's over. You're doing an interview on or you're on the air live or we're doing a Q&A in front of a live audience or whatever it is and you got to be able to just draw and fire. Um so we're looking for that. Um but we're also looking for that uh it factor on the stage or in front of a microphone in front of a camera. And different people have different places that are a strength. I've already said my strength is not on camera. Mhm. Uh I enjoy the stage and I enjoy the the the uh intimacy that talk radio has. Uh because you're dealing with just one uh sense. Just you hear just hearing. And so you're not getting the benefit of body language or and you're listening for that pause that means they lied or you're listening for uh you know, the the nuance of it. And 30 years of doing it you can begin to get it dialed in. But the the it factor in one of those places, can they lift people? So in our situation we have to be able to put out high quality information but doing it doing it in a way with story and with humor that is aspirational. That's lifting. Mhm. You know, there has to be a motivational piece to it. If you just lift with no information, that's just fluff. But if you send out information with no lift, that's called a boring 401k meeting. And nobody wants to go to those. And so we're not doing either one of those. And so you know, we sit and talk to you know, Dr. John Delony. We're interviewing him uh about coming on and doing this and he was the Dean of Students at a local university. But you're just sitting in a room with him. You get real quick. You go how quick he is, how smart he is and how funny he is, self-deprecating and and uh uh I went this guy can do. He he can handle that. And what George did was uh George has always had that. I mean, he loves to perform. He's a musician. He you know, already had that. Uh and we had had him in front of the camera with the video channel as the host. So we got to see, you know, could the audience love George as a host? And you know, could they could he could he connect? And you got to be able to do that through these things or from the stage or whatever it is, and he obviously did that. And he's got an incredible work ethic. He's one of the of all the personalities, he's probably the one that does the most work to prepare before he comes on the air to do something. So, he'll come in with like three articles when we're going on the air and go, "Hey, we could talk about this stuff. I've been looking at this this morning." and uh my level of preparation is I walked in there and hit on. You know, I mean, it was like cuz I've been doing it a long time, but I don't I don't track that stuff, but he's bringing good fresh new ideas and chemistry from his work ethic. And so, that's the type stuff we were looking for, and that he definitely personifies. Yeah, I have to say the level of preparation, even when we walked in here, I looked at the desk and I'm like, "Wow, this is similar to our desk." And I looked over I looked at the lights I'm like, "Wow, they very similar to our lights." And you said that you've created this to somewhat replicate the Iced Coffee Hour. And just the level the attention to detail, I've I've never seen like this before. Our team has very high standards, and it stems from this guy right here. It is that we call it the suck bar around here, and the suck bar is down here for most of America, most companies, and everything we do is to the highest standard. You know, when we say we do our work as unto the Lord, that means we are putting our 110% effort in. We have a core value of excellence in the ordinary, which means the smallest things. Before we went live, we are de-linting a shirt. I know. Because we don't want anything to distract from what we're trying to is. Is that a word? It's a new word for Dave. But our team, I did none of this by the way. It's our amazing video crew over here, and their level of I mean, excellence. And over time, you know, 10 years ago, we weren't at the level we were now. And so, we we grew over time. We got better cameras. We got better at lighting. We hired even more talented people. And so, over time, now the bar is just way up here. And this is where we start. And if you've been to our live event, and so you know our production values, the things that we put out there, we want to be the best out there. And especially in the faith space, there's a lot of just like bad, you know, SNL skit level stuff out there. And we wanted to stand out from that crowd and do our work as unto the Lord. And so that's what we've been doing now for over many, many years. Now, I'm curious about this because your faith plays an important part in the business, in your life. Where did that start? Because you mentioned uh in one of the interviews that you've done that it wasn't on the way down. It was on the way up that you began to practice and Was there a catalyst or where did that start? Or what prompted that? And how were you before that point? Um well, yeah, the the phrase we always use is I met God on the way up. I got to know him on the way down. Meaning that first rise in wealth. Um And so I do everything backwards. A lot of people want their faith journey begins at a point of crisis. Mine was at a point of prosperity. But it deepened with the going through that bankruptcy walk over 2 and 1/2 years. And so I met God as an adult. And but I didn't have a a framework for really uh anything. I don't you know, how do I be a good husband? Okay, I'm going to learn that from biblical teaching. I'm going to How do you raise good kids? I'm going to learn that from a source of truth, biblical teaching. I'm going to learn how to handle money. I'm going to learn leadership. I'm going to And cuz they're you know, the principles are there uh within biblical wisdom. And it just gave me a framework to form my uh character. And uh so then, you know, that's why I don't read comments. Cuz I'm not really taking a poll. What we're going to do we're going to do. And if you don't like it, it's okay. I understand. You get There's a lot of stuff you can watch and a lot of stuff you can buy in other places. And it's okay. But this is who we are. And um we're not trying to rub it in someone's face in terms of the our faith. But it is who we are. We're we're to be apologetic about it. And then of course you get a lot of we get a lot of hate and a lot of stuff from that. Um but you know, people generally respect someone that's very authentic. You know, I've got friends that are deeply involved in a different faith. Um you know, Muslim or Jewish or whatever and tremendously respect them for being who they are and it's people that change and blow with the wind and virtue signal just to be try to try to let everybody know that they're you know, I'm into this thing or I'm into that thing so that you like them and I'm like that's not we're not taking a poll. Was there a moment for you though where you feel like your your faith had you know, increased or was was there a pivotal point I guess in your 20s? You know, you know, it did increase it deepened in the pain the stress level of walking through losing everything and the strain it put on our marriage it deepened you know, that that that pain point deepened the quality of our faith and then you know, I mean stuff around here we go through we all go through crap, you know, um whether it's just drama or whatever it is or a you know, stress point and you go okay, I had to I had to decide really what my center is on this where am I drawing my you know, what's my source really where am I going with this and so you know, it's a it's a it's a walk. It's not a singular decision. It's not a singular inflection point. Got it. And you've been married for how many years? 40? 40. 40 years. Congratulations. That's incredible. What have you noticed that's led to such a long-standing relationship and a happy relationship I presume? Yeah, Sharon says we've had 33 good years of marriage so. There you go. All right. It's a good ratio. That's not terrible. But yeah, I mean thank God she's not married to the guy she married originally. He's gotten better over time. I've grown I've learned learned how to be a better man, learned how to be a better husband, learned how to be a better dad. And now I have the privilege of being a granddad and if I'd have known how great grandkids were going to be, I'd have been nicer to their parents. But yeah. But the yeah, that's you know, it's it is a little bit like leading a team or raising kids or just dealing with the audience. Um Are you are you there to add value and help? Or are you there to take? And takers just don't you know, the parasites of this life, they don't do as well. And they don't have as high quality experience. And the odd thing is is if you choose to serve, you end up um you know, in a position of of prosperity in every part of your life. And so you know, sometimes when I serve a team member, I'm asking them to work somewhere else cuz they suck at their job. Mhm. And so they really need to go do something they're good at, and you know, we serve them by not letting them work here. We serve the rest of the team if someone's misbehaving by not letting them stay in the building and so that people here are safe. Um and emotionally safe with a you know, like situation. So it's an act of service sometimes to be strong and to take action. But that and that's true in marriage, it's true in leadership, and it's true certainly with kids. How do you feel that you've improved and evolved as both a husband and a father? Um well, I I'm not a arrived, but I am better. And I think I'm a better leader. I used to be more of a boss. Mhm. I'm a better um Uh but it is it's a character issue and it really does come down to you know, deciding that you're going to get the most joy out of adding value to other people. You're going to get the most uh, reward out of helping someone else do their thing, uh, without just saying, "Okay, what can I get out of this? What can I get out of this? What can I get out of this?" One thing I kind of wanted to harp back on is the amazing culture that you guys have established here. We were told by your head of security that once every week you get all 1,200 employees in one room and talk to them all about the different stuff going on with the business to for everyone to get updated on what's going on. How effective have you found that to and, you know, make the culture better here? Because I know between Graham and me and our other, uh, I guess partner, Alex, Mhm. we don't have meetings and it's only three people. It's through text message every now and Yeah, and I guess we could do a lot better of a job with that, but, uh, I just want to know how that contributes to the the culture here and have you found that to be, uh, I don't know, to contribute a high ROI? learned so many things the the hard way by doing it wrong and doing it stupid. Um, but what we figured out is is that where there is no communication, it's very difficult or limited communication or poor communication, it's very difficult to build trust. And when you don't trust the people you're working with, you all you spend all your energy looking over your shoulder for the knife that's coming or all your energy spent on distract instead of doing the thing. But when you when you when everybody has a level of trust, a high level of trust, it's never perfect cuz we're all humans, but when you have a high level of trust, things run really fast, really efficiently, and productivity goes up. And so even when there was like 10 of us, we would just get around a conference table and go, "Okay, what are we working on? What's everybody doing?" Because if the right hand doesn't know what the left hand is doing, they do not assume good. They assume bad. They assume it's going to be bad and there's something bad. If they think they would rather hear bad news that's the truth than no news cuz they assume bad when it's no news. And often times there wasn't no news or no good or or no bad news. Uh but if you just don't talk about it when there is bad news, you don't talk about it when uh and and just let people know what's going on. And so, the uh our once-a-week staff meeting, you mean 1,200 people, 50 weeks a year, whatever it is, 48 weeks a year, we end up in that room. That's a heavy investment in payroll if you just add the dollars up for an hour of that every, you know, every week. But it the ROI on it is level of trust goes up because you get to hear George up there. We had a panel with all the personalities on there the other day this week. And you know, they get to see the personalities and it was a behind-the-scenes kind of joking, they're cutting up, and they're, you know, they're telling stories on each other, and what they're working on right now, what they dream about in the future, and you know, some of the stuff that led them here, and it was it was really the team gets to love the personalities then and wants to work with them and for them and help them and that kind of thing. And then, you know, we had a guy get up and you know, talk about what's happening with the high school curriculum that we've got. So, we know what's going on with that, and they, you know, we're able to get that we're changing this around, and here's the thing we're offering, and here's a test we ran that bombed and didn't work, and you know, people get up and tell what's happening in the different areas of the business cuz I mean, it's there's a lot of different things going on in these buildings, and you know, I don't even know sometimes what's going on up there uh if I don't, you know, get reports in from the leadership team on it. I would have zero clue. Uh but it's really refreshing, and and you know, we have to be real careful to for it to not be boring cuz you can sit over there and go, "This doesn't have anything to do with me. Oh god, I'm so tired. I don't want to be around anymore listening to this crap." You don't want to do all that. So, it's need to be quick, concise, need to be uh uplifting, and it needs to be truthful. And we also recognize people with use it for recognition. Uh we use it to restate the core values and say, "This is, hey, here's the core value of this." And I'll teach on it a little bit. I'll speak. And uh that kind of thing. And uh so, it's just a real good solid uh and once we kind of said, "This is a lot of money." We really need to cuz we kind of just used to walk in and just like ad hoc do it, you know? But now it's very programmed and has an agenda and how many minutes you've got is on a clock up there and that kind of I mean it's because it's such a heavy investment, we want it to be good and tight, you know? But uh yeah it that helps a lot cuz then when the right hand knows what the left hand is doing, things move at the speed of trust and you know? If I don't have to think about whether you got my back or whether you know what the flip you're doing or whatever, then I can go do my thing and everybody everybody's that way in the whole building. At what point did you start doing that? Uh when there was about 10. Cuz we've I you know, I'm I'm like it's amazing with 10 people that somebody could be pissed off about something that doesn't exist, you know? You know? It's just like you know, they just they just made up something in their head driving home. They're like, you know, I I just think I think he looked at me funny today and holy crap, how do you do that? But yeah, the mind the mind does that. It goes to dark places if it doesn't have information. That's true. There There was a study that was done I found really interesting that a business, let's just say, has 10 employees and they asked each of the 10 employees, "What percentage do you contribute to the business's success?" And they added up all of the percentages of the 10 employees and it was like yeah, it was like 180-200% so it's like clearly the math doesn't work out, but they over assume what they're doing and they under assume what their, you know, partners are doing. Yeah, and you know, well he doesn't like me. Yeah. How do you know? Cuz he walked by you and he maybe his wife yelled at him before he walked out this morning. He's still trying to get to a cup of coffee and leave him alone, you know? How do the meetings help with that? Do they flush out some of these issues or Well, when you hear what's really going on, you go, "Oh, well that that team over there is going through crap right now. They're stressed. That whole product line they launched failed." And you know, they're dealing with all that. And so maybe you know, maybe I can cut them a little slack in the way they eye roll or something, you know? And so you know, just being in the same you pick up on and Dr. Delony talks about this from a psychological standpoint, you regulate off of other people that you're in the room with. You know, and you over time you're going to get a vibe and you get stable and that's what's happened actually on the air with the personalities. It took a little time for that chemistry to lock in and and stabilize. And where we can just sit there and have a conversation, cut up and we can you know, be messing with each other, messing with the guys in the booth, we can be talking to somebody on the air, kind of know where the other one's going a little bit and you know, you know, George knows where I'm going to go and I'm hearing yeah, he's going to take that. I'm going to sit back and let him run that one, you know? And you get that but that comes from just time spent together. Yeah. Is there anything else that you've learned along the way in terms of managing a business and and being able to scale it efficiently? It seems like you've done an incredible job of doing that and my fear is always over scaling, taking on too much responsibility, getting ahead of ourselves. Whereas I think you know, Jack is is prominent that you know, we should be expanding more, we should be taking on more. Mhm. How do you find a balance for that? You know, it's just it's it's worth it but it's hard. It's not easy cuz you're dealing with people and um we teach when we're teaching entrepreneurial leadership, teaching small business people about the same types of questions um that you know, people are going to be your greatest blessing. They're going to be the biggest line item, payroll on your P&L. Mhm. It's your largest investment in other words. And they're also going to be the greatest source of pain. If you love people and you care about people and you say, "Okay, I'm going to take care of that person, we're going to do this." and then you turn around and 6 months later and and quit for a nickel an hour more or something. I'm like, "God damn it, you forgot about that time I gave you a car." You know, it's like When you You know, it's like, "Ow, that hurt." You know, that leaves a mark. And but you you know, that doesn't mean you can't still turn around and do something good for somebody. And so um we continue to pour into, continue to love people well, continue to treat them like we'd want to be treated. Um and uh continue to fire them if they don't fit in. And if they're not going to you know, align with who we are. And so And the team, you know, it's like when we're bringing on new team members, I I make them a promise. I promise you're not going to have to work with people of bad character and people who will not play to win. You're not going to play You're not going to run with You're a thoroughbred. You don't have to be You don't have to work with donkeys. Mhm. We're going to regularly do donkeyectomies. That's funny. So, we got about 20 minutes left. I think it would be interesting if we shift and talk a little bit about the economy, the stock market, real estate. Um where do you see the economy heading over the next, let's say, 1 to 2 years? Cuz I think we have a lot of interesting catalysts going on with inflation that may have peaked, um student loan forgiveness that just came up, which might have some implications down the line. Where is your stance about where we are today? It's obviously uh today we're in a bad place. But we're not in a devastating place. It But if you want to call where we are today prosperity, you would be ignorant. Um and you would have to have some kind of a political agenda um because any person that can look at life and look at numbers and look at the the indicators in the economy, the the metrics, can tell we're not This is not a time of prosperity. Uh now, the good news is there's always opportunity in uptimes and there's opportunity in downtimes. And so, that you know, it may be a time that you take more space, that you expand your uh your your footprint, know, you expand your market share. Uh downtimes are really good time to do that cuz a lot of people are sitting on the sidelines whining, sucking their thumb when things are slow. And so, it's a good time to be a hard charger in the middle of that. Uh in terms of your personal reaction to it, but no there's no question that we're, you know, running a the GDP's running flat to down just a little to up just a little to down, which is basically hovering around recession. Uh we did have officially a recession, two consecutive quarters of a downturn. I don't care how you want to define it. It's that's what they teach in econ class. So, but it wasn't much of one. It was like a quarter of a percent. It was a joke. As recessions go, it's a pitiful one, you know, but it but it's also not booming. It's not a time of great prosperity and and the fields aren't full, you know, or that kind of thing. So, we definitely have that. Uh the inflation thing was aggravated by Washington, but certainly was caused by the uh economic suppression around COVID. I mean, we shut down the economy. When you shut down an economy the size of the United States of America, the size of the world, and you want to restart it, you're going to have shortages. Uh that's called supply chain, maybe. You can call it whatever you want call it, but you're going to have shortages. And when you have shortages, you're always going to have price increases. Thus, you're going to have inflation. And so, uh you know, it makes a real case for we destroy we economically destroyed some people's lives with the COVID policies. Sure. Uh was it worth it? Well, we can argue about that. It's kind of late, but we can argue about it. In the name of flattening the curve, if you remember that. That's what we were all doing. Everybody sits at home, so the factories all shut down, so they're not making cars, so there's a car shortage, so cars go up. I mean, for the first time in it since they've been made, used cars went up in value. Never in the history of the car has that occurred, and never again will it unless you do something stupid to the economy like shut the whole freaking thing down um in the name of flattening the curve. But the ripple effect is that of that that you get inflation. Uh, and then you get people you know, the Biden administration's tinkering with the energy policies in the name of green. And so they're shutting down, you know, domestic oil production or greatly curtailing it making an unfriendly environment for them for sure. Intentionally in the name of a green policy. And you can argue about whether that's right thing to do or not, but you can't argue about the fact that that caused gas prices to be $5. I mean, that's where it comes from. It's a shortage. Shortage, scarcity always it's a simple supply demand curve. Uh, and shortage always creates it. So we've got inflation as a result of those things. I kind of think that's going to level on out. I don't think it's going to continue if the Fed will quit screwing around with it. But they're they can't. They're like a mad scientist. So, um, but uh, the the real estate market, you know, is crazy. White hot. Yeah. Um, a lot of that was scarcity. People sitting around looking at their house going, this this house sucks. I don't spend enough time here to realize how bad it sucks. And then you know, but I'm quarantined. I'm stuck here. So now when I as soon as this is over, I'm going to go change houses. And well, by God, they did. Or I'm getting out of this state. Uh, we had a migration that occurred, you know. So there's all kinds of weird stuff that's um, probably a once-in-a-lifetime events in the real estate world. So, um, my, you know, my guess is and really if you look back for the last 30 years I've been doing this, it pretty well plays out that uh, this too shall pass and um, you know, regardless of how smart or how dumb the people in Washington are, eventually these the wrinkles will be smoothed out of this and 36 months from now we should see a completely different economy than we do today. Yeah. I don't think inflate This this is not long-term inflationary cycle. This is caused by shortages. Yeah. Where do you see the opportunities today for most people? I know you're talking about expanding, but I would say for the average person who's maybe concerned that home prices are going to go down. Maybe they believe that or they believe that, you know, stock prices are still high, things are going to crash. You know, my job is going well, but where's the next opportunity? I know short-term where the next opportunity is, but I do know long-term I I'm buying mutual funds in real estate. That's what I do. And that's my personal wealth-building plan. It's not really complicated. Um why? Because I'm pretty dadgum sure that an 80-year history in the stock market of it going of the economy getting stronger and stronger, those companies continue to make profit, and that profit results in value of those stocks going up, and over time, you know, where as a grouping, the stock market the the what you're saying is is is the American economy going to permanently go down and stay down? If you say the stock market's going to go down and stay down, that's what you're saying. And that I just don't believe that. And it's not it's not weird, it's just there's an 80-year track record you can look at and go, uh didn't happen. Went down here, came back up, went down here, came back up, went down, and you know, with quarantine, dropped, you know, Yeah. through the floor, and then was back 18 months later, 6 months later, whatever, was back up to where it was. So, um you know, I'm just going to continue to invest. It's just long-term, long-term, long-term. I I just, you know, I got in the real estate business, as we said, in 1978. I mean, come on. And so, and those houses that I was selling then, Yeah. don't you wish you owned all of them? Yeah. Oh my gosh, for what they're worth today. Oh, of course. Now, when you invest in real estate, do you prefer residential or commercial? Uh these days it's commercial, just because of scale, the number of dollars involved. And um real residential is a great place to get started. I've still got, I don't know, 10, 15 houses or something in our portfolio, but I just cuz I hardly ever sell anything. So, I just buy and keep it forever. Buy quality properties at a deal, keep them forever. But, um commercials give me better ROI Mhm. uh right now than uh of course our stuff's 100% paid for. We don't borrow money. But, um it's giving me the best internal rate of return and and cash on cash ROI. Yeah. Uh overall, I've got a one piece of commercial that just sucks. I can't get it rented. But, um but uh the rest of them are doing really, really well. And of course the residential's all jamming and the rents have gone the rents have gone up uh this year uh last 2 years pretty dramatically, but um still not making cash on cash or cash on value with the value if I took that million-dollar house or that $700,000 house and I you know, what's my return on it? Cash on cash isn't that great. It's okay. But, uh even with high rents, you know, and What do you think about the movement right now? It seems that landlords are evil. They're taking advantage of their tenants. It seems like there's been a shift over the last 2 years with rents and house prices going up that buying a house right now is is is immoral. What are your thoughts on that? Because that's a movement that I've seen that's been taking a a stronger hold than I would have expected. Yeah, that comes and goes, too. Um I mean, when when people are hurting and they're scared, socialism is is gets in vogue. And being angry, the Australians call it tall poppy syndrome. Mhm. Uh or which is an Aristotle thing actually isn't you know, the poppy that gets higher has to be cut down. Yep. And so, anybody that makes money must be destroyed. Anybody that's successful must be destroyed. So, that we're all equal. And uh which you know, as we have figured out, we are not all equal. It doesn't work out that way. I mean, it turns out that Brad Paisley's better playing guitar than I am. And uh we're not all equal. And it turns out that other people, you know, my friend Brad Thor sells he does a fiction book on spies and sells 15 million per copy, which pisses me off. But, you know, we're not all equal, but I don't think Brad should be destroyed cuz he sold more books than I did. I'm happy for him. And it didn't cost me anything except when I bought a copy. But, I mean, it was not, you know, so it's uh that kind of stuff. But, I it it's um at the core of that is the kind of wealth inequality concepts that movement or the uh the socialism idea that, you know, if you're somehow a capitalist that you are evil. Um and really the core of all of that is uh two of the deadly sins, envy and jealousy. Uh jealousy is I want what you have. Envy is I don't think you should have it. And this is envy. You should be, you know, you you should be it should be taken away from you because you bought a house and charged rent. Um Yeah, I mean, one of the one of the things got really excited about something I said on the air and trashed me. I can't remember who it was and and one of the YouTubers or somebody and cuz I said, "Yeah, I'm going to raise my rents." They're like, "Well, you're not a Christian." I'm like, "What's What's Christians don't raise rents? What kind of dumb butt statement is that?" Of course we raise rents. You know, we charge market rent. It's not evil. You're not evil. You're providing a house and you don't have to live there. Well, where do you Where are your people going to live that can't afford it? Somewhere else, you know? I grew up in a neighborhood that was over the tracks from this neighborhood. And when we were growing up, we went, "Hey, rich people live over there. I can't afford to live over there." That's what we said. You know, and I can't afford to live there anymore. They the rents went up. And you know, if you make $45,000 a year, you cannot live in Manhattan. Hello. You can't pay the rent. Welcome to life. Uh you you're going to make more if you're going to live in Manhattan. Uh that's how it works. Well, that's evil. No, it's not evil. It's just math. Math is not evil. It's not Nobody's doing anything wrong. Nobody's out to hurt you. It's just you know, you don't get a pass on math because you got your little butt hurt feelings. Yeah, I will say I did make a mistake. Two years ago, I made a comment to Kevin O'Leary who reviewed my portfolio and we got to a property and we explained the cash flow. He looked at one property. He says, "Well, the rents on this is lower than every other place that you have." And I said, "Well, I've never raised the rent on that tenant." And it was 10 years I had not raised the rent. She was a great tenant, never a single issue, always paid on time, treated the place like her own. And I figured, "You know what? I wouldn't raise the rent. Makes my life easy, don't have to think about it. She's there." She was a tenant 10 years later, had some issues and I I don't want to go into detail, but I wish I I should have raised the rent. It was a huge mistake that I made looking back that I should have done that as as part of a smart business to Exactly. No, and it's it's also psychological, okay? Because she started to get confused at some point who owned the house. Mhm. Yeah. And so with our tenants and with our advertisers, we go up every year. $25? I don't know, but we go up every year. We don't any want anyone to go, "Well, I'm doing him a favor by being here and so No, this is a transaction. I mean, you're you're going to pay the rent and you get to stay. This is a transaction and I'm going to take care of the stuff that's broken and I'm going to be kind to you and nice to you, but you are not entitled because you have been here a long time to cheaper rent. Now, I I will, you know, maybe not raise it all the way to market to not push somebody out because of the cost of a turnover, but that's an economic decision. Yeah. That's not a I'm doing you a favor. And you know, and then if you run your business well, then you can choose as a one-off in a situation to be kind to someone. Like, we had a tenant that was going through cancer treatments. And the family was just destroyed. And so, we not only didn't go up on rent, we just gave them like 3 months with no rent, just to help them. But that was an act of kindness and generosity that was not a statement of previously we've been doing something evil, and now we're going to do something good. No, instead, now we're having a transaction here, pay your rent, you get to stay. This is the value of the property. And you can't you it doesn't work anymore. And oh, you've got a life thing, and I've got some margin, so I can just be kind. I can just be generous. Mhm. And give you give you a little time off. And we did do that. Um we took over it we bought a building one time in a foreclosure that had a a church operation operating a daycare. And the daycare was primarily serving uh the underserved area, a lower-income situation. And they didn't have much margin in running that thing. And they were running nonprofit. We sat down with the guys, and you know, we ended up giving them the first 6 months after we bought the building free. So they could get up, get things running. But it wasn't it wasn't because charging rent was evil, it was because we were able to help these people get their business situated, and that was a nice good thing to do generosity-wise. But now that it's ridiculous, so we always go up on rents every year. Yeah. I wanted to bring yeah. There was a certain investing philosophy I know you feel very strongly about, which is debt. And I'm assuming you probably share that sentiment with Dave. So Graham and I have had very unique experiences with debt. Graham utilized debt extremely well to grow his real estate portfolio. In the beginning, he took on a a decent amount of debt uh and was able to leverage because of that. I have had a good and a bad experience with debt. Uh I bought a house I wouldn't have been able to afford without debt, and since I bought it I've appreciated maybe I've gained probably 90 $100,000 or so in equity. On the flip side, I had a stock portfolio that's kind of my fun portfolio and I brought it up from 20 or so thousand to like 75,000. And right around 75,000, I went in on margin. Yeah. So, I I know where this is going. Yeah. And uh unfortunately, that was in December. So, The peak. Yeah, and timing sucked. It was really bad. See, I thought Jack's trades, you'll make a You really would. Yeah. Unfortunate It's true, but unfortunate. Yeah. But uh I basically thought I was a genius because I was making money all last year and I'm like, you know what? I got this. I'm just going to continue doing what I have been doing, but this time going to leverage. Now, I had the money. I had the cash, but I decided leverage, why not? It's on Robinhood. So, I did that and uh currently sitting at about 7,000 uh from 75,000. And uh you know, so I've had both good and bad experiences with that. And I wanted to know because maybe the average person isn't as responsible as maybe Graham is with that. Maybe they're like me on my Robinhood thing. Do you say debt is bad because for the average person, that is a good principle to live by. And with that, I kind of agree with you. However, if people do utilize debt in an effective way such as Graham, he's very responsible, very well researched on, you know, the markets and how he can leverage his money with debt, do you think that that is a more effective way to to grow fast if you're calculated with it? It is a more effective way to grow fast if that's your goal. But what people leave out of the discussion is that you've increased your risk exponentially. More debt equals more risk, period. Um and so um you know, after I went broke, I had to analyze and go, "Okay, what went wrong here?" And cuz was it See, I had never lost money on a flip. I was not behind on the notes. They just called them. They had the ability to do that cuz it was commercial paper. It wasn't traditional mortgages. It was 90-day paper. And uh um so I you know what it amounted to was and I so I had proven track record of making money. I mean, I did. I I probably owned 2,000 pieces of real estate in my life. And so I was doing a lot of flips. And some of them I was doing in 24 hours. You know, I'd just buy them and flip them to another investor and make 10 grand and keep rocking, you know, that kind of stuff. So but I was doing 100% financed. Mhm. I didn't put any money. Not a dime. I didn't have any money. So I talked a guy into giving me a 100% deal on this house. I flipped it. I made 10 grand. I was like, "Hey." And I talked him into doing it again. Then I talked him into doing a million, too. And uh with that one bank. And yeah, so it set me up. And so after I crashed, I kind of had to go through a CSI, you know, an autopsy. You know, "Okay, why did the patient die?" You know, so what I you know, cuz everything I was taught, I grew up in the real estate business. And when you when you're in the real estate business as a profession, one of the rules is they take your risk meter out and they sit on the table and they break it. So you have no you have no ability to perceive risk cuz everything's good. Everything's going up. And you know, and you know, it always works. And uh the the mythology that just cuz something worked once is always going to work every time. So uh I I had to go through kind of a healing of my heart in that regard and go, "Oh wait a minute, this is risk." Uh oh, wait a minute. OPM, other people's money. Yeah, yeah. It's kind of got that get-rich-quick slimy vibe to it, you know, and all that. But there are people that intelligently, more intelligently than that, use debt. And so there's a spectrum there. But even those are taking on risk. And so when you have Buffett says when the when the tide goes out, you can tell who's skinny-dipping. So when you stress test with an economic problem of some kind, uh outside variable or inside variable, inside your organization or your life inside your portfolio or the economy like a a quarantine type thing comes up or inflation or recession or and you stress test your theories um you know, you can tell who's skinny dipping when the tide goes out. And uh you you if your theories don't last and so the only one I've ever found and this comes back to my faith journeys where it started, the borrower slaves to the lender. I can find nowhere in scripture that debt was used to bless people. And so then I got to think, okay, do I believe that or do I believe my academic training? I've got a degree in finance. And I know how to run an IRR, you know, and I know what the IRR looks like without with with uh with debt and without debt. And it's not nearly as good unless you're leveraged. But you can run an IRR through the roof with leverage. Guess what's left out of the IRR calculation? There's no math inserted for risk. The IRR is agnostic to risk. It doesn't recognize it. And so while you see this great rate of return, there's zero risk showing up in there. The chance that you lose the thing or the chance that the stress brings on your life or what it does to your marriage or what it does to your body to carry around the weight of that. None of that is parlayed into there. And real estate is unique in that way because other investment vehicles teach us to mathematically insert risk. For instance, two mutual funds you would never compare an aggressive growth stock mutual fund with a with a growth and income. Okay? And if you look at the chart, you know, the growth and income is kind of like this and the aggressive growth like this, right? And that's the risk factor. And the highs and lows on that, you all probably know this is called for our but for our audience at home, the the change, the rapid change is measured by thing called a beta. And a beta is a statistical measure of risk. It's a math number. And so a beta of 1.0 for those at home means that that particular mutual fund is exactly what the stock market is, S&P 500 is doing what the stock market is doing. A beta of 2.0 it means it's twice as risky. So, this is an aggressive growth emerging market type stock fund portfolio. And so, it's twice as risky as the market. So, you would the way you would adjust for risk between a beta of a point eight which might be like a growth and income versus a beta of 2.0 is you insert the beta in an inverse in the math formula and you adjust for risk so you can compare these two apples to apples even though after risk, a post risk analysis. We don't do that in real estate. No one ever talks about that in real estate. It doesn't even come up. And so, if you but we have kind of a brain and our brain says, "Oh, wait a minute. If I'm a 110% leverage in real estate, that's probably not good." You know? Where would you say the risk is though? Let's say on a 3% mortgage or an interest rate that's below inflation because for my perspective it seems like there's less risk in having cash in the bank than tied up in a property that might not be as easily accessible. That in the event of a job loss or something happens, you'll you'll have cash that you could easily access versus in a property where might be difficult to take out of like if you need the money. Like something comes up and it exceeds your emergency fund that maybe it's harder to tap into if that's your last case reserve. Well, the the difference is are we talking about the shortest path to bankruptcy or the shortest path to wealth? This what you're describing is not going to lead you to bankruptcy. Mhm. And and so, it's a nuanced argument at that point. Okay. And so, like, you know, uh because we're not talking about a get rich quick 100% you know, portfolio and you're just trying to use an inflationary number to offset your interest rates and that that that doesn't play long term. But you know, where you've got a high cash position, a high equity position, lower debt, well, guess what? Your risk is so low that it's but the the the the the debt represents that your beta would not be a 2.0, it would be a 0.25, you know? But there is still a risk that is there that is not there if a house is 100% paid for, the property is 100% paid for. Because then if your tenant doesn't pay because of pandemic Oh, and by the way, you can't evict them because of a moratorium on evictions. Uh and so you got zero cash coming in and nothing you can do about it. Or they going to chapter 13, takes 6 months to get them out. Um yeah, you got zero cash coming in and not squat you can do about it. Uh and legally, I mean you're going to you're going to get real criminal crap if you start messing with those things, right? So you cannot. And so you're writing checks. I'm not. And I'm sitting here smiling and going, "Okay, we got a big pile of cash and we got all these buildings paid for and we had entire segments of our revenue just evaporate with the quarantine. Like live events didn't exist, obviously, right? That kind of stuff. And we're going, "This ain't good cuz we're going to if this thing goes down into the red and we start burning that cash, what's our burn rate and how long before we start leadership doesn't take pay and how long after that before we start having to furlough people or lay people off? And we're we're running those calculations during that short period of time that we were off. And uh but we did not have added to that the burn rate of the rent, burning through the cash. Yeah. Uh or or the or the payment on the buildings. I mean, can you imagine the payment on these buildings if I'd have been burning that cash during that? Holy crud. Yeah. But you know, so one less thing to worry about, right? But it's a risk analysis is what it is. And if you 100% I I run a 100% debt-free portfolio and so I have zero pressure to or virtually zero pressure to make that property inordinately perform in a stressful situation. So, I make different decisions about tenants. I don't need a tenant. And so, I don't get as many bad ones. Cuz I'm willing to go, "Nah, we'll sit here another month. If it takes another month to fill it, that's better than putting that bozo in there. He's going to change his Harley oil in the living room. I can feel it, you know? You know what I'm talking about? And so, but when but I remember when I had payments on properties in the my other life and I'd be going, "Honey, I got to make this deadgum payment. I need to get a tenant in here." And, you know, all of a sudden your little IRR thing you did when you bought the property and you ran your pro forma out on a, you know, you ran out the NOI and you run the whole thing out through there. All of a sudden you go, all that's out the window. You're just like, "Crap, I got to make the payment." And you forget thinking about that. And so, you kind of have that same look he had when he was talking about $7,000 a minute ago, you know? And it's But I've been Hey, dude, I did it I did it with millions. So, you're not you're not nearly as dumb as I am. But, yeah, that's where it comes from. So, you know, the uh 100% debt-free works in prosperity. Uh and it works in down times. The more debt you use, the more prosperity is is required in the marketplace for you to succeed. Because to overcome the risk. That's all it is. And so, I just decided I'm wounded. I'm not borrowing money. Period. And Joe and Suzy consumer, you know, when I can get them 100% out of debt, their probability of walking into a million million-dollar net worth increases dramatically. Dramatically. Cuz they're not trying You know, of all the 10,000 millionaires we interviewed 10,167 millionaires in our largest study of millionaires ever done. Uh precisely zero said, "I became a millionaire because I borrowed all I could on my personal residence at 3% and I parlayed that in the stock market and it made me a millionaire. None of them said that. Zero. Z- That's bizarre. I mean, zero said that. Zero also said, you know, my airline miles that I got on my credit card, you know. You know. I I'm the opposite. I'm like, yeah, because I borrowed money. cards do you have? Probably 10 10. What does that make you feel inside? all paid off. They're all paid off. They're zero balance. I couldn't live with that. No, I love it. That was mean. That was like that. No, that was That was You're going easy on me. I look at the flights that I get with my miles. It's just cuz I love you, Graham. It's cuz I love you, man. The hotels, we booked a whole trip to Hawaii last year all paid for. Yeah, cuz you couldn't afford it otherwise. Yeah, but it was free. It was a free trip. Yeah, it was free except you spend 12 to 18% more when you use plastic on average. I don't think so. I I'm so I don't know. The behavior studies show that. I'm sure they do. I had to buy him his iced coffee this morning, Dave. He was struggling. I brought a coffee from the Airbnb that I made there and I still have it in a plastic cup because I knew that I just habitually make my own coffee. My default is don't spend money. Yeah. Yeah. The default is always I'm not going to spend for being cheap. That's a cheap Is it cheap or frugal? No. I'm getting better. You are getting better, Graham. I'm very proud of you. Well, thank you guys so much. I see we're running over a little bit on time, but I don't want to hold this up. Thank you guys so much. an honor to be with you guys. Love what you do. Love the podcast. You guys are amazing. Thanks for letting me be part of it. Thank you. Yeah, thank you for for agreeing to do this. Thank you, George, for setting this up and uh we got another really exciting video planned right after this. So, make sure to check out the main channel right now. It's worth it and uh I'll see you very shortly. Appreciate you guys. Thank you. Thank you. That was fun. See, I could have done this for another few hours. You could see how