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What are the main challenges that I need to solve as a company trying to apply AI to help my business? In this episode, I have a conversation with an organization that provides an AI platform to help you overcome those.

Grant
Hey, everybody, welcome to another episode of ClickAI Radio. This is Grant Larsen. And today I have someone that I bumped into the not too long ago, I was at a conference and literally went to their booth and said, Oh, I want to learn more about this technology. I've been tracking your team, your organization, so it's my chance to learn more about it. And so I got to meet a Atalia Horenshtien I hope I said that right. I'm so excited to have Atalia here with me today. So first of all, "A" welcome I tell you and "B" did I say your name right? And then "C" the first question out of the box, explain the meaning behind your name.

Atalia
Thank you so much for having me. And you actually pronounced the name correctly. So kudos to your best. The meaning behind my name. So first of all, thanks to my parents for choosing such a unique name. It's actually a Hebrew name. I'm originally from, from Israel. And I totally I need Hebrew pronouncing it as a Talia is actually the first claim in Judaism kingdom. So it's a name from the Bible. And it's actually very unique even in Israel. Very cool.

Grant
Really. The queen in the Bible, I'm gonna have to go look that up. That's awesome. You should. That's very cool. Do we? Do we bow in your presence? Then? Do we do anything like that? Do we do we say Hey, this is me?

Atalia
No, no, no, no, not not at all.

Grant
Excellent. Well, thank you. Thank you for taking the time here today. Now as I understand that, I want to make sure I get this right. Your title in your organization is Global Technology Product Advocacy Lead, I actually had to write that down because I can only remember three things. And that's five words in a title, Global Technology Product Advocacy Lead for DataRobot. Did I get that? Right?

Atalia
Yeah, that's actually correct.

Grant
What do you do in that role?

Atalia
So we did a robot. I started as a customer facing data scientist, where I work with customers in different industries, and helping them how to solve complex AI and machine learning problems. And learning from this role, and those use cases. I shifted a bit towards to the advocacy side. So how we tell the technical story of DataRobot, how we educate the market about what's possible. Some of the use cases I implement, and some of the stuff I saw was working on collaboration with our marketing sales. And our customers as well.

Grant
Okay, got it. So that global part, I think, is critical, because I'm assuming that you go across multiple markets, you're not focused on any one. I gotta believe that gives you a sort of broader industry cross industry view on on AI and machine learning. Is that correct?

Atalia
Yeah, so I was very lucky to work with different industries in different geographical locations. And obviously, I see a lot of different trends and maturity around AI, where they are in the stage, how are they adopting? What's the process? There, technical knowledge, their technical stage? Yeah. So from United States to Europe to the Middle East. It's really, really interesting. And I'm very happy that I have the opportunity to do so.

Grant
So that's awesome. What know what got you into this world? What got you into AI and machine learning?

Atalia
Actually, it's a really interesting path because I started actually the software engineer Not not a, as a data scientist, and over time, obviously the software engineer you work with, with software development, system design, etc, some stuff that you see today in in machine learning operations. And then when I did my masters, I was mostly specific around business intelligence and machine learning. And I learned a lot, it was super interesting. So I took my software skills into a different level. And it's a funny story, because a professor of mine is actually working for DataRobot. And he's one of the main reasons I'm here.

Grant
Oh, really? Oh, that's interesting. So was the professor already at DataRobot when you were like, Okay, got it. Got it?

Atalia
Yep, he's still here. His name is Ted Kotler is a world class Person, both on the personality side, and he's a technical knowledge. So I'm very fortunate to work with great people in the company.

Grant
That's fascinating. I have a similar journey myself, meaning I too, came through the software engineering path, and then sort of stumbled into  through a whole range of things into the whole data science and ML/AI space. So a lot of people certainly do that. But it's sort of a shift in the thinking, isn't it the first time you come into the ML thinking, you're thinking about your data in a much different way. And algorithms and such you're like, wait, okay, I'm solving it. So much different. But I thoroughly enjoy that. All right. So I want to get to some of the things that are unique to, to DataRobot itself. I've worked with multiple AI and ML platforms. And as I mentioned in the intro, I had been watching and looking at DataRobot, watching your organization over time, take on more and more capabilities. When I when you demonstrated the latest capabilities and gave me a sense of where things are going. It started me thinking, what are the main challenges when you think about the AI and ML world? And the problems that are in this space? What are the main challenges that we face? And ultimately, I want to get to what is it that differentiates the way DataRobot does it in the market? But could you first start with what are some of the main challenges you see today, especially with your global perspective, in the AI space?

Atalia
Yeah. So I think the main main challenge today around the machine learning lifecycle is how you move models into productions and how you make sure your models are still accountable, and accurate with all the factors and new reality that is coming up, right. And get this today, everyone can just build psyche learn model or simple, you know, regression model. But when you work as an organization, and you have different infrastructures, different tools, different skill sets, different personas within your team, and you localize the development side of it, and every model has completely different requirements. So you're getting to inefficient lifecycle. So moving a model from development phase to production is a process that takes usually a lot of time, and it can be super complex. So something that I personally like about there rather than this is something I learned from customers, right that this is the biggest pain today is having an ability to have a platform that will be interoperable and flexible around how to support models that were created in variety of environments and languages, but also how to serve and manage and monitor models that were deployed to different endpoints necessarily to data on production server.

Grant
So sorry, just interrupt there. That was one of the things when you showed me I was fascinated with which was this ability to bring in models produced from a wide range of platforms and tool sets, if you will, and still bring them into the management aspect that I thought that was a critical characteristic around DataRobot itself. So when when you do that work, when you bring those models in and you manage those, what is it that that you're doing that makes that easier? A it's a it's helpful for me to have one place to bring those together but be what value then does that help me with as I tried to, to update those and refactor those moving forward?

Atalia
So it includes several other aspects. So first of all, as you mentioned, you have a single place where you can see all your models regardless where they've been created and regardless of the word have been deployed to. So like single pane of glass where you can see everything and, and being able to see at a glance which models are stale, which eventually preventing any risk to your business. Because it's not just about having the visibility to those models. It's also the ability to manage, monitor and govern them. So what is the service health status of this model from the the all endpoints, and what's the accuracy of the model, how it's changed over time, maybe some features that have been drifted. When you see those aspects, it's really helpful for you to understand, maybe you need to retrain your existence project, maybe you need to swipe your existence model with any challenger model, something that is performing better now with the new data that is coming up. Think about COVID That can be a really great example, right? When you train models on certain data set, but then all the reality has changed. All the products you did at that time are irrelevant today with the existence data.

Grant
Okay, yeah. And this this ability to see the either the drip, like you said, or the staleness of that that's such a critical capability. Is that is that a visual thing? Is it notification based? And how is it that you're being made aware of this?

Atalia
So it's definitely a visual thing. So you have an ability to see on a specific time when something happened, but you know, we're not expecting from people to go in consistently checking the platform, you can automate the whole process with notifications, if you want to get notified that, let's say, above a specific threshold, you have, under a specific threshold, sorry, you have a drift in accuracy, you would like to get a notification. And you can automate the whole process around retraining, what are the factors for retraining? So really looking to? Where are the areas we can automate the cycle in order to make the life of the user easier? But also, you know, with how much we are saying, Yes, we have AI and we have a donation, you you still need the man or the woman in the middle to approve this process? To be aware about this process, and there is still user intervention for some degree.

Grant
Okay. All right. So so let's take a scenario. You know, one of the current challenges around AI is this, you know, data bias problem. So what I want to figure out is, let's say in my organization, I've got this bias that comes in, I'm not aware of it at the time, I'm creating the model. There's no intentional harm here. But however, as we get into the production and rollout in its execution, it becomes obvious that the kinds of decisions or insights are certainly leaning a particular direction, what is it that helps me to discover or find that out? And therefore ultimately, correct that?

Atalia
That's a good question. I think ethical AI is one of the rising topics in AI, right. And mathematically, you can create a model that is not biased. But there are some techniques on how to make sure that the model is more fair, towards your sensitive features. And actually, there are some capabilities in the platform that really helping you not just in production, actually, but also in development, where you can manage bias litigation and tag those have the features and see in your development process already. What's the what's the bias and fairness around this specific project with those features that you chose, and then being able to seeing how the bias and fairness continues towards the production side where you have new data coming in, so you have an ability to target even before and this is helpful for you to understand how to deploy the model into production? And what are the changes that are required in order to keep this model fair.

Grant
So it's interesting that there's some capabilities in the platform that help you to identify potential bias factors or features along the way, be mindful of that. Let's go to the far right side of this, which is let's say we've done that work. We have the model produced, it's deployed, it's in production. How do I how do I Give feedback. Is there a way to say, A? What are my results of this model? And be? What are my end users potentially feedback on it as well? It's two different kinds of feedback. A is the model given me good insights or guidance? And then be? What about the end users themselves? And how do I get their feedback into there?

Atalia
Are you asking in general about the model, or specifically with the ethical side of it,

Grant
Either one, I'm fine with either side of it. Yeah.

Atalia
I'm still on the ethical side of it. So we provide those visualization tools as part of our ML ops capabilities, to track the bias and fairness on those sensitive features. So you can be certain that decisions that are made with the model are aligned with your technique that you applied during development process. That's, that's one thing. And obviously, if you see any changes over time, you can retrain your model, you can try out different things as part of your development, with our bison furnace techniques. And then overall, the insights you can get from a model, they are divided to two phases. On the development side. You know, in machine learning, we're always talking about the predictions, the predictions, but this is not really the main thing. Yes, we care about the predictions, right. But how we translate those predictions into business actions. Exactly. So having an ability to get that Explainable AI, this is something that I see all the time, especially with the business personas, decision making people, for them, it's really difficult to translate, what is it? Ai model, right? So we provide some graphs to, to present insights and explainability on a model, for example, what are the main factors on a macro level, that contributing to the model? So for example, let's take a churn use case. And you're looking to understand why customers are churning. And it's not just about oh, this customer, the likelihood that this customer will churn is 0.7. What does that mean? So we know what what's the factors, for example, how many times the customer may be called to call center a lot, and maybe the customers plan is, is very expensive. So some of the factors that really affect about if the customer is churning. So from a business perspective, we can decide, oh, maybe we should improve our customer service, maybe we should reduce our pricing. So on a macro level to see those main factors, but also being able to dive into the to the micro level, and check how a change of each one of the features is really impacting the target variable. So let's say if a customer called two times twice or three times to customer service, how that affects the likelihood to churn. So this is gonna be super helpful. And this is really where we add the expandability side to, to the predictions from from the model and the predictions themselves, you know, at the end, when you move the model to production, and now you have new data coming in, you look to score it, this is where you can integrate the predictions with your business applications. For example, you know, Tableau Power BI, all those business applications. So you can still continue to work with your existing business flows and tools as you like, and being able to generate decisions.

Grant
But I like as he explained, or that you shared explainability is one of those elements that helps with successful adoption and usage of an AI model, and ML model. If we step back and given your experience with customer success, how would you net that if you were to look at the patterns, both the good patterns as well as the anti patterns around customer success? What have you noticed over time, across lots of markets or industries, those success patterns for not only building the models but but actually getting the value in the outcomes from AI models? What have you seen?

Atalia
So I think this is the million dollar question because I always say that it's not enough just to purchase an AI machine learning tool, right? It's a it's about if you if you use it, and if really models made it to production. This is how we did Robert, manage our success and with ourselves as partners, to our customers, we have an organization that is professional services, that includes data scientists that helping customers on implementing the whole process, we have some AI success. division where you have consultant, past consultant that currently working for DataRobot can do irrigation sessions with with customers and really looking to unlock the potential that they can get, and really helping them to the whole process with our professional services. So, the process can be quite long and complex. And I think it really depends also in the maturity level of the customer, because based on their skill set based on if they already have some models in productions, or if we just started a process, those things can affect about the process, because when you need to take into consideration existing infrastructures and models versus building everything from scratch, and maybe educate the people on what they can get from AI and machine learning model. So, this is a bit different between maturity, and I think everything eventually stopped with change management, you see, a lot of times you know, there is this very motivated executive buyer that is looking to change and, and include AI in the organization. But then how do you really convince the people that working on a day to day basis that this is the tool that can really help them and sometimes we see it even with data scientists that they they still like keeping, like to keep the hands on and and code by themselves without really trust any any other tools. So this is where you provide some education with some horses on the platform, but also how you engage a model that is not like a black box, right? You have expandability, you have the process, you have documentation to really let the the employees to trust the process at the output of the product.

Grant
So building that that trust in that, in that process sounds like the key thing there is success stories. Is there a success story that you can share where you help the organization go through this and realize some outcomes?

Atalia
I can try to think about some of the success stories that are publicly covered. Yes, as you know, right. For example, we have a story from Stuart healthcare. They are the largest for profit private hospital. They're operating in the US. And they use machine learning to make big decisions about staff and patients, which eventually helping them to reduce costs and improve the patient outcomes and experience. And they already started the process and really decrease the cost as they wanted. So 1% reduction in registered nurses hours paid per patient they netted $2 million in saving per year for eight of the 38 hospitals enough to its network. I think this is a great number and also a greater effect. I'm always very happy when I see those stories around, you know, hospitals and health care, which eventually provide better outcomes for society as well.

Grant
If you were medium size organization looking at looking at Hey, how can I apply AI/ML to my business? What would you say to them in terms of adopting a platform like like DataRobot? What What would you say? What are the things that they should start doing?

Atalia
So the process, in my opinion, divided for three major stages. One is the why. look internally and think, Okay, why we need to use AI? What are those use cases that I'm looking to solve? And what will be the expected improvement or our AI from those use cases? Once we define those use cases? The next question will be the how, okay, we defined the why now how we implement it. So understand the skills that they have in house and then define what to outsource versus what to build, buy versus build right, and then choose the right tool and start the implementation. And when you start the implementation, the the end result will be the what? Once we have the model in production, so how, what are the outcome that we are getting and how we are making sure that the models are still accountable with our business and always start small start with one use case, just prove that works, we have adoption across our organization. And then it's going to be like a waterfall because many times one use case can really amplify the rest of the use cases and create motivation. And some of the outputs of one model will go to another use case, and so on.

Grant
Have you have you gotten a sense of the general amount of time? Or is there a pattern? In other words, let's say I get started today? Can I expect to see outcomes in three months? Six months? A year? Where's that said?

Atalia
I've seen it all I've seen organizations that that can do it quickly, within really, two months. And I've seen organizations that are still stuck. Because if we're going back to what I said earlier, it really depends also in in the organization itself, right? If you have a blocker from the IT, or from the scientist, or you know, maybe some requirements that you still need to, to to implement and you didn't and what is, what is it around your prioritization? So it really depends. And also, let's be realistic. It's not just that I decided today, oh, let's talk with AI and machine learning. And it can work right. I need to have specific state of my existence data so I can really produce a better outcome, right? Today with data centric AI approach. As your data is more clean and organized and relevant, you will have better outcomes on your model. So you need to be in certain of our data transformation process with your organization's data to really start. Wow,

Grant
Wow, that's that's awesome. I love that Atalia. Thank you so much for taking your time here today. With me any last comments before we wrap?

Atalia
Up, I'm just audience gonna feed the story don't afraid to, to ask questions. I always like to say at the end, Are You Smarter tomorrow than yesterday? Because as we evolving over time, you know, I was I was three years old. And then I'm trying to obviously I'm gonna be smarter over time, as I'm growing up, but in the in the small revolution. Are we smarter tomorrow than yesterday? Think about that chocolate thing, how you can be more innovative, how to make your life easier. And how to do some changes fitting your condition and with yourself to develop and achieve great outcomes.

Grant
That's a growth mindset. I love that Right? Which is always learning our learning isn't kept. And let's focus on what are the things we can take moving forward to improve our environment, our situation, the people we serve, and those around us. All right. Natalia, thank you so much for your time and your organization for allowing us to chat with you today, everyone. Thanks for listening to another episode of ClickAI radio. And until next time, go check out DataRobot.

Thank you for joining Grant on ClickAI Radio. Don't forget to subscribe and leave feedback. And remember to download your free ebook visit ClickAIRadio.com .

In this episode, I talk with the CEO and founder of an organization that has been applying AI to help them develop products. Will AI help you develop your products faster? Come and see.

Grant
Hey, everybody, welcome to another episode of ClickAI Radio. So today I have this opportunity to speak with one of those brains out there in the market that's being disruptive, right? They're making changes in the industry in terms of not only the problems are solving, but it's the way in which they're solving the problems using AI very fascinating. Anyway, everyone, please welcome Paul Ortchanian here to the show.

Paul
Hi, nice. Nice, nice of you, happy to be here on the show. 

Grant
Absolutely. It's very good to have you here today. When I was first introduced to you. And I started to review your material what it is that your organization has put together as fascinated with the approach because I have a product development background and in in the software world. AI was late comer to that right meaning over generations when I saw the approach that you're taking to that I'm interested to dig more into that. But before we do that big reveal, could you maybe step back and talk about the beginning your journey? What got you on this route? And this map, both in terms of product development, and technology and AI itself?

Paul
Yeah, absolutely. So I started out as an engineer, headed down to San Francisco in the early 2000s. And, and I was more of a thinker than an actual engineer, or just be the type of guy who would figure things out by themselves. But if you were to ask me to really do things that the real things engineers do, you know, creativity was there, but not the solutioning. So being in San Francisco was a humbling experience, I guess, Silicon Valley, you get to see some really, really good engineers. So I had to make a shift in my career. And since I had a passion for user experience, the business aspect, product management was a great fit a function I didn't really understand. And I got to learn and respect, and did that for about 10 years. 

In the mid 2000s, and 10s, I basically moved back to Montreal for family reasons and cost of living, of course in San Francisco. And I started a company called Bank Biddick, which in French stands for public bath. And the idea is that most what I realized in Canada was that people here in accelerators, incubators and, and startups just didn't understand what product management was. So they didn't really understand what they do and how they do it. And I saw a lot of organizations being led by the marketing teams, or the sales team and being very service oriented and not really product LED. 

So basically, it basically stands for public bath, which means every quarter, you want to basically apply some hygiene to your roadmap, you have a galaxy of ideas, why not go out there and just, you know, take the good ones and remove the old ones and get rid of the dirt. And we started with that premise. And we put we said, well, what does a product manager do on a on a quarterly basis? Because a lot of the material you'll read out there really talks about, you know what product managers should do in terms of personas and understanding the customer's data and this and that, but nobody really tells you which order you should do it. Right. If that was my initial struggle as a product manager, do you try to do it all in the same day and then you realize that there's not enough time? So the question is like in a one quarter 12 week cycle, as my first three weeks should be about understanding the market shifts the industry, the product competitors and and the users and then maybe in the next three weeks working with leadership on making sure that there is no pivots in the organization or there are some some major strategic changes and then going into analyzing the DIS parking lot of ideas and figuring out which ones are short term and re and making business cases in order to present them for, for the company to make a decision on What to do next on the roadmap. 

So there is a process and we just call that process SOAP, which goes in line with our public bath theme. So the idea was like, let's let's give product managers SOAP to basically wash their roadmap on a quarterly basis. And, and that's what being public does. And we work with over 40 organizations today so far, on really implementing this product LEDs process within their organizations, we work with their leaders on identifying a product manager within the organization and making sure that marketing support sales, the CFO CEO really understand how to engage with them what to expect from them, and how product manager can add value to to the organization. And so they just doesn't become, you know, this grace towards them as many features as you can pump out, right.

Grant
Oh, boy, yeah. Which, which is constant problem. The other thing that I've noticed, and I'm wondering if, and I'm sure that your SOAP methodology addresses this, it's the problem of shifting an organization in terams of their funding model, right? They'll come from sort of these project centric or service centric funding styles, and then you've got to help them through that shift to a different funding model round products. You guys address that as well.

Paul
Yeah, we address that a lot. One of the things we always tell them is if you are a service professional services firm, and you know, I have no issues basically calling them that. If and I asked them like do you quantify staff utilization in percentages, like 70% of our engineers are being billed? Right? Do we basically look at the sales team? How many new deals do they have in terms of pipeline? Are we looking at on time delivery across those, so double use that to serve the sales team closed? And what is our time and technical staff attrition, that usually tends to be identifiers of you being a service firm? And we often ask them, well, let's let's make the shift, when we identify one little initiative that you have that you want to productize because they all these service firms, really all they want is recurring revenue, then the service is tough, right? 

That you constantly have to bring in new clients. So this recurring revenue, the path to recurring revenue is, you know, being able to say, Okay, I'm going to take two engineers, one sales person, one marketing person, one support person, and a product manager. And those guys collectively will cost me a million dollars a year, and I'm going to expect them to basically bring me $3 million in recurring revenue. That means that they're, they're no longer going to be evaluated on staff utilization, they're no longer going to be evaluating the number of deals they're bringing in. And they're, they're really going to be evaluated on how are they releasing features? Are they creating value for those features? are we increasing the number of paid customers? And are we basically, you know, staying abreast in terms of competitors and market industry changes. 

And so that's a complete paradigm shift. And that transition takes a while. But the first seed is really being able to say, can you create an entity within your organization where the CFO accepts that those engineers are dedicated and no longer being, you know, reviewed in terms of their utilization rate in terms of their know how much they're billing to customers? Once they do that shift in the recipe is pretty easy to do.

Grant
Yeah. So it's become easy. So the thing to I've seen and experienced with, with product and product development is the relationship of innovation to product development. And so I see some groups will take innovation, and they'll move that as some separate activity or function in the organization, whereas others will have that innate within the product team itself. What have you found effective? And does self addressed that?

Paul
Yeah, I mean, we always ask them the question of what how are you going to defend yourself against the competition with the VCs that have to call their moat, right? And that defensibility could be innovation, it could also be your global footprint, or, you know, it could be how you operationalize your supply chain make things really, really cheap, right? Every company can have a different strategy. And we really ask them from the get go. We call this playing the strategy, we'll give them like eight potential ways a company can, you know, find strategies to differentiate themselves? And the first one is first the market? 

And the question is, it's not about you being first to market today. But do you want to outpace your curlier closest rivals on a regular basis? And if so, you know, you need an r&d team and innovation team who is basically going to be pumping out commercializable features or r&d work. And then we always give him the two examples, the example of Dolby Dolby being completely analog in the 70s, but really banking on their r&d team to bring him to the digital age and from the digital age to set top boxes to Hollywood and now into Netflix compression, right? 

So they basically put their R&D team as the leader to basically keep them a step ahead of their competition. But it but on the other hand, we also Welcome, you know, talk about Tesla, where Tesla is basically doing the same thing, but they're not doing it for intellectual property like Dolby, they're not suing anybody are actually open sourcing it. But there's a reason behind it where that open sourcing allows them to basically create the, you know, what we call the Betamax VHS issue, which is making sure that there's compatibility across car manufacturers for Tesla parts and overproduction of parts that are Tesla just to increase their supply chain, right? So we ask them, Do you want to be that company, if you don't want to be that company, then there's other ways for you to basically create defensibility, it could be regulatory compliance, if your industry requires it, you can go global, you can go cross industry, you can basically create customer logins, how just how SAP and Salesforce love to basically just integrate workflows with like boots on the ground, professional services certified teams, right? 

And or you can basically review your process and make sure just like Amazon, that you're creating robots to do human work in order to just basically do it cheaper than anybody else. So there's ways of doing it. And I would say that if you were in AI space, especially, you know, it's important to make sure that, you know, are you really trying to innovate through AI, because you can get a lot of researchers doing a lot of things, but that's not really going to help you create commercializable ideas. So from the get go, the leadership team needs to, you know, at least make a hedge a bet on, you know, expansion, innovation, or creating efficiencies and just, you know, decide and let the product management team know in which direction they're gonna go planning on going for the next six years. Please.

Grant
I love your last comment there, Paul about about getting the leadership team involved. It seems that many times in organizations, this challenge of making the change sticky, right, making it last making it resonate, where people truly change their operating model, right, they're going to start operating in a different way, their roles and responsibilities change, what is the order in which things get done all of those change, when they start moving both into this AI space, but you know, product driven just by itself, even without AI has its own set of challenges? So here's the question I have for you. As you move companies through this transformation, that's part of your business, right? You are transforming the way companies operate and bring about better outcomes. How do you make those changes sticky? Because this is a cultural change? What is it you guys have found it's effective?

Paul
Or it goes back to our name public bath and SOAP, right? Because the idea is, you take a bath on a regular basis hygiene is something you do regularly, right? So we ask these organization, if we give you a process where you know exactly what the product management team is going to do with you with the leadership team in order to prioritize your next upcoming features, then can you do it in a cyclical way, every quarter, you need the product manager do the exact same process of revisiting the competitors, the industry, the market, as well as like the problems that you have with your premature customers, bringing it back to the organization, asking if the strategy is still about expansion, innovation, efficiencies, identifying new ideas, clearing up the parking lot of bad ideas, etc, and eventually making the business case for the new features in order for them to make a commitment. So if we do this in a cyclical way, then the product role becomes the role of what I'd like to call the CRO, which is the chief repeating officer, because all the product manager is doing is repeating that strategy and questioning the CEO, are we still on? Are we pivoting or if we pivot? 

What does that mean? And if you're doing it on a three month basis, what that allows your company to do is to make sure that the marketing and sales and support team are going along with what the engineering team is going to be delivering. So this is what I usually see most product organization where a decision has been made that the engineers are going to be building a particular feature, the sales and marketing team just waits for the engineers to be Code Complete. And once a code completes, done, they're like, Okay, now we're gonna promote it. But my question is that it's too late. Right? You really need so I always show the talk about Apple, how Apple would basically go out in front of millions of people and just say, here's the new iPhone 13. And we came up with a new version of Safari, and we're updating our iOS and we're doing a 40 Other changes. And the next thing you want considered an Apple store and you know, everything has changed. The marketing has changed the guys that the doing the conferences, and the lectures and the training are all talking about the new supplier, the new iPhone, and you ask yourself, How did how did Apple know and to organize the marketing support and sales team in that in such a way that the day that the announcement has been done? Everything is changed. So that means that it's not just the engineering team's responsibility to get to Code Complete. 

It is a collective responsibility where marketing support and sales are also preparing for the upcoming releases. And and the only way you can get that type of alignment is If every three months these these parties, technology, product, CEO, CFO, sales, marketing and support can get together and make a clear decision on what they're going to do, and be honest enough of what they're not going to do, and then work collectively together on making sure that that those are being delivered and prepared in terms of the size of the promotion that we're going to do, and how are we going to outreach how's the sales collateral going to change? How is the support team going to support these upcoming features. And so everybody has work to do in that three months timeframes. So and then that if we can get to that cyclical elements, I think most companies can create momentum. And once that momentum has is generating small increments of value to the customers, then you base start start building, what I like to call reputational capital, with the clients, with the customers with the prospects. And eventually anything you release the love, and everything you release adds value. And eventually everybody loves everything you're doing as an organization become that, you know, big unicorn that people want to be.

Grant
Yeah, so the net of that is, I believe what you said as you operationalize it. Now there's it gets integrated into everyone's role and responsibility. It's this enterprise level cross functional alignment that gets on a campus. And the cadence is, in your case, you'd mentioned quarterly, quarterly sounds like that's been a real real gem for you. I've seen some organizations do that in shorter timeframes and some much longer. It sounds like yeah, at least quarterly is that a good nugget that you find there? 

Paul
Yeah, quarterly works, because you know, markets are set in a quarter way they operate in that way the you want results on a quarterly basis in terms of sales in terms of engagement, etc. But what's important is that which you know, a lot of engineering teams like to work agile or Kanban. And in a quarter in a 12 week timeframe, you could fit, I'd say, Let's see your Sprint's are three weeks, you could fit for sprint for three weeks variance, or you could fit six 2-week sprints. But I feel that if you were to shorten it, then the marketing team and sales teams supporting might not have enough time to prepare themselves for Code Complete, the engineers might be able to deliver but then the product manager gets overwhelmed because doing an industry research, competitor research etc. Every, say month and a half or two months just becomes overwhelming for them. Because things don't change enough in two months for them to be able to say, Oh, look, this competitor just came up with that. And now we need so so I think three months is enough time for the world to change for, you know, country to go to war for COVID to come over and just destroy everything. So pivot decisions are usually can pretty good to do on a on a quarterly basis. 

Grant
Yeah, that's good. That's, I think COVID follow that rule. Right. Hey, I have a question for you around AI. So how are you leveraging AI in the midst of all this? Can you talk about that?

Paul
Yeah, absolutely. So what we noticed is a lot of organizations who have products, so SaaS products, or any type of product, IoT products, etc, they're generating data. I mean, it's it comes hand in hand with software development. So all that data is going into these databases are and nobody knows what to do with them. And eventually, you know, they want to start creating business intelligence, and from business intelligence, AI initiatives have just come about, it's very normal to say, You know what, with all this data, if we were to train a machine learning module, we would be able to recommend the best flight price or the best time for somebody to buy a flight, because we have enough data to do it. So so we're not working with AI first organizations who are here we have, our entire product is going to be around AI, we're just trying to work with organizations that have enough data to warrant 1-2-3, or four AI initiatives and an ongoing investment into those. So the best example I like to talk about is the Google Gmail suggestive, replies, right, which is adding value to the user needs AI in the back, end a lot of data. 

But ultimately, it's not that Gmail isn't AI product, it simply has AI features in it. So and when organizations start identifying AI or machine learning, predictive elements to their product, then we go from engineering being a deterministic function, which is if we were to deliver this feature, then customers will be able to do that to a probabilistic function where Let's experiment and see what the data can give us. And if this algorithm ends up really nailing it, we will achieve this result. But if it doesn't, then do we release it? Do we not release it? 

What's the and then it gets a little bit hairy because product managers just lose themselves into it. Oftentimes, they'll release a feature and the sales team would just ask them to pull it out right away because it has not met the expectations of a customer or two. And ultimately, like what we ask product managers to do is work with leadership on really it Identifying a few key elements that are very, very important to just just baseline before you were to begin an AI project. And those are pretty simple. It's, it's really like, are you trying to create to have the machine learning module? Make a prediction? Are you or are you trying for it to make a prediction plus pass judgment? Are you trying to make it a prediction, a judgment and take action? Right? Decision automation, which is what you know, self driving cars do, will will see biker, they will make a prediction that it's a biker will make a judgment that it's indeed a biker, and we'll take action to avoid the biker, right? 

But when you when you're creating ml projects, you can easily say, you know, we're just going to keep it to prediction, right? Like this machine is going to predict something and then a human will make judgment and the human will take action. There's nothing wrong in doing that. So just setting the expectations for from the get go in terms of are we basically going to predict judge or take action? That's number one. And then the next question is whatever that we decide if it's just prediction, is that worth guessing? And who doesn't have guessed today, if it's a human? Is that how accurate is that human? Let's quantify. So this way we can compare it against what this machine is going to do? What is the value the company gets out of that gas being the right gas? And what's the cost of getting it wrong? So oftentimes, we forget that humans to get it wrong to and if humans get it wrong, there are huge consequences to organizations that will overlook but as soon as machine learning does the same thing, we're ready to just cancel hundreds of $1,000 of investment. 

Grant
Yeah, that's right. Yeah, we tossed it out. So the use case, I'm assuming would be you would leverage AI to say enhance a product managers abilities to either predict outcomes of some product development activities, or releases or things like that, would that be a kind of use case where he looked apply?

Paul
Well, not a product managers, I would say the product manager, we'd look at it software, let's take the software of a website that tries to predict your if people qualify for a mortgage loan, for example, right? So you have enough data at that point to be able to automate, what's the underwriting process that humans do of validating whether or not somebody's eligible for loan? Well, we could take all that data and just make a prediction of that person's fit for a particular loan. Now, if we were to say, well, it's just going to be the prediction, but we're not going to give this person the loan, we're still going to ask a human being to pass judgment that that prediction was the correct one, and then take action to give or not give him a loan. 

So let's say that's the machine learning module, we're going to add to our to our feature. Now, the question is how this underwriting department in the past 10 years, how often did they really screw up that, you know, and issued loans to people that were that couldn't pay their loan, right? And realize it's 40%? Were like, Wow, 40%? Could this machine learning be as accurate as damn plus one, right? And, and then we ended up realizing that yeah, this, whatever we delivered is 33% accurate, and not 40% plus one accurate now is it still worth putting out there we spent $100,000 into it, and then you know, then it's up to the product manager to basically be able to put this thing in place and say, but look, you know, underwriting is a nine to five job currently in our business, and it cost us this much money. 

On the other hand, if there's this machine learning is 33% accurate, but it's actually doing it 24/7 365 days a year, and it's only going to improve from 33 to 40. And if it goes above 40, then we the savings for our organization are this much money. So it is really the product managers job to be able to not only talking about the business KPIs, but also the what the AI machine learning KPIs we need to achieve and what the impact of that would be if we get it right. And I think that the biggest issue we have as product managers in the AI space is if we were to go and do this all there everything that we need to create AI, like the day data ops, selecting the data, sourcing it, synthesizing it, cleaning it, etc. The model ops, which, you know, comes down to multiple algorithms, training those algorithms, evaluating tuning them, and then the operationalization. If you do all these steps, and you get to 80 to 20% accuracy, and your target is at 70% accuracy, right? What do you do with it? 

Because you had to do all this work anyways, it cost you tons of money and time. And so how do we get the leadership team to say this AI initiative has enough value for us that we're willing to live with the consequences of it getting it wrong, or we're willing to actually have it supported by human for the next six months to a year until we basically trains itself and gets better? So it's how do you get this openness from from from a leadership team? Because what I've often find delivering AI projects is every time you deliver an AI project, and it's misunderstood in terms of its output, and everybody thinks it has to be 100% accurate, the second and goes wrong. It's the political drama that you have to go through in order to keep it alive. is just it's just overwhelming, right? So miners will set those expectations up front and tool, the product managers with the right arguments to make sure that they the expectations are set correctly.

Grant
Have you ever worked with or heard of the company called digital.ai? Are your familiar with them? digital.ai, maybe not. Anyway, they have been working in a similar space as you but not so much of the product management level. What they're doing, though, is they're, they're looking to apply AI to the whole delivery function. So so you can you see, the product manager is above this, and is making sort of these KPIs and other estimate activities and the planning out. But then there are all these functions under there that of course, do the delivery of the product. And so they're working on the tooling spectrum, I think they acquired I think, was five different companies like in the last nine months, that they're integrating these and then building this AI seam or layer across that data across delivery with that purpose and intent to do that predictive not not only backwards analysis activities around AI, but predictive, which is what's the probabilities, I might run into the problem, or some problem with this particular release, right, of this product, right, that we're about to send out, now might be an interesting group for you to get connected with.

Paul
Yeah, I know, it's funny, because we're there. There's a local company here in Montreal that does the same thing. It's really about like data scientists are really expensive, and they're really hard to find, and there's a shortage of them. So, you know, the lot of organizations are trying to find like a self serve AI solution where you can build your AI using their AI. But ultimately, what they're doing is taking your data and delivering 123 or 10 versions of the machine learning module, it's up to you basically, judge which one is going to work the best for you, but they actually operationalize it, put it out there for you, and really automate the whole thing. So this way, you're not dependent on humans, I love that I really love that I think your organization should have one of those. But that still means that there's a dependency from the for the product manager to know that it's, it's data, like end to end, be able to clean it be able to tag it and then feed it to the to these machines, right? And I think that part is also misunderstood. Because Do we have enough data? Is there bias in the data and all that needs to be understood and figure it out? Because, you know, you could say like, Hey, we put it to this big machine. And we ended up with a 20% accuracy on the best ml that it out, put it, but that's still not good enough? Because we're trying, we're aiming for 87? And what does it mean? What do we need to do to basically get it to 87? We're gonna have to review the data bringing some third party data, you know, and it's, and that's, that costs a lot as well. So, yeah,

Grant
Do you think AutoML solutions play a role here like, Aible, I don't know if you're familiar with that platform, you know, that the goal is to try to reduce the amount of dependency that's needed on the data science. Scientists themselves, right. And but it's, it's still doesn't remove all of the data cleansing part, but it does help take care of some of the certainly the low level data science requirements, you think you think that's a viable solution in this area? 

Paul
I think it is. I mean, it's, you know, we went from rule based AI, where data scientists had to do good old fashioned AI, which was a feature engineering, right? Putting the rules themselves to machine learning AI, where, you know, we had to train the data that we needed, were so dependent on these data scientists. And now we're getting to v3, where we have these tools. And you know, there's a data dependency, but there, they also don't have such a high dependency on data scientists are and you know, figuring our algorithms and etc, we could just basically have these prepackaged algorithms that could basically output us any types of solution. What I tend to like, I've seen this a lot in a lot of companies. There's some companies that are very, very industry specific, right? So they're providing AI for E-commerce to be able to provide better search with predictive elements based on the person's browsing history. I mean, I, I'm not sure, but the ones that are providing every ML imaginable, so you could use it for supply chain, or you could use it for something else. I know it's dependent on data. But again, these algorithms, you can't have all the algorithms for all scenarios. 

Even if it's supply chain, some person has perishables and there's ordering bananas and the other person is ordering, I don't know water coolers, and those, those don't have the same rules, right. You know, so it's, it's important to just, I think that maybe in the coming years, we'll have a lot of companies that are really going cross industry, just like we're in E-commerce, the other ones that are med tech, the other ones are, etcetera, the tools are the same. I mean, more or less the same, the customers are gonna get used to basically having these UI is that I'll give you your input the data in and then these emails come out, and then you choose which one and they give you probability you can retrain them and all that stuff. And I think that it's just going to get to a point where we're going to have these product managers who are now responsible of kind of training the Machine Learning Module themselves, you know if it's going to be the product manager, or if it's going to be some other function, where I think it does definitely fit inside the product managers?

Grant
Well I do is, I think it's because they still need to have what we would call the domain knowledge and in this domain of building products, yeah, AI, at least at least in this phase of the life of AI, where we are today for the foreseeable future. I think the product manager needs to be involved with that. Sure. So.

Paul
It comes down to intuition, right, somebody has to have like to build that intuition about what a model is relying on when making a judgment. And I think that, you know, with product managers, the closest one really, maybe in bigger organizations, it's the person who's managing analytics and data, but in smaller startup organization, I can definitely see the product manager putting that 

Grant
Yeah, absolutely. Paul, I really appreciate you taking the time. Here today on this been fascinating conversation. Any last comments you want to share?

Paul
We have tons of articles that talk about so we're very open source as an organization. So if you want to learn more about this, we have about 70 articles on our website. Just go to BainPublic.com and just click on "Articles" and you could just, you know, self serve and basically improve as a product manager in the AI space.

Grant
Excellent, fascinating, love, love the conversation, your insight and the vision where you guys are taking this I think you're gonna continue to disrupt everyone. Thanks for joining another episode of ClickAI Radio and until next time, check out BainPublic.com.

Thank you for joining Grant on ClickAI Radio. Don't forget to subscribe and leave feedback. And remember to download your free ebook visit ClickAIRadio.com now.

In this episode I talk with Dr. Pranay Parikh, where we look at the question, how can you do your full time job while being an entrepreneur to fill the gaps that are missing in your life?

Grant
Hey, everybody, welcome to another episode of Financial Investing Radio. So today I have this opportunity. It's taken us a few times for me to chase him down. He's very busy. Dr. Pranay Parikh. I'm excited to talk with him when I when I first saw the profile on him and realize the journey that he both has done and the one that he's on and his vision of that I got to talk to this gentleman. I'm gonna read his the little clip that I got before even let him say a word. I just want you to hear a little bit about him. Alright, here we go. Okay, hold on. Here we go. It's Dr. Pranay. Parikh is a physician co founder and president of ascent equity group, a serial entrepreneur, we're going to want to ask him about that. Okay, online course creator and host of the MD to entrepreneur podcast, which is really cool. Continuing on his unconventional journey, and I add it is which is what makes us really cool. His unconventional journey to medicine helped him learn the skills to excel in entrepreneurship. He's launched a seven figure online course. And he's bought over $1.1 billion in real estate. Wow. And he's helped hundreds of physicians launch their own businesses. His goal is to help launch 10,000 physician led businesses. That's amazing. So I want to welcome here to the show. Dr. Pranay Parikh. Welcome.

Pranay
Thanks, Grant. I'm super excited to talk.

Grant
It's so good to have you here. Now, we were both talking before we got started. We're both in the southwest part of the country. We sort of enjoy that. In fact, I think you and I might have even had our earlier grown up years in the Northern California area. So we got a lot in similar but the key difference is, I am definitely not a doctor. You know, I went bought band aids last night. And it took me awhile just to figure that out. So I'm more of a tech and investing guy. But I am not a doctor guy. But I'm excited to talk to you about this and your journey. So thanks again for being here.

Pranay
Yeah, super excited to talk to you and your audience. 

Grant
Okay, now something happened, right? You were growing up and you said, hey, I want to be a doctor and you got moving down that path. But somewhere along that line, well, first of all, what kind of medicine? Have you been practicing?

Pranay
So I did a residency in Internal Medicine, and I practice hospitalist medicines. So that means if you ever have to spend a night in the hospital, then I'd be your doctor.

Grant
Okay. Is that is that the same as as an internist? Is that? Is that what that is? 

Pranay
Yeah, so it's the same residency, but usually what internists do they do outpatient medicine, so you know, your primary care doctor, they do some inpatient, but I'm kind of sub specialized. I only see people in the hospital, the hospital itself. 

Grant
Okay, got it. Very good. All right. So you were on that journey doing that work. And something happened somewhere along the line, you sort of sat up and said, I need to add something, either to my life or my purpose or my vision on top of this medical route. Tell me about that. What happened?

Pranay
You know, so it's kind of funny. So to get into medical school, you have to be well rounded, right? You have to be doing all this other cool stuff, right? You can't just be a nerdy like I was really good at Sciences and maths and all that stuff. They want someone you know, reads a lot of the books and does all this stuff. But after you get in all that stuff gets taken away gets subtracted. And it kind of sucks for people like me that like doing a lot of other stuff, but you're so busy in medicine, doing your job learning that there's not much else you can do. So as soon as I got an opportunity to start doing other stuff I did. So for example, in medical school, I used to hold art shows. And then the money that we grades go to the doctors without borders, I was always trying to do stuff that was, you know, a little bit outside the box. So as soon as I graduated finished everything, I was like, okay, what can I do? What? Where can I go and all this stuff that's been suppressed for so long.

Grant
That's amazing. You talked about Doctors Without Borders, I have a friend just Sunday night I was talking with he, he spent a number of years I think went five times down to Central America, they were taking both dental as well as medical help and support into some of those areas there. It's fun to hear the service and the blessing that that is to people that are missing those things. So you did these art shows that was providing support to them. That's a cool thing. So it sounds like there was either there's altruistic thing that you needed to get filled in your life, right? I mean, something to reach out further, in addition to the work you're doing that led you to doing this kind of work. Now, there's that what led you at some point to say, I'm going to build sort of a business or be an entrepreneur on it is that what led you down that path?

Pranay
Still, so you know, when I when I looked at the landscape after being graduated, you know, at a pretty decent salary, but I realized the most important thing is what I do with that money, not how much I can make, you know, I could have just gone and bought a car or bought a house. And I'd be, you know, I wouldn't have a ton of money to consider for my future, right. So I decided to rent a little bit longer, keep driving my Honda Accord, which actually still have 2012. So you know, it's what I do with the money. So you know, I did the stock market, but in this world, people that are most well off and buy well off, you know, I don't care about the total number that's in my bank account, I care about freedom, I care about providing for my family, and I care about providing for my extended family. So the people that I've seen that been have been able to do that are the people in business, business and real estate. So I thought how, how can I incorporate one or, you know, fortunately, now, both of those into my life? And what's the quickest way to do that?

Grant
Okay, excellent. So you have a broader vision about, I want to make a difference, right? I want to help someone in the world, what not just my own family, but but the people within my reach that I can access or get out to? Is that right?

Pranay
Yeah. And as a doctor, it was great. Because I there's a lot of job satisfaction and being able to help people. But I was limited by time. And that's, that's one of the big issues that I had, I wanted to create this impact. I wanted to help as many people as possible, but there was only one of me, right? So if I'm not at the hospital, I'm not helping people. So how do I take that impact that I want and spread it to, really the whole world, and the what I thought was, if I can help other people, after I got my business up and running, I can help other people get their business up and running. And if they're able to either find financial security and be happier doctors, you know, you might have heard of this epidemic of a burnout, that's just been an issue. And a lot of that is not being able to pick your own hours and being forced to do things that you don't necessarily want to do a lot of administrative work. And if you're able to take control of your life, then those happy doctors are making a bigger impact. And that's something that I can, I can help people do as well.

Grant
So you're going after this audience of people that have proven that they have the ability to be disciplined to dedicate their time and their resources, their energy, not just to not just to their practice in their craft, right around medicine, but but now to take that and apply it to businesses. And those businesses the purpose of those sounds like have twofold one is to provide an outlet for them sort of emotionally, right where they can get outside and, and maybe really, you know, benefit their own family but also to use their businesses away then to further their reach to help people when they're away from practicing their medicine. Did I get that? Right?

Pranay
Correct. Correct. And you'd be surprised how often someone comes up to me and says, Hey, Pranay, I'm just a doctor. You think I could start a business? And it's funny because you have to get to get into medical school or, you know, dentistry lawyers, and I'm just talking about medical school because that's what I've been through. But you know, any professional degree, you've gone through a lot. You've studied, you've been taking all these tests and you've really stood the test of time. So you can pick up a lot of these other things pretty easily, you know, a little bit of trial and error. So a lot of it is just showing people that they have this innate ability. And a lot of times in medicine, we're taught not to try something, unless we have 100% chance of success.

Grant
It's interesting is about a year ago, I was running a class for a group of people on starting your own business. And, and one of the people that came into that class was an oral surgeon, and doing doing just great, you know, in terms of financial, right. And I said to him, why, why did you take this right to mean, you certainly don't. Okay. I mean, and he said, well, the, the one area that he felt like he was running into that it was creating a challenge for him was that, while he had figured out and was successful at the procedures, at some point in the career, those procedures became procedural. In other words, I was just doing I'm quoting him, I was just doing and still doing the same thing every day. And what I found that I couldn't do is I couldn't be creative, right? I mean, that wouldn't be the right thing, either for the safety of the patient, right, or for other reasons. It's not like I can say, well, I'm going to try this procedure. And other way. There's other times and places maybe to do that, but not while you're, you know, doing the the surgery. So he said there was a gap in his life was, he needed a way to be able to express himself and be more creative, and let that part of his personality have a place to do things. So he was starting a business on his own. And I'm wondering if, if that resonates with you, if that's also part of what was in your mind as well.

Pranay
Yeah, and you know, after and there's usually a slump, three to five years after you're done with school, you feel confident in your abilities. And a lot of times that challenge is gone, you know, it comes here and there. But that that daily challenge that you're, you're racing against the edge is gone. And it's nice to go into something that you have no idea about, you know, starting a business, starting your own practice starting a podcast like yours, and it's invigorating, trying to figure things out, you know, and, and failing and being successful and getting that first download and 10th Download, and so on.

Grant
There is something to that, isn't it? It's this, what's my next hurdle? Right? What's the next thing? You know, can I do this right? Can I grow or expand in that area? And so I think sometimes in that profession, well, not just that profession, others as well. But being able to have that side hustle, or that side practice helps to fill that out. And to round you out. That doesn't mean you step away from it. Now, maybe some do. In fact, on that topic, do you still practice then today in medicine? Or are you full time over in the sort of business and investing side?

Pranay
I actually still practice and most people are very surprised, given all the other stuff I do. I'm at around point eight full time, I probably need to cut down a little bit more. So at the end of the year, I'll probably do point five, but it's nice to keep my foot in the door a little bit. You know, like I said, I enjoy it. And it is using a different side of my brain.

Grant
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Okay, so let's talk about, let's talk about that entrepreneur side of you then. So you went to real estate, because you said you saw that those that had achieved some level of freedom. Were doing business and real estate, and you sort of found that pattern there. Right. You talk a little bit about what it is that you do with that business.

Pranay
Yeah, you know, and so a little bit about the beginning, in medicine a lot of the times is you're learning from colleagues, you know, it's like Socrates, instead of more of a professor to student, there's some of that as well. But after your practice, seeing I reached out to my colleagues all the time, I asked them what they think so, you know, when I first learned about real estate as I thought, there's not that much people teaching how to invest in real estate without being a landlord. And I looked around, I looked around, there wasn't anything. So I went with my partner and said, Hey, let's create a course that will teach people how to do this, right? And we thought we were done after that. And after a couple years of doing that, we've had 1000s of students, people say, hey, you know, we learned we'd like what you say, but we don't actually do want to do the work. We want you guys to find the deals to negotiate, and most importantly, to follow up to make sure that the person who's running the day to day is doing what they say they're doing. So we created really almost like a bespoke, passive, real State, a private equity company called the cent equity group where we go out we find best in class operators that have done this for 2030 years. And when we partner with them, we negotiate for the best terms. And most importantly, there's many people that do that. But most importantly, we have a full asset management, we have a full team that if something goes wrong, we could take over the property. However, that team, they're really focused on the big picture, how do we maximize profit? And, you know, not really doing the day to day like talking to maintenance, finding about leases? How do we maximize profit for our investors, and, you know, we have at this point, hundreds, almost 1000 investors, mostly doctors, but some dentists pharmacist, and we really want to create the best real estate investment, that it takes the least amount of work. So I own a couple rental properties myself, I have a property management, property manager, and it's still work. You know, I don't want to really work very hard for my investments. But that's just me. 

Grant
Yeah, that makes sense. So wait, can you talk more Pranay about where the investing is? Is it raw land, single homes, this apartments are commercial? You talked about that?

Pranay
Yeah, so we, you know, we do bread and butter. And we kind of focus on people's needs, right? And people need a place to live. And what happens when, like right now we're heading towards a recession or mortgage rates are going up. People go into apartments, I've lived in apartments in the past. So what we do middle the ground, what is often called Class B, like boy, apartments, where when times are good people will move up into when times are bad people will downgrade from, you know, the nice downtown apartments to you know, maybe a little bit further away. And, or maybe they can't afford a house or they don't want to buy a house. And they go to class B. So that's the type of stuff that we've like, because it's recession, recession resistant. And even in 2008, the default risk was less than 1%. Because apartments are safe and stable.

Grant
Yeah, safe and stable. Another key part of that seems like the demographics and the geography. In other words, where these are located. Do you target a specific part of the country? Or where do you focus?

Pranay
Yeah, yeah. So we call it the business friendly states. It's kind of along the Sunbelt. And this has been a trend. We've seen it a lot more in the past, since 2020, after COVID, but it's been ongoing for five to 10 years, people are moving to areas that are more affordable outside of coastal cities. And now with all the remote work, there's there's no reason really to live in the coastal towns, you might as well live where you can afford, and they're starting to get, you know, robust neighborhoods and cultures and all that great stuff.

Grant
Nice. And when you when you think about the kind of profile, right, can you describe what does that look like in terms of the perfect person that you would bring into the ascent group? Meaning that you're focusing on the doctors, right, but is it someone that's done with medical school? Or is it Are they on their way? Or they they're 10 years down into their career already? I mean, what does that look like?

Pranay
Yeah, so all our deals have to be accredited investors, meaning that you have to make more than 200,000 per year, for two years, or 300 as a couple for two years, or have a net worth over a million dollars. And that's, that's not our requirements. That's the Securities and Exchange Commission by the government. So as long as they qualify for that, we're happy to take anyone, mostly doctors, but we have a ton of dentists. And it's usually, you know, they have to have two years of tax returns. So people started investing two years after they graduate, and then all the way towards the, you know, latter part of their career. So it's, it's nice, it creates stable income. It's tax deferred. So it's money you can start using, and there's a lot of tax benefits. So doctors especially like the type of investment.

Grant
Yeah, is it? Is there a certain commitment time? So in other words, are you expecting people will get involved for a five year period or 10? Or what does that look like?

Pranay
Yeah, so our deals, we tend to go on the lower end. So three to five years, that means you put in your money, you get your money back? Usually 1.8 to double your money in about three to five years just depends on the deal. And minimum is usually around 50,000. And we have that at that amount because it's really easy for people to get me on the phone and any of the principals who are all doctors And we want to create really a high quality great communication system. Because, you know, even if you're able to put down 50 102 50 It's scary. I don't care how wealthy you are, it's scary putting your money down. So we really pride ourselves in having great communication.

Grant
What impact have you noticed on this investing strategy with, you know, the increase in inflation rates that's been going on as well as mortgage rates is had some impact on this?

Pranay
Yeah, so and this is really important for people who are looking at these types of deals, also called syndications. People might know it as that the two things I'd really look at right now, to bet a deal is to sponsor you know, people who are running the day to day, that kind of makes sense. But the second is the debt. So interest rates are crazy right now. So I would try to get a fixed rate debt, you know, meaning that it's, you know, three to five years. So for example, our last deal that's close now, we had nine years at 2.9%, Raizy. And then four years of interest only. So we really go out and try to find deals that we think have a ton of downside protection. So the one of the most important things, it's always been important, but even more so is what type of debt or mortgage the people are getting. Because if anything's gonna go wrong, it's, you're not going to be able to cover your mortgage payment, and the bank takes the property back.

Grant
That's amazing, you share that, you know, I look at the interest rates today. And they are obviously higher than than they were just, you know, last couple of years. But it reminds me of when my wife and I had just gotten out of college, and this was late 80s. And we were in Chicago, and we were buying our first property. And interest rates were really high. I mean, like, 9% 10%, I remember us driving, you know, an hour because we found one mortgage place, you know, that give us you know, half a basis point last. And that meant that we could probably eat every month, right? Because he knows, several $100 less on the mortgage. And so that matters, matters. Totally what what you're saying to have that. All right. So what questions haven't I asked you, you've been very kind to share your time here. What other things do you need to share with people that would help them prepare to take advantage of the services that you're providing?

Pranay
Yeah, we, you know, one big thing I see. And we deal with a lot of investors on the active and passive side, and you know, the stocks and all that stuff, consider your time, the value of your time, right? If you're spending, you know, 20 hours a month on one of your properties, and you're trying to scale it up. Consider that right? Most of us don't pay ourselves first. You don't have to take money out. But consider the time that you're spending on this. And, you know, unfortunately, a lot of people in business as well. They forget the time they spend on it. They're like, Yeah, you know, it's making us it's making six figures a profit. And when you realize you're not paying yourself. So the nice thing about our real estate investment is maybe you spend an hour on it a month, a year, one, one investment one hour per year, you know, and we really try to create this bespoke experience that we take care of everything for our investors, you know, and that's not the right thing for everyone. And some people like to kind of pick their own deals, but we find that most doctors prefer this. And we give them a nice, diversified portfolio because we work with different people across the US and different types of deals. We'll do maybe some, like very safe deals a little bit more value, add meaning larger renovations with a higher return. So we kind of really spread it out. And we've had we've been going for a couple years now. And like you mentioned in the beginning, we've bought over a billion dollars of real estate and so we're really excited about the chance to give this opportunity to doctors, dentists, pretty much anyone that would qualify as an accredited investor. So if anyone is interested, feel free to reach out to me. Sure, we'll have it in the show notes, but it's Pranay@ascentequitygroup.com. And then one last small plug. I have a podcast if you want to hear more about podcasting, entrepreneurship, being a doctor things that I've been dealing with. It's from MD to entrepreneur podcast and you could find it on Spotify, Apple, Google pretty much anywhere you can find podcasts.

Exclusive resources: finp.ascentequitygroup.com/
My podcast on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/48VsN5DnCWY8lxiMyLbrMA
My podcast on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/from-md-to-entrepreneur-with-dr-pranay-parikh/id1625547221
My email: pranay@ascentequitygroup.com 
My Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pranay.parikh2
My Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/pranay-parikh/

Grant
That's awesome, man. Pranay, thanks for taking the time here with us today. I really appreciate that. Very impressed with the journey. journey that you're on, and also the impact that that journey is having on people, both in terms of not only your medical practice but what you're doing in terms of business as well. Thanks again for joining. Hey, everybody. Thanks for listening to another episode of Financial investing radio. Until next time, check out Dr. Pranay Parikh at ascentequitygroup.com.

Thank you for joining Grant on Financial Investing Radio. Don't forget to subscribe and leave feedback. And remember to download your free ebook, visit cliclairadio.com

Today I had the opportunity to speak with "The Land Geek". Fascinating conversation. He's got over, well over four and a half million downloads on his podcast. He's got some interesting ideas and insights on investing with land that the returns higher than normal, I guess normal, what's normal, higher than, you know, eight 10% return, if you will, returns on these investments. So I'm very excited to have Mark here with me today. Thanks for joining us, we learn the secrets from the land geek.

Everybody welcome to another episode of Financial Investing Radio. So I have been chasing this person for some time. He is super busy and has an amazing profile. I hope you take the opportunity to look into what he's done. We're going to be having conversation today with Mark, Oh man, Mark. I didn't even ask at a time. Podolski!

Mark
Perfect pronunciation.

Grant
Did I say that? Okay. All right. Very good. Mark. Welcome. Thank you for being here today. I appreciate it.

Mark
Grant Larsen, an honor. Privilege. Thank you.

Grant
You know, we found out that we are not too far from each other geographically, which is a real treat. There's some neat, neat things about the part of the country we live in for sure.

Mark
Absolutely. We've lost our complaining privileges living in Scottsdale, Arizona.

Grant
That's right. That's right. That's right. Even when it gets a little hot. I've learned to quit Quit complaining about it's not a Houston hot right.

Mark
Houston hot. It's 80 degrees in the pool. 

Grant
Yeah, that's. That's right. It's fixable with the pool. That's right, right. Okay, so the land geek, you are known as the land geek, you've done a great job getting your name out there as land geek, not only getting your name out there, but proving a framework. But we'll get to the framework here in a moment. Because what you've done is pretty unique compared to other real estate investing strategies that are out there, of which I actually participate in some of those others, right, but I won't get to that yet. So I'm interested to learn more about what you do here. But let's back up. You were doing what what got you started to say I'm gonna go after land investments in this way.

Mark
So if we rewind the tape now, to 2000 I was a miserable micromanaged. 45 minute commute to work and back investment banker specializing in mergers and acquisitions with private equity groups. And grant it got so bad for me. I wouldn't get the Sunday blues, anticipating Monday coming around. I'd get the Friday blues, anticipating the weekend going by really fast. And having to be back at work. On Monday. I was pretty much yeah, really blue. So I first hired this guy, and he's telling me that as a side hustle, he's going to tax deed auctions. He's buying raw land, pennies on the dollar. He's flipping them online, and he's making a 300% return on his money. Grant. I'm looking at companies all day long. And a great company great has 15% EBIT on margins are free cash flow, average company's 10%. And I'm looking at companies all day long, less than 10%. So of course, I don't believe them. And I've got three grand saved up for car repairs. I go to New Mexico with them. I do exactly what he tells me to do. I buy 10 Half Acre parcels and average price of $300 each. I flipped them online. And they all sell for an average price of $1,200 each. It worked. So I went to another auction and in Arizona, where we live. And again, this is 2000 There's no one in the room. I'm buying up lots of acreage or nothing. And I sell all that property. You know that what auction I made over $90,000 So I go to my wife. She's pregnant at the time. I said Honey, I'm going to quit My job and become a full time lead investor. And she said, Absolutely not. Yeah.

Grant
What do you say? And what are you doing on?

Mark
Yeah. So it took 18 months for the land investing income to exceed the investment banking income. And then I quit. I've been doing it full time ever since. And I absolutely love it.

Grant
That's incredible. So you just sort of stumbled into it, someone happened to say, they'd already sort of figured this out. Now, it sounds like what you did with that is after you've done this for a while, you've created a system out of this, then is that right?

Mark
Yeah, I mean, after a while, you start picking up things, and you start seeing, okay, well, how do I make this job, myself. And, really, my whole philosophy is, I can always make more money, I can't get more time. And so we want to use three levers to scale and grow a business, other people's time, software and automation, and other people's money. And so once I combined all three of those, I was really able to grow and work really about 30 minutes a week, in my business.

Grant
What, 30 minutes, you're at a point now where you work 30 minutes a week on your business? In the business? Yeah, that's amazing. Wow. But it took that scaling, right, took that automation to figure it out the team around you to help take care of certain aspects of it took all of those pieces, as well as other people's money. That's interesting. That took five years. Oh, that was gonna ask you so five years to get to that point, learn the lessons, learn the business processes that you should automate, and so forth. Right?

Mark
Well, five years just to start getting myself out of business, probably another five years, to get to my point where I can work 30 minutes, 30 minutes in the business, rarely, I'm just meeting with my Acquisition Manager. And we're looking at the numbers and saying how many deals are pending? How many offers went out? How many deals will be closed? How can I support you?

Grant
So when it comes to finding these opportunities is the auctions is that your main input, or source or how well find these.

Mark
So Grant, I'm going to walk you exactly through how I do it. So you live, I'm gonna use these as a case study. You're in Scottsdale, Arizona, but let's assume that you own five acres of raw land in Texas, and you owe $200 in back taxes. So essentially, you're advertising two important things. 

Number one, you have no emotional attachment to the raw land, you're in Arizona, the properties and taxes in Texas. 

And number two, you're distressed financially in some weird way. Because we don't pay for things like our property taxes, we don't value them in the same way. As resolved, county treasurer, keeps sending me notices saying, Grant, if you don't pay your property taxes, you're going to lose that five acre parcel, tax deed or tax lien investor. So all I'm gonna do is look at the comparable sales on your five acre parcel for the last 12 to 18 months, I'm gonna take the lowest comparable sale, let's say $10,000 and divide by four. And that's gonna give you a Warren Buffett would call a 300% margin of safety. So I'm gonna send you an actual offer on your five acre parcel for $2,500. Now you accept it. Why? Because for you $2,500 is better than nothing. In reality, three to 5% of people accept my quote unquote, top dollar offer. But now that you've accepted it, I have to go through due diligence or in depth research. I have to confirm you still own the property. I have to confirm back taxes are only $200 I have to make sure there's been no breaks in the chain of title. There's no liens or encumbrances. And because it's only $2,500 investment, I outsourced to my team in the Philippines, connected to an American Title Company. It cost about $11. I was investing $5,000 or more, I wouldn't take any title risk. 

You have to close traditionally through a title company. But since this is a smaller deal, everything checks out. And now I'm going to sell your five acre parcel 30 days or less and make a cash flow. So I have a built in best buyer grant. Do you know who it is? Who is the neighbors, the neighbors? So I'm going to send out neighbor letters saying hey, here's your opportunity. Protect your privacy. Protect your views. Know your neighbor. So oftentimes the neighbors will buy now if the neighbors pass a gun to my buyers list, if they pass. A good little website you may have heard of, it's called Craigslist is the 15th most trafficked website United States. I'll go to one I know you've heard of called meta, or Facebook, buy sell groups in the marketplace, and then I'll go to the lands land moto.com lands of america.com land and farm.com land flip.com Land hub.com These are platforms where people buy and sell raw land. But the way that I'm going to do it is the secret. I'm going to make it irresistible for my next buyer. All I'm going to ask for is a $2,500 downpayment, to control this five acre parcel, and then I'll make it a car payment, let's say 297 a month, for the next 84 months at 9% interest. So it's a one time sale, I'll get my money out on the down payment. I could go six to 10 months out. And now I'm getting a passive income of 297 a month, next 84 months. No renters. No rehabs, no renovations, no rodents. And because I'm not dealing with a tenant, I'm exempt from Dodd Frank RESPA. And the SAFE Act, all this owners real estate legislation. So grant, it's a simple game, can I create enough land notes where my passive income exceeds my fixed expenses? And now working? 

Grant
Because I want to not because I have to guess you have to? So on those numbers, then Mark, when you look at that, and what's the percentage of those that carry all the way through, you know, you're obviously I love, I love how you have the profile for that best buyer, how you create that, that passive income, what sort of risks does that put on your shoulders, where there's potential for them not following through on the cash flow, any issues there?

Mark
We don't mind it, because we use a land contract. And a land contract means that we can we still own the underlying asset, while they make payments. If they default, they have 30 days to cure their default. If they don't, we keep the down payment, we keep the monthly payments, our cost basis goes lower, we resell that property, we get a new down payment, we get new monthly payments, and extends out a return on investment is...

Grant
Oh, that's awesome. 

Mark
So I've been investing my wife and I invest in real estate, but it's it's on. It's with the tenant model, right? It's, you know, creating sort of the cash flow on that site. And it has some of the challenges and headaches you're talking about. Right? It's I deal with property management organizations, I deal with tenants that aren't following through blah, blah, blah, blah, all that. And so this is appealing to me to be able to say, hey, you know, I don't have to worry about about that. 

Grant
Is there a return that you felt like is higher taking this strategy than taking that sort of tenant based model?

Mark
Well, our average return on cash is 300%. And on terms, it's 1,000%.

Grant
That's crazy. Because we you know, typically fight for eight to 10 or 15%, right? In this in this renter model. So that's, that's fascinating, fascinating approach. So a couple things here. The average hold time. So you'd mentioned 30 days, are you literally flipping these in a 30 day timeframe? Is that the average?

Mark
Yeah, that's average. Now, if it's more than 30 days, something has to change. Maybe we have to raise the downpayment, maybe people think it's too good to be true. Maybe we have to lower the downpayment, maybe we have to raise the price, lower the price, change the interest rate, change the terms, something needs to change, maybe it's as simple as the headline is conducting. So that's our litmus test for what's wrong with our app. Why did that? Why is this not selling 30 days?

Grant
What's the what's the benefit of turning it into that passive cash flow as opposed to just flipping and taking the cash right now all of it out of the deal and walking away with that in your pocket?

Mark
Well, cash is a problem, right? Because now I've got to do it all over again. And I've just created a really hard job for myself. So I'd rather buy the asset one time and hold it for as long as I can and have a cash flow rather than flip a tax. Hopefully, I get another deal flip, pay tax, the market could turn on me. Right? I've been I've overpaid and I'm stuck with an asset.

Grant
Yep, makes makes total sense. So I noticed on your on your on your YouTube channel here. I noticed on there you you've been creating quite a nice playlist for a long time describing some of the challenges the hurdles the things people might deal with some tips and techniques around that. You've been publishing for quite a while on this. If someone were to get started on your YouTube channel itself, you've got this nice entry YouTube video right there passive income without headaches explained. I love that as your entry one. I watched that and you walk through much of the framework that you just described here today, what would be some of the hurdles that you think people will run into? Or that you've seen people run into where, where this doesn't work?

Mark
Well, you know, the biggest hurdle I think, for people who get started is they think, can I do this in my backyard? Well, if you live in San Francisco, no, no one's gonna sell you an infill lot. 25 cents on the dollar, they're gonna go the biggest, baddest land broker in town. If you live in Manhattan, same thing. So we're looking at properties an hour to three hours from the nearest town. And also, there's 3007 us counties like where do you start? So if I live in Iowa, let's face it, nobody wakes up next boy, I'd like to buy some land today in Iowa, unless you live in Iowa. So to get your biggest buyer pool, you want to be the southwest, little bit the Northwest, California and Florida. These are the sunshine states. These are fast growing states. And there is just a plethora of inexpensive raw land.

Grant
Okay. All right. That's fascinating. The other thing that I think you wrote your book was in 2017, did I get the date? Right? I think 2018 and 2018. Okay, dirt rich, dirt Ranch is out on Amazon did a review of that awesome book. Tell us about that? What does that cover?

Mark
So Dirt Rich gives you the basics of how to buy and sell raw land, it also tells my story. So you don't make the same mistakes. I did. And then Durbridge two is coming out very soon. The next plot how to scale your business.

Grant
I love that the next plot, there's a play on words right there for sure. You're also out there on medium.com. I see you being referenced and talked about there. As well as you got your website, check that out as well land geek, the land geek.com, right, the Land Rover COMM And I'm assuming that is I reviewed that what I noticed about what you have here is this is where people can come to your organization, if I understand it, right and say, hey, I want to get trained in this. I want to get skilled and how to create my own business. I'm assuming this is where you take your years and years of expertise. And you condense that into a program, if you will, that take all the lessons learned rather than take 10 years to learn it. You'll learn it and you know, how long, what is sort of the up ramp for people in terms of amount of time and effort?

Mark
I mean, can really get going in about 16 weeks. Okay. Yeah.

Grant
That's, that's amazing. It's amazing. Have you do you participate in any sort of real estate investing other than raw land?

Mark
No, because I don't have an advantage in any other real estate niche other than raw land. So I'm a inch wide, and a mile deep. So and no one can really get my returns, it would be nice to get depreciation because land lasts forever. But that being said, I don't have to deal with the depreciation like there is depreciation for reason I don't have to deal with any physical structures. So I like the headache free piece of it. And I got it 90% automated with software and expensive virtual assistants.

Grant
That's incredible. So tell me about your, your best type of client that would come to you and say, hey, I want to participate in building passive income with your program. What does that look like? Who do you know? 

Mark
You gotta have a burning desire to change your life? Right? You don't have to grit. So anything we're doing in life is inherently hard. And so it's kind of like hockey, right? People who play hockey, really love hockey, because they love it enough to get their teeth knocked out and get back up. It's the same thing in business. You have to love what you're doing enough to get knocked down and get back up. And so if you have a burning desire, give me that more than somebody who has cash. So I always say commitment over cash. It's, that's really all it takes.

Grant
How much cash did you have when you got started? I mean, it wasn't a ton. Right?

Mark
I start with $3,000. My buddy Durant's are $800. We think that, you know, 5000 is a is a really easy number. We have some clients who start with $500. 

Grant
So you really don't need a whole lot of cash is needed that commitment or that grip that that desire to move forward with it. Okay, very good. So, any other tips that you'd want to share with our listeners on on doing this?

Mark
Well, if I were the listener, I would be thinking, well, Grant. It's so great. Why is Marc teaching it?

Grant
That's gone through my mind. I mean, You're talking Yeah. 300% To 1,000% return.

Mark
Right, right. So to answer the question, because when I started teaching that my wife asked me the same questions like, aren't you going to create your own competition? And it's a very valid question. So I started putting on my investment banker hat. And what's the first thing, investment banker looks at? How big is the market, and there are billions of acres of raw land available in the United States. And there is literally do you couldn't think of a more boring niche, like you could go on HGTV or the DIY Network and think, Oh, I'm gonna watch flip this land. The before pictures are all in the after pictures are all in. Plus, there's no hedge funds, there's no private equity groups. So you meet a million people can be in this niche, will all run out of money, before we run out of deal flow.

Grant
Plenty of opportunity for sure. So is some of this sort of altruistic in terms of you know, you want to give back, you want to see others sort of experience some of the same benefits you have is, is there a component to that that's driven yet to create these systems?

Mark
I mean, that really is my, my purpose, honestly, because, you know, buying and selling land is great. It's helped five people, really, my family. Yeah, that being said, nobody ever bought a piece of land for me, you know, called me and said, Mark, you changed my life with this land investment, but being able to help people retire their spouses, so they could spend more time with their children, being able to have people replace their income, and really get out of what I call so economic dependency, which means that they're personally not working. They're not making any money, so that they can move up Maslow's hierarchy of needs, into self actualization, and solve not just their money problems, but their time problems, to explore their highest purpose in life. That has been the most gratifying thing for me, professionally. And I absolutely love waking up to that idea every day.

Grant
This is the "why" of your journey. Right there. That last sentence, isn't it? Yeah, it's helping them to get out of that solo economic dependency for sure. You had mentioned at one point, or I saw when I was doing some reviews on you, five reasons you should be creative, Pat, you should be creating passive income in raw land. What are those five reasons?

Mark
The first reason is, it's just so simple. All you got is a piece of land and a buyer and a seller. So you know, juxtapose that to like, say multifamily, where you've got to raise millions of dollars, you have to get private capital, you have to get investors, you could spend a million dollars just on due diligence alone. So it's just a much simpler way to go. The other issue is there's just no headaches, nobody's calling you up at three in the morning saying my land is leaking. So you get to go to bed every night, knowing that you don't have to deal with the typical headaches of real estate, tenants, termites, toilets, that kind of thing. So you know, another reason would be that it cash flows. So why not have this passive income come in, and get total freedom in life. So you can work when you want, where you want, and with whom you want. I think another reason is just that there's no limit to it. So you can grow as big or, you know, you can get to a point where you kind of like the Mexican fishermen, you have enough type of thing. And then I just think the other reason, it's a lot of fun. It's a lot of fun. And it's not building another job for you, yourself if you just automate it. And I think that's great.

Grant
Yeah, yeah, that is great. It's interesting that you found this niche. I love how you described it. It's narrow and yet very deep, you become very specialized in this. That's awesome. Mark. Thanks for taking the time with us today. Any final comments or tips you want to share with our listeners?

Mark
I always love this quote from Zig Ziglar. If you'll do for the next three to five years, what other people won't do, you'll be able to do for the rest of your life. What other people can't do.

Grant
That's a very enabling. I love that for sure. Gosh, that's awesome. Mark. Thanks for taking the time, "The Land Geek". I appreciate you doing this. And everyone thanks for listening to another episode of Financial Investing Radio. And until next time, check out thelandgeek.com

In this episode, I have the opportunity to talk with a self made entrepreneur who's followed the footsteps of her amazing dad, and in the journey has discovered what the tips are that the wealthy use to invest to change your life.

Grant
Hey, everybody, welcome to another episode of Financial investing radio. So I have been trying to track down this person multiple times and admitted it was my fault. I could not get my calendar right to meet with Stephanie Walter. So glad to have her here with me today. I'm fascinated with her background, what she's done in terms of growing wealth. But before I go any further, Stephanie, welcome.

Stephanie
Thank you so much for having me. I appreciate it. 

Grant
Yes, this is fun to have you here. Your journey is a fascinating one to me, because it's this journey as I reviewed it, of gathering some financial capabilities, but then not resting on that, but rather using it to leverage for future wealth. So I don't want to give that away because I want I want our listeners to hear this cool journey that you've gone on. But let's rewind. Okay, let's uh, we won't go back to where you were raised as a kid. But let's go back to you get out of school, and you're thinking I'm gonna go do some work. And that led you down a certain path? Would you talk about that? Yeah, I did what like most people do, I got it. I just got a regular job with a corporation.

Stephanie
I had some interest in insurance. So I became a claims adjuster. And, and I sort of moved up the ranks pretty pretty quickly to where I was working kind of as a liaison between the attorneys in that represented the insurance companies and, and the insurance company. So that was, that was really interesting, but just, you know, working in a corporate setting, I remember that, you know, my pivotal point was I was getting a 2% Raise after my superiors had said, what a fantastic job I was. You're welcome all 2% Did you get to keep all that 2%? Or did you know you got to keep? 

Grant
That's impressive. Yeah.

Stephanie
And I went home to my Dad, I just bought a house and was like, Dad, I just, you know, look at how much gets taken out. But with taxes, it was a big learning experience. I mean, well, as you know, I did put, you know, seven years into it, but just realize that, you know, if I'm making these 2% races for the rest of my life, you know, what is that going to look like? And my dad was an entrepreneur, actually, he's a second generation entrepreneur. And he's like, Well, you know, what you're gonna get if you stay in this, but if you go out on your own, you know, really what you build will be up to you. And it's your choice to do what you want to do. And I gave my my two week notice probably the next day, did you really? Oh, wow. That's okay. Wow, a woman a decision and action. That's awesome.

Grant
So, all right, so you gave you gave the two week notice you left, and then you didn't go to the pool? That's for sure. What did you go though?

Stephanie
Well, I have a I have a lot of relatives and insurance. And that's kind of how I started in doing in claims to begin with. And so I just knew, you know, the company I was really familiar with, went and signed up with them, took all the classes to become an agent and and just, you know, started started working, you know, right off the bat, state and insurance agent for about 16 years. 

See, I started that I'm trying to think of like timeframes, I think it was 2004. And then right around that same time, I kind of decided, you know, with the when the bottom fell out to buy some real estate, single family homes, right in an area in Denver, I'm a native, as I mentioned, where I felt like if there would be growth, from Denver that, you know, over time, these would probably be good, good investments to have. And that was in the Sloan's Lake area if people are familiar. And so I became, you know, a untrained landlord, as well as a business owner at the same time, all in one shot. So quick question. So when you did this transition out of the corporate world, into the entrepreneur going to do myself.

Grant
How many entrepreneur books did you read before you got started?

Stephanie
You know, I? I didn't read that many. 

Grant
Yeah, that's like I could tell you just jumped in and went after it. Right? You got going on.

Stephanie
I think also my my step up in that area was I'd see my dad growing up who had never, who had always had businesses and so to I never saw him work a nine to five job, you know, have a two week vacation or anything like that. So I had a very good example of what an entrepreneur looks like. And so that's probably why I didn't need to read books. I have since read a lot of books. 

Grant
But yeah, yeah. But you had a role model, you had a mentor to follow after. Alright, so you go through this journey, you run your real, or excuse me, your insurance agency for 16 years. What happened?

Stephanie
I mean, as time went on, there was you know, also some distaff dissatisfaction. Because you, you know, you really like your clients, and they're doing business because of you. But then there's this big, you know, corporation behind you, mine was Farmers Insurance, who, you know, ultimately makes the decisions based on, you know, the claims and the the rate changes and things like that. So that became kind of frustrating. But then also, you know, again, my dad was, you know, pretty. He passed away, actually, shortly after I started my agency, but I'm sorry, yeah, thank you. But I had, I remembered a lot of things as time went on. I was like, Oh, I remember when Dad said that. And one of the things he always said was, don't put all your eggs in one basket. And that was for me, that meant just, you know, don't continue, farmers was very big on, take a loan out, to keep running your visit business, make it bigger, make it better, all these things, where I just sort of directed my money in my growth into real estate, because I felt like it wasn't so attached to to the business. And I loved real estate. I didn't know much about it. I certainly wasn't very educated about it.

Oh, I think it was 2016 I had gotten an invitation to a boot camp and about buying apartments, which I had always been curious about, oh, cool. Went into there. And that's where I first heard the term syndication. And I was I was just blown away, I'd never heard that I loved the idea of a group of people buying something that no one could do on their own. And I from that point on, I was all in there. I did about three years thing me maybe it was only No, I think it was only two years of education, which, you know, was an investment, but you come out of that bait being able to be very knowledgeable about commercial real estate, which is very different than residential real estate residential. 

Grant
So if I hear you, right, I think you said that this transition to real estate, it was a diversification strategy for you following your dad's counsel, right not to have all your eggs in one basket. You still had the insurance company at least for a while, right? And then then you started investing in the real estate, is that right? 

Stephanie
Yeah. i And well, I had all I had invested, you know, in the single family homes and they're, you know, through the last crash and then wanted to do the apartments and then in 2016, that really was probably, I mean, I kept running my agency obviously, until actually last year when I Um, my investing had my income from investing had exceeded my, my business income. So I was able to retire, or in my case, just do do a different career for a while.

Grant
I love that when I saw that in your profile, I thought that was the ultimate, which was to sort of break away. It's that, hey, I'm no longer just going to be a business sort of operator, right? I'm actually going to step aside and let let your income or your assets generate that income for you, right. It's the money's working for you. And I saw that in your notes too, which was a, you said some interesting about the way the wealthy do it, which is the wealthy have their money working for them? Was that always at the forefront of your mind? Or did you sort of discover that along the way? 

Stephanie
No, that's a that's a big, I think it was big, the aha moment for me. And how I describe it is that I believe most people, and I was one of those most people believed in an accumulation model of money, which meant for most people is I'm going to accumulate the money in my 401k. I never really, you know, went down that path from owning my own business, I wanted to accumulate my money in real estate. But yet my idea was the same, which is I'm going to buy this property and manage it for 30 years until the loan is paid off. And then I will live off of the rents or whatever at that time. But when I started raising money for the syndications, I started becoming friends and, you know, meeting really, very interesting, you know, wealthy people, and just notice that they were doing stuff differently than than I was, I couldn't quite put my finger on it. But after a while of working with them, I realized that they look at their money as a good word is utilization. They're always using their money. They're using their money to give them cash flow. And there was kind of the light bulb that came on for me. Later on. You know, I started doing syndications in 2018, and I think it was the end of 2019 that I started to sell my properties one by one, and invest them in syndications. Because I realized I had these this great big chunk just sitting in and it's really not doing much as far as you know, cash flow, helping me out at all. Whereas, you know, if I just shifted my focus and where I put my money, the returns as far as cash flow, were really significant. Yeah, Major. 

Grant
Have you ever played that game called cashflow there? I've heard about the Robert Kiyosaki Robert Kiyosaki game. Yeah, I've never played it, you shouldn't play I have a feeling you do really well with it. 

Stephanie
Yeah. 

Grant
Excellent with cash flow is king, as you're as you're pointing out, and the ability to get that cash flow lined up and consistently look at money as a tool to deliver the cash flow is critical. So that 401k experience, I've had that same journey where I was putting money I was putting money in in a 401k. And then the first time the market in my career, you know, did this massive dive down, right, and I'm sitting there thinking, I know that there's someone on Wall Street's buying puts against my investment making a ton of money while I'm losing a ton, wait, who came up with this strategy, right? You know, also you could keep your you know, 2% Raise, it is it is a disservice to the working class for sure. So, did you did you ever get involved in the 401k strategy? Or, or did you ultimately just leave it wouldn't? What happened there? 

Stephanie
Eight, actually, I have my series six, when to be a n 63. So for the audience, that just means that I was registered to sell products, you know, mutual funds and things like that to my database of clients. I never really like to that I never really, I felt the variability and that the training that I was given never seemed to give me a lot of anxiety. And so I never really did much with that. And inevitably let those those licenses go. But though the 401k Actually, I'm in the process of writing a book and there's going to be there's one chapter that's dedicated to the 401k, which I do a great deal, you know of research on and you you pit. You know some really good points on on that. And but it's just letting people question it because there are so many things about the 401 K that are, you know, you're giving you're giving your money to someone else to watch. And they're not doing it for free. And financial institutions want to hold on to your money for as long as they can and give it back, as you know, little as they can. And so you're you're using your money to subsidize things that you probably don't even know your money's doing. And I know, these are hard things to come to in this day and age when it's just like, can I just give my money to this person and have him manage it? Or have the 401k make those decisions? Why do I have to be involved with everything, it really is a significant amount of money that you pay to these financial institutions. And you can do much better on your own. But I won't go into that. That's a whole nother discussion. 

Grant
That but that's your journey, though. I think your journey is you figured out Wait a minute, I can do something differently with this. And you took control of it right? You did the education you put in the work, you discovered cash flows. The secret to this, let my money work on just building even small incremental cash flow growth and how critical that is in the strategy.

Stephanie
One other point just quickly is I was watching something on TV last night, and there was several commercials that came on. And they were women. They were geared to women and there they were talking about, you know, women and finances are bad with finances. And the whole message in this commercial was save your money for retirement or whatever. And I was like, I want to just get out the message that it's not saving your money. It's investing your money and learn how to be a good investor, because those are the things that are going to allow you to retire early or retire in not a poverty situation. But in you know, invest and learn how to invest because it isn't as hard as people think it is, you know? 

Grant
Yeah, absolutely. I love that and are good. I understand. You're right. Did you say the messaging in that TV ad was that women are bad with finances? Is that what you say? 

Stephanie
Yeah, I think well, they were trying to you know, women were kind of trying to empower themselves by saying, I'm not bad with finances, even though you know, I've been told that women are bad with finances, but it seemed like the solution for them in that commercial was save. Save your money. You say? Like, no, no, no. Yeah. Yeah. Ah, good. Good. Debt should produce cashflow. Right. That's, that's actually that's actually the message right there. One of the things I noticed as I was looking at your background, and the things you've done, as you had made a comment if I if I've got this right.

Grant
Money myths, you talked about money myths, and I think you just touched on one of those. What other money myths? Have you learned that we hold on to that? Are these incorrect notions that actually hurt us financially? What have you found? 

Stephanie
There's one very significant one, which is people will say, well, the wealthy people, you know, I've talked to people and they'll be like, Oh, but the reason the people you work with have so much money is because they're willing to take these crazy risks with their money, and stuff like that high risks. That's that's why they got where they are, they are and I say actually, nothing could be further from the truth. The majority of wealthy people invest in extremely conservative things. They, the other myth is, you know, put put your money into the stock market. Many people can't tell you in their mutual funds, what they're invested in, what even one company is that they're invested in, let alone who's who are the team members on that, you know, on board or who's the CEO of the company, they can't tell you anything. Whereas wealthy people they tend to invest if they do invest in businesses, they invest directly in a business, either for themselves or they understand the dynamics of the business and the business plan and they invest that way. If they invest in real estate, they largely do the syndications and they get to know the team that's running, running the syndication. They know what kind of experience they have, what kind of past returns they've done. They do their homework in that sense. But then once they've invested in the team, they tend to invest again and again. And these are very conservative things that they're investing in things that are tangible in value. That's another. That's right. Three things I'm hitting is wealthy people tend to invest in things that have tangible value, which means, you know, an apartment complex Well, let's say, for some reason, it's terribly mismanaged and it goes out of nobody wants to be in it anymore. Well, you still have the building and the land in which you can sell. So there's, there's tangible value there.

Grant
Okay, so the tangible piece, that's interesting, too, especially in today's world, where digital assets are becoming more and more of a thing, right. In fact, I saw recently, someone talking about digital real estate on one of the online ads, you know, doesn't feel tangible, right. Are all the NFT stuff going on? Right are the crypto so many intangibles today as well? It Do you have any position or thoughts when they do that? 

Stephanie
I don't because I guess I always take the line if I if I don't understand it, or if it's not something that I want, you know, I guess it comes down to really understanding it. I've had a lot of people explain it to me, but I still don't, you know, the ups and downs, you know, lately, it's been a pretty big crash, you know, people are saying that's a good thing. Okay, I still don't really understand it. And I know that they're planning on, you know, digitizing, then that's, that's probably, you know, not too far away in real estate, you know, 10, I would hope it's going to be 1015 years in the future. I don't know what that looks like. But that's definitely something in the future. I don't think that is wrong. And when I say that the wealthy people invest in, they probably do have some investments in cryptocurrency, but that's probably less than 5% of their portfolio.

Great majority of what they're invested in, probably 30% Every year.

If you go on to the name of this group is called Tiger 21. And it's, it's for wealthy, wealthy people, I think they have to show a net worth of at least five or $10 million to get in the group. But every year, by agreeing to be in this group, they agreed to release as a group, kind of a asset allocation of all of their investments, and every year, there doesn't change that much. And over 30% is in real estate. 

Grant
Really. Okay. All right. That's interesting. That's fascinating. One of the things that I noticed as I looked at it now Now the name your company, you're gonna have to help me because is it Erbe Wealth? This Erbe? 

Stephanie
Well, Erbe Wealth, okay, everybody. Well, thank you Erbe Wealth. 

Grant
Well, so I'm on your site, I was on your site. And I was checking out. This is really cool. erbewealth.com. And I went to the about page and told my listeners, you should check this out. Stephanie's got this thing called the 15% Plus community. Can you talk about that? 

Stephanie
Yeah, well, I mean, my partner and I started working together in 2018. And we both realized, as many successful pairings go is that he had some skills in in this in the certain areas, and I had skills in certain areas. And together, we have really done very well together, and we just closed on our 12th deal about two weeks ago. And every single deal that we put together has returned over 15%. But truthfully, every every one that we've done up to this point has returned over 20%. So the person designing my website said, I don't know you might want to just put that down to 15%. But every deal that we have done has had an annualized rate of return of over 20%. So if you're we, our goal is when we hold the money for three to four years, then we'll double your investment in that time. And we have we've done that successfully, and we have a system and we're will we're continuing with it. 

Grant
That's amazing and that's that's leveraging the syndicated real estate strategy. 

Stephanie
Yep, that's we buy apartment complexes and a very specific market in the country, we have a very specific buying strategy that allows us to get in and make money when we purchase it, purchase the property. And then we just find areas where there's there's been a lot of growth, and there's been a lot of rent growth and population growth. And I think if anyone's been listening to the news is we know that there's a housing shortage. So we buy in areas where, you know, there's a great deal of population growth and not enough housing, 

Grant
What is your what is your perfect client look like? What's their profile? Like?

Stephanie
I mean, I would like it to be more broad than than it is, it's usually, you know, well, to invest in our deals, you need to be accredited, which, you know, that means you need to have a net worth of a million, or you have a $200,000 salary.

And so I love working with business owners, that's kind of my thought to I tend to attract a lot our business owners, because, well, one is, they're so busy trying to make their business work, and I'm talking more like smaller business owners, you know, and, you know, trying to manage their company, which they're very passionate about, but business owners tend to not really plan that well for their retirement, because they're just, you know, they're thinking all about this. Yeah. Run on the business constantly, right? Yep. Right. So those are, you know, those are the people I love to work with, just to you know, get them some cash flow, that that is nice, but as well as just having, you know, great returns that they don't have to manage, you know, at all. 

Grant
So, okay, very good. While you've been very generous with your time, can you give our listeners a place to go to to learn more about you? Yeah, to your website? 

Stephanie
Yep. That's my website, which is erbewealth.com.

There's, I have I think, right now, it's not a lot, but it's about 15 articles that I've written, that just I try to really educate the newer investor that isn't familiar with this type of investing. And then there's a track record of of all of our Not, not cherry cherry pick deals closer, every single deal that we've done together, up until this point, and then you can join, you know, the list the email list to get notifications, I like to really educate my investors, as well as then they get the first, you know, chance of getting the new investment when it comes out. But air Bay, actually is the German word for legacy. And my dad was a second generation, my grandfather came over on the boat right from Germany. And he became an entrepreneur after he paid his dues and did everything he needed to do to become a citizen. And then my dad, you know, followed in his footsteps and was an entrepreneur. 

Grant
So I was gonna ask you about the backstory on that name. I was trying to figure out Erbe. What is that? Yes, that's awesome. I appreciate that. 

Stephanie
Yeah, not to my dad, who never you know, saw any of this, but definitely, it's because of him that this has happened. I can tell you have an awesome dad. Really cool. 

Grant
That's awesome. Stephanie, any final comments that you want to share?

Stephanie
No, no, but I'd say you know, just just check on my website. I'm trying to, like I said, working on a book and that that'll be my next. I'm hoping to have it done by the end of summer. So when when it's available, it will be available on my website as well. 

Grant
That's awesome. Stephanie, thank you so much for taking the time with us today, everyone. 
Thanks for listening to another episode of Financial Investing Radio. And until next time, check out erbewealth.com.

In this episode, I have the opportunity to sit down with Christopher Nelson. A technology executive out of Silicon Valley who's figured out the secrets to helping you achieve passive income as a W-2 employee.

Grant
Hey, everybody, welcome to another episode of Financial Investing Radio. So today I have in the house with me, Mr. Dr. Why don't want to call you. Sophisticated, brilliant. Christopher Nelson is in the house here with me today. I love his subtitles technology executive real estate investor, author, podcast hosts and inventor of the space station. Was that right? Or did I get that right?

Christopher
I think you may have stretched on the space station. But I you know, space has always been a dream of mine. Right? I am a low tech tech technologist, a bit of a geek. So yes.

You can learn more here:

• Wealthward
• Thrive Community

Grant
Excellent. Excellent. Well, okay, so let's start with that. technologist geek. What does that mean? What? Tell me about your background?

Christopher
Yeah. So So my background, you know, interestingly enough, I started with just a love of technology, right? You know, I heard some people tell stories, the other day of how I think exploring and wanting to take apart, you know, televisions and, you know, anything remote controls, understand how they worked. And I just was fascinated, especially as the computer age started taking off. What can we do with these? So, you know, my thought was, I wanted to go to university and I wanted to learn how to become a software engineer, so studied very hard. And then when I went to my first internship junior year, with a large database company, and I was by myself working on this code, I started going crazy. I started thinking, what am I going to do? Like, I, I love this, I do not like this. And it was actually in a job fair that I met somebody who, who had a similar major who was working in technology consulting, he said, Hey, there's different things. It's not all you have to be a software engineer, I solve difficult technical problems with people moving businesses forward. And so that really, I mean, hit a lot of cylinders for me and took me off into technology, consulting, which is where I started my career.

Grant
That's awesome. I love that background. i It's funny, I didn't know that about you. I had a similar journey. I come through the technology world. But I ended up bouncing from doing my first startup right out of college. Because when you come out of college, I don't know if you know this, but you typically have all the answers, right? So so I jumped, I jumped right into startup, I'm gonna go solve these world problems. Clearly, everyone's having struggle with course, I failed miserably on my first startup. So then I jumped into the technology consulting world with back then one of the big six, you know, in Chicago doing some technology work. But yeah, it's funny, I jumped to the people side of it, also. And that, that was liberating for me, because if I spent all the time just and I love I still code today, don't tell anybody. But I use it as a tool to keep my brain active. But if I had to read every day, all day, I think I'd go crazy.

Christopher
Right? And, you know, it's, I actually tried to now actually take that message to people, kids graduating from college is the fact that you can actually be involved with technology. And it doesn't have to be this one way like we see, you know, again, media, movies presents this one view, but there's a lot of other things that you can do. And I found that it was great start to my career, to really get me launched. Give me a ton of skills. Give me a great background, because I did I went to work for Accenture, right that came out of one of the you know, the big six became the big four. Yeah, it was, you know, one of the big four back in the day. Well, well, we're constant names. 

Grant
Yeah, I did. KPMG. So there you go. Yeah, technology. There we go. Wow. Okay, which office were you located? Where were you?

Christopher
At San Francisco. I mean, I felt like that was a great opportunity because I while I was doing the tech consulting thing I did want to work for high tech, like I wanted to work for companies that were really, you know, moving the needle. And that's actually set me up. So about eight, nine years into my career, I realized that I had this great experience. And this is what I call in my book, Your career capital, which is a combination of your education, your experience and results. And I realized I could actually go trade this for equity in startup companies, because like you said, I've been working for these tech consulting companies, I got that figured out, right? Well, I went to work for my first startup, abject failure, right, I found myself and then a year nursing and Ulster having a bad boss. And I didn't know how I got there. But taking a step back, and I think a lot of us figure out pass through failure. And so I don't think we should fear that. And I realized I did not look like I did not think like an investor with my time. Like I'd been, you know, in the in the stock market investing since, you know, the 90s. But I had not thought like an investor with my time. So went back, put together a due diligence criteria started work in my network, what did people recommend? The next company I chose employee for 17, at a company called Splunk, in 2011, and up IPO in 2012, and it turned out to be a big win for my family.

Grant
Yeah, that's absolutely cool. Yeah, Splunk, boy, they have done a great thing for the industry. It's funny, united, similar routes, I, after I did my KPMG route for a number of years, I had this itch to get out to Silicon Valley. And so I was chatting with this startup company out there. And, and I said, my wife, you know, I'm just gonna fly out, you know, we're in Chicago, the time's gonna fly I just checked, probably won't do this, right. Uh, probably, but I just gotta go check them out. And of course, I get in there. I'm talking with them. And after several hours of whiteboarding and brain, brain exciting things, they go, do you want to, you know, come join us? And I'm like, Oh, I think the answer is yes. You know, and I remember being on the phone in the little conference. You know, maybe my mind's changed. You know, I think we're switching. We're moving out here. Yeah, I did several startups out there as well. And those course weren't much different. So you know, you need to have that first one that kicks you in the teeth, right? And it's like, okay, wait a minute. You do, you do?

Christopher
And I think sometimes, right? It is, you know, those those learnings that help like anything else, right? I mean, this is where I'm trying to now build this thesis and conversation around, it's an investment of your time. So sometimes you go, you get skin in the game, and it's not the right thing. But then does that mean you stop investing altogether? No, you go and adjust your lens and you you go, and you get feedback, and then you go, and you do it again. And maybe this time you say, I'm just gonna, in my head, I may sign a four year contract, maybe let me just do two years, see what's there and track it as they go along. You're going to also be looking at those quarterly meetings, when they're giving readouts a lot differently, you're going to look at the market a lot differently and say, What can I do with my time?

Grant
So I think that's one of the cool things that I noticed about you when I was reviewing your profile. And it was this, it was not just let me go after doing this startup. But it was to leverage what I'm getting out of this either equity opportunities, but to move it into some passive opportunities. And I think that was, for me a real Aha, like, you know, earlier in my career, I wasn't even thinking that right? I'm doing the various startup companies. I'm like, go, go, go, go go. And you think you've got all this endless energy. And at some point, you think that way, but what I love is a year connecting the dots from take that energy and translate it into this passive mechanism that's going to benefit you. So I don't want to steal your thunder. But talk more about...

Christopher
Well, well, what led me to that is it was actually that first IPO. So all of a sudden, you know, I'll never forget that day was you know, April 18 2012. Phenomenal day. And but the most memorable moment wasn't this big party, the fact that it went out double what we thought it was, was when I went home that night, my pregnant wife is sitting there, she asked me two questions. She says, When can we get the money and when can we buy the house? And I had no answers. And I literally went into the next room and started emotionally, you know, falling apart a little What I didn't realize is I was experiencing what's called a sudden wealth event, which is sudden wealth syndrome, which is a psychological syndrome that when you have these things you feel lonely, depressed, stressed out. If you're not prepared. You're not and I wasn't like I'd fought so hard to get there like most of us do. I wasn't prepared aired in so what I found grant is that many people aren't prepared like they like and I literally have been interviewing a lot of people from my book a lot of technology in place. And they will. I heard Mark Cuban say like you have to work for equity if you want to get ahead or, you know, I heard Gary Vee or somebody, Robert Kiyosaki gives them the idea that they want to be an owner. They go get it, and then that's it. They stop. And so my experience was okay, now we got this. I was okay. How do we now start getting this? You know, because I was tired during the six month lockout period, over 90% of your wealth and a single stock. I'm telling you, man, like I ate a ton of Tom's during that time, like you do. Yeah. Yeah. So it was really been this plan of, you know, how do we start moving it into something passive? How do we get it to that, you know, Kiyosaki goal. And so as we were doing that, as we were, you know, scouring the earth in the Bay Area, trying to understand it, we started getting exposed to real estate syndications, we started getting exposed to crowdfunding. And we realized that we had to get sharp on the math, we need to really understand how to do diligence, how to, how to invest. And, you know, we went on a journey of where we figured out how to start getting some skin in the game that, you know, was something that we could afford that we could afford to lose, and start really understanding those types of investments. And as we started seeing more and more success, other people started raising their hands, because we were very excited, we would talk about what we're doing. We always feel, you know, with our children with our friends, we should talk about careers and money. Like we should just have the conversation in an appropriate way. Not in a braggadocious way. But in a What are you doing? What are we doing? Because if we don't talk about it, you know, like you do here? Yeah, we don't do anything is people who sit on it. Yeah. Yeah.

Grant
You do, you do sit on it. Absolutely. So. So tell me about I think I saw something that you wrote. "From No Dough to IPO". I love that.

Christopher
Yeah. And so this is, this is the first book that I'm writing. And it's really going to be a playbook on how to tech employees think like an investor when trading their time and talent for equity. Right. And I want it you know, you said it grant like, nobody gave us the playbook. Right, we had to go in there. And we had a trip over our own shoelaces, you know, get beat up, figure this thing out. I you know, I have interviewed people in my network who have done three or four IPOs serially, I've interviewed people that have never done anything pre they've all been in post companies, and they get these companies public, and they take them from, you know, 500 million to a couple billion dollars. And they've gotten tremendous wealth, already liquid the whole time. And I've turned it around and put it into a framework so that w two employees can really be time investors and say, you know, for myself, I had lost a small business. That was my side hustle, I was broke in, I realized I had to go and work for startup companies if I wanted to get ahead. And I think many people are trying to figure out, how do they leverage their skills, their time and their talent to do that? I wanted to put it out into a book that says, here's how you actually set yourself up. Here's how you negotiate for the equity. And then once you get it, what do you do you need to plan protect, and then you need to start producing passive income.

Grant
So that framework that you've alluded to, and obviously it's in your book and what it is that you provide in terms of services to others? Sure. In that framework, how far does your organization get involved in terms of taking people through that and applying it as a good go all the way through into the real estate piece itself? Or tell me more about that?

Christopher
Well, so I mean, the book is really launching the education platform. So right now the book is really the key anchor, we are looking to follow with some online training that people can do. And we're considering some coaching programs. But yeah, I mean, getting back to the origin story is that this this endeavor started from us doing done for you investments for technology employees, my wife and I who were actively investing in, you know, multifamily in ATMs and mobile home parks. We were asked by our friends to help start creating some vehicles for them because they wanted the success they didn't want to go put it together. So that's how Welford capital was born five years ago was in in an effort to help technology employees and you know, we're the lead investor, we're leading with our families dollars, we're creating a model portfolio that's based on where we've taken our tech equity and how now we've put it to work in real estate with our my wife and I shared goal the goal of getting to $300,000 of passive income a year.

Grant
Yeah, that's awesome to get to that. Point, what's the trajectory? Like? And I? I'm sure part of the answer is how much you're putting into it financially. But in order to in order for someone to get to some, I guess what I would call, in fact, I was watching on your YouTube channel use an interesting phrase I'm looking at right here. It was something like, yeah, you wanted to get to a point where your passive income could overcome your W two income, you made that video. So I realized that's gonna vary by person. But yeah, sure range like, Is it A, is that a two year or five year journey? What does that look like?

Christopher
Well, I think to your point, Grant, it depends on, you know, how much you can deploy, I really think that it is a five year plus journey. For most people, I think that if you have if you're sitting on a ton of dry powder, right, if you've had, you know, a couple of exits, you know, still it's gonna take time to deploy that capital. Right. And this is what I tell people is, if you walked in, you know, with $10 million, you would not want to put that into a single real estate investment, because then you're going to have the same thing you should if you're sitting in the single tech stock, you're gonna be not diversified. Right? So I think on average, it's, it's, it's a five year journey to really start making some impact. And this is why, you know, I want to go upstream to people earlier in their careers thinking about it, because my honest belief is that if I can free technology employees from having to work for a W two, many of them still want to make an impact. And this is the conversation I love having is if you didn't have to work for money, what would you do? You know, eight out of 10 tech employees don't say I'm gonna go travel the world, they'd be like, I want to solve this problem, or I want to fix that problem. And that, to me, is is really powerful in our community, right, as a technology employees is how can we unleash that power, and allow people to do the impact work and not be focusing just on the survival work?

Grant
So I have a fundamental question for you, when I saw that your focus was on the tech space employee. I'm assuming this could apply to any sort of w two employee? Or is there something about what you're doing that says, This is really relevant to a tech space employee?

Christopher
Well, so the reality is, is, you know, I want to be able to speak into my people, my focus, my niche is focused on technology employees that I really understand, I understand, you know, their concerns, I understand, you know, you know, how it is, it's a very high paced, fast paced lifestyle. And so, in. So that's where, like, my writing my books, and everything is very much focused on how do I help these people and try and pay it forward, if you will. Now, on the real estate side, it's interesting that I've been very focused on technology and plays in helping them however, different people relate to the story, right? I mean, I have people that come in and say, Oh, I've I've gotten equity, it hasn't been in tech. Can I invest with you? Of course, you can, you know, or, interestingly enough, I had a jockey that reached out and wanted to get a call and said, I actually won this big stakes race. That was my big one. And I went through the sudden wealth event, I really related to what you were talking about that, can I invest with you? And so of course, I'm open to everyone participating in our investments, but I just feel really nobody feels sorry for somebody who goes through the sudden wealth event, right, you know, works in an IPO, all of a sudden, you get a multiple seven figure, payday, nobody feels sorry for them. But those people still struggle. A lot of us, myself included, didn't come from money, had no idea what to do with it. Yeah. Right. And so it's really, you know, in my mind that I want to really help and lean back into my community, because as I mentioned before, like I think that that community, financially independent will actually then turn around and bring some huge benefits to to everybody.

Grant
I can relate with that, I grew up milking cows and hauling hay. So yeah, that was that was that was the foundation of that. So I'm interested in your thoughts around because one of the cool things I saw that you did was you're helping people think through their career paths, and with everything that's taken place with COVID and the impact to the workforce and and even what people are expecting from their jobs today and how that changed. The mindsets changed. How is that impacting the things that you're doing?

Christopher
Well, I think it's creating more opportunities, right? I think coming post COVID I mean, it was in the middle of COVID. I ended up going back to work for another technology company. I had a very interesting offer. And it was for an all remote company that was built all remote they came it was developed all remote in 2011. And it had an An amazing trajectory and amazing story. And it was important for me to really experienced that because I think that the future of technology employment, while I know a lot of people are being brought back into the office, I think it will truly, ultimately become hybrid, that where you're going to have office time to connect, you're going to have a lot of home time. What this allows for, you know, I think certain roles, certain specialized roles is the ability to make tech money and live in the low cost, you know, income or a low cost of living areas. Yeah, that wouldn't change. It is in this to me provides opportunity to what to save more to invest more, right? There's this whole concept of people talk about lifestyle by design, well, what if you designed your lifestyle to invest more, and I mean, this is what, you know, really motivated us to leave the Bay Area, come to Austin, Texas, in 2017, where, at that point, we got in here at a much lower price point, we are able to sell our house in the Bay Area, get some single family homes and this home, so we're able to now more passive income, right, but lower our overall cost of living so that then we can invest more, I think there's going to be more of that type of opportunity. I think that, you know, there, people are going to be able to have much more flexibility in that geography, which I think creates more overall opportunities.

Grant
Yeah, definitely see the the change there with that. And in fact, having so many people shift and move around the country right now you see this sort of exodus from some of the coasts, you know, coming in to the Central part, companies, large companies that we've seen, of course, moved out of places like California and such, you've talked about in your material that I reviewed, on your YouTube channel, some of the reasons to invest in real estate, and why you picked that as an avenue for doing this. There's obviously lots of places certainly crypto which has, of course, been kicked in the teeth, you know, recently, but, but why why real estate, he touched on that.

Christopher
I would say the most compelling reason right now, to be investing in real estate is the income by like, a lot of, you know, asset classes do not provide, you know, to me, there's there's the construct of a investment that says I made for income. Income to me is not a growth vehicle that says I'm going to take your money and expand it know, an income vehicle, like real estate, or like what we used to have in the bond market, you know, pre 2008 is, I am going to preserve your capital, potentially increase that, and I'm going to give you returns on top of that. I think that real estate is the place where then you have a hard asset behind it, that again, gives you you know, those those multiple benefits, I know that, you know, four ways to make money in real estate, right, there's the cashflow, there's the appreciation, there's the equity pay down, and then guess what the tax benefits as well, right? We know that we need a lot less real estate money to duplicate w two or where we want to be with w two income because of the fact that we don't need as much because you get a lot of the depreciation, you really get, you know, good tax planner going there. You know, you can you can reduce that. But this is where, you know, I don't see any other vehicle right now that's going toe to toe that can preserve capital and put cash in your pocket.

Grant
Yeah. What are your thoughts about current trajectory, you know, around interest rates and potential soft landings of the real estate market? Is that create any concerns for you?

Christopher
I mean, it definitely creates concerns. I mean, I think that a lot of the the increase in interest rates has slowed down a lot of the transactions on the real estate front. I know that for, you know, multifamily, you know, partners that we have here in Central Texas, you know, there's just a real long pause, like, where's this going to land? And I know, a lot of, you know, investments that were in process, you know, now have have stopped because, I mean, just negotiations because the rates are moving so quickly. I do believe that, you know, this increase in interest rates will do what, you know, the government is looking to, which is going to slow down, cool it off, prices are going to have to start ratcheting down to excuse me move the market forward. But however, in real estate, there are opportunities to buy I know that I'm very bullish right now in the mobile home market. I know also in the self storage market, there still are a lot of opportunities because the fact that those industries have not been standardized, let's say like multifamily, or a lot of you know of some other commercial properties as well, there still are real buying opportunities there. And so I think if you stick to the fundamentals of Buy low, get something that's cash flowing very well, there, then is the opportunity to still make money.

Grant
Is there a particular asset class real estate that you enjoy more than the others and mobile homes? Is the multifamily? Do you? Is there a particular place people should start, you know, when they think about this?

Christopher
Well, I mean, I think everybody should start with with the fundamentals. So there's a, a book that I recommend to everybody, it's what every real estate investor needs to know about cash flow by Frank gallon le, and it's a math book, and it gives you the fundamentals. And you go online, you get a spreadsheet, and you understand the math, not complicated, but that's where everyone should start. And it gives you a breadth of asset classes. For me right now, I am bullish, and my partners and I are acquiring in the mobile home park space because of the fact that it's a scarce asset class, scarce meaning that's in high demand. And for the demand, they're not making any more. So that means that if you look at, you know, I have a chart that I share with people that the net operating income of mobile home parks has been steady up into the right since before the year 2000, because of this whole thing that, you know, when you have a scarce asset class, that is going to force appreciation. The other thing is, you know, there's there's a lot of inefficiencies, and a lot of, you know, mom and pops that are baby boomers that are looking to get out right now. So, you know, with a good operations team, there's, there's a buying opportunity. And I do want to I think one of my partner said the other day, and I love this piece of advice to say when when times are good, you want to be in affordable housing, when times are bad, you really want to be in affordable housing. Well said, yeah, right. I like that. I literally wrote it down. As soon as it says, I go, that's gold, that isn't that is good.

Grant
I picked up that wealth word is a verb. That's one of the things that I discovered in reviewing what you're doing. Tell me more about this verb. And what I mean by that is, I'm trying to relate it to those that are listening, where they may or may not be in the tech space. But let's say you're in the tech space, and they're early in their careers, and they're thinking, How do I get started? What do I do next? What's the verb? Right? What's the action that I should do? What I start doing differently?

Christopher
Well, and so the whole concept is always be moving towards wealth. And this is always just having your eyes and I do have spec. So you know, having your investor lens on. And so I think that, if it's in your W-2 job, you know, it really is then how can you work for equity? How can you get a piece of ownership and this, you know, I call it Kiyosaki is bridge, like he doesn't call it out in his book, because he sort of has, you're the employee and the owner over here, there's this gap. But equity when you're able to get, you know, again, can that be in technology companies? Sure, could you, you know, I know people work in private equity companies, they get staked there, you know, and other public companies, you can too. But if you're working for equity, and you have salary, you know, a bonus, and you have this equity, what I always tell people, then you can live on your salary, you can party with your bonus, and you invest all your equity, you know, that then gives you this additional capacity to be able to start investing. And then, you know, as you and I both know, on the investing front, it's how do you stay diversified? How do you have a portfolio that's fit for your lifestyle, and you have goals, and you're working on it? And to me, you know, in my wife and I created this word, you know, sitting around and trying to think of how can we create this word that really encourages people to just be thinking about moving towards wealth, which could be your health, right? You want to be taking care of your health, you want to be taking care of your mind, you know, because wealth to us is an abundance of resources. And that can be you know, energy, it can be, you know, a network, right networking with people is moving towards wealth. So, that was really the spirit behind it.

Grant
That's awesome. I love that now if someone wanted to learn more about you and your organization, what you're providing where do they go? How do they find this?

Christopher
Well, they can go to Wealthward.com. That is my core website where they can go learn more about what we do and get time on my calendar. They want to understand what we're doing in the mobile home park space, that is ThriveCommunity.fund. There they can go see a free webinar of you know, really how we're, we're, we're really doing something very really interesting in that space and have this blue ocean concept. And then tech careers and money talk. That is my podcast I'm recording episodes gonna be launching in September. But that's tech careers and money talk where, you know, like yourself, I'm facilitating this conversation in the corner of tech careers, you know, and really, there'll be a Tuesday episode. That's all about how you build and grow your career. How do you go from individual contributor to manager, there's going to be a lot of strategy, there's going to be a lot of interviews and use cases, then Thursday's money day, right? We want to bring in stock options, lawyers, what do you need to be looking for when you're negotiating for equity? How do you generate passive income? How do you buy houses in high cost of living areas? Right? We want to really speak into all the problems and challenges that people have and in hear from people who've been successful.

Grant
What a fun journey. I look forward to listening to what you're doing on your podcast. That's really awesome.

Christopher
Well, yeah, and I mean, it sounds like, it sounds like you're gonna be a guest too, because little did I know about your secret tech background. Like I think we got some, some stuff to talk about.

Grant
Oh, yeah. Like I said, at the beginning, three in Silicon Valley sold them all IBM acquired one of them. So I spent some time as an executive, they're definitely bounced out of that world.

Christopher
Yeah, I'm ready. Yeah, I'll be on the other side of the mic. I'll be asking the questions. There you go.

Grant
That's right. Good stuff. Christopher, this has been a pleasure. Any last comments you'd like to share with our listeners?

Christopher
Well, I think, you know, what I always like to share with everybody is just the fact that, you know, if you ensure that you are taking time, energy capacity to focus on this building your wealth, I think there's a true opportunity to, you know, live a life that is sustainable, and you can actually design it yourself. So that's my encouragement.

Grant
Why don't they teach this in school?

Christopher
Well, they may soon enough, I'm I'm working on that curriculum to say.

Grant
I think you're the one to put that curriculum together. 
So that's right. Yes. Hey, thanks for joining everybody. Thanks for listening to this episode of Financial Investing radio and until next time, reach out to Christopher Nelson.

Thank you for joining Grant on Financial Investing Radio. Don't forget to subscribe and leave feedback.

In this episode, I have the opportunity to sit down with someone that has digested and synthesize the tax code and brings the tax saving secrets to you.

Grant 
Hey, everybody, welcome to another episode of Financial investing radio. So today I have with me someone that just barely met. But as I review, his biography, his profile what he does, it is in one of those places, which I admittedly know so little about, I lean on so many people for help in this area. Now I get to meet with and speak with an expert in the area of how to take it to the tax man. All right, let me welcome Mark Meyers here today. Welcome, Mark.

Mark
Hey, thank you so much, Grant, I'm excited to chat with you about this. And, you know, hey, if you can keep more of that hard earned profit. It definitely helps in the wealth accumulation realm for sure. So this exciting topic.

Grant
Boy, for sure. You know, when when you think about taxes and talking about taxes, you know, it's probably right up there with flossing your teeth, right? It's like, oh, everyone should be doing it. Right. But oh, my gosh, do I really want to talk about taxes. Turns out, as I was reviewing some things that you have done to help people, individuals, businesses, really reduce their tax burden. And putting that money, like you said, or leaving that money back in your pocket, suddenly, it becomes really an interesting topic to address. But before you give away any secrets, let's back up. How is it that you got interested in taxes? What is it that even got you to this point? 

Mark
Grant, you know, it's an interesting story, because I started out my career at the University of Florida, with as an undergrad in exercise physiology, get my Master's in sports management, moved to New York City to manage health clubs, and then moved to Los Angeles to edit, manage more health clubs. And in the process of doing that, I helped a really large high end brand, open a number of different locations. And in that they were they went from a 10 clubs to over 100 clubs. And in that process, I really learn to be an owner operator, every club that I would open or go chant, you know, help return around, I'd have to really be mindful of driving revenue, minimizing expenses, putting the operations in in place, you know, the best practices in place to get the best output. And of course, I was compensated on EBIT margin, so I'd get a base, and then I'd have cash bonus based off of how profitable is the company process, I realized, you know, hey, I might be running health clubs. And I might have a background here, but I have a knack for running companies. And I know there's a lot more opportunity in the financial markets in the financial world, particular to consulting with business owners, that's when I said the light came on after, you know, working well over a decade, you know, 365 days a year, and these clubs are open from, you know, five in the morning till 12 At night, you know, they never got hit. So I'm like, Okay, I'm going to shift gears here and do something fun that can ultimately help other people, and also helped me kind of increase my income opportunity here. Get out of this glass ceiling environment.

Grant
Yeah. So So you are living this life of just constantly being on right, the lights on, right, because your clubs are on right, the gyms are open, and so you're trying to optimize as much as possible. Talk about school, hard knocks, right? I mean, you learn the lessons along the way, for sure, right? Oh, for sure.

Mark
I mean, it's one of those things where you know, every penny counts, particularly in that industry. And of course, I worked in a higher end layer. So it was, you know, we're looking at 200 plus dollar a month memberships with spa packages and training and Pilates and Yoga. But at the same time, you still have to be mindful of your margins. That's really, really important. So it was it was a nice experience. It was a nice way to understand how to really learn the p&l, learn the people, learn the drivers, and then of course transitioned over to say, hey, I can speak to business owners, I could speak to those that are looking to, you know, increase efficiency. And there's a lot of opportunity there. So that's kind of where this all kicked off.

Grant
So in the course of doing this, you start uncovering, I'm assuming, oh, here's a little secret about how I could save a little more money or take some out of the taxes. I imagine over a period of time you started to build up this cadre, or list of or selection of wait, here's some best practices of actually taking the tax back from the tax man and leaving it with you. There's it was it was it that it was a 10 year journey that you invested in to build up that knowledge base? It sounds like, Right?

Mark
Absolutely. And you know, you really said something important, and it was very accurate in that my, my getting to where I am now didn't happen overnight. In particularly shifting gears, I'd say the last seven or eight years is when I really really shifted gears, to not just talk about can I just not consult with with individuals on their businesses and help them with maybe some financial planning, really shifting gears and saying, hey, there are a lot of different opportunities to reduce tax. And I just went out there. And just like in the past, in my first few years of this, I was kind of more of an advanced insurance specialist and consultant to business owners, and I could go out there and work with any insurance carrier. And I could basically look and say, you know, this is the carrier need for this solution. And this is why this is I realized I could do the same thing in the tax realm, there's just not 100 different, you know, tax savings providers out there, there's probably about 20 to 30 that you want to do business with. And these are small groups are generally fairly boutique, they're not huge. And they offer something very, very specific. And it's somewhere in the 70,000 pages of tax code. And they just so happened to analyze it, apply it. And basically, that's their gig key. So I have a lot of different tools in the tool chest, I have a lot of different relationships with groups that do these things. And I break when I do consulting work, I just put all the pieces of the puzzle together. And it's really cool. I'm not a CPA, I'm not a tax attorney, I'm really literally I call myself a tax savings architect, I've just developed this ability to consult, oh, that's a great title. 

Grant
Wait, say that title again, you're a what?

Mark
A tax savings architect, Oh, I love it together, I just build I build the plan. And then I bring the vendors in, right, the right team on the on the coach, I'm bringing the right team in to put the right plays in at the right times. And then the implementation goes, you know, off, you know, from there.

Grant
So, what I want to highlight is you have developed this by doing it again and again, maybe making a mistake fixing it again and again, oh, learning more again, and you put in that 10 year effort to gather and build that experience and that that's the value platform that you bring to the people so they're not off doing 10 years of learning the lessons, right?

Mark
Oh, for sure. Grant, I'll tell you, these are types of things that, you know, people don't have time, even the best CPAs right. And you can think about any CPA out there, you've got out of every 10 You're gonna have to my experience, you're gonna have two out of 10 that have developed their practice in a way that they'll have forward looking have a forward looking approach. And they'll have more bandwidth than just, you know, recording and tracking and filing right most of them record track and file. Do you have any more expenses? Are you sure you don't have any more you know, you can buy this capital, we get section 179 it so why don't you spend $1 to save 35 cents? No, that's, that's really a good idea if you need what you're buying. But two out of 10 are forward looking right? They're actually stepping outside of the box and seeing what's out there. They're 70,000 pages of tax code. So this is where the key is at 10 years, you're talking about their 70,000 pages of tax code you if you're going to win a championship. If you're a team think about a just a collegiate team or a professional team. They have multiple coaches. They have strength coaches, they have quarterback coaches that are talking about football they have offensive line coaches defensive line coaches look at businesses the reason why Amazon and Microsoft and General Electric and Nike and DuPont the reason why they pay significantly lower taxes than the average individual is because they have teams they have accounting teams, more than one CPA, they have attorneys they have business strategists. So this is what I really do is I bring that team approach to the small to medium size business owner or you don't even have to be a small to medium sized business owner to have tax savings you can be a high income earning executive. Oh really how to Matt navigate the tax code. There's things that you can do to reduce your tax.

Grant
Okay, so that gets the the question I was gonna ask around who is this for? Definitely the business owner. But if you're, if you're in the High Net Worth areas and individual this is applicable to you as well.

Mark
Absolutely. There's three there's three He kind of avenues, business owners. And the reason why is business owners are great to work with because they have control over their income, they can determine how much salary they take, they can determine how they take their income. It really they have the control. The other side would be high income earning executives that maybe don't have as much control but they're they're looking at, you know, half a million dollars or more of taxable income per year. I can work with business owners with much less I mean, they can have as low as 250 or so in taxable income, okay, because the more there's more flexibility. And then the Third Avenue is people that are selling highly appreciated assets, once a lot of crypto traders or somebody that had a stock portfolio, but they didn't have this huge blend, it wasn't like a qualified account, it was just a brokerage account, they had positions that just blew up, and now they're sitting on, you know, $5 million with Apple stock. Well, if they pull the trigger on it, they're looking at, you know, if they're California 37%.

Grant
Yeah, goodbye to that. 

Mark
Yeah, well, I can help them, you know, really take care of that as well either eliminated or different depending on what solutions we're looking at.

Grant
So, okay, what about what about on the, on the inheritance side, same same sort of story. In other words, let's say you inherited something is you have techniques that helps with that group as well.

Mark
Well, on the inheritance side, I don't spend a lot of time there, because generally, that should be done prior to and a lot of the work that I do actually blends in with maybe some estate planning attorneys, because you really want to solve that equation prior to the need. If you don't, then unfortunately, if you're above the exemption rate, the estate tax man will come take, you know, 60% of that from your kids, right? Not from you, but from your kids and your loved ones. And they might even have to be, they might have to sell appreciate it like this is a real estate high net worth real estate holder, they're selling off real estate just to pay the estate tax, which is never a good thing. So we when it comes to the gifting and the you know passing on to heirs, we generally integrate that into our planning, but we're doing it prior to so that way the kids and their loved ones can breathe, you know, sleep well at night and not have to worry too much about worrying too much about about that sort of thing. 

Grant
So so let's take the scenario of you're a small and medium business owner and you've got the you've got this tax burden on you. Do you need to be doing the work ahead of time? Is this a whole year of effort that the business owner goes through? Whether they have to be intentional throughout the whole year? Or do your practices, techniques allow you to just sort of come in at the last minute and who 30% off? Thanks, Mark. Have a great year?

Mark
Yes, well, I would say a little bit of all apply. But proactive forward looking is always the best. The best approach is a forward looking approach. Now I can do hindsight foresight, and then give you insight. On the hindsight we're always looking at, well, what did you miss that you can go back and pick up a lot of people don't realize, particularly in business, there's tax credits that they can pick up in previous years. Currently, right now for the next few months. There's the employee retention tax credit. So there's there's r&d credits, there's there's trends for investing in renewable energy, they can go backwards and pick up previous taxes paid, it's always look at the hindsight, what can we pick up that you paid in the last year or two or three? Ford, Ford sight? Or, you know, foresight is okay, what can we do to change the trajectory of your current income? Because right now, the way we're always looking at pathways, how are you taking your income, because what we need to do is look at creating new pathways. And if you have different pathways to receive the same income, there might be a different taxable situation. But those pathways aren't going to save you. You can't save any money until the pathway is created. So the foresight we're always looking at, well, this is how much money you're taking in now. And you've taken it in one pathway, or maybe two pathways, and this is your taxable outcome. But what if we created two additional pathways? Now you have four pathways, and we're not talking about deferring it. And putting into qualified accounts. I'm not talking about any of that, obviously, that's been going on for years and years and years is there's arguments as to whether or not that really is saving them anything. At the end of the day, we're talking about really taking tax law and the tax code by the horns and saying, hey, the tax code says I can do this, therefore, this money is not taxable. Right. So now that you have this money in your hand, that's not taxable you and you've lowered your adjusted gross income because you took a portion of your money that the tax code says is not taxable because of the way that you've structured it structure that we've just just decreased your taxes and you're like liquid, like the money that you save is liquid, it's in your pocket. If you want to use that for investing you can if you want to use that to recapitalize your business you can if you want to use that to go to Vegas, you can.

Grant
Yeah, your choice and that's the whole point. It's your choice rather than Uncle Sam. So the strategy seems to be tell me if I've got this right. It's don't fire your CPA because you're going to keep The CPA as a business owner, because you're not the CPA, but what you are bringing is a way to be more productive as you work with the CPA, right, you're bringing in additional knowledge or insight that will then be brought into those conversations with the CPA currently have is that close 100%.

Mark
And what I always like to tell business owners, and right off the bat is, you know, let's, let's not put your CPA on defense mode, right? They, there's no CPA out there that has the bandwidth, to have this time to vet and research all these different ways to save taxes. I mean, they know a lot, but because they may not know everything that I'll bring to the table, that's okay. So the first thing is make sure that they're not on the defense. And also, I'm not looking to take over any bookkeeping, your tax filing or tax prep, I'm just looking to add additional layers that usually increase revenue for the accounting because it usually does increase their need to maybe have an additional filing each year, or maybe some additional bookkeeping to take to oversee these new solutions. 

Grant
So it's all day for you as a partner in it, your they don't see you as Oh, I'm here taking business from 100%.

Mark
Most of the time, when I'm speaking to the right CPAs. And I'm introduced to them by the taxpayer, I get introduced to three or four new clients that the CPA has, because they're like, this is great, I have you know, four or five, or depending on the CPA, they might work with a higher net worth individuals, they might have more, but I like those relationships, because they open the door for more opportunity. Now, I will say there's going to be out of that regard every 10 CPAs, there's two that are for thinking. And there's eight that are really just doing the numbers really doing the prep the recording and filing and prepping. Sometimes the eight, there could be some resistance there. And it's it's, it's only because they don't know what they don't know. So in those situations, hey, I always say it's up to you. It's up to the taxpayer, that you're the decision maker, the CPA is not the decision maker. And I have you know, I never want to pry someone away from their CPA, but if they really liked what I'm talking about under CPAs, just very resistant, doing anything that they're outside of their norm was to have dozens and dozens of CPAs all over the nation that would be very happy to interview you. Or you could interview them because they know the solutions and their clients use them.

Grant
Yeah, I was gonna ask you. So how does you know? What's some guidance for our listeners on? How do you pick? How do you find those two out of the 10? CPAs? Right? What are some of the key things that someone's looking for? to vet your CPA or while you're searching for someone to say, now you're you're part of the 80%? It's you you're actually not going to help me as much I'm looking for the 20% What What are some tips you have?

Mark
Yeah, first thing Grant is ask them if they do quarterly meetings. If the CPA or the tax preparer for you is not meeting with you quarterly, they are not forward looking, they're likely going to say hey, let's meet in might not even be before the end of the year, it might be in like January or February to say tell me what you have, is that all the expenses you have? Are you sure because we need to file. But if they even if they're only meeting once per year, at the end of the year, and just trying to figure out, okay, we need to shove a little bit more in the qualified account. And maybe you can have any more, you know, maybe you can buy some more capital equipment. That is not, you know, I'm not saying that's well, let me just say this, that is not the accounting, that that someone needs as they're climbing, the echelon of income, if they're still using that CPA, when they're climbing that income bracket, they are going to be paying retail taxes. When everybody else that has reached that level. When they get to a certain level of of success. They figured out how to pay wholesale sales, no different. There's no different there's a retail price, and there's a wholesale price and the people that pay the wholesale price go above and beyond and look for the coupons where the coupons they're in the tax code. Awesome. The IRS is not saying I'm giving out all day. Yeah, they're not putting a flyer out your mail. 

Grant
Wait a minute, are you saying there's no mobile app that they could the tax code mobile app with coupons? I think we should build that. That's a great I should yeah, that's my app. 

Mark
Together Grant.

Grant 
Let's go build that. I bet there's a market for that.

Mark
Okay. I would bet there is as well. Yeah, absolutely.

Grant
I love that idea. Okay, so there's something I saw on your profile that intrigued me many things intrigued me and one of those. I just gotta read this off here. Because when I read it, I was like, Where do I sign? It? It was it was learn how to get the IRS to fund a portion of your retirement 100% tax free. So like, right next to the mobile app. We just talked about developing there's this also. Okay, tell me all right. We want the IRS to fund a portion of our retirement 100% tax free any secrets you can share on that?

Mark
You know, there's a I'll, I won't give everything away, right? I want people to want to ask me some questions. But I will say this, there's a few different ways to do it. One of the ways is when you find these tax savings, right, when there's that when you're applying the code that's going to basically give you a deduction, right? Because there's codes I can actually, you know, there's a little golf tournament. Here's a nice secret out there. A lot of people know about this, but let's a lot of people don't as well, golf tournament out there. It's been going on for years and years and years. And the winner gets a green jacket. I'm not sure if you're a golfing fan. Oh, sure. Or Yep. If you know, who gets the green jacket every year, you know, there there is somewhere in Georgia and a little town. That's right. And it's a very prestigious golf tournament. So about 60 years ago, the higher net worth individuals that lived around that, that golf course realize that they could rent their homes to the corporation's coming in that were or anyone coming in that wanted to, you know, watch the tournament, and they could rent their homes for significantly more than they would you know, what would cost them to go have a little nice vacation? So in that process, they said, Well, these are our personal residence. This is not a this is not an income property. So they lobby to the their friends and Senate and said, Hey, we're not renting our this is not an income producing property. But we're not getting any deductions on this. We're not getting any tax benefits. But so can we have some benefits. So they basically the Congress, and there's two tax codes that validate this, you can rent your personal residence for up to a certain number of days per year. And the dollars that you receive for that rent is tax free, as long as you don't rent your home for over a certain number of days. Now, here's where it gets fun grant, because some people don't want strangers in their house. Right? So even if they could rent their house for significantly more than they could go do something else. They don't want to Airbnb their house, what if they're a business owner? Well, can they rent their business? Can they rent their house to their business for business purposes? Using the same tax code? Absolutely. Now, we just have to determine what the value is, and put it in your bot and your minutes and ultimately integrate it and know, now when you create those deductions, right? Because if you're renting your house, from your business, and you create a deduction at the business level, but didn't cost you anything at the personal level, or the business level, maybe there's a, you know, maybe the meeting you did was whatever, you know, lunch, well, you just created deductions with no cost, no cost. Now that tax savings now the tax savings is getting to you from that's where you're funding your retirement tax free from the IRS because those that those dollars are non taxable. Now, if you get them into a Roth, if you get them into a cash value life insurance policy, you're never paying the taxes again. So now you're looking at never even paying taxes again after you didn't pay the taxes on it to begin with. Okay, that was one little nugget.

Grant
That's you know, would you just drop the mic on that? You're not holding in my car? Yeah, yeah.

Mark
No, but if I dropped it, it might fall off my desk.

Grant
I might, I might fall off that. Yeah, I tell you, Mark, that that was awesome. Just following that flow of what you articulated. I think that's a beautiful thing. Okay. So let me ask you this. With all that you're doing, and with all that people are coming to you for? How do they engage with you? How do they dial it? How they interact with you? How do they how do they say I'm a good candidate for you? Where do they go to find out more about you?

Mark
Great question, I always just invite him to my website, Grant, I just PeakProfitSolutions.com. And as you know, peak as in a mountain peak, P-E-A-K Profit Solutions, plural PeakProfitSolutions.com. On that you can have, there's places where you can go get case studies, I click here for some case studies, there's a link that says, hey, book an appointment with me, and 20 It literally only takes me 20 minutes to have a conversation with someone to determine if they're a good candidate for any one of the dozen or more solutions that I can bring to the table. That's really the best thing though, the most important thing to know is, you know, just take a little bit of time, even if it's 20 minute phone call, you don't have to come super prepared. They don't have to come with their entire balance and their their previous tax years and their p&l Like just come and say, This is what I how I'm structured. This is how much I'm making every year. I'm writing a lot, you know, just all they need to do is do that. And I and from that point forward, I can determine right out of the gate if they're a good candidate for the architecture to start.

Grnant
The tax architect.

Mark
Architect, tax savings, architecture, tax savings architect good building. That's right.

Grant
That is awesome. That is awesome. Excellent. Mark, thank you for your time today. Any final comments?

Mark
No, I just appreciate being on the show. Appreciate your, your hosting style, and of course, all the interviews that you've done on your channel so are fun to listen to. So thank you.

Grant
I'm having fun. It's a fascinating world, right? There's just so many great people doing so many cool things. So when your profile came across me as like, Oh, I gotta talk this guy. He's got some secrets about reducing taxes. Okay, yeah, he's in. So thanks for doing that mark for thanks for taking the time everyone. Thanks for joining another episode of Financial investing radio. And until next time, go check out go check out Peak Profits Solutions.

Thank you for joining Grant on Financial Investing Radio. Don't forget to subscribe and leave feedback.

In this episode, I have the opportunity to speak with someone who demonstrates true grit to make a whole life.

Grant
Everybody welcome to another episode of Financial investing radios. So today I have with me, someone who is more than what you might think she is an expert on whole life. But do you really know what whole life is? She's going to help us to understand what that means. I'd like to welcome Svetlana.

Svetlana
Thank you so much. It's such a great joy to be here with you and sharing this space. Thank you for having me.

Grant
Oh, it's so good to have you here. So I had this opportunity to interview your wonderful husband twice. He's so gracious with his time. He's really skilled in the financial markets. I've even gone through a whole bunch of his courses and applied those. And so it's been I'm a Jeremy Newsome fan. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And and while I was talking with him, he said, Hey, have you thought about interviewing my wife? And I'm like, Well, what is she talking about? And says, well, she talks about whole life. And I'm thinking well, yeah, whole life such a critical part of life, no doubt. But let's back up set. Svetlana, would you tell us a bit about your origin story where it all started? And how you got into this business?

Svetlana
Absolutely. Yes. So I'm originally from Kazakhstan. And I moved to America at 19, turning 20 with big American dream as the $100 in my pocket, and I had an opportunity to come and create opportunities and live here. And it wasn't as easy as I thought it was, right. But it is a beauty of a young person that, you know, be 19 and 20. And so courageous, and so naive in so many ways, making those leaves a lot easier than when we become a little bit older. And we have more things that we start considering. Yeah. And so I was blessed that that time, was that mindset, like, what can happen? I'm just going to go and have all of these dreams come true.

Grant
I'm just gonna go to America, everything's gonna be fine. Right?

Svetlana
Exactly, exactly. That was like people are so nice there. And so how cool is the wonderful, and it's really a beautiful way to see the world. And I kind of when I was telling my mother, I will come to America. And in five years, I will have all of my dreams realized, I will have, I will get married and I will have a baby and I will have a beautiful home and nice cars and travels. I will have my papers like all of it. I just kind of described for the life that I created. And I knew like just give me five years, it will take me a lifetime in context and to create those things. Wow. But it'll take me only five years in America. And that is the beauty of an opportunity that exists in this country that most people don't recognize. Because when you're born here, you can't think this is how it is.

Grant
Yeah, you take it, you take it for granted. I mean, I've traveled the planet for 35 years doing business. You do recognize that when you're in other countries, but it is easy to forget it or not be aware of it.

Svetlana
Absolutely, absolutely. And so when I came here I was like in a Candyland. Like oh my god I can do all these things like it's so amazing. And to start a business you just go on mine create LLC pays $150 get a business license, build a website and you're ready to go. Right like it's a marvelous back home who do you know who do you pay it on the table? Is it my favorite though because the government like I was just like was so impossible, and it couldn't like believe the ease and I recognize truly that there is only one obstacle, truly one obstacle in us. And it is us in our mind, our mindset.

Grant
The mindset is the obstacle.

Svetlana
That's a like there is no actually real worldly obstacles that you have to seriously overcome. And yes, you might have a harder life and different things. And not everyone have the same cards dealt. However, you can I was going to library, right, using the computer in the library, did you write emails and just start doing some things. And I was walking for two years didn't have a car. But that still felt like I'm gonna Candyland. And it was amazing because the hardship that I experienced before in my life.

Grant
So compared to the hardships that you came from, you looked at this hardship of oh, I have to walk somewhere. Oh, I don't have a computer and in your mind, those weren't showstoppers. Those are just things you're gonna go do because you're pursuing that dream, that vision?

Svetlana
Yes. And the computer is in the library. And it's on the 20 minute walk. Yeah, I mean, my did it was Las Vegas. 120 degrees in the summer. Still possible was a bottle of water.

Grant
A bottle of water and maybe a hat or an umbrella. Right.

Svetlana
Exactly, exactly. And so you know, life started. First couple years were very difficult. And then life started to add folding. And indeed, I got married to this incredible man. And we bought our first home. And we have two BMW in the garage. And we I have a great job. And he has an amazing job. We are here pregnant and having a baby boy. And I'm getting my green card in the mail. And I was looking at everything. And it's like four years and eight months. Mike, oh my god, like everything that I told my mom totally can show every single dream. Wow. Yeah. Oh, my how incredible that is. And I was just in the jail and then thinking, Okay, what is next? What is next in my life. And then, two months later, the biggest tragedy of my life happened. Oh, no. And it was the darkest time of the darkest time of my soul that I ever experienced. And I wish no one ever experienced that. But my husband died very unexpectedly, within a week, within a week. Wow. And we had all this plans for the future. And we had tickets bar to go and travel and visit my family and the plants for like, we will come back and get pregnant again. And all of it ended. All of it ended. And I once heard that the hardest thing about heartbreak, and then the hardest thing about deaths is having a funeral to all of your dreams. Right? Because what you saw your life would be is no more. And then it's a time of void. Yeah. And a very deep healing is that in sir in search of what's next. And so during that time, I was very blessed. He was in a new position for the six for six months, and I got life insurance proceeds. Really, and I didn't have to go to work right away. So that money that came into my life allowed me just to lay there and cry, and grieve, and pour into myself, allowed me to get help allow me to do all that I needed and my soul needed and to really rest in grief. And I took nine months off to be with my baby because it was so unfair if he would lose his father to death and then his mother at the same time because she had to go straight to work. shut down everything it just started providing for the home that was created for two incomes, right?

Grant
Yeah, very difficult. There's some level of an emotional suffering, maybe even an emotion No doubt that you went through as well, I would imagine.

Svetlana
Absolutely, absolutely. And that was also an awakening into, wow, I need insurance. Because what if I go? What would happen to my baby? Boy? Do I have actually any paperwork? Because I didn't, I had no way or no trust, we didn't have any of that stuff. And I remember when we bought our first home, we received a letter in the mail saying, Would you like to add insurance for 9099? That in case one of you die, the mortgage will be paid off? And my husband was like, ah, should we do it? And I'm like, why would we spend $20 a month?

Grant
Oh, yeah, at the moment, just now why would we write?

Svetlana
Yeah, because we never think it will be our story. It's never our story until it's our story, right? It's never our life until it is our life. And that's the unfortunate part about it. And an insurance world we say the money pays for the, for the insurance, your house is what buys it. Like so many people reach out to me when they in a health crisis. And I Hey, can I have a life insurance policy? And the answer is no. Most of the time it is now because now you're not insurable. It is that time where you are well, and everything is going good for you. When you need to just put a month into it, get everything put together will trust Power of Attorney insurance and be done. And hopefully you will never ever ever in your life again, need to look at it. Next 15 years.

Grant
I mean, the best time to buy insurance was 10 years ago. But if you didn't do it, well then the best times today, right?

Svetlana
Absolutely. Absolutely. Yes. And so really, that was my coal into insurance runs? Well, because I had to learn about it for myself. And I remember I called my you know, car insurance plays whoever was insured at the time. And they asked me, well, What type do you need? On my there are different types. Like I had no clue. Like, well, I didn't know like, and there was no one really to educate me. And I recognized Well, I'm not the only young woman that is a seeing single widow, with a baby that has all of this questions and insurance world world is huge. You open the door, and there are millions things.

Grant
So how did you educate yourself on this? What do you do?

Svetlana
So I got a lot of information here, a little information there. And then insurance agent came into my life. And she told me about certain policy, and I bought it. And then I learned that that policy isn't actually good, that I got it as a policy that I learned that that one wasn't good. And then I was like, Okay, I just need to like figure this thing out. Right. And I was very fortunate that an incredible Insurance Agency, Candace grabbed me, and my G just saw this potential enemy. And so the hunger and the knowledge, so really the heart that was behind it to truly help people. And he sat down with me, and he taught me everything I needed to know and more. And what I find and again, I don't know everything, right? It can be a lifetime on studies. Things are shifting and changing all the time. But I know a lot and a few things that I don't I have incredible people to go to you. Right and and work through those parts, right? And it is usually a bigger project such as estate planning class $30 million. Well, we do what do we do there? Right. So I'll make the phone call my hey, I need you how can we do this together? But pretty much everything else I've done by now and I'm very comfortable with.

Grant
So what occurs to me, Svetlana, learning about your origin story and how you get going in this is that the common thread and all of this appears to be your grit, how to use the term grit, right meaning you've got this, this desire and this burning desire, right to go pursue something. First, you got to come to America, whatever it takes. And then when you get here, you start ground up and that's just pure grit to make it happen and then then you're thrown this option Typical of your husband passing away. And yes, you needed to heal and do some recovery. But then you got back up on your feet, and you had grit. And you said, I'm gonna go figure this out. And you did both learning, but also trial and error, right? So it was a bit of learning by faith, right? And faith, meaning you would take the next step, you would exercise your faith, try something learn. But each time if there was a setback, you didn't just pull back and say, I'm done. Rather, you would pick yourself back up and keep going again, that's what comes across me is one of your main qualities.

Svetlana
Yes, it's a beautiful observation. And thank you for saying that. And I would, I would pull back for a little bit and I will, at least in a pass, and that would feel sad for myself and bad for myself. And I would now I'll give myself a day or two, I'm like, Okay, let's be depressed for a day. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Now it's time to see see beyond, right sees through says it shows. And it is, it has been a lot of personal experience. Absolutely. And then having that greed to rise up again and again. And I think is truly my love for life. I love life and I'm so I find it to be so miraculous, and so magical and so beautiful. Just to have this physical body to experience this life on Earth to experience the depths of love and, and hog and Tai Chi and, you know, be able to eat a delicious cookie.

Grant
Oh, there you go. Yeah, cookies. I like that a lot. So that leads me to another part of whole life. So when I was talking with your husband, Jeremy, and he said, Hey, do you want to talk with Svetlana? Oh, yeah, sure. What does she do? She does whole life. And I'm thinking whole life insurance, which is, of course, what you do. And then I went to the site, that was I saw off of your email, thelightfreedom.com. And I looked at that, and I'm looking around your site and like, I wait, where's whole life insurance? And then I realized, Oh, this is whole life. Can you talk about that? Because I think this is fascinating. It's two key ways to view Svetlana, she's an expert in whole life insurance, but also in whole life, you talk about that?

Svetlana
Absolutely. I am a certified life and relationship coach and I work very deeply with the divine energy of, of light, to create healing, healing in mental and emotional, spiritual, on a physical body. And that is what my calling and my life purpose is my life purpose is to free your life people's light, so they can shine bright and impact many truly create a beautiful world. And, and it is as it is whole life, right? It is about mine. It is about heart and energy, and emotions, about your connection with your highest self, your spirit, your faith, God. And it is about the whole wholeness. Because when we only address parts of ourselves in a western society, we're so attached to our minds, right? It's about how smart I am and how much I now. But unfortunately, no, in my view, doesn't create a space of fulfillment, or joy, or just magnificence and life. And my desire for people to experience wholeness, whatever they truly means to them. So they can live out their life purpose, they can share, they live in a world, whether it is through having a financial podcast, right and teach people how to become prosperous. And as my husband says, money don't sell don't solve all the problems, but money solves all the money problems. Right?

Grant
Yeah, that's right. And money solves the money problems. But not all the problems. I agree.

Svetlana
Exactly. But it's so mindset can be really be solved. Whereas was finances was those resources when we have them and money is an amplifier. Out of the love that is inside of us. And when we are love, we become so much more love with money and we create healing in a world we go out and build schools, we go out and do beautiful missions, and we just do great things. And the problem becomes when you are dark inside, and then you have all our money, and then you're like, Okay, you know, it becomes more of the darkness, because that's what the inside and managers multiplies what is inside of you.

Grant
In fact, I remember Jeremy saying something like money just becomes the amplifier, right? of whatever is inside of you. Money just amplifies it.

Svetlana
Exactly, exactly. And so, Jeremy works on that amplify it on amplifying things, and I work on that to make sure that here is light. Yeah, let's make sure that here is harmony and peace and love. Let's make sure that you have forgiven yourself and those who betrayed you or hurt you. Let's make sure that you learn how to love yourself. Because the reality is I remember having this beautiful 20 year old that I got to work with. And I asked her, please tell me what's good about you? And she said, Oh, Svetlana, I can't. I feel like I am just so selfish and just bragging. But Mike, okay, tell me what's wrong about you? And she gave me the whole list, the whole list of things. And I recognize the madness of this world that we actually been kind of having this applied for? Oh, yes, you are. So you're recognizing how bad you are, and all of these horrible things about you. But when you come in and say, I'm good. I love mine. I am a wonderful, incredible human being. All of a sudden, no one wants to hear it. And everyone is like, oh, yeah, that person is so selfish. And so we go wrong with this mentality that we actually, when we beat ourselves up and talk horribly horrific ly to ourselves, we are fully

Grant
Yeah, we get held up as oh, gosh, this is good. Sometimes it's viewed as though you're being vulnerable. Right? You're you're you have the courage to expose your weakness, right? Yes.

Svetlana
And it is very different when you expose your weakness from all the a healed place when you are sharing it, and yes, it is my weakness, and I acknowledge it. But there is nothing wrong with me, I still adore love myself, even though I'm not perfect. And I have this weakness inside of me. Right, and I'm working through it, I'm working on it. And maybe it's a part of my personality. And I want to really embrace that. Also, whether I'm going to heal it and overcome it, or whether I'm going to just embrace it and make it just a part of me instead of fighting with that part of myself, because I'm just exhausted of the sport.

Grant
When you see people go through this right when they start to embrace whole life and the way we're talking about it here, what's the impact to their lives? What's the outcome of that? Do they end up making better decisions? Are they more kind and loving? I mean, what what's the net effect of of coming to understand that are embracing that?

Svetlana
They get to start living the life of their dreams. What I help them is to heal so that they can come into the homeless, and then to really look at us, okay, what is placed into my heart by divine for me to live through an experience in this lifetime. And those are your dreams. Our deepest heart desires. Our dreams are not ours. They're not. They are placed by God in our hearts, because this is the way God wants to experience itself in a world. And it is for us to truly be for us to truly experience and to embrace. And the people who work with me, that is really the result they get to live their dream life. Whether they have dreams is to have an amazing partner to have a family to have a business that is prosperous and brings a lot of cash flow and they are creating impact in a world where it is, you know, living at a harmony in a beautiful place because that brings more of the goodness because of who they are, and how they can create, in write, and do podcast and Ted Talks, whatever that is, right. And so one of my primary courses that I teach is limitless creators, the dream scores. My what I take people on this five week journey of creating a dream life, downloading the deepest heart desires. And a lot of times, it is a very first time, they actually true to themselves, they actually admit, this is what I saw truly want. I just been so scared to admit it. I've been so afraid that what if I say that, but it wouldn't come true, or it would come true. But I'm not ready for it yet. I'm not. I'm scared of it. Right. And I held them to really open up, open up and release all the blocks and fears and limiting beliefs and any kind of limitations, so they can live their dream life.

Grant
And you know, one of the comments you made earlier was that one of the biggest hurdles that you've noticed, coming to America was that the obstacle of mindset. And it sounds like that this approach to what you're doing with Whole Life helps to address that mindset obstacle.

Svetlana
Absolutely, absolutely. Yes. Because for as long as we have these blocks in our mind, we cannot live the true life, we cannot truly create what is meant for us to create in a world we cannot truly show up in our highest light and be unapologetically. And that mindset is a huge, huge part of it.

Grant
Huge. It's interesting that you come from this background where you've recognized where mindset is the major obstacle, whereas other places there's other obstacles long before mindset. But here, here in the US we've gotten mindset as a major obstacle. So let me ask you this if if someone wanted to learn more, both about whole life from Svetlana in terms of insurance, as well as whole life from set set, Svetlana, in terms of living your dream life, where do you send them?

Svetlana
So the best way to reach me is through my email it is the SvetlanaNewsome@gmail.com. The second best time is actually messaging me on WhatsApp and my phone Yes, my phone number is 702-557-8157 so WhatsApp me and I will send you probably a voice message. That's that's the easiest for me. I do have an incredible soul that is eight months old. So yes, I will drop the message was is in a voice voice recording. And my website is thelightfreedom.com and so is my Instagram is The Light Freedom and I'm very active in Instagram, you can always see me reach out to me there. And that is the best way to reach me and ask any questions that you have about the wholeness of the life the whole life? Or about the insurance surely if you have any insurance needs, or any questions about insurance and the insurance world period, I would be happy to guide you through it.

Grant
So I really appreciate you taking the time and your beautiful life of true grit to accomplishing your purpose and your life's dreams. Just from the beginning till now i i look forward to continuing to watch you and Jeremy make a difference in the world. You guys have already been making differences. Thank you for spending the time with us today. Any last comments you want to share?

Svetlana
Love yourself fully love yourself more. And remember that you are an incredible human being the way you are. You can only become more of the goodness because you're already good.

Grant
That's awesome. Thank you so much Svetlana appreciate you taking the time in your busy schedule, everybody. Thanks for listening to another episode of Financial investing radio. And until next time, get some whole life.

Thank you for joining Grant on Financial Investing Radio.

In this episode, I have the opportunity to speak with Alex Hagerup who is solving the problem of using AI to take costs out of your business.

Grant
Hey, everybody, welcome to another episode of ClickAI Radio. So today I have someone that I have been admiring by looking at his background, here with me today to talk about some amazing aspects of his journey to solve business problems leveraging technology, specifically AI which is quite cool. Anyway, let me stop right there. And welcome Alex Hager group. Hello, Alex.

Alex
Hey, Grant. Thanks for having me. It's a pleasure.

Grant
Thank you. Thanks for being here today and for taking the time. I know you're getting ready to head off trans continental here pretty soon on a trip. So thanks for for jumping on this conversation here today.

Alex
Absolutely. It's exciting being able to travel again. So I going home to the Motherland for a few weeks is exciting. I haven't been there for more than a few days, for the last three years, actually. So I'm definitely excited.

Grant
Have have have the COVID situations and those numbers pretty good over there at this point.

Alex
Yeah, everything is fine. So Norway is completely open again. And it's all good. But But Norway was one of those countries that really looked down hard. And also since the US didn't allow non US residents to actually come back into the country. If you left. It was just a problematic situation to go to Europe in general. Wow.

Grant
Yeah. What a great opportunity to get home to family. Well, thanks for taking your time here with me today on this. So Vic AI. All right, who is Vic AI? What happened here? How to what are you? What are you solving? What what problem? Are you looking to address with Vic? Ai?

Alex
Yeah, absolutely. So I'll take a little bit of the background to set that up. So I, I've always been very interested in both accounting, finance and technology. So this is a company that lives in the intersection of those. My mom had her own accounting firm. So I grew up there, which probably influenced my interest for for accounting in general. And I built a couple of companies. But one that I spent three years with just prior to starting, Aki was a cloud ERP system, an accounting and accounting platform that was being used by about 30 40,000 companies back then it's about 80 90,000. Now, and during working there, you know, observe the sort of, let's say, the challenges of accounting and the manual, repetitiveness, the tediousness, all of that from, you know, every day you felt it?

Grant
Where? I mean, what is the excitement in that? Right? I mean, where's the excitement? Yeah. Did you credit that properly? 

Alex
Oh, gosh, yeah, exactly. So so we were we were just observing this. And then this was back in 2014 15. Just before we started with AI started having a new, you know, like a new summer or a new renaissance in a way and, and we were thinking like this has to be we can maybe like we can solve this in a better way than how the technology has solved it so far. And after some deliberation, we sort of thought that we could create AI algorithms that would be able to actually do accounting transaction processing better than humans.

Grant
Because that's a really key point I think you're making. So the way that we've been solving this problem up to this point has been, let me take the tasks that we do and just automate the tasks themselves. Right. In other words, let me take your actual transactional activities that you're working through, and just put some increased processing to that. That's how it's historically been done, right?

Alex
Yep. Correct. And that's been entirely driven by rules, right? So, you know, transaction, Uber, transportation, as, you know, rules based automation, right? And there are all sorts of problems with that. It's obviously better than doing everything manually, right? So we aren't we're progressing through stages there. If you go back before the spreadsheets, you know, everything was done entirely manually. So we are progressing here, but, but what we're building is not next face that comes off there, you know, what everyone is using today, all over the world. And, you know, AI will solve this in a more scalable and gracious way and more more effectively. So that was all right. Yeah.

Grant
Yeah. So real quick on that, can you articulate how is that different? Right? Because all of us come from this rules based way of thinking. So what is it that AI is going to do better? How will it do it differently than what we're used to?

Alex
Yeah, I mean, that's a that's a great question. It's kind of the essence as well. So when you when you look at how it happens today, it's not only rules are not only automation, it's automation, and a lot of human hours involved. So you can always ask yourself, why are all those human hours involved? If it's automation, right? So so it begs the question, right, so what happens in reality is that sort of rules and templates and RPA isn't sufficient, because there's so many edge cases, and there's so much variability in the world of accounting. So you know, rules only takes you so far. And then you have to staff up and have human cognitive reasoning step in and do the rest of it. So where AI comes in is that it can do both of those things. So it does the automation without rules, and it can do the reasoning that humans are there to do today. So I always say that AI is, is great at sort of mimicking that reasoning that humans are doing. So one of the areas that we're in is invoice processing. And when I give an invoice to any human, you know, it will always tell me, oh, that's the vendor, you know, that's the invoice number, lots of total costs. But that's not obvious to a computer. And if you're gonna write rules for every variability in the world, you can just end up writing too many rules. So it's just not a, it's not a great technology for it. And AI is way better. So it's just like in the early stages, so that's next sort of digital transformation, transformation journey that we're all. So as

Grant
So as you know, when you're working in the AI space, and you're saying, Oh, I'm going to apply AI to a particular problem, you end up building different models with different AI characteristics based on the nature of the problem, some more aggression based some more sort of classification based, as your people as your customers look to use your platform, do they get exposed to any of that? Are they even aware of what elements or aspects of AI are at play? Or? Or do they just jump in and start solving the problems they're used to, and then the right sort of AI model behind the scene is executing on their behalf?

Alex
Yeah, we've hidden all of that from our customers. So we do try to keep sort of Explainable AI in the way where our user interface is explaining why our AI predicted something. But we've kept all of the complexity, so sort of models and model training. And all of that is in the background, we decided to do like an end to end service where the customer, they don't really need to do anything technical. It's, it's, you know, just another SAS subscription that they're using, that they plug into one of their processes. And then we deal with all of the complexity of the models, both global models and AI models, specifically the same for each customer. So we keep all of that complexity hidden.

Grant
That's awesome. That way, I'm not touching any of that as the end user. So if I see the name Vic AI, I don't need to shy away and say, Oh, wait, I need to be an AI expert. It's more that this is the enabling technology. And it just turns out that you've made that simple for the people without needing to know that Wait a minute. So that brings a question on my use, you know, one of the challenges around AI is the whole notion around bias. And, and, and with the cognizance that's required for humans up to this point, and still largely today to do you know, counting processes. Therefore, that has the opportunity for some bias that comes in right terms of the way things get handled. How do you deal with that then in terms of applying AI so that that bias doesn't creep through?

Alex
Yeah, it's a great question. And it's a challenge for everything where we're data sets are involved in training, AI. So one of the ways that so one of The one of the good things with accounting data, if you start with that is that it's ultimately numbers and classifications. And you, you kind of want to have that, right? Because otherwise your your books of your business is wrong. So unless you want them to be wrong, you know, you have a very good incentive to keep this right. SO into SO, you know, I think we generally see kind of less less bias in accounting data, and then some other more like subjective data in a way. And then also we draw on data across 1000s and 1000s of customers. So we have customers in both Europe and the US and many other many other regions as well, but the little fewer and most of the concentration in Europe and US. And in all sorts of industries and all sorts of sizes, we have about 13,000 customers on the platform now. So when you start looking at such a wide data set, you also hopefully reduce some of some of that bias. And then you also have auditing processes that sort of sits at the end of their accounting. And hopefully also they'll you know, annually they'll catch corrections, and also fed in as well to make AI. So those are some of the tactics. Basically, it's all about keeping clean data, so that our predictions are accurate. That's really what we're trying to get to.

Grant
Yeah, boy, that's that's so critical, especially as you pointed out with the with the need to of course, be accurate for the business for sure. All right, so So let's say that you've got this data, you've cleaned it up, you've done the preparation, you're on the Vic AI platform, the question now in my mind becomes, therefore, what changes in the lives of the people that adopt this right and others, they may change? I'm supposing something about the way they do their daily work, or the way the CFO does certain things, or maybe even impact on regulations and audits. I mean, what's the impact of the organization when when this gets adopted? 

Alex
Yeah, I'm also in question. And I want to point out also that the beginning of getting getting live with Vicki AI isn't complex for a customer, because we built an automated system to ingest and clean their historical data, which then goes into our system automatically and train our AI algorithms so that when we go live, we have, you know, pretty good knowledge of what's going to be predicted. We know your system, we know your accounting, we know how you do things. So when you start pushing new transactions through our classification, accuracy is high. And there's no complexity for the customer. In that process, it basically happens automatically in the background. Once you are live with Vic AI, some things will will change. But it doesn't sort of change. Like overnight. One of the things with AI is it gets better and better over time. And one of the things we're driving towards is what we call full autonomy. And full autonomy is you know, the AI's version of automation. But it means that it has perceived this not to need human review. And that's when it's fully autonomous. So that's our sort of end goal with the autonomy of transactions is that, you know, the AI system is perfectly confident in the work that it has been doing. So it doesn't even ask a human to review it. So this this increases over time. So when you start with Aki, you, you have a you know, you have a better interface, you have a smoother operation, you have already probably 50% time reduction in the first month of using the system.

Grant
Let me stop you on that right there. 50%. So, that would be 50% of those that are doing sort of the daily operational activities, or is that of the CFO? Or who who is that, that that percent impacted?

Alex
Yeah, that's on the accounting team that is doing the processing. So if you're doing you know, if you have five people or if you have 15 people doing invoice processing, whether they are onshore or offshore, you know, just in the beginning, you can drastically reduce that, and then that percentage just increases over time because you're substituting the AI for for for human FTE. So basically, and and what we see is that everyone wants to do something else than just sit and do like data entry and accounting classification, right? You you, you can be more proactive, you can do more value added work than that. And we're sort of at that phase now where the AI can substitute that's partly augments and also fully run things autonomously. So when you put this in place, in the beginning, there is a little bit of effect right away but you know, you got to read the sign some of your some of your processes and some of your routines because you have a platform here now that is doing Most of the work for you, and you're just reviewing and you're reviewing the AI and training the AI to become more autonomous. So you've got a little on my mind shifts, and some sort of routines, you don't need to double and triple check, check in have four people involved in reviewing, you know, one thing because the AI can tell you how confident it is. And if it is very confident, maybe you can have one person review it in the beginning, and then eventually it will be fully autonomous. If it's less confident, then it will also tell you, and you can review it in more detail. So it's pretty, it's pretty, pretty fascinating.

Grant
It is dang fascinating. And I'm assuming that there are some that have run into this, and they've worried about their jobs, right? They're like, wait a minute, you're taking my tasks away from me? Do you have to help them overcome that fear and say, hey, you know, you're gonna move towards more value added activities within the organization? Have you run into that problem?

Alex
So it will we see is that it's, everyone is just squeezed on time, right? Everyone's trying to hit the deadline of the month, the clothes and all of that. So it there is no shortage of work to be done in the accounting piece. And, and just having, you know, having faster turnaround time having more accurate data, because AI is more accurate than humans, like it doesn't fat fingers thinks the same way. And when it's uncertain, it asked for a human verification, a human looks at it, and then you get more accurate than then all the way. So we see that, you know, there's no shortage of things to do. Everyone wants to progress their careers. And I don't really perceive that as an actual problem. But it is like a, you know, people think about that as a problem, but I don't think it is in reality.

Grant
So this has been several years and coming. When did you start this 2 to 3 years ago?

Alex
Yeah, early 2017, was 5 years.

Grant
Okay, that's, that's awesome. And you built this ground up, meaning all of AI development AI technology that your organization's created, right?

Alex
Yeah, exactly. I mean, it's been challenging. That's why it's taken taken quite a few years, as well as because you we started, you know, completely scratch, and we had to figure everything out. So one of the things that sets the KPI apart a little bit as part of our founding story, where we were able to start the company, we had access to a gigantic data sets of accounting transactions, and all corresponding documents to that. So that helped us just spend the first two years we just spent on data analysis, data science and machine learning development, because we had some thesis and theories that this could work, but we didn't know. So it just had to do that in the beginning, for for a couple of years. So when we saw that this actually has promised, like, we were predicting more and more accurately, and you know, we're gonna get to this inflection point where it's better to use PKI, that do not use PKI. And at that point, people will use it, and then, you know, continue growing more and more customers and more and more data and more and more corrections, and better and better predictions. So we realized we would get to that point. And then, you know, then we raised the seed round back in 2017. And, you know, started developing,

Grant
What a great journey. I love this story. So tell me about impact outcomes. So you talked about a large number of customers that are using the platform now, what is what's been the results that they've seen?

Alex
Yeah, so we see. So there's a couple of numbers that we that we statistically enroll from the from the customers, we see that customers have about 80% reduction in the overall time spent on the process. And that comes from two things. One is the percent of fully autonomous. So let's say you're 50%, fully autonomous, that means you spent zero time on 50% of your volume. And then that other part, we've drastically reduced the number of minutes in two seconds. For each transaction a human has to review because the AI has done all the upfront work, humans just reviewing it, rather than sort of processing it from scratch. So you're at seconds rather than minutes. This turns into sort of an 80% reduction in in time. You also have things that we do like prevent duplicate payments, and we have some fraud detection in the system. So you also have some of those benefits that can turn into multimillion dollar when you have a large enough cost base. And then we have audit trails in the system, which helps with figuring out you know, making sure that you know, all of the approvals are doing rights. If anyone has changed in amount or something. It's all logged into the system electronically. So you have some some compliance and auditing benefits from it as well. But right now the main, the main effective impact our customers have, and we typically sell to the mid market and enterprise. So these are larger organizations, they can have hundreds of 1000s, or millions even have sort of vendor bills per, per year, and a substantial amount of people and resources involved in dealing with that problem. So they see very significant ROI from it.

Grant
So to sell into that particular group, then I'm assuming you've got to have a decent amount of integrations into all of their incumbent systems, right, all of their ERP systems and CRM systems, etc. Right? What does that look like?

Alex
Yeah, that's, that's true. So we build out these connectors as we as we go, it does, for each connector, the first time we build it, it does take a little bit of time. And then once we have that connect, for instance, you know, to NetSuite or intact or Oracle, the, you know, the next customers that we bring on board, we can leverage the same connector. So it is it is some work initially to build out all of the ones that we need. And then you can grow and scale on top of that for the customer. This is no complexity like we're taking not on completely. So the only thing we need is to know what type of system they have. And we develop that connector as part of the offering.

Grant
So let's talk about looking to the future in terms of when I'm doing FPA, a financial planning and analysis and I'm, I'm looking at my numbers, and I want to leverage a view into the future. How does something like this help an organization with that?

Alex
Yeah, that's a, that's a beautiful question. And a big passion of mine, actually. So what we're doing now sets us up to solve that specific problem. So if you think of where we are, now we're in accounting. And what you're talking about is more finance, which is what we'll dive into the idea and the vision that we are getting to is that we want to develop an AI that's basically is a real time cost optimization engine that serves predictions and monitors that in real time, we will be able to help you project kind of what your cost base should be, and how you could reduce spend in various categories and with various vendors. That's that's the piece that we're trying to solve as part of that equation of the of the future. So that you always have multiple pieces of the accounting equation, you have the cost side, you have the revenue side, you have adjustments and close process. And we're trying to stay within one of them for now. And make sure we sold provide real true value in that swim lane before we move on from from there.

Grant
Yes, I think that part's fascinating, as well, I've seen and interacted with organizations that are trying to leverage shift P and A even into capacity and resource planning, and trying to figure out what that looks like, and especially with it what's going on in the world today, right, with certainly high inflation and certainly supply chain challenges. The need for this kind of capability, I think is dire. Right. I think having the ability to provide something like this sooner rather than later is really crucial.

Alex
Yeah, definitely. And I think the technology has the ability to hold much more context and see data across all of the things that buck forms, like ours can do in in, in a compliant and anonymized ways, you can see data patterns, you know, across different companies. So you can inform yourself, no more than just sitting looking at your own data sitting inside your own office and their own silo. So that I will, you know, in the future greatly help with, you know, capacity planning, or, you know, cost reduction initiatives and so on. So I think that's one of the powers of sort of, like the cloud combined with with AI and big data, if it's leveraged in the in the right way.

Grant
And so if I go back just one moment on something, so if we take an AI model, and and we take it through a data set, and we were able to get sort of two key views at it, one is sort of more hindsight, right? One sort of looking backwards, right? It's the AI is looking at it saying here were the drivers that that contributed to the certain behavior, right? So it's more analytic Right. But then there's the other style of using it, which is looking forward, which is more predictive. And oh, okay, here's, here's where based on things we've seen, here's what the high predictive sort of correlations are opportunities are things that we expect moving in the future. When you when you look at Vic AI, and everything that you're providing, do you focus more on one side versus the other? Or you're combining both of those views together?

Alex
Hmm...yeah, we so in the, in the course of the work in the platform we have now, so every thing we do is a prediction on new data. So that means a new so if you sort of break it down into like, there's a new signal or a new transaction, or a new document coming in, that we've never seen before. And, and the platform then predicts what this is, Donald to vary like line item level detail, how to classify it, and so on. So it does predict this based on the algorithmic design, and the historical data that it seen both for this customer and globally. So it sort of is our engines are purely predictive in terms of what they're trying to predict what's going on. And you can extend that to two other parts, like we just discussed on the cost side as well. You can predict how how you should, you know, maybe they'll just classify this cost, but like, how, what your cost base should consist of a new look at categories. And you can sort of predict this based on your own current spend your growth in the company and maybe other comparable companies, so you can start predicting a journey based on the same technologies.

Grant
Awesome. So quick question for you, as COVID started to hit, obviously, a couple of years ago, and large companies have their AI models, you know, out there deployed, we're running, suddenly that disruption created an impact to the way in which business was typically being done, right. Not all industries were hit. But certainly a lot of industries are hit. And therefore, business operations changed. And the way in which people conducted business altered, which meant then, that those models were making assumptions based on former operational models, right former ways in which people executed, and therefore invalidated some of those predictive characteristics or capabilities of those models, which meant then, as you know that they had to go do some rework, right had to reduce retraining, right and update the data sets and so forth. So to what degree does Vic AI continually learn, right, so as you pointed out, you get a new document you've never seen before. At some point, I'm assuming it pulls it into its corpus, right? And it continues to learn or relearn on that. Can you talk to that?

Alex
Yeah. And it's a key feature of the platform, which, which is actually pretty enjoyable when you see it working in reality. So we, so for every transaction that goes through our platform, or every invoice or vendor Bill divest process through our platform, that leaves that leaves us with some learnings. So, you know, it's either it's corrected, and we made a prediction and a human chose to change it. Right? That is something that is fed back into our data set, and also our learning database of sort of, why would that ever happen? What did we get wrong in this prediction? And so for every prediction that we do, we learn something because if we predict something, and it's correct, we also learned something. So you know, we have millions of transactions just flowing through the system every month. And for each of them, we learn something so the system then improves basically, for each transaction that goes through the system. The level of, you know, transaction processing we're at isn't really affected by kind of like global changes, like you mentioned, for for COVID. Like, the only thing that could happen is you suddenly have some some new transaction because you need to do something differently, or you may have fewer transaction, which then just you know, is additive to our system. So you know, we will get something maybe we'll have lower confidence on this because this is something new. So you know, you will have a human come in there and tell the system what to do with this. And then that will be additive to the to the data sets and, and all the algorithmic design, if that makes sense.

Grant
It makes total sense. Absolutely. Yeah. And I loved how you tied the two together which is, well, I'm still gonna have the transaction. Although the world the macro world around me is changing the transaction occurs while may change is the rate of them. or how, or maybe even maybe even the units or the number of units, etc, right things like that will certainly or could change because of disruption. Being able to predict or understand how the organization can respond to, to disruption, I think becomes more and more critical, as we seem to continue to have more disruptions in business. Right? That happens a lot.

Alex
Yeah, absolutely. And I mean, what happened with with COVID specifically was also a lot of disruption in how people worked. And, you know, they were used to working from home and, you know, we have some, some of our customers, they have millions of invoices a year, which means, like, 1000s of invoices a day and, you know, suddenly you have, your whole workforce is like, not as productive as they were when something like this happens. But you know, you still need or your your system to be updated, you still need to pay your vendors on time. And otherwise, you know, you'll incur fees, and it'll so just like having an AI system in there that doesn't sort of care about those things. It has the same throughput and outputs 24/7 all year around, makes you very resilient for for sort of things like that are like workforce changes.

Grant
So that's the right word resilient, you want that organizational resilience, and as the point I wanted to drive out, which is, even though there's these disruptions that take place, most of which are outside of our control, getting our companies into a position to handle and respond properly or well, to that, or to pivot is what organizational resilience is about. And my experience has been AI is one of those tools to help us do that. Yeah, that's, that's awesome. Okay, I want to ask you a very forward looking question. Right? You're ready? Yeah, sure. All right. So I'm not going to ask what are you going to do Norway? Or what I'm asking is tell me about blockchain? What does that mean to you in your world and things that you're doing?

Alex
Yeah, I mean, that's, we've been thinking about that. And, to be, to be honest, we haven't really seen yet the connection between specifically what we do and how to leverage a blockchain effectively, I like the technology of a blockchain is really awesome. And it can unlock a lot of things. But it doesn't mean that you need to use it for everything. One thing that I think could be an interesting exploration is when you start looking at accounting, ERP data, and whether the accounting systems could run and have their data in a blockchain that is verifiable, to prevent all sorts of, you know, fiddling with the data. That could be an interesting application for for blockchain in in our area. And there's clearly things around, you know, like money movement and value movements that blockchain can solve pretty pretty well. So just in the layer where we are, we haven't really found a great application that applies to us with the blockchain. Yes, but I think that technology is super fascinating. And I think that there are many areas where it is a superior technology to sort of like the trust based system that we have now. And it's an epic thing, when you can run that successfully in a resilient way.

Grant
When you think and that that makes a lot of sense. It's, it's got some, as you pointed out some interesting potential benefits to the industry. But I suppose at some point, it doesn't really matter where the transaction sits for you, right, in terms of the problem that you're solving, right? In other words, whether it's sitting on a blockchain or it's somewhere else and an Oracle ERP or whatever, right to it, at some point, that probably doesn't matter. Right?

Alex
Yeah, for us, the Store of the the sort of the store of the data ultimately is for us in the ERP system. And we are not an ERP system, we just layer on top of the ERP systems. So that is the ultimate sort of storage of the data. And that's where if, if, if at all the like blockchain technology could be leveraged to, to kind of store data in in a safe and transparent way. But there's also some new or some transparency issues with accounting data as well, that's going to be kept in mind.

Grant
Yeah, I would imagine that one of the greatest use cases to for what it is you provide is in the area of fraud to fraud detection, right the ability to regardless of where the data sitting, and regardless if it's on a blockchain or in an ERP system, you Your ai i would imagine would help to discover or uncover some of those potential opportunities. Is that accurate?

Alex
Yeah. And you have this this platform benefit as well is what if one customer sort of reports. So what happens a lot is just invoice fraud, right? You have, you have invoices that are not from the vendor that they appear to be from. And you have different variations of trying to change payment details, and you know, all of that. So when you see when you see data across 1000s of customers, you, you have a way of detecting those things, and at least flagging them for like, Hey, someone should have an extra look at this, because something may be up, if we're all good with it, that's fine. But you know, have an extra Look at this. And for people, you know, when we, as people, when we're doing something for six hours straight, you know, the last few hours, we're just like, you know, we're just clicking enter and trying to get, you know, the day over with, and, and things can easily pass by that shouldn't pass by. So this is this is problematic in two ways. Number one, your accounting data could end up being wrong, like you just have things that are misclassified. And then you can have things that are, you know, paid, or you're paid twice, or you pay the wrong thing, or you pay an extra zero, you have all of these things that are just humans are it's easy for humans to do those mistakes. And you just want to sort of get rid though those with a technology that can help you remove all of those errors. And we know how, you know, a billion dollar cost base? Just you know, half a percent is, you know, quite a lot.

Grant
A big number. Yeah, it is. Yeah, you'd hate to get false positives on a fraud situation, right, where you might be accusing someone that, that they've conducted fraud, when in fact it was was just a mistake. This is fascinating technology. So, Alex, where do people go to? I mean, where can you point them to, to learn more about you and your organization?

Alex
Yeah, I mean, the website is, is the safest place to go right now. So just go to Vic.ai. And we have, we have a good bit of marketing collateral and informative collateral blog posts, we try to educate the customers and the finance team. So finance teams are interestingly, you know, they're, they're not buying new things that often because you know, your ERP system, you have it for a very long time, which which you definitely should. So you know, you're not like a high. There's no high velocity necessarily on procuring things for the finance team. And, and we try to do a lot of educational material as well, because AI is new, but it has true effects or the finance team, and they'll find them blog, blog posts and collateral and can happily reach out to us and we'll help guide anyone through the process.

Grant
Oh, okay. That's, that's awesome. Alex, you've been so generous with your time here today, especially as you're getting ready to jet off into the sunrise just real quick. Any last comments that you want to share?

Alex
Um, I think this has been this has been a cool chats. It's been it's been really good. I love talking about, of course, AI and our company, but also the technologies in general. So I think this has been been super cool. And I think that it, you know, it's just wanted to say that we've we've spent a long time building the platform, so glad it's not complex for the customers right now, all of the AI performance, which is actually mind blowing, but you have no level of complexity. So, you know, if you if you want to get started with with AI for a function, this is a very specific function within invoice processing, where you can deploy AI, get the effects out of it with no complexities, and we'll deal with all of that for you.

Grant
That's actually the beauty of this, you know, to be able to get that down to a few points. Now splint clicks on a SaaS solution. They have all that taken care of, I've written my share of AI code, and oh, my goodness, the fact that you've handled that so seamlessly for the business people is huge. Nice job. Really great job on that. Yeah. Thanks. Great.

Alex
Thank you.

Grant
Thanks for taking the time today. Again, Alex. My gosh, this is awesome, everyone. Thanks for listening to another episode of ClickAI Radio. And until next time, go check out Vic.ai.

Thank you for joining Grant on ClickAI Radio. Don't forget to subscribe and leave feedback. And remember to download your free ebook, visit clickairadio.com Now.

In this episode of Financial investing radio, I speak with the person that introduced overnight trading to the financial markets. He will give you some guidance on how to build your wealth, I speak with The Wealth Architect.

Grant
Hey, everybody, welcome to another episode of Financial Investing Radio. Okay, so today I have in the house, it's taken me a couple of tries here actually, literally, to catch Mark Yegee with me here today, longtime expert in the investing world. So grateful that he took the time to come here today and talk with us and share some of his secrets on how to grow your wealth. In fact, I think he's known as The Wealth Architect anyway, without me saying anything else. Mark, welcome.

Mark
Well, thanks. I'm not I'm not sure I like the title of longtime expert. But you know what, I guess it goes with the territory. But thanks. Great to be here, Grant, and I can't wait to get into what we do and what you do and have some fun with your audience. It should be great.

Grant
Yeah, thanks again. I appreciate that. So one of the things that caught my eye when your organization reached out and I was reviewing your profile, I just have to start here. There's this tip here about you getting into this world into the investing world at the age of 12. I mean, holy smokes at the age of 12. I was milking cows and hauling hay. I mean, there was not a stock market in sight. So I asked you, I mean, the only stock I saw had horns, right. And where I was milking it. So you know, if you'd have said, How's the stock market? We're like, well, we got, you know, 50 cows in the pasture, but like, What are you talking about? So, how did you get into this at 12?

Mark
Well, you know, my dad was a grew up on a farm. I didn't, I grew up in the city. And so I you know, I mowed my yard and cleaned my pool and got paid to do that. And every day, I would see my dad reading the Wall Street Journal, and it had all these symbols in it with numbers by them, and he would circle stuff. And I was so curious about what he's doing. And finally, one day, I'm like, Dad, what are you doing? I think it's like you thought I was ready. And so he said, Oh, this is how you invest in other people's businesses. And I was like, Oh, great. So over time, he started to kind of teach me that, you know, you're running your own business, doing your lawns, but you can also go out and invest in other people's businesses. And I thought that was fascinating. And after a while, after maybe a couple of months of telling me about it, he goes, but the only way you're gonna learn it is to take some of your money and put it in and I did. And so my first stock, I think it was 12 or 13 years old. It was right around that time. It was it was 100 shares of a company called Ailey company.

Grant
I've never heard of, I haven't heard of them.

Mark
No, I don't think they're around anymore. But they were they was this women's clothing store in the malls. And it fit all the criteria. Low P I mean, my dad taught me a few things. And it was alphabetical that I went, you know, I finally went, Hey, here's one. So I circled it. And I bought, you know, $300 worth of that stock was 100 shares at three bucks. And I just would watch it every day. And I was fascinating. Oh, there's the new print on it. And there's a new price. And the stock went to $6. So it's it was probably the worst thing that could ever happen. It's like, it's like when you grab the golf club and you hit it right down the middle. You think you're a good golfer? This is easy, right? It's as easy as like this, you know, or if you go to play craps and you hit it on the first you know, first dice roll. And so I I invested again, I saw commercial on TV, you know, and it said us, it said Allegheny Airlines is becoming US Airways or us there. I think it was at the time. Yeah. And I was like, Wow, what a cool name for an airline. And I you know, that was the only reason yeah, I think it might have might have met some of the other criteria as well. So I bought it and it went from 17 I remember to 35 so I doubled it again, which is probably the the next worst thing that could have happened but now I'm like, this is a piece of cake plus I don't even have to work the money is doubling and yeah, anyway, so you know, I guess I could buy more candy than I could. But that was it. That was the beginning and then he started intermediate. introducing me to books. My dad was a big Personal Growth Guy. So I had read, I had read books, you know, by Dale Carnegie very early on, I read books by Edward Thorpe McShane, the business who wrote a book called, oddly enough, he wrote, this first book was called beat the dealer need to deal with a guy who was an MIT professor. So he taught math at MIT. And he went to Las Vegas, and he figured out how to beat the roulette tables. And they, you know, he had another guy helping him and this was kind of a rudimentary metric computer in the 50s. And he figured out where the ball was coming out, and how quickly it was anyway, he figured out a way to get the probabilities in your favor, and he started to beat the roulette tables, and they kicked him out of Las Vegas. So he went back, and then he figured out well, I'm going to figure it out on Blackjack, and you've heard the story, there's been a movie made about him. Is that the movie? 21? Yeah, yep. All these kids went to MIT, you know, the students. And he brought them they all cleaned Vegas out and then finally got kicked out of that. And then he turned his his efforts to the market. And then he wrote a book called beat the market. And it was basically how to buy a stock and sell the warrants against the stock, which today are basically known as options. They're still warrants, but most people don't know what they are. And it was covered. It was a system of covered calls before they even had options. They didn't have options until 1971 or 1974, I think. And so but I was fascinated by because my dad was like, Oh, you got to learn this. And it was this thick book. It was really boring. And but I, I started to apply it. And I applied it so much that when I was 16 1718 years old, by the way, I bought my car with the winnings and the monies that I made in that those first few investments. I set up a brokerage firm at EF Hutton and my dad had this old timer broker. And I said okay, Harry, I want to buy 100 shares of IBM and I want to sell the you know, the call options against it. And he's like what? So we had to call in New York and get the options principal from EF Hutton on. And he understood why zoom, but my broker didn't even understand I did teach him what I was doing. And so all through high school and college...

Grant
And this was a high school you did that you sold your first in high school high on IBM?

Mark
Yeah. So IBM, and this is back when you pay a commission of $300 to do IBM. And they had quarterly options. And you know, the different it was a different game. And now we have so many more tools that are at our disposal. That's great. So yeah, I did this all the way through college. And finally, you know, I had several different entrepreneurial ventures and then I actually sold copiers, which for me was the worst thing. Anybody.

Grant
Like they just sort of jumped into the white when you're selling options, and you went from that to copiers. What happened? Mark?

Mark
Well, I mean, when I went to college, I didn't think that making money in the stock market was going to be on my my career. So I went to college. I got a marketing and business degree, and everything was hunky dory. And then I got out and pretty. I I started an entrepreneurial company in college. I was back when the Swatch watches were this big craze. Oh, yeah. And you remember those people put 10 Swatch watches on their wrists? Yeah. And I thought, Well, I went to the University of Florida and I thought why isn't there a swatch watch with a gator on it? Like a University of Florida Gator, you know? And, and I went to the I went to the, you know, the alumni office and I said, Can I license the gator. And this was back before the internet. This was back really? Right around the time faxes were becoming popular, but still pretty early back in. In 1980. What was this 85? Yeah. And they licensed the Florida Gator trademark to me. And I figured out a way to get to Hong Kong. I had no money at all. And when I was a junior and senior in college, I went to Hong Kong and I met manufacturers and I figured out a way for them to put the gator on these watches that I wear orange and blue the color the exact colors of the school. Yeah, and I brought back these you know, 2000 watches are added, manufactured and shipped. And I had them in my college wasn't my dorm room was my fraternity. I lived in the fraternity house last semester. And so I had them stacked floor to ceiling all these watches, right? So I go to the games, and I would sell these things and and I learned a lot about a lot, right? Traveling, manufacturing business, you know, buying good quality products versus crappy products. And I expanded to 23 schools in the southeast and finally just got out of that business about four years later. And then I sold copiers after that. And I that was miserable. But it was that was again instructive. And then finally I I said why I've been doing the market all these years. Why don't I just go do that? Amazing. Yeah, I got a couple of I got a job with a guy named Ernie Ollie who had already discount old discount stockbrokers. It was a discount broker like, like Charles Schwab, they were actually good buddies and they started when those got deregulated in the 70s. And I worked for Ernie for or a year and a half, two years, something like that started my own brokerage firm with a partner. And then we grew that to a to a pretty big venture became a Wall Street company that applied to do this financial technology, I could bore the I could bore you with all the little stuff that I've done in between. But it all has led me to this spot where I had a, you know, a big trading firm, Wall Street trading firm. And we traded, you know, billions of dollars worth of securities.

Grant 
I saw that, that's well, and did I read it right? That did you guys introduce after hours trading? Is that true?

Mark
Yeah, that was actually my idea. And everybody thought I was crazy at the time. But I thought, you know, we have this system that all we do is if somebody wants to buy and somebody wants to sell, our system was a computerized system, they just matched those sellers. And I said, why does that have to stop at four o'clock? Why Can't We? If somebody still wants to put the order on? What can we do it a 401? And then if we can do it a 401. Why can't we do it at 601? And then why even shut the thing off? Let's just let it run all night. It happened automatically anyway. And so yeah, we introduced after hours trading in 1999, I believe. And I was on NBC Nightly News with Tom Brokaw. And you know, a few things.

Grant
And then, and you're now you're talking to me now how am I now?

Mark
And now I've moved up to talking to you. Yeah.

Grant
Wow, you finally got up to Grant Larsen. I mean, Tom Brokaw, it's been a long time coming!

Mark
So just a stepping stone. You know, you got to stand on the giants that came before you gotta get to the grant Larsen. So. But, uh, but I'm glad to be talking to you. Because you know, everything that I've done in my life has led me to this exact point. And that exact point is now where I have a few hedge funds that I run. They're all based on all these mentors and all of them knowledge that I learned over the last 45 years. And now we help people call, you know, make what we call Safe, reliable income. Although if you look at it today, with this market, it's not safe, reliable income today.

Grant
Yeah, I turn my head and I'm looking at it that can you say sell off?

Mark
Yeah, don't don't even look. It is a light volume sell off. So I believe that there's a bounce coming in a couple of days. But boy, it's, it's painful for a lot of people right now. It's, you know, people think you just buy a stock and you hold it. And that's the way you invest. And then you get these 25% corrections in the market. And people's 401 k's are decimated, they go to 5060 70%. Yeah, it's just a shame. It's just a shame.

Grant
Ever since November, I saw got it at the end of last November on my systems and went, Okay, I'm gonna start preparing to hedge here. So I've just been building my hedging positions since then. And yeah, we've had some interesting volatility a couple times. But right now it's down hard for sure.

Mark
So it's horrible. Yeah. And you if you started in November, you probably if you correlate it, it's the exact day that Jerome Powell from the Fed said, we're going to start to raise rates. And from that point, we're down about 27 28%. And some stocks. I can tell you some stocks are down 50%, 60%, 70%.

Grant
Yeah. Facebook and others. I mean, they're down like massive 5060 out, yeah, Netflix got hammered with your training thing. And, yeah, just a lot of them are down really soon.

Mark
But it doesn't have to be that way. Right. Like, you know, a lot of people just don't know what they don't know. And we tell people that they can make two to 4% a week. Now, that doesn't always happen. But our goal is just like that analogy that I threw out before about the craps table. It's, it's to get the odds on your side, right? Yeah, I mean, I know, it's this is not gambling. But if you use gambling as an analogy, you can understand it better. If you're sitting around a poker table like Annie Duke or Phil Ivey or those guys that are on, you know, the the World Series of Poker, they don't win every hand. But if you have a pair of aces, you have the odds in your favor. If you stay in, unfortunately, sometimes three kings comes up and your opponent has a king, and then you lose, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't have been in the game. So what we try to do is we try to create safe, reliable income by renting stocks, to other people that are going to our B that are willing to gamble and pay us a premium for having the option to buy our stock. I can explain that a bit more with an analogy, if you if you want to hear it, but that's really what we do.

Grant
And I'm selling options, then that's that's your main strategy.

Mark
Yeah, yeah, we buy we buy a good solid stock. So we have, we have a system called the cash flow machine, right? We call it the cash flow machine because you you put cash in, and then it gives you cash out more cash. And that's it's, it's a system that creates income, using what we call the four cornerstones it's the right stock, not just any stock, the right market, because you want the tailwind to be behind you. So we use a component of market timing and does help and then it's got to be the right spot on the chart. And usually you can find a high probability spot on the chart where this were the end institutions are behind the stock exchange in the right direction. Yeah, and we don't want to be against the institutions. That's the big money, right? We're little people. Yeah. So we want to be with them. And we can see where they are, they leave footprints on the chart. And then we go in that direction. And then the fourth Cornerstone is we squeeze the juice or we collect the rent. And that's the option premium that we get for selling upgrades and income. And it's a defensive strategy that we make, you know, two to 4% a month, conservatively.

Grant
Now, there's, you know, there's obviously a fair amount of margin that's needed in order to do this kind of thing. So you typically need to have fairly decent size accounts to do some of that stuff. What what's sort of the entry level that you see most of the people come in at how much is what sort of account size or capital do they need to have?

Mark
Well, it depends, we have a breadth of options that you can use so so I have a hedge fund that I run using this strategy for accredited investors, people that are worth, you know, more than a million dollars, you know, rich guys, basically, but not everybody qualifies for that. And I want to do whatever I want to make this accessible to everyone. So we have a set of courses. And we have my favorite thing is a mastermind group. And so the mastermind group is around a series of courses, and their video courses over my shoulder, I show you how to do the trading and you and you understand the philosophy behind it. And I give you the whole strategy. And then it's also surrounded by a full ecosystem of support. So we have like minded people that are also giving you support people that have just gone through the learning that you've gone through, you get mentorship from me, and I've got, you know, for decades of doing similar things in this, you get, you'll actually get something called the private access group where I put out the actual trades I do in my hedge fund. So you can learn from them, mimic them, do them, you know, do subsets of them, whatever. And then on Friday, and again, this was what I was alluding to a bit ago, on Friday, we have a mastermind call where we all get on a zoom call, some of us will share our screen show the trades we're making, I'll usually teach a concept about the current market or something, you know, that we should know. And then we hold each other accountable through a chat group all week, like, Hey, what are you doing? Who's doing what during the Fed announcement? Why are we you know, selling, you know, the Tesla when Tesla's coming out with numbers, you know, things like that. So to answer your question, that mastermind group, it's an investment in yourself, I give a money back guarantee, if you don't make enough money to cover the tuition because it's not a it's not a small amount. But it is the small amount of it's an investment in yourself, and you make it back with your investments. But in order to, for me to feel good justifying that you need about $150,000 to 2 million as a minimum, Now, not everybody has that. And I've had people that just you know, take the courses and do extremely well with five or 10 or 15,000. But they're not going to afford to be in the mentorship program, and the mastermind group and all that kind of stuff. But they can take the courses. And so we have a full breadth of offerings for people just so that we can they can learn it. I also have a free course on my on my website that you can sign up to take that kind of introduces you to the concept of what we do. You know, we got all kinds of stuff. My goal is Grant, it's financial education, right? We don't teach people about money in school. We just don't Yeah, it's it's not at all. I don't know about you, but I use money every day. I don't use Romeo and Juliet every day. And I don't use the Pythagorean Theorem every day.

Grant
One I don't use while shopping the grocery store. Okay.

Mark
I haven't used the Pythagorean Theorem, I don't know in at least a week. Yeah. And, you know, I don't learn I don't know much about you know, I don't use Cleopatra, and Henry the Eighth and his wives every day, but boy, I use money, it would be nice to know, would have been nice to know without having to go outside and learn how to buy houses in real estate, how to invest in the stock market, how to do my taxes would have been nice to have learned a little something like that. Yeah. So I believe that that's the biggest thing that people can do is they can invest in themselves by getting financially educated. And so that's part of that's a little part of what I do in the world is is help people with that.

Grant
So it's interesting that you're making this available to a wide range of people regardless of where they are right certainly you've got the capabilities to help those that are accredited, but for the person that's just trying to get going I mean, you walked that journey so you understand that and therefore you're made this available to them to help them ultimately get there are you positions intended to be longer term Are you have sort of a timeframe Are you more like a swing trader? Are you sort of long term Are you did sort of break it up you got portion of the portfolio's shorter term and some sort of longer term investment What's What's your philosophy on that?

Mark
Well, I can give you the short answer or the little bit longer answer that has some more depth let me give To the longer answer, since we got a nice podcast format going here, the longer answer is that everybody says, oh, you should be diversified, right. And to most people who are uneducated, don't have the financial education that we should have. They're educated by Wall Street. And Wall Street is run by two groups, lawyers and salespeople. And so lawyers are there to not get the firm sued. And for that, they've put you in average investments, because how can you get sued? How can you sue anybody if you just did an average return, and the salespeople are there to grab assets and a lot, the more you assets you grab, the more they pay the salesperson, but the more the firm can trade of that money and make money on it. And so what they want what we hear, and I was a Wall Street guy, so I can say this, is they want you to be diversified. So they tell you put your portfolio in a nice little portfolio of mutual funds and ETFs, a couple of stocks, and you know, maybe some bonds and you won't get hurt, right? And you get this average low returning 8% thing that you feel great about because woohoo. But that's the average, right? The s&p 500 over the last 500 year or sorry, 100 years, has made 9.4%. So if you're doing around nine point you do 9.6%, you're feeling really good about yourself. But you know, I did a study, exactly. You pat yourself on the back, right. But I did a study a few years ago, and in 2000, I think it was 13 and 14, or might have been 14 or 15. I can't remember but doesn't matter the years, the the stock, the stock market did about 28% or the s&p 500 Dow about 28% during those two years, but the top 10 stocks did 185%. So what you're doing when you diversify is you're you're supposedly spreading out your risk, but you're also muddying up your returns, you're taking the good returns, and you're making them crappy returns by some stocks even went out of business and the s&p 500. And the rest are kind of in the middle, just kind of figuring it out. Because not everybody can win. So why not just invest the top 10. Right. And easier said than done, of course. And so what we do is it's a probabilities game, we we you know, when you and I if you buy a stock, and I know you're a futures guy, too, but if you buy a stock or a future or an option, or any kind of investment, you've got a 50% chance of being right at the moment that you do it, yeah, you have a 50% chance of being wrong. Yeah, because there's a smart person on the other end that's got the other side of that trade, and they got a 50% chance. So it's whatever you do after it. So what we do is we we try to find the right stock stocks that are trending up, have above average return on investment, return on equity, earnings per sales, growth, per share growth, sales, growth, those kinds of things, great, great products. That's that, that gives us a little bit of an edge maybe takes us to 52%, then we try to find the right market, because 70% of the stocks performance, it comes from the performance of the market itself. So whatever. So they're in, right, whatever. And then sector performance is 38% of the stocks performance, right. So you're now you're adding you're stacking these, these percentages 52 to 54, maybe 5556, then you find the spot on the chart where it's about to break out or where there's institutional support, or it's bouncing off the 200 day moving average of the 50 day, there are spots on the chart that statistically over the last 120 years on on the right stocks seem to be where that they are going to support the stock. So now you're inching your probabilities up, you never get to 100%. But if we can get to 6070 80%, great, then what we do is we create income from the stock. Now, I don't know if your audience wants me to get wonky with statistics, but I'll give you one more. Okay, go for it. All right, here we go. When you buy an option, and an option is the right to do something, but not the obligation to do something at a certain price before a certain time. When you buy an option, you have an 80% chance of losing all of your money. 80% Wow, that's statistically what it is 80% chance, all options expire, without the buyer making money 80% of the time, because there's no free lunch. But there's also the other side of the trade, Somebody sold that option to the buyer. Well, if somebody's losing money, 80% of the time and they're the buyer, what do you think's happened on the other side of the trade?

Grant
I mean, someone's got 80% wins. 

Mark
Yeah. And that's right, it approaches 80% Doesn't always happen. But it does have the statistics in your favor. Because when you sell an option, you always pocket to time premium. And this is what we teach in the course of of how that works and what that is, but you always get the timeframe, you always get the amount that the gambler is willing to risk to have certain amount of time to be able to do something because they're getting leverage. And you know, you want me to give an analogy so I can tell you kind of what we do. Go for it, mark. So most people understand real estate way better than they understand these intangible pieces of paper. They're not even pieces of paper anymore in the stock market. So imagine you open up your window and your front door. And you look out the front door. And there's a vacant lot across the street that your your other neighbor, your friend Jim owns, right? And Jim puts up sign on it says For Sale $100,000. Right. And so Wow, you got your neighbor's got his one acre lot across the way for $100,000. And let's say this other guy, Bob is driving down the street. But Bob heard that there was a Hilton going to be put right up next to Jim's lot. And it's going to make Jim's love worth, not just 100,000. But since it's going to be this Hilton resort, it's going to be put there, it's gonna be worth a million dollars. Yeah, problem is Jim's broke. He doesn't have $100,000 or not, Jim, but Bob, the guy driving down the street. Yeah. But he goes to Jimmy stops his car and he finds Jim in front of the lot. They're, you know, cleaning it up getting ready to sell. And he says, Hey, I'll tell you what, I don't have the $100,000 to give you right now, you know the to buy the property. But I do have this $10,000 Can I give you the $10,000. And all you have to do is promise to take it off the market and not sell it to anybody else. You get to to keep the $10,000 for doing that. But anytime in the next six months, you have to sell it to me for 100,000. And Jim, the guy selling it goes, Wait a minute here, hang on a second, I get to keep the $10,000 I take the property off the off the market, and you're gonna buy it from me for the same price I'm asking anyway, sometime in the next six months. And if you don't I still keep the 10 Grand. And Bob goes, Yeah, that's the deal. And they shake hands and you make that deal. And they write up a contract. Now a couple of things can happen. One thing is Bob could have been right, and there's a big Hilton, they make an announcement. There's a big thing in the paper Hilton to buy, you know, the lot next door to Jim. Yeah. And now. Now Bob took his $10,000 investment. And now he turned into a million dollars. Yeah, he made a high huge amount of reward for knowing about that rumor. As you and I both know, information is not perfect on Wall Street. Yeah, it was a rumor. And it never even happened and nothing ever happened in the next six months. And there's no announcement. And so the the option expires, Jim kept the $10,000. Yeah, so now that now he's got a $90,000 basis in the property, let's call it Yep. And Bob lost the whole $10,000. So Bob had high risk, because he lost it all. But he could have made a killing. But Jim made the $10,000 no matter what. And he could turn around and find another Bob and sell it to another Bob for 10,000. and another and another another. So to answer your question, what we do is we find a position that we like, like I said, it's the right stock. And then we do the same exact thing in a stock market. So we find a position like Tesla right now is the big one. We're all in. We were an app a lot of a sudden Apple still to some of us traits and Apple, we have these great stocks like Nvidia and Microsoft and you know, the big ones. And there's certain criteria that they fit because this doesn't work for every stock. And then we just find a gambler out there like Bob that was driving down the street that thinks he knows more than everybody else. And he wants to give you some money in order for you to take that stock off the market and sell it to him at a certain price. Before that happens, and we do it weekly and monthly. We don't wait. Okay, we do weeklies, yeah, we do weeklies and people are paying a lot of money to have the option for a week to buy a share at Tesla. In a week that goes up, you know, they'll they'll pay you 20 bucks for a week for the stock to go up another $20 plus more. 

Grant
So it's really high at that point to write on those weeklies so yeah, it is yeah, yeah, it is.

Mark
So it's, it's, it's and it works. I can tell you some stories about some of the people in our program, and a lot of people are, you know, physicians and the physicians are. This is funny, funny to me. I didn't know this grant, but a lot of physicians just don't like being physicians, not because they don't like helping people, because that's what they really do. They just don't like the politics. Oh. So they don't want to be told when to be at work. And they don't want to be told the politics and other things they have to write up in the computer education, they have all this stuff. And so they can't wait to retire. And I always say why well wait till you're 65 and your hips don't work and your knees creak. And then you can travel the world and you don't feel like it. Yeah, I don't retire a little bit earlier. So a lot of our guys and gals in our program are retiring early, using using some of these things. And I'm really proud of that. 

Grant
That's, that's an amazing I love the analogy. And so it sounds like you're doing weekly as well as monthly sort of positions. So you're turning them around that you get involved in leap at all are you doing really long term positions is also.

Mark
We actually do we do we do long term positions as a proxy for the stock. That's something called synthetics. And we that's a wonky concept because there's deltas and all kinds of things that you'd have to teach people about, but yeah, the two to 4% that we make as our basic and then we kind of ratchet things up, if you want to take a little bit more risk, we like to tell people, it's about three times more return that you get, but take 1x more risk. But it all depends on the stock and the market and how you trade it. And, and 90% of this, at the end of the day comes down to emotion and mindset. And I always tell people, that that's that, to me.

Grant
That seems like that's one of the most critical aspects of this, there's the mechanics that you're describing that have to be right. But with all those being, quote, unquote, right point, that mindset, if you can't hold that position, or you're not confident in the system, then you really get whacked hard. How do you how do you get to the right mindset to do this Mark?

Mark
Well, you know, the premise starts from the word emotion and motion, money is tied to emotion very significantly, right? It's the number one cause of divorce even even more bigger cause than bad sex. And, and so money, money is a big deal. And people try it, they work hard for their money. And then when they put their money, it's so easy to click a mouse to get into a stock, right? Click, boom, you just invested $100,000, you don't have a strategy for when to get in. You don't have one to get out. You heard Cramer say something on TV that you should buy the stock. And pretty soon you're like, oh my god, it's down $10,000. And now you're getting emotional. And I don't know about you, but when you're angry or sad, or you know, the you don't make good emotional, emotional decisions, right? Not a time to make a decision. It's not the time. So what we do, and I believe that anything that is worth doing is worth doing right? Is we teach people a series of rules, right? Because rules allow you to say, is this, it's either yes or no, right? If you have a role, it takes the emotion out of the event, doesn't mean we don't have to deal with emotions, because boy, there are days like today, where things are moving around a lot. And you know, but we also teach you what to do in markets like today, like what do you do? Do you react? Do you protect you buy a color? Do you do whatever. And those and that system was just a system of rules is designed to reduce emotions, because when emotions go up, intelligence goes down, and vice versa. Right. So our goal in anything that you do in life, right, have a system like Michael Jordan had a system. And if he became the greatest basketball player ever, anybody has to have a system to do something really, really well.

Grant
So hands on help to overcome or manage meaning not overcome, manage the emotions through the system, the core of it, that helps you to have and maintain the right, the right mindset. I have another question for you slightly different. Time for one more question.

Mark
I got as much time as you want. 

Grant
Okay, question. This is crypto, what is going on there? Is that the place to go put your money? What do you think? 

Mark
Wait a minute, you said "Do I have time for one more question". And you asked me about crypto, which is a whole new universe of stuff? Yes, I did. Oh my god. Yeah, I have so much fun with Bitcoin right now. And it's, it's because a year ago, I was the biggest Bitcoin skeptic that there ever was. And today I have a cryptocurrency hedge fund because I decided that if I'm going to be in the financial services business, I need to learn about this. And I need to figure out why am I so skeptical? And why are so many people making money on it? And then when I got into it, Grant, I started to realize there are so many and it's not every crypto, there's almost there's like 20,000 different tokens. And I'm not recommending them I'm a Bitcoin guy with a with a little bit of cryptocurrency on the side maximalism. Right? But it's mostly because Bitcoin maximalism for me. And boy, I could get into all kinds of stuff. But if you just look at the whole man, I don't know where to start. But to keep it just keep it short. Let's let's just talk about what money is. Right? Money has certain properties, right? So we'll talk about and if you put three things in your brain as we talk about these. It might it might help but money is first of all, it's it's portable, right? You can take $1 Bill and you can walk across the street or you can go to get on a flight and go spend it right it's yeah, it also means it has to be accepted, universally accepted. So your dollar bill in your wallet will be a universally accepted somewhere else or they'll change it into something else. They won't look at it like a conch shell like they used to 500 years ago and say, well, the shells too small. We can't I used to actually trade with conch shells. Till some country said hey, we got a ton of these. Let's go buy a bunch of their stuff. So it's got to be universally accepted. It's got to be standard, right? $100 Bill is $100 bill, it's standard. It's got to be divisible. Well, you know, you sometimes you need a little less than 100 bucks, maybe not in your case. Maybe you're walking around with wads a hundreds but a lot of us we need you know dollar bills and $5 bills and pennies and nickels, and so it's divisible and it's in let's see what else it's um It's a store of value. It's a medium of exchange. So if you keep those so So looking at the dollar, I just described the dollar looking at Gold. Gold is pretty good, too. Gold's a good store of value, right? It's a good hedge against inflation doesn't pay you in any any interest or anything, but it's a good store of value. And a good hedge of inflation. Problem is, I'll bet you that you don't have any gold on you right now.

Grant
Yeah, that's it right there.

Mark
Yeah, that's it. So you're not walking around with a bunch of gold. And if you wanted to walk around with any kind of wealth in your pocket, you couldn't carry it in gold, right? It's heavy, you couldn't go across the border. Imagine if you're in Ukraine right now trying to come out of your country, because you have all this money, your bank account is closed? How do you get your gold out, they're gonna confiscate it, possibly at the border. If your guy they're not even letting you leave. I want to make you fight. So, you know, gold has got some really great properties. And for 5000 years, it's been a really great hedge on investing. You know, they used to actually shave off pieces of gold, but then you couldn't measure it. Right? And so they went to silver and then that's how coins got the ridges on the side of them. I don't know if you know that is because with with the people would shave off the silver, and then the coin would get smaller and smaller. So if it didn't have the ridges, they wouldn't accept that. Anyway.

Grant
Are you serious? 

Mark
That's yeah, that's why the ridge is... Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And then and then we can talk about Bitcoin. And now let me just give you a background of Bitcoin, bitcoin is called a cryptocurrency, which, right off the bat eliminates most people from understanding what it is, but it's actually a really simple, it's a really simple product. All money is a ledger based system. When you have a bank account, it's held on the bank accounts, books as a liability, they owe you that money, right? You can go in and say, I want to get my money, and they owe it to you. Right? So it's an asset on your books. It's a liability on theirs, depending on on what you believe, how the Fed really interprets that. But that's, that's another conversation. Yeah, yeah. But but it's all a ledger system, right? You know, you own a house that's got a value, and then there's a liability against it with the mortgage, those kinds of things. The same thing with cryptocurrency, and I'll give, I'll give you the analogy, just in case, there's somebody here that doesn't understand what cryptocurrency is, because it can be very wonky. Imagine you and me and Susie are sitting around a coffee table. And I've got this book, that's this blank journal, and we all decide to write a book. So I write the first sentence. You know, the dog bit, Johnny. Okay. And then you take you take the book, I pass it to you, and you go, Mark wrote the dog bit, Johnny check. That's what he wrote. And John, and Johnny screamed is your sentence, and you pass it to Susie and Susie says, Mark wrote the dog with Johnny check, Grant wrote, and Johnny screamed, Chuck, and that she writes her sentence. And then we just keep passing that around. And we pass around, and then we write this story. And the journal gets thicker and thicker and thicker and thicker. And now it's 1000s or millions of pages. But you know what, the first sentence that I wrote is always in there. And the second sentence that you wrote is always in there. Yeah. And when those sentences are in, that's what's that's the blockchain. It's an immutable ledger ledger that can never be changed. Now, with Bitcoin, it has the advantage of this last component of money. And that this component of money is that was one that the dollar doesn't have, or any other fiat currency doesn't have. And Fiat just means by decree, it's just created by the government. It has scarcity. There's only going to be 21 million Bitcoins ever made, there's might have been 19 million made, the next 2 million would be made over the next 110 years. And so there's a scarce amount of those things. Well, you and I both know that, you know, if you gave somebody a dozen roses, that has a lot of value, but if you gave them two dozen roses that has some good value, and if you know if you gave them you know, 50 dozen roses. Well, that's cool, and you could story but pretty soon that last vowel that last rose doesn't have as much value as the first dozen roses and if you gave him 1000 roses, and 1000 Roses, the day after that pretty soon you'd be like, What do I do with all these roses? Now they're a nuisance and they don't have the value. So with scarcity it's like if you ever saw that tulip mania thing that you'd probably have in in in the Netherlands years ago the Dutch tulip mania it's that's indicative right? Because there was there was a scarcity you know, they created scarcity, but this is legitimate scarcity is 21 billion Bitcoin now. I'll tell you one more story. I know I can get a little bit wordy, but I just got back from El Salvador. So the reason I went to El Salvador is because number one, I run a cryptocurrency hedge fund and predominantly we're tracking Bitcoin. But El Salvador this little third world country that had civil war and has drug issues and Ms. 13 and nobody goes there. He has this really young, really visionary president named naive, okay? And this guy said, if if we're going to use the they use the US Dollar as their currency, and they see what we're doing to our currency in the US. And he's like, why would I want to put my I want to create a change in this country. I don't want to stake everything on this US dollars that's being debased. So he adopted Bitcoin as the first legal tender coin that I heard, and I thought, I gotta go check this out.

Grant
Well, close. Interesting. 

Mark
I was hoping it's a small country. I was I was sick. I thought you might have. Yeah, I met some other really cool people because I got invited to some thing with bunch of a bunch of government dignitaries on a different cryptocurrency launch, but it was really, it was really cool. And so I went down there because there's this place place called Bitcoin beach. Oh, no, ran an experiment for a year. And you might have seen it was just on a 60 minutes episode and Bitcoin beach. They just went to everybody and told them, You have to start accepting bitcoin, all the restaurants, all the hotels, all the people selling, you know, the little shell bracelets, and the necklaces and all that stuff. And they said, you have to start accepting bitcoin. How do we do that these third world, people would say, Well, you have this wallet that we're going to give you called the Chivo wallet, that's the name, the name of it, and you put it on your phone? Well, everybody's got a phone, right? And so you just accept it with this little QR code, QR code, what's a QR code, and they show them what that is. And so I went down there, and I bought my dinners, and my hotels, all with Bitcoin. And these people all understand it. They're third world people. And I go down the street and I tell people about cryptocurrency and Bitcoin and they look at me like I haven't unicorn sticking out of my head. And they're like, this will never work. Bla bla bla, it will work because it has all of the properties of money, but you can carry it with you in your brain. All you have to do is memorize 24 words. And now you have access to your cryptocurrency wallet, anywhere in the world. So when they when they when we left Afghanistan, they shut down the banks, anybody who had wealth in the banks couldn't get at it. But if you had the foresight to have Bitcoin, you could get at it. So it's transforming. one more statistic couple more statistics. 70% of the world is unbanked. Imagine the person in Ethiopia, or somewhere in Africa where they don't have banks on the corner like we do. Now. They've never seen a bank. And so they use systems of barter, and they use systems of exchange with and they don't have a banking relationship. But with a $50 phone, and a wallet that holds your cryptocurrency or your Bitcoin, you now have a bank on your phone. So these people are now able to create this ecosystem where they, they they can be banked. The same statistic happened in El Salvador 70% of the people were unbanked. And 30% of the people had access to some kind of banking relationship. After they announced last year, that they were accepting bitcoin as their legal tender. It's the reverse now 70% of the country now has Bitcoin on their wallet because the country gave them $30 worth of bitcoin. So they can either save it, spend it, you know, give it to their buddy, whatever. And they're all part of this like new ecosystem, they figuring it out, they're spending money. And it's it's fungible, it's accepted. It's it's a store of value. It's it's it's universal, it's divisible. You don't have to buy one Bitcoin at $40,000, or whatever it is today. You could buy 100,000 of a Bitcoin. Yeah, you might fraction, right. Yeah. Yeah. So that's the long answer to a very short question.

Grant
Well, yeah, well, it is it is a future. A lot of organizations pursuing it, who feels at risk by crypto who sue who isn't that's going to lose, right? What organizations or governments would fight against this? And why would people fight against moving to crypto?

Mark
Well, first of all, it's more accepted than you think. There's another country that accepted it in Africa. So there's two countries now that accepting it as legal tender. There are cities there's a city in Switzerland that is now accepting it. It's being widely adopted. So first, it was just a couple of nerds. And then you know, I don't know if you know this, but the first transaction on Bitcoin was to buy to Papa John pizzas, and I think it was for 10,000 bitcoins and the guy goes, Yeah, I'll give you the pizzas for stupid 10,000 Bitcoin. Well, that's bitcoin is now worth $453 million. But that was the first real transaction and it's actually a great story about two pizzas being worth $400 million, or whatever the number is.

Grant
So man, I did not know.

Mark
Wow, yeah, no, that's they call it the pizza, the pizza trade. But there are some entrenched interest in doing this because the government first of all is debasing our currency, our currency is lost 99 Point 5% of its value in the last 100 years. Right? That's why a car an average, sorry, an average house today cost $250,000. But that house, you know, it's a similar house in, you know, 20 Sorry, 1920 cars $5,000 We've We've debased our currency to almost nothing. And we feel like we're getting rich, our houses are going up, but you're not getting richer. It's just the denominator is getting more debased. So the governments are all threatened by this, and they don't. So what they're doing is they're trying to come out with something called a C D, BC, a centralized digital banking currency. Right, Senator CBBC. And, you know, they think and if you think about the dollar, it's already electronic, like on my phone, I have Apple Pay and Google Wallet and visa and, and I have, you know, I can move money through my bank account. One other thing that Bitcoin you can do is, and I had somebody that wanted wanted some money from the hedge fund last week, and she asked for the money on Wednesday, I had to clear it out of the brokerage firm on Thursday, it had to get to my bank on Friday. And then I had to wire it over the week, you know, on Friday, and it got to the she got the money a Wednesday on Wednesday. And I said, if you had just asked for Bitcoin, you would have had this money in 10 minutes. Yeah. Because banks, Bitcoin never closes, right, you can sell the coin on a Saturday or Sunday at three o'clock in the morning. So the government's are trying to figure out how to get in the game. Because if they're not in the game, they're going to be out of the game. The problem is, you don't want the government to be in charge of having your control of your money. That's the problem we have now. You don't want more of that. Now then they could just print that and infinitely like like many of the other stuff they've been doing. Yeah, yeah. That's, that's the big deal.

Grant
That is that's, that's a huge deal. Okay, so let me ask you this. So you've shared so many great insights mark, it's just, it's amazing. You're a wealth of insights? Well, you're a wealth architect, I guess you're living name, that's for sure. So where where can people go to learn more about you, and what it is you and your team are providing?

Mark
Well, there's lots of places, you know, marquee around the web. But I set up a site, a little page for us here for this particular podcast for your audience. And it's if you want to grab a pen or put it in your phone, it's it's go dot Destiny creation, because we believe in creating your destiny. So it's go dot destiny creation.com, forward slash grant. Very nice. And so if you go there, we'll have we'll have this podcast there and some notes and some links, but I'll give you guys who are listening. Not only a free book ebook called relic, regular paychecks is how to how to create regular paychecks out of the stock market. But if you poke around there, on our website, you'll figure out a way to get a free course to seven day we call it the accelerated training program, it highlights and teaches you actually, two of our programs. One is called the stock trade genius program. And the other is cash flow machine once for growth and once for income. And, and you know, then you can poke around and see if you want to go any further with us. But the bottom line is I want to educate you, I want you to figure out what you don't know, right, because there's a lot of times people just don't know what they don't know. And I don't want to see people happy with 8% returns and having to work for 45 years, and then retire on 20% of their income. I want to see people wealthy and you know, thriving and even in this market. So this is the this quarter has been the worst quarter in it since in since the Great Depression, the worst beginning of any years since the Great Depression. Most of our investors in my hedge fund made money this quarter. So it shows you that by playing defense, you actually can play a little bit of offense.

Grant
At the market today, we're already back to like, it's almost wiped out. Like the in fact, I think was wiped out, or at least on the index is the entire year. Right? Yeah, it's wiped out. Like, like, like, like the entire year. That's amazing.

Mark
And yeah, at least Yeah, that's it. And that's what the market does, right? It goes up. They always say it goes up with the staircase, and that comes down with the elevator. So the market just gets hammered really quickly. And it goes back and you go wow, it took two years to get this. And we gave it back in three months.

Grant
Got it. Yeah. Okay, so it's go.destinycreation.com/grant. I appreciate you doing that. That's very kind. Mark. Thanks for your time. Any final comments you want to share?

Mark
Not really. I mean, first of all, this was a lot of fun. You had some really great question. Do you have some really great insights, and I hope I didn't talk too much. I have a saying and I'll just leave you and your audience with the saying it's never give up your power in your health, your wealth, or your time. So thank you for your time and I was so honored to be here with you today. Grant.

Grant
Thank you. So much Mark. I really appreciate all your insights and the wisdom that you shared everybody. Thanks for listening to another episode of Financial investing radio. And until next time, go get your destiny creation.

Thank you for joining Grant on Financial Investing Radio. Don't forget to subscribe and leave feedback.

Grant
Everybody, this is Grant, Welcome to another episode of Financial Investing Radio in the house with me today is Heather Dreves of Secured Investment Corp. Now someone reached out to me and said, Hey, have you taken a look at Heather's profile. And when I reviewed it, I started to realize, hey, there's some things that she's talking about that I've been able to dip my toe in, in the real estate space. And when I saw what she was doing, I thought, oh gosh, this would be really fun for us to hear more about the unique solution that they're bringing to clients. So let me take a breath and say welcome, Heather.

Heather
Well, thank you for having me. I'm excited to be here.

Grant
Very good to have you here. And you know, when we were talking before we got started, I think you probably live in one of the most beautiful places on the planet, which is awesome. So thanks for coming out of the cocoon of beauty where you guys live, talking with the rest of us. Okay, so first things first. Tell me a little bit about how your dreams and what got you going into this business area in real estate?

Heather
Yeah, well, I think everybody has a story, right? Like, a lot of us started with something else. And then was led down a path that was probably a better calling, per se. I went to college to be a teacher and decided I really liked my children but wasn't really interested in spending all day with everybody else's kids. That's it.

Grant
That's good to find out. 

Heather
Yeah, yeah. Well, my kids gonna test it out. They're like, You were terrible at helping us with homework. But anyway, so stayed home with our kids for a long time, we were kind of entrepreneurs and my husband was running an indoor soccer center facility. But I had a very good friend of mine that was in the private money industry. So when our youngest son was in school full time, I decided to go back out into the adult world. And he's like, you know, come to work for me. I said, I have no idea what you do I have a mortgage, is it the same thing? He's like, No, come down to my office. So long story short, 20 years ago, walked in there and just, it blew my mind. I had no idea that one, if you were a real estate investor, you could get funding outside of a bank and traditional sources. And two, I had no idea that you could invest money that way. I thought everybody went to a financial advisor, everybody, you know, stocks, bonds, mutual funds, like I just I was, my eyes were wide open.

Grant
I mean, that's such an uncommon knowledge just right there. Even some of our listeners will be like, wait a minute backup, say that phrase again, you can do what say that one more time.

Heather
So you can buy real estate, and get funding for real estate transactions outside of a bank. So you can acquire what we would call private money lending to buy real estate, a lot less restrictive than a bank, you know, they typically private lenders will look at what we call an after repair value, which banks don't do, you know, they want to know what's that property worth as it sits, and that's the most they're gonna lend on it. private lenders are much more creative. And they can look at a property and say, hey, I can see the value you're going to add, and I can see your vision. Absolutely will end on that. And so, that was mind blowing to me first. And then I started started with working with investors that said, you know, I've got money in the stock market, but I also want to invest in real estate. But here's the deal. I don't want to own the real estate. I don't want to rehab the house. I don't want to deal with a tenant and toilet but I want to reap the benefits of that.

Grant
So intended for more passive participation. Is that the idea?

Heather
Absolutely. Yep. So I'll huge majority of my clients, you know, have been active real estate investors in the past. They like real estate as an asset class. Again, they don't want to do it themselves, but they want To be the lender per se, and so there was this opportunity to match active real estate investors with people that are looking for a more passive Path to Wealth and and match the two and it benefits everybody. Right?

Grant
So what's the what's the typical profile of someone coming to service like this?

Heather
I would say on the borrower's the active investor side, you know, there there are people fixing and flipping, and they're everything from the guy that has a full time job that's doing it on the weekend to the very active clients that are for like 100 houses, really now they don't want to deal with a bank. There's too many restrictions. You know, we obviously have a very clearly defined guideline process and underwriting process, but it's much different than a thing. We're we're focusing on the asset, and then also focusing our attention on the borrower, we're making sure that they have the financial wherewithal to actually finish the deal. Can they make the payments, you know, all those things, we look at credit. But then on the on the passive side, the clients I mostly deal with there, you know, one of the niches I've really gotten involved with is high net worth dentist right now.

Grant
Did you say dentists?

Heather
Dentists.

Grant
Okay, I did not expect you to say dentists.

Heather
Well, here's the thing. They have tons of capital, right? Yeah, they have no time to manage their money invested, you know, and a lot of times their biggest asset is their business, they'll sell their practice, when they retire. Now, they have this influx of massive capital. Oh, interesting. A lot of them are very educated with real estate, but they don't have the time to do it. And so I would say that the profile for my passive people are people that have started to create some wealth for themselves, and they want to either create cash flow, so maybe they're retiring. And they don't want to tap into what they've saved, but they want to live off their earnings. Got it, or a new niche I've really I'm pretty excited about is our growth minded clients. So you know, I don't know how much you know, about a real estate fund. But for a long time, you had to be a high net worth accredited investor to even ever think of investing in these types of funds that we're talking about REITs. Yeah, well, we are similar to a REIT. But we are a privately managed real estate. Oh, interesting. Okay, got it. Well, we're privately managed, but the model is the same. It's real estate assets, throwing off profit. And that's how people make money as off their earnings. But 10 years ago, you could only open that type of fund up, if you were what's called an accredited investor. That's the only people that could invest. So you had to have a million dollars in assets over income of $200,000 a year 300. As a couple. We feel really passionate, we think everybody should have the opportunity create wealth. So four years ago, we actually have the ability to open up what's called a Regulation A fund, and anybody can invest in it. We started our minimum at $1,000. And it's open to anybody, and we pride ourselves on this, it took a long time to get approved for this spot.

Grant
That's fascinating. Okay, that's the first I've heard of something like that. How many organizations do that? 

Heather
I mean, I haven't heard of anyone, not many that are a real estate fund. Most of the time, they're a crowdfunding platform. So you're, you know, you're investing in a platform, that's an angel investor, or they, they provide business loans. There are only a few real estate funds in the United States that were approved for that. So it's pretty uncommon.

Grant
That is, wow, that's very interesting. Okay, that must have taken a lot of effort to get that I mean, so that's feels like that's such an untapped market too. Huge market.

Heather
What we cater to is we work with a lot of clients that have 401k Is that they didn't move from a previous employer have small Ira balances, you know, they funded it with six grand and, and then they never did anything with it. This is a great opportunity for those kinds of funds. You can roll those accounts over to self directed custodians. So they're still tax deferred, you're not, you're not taking a distribution on it, okay? You're just, you're just now deciding where you want to invest it instead of having a financial advisor or a money manager, and I'm not here to tell you to people to pull all their money out from their financial advisor, really, it's just a way to diversify. And it gives people the ability with small dollars to invest in real estate because a lot of people think, well, I've got to have, you know, a couple 100 grand to buy real estate, no, you don't, you could invest in a fund that's investing in real estate and you reap the benefits of it and you have zero headaches. 

Grant
That's, that's awesome. So let me say back to you because it sounds almost too good to be true. Okay. You're telling me that someone could take their four When k or whatever other capital they have, there's not a bar, a minimum bar, they can roll that into this investment fund investment fund is going to be making the investment decisions, as well as managing the properties. And these people then just participate that investment participate in sort of a passive, passive return is that you said?

Heather
Yep, yep.

Grant
That's really awesome. 

Heather
Average yields are eight to 9%. We've managed funds for 10 years. So we have a really good track record. They are very regulated by the SEC. So there is a another set of eyes overseeing it. And they're fully audited funds.

Grant
Okay. Okay. Then what's the risk side?

Heather
Well, the risk side is, you know, not any different than any other investment, right risk is the market shift values decrease, I will tell you that our funds are a little bit different than most in the sense that we focus around residential real estate, okay. And we were not what people would call a syndication where we're investing in apartment complexes, we focus our investments around single family up to four units, all in the affordable housing market space. So we do two things with the funds. So part of the fund, we lend the money out. So real estate investors that are wanting to fix and flip we'll lend them money, we take a first lien against their property. So worst case scenario, they don't pay, we foreclose on the house. And now we own a house with 30% equity in it because we don't lend more than 70% of the the other portion of the fund we buy real estate, specifically in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, and Spokane, Washington. So we invest in projects locally. We don't preach people trying to manage a rehab five states over and we don't do it either. So that's our model.

Grant
So are all of your properties in that area, then?

Heather
Yes, all the hard assets that we buy are only local, we went out is nationwide.

Grant
Because I've worked with I've worked with some groups that will take the approach of the look for places in the US where the volatility of the real estate market is small. The intent is to create a cash flow through sort of this renter model, if you get appreciation on the property great, but it's not about that it's more about sort of that rental cashflow. How different are you from from something like that? 

Heather
Well, we look at all of that. And that's another reason that we stay in the affordable housing market space. Because let's let's say that, you know, our exit is to rehab a house and flip it and the profits flow back into the fund and the market shifts. When you're in that affordable housing market space, you have a huge opportunity to cash flow that property in the event that you need to write out, you know, values decreasing. So we're much like that. And I think you'll have to be as a fund manager, you have to be nimble, you have to have multiple strategies. If you start relying on one stream of income for that fund, you're in big trouble when things change. And so we're much like that I you know, in the past, we've done very well, fixing and flipping, and our clients have done very well fixing and flipping, we're right now educating our clients that hey, some markets are turning like in an inflationary time, real estate's a great place to be. But it's also a great place to be for rental market. And so we're seeing a ton of opportunity for cash flowing properties. And so we're starting to add that to our to our portfolio.

Grant
So a couple minutes ago, you were talking about another class of investor that sort of a high growth or high high growth minded and then I think I may have entered interrupted you on that. What is it about them that you find interesting?

Heather
Well, the nice thing about our funds is when people make a decision to deploy capital through our funds, they can set their accounts up however they want. So what I mean by that is, they can either set their accounts up to reinvest their earnings. So earnings are paid out monthly. So we pay out all profit, which is really different than most real estate funds. Because if you're investing in a fund that's buying an apartment complex, for example, typically your returns are realized five years down the road, you get the benefit of depreciation, which is great, but you don't typically see your high yields till they sell that property. Right, right. Are our funds cash flowing? So we're lending on loans or paying off or buying properties? We're selling them. So all those earnings or profit are paid out every month? So you can either reinvest your earnings and roll them back into your equity membership, which is yeah, if you're working with self directed IRAs, that is an awesome option because you don't have these dollars going back. All right, and then they sit there and deploy until you have enough so you can reinvest for more growth minded clients, or for my guys that are looking for cash flow, you know, retired sold their practice trying to replace their income. They liked the monthly model because they're getting, you know, the earnings. Yeah.

Grant
So on the property, so sorry, Heather, quick question on the property itself when it's purchased, is it the fund that is on the property that owns the property? Or is it you know, allocated to the individual?

Heather
No, the fund owns the prop. Yep. Any loans that we originate? The fund is the lien holder. And that that's another thing is these are tangible assets. So risk is, at the end of the day, the markets go haywire, we just start liquidating assets and paying people off would be worst case. Right?

Grant
And that's how that's very interesting. Because, you know, I, currently, my wife and I, we invest in properties, but we do it where we're the first in other words, it's, it's, it's on us, right? So we have property managers that certainly take care of it, because we really like that, you know, cash flow kind of idea, right? And you want to be sort of passive with it, for sure. But at the end of the day, it's it's my name on it, right. And I think that's a unique thing about what you're describing there. I'm listening to a gun, though, that would distribute the risk, right, and spread it around there a little bit as as the individual investor.

Heather
Very cool, right. And that's what you know, a lot of people like, I have a large percentage of my clients have done real estate in the past, they've owned rentals they've owned, they've funded notes, they've fixed and flip, they, you know, developed and they're kind of at the point where they've, they've got capital now, and they don't want they want to retire. They, they want to, they want to golf, and they, they don't want to hear from a tenant that their toilets plugged in the middle of the night, you know, even though you're using a property manager at the end of the day, it's still you paying for it. That's right. That's right. You know, that's where I think there's benefit there. And then also for our clients that have smaller dollars that, you know, our husband and wife both working full time with kids, they don't have time to be rehabbing a house, this is a way that they can start to put that money to work for them. And it's shocking how quick it grows, especially your tax deferred accounts, self directed IRAs, and self directed 401. K's are like, people don't talk about it enough. It's, you know, you can do traditional, you can do Roth, if you're not working currently, for the employer that provided the 401, you can roll that over and start deploying that capital. So there's just so many other options out there that I just don't think people are aware of.

Grant
What's your take on potential impact to this model with, you know, interest rates slowly nicking up there from the feds and such any any concerns there?

Heather
We do. We talk about it. We meet multiple times a week, there's three fund managers to include myself, I think what we're already seeing, I mean, our market is a little different. It's still very hot, but we're starting to see it take longer for houses to sell. I think prices are going to stabilize. I don't know that we're going to see a I don't think we're going to see a downturn like 2008. I don't think that's going to happen. banks aren't lending at 120% of value. But at some point, I would I think homeownership is going to be affected and there's going to be a huge opportunity in the rental market.

Grant
I think it'd be a soft landing, right?

Heather
Yeah, yeah. Well, there has to be right. Yeah. You you can't have interest rates as low as they were in values increasing at the pace that they were.

Grant
No, it's crazy, right. Especially what the last. I think you're saying before we started chatting wasn't like you've seen it just in the market year and 40% valuation increase just in the last two years. Is that right?

Heather
Yep.

Grant
Yeah, boy, that's in the Wall Street. Yeah, that's better than this.

Heather
We bought a little house close to my office down here. My our younger son was going to call it there's actually a small junior college here. And three and a half years ago, we bought it for 200. And I was sweating bullets. I thought, oh my god, we're just overpaying for this house. The house next to it just sold for 450. I was like, Why didn't we buy like five of five of these? Yeah, I was thinking but you know, it's but but again, that shows you that a lot of locals in this market are selling because it's a huge opportunity, right? They'll never make as much money but now they're displaced. And that's why as a as a fund management team, we're saying hey, multifamily, small multifamily. We have several duplex projects going and for plexes because people have to have somewhere to live and at the prices that have increased here, you know, most of the locals can't afford it. And so they're going to be you know, looking for housing. So we think that that the housing market right now, is it the opportunities in rentals?

Grant
Yeah, that makes sense. Quick question about your clients in terms of preparing them. So given that some of these models are new to a certain group of people, what do you guys do in terms of getting people up to speed or educating them? Is that some of the things that your organization does?

Heather
Yeah. So the interesting thing about our company is we actually are an education company. First and foremost, we put on so it's interesting, we used to put on live events, like maybe at most for a month, usually two to three will COVID hit. And as everybody else in the education space that did live events, quickly, you're either closing down or you're pivoting saying how do we still pull this off? So what's really cool about that is we went live with all these these events, webinars, podcasts, online live events, and now we put on anywhere from three to four a week. So yeah, so and they're everything. They're from a grant, you want to buy a piece of real estate, we're going to teach you how to rehab it too. Hey, Grant, you want to be a loan broker? We'll teach you how to do that. I am mostly involved with a lot of webinars where I just did one last week, and it was all about how to buy a note how to educate people about how to buy a mortgage, or what some people call a first lien. How do you do your due diligence, what do you look for? And so we just, we really believe in helping our clients be the most educated they can to make the best decision, you know, and and so a lot of webinars, we have one tonight, we do every first Monday of the month, called our CEO, fireside. And that's all going to be focused about around the rental market. So education, just tons of online, tons of education.

Grant
Perfect. And where would someone go to find those webinars?

Heather
So they if they're want to learn more about the passive investing side of things, I would send them to our main website, which is at secured investment Corp, no plural in their secured investment Corp. There they're going to learn there's tons of webinars, different podcasts I've been on. And that's more your education about passive investing. If they are a more active real estate investor, they want to go find the deals they want to make offers, they should visit our website at Lee Arnold System of real estate.

Grant
Sorry. Did you say Lee Arnold?

Heather
System of real estate system real estate? Got it? Okay. All right. Yeah, that's awesome. Kind of two different paths, it kind of just depends on what they're really trying to accomplish. I mean, that's what I talk with my clients is like, what are you trying to accomplish? How much time do you have? And how much capital do you have to actually commit to that? And then that typically dictates what path they're going to take?

Grant
Is it pretty evenly split? Or do you see more people going passive? What's What do you observe? And

Heather
I'd say it's pretty evenly split. Honestly, you know, I think for a long time, it was heavier on the, you know, everybody, you know, you got HGTV, and they make rehabbing look like it's I've I've rehabbed and I never looked like anybody on HGTV, and my husband and I almost divorced each other. So I said, I thought we were going to be like, Chip and Joanna, like, this was a thing. I was like, Oh, it was good. Like, that was a big buyer, you know, through COVID, you know, you couldn't get into buy houses, you couldn't get the county out there. Now you're having supply chain issues, you can't get materials. So I think it has started to shift a little a lot of people have left employers through COVID. And now they've got these 401k sitting there. And they're going What am I going to do with this? So I think that's created a lot of opportunity and interest in the passive side of it. So I think it's right now it's probably 5050 5050

Grant
Awesome. Okay, while Heather, you've just been incredible sharing these, these experiences that your organization's had and the value that you're bringing, I have a quick question. Are you still doing CrossFit?

Heather
I am I'm getting back into it. I kind of fell off the CrossFit wagon. Last year we moved we were, you know, again, developing five acres like it was going to be the big glamorous thing. So yeah, I not as much as I was but I'm getting back to it regularly.

Grant
That's awesome. I love your story and what it is you're doing for the market and for people changing lives and given them a livelihood to build on all the like you said all the nest eggs they've developed in a way that's got a sounds like a lot of risk taken out for the people. So that's amazing.

Heather
We're here To educate people and give them a pathway to create, you know, generational wealth for themselves. And we just strongly don't agree with the fact that you have to be a high net worth individual to take advantage of this. So we pride ourselves on the fact that we we have a real estate fund with people with as little as $1,000 can invest in. Yeah, people have to start somewhere, they really do. 

Grant
Well, and you may have a free, you may use the phrase there that I love, which is around generational wealth. And sometimes that gets in the popular culture that's not talked about much. But for people that are being intentional with what they're trying to do for their families, those kinds of strategies mean a lot. So the fact you've made it accessible to the masses, and you're helping them solve that generational wealth problem. That's that's really awesome vision that you guys have any last comments that you'd like to share?

Heather
No, I mean, I guess I what I would like to share is if you have any interest, or you want to become more educated about self directed IRAs, and 401, K's just for clarification, we are not an IRA custodian. I'm not a tax professional. But I know a lot about those accounts. And I would encourage anybody, if you even have a small interest in it, get a hold of me and my team, you can get a hold of me at our website at security investment corp.com. And we'd love to give you some references for you know how you can set those types of accounts up if there's one thing people take away from this this presentation is that there is opportunity for investment through tax deferred accounts.

Grant
Very cool. Wow, what a great, great service you guys are providing Heather, thank you for taking the time with me here today. I appreciate that. All right, everybody. Thanks for listening to another episode of Financial investing radio and until next time, go check out Secured Investment Corp.

Thank you for joining Grant on Financial Investing Radio. Don't forget to subscribe and leave feedback.

Hey everybody, welcome to another episode of Financial investing radio. So in this episode, I have the opportunity for a second interview with Jerremy Newsome. What's interesting about this with Jerremy is he's got this organization called Real Life Trading. And he's got this. I love his mantra. It's basically they're there to enrich lives, and he gives away tons of free financial investing and trading courses, just gives it away. He feels like like this should be available to everybody. And he told me and it wasn't part of the interview afterwards, we were talking about it. He told me about an upcoming deal he's got I think it's on May 5th. If you go to reallifetrading.com/funding.

What he's doing is he's given you an opportunity to get $200,000 to invest, you got to prove yourself, you got to follow some rules, otherwise, they'll they'll fund your account. Kind of an interesting, interesting deal there. Today, though, in this conversation, Jerremy and I are talking about crypto trading, adding it to your portfolio.

Everybody welcome to another episode of Financial investing radio. So I went and got on my knees and begged and pleaded to one more time to get in the house. Mr. Jerremy Newsome first of all, thank you, Jerremy, for taking the time to be here.

Jerremy
Man, my pleasure. You're so welcome. And I'm honored. This is my privilege as well. So thank you for having me.

Grant
So you and I spoke, I don't know, few weeks ago, and since we spoke, I went and I checked more of his stuff out, you guys get to check his stuff out. I want I checked out his stuff. And I went on to his site real life trading.com. And, and he's got all this free content out there. It's incredible. I've spent 1000s and 1000s of dollars for that kind of training before I was amazed you had that out there. And I've knocked out your first three courses on it. And I have to tell you, first of all, you're an awesome educator. And second of all, you really know the markets and you teach them well. And third, I've been applying as techniques and it's made a direct impact on my on my trading activity. So okay, there you go. That's my hero worship.

Jerremy
Thanks, dude. It means a lot to me that you did that because you're a man of your word. You said you're going to and you did it. Yeah, that's phenomenal. 

Grant
Yep, sure did. Sure did. Okay. So what happened then is after Jerremy and I talked last time, I said, Gosh, that went really well. Are there other topics that you cover? And we're texting back and forth? He's like crypto and like, serious. Okay, of course, that's before I gone through your training courses. Now. I realize oh, yeah, you definitely are gonna, you know, knock it out of the park and crypto. So we wanted to discuss crypto in this world that has so much controversy around it. Some are like all in on it something it's you know, the devil's mother. It's just got all sorts of different views on it. But bottom line, let's start with what's attracting people to crypto. What are your thoughts there?

Jerremy
You know, that's a good question. And I think what attracts most people, and this is probably a slightly unfortunate answer, but that's okay. It's just like explosive games. I think that's what attracts people to it, because they're like, well, this thing is brand new. They heard about Bitcoin, they probably saw it somewhere around five to $10,000. Back in 2017. It's all up to 20,000. And now it's at 34,000. And so they're just there, they're doing the math right. People are like wow, there's a lot of opportunity. There's a lot of returns to be made. And same thing with NF T's are same thing with just active crypto trading like there are ridiculous ridiculous numbers and some huge success stories that have happened in crypto for sure.

Grant
Yeah, absolutely. So when you think about how much money I have to have in order to trade you know, options or or to be buying stocks or Doing futures, they each have their own requirements. What does it mean for crypto? If you want to get into that world? What do you need to have in your bank?

Jerremy
So that's what's cool, I think probably later down the line, but certainly, an aspect that will attract people is you can start with any amount of money, there's no regulation on how much money you have to have. So for example, as you mentioned, you have to have $25,000, the day trade, right at least, if it's if it's in a margin account, and if you're here in the US, but you have to have a certain amount of money to place a certain amount of trades in a certain period of time. Well, with crypto, you don't any amount of money, what 100 bucks doesn't matter. And what's incredible about that is you do have the opportunity, in my opinion to then offer new insights to new individuals, right? Maybe their children, young adults, maybe their 1415. Kids can trade this stuff, right? You can give, you can create your own account, put three 400 bucks in there and let a child go wild and see how they can trade because there is no if you don't use margin, which is pretty hard to do actually in crypto. So if you don't over leverage yourself, which again, is very difficult to do, the chances of you losing all of your investment are pretty small. And the chances of you losing more than you invested. If you don't use margins are pretty much zero, at least to my knowledge. I haven't heard anyone doing that yet. Therefore, it allows really an experienced individuals to get experience through the through the school of hard knocks, you know, why not? But with any amount of money, man, that's incredible.

Grant
In fact, on that point, just real quick. So when when we talk crypto, what are the what are the main instruments that you're referring to?

Jerremy
Man instruments I would say like the the decentralized, peer to peer currency that most people will probably heard about Bitcoin, you have a theory of them. There's a very popular website called coin market cap.com, coin market cap.com. And any individual can go there's free and they can kind of scroll through and determine and visually identify what are some of the larger coins, tokens projects? What are people doing? And how are they doing it. And it allows them to really just see what's out there because from a market capitalization standpoint, it's a market capitalization, meaning how big is this asset, I usually stay in the top 30. So if I'm trading something, if I'm putting my own currency into it, my bitcoin or US dollars, whatever, if I'm buying a token or a project, I'm usually staying in the top 30. So that I can assure myself of liquidity, which means the ability to sell, right, so there's almost always a buyer on the other side of the screen.

Grant 
In fact, I got involved real early on some of the Bitcoin stuff, but there wasn't as much liquidity back then. And that turned out to be good and bad, right? Those those a lot of that's overcome, certainly, obviously in the Bitcoin area. But that's great advice to stay on the top end of those is I've come to get to know you and your mission, which is to enrich lives, right? I love that about your mission. In the fact that you're you're taking Kryptos away to teach younger people about this, right? These are things that are not taught in school, right? How do you actually go about making money? Right, and how do you go about building wealth and growing it? Those are critical lessons learned? And I know that you've done some I haven't seen it. But I've heard that you've done some things around education for younger people on this. Can you talk about that? And have you done it in the crypto area as well?

Jerremy
I have. So I came up with a book not too long ago called a stock stock market journey. How to make sure kids win at life every day. And in that book, actually kind of blend in the nuances of currency. And talk about money is a fluid discussion because I mean, it is right it's a universal language. It's something that it's borderless, money is and it changes from border border, oftentimes, but allowing kids to realize that this is like a video game, you have to learn it, you have to play it, you're gonna lose, just like in a video game that you're not always gonna pass the level or whatever you might initially. But as it gets harder you get to determined you increase your skills and your capabilities through that difficulty to come out on the other side proficient at this game. So my take is yeah, I've created a live course that I did in March. So March is kids month, every month in my company. So I did a live educational event for children. And after that, it was a week long and at the end I today an offered a mentorship program for children and their parents to go through with one of my mentors so that they can learn together. It's kind of like a like a spring break at night. Learn and just understand more of it. because my thought Aussie grant is not going to change your life, and are they going to become full time stock traders? Probably not. But they will start to see the world differently. And they'll believe different beliefs now, because they will see that money can be created easily doesn't mean that you always have to choose that route. But it's at least a choice that is available to you.

Grant
Yeah, I love the fact that you're you're providing that for for these people. You got an awesome mission. Okay. All right. Let me get back to successful crypto trader. What does that mean? How do you do that? Well, like what does it mean to be successful? crypto?

Jerremy
Yeah, I mean, valid question, I think, I think success. For me personally, I define the word success as the opportunity to recognize or did I recognize an opportunity, like, That's it, if I recognize opportunity, I'm successful, I made it easy for myself to achieve success. But from a monetary standpoint, I mean, like, if you're actively trading, if you're successful, you haven't blown out your account, right, you haven't lost tons and tons of money, you still have capital around, but you are able to increase your currency that you're trading with, to better your life or the life of others around you. That's essentially it. Right? That's, that's the, I would say, an ulterior motive of success is for people to figure out a way to help others with their success. Either teach it, provide it, give it away, donate it, expand it, offer it something. So if you're a trading and you're able to carve out metal sell something of the day, if you made $600 Extra, or you made a $600 profitable trade, so 600 US dollar increase when you do 200 days a year. That's $120,000. Extra. Like, that's bomba, that's the number three significant, so tour data of the year. So we're not even talking. This is a 24/7 365 job. There's like no 200. So you're doing it's a third of the week that you can sit in and look at a good trade every other three days you find a good setup, make 600 bucks like $120,000 extra year, that's magnificent change you have as life changing and up and people do have the opportunity grant all over the world to participate in crypto, because you can do with the euro, you can do it with the Japanese yen, the Australian dollar, the British pound, any type of currency can be transacted and use through crypto. So it's a really fantastic tool.

Grant
Do you have a favorite that you typically pursue or trade?

Jerremy
I do? Yeah. So one of my favorites. It is a theory a theory was one of my favorite Kryptos for sure. But also there's another one that's a little bit less known called Cosmos, which is, which is Adam and so Adam ATO himself spelled, Adam pays a 5% yield to kind of like, is it through Coinbase. So Coinbase is a publicly traded FDIC insured company at this point. And Coinbase allows traders to have a position and Adam and just receive 5%, just like it would in a bank well used to write well, you can just kind of leave your money in the bank and just get like a free 5% return on your interest or a CD or whatever. Pretty fantastic. And that's because it's a very volatile asset class and moves up and down a lot. And so when you're leaving your money on the exchange, the exchange of the broker is able to go back on their on their side, and trade and transact with it. Just like a bank will take your money entering transact with it's really cool.

Grant
With 5%. Really? Yeah. 5% ROI. Okay, so now you can take all your money out of your CDs where you're getting point 0.002%, right. Oh my gosh. That's crazy. That is That's amazing. So in terms of crypto platforms, crypto trading platforms, do you have I mean, you mentioned using Coinbase? Or what do you what do you use them?

Jerremy
Yep. So I can definitely give you a few, Coinbase is absolutely usable. It's really easy, super effective. I like it. A lot of traders like it. A lot of individuals use it, but it is more of a what I would refer to as like a longer term. For crypto, you don't want to actually try it. The fees are a little bit higher. It's a little more clunky. clunky in the sense of it doesn't have a lot of advanced features to use. So I do use additional advanced features and other cryptos trade platforms, ones called Coinbase Pro. So it's their upgraded version of their main platform. So you can actually trade you can set limits, you can set stops, you can do all the advanced features that you want and Then if you want to level up from Coinbase Pro, there's a platform called Kraken, K R A K E N. And all these exchanges are very easy to transfer the money back and forth. Kraken is working on an IPO right now, which is they're gonna come out in the market, hopefully in the next few months. So you have a lot of opportunities to anyone, right? This is here in the US. I mean, you can open up an account been an account and like four minutes, if you're bout technology, three minutes, if you're fast, it's really easy to use. It's super easy. You can download on the app store you can use on an iPhone. I mean, it's, it's available everywhere now.

Grant
That's awesome. What a great, I'll check out crack and I've used the Coinbase stuff. But it wasn't the Pro. And yeah, I came back going oh, clunky, slow. And I couldn't couldn't control my trades very much. And this isn't the Yeah, yeah, but it's good for longer term. 

Jerremy
Like you said, the CD thing that's kind of what I tell people is like, hey, just treat like, essentially treat like a CD. You know, look at it, play with it. Like, have a have a long term, just you're buying slowly over time. Right? You buy and just sits there you treat like a savings account. Just keep buying, don't touch it. Don't buy anything. Don't do anything weird with it, just slowly buy over time. Let it accumulate, treat it just like a savings account of money come out of your bank into Coinbase great way to use it put into Adam get a 5% yield. Good times.

Grant
Awesome strategy, talking about strategies. And of course, your training material you do awesome talk talking about different trading strategies, do the typical sort of S&P 500 trading strategies that lots of people talk about? Do they apply in the crypto world?

Jerremy
Great question. Not fully. I mean, depends on what you want. Obviously, we're talking about but so crypto doesn't have very fluid option trading right now. So options are essentially insurance contracts where they protect your downside, help you leverage your upside things that nature. They are offer, but it's really more for international individuals right now. So the US is getting on board eventually with that process. However, long term strategies like buy the dip, buy long term, like take some money and accumulate over every few months. Absolutely. That works like so long, the longer term strategies that can definitely be effective and certainly be useful to think about some other ones. Just try to think of other like really aggressive strategies. I mean, I personally don't trade Kryptos on a small term timeframe. So I say small term, I mean, like, on a 15 minute chart or less. So I don't day trade Kryptos. And here's why Kryptos can very easily move 10% a day. Like that's simple for a cryptocurrency to do which is wild. But as I mentioned earlier, that's why people are interested in them. I don't go less than 15 minute chart because I don't want to capture a 1% gain or 1% Return on something that could move 20% When 10% On Tesla or Advanced Micro Devices or Apple, I'll trade those on a daily basis, but they're not going to move 10% A day 99.99% of the time. So I'm looking for one to 2% pulled out the market, right capture that cash flow, but on on Kryptos. I am more of what's called a swing trader. So I'm usually in for three to six weeks is like kind of like my preferred timeframe.

Grant
Oh, awesome. Awesome. Okay, so what about alignment with the s&p, do you see anything there happening between crypto and s&p alignment?

Jerremy
Ah, that's a good question, man. Yes, I kind of do actually. I've been noticing or at least it seems to me that Kryptos actually kind of leading the stock market a little bit. And the stock market as of right now has been a little bit of a laggard or a little bit of a weaker position. Not overall but in general, or specifically. So to come up with an example Aetherium and Bitcoin are down about 40%. Pay Pal is down 70 squares down 65 Facebook is down 45. Right. Netflix is down 75% Boston Beer Company is down 80% You have some companies are down 85% like Roku. I mean, some individual companies names are getting absolutely decimated. But big coin in theory, we're only down 30%. It's like well, relatively speaking, that's not terrible. And that's actually started before that wasn't like early November. And most of the stocks, the bigger names at least big broader market, s&p, NASDAQ they started selling off late November. So I kind of see Kryptos as almost as almost a leading approach like if I see strength in crypto, I'll have ventually assumed literally strengthened the stock market, sometimes at the same day. And I think that's because people are going to, again, slowly peel some money into crypto, the total market cap of cryptocurrencies on a like, again, accumulative basis right now is almost 2 trillion, 2 trillion now really? I'm sure Yeah, but but that's not a lot, right. That's the market cap of Apple, Apple. Yeah, that's one Google. That's one apple. Like, that's nothing essentially. So if you take, I think, I think there was a stat that said, the overall retirement savings in all of us, like, if you take the US, you take every single dollar in retirement accounts right now and average them together. It's like 36 trillion, which is a lot. If we take 10% of that 3.6 trillion, and put it into the crypto markets, I mean, crypto market triple, essentially overnight. So that's the grand your larger term I get at actual sizable money starts flooding into these Kryptos, they likely will go a little bit higher. And so that's why I kind of think that the crypto market almost right now leads the stock market.

Grant
It just looks amazing in the fact that it hasn't pulled back on such high weakness, I was reviewing some of the various stocks just last night that you were mentioning, and I was looking on the monthly charts, the the massive pull backs, and I started thinking, this is starting to feel like buy time. You know, when it's down this far back, you're like, wait a minute, this is probably what what's your take on that?

Jerremy
You're not wrong, man, you're not wrong. I do. I think that the way, there's a very popular term, I don't don't try to catch a falling knife. But my my definition of a falling knife generally is if you are trying to catch it, right, don't try to catch it with both hands. So keep keep one of your hands alive. So throw a little bit of money at it don't get super super aggressive. Take a little sizeable chunk so let's let's say have 100,000 our portfolio and unit put some money in the Netflix throw five grand at it over a week or over a month I don't take five grand go okay. Oh man go by Netflix spread it out. Because right now Commission's are free generally, in 98% of trading platforms like your Commission's are free. So you can buy and sell by 500 bucks on Monday by 700 bucks next Tuesday by 800 bucks, the third Thursday of next month, and slowly tiptoe into some of these positions. So it kind of allows you to a lower your cost basis a little bit. But really, and also be adjust. It does, it allows you to kind of understand and see and accumulate without being fearful and upset and scared. Because most people they're used to buying something and once they buy it, that's the bottom right, that's the lowest price ever. So if you buy candy bars, like you're not really worried about the candy bar you buy a house is like very, very frequently, house price goes up, if you buy a car, they feel like the price isn't going down because they don't notice that. If you buy a stock, you're you're not gonna get in at the low, like it's gonna go lower than wherever you bought it always 99.99% of the time, you're never gonna press the button near the bottom. Yeah, it's not gonna happen.

Grant
So tough to find the find the low I love that counsel, the spread it out, distribute the risks, try to get control the cost basis or lowered as much as you can. That makes a ton of sense. Okay, so final comments on crypto for helping someone to get started. Any thoughts on that?

Jerremy
Um, to get started, so I do offer education on crypto. I know right before we talked on the webinar, you mentioned that you might dive into that program as well. It is a valuable program, it is extremely useful. I teach people a little bit about what I look for when I'm trading crypto and like what what patterns I'm looking for and how I get in and how I pyramid into a position. But the good news is, I mean, go to YouTube University, right, which is just youtube.com. And any questions you have typing a how to and then how to trade Bitcoin, how to trade and how to trade, you will find so much information because education shouldn't be free. Right? The information I give away in crypto isn't necessarily education is more like how I do it and my perspective, my opinions which are valuable because I do quite well in crypto trading. And so I want people to kind of understand and see the way that someone can approach it. So for me, yeah, just go study, like spend 10 hours over the next year. Hour month learning a little bit more about it. Because it's knowledge right applied knowledge is power. If you just sit there and say I don't have the time I don't have the money. I'm not smart enough. You're leaving a lot of games, both monetary financial emotional on the table and that's not what you want.

Grant
Yeah, I love that guidance, because one of the things that you've pointed out some of your trading area, your trading training that I went through and by Either way, Have I mentioned everyone yet? It's got good material? If not, I'll just say it's worth your time to study because the approach is very balanced. It's, you know, get some into some long term. And here's an approach on how you do some long term investing. And then, and then maybe there's some medium term stuff. And then okay, you're going to go after some cash flow stuff, which is where I do some of my day trading activities there. I think you have a great balance on that, Jerremy, and I think my audience will benefit from that as well. So it would be real life trading.com. And then on there, there's going to be some links, what links will they follow to get to the crypto stuff?

Jerremy
Yeah. So just go through all the education, there's if you click on trading, and you'll see courses, just click on courses and start growing and going through all the courses there's tons of, there's tons of them out there, there's a lot available, one of my favorite ones, which you're like a lot grant as you get to it is hedging with options. So the hedging with Options program is just about how to essentially create cash flow from stocks using options and how to protect yourself on the downside, especially if you want to be in a company long term. But yeah, the crypto program, just under courses, check it out. It's very valuable, it's extremely useful. And you will get really great insight just not only on the future, and what applications and what systems can be disrupted, right, with Blockchain technology, but also how you can take advantage of any individual here can take advantage of it without being a coder, or a weird nerd or programmer, if that's one of your fears. You don't have to know any of that, to take advantage of this market, or just be in a space, just like you, man, just like me, we have to study. We're dumb. Put yourself in front of educational platform, videos, books, YouTube, podcasts, whatever it is, and study, spend a bit of time. So you could apply knowledge because at this point, my friends as we go forward, if you have internet, you have income, you have access to income, and that is a global endeavor that can change the world for the better. That's a great statement.

Grant
If you have the internet, you have income. That's a good one. I got to put that on a plaque. Okay. All right, baby. Jerremy, thank you so much for joining me here today. I appreciate that. I know you made some adjustments to your schedule to make this possible. So thanks for doing that. Any last comments before we wrap?

Jerremy
You know, the best one is, it's never the perfect time to start anything. I think a lot of us and I'm 100% guilty of this everyone isn't mature should be. There's never a time you're like alright, march 15 of 2027. You know, I'm gonna sit down, I'm gonna take four hours, I'm gonna learn this stuff. Five years from now and I'm a little bit more wealthy when I'm a little bit richer, when whatever is happening. There's never a perfect time is going to be a little bit painful, it's gonna be a little bit scary is essentially irrelevant of what it is that you're doing or why you're doing it or how you're doing it. What I can say is this, if you start something, consistency is what pays off, consistent and intentional wins the race. And if you stay consistent if you stay intentional, if you really focus on your personal growth and your personal mental prosperity, absolute game changing life will become incredible.

Grant
I love that. Thanks. Thanks for taking the time to go over that. And for joining us here today on Financial Investing Radio. Thanks again for joining. And until next time, everyone go get some crypto from Jerremy Newsome.

Thank you for joining Grant on Financial Investing Radio.

In this episode, we take a look at the seven pillars to grow your wealth.

Grant
Everybody, welcome to another episode of Financial investing radio. My name is Grant Larsen. And today I have in the house, one of those unique people that understands some of the fascinating ways to build and protect your wealth. I'm excited to have with me here today, Seth Hicks. Welcome, Seth.

Seth
Thank you so much Grant, glad to be here.

Grant
So when you reached out to me, and you started to say, hey, could we talk I started to look into what it was you're doing. I mean, I'm hearing words like private banking and asset protection expert, you hear some of that stuff? And you think, Oh, wow, do I have to have an advanced degree, right in financial management to understand this stuff. But what occurred to me is that I've seen some of these principles before, they don't seem to be well known by most. And so what I'm excited about is the opportunity through this channel here for you to continue to get your voice out there and say, here's a way that you can build and protect yourself. So first of all, how did you get into this?

Seth
Well, I practice law for about 25 years now, and have structured transactions, commercial real estate transactions, business, acquisitions, and sales. And kind of help people keep what they make, so to speak. And when I met my now partner, Vance Lowe, the principle of private banking strategies, it floored me to find how easy it was to make a few changes, and effectively do 100%. better job. And so what I mean by that is private banking strategies, we use whole life insurance policies that are structured in a way to have a high cash value, and in the appropriate structure and appropriate jurisdiction. They're statutorily exempted and protect it, much like a homestead in certain states and many of the same state. So, for example, in the southern states, you've got a post Civil War air legislation where...

Grant
It goes that far back post Civil War? All right, absolutely.

Seth
Yeah. So private banking goes back as far as Civil War era. And even before that precedes branch banking, it precedes the the type of current culture banking that we have. And the post Civil War era statutes protected their their citizens, the state citizens from Northern carpetbagging. So for example, yeah, for so for, like example, in Texas, and Oklahoma and Florida. And a lot of those states, south of the Mason Dixon Line, you have laws that protect homesteads. So in the event that there's a liability, and someone has a homestead that they've declared, it is 100% protected from being taken from them. And that was a product of the Civil War.

Grant
So let me ask you this, when you talk about how you know protection from having it taken, I'm assuming you're talking about scenarios like maybe bankruptcy scenario, or something else where you owe other people but you've got this protective layer that no one could actually come in and take that foundation from you. Is that right?

Seth
That's right. A lot of our clients, you know, higher net worth, some of some are ultra high net worth, and many are blue collar, but they have created strategies to keep what they make. I mean, no one wants to effectively work hard to earn money and then and then lose it. So those type of folks who gravitate towards structures where they're able to keep what they make, so for example, if you've got a homestead You're in Texas or in Florida, and you want to use it as a vault, and you don't have any debt on it and you're able to pay the property taxes, year after year, then it is 100% exempted from creditors or from outside taking.

Grant
So that's an important baseline is that it does need to be debt free, you have to have no mortgage on that or any liens against that. That'd be right.

Seth
Sure, yeah, you've got to if you've got a, you know, a loan with a traditional bank, they have a right to the mortgage payments or, and so they will effectively if not paid, foreclose on that, and those rights are obviously superior. But if you're if you're in a position where you're able to, for example, use your own private bank, through the cash value in your own policies, and purchase and acquire your home, or other assets through that entity, you would do the same structure, you mean, obviously, your bank and part of the cycle is getting the money back. And that's something that the Vance prides himself on his teaching people how to get the money back, you've probably heard some of that, and your private banking, that's one of the reasons that people do it, they effectively take the banking equation back into their own law into their own become the bank.

Grant
So as the flow is something like this, you get one of these Whole Life policies, it takes some time for you to build up some cash value, but then that cash value becomes something you can leverage and use for either purchasing other assets or leveraging it and other investments, so to speak. And that has some protection wrapped around it, is that what you're describing?

Seth
That's exactly what I'm describing. And like I said, a lot of our clients are higher net worth or even ultra high net worth. And when they capitalize their bank, they are, they're able to do a lot more with it right out of the gate. But for the blue collar guy, you're right, it's a, it's a steady increase that you use. A lot of folks use this as a retirement strategy, because the ins and outs are not a taxable event. And if any of the audience wants to dig on that it's internal revenue code 7702. And what that basically outlines is that your whole life policies, your your cash in and your cash out, are not taxable events. So compare that with like an IRA or a 401 K, that someone's been socking money into. When you take those distributions. Well, if you take them too soon, you're penalized you penalized if you take them too late, you're penalized. Yeah, and it would take them right in that the right time. You're still paying taxes, I'm still paying taxes on it. 

Grant
So every single cash transaction on the cash value, no tax, no taxation on that, right. That's, that's amazing. How blue collar person or someone that's not old truck, how do they get started then Is it is it I hate to say as simple as but Is it as simple as getting started with your whole life policy earlier in your life than later? So you can begin building out that cash value is is that the number one thing are what else would you do?

Seth
You know, I wouldn't say age is the number one determined to factor. In fact, we've got an article and a podcast that we've produced that says, you know, you're never too old to start private banking. And here's why. And we go through the outlines the benefits and values, which include asset protection, tax free growth, financial privacy, no taxation on the legacy value. So if you're leaving high value to heirs and benefits, beneficiaries, don't pay any taxes on that transaction, even if it's ultra high. So there's some value there, depending on what your primary motivations and focus are. And the age of course, if you start earlier, you're going to accrue a much greater and higher value as you you know, as you go year after year, but let me give you an example. We've got one of our favorite clients is as a woman in Texas, who was a single mom, and she started out with a $5,000 annual whole life policy and she made she made that contribution for a few years and and then use that cash value to as a downpayment into an investment property. Oh really? So she purchased this investment property as and then she also had third party financing of course, she began to develop cash flow from that and she paid her bank, her private bank back and as that cash value increased in a crate increased, she did The exact same thing, she rinsed and repeated the process with the second investment property. And now she has a million dollar equity portfolio in real estate from where she started at $5,000 leverage. Now, we've been, you know, she's had the benefit of an appreciating real estate market, she's had good investments, but it illustrates the principle that you can actually start in that small of an amount and and multiply that seed into something that really brings a large harvest.

Grant
That's fascinating. One of the things I noticed from you was, I think you call it the Seven Pillars of private banking strategies. Can you speak to that for a moment? What are those?

Seth
Sure, the first, the first pillar we've been talking about is asset protection. And the second pillar is tax free growth, which is we also referenced that compare that to a 401 K, or an IRA, you may have tax free growth inside, but you're going to pay taxes when it comes out. And we've got some illustrations that kind of compare those two things and show you you know, which comes out ahead, and it may look like a contributions from an employer and other matching proceeds will come out ahead. But in overtime, they really don't. So you've with inside the policy, you've got compounding growth, and you've got a tax free growth. And you've got a financial privacy. third pillar is financial privacy. Whereas compare that to a bank, for example, who has to KYC know their customer, know your customer, they want to understand, you know, every aspect of money in and money out, you going to try to take out or put in a large cash, for example, a 510 $1,000 Cash, I'm into your Wells Fargo or Bank of America account. And they want to, you know, cross examine you on 50 questions about why you're using cash, where, you know, that doesn't happen in a private contract with the life insurance companies, we use it, it's totally private, and they don't raise their hand and go, Hey, there's a large transaction in or out, and they're not required to by the IRS Code 7702

Grant
And it's just not part of their business model, right?

Seth
It's not part of their business model. No. And so it's interesting to point out this is kind of a little sidebar, but the largest players are the largest clients of the life insurance companies, or the centralized banks, like Wells Fargo and Bank of America. I think the last time I looked at Wells Fargo has a 20 plus billion dollar annual premium for life insurance policies that they hold on employees and, and others. So if, you know, gives you some insight.

Grant
That's huge. Okay, so right, so asset protection, tax free growth.

Seth
Tax free growth, financial privacy, privacy, the big one is velocity of money. And once philosophy of money, we describe that a little bit and in the the example that I gave our audience with the woman who started with a $5,000 premium, and then when she had enough to make a down payment on an investment property, she did so and so she she paid a premium dollar into the whole life policy, she borrowed that same dollar out to make a downpayment, she purchased a piece of real estate with that dollar, she got a rental dollar back from the tenant, and she paid her bank back on the note and deed of trust. And that's the velocity of money. It's the multiple touches within your own economy of the same dollar. And I mean, I'm simplifying it there with $1 but that's effectively the transaction.

Grant
Now that like you said earlier, it's the rinse and repeat principle right meaning absolutely cut it out. She's liquidated it used it acquired some capital back repaid herself and now she's she's reset to do again, right? That's absolutely. When every

Seth
When every dollar that she pays back into her bank, Grant, it increases the cash value, dollar for dollar. So you've got that that loan from your bank coming out. And when you recycle that rental cash flow back in or that business cash flow, or that cryptocurrency sell, or whatever your investment might be back into your bank, your cash value goes right back up to whatever you've put in. And so you and I both know that banks they make money by lending money. So Wells Fargo with and Bank of America orca Chase and these large centralized banks, they put their money to work by making good loans. They make loans that are secured, they make loans that are collateralized. And they, ultimately they want that cash flow with an interest rate. Well, it's the same principle with your own private bank. And you want to make a good loan to the borrower, whether it's your business, whether it's your brother, whether it's whatever a third party, you want to make a good loan, make sure it's collateralized and secure in the chief got an investment, cash flow, and an ROI on that loan coming back to your bank. And there's that cash flow increases again, you do the same thing. So you begin to think like a banker, you think like a banker?

Grant
Yeah. Because that's so liberating, right to people to be able to be on that side of the table. Right? making those choices. Alright, and then what's the fifth? So there were seven? So I was four. What's the fifth one?

Yeah, I'm looking at the seven pillars.

Seth
So guaranteed financing. Yeah, it financing. So let's say that you're that you've you've you've done like our our hypo example with a woman there. And she's gone through a number of years, but she only started with 5000. Remember, now let's say that she's got 100,000, in total cash value. And she's in a state like Texas, where you can buy an investment property for 100,000. Or she could lever into multiple properties on like an 8020, split, for example, you know, she could buy five properties with 20%, down and put 20,000 down on five properties that cost $100,000, financed the other 80%. And she's building cash flow on all five of those, and actually getting a much higher ROI. And in that example, what you what she would be doing was effectively using leverage to increase the ability to invest in multiple assets. And when her cash value stacks up high enough, she could take out the third party lenders, or she could continue to use that strategy of leverage. And that really depends on someone's their own risk tolerance, their own investment strategy, some folks, they you know, that they're going to eliminate those third party loans. And they're going to take that cash value and just totally take out the third party debt. And so the only debt that would remain on that particular real estate asset would be their, their own private bank. So the guaranteed financing part means you don't go to the bank, and you don't have to qualify, you don't have to go through any type of you know, yeah, because you're the bank. Yeah, you're the bank. Yeah. So you make sure you look that guy in the mirror, and you make sure that you're making a good loan on a good asset. And you do that. So but I described the principle of leverage, because a lot of times people get ahead on that concept of leverage, as opposed to just buying one property for $100,000. And let's say you're making 2000 a month, you got 24,000 in gross cash flow, versus, you know, if you spread that across five properties, and you got 24,000 times five life and cash flow, so you know, and you're able to just knock those debts out a lot faster. That's the velocity of money and guaranteed financing working together. Yeah.

Grant
And written replenishments faster. Okay. All right, number six, and seven, what are those on your seven pillars?

Seth
So guaranteed compounding it tax free growth is the part inside your policy that that cash value and your premium dollars, they are compounding inside the policy annually, and there's no taxable event. And so I think it was Einstein who said the, you know, the compounding interest is the eighth wonder of the world or something along that line. And if you're not, you're not getting compounding interest, then you're making a mistake. So you don't get compounding interest in your centralized banks. You don't get compounding interest in various other investments or formats. But in this these policies you do. So that's, that's something that is very distinguishable and it also takes out the market risk with your policies and the values in there, you're not subject to market risk. So this is not universal life. This is not indexed. Universal Life or any type of risk transfer. To the the owner of the policy or to us, you're not taking on market risk. But in those types of policies Universal Life or index, Universal Life, ual 

Grant
You, you are taking on market risk and one of the things? That's right, so being in control of the risk, right, that's absolutely mental aspect.

Seth
Absolutely, if you're going to use your cash value and put it to work and investment, you should be the one that's able to identify that risk and not have it subject to equity market risk. So it never goes backwards, you're going to only see a steady prodding forward with this compounding growth. And after a certain number of years, it starts to go more parabolic. And that's, that's really the beauty of this. And the magic of it. Some folks, they they locked this stuff up for retirement strategy. And you know, some are using it for the leverage.

Grant
Yeah, you know, it's interesting, I've seen some financial people describe that risk control paradigm with a with a pyramid, right, and they'll describe it, you know, in the, in the manner that you want to have more control. So you start, you start, you should start these sorts of strategies first and get that established. And then and then over time, as you go up the pyramid, you have less control over it higher risk, potentially higher returns, but that might be where you're doing some you're, you know, trading or investing or self directed activities. And a lot of people invert that pyramid, right, that's a well, they'll start with that self directed trading or investing. It's, you know, high risk, low control, and then blow out what capital they have, when instead, turn that the other way around, start with these foundational approaches that you're describing, and then build on top of that. Does that make any sense?

Seth
Amen, absolutely does. Sometimes will, will describe that as, you know, Hare and tortoise paradigm. And some people go, Well, this isn't, you know, I can make this much here. And I make 12% Over here, I can make 15%. Well, no, you really can't over 30 years, and likely there's going to be a risk factor there that may blow you out. Totally.

Grant
Yeah. And the loss of control that absolutely, yeah. Now. Yeah.

Seth
I mean, you've got this third party risk, whenever you've got, you know, a transfer of your money to someone else. That's, you know, you've got that risk that counterparty risk, whereas this, these insurance companies, they don't fail. I mean, they've been paying dividends, since before the Civil War, year after year, through the Great Depression through the Civil War through every economic upturn and downturn that there is. And it's, it's just one of the reasons why grant is because there's a cash reserve requirement of one to one, as opposed to a cash reserve requirement at a Wells Fargo of maybe 10% or less. Yeah, so they take they take $1 In deposit, and they're able to lend out 10, or perhaps even 50, depending on what their total asset bases and that's, that's funny math. You just print money out of thin air, and then they're able to loan the printed money at an interest rate, and they're making money on something they never even received a receipt.

Grant
Fascinating, right? The before I ever heard about this approach of this technique, one, I have to tell you my origin story of learning about this for the first time, it was my wife was driving our minivan. It was when our kids were little. And she was backing out of the garage and kids were bouncing around everywhere. And you know, I would have made the same mistake, but she wasn't watching. And she was turning around and talking to the kids. Hey, kids sit down, she backs out and just wax the mirror off of the side of that house right on the minivan. And so you know, I come home from work. She's like, many of the mirrors hanging off the side. So I look at it go well, it was a really old minivan, really old minivan. And I was like, Well, okay, let me go get it fixed. And so I took it over to the dealer. And I had this thought goes through my mind. And the thought was wait, rather than because at the time, I think auto loans were going to like 4% or 5% or something like that. And at the time, our house had been paid off, but I decided to take out a home equity loan to do some fix ups on the home and it was running. The interest rate at that time was like half a percent on this home equity loan. And so I'm in there They're looking at getting the car fixed. And I'm going to dealer and all sudden I go, let me go look at the floor, showroom, and I walked over, you know, I pull out my home equity checkbook, and I just pay for it right there, boom, and I get this car course still today it's a joke if dad goes to fix the mirror comes home with the new car. So I come back with the, with this car. And oh, by the way, I'm driving back thinking, I'm a banker, man, I just, I'm a banker, I just, I just floated this thing myself, and got home. And of course, guy, you know, paid that off at a much less interest rate. A few years after that. I heard this principle you're talking about you've been discussing here. And it clicked, I went, wait, wait, that's kind of what I did. Right. But it wasn't using a whole life. But the whole principle is, let's put the people in charge. Right? Not not some other policy or program that larger organizations are bestowing upon you but rather put us the people in the driver's seat, so to speak, and be able to make those decisions themselves. And I think that that's really liberating. 

Seth
That's absolutely, yeah, that's absolutely right. And that that's exactly the same principle is you're you're taking back the banking equation, you're becoming you're operating a private family bank that has generational value, and and has you where you are able to touch the same dollars that you make multiple times like we described in one of our examples and and you're that velocity, really accelerate your wealth curve. And without the taxation issues. And without the the asset protection risk, you're able to transfer assets generation to generation and take a whole nother opens up a whole nother doorway. So that brings us to our seventh pillar, which is legacy value, and the tax free transfer of these policies and the death benefits to the next generation or Asian officials. Wow. Yeah, tax free. So think about this, for example, there's a guy who most people know named Prince, and the or the artist, formerly known as Prince, he was a pop rock, yeah, seeing are pretty pretty well known. And he died not too long ago with an estate value of about $200 million. And he was a resident of Minnesota, ironically, and he had no private banking structure in place, he had really no estate tax planning structures in place. And between the federal government and the state of Minnesota, they took over $100 million of that 200 million, and in taxation and estate taxes, and his beneficiaries and heirs, you know, are left holding the short end of the stick, that none of that would have occurred with proper planning, or that same money in a private banking situation. And then, I've heard, I was reading some articles on Suze Orman who's a supposedly financial guru. And she talks about private banking on occasion, and she, she really has no concept of what it really does. And in this interview article with the guy from New York Times, she says, You know, I'm so worried or concerned about my, my partner, being left with less than half of my estate. And I think at the time of the article, she worked about 65 million. And so her partner, she said, is going to, you know, have have to, you know, take 30 million or whatever, instead of 35. And she didn't know how to overcome that problem. And I thought, this is really unbelievable, in the sense that it's such an easy solution. And we kind of we talked about this kind of off off recording about it's literally the stroke of a pen that you can accomplish these values and these benefits the Seven Pillars without having to be, you know, a black belt. And in any particular one one realm.

Grant
Financial genius, you just have to know that that's available that it's there. Absolutely.

Seth
Yeah. So you enter the policies, you fund your policies, you keep funding your policies, and you enjoy the these benefits. It's really not rocket science. It's more just of learning that it's there. And it it it blew my mind. It was an epiphany to me. Yeah, having practice law for decades and then and then seeing this was available. I thought it can be that easy. It can't be that easy to with the stroke of a pen to protect assets, but it is I mean, it's it's codified law and these contracts grant or it's worth mentioning that there they are regulated state by state. So each state has their own statutes that govern the the law, the protection, you're gonna need to protect it right. 

Grant
So some states better than others are worse, right?

Seth
Absolutely. And it's, it's kind of like the post Civil War era statutes in southern states. They protect their citizens, life insurance policies, they protect their citizens homesteads many times in comparison to other northern states or western states. So it is,

Grant
wow, that's huge. Okay, so, all right, I've really enjoyed the conversation, if you were to point people to a place to go to learn more about this, Seth, where you're going to point him to?

Seth
It's really easy, you go to our website, https://privatebankingstrategies.com, that's https://privatebankingstrategies.com. And there in you're going to find a an offer. And you can read a book that we wrote that that tells you about secrets that banks don't want you to know, effectively. And I like to call it a red pill book. And it spots issues that people may or may not be aware of. And it's it's amazes me, how many folks don't really understand what the banking folks are doing to them. You know, and with regards to mortgage rates, with regards to all sorts of issues, you just so this red pill book is something that pops up there for you. And you've put your contact information, your name and your email, and, and you can listen to the book on audio, or you can take it in a written form. And that's really the where we start. On our website, Grant, we've got a pretty wide volume of resources from podcasts that dive into particular pillars, or how to how the banking operates, to blog articles, and then our emails that will come to you also address certain issues like the Dodd Frank Act, and what how why does that matter to you?

Are, are your are your, you know, is your cash safe? And and it's centralized bank, why or why not? You know, our, there's simple things that you can do to protect yourself. So we try to add value. And those emails that come out to folks, we try to help them make a decision that this is, you know, for them or not for them. And it's really that simple. So you just hit the website, private banking strategies.com. You can have the book for free, all the podcast, all the emails for free. And if those things resonate with you, then you can schedule an exploratory call with Vance and start to get into the nitty gritty of it into what it means. 

Grant
Wow, Seth, thank you so much for taking the time here today with us and with our audience here. Very enlightening. It feels like we're popping out of the matrix right with with red pill. I love the analogy. Thanks again for joining and for going over this today. Everyone. Take a look at what it is that Seth is talking about https://privatebankingstrategies.com

Thanks again for joining in everybody and until next time, become your own private banker.

Seth
Thank you, Grant.

Thank you for joining Grant on Financial Investing Radio. Don't forget to subscribe and leave feedback. And remember to download your free ebook, visit ClickAIRadio.com now.

Grant
Welcome everybody. In this episode I speak with Jerremy Newsom who has a system for giving back

Everybody welcome to another episode of Financial investing radio. All right today we have in the house. Mr. Jerremy Alexander Newsome coming to us all the way from Nashville, Tennessee. He is a long term successful investor and trader and he's been gracious enough to spend some time with me today, talking about some of the unique things around what he has done and how he's benefiting the market and investors and traders. So first of all, welcome Jerremy. And please take a moment to introduce yourself.

Jerremy
Thank you so much, man. It's always an honor to pour into like minded individuals I love that everyone here is interested in investing and growing their minds and therefore growing their bank account. My name is Jerremy Newsome. It's spelled with two R's. My dad's name was Jerry. So it stands for Jerry and me. That was Oh, that's awesome. Thanks, Mom. Yeah, man, I love the stock market. I love trading. I do love investing, right? Everything from long term buy and hold to day trading options and everything in between. I think that the liquid markets are extremely fascinating. And one of the things that I spend the majority of my time doing is helping other people learn how to do it themselves, right how to generate cash flow, using the markets, so that they can live the life that they want to live and help me people they want to help.

Grant
I love that. So one of the things that triggered me to want to be able to talk with you is when when I had the opportunity to interview I was looking at something about you in your background that sort of caught my eye in terms of what you started with. I'm not gonna give it away but would you back up and just talked about how this all got started? How did what got you thinking Let me do trading. Let me do investing. What was it that can get us that sort of the beginning?

Jerremy
Yeah, dude. The craziest thing it was a movie, a Tom Hanks film 1994 Academy Award winning film Forrest Gump. And I was watching that at six years old. And I was watching with my dad and my oldest brother, Jerry, Roger. And by apresenta way through the movie, Forrest Gump says that him and Lieutenant Dan invested into a fruit company and they no longer had to worry about money anymore. So I asked my dad, I was like, what is the fruit company was investing because when I mean we were poor, financially, we were very happy family had a great incredible childhood. But we were very poor. We we were at the time living in a single wide trailer tree house. Doesn't. It's not nearly as glamorous as it might sound. What I mean, okay, a tree house. A bunch of single wide trailers thrown into a tree house. Yeah, really?

Grant
Wow. That's a story right there.

Jerremy
That was a story. My dad was a creative builder. And I lived in there for from age three until 12. And so anyway, we're watching this film. I connect with that because I was like, Well, I would love to not worry about money anymore. I know a lot of my family members or somebody that we stressed about and worry about. I would like to not have that be an issue. When I asked my dad what's investing what's the fruit company? My dad goes on to tell me about Apple and how the stock market works I was like let's do this the Forrest Gump investing model Dad Come on, let's do it. And you know, he did the normal dad routine, right? Like yeah, this is a movie.

Yep. It's but I asked my dad was like, Is Apple a real company? Can you actually invest in it? I begged him and begged and begged him and he said, Listen, if you bring me some money, I'll match it dollar for dollar and we'll buy some shares of Apple. So I went and picked blackberries, door to door and made 1500 bucks in the summer of 1994 some blackberries. And so true to his word. We bought $3,000 worth of Apple in 1994.

Grant
Man you bootstrapped it. I loved your initiative. Uh, you know, the fact that you really wanted it you went after sold blackberries, right? Like, we just want to pick them out of gardens kind of thing sold and door to door.

Jerremy
Yeah, yeah, just exactly. So they grow wild in South Georgia. And so I just walk around up and down the streets and find BlackBerry pouches and put them in plastic bags or buckets or whatever. I could find them and just wrap them up and then go to go to Door Door and sell them. And the thing is, though, I sold them $1 bag, organic handpicked blackberries. 35% cheaper than they sold stores and had a six year old no shoes, no shirt jean shorts at a high closing rate. Yeah, grandma's would give me 10-20 bucks. You know, I think I was cutest thing in the world. And that was it.

Grant
You know your audience? That's awesome. Yeah. But you know, your dad's brilliant to where he, he saw that. Hey, you know what, I'll support you in this. But I also want you to take some ownership as well. I think that's a great, great learning, right for your kids.

Jerremy
I love that you brought that up, man. You're 100% Right. And I'm assuming that you're a father. I can probably I can make...

Grant
Six kids six grandkids actually two more grandkids, almost eight grandkids. Yes. Big family.

Jerremy
Good for you, man. Good for you. That's incredible. And yeah, so you're absolutely right. It was an ownership thing where it's like, Listen, you want this bad enough? Prove me how bad you want it? And I did. And then he Yeah, he was true to his word.

Grant
Big time. I love that. And I know, I know, you've mentioned this before we got started. But I feel like this is this is the right time to bring this up. You just released something for kids phone is that?

Jerremy
Ah, yeah. No, thank you, man. We talked about that just a few minutes ago. You're absolutely right, I have a brand new book that just hit Amazon. That's the only place you can buy right now. I'm sure it'll be in bookstores eventually. But it's called a stock market journey, how to make sure your kids win every day in real life. And so if you just type in stock market journey into into Amazon, you'll see a pop up and a man. So that's it's a stock market education book for kids, which is very rare. And it's more or less like it doesn't exist. I was told by a person forever ago, like a business mentor. Don't do that. Don't waste your time. There's no demand, like kids aren't trading stock market. Like why teaching? Yeah, I was like, Well, I want to know. I mean, there's someone else wants to know.

Grant
Yeah, you're absolutely right. Absolutely. Yes. Yes. Some of my own kids have done that as well. So I love the fact that you created that book. Okay, so So backing up here. So you have this experience you you got the got the edge, got the bug, committed your time, got the apple investment going. Alright, you've got this sentence in your headshot piece, who shared to me I love it says retiring on $3,000 how to grow a modest investment into a comfortable retirement. But that tells me as you're thinking about us as people in general, right, you're not looking at Gee, it's gonna take lots of money to pull this off. If you do it right. You can bring you can lower that bar to get going with this. Can you talk about this?

Jerremy
Yeah, so essentially, I teach people how to leverage their funds to do day trading, and to be in a position where they're comfortable, where they're not risking insane, insane amounts of money. Because you can leverage money very easily, right? Money is the easiest asset to come by. Now, most people don't think that's accurate, especially if you're not extremely wealthy. But it is like like, if you buy a house, you didn't have to come up with all that money. You went ask the bank and the bank gave the money. And so now you're paying the bank back plus interest, but you are living in a house and 100 or 200 or $3,000 that you didn't have to come up with up front, you got the money, right? That's a resourcefulness going out and getting a bank. But there's other ways to get houses, owner financing, asking your parents, whatever, right there's a million ways to buy a house. So for me when it comes to actively trading the market, most people don't know that leveraged funds exist. And when they hear leveraged funds, like I'm about to lose all of my money. There are mathematical formulas. Second grade math, I'm not very smart at math grant, I'm like a, my IQ is a high 93. And I use second grade math over and over and over to ensure that I never lose more than 1% of my account on any trade. So for me, you can take $3,000 And you can actually get access to $100,000 in day trading, buying power right using the leverage funds and only lose 30 bucks per trade and 30 bucks per trade is 1% of $3,000 Even though you have leveraged $100,000 available so it's it's incredible what's available out there and I wrote a book also called money grows on trees, teaching people these concepts and letting people know that this does exist items and processes And then, you know, companies out there know how to use their money and how to leverage it and give it away for people who might want to grow into a substantial sum of money.

Grant 
So that's interesting that, you know, you identified putting that risk management in place upfront that that seems to be sort of the common theme across a lot of traders that are real successful and having the discipline to say, You know what, I'm not gonna go past that $30, and I'm gonna diversify this, is that the basic strategy across a lot of different trading positions in different markets? Or how do you approach it?

Jerremy
You're not incorrect. That's absolutely one way. Another way that I do it is you create the calculation ahead of time, so you have your 1% of your portfolio. And for me, I'm taking this from a active trading perspective. So I say active trading, I'm a full time legit, professional stock trader, and I'm in front of the computer, trading maybe 10 hours a week, maybe during the time I'm studying, I'm reading I'm listening. I'm doing podcasts I'm, I'm talking people much smarter and much wiser than me like you asking them, Hey, what are the macro economic challenges are going to face America because of Ukraine or because of COVID. I'm asking other people things that's using them some spending, most of my time doing is listening to veterans, people have been doing this for 20 3040 years, getting their their knowledge and their expertise. So the math, for example, is let's say you have a $3,000 investment. 1% of $3,000 is $30. Well, the math behind the risk is if you buy Apple at 180. And you're like, Okay, if Apple goes down to 179. Get me out. So you're risking $1? Well, if you know your risk is 3030 divided by that dollar equals you can buy 30 shares of Apple. So even though your investment in this scenario is well over $4,000, you're only going to lose 30. If it doesn't work. Now, let's say Apple goes from 180 to 190, you make $10 per share risking $1, right you your risk reward is 10 to one you just made $300, even though you only risked 30, that 300 bucks. So it could be cash flow grants could be huge for somebody, right? That could be a car payment, that could be an electricity bill, that could be all forms of items that they might need. That could be groceries, and that could happen in an hour. Right? Like that tray could happen in an hour and or 15 minutes sometimes. And it's amazing how quickly the markets can move.

Grant
Yeah, it is amazing. And with that sort of control risk, and that potential for upside being much more than what the risk is you're taking on. So you're leveraging options, It would be my guess to do something like this, is that right?

Jerremy
You absolutely can leverage options. And I do and I know how I'm very versed in options. But I do generally 99.9% of the time instruct most of my clients to start with stock because it's easier. And stock margin and startup stock leverage is super, super available to anyone who wants it, essentially. And yeah, it's amazing what's available out there.

Grant
That is amazing how long then you typically in positions as you help people do this. So so your your coach student would be one that would come in take your system, they're in front of the computer, they're leveraging their their $3,000. And they might be in a position for like you said 15 minutes or an hour. It's certainly shorter timeframes, right? Not they're not holding anything overnight, or do they?

Jerremy
Very good question. Right. So the leveraged accounts to leverage trading, this is a day trade system. If you're going to hold overnight, I almost never suggest using leverage, though. If you have $3,000 to your name, like you're going to put $3,000 in you're only going to invest, right what you can afford to lose if you're going to hold for long periods of time. And so yeah, absolutely, man, this is a day trade system. But I do I love long term investing love long term. It is an incredible way for wealth generation and for asset appreciation. But I think day trading is really cool for cash flow, right? Because investing is like Well, it's great, but now I'm 65 What now? Well, what if you're 33? Or what if you're 29? Or what if you're 48 and you got a few $100 or 10s of 1000s or a few 1000 And you're like well I would like to make $400 Next week though Can I do that? I was like yeah, that's that's day trading there are systems available that can do this.

Grant
That's That's fascinating. So so with the the talked about the difference between fear and greed, those doggone emotions, alright, what's the secret? sauce here. Jerremy, how do you control those?

Jerremy
Awesome question, man. So good. I mean, it's, it is controlled to an extent, but it's also a lot of self knowledge and introspection. Because, for me, I don't believe that most market participants are greedy. Now I know that's a very, very popular term, right? I mean, Warren Buffett says buy when others are fearful and sell and they're greedy. And so on and so forth. There's a lot of the markets are controlled by fear and greed. There's tons of fear and greed baked into the system. But here's the challenge with that is inherently, the majority of market participants don't want to be greedy, right? They're God fearing church, attending people that are 57 with, you know, a few kids maybe a grandchild or two on the way, and they want to give to charities, and they want to donate and they want to help build orphanages and, and hospitals. They want to donate money to the zoo and protect pandas. Like, if you give money away, Grant, by definition, you're not greedy. Mm hmm. Yeah, I mean, I'm sorry. But that's like just the exact opposite of greed. You can't give money away and be greedy. It's impossible. So therefore, what we do is if people tell themselves, I'm greedy, and greedy and greedy, they're not going to want to make any more money. Because nobody wants to be greedy. So we have to remove these really weird, crazy subconscious beliefs that we have internally about money and about growth. I call it financial optimism, or monetary zealousness rather than greed. Yeah. Or money.

Grant
What about on the other side? Jerremy, what are your thoughts there around fear the management of that?

Jerremy
So fear? I mean, that doesn't go away. And fear comes down to having more and more certainty. That is a piece of it. So you do not have education? Thankfully, there is a company out there that teaches you for free, which is my company, I don't charge anything for these systems, or this education for this knowledge is I just gave it away.

Grant
I mean, you don't charge? That's amazing. You don't?

Jerremy
Yeah, no, it's totally free. Because I want people to be able to experience it, and to understand it, and to learn it, so that they can really figure out they want to do it or not, or to what level because if I'm being honest, I've made a lot of money, millions of dollars in the markets. I'm good. You know, I don't need anyone's money. Specifically, I love money, I'm not pushing it away, I'll absolutely charge you for things. But education is not one of them. I feel like I feel like education should be free. And so I create a free platform, people can learn my system entirely for free. And the piece of the real massive distinction that you're giving about fear is it is a knowledge thing. A lot of people are afraid of I'm just gonna use guns as an example. Okay, well, I grew up around guns, I don't have many, but I'm very comfortable knowing that if I hold the gun, how it works. Yeah, and I know how to put a safety on, I know that it by itself isn't harmful. Just like a car by itself is a harmful you put a drunk driver behind that vehicle. Now it's a weapon. So weapons aren't. Money is a tool, right? Money is a it's like a brick can be thrown through a window or it can build a church. Same thing with guns into the car are all tools. And once you understand more, you have more certainty, you have more education, that fear will slowly start to dissipate. And it won't go away entirely forever. But you will have and you'll replace your replace that with different fears over time.

Grant
Oh, that's awesome. I love the altruistic aspect of this. It's sort of a gift back and feels like what you're doing right to the community. Right. Okay. Let me let me improve the education of people. I actually think that Well, let's talk to the other side of that. Then, with that giving back can you speak to what are the outcomes been to your audience and the people that have gone through the systems? Can you speak of successes and things where people have had their lives changed?

Jerremy
Yeah, man. I mean, the first one that came to mind is a really good friend of mine. His name is Matt DeLong. He's actually my business partner, mentor of mine, when my best friends he's a little bit older than me. 45 years old, has two kids. They're both in college and he was a business owner. A little bit of money, started day trading and losing his face. I mean, he was hemorrhaging money, because he had no idea what to do. Just just losing money all you click the button, boop. He's gone by because there was a siphon. And he didn't know what to do. And so he pumped the brakes. He said he sought out assistance, a coach and mentor and he met with me and pay me for my time said hey, man, I'll buy some food or whatever. Let's let me Cafe this out. So come full circle. That was four years ago, four and a half, five years ago, he now can trade profitably consistently and have an income. And now that his kids are out the house, he is fully financially sustainable, where he doesn't have to draw off of his retirement or he, you know, he does not working right, he sold his business. Him and his wife are able to foster children well, and to be a real force for good by going on mission trips, and by donating to charities and him and I ended up creating a foundation together called Real Life Foundation. And so one of our main goals is to end human trafficking. And so we donate hundreds of 1000s of dollars towards that foundation, and we just we work on Yeah, man. Yeah. So he has time to pour into the world using his gifts and his skills tests with your technology, because he doesn't have to be working 70 hours a week anymore behind the desk, which that was that was the case. That's what he's doing years ago.

Grant
Yeah. So it's interesting. You mentioned what's called Real Life Foundation. Yep. It sounds similar to as it Oh, you are like operation Underground Railroad?

Jerremy
Yeah. Yeah. So that's, that's our main as who we support as one of our main go to www.reallifefoundation.org . Like we do the in human trafficking by connecting directly with Tim Ballard.

Grant
Yeah, that's awesome. Wow, Jerremy, that's, that's really, really cool. Okay, so you're going after leveraging the benefits from this investing and trading strategies, you're tying it back into, I see two huge givebacks from you guys, man, obviously, the free education but going after that human trafficking problem. That's what's our massive problems to pursue? Oh my gosh, that's, that's incredible. Okay, so, so real quick question. You mostly do this in stocks? Is that right? Are you doing things like futures and stuff like that?

Jerremy
Very valid question. I have traded futures. I probably do four or five futures trades a month. Nothing too ridiculous. I do trade cryptocurrencies. I know how to trade foreign currencies. I know how to trade bonds and how to trade commodities. But I mostly trade stocks and options. I would say crypto but it's almost identical. They move very, very, very, very similar. And for me, I tell all the people like It's like Lebron James. Right? He plays basketball. Really? Well. Yeah. I don't know about his football game, or his golf or his baseball, but he's not making money doing those things. So I picked a career path that I understood, I focused on that career path exclusively.

Grant
With stocks and you doing more and more with crypto. And that's such a popular instrument nowadays. Do you do much there then?

Jerremy
I do. I do for numerous reasons. But one of them specifically being that people can do with any amount of money from anywhere in the world. And it really does open a lot of doors to let's say underserved countries that are they're still developing these developing nations, you can give anyone their $10 or let them earn 10 $20. And they can trade crypto and might make $1 a week. But in that world, or that country, that location, that could be a huge return for them. And those opportunities exists. And that's something that I think the crypto markets have allowed to, to really pour pour into other people.

Grant
So for people that are listening to this podcast that are brand new to trading, what tip would you give them to get started?

Jerremy
Most people are brand new, that's the good news. You don't meet many full time day traders who actually make money it's it is a little bit of a rare career path, but it is actually a legit career. And if you are new to it, number one trade companies that you know, know exactly how they make money. So don't trade like random biotech, pharmaceutical companies traded Apple trade, Google trade, Tesla trading normal companies that you know, how they how they interact and what they are. That's the first step for sure. Second step, while you're doing it, start with a small amount of money or pay per trade, right, you can trade virtually, and just practice without any real money at risk at all. Just so you learn a little bit more about it. That's always a very widely accepted form of education. And then yeah, number three, educate yourself right? It doesn't have to be my company. There's tons of websites and articles and YouTube channels that will educate individuals on how on how to trade but the very first star is have a have your mindset and your understanding that it is is achievable and is possible for anyone and yes, it might take 10 years. But what doesn't what doesn't take a long time to be really really, really amazing at it. If you see a professional basketball player, yeah, they make millions of dollars a year, but they pin planks and six. Yeah, now they're 20. Right? 

Grant
Yep. So with regards to a call to action, where would you send people? someone's like, hey, I want to learn more about this. I want to get connected with Jerremy in his system, where are you going to send them?

Jerremy
Absolutely the best call to action, go to https://www.reallifetrading.com/ and click on the beginner's tab. And again, you'll notice that it's free. There's no sales pitch in the presentation. It's just like, hey, man, here's the content, enjoy, go through it, and start there. And I have my email everywhere. I have contact pages everywhere. It's a very easy, user friendly website, and we have a connection teams or reach out to you just to see if you need any help. If you have any questions, we offer free coaching and it's an amazing opportunity for people to learn.

Grant
It is amazing. Thanks for your time today. Any final comments for we for wrap up?

Jerremy
Oh, final comments. This was my dad told me, I asked him what I should be when I grew up when I was about 14 years old. And he said son, study money, study money, study money. I didn't know it at the time was like I don't know what that means. But looking at it now that's that's good advice. Because I think the four most widely under underrated and least talked about but most important subjects on planet Earth are sex, money, religion, and politics. And the least divisive of those four is probably money. So study that one and the other three will start to slowly work themselves out. And you'll start to get into a position where you can hire help and coaches and mentors and, and assistance. You can be in positions where you can change your life dramatically and very quickly using money for the tool that it is, which is an expansion tool of your heart.

Grant
That's awesome, awesome advice. Jerremy, thank you so much for taking the time with us today. Really appreciate that. All the insights you shared, everyone thanks for listening to another episode of Financial Investing Radio and until next time, get some real life trading.

Thank you for joining Grant on Financial Investing Radio. Don't forget to subscribe and leave feedback. And remember to download your free ebook, visit ClickAIRadio.com now.

Welcome, everybody. In this episode, we learn the secrets of systematic growth for your portfolio.

Grant
Okay, everybody, welcome to another episode of Financial investing Radio, I'm excited to have in the house with me today, Mr. Adrian Reid coming all the way from Australia, which is fascinating to me that I have this opportunity to get connected with this professional trader on the other side of the planet, literally from where I'm sitting at the moment. First of all, Adrian, welcome.

Adrian
I'm thrilled to be here. Thanks so much for having me on the call. And isn't this just a fantastic part of the world? You know, we we can communicate from the other side of the world we can we can help traders from all over the world. And there's just really no boundaries now.

Grant
There really isn't. I love that. And what I love is your willingness to get on and share tidbits and insights, right to help the everyday trader who's really trying to figure out how can I grow my portfolio in a way that's going to manage risk? And I know you've got some excellent insights on that. But before we get into that, would you mind stepping back and sort of thinking, what's your origin? How did you get into trading? What even brought you to that part of the world at this point?

Adrian
Yeah, absolutely. Sure. So I've been trading for about 20 years or so now, plus or minus, let's say, six months. And What first got me interested in was actually well, before that, well, before that, my family had a board game, in, in our holiday house, called the stock market game. And I have these amazing, fascinating memories of playing the stock market game becoming a paper billionaire by going around the board and buying lows and selling highs and collecting dividends and stock splits and all of these things. And it was just fascinating. Like, oh, this is this is the best thing ever, was my recollection as an eight year old. Now, I didn't trade or invest for a long time after that. But that was sort of my first memory of the stock market. Wow. And when I started work, I pretty quickly came to the realization that I didn't want to be in the corporate world forever. You know, I was commuting. I was working extremely long hours, I had a lot of high stress right from day one of my first job. And I said to my dad at the time, oh, it basically is this one. It's like, Aha, yeah, I don't want to do this forever. So what do I have to do to not have to do this forever. And we talked about investing, and we talked about stocks and the stock market and real estate and other forms of investing. And so I just started down that, that journey. And when I first came across some money, you know, from from work, I started, I started buying stocks. And I did the typical thing. You know, I didn't actually know anything, but I didn't know that I didn't know anything. So I bought stocks in companies that I recognized that I thought were big names, good companies. 

Grant
And now this is gonna go up, right? 

Adrian
Yeah, yeah, this is gonna go up. This is a great story. And there's a big company, um, you know, I recognize that this is gonna work and I'm smart. So therefore, I should make money. And of course, what happens? You know, I bought in exactly the wrong time it went down. I lost money. Very, very cool at the peak, right? Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And so I look, I played around with that for a period of time. And it took me three years of trying lots of different styles. Before I actually started making money on it in the corner. I tried that fundamental animal.

Grant
First of all, that's impressive that you were able to, so you didn't trade to the point where you lost all your capital, right? You are at least wise enough not or did you at times, say hey, I blew it all out. I gotta rebuild.

Adrian
Oh, I had no look. Absolutely. I have never blown up an account. So when I think one thing that I've really got, that I did well, from the very beginning was always very cautious about risk. And this is critical, right? Because if you blow up your account, the problem is you've got to then go back to work, you know, save money, and that takes time and You've got to build up the courage and that takes time and you're gonna put the money in the market and and then try again. And then chances are you blow it up again. So as soon as you blow up and lose your money, you've just wasted months and months and months. So from the very beginning, I took small trades, small positions, low risk. And I had learned a little bit about risk control from some of the books I read. And for three years, I was able to survive and on my account sort of went sideways and down a bit and sideways and down a bit, but never really made any gains. But the thing that turned the corner was I, I read a series of books called Market Wizards, which no doubt you've read or seen. And Market Wizards is fantastic, because it's a series of interviews with professional traders who have done extremely, extremely well. And as I was reading through it, I realized that all of these traders have their own unique style. And some of them really were like, really resonated with me. And some of them were like, it was an alien from another planet. And what I realized by reading through those interviews is I had to find a style that really fit me suited my personality. And the one that resonated, the ones that resume the most were the systematic traders, the ones that have rules and did tests to check those rules worked, and then followed those rules. And the reason I resonated is because they didn't spend every waking and sleeping hour staring at the screen. Mm hmm. They spent 15-20 minutes, 30 minutes a day running their rules, placing the trades and that was it. And that's what I needed. Yeah, because I was working a job I you know, I didn't have enough capital to live on my trading back then. Yeah. And so I started trading systematically. And you know, I took three months off work to develop my first trading system.

Grant
Really? Yeah. So you took some sort of sabbaticals?

Adrian
Yeah, I just I just said, Look, this is, I want to do this. And so I took three months off, and they my boss basically laughed at me and said, Good luck with that, you know, trading. Okay. Yeah, right, right. So I didn't get a whole lot of support them from from anyone else apart from my wife and my family. But you know what, when I implemented my first trading system, my results basically turned around on a dime. So if you look back at my equity curve, you can pinpoint to the month where that trading system went live. And that's because all of a sudden, I was consistent, and profitable, I had an edge. And from then on, it's just a matter of patience, of continuous improvement, and adding capital, and then eventually to get there.

Grant
So let me ask you this, in terms of the trading system that you've developed and matured over time, what's your general timeframe? And are you in your positions for a few days? Several months? I mean, what's, what range do you trade?

Adrian
Yeah, this is a good question. This comes back to the idea of it's got to fit your personality. So I'm a fairly patient sort of person, I don't like frantic activity, I don't like you know, really fast paced decisions in high stress. So I'm, I'm a longer term, sort of hold. My my favorite style is long term trend following. So that could be I could be in a position for many months. But I'm quite, I'm quick, systematically to cut my losses. So if I if I, if I enter a trade and hits my stop loss on day one, I'm out, I don't care. I'm very comfortable with that. So trend following is my natural kind of place that I gravitate to. But I have shorter term systems and mean reversion systems that are quite short term, because now having evolved as a trader and got comfortable with what the markets can do, and how they move, I can trade other styles outside my sort of natural center, if you like. 

Grant
So the key for us is to establish that main style of trading get good at that make that consistent, once you've got that producing now look at considering other styles that I hear you right?

Adrian
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Because I think as humans, we, we have a natural sort of center or personality or style that will fit best with us. And let's face it, trading is kind of hard, emotionally. And so if you're, if you're challenging yourself with a style that doesn't fit, and the market is challenging you with all of the, you know, the volatility, the ups and downs, the uncertainty, it's pretty difficult to stick to the rules. But if you have rules that are somewhat natural for you, they fit you and you follow them, then you can learn all the emotional essence from the market deal with those and then branch out. I think that's key.

Grant
Well, so earlier, when you made the comment, hey, you went to your corporate job, and it was stressful. The thought that went through my mind was trading can be stressful. So what is it that protects you, right? It's a different kind of stress. How do you equate the two stresses? I've got corporate job, let's say and their stress is there. But wait a minute, I've got training in the stress. How are those different In your mind,

Adrian
I find that different, the types of stress are different in terms of the duration, intensity, and how much control you have over it. So in the corporate world, what I found was, I was just under constant pressure to do more and more and more and more and more and more, and anything that I could produce, the corporate machine still wanted more. And if I wanted to perform even better next time and get a bigger bonus, then I had to produce more. So it was relentless. Whereas in the market, and it's also externally imposed, you can't do much about it, apart from resigned from the job, if you no longer like it, you know, it's sort of outside your control is what I think you don't feel.

I felt that way. Now, in the market, the market is also outside our control, we cannot control the market. But we can control certain things which are really, really important. We can control whether we are in the market or not. And we do that through our system rules that we trade with, we can control how big our positions are. So that whether or not the volatility causes stress or not. So if you position size very aggressively, you're going to have more stress and more stomach acid in your life. If you position size conservatively, you're gonna have less. So we can also control what strategies we use. If you're long, lonely, and you're highly leveraged, it's going to be amazing and pretty stress free in the middle of a bull market, that the end of a bull market as it's turning, it's going to be extremely stressful. But if you're long only, you don't use that much leverage. And you've got some some short term systems and some long term systems, and you can make money from a bear market. And you can make money when the market turns because you've got different strategies, then some of that stress is really dealt with, because you're diversified in a way I saw.

Grant
So if someone's new to trading, does it make sense for them to approach it that way? From the beginning? Or do they still need to get really good at say, their first initial personality style related system? And then over time, then build that more equitable approach to trading?

Adrian
I get really good question I, I think the answer is you've got to start somewhere. And in order to start, you've got to make sure it's not too overwhelming. So I would say start with one system, or one strategy that you can quickly build confidence with. And it really helps to have a guide to kind of step you through that. But if you've got a like someone to model or someone to follow, you can quickly move from one simple strategy to a diversified portfolio. And so, you know, I teach traders and I teach a lot of brand new traders, and I've taken people from knowing absolutely nothing to a very diversified portfolio in a couple of months. So it really is just, oh, wow, a couple of months yet. Because when you when you are given a set of rules that work, and you're given the tools and knowledge to test and evaluate those rules for yourself, so you can build confidence in them, then you can start trading. And then you just you start trading one set of rules, then you get another set of rules, and you test and evaluate that. And then you can start trading now, and then the next set and the next set. So you can pretty quickly build a portfolio of strategies, if you're not trying to figure everything out on your own. Right.

Grant
Okay, so you started to address some of the questions I had for you, which is how long does it take for someone to get proficient using your system? And it sounds like the first part is they could begin some level of proficiency within two months. Is that accurate? 

Adrian
And for both a completely new trader who is motivated and willing to learn and willing to ask questions can be up and running in in with a system in a month or less, then with a portfolio of systems within two to three months.

Grant
And when you look at that person going after a portfolio, what sort of capital do they need to bring to to this trading style.

Adrian
So my style is all systematic, and each system is a diversified portfolio of instrumental positions that are hold so what let's say one of my trend following systems in stocks, that makes money as stocks just continue up on their their long trend and then when stocks turn around and go down, it gets out and takes you to cash, that system might hold 20 simultaneous positions. Okay, now, if you're trading the Australian market, the Australian market has this unfortunate rule where each trade has to be $500 in value. You can't place a new trade for $200 It's five Under dollar minimum, so for that system on Australian, you need $10,000 to trade it properly, but in the US not so. And in the Asian markets not so so. So you really, you can start with just a couple $100 Or a couple $1,000 If you choose the right market. And this is one of the reasons why the cryptocurrency market is so great, because you can you can trade a diversified portfolio in the crypto markets with very small positions, and there's no minimums, and the costs are very, very small to trade it. So you really capital isn't really a barrier to entry anymore. It's it's really the learning that is the barrier to entry, you've got to have rules that give you an edge. And you've got to have absolute confidence in those rules. That's what you need to win really.

Grant
So the biggest challenge that seems over the years in the years that I've been trading as, as the discipline trader mentality, right, the ability to stick with those rules. So what tips or techniques do you have for, for sticking with the rules, right? Not letting the emotions overcome saying, Hey, I'm just going to take the loss, not doing revenge trading, etc. Right? What What are your tips for sticking with the rules?

Adrian
Yeah, this is this is great, because when I before I, before I became a systematic trader, I was a discretion. I did discretionary technical analysis, and I did fundamental analysis, and I really struggled emotionally. And systematic trading really helped. Because there was no, there's no ambiguity. If you have a system, which is objective that tells you if A and B and C happens you buy if D or E happens you sell, you don't have to wonder, is it a buy signal? Or is it a sell signal? So I think most people will benefit hugely by trading systematically, rather than with discretion. That's the first thing. Second thing is your system won't make money all the time, and it won't be profitable on every trade. It's the the your account is gonna go up and down gradually on a path to building your wealth. So you've got to be comfortable as the account swings around. And the biggest trick to getting comfort is building confidence in the rules. So we have our rules, like I can give you the best trading rules in the world. But if you haven't tested and evaluated them for yourself, then when they start losing money and going into drawdown, it's gonna be really hard for you to keep following them. Right? If you've tested them, and you know, okay, for this set of rules, a 15% drawdown is perfectly normal, or three or five losses in a row was perfectly normal. And if I just keep falling it, I'll come out the other side, if you've done that work, not me telling you that's the case you actually doing the testing, then you can sit comfortably knowing this is perfectly normal.

Grant
So do you provide the traders with a certain level of back testing tips and techniques to prove that out?

Adrian
Yes, absolutely. I think this is the the most important thing, because what what most people ask is, what stock should I buy? What crypto token should I buy? The next level of question? It's a very basic question. Next level of evolution is what rules should I follow? Yep. And if someone asks you what rules should you follow? They've evolved beyond keep trying to get tips, right? They're trying to get a process. The Evolution above that is I these are my rules. And I have confidence in them, because I've tested them. And I've evaluated them. So the most important part of my program, my teaching is actually the the back testing, the evaluation, the optimization, improvement of systems, yes, I give systems, but I don't want you to believe and trust me that those systems work. I want to give you the skills and tools to make that decision for yourself. So you can actually follow them in good times and bad. Does that make sense?

Grant
Oh, total total sense. Yeah. That way that you have a greater probability of being disciplined of sticking with that system and not not bailing when you shouldn't? Or not being able to get back in when you should? That's, that's right. Yeah, yeah. critical aspect for them. So when you think about the portfolio's you've talked about you doing stocks? You doing crypto? Do you do have an approach where you separate the portfolio across those? Or is is crypto always part of it? Or do you just focus in crypto with some of your trading strategies, but different ones in stocks? I know it's a long question. And how do you distinguish between the two trading?

Adrian
Yeah, it's a good question. It's a good question. And one of the one of the things I realized when I started researching into systems is that different markets move and behave differently. So you know, gold moves differently to oil moves differently to the stock indices moves differently to the Australian stock market. So my rules are developed for each market. Now a great set of rules will probably work on several markets, but you design it for a certain market. So I have rules for the Australian stock market rules for the Hong Kong Stock market rules for the US stock market. And I have rules for the crypto markets and then different. What I have that sits above all of those systems is a capital allocation model. And I say, okay, for my portfolio, I have this X percent in system one y percent in system two, Zed percent in system three, and so on. And each day, when I'm calculating the size for my positions, I go all the way to the top and say, Okay, how much money do I have in my accounts? What are the percentages for each system? And then within each system, how do I size each trade. And by cascading it down like that, you do a couple of things, you make sure you stay diversified, you don't get concentrated, you make sure your risk on each trade is low, and red linked to the amount of capital you've got in that system and in in total in your account. So the systems are all separate, but they essentially trade a common pool of money and have an allocation to each system, which keeps everything safe and balanced.

Grant
Okay, so. So having that in place, then it makes total sense to, to organize it that way. And it sounds like because I've traded lots of different markets like you having the rules that are that are unique to market makes total sense. Because each one of them has different personalities, even with the same let's say it's us base stocks, then even even each of those have their own sort of personality and characteristics. And so the question is, you know, trading apples gonna behave differently than trading IBM, right? Or whatever, right, that they all have that? So my question is, what in your trading system in terms of your rules? How far down do you get? Do you get to individual stock sort of rules, or you keep it to sort of industry or sector rules, how far down you go with that.

Adrian
So for me, personally, I usually go down to a market, I trade one set of rules that would be applied to a, an entire market or a subset of that market, like, I have a set of rules that would be applied to stocks in the s&p 500, I have a set of rules that would be applied to the entire US stock market. So NASDAQ, Amex NYSC, not pink sheets, for instance, I have a set of rules that isn't applied to the entire Hong Kong market, and the entire Australian market. So I sort of play at that level, you can develop systems at a lower level. But the trouble is, the lower you go, the less trades you get in your back tests, the less confidence you have that the rules really work.

Grant
Yeah, that's what I was wondering about your comment about back testing, I started thinking, Oh, wow, because I know the personalities of some better than others, I obviously don't trade all of them. And after a while you find a few that you feel like you start to understand. So you focus on those, I started like, wow, if you're gonna do that back testing against each of those different types of personalities, that's that's a lot of work. To do that back testing.

Adrian
The back testing is probably not as much work as you think. Because the the way, the way I do it is I have a subscription to a data provider, which gives me all of the stock history for all of the stocks on all of the markets. Okay, I put that into some trading software, I use Amy broker, there's other software, but Amy broker is probably one of the best, best value trading sort of back testing software's. And in the software, I codify the rules and the portfolio management principles and rules in the position sizing. And then I can back test using those rules on the entire market all at the same time. So once I've coded to run a backtest, over 30 years of history, over 1000s of stocks listed on the US market takes about a minute. Oh, really? Wow. Okay, so we're not doing this manually? Oh, guess. It's not just a matter of pressing the backtest button and saying, oh, it's profitable. There's steps you need to go through in the analysis to validate Oh, it's profitable, it's stable, the rules are all significant. I haven't over optimized or fine tune my system to particular trades or the past data. So back testing is really a process. But the labor intensive stuff is taken out of it by the software.

Grant
So that makes it it makes total sense. Because I've both written code on as well as use multiple back testing systems. And I know they can become quite involved. My question is now with that back testing strategy that you have, as you then go to apply it, is it the human that's clicking the button, or do you do leverage software that actually says Oh, well, hey, here's the point to actually execute based on these rules. And therefore it executes that for you.

Adrian
Yeah, it can be both. So on the crypto side, my trading is 100% automated, I literally, I don't do anything, I just monitor that the program, the algorithm is working. And I get a report at the end of each day saying these are the trades you placed. And I just make sure that that's all, you know, in line. On the stock side, it depends on the style of the type of stocks you're trading. So if you're trading extremely high liquidity stocks, like let's say you only traded stocks in the S&P 500, it's pretty easy to fully automate that one. It's less troublesome to fully automate that. And I won't say too easy because there's a bit of tech involved in the automation, if you're trading penny stocks, or smaller caps, where there's a little more risk of slippage, and you want to be a bit more careful with your entries, probably less wise to trust that to a piece of software to place your trades for you. So I do most of my I do my stock trading manually. Okay, but I'm moving to automation on that side for selected systems, not for every system. Yes, but I think the advantage is, on the stock side, I'm only trading once a day or once a week. And so it still takes very little time, even though the execution is not automated, I literally spend 15 to 20 minutes a day, placing orders. And that's all I do on my trading, it's really quite quick when you trade systematically.

Grant
That's amazing. So if I pull it back then to you got a brand new trader, they're gonna put in about two months of effort before they can maybe get a portfolio in place. I'm assuming initially, that's probably manual trading activities, but over time, then they take on more and more automated capabilities. Is that fair?

Adrian
Yeah, they could if they wanted to, if they were comfortable with the technology to do so, as some people are not, you know, they're not programmers by background. And some of those, you know, the API's or that is it's not straightforward. So you don't have to do that. I've traded for 20 years, and I'm still doing some trades manually, that, you know, 1520 minutes a day doesn't stress me out too much. So I'm okay with that.

Grant
Yeah, yeah. If you are stressed out, Adrian, then yeah, I'd say well, wait a minute. No, that's not stress 15 to 20 minutes. Um, so quick question. When you talk about the profile of your, you know, the students, the people that you take through this, can you describe a few profiles of people that tend to do well at this,or I have literally taken all sorts.

Adrian
So, you know, I have on one extreme, the people who gravitate most naturally to systematic trading, and typically, typically analytical types, engineers, scientists, accountants, people who are comfortable with computers in code. And they will typically pick it up very quickly, they'll they'll see the value in the analysis, they won't be stressed out by the the software, the analytical work or the coding. And they'll be off to the races very, very quickly. But at the other end of the extreme, I've taught artists, people with adult someone with a dog walking business, some people who are stay at home moms stay at home dads, who with with no analytical background, so it works for all sorts. But the common the common drive or factor amongst all of them, is you is desire. You've got to and fascination, you've got to really want to learn to trade the markets. What I say to people, when they come to me say can you teach me to trade say, Well, yes, but why do you want to learn? And what do you think about the markets and people who say, Oh, look, I just think I, I should invest? I don't really know anything. And stock seems easier than property because I've got no money. I say, You know what, it's probably gonna be a hard journey for that person. But for someone who comes to me and says, Look, I just, I just love the way the markets move up and down. It's, it's kind of fascinating to me. I've tried, but I lost money. And I don't know why. And I just want to learn, you know, that person will succeed ultimately with the right guidance.

Grant
Awesome. That that's wonderful. Okay, so if someone wanted to find you, how do they find you? What's what's a call to action here so they can get

Adrian
Yeah, absolutely. So the the business in the website is enlightened stock trading and for your listeners, Grant, I've put together a page with some kind of free free content and courses just to get people started. So EnlightenedStockTrading.com/FIR, register there and they'll get a bunch of cheat sheets about how to avoid losing how to make money and how to build confidence in your systems and a course on the millionaire trader code which gets your mind right and shows you the path to success.

Grant
Excellent. Wow. Thank you for doing that. I didn't know you're going to do that. I appreciate that.

Adrian
Yeah, no pleasure. It's exciting because you You know, what I want most of all, is to stop people from getting into the market uninformed, and just losing their money. Because a little bit of education will keep people alive. And a little bit more education will actually show you how to make money. So, you know, what I'm aiming for is, first of all, make sure people who get into the markets just don't lose everything in the next two weeks, because that happens more often than you'd think. So absolutely. With that do people can be in the game.

Grant
And with the increased volatility in the market today, does the systematic trading, you still fill fill work? Well, I mean, it's obviously not. It's not that secular bull market that we've experienced over the last, you know, plus, you know, decade or more, right. So that's change. Any thoughts on that?

Adrian
Yeah, the key here is diversification. So you don't want to as you evolve as a trader, you'll become more and more diversified. And you can make money for more different market conditions, you can make money from quiet up markets, from volatile sideways markets, you can make money from volatile downward market, you just need the right set of rules. So none of the market conditions need to be scary. It's just a matter of finding rules that work and applying them consistently. And that can those rules turn themselves on and off. Well, at least in my world, I create the systems to turn himself on and off when the time is right. So my long side trend following turns off when the market isn't in a bull phase. So I'm not going to keep taking signals all the way down in the bear market, because that's just silly. It's low probability. But I will sell stock short when the indices, rollover, and everything is clearly going down. And I'll hold the short positions until the market comes up, or until I've got a decent profit and then hits my profit target. So it doesn't matter what the markets doing, you can have a systematic approach that works.

Grant
Great. I wanted to make sure that point came out that this is not just about because earlier we talked about, oh, well, I put it in I think the long term, the reality is for the different market conditions, you have the set of rules to handle what the current market conditions are. So that's key.

Adrian
Yeah, absolutely. That's really, really important. You've got to diversify. No one method doesn't matter what you're trading or investing in no one thing is your path to wealth. You need to have different strategies, different approaches, and systematic trading is no different.

Grant
Adrian, it's been a pleasure. Thank you. I know it's, it's already tomorrow. It's Saturday. From the future in Australia. It is from the future. What's the market look like? Yeah, just let me know. Right.

Adrian
I'm fortunately markets closed in the future because it's Saturday.

Grant
Ah, that's right. That's right. Well, Adrian, thank you for taking the time, especially on your weekend. I appreciate you doing that. And I look forward to chatting with you again, because I'd like to do a follow up with you in some time. And everyone please take a look at that call to action that you shared on that URL. What's that URL? One more time?

Adrian  
It's EnlightenedStockTrading.com/FIR

Grant
Thank you very much. Okay, everyone. Thanks for joining. And until next time, get some systematic trading.

Thank you for joining Grant on ClickAI Radio. Don't forget to subscribe and leave feedback. And remember to download your free ebook, visit ClickAIRadio.com.

In this episode, we take a look at the question Can AI Be Used to Automate the Mundane?

Grant
Hey, everybody, welcome to another episode of ClickAI Radio. So welcome, I am excited to bring into the show today someone that it's taken me several times trying to get to this, busy busy guy. This is Evan Ryan. Evan, I hope I said your name right, right. Because I've said some people's names wrong. It's not Yvonne right or not right on? Is it Evan Ryan? Right?

Evan
It is Evan Ryan. Yeah, you got it in the right order. Most of the time, it's in the opposite order to flip it around.

Grant
Right. Um, founders CEO, King, of Teammate AI, right.

Evan
I just tried to go by founder. Okay.

Grant
Awesome. All right. Tell us a bit about yourself, Evan, what's brought you to this point. And anyway, thanks for joining the show. All right. Let me stop talking. Go ahead.

Evan
Well, Grant, thanks for having me. We were talking before we started recording, I just hit it off from the first second, at least in my opinion, I'm having a wonderful time. So really with me, I didn't really notice this. But throughout my entire childhood, I really had zero tolerance for boring stuff. I was somebody who just really likes doing fun things. And I like doing things that are that are entertaining, that are challenging, that are fascinating, that are motivating. But I don't like doing things that are boring. And I will basically do anything that I can to avoid doing boring stuff. And of course, now Hindsight is 2020. But that's sort of how I view a lot of my childhood. Well, in 2016, I went to a conference where they had this guy by the name of Jeremy Howard. And at the time, or a year or two prior, he was the number one ranked AI researcher in the world. He was talking about all this stuff that you could do with AI. And he, he mentioned that he had this company that could correctly diagnose cancer from MRIs and CT scans. Cool better than a team of board certified doctors. Oh, this isn't 2016. Yeah, so I was just about to graduate from college. I was thinking that oh my gosh, like, this is just the coolest thing I've ever heard. I basically went into AI the next day. Did you really? Wow. Yeah, it was it was really sort of powerful and transformative. Over the next couple of years of sort of iterating around well, what what do I really want to do inside of AI? You know, how do I want to define AI? First of all, there's sort of no definition that everybody can agree upon. I really found that, you know, I hate doing boring stuff. I bet a lot of other people hate doing boring stuff, too. Yeah, yeah. So and so now we all know the pattern there for sure. Yeah. Yeah. And what I've found is really interesting is, you know, one of the biggest conversation topics around AI right now is will AI take all of our jobs?

Grant
Oh, my goodness. Yeah. I hear that so many times. Yes.

Evan
I mean, there are like so many ways to answer that with the answer, in my opinion, being No. But what I found is really exciting is when I bring people into the creative process about how can they automate the mundane, the boring, repeatable on their days, they're so excited, like the first time in a while that they felt like, wow, the future is so much bigger than my past. So for the last several years, we've been automating, we've been automating tasks and automating processes for small and medium sized businesses.

Grant
So let me back up. So you hear this guy speak. You're like AI is the place to go. Your passion is let me take boring out of life. So you're leveraging AI to do that to remove the boring. I remember my dad is really what got me into the, into the technology industry. He was in it if you can believe it, right? So he was like one of the early early pioneers in some of this stuff. And he I remember him using the phrase Boolean shift a lot. He would always talk like, oh, technology is a Boolean shift. And I'm like, What are you talking about? What's a Boolean shift, you know? But this is kind of a Boolean shift with AI something, it's going to totally replace us. But in fact, I think it's a shift to the right, where it starts to automate more and more capabilities. It does require us to re retool. But that's good. Because every big shift, you know, throughout our whole economic history, right, as a country, and as innovation continues to grow, we have to keep shifting to the right terms of the skill sets that are important and critical. So I don't see it as, as this big day AI is gonna come take over, and we're all gonna sit around and become people like on E. What is it Wally, that movie Wally? Right, where they sit around doing nothing? Right, I don't think is that, but I do think it is a shift in terms of the capabilities that will bring and therefore we'll get skilled up in other areas. What are your thoughts on that?

Evan
Well, I have a question first before, before I answer that, do you have a memory of when you were a child, where you first saw technology, do something and you're like, holy, holy smokes.

Grant
I do it was that this will highlight the age difference between you and I, it was my, my dad worked in this. So there used to be a competitor to IBM. They're called Control Data Corp, and my dad worked for them. He'd worked on some of the big mainframe systems. And I remember one time, he took me into one of their big mainframe centers, right, and we walk into this room and the fans are running. And the big computers are, and the disk, you know, the tape drive is going, you know, like, just like you see on the old movies, right? And the big disk drives worrying. And my dad sits down and starts coding some things on it. And the computer starts interacting with me saying my name and helped me, you know, asking me questions. And I remember leaning up to and going, this is what I'm gonna do. I don't know everything that just happened there. But I want to be a part of this. So yes, that that was my technology origin story. Yeah.

Evan
Yeah. For me. So outside of seeing this, like this was years ago, when I was like a small child. I remember my best friend was sending out invitations to a fourth of July, a fourth of July party in the United States. And, and he mailmerge at like age eight, e mail merge, like 500 contacts. Oh, that's everything that is just insane. Like, as incredible as mail merging. And AJ at AJ. Also, like, what is this thing? mailmerge? Oh, my gosh. Yeah, it's so fun to like, kind of think about, you know, there's this like, one time where at some point, you're like, I wonder what else it can do? This is just the beginning. Yeah. But to answer your question, you know, will we will we all end up just kind of like sitting around or being artists all day? I don't think so. The example that I use is, you know, right now you and I are talking over zoom. It took me three clicks in order to get into our zoom meeting. Right? And so what if I went, what if we went back to the 1950s. And we said that in 70 years, you're going to be able to talk to virtually anybody in the world, you'll be able to see their face, the audio quality will be crystal clear. And I'll cost you essentially nothing. But all 1.5 million telephone switchboard, switchboard operators will lose their jobs.

Grant
Yeah, yeah, it's it's true. Yeah, that Yeah, right. Yeah, no, people like, like, There's no way.

Evan
Right, and, and so there's always been this sort of technological destruction that has taken place. Even back when we humans created the waterwheel. And now you didn't have as many people moving water to generate power generate electricity, or when we created ladders, and, you know, there are all sorts of different pieces of technology that we've had, over the last several 1000 years that have changed the way that we worked. This is just another one, I think it's a bigger shift than then some of the other ones. But, you know, the printing press did the same thing. There are all sorts of people that were just writing books, they were writing the Bible over and over and over and over again. Well, they lost their job pretty darn fast. Yet we have more people on the planet than ever before, and more people are employed than ever.

Grant
To do this. I remember one of the startups that I was involved with earlier in my career in Silicon Valley, we're trying to solve the problem of we want to be able to allow software engineers and designers to design systems remotely over the Internet, right. And so in order to do that, we have some some design tools, but we got to make that accessible and you need to be able to manipulate it remotely. Right. This is before there's a lot of big fat network pipes. You know, you know, everyone's got high bandwidth, right. So we were trying to figure out how to get this to work. We ended up getting it to work, but the cost was prohibitive. Right Just so dang grim. So when I think about the progress of technology, it's lots of trying over and over again until you get to this point where enough of the complexity can be abstracted away so that ultimately the end user sees this simplicity enough to say it's adoptable for both ease of use as well as cost perspective. I think we're right there. They I, I think we're doing similar thing, right to go through the same round, which is, can I take some techniques that are advanced that have some value, but you don't have to have massive data science background in order to get the benefits from that, and I see that shift taking place where more and more of it can then become accessible to others? As the cost drops dramatically?

Evan
I've seen similar things, I I couldn't agree more. You know, I think AI is sort of one of those things that for a decade or two was promised but under delivered, no, yeah. And now it's so it's like it's coming in with a vengeance. And the tools that are being made are super intuitive. The use cases that are being documented, and copied and repeated are ones that affect a lot of people. And I think people are really opening their minds to the idea that they don't have to do things the same way that they always have, just because that's how it's always been done. So I think it's kind of a combination of a huge mindset shift. But also just the tools are flat out better than they've ever been before. And they're finally usable to the point where you can automate things and you can create API's with button clicks instead of with raw code.

Grant
Yeah, yeah. Which is, which is fascinating. I think it's bringing an order of magnitude capability, and will continue to do that, to the kinds of problems that we can solve it. And it's just, I think, at the crux of it right in others is you look to the future, if you can continue to provide this time to this kind of computational power. And add that in the future to things like quantum, when we start blending both of those, I think the kinds of problems we can solve becomes quite large. But let me pull it back to tell me about the problems you're specifically solving with teammate AI. So So you got into this space, you're looking to go solve some problems with AI, you want to make things simple, what are you making simple?

Evan
You know, we really love to help entrepreneurial companies, and primarily companies where the executive team really wants to grow, they really would love to grow, they'd love to grow five or 10x, and the next decade or two decades, or even shorter, but they can't bear the idea of doing it while radically increasing their payroll. Right. And the most common complaint that we hear is not you know, I have the wrong team or my team doesn't do great work. It's that my team is underutilized because they have too much stuff on their plate. And so what we really try to automate the problems that we try to solve, are really helping these team members helping these employees identify what are the things that you do in a day that you hate the most, let's not automate the stuff that you love, let's automate the stuff that you hate. And then we'll figure out together how we can automate this so that you never have to deal with it again. And so we do that with with companies, basically, across every industry. The the question, the second question that I get the most often is, what industries does AI work in? And my answer is always well, you know, AI is a little like electricity, like, sure there's the electric company. But every every company was benefited. And every industry was benefited by electricity. And it's kind of a similar thing. Yeah, you know, there's sort of no gift that you can give people that's more valuable than their time, in my opinion.

Grant
What would be some use cases that you're applying it to? Is it? Is it things like bookkeeping, is it, you know, mundane, you know, administrative tasks? Or is it in other areas that you're applying AI?

Evan
So every company is a little different? I mean, of course, there's like bookkeeping and accounts receivable, and how can we send invoices out of our ERP smoother or submit website forms for invoicing smoother. But there's also a lot of reporting, sort of data collection, data crunching and then putting that into a human readable format. That way, people aren't in charge of trying to figure out what the data says. Instead, the computer tells you what the most important things are to look for. We use AI to write newspaper articles, write and publish newspaper articles for media outlets across the country. Regardless of your feelings of the media, it costs too much money in order to be able to write an article especially for info journalism, like what happened in the local sporting events. So we're doing that all across the country and all across the world, all the way to multi day processes where maybe We're using machine vision to look at images and see, well, are there any defects in the products that we're working with right now? If there are defects, what are the defects and let's report back to the supplier, let's report it back to whoever's responsible in order to be able to get that quality control, like up to speed and up to where we needed to be. So we do the boring in the mundane like accounts receivable, we also do the really sexy and complex machine vision. And we're reporting back with here. Here's the percentage of products that you shipped us, for example, that that were manufactured properly or are up to spec.

Grant
That's quite a, that's quite a wide range of use cases. That's, that's amazing. Are you building your machine vision work off of the Open CV material or your you did this all by hand?

Evan
We use Fast AI's library, which Fast AI was the not for profit that was founded by Jeremy Howard. So basically, Jeremy was telling me in this conference, you know, here's all the great things that you can do about AI, by the way, I have a free and open course. And we found that their library is just absolutely unbelievable. So we'll try as hard as we can to be able to, to be able to build it from scratch. And the reason for that we originally did not try to do that we originally tried to use a lot of the open source. Yeah. But the reason was really interesting. It was that, especially when, when the process that we were automating wasn't related to customer acquisition, lead generation. Yeah, what was happening a lot of times was our was our clients who would get this new capability called this AI that saving, you know, hours or days per week in some cases, and they'd say something to the effect of, you know, everybody else in our industry faces the same problem. Could we license this to everybody else in our industry? Wow. Well, now they had this old legacy business, that they flipped into a software as a service business. And we realized really fast that we that we had to be able to make sure that our solution scaled to more than just one user. Mm hmm.

Grant
Amazing. So what's been some of the outcomes, you've noticed now that you've been out doing this across a range of companies, what, what's been the impact to them?

Evan
What's most exciting for me is that all companies are unique, yet all companies are the same. So they all have product delivery, they all have accounting, and bookkeeping, they all have sales and customer acquisition, they all have customer service. And so they all have these sort of functions, that interplay really nicely together. But largely, they're the same. The real differentiator, among a lot of companies is things like their supply chain, their product and their product delivery. So being able to help a wide swath of companies get clarity surrounding, you know, AI isn't just for Silicon Valley. It's not just for Tesla, and Mehta and Apple and Google, right. That's been really exciting. I think that there's a real market shift going on among employees, I think employees really have a smaller and smaller tolerance for doing stuff that's boring and doesn't move the ball forward. And companies are really incentivized right now, to outsource a lot of the work to AI in order to be able to retain their best talent. And so that's been one of the really, really interesting things. I think that's come out of the last six months.

Grant
Now, I guess I could imagine it would be something like removing them in the mundane so that you can tap into their creative, right, I think that's really sort of what you're after, right? It's try to exploit opportunities to get more creativity from your people. I would imagine in today's market, too, with a lot of attrition taking place and the challenges with hiring, that this also can be beneficial. It's is it part of a play to help people stay in their jobs where you could take some of the mundane out of it, and therefore allow them to do more creative and enjoyable things in their work?

Evan
It absolutely is. That's actually one of the biggest reasons why a lot of companies decide to work with us right now is because they know that they if it can create a work experience, that's five times better than what it is right now. That key employee might not go looking for an extra $10,000 A year or an extra 20 grand, or for new opportunities just because it doesn't feel like a right fit anymore. And so we're seeing that all the time. We're also seeing on the flip side of it, a lot of companies that are having problems hiring, or they're having problems retaining employees, just overall, maybe they have a 3040 50% attrition rate on new hires in any particular role. They're starting to ask the question, Well, I wonder why. Like, maybe it's us. That's the problem. And it's not them. That's the problem. And so all of those tasks that used to be hired, are now being automated instead. That way they can hire for those more creative and fascinating and motivating roles. I mean, I don't know anybody I don't know anybody who wakes up on a Monday morning looking forward to doing the same stuff they've done for the last five years.

Grant
Yeah, if they do well, yeah, that's another conversation. But sounds like you use a range of things from RPA to some custom built AI work, you guys have developed is your sort of toolset is that, right?

Evan
Yeah, whatever it takes to get the job done. A lot of times customers will have specifications. But, you know, Microsoft Power automates a really powerful tool. And there's a lot that you can do with 1000 lines of Python code, right, and with a great AWS or Azure suite. And so we do use, we have a handy and a really kind of wide tool belt. But what we find is that we're using the same tool sort of over and over again, which is really handy, I think, overall, and it makes it so that the tools are getting better over time.

Grant
They are Yeah, they're definitely getting better. Okay, so for our audience, what would be a call to action for them? If they were wanting to learn more about you and your organization and what you're doing?

Evan
Yeah, so I think the biggest thing would be head to automation secrets that teammate ai.com, there, you can get a free copy of my new book, AI is your teammate. And really what it does is it kind of helps distill down what are the mindsets necessary in order to be able to use AI in your world, whether you're a business owner and entrepreneur and executive or an employee? And how can you make it happen? You know, there's a lot of sort of how to guides for how do you make automation happen, but I've tend to find that they're all either way too high level, like, AI can only be used for chatbots on your website, or cybersecurity, or they're literally showing you lines of code. And so how can you make it happen, no matter what your level of technical capabilities are? So I would head there, no matter what, get a teammate, or you can get it on Amazon or Barnes and Noble or anywhere where you find books.

Grant
Oh, that's cool. So when you think about a bell curve in terms of the amount of time that someone would commit to working with a group like yourself, what does that look like, you know, the bell curve is or the efforts or the projects you do with them? Is it a two week four week, eight week? What does that look like?

Evan
I you know, for for relatively small automations. If you're if you're using a tool, like Zapier, for example, that would be two to four weeks. So very, very short, you could wake up this month, you have a lot of stuff on your plate that you hate. And by next quarter, you could have saved 510 20 hours a week, depending on what your job description looks like, all the way to six months to a year depending on if you have a if you have a really complicated sort of project that you need to automate.

Grant
Gotcha. Gotcha. Very cool. Okay. What questions do you have for me, you said you wanted to ask me some questions before we started?

Evan
I do want to ask you, yeah, what do you see? You know, so you do it a different type of like a eyes and really what we specialize in? We don't try to do a lot of the predictive the predictive modeling. Yeah. What are you seeing in the marketplace? On the predictive side?

Grant
Yeah. So on the predictive side, I'm definitely working in that space. Not so much in the CV area, but more in terms of predictive analytics itself. So you know, taking things like oh, how can I? How can I address stockout? problems, right, my supply chain? Or, oh, what can I do to increase sales? That is probably the number one use case that I see. Right, which is, hey, we're just trying to grow the business? And what are the conditions that are driving the best sales situation? Or how can I take costs out of my business? So efficiency plays? That's probably the second sort of style of problems that organizations need to solve. And similar to what you're describing, in all cases, it's Can I do it with the same amount or fewer resources? Right, I can't be adding more resources to this. In most cases, there's this FOMO aspect, which is there's this fear of the unknown, what is it that the AI can see that I can't write, because lots of times our brains are wired to see only just a few factors or variables. And then once we get too many dimensions out, our brain sort of gives out AI really exploits that well. And so casting as wide a net as possible, that makes sense for that business outcome. You're trying to target where it sells or whatever, and letting the AI help you to see all of those all those far reaching variables and pulling that in and saying actually, it's, it's the combination of these other factors as well means that this is when your sales take place. If it's this salesperson, during this time of the month to this particular market. You know, when the weather is clear in San Diego, whatever it might be, right? Those conditions tend to drive higher sales, whatever the situation, it's that watching business owners have that aha moment to go. Oh, okay. And that's, that's real satisfying, because then they go in and start tweaking their business, right, just enough to say, hey, it was worth the effort to discover them. One more thing, while I'm monologuing on this, there's that part. And then there's the other part, which is I find that AI, it can bring so many predictive insights, that it cripples the organization, right? It comes back and says, here's all the drivers, and here's all the factors, but it gives you, you know, 20 of them, and you're like, oh, okay, what am I gonna do with 20? Right? How do I figure and so that's the other key part of what we do, which is, we then say, oh, let's prioritize these into a series of incremental steps that moves the organization one step at a time. Otherwise, people get changed fatigue, right, it's too much to keep trying to, you know, do it all at once. So we take the insights that are predictive, go after those that have the highest probability as it relates to the business outcome, and then just go do one or two of those, and then rebuild, because contacts, you know, business shit, and business drift occurs, data drift occurs. And so you then refactor the the model again and gives you fresh insights. So how's that for a long answer? That's what I'm saying?

Evan
Well, that's actually you kind of touched on one of the follow ups that I wanted to ask, which is, we spend a lot of our time with the end users with the end employees, it sounds to me like you spend a lot of your time with the C suite. Is that correct?

Grant
We do, but it depends on the organization. And who's been tasked, in many cases, will we start with a C suite. And I'll tell you why. One of the challenges, I believe, with a lot of the AI platforms today is is the over over focus on model accuracy, right getting a 90% accurate, now, don't get me wrong, the model has got to be, you know, really accurate, but when it's done outside of the context of your business operations, then it means I could end up producing an AI model that's so efficient, that my business is not actually able to deal with or handle it may be bringing me too many deals, such that it actually increases the cost of goods sold, that it actually ends up hurting my business. And so it really needs this combination of a sufficient, efficient model connected to what are my business costs, my operations, my you know, the the amount of resources I have available, and that's why it needs to go a step at a time, right, you just keep going one step at a time to improve or grow it. So sometimes it's with the data, people. But if you do it outside of the context of those business questions, then it tends not to be as effective on the ROI.

Evan
That's a that's one of the things I was gonna ask, are you seeing that there are sometimes negative consequences where the AI is so good? Yeah, you know, that people either you have a change management problem where people's preconceived notions of why things happened was actually incorrect. And now you have to retrain, or something like that, where, you know, the like what you said, the cost of goods rises so much, because it's so efficient at acquiring new customers or getting more sales, that that the business wasn't ready to scale to that level? Do you see that that happens more often than not? Or is that a sort of a corner case?

Grant
I don't know, I don't think it's corner case. It's, it's a fair, fair amount of the cases, though, enough to be a worry, right, that if I don't take change management into consideration, as I roll out AI, then then my probabilities of success dropped dramatically that just because I have the insights from Ai, in my opinion, is only 70% of the way there, then you got to get that, you know, last mile and and the last mile is the successful rollout and adoption of this, and sometimes it's a cultural thing you're running into, people are worried, oh, I'm gonna lose my job. Others are like, Oh, this is gonna change my job. And then others are, well, we embrace it. But now we run into a money problem. And the money problem is that our business operations can't handle this adjustment. Or maybe the AI got it wrong, and the business can't handle that adjustment either. Right? Doesn't mean that it's always right. And so in either case, it can have that financial impact. And if we're not, if we're not taming the AI enough in the context of business operations, then it ends up creating a problem. So there's several hurdles after you get just those those predictive insights.

Evan
Yeah, one of the things that's interesting about hearing hearing your world which your world is just is so radically different than mine, I mean, with us, we have a pretty set, you know, this set of criteria. We're going to automate this process Is this process we've mapped out exactly what the steps are in the process, and then we build a computer to do it. with you what I think is interesting is, I hear all the time, that this concept of what we want to use data to make better decisions. Oh, yeah. And, like, there, I always think, you know, there's part of that that's true. But there's also part of it, that's like, you are thinking that the human should be making a decision right now.

Grant
I like to view this more as augmented intelligence. I know we say AI. But I think a should be augmented. It's really the state of where the practice is, I think in AI, to say that we're going to give all decision making rights over to some AI model and just blindly trust that I think that's naive in today's AI. Now, you know, they're getting better and better. But I work a lot of organizations where the majority, the AI model is early. And so it's growing, the need for a lot more cognitive support from the humans, to ensure that this thing is naturally moving in a way that is reliable, and truly predictable. And otherwise, I think you could just hand it off and say, I give all all decisioning rights over to the AI, I think that's foolish, you have the ability and need the ability, even after you've deployed an AI model to come back and vote on the impact of that insight. And that's important, because we want to continue to refine the training and retraining of the AI. Hey, what you just shared with me that predictive insight actually didn't pan out, that guidance really needs to come back into the models.

Evan
Yeah, I think, you know, the AI at the end of the day, like the algorithms, they make a prediction and they make a recommendation, but they never, they never make a decision. Now, humans either a prediction or recommendation, the human needs to make a decision. So the AI can provide all sorts of information, and it can provide recommendations. But But yeah, I don't it's not ready yet to to just understand how the world works and understand where you're going, what your objectives are, and then just say, this is right. It's not it's not quite otherwise. I know. I know, a lot of senior managers who are going to have really bad days. AI can do that. So what are some of your what are some of your sweet spots? What are the things that were the projects where you know, you know, that you can hit it out of the park?

Grant
Yeah, it's, like I said, it's in medium sized organizations typically trying to solve, you know, a revenue sales problem, right? That's definitely a sweet spot and supply chain areas, right? That's where they're looking to say, Hey, I'm trying to make sure I can, can keep inventory coming in at the right pace or the right rate, which is a serious problem now. But you know, we've also seen it in even in the current talent management shortages that's going on, which is, can I use it to help me understand the probabilities of, you know, certain groups or individuals who are candidates for leaving early right, and the cost and impact to an organization when that happens? Those are the types of use cases where typically we get involved. Those are, those are great questions, for sure. Okay. All right. This has been awesome. Yeah, you haven't. Thank you.

Evan
This has been great Grant.

Grant
Yeah, thanks for your questions. Any final statement before we wrap up about Teammate AI?

Evan
You can grab AI as your teammate on Amazon or at automationsecretsteamai.com. But mostly, I just hope that everybody has a future that's far, far bigger than their past, and far better than their past. Thanks for having me, Grant. Really appreciate this one.

Grant
Thank you for your time, everybody. Thanks for joining another episode of clique AI radio. And until next time, get some Teammate AI.

Thank you for joining Grant on ClickAI Radio. Don't forget to subscribe and leave feedback. And remember to download your free ebook, visit ClickAIRadio.com now.

Grant
Welcome everybody. In this episode, we take a look at the four pitfalls to AI ethics and are they solvable?

Okay, hey, everybody. Welcome to another episode of ClickAI Radio. So glad to have in the house today Plainsight AI. What a privilege. Elizabeth Spears with us here today. Hi, Elizabeth.

Elizabeth
Hey, Grant. Thanks for having me back.

Grant
Thanks for coming back. You know, when we were talking last time, you threw out this wonderful topic around pitfalls around AI ethics. And it's such a common sort of drop phrase, everyone's like, oh, there's ethics issues around AI. Let's, let's shy away from it. Therefore, it's got a problem, right? And I loved how you came back. And it was after our episode, it's like he pulled me aside in the hallway. Metaphorically like "Grant, let's have a topic on the pitfalls around these some of these ethical topics here". So I, you hooked me I was like, Oh, perfect. That's, that's a wonderful idea with that.

Elizabeth
So typically, I think there's, there's so many sort of high level conversations about ethics and AI, but, but I feel like we don't dig into the details very often of kind of when that happens, and how to deal with it. And like you said, it's kind of the common pitfalls.

Grant
It is. And, you know, it's interesting is the, in the AI world in particular, it seems like so many of the ethical arguments come up around the image, style of AI, right, you know, ways in which people have misused or abused AI, right for either bad use cases or other sort of secret or bad approaches. So this is like you are the perfect person to talk about this and, and cast the dagger in the heart of some of these mythical ethical things, or maybe not right. All right. Oh, yeah. Alright, so let's talk through some of these. So common pitfalls. So there were four areas that you and I sort of bantered about, he came back he said, Okay, let's talk about bias. Let's talk about inaccuracy in models, a bit about fraud, and then perhaps something around legal or ethical consent violations. Those were four that we started with, we don't have to stay on those. But let's tee up bias. Let's talk about ethical problems around bias. All right.

Elizabeth
So I mean, there's really there's several types of bias. And, and often the biased and inaccuracies can kind of conflate because they can sort of cause each other. But we have I have some examples of of both. And then again, somewhere, some where it's it's really biased and inaccuracies that are happening. But one example or one type is not modeling your problem correctly, and in particular, to simply so I'll start with the example. So you want to detect safety in a crosswalk, right, relatively simple kind of thing. And, and you want to make sure that no one is sitting in this crosswalk. Because that would be now generally be a problem. It's a problem. So, so you do body pose detection, right? And if you aren't thinking about this problem holistically, you say, All right, I'm going to do sitting versus standing. Now the problem with that is what about a person in a wheelchair? So then you would be detecting kind of a perceived problem because you think someone sitting in the middle of a crosswalk but but it's really just about accurately defining that problem. And then and then making sure that's reflected in your labeling process. And and that kind of flows. into another whole set of problems, which is when your test data and your kind of labeling process are a mismatch with your production environment. So one of the things that we really encourage for our customers is, is collecting as much production close as close to possible, or ideally just production data that you'll be running your models on, instead of having sort of these very different test data sets that then you'll then you'll kind of deploy into production. And there can be these mismatches. And sometimes that's a really difficult thing to accomplish.

Grant
Yeah, so I was gonna ask you on that, you know, in the world of generative AI, where that's becoming more and more of a thing, and in the app, the appetite for sort of generating or producing that test data is the premise that because I've heard some argue, wait, generative AI actually helps me to overcome and avoid some of the bias issues, but it sounds like you might be proposing just the opposite.

Elizabeth
It actually works both ways. So um, so creating synthetic data can really help when you want to avoid data bias, and you don't have enough production data to, to do that well. And so you can do, you can, you can do that in a number of different ways. data augmentation is one way so taking your original data and say, flipping it, or changing the colors in it, etc. So taking an original dataset and trying to make it more diverse and kind of cover more cases than you maybe would originally to make your model more robust. Another another kind of way of doing that is synthetic data creation. So an example there would be, you have a 3d environment, in one of these, you know, game engine type things like Unreal or blender, you know, there's, there's a few, and you have, say, I want to detect something, and it's usually in a residential setting, right. So you can have a whole environment of different, you know, housing types, and it would be really hard to get that data, you know, without having generated it, right, because you don't have cameras in everybody's houses, right. So in those cases, what we encourage is, pilots, so you before, really, you know, deploying this thing, and, and letting it free in the world, you you use that synthetic data, but then you make sure that you're piloting that in your set in your real world setting as long as possible to, you know, sets out any issues that you might come across.

Grant
So let's go back to that first example you shared where you got the crosswalk, you have the pedestrians, and now you need to make sure you've got different poses, like you said, someone you know, sitting down on the road or laying on the rug, certainly using generative AI to create different postures of those. But But what about, hey, if the introduction, is something brand new, such as, like you said, the wheelchair or some other sort of foreign object? Is the generative AI going to help you solve for that? Or do you need to you need to lead lead it a bit?

Elizabeth
It absolutely can. Right? So yeah, it's, it's basically anything that you can model in a 3d environment. And so you can definitely model someone in a wheelchair in a 3d environment. And, and Tesla uses this method really often because it's hard to simulate every kind of crash scenario, right? I mean, sorry, it's hard to have real data from every kind of crash scenario. And so they're trying to model again, they're trying to model their problem as robustly as possible. And so in some of those cases, they are like, you know, all of these types of things could happen, let's get more data around that the most efficient, and kind of most possible way of doing that is with synthetic data.

Grant
Awesome. Awesome. Okay. So that's a key approach for addressing the this bias problem. Are there any other techniques besides this generative, you know, training data approach? What else could you use to overcome the bias?

Elizabeth
Yeah, so. So another type kind of is when you have, like I was saying a mismatch in test and production data. So a lot of people even you know, computer vision, people sometimes don't know how much this matters. When it's things like, for example, working with a live video. So in those cases, bitrate matters, FPS matters, your resizing algorithm and your image encoding. And so you'll have, in many cases, you're collecting data in the first place for your test data differently than it's going to run in production. And people can forget about that. And so this is a place where, you know, having a platform like plain sight, can really help because that process is standardized, right? So the way you're pulling in that data, that is the same data that you're labeling, and it's the same data that you're, then you know, inferencing on, because you're pulling live data from those cameras, and it's all it's all managed in one place and to end. So that's, that's another strategy. And another thing that happens is when there are researchers that will be working on a model for like, two years, right, and they have this corpus of test data, but something happens in the meantime, right? So it's like, phone imaging has advanced in those in that time, so then your your input is a little different, or like the factory that they were trying to model, the the floor layout changed, right. And they didn't totally realize that the model had somewhat memorized that floor layout. And so you'll get these problems where you have this, you know, what you think is a really robust model, you drop it into production, and you don't know you have a problem until you drop it into production. So that's another reason that we really emphasize having pilots, and then also having a lot of different perspectives on vetting those pilots, right. So you, ideally, you can find a subject matter expert in the area outside of your company to, you know, take take a look at your data and what's coming out of it. And you have kind of a group of people really thinking deeply about, you know, the consistency of your data, how you're modeling your problem, and making sure that kind of all of those, all of those things are covered?

Grant
Well, in reducing cycle time from this initial set of training, to, to sort of validation of that pilot is crucial to this because as you're pointing out, even even if you even if you keep that cycle time short, and you do lots of iterations on it, some assumptions may change. How do you help? How to me what's the techniques for, you know, keeping someone looking at those assumptions? Like you said, maybe it's a change in camera phone technology, or it's a change of the layout? Like I said, as technology people, Einsteins we get so focused on oh, we're just pushing towards the solution, we sort of forget that part. How do you how do you get someone? Is that just a cultural thing? Is it a AI engineering thing, that someone's got a, you know, a role in the process? To do that?

Elizabeth
I think it's both. So I think the first thing is organizations really need to think deeply about their process for computer vision and AI. Right. And, and some of the things that I've already mentioned, need to be part of that process, right? So you want to research your users in advance, or your use cases in advance and try to think through that full Problem Set holistically. You want to you want to be really, really clear about your labeling, right? So you can introduce bias, just through your labeling process if humans themselves are introducing it, right? Exactly. If you have some people labeling something a little bit differently than other people. So like on the edge of an image, if you have a person on the edge, do you count that as a person? Or is it or you know, or as another person? Or is it not counted? How far in the view do they have to be? So there's, there's all a lot of gray area where you really just need to be very familiar with your data. And, and be really clear, as a company on how you're going to process that.

Grant
So this labeling boundaries, but then backing up, there's the label ontology or taxonomy itself, right, which is, yeah, that itself could just be introducing bias also, right.

Elizabeth
Yeah. And then back to kind of what we're saying about how to ensure how to really think through some of these problems, is you can also make sure that that as a as a company, you have a process where you, you have multi passes, multiple passes on, on that annotated data, and then multiple passes on the actual inference data, right. So you have a process where you're really checking. Another thing that we've talked about internally, recently is you know, we have a pipeline for deploying your computer vision. And one of the things that can be really, really important in a lot of these cases is making sure that there is a human in the loop that there is some human supervision. To make sure that you're, you're, again, you weren't servicing bias that you didn't under your you didn't anticipate, or your your model hasn't drifted over time, things like that. And so something we've considered is being able to kick off just in that process, have it built in that you can kick off a human, like a task for a person, right? So it's, it's just built in.

Grant
And so it no matter what you do that thing is this, it's just as a governance function, is that what you're getting?

Elizabeth
Kind of so it's like, it's like a processing pipeline for your data. And, and so you can have things like, Alright, at this step, I'm gonna augment my data, and at this step, I'm gonna, you know, run an inference on it, or flip it or whatever it is, right? And so, in that you could make sure that you kick off a task for a human to check, right, or, or whatever the case may be. Yep. Yep. So there's several good, so good process maturity, is another technique for how do we help overcome bias as well as inaccurate models? And I'm assuming you're, you're almost bundling both of those into that right? In Yeah, both right.

And, and like you said, they're the another way is reducing that time, and also making sure that you're working on production data whenever possible. So reducing the this, this is where the platform can help as well. Because when you you know, you aren't off in research land, without production data for two years, but you have a system where it makes it really easy to connect cameras, and just work on on real production data, then two things, you're, you're reducing the time that it takes to kind of go full circle on on labeling and training and testing. And then also you you have it all in one place. And that's that's one of the problems that we solve, right? Because, in many cases, computer vision engineers or, or data scientists, they're kind of working on the they don't have the full pipeline to work on the problem. So they have this test dataset, and they're working on it somewhat separately from where it will be deployed in production. And so we try to join those two things.

Grant
Yeah, I think that's one of the real strengths of the platform of your platform, the plain side platform is this reduction of the cycle, so that I can actually be testing and validating against production scenarios, and then take that feedback. And then augmenting that with the great governance processes you talked about. Both of those are critical. Let's let's talk a little bit and talk about fraud is, you know, certainly in this in computer vision, holy smokes, fraud has been probably one of the key areas that, you know, the bad guys have gone after, right? All right, what what can you do to overcome this and deal with this?

Elizabeth
You know, it can really become a cat and mouse game. And I think the conversation about fraud boils down to, it's not clear, it boils down to is it better than the alternative? Right? So it's not clear that just because there could be some fraud in the computer vision solution, it may or may not be true that there could be more fraud and another solution, right. So so the example is, technically, you used to be able to and I think with some phones, you still can 3d print a face to defraud your facial detection to unlock your phone. Yeah. And there is and so then they've, you know, done a lot of things, advancements, so this is harder to do, which, like there's a liveliness detector, I think they use their eyes, your eyes for that. And then you know, there's a few but you could still use a mask. So again, it's it's this cat and mouse game. And another place is is you know, there are models that can understand text to speech. And then there are models that you can put on top of that, that can make that speech sound like other voices, right? So the the big category here is deep fakes. But it's, you know, you can you can make your voice sound like someone else's voice. And there are banks and other things like that, that use voice as a as a method for authentication. Right, right.

Grant
I'm sure I'm sure we've all seen the the Google duplex demo or scenarios right. says a few years from now, right? I mean, that technology obviously continues to mature.

Elizabeth
Exactly. And so, so then the question is Okay, if I can 3d print a face and or a mask and unlock someone's phone, is that is that is that harder than actually someone just finding my, you know, four to six digit phone, you know, numerical code to unlock my phone. So, you know, so I think there it really becomes a balance of which thing is is harder to defraud and in fraud in general, you know, if you think about cybersecurity, and, and everywhere that you're trying to combat this, it's a it's a cat and mouse game, right? People are getting, you know, people are figure out the vulnerabilities in what exists and then and then people have to get better at defending it. So well. So the argument is, if I if I can say back to the argument is, yeah, it exists. But hey, how's this different from so many other technologies or techniques, where again, you got fraudsters trying to break in? This is just part of the business today? Right. That's where it is?

Grant
Yeah, I think it becomes a, an evaluation of is it? Does it cause more or less of a fraud problem? And then it's, it's really just about evaluating the use of technology on an even plane? Right. So it's not it's not about should you use AI? Because it causes fraud? It's should you use any particular method or technology because there's a fraud issue and what's gonna cause the least fraud? Right, a more specific use case?

Elizabeth
Yeah.

Grant
Yep. Okay, so So fraud. So, uh, you and I had talked about some potential techniques out there. Like there's a Facebook Instagram technology algorithm. Right. I think it's called seer. I think it came out not too long ago. It's a it's an ultra large vision model. It takes in more than a billion variables. P believe that. That's, that's a lot. A lot of massive. I mean, I've built some AI models, but not with a billion. That's incredible. So are you familiar with that? Have you looked into that at all SEER itself?

Elizabeth
Yeah, so So this, basically, this method where you can look, basically to try to address bias through distorting of images? Yeah, yeah. So I can give you a good example of something that actually we've worked on, I'm going to chase change the case a little bit to kind of anonymize it. But so in a lab setting, we were working on some special imaging to detect whether there was a bacteria in, in in samples, or not, right. And in this case, we were collecting samples from many labs across the country. And one thing that could be different in them was the color of kind of the substrate that the sample was just in, it was essentially a preservative. Wow. And so but but those, there are a few different colors. And they were used kind of widely. And so it wasn't generally thought that, you know, this would be a problem. But so the model was built and all the data was processed. And there was a really high accuracy. But what happened, and what they found out was that the, there was a correlation with the color and whether the bacteria was present or not. And it was just a kind of a chance correlation, right. But if you had had something like that, that image distortion, so if you took the color out automatically, or you mess with the color, then that would have taken that bias out of that model. And then as a second thing happened, actually, which was when the, the the people in the lab, were taking the samples out of the freezer, they would take all of them at once. And they were just kind of bordered. And so they would do all of the positives first and all of the negative second. And machine learning is just it's a really amazing pattern detector, right? Like that is that is what it is about. Yeah. And so again, they were finding a correlation just between the weather it was hot, more thawed or not. And that was correlating with whether it was positive or not. So, you know, some of this really comes back to what you learn in science fair and putting together a really Your robust scientific method and making sure you're handling all of your very variables really carefully. And, and, and, and clearly and you know what's going into your model. And you can control for that as much as possible. So, so yeah, that I mean that Facebook method is, can be really valuable in a lot of cases to suss out some of these correlations that you may just not know are there.

Grant
Yeah, I think what's cool is they open source that right, I think it's called swag SwaaV. Yeah. Which is awesome. The they figured that out and made that open source so that obviously, the larger community needs something like this course help deal with some of this, this bias challenge. Interesting. Okay, that's cool. So all right. I was I was I really wanted to ask you about your thoughts on that approach. So I'm glad to hear you validate that.

Elizabeth
Yeah, no, it's great. I mean, there really has to be a process, especially in a in a model like that, where you try to break it in any possible way that you can, right, there has to be a whole separate process where you think through any variable that there could be and so if there's a model that's, that has, you know, so many just out of the box, that's a really good, great place to start.

Grant
Yeah, awesome. Awesome. Okay. And then the last category here, around ethical violations, any thoughts on that?

Elizabeth
Addressing that overcoming that, you know, I think that really just comes down to when you need permission to be doing something, I need to make sure that you're doing it right, or you're getting it. And that, you know, obviously that happens in cases where there's facial recognition and making sure that people know that that's going on, and that's similar to being kind of videotaped at all right. And so that one's fairly straightforward. But sometimes people need to, you know, when you're putting together your ethics position, you need to make sure that you're really remembering that that's there. And you're checking every single time that you don't have an issue.

Grant
Yeah, permissions. And there's this notion, I'll come up with a term that feels like permission creep, right. It's called scope, right? It's like, well, you may have gotten permission to do this part of it. But you kind of find yourself also using the data stuff over here right to maybe solve other other problems, and that that's a problem in some some people's minds for sure. I was very good point. Yeah, various articles, people out there talk about that part of it sort of creeping along, and how do you help ensure that what it is I gave you the data for what we're using it for? Is just for its, you know, you know, permitted intended purpose, right? That was a challenge for sure. Okay, so you've been more than fair with your time here today with us, Elizabeth, gay, dry, any conclusions? What's the top secret answer to the overcoming the four pitfalls here of AI ethical?

Elizabeth
So one thing I have to add, we would be remiss if we didn't talk about data bias without talking about data diversity in data balance, right. And so, you know, obviously, the, the simple example there is fruit. So if you are looking at if you have a dataset with seven apples, one banana, and seven oranges, it's going to be worse at detecting the banana. But the more real world example that happens is in hospitals, right? So they, in the healthcare system, in general, we have a problem with being able to share data, even even anonymized data. So when a hospital is doing is building a model, there have been problems where a can be they, they have bias in their dataset, right. So in in a certain location, you can have something like if you're coming in with a cough in one area, it may be most likely that you have a cold, cold, but in another area, it may be more accurate to start evaluating for asthma, right.

Grant
So that kind of thing can come up so it if you if you take a model that's done in one hospital and try to apply it elsewhere, then again, that's a place where you can visit, is that kind of like a form of confirmation bias, meaning, you know, you have the same symptom, but you come into two different parts of the hospital and, well, this person's coughing and you know, you're in the respiratory area. So they immediately think it's one thing but now you go to another part of the hospital. Well, yeah, a cough is a symptom for that to suddenly you know, that's what they think you have.

Elizabeth
That's a great point. It really it's sort of the machine learning version. that?

Grant
Yeah, that's right. Yeah, it's a confirmation bias sort of view. It's like yeah, oh, this is, uh, but it how many variables does it take for you to actually have true confirmation? Right? But with this example from Facebook a billion, but how many do you need to have?

Elizabeth
I think it's really it's less about the variables. And it's more about your data balance and making sure that you're training on the same data that's going to be used in production. So it you know, it's less of a problem, if you are, you know, only deploying that model at one hospital. But if you want to deploy it elsewhere, you need data from everywhere, right? Or, or wherever you're, you're planning to deploy it. So So again, it really comes back to that data balance and making sure your test data and your production data are kind of in line.

Grant
Are there any of these ethical biases we've talked about that are not solvable?

Elizabeth
Um, that's a good question. I think Ah, maybe dancer, are you? Are you running? I think there are definitely some that can be really hard. So, so something that we touched on, you talked about, you know, is there inherently a, are our supervised models more inherently more biased than unsupervised? And like, the answer there is, is probably yes. Because you're T you're a human is explicitly teaching a model what's important in that image? And so you know, that that thing can be exactly what you're looking for. Right? You want to make sure there's not a safety issue or whatever it is. But, but, but just it's a human process. So there can be things there that you don't catch.

Grant
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, that's that's been a question on my mind for a while, which is the implicit impact of bias on supervised versus non supervisory, or work with another group called Aible, have you run into Aible, they're one of the AutoML providers out there. And more on sort of the predictive analytics side of AI, right. They're not doing anything with with computer vision, they have this capability, where they'll look at, but it's always supervised data, but what they're trying to the problem you're trying to solve is, okay, you got a lot of data. Just give me tone, give me signal. In other words, before I spend too much time, trying to, you know, do some training and guiding the model, just do a quick look into that data set and tell me, is there any toner signal where these particular supervised elements, they can draw early correlation to outcome or predictive capabilities. And the idea is that as the world of data keeps getting larger and larger, our time as humans doesn't keep getting larger and larger. So we need to reduce what's the total set of stuff we're looking at, dismiss these other pieces, they're irrelevant to, you know, being predictive. And then you can focus on the things that are important. Anything like that in the computer vision world?

Elizabeth
So So I was thinking I was trying so unsupervised learning is less common in, in computer vision. But, but, but one of the things that can happen is just the data that exists in the world is bias. Right? So So an example is say you want to predict what a human might do at any one time. And you want to use an unsupervised method for that. So say you want to scrape the internet of videos. If you look at the videos on YouTube, the videos that people upload are inherently biased. So if you look at security view videos, they're like, almost all fights, right. So your model, because that's what humans think, is interesting. And as you know, uploaded it in a security video. And so I mean, not almost all but a lot of Yeah, yeah, he's inherently what humans think are interesting. And so there are places like that where just inherently your data set is kind of biased because we're human. So So again, it's another place that you have to be pretty careful.

Grant
Yeah. Okay, so sounds like the problems are I'm gonna say I'm doing Air quotes. These are solvable, but it takes some discipline and rigor.

Elizabeth
Yeah, okay. And and it's just so important for organizations to kind of sit down and really think through their, their ethical use of of AI and how they're going to approach that and get a policy together and make sure they're really kind of living those policies.

Grant
Excellent. Okay. Elizabeth, thank you for your time today. Any final comments? Any parting shots?

Elizabeth
Um, no, I think I appreciate you having me on. That was a really fun conversation. And yeah, I always enjoy chatting with you.

Grant
Likewise, Elizabeth, thank you for your time. Thank you everyone for joining and this episode. Until next time, get some ethics for your AI.

Thank you for joining Grant on ClickAI Radio. Don't forget to subscribe and leave feedback. And remember to download your free ebook, visit ClickAIRadio.com now.

In this episode, we take a look at how to get AI signal on your business.

Hi Everybody, welcome to another episode of ClickAI Radio. So you are busy running your business, right? And of course, you often wonder, is there any way for me to work smarter, not just harder? Well, years ago, and one of my startups I was working 100 hour workweeks absolutely crazy. And I was trying to keep everything moving for right, we had a very challenging client, that really took up 80% of our energy and the other 20% of the energy was spent on other clients, as well as all the administrative things right that it takes to run a business. One night, while we were writing and testing a bunch of code. I looked at my teammates and exclaimed, ah, there's got to be a better way. And they agreed. So we decided to step back and we looked at the assumptions on which we're operating.

Number one, could we adjust the clients expectations, and number two, perhaps we could look at all the information at our disposal and look for insights, things that we weren't seeing. So we did both of those. And of course, at the time, we did not have AI, but we perform something that you might call AI signal. So the takeaway from the story is that by addressing both of those items, of course, we dramatically improve the outcome of the business. Number one, with regards to adjusting the expectations. This was, of course, one of those common sense functions. That should have been done months earlier. And of course, I'll chalk that one up as a life lesson. But number two, looking at our data and searching for insights, we found some clues that told us how to improve. So what is AI signal? Well, it's, it's similar to tipping your toe in the water before fully committing.

Alright, so that reminds me of a backpacking story. When our kids were younger, we were backpacking, in the flat tops wilderness area of Colorado, and it was still early in the summer. And so there's plenty of snowpack melt, you know, coming down through the streams, and, you know, AI signal, we had to cross the stream, right, we couldn't find a way across, it was much too wide to jump. But we knew we had to get in and get over to the other side. So AI signal would be similar to testing the temperature of this fast moving water before hopping in, as well as getting a sense of how deep the stream is, and how fast the water is moving. Well. Did we do any of that? No. And so you know, we would have saved ourselves some emotional as well as physical heartache, if we would have tested out the conditions first. So instead, we took a run at it and jumped as far as possible, right. Meanwhile, the fast and very cold moving stream just switched, you know, with this downstream, right. So don't do it that way, obviously. Now, this, of course, applies to your business. And especially when it comes to AI, get some AI signal first on your business data to put your toe in the water.

So let's look at an example. Imagine, imagine you have one or more systems as part of running your business, it might be a CRM, with sales data, you also might have a lead management system. And now they may or may not be connected to each other, when in fact, let's say they're not connected. Now, you only have so much time, obviously, and resources each week as a business owner. And so the question is, how can you improve the use of your scarce commodity of time each week? Well, one way to help you do this to fine tune quickly is to look for a signal. Well, what does this look like? Well, lets you know when you do an AI project. If you don't use a turnkey provider, like ClickAI, then you're gonna do the work of cleaning up the data and getting it ready for AI. This is is and can be a really significant effort on your part. And it interrupts Of course, all of your other business operations.

But what if you could find out if there's enough predictive behavior in your data before you even spent the time to clean it up? So this is what AI signal is, right? It's an AI technique to preview your not so prepared data and run enough AI on it to determine if there's some signal in it that could ultimately be used to one, improve your efficiencies and to grow your sales. Now, in the example that I gave above, you know, you may decide to look for signal in your lead management data. And separately, you may decide to look for signal in your CRM data. But if there's enough signal in the data in one or both of those systems, you may want to knit those together, or have a turnkey provider and that those together for you. So for example, if your CRM CRM system has a history of sales and refunds and things like that, imagine the value of connecting your leads data to your sales data, of course, so you could see through the AI, things which could translate leads into either sales or refunds, you really want to know both right? The kinds of leads that is going to ultimately translate into refunds, the ones to ignore now, of course, it all starts with just getting AI signal.

That's a, it's a powerful first step that lets you know if your data has AI potential, and if so, which data elements are the biggest contributors, that's incredibly powerful. This is, this is better than taking your car to the mechanic shop where the signal may be spend more money in these areas. It's more like having a gold mine and the mining engineer stating, hey, in this part of the mind is a vein of gold. And over here in this other cavern, there's another vein of gold. Alright, now you know where to focus and where to dig. So once you've course commenced with mining the material, but the real question is, what do you do with the material meaning with the goal meaning with the insights you receive? Well, getting an AI signal is exciting, of course. And it's dramatically time saving, it'll save you a ton of time just to know where the gold is. But getting the AI gold is even more exciting, and even more impactful now, using the quote unquote AI gold to grow your business and of course, improve the value of your business opens a lot of doors. All right, everybody. Thanks again for joining. Until next time. Check your business for AI signal. It's the fastest route to business value.

Thank you for joining Grant on ClickAI Radio. Don't forget to subscribe and leave feedback. And remember to download your free ebook, visit ClickAIRadio.com now.

Hey in this episode we take a look at how you can use the technology half-life to build your business.

Everybody, welcome to another episode of click AI radio. So thinking about half life, technology half life, what does that mean your business? And how quickly are things changing? It's interesting in terms of the you know, different organizations have different views on how fast things are changing sort of the, the sort of the pop culture, if you will, of technology tends to treat it like things are changing quickly. And that and that that certainly feels that way for lots of us. It's interesting, though, to see the different viewpoints on it. Let's let's take a quick look at this. So here's one and that this comes from culture.io. Right, they talked about how digital transformation is more successful with a positive shift in culture, in fact, goes on to say 80% of enterprises will change their culture as a way to accelerate their digital transformation strategy. That's actually a Gartner statement. So the point here is that, hey, if if you are if technology is changing a lot, and it's, you know, impacting your business, you better change your culture.

Alright, let's check off the box for the culture statement. Let's move on from here. So how fast is technology changing? Or what pace or rate are things changing? Singularity hub.com has got this interesting viewpoint where they they show the growth in the DNA sequence data over years, right, where they show the Internet backbone bandwidth over you know, over the years, all of these are course up and to the right in terms of you know, what we see on the graph, right? Or the number of bits per second, you know, over the years, right, or the number of bits per second per dollar, right? So you end up getting more and more, more and more data for your dollar. Alright, so these logarithmic charts come from Ray Kurzweil Neil's 2005 book, The Singularity Is Near right, and it's attempting to show that certain things are growing exponentially. All right. However, there's other views. This comes from itI, f.org. They've gotten an opposing view, they're they're making comments like, Well, wait a minute, is a really changing that quick. They make this comment, they say, Look, if technological change actually were speeding up, one would expect to see an increase in patents and productivity, but we don't. All right, they also go on to say from 2006 to 2015, US utility patents increased just 3.8% per year. And then they go on to talk about productivity, growth, so the productivity improvements of labor. So from 1980, in the US productivity, annual annual productivity growth in US was about 1.5% 1995 was up 2.5%. And, and from 2007, and 2017.

It was only 1%, which is interesting, showing that the actual productivity, even though all these new technological wizardry, cool things are around us, as our productivity actually increasing. Well, they go on to make this interesting comment. I'm just going to read this right here. They make this point right here, they say, look, many technologies today are nowhere near half patent or penetrating half of the American homes a decade after they first commercialized. So they go on to point out that Fitbits came out in 2007. You know, consumer 3d printers in 2010, VR 3d goggles, 2015, none of them are anywhere near 50% market penetration. So the question is, well, so Alright, maybe maybe there's this increase of many new different types of technologies, but in terms of their adoption, and the impact in our lives and making us more productive. These guys are arguing that it's not really making a difference there. What is changing or growing fast, and this comes according to hosting tribunals. dot com, they have an interesting set of stats, he pointed out that what is growing is things like, like the number of smart devices, right? As well as the number of hosting services and, and and the number of websites, right and the amount of data and those are things that all tend to be increasing and growing, what up to almost 2 billion websites now. But some say that, that can only 75% of those websites aren't active. And so while there's still a lot of stuff out there and a lot of data growing, the real question is, is it making us more productive? And is it doing more for us and helping us to become better? What we are getting is a lot more data. So here's something from MIT, MIT said, Look, when it comes to changes, right, in terms of the amount of changes that are taking place, from their perspective, they felt like it's varies based on the industry. So it says from a low 2% per year for the mechanical skin can you know skin hair treatment, skin treatment, hair removal wrinkles, to a high of 216% per year for the dynamic information exchange and support systems. Their point is this. The rate of change from 2% to 216% varies across different industry. So one industry might see tons of new technologies, new changes, whereas the other hardly sees anything changing or it's changing very slowly. And even if things are changing, are they really making things better? Well, here's one of the challenges. With the increase in terms of numbers of technologies and things that are out there again, things have to be adopted to really make a difference.

The one thing that folks are seeing is that there's a half life, that's taking place, there's a half life of the technology because of the numbers of things that are changing. So in general, we see that their half life is going down. And the other thing that's that's happening in terms of Half Life is around the skills of the people. And so this comes from emeritus.org blog, there talks about the half life of employee skills. I'm just going to quote here, World Economic Forum research in 2017, said that the half life of a skill is about five years, that was in 2017. And then by the end of 2021, was estimated to be down to four years now that those were just employee skills in general, some feel that the that that number is lower for technology skills, I've seen some folks say it's down to even three years. So if the half life of your technology skills, let's say that it is around three years, so you spend your time as an organization, you you're investing in the technological skills, so you're going to use technology to help compete, but the half life is, let's say three years for that. What that means is of course got to keep keep ahead of that curve. And as a small to medium business owner that starts to become fairly expensive value proposition. Here's, here's another piece right here, it says of the existing 25 million software developers 50% will witness the half life phenomenon to their skills. So means that without additional upskilling, only about 12 point 5 million of them are going to be suitable for jobs that we need to have them do by 2025.

So that's a shortfall of about 18 point 5 million jobs. Alright, let me say it another way. So you're small to medium business owner, you're trying to use technology to be competitive, but the half life of technology is reducing whether or not it's making you more productive. That's another argument, as well as the half life of the skills of the people to bring the technology down to three to four years, that starts to become really expensive. So while it can be argued that the technological pace of change varies in different industries, it can also be argued that access to the skilled teams to leverage AI for your business is like fighting a drying or fight fighting around a drying waterhole in the Sahara Desert, right? It means that, you know, less and less water, you know, everyone's fighting for the last little bits or drops of it. As an SMB owner, though, I'm going to suggest that it's critical to not play the game of building your AI technology team using your scarce resources. So what I am suggesting, though, is that with the advent of democratized AI, and there's a bunch of platforms out there, like with ClickAI and able with Plainsight AI, who I've had them on here, before, you know you should take advantage of these platforms. And the benefit is that you abstracting the AI complexities away from you, while delivering the benefits and the values that AI has to offer. So the argument is this, given the democratization of AI that's available given the half life of skills for the people and the half life of technology itself, why would you do or take another approach without using democratized AI? So as always start with your business use cases and then of course, leverage democratize AI rather than investing in technologies with with you know, such a short to HalfLife Alright everybody, thanks for joining and until next time, spend your half life wisely.

Thank you for joining Grant on ClickAI Radio. Don't forget to subscribe and leave feedback. And remember to download your free ebook, visit ClickAIRadio.com, now.

Hey, AI where are my results? In this episode, we take a look at some of the fundamental principles to getting results for your business using AI.

Hey, this is Grant, Welcome to another episode of ClickAI Radio. All right, so I've been thinking about this issue around AI and the ability or inability of businesses to get the results from their AI efforts. So I'm gonna quote here again from Bernard Maher's book, it's called artificial intelligence in practice, he actually points out some interesting, he's got a series of use cases, or case studies, I should say, with their various use cases where AI has been applied, and what some of the outcomes or the results of those arms is going to pull from one of these here, this was a Kimberly Clark experience, where they were looking to produce some, some AI insights based on their customer data. Alright, so customer segmentation problem, how do we go after the market and try to improve our targeting with our marketing efforts and use AI to understand where to go with that. So what they did was, as they applied the AI, they ended up increasing their signup rates by 17%. And then they ran some other campaigns to optimize targeting of customers, this was for their dipende brand, and they saw a 24% increase in conversions. So how did they do that? Well, they they did it mostly by producing content, that more closely aligned with the customer profiles, that the AI predicted would be more responsive. So there's a great a great use case here, right in terms of applying AI to to this sort of marketing problem and customer segmentation area. Now, these customers, what they also found, was it, they ended up becoming more likely to be long term repeat buyers. So it's one thing to have an increase in conversions and sales, but to turn them into longer term buyers. That's a real bonus. Certainly, it also had the had the downstream effect of making them more likely to give positive recommendations to friends and family. So this is a great example of of successes for AI, right, it's a great use case for where we would apply it, and the kinds of sort of long term benefits that we want from AI.

Of course, what we're finding is more and more market leading companies are transitioning into tech companies. And if we're not thinking of becoming a tech company, it actually is continues to move to our disadvantage. So it's essential that we do that, of course, we want to be competitive and, and even stay ahead of the pack, if you will. But turns out that AI driven Analytics is a lot more powerful than the you know, traditional business intelligence solutions are out there previously, and still certainly in use today by a lot of organizations that are focusing a course on customer segmentation. But the real point is, by applying AI ultimately into the space of doing custom customer segmentation, the AI is able to see things of course that difficult for our brains to get get get wrapped around. But it's also has another impact that we're seeing, and that is that the businesses that are competing, of course, as our businesses each compete in the pool and the talent pool and the challenges we face at this time of year not producing this at the beginning of 2022 when we've got a lot of not only supply chain challenges, but resourcing problems and a lot of competition for talent in our businesses. You know, building our business in tech savvy ways and leveraging the the technologies such as AI, of course to help us to be more competitive. Those also tend to attract a certain type of talent to our to our companies also. So it's a it's important part of building our representation, a reputation and our branding.

But I want to talk about But the other side of it, right, so that sounds like you know, roses and apple pie and motherhood and so forth, right? Everything's great. Turns out, of course, as we all know, AI has had its failures. But I found that particularly interesting view of this from the I triple e.org site, they were describing some AI failures. And it's interesting, as you look at the different set of failures, typically, it's it seems to be a lot in some of these areas where, where there's, you know, AI is being used in these use cases that are, you know, pushing the edge and the envelope, which, of course, is what we should be doing for our r&d. But you know, when I think about AI, my focus is more on how can I apply it to benefit my business, right, to improve my customer service to increase my revenues, my profitability, my efficiencies, and so forth? Well, it turns out that a lot of these are fairly r&d centric, use cases, that IEEE sort of points out not surprising, given that it's IEEE but I'm just gonna point out some of these right, and then and then take, hopefully point out some takeaways. Number one was brittleness, they felt like AI is quite brittle, especially this was in a computer visioning use case. And that as as the as the world of the imaging kept changing, then they had to do a lot of a lot of AI rework so so brittleness of AI models, in some use cases, that's That's true statement. So is that a failure? Well, it might be, I guess, right, depending on your use case, number two, the embedded bias problem, I touched on that earlier, especially when I was having a conversation recently with a couple of the organizations that I've done some interviews with, so I'm not going to drill more on to that. This is something that we have to be mindful of, as we're building our AI models to help our businesses. Number three, catastrophic forgetting, that's an interesting phrase right there catastrophic for getting in here, they point out the double deep fake problem, right. And, and here, they're discussing how, you know, bad actors in the market, who are doing this deep fake work. And, you know, organizations trying to compete against that the constant retraining of AI models to include not only new deep fake techniques, but also the need to deal with previous and older styles of deep fake.

This certainly is critical. Is it a failure? I don't know, I kind of look at that as the cost of doing business conceptually, right? That if we're in that world, where we got to keep figuring out which we do, how to address this deep fake problem. But nevertheless, AI models are, you know, if you don't include the data in your retrained model, then yes, it can, quote unquote, forget old stuff. So it's not like our cognitive brains were well, I guess depends how old you are. Then you don't forget things as humans, right. Okay, number four explainability. This is a challenge with AI. And in particular, it's a challenge as it relates to giving X explanations for results. And predictions can sometimes be be difficult to do, right, where there's some of these questions. And predictions that come out are hard to to explain how it is that this was arrived at. And as a result, I'm going to give a suggestion on this here in a moment to help address some of this stuff. I think explainability is a real challenge for so is it a failure? It's it's it's a challenge for sure. Number five Quantifying uncertainty. So hey, here we go. Once again, having sufficient data sets that deal with fringe or edge use cases is critical. This is a, I guess, maybe a failure in the sense that sometimes as humans, we don't do that. And we focus on the Happy Day scenarios. But turns out, our brains and real life have to constantly be dealing with all the other fringe cases as well. So it does put the onus on us as business owners to make sure that we're collecting as wide a set of data as possible. And that not necessarily means more and more data means more coverage of you know, the different use cases of data out there that we have number six common sense this was a failure, the I triple C I triple E was pointing out common sense meaning turns out AI lacks common sense. Sometimes us as humans lack common sense in any event, the ability, of course, to reach some logical, acceptable conclusions, right based on our, you know, vast understanding and context of everyday knowledge. You know, a lot of times we take that for granted and well AI doesn't really have that at least in our current current maturity levels of AI, we just don't have that. as such. I think one of the things that I've seen and how I tend to view it as I work with organizations is this AI stuff really should be looked at as augmented intelligence.

So the bottom line is, Do not throw your brain away, right this stuff is, is AI stuff in our Yes, we should look at it as it's going to be bringing insights Bhutia, challenge it, right. And so when it comes into us with some insights, we should look at in terms of the realm of possibility, as well, turns out one more number seven terms of failures, what I triple E was pointing out was math. He said, Well, look, you know, simple number crunching tends not to be handled so well with AI. So in addition to not throwing your brain away, don't throw away your old calculator, right? Or, of course, all of your old, you know, sequential linear software, right? That's doing real stuff today, running your business in the economy and such. So AI's got its place, and these seven, quote unquote, failure areas, I think, have that I think there's some some techniques that we can use to get around some of it. Not all of it, but some of it, but what it does is it pushes us into a set of use cases, where, excuse me, we can still get AI value. So to get the best insights from your AI, I think the net net is somewhere in this area, a letter A, I decided not to do a number one, letter A define your Chris questioning, right, which drives focused AI model preparation. So it means we got to think we got to think about the business and not about the technology. As we're as we're organizing, what we're going to go do with AI that has has to happen. Be not number two, but be I guess, here we go be. So when it comes to data, be prepared to continually add to your data set and rebuild your models, this notion that you know, build it once and it's done kind of thing that that needs to go away. And then see, use AI like an augmented intelligence tool, as I pointed out earlier, right? So use an AI platform as part of this that can take your feedback to influence the AI model. You are the brains.

Alright, and so as you're getting some insight or predictions on things to do, be sure to come back and inform what was the impact of that was a positive? Was it negative that do what we expected? We need the AI models to continue to be informed and learn from this. Alright, so AI does a great job identifying insights on correlations, of course that are difficult for our brains to see, but we should review it as business owners within the context of our business. Right, we got to keep that in mind and evaluate the veracity of applying that insight to our business. I had to get the veracity word in there just shouted intelligent earlier look at the very the can we actually take this insight and apply to our business? Right? That's really what we're after, not just to have the, you know, the aha moment. Oh, that's great insight. But hey, can I make some concrete adjustments, it's going to change my business and actually bring some bring some benefits about so a I want its approach approached right, using the techniques that I mentioned above my experiences, it really can't help our business. But the industry is also gathering context on the failure scenarios. And so of course, we're going to be best served if we take that into consideration, no doubt about that. So I was looking at something else here. medium.com, you can find some interesting blog, articles and such out there. It pointed out, okay, let's say that, is there a single point of failure for AI. And I found this to be an interesting point that was made here on this particular piece here. Is there a single point of failure for AI and there was this blog on medium.com. That suggests there is and as I reviewed it, I thought, Hmm, interesting. So this piece suggests that to get started with AI, you should not choose a company wide AI implementation, but rather a proof of concept that gets the company accustomed to the new normal, right in my experience, the new normal includes the following activities.

These are going to sound like the ABC items I just mentioned. I'm going to use 123. Now just switch it up number one, alright, the new normal if you're going to go apply AI Think about doing these things. Number one clarity in the questions, the business questions or seeking from the AI. Sound familiar? Number two, data curation doesn't have to be perfect, but you got to have for thought and organization on your data. And of course, its potential relevance to the questions you're asking. And number three, a mindset of iterative AI model refinement over time. Alright, so I think I've said those three things several ways in this episode. All right, so let's get to the point of this particular piece here. Is there a single reason for AI project failure? And you hear all sorts of stats out there, right? Maybe half of the projects fail? Or some say 85% of the projects fail? Is there a golden thread? According to this particular bar, blog, or article? They stay? They say, yes. And the answer is expectation management. Right? So organizations have of course, said amazing things to me about what they expect from their AI. This has to be managed early in the process. So I agree with the sentiment, right? It's certainly not as quantifiable, right? It's not to say, Oh, the, you know, common point of failure is you didn't have clean data or enough data or whatever. Certainly, the best practices are we got to have that data and etc, etc. But expectation management is really an interesting point on that. And I agree with that. As I've reviewed this thought about this right, I've developed a guide for smart steps to business outcomes with AI. If you're interested in that, reach out to me click ai radio.com Just join my email list. I'll make sure you get get that to you. Hey, everyone, thanks for joining and until next time, then edge manage manage your AI expectations to achieve the results which are there to benefit your business using AI.

Thank you for joining Grant on ClickAI Radio. Don't forget to subscribe and leave feedback. And remember to download your free ebook, visit ClickAIRadio.com now.