Wealth Formula Podcast

It's time for our next series of "Ask Buck" episodes. It used to be that we just did one of these every few months. But now we get so many questions that it has become a quarterly series! While all of our shows are educational in nature, the nice thing about the "Ask Buck" shows is that material is highly focused on practical information and strategy applicable to most investors. These shows have become extremely popular over the years and, if you are new to the Wealth Formula community, are particularly useful to "catch up" on recurring themes in our world. Tune in now for the first "Ask Buck" episode of Q4!

What if you were in a 747 jet airplane traveling 500 miles per hour. You could get to where you want to be pretty quickly. But what if you didn't know where you wanted to end up? Well, then it wouldn't do you much good to move at 500 miles per hour. In fact, depending on where you ultimately want to end up, it could end up making your journey take much longer than if you just walked directly there to start! The point is that it doesn't really matter how much energy you have or how hard you work if you have no idea where exactly you want to end up. Now of course it is hard, especially when you are young, to pinpoint exactly where you want to end up. But that doesn't mean that you can't start making some goals for yourself early on. You can always go back to revise them if they don't end up being as appealing later on or if you have goals that are even bigger. The point of having a goal is to engage your self conscience to autopilot you to a place that you can see in your mind's eye. Let's take, for example, the goal of making $1 million dollars per month. That's a big goal for most people. If you set that as a goal you truly want to achieve, you would have to take a pretty good look at where you are in life today and make sure your trajectory makes it possible. And if it doesn't, change course immediately! In other words, if you are working at a comfortable 9-5 job making $300K per year today, you are going to need a serious pivot plan to make over three times that amount every month. No matter how hard you work, that job is not going to get you to $1 million per month. On the other hand, what if you are already making $100K per month and your earnings are independent of your time? What if the only difference between $100K per month and $1 million per month is increasing the scale of what you do? In other words, if a unit transaction currently makes you $5K, is there a way to make that same unit transaction worth $50K without significantly increasing your time and effort? If so, stay the course. If not, abort and alter your plan. I know that it can be done. I've seen people add zeros to their income and net worth in just a few years over and over again. You just have to have a plan. It has to viable and you have to execute it. And…perhaps most importantly, you have to believe that you can do it! Henry Ford once said, "If you think you can do a thing or you think you can't do a thing, you're right." Mindset is everything. If you think there is no way to get to $1 million per month, you won't get there. The reason why is nothing esoteric. It's quite simple. Think of everything that you have done in your life up to this point. At one point it started as an idea that you believed would become reality. In order to make anything real, you have to create that reality in your head first. If you do that, your subconscious will help guide you along the way. Of course this type of goal setting applies to much of life. It's not just about money. It's just about what you really want. Visualize it, believe it, and make a plan to get there. My guest on Wealth Formula Podcast this week, Rod Khleif, credits all of his life's many successes to these basic concepts of visualization. And while it is easy to be cynical about this kind of stuff, I can tell you from personal experience that I have experienced this kind of manifestation myself and it's hard to explain. But it works! As the end of the year approaches, it's always a good idea to reflect a little bit and this week's interview with Rod might just be what you need for a little holiday dreaming!

Wealth Formula does, in fact, have a mathematical formula behind it. Wealth=Leverage(MassxVelocity) I believe the key to building your wealth is behind maximizing each one of these variables. Mass is simple. It's how much money you invest. If you have more money to invest then you are going to create more wealth. Leverage is critical. Despite what some popular personal finance gurus say, significant wealth creation is almost impossible without the judicious use of debt. It serves to amplify your returns. After all, growing your wealth at 5 percent per year is quaint but it isn't going to make you rich. Velocity might actually be the least understood and least appreciated variable of the Wealth Formula. Velocity is more complicated than a simple yield or cash on cash value although that's part of it. Velocity is how quickly you get your money back in your pocket to redeploy into another opportunity. So, if you have money in one apartment building that refinances and you get your money out of the deal while maintaining your equity position, you can now recycle that same capital into another investment. Now you are invested in two assets at the same time using the same initial capital. Velocity is a function of time. If you can do the same work in half the time you are going to double your annualized returns. If you redeploy that capital into multiple opportunities you begin to see exponential growth of your wealth. While that might seem like a fairly simple concept, it's not the way most businesses think. Even most value-add apartment syndicators seem blind to this concept. Every day that value is not created in a real estate project, it decreases the over-all return on investment. That's the secret behind our Investor Club partners: Western Wealth Capital. It's THE NEED FOR SPEED!!! If you have been part of our investor community or have come to one of our live events you have seen these concepts come to life and it's truly remarkable! You see the math is quite easy. Once you know the variables it makes sense. The hard part is the execution and, in this regard, Western Wealth Capital is the Wealth Formula coming to life. To talk about this remarkable organization, this week's podcast features an interview with David Steele, one of the principals and cofounders of Western Wealth Capital. As always Dave is not only brilliant but entertaining. Don't miss this episode!

Boring is good. Beware of shiny objects. When it comes to investing, those are the words that I generally live by. When I keep true to this wisdom, I don't generally lose money. Now that doesn't mean I have never lost money! Remember, before I became a boring domestic real estate guy, I was a flaming entrepreneur! I acted on every good and bad idea that I had. I made millions of dollars with some of those startups while losing most of it with just a few bad decisions. It was exciting—but not all that profitable. I remember a few years back after losing a ton of money in a failed business expansion that my net worth was preserved only by the real estate I had purchased along the way. Luckily, I had a rule that I had to buy at least one apartment building every year while building my other businesses. Guess what survived? Guess what thrived? Yep…the boring stuff. Those apartment buildings I bought while I lived in Chicago saved me! And while not all real estate investments grow by 500 percent plus in just 3-4 years like mine did, you can pretty much count on most residential real estate to be fairly safe in competent hands. Boring stuff like real estate is a slow-burn for creating wealth. We can amplify that growth through velocity—we can invest in value-add projects that quickly refinance and recycle capital. However, it is highly unlikely that you will end up with "10 bagger" on any individual real estate project. To get a 1000 percent plus returns, you need to do something a little riskier like I did with those start-ups. But is it prudent to do so? After all, if you are making $500K or a $1 million per year, do you want that kind of risk? For most people, the answer is no. But, what if you want to go from being a person with a net worth of $3 million to $30 million? Well, if you really want to do that, you are going to need to take some risk—asymmetric risk. If you've got the money to do it, it might make sense to take that 5-10 percent of your net worth and shoot for the stars. If you lose it, you can afford it. But if it takes off, it could be life changing. Bitcoin and other cryptocurrency speculation is certainly a good example of asymmetric risk. People who bought a couple of hundred dollars of bitcoin back when it first came out are worth hundreds of millions of dollars! That kind of crazy profit is extraordinarily rare and requires a huge amount of good fortune. However, more modest levels of asymmetric risk can potentially be systematized. That's essentially what an angel investor fund does and that's what we are going to talk about on this week's episode of Wealth Formula Podcast. So…if you're tired of all the boring stuff we do in Investor Club don't miss this episode!

In 1798 Thomas Malthus published a theory that predicted that human population growth would eventually outpace food production and thereby push living standards backwards. He based this on a simple mathematical observation that human population was growing at an exponential rate while food production growth was linear. While Malthus' theory was mathematically sound, it did not take into account that which it could not predict. Malthus had no way of knowing the impact of the industrial revolution and our increased ability to scale food production at a pace that would keep mankind prospering with enormous population growth. Doom and gloom predictions about the future are very popular and often substantiated with the available data of the time. However, technology always seems to save the day. Another example: Remember the "Peak Oil" bandwagon a decade or so ago. Whatever happened to that crisis? Oh yeah—shale and alternative energy sources. Turns out, human ingenuity finds a way. Is it possible, however, that human ingenuity in the form of technology could create so much efficiency in the system that it actually puts us out of work? Will artificial intelligence replace all of our jobs? Will technology create so much efficiency that everything will be less expensive than it is today? After all, think of all those mobile applications you use on your phone that we get for free. And when was the last time you had to pay for a long distance call to someone in another state? Will everyone start working from home and will that essentially eliminate the need for commercial real estate for offices and retail? If all of these things happen, there would be a natural deflationary pressure on the economy. Is getting stuff cheaper bad? Well..sort of. Deflation is probably the worst thing that could happen to a country's economy. We live in a debt based economy. We borrow money now and, because of inflation, we can pay that money back in the future when it is worth less. If we had a true deflationary movement, we would be screwed. We would not be washing away our debt with time but rather amplifying it. That's kind of a scary scenario. However, my guest on Wealth Formula Podcast sees this situation coming our way sooner rather than later because, of all things, the exponential rate of technology growth. Want to know more? Tune in to this week's show to listen to my conversation with Jeff Booth, author of The price of tomorrow: Why deflation is the key to an abundant future.

Estate planning is by far and away the most ignored topic amongst the high paid professionals with whom I talk to every day. First of all, it's not a very sexy issue. Who likes talking about dying anyway? It's kind of a buzz kill. But I got news for you…eventually you are going to die and you probably won't get to pick when. Remember—I'm a doctor so I'm qualified to make this statement! The other hesitation many have when it comes to estate planning is that it often requires the concept of gifting your assets to a trust or to your children. When you are in your 40s or 50s you might think, "I'm not ready to give my stuff away. I want to have some fun!" A good friend of mine had that exact response when I brought up the issue to him recently. But here's the thing. Gifting an asset to a trust DOES NOT mean giving up control. Remember the old dictum, "Own nothing, control everything." That's what good estate planning is all about. You really don't need to change much of anything in your life while you are living. However, good estate planning will make a world of difference to your loved ones when you die. Imagine for a second that you have amassed a net worth of $10 million and you suddenly pass away. If you didn't do any estate planning, your kids aren't going to see any of that money for a year or more as it goes through a process called probate. And to be clear, A WILL DOES NOT PREVENT PROBATE. Probate is the judicial process whereby a will is "proved" in a court of law. In California, that takes a minimum of two years! The good news is that avoiding probate is easy as establishing a living trust and funding that trust with all your assets. Now, if you are one of our typical accredited investors, a living trust may not be enough if you want to really protect your family's wealth. Estate tax laws are rapidly changing and if you thought this was only a problem for $20 million plus families, you might be in for a rude awakening as new tax legislation is almost certain to come to fruition in the next several years with or without a Biden administration. Estate planning is an area that, regardless of its minimal sex appeal, must be addressed to preserve your wealth and to keep your family safe. You don't want them dealing with this stuff at the same time they have to grieve your death. The good news is, again, you don't have to do a lot to make adequate adjustments to your finances and it's not very expensive. Just do it once and then you can go back to pretending you are immortal! How do you do it? Well, this week's Wealth Formula Podcast will make it all very clear as I interview attorney Joe Longo. Your family will thank you for listening to this one!

It's not what you make but what you get to keep. Think about that for a second. If you are a physician in California that makes $500K per year, do you really make $500K per year? No you don't. With combined state and federal taxes, you make half of that. The Federal government and the State of California made the other half. Believe me, I've been there. I spent the first year after residency as a W2 employee and it's painful. I've illustrated how painful this is to my children by getting an ice cream cone then taking half of it myself and telling them I'm taxing them. They get the point. However, their first inclination is like many others—they try to get two scoops instead of one. They don't ask the question, "Daddy, is there a way that I can pay less tax?" It's human nature to accept certain things in life. Even Benjamin Franklin famously said, " …in this world, nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes" While as a physician I can tell you that we do not have a solution to the former, the latter is a problem with several potential solutions. Look at our current president. Well…I guess he did pay $750! The truth is that it is the right of every citizen to legally mitigate the amount of taxes they pay. I've heard the argument that it is unpatriotic to decrease your tax burden. However, understand that the tax code is written as a series of incentives. In other words, if you are paying less taxes, you are doing something that the government theoretically wants you to do. Anyway, if you are concerned that reducing your tax bill is unpatriotic, you probably don't like Wealth Formula Podcast anyway so I won't say much more about that. However, if you would like to seriously start to change your tax, my friend and CPA Tom Wheelright says there is only one way. You have to change your facts. And, if you want to change your facts, I can tell you with some level of certainty that there is almost always a way to do it. You just have to have the right advisors. Of course, Tom Wheelwright is my tax advisor and he is the best in the business. So, if you want to start keeping more of what you make, don't miss this week's episode as Tom and I focus on the concept of creating passive income.

We are now just a few weeks away from a presidential election. Ordinarily that is, in and of itself, a wildcard for the economy. People tend to freeze up in times of uncertainty. Factor in some kind of October surprise which would not surprise me, on-going COVID-19 fall-out and decreases in government support and who knows what happens next. If you are in our Accredited Investor Club, you have fortunately been shielded from having to worry about much. It turns out that preparing for a down cycle via hyper-focus on working class apartment buildings, self-storage facilities and other uncorrelated asset classes turned out to be the right move. Many of our properties continue to perform as well or better than pre-COVID levels. In reality, we are not seeing much distress at all in our space in the markets where we have chosen to buy. And, frankly, if we get through the next 4-5 months relatively unscathed, we may be seeing an even more expensive market than before as big money starts to see our space as safe-haven. I'm hopeful that scenario indeed happens in our niche. However, it is highly unlikely that many of the other real estate sub-classes will do well. Specifically, single family homes in middle-class markets may see some distress as mortgage mitigation efforts expire. Non-residential commercial real estate such as office and retail are likely to see big trouble as their government assistance expires and distress begins pushing prices downward. In that regard, we could see great buying opportunities in many real estate niches in which many of us have little exposure. That means opportunity. The whole real estate market is in flux and we need to continue watching it closely. While it may not seem that much is changing on the surface, guys like Jorge Newbery of AHP Servicing are seeing mortgage default rates as high as they have been in 8-9 years. To talk about this in more detail, I spoke to him a short time back and you will have a chance to listen to our conversation on this week's Wealth Formula Podcast. Don't miss it!

"Saying yes will get you to a million. Saying no will get you to $100 million." That's the advice I once got from a very successful centimillionaire friend of mine. And while, on the surface, it may seem like one of those things rich people say to sound profound, I assure you that the power of no is indeed real. As you may know, I have been a bit of a flaming entrepreneur since leaving surgical residency. I got the bug after reading a Kiyosaki book and from that point forward, I was like one of those kids who grow up repressed and tries to make up for it up by drinking too much in college. In other words, there was a period in my life where I chased too many shiny objects. I said yes to everything. It was fun until I realized it wasn't particularly profitable to be so entrepreneurially promiscuous. In fact, in 2014, I gambled away two successful businesses that were making millions of dollars per year by over-leveraging myself and trying to grow too fast. It didn't work and I lost millions in the process. That was my "come to Jesus" point where I realized that I had to get control of my desires. It was a fun ride, but I had to be more methodical going forward. And since then, I have trained myself to say no to pretty much every opportunity that comes my way. I only consider saying yes under very narrow circumstances. First, the opportunity has to be worth at least another million dollars per year in income for me. I'm not saying that it starts off that way, but it should be able to get there pretty quickly. The next criteria is that there is no significant over-head. Over-head crushed me when I tried to open up 5 surgical centers in 5 different states at the same time. I won't make that mistake again. Finally, the new endeavor cannot put anything that I am currently doing in jeopardy. This is fairly broad but, for example, I won't sacrifice ongoing cash flows from one business to support another for a prolonged period of time. In addition, I won't get involved with anything that will require a disproportionate amount of time when considering financial return (or other kinds of fulfillment). Sounds pretty obvious right? Well, try telling that to the entrepreneur possessed. It's not that easy. Whether you are an entrepreneur or an investor, you have to develop the ability to say no. Now, there is hazard on the opposite end of the spectrum as well. For example, I know guys who are very successful and they keep burying all of their money into the same business to grow it more and more. They aren't taking any of that money and creating other sources of income. That puts them at a high risk of single point failure. So, the moral of the story is that while it's probably best to lead with no, you should be open to saying yes once in a while for the right opportunity. You may be a highly successful individual who makes a ton of money through your income. What if you lost that job or were unable to continue to do it? What if there was a way for you to create significant income that was not considered W2 income and provided significant tax benefits? That's where being a business owner has its biggest advantages. You can't get fired and you will pay a lot less in taxes. However, starting a business is pretty darn risky and most fail. So, how can you mitigate that risk? Well, one option is to consider getting involved with franchises. This is an area that I have considered for years but have never really explored. But after this week's Wealth Formula Podcast interview with Franchise expert, Kim Daly, I am seriously considering it. I really enjoyed talking to Kim and I highly encourage you to listen to our discussion. It could change your life!

If you want to be wealthy, do as the wealthy do. The wealthy do not use IRAs and 401Ks to invest in heavy loaded mutual funds. That system is set up to make others wealthy! The ultra-wealthy get a completely different set of options when it comes to investing their money. They often have direct ownerships in businesses and real estate. They may own publicly traded equities, but they are not paying the fees that most people do. The ultra-wealthy also understand the importance of leverage and apply it judiciously whenever possible to increase their returns. They are also keenly aware of tax efficient investment strategies. Perhaps the biggest difference between the typical retail investor and the ultra wealthy is that the latter does not simply hope for the success of their investments: they engineer it! What does that mean? Well, let's take permanent life insurance as an example. Dave Ramsey and Suze Orman tell you to stay away from it. Yet, the wealthiest families in the world like the Rothchilds and the Romneys have used these products for generations to preserve and build wealth. In fact, the wealthier the family, the more likely it is that they are using some kind of permanent life insurance as part of their wealth building strategy. You see, the affluent do not view permanent life insurance policies as simply assets. They use the elements of permanent life insurance to enhance their other investments. Life insurance, when used properly, is a tool to leverage your other investments. So, again, why would Dave Ramsey and Suze Orman tell you that permanent life insurance is a bad idea? Well… a fool with a tool is still a fool. It's hard to become wealthy if you are a fool (or at least to maintain your wealth for long). I have been trying to uncover these kinds of secrets of the wealthy for years now. Along the way, I've learned a ton and have tried diligently to pass this information on to you. I know there is a lot to absorb. However, I will say this. If you do nothing more than to pay close attention to the concepts of what we call Wealth Formula Banking and Velocity Plus that we discuss on this week's Wealth Formula Podcast, I truly believe that I will have done you a service. Don't miss it!

People are social animals. We aren't designed to be wearing masks, not touching each other, and quarantining. Yet for the last six months, that's been our predicament. At the same time, we are increasing our dependence on digital socializing through social media and have significantly increased our collective screen times and subsequent exposure to toxic blue light at all hours of the day and night. The whole scenario is a perfect set-up for individuals already susceptible to depression or other mental health issues. In fact, people who have never experienced any psychological issues in the past are now experiencing it for the first time because of the inorganic nature of our current lifestyles. Divorces, domestic violence, and suicide rates have dramatically increased across the country. Yet, this kind of fall-out from Covid-19 have not been appreciated adequately in the media and recognized as considerations in the big picture of pandemic-era policy. The non-medical, non-economic consequences of the pandemic are real and have had a huge negative impact on many of our lives. To hear about what's going on out there in this part of human existence, this week's Wealth Formula Podcast features a conversation with therapist and personal coach, Joel Wade. If Covid has got you down, make sure to listen to this conversation!

It is the second week of September—my birthday week. And…as I reflect on the past 12 months, I can't help but think, "What a shitty year". The only solace I take in my reflection is knowing how radically things can change over the course of 12 months. The pendulum just needs to move the other way. The good news is that this time next year could, and probably will, look very different. We could be getting on planes to meet up in Dallas for a Wealth Formula meetup. We could be meeting up at the bar, shaking hands, and even hugging each other without masks and disinfectants. We could also be looking at a different economy. Perhaps things will have taken a turn for the worse from pandemic-age repercussions. Or…perhaps the sheer magnitude of pent-up desire for people to go out and have a good time will power GDP to record growth launching us into the roaring 20s. I actually think that could turn out to be an accurate prediction. I know I will be out there spending! The point is that Covid-19 has already happened. I know it's not over yet but I think it's wise, and certainly more fun, to think about what happens next. Of course this is an investing program so let's focus on that subject. If you are in our Accredited Investor Club, you probably know that I have been very clear on my investment thesis in the past couple of years—"keep it boring, stupid". This is generally good advice for all season but we do need to adapt to new environments and recognize opportunities when they become available. One of the spaces that I am interested in exploring over the next 12 months is the hotel space. Admittedly, my only previous hotel investment has not gone well. In fact, it was a construction project off-shore that has had lots of problems and, as a result, has soured me both on construction and on investing outside of the United States. But I'm not going to throw the baby out with the bathwater. I think there may be a real opportunity in the bread and butter domestic hotel space in the United States and so I'm watching it closely to see if and when it might be a good time to get involved. So, in the spirit of looking ahead at better days and possible investment targets in the post-covid era, I asked an expert in the area to come on the show and share his experience in the space. Make sure you listen to this week's episode of Wealth Formula Podcast to see if investing hotels might be right for you!

If you like these "Ask Buck" shows, you've been enjoying the last few weeks. I would love to get some feedback from you as I'm always trying to improve the quality of my content. In the meantime, here is the third and last ask Buck episode of the summer! We will do it again sometime in the fall. Enjoy!

We do a lot of interview based content on Wealth Formula Podcast. However, the feedback I get is that the most learning happens during our "Ask Buck" episodes. The good news is that we have a bunch of questions lined up so we will do a couple of "Ask Buck" shows in a row for the next few weeks starting with this one! I also encourage you to go back and listen to older "Ask Buck" shows as well. It's probably the quickest way to get caught up with all of our lingo and the concepts we constantly go back to. I hope you enjoy it!

"You're nuts!" That's what I would say to anyone a year ago who suggested that we would face a global pandemic that would put us in a recession magnitudes greater than 2008 (based on GDP), make all bars and restaurants shut down and cancel professional athletics. I would also think you were nuts if you told me that despite all of this financial destruction, our apartment portfolio would still be performing as well as it is. We truly are living in the Twilight Zone right now. So what happens in the next six months, a year or two years? Yogi Berra put it best, "It's tough to make predictions, especially about the future". So, no matter what anyone says right now it is probably akin to throwing darts. That said, let me make a couple of observations. First, apartment buildings are still doing very well. Interest rates will be artificially low for years to come. And there is a ton of money on the sidelines that must be deployed. What if we avoid the much predicted tsunami of defaults altogether and go straight from stable or slightly decreased rent growth for the next few months to massive demand and cap rate compression a year from now? I would not have said this with a straight face a couple of months ago but now I can actually see that happening and not be surprised by it. Anyway, in the interest of continuously trying to understand the future of real estate investing, I am interviewing yet another economic sage this week. He's a guy who specializes in apartments and actually spoke at our last Wealth Formula live event which now seems ages ago. His name is Ryan Davis and he's a very smart guy. Make sure to listen to this week's Wealth Formula Podcast to see what he has to say!

There is a phenomenon in finance that I have witnessed first hand that I find fascinating. The best way to explain it is to tell you about a guy I know out here in California who has been very successful as a fund manager. I asked him once about the expectations of his investors and he quickly replied: "5 percent". Knowing this guy was pretty savvy and could easily produce more than 5 percent for his investors, I said he must be making them pretty happy by outperforming that expectation on a consistent basis. "No way!" he said. "I'm not about to scare anyone off." He continued to explain that his investors saw the money he was managing for them as safe money. If they got higher yields, they would start to think of themselves as doing something risky. So, instead of scaring people by giving them bigger returns, this fund manager was kind enough to spare them the scare and pocketed the spread himself. Of course he was not doing anything nefarious at all. The agreement he had with his investors was to deliver 5 percent. As a real estate investor you might be scratching your head right now but this phenomenon is real in the financial services world. Conventional financial wisdom trains us to believe that nothing profitable could be relatively low risk. And, to be clear, there is some truth to that when it comes to traditional bond markets etc. However, I can tell you that we see exceptions to this rule all the time in real estate. If you've been to our accredited investor club for long, you've seen this play out in apartment buildings over and over again. Is it possible to have a relatively safe asset that makes money in recessionary times and makes even more money when times are good? Well, I happen to know and have partnered with a top 25 operator in a category of real estate that seems to thrive no matter what the economy looks like. Of course all real estate is operator dependent. This particular partner raised net operating income across his portfolio by 9 percent in 2008 during the financial melt down! This operator has also seen an average project level annualized return of 64 percent on all divestments! In other words, during down times he has done very well and during thriving economies he has absolutely crushed it. And to be clear, this is not a mom and pop shop that got lucky. They are the 25th largest operator of self-storage in the country. Want to learn more? Listen to this week's interview with Lew Pollack. And if you are an accredited investor, I would highly suggest you join our investor club ASAP!

Back in the early 1990s, I was a freshman at Columbia University in New York. Frankly, I wasn't very interested in the academic part of college at the time. I was too busy doing what a college kid might do after being dropped into Manhattan after going to private school in the midwest. In fact, I realized that college courses were starting to interfere with my nocturnal lifestyle so I started taking an increasing number of evening courses. The evening courses had a lot of older students in them—many of them graduate students that took their studies pretty seriously. I recall taking a political science class one time where I am quite sure I was the only freshman there. The lecturer was some fancy academic guy who many thought would eventually run for office. The lectures often led to spirited discussions which I found intimidating for multiple reasons—one of which is probably because I rarely came to class having adequately prepared myself with assigned readings, etc. One evening a lecture stirred an interesting idea in me that I wanted to share but, again, felt too intimidated to share in front of this older, intellectually talented class. So, I decided to wait until a break we typically took midway through class and talk about it with the professor one-on-one. To my delight, the professor called my idea interesting and spoke to me like a colleague rather than the 18-year-old punk that I was. Emboldened by my success, I awaited the next time that I could interject myself in class. On one occasion, the discussion turned towards the Clinton administration stance on gays in the military. There was lively discussion on this hot button issue primarily around the effect on morale. I didn't get it—why did people care, I thought. So, I raised my hand and, in front of a classroom and stood up. I looked at the packed classroom of intellectual heavyweights and said, "Why do we even ask them if they are gay? Wouldn't it make sense just not to ask?" There was an odd silence for a minute and then two or three students reminded me that the Clinton administration had just passed the "don't ask, don't tell" policy. After an uncomfortable moment, I quickly sat down about as embarrassed as I had ever been. The class, briefly stunned by my profound ignorance of current events, continued their discussion where it had left off before I interrupted. I never did go back to that class. It wasn't too late to drop it fortunately. Why did I tell you this story? Well, as you can probably tell from the frequent appearance of economists on my podcast, I really enjoy learning about macroeconomics. That said, with a medical background, trying to follow some of these theories can be kind of humbling. I've gotten better over the years but I am sensitive to the fact that you may be a super smart professional in your own field that knows little about how the economy works. Meanwhile, the alternative podcast ecosystem is talking non-stop about the fall-out of Covid-19 and the potential consequences of unprecedented fiscal and monetary policy interventions that we are seeing. One of the theories circulating out there is called the "Dollar Milkshake Theory". It's counter to some of the doom and gloom scenarios that are out there right now—at least for the next 2-3 years. It's not the easiest thing to understand. So, I appreciated the fact that this week's podcast guest, Brent Johnson, allowed me to dumb his theory down enough so even a surgeon could understand it! Let me know what you think!

"Be careful what you wish for…lest it come true!" -Aesop's Fables I remember back in college going to the mail center daily in hopes of finding and acceptance letter to medical school. Back then, I really romanticized the idea of being one of those heroes in a white coat. Fortunately, I got what I wanted and was very excited. The next August I drove to Chicago from my parents home in Minnesota medical school orientation. On the drive, I heard a famous neurosurgeon on the radio (who is now HUD Secretary oddly enough). He was asked the question of how he knew that he was capable of something so delicate as brain surgery. He replied that he excelled at hand-eye coordination sports like table tennis as a kid. It was then that I knew that I belonged in neurosurgery. After all, I was great at ping pong! And…being a brain surgeon sounded kind of cool. So, I decided then and there that my goal was to get into a neurosurgical residency training program—no small feat in the competitive world of medical school. A few years later, not only did I get there, but I got into the program of my choice with the chairman that I envisioned being my mentor. Along the way, I even realized I liked neuroscience so it wasn't entirely for my ego. But two years into neurosurgical training, I came to a stark realization. I didn't like being woken up at night! That was a problem. I was getting woken up every night I was on call with snowmobilers being flown in with brain trauma from the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. And while my fellow neurosurgical residents seemed to get an adrenaline rush out playing superman in the middle of the night, I was just tired and cranky. I wanted to sleep. I wanted a life. That wasn't going to happen the way I needed to in neurosurgery. So…I quit neurosurgery and decided to switch into a surgical specialty that did not involve the brain. In order to do that, I headed out to San Francisco for a new residency program that left me, frankly, uninspired. I wrote academic papers at a feverish pace for recognition but my heart was not in it. By the time I finished training, I was just going through the motions with no passion at all. Now, if you had told that kid back in college hoping to get an acceptance letter to medical school that he would finish surgical training at UCSF (my prestigious alma mater), he would have been absolutely thrilled. So why wasn't I? I guess the distant idea of an accomplishment or a kind of lifestyle is usually better than the achievement itself. After all, what you want in life is dynamic. Every time you get to a certain place in life, your desires have already moved on to the next thing. I think it is sort of inevitable to one degree or another for most people. The extent of the dissatisfaction with life varies of course. But the need to grow and be better in one way or another is always there in high performers. You are not alone. I am sort of the extreme example. I stopped practicing 8 years after surgical training. The 16 years of college, medical school, and post-graduate training could not convince me that I had to stay as it does to some of my colleagues. I've found a better fit for myself in entrepreneurship and education, but I'm still trying to fill needs all the time. In fact, my latest decision was to get a real estate license in hopes of getting involved with luxury real estate in my town. Why? Well, it's not for the money. The amount of money I make that is essentially time independent makes just about anything that requires my time to seem like a poor financial decision. For me, it's about getting out of the house! For the last three years since leaving Chicago, I have barely left my house. My work is online and in the podcast sphere. Sometimes I go a whole week without seeing anyone but my family. In the meantime, I gained weight, I let my beard grow uncontrollably to unabomber levels and I simply didn't feel energized. What I was missing in my life was interacting with people! When I realized this, the old saying about choosing your profession based on what you do in your free time crossed my mind. Clearly it was a little late for me to get involved materially in the NFL. But I do spend a lot of time on Zillow and Trulia looking at luxury homes. So, putting together luxury homes and interaction with people as a job requirement—it just made sense to get my license and to go to work. Now don't get me wrong. I am feeling very uncomfortable with this new identity so far. Right now, I'm the new guy who knows very little. It is a humbling experience that I have not felt for over a decade at least. But sometimes radical change serves as a nice shock to the system and makes you feel alive. Who knows how this decision will play out but I'm excited. Want to buy a house in Santa Barbara? Let me know! Anyway, this idea of feeling restless in your skin is something that is common enough that my friend Michael Bernoff wrote a book about it. It's called Average Sucks. That's what we

Entrepreneurs are just professional problem solvers who keep score by how much money they make. I know this because I am an entrepreneur at my very core. It's not a choice I made, it's the way I was born. Entrepreneurship is not usually glamorous as frequently depicted in the movies or on reality shows. Most of us have more failures than we have successes and the failures often create profoundly negative effects for the people around us. It can be a bit of a curse. But the high that an entrepreneur gets when identifying a problem and finding a solution is very strong. Being able to look at an inefficiency and realizing that it can be fixed by creating a business around it is exhilarating. And when is the best time to find inefficiencies in a business model?… When times are bad! You see, when times are good, profitable businesses usually leave way too much meat on the bone because they are already fat and happy. Few people look at ways of doing things better when they are already making a good profit. Only when the tide goes out do you discover who's been swimming naked. Profits get tight and businesses have to rely on becoming more efficient to survive. This is the perfect setting for the entrepreneurial mind who sees opportunity where others see crisis. My friend Jorge Newbery is the purest entrepreneur that I know. He is, of course, the founder of AHP Servicing and Debt Cleanse. He has been on Wealth Formula Podcast several times before. This week, we are going to talk about his latest business that stems from the embargo on foreclosures note holders are now facing in many states—specifically those who are trying to foreclose on vacant property. In usual Jorge style, it's an elegant solution where everyone wins. The good news is that there is an opportunity for you to participate and get your own feet wet as an entrepreneur. Don't miss this week's episode of Wealth Formula Podcast as Jorge and I discuss the business he calls Pre-REO.

When in Rome, do as the Romans do. If we follow that advice, what do we do in an economic environment like today? Austrian economists would tell us to stop printing money and to keep the Fed out of the bond market. If we did that, we would go into a depression. No one denies that—not even the Austrians. The disagreement is on whether or not it's the right thing to do for the long term. The bad news for the Austrians is that they are grossly outnumbered and we do not live in a gold-backed world. We live in a Keynesian wet dream with essentially limitless money printing and government spending. For now, it's keeping the economy alive. We did the same type of stuff in 2008 and it saved us then as well. Oh...by the way, we didn't get the inflation that was predicted by the Austrians either. Instead, we shipped it off to the rest of the world without trade deficit. We could very well do the same this time around. It's a bizarre economy that's for sure. But don't fight it. Just try to understand it and do as the Romans do. There may be a day of reckoning from this game we are playing but we need to ride this wave as long as we can. It's the only thing we can do. But again, the first step is trying to understand what is going on. Understanding macroeconomics gives you a chance in a crazy financial climate. That's what we are going to try to do again on this week's episode of Wealth Formula Podcast as I once again interview economist Richard Duncan.

Robert Kiyosaki's Real Estate Advisor, Ken McElroy, was kind enough to give his perspective on the current state of apartment investing on last week's episode of Wealth Formula Podcast. Ken's perspective on the state of the apartment market was pretty bleak. While there is no doubt I respect Ken's views, I also think it is important to get the perspective of others to begin formulating your own opinions. Remember smart people can, and often are, wrong. The extreme example is someone like Peter Schiff. I think Peter Schiff is a very smart guy but he's also wrong a lot. He's doing an end zone dance right now about the economy going south, but he's been predicting that for years. Even a broken clock is accurate twice every day. Ken is definitely not a zombie apocalypse guy, but he also stopped buying real estate 3-4 years ago and has been on the sidelines since. During those years, there was money to be made and others as smart as Ken did exactly that. Don't get me wrong, I respect the hell out of the guy. I just think it's important to not take any one person's predictions as fact. That's not fair to him either. Instead, let us do what any intelligent person should do. Let's gather facts. Let's talk and listen to people on the ground who are monitoring what's going on in real time. It's hard to do that when you are not in the business every day. The most successful operators are following everything in real time and, so far, what's really happening may surprise you. One of those guys you should be listening to is one of my real estate partners, Dante Andrade. Dante is based in Dallas and is one of the most granular researchers of real estate that I have ever met. So, if you are one of the many apartment investors out there trying to get informed of what's really going on, you will NOT want to miss this episode of Wealth Formula Podcast.

I have been on the record for a while now anticipating the "tsunami following the earthquake." In other words, COVID-19 was a destructive economic force but the aftermath may be even worse. The theory is based on historical observations of how these things tend to play out. The problem and potential flaw in the rationale, however, is that there really isn't a situation that is truly parallel to what we face now. When has the entire world shut down for business for months at a time before? Never. But when has a country with the economic might of the United States flooded the system with so much money and so many ways to keep businesses alive? When has a country paid some people more to be unemployed than to work? I can't think of any time like this. Can you? The point is that beyond my predictions and those of the other armchair economists whom you may follow lies a harsh reality—none of us really know what's going to happen. Sure that tsunami I keep talking about seems likely but it may not happen because fiscal and monetary policy do their job and an earlier-than-expected vaccine saves the day. Alternatively, the tsunami could hurt selective parts of the economy and leave others relatively unscathed. So far, in multifamily real estate, our investor club is seeing asset performance matching if not exceeding pre-COVID levels across our portfolio! Our portfolio is a very specific niche, however. We focus on working-class apartment buildings in rapidly growing red state cities such as Dallas and Phoenix with relatively low cost of living index. The details matter. Being in Texas instead of California means we don't have to worry about "rent strikes" and courts saying how much we can charge for rent. Population growth gives a natural benefit of increased housing demand. Being in working-class housing right now means two things. First, we have a lot more people moving down from A to B and high C class housing then we have C class tenants moving down to the depths of D class hell. Our working-class tenants do appear to be working and those who are not are receiving unemployment benefits that are exceeding their typical salaries. These unemployment benefits are more than enough in low cost of living areas to buy food and pay the rent. Conversely, people living in the A class apartments are losing jobs and unemployment doesn't provide them with the ability to maintain the same lifestyle. Anyway, that's what we are seeing right now. I should add that the demand of this housing has been such that we are continuing to raise rents. Crazy, isn't it? Anyway, the point I'm trying to make here is that when you listen to anyone right now about what's going to happen with the economy and with real estate, you have to listen to them in a nuanced context. You also need to remember that we have no idea what further fiscal and monetary policies will be unleashed in the next few months to further mitigate the damage to businesses. Listen to everyone who is worth listening to but make sure you identify the context and do a little thinking for yourself. Now, one of the guys that we should all listen to in the area of apartment buildings is Ken McElroy. Ken is probably best known as Robert Kiyosaki's Rich Dad advisor on real estate. However, I listen to Ken because he is a multifamily real estate syndicator who has had a lot of success for a long time. Ken's niche is a little different than mine. He's an A class and new construction guy but what he has to say in the context of what's going on right now is important for all of us to digest. So make sure to listen to this week's episode of Wealth Formula Podcast as Ken McElroy and I dive into the Post-Covid Real Estate Reality.

In our latest Wealth Formula Network video conference, a question was asked that I think pretty much all of us have at this point. If the economy is in the tank, why does the stock market seem to be tone-deaf to what's going on? It's the elephant in the room, right? Well, I don't claim to know the answer to that but let me give you my two cents. First, fiscal and monetary policies are in full force. The Federal Reserve has the printing press on full time and we have added a trillion dollars to the debt in just the last couple of months. The Federal Reserve has shown willingness to buy high yield corporate bond ETFs (aka junk bonds)—literally picking winners and losers. If they are willing to do that, what's keeping them from buying S&P 500 ETFs? The law? Well, at this point that seems like a formality. If the ship starts sinking again, it seems not unlikely for this to occur. So, if you are managing client money, what are you going to do? If you missed out on the 40 percent recovery since March, you are probably going to get yourself fired. Instead, it might make more sense just to follow the money—the Federal Reserve in this case. To me, that's why stocks are doing as well as they are. To say the least, the economy has significant challenges ahead. No one doubts that. However, remember that a crisis often brings about opportunities. These are the times when wealth is transferred significantly and you want to try to be on the receiving end of that. As part of its arsenal, the government has provided substantial support to small businesses and by changing the tax code. It is imperative that you know the changes that are going on. Even if you are not a business owner, understanding what's happening on the ground will help you better understand the realities of the economy and prepare accordingly. For that reason, I have asked my friend and CPA, Tom Wheelwright to join us again on this week's podcast to explain the most recent updates to the tax code and what he is seeing with his clients in real-time.

Robert Kiyosaki is the author of Rich Dad Poor Dad, the best selling financial book of all time. He went on to publish several books including Cashflow Quadrant which fundamentally changed my life. To say that Robert Kiyosaki has made an impact in the world is an understatement. He has helped to create a generation of entrepreneurs inspired by his writings. Many, including myself, discovered the very concept of entrepreneurship for the first time through his teachings. Pretty impressive right? Imagine making such an impact on the world. It sure sounds like a life worth living to me. And you know what makes it all the more inspirational? He was 50 years old when he published Rich Dad Poor Dad! Of course Robert was successful before Rich Dad Poor Dad. But he would be the first one to agree that the trajectory of his life really peaked after 50. This pandemic has taken its toll on many of us. While thousands have died, the emotional casualties will never be truly appreciated and is reflected, in part, by the social unrest we are seeing across this country. In that context, I am looking for something to be hopeful about today. To me, Robert Kiyosaki's books were paradigm changing when I first read them. But now, as a 46 year old guy feeling a little blue, it's his success later in life that has me feeling inspired. The truth be told, I don't agree with everything Robert says these days, but he is someone that has earned the right to be heard. As a guy who does not routinely engage in hero worship, he has also earned my eternal gratitude. As such, it is my pleasure to present you with this week's Wealth Formula Podcast featuring an interview with Robert Kiyosaki regarding the post-pandemic economy.

There were a few questions left in the "Ask Buck" file that have finally been answered! You can listen to the latest episode HERE. The good news is that this format seems to be quite popular. I really do enjoy these virtual interactions and encourage you to keep those questions coming! Enjoy.

As I mentioned last week, we had a lot of questions piled up in the "Ask Buck" file that I need to get answered. As a result, we ended up with multiple shows. You can listen to the latest episode HERE. The good news is that this format seems to be quite popular. I really do enjoy these virtual interactions and encourage you to keep those questions coming! Now, in the interest in maximizing your weekly experience, in addition to the "Ask Buck" episode, you will find a bonus episode which features the webinar recently done for us by Tom Wheelwright on the latest tax legislation that you need to know about. You will get more out of Tom's talk with the video presentation which you can access at the following link: https://www.wealthformula.com/critical-changes-webinar/ Let me know what you think!

Ever since this COVID-19 thing started, it seems like there is no other news. Maybe what that tells us is that most of the news we ordinarily get on a daily basis is worthless. But seriously, doesn't it seem like the world has just frozen into a COVID-19 coma? My ER doc friends joke that everyone stopped having heart attacks and strokes since this pandemic started. As a podcaster, I realize that it is very difficult to not talk about the viral elephant in the room, but it gets old doesn't it? Anyway, the virus hit us just as we were doing our 200th episode. At that time, we were going to do a couple of special "Ask Buck" shows but we only got a few of the questions answered. These shows tend to be well received so, if you are one of those people who enjoys hearing my opinion, you are going to love the next few weeks as I get through all of these questions—some of them are pretty old! So, if you want to hear my opinion on investing, taxes and, of course, the pandemic, make sure you listen to the first in a series of "Ask Buck" episodes HERE!

"It's hard to make predictions—especially about the future." That's one of my favorite Yogi Berra quotes. It's funny but also incredibly true. Think about what is happening now with COVID-19. Social scientists make predictions based on assumptions. The epidemiologists are making projections on the spread of the virus even though they have no significant knowledge of what they don't know. We are learning something new about this virus everyday. To further complicate things, the virus can mutate. There are already two strains and there could be more in the future makings its virulence and contagion even more unpredictable. In the meantime, economists are basing their predictions on the work of the public health professionals. Their models are predicated on the moving targets of the public health projections. They are also basing models on an assumption that there will be a vaccination or cure in some specified period of time. What a mess right? In fact, no one really knows what's going to happen next month or tomorrow for that matter. We are in slow motion as the economic fall-out declares itself. Monetary and fiscal policy measures will be unparalleled in size and scope but no one really knows what the real impact of those measures will be. If I am sounding a bit nihilistic, it may be because our Wealth Formula Network mastermind is currently reading Nassim Taleb's The Black Swan as part of our book club. A lot of people refer to this book when they talk about unpredictable events—even if they didn't read the book! I do highly recommend it myself although be forewarned, it is not a light read. Taleb actually doesn't think that COVID-19 as a black swan event. Why? He, along with many others, had predicted this kind of pandemic in recent years based on recent viral outbreaks and the rise of globalization. There are documentaries about the likelihood of a Disease X epidemic and there was even a White House Pandemic Task Force that was dismantled by the current administration. But what Taleb does see as a potential black swan event is what happens as a result of this grayswan. The unpredictability of this economy is ripe for a true event that none of us can predict. So what's the point of making predictions? Well, most of life does stay on the bell curve. In other words, economics can provide value in the bigger picture when known factors are modeled in. As long as you can stay away from highly unlikely events, they can serve people and businesses well. ITR Economics is a firm that I follow. They've been right on 97 percent of their economic forecasts over the last 70 years or so. That said, for the reasons discussed earlier, they didn't see the severity of COVID-19 impact coming either—again because their assumptions were based on then-available public health assumptions. At any rate, the key to get the most out of economics is to be agile and redirect projections as assumptions change over time. For that reason, this week's episode of Wealth Formula Podcast revisits the question of the economy with Catherine Putney of ITR economics. As you may recall, she was on the show shortly before all of our lives suddenly changed and businesses closed a couple months ago. Make sure to tune in as Catherine gives us an updated forecast for the coming year and beyond!

Last episode we talked about the realities of COVID-19—what it is, what makes it so challenging and how dangerous it really is. We also talked about potential medical treatments. In this episode, we go into vaccinations and economic impacts of COVID-19.

What a strange time we live in where even public health issues are politicized. The wingnuts on the right want to downplay a virus that has already taken the lives of more people than the Vietnam war. The wingnuts on the left want to demonize anyone who even suggests an alternative approach to dealing with the pandemic outside of staying at home in perpetuity. They want us to completely ignore the pain, suffering, and death that will inevitably occur from a financial depression. The polarity of thought on this black swan event is the product of politicized news—on both sides. That's a problem for us all. As a physician and an over-all rational guy, this kind of partisanship when we should be seeking facts is maddening. However, it is not surprising. When I was a kid, there was only one set of facts that people were given and they made decisions based on that. We now live in a world of "alternative facts" which has really made it a confusing place to navigate. That said, the idea that there are alternative sets of facts in science is, in fact, fake news. In science, we follow the studies. Sometimes studies show disparity but, over time, we get to the bottom of things. Take Hydroxychloroquine for example. Donald Trump has been talking it up like it's a vitamin with no down-side. That's not true of course. There is some potentially severe side-effects of the drug that have actually killed people in the past few weeks. On the other hand, in order to prove Trump wrong at every turn, the liberal news media makes Hydroxychloroquine sound like an asinine treatment of COVID-19 in any form. The reality… the evidence suggests that the role of Hydroxychloroquine in the treatment of this illness may be nuanced and can't be characterized simply as a black and white issue. That's just one example of the complex questions that are being dealt with in overly simplified ways in the press. It's not helpful for anyone who wants to understand what's really going on out there. So, this week, I have put together a two-podcast series of interviews with three other physician/investors for you to get some real facts and to help you understand where we currently are with this public health and financial disaster.

What are notes? Well, for simplicity, let's call them mortgages. You owe the lender money when you take out a mortgage. However, that lender can sell that mortgage to someone else. That's what it means to buy or sell a note. Notes can be performing or non-performing. Non-performing notes are simply those that have had trouble paying on time in the past. So, if you buy one of those, you either pay people to move out, foreclose on the property and sell the asset or possibly negotiate the payment to something a person can afford and let them stay in their home. That last option, of course, is a win-win situation. Bottom line is that, in principal, the note business is not that hard. But as is often the case, the devil is in the details. I found that out the hard way when I tried to learn the note business myself to start a new venture. As it turns out, it wasn't something that I could do as a part-time gig—at least not at the level that I found personally acceptable. To do really well consistently in the note business requires volume, creativity and a ton of experience. As we sit here in the middle of a black swan public health and financial event, I'm just glad I realized my limitations and didn't complicate my life any more. One of the great lessons that I have learned with age is that often the best thing to do is nothing at all. When I was younger I used to chase after shiny objects and I was not focussed. Doing that makes it difficult to become really good anything. If I have one bit of advice for anyone going down the entrepreneurial route, it is to stay in your lane and focus. You can't be the best in the world at everything and, if you try, you won't be very good at anything. As investors, our most important skill set is often to pick a jockey. We may not be doing the heavy lifting but we need to know who will do it well. This is a very different skill set than being an actual operator and it is important not to confuse the two. When it comes to notes, there is really only one guy I trust: Jorge Newbery. That's the honest truth. Jorge is smart as a whip and has a lot of scar tissue from the past to help him navigate the current crisis. This week on Wealth Formula Podcast features a really good conversation with Jorge that I had about not only the note market but the residential real estate market in general. If you are curious of what someone who lived through 2008 thinks of where we are today, you won't want to miss this episode.

As expected, the government roll out of the multi-trillion dollar stimulus program to save the economy has been sloppy and slow. People who need to tap into unemployment insurance can't get through on the phone. Businesses who need money can't get the money they applied for and, when they do, the terms are very unclear. Some businesses have given up. Rather than take a big loan from the government to their grave, they have decided to call it quits while behind. Meanwhile, the Dow Jones Industrial average showed a remarkable turn-around over the last couple weeks after dipping down below 19,000. That's great if you have money in the market but, quite frankly, I don't understand the rally. Most businesses are closed so how could their stock be worth more than it was two weeks ago? We still aren't clear of when this pandemic and all of its stay-at-home orders will end. Even when it does, that's really just the beginning. People aren't going on vacation or sports events or concerts until there is a vaccine. That's not going to happen for a while. When the economy "opens up", it will only be half-open and certainly not running on all gears. Thousands of small businesses will not survive this ordeal and that will leave many unemployed. I would not be shocked to see double digit unemployment going into the end of the year. From an economic standpoint, we are at the very beginning of the fallout. So why is that stock market going up again? I suspect most people who are buying into this market right now aren't small business owners or facing the prospect of losing a job. There is a fundamental disconnect between the markets and reality. For those of us who are small business owners or real asset investors, we have a little bit better perspective. If you have a small business and employees to pay, you may understand that there is a possibility that you may not recover from this event. If you own residential real estate right now, you get the idea of what your tenants are going through and how that is affecting your ability to collect rent. If you aren't well capitalized, you are freaking out. I hope you don't lose any property, but I can pretty much guarantee you that distressed assets will become common in the not-so-distant future. The earthquake just happened. The tsunami of financial fall-out has yet to arrive. To get a better perspective of what's going on the ground, this week's Wealth Formula Podcast features a conversation between another physician podcaster and me. Join us as we talk about not only the COVID-19 disease, but the real time economic impact both of us are seeing on our businesses and investments.

I have to admit, I did not think that this Coronavirus thing was going to hit us this hard. To be clear, I'm not just talking about how deadly this pandemic has turned out to be in terms of human life. A month ago, if you told me that just about every small business in America would be shut down, I'd have thought you were crazy. I guess I had become accustomed to hearing about scary diseases like the Chinese SARS epidemic in 2002 and Ebola. They sounded scary but distant—like someone else's problem. Not this time I guess. We are getting crushed! There is an old saying that you should never let a good crisis go to waste. This is a pretty damn good crisis so let's make the best of it! Situations like these often create opportunities for entrepreneurs and bargains for investors. For the motivated, here's your chance. On the hand, If you aren't feeling quite that ambitious, you can also work on your defensive game. Be mindful of your position in this stressed environment. Are you happy with your financial portfolio? Are you invested in the right asset classes to withstand a downturn in the economy? How are those operators you invested with doing? Are they giving you confidence or making you feel a little uneasy? For better or for worse, soon the tide will go out and we will discover that some big talkers were actually swimming naked. It ain't going to be pretty but once in a while you need a Darwinian event like this to shake things up and come out better on the other side. After all, chances are that this will not be the last black swan you encounter in your life. As you reflect on these questions, I suggest that you listen to this week's Wealth Formula Podcast interview with Doug Lodmell. This was a discussion on real estate asset protection that was recorded before the pandemic hit us. However, the contents of this interview are incredibly relevant to what's going on today. Think about the business owners who are becoming insolvent as we speak and the creditor issues they will be facing. Any real estate owned by those business owners will look like red meat to people trying to get paid on loans gone bad. Of course it's better to get this type of protection in place ahead of a crisis but sometimes it takes a good scare like this to actually put a plan in place. Anyway, make sure to listen to this interview with Doug—especially if you own any kind of real estate or are even a limited partner in a real estate syndication or fund. Listen HERE. P.S. Attached below is a copy of the white paper Doug talks about in this interview that outlines the different levels of asset protection you should consider.

Remember a month ago when this whole Corona-thing was sort of a theoretical issue? After all, we only had 15 cases reported in the whole country and no one had died. Sure, we were starting to see the news in China and Italy but they were so far away. Even the president said it would just disappear! But then every day things got substantially worse—exponentially worse. And now, even those who mocked the hysteria are now admitting that this is, indeed, a big deal. I won't pretend that I knew what was coming. I didn't have the perspective to see it and those who did, didn't make it clear to the rest of us. They were too busy selling their stocks! But it's here now and it's going to get worse—a lot worse. Thousands will die. Unemployment will be well over 20 percent. There will be suffering beyond the disease in the form of financial follow-out. But the good news is that this episode in history will eventually be a thing of the past. Eventually it will be a bad memory. We will move on with our lives as we should. BUT…we should not forget because, although history does not repeat itself, it does rhyme. There will be another pandemic eventually. It could be even worse than the current one. And we shouldn't be surprised when it happens. After all, even though most of us thought coronavirus was over-blown to a certain degree, there was plenty of evidence at the national security level that this kind of "virus X" was quite possible and was something for which we were unprepared. As a society, we knew it was possible and did nothing to protect ourselves. We can blame the government, but the government only reflects our own priorities. Unfortunately, our priorities don't seem to plan for much beyond today. This current pandemic worries me but I know it is finite. What worries me even more is all of the ticking time bombs that we know are out there, but are choosing to ignore the same way we ignored the risk of a pandemic. We are being short-sighted on multiple fronts. Some of these perceived time-bombs could be real and the consequences devastating. For example, we know that our power grid is vulnerable to cyberattack. If our grid went out tomorrow, it would mean more than the lights going out. It would mean amongst other things: hospitals being rendered non-functional, a shut-down of communication of all kind, and no more clean running water. People would die. It's a very scary scenario that national security has identified as a threat. But we do not have the appetite to spend on new infrastructure and defense now. Another case in point—climate change. I don't understand frankly why climate change opinions seem to be affected by party lines as they clearly are. I am an anomaly in that I am a fiscal conservative yet I am open to the idea that there is potentially serious hazard in ignoring climate change as a national security threat. It doesn't take a meteorologist to figure out that something funky is going on when thousand year storms start happening every couple of years. And, although I believe it is man-made in nature, you don't have to believe that to concede that there could be deadly consequences to us or our children if we choose to simply call it a hoax. Let me ask you this, would we be better off today if we as a country had taken Coronavirus more seriously two months ago? Even if coronavirus ended up being just another flu, would we have suffered by being overly-conservative with preparation and early lock-downs? Of course not. So why not look at climate change the same way? In my mind, if those of us who think climate change is a serious danger to the world are wrong, the worst case scenario is that we end up with cleaner air and water. Anyway, save yourself the time with hate-mail. I'm just providing some food for thought—call it civil discourse. Bottom line is, I hope that at the end of this national nightmare, we can start to look at where else our exposure is and start coming up with some plan b's that might be needed when a second passport does you no good. It is a time right now that I think we should all use for reflection on the macro-level as well as the micro-level. And of course, this is not a political show so we will keep it about money from here on out. I will say that there are plenty of lessons to be learned by this kind of financial stress test for all of us. The government is doing what it can to keep us on life-support until we get that cure or vaccine but we will all be challenged to varying degrees and it is a good time to assess the defense that you need to shore up for the next disaster. My friend Tom Wheelwright will be on this week's podcast to talk about all of this and more. Tom is the Michael Jordan of CPAs, a brilliant entrepreneur, and has literally saved me millions of dollars in taxes over the last several years. In fact, you may come away from this podcast realizing that you might have actually come out ahead financially because of the tax relief provided by this disaster

A few days ago we had the worst single day loss in US stock market history. The next day we had the single best day seen by the Dow Jones Industrial average in 80 years. I have no idea what kind of volatility there will be between the time I write this email and when you actually read it but it's kind of ridiculous. Don't you think? This volatility is exactly why I have stayed away from stocks throughout my adult life. I just don't get it. How does a fiscal stimulus help the stock market if the entire country is, for all practical purposes, unemployed? The economy is frozen and there will be a deep recession. How long it lasts is unclear but stocks going up in value right now makes no sense at all. The word that best describes the economy right now is uncertain. As an investor, it's the worst feeling you can have. If you feel uncertain right now, remember what this feels like and make sure you feel better about your portfolio next time something like this happens—which it will. As I have made clear several times before, I hedge uncertainty through contractual agreements that I have with life insurance companies that have paid out consistently through the Great Depression, multiple World Wars, and bank failures. Cash-value life insurance policies like Wealth Formula Banking help me sleep well at night. We spent a lot of time on this concept last week and, if you are not sold on getting a policy yourself, that's fine. I just want you to understand why I think it's so valuable and make sure you really understand it. This week, I want to give you another way that you can get exposure to this kind of hyperstable asset. You see, you can also get exposure to life insurance company level stability by purchasing other people's life insurance policies. If you've never heard of this strategy, I'm not surprised. It's not something most retail investors know about. Meanwhile, Warren Buffet buys $600 million/year of these things and there's a half billion dollars worth of them on Bill Gates' balance sheet. Curious? If so, make sure to listen to this week's episode of Wealth Formula Podcast!

What we are experiencing right now is truly a black swan event. Even those who predicted a recession had no idea how badly the global economy could be crippled in just a few weeks. Hopefully it will be short-lived. But frankly, even a few months of people staying at home and not buying anything will have extraordinary repercussions. The fiscal and monetary tools we have to combat our situation are not designed for this kind of assault. Cutting interest rates and quantitative easing are meaningless if businesses are closed and no one is buying anything. Cutting payroll taxes doesn't help when no one is at work. Treasury Secretary Mnuchin suggested that if a strong fiscal stimulus is not taken soon, we could end up with 20 percent unemployment—comparable to Great Depression levels. Wouldn't it be nice not to have to worry about your retirement money right about now? How would that even be possible? Well, suppose there was a financial instrument that's been around and tested for 1400 years and used by some of the wealthiest families in the world for generations to create and preserve wealth. Suppose that product survived the test of the Great Depression and became the favorite financial instrument for those who lived through it because it paid positive interest every year while everything else around them crumbled. Wouldn't that sound appealing right about now? It gets better, this investment grows untaxed and its liquidity can be harnessed in any credit condition. In fact, it is a product that literally allows you to invest the same money in two places at the same time. In my opinion, this kind of product is the safest investment outside of US treasuries—safer than any corporate bond that I could buy and far more profitable. Simply put, I don't understand why it's not part of everyone's portfolio. I am talking about permanent cash value life insurance strategies. We call these strategies Wealth Formula Banking and Velocity Plus. If you do not know how these strategies work or what they can do for you, I HIGHLY suggest you listen to this week's podcast. I can honestly say that if you learned and implemented one of these strategies, and did nothing else that I talk about on this podcast or investor club, I would feel like I've done you and your family a great service. That may sound like an exaggeration but I use these tools myself and, with the way the market is right now, I couldn't be happier that I made that decision. So, do yourself a favor and listen to this podcast now! PS. Here is the information for the upcoming webinar mentioned in this podcast: Bunker Investing: Wealth Formula Banking and Velocity Plus Thursday, March 26th 5:30PM CST Register HERE

We live in a world where things can change fast! A couple of weeks ago, it seemed like this novel coronavirus was some exotic disease in China. Before you know it, it became a big enough problem in Italy to cause a national lockdown. Then last week, the NBA season in the United States was suspended. What's going to happen by the time I release this podcast? Who knows? I'm sure you are getting information from a lot of places on this coronavirus situation, but let me give you my perspective on this as a physician and also as an investor. Coronavirus is NOT the Spanish flu of 1918 that lowered US life expectancy by 10 years and killed off 2-3 percent of the planet's human population. Spanish flu paradoxically was particularly virulent to young healthy people with a strong immune system. You see, the way that virus killed people was by triggering an immune response. Young healthy people with strong immune systems had the most powerful immune responses and, therefore, were disproportionately dying from the infection. Covid-19 AKA novel coronavirus is different. In many respects, it is a smarter virus. You see, a virus that kills all of its hosts doesn't last for long. What makes this coronavirus so challenging for us is that, for most people (80 percent), the symptoms are quite mild or non-existent. That allows for this virus to spread like wild-fire. Most people who get it, don't know they have it. The kids in schools and universities come home with "colds" or with no symptoms at all. But when they go visit grandma, she ends up dying two weeks later. Frankly, without a vaccination, the lack of consistent presentation among those infected makes this virus extremely difficult to fight. In fact, the only real option we have is social distancing. That's why the NBA season was suspended. That's why universities and major companies are asking people to work from home. So, for the people who think we are going too far with this social distancing stuff, I disagree. But I also disagree with people who are creating hysteria by calling this the Spanish Flu. If you are under 60 and are relatively healthy, your chances of dying from coronavirus are very low. Nevertheless, it is the socially responsible thing for us to try and not to get infected and then pass the virus to someone else who might end up killing their neighbor. So…that's the public health part of this virus. There is obviously an economic impact of this virus as well. Just think about the money lost in travel and entertainment! I will admit that I didn't see some of the economic implications of this virus coming before, but I do now and it's going to be ugly. What drives the economy is people spending money. If people are staying home, they aren't spending. Lower interest rates are not going to help with that. Trump's plan for a payroll tax cut holiday won't do much other than to buy a day or two of stock market irrational exuberance that will die off just as quickly as the Fed's first emergency rate cut. In my humble opinion, we are likely already in a recession. The question is how deep this recession will be and how much damage it will do before things get better. Now here's the good news. Coronavirus will not kill off 2-3 percent of the world population. An effective anti-viral will likely be available within the next several months and a vaccination will almost certainly be streamlined and be widely available a year or so from now. In other words, the underlying problem that triggers this recession is self-limited. If you can, start looking at this situation as an investor's buying opportunity. Now is not the time to let fear overcome you. Be patient. There is a good chance there will be some opportunities to buy assets at a discount. Just remember Warren Buffet's quote to "be fearful when others are greedy and greedy when others are fearful". Soon, it will be time to get greedy! Now I don't know about you, but I'm trying to get as many opinions from economists as I can on what's happening in the global economy. For that reason, I did this interview with Richard Duncan two weeks ago. What strikes me is how quickly everything is moving and we have no idea what's going to happen two weeks from now. What do you think is going to happen? P.S. As a reminder, in the interest of social distancing, we have canceled our upcoming Wealth Formula event in Phoenix, AZ.

"People tend to overestimate what can be done in one year and to underestimate what can be done in five or ten years." That's a quote with unknown origin that I've heard a few times and one with which I cannot agree more. All you have to do is to look at my podcast to see that. It's been about four years now since I began Wealth Formula Podcast. The first several shows that I did had no listeners. Today, we get about 25,000 downloads per month. We also have a regulation D accredited investor group of about 1400 individuals. Collectively, our group has placed over $100 million in equity in the last 18 months! Our ability to raise capital has been incredibly powerful and allowed us to partner with some of the best operators in the country and to cherry pick opportunities! More important than that, we have created a truly unique community of really smart, successful individuals of like-mind. We invest together and play together. Just come to our next Wealth Formula event in Phoenix to see how hard we play! Sometimes people ask me how I built Wealth Formula. The answer is persistence. I have a message and I have a mission and I go to work every week. If you put your mind to something and plug away at it long enough, you have a good chance to succeed. The problem that most people have is that they stop trying too early. It's hard to see five downloads on your podcast dashboard and keep going just as it's hard to build a business from scratch. Success, though, comes from a series of small victories that accumulate over time. That's true whether it's a podcast, an exercise regimen, or learning a new language. The key is to stop chasing shiny objects, decide what you want and to aggressively follow the narrow path that will eventually get you there. Seeing what has happened with this podcast makes me believe in this concept more than ever. Take a minute and think about how this might apply to your life. After that, make sure to tune in to episode 200 of Wealth Formula Podcast!

* In case you are wondering—I didn't get a chance to finish episode 200 yet so we are going to call this one episode 199.5! One of the great things about Wealth Formula Network is having a community where people can share what they know including who to stay away from. For example, through our collective knowledge, our group learned pretty quickly last year when a high profile turn-key home provider appeared to have been either purposefully or by incompetence, getting people involved with a Ponzi scheme. Sometimes we figure this kind of stuff together the hard way. For example, in January of 2017, I got an email from one of our listeners/investors telling me about "The Income Store". The Income store was owned and marketed by a podcaster named Bill Courtwright who claimed that people could buy websites from him that he would manage for six figure investments. He promised returns of up to 20 percent forever. Knowing a little bit about internet marketing, the concept piqued my interest. I had done pretty well with a few on-line projects myself and know some people in the space a lot smarter than me that helped me along the way. It seemed like something worth looking into. To do some research, I asked my primary internet marketing guy and friend to look into it for me. He went on to the company website and did some research with some basic internet tools. Here's what he wrote back in January of 2017: "I took a look at all the sites on their 'brag sheet'. The sites do not get any real search traffic results—less than 50 visits maximum per month each. None are big powerful sites and are not found in google. They can't be profitable…I am not sure how they are making this cash flow…something is not right." Bottom line is that it was clear for anyone who knew what they were doing back in 2017 that something was fishy. Unfortunately, our listener had already invested $290K. I told him what we found but it was too late. Almost exactly three years later, I saw a headline in the Chicago Tribune, "SEC freezes assets of suburban owner of The Income Store, allegedly a $75 million Ponzi-like website investment scheme". I'm sure I don't need to say more than that to describe what had happened. This guy used the power of podcasting to create influence. He then used that influence to get people to trust him and give them their money. I have to tell you that I see this kind of shady stuff happening left and right in the podcast space—not necessarily Ponzi Schemes but stuff that just doesn't smell right and often turns out crooked. As a podcaster myself, I have to warn you that just because someone is behind a microphone or is a guest on someone's show does not automatically make them a person you can trust. That may seem obvious but tell that to the investors of "The Income Store". The appearance of influence can make people blind. Ronald Reagan once said, "Trust…but verify". Bill Courtwright was on the podcast circuit and he was aligning himself with known personalities and trustworthy brands. He was a very good marketer. But all you really had to do was a little due diligence to figure out, as my friend said, that "something is not right". But I guarantee you that none of those investors bothered to look at the traffic results of the websites he promoted or asked someone else with more internet savvy to do so. Beware the fraudcaster! Beware the fraudulent podcast guest. Not everyone does due diligence on all of their guests. Not everyone has rules on who can advertise on their show. Trust…but verify. This goes not only for investment opportunities, but also for a variety of other services. In fact, there is something out there right now that I think is going to be a real problem for a lot of people in short order. While I can't name the company itself or the name they've given to the program, I have invited my friend and asset protection attorney, Doug Lodmell to describe the limits of trusts and taxation which this scheme involves. Listen to this interview so that you don't fall into another influencer trap! P.S. Our April 24th -25th Wealth Formula Meetup in Phoenix is filling up quickly! Sign up now at WealthFormulaEvents.com

"Be careful what you wish for, lest it come true!" The origin of this saying is Aesop's Fables (circa 260 BC), not a modern country singer as some might think. Either way, it is a powerful statement when it comes to financial wealth. You see, I talk to hard working, high paid professionals every day and many aspire to retire. They believe that they would be much happier if they could make enough money to quit their job. But is that really true? It may be more complicated than you think. As you may know, I quit my "job" as a surgeon almost three years ago. I would not call myself retired but I am most certainly retired from medicine. Do I miss it? Well, I have to say that I rarely think about operating so the answer is no. However, I do miss certain sensations associated with that time in my life. I miss doing things with my hands. I don't think about operating anymore but I do miss the sensation of being completely absorbed in a physical task and trying to do it perfectly. I remember the feeling of being lost in my own world completely detached from any other concerns in life. The only other time I really felt that way was when I played ice hockey as a kid. In addition, I miss having a well-defined routine that I can't cancel on a whim. There is a certain comfort in the monotony of a strict schedule and being needed that is not appreciated until it's lost. I also miss interacting with people in a work setting. I used to go into an office every morning and bond with people. These days, I spend most of my days working by myself and, when I do speak to others, it is usually over the phone and all business. Now don't get me wrong. I don't want that old life back anymore. However, I am trying to figure out how to have my cake and eat it too! That is to say, the feeling of flow (being lost in work), routine, and community are all important elements of feeling happy. If you recognize that you are missing these things in your life, that's great news because you can actively do something about it and improve your sense of wellness. That's what I want to do myself. Right now though, I am in the data collection phase. I am a scientist at heart. I need to define, at a physiological level, what exactly happiness is. Is it ultimately a function of dopamine and serotonin that result in certain electrical activities in various parts of the brain? If so, what kinds of things alter that activity? I'll let you know when I understand this stuff better myself. In the meantime, I'm relying on the experts in the field to help me establish a larger framework for this thing called happiness. After all, what's all this money we are making for anyway? Money can buy happiness to a certain extent and science has evidence for that. But it can't take you to the next level. I have realized recently that in order to get to that next level of holistic wealth (aka happiness), it will require the same level of education and diligence as it requires to become financially wealthy. That's what I need to do and I hope that you will be inspired to join me over the next year as we put further emphasis on this topic of positive psychology into the Wealth Formula milieu. If you want to start working on this stuff in a meaningful way, listening to this week's Wealth Formula Podcast interview with Joel Wade would be great way to start. Listen HERE! P.S. I'll be talking about happiness at our upcoming Wealth Formula Meetup in Phoenix on April 24th-25th! Make sure to sign up for the event at WealthFormulaEvents.com

Yogi Berra once said, "It's tough to make predictions, especially about the future." He was a wise man. No wonder they named a cartoon character after him. The problem is that everything we do in finance ultimately relies on some kind of belief of how the future will play out. As a result, we often search for prophets who can help us make a profit. Of course these prophets, otherwise known as economists, don't seem to agree with each other. Some even seem to have secondary agendas. You know what I mean—the guys who boast about predicting the great recession of 2008 but omit the fact that they also predicted recessions every other year for the last two decades! The economy is cyclical. That means if you keep saying the same thing all the time, periodically you will be right! But only drawing attention to those occasional events is a bit disingenuous don't you think? It's also suspicious when they talk about gold to protect against cataclysmic events and just happen to have a thriving business that sells gold. That's hardly an unbiased source. Listen, like everyone else, I'm looking for some help with the future. Wouldn't it be great to be given a heads up on events like 2008 several months before they happen? Wouldn't it be great if there was someone who could tell you for sure that the next 10 years will be the most profitable in history and that you should invest everything you can? Of course that would be great but without Michael J. Fox's Delorean in "Back to the Future", it ain't gonna happen. Economists can't even agree with one another so why bother listening to any of them? Well, I would argue that you just need to do a little homework and decide who is worth listening to. I'll tell you what I do. I vet my sources of information the same way I vet my real estate partners. Now, it may not be important for me to know, like and trust an economist, but it is critically important for me to understand their track record. How frequently do economists tell you their batting averages?—not often in my experience. Why do you think that is? Wouldn't that be useful information? After all, If you could find a source that has been over 95 percent accurate with both positive and negative predictions in the US economy over the past 70 years, would you take their predictions seriously? I would. That's exactly what ITR Economics has done and its the reason why they are my single most trusted source of economic forecasting. When they talk, I listen. This week's Wealth Formula Podcast will give you the opportunity to do the same as I interview ITR economist, Catherine Putney.

If you are part of our Wealth Formula Investor Club you know that we do a lot of multifamily real estate. In fact, 95 percent of what we do is working class, value-add multifamily real estate with the same two operators. Some of you have invested literally millions of dollars into these deals. I've got my own money and my dad's money in this stuff too so I'm not doing anything different. I know it seems boring. The entrepreneur in me wants to bring you and me some brand new bright and shiny objects in which to invest. But I just can't do that—at least not right now. Right now, boring is good. For those of you who have been urging me to branch out, I promise you that I am looking at new stuff all the time. The problem is that the risk adjusted return just never seems on par with what we already have. To make my point, let me give you a couple of examples. A very respected private equity shop approached me about a joint venture with them in which we would construct several well known burger franchises across the country and then roll them up to private equity for a big multiple and an exit. Sounds good on the surface. The investor IRR was projected at 20 percent which was respectable and it certainly could be better if other things went just right. However, there were no tax benefits, so even an 8 percent yearly dividend sounded less than attractive. Furthermore, there is no doubt in my mind that the risk to operating businesses in this economy is far greater than working class residential real estate. So, bottom line—shiny object, cool business plan, great team…but for what? The return profile was similar to our real estate proformas with far greater exposure to a volatile economic climate and no tax advantages. I'll take boring. Another deal I passed up on was a really interesting commercial real estate play where the group was buying from pension plans that had to sell per mandate and was getting steep discounts on the properties they were buying. But these properties were in tertiary markets like Louisville and Cincinnati. And when you did a deep dive, cap rates were still at 8 despite the big purchase price discounts. This is with vacancies at historical lows! What does that tell me? It tells me that this is a great model but the timing sucks. Am I really going to load up on office space in tertiary markets in 11th year of the longest expansion of GDP in US history? In an election year??? Again, the answer is no but I promise I'm still looking! It's just that right now, very little beats our boring little real estate deals on a risk-adjusted basis. So, for now, I'm going to just keep investing the same way and you may find it prudent to do the same. Now, if you are making a lot of your investments out of retirement accounts (SDIRA's, Solo 401Ks) or thinking about doing so, I highly recommend you listen to this week's podcast interview with Damion Lupo. If you've been on the fence about using your retirement funds for real estate, some recent legislation may just change your mind. Find out why on this week's episode of Wealth Formula Podcast! P.S. Don't forget to sign up for our LIVE meetup in Phoenix Arizona on April 24th and 25th! To sign up, click HERE!

I don't really like basketball and have never watched a full game in my life. Despite that, I knew who Kobe Bryant was and was shocked by the news of the tragic accident that took his and his daughter's life. His passing actually reminded me very much of Princess Diana dying in a car crash in 1997. I remember that I was at a bar attending a medical school new student orientation event when the news came up on a TV. I was shocked and disturbed the same way I am now. I also remember that a friend of mine turned to me and said, "So what, people die all the time." My initial response was to see him as a heartless jerk. However, it does beg the question of why someone like me, who could really not care less about the British Royal Family or the NBA, gets so disturbed when unexpected tragedies like this happen. I think that the reason high profile tragedies affect us the way they do is because they somehow strip the world of its makeup. In order to not go crazy, most of us have to create a reality in which things happen for a reason. Thinking of life as cruel and disorderly is not compatible with a sense of well-being. So, we slap some lipstick on reality and pretend that we are in control. Kobe Bryant's death puts that sense of order into doubt. He was a successful and beloved athlete with four children. He was strong and smart and seemed to be just getting started. If someone like him dies suddenly, then it could happen to anyone at any time. That's not a comforting thought. But change and loss are inevitable for everyone—rich or poor, powerful or weak. The question is how do you get through it? I certainly don't know the answer to that but my guest on Wealth Formula Podcast this week, Russell Gray, is doing his best to help himself and others do just that. Russ is a good friend and a wise man. Don't miss this episode.

People send me real estate deals to look at all the time trying to get an opinion on whether or not they should invest. Usually it's some glossy executive summary showing nice pictures and impressive proforma numbers. "What do you think?", they ask. My answer is pretty much always the same. "I don't know these people so I can't comment". You see, real estate is not like publicly traded stock. If I buy Apple stock from E-trade it's the same stock that someone else might buy from Ameritrade or some other brokerage. You don't have to worry that you aren't getting the same stock. No matter where you buy Apple, it will perform the same. Real Estate is different. Every property in which you invest is unique. Furthermore, the performance of the asset is highly dependent not only on the intrinsic nature of the property, but also on its operator. The same asset in two different sets of hands will almost certainly result in different outcomes. Some operators are good and some are outright bad. So, it's probably a good idea to get to know who they are. That may seem obvious but think about how many people blindly invest in real estate through various on-line platforms where they have zero clue about the operator. The platform gets paid to bring money to the deal. Why do people trust these platforms so much? Is it because they have nice looking websites? Is it because what they say sounds official? I don't get it. You see, apart from being good or bad, operators typically have different business models as well. A few weeks back, you heard Dante Andrade, my colleague in Dallas, talk about our hybrid value add/cash flow model. That's very different from what my partners at Western Wealth Capital do. Their entire focus is on the creation of equity for velocity and a big bump at exit. So how do you decide with whom to invest? Well, first of all, let's go back to the the idea that real estate is not a commodity and highly dependent on people. That being the case, my general rule of thumb is to know, like and trust the operations team. That's what I spend my time doing in investor club. Of course, liking and trusting is only part of it. I like and trust many people with whom I would never trust my money. You also have to make a judgment on competence. How do you do that? Well, how about taking a look at the company's track record? If you know, like and trust a group AND they have a great track record, you can at least start looking at proformas and taking them seriously. Anyone can make a proforma look good. Some glossy paper and excel worksheets and you can make swamp land in Florida look good. But not every opportunity is good and most won't achieve proforma—especially in a market like today. Look at the track record. As for Western Wealth Capital, I won't pretend that I am not biased. Apart from them being a partner of Wealth Formula, I have invested a lot of my own money in their offerings. Perhaps more illustrative, I have invested just as much of my 80 year old father's money in these deals. I don't take that lightly as you can imagine. Western Wealth Capital has become a big part of my life and my guest today, Tim McLeary has become like a brother to me. Tim is a major part of the Western Wealth machine and is my guest on Wealth Formula Podcast this week. Don't miss it!

I have a question for you. Did you make any significant New Year's resolutions or set some serious 2020 goals for yourself this year? I bet when you set those goals, you likely felt a lot of energy: "This time I'm going to do it!". You felt like nothing was going to stop you. Now, four weeks into the year, are you losing steam on that goal? If so, why do you think that is? Personally, I think we humans have a series of set thermostats in our lives. We are set at a particular state of health, wealth and happiness. In order to reset any of our thermostats requires considerable effort. Self-help book enthusiasts swear by visualization techniques like putting up photos of things you want in order to let them creep into your subconscious. Positive affirmations have the same intent. The idea is to reset those thermostats. These kinds of rituals create constant reminders to your subconscious of a new reality you are trying to create. Any significant goal requires a lot of energy and effort. If you don't fundamentally believe something is possible, it's hard to put in consistent effort. If you change any one of these thermostats, you will change your life. I truly believe that and I wish I understood that when I was much younger. If you buy into this idea that you can fundamentally change your life by changing your mindset, and you wish to do so, you are not going to want to miss this week's interview with best selling author, Hal Elrod.

Our private group, Wealth Formula Network, has a biweekly zoom video call to discuss anything and everything about personal finance. These calls are a lot of fun for people like me who like to geek out on money stuff. If you are the only one in your social network who likes this topic, Wealth Formula Network is a great way to get your fix through an on-line community instead. On our most recent call, someone brought up a fund and wanted to know the groups thoughts on it. We broke it down and realized that there was really nothing AT ALL appealing about the opportunity. So what was it about this deal that attracted attention in the first place? Well, it was packaged well and presented in a way that, on the surface, made a whole lot of sense. You see, there are a lot of good marketers in the podcast ecosystem. These marketers understand that the podcast space creates a world that can grant immediate legitimacy for them through brand association. Let's say you have a podcast that you really like and feel like you really trust the host. If you hear someone interviewed on that podcast, it immediately legitimizes the interviewee as someone who can be trusted. I learned this the hard way as a podcaster. Early on, I would interview anyone with an interesting idea or concept just to get the content out there. But some of these people were raising money for deals that I wouldn't touch with a ten foot pole! I soon realized that I had essentially legitimized these opportunities by having someone explain them on my show. So…now I am very careful about who I interview and also give frequent disclaimers when someone is raising money. Anyway, the point I am making here is that it is critically important to use what you are learning and pick these deals apart. When you do so rationally with an objective stance, the negative elements of an offering are usually pretty glaring. It helps to do this exercise with a group of individuals of like mind. If you do it over and over, I promise you will get better at it and get really good at identifying bad deals quickly. We do this all the time in Wealth Formula Network where several of the real investors of Wealth Formula Nation share their experiences together. One of those investors is Dr. Ian Kurth, MD. Ian has become a real leader within our group. He is smart as a whip and works diligently at mastering personal finance concepts. For high paid professionals who work full time and want to create wealth efficiently, there is no better role model. And for that reason Ian is my guest on Wealth Formula Podcast this week. Don't miss it!

Happy New Year! This is my first podcast of 2020 and I'm looking forward to another great year. I don't know about you, but I get very reflective this time of the year and it is usually pretty helpful. I have a suggestion for you. Write down where you are today and where you would like to be next year. This exercise can really help to focus in on what is NOT working. You see, it's easy to focus on what is working. We are naturally programmed to run to pleasure and away from pain. It is much harder to acknowledge those things that are not working and to figure out how to make them go away. This applies to all parts of life—relationships, investments, jobs, and businesses. If it isn't working and you know, deep down, it's not going to change... Then it's time to get rid of it. As a serial entrepreneur, I can tell you that I have had to do this several times. Sometimes businesses do great and sometimes they don't. The entrepreneur's curse is to get emotional and not let go of a dying business idea or one that no longer provides joy to the owner. We've all been there—90 percent of your life is great but the 10 percent of it that is not consumes all of your energy. If that's the case, get rid of it. There may be some temporary pain—emotional or financial, but it will be worth it. A few years ago, I decided that I didn't want to practice medicine anymore and I wanted to move to Santa Barbara. It was a tricky transition and one that was not without substantial risk. However, had I not eliminated medicine and my Illinois home address, I would not have focussed on what has been the most successful and enjoyable businesses of them all for me—multifamily real estate. I've been lucky for sure. You see, the success of any venture depends not only on the endeavor, but also on the people with whom you partner. On my road to success in my real estate business, finding the right people has been the most difficult part. Building relationships is time consuming. It requires perseverance in getting to know people and businesses personally and professionally. But it has really paid off for me and, frankly, to our Investor Club. Had I not eliminated the practice of medicine a few years back, I simply would not have had the time and energy to build the infrastructure our investor group has today. Some of you in Investor Club know Dante Andrade. He's my partner in a newer company that we formed together called Touro Asset Management Group. Touro focuses on working class multifamily real estate specifically in the Dallas submarket. Our model is a hybrid cash flow and value add strategy. I'm very lucky to have Dante as a partner. He's one of the most meticulous underwriters and operators I've ever known and has facilitated over $1 billion in apartment transactions as a buyer's broker in Dallas. He really knows his stuff. In this week's Wealth Formula Podcast, I sit down with Dante and talk about all facets of investing in apartment buildings. Whether you are old hat at multifamily investing or just thinking about it, I'm quite sure you will take something away from this conversation!

Last summer I had a drug reaction that made me pretty sure I was going to die. There was nothing terribly remarkable about the day it happened. I was with my wife and kids visiting my parents in Minnesota. On our last evening there, I stayed up a little later to chat with my parents. The children were already asleep. By 11PM or so I headed down to bed. I felt a little funny walking down the stairs and then, the next thing you know, I couldn't stand and I felt completely disoriented. Within 20 minutes, I was getting loaded up into the back of an ambulance. I remember seeing the doors close and wondering if I would ever see the outside world again. During the ride to the hospital, all I could think of was whether or not I was going to leave my family in good financial shape. Had I prepared them for this? I wasn't sure. Of course the whole thing was a false alarm and I'm here to talk about it. However, it illustrates the idea that unexpected things happen to people all the time. Life is full of uncertainties but death is not one of them. The only question is when. Despite that, very few people give much thought to making that transition as easy as possible for their loved ones. Why? Well, it's scary I guess. Some people are superstitious and worry that estate planning may hasten their demise. Others just have no clue that anything needs to be done. Maybe you fit in the latter category. The good news for you is that there are very clear things you should do now for estate planning regardless of your age and health and they are relatively simple and inexpensive. For people with larger estates, this kind of planning becomes even more important as estate taxes can rob your children of your hard earned wealth. These are the issues that we will discuss on this week's Wealth Formula Podcast with attorney Joseph Longo. Do not miss this episode!

The end of the year is a good time for giving. Of course we are already in the mood with the holidays. Buying presents has a way of greasing up the credit cards and making it easier to pull the trigger. The end of the year is also a good time to give to charity. Even if you are a kind hearted human being, I'm sure it's not always easy to part with your hard earned money. However, at the end of the year, you come to the realization that charity is also tax deductible so it starts to make you feel more philanthropic. That being said, I would like to direct you to a cause that I think is really worth your attention. One of our listeners, Dr. Eric Payne is a craniofacial surgeon. He's the kind of plastic surgeon who can change lives for children with facial deformity such as cleft palate/cleft lip. A few months ago, Eric did a webinar for us on what he does on these international trips. It was pretty pretty inspiring. You can watch that webinar replay HERE. You see, one of the things we take for granted in our lives is how we look. Even if you aren't a supermodel, chances are that when you walk around town, people don't look at you like you have a deformity of some kind. We take anonymity for granted and focus on higher level stuff like making money. Now imagine being a kid with a facial deformity that everyone can see in plain site that also interferes with your basic functions like eating, drinking and speaking. That's what kids born with cleft palates and lips are up against. I want to help these kids by supporting Eric's work. My goal is to raise $100K for his organization to fund the next mission to India. Then, Eric will take lots of photos and videos to show you your money at work in a follow-up webinar. $100K will result in unparalleled return on investment in terms of the impact it will have on these kids. We have A LOT of people in this community so all we need is for everyone to participate and donate SOMETHING. It could be $10 or it could be $10,000—no pressure! Everything helps. Use the following link to get to the donation page: https://www.leapmissions.org/donate-form/ Make sure that you include Wealth Formula as your referral source. I would like to keep track of how much we donate as a group. In addition, anyone who donates at least $1000 to the cause will be acknowledged on a "Giving Back" page that will be added to WealthFormula.com. If you have been to our events or are part of our online community, you know that the Wealth Formula Community is extraordinary. As a community, I want to see us increasingly make an impact on the world around us. As for this week's podcast, it's about how giving can also be designed to make or save you money at a higher level. Merry Christmas.