Jaspreet Singh: Why Most People Stay Broke (Follow THIS 7-Step System to FINALLY Stop Living Paycheck-to-Paycheck!)

This is an IHOT podcast. Guaranteed Human. This is Dr. Jesse Mills, host of the Mailroom podcast. Each January meant promise to get stronger, work harder, and fix what's broken. But what if the real work isn't physical at all? I sat down with psychologist Dr. Steve Polter to unpack shame, anxiety, and the emotional pain men were never taught how to name. Part of the way through the value of despair is realizing this has happened, and you have to make a choice whether you're going to say in it or move forward. Our two-part conversation is available now. Listen to the Mailroom on the IHOT Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your favorite shows. Hi, I'm Dr. Priyanka Wally. And I'm Harry Kandabolo. It's a new year, and on the podcast, held stuff for resetting the way we talk about our health. Which means being honest about what we know, what we don't know, and how messy it can all be. I like to sleep in late and sleep early. Is there a chronotype for that, or am I just depressed? [laughter] Health stuff is about learning, laughing, and feeling a little less alone. Listen on the IHOT Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. A new year doesn't ask us to become someone new. It invites us back home to ourselves. I'm Mike Delarocia, host of Sacred Lessons, a space for men to pause, reflect, and heal. This year we're talking honestly about mental health, relationships, and the patterns we're ready to release. If you're looking for clarity, connection, and healthier ways to show up in your life, Sacred Lessons is here for you. Listen to Sacred Lessons with Mike Delarocia on the IHOT Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Between 55% and 78% of Americans have no money after I just pay my basic necessities. Our system is so rigged for the rich and the financially savvy. But we're never taught to be financially savvy. Hey, everyone. Welcome back to On Purpose, the place you come to become happier, healthier, and more healed, to have a better relationship with yourself, with your partner, with your money. And today's guest is one of your absolute favorites. He came on the show three years ago, over two million views, millions and millions of impressions across Instagram and TikTok as well. We had to bring him back. I'm talking about the one and only minority mindset, Jess Breet Singh. Just Breet, it is so great to have you back. Last interview went ballistic, the comments, the feedback. Wow. We had to have you back in the chair, and I'm so grateful to be here with you. Well, thank you, Jay. Thank you to everybody for listening, watching, and it means the world to me. And man, it's great to see you after so long. Yes, I can't believe it's been so long. I was telling my team, I was like, "Can't believe it took us this long to get him back." And I can't believe you've never been to Detroit. I know that I need to figure out. Yeah, I was saying to Jess Breet for those of you who are listening or watching our Satan, that M&M. I've always been a massive M&M fan. And so I heard about Detroit so much growing up. And Big Sean's a dear friend, he's been on the show like three or four times. So I can't believe I haven't been to Detroit yet. Yeah, and our offices and downtown Detroit for those of you that don't know. There we go. And did you grow up in Detroit? I did Metro Detroit. Okay, amazing. So that makes sense there. Yep, yep. People close to home. But just Breet, let's dive in. The reason I love singing down with you is because I feel the advice is so practical, it's so tactical, and it's extremely honest. And the first question I have for you is something that I have really been experiencing when talking to people. When I just went on tour, I was in 15 cities across North America. I don't know why we didn't come to Detroit. But 15 cities across North America and Canada. And whenever I do that, we were taking on purpose on tour. I sat down with people and listened to people's questions. And something that I was really noticing was this. If someone's living paycheck to paycheck, what's the very first step they can take to break that cycle? Yeah, one of the most unfortunate things about money is we use money every single day. It costs money to eat, it costs money to feed other people. We go to work to earn money. Yeah, most of us are never taught a thing about money. And so what happens to so many people is we go to school to get a good job. And now we go and get an income. And then we go and spend money. And that recipe is a disaster. It's just statistically. The majority of Americans are living paycheck to paycheck. And by majority, it depends on which study you read. It's somewhere between 55% and some people say it's highest 78% of Americans have no money left over for a gift of vacation, let alone an investment after I just pay my basic necessities. And now the problem and question to everyone has is why and how do I get out? And in order to get out because that's your question, you have to understand the why because the reality and this is going to sound harsh, but I learned this the hard way. What do I mean? When you understand money, it's much easier for you to get that money and grow that money. When you don't understand it, you're the one that's making everybody else rich. So in this system where you're working to make money and spend money, you're working to make everybody else rich except yourself. Why? Because the majority of America and really the world now is I make money and I spend money. And every dollar you spend is a dollar going into somebody else's pocket. And in our society, we live in what's called a credit-based economy. What that means is if I make $100 from my job, I have the ability to spend that $100 plus more thanks to Visa, AMX, MasterCard, Discover, and all the other forms of debt out there. And so if I go out and spend $100, I'm gonna make you $100 richer. If I spend $100 plus $50 on my credit card, I just made you $150 richer. And so when we live in a society that's built around spending, but more specifically, credit-based spending, and you don't have that shield, that financial education, that financial saviness to know what to do with their money, well now every corporation in the world, every bank in the world is gonna hire the smartest marketers, the smartest MBAs to get you to spend your money there, because that's gonna make them rich. And you are going to work just to pay bills, just to make them rich. And now you never have a chance to get ahead. So this system is designed this way. Now how do you get out? And the way you get out, we can break it up into multiple steps now. And it starts with step number one, building the right mindset. So I'm gonna break it up into seven steps. Step number one is the mindset. And when it comes to mindset, there are four different layers of this mindset that you have to understand. Number one is I will become wealthy. Number two is money is abundant. Number three is money is a tool. Number four is it's my duty to become wealthy. And the reason why I say that is, a lot of us grew up with some sort of money trauma, some sort of money negativity. And people say poverty is generational. Well, it's not that we have a gene in our DNA saying you're gonna be poor. What it is is you grow up hearing money is bad, money is evil. We don't have enough money. That's too much money. We can't afford that. We hear these types of things growing up. And so we start to normalize those things. That, oh, okay. As a kid, I can't afford that trip to Disneyland. I can't afford these nice things that I want. And then as you start to get older, you start to have kids yourself. What happens when your kids want nice things? That's beyond what we have. So that gets passed down. It's that mindset that gets passed down. So the first step is you need to change the way you talk and say, I will become wealthy. And I did a little exercise. I used to guest teach in Detroit Public Schools. And it was a very tough school district, very rough school district. And I would talk to these kids about money. And I think we talked about this on the last podcast. But one of the things I would ask them is, what is your dream car? And many people would have dream cars of things like a Ford Focus or Dodge Challenger. And I would say, why not a Bugatti? Why not a Rolls Royce? And the answer that I would get is somebody like me from my background could never have a nice car like that. So when you tell yourself, I can't. I guarantee you can't. Which is why you have to start saying, I will become wealthy. Number two is money as a tool. Many people are scared to talk about money because we're insecure about our own money. But the reality is, money is a tool that can amplify who you are. You give a good person more money. They have a tool to do more good. You give a bad person more money. They have a tool to do more bad. Which is why we need more good people with money and understanding that, hey, you know what? It is just a tool that can allow you to do more things to take better care of your family, your kids, your parents, and your community. Yeah, I think the challenge is we look at how much we're worth as a sign of how much we are worth. Right? Like there's that idea of, we're almost looking at it. The reason we're uncomfortable or insecure talking about money is because in some way we believe society values us based on how much we make. And certainly we may have started to value ourselves that way as well. Well, this is 100% true. And just take a look at it from Instagram. Instagram has become a highlight reel. I'm going to show my best self. But we often don't look at it as somebody else's highlight reel. We look at it as somebody else's average. And then let's say you're in a relationship. Your wife is now on Instagram and she sees, oh my god, this couple is going to Cancun. Oh my god, look at this nice house that this couple has. Oh my god, look at the car. He just got her. What's going to happen? Hey, hub's husband. How come we can't have these nice things? What are we doing wrong? How can we feel the sense of like I'm missing out? And so now we go back to my money is my worth. But that's not true. Money is one part of our lives. And you have to understand that more money will allow you to fulfill the financial part of your life, which is important. But the only way you get there is by getting on the same page about money and building that separation between the emotional side of money and the logic side of money. And that can be difficult because oftentimes, especially when we're struggling with money, we're thinking emotionally. Why is it that the casinos are in the poorest neighborhoods? Why is it that all these stores are designed to profit off of people that don't have money? It's because when you don't have money, man, it is easy to say, "Hey, let me give you a dopamine hit." Buy this nice pair of shoes, buy this Gucci purse, buy this whatever thing to the people that can at least afford it because it gives you that emotional rush that, "Oh, they're spending therapy." But that's the same thing that's keeping you broke. You look rich, you feel better for the moment and then you have to pay it back plus interest. And in the beginning of this podcast, I said, our system is designed to profit off of people that don't understand this. Well, the reality is our system is designed to profit off of keeping you poor. And it's going to sound harsh, but the reality is banks profit when you are in debt. The more debt you are in, the more money they make. Corporations profit when you spend money. The more you spend, the more they make. The government profits when you are financially uneducated because I am going to pay the highest taxes and you're going to be stuck relying on the government when in reality, when you become financially uneducated, you can pay less money in taxes legally and not need those same services per se from the government. That's why the financial education is so important. But the only way you can get there is if you can separate the emotional side from the logic side and it starts with that mindset. Money is a tool. Money is a tool. And then it's number three. Money is abundant. This one is a tough one. But it is one of the most powerful tools to become financially successful. Let's say now, you make $50,000 a year. And you start to watch some financial education content on YouTube and you're like, "Oh, wow. I like this idea to invest in my money." And you become extremely aggressive and you find a way to live off of $40,000 and invest $10,000 a year. Well, what happens to a lot of people in this situation is you say, "You know what, Jaspreet? I want to do more of this. I want to be more of an investor because I can see that light at the end of the tunnel. I'm going to live now instead of off of $40,000 a year. I'm going to live off of $38,000 a year and put aside $12,000. Then maybe I'll live off of $37,000 and I'm going to invest $13,000. This is a scarcity mindset way of thinking because you think that there's a limited pie and you can just squeeze more pennies out of the pie. I mean, everybody on the internet talks about why you need to stop digging star bucks so you can have $5 more to invest. Well, let's flip that just a little bit. You make $50,000 a year. You're saving and investing $10,000. But what if now you work to earn $500,000 a year? And if you were going to save and invest to save and invest that same percentage of your income, that means now you can save and invest $100,000 a year. Now, the first time you hear that, your response is probably going to be just but if you are out of your mind. My boss is not going to 10X my income. How am I supposed to go from 50 grand to $500,000 a year? Are you, you know, bad word? Well, I want you to take a step back. What do we just say? I will become wealthy. Money is a tool. Money is abundant. There's a lot of money in the world. A lot of money. There's some people that make whatever you make in a month. There are people that make whatever you make in a week. There are people that make whatever you make in a day. And there's probably people that make whatever you're making in an hour. If you start to reframe the way you look at money, now you can start doing different things. Maybe you start watching more YouTube videos and how do you earn more money. Maybe you start to read books about it. And maybe you don't get to $500,000 a year. But maybe you get 80% of the way there. 50% of the way there. It's still a lot further. And you will never get there unless you start thinking about money in terms of abundance. And finally, it is my duty to become wealthy. In the sick religion, we have three main values. I might hear to preach anything. But there are three main fundamental tenants. Namjapana. Vanjakana. Girdgarni. Which means, remember God. Serve others before you serve yourself and earn an honest living. It is, in my belief, your duty to become financially successful. So you can take better care of yourself, better take care of your family, and take better care of your community. And once you can understand these things and change the way you think, it's not easy. But if you can work on that. Listen to your podcasts. Listen to the other stuff out there. Now you can move on to step number two, which is learn the rules of money. And again, I know we're getting to the theoretical stuff right after this. We'll talk about the practical side of what you actually do with your money, but you have to learn the rules of money because one of the things that I learned is that wealthy people understand that money is a game. And every single person is playing this money game. But the way that wealthy people are playing the money games are very different than everybody else. The average person thinks about money and how you attract that money is. I have to go to work and have to earn this money. I have to work hard to get this money. Now you do have to work hard. There's no way around that. But the way that wealthy people and financially savvy people think about money is I'm going to work hard not to make the money, but own an asset. And this asset is going to make me more money. I'm going to work to own the things that will keep paying me even after I stop working. And that is a completely different way of thinking because the average person is thinking if I can make a little bit more money, I'm going to drive a better car. If I can make a little bit more money, I'm going to buy a better house. If I could get a bonus, I'm going to go on a vacation. If I could get a nice raise, I'm going to buy my wife a nice purse. We think in terms of spending wealthy people think in terms of investments. And there's three rules of money that I learned that you have to understand. Number one is that money flows to the investor. When I go to Chipotle, and I buy a bowl of extra guac, who am I benefiting? Am I really supporting the employees? Yes, in a way, because I will be paying their salary, but the real profits are going to the owners of Chipotle. It's going to the investors of Chipotle. Money rule number two is inflation benefits the investor. What does that mean? Over the last five years, we've seen the prices of things rise. This is because of inflation. Inflation didn't just start after the pandemic has been happening for a long, long, long time. And so you might have heard your grandparents or parents say, "When I was young, I used to go to the movie theater for a nickel, a dollar, whatever it might be. Now it's $25 to go to a movie." This is inflation. So now when you spend those more dollars at Chipotle, who's getting those more dollars, it's the owners of Chipotle, the investors, and then finally is our system. It's designed to benefit the investor. As a licensed attorney, who's at your attorney, I can tell you that when you earn your money as an investor, you are going to pay a lower tax rate than when you earn your money as an employee. That's why it is so important to understand the rules of money because our entire system is designed to make the financially savvy wealthier while everybody else is paying the price. I'll give you one more example. When I was in law school, I learned about this concept called fiduciary duty. And what I didn't understand and what I learned is that the CEO of a company, your boss, has a fiduciary duty to make one person rich. Do you know who that is? It's not the employees at the company. It's not the customers at the company. It is the owners of the company, the investors in the company. The CEO has to make decisions to make the investors rich. And we're never taught to become an investor. We're taught to become an employee. Now it's not bad to work a job. That's not what I'm saying. In fact, that's probably the best thing for most people. What I'm saying is you have to understand that when you go to work, you now have to take some of that money and become an investor. Now when you do that, now you can start to get into the practical steps of what you do with your money. So we talked about, now step number one, is you have to build the mindset. Now you have to learn the rules of money. You have to go into the practical side, which is step number three, get out of the financial danger zone. And what I mean by that is the very first thing you have to do, is save $2,000 as fast as possible. Just $2,000. Just start with $2,000 as a start, and then pay off your credit card debt. Half America today does not have $1,000, but a side to protect them against emergency. So if your car breaks down, your kid gets sick, your window breaks, the average person has to go into debt to pay for that expense. You have zero breathing room. If you want to go on vacation, you want to do anything. You have to go into debt to do that. So we need to stop that. I call this the financial danger zone. You need to save $2,000 as fast as possible. And the way you can do that is by spending less or working to earn more. And you have to make some extreme sacrifice if you don't have that. Do you know what people have wasting the most amount of money on right now in the United States? Is there any research on that? Oh, man. Well, if you are somebody who does not have $2,000 saved up, there's a lot of things you got to cut out. And this is going to sound mean, but I don't say what I say to make friends, I say what I say to help people be better with money. You should not be eating at a restaurant. You should not be going on vacations. You should not be driving around in a fancy car. You shouldn't be living in a big fancy house. Right now, you got to make some extreme sacrifices if you don't have $2,000. So much so that what I tell people is you should not have a Netflix subscription. Not because it's going to save you $15 a month, but because the average American is watching somewhere between two to three hours of Netflix a day. If you don't have $2,000, how can you feel comfortable sitting there at nighttime watching whatever the heck is on Netflix? You have to have a little bit of urgency that, oh my god, I got to take care of my family. So whatever you can cut back on, do it. And then once you get the $2,000, pay off your high interest credit card debts. Because when you are in that situation where you have those high interest debts, you are trying to climb a mountain with 1,000 pounds of chain strapped to your back. You're never going to get to the next step because anytime you get some money, you got to pay it back off. In fact, let me give you an example. Jay, if I gave you $6,500 today, and you invested that money today, you never touched that money again. You never invested another penny again and you could get a, let's say, 20% return a year on that money. In 40, 45 years, you're going to retire very wealthy. You're not going to have a million dollars, $5 million, $10 million, $50 million. You're going to have closer to $60 million off of that one investment of the $6,400, $6,500 that I give you today. Now you're going to say, all right, sign me up. Just give me that money and know where to invest it. Well, here's the reality. Do you know who's getting those returns? Amex, Visa, MasterCard, Discover. And you know who's paying it? You, if you have credit card debt. And so instead of you having that wealth, you were the one that's paying for their private jets. You were the one that's paying for their big buildings. You were the one that's paying for their luxuries, which is why I get so serious about this that if you want to become wealthy, you have to. You have to, you have to get out of this financial danger zone. Once you get there, now we can get to the next step. Step number four, this is where things get fun because you finally have a little bit of a foundation. Now you can create a system for your money. The difference between wealthy people and everybody else is wealthy people know what they're going to do with their money before they earn it. Everybody else gets the money and then they wonder, well, what should I do? How should I spend this money? And this is where it is very helpful to have a system for your money. One that I teach is a 75/15/10 plan, which says for every dollar that you earn from here on out, 75 cents is the maximum that you can spend. 15 cents is the minimum that you invest. 10 cents is the minimum that you save. This way, whether you're earning $30,000 a year, $300,000 a year, or $3 million a year, you're always going to have a rule of how much you can save, invest, and spend, break that down for us again. 75/15/10. So the way I'd like you to do this is I want you to open three bank accounts. And you're going to make money. Money gets deposited into one bank account. Create an automatic withdrawal and deposit that money gets pulled out of one bank account and 15% goes into your bank account holding your investment money. 10% goes into bank account holding your savings money. The reason why you want to have three different bank accounts is because if you have $100 in one bank account, and you think this is my investing money and my saving money, you go into the store and you see this nice sweater on sale. It's $90. I have $100 in my bank account. Well, I should be able to afford it, right? Well, you forget that some of that money is supposed to be saved and invested and then you pay taxes on that sweater. And now you spend $98.99 on that sweater. Oops, I just spent my savings and my investment money, which is why you need the three different bank accounts. Your savings are not going to make you wealthy. This is a big lie that we've been sold. Your savings are there to protect you. Now we move on to the next step. How do you spend your money smartly? This is where things start to get a little bit painful, but this is where you can really accelerate your wealth. You know how to spend your money now. You have a good system. Now when it comes to actually accelerating your wealth, I mean by that is no more financing things. I don't want money in your pocket. And then follow the rule of five when it comes to luxuries. So when it comes to no more financing things, it's very normal. You want to buy the new iPhone? Why would you pay $1,1200? But in $50 a month, 0% APR. It's free money. Why wouldn't you take it? Well, let me ask you a question. If I walked into the bank today and I said, give me a $1,000 loan at 0% APR, what are they going to say? Heck no, there's a door. Why is it that somebody is willing to offer me 0% APR? Not just somebody, a very profitable corporation. Because they know how to make money off of you with a 0% APR. Why? Because at 0% APR number one, it's going to make it much easier for you to buy the new iPhone more often. Number two, you don't feel the pain of $1,000 leaving your bank account. It's just $50 a month. Number three, when you buy the new phone, well, now they can sell you the new AirPods, the new charger, the new case for it. And then number four, they know that a lot of people are not going to pay it off in time. And now they're going to slap on that 15, 20, 25% interest, which then makes them even wealthier. Which is why you should not be financing things, even at 0% APR. If it doesn't put money in your pocket, do not finance it. The only exception is the house that you live in. And then my rule of five. If you can't buy five of them, you can't afford one of them, especially for luxuries. That's a good rule. So you want to buy a nice $1,000 watch? You better have $5,000. So of disposable income? Of extra money. Yeah. Now we can get into the next step. Which is, how do you earn more money? The step number six. Because now we know how to create a system with your money. You know that I'm going to do 75, 15, 10. I know how to spend my money. Now let me earn more money. And this is the part that many people get flipped because they assumed I just said I'm going to make some more money. Well, if you make more money while knowing what to do with that money, you make more money and then you make other people rich with it because you just go and spend it. This is where now it is important for you to figure out how can you earn more money? Maybe you ask for a raise at your job. Maybe you get a second job. Maybe you create your own business. Maybe you learn how to utilize artificial intelligence. You find ways to earn more money. But you keep following that system. The 75, 15, 10, and that's the keys. As you earn more money, you keep investing more money. Because that's what's going to make you wealthy. And then finally, at the top, step number seven is you have to protect your assets. And there's two parts to this. Number one is you got to understand the legal side. That means understanding taxes. Because taxes can be one of the biggest expenses that you have to pay. You have to understand how do you pass this wealth down? How do you put shields around you? Because when people realize you have money, they're going to want some of it for themselves. And this also means how do you give back? How do you help others? How are you going to leave a legacy for yourself and your family? That's now wealth planning. And so we talked about not kind of the whole progression of these seven steps. But it starts with that mental side of understanding the mindset. And you got to understand the framework of the rules of money. Then we start with the basics of saving the 2000 paying off the credit card. Then you build a system for your money. From there, once you have this system, you have to know how to spend your money the right way. Then you have to learn how to earn more money the right way. Then you learn how to manage your wealth. Grow your wealth and pass on your wealth. Yeah, that is a really brilliant system. I mean, that's a master class, truly, because-- I call it the climb to wealth. Yeah, it's brilliant. It's so great. And I love that it goes from-- I love that you start with the mindset and then switch into the practicals of money. If you talk all the practicals stuff and people didn't have the mindset, you'll make mistakes and you'll actually put your money in the wrong places. And if you only have the philosophy and the mindset and don't have the practicals, well, then it's just a nice idea. Hey there. This is Dr. Jesse Mills, director of the Minsk Clinic, a UCLA Health and Host of the Mailroom podcast. Each January guys everywhere make the same resolutions. Get stronger, work harder, fix what's broken. To kick off the new year, I sat down with Dr. Steve Polter, a psychologist with over 30 years' experience of helping men unpack shame, anxiety, and emotional pain they were never taught to name. In a powerful two-part conversation, we discuss why men aren't emotionally bulletproof, why shame hides in plain sight, and how real strength comes from listening to yourself and to others. Guys who are toxic, they're immature, or they've got something they just haven't resolved. And once that gets resolved, then there comes efficacy, as in compassion. If you want this to be the year, you stop powering through pain and start understanding what's underneath, listen to the Mailroom, on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your favorite shows. Hi, I'm Dr. Priel Kuali, and I'm Harry Kandabolo. It's a new year, and on the podcast, help stuff for resetting the way we talk about our health. We talk to experts who share real experiences and insight. You just really need to find where it is that you can have an impact in your own life and to start doing that. We break down the topics you want to know more about. Sleep, stress, mental health, and how the world around us affects our overall health. We talk about all the ways to keep your body and mind inside and out healthy. We human beings all we want is connection. We just want to connect with each other. Health stuff is about learning, laughing, and feeling a little less alone. Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. A New Year doesn't mean a racing who you were. It means honoring what you've survived, and choosing how you want to grow. It means giving ourselves permission to feel what we've been holding, and knowing that it's okay to ask for help. I'm Mike Dollarocha, host of Sacred Lessons. This podcast is a space for men to talk openly about mental health, grief, relationships, and the patterns we inherit, but don't have to repeat. Here, we slow down. We listen. We learn how vulnerability becomes strength, and how healing happens in community, not in isolation. If you're ready to let go of what no longer serves you, and step into the year with clarity, compassion, and purpose, Sacred Lessons is your companion on your healing journey. Listen to Sacred Lessons with Mike Dollarocha on America's #1 Podcast Network, iHeart. Follow Sacred Lessons with Mike Dollarocha, and start listening on the free iHeart radio app today. The big question that comes to my mind right now is, for anyone who's like, "Just free, I'm making that $50,000. I'm making that $30,000. I want to make more money right now." What is the fastest, most effective, realistic way I can make more money today? So that I have more of this 75/15/10 split to ultimately invest more. What do you recommend I do in this damage right now? Can I recommend what you shouldn't do, too? Yeah. So I talk about investing around. That is my focus. It's the financial side of what do you do with that money? And so I was actually just doing a conversation with somebody about this, where a lot of people who end up in a tough financial situation, whatever it might be, maybe you have debts, you have expenses, you have, you're in a situation where money is tight. You go onto the internet, and now you start to hear about this topic called passive income. And now you think, "Wow, if I could just have some more money coming in passively, I could pay all my bills and no longer have to worry about money." But that's not how it works. Investing in everything that I'm talking about when it comes to growing your wealth is when you have extra money that you don't need and you throw it into this investment, you throw it into this asset that is going to then grow and make you more money. It is not fast, but if you do it right, it works and it can make you wealthy. And that's how that works. Your question was, how can somebody start to earn more money fast? And the first thing that you can do, ask a boss for a raise. But don't do it the way most people do it. Because what most people will say is, "Hey boss, I've been working here for a long time. Can I get an extra $5,000 a year, $10,000 a year, whatever it might be?" And, well, what your boss is probably going to say is, no, because you're going to pay you to do the same thing. No, instead I want you to think about it from their perspective. The fastest way for you to make more money at your job is to make your boss more money. And if you can show them, hey, I'm going to make you an extra $20,000 a year. You pay me an extra $10,000 a year. Now they will probably say, yes, because you are adding more value to them. How can you do that? It's going to depend on your position. But find a way to add more value and go to them and say, "Hey, look, here's what I'm going to do. Here's how much more revenue I'm going to drive. Here's much more money I'm going to make you. I just want a piece of what I'm going to make you." Some people are going to say to me, "Wow, I like that idea." Others are going to say, "Screw that. I don't want to make my boss richer." Okay, then, well, you can try to do something for yourself. And today, AI is probably not probably. It is the biggest opportunity that we have at our fingertips. It is growing faster than the rate of the internet. It's growing faster than the adoption of blockchain. And most people think that AI is how do I go on to chat GPT and search guacamole recipes? But if you can understand AI, you can get ahead of the curve and solve a problem for many businesses or people with money, help them understand it, help them use it, and in exchange, you charge them money to do that. And there's so many ways to do it. This is going to get into how do you actually make money? How do you build a business? But if you can find a pain point. For example, dentists have a pain point, which is that patients don't show up for their services. Well, you can use AI to help solve that pain point. What can you do if you can show these dental offices, "Hey, let me build you an AI tool that will automatically text your patients when they have an appointment?" And it will say, "If you can't make it, click this button." If they can't make it, and you click the button, the AI tool will then work to find somebody else who's on the waiting list to come in and fill that slot. Well, now all of a sudden, you helped that dentist office fill more the slots, have less vacancies, and make more money. And then you could take a one step further. After they're done with their procedure, send out an automatic text message saying, "Did you like your service? How was it?" If you enjoyed it, give us a five-star review on Google, which is going to help drive more patients for the dentist office. And so that's the thing. Some people assume, "Well, I'm just going to go teach AI. I'm going to go help." It's too broad, get specific. Every business in the world should be using AI to some way shape the form. Most people have no idea how it works. If you have some time, study it, learn. And if you can figure out one pain point, go out and solve it for one person. Let there be a testimony for the second. Let there be a testimony for the third. And now all of a sudden, you're in business. Yeah, I love the first piece of advice as well. And I think there's three types of people that ask for a raise. The first person just asks for a raise, as you said. They're like, "Oh, can I get some more money?" And it's like, "Well, you're doing the same exact thing. Why would I pay you?" The second double person shows you everything they've done in the past and asks for a raise. And the person again goes, "Well, that's great, but you did that anyway." And then the third double person goes, "This is what I want to do," which is what you're saying, which is like, "Hey, here's I'm going to make you 10,000, 20,000 percent more, whatever it may be in your position." And that third double person is the person who gets the raise because you're now investing as an employer in what you hope is something that's valuable to you if it's a win-win. If you work a job, you have to know how you're making money for your company. If you don't spend this weekend figuring that out, because unless you understand how you drive revenue for your business, you are just a piece of space. And I say this as nice as possible because we're talking about AI. AI is getting smarter. It is getting more advanced. I mean, chat GBT did not exist five years ago. It is getting more advanced every single day. And there's a lot of talk about people being replaced by AI, which is true. But the bigger threat to that is you being replaced by somebody who knows how to use AI. And so if you don't understand how you're driving revenue for your business, well, there's a chance that there's a missing link between what you're doing as a job and what the business needs from what you are there to do. And that's what we got to figure out. And even with your second part of the answer, which is like how do you learn to use AI for something, it is people who start with problems, like trying to figure out a problem that you can help solve. That is really where it is. I think often we sit down and go, "Oh, I want to come up with a really cool idea." And in fact, every cool idea was only cool because it solved a good problem. If it didn't solve a problem, it wasn't a cool idea. And so if you are close to a problem, like sometimes people think also, "I want to go do something that I enjoy and love." And that's great and wonderful if it works out. But it's like, there's something that you know in your career path because you're close to it. I have a friend, funny enough, he talked about dentistry, I have a friend who's a dentist. He just understands the dental industry better because he's been so close to it for so many years. It's not his passion, it's not what he loves, it's not what he enjoys. But he's been able to build solutions for dental practices that allows him to make more money than even being a dentist. And again, it comes back down to what you just said, which is start where you are, start where you understand problems. You don't have to go and learn some new industry and figure something out. Because I think that can feel quite overwhelming sometimes to think, "Oh God, I don't know anything about what's happening in the world." You got to know your skill set as well. But I think you nailed it on the head with that problem side. Because as you were talking, I was kind of smiling because I was looking back at my life. And I was like, everything that I've kind of done sort of successfully was because there was some problem that I was trying to solve. I'm not going to say first, but one of my earlier, more successful businesses was an e-commerce company. It was a water-resistant sock. And this is, I mean, it goes so beyond what we're talking about. But they came up with this idea because I was in school. I was in college taking a public speaking class. And they gave us an assignment to pitch up product to the class, kind of like Shark Tank or Dragonstan. And I procrastinated and I put it off. And one day it was raining for class and I ran to class. I stepped in a puddle. I got to class and the teacher said, "It's your day to present." And I said, "Present what?" She said, "The product." And I said, "Oh, crap." And I was standing in front of class. My heart is beating. My socks are wet. And I started talking about water-resistant socks. If you're an athlete because I used to put football in high school, American football. Oh, man, when it rains, your feet feel soaked. And how athletes would love it. And I sat down and I was like, "That's kind of a cool idea. How can I do that?" So I created a water-resistant sock and that was my first kind of internet business. And then I think about what I'm doing now. So I run a company called Briefs Media. Our flagship product is called Market Briefs, which is a free daily newsletter. And that started because during COVID, the economy flipped upside down, like in a matter of a day. And so I went from making YouTube videos like three times a week to seven days a week. And there's so much happening in the news that I asked my team. I said, "Hey, can you send me a daily briefing of what's happening in the market?" And I said, "Make it super simple so I can understand because I don't like complex jargon." And so my team started sending this to me and I was like, "Huh, I wonder if other people would like this?" So I would occasionally mention this on my YouTube channel that, "Hey, if you want to get a daily report of what's happening in the markets, you can just join this newsletter." At the time, it was called the minority mindset newsletter. Super original, right? And that started picking up attention, people started to like it. And I was like, "Huh, we can actually do something with this. We're not making any money." But I was like, "I see the value because I like reading this newsletter." And I don't like the complex jargon of all the traditional financial news. I just want to know what's happening in the stock market, in the housing market, in crypto. I just break it down into a quick five minute read. And that's when we rebranded it into market briefs. And I said, "Hmm, let's ignore all this other stuff that we were doing. Let's put more energy and focus into market briefs." And that's what then allowed that to take off, which then was the flagship for many other products that we have now in our company. But it started with that pinpoint. Yeah, it's always a pain point. I just, whether it's something like that, like a newsletter, whether it's the biggest business in the world today, like it all started from a pain point. And I think if we spent more time with pain points, we'd come up with better ideas, rather than trying to come up with solutions and ideas, to problems that either don't exist or that we're imagining. I know a lot of people like this, probably even on my team, people that I know, friends and family, who are like, they were never exposed to investing. Even I wasn't. I had no idea growing up what investing was. You and me both. Yeah, I had no clue. No one ever explained it to me. I didn't know anyone who invested. Really, I don't think. Maybe I knew one person who had one other property than the one they owned. I didn't grow up in that circle. If someone's out, they're going, okay, I want to start investing. What's the smallest amount I need to start investing? What's the number? Where do they start? Now, $1. You can start investing with any amount of money. And the whole idea of investing is you take this extra money, and you're going to put it into this thing, going to buy something with it, with the goal of making money off of this thing, as opposed to just buying a watch or a pair of shoes. But the part that I think a lot of people don't understand, especially if we don't grow up learning about investing, like we didn't, is there's more than one way to invest, because 10 years ago, what was investing? Or what did people think investing was? How do I find the next Amazon? How do I find the next Apple? Today, a lot of people think investing is how do I find the next meme coin? How do I find the next cryptocurrency before it pops off? We start to think of investing in terms of gambling, especially because now, there's so much of it around us. I mean, there's sports betting, there's foreign exchange market, there's polymarkets. I mean, people are betting on what the Federal Reserve Bank is going to do next. They're betting on these wild decisions off of. Remember that one, there was that big couple that got caught cheating at the Coldplay concert? There was a betting market around, are they going to file a divorce or not? So people are, quote unquote, investing their money on that type of thing. So people are now making businesses out of all sorts of prediction markets. And so we start to assume, without any financial education, that investing is the same thing. We're just going to predict what's going to happen in something tomorrow. But that's really not what investing is. Investing is something that you want to buy and own for the long term that you believe is going to either go up and value and maybe pay you with some sort of interest along the way. Maybe it's going to deposit money every month, maybe it's going to deposit money every three months, maybe it's going to deposit money every year into your bank account for not doing anything. That's what investing is. So now how do you go by doing it? And there are three layers that you need to understand. Number one is the most hands-off. And that is I'm going to give my money to you, a financial advisor, and you were going to manage my money for me. And now it's completely hands-off. And so if you just run some basic numbers, if I invest $1,000 a month for 30 years, and my financial advisor can beat the markets, they do 11% a year. I'm going to end up with 1.8 million. But I got to pay a fee. I got to pay a price. You might have to pay one and a half percent fees. So you might end up paying five or six hundred thousand dollars in fees. So the 1.8 million is what you're getting after the fees. Option number two, if you want to be a little bit more involved, but not fully involved, is what I call being a passive investor. And passive investing is all about finding a basket of stocks, and now you just keep consistently investing your money in it. So for example, you can invest in the United States economy, in the broad economy. And one of the most common and popular ways to do that is to invest in something called the S&P-500. That's a group of the 500 largest companies in the stock market. You don't have to go out and find Amazon and Tesla, and all these companies, you just invest in this fund, and you don't have to touch it. And the nice thing about it is, if you invest your money to this fund, and let's just say, Amazon goes bankrupt. You don't have to do anything. The fund is going to kick Amazon out as they get smaller, and they're going to replace them with another company. So it's completely passive for you. Historically, this is averaged about 10% growth a year. A little bit more than that, but right around 10% historically. Despite the recessions, despite market crashes, because we know that they happen, it is averaged about 10% a year. So if you invest $1,000 a month for 30 years, that would be about $1.9 million. Then you have layer three, the most involved. This is called being an active investor. And being an active investor is not trading, it's not flipping. It's I want to own good investments that I believe in that I've researched, now put the work into, and I want to own them for the long term. So this might be investing in individual companies, individual stocks, maybe now I want to invest in Amazon, maybe now I want to invest in McDonald's or whatever. Maybe it's investing in individual real estate properties. And the goal with this is you're taking on more risk for more potential return. So we talked about how, if you just invest your money into the broad economy, you're averaging about 10% a year. As an active investor, you know, we're not talking about 200% returns or 100% or even 50% returns that people like to talk about on the internet. Because that's not sustainable, it's a lie, it's a scam, and they're screwing you over. We're talking about a slight edge, let's just say 13% a year. If you can do that 13% a year, $1,000 a month for 30 years. Well, now you're going to have about three and a half million dollars. So we're talking about $1.6 million more than if you passively invested. You're taking on more risk, it's more work and more research, but there's more potential upside. And so you have to know kind of where along this curve you want to be because active investing is not for everybody. This is what our firm focuses on is that research for active investors, but it's more risk for more potential upside. Yeah, and it almost feels like it's better to start and move layer by layer by layer rather than dive straight in. It often is just to start with what's most accessible to you because what is most accessible to most people is something like a 401k or IRA. And I personally don't use a 401k because it's not right for me, but personal finances personal. Okay, what's right for you is not going to be right for me. Start with whatever you have access to and then take the next step and then take the next step. And then you'll start to realize what are all the options out there because it can be intimidating because you say, "Oh my God, should I invest in stocks or real estate or crypto? Should I invest in individual companies or ETFs or mutual funds? Oh my God, should I be investing in apartments or mall or single-family houses? Should I be using. " Take a breath. It's okay. Just start. The reason why people don't see the success that they want out of their investments isn't generally because they made the wrong decision. It's because they never made a decision. It's because they never started. But once you can get started, you can make that adjustment. I relate investing to working out all the time because I see the same thing in the gym. People that are getting started with working out, they'll say, "Just, what should I do? Should I go do these high-intensity workouts? Should I do these low-intensity workouts? Should I do carnivore diet? Should I do vegan diet? Should I do. " Look, just get on a treadmill and put down the donuts. Start and then take the next step and then the next step. Just start and then you'll see what works better for you. How do you track the stock market? Break that down for me for someone who doesn't know where to start. Like what we're saying right now. Someone's like, "I'm thinking of doing this. I'm thinking of doing this. I don't understand. How would you break it down for me?" The stock market is a place where anybody can go out and buy a piece of ownership in a company. Not every company, the company has to be what's called publicly traded. For example, briefs media, my company, it's private, meaning you can't invest in my company. But if a company is publicly traded, for example, McDonald's, you can buy a piece of that company. It's called a share. And if you buy one share of McDonald's, you become one of the owners of that company. So when I go to Nike and I buy a pair of shoes, I am a consumer at Nike. When I own one share of the Nike stock, I become one of the owners of Nike. As the owner of Nike, I profit when you buy the Nike shoes. As a consumer of Nike, I am making the investors richer. But I look cool because I got the Nike, I got the Jordan's on. And so the whole idea behind the stock market is you are buying shares of these companies that are publicly traded. Now, the price of a stock is going to depend on whatever the stock is. And what causes the price of a stock to go up and down is not how much money the company is making. It's supply and demand. And what I mean by that is the price of any asset, real estate, stocks, crypto, it ultimately depends on how many buyers and sellers there are of that asset. So if more people want to buy the McDonald's stock, then there are sellers of the McDonald's stock. That stock price will go up. If people are selling the stock more than there are buyers, the price of that stock goes down, which then goes to the next question. What causes it to go up or down? Why do people buy versus why do people sell? And there are a whole list of reasons, but you can look at the obvious. If McDonald's starts to produce bad hamburgers, the owners might say, I don't know about this. Well, maybe not the hamburgers because McDonald's is actually in the real estate business. But if McDonald's starts to have some problems, the owners might say, maybe I should sell. If McDonald's starts to have smaller profits, now the investors might be concerned. If they start to have bigger profits than expected, more people might want to buy, which could push that stock price up. So you have to understand the psychology of the buyers and sellers, because there's two parts to successful investing. One is the financial side, but it's also the emotional side. And in today's market, our markets are more emotional than ever before. Business Insider actually did her study on this recently, where they, I mean, it's not really that hard to find, but they said that our stock market is more volatile than previous decades, which for the average person is not good. Because they say, oh, my God, I'm scared, but the markets are going to go down. I'm going to lose money. But for the financially savvy, that creates more opportunity than ever. In 2025, for example, we saw three stock market crashes. When we saw the first announcement of tariffs, markets crashed. Then tariffs were paused, markets hit new record highs. Then we had the second announcement of tariffs, markets crashed. Once those were paused, markets rose again. Then we had liberation day, the third announcement of tariffs, markets crashed at the fastest rate since the pandemic. Then they were paused and markets broke new record highs. See for the average person, that was a nightmare. But for the financially savvy, all of those downturns created a great buying opportunity. The thing that I like to tell people is you're going to see ups and downs. But when you have those crazy times, I want you to remember one thing. I want you to remember poop. P-O-O-P. Why? Because panic leads to overselling, leads to opportunity, leads to profit. And that's where we've been talking a little bit about the education side of investing. But that psychology is just as important because if you're the one that's panicking, well, you're making somebody else wealthier. And you have to understand what it is that you're investing and know how that fits in with your investing strategy, that way you can actually make money instead of being the person that's making somebody else money. I was going to say that one mindset that sticks very close to what you're saying, which may have to go earlier on in your system is this idea of trying to get the language right, you name it better because it's your system. But this idea of just don't chase fast money because I think the reason why we get scared when the markets crash when we're not financially savvy is because we thought, oh, God, I lost all my money. Let me take it out. Or let me avoid putting more money in because things are not looking safe. And this idea of this mindset that we have around, I just want to make money quick. I just want to put something in next year, it's huge and then I want to pull out. And it's like, well, that's very, very rare for people to pull off. And I think that speedy money is what stops us from making good decisions because by the time you actually put money in, you're like, oh, I should have done it last year. Right? Because you're just watching that quick win. Does that make sense? Yeah. And that is actually, it goes back into what you were saying a little bit ago when you said, what about that person was living paycheck to paycheck? What does that person want? I want a relief of where I am. So what is that relief often? It's fast money. It's like, oh, my God, my arm hurts. What do I want? I want relief. Give me the extra strength, tile and all or whatever it is because I just want a quick fix. And so what happens to a lot of times that person in the situation and we were hinting at this more different angle before is you get screwed over the system profits off of you because, well, you are a prime candidate for spending money. But now if you start to say, oh, my God, I just want to make some more money. What happens? Well, you become a prime candidate for that fast money. And that fast money, most of the times is not there. And when it is there, if it does happen to come fast, you are also going to lose it just as fast because if you don't know what to do with that money, well, it can go and leave just as fast. And so they say, I think it's like 80% of lottery winners go broke or bankrupted within five years of winning the lottery. Why? It's not because you don't have enough money. People have one millions and millions and millions of dollars. If you don't have the financial education and the money comes fast, it's going to disappear just as fast. And on the other side, when you become desperate for money, you become a prime candidate to buy those programs and services that are trying to sell you this dream of. Hey, all you got to do is work three hours a week on a laptop off of a beach in Bali and you're going to make $10,000 a month, $10,000 a week. It sounds amazing. Sign me up. $997.00. There's no problem. Well, that fast money doesn't work like that. There's no sacrifice in the hard work. A new year doesn't mean erasing who you were. It means honoring what you've survived and choosing how you want to grow. It means giving ourselves permission to feel what we've been holding and knowing that it's okay to ask for help. I'm Mike Doloroccia, host of Sacred Lessons. This podcast is a space for men to talk openly about mental health, grief, relationships and the patterns we inherit, but don't have to repeat. Here, we slow down, we listen, we learn how vulnerability becomes strength and how healing happens in community, not in isolation. If you're ready to let go of what no longer serves you and step into the year with clarity, compassion and purpose, Sacred Lessons is your companion on your healing journey. Listen to Sacred Lessons with Mike Doloroccia on America's #1 podcast network, iHeart. Follow Sacred Lessons with Mike Doloroccia and start listening on the free iHeart radio app today. You brought a AI. Where do you see the biggest opportunities with AI and investing right now? Oh, man. Well, let me premise it with this because I love talking about history because while history doesn't exactly repeat itself, it does rhyme. When the internet started to become popular in the 90s, we started to see very similar things happen. What do I mean by that? If you started a company in the mid to late 90s and you put the word dot com at the end of it, you could go to whatever bank or investing institution you want it and raise a couple million dollars because they wanted a piece of that action money was just being dumped into the internet companies. And then came the year 2000 and in the year 2000 that internet bubble that was created popped and we saw internet stocks get wiped out. And there was a index called the NASDAQ which tracks a lot of these techy type companies at that time it was a lot of internet companies that index fell by about 78%. And it was a disastrous crash where even Amazon stock fell by more than 90%. But during that time, we started to hear the news that the internet must be a fad, the internet's done. No one's using the internet before. I mean, there was a lot of famous headlines for big newspapers that published that. Well, what happened? It wasn't that the internet died, but a lot of internet companies did die. It was the strong companies that survived and Amazon became what it is today. So you talk about AI. Could we be an AI bubble? Absolutely. We're always in some sort of bubble. We have more money going into AI than ever before and it really feels like that rate is accelerating. And it's like, it's like an infinite black hole of money. It's just money coming out of everywhere from the government, from foreign countries, from investors. Everybody wants a piece of the action. Could we see an AI bubble burst? Absolutely. But just like how the internet bubble burst, it doesn't mean that AI is going to go away if it does happen. It means that the smart and the savvy will survive and then the others will get wiped out. So now let me answer that question now. Where's the opportunity? And I'm going to explain this like an onion because like onions have multiple layers. That's how savvy investors like to think about their investments. Because when a lot of people think about AI, they think, how can I invest in chat GPT? Well, when you're saying that what you're essentially saying is I want to invest in the company that's producing the AI and there are companies that do that, which sure, but that's the top layer of the onion. What every savvy investor wants to do is they want to know where is the money moving? Where's the money going to go before other people understand? That's what investment research is all about. And that's what I tried to spend a lot of my time on what's my company works on. So let's now go one layer deeper. Well, what is the AI going to be powered by? What is powering this technology? Well, right now it's being powered by computer chips because in order to do this AI computing, you need powerful computers. Well, the next generation of computer chips, which we don't have yet, could be something called quantum computers. And the quantum computer is essentially a supercomputer to the 1000th power on steroids. That a typical computer, so I don't want to get too technical, but a typical computer that we have today can solve one math problem a second. That's just the way that it works. But what a quantum computer can do is it can solve multiple problems per second. So is 64 bit computer that we have today, which exists that can solve one problem a second. A 64 cube bit computer can solve. If I remember the numbers correctly, I think it's 18 quintillion problems a second. Wow. What does that mean? A quantum computer can solve what a normal computer would take hundreds of years to do that same problem could be solved in a matter of seconds. It is. We're not there yet, but there are companies that are investing in it. If that happens, some of those companies could make a lot of money. Well, let's keep going another layer deeper, right? We're going down the onion. So we talked about the first layer, which is the AI may be quantum. What about the third layer? If I have a AI company, or I have AI, I have data. And as much as we want to talk about privacy, the reality is if you have a smartphone, you have data this in the cloud. Well, the cloud isn't in the clouds. The cloud is actually in a physical building called a data center. So as AI starts to gather more data because anytime you ask chat, GPT, a question, whether it's a guacamole recipe or something, write me this email, that data is being stored somewhere and that data is being stored in a data center. And that could also create an investment opportunity because now as we start to have more data being processed as more people use AI more data is being created every single second. So now data centers are now booming because of that. In fact, I was just reading that there are some companies looking up putting data centers on the moon now as a way to diversify. And that's how crazy it's getting that we're looking for new ways to put data centers outside of the earth. We could take it now one layer deeper in the onion, right? So we talked about data centers, but those data centers have to be powered too because those data centers need energy. Those data centers that are keeping all this stuff use a lot of power. And there are specific companies that are powering those data centers and these companies are trying to be as innovative as possible of how can we now power the data center for as low cost as possible. And somebody is going to win that race and the one that wins that race is going to make a lot of money that can create an investment opportunity. Let's take a one layer deeper in this onion that data center has to be kept at a specific temperature because they have all these computer parts in there that get hot. I mean, if you if you use a computer, you know, you get that sound. It gets hot. Well, if that data center starts to overheat it is going to malfunction and no AI company, no tech company wants to lose it. It would be a disaster. So these data center companies are investing heavily into data center cooling, which is a whole new industry of companies. Well, one of those companies is going to be the most efficient. They're going to be the most innovative and they're going to be the best one the the one that everybody wants to use. Well, they're going to have the opportunity to make a lot of money as well. So this is what smart investors are doing is, you know, when people think about AI, oh, I want to invest in this a stock. Well, that's the first layer of the union. But what savvy investors are doing is they're paying peeling that layer back and they're trying to think two years on the road five years down the road. And what are all the things that are impacted by that artificial intelligence. Now, you can invest in the individual companies. There are funds that can give you exposure to artificial intelligence, but the whole idea is understanding. I mean, this is investing 101 is understanding where the money is moving. And that's where the opportunity will be. It's a great answer. Sign me up to market briefs. Yes. That's what we cover. That's the that's the inside you're giving people, right? Like if if someone signs up, are you able to say, Hey, these are the three companies right now that are building XYZ for you to be informed. And then someone could go and look at that. Or how does that work? So market briefs itself is the news. We give you a snapshot of what's happening. That's free. Then for the investors, we have different types of products for the different type of investor, because we talked to people that want to work with a financial advisor, we can help refer you to financial advisor. For those of you that want to be passive investors, we're building tools for you. That way you can analyze ETFs and do all this stuff with the power of AI in there. We're building our own proprietary tools, which I've never talked about before, but hey, here we are launching in 2026, some really powerful stuff. Then for active investors, we have our briefs pro product, which is research. And the thing that makes this so unique and powerful is traditionally, if you wanted to know what Wall Street knows, it was number one extremely expensive. Number two is extremely complicated. I mean, if you go and read black rocks reports, which I do, I'm a weirdo, I know. But if you read any of these banks reports, it is complicating. It's difficult. And there's a lot of technical jargon in there that unless you are a professional, it's really hard to understand what these companies are doing. So what we try to do is we have analysts that do real research. I mean, we're going to talk into executives. They're going out and attending trade shows. They're going out and putting in all this work to find where money is moving. And then we break it down into our pro research for the active investors because not everybody should be an active investor. It's for the people that actually want that research that we break down into plain English. How should someone who's a university graduate right now, a young person prepare for an AI driven economy? What should they be thinking about? You better, it is inevitable. At first, you know, I'm one of those guys. I hate to say this, but I'm one of those guys that kind of has always fought technology. I was very anti smart phone for a long time. I was very anti touch screen phone for a long time. I still don't really understand how to use Netflix. My wife is the lead on that. And I was kind of like, you know, with AI. I said, oh, this is cool. We'll see where this goes. And as I started to learn about it more and more. And I started to use it in my own business. I started to realize, oh, my God, this is not one of those things that I can just kind of sit on because the internet changed the world quickly. And the companies that understood the internet were able to grow very fast and the companies that didn't failed blockbuster bankrupt, Sears bankrupt. Well, AI is doing the same thing at a much bigger level, at a much faster rate, but our minds haven't gotten faster. And that's what makes it very unique because humanity can only evolve as fast as we can evolve. I mean, our minds can only grow at a certain rate. Technology keeps growing exponentially faster. So when the internet started to grow, we thought it was extremely fast. I mean, over the course of 2000 to 2010, we saw a lot of companies that were not getting involved with the internet getting wiped out. Well, chat GPT did not exist five years ago. And here we are today in 2025, and you have a lot of companies that have replaced workers with AI. And ensure there's a lot of companies that have not started adopting it yet, but the companies that are savvy have started integrating AI in some way, shape, or form. I mean, I have a YouTube channel in Spanish. I'll give you an example. And what I used to do is we used to take my videos, send it to a person who would then write down my script, and then he would record it, or he would translate it, and then he would record it, he would give us the audio recording, and then we would take the audio recording and impose it onto the video. I mean, this was the process, so I'm sure you've done something similar, and then that would get published. And that's what we did for a long time. Then came AI, we take the YouTube URL, you put it into this thing, you press enter in 15 seconds later, it's a video dubbed in Spanish in my voice at a fraction of the price. You don't have to rely on somebody else. This guy's on vacation, I have to wait for him to come back for vacation, or if I'm doing an interview with somebody else, and I need two voice editors, I mean, it was just, it was difficult and expensive. Now what AI is not like that. So we're talking about in just a few years, we've gotten to a re-art today, and we're not even at the goal of what AI wants to be. The goal with AI is AGI, artificial general intelligence. And if you read what open AI has published on their website, they say that their goal is to build a smarter artificial general intelligence for humankind. Metal has said the same thing. I mean, pretty much any AI executive has made it explicitly clear that their goal is not artificial intelligence. It's AGI. And what AGI is, it's an AI that will do the work for you. So let's say I wanted to start a guacamole business. I like food. I'm just a food person. So if I go to AI, and I say I want to start this business, it can give me some recipes, and I can say, you know, you can do, you need to file an LLC, you should go find an assistant, and you should find a place to build your recipes and things like that. If I ask that same question to AGI, the results are very different. Instead of telling me what I need to do, AGI will go up and actually file my LLC for me. It will go and sign a lease for me to rent my warehouse. It will go and hire me a team. It will hire me and exist an executive assistant to run the business for me. Probably hire an AI and hire the AI to do that work. That's what's every AI company is working for in the first company to get there is going to be the one that is going to be making all that money. And if you don't understand that, you're going to be left behind. So if you're out of college, you have to learn about AI. I don't care what industry that you're in, learn how to use it, because a lot of people talk about there's not going to be need for human workers. I don't necessarily agree with that. But there's not going to be a need for purple that don't really understand how to use AI. And so you need to understand how to use it to make your work better to make your work more efficient because you might not be replaced with AI, but you will be replaced by somebody who understands AI. And I know at our company, when we hire, I don't care what the position is, even our customer service reps, we ask them, how do you use AI? What do you understand about AI? Because we want to know how you are thinking. And if you are out of college, you are in a, I mean, this, and people look at it as a big con and a big hindrance. But for the savvy, it's a huge opportunity because most people have no idea. They don't know anything beyond chat GPT. And all they use chat GPT for is the very basic stuff of how to write an email or analyze this for me. But if you can start to research it and just a lot of free resources on YouTube. Yeah, what would you recommend for someone who's like, I really want to learn AI this year, I want to give, you know, a couple of hours a week to do it. Maybe a couple of hours a day because I'm really excited about it. Where do they start? Let's try with YouTube. I mean, YouTube's got so much free content out there and learn something. And it's free to try it, go on to chat GPT, go on to YouTube and learn what can they use AI for? And you're going to see all these crazy stuff. Just start to go down some rabbit hole that can align with your career. So if you're a dentist, how can I use AI in a dentistry office? If you are an engineer, how do I use it as an engineer? If you are a construction worker, how can construction workers use AI? I mean, there was a thing that I was reading about window washers. This is not a tech savvy industry, but it was talking about how there's a business of people now that are building AI tools for window washers saying, hey, when you have to go and clean people's windows, how do you know which house to go to first? If you can have an AI tool to build that route for you, you can save time and do more houses in a day. And if you can use that same AI tool to help you give quotes that are more realistic to maintain your profit margin without you necessarily having to go to every single house. Now you can give more quotes that are more accurate and spend less time doing it. So if you want to edge as a window washer, use AI. If you want to edge as a real estate agent, use AI. I mean, in real estate, if you want to help sell a house, you want the house to be furnished. You wanted to have the nice furniture so people can imagine themselves living there. Well, it's expensive to furnish a house. But what if you can take a virtual tour of a house because somebody can take a video of it and you can use AI to superimpose the furniture in the house. Now somebody can imagine themselves living in that house with a virtual tour, but they don't have to go to the house and it costs you a fraction of the cost of actually furnishing it, which means that you can find more of that potential buyer faster, easier if you can show them how they could potentially live there. Again, it's not replacing the need for them to go there, but it's making it easier for them to decide if they wanted or not. It's increasing something. It's incredible just how much it's speeding up. This is your making purchase again, which means again going back to your original point where we started is you're either going to become the consumer or the investor in the user. Because we are going to consume based of AI because it's going to make it easier to spend more. Absolutely. The internet made some people wealthier. It made it easier for everyone else to spend money. It started off with, you can just spend money without driving to the store. Well, then it became the one click purchase because Amazon realized that for every time you had to click a button to get to the checkout page, they lost about 50% of buyers. So this and how will we just create the one click purchase that way it's so easy to buy then came buy now pay later online. So you go to the purchase don't you don't need the money to buy anymore. Just hit buy and we'll figure out how to get your payments later. Now with AI, it's going to know what you want before you know what you want. And it will be presented to you and the people that don't understand how to control their finances are going to be spending their money much faster. The people that understand this are going to be able to gather that money much faster. So it's what side of the game do you want to be on. And it goes back to the financial education, which we're never taught. It's great master class. It's fantastic. Really great man. The world is changing so simple. No, but the world is changing is changing fast. But what I really appreciate about talking to you is you make it so simple. And you make it applicable for everyone. I hope everyone who's been listening and watching today has a roadmap. I feel like they have the steps that they need to take to improve their financial well-being and that they're supported in that because it's such a systematic process. And it doesn't matter how much or how little you have. It feels like you've given people a real blueprint to start with. The reason why I wanted to do this is because I was actually reading a statistic right when your team emailed me, which was we know that somewhere between 50 to 70% of Americans are living paycheck to paycheck. And then I was reading a statistic that said 72% of Americans have Netflix. What that told me is that the average American is spending more money on Netflix than they are on their investments. And that's a problem. That should be flipped. It should be way beyond flipped. And it's what are we prioritizing? And the reality is the reason why so many people do that is because we just don't know there's an alternative. And that's what we're on the mission to do is to help help people be better with money because it costs money to eat, it costs money to feed other people. And unless you learn, you are going to be the person making everybody else rich and never wondering, never understanding why, why, how come I can't ever have freedom, how come I can't ever have those nice things, how come I can't ever do that stuff that everybody else is doing. But it starts with your mindset and starts with that financial education. Great. Just for each thing, everyone, make sure you go and subscribe to market briefs, the newsletters, if you want to find out simple actionable tips on the news around finances and stock market market briefs dot com or is it my I want to make a brief dot CO slash market briefs dot CO slash market. Yeah, or it can just go to briefs dot CO you'll see market briefs there. Honestly, if you go to market briefs dot com, it'll still be there too. But the briefs dot CO is our home page. Okay, amazing. Just for you. Thank you so much for your time. Your energy. I learned so much. I hope that you keep coming back on the show again and again to give great insights and so excited for everyone to go and make better investments. This is my actual hope for people after this. Please do not sleep on this advice. Please go and subscribe to market briefs. Please go and figure out how it invests one dollar. That's all I wanted you to do to actually go and do it so that you get into the practice we were talking about. Waiting around for a long time and the third is going really make sure you make those three bank accounts to those a brilliant piece of advice to actually have your savings your investment and you're spending money. Those three action items from this episode will transform your financial well being and of course, there was so many more insights that just pretty gave that I hope change your life and change your family's life as well. So yeah, thank you, man. You know, it's always a pleasure to be on with you. We got to bring you to Detroit sometime. You know, the small changes add up. So get started. It doesn't matter where you are. It adds up and we give one last that please because I just said that I was like, oh, you know, I should say this. If you can invest four dollars a day from the day you turn 21 until the day you turn 65 and you just invest your money into the markets, you will retire a millionaire. Four dollars a day. That's something that I think everyone in a first world country can strive to do regardless of where you are. It's possible. Just get started. What was that? Amazing, man. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much for listening to this conversation. If you enjoyed it, you'll love my chat with Adam Grant on why discomfort is the key to growth and the strategies for unlocking your hidden potential. If you know you want to be more and achieve more this year, go check it out right now. You set a goal today. You achieve it in six months. And then by the time it happens, it's almost a relief. There's no sense of meaning and purpose. You sort of expected it and you would have been disappointed if it didn't happen. I'm Mike Delarocia, host of Sacred Lessons, a space for men to pause, reflect and heal. Listen to Sacred Lessons with Mike Delarocia on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed Human.