Garrett Gunderson 0:00
Our vision has to be bigger than our escape route. It’s easy to numb out with social media or the news or politics, but then they never know the price of the relationship with themselves, because it’s always about something outside of themselves. Passion without proper skill and frame equals bankruptcy. It equals loneliness, it equals nothingness. Like be passionate about a hobby, find ways that you can evolve. But if you think it’s all just gonna be perfect, right from the get go, I mean, maybe that happens for some I don’t think it happens for
Brad Weimert 0:31
many. Congrats on getting beyond a million. What got you here won’t always get you there. This is a podcast for entrepreneurs who want to reach beyond their seven figure business and scale to eight, nine and even 10 figures. I’m Brad weimert, and as the founder of easy pay direct, I have had the privilege to work with more than 30,000 businesses, allowing me to see the data behind what some of the most successful companies on the planet are doing differently. Join me each week as I dig in with experts in sales, marketing, operations, technology and wealth building, and you’ll learn some of the specific tools, tactics and strategies that are working today in those multi million, eight, nine and 10 figure businesses, life can get exciting beyond a million. I just heard you do a live podcast with JP Newman, yeah, and that was a blast, and it was some deep shit, mental shit, that’s really relevant to entrepreneurs, relevant to everybody, but there was a heavy focus on kind of things that are important. Of things that are important for wealth, creation and life from an entrepreneurial, entrepreneurial perspective. But the more that I think about that kind of stuff, the more allowance I give myself when I’m talking to people here to talk about whatever the fuck, because ultimately it is all relevant and ultimately, mindset and how you spend your personal time and how you act and how you live has a tremendous impact on your
Garrett Gunderson 1:50
business. And I think that I was just thinking coming, you know, driving here, I was like, What is the difference between, like, a seven figure and eight figure, nine figure and above, and I realized, like, the reason I got to eight figures and not more is because I work so much on my skill sets and not enough on my team skill sets. Now we got to eight figures because of the team skill sets, but those happen almost accidentally, because I left for a month for summer, and they had to just grow up and develop. And that was awesome, because they just figured things out. When I wasn’t around, when I was around, we were stuck at seven figures, even though it was mid seven figures, because it was personality based, it wasn’t enough system based. It was reliant on me being on stages or even on a podcast. And when I was gone, it was like, Cool. They had to run ads. They had to do creative and copy and build that out. And they just matured and figured it out. And then we sold hundreds of 1000s of my books because of their skills, right? And I got to be in Italy for the summer, and I just realized, like, selecting your team and having the right people even, like, just one badass that’s like the operations person makes such a world of difference, because they can, they can systematize and operationalize the things that really hold the seven figure entrepreneur back. Because you and I have seen plenty of people get to seven figures because they just work hard, sure, and they burn out when they’re exhausted, and they don’t know how to offload, because they’re just so deeply entrenched in it. And this is one of the fascinating things, is if you just develop a life that you really enjoy and not let business be the only thing, then all of a sudden, your business is either going to sink or swim. But it can definitely swim if you have the right people around you, it
Brad Weimert 3:33
very much fits the frame of you can hear something 100 times and 100 and first, all of a sudden it’s meaningful to you, yeah. But you can hear somebody say, get, get the right people around you. It’s all about hiring. It’s all about team. But until you figure out what the fuck that means, and how you’re interacting with the people, and what you expect the people to do, whether you’re dictating things or collaborating or expecting them to bring it, how you run, it makes a huge fucking difference. How
Unknown Speaker 3:57
do you inspire them? Like all those, all those, values.
Brad Weimert 4:00
Are you supposed to inspire them? Right? Are they supposed to come with their own, you know, toolkit, or whatever?
Garrett Gunderson 4:05
Yeah, I love when I love like, if you have someone that doesn’t rent space in your head when you’re away from the business, you’re not worried or thinking about them, because they just know what to do, how to get it done. They’re thinking ahead. They treat it like it’s their role and responsibility, not waiting for some instruction, and I didn’t tell me to do it, or I did my best, all that kind of stuff. I mean, look, IBM said that an A teamer was 50 200% more productive than their B team Oh, shit. Think about that. 50 200% and I’ve noticed, like, if we’re in this price, cost value model, which is, price is what we pay. Cost is the economic impact. Value is our feeling and perception and satisfaction, fulfillment like in the world of hiring, price should be a much like, what if they’re 50% more expensive on the price, but they’re 50 200% more productive? Yeah?
Brad Weimert 4:53
Yeah. That took me, like, fucking 15 years to figure out, dude,
Garrett Gunderson 4:58
Steve Jobs, that. Asshole that he was just realized there’s no better advantage in the world of money than top, top, top talent. And he’s, like, he said, I could accomplish with five people what people expected to be hundreds. And when you think hundreds, there’s a lot more complication, personality, like, you know, conflict, chaos, all those kind of things. And it’s funny because you said, you know, oh, you can hear something 100 times, and then it’s a 101st Well, I remember, I was in Chicago, my our servers were down. This is a long time ago. Our we had Voice over IP. Phones weren’t working. Our email wasn’t working. And like, I’m talking to my mentor, and I’m just bitching about it, he goes, Do you think if this happened to Warren Buffett, he would say any of this? Do you think that he would know all this was going on? Do you think if he walked in the office, this is the first thing they would tell him about, or they’d just be excited to see him? I was like, and that was the first time working on the business, versus in the business, became a real reality for me. I was like, Oh, damn, I am the bottleneck. I’m the I’m too involved in too many pieces. I have my fingerprints on too many things, and so I just made a deal with myself that day. I’m like, I’m not answering any question that a team member can answer. So if someone calls me like, and even if I know the answer, I’m like, oh, Tricia knows that. Let me connect you. She’s the best someone’s referring it. I’m like, Oh, let me get you to Bobby. Bobby’s the person that does that. Because as soon as I circumvent that, because it’s efficient, the moment it becomes less effective in the long run, you know, and I just realized, like I was creating the bottleneck.
Brad Weimert 6:24
That’s a really good fucking lesson, or it’s a really good lesson. It’s not really about fucking
Garrett Gunderson 6:31
and I still feel like sometimes, and I’d love to challenge my thinking on this, like sometimes, I think the reason why people go from like eight to nine figures is there’s a corporate crossover. I kind of think of like when I started my business, like getting a sailboat super cool, and then one day, like, the waves aren’t cooperating, the winds aren’t cooperating, so we’re just too much going on. So I hire an assistant to help me. We see just a speed boat cruising along. We’re like, shit, look at that speed boat. But the system’s like, No, I’m a sailboat person, so I’m trying to go to the speed boat, and they’re trying to say, here’s why we should stay a sailboat. So they just hold me back, and if I bring him to the speed boat, they’re gonna continue to fight. Yeah, so sometimes they don’t get to come along. And then I see a yacht, and I’m like, Dude, that yacht? Are you kidding me? Like I could relax sometimes, and that looks a lot more fun. But I think that like to go from eight to nine figures. You’re building a battleship. You know, it’s like everybody knows their role. Everybody knows their position. The owner can get on an aircraft and take off, but you can handle any wave. You can handle every enemy, because you just, you’re built for it. But that isn’t as seductive, that isn’t as exciting, that isn’t as romantic, that isn’t as maybe lifestyle founder based, you know, connected to the outcome. Because I think for me, I just like the like, when people would come up and I knew my customer, right, and they would talk to me and they were excited about what I had done. And, you know, eventually I’m like, Well, I can’t really coach one on one this much anymore, so I’m gonna reserve that for like, two clients a month. And, you know, eventually we had 2200 customers paying monthly, and I couldn’t have told you a dozen of them, right? Because I’m just looking at a computer screen, yeah. And so it just removed all of the enjoyment. So we got to ask, like, what do we want in the first place? So
Brad Weimert 8:13
I’ve told the story before, but not to you. My My father had a business, had a his partner, he was a doctor. His partner, his son, sold real estate, and he was probably 10 years older than me, eight years older than me, or something. And he told me, oddly, he had grown up selling credit card terminals, which is just a hilarious coincidence, that that’s where I ended up, essentially. But he got into real estate, and he said, You know, when I was looking for the next thing to do, I was very conscious that selling credit card terminals was incredibly transactional, and I would get my rush from selling five sales a day. And when I got into real estate, I had to figure out where I was going to derive the feeling of success from. And so he had to deliberately associate a certain behavior. In his case, it was like, each step along the process he would celebrate the win, right, setting up the appointment, you know, getting the listening, etc, etc, etc. That’s, yeah, it was. It was a something that I carried with very aware. Yeah, when you think about that, your story and your path and that transition, was that conscious for you, or did you have to figure that out? Like, Oh shit, I hate this. Now. I don’t like this. I’m not getting any satisfaction out of
Garrett Gunderson 9:25
my business. I had to figure it out. I sold it. The worst time I was disenchanted, like we were scaling, and I was like, the more we scaled, the less connected I felt, and the more it became about a balance sheet and an income statement, unless it became about value creation and connection. So I was like, yeah, like, every business says it has values, but there’s one thing for values to live on a wall. There’s another thing for values to live inside of a person. So I’ve really taken the last three years going like, Well, what do I really value? Like, what really matters? I was like, well, one when I feel like I can. See someone like, just and they feel seen and heard by me. Like, dude, that’s an amazing moment. It’s like a moment of intimacy. So I was like, I know I want more of that. I was like, I can’t tell you how many people that I’ll just talk to him and say, Well, I’ve got you like, I’ve got like, in there, they’re financially worried. I’m like, I’ve got your back. And they’re like, there’s a connection there. So I’m like, Ooh, I like that. And I’m like, what if you if I helped you if I helped you create a life you didn’t want to retire from? Like, that’s a fun game. What, even if you chose to do less work, even if you chose to sell, but, like, what if we just designed a better life along the way? And then what if we, like, just, you know, what if I could just fall in love with my customers, just like, truly care about them, become lifelong friends with some now, okay, that’s not overly scalable in some ways, right? I can only meet with two people a year or a month, one on one, but they come to the cabin where you’ve been. It’s like my favorite place on the planet. We dive deep really quickly. I assemble their team, and we stay in touch. So that’s cool. That gives me like content, that gives me connection, but then I’ve created a community where I’m live with them every week, but I can see them even though it’s virtual, and I communicate with them in an app, because those things mattered to me. And so I took the time to say, if I’m going to create this, what would keep me engaged for 20 years? What could I still see myself doing? And I was like, community, absolutely being vulnerable and letting them be vulnerable, because there’s not a safe space in finance like most people don’t want to tell their financial advisor about their shortcomings or their money story, because it’s a transactional thing. And then I’m like, assuming that that kind of relationship right? And so I’m not really in the transactional game. I mean, I used to sell life insurance from like 98 through 2006 and I just was kind of bored with that, so I just wrote a book that explains the whole thing with what the rock fellers do. So I don’t have to have that daily conversation. I could have a bigger context of legacy as a conversation and insurance fits in there in a small piece, instead of the main piece, which made my life better. So I had to define my win. Play a better game, enjoy the process along the way, not allow this, like, behemoth to grow without me saying my piece. I was like, I was like, Oh, I just want to be a good business partner. We’ll just do Yeah, that’s a good idea. And then I like, deep down, I’m like, I don’t want to do that, so yeah, it would be taken away from me in a way that must be like, Oh, that’s cool. You don’t have to do that anymore, and you still get paid. I’m like, Yeah, but it’s not what I want to do. Yeah. And to keep that money coming to me, I would not be able to do these other things I wanted to do.
Brad Weimert 12:29
Do you think you could have, in retrospect, do you think instead of selling the business, you could have redesigned it and redefined your role so that you could do what you wanted to do and still kept
Garrett Gunderson 12:38
the business? I considered that I would have had to buy out one partner. He didn’t want to sell, um, it was complicated relationship. My shortcomings are, I show up and I inspire, and then I abandon, like, that team, super excited, Oh, dude, Garrison, like we’re having fun. We, you know, we might have a workout with the whole team. We might get married, man. And then I’m like, Oh, I’m gonna go write this book, and you’re not gonna hear from me, or I’m gonna go on these stages, and you’re not gonna see me where he was consistent, right? But he governed by scarcity. So we had, we’re in direct odds, like, everything was reduction and cut back and anger, and you’re not enough. And I’m like, over there being like, hey, let’s build you up. So it was like, we just had divergent styles that wouldn’t it couldn’t come together. There was no way we tried, yeah, which i He was amazing at cleaning my life up early on, because I created chaos, right? Which is part of what happens when you’re a creator, but then eventually it stifled that creativity. And so when I first said, Okay, I’ll sell, but I’ll do a licensing deal. I’ll still create content, I’ll still show up and do some teaching. And we grew for two years, and then one day, he was like, I don’t want you speaking at this event, and I don’t like you hanging out with this person. I was like, what? I was like, I grew up and left my house, and now I’m in this financial house, and he’s like, Well, you know, I’m not going to pay you on this licensing stuff if you do that. And he was contractually within his rights to do that. And I was like, then I guess we’re done. And I fully divorced that business a year ago, fully nine figures. I’m all for it, but this time more communication, way more clarity about like, who I am, what I do, what I don’t do, where I partner, where I don’t like, what my personal brand is, like, I just was naive, and I also didn’t recognize when I was being manipulated. Like, I just like, thought I was being a good guy. I was just being a jackass. I just wasn’t but part of that was my upbringing, and I had to figure that out and learn those lessons personally, but you know now I’ll have new mistakes, hopefully I don’t make those ones again. Yeah, no,
Brad Weimert 14:45
I like to say that I’m very good at learning from my own mistakes after I’ve made them a bunch of times. Have people that
Garrett Gunderson 14:50
make the same mistakes twice. It’s like, 1516, times, but it’s really painful. MMA, where it’s like, you think you learned the lesson this time? Got it? Yeah? Yeah, maybe we’ll see Carrie just lets me go through my process, which is pretty amazing, because I’m not good at doing that for like, at the same rate, like, she’ll just let me discover, ask some questions. It’s probably not coming across judgmental, yeah, you know? And then sometimes I’m like, Ah, we just lost this amount of money. She’s like, we live in this great house, and we have our cabin, and kids going to the same schools, and we’re eating the same food, so we’ll be fine, like, cool.
Brad Weimert 15:27
That’s good. That’s awesome. That’s an awesome partnership.
Garrett Gunderson 15:31
Yeah, it’s because I fell in love with her at Kmart, and white trash recognized white trash Brad, you know what I’m saying, a very long time ago, I went in, but she was I was 19, she was 18, and she was working at Kmart, my buddy’s, my buddy’s sister, and I walked in, I was like, I love this girl. And I was like, whoa, I’m not nearly mature enough to have these feelings. And then you did. Waited years, okay, so I wouldn’t mess the relationship up. Now, that’s a little little wisdom. 22 years married now, yeah, yeah.
Brad Weimert 16:02
That’s wild. It’s different life paths, my friend, different life paths. Well, let me for some context, since we just started jumping in and talking about random shit, you We did record once before in the old studio, and we talked like business tactics, strategies, tax, right? Yeah, and your sort of initial path into entrepreneurship was super interesting to me. I learned more about kind of the interesting quarters of it earlier today with JP, but let’s talk about that for a minute as backdrop. So we were just talking about a financial education company, teaching people about financial investments and wealth creation, uh, kind
Garrett Gunderson 16:45
of a, you like, somewhat of a unicorn, because we didn’t do financial transactions, yeah? And we were doing, you know, eight figures, yep, doing financial education and coaching, yep, even though I came from a background of financial transaction, yeah,
Brad Weimert 16:58
you were doing well, doing that too, doing financial products, right? Namely, selling life insurance. Yeah, I
Garrett Gunderson 17:05
just got super bored, yeah. And my wife was like, so you’re gonna walk away from all these renewals? And I was like, Yeah, cuz if I don’t, I’m gonna be unhappy
Brad Weimert 17:12
see that. And that’s super uncommon. And it also seems to be a through line in your life, at least as of late. But let’s go to the beginning, because you grew up in coal mine?
Garrett Gunderson 17:21
Not quite, but kind of, yeah, my dad was a coal miner. Yep. He wouldn’t let me go in a coal mine. He wouldn’t. I’ve never been in one. Oh, wow. A couple years ago, I was like, Dad, why don’t we take my sons and show him a coal mine? He’s like, why would we do that? I was like, Well, I mean, you worked in one. He’s like, now they don’t need to see that. So my mom overheard the conversation, like, watch this show on Netflix called mine nine. And I watched, I was like, Damn dude, like, coal mining, that’s some gnarly stuff. And my dad was on mine rescue, so he pulled out dead bodies during the Crandall Canyon mine disaster. And there’s another one, the Wilberg mine disaster. Like, like, he’s seen some pretty horrific stuff, and he was crawling through mine rescue, thinking, hey, I don’t know if this thing’s gonna collapse. And he went home, and the people on the next shift, it collapsed on them. So, like, that is, like, That dude is, he’s a good, good man, like such a great father. And I asked him as one of his biggest regrets, and he’s like, Well, I should have worked harder in school and not done coal mining, but he was going to college, he was playing basketball, and then his dad had some issues, because the mines were on strike, and he had a bunch of siblings, so he went and kind of worked to take care of the family. And what’s cool about him is, I mean, he went, got his college degree while I was, you know, a kid, and then was able to get out of the mine some of the time, still kind of in that world, but in safety instead of in digging. Yeah, that’s some treacherous shit like this. Look what we’re doing. We’re sitting in an air conditioned room. Looks like we’re in a Vegas lobby. Yep, talking about whatever we want. Yep, drinking our topa. Chicos, you know what I’m saying, and he’s down in the coal mine, yeah, yeah. I
Brad Weimert 19:02
mean, down in the dark, no natural light, confined spaces, collapsing rooms, you know, the dust and the depree and the shit that you breathe in as a coal miner,
Garrett Gunderson 19:11
a 71 doing well, yeah, doing well. But I mean, he’s, he’s gone and done a lot of work. I’ve been like, hey, go see this guy, Dr Bueller, go do somatic. Like, he’s healthy at 71 we’re going hunting next week, so he just stays hiking and stuff like that. So it’s kind of cool that he was a coal miner and he’s doing well, okay. He was worried well during COVID, he’s like, Oh, well, my lungs be able to handle it. He was fine, you know, because he’s taking care of his health afterwards. The
Brad Weimert 19:38
logical concern that’s like, the black lung.
Garrett Gunderson 19:41
I think a Zoolander, right? Like, I would have been Derek Zoolander, like pop, I got the black lung. I’m in there for a half hour.
Brad Weimert 19:49
So how did that impact your choice to get into entrepreneurship and financial planning, which seems boring as shit, relative to really everything in the world? Actually,
Garrett Gunderson 19:58
my mom was determined. That we would get an education, that we would take on her and my dad’s work ethic, for sure, but that we would have a better life than coal mining. So I went to things like engineering state and governor’s Honors Academy and all these programs when was a teenager to get exposed to things. I went to this thing, governor’s Honors Academy, and one of the speakers was Ren zafiropoulos, and he was the founder of Xerox. Oh, wow, an entrepreneur. And he just the way he spoke, fascinated me, so I went up and interviewed him. Then we went to these people’s house that were big donors to the university. There were they hosted at Southern Utah University, Steven Cindy Gilbert, and he was an entrepreneur. And so I just went and like, because I was young people love talking to young people that are curious. If they’re smart young people? Yeah, I was asking good questions. Yeah. That makes a big difference. And there aren’t that many of them that’s rude. There are lots of young smart people,
Brad Weimert 20:52
but there are also, I mean, you know the, I think the ongoing narrative of you’ll understand this when you’re older, it’s there for a reason, and that is that the impatience that is with youth typically leads to bad questions, which leads to an annoying conversation. And it’s like, I don’t know, express some other interest and actually learn something before we talk.
Garrett Gunderson 21:12
Yeah, Steve Gilbert, when I talked to him and Cindy, they were like, look, what you should do is spend time with wealthy people and offer value to them for free, just so you could be around them. Just do stuff for them, like too many kids, they they come and they just want a job and they just want to be paid. So I had this professor, and he his first year as a professor, he had just retired from being a money manager of $5 billion in municipal bond funds. So I just as soon as I knew he wanted to get in shape, I was his guy. Hung out with him after class. We went to the gym, we played racquetball, and then we go sit down have lunch afterwards, and I just get to ask him questions, because I just, you know, helped him get a little bit more fit. So I just looked for that opportunity, and that really helped me out, because he really taught me a lot. Is
Brad Weimert 21:59
that what led you into life insurance? Originally,
Garrett Gunderson 22:02
I had this $5,000 I wanted for being young entrepreneur the year, and I wanted to invest it because I thought 5000 bucks was a lot of money as a teenager. It
Brad Weimert 22:10
is when you’re a teenager.
Garrett Gunderson 22:11
I mean, I was my first six months in business. I had $551 of net income off my $700 of gross revenue, right? And I was a miser, saving every dollar the next year, you know, I think I made like $1,800 and kept like $1,500 you know, is good margins, using mom and dad’s products in the garage type of thing, right? But then I won that, and I was like, I should invest this money, but my I was, I was too young. I’d had to have a custodian sign off. But soon as I went to college, I started asking people that, like were in the fraternity that had graduated, like, in finance, where would you invest? I asked, you know, people that I knew that had more money, like my uncle, or people like that, like, where do you invest? And the reality was, it was confusing. The more I asked, the more I got fragmented advice. But in that path, this girl was like, Well, my dad’s in finance, you should go, you know, talk to him. So I was four hours away where he was, you know, at went in, and I start talking to him, and he’s like, I’m off, you an internship, which sounded awesome. And it goes back to like, oh, internship, even if it’s not paid, I’m going to learn it was a paid thing. It was basically, hey, come and bring your friends and family. So we could pitch them life insurance and mutual funds. Oh, damn right. Yeah, 99 like, I’m making, you know, I’m in a little school. I’m making two grand a month just on a on, like, a advance, and I’m learning a little bit, but I’m bringing friends and family, and they’re getting into mutual funds, and the market’s Great, then the market’s not so good in 2000 so that’s when my education began. But, yeah, it was, I ended up being on, you know, having a radio show, writing books like that’s where I found the fun in this whole thing. Sitting around talking about life insurance wasn’t very fun.
Brad Weimert 23:49
So you told a story earlier today about being 20 as the market was collapsing the.com era. So.com is collapsing. You had built a life insurance, I don’t know how big, but a life insurance book. And then you realize that you were 20 and you didn’t know what the fuck you were talking about.
Garrett Gunderson 24:09
Yeah, I was, I was selling mutual funds and selling life insurance both. And I remember this guy from New York, I was selling a variable whole life policy, because the 90s, the market was just crushing. This guy from New York’s like, okay, the 90s was the best time we’ve seen in the market. Pause
Brad Weimert 24:24
on that for a second, because people that don’t actually care about insurance or know what that is, variable life, meaning that the life insurance policy and the gain is tied to the stock the market directly.
Garrett Gunderson 24:33
And so I’m just following that. The market’s crushed. Why wouldn’t I do this? This guy’s like, this is the best 10 year period of time. Let me show you what whole life did versus variable whole life. He’s like, this variable whole life is like, one and a half percent higher in the biggest bull run ever. Now, let me show you what happens in bear markets. And dude, I almost threw up in a garbage can because it was so bad. And I had put friends and family in this stuff, and I’d sold the mutual funds. And he’s like. Like, how long is the market going to be down? I’m like, I don’t know. He’s like, when’s it gonna come? Like, I just realized I’m gathering assets. I’m showing historical charts. I’m regurgitating what I’m being taught. I’m going I’m not getting technical analysis, I’m going to meetings, and they’re teaching us sales, how to build rapport, how to sell nothing on like, how this is going to work long term, or what the benefits are, how you get money from it, or any of that stuff. And so I then met this woman who was part of Robert Kiyosaki financial team. And I just read Rich Dad, Poor Dad. I was in Phoenix, and I was like, so I just went up and started asking her questions. We’re still friends to this day. And so she’s like, read this, go to this. And so I for every single month. For 22 straight months while I was still in college, flew somewhere to go talk to someone, to meet with someone, to ask questions. And that gave me a pretty good body of knowledge. And what I decided to do coming out of that was, I’m going to be an efficiency expert. I’m going to save money on tax, interest, non performing fees with investments, redesign insurance so they don’t have duplicate coverages. And I also realized mindset is the key. So we built this program called the producer revolution. We sent these emails five days a week called producer perspectives, how to produce more than you consume. We had once a month forums that people would come, attend, live like that’s where the joy started to come. I had a radio show two hours a day, 22 when we started the producer revolution that was in 2005 okay, I was 19 in 1998 so now I was, like, in my mid 20s, like 24 years old or whatever. And so that’s when that really started to take off. And then once I did a radio show, they were like, well, you can’t do this because of compliance. And so I said, Well, it looks like I’m no longer selling life insurance, and I had to walk away from the renewals and just, you know, drop my licenses at that point. And then another firm came and said, we’re fine with you talking. You don’t need to. You’ll be we’ve heard your stuff. It’s not a problem with compliance. And I just started referring those leads to other insurance agents, and they would write the insurance and put me on the application. Oh, and so I didn’t, you didn’t maintain a license to do that. I did. I ended up, you know, see, I was like a series 665, those are securities license. Had a life insurance license. And eventually I got my wife life and life insurance license so that I could have authors exemption and talk about what I wanted on the on the radio show, and the insurance company knew I was doing that. How’s that work? So authors exemption? Basically, my attorney was like, hey, we need safe harbor because you’re shooting on 401, K’s. And I was like, my first book was like, and it’s like, okay, so I got all these extra licenses. And then he’s like, Wait, there’s this exemption because you’re an author, so you can talk about these, you just can’t give one on one on one financial advice. It’s like, great. Well, I know a lot of good investment advisors. I don’t want to do assets under management. I’ll let them handle that. I want to build the big picture. I want to develop the philosophy. I want to create the frameworks, I want to host the events. I want to, you know, like, and so that’s the process I went down. And eventually I just started, you know, referring all that business out. Now, originally, I was greedier than that. Brad, I was greedy bastard. I was like, You know what?
Unknown Speaker 28:06
I don’t know, you couldn’t be, I
Garrett Gunderson 28:07
mean, I’m like, I should own a mortgage company. Yeah, I should own a Property and Casualty Company. Good luck. I should, I should, you know? And I started a bill and I was like, oh my god, this is so much extra effort. Oh my god, non stop. Like, and I realized I’m too boutique, so I had no power to get a mortgage through, because it was a small firm, versus some of these people that that’s their whole world. And so then I was like, I’ll just charge more for the design, and then I could refer that out. And then I went to attorneys and accountants, and I said, I want you to give my clients a discount, because I’ll do a lot of the heavy lifting, get you the data, and then I won’t take any money. I’ll just refer them out, but I’ll charge this fee on the front end, and I can build the financial team, and that’s what I built for a long time. Yeah,
Brad Weimert 28:45
there’s that’s interesting, like, I think that the the ongoing sort of conversation around making money through what are functionally affiliate partnerships, uh, versus refusing to take that fee, the split, there is an interesting choice, because, on the one hand, there is no question that building these huge revenue streams by referring product out can create a lot of money,
Garrett Gunderson 29:08
the amount of money that I could have made from 2015 until today on life insurance, because I ended up just selling leads instead of being on app. I have a couple guys that they make a couple million dollars a year, whether they do another piece of work just servicing that, and I made zero after selling the leads. I made a couple million selling the leads, but I didn’t get the recurring revenue. So I’m kind of evolving with that model. Because I thought I was being like, I’m the one person that’s not taking this. So I could be non bias, and I could be your advocate. And then I just realized, I’m like, well, they’re doing all this, and I’m having to get involved. So now I just disclose, yeah, I’ll just say, hey, this person’s offered me something, but the deal is, you get the same price whether you found them without me. Yeah. Are you okay if I get paid on that? Yeah. And so instead of charging bigger fees that I was charged. Paying, you know, like, up to 150 grand for two years for me to work with people. Now I’ve got it down to like, five grand. Someone can join my community. And then there’s a few transactions I can actually get paid on and keep that price down, and they’re not obligated to do any of those transactions with me. As a matter of fact, other financial advisors not referring into my community because they’re having a hard time with customer service, and I refer the business back out to them, but I’m now doing the education, which I love to do,
Brad Weimert 30:25
yeah, well, I think they, you know, the other side of that path, The other choice is to not take any money in the back end. And then exactly what you just said, the value prop is, hey, I’m not biased, right? Look at me. I’m not biased at all, and it’s a good USP, you know, like it sells shit, for sure, makes people comfortable. Also, if you have, I guess, inside any given product category, for finances, or inside of, like real estate, inside of an asset class or whatever, you could go to a million places and refer it to a million places. So there is another part of that angle, which is like, look, I could be sending you anywhere. And honestly, this isn’t where I’m making the most money, but this is the place that you want to go. You
Garrett Gunderson 31:02
want to go to when there are some things I just choose not to make money on. Yeah. Okay, so if someone’s doing business acquisition or real estate acquisition, or any investment, I don’t get paid on any of those because I want to sit on the same side of the table as my customer and help them with due diligence of risk mitigation when it comes to tax, legal insurance, you know, like, I’m not getting paid on legal right now, but you can own a law firm in Arizona and not be an attorney. And so I’m like, I might as well start. I mean, I sent few attorneys, 1000s of clients and then paid zero, and these guys don’t even give me a deal on my legal work. Yeah, yeah. So, so I’m looking at that a little bit differently, but only if I feel like I get a amazing attorney that would be world class, that could then design, even if we have other people do the implementation.
Brad Weimert 31:55
Isn’t that a an oxymoron?
Garrett Gunderson 31:59
Well, all I know is the few amazing tax attorneys I’ve worked with have changed my world tax in their tax in there, changed it a little, and the right corporate attorney, yeah. I mean, I’m talking shit, but not like I get like, litigators and stuff like that. I mean, ultimately, I’m just talking about, how do you get your legacy plan implemented? And I’ve got this guy that’s willing to create packages for my clients, that’s used to working with higher end people that can get them the stuff that they need. Yeah, that, yeah, anyway, well, I’m
Brad Weimert 32:28
talking shit because I think, you know, attorneys in general have a reputation for sucking up time that doesn’t need to be
Garrett Gunderson 32:35
sucked up divorce attorney. Oh, well, that’s a whole different right, or even a litigation like I yeah, I was in litigation once, and I thought my attorney was brilliant and amazing, and shout out to Paxton, but I’ve seen where I or I’ll have a client that’s dealing with a lawsuit, where they’re suing someone, or they’re being sued, and I’m like, You should call that person, right? Like my attorney says not to. I’m like, it should be the first move that you do find out. Could you guys just come to an agreement? Because 90 plus percent of this stuff settles anyway. Why are you going to drag this out in discovery? If you could just get to the bottom line right now you’re both going to spend you’ll also kind of know where you stand. Yeah, like, I got sued. Once the guy sends me, you know, the lawsuit, I call him before even calling an attorney, and he’s like, I’m not supposed to talk to you. I’m like, There’s nothing that says you can’t talk to me. I just, I know you got screwed in this deal. I made an introduction to someone. I didn’t get paid. I wasn’t there. You’re in the financial space. This is your type of why didn’t you go after him? I go. He goes, I did. He’s bankrupt. I’m like, so why are you coming after me? He goes, Well, my attorney, I can’t talk about it. I’m like, Well, what do you want? He invested like, 250 grand this real estate deal. He’s like, I want 600 grand. I was like, for what punitive damage? I’m like, what like? So I just realized, I told I then I called my attorney and like, Hey, he’s up in the night. Turns out that attorney was like, let’s see if we could win against Garrett, because he’s got a reputation. Then I can look at anyone that’s ever done a real estate deal with this other guy that knows Garrett, and we’ll see if we can create, like, a class action. Well, we went in court and that guy applies to be a judge. His attorney and my attorney got that blocked because, because that case almost got thrown out twice before the jury got to it, because we’re legit, just society, 20 million lawsuits in the United States, and there’s no tort reform. So, I mean, basically, someone could sue, they lose, no problem. You do that in England, you pay for the fees, right? So there’s like you better question whether it’s worth it or not. So, yeah, I get on that side of things personally. Well, I
Brad Weimert 34:28
think the the the other point that you made is a valid one, which is that there are lots of attorneys that even if, and this goes back to what we talked about earlier, about cost versus value. Right cost, price and value is that there are tons of attorneys, and even if you feel like they took way too long to do something, it was super expensive contract law like it bothers me when my attorney spends 11 hours reviewing a really fit contract, and you know what, probably some of the best fucking money that
Garrett Gunderson 34:59
I’ve spent. I. Not review the contract of a business cell. Oh boy, that was very expensive. And like, I would tell every client to review, I would, you know, I would, and yet I just anyway. So it’s it. That’s money well spent, for sure. I’m I just spoke at crisp, which is like a this guy, Michael mogul, created this program for attorneys, and it was his inner circle. And they were amazing. They were like, these guys are making 1020, up to $100 million a year because they built firms. They’re not thinking in billable hours. They’re thinking in a much bigger picture. And they were gracious, and they were intelligent. So it made me feel really good. I was like, Cool. Like, this is nice because I’ve also talked to other ones where it’s like, if they think about someone in the shower, they’re charging in billable hours. Yeah, right, right, exactly. And they’re using chat GPT to write contracts. Yeah, I’ve seen it, yeah. Well, I mean, that’s fine, but they’re still charging for Yeah, that’s if they’re not using it. Yeah, that’s a
Brad Weimert 35:57
problem. Well, in most contracts can be boilerplate. I mean, a ton of a ton of contracts can right, and it’s why the legal zooms of the world, etc, have accelerated and done well, and a lot of stuff you just don’t it doesn’t need to be complicated. I was talking to a financial planner who really, he’s like, his baseline is he won’t take people that are less than 10 million liquid. And so that’s like, the starting point. And he’s got a bunch of people that are, you know, multi 100 million. And he mostly, he’s like, look, I don’t need to give people investment advice at that level. He’s like, I help them with taxes. And he’s like, I help them with tax vehicles. It’s like, I don’t need to do investment stuff, he said. But what I’ll tell you is that if somebody gets a deal and it can’t be explained in one spreadsheet, it’s
Garrett Gunderson 36:49
too complicated. Exactly, there’s probably some fraud in there somewhere. Or, yeah, I think if it can’t be, if it can’t be explained in a page, then there’s a problem.
Brad Weimert 37:01
Yep, that was his take. I thought that was interesting. Well, so one of the things you just said was mindset, and that was where I think the bulk of your time with JP and that interview went, Yeah, and that’s always been sort of a bizarre construct for me, because I found, I found Tony Robbins when I was 18 or 19 actually, how Elrod had told me about Tony Robbins, and how is as a lot of that, it’s
Garrett Gunderson 37:26
funny how long you guys have known each other. Isn’t that crazy, right? A whole there’s this whole crew that you guys cut CO crew that’s just like, insane. How well you’ve all done, how you all run together, and how you had, like, fed your mind from an early age.
Brad Weimert 37:39
I I am pretty vocal about, like, the extreme positive impact that vector marketing, which is the marketing arm of Cutco, has had on me. But I think that it is in no way hyperbole to say that that was the most impactful thing in my business career ever, in probably my personal life, because the skill set around being forced to create and do everything yourself. And what I mean by that is have ownership of things. And to be very clear, like they gave all the structure the format, they gave me a playbook to play by, but they said you have to create the schedule, you have to follow the schedule, you have to work. And then it was just a commission only gig, right? And so a lot of lessons from that, but how, at one point, were at some conference, and I didn’t have any exposure to personal development at all, right, at all growing up, and how said, Oh yeah, there’s this guy. And he’s like, ranting about this guy, and he’s like, he does infomercials. And I’m like, What the fuck are you talking about right now? And I but he was like, no, no, he’s different. And at the time, my TV was my alarm clock. It was like a gaming TV when I was 22 or 21 or something, and I had it set to wake up, wake me up at 6:30am but when I went to bed, I’d watch Comedy Central. Well, what plays on Comedy Central at 6:30am infomercials. So I wake up one morning and I hear this infomercial, and I can hear it when I wake up, and it’s different, and I hear something different, and I’m like, oh shit, and it was an ad for personal power for Tony Robbins. And so on the way to my appointment, my first appointment, I called, and he had a great sales guy. So the sales guy answers the phone, and he tries to upsell me to a conference for like, five grand. And this is, you know, 2000 and I five grand seems just totally out of control, expensive to me. And I’m like, now, and he’s like, Well, what’s it gonna cost you if you don’t go and I was like, motherfucker, it was a good light. I was like, God damn it. But I got on that, that personal development train, and there was some point, I think in the last like 10 years, where I started to wonder how much benefit came from being entrenched in this. Of that, versus it just being like fluffy bullshit. And I think it’s an ongoing question that I like to ask more successful people about, because there are people that I talked to like I just had Mike Dillard in here last week, and he his answer surprised me, and he said, You know, I basically don’t spend any time on it at all anymore, like zero, because I feel like I developed into the person that I wanted to be, and now I spend no time on it. And the other side of that is the idea of I’m always learning and growing, and I always feel like I need to focus on it, and maybe he’s just focusing on different things, or maybe he’s not, or whatever, but how do you think about personal development and mindset and where it fits into business?
Garrett Gunderson 40:45
Yeah, so when I think back to still in college, I went to landmark right and then I go through forum, but I’m kind of like not really participating because I’m nervous and I want to look good and all that. And then someone called me out on it. So when I went to advanced course, I played full out. I got huge results, big growth. And so I was like, Okay, I’m gonna, you know, go through programs. They’re gonna challenge me. And a lot of that was kind of group programs, group personal development. Early on, I remember I went to couples connection, which Strategic Coach was putting on with my wife. We didn’t have kids yet. Everyone’s, like, 20 years older than us, you know, kids our age. And so that was, like, all those things were helpful until they weren’t. Until it was like, there was a little bit of a, like, All right, what’s next? And then it was for me to do more one on one, like somatic method and a little bit of journeying and, you know, a little bit of one on one counseling and spiritual stuff. So it’s like to me, it’s just different phases and different things, but there’s always some calling to like, what’s going to help me release limiting beliefs, develop myself, grow my skill sets, and so it’s just what phase of life is it needed most? Like, I feel like, the last five years I cleared out a lot of, like, my childhood stuff that was still holding me back, weird stuff, like going through birth trauma stuff, or going through like, you know, timeline therapy, or stuff like that. It was really effective, because I could feel more peace, I could feel less scarcity. I could feel like more clarity. I and I also just was tackling a lot of things. But if I would have started there, I don’t know if would have been as effective as, like, being in these groups and seeing that, oh, other people have these issues too, and having permission to explore and, you know, learning how to just be myself, and like, even going on the journey, journey of comedy that’s like very much personal development, getting up on stage, being more expressed, designing what I want. So I’m I’m always on the phone with someone, at least once a month, one on one. That’s helpful. I am listening to things and reading things. It changes over time. Some people are just addicted to it, right? And it’s and it doesn’t lead to anything. It’s a it’s a as my buddy patch and Tempest is a Jacuzzi experience. It’s fine while they’re there, and then they go back and they don’t integrate any of that into their life. So if that’s the case, then I think that we have to go deeper into our earlier recesses of our life to heal whatever it is that’s preventing that next layer and personalize it a little bit more. You know, I wrote in disrupting sacred cows. There’s three pages at the end of like, here’s the most important modalities that I found, you know, certain brain wave function, stuff I did at 40 years of Zen, you know, MDMA, somatic therapy, EMDR, like those types of things helped me to deal with childhood stuff that were holding me back. That landmark kind of showed me a little bit. Strategic Coach helped me to think bigger about like life and business, and designing my life and taking days off, like they all had their moments and their places, but eventually it was like I needed more quiet time, more time up on my cabin, more time writing, not in everyone telling me what to do, just my own hobbies, listening to myself does that like. So I think that where Mike’s right is like, there’s a certain point where you’re like, hey, some of that stuff can all become a distraction. It can all just become an addiction. You know? It can become an escapism. But there’s other times where it’s the catalyst that moves you forward, and at different points we have different consciousness or different mindset, and some of those might actually hold us back at a certain point because of what they’re about, right? So what set and setting matters, what the content is matters, and where we’re at now in our life.
Brad Weimert 44:16
And for clarity, when you say journeying, do you mean doing drugs in the forest? Yeah,
Garrett Gunderson 44:20
I mean, like doing my cab and doing some mushrooms couple times. I mean, doing MDMA with a therapist that has an eye bag on me for six hours, and walking through memories that are stored in my body, which sounds weird as shit, and I haven’t ever done the Ayahuasca trips or the five Meo or, you know, there’s a whole bunch of other stuff. I just kind of had a little stint where I did some journeying. It was super helpful. And I was like, now it’s time to go out and live life. So I’m not called to it right now, yeah, but it was actually really helpful.
Brad Weimert 44:50
I buy it. I just like to, I like to poke at it, because it actually goes directly to what you just said, which is, there are people that do it and just keep doing it and doing. It and doing it. And I did it
Garrett Gunderson 45:01
too much for a little while. In 2021 I definitely did too much. And I could tell, because some of my thinking was getting skewed and a little crazy. But my wife would be like, it’s time to pump the brakes. You know. She’s like, maybe these are things that are not real, that you’re thinking of that aren’t helpful anymore. And I was like, she’s like, maybe the train wrecks gone off, you know, maybe the train’s gone off the track a little bit. And I was like, Yeah, I think I just like the feeling of it a little bit too much. And it’s time to go ahead and do that. Like I did from 2018 till today. I did nine somatic MDMA therapy sessions, never sooner than within six weeks. And those were super helpful. And the last time I did one was February of this year, and I was like, Cool, I feel complete, but there was no more childhood stuff that was coming up. So I was like, I think, and I have no more physical pain, which a lot of physical pain is just stored emotional pain, but our brain tells us, oh, that physical pain is a distraction. You’ll have to deal with your emotions. So it was helpful. But, uh, you know, sometimes I was just getting high, yeah, right, exactly. I was like, Cool. There’s nothing harvested from this, other than it was really fun for the moment. So I was like, Cool. I just need to be the medicine. I need to kind of get out there and live life a little bit. So I’ve been,
Brad Weimert 46:14
what is the, what is the, the general format you, you’re calling it somatic therapy. What’s the general format for MDMA therapy with a therapist for you that you’ve experienced. Yeah. So
Garrett Gunderson 46:23
the somatic method I’ve used with MDMA, MDA and some people use cannabis or syllabus, psilocybin. I tried cannabis, I just slept through it. It had no positive impact. I hated it. I woke up. I was high. Everything was slow. She’s like, let’s try a different strain. Slept through that, woke up. So that’s not my medicine, but MDMA eye bags start with the top of the head. She’s like, let’s do a check in with the body. And then just start at the top, and then be like, Ooh, I kind of have my left shoulders tight. She’s like, all right, allow for the tightness. And then it’s like, what’s the emotion behind the tightness? And it’d be like, shame. It’s like, I don’t know where this shits coming from. It’s like, then it’d take me back to some early childhood memory, and we’d work through it and find out what the limited belief was, and it would release from the body like it would sweat or move. And then we do a check in again. And, you know, just keep doing that until it was cleared. Interesting. So, and then MDA is a little bit stronger. It was a little bit more intense. But those are pretty light journeys overall. And then I did stuff that was like a combination where it was like, here’s some MDMA or MBA with ketamine, and that would be like a deeper ego kind of goes to sleep, and I would talk, not knowing what I was saying, because I had an eye mask and a headset on listening to music. And then I would transcribe that and kind of read what that would say, and felt like it had insights or messages, or, you know, like instructions, or healing and those kind of things. But again, that’s the one that I think I just got to a point where I was like, Cool. This is just doing drugs now, yeah, right. This is just fun, yeah? But I’m, like, not harvesting anything, so I stopped doing that.
Brad Weimert 47:57
The therapist from that stuff. How do you so like, one of the critiques also is that everybody’s a shaman or some shit, right? So who do you go to for that kind of therapy? Who do you trust? How do you trust them? As we find
Garrett Gunderson 48:10
an apartment in LA, I’m just kidding, referral based. So what happened is, I have a cranial sacral therapist, and when you and I were at Mastermind Talks in 2018 in Utah, Tucker talked about MDMA therapy. Dave Asprey talked about MDMA therapy, and just took a note. I was like, I should look into MDMA therapy. And then I couldn’t move my right shoulder. I was doing German volume training with bench, and it kind of agitated it. And then I was throwing football with my son, and all of a sudden I couldn’t move my shoulder. So I was doing like, so I was doing like, prolosone and stem cells and dry needling and you name. I was getting ultrasounds and X rays. Couldn’t find out what was wrong with it, but it wasn’t moving. And I was like, we’re going on a trip, and I don’t want to just be walking around with one arm, you know. And so I was going to just do a craniosacral session, where they just kind of move the fluid up and down your spine. It’s very relaxing. And relaxing. And I try to schedule, and my therapist is like, Oh, I’m booked out. And I was like, why? It’s like, well, I’m an MDMA I’m doing MDMA therapy. So she went and did a bunch of training in Denver, and had a somatic Institute where she got certified. And so I started seeing her, and it like, one session, my had full range of motion in my shoulder. One session, Jesus, that’s so weird. Full range. I was like, so there’s like, books, like the Body Keeps the Score or the great pain deception. To talk a little bit about this, but I just experienced it firsthand. So I set my dad, so I sent my sisters, so I sent a lot of friends and clients, and I trust her, because I think set and setting matters so much, and I think that’s a space where there’s too much manipulation. Yeah, you know, I’ve been in medicine where someone’s like, oh, you should invest in our project, and I’m like, or I’ve been in it with a group, and also I’m giving away stuff for free, like my time that I never would do, because it’s easy to be manipulated in that. And so who you’re around really matters. And some people should just admit they’re doing drugs. I agree. And other times it’s very therapeutic. But, you know, like, sometimes I was just doing mushrooms at my cabin. I
Brad Weimert 50:13
think both can be true too. I think that, you know, you can be doing drugs, and you can get insights from drugs.
Garrett Gunderson 50:18
Yeah, I’ve just been up at my cabin before when I had COVID, and I was like, Don’t spread it to us. I just went up there. And the end of the week, I’m like, I’m gonna take some mushrooms,
Brad Weimert 50:25
yeah, blending, set, setting and dosage, yeah, are also relevant, right? So, like, you know, I can have a glass of bourbon with somebody, and it’s going to deepen the conversation and open up the conversation to different things, and I will learn different things. Yeah, I can probably have two, three or four glasses of bourbon, actually, but there’s going to be a tipping point, yeah, where it’s not going to be productive anymore. I won’t remember it right, and who fucking knows what I’m saying, just nonsense, and then I’m just doing drugs. It’s funny,
Garrett Gunderson 50:53
because I have this Kelsey is someone I talk to every other week. She’s kind of like, counsels me, and is like, a, you know, just a mentor. And when I was doing a lot of journeying, she’s like, Yeah, you really hard to manage. Right now, you’re all over the place, right? But it was also like, good, I just go too fast. I was like, I’m gonna handle everything I’ve ever been out of integrity with. I’m gonna have every conversation I need to have. I’m gonna help every like, and I was like, it was a lot. No, I was fine. Like, okay. Like, I could take this in stride.
Brad Weimert 51:22
How do you think that mindset impacts money for entrepreneurs specifically? So you talk a lot about in your book, you talk books. You’ve got 10 books from Wall Street Journal, bestsellers, New York Times bestseller. Tons of books have been sold. A lot of that stuff talks about kind of frameworks for the middle class and how to invest as a middle class family. And some of it is just a mental shift in how you approach investing. How do you think about that for the next level up in financial management? Yeah, so
Garrett Gunderson 51:59
the next level up like we all have a money persona that creates success or sabotage in our finances. Some people just have a higher thermometer so they can handle more money, and then they eventually hit to a place where they feel like that’s all they’re worth. And whether they subconsciously or consciously understand it, they’ll create sabotage. If it gets beyond that level, they’ll blow it, they’ll spend it, they’ll risk it, they’ll fight about it. They’ll, they’ll, there’s just so much that happens. And you’ve seen this with people sell their business all of a sudden they’re a bunch of money. It’s like, they’ve just went to the gym, they’ve never squatted 400 pounds, and they’re like, cool, I’m gonna put 400 pounds on the bar, because I’ve been killing it at 200 pounds, and it cripples them. And that happens when that amount of money comes in. If they’re not a proper steward, or they’re not ready for it. That’s where you see people take too much risk. They invest in too many things. They don’t know how, like they have this great skill set in their business. Now they sold them now they go invest in areas where they have no skill set, but they buy into the story. So I think at the at the higher levels, it’s just that their threshold is much higher. They can accept a higher level of stewardship, because they grew their way there, where sometimes people just get stuck in this middle class place, and they never evolved past that. So they kind of their thermometer is just a lot lower. And so to be at nine figures, you got to have some pretty substantial vision. There’s got to be some level of value that’s expanded beyond and you’ve got to be willing to accept, receive value from others. You’ve got to feel worth it. You got to be willing to ask. There’s just so many things that people in the middle class just keep quiet about. They just don’t ask for. They don’t feel deserving of. They don’t they just work through. They just tolerate. And some people won’t tolerate that because they’re just more committed to the value they want to bring to the world and the vision that they have, and they don’t let any of these, like mindset blocks stop them, because they just continue to evolve. I mean, if you listen to the creative act by Rick Rubin, I thought it was a pretty amazing you know, I listened to it a couple times. Is that his most recent book? That’s his most recent. Yeah, I think this is only one. And he’s just like the artists that keep producing art, or the artists that continue to work on themselves so they can receive so they can receive the art. And he’s like, those that don’t work on themselves might have a hit and they never reproduce it, because they stop being in a place where they could receive it. And so we have to be in a place where we could receive so in my book, money on mass. The first line is, what would you do with a billion dollars? First question very confronting. If someone’s like, I don’t know what to do, because it’s hard to go spend a billion dollars, right? That’s a hard thing to be like, I’m gonna spend that. So you have to be in this thought process of value creation. And it gets a gap where people are like, Wait, how would I create enough value? Now, if you’re trying to transform the financial industry or transactions and how they happen for someone with easy pay like that’s, that’s a multi billion dollar idea, so there’s plenty of momentum. But if it’s, it’s my goal to make $2 million like that, it just doesn’t equate, because one’s about impact reach value. And I’d say that if you’re not sure what to do with those large numbers, you have to think bigger. You have to focus on. Fact you have to, you have to know your value. And that question haunted me in my 20s because I just felt insignificant and stupid that I couldn’t answer
Brad Weimert 55:08
it. You said a couple things that I want to hit on, because there’s the a lot of that I would normally hear, or I do hear, and think it’s sort of this ethereal, interesting concept without any tactical advice in it. But I think a couple of things that you said are pretty tactical, like people are unwilling to work through the things that somebody else who really wants it badly is willing to work through. And a couple of things that popped up for me through that are that are directly mindset is you’re going after something, and you get uncomfortable in a moment to ask because you’re afraid you’re gonna look stupid, or you’re uncomfortable to ask because you think that you’re already supposed to know the answer and you don’t want to embarrass yourself in front of a certain group. Or you’re supposed to be a leader, and what you think a leader is, is somebody that knows everything. Yeah, and I think that being able to be vulnerable certainly has to be a part of that
Garrett Gunderson 56:04
our vision has to be bigger than our escape route. So we all have escapisms, like some people’s escapisms, they get caught up in a TV or movie character rather than their own reality. So when they don’t know how to deal with things, it’s easy to numb out with social media or the news or politics, but then they never know the price of the relationship with themselves, because it’s always about something outside of themselves. It’s always blame, it’s victimhood, it’s chaos, it’s the economy, it’s someone else’s fault. And so our escapisms can be starting to get addicted to watching sports or playing video games or anything that has this hijack or sabotage the result that we want. Like, when I was like, Yeah, I’m gonna film a comedy special dude that was confronting. Because I was like, why am I that funny? My wife says, No. So I was like, this is and then I was like, I had to deal with those insecurities and those escapism. So anything we delay or choose not to address. We’re either playing not to lose by hiding from it. Those are the people that hold on to what they’ve got, or playing to run win, running to something else so that we don’t have to address that. And so people get busy doing things that aren’t as productive. Like you can get busy and make a million dollars, but you can’t get busy and make 10 million because it requires a team. It isn’t just you doing a Herculean effort, and yet that escapism is, well, I’m too busy to do that. I’ll do that later, so they don’t realize that that’s a sabotaging thing, playing to win or playing not to lose. So if they sweep things under the rug and hope they go away escapism, if they delay or choose not to address something, then you know that destroys peace of mind and prosperity, or if they pretend like future projects are so important they don’t have time for this thing that they say that they really want, they continue to let themselves off the hook with their trump card. Their trump card is anything that’s an escape from this vision. Because if you’re going to have a vision a nine figure business or greater, you’re going to be confronted, because you’re going to be in a realm that is so few people have been in that there isn’t just an easy map of how to get there, right? There’s an easy map of going to college, getting a student loan, putting money in a retirement plan, paying off a home, and being unfulfilled for 30 years, working in a job with benefits. That’s an easy map. It’s like shit, hard life long term, but it’s an easy out right from the beginning. But to be like, you know, I listen to Jerry Seinfeld. He talks about how he didn’t get paid for comedy, and how he’s working his ass off. And, you know, and then he sees Eddie Murphy pull up in a fancy car, and he’s like, holy shit. You can make that much money doing comedy, and if seed is planted. But you know, even when him and Larry David are doing Seinfeld. They’re just relentlessly working and working and working to build the foundation. And they have to do this work before it blossoms and before it comes out, not knowing if every action is going to lead to an outcome. It’s just that resilience of I’m going to love the work and I’m going to do the work. And too many people opt out because of that fear, that scarcity, that roadblock, that escapism, that bump and road, whatever it is, because life doesn’t go according to plan.
Brad Weimert 59:05
Yeah, basically, ever, no, ever. So I think you hit on exactly what I wanted you to, which is the word sabotage. And I sort of forgot it. But that’s, I think that’s one of those words, like the way that you originally framed it was, you get to, you use the thermometer analogy, and people get to a point where they start to sabotage themselves, and it’s really hard to recognize or to reconcile this notion that you are sabotaging yourself and being aware that that’s being self aware enough to pick apart your life and see the areas that you are deliberately spending time on that you don’t need to be in the absence of progress towards something that you say is very important to you. Is another way to say sabotage, right?
Garrett Gunderson 59:49
And that’s like success requires a degree of consistency. And the problem is most people go this far and then they abandon it before the consistency has time to. Payoff? Yeah, because we are conditioned and indoctrinated to get short term payoffs for that dopamine hit, and it’s harder to have that longer term vision of I have a vision that’s so big it’s going to take some time to develop. And it’s so big I don’t know how to achieve it on my own. So it’s going to require bringing people along. You know, that’s, you know, I have a mentor. Do you know Rick sapio? He mentored me back in the day? No, I know that name. So Rick, you know he would have lunch every month with, uh, with this billionaire, um, Phil Romano. And Phil had this great idea, and he’s like, Rick. Do you know anyone that could run this? Rick’s like, No, but I’ll keep an eye out so they have lunch the next month. He’s like, Phil, how’s the business going? He’s like, What do you mean? He’s like, Yeah, like, how’s it going? He’s like, Oh, you know, you’re a multi millionaire. That’s that’s really cute. I’m a billionaire. The difference between us is you’d be hustling and grinding and working your ass off in this business. I’m looking for the right talent to build this business. He’s like, we fundamentally are viewing the world differently. And when Rick told me that story, I thought of like, my life, and I was like, oh, yeah, I’m just, like, rushing to get it done, trying to make it happen, doing too much on my own, getting over exhausted. So it’s hard to keep that consistency. You think of like the people that are the biggest at what they do have been consistent for so long, like Chappelle was doing comedy as a teenager, right? So you know, to be considered the goat, or one of the goats that came from a lot of like, if you hear his early times, you know, like there’s a ton of work that goes into it, yet all people see is this end result. They don’t want to do all the work that it takes to get there, and then they’re wondering why they don’t have what they that person has. Well, first off, don’t model someone else, because you might not have the same intention, skill set, attention, ability, passion, and so if you try to model that, you’re going to run out of steam, yeah, when you find out who you are and what you’re really capable of, and the skill set you’re willing to develop and the business you’re willing to stay consistent to that’s the mistakes I’ve made in the past. Insurance was just convenient. And the nice thing is, with what with Rockefellers do? I figured out how to stay with that over a lifetime, because the conversation of legacy is something I love to talk about every day. It is something I’m like, I just spoke at Mark Master’s event. And, you know, they love the Rockefeller story, of all the things we’ve talked about for two days. And I love telling it, and it was fun. And I’m telling jokes and like so I found if I use comedy in my speeches, I’ll be giving speeches 30 years from today, teaching finance, not in a boring, mundane way. So I’m finding out what all those ingredients are that uniquely make me, that I can stay consistent with for a long period of time. I mean, you watch me in the early days of my theatrical keynote this like, where I act out the four characters, and I pick it up the guitar and dude, I was early on, right? I was not a good actor, like it was. We were
Brad Weimert 1:02:37
in a friend’s living room with eight people, and you were standing in front of us in the living room doing your thing.
Garrett Gunderson 1:02:44
And you were like, Dude, you usually just get up and speak off the cuff. It’s good to see you struggle your ass off trying to memorize something. Like, you’re like, you’re like, respect, and you’ve got a long way to go. Is how you said it without saying all those words, but, but yeah. I was like, I Here we are. I started that in 2019 Yeah, I rehearsed it this week. Yeah, I’ll rehearse, and I’d add a musical score to it. I hired Larry Moss, the the acting coach, the coaches. I’m just like, I can dedicate 20 years to it, because there’s more depth to it every single day, and I’m more excited about it. And so it’s going to take, it might take me. I mean, I’m about to do it for 3000 attorneys, and got paid my full speaking fee, and ludicrous is performing at it. So like, it’s kind of cool, and the first time I did do it live at a real estate event for full fee, someone came up and hugged me and told me about their their brother’s suicide, and that they hadn’t been able to talk about it. So like, I’m like, Yes, I’m into this world of connection. It’s sharing my values. I can stay committed to that. But nobody knows what the hell a one man show is. I told my wife, I’m gonna do one man show. She’s like, What the fuck is that? I’m like, that? I’m like, I know. The first time I heard someone say they did a one man show, that was my response, too, and then they crushed it. So, like, we just gotta find that thing that we’re willing to dedicate to. Like, that’s why I believe in create a life you don’t want to retire from, yeah, because if we just sacrifice, then we just end up with a shitty life, and then we’re doing things out of drudgery, which drains our energy, and if we don’t have much energy, we’re not that good to anyone, really.
Brad Weimert 1:04:04
So back. So I agree with you 100% the question that I like to ask people is, do you think that a 25 year old entrepreneur should keep trying to find that, or should they make money and then find it? Or is there a balance?
Garrett Gunderson 1:04:18
Yeah, I think my Buddy Rich Christiansen has a book called The zigzag principle. He’s like, have your vision, but don’t run straight for it. If you run straight for it, you can run out of steam. Cash Flow first. Resources, second, skill third, cash flow resources, scale zigzag your way there. So to sit there and be like, I’m trying to find my passion on my couch at home, doing nothing isn’t very helpful, right? Like, I think that insurance was a good part of my journey. Yeah, it was good data. I learned how to communicate, I learned how to sell. I learned the value of risk versus non risk. I learned the value of the different policies. It became an ingredient towards the what would Rockford do, which is my most prolific work that I’ve done, and that led me. To meet fascinating people on legacy, including this woman, Sheila, that worked for the family office, for the Rockefeller family, including people that mentored the Rockefellers that are now mentoring me. It’s like it was an amazing journey. If I didn’t have that initial piece, I don’t know if this would be there. So if we just chase our passion, we can hear anyone on any corner talking about passion, but passion without proper skill and frame equals bankruptcy, it equals loneliness, it equals nothingness. Like be passionate about a hobby, find ways that you can evolve. And if you think it’s all just gonna be perfect right from the get go. I mean, maybe that happens for some. I don’t think it happens for many.
Brad Weimert 1:05:35
I think very, very, very few. And I think even the people that that does seem to happen for I think that vision is curated through experience, yeah? And if you don’t have the experience, you don’t have the ammunition to construct a vision in many cases, right?
Garrett Gunderson 1:05:52
You agree with me, then you’re brilliant. We’re on the same page. Well, because I don’t know if we’re on the same page, I was like, interesting to know.
Brad Weimert 1:06:01
I very much believe that. I really think that my my approach to life has been one of the reasons I ask is because I think that it’s a confusing I think that it’s sort of the journey of life to figure that out. My path has always been, I don’t know what my grand vision is. I don’t know what I’m like, endlessly passionate about where I’m pulled to the future, but in the meantime, I’m gonna fucking work like hell to make sure that I’m continuing to grow and develop and check the other boxes while I figure it
Garrett Gunderson 1:06:32
out. It’s a lot better to be in the world of value creation and have value creation with contemplation instead of contemplation and nothing else,
Brad Weimert 1:06:43
yes. So I have to ask you financial questions, because you once told me that financial advisors are like strippers,
Garrett Gunderson 1:06:52
nice. I’m sure that I did it. I’m not surprised to say these words, yeah, but can you think of the context for that? Well, financial advisors are like strippers, because strippers present that. You think it’s going to be this great thing, but you find out, you know, it’s like the song I fell in love with the stripper. You know, it’s like, it’s like, wait now, when I talk about financial advisors, I’m talking about like, these fee based advisors that have all the right things that they tell you, I’m a fiduciary. They bring the douche to fiduciary quite often, you know, like, oh, I, you know, but they’re taking a fee off your money, whether you make money or not, yeah. So they’re taking money from your pocket, and you don’t even notice it, and then all of a sudden, you’re like, Wait, what did I get for all this? And it’s and it’s quite a disappointment. I think strippers are usually a disappointment for people. You know, I think that that’s probably not soul mates
Brad Weimert 1:07:44
a safe statement, right for almost all right?
Garrett Gunderson 1:07:47
I mean, I remember telling my wife for my bachelor party, I’m like, dude, strip club, sorry, the safest place we can go, you know? I’m like, nobody ends up with hooking up with the strippers. And we had 20 people that went, and two of them hooked up with strippers, including your brother. I was like, so much for that philosophy. Thought it was, you know, Look, But Don’t Touch. But Garrett never went to strip club again. I remember, like, I so i i Go, and then she’s like, I’m really glad you can go to a strip club for your bachelor party. I was like, Is this a trick question? Yesterday, I said that we were going, and we definitely went, like, are we good? Yep, I think that we had a little bit of an argument, but we’re still married, so, like, it’s worth something I at least was honest about. I was like, ah, we definitely went to strip club. We went to Vegas for my bachelor party. Yeah,
Brad Weimert 1:08:35
that has to involve strip club, I think, for a bachelor party. Yeah. Also, weren’t you, like, 22 when you got married, or some shit? I
Garrett Gunderson 1:08:43
was 23 so I was pretty young. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It’s
Brad Weimert 1:08:46
the choice you’re gonna make every time. I think when you’re 23 we had
Garrett Gunderson 1:08:49
a lot of people down there in at that strip club, and one wasn’t that. That wasn’t the nicest one. I do remember that. I do recall that, yeah, there’s no threat. There was nothing to worry about that is
Brad Weimert 1:09:03
maybe comedy, but, like, there’s some brutal strip clubs out there,
Garrett Gunderson 1:09:07
yeah. Like, sometimes, like, you know, it’s like this notion of you’re not gonna fall, you’re not gonna find what you want financially by getting a portfolio, like, financial independence is having enough cash flow from your assets to cover your expenses. Where are you getting that from a financial planner, you know, plugging financial leaks by not overpaying tax or interest or non performing fees with investments or hidden commissions that don’t that don’t help, or improper design with insurance. Like most planners aren’t doing that. They’re not making sure that you get your legacy planning done. They’re basically saying, Here’s a retirement plan, put your money in here, and 30 years from today, you’re going to be happy, but you’re not gonna be happy. 95% of people are not financially independent. So it’s a promise that isn’t actually being fulfilled, and it’s not the financial planners are bad people. They’re just in a bad system. They’re compensated for selling a book of business for 12 to 15 times EBITDA that they got paid money on. 1% a year quite often along the way. So if they’re managing a billion dollars, which they’re not trading, they’re just handing it off to some firm, right? They’re making some decisions on it, but not every decision. It’s more acquiring customers. 1% of a billion dollars isn’t a bad income every single year, right? Right? Yeah, misaligned. And son, if I do the math, I think it’s 10 million bucks, right? It’s
Brad Weimert 1:10:21
pretty good math. I
Garrett Gunderson 1:10:22
think not bad. So then they can sell that for 12 to 15 times. EBITDA, oh shit, yeah, you said that, and it didn’t really sink. That’s nice, right? Yeah, paid then, and then you get paid. And so it’s like, you know, they used to hammer, oh, you get paid so much insurance commission. I’m like, I get paid a lot up front, a little bit over time, and it’s still not anything compared to selling a book of business. Because I can’t sell that book of business like you would, you know, like, when I found out four 1k were, what they were, it wasn’t a good day for me. Yeah, I was like, Oh, I’m going to make a lot less money. Because if I believed in them, they’re easy to sell. So many people do them, 70 plus million Americans. But the problem is, they lack cash flow. They’re government controlled. There’s tons of fees, legal, admin, you know, 12 B ones fueled by mutual funds, which I think underperform to other asset classes out there. They don’t help with that financial independence. The government can change the rules along the way. I mean, there’s too many things that I’m like, this is a stripper, there’s herpes, there’s fake boobs. There’s a lot of stuff that’s, you know, going on here.
Brad Weimert 1:11:26
And it also goes back to the it’s not a one page explanation, and
Garrett Gunderson 1:11:29
sorry for the strippers that don’t have herpes. I felt like that was very the comedian in me, not a judgmental prick, just the comedian.
Brad Weimert 1:11:37
So it is almost q4, 2024, we’re recording just just before the turn into q4 we’re going into an election. How do you think Donald Trump winning or Kamala Harris winning will impact one’s ability to make money? Well,
Garrett Gunderson 1:11:57
I don’t think it’s going to matter who gets in for the tax sunset. So the tax jobs cut. Act, right. Tcja, talks tax cuts and Jobs Act. TCGA, it goes away January 1, 2026, at sunsets. In order for that not to sunset, we have to have a house give me bullets on what that is, qualified business deduction section 199 a lowering the tax rates for most business owners gone top tax rate, 37 and a half percent, the marginal rates where you get the higher tax rates kick in later than the old system, like it’s just all the old tax system. So it’s going to be pretty massive hit to people that have been used to paying less tax when that sun sets. And if Trump gets elected, I still don’t see the House and Senate both being Republican, and even if they are, do they agree with Trump, it doesn’t feel like they’re all all totally aligned there in that party. We already know that that’s not going to happen if Kamala gets in because she’s already talking about all sorts of different taxation, and we’re $35 trillion in debt. So they’re inflating their way out of that debt the best that they can, because it’s easier to create inflation than it is to collect taxes. It’s just a stealth tax. So what we’re going to find, more than anything, is the mindset of the people. I have a guy that guides me in hunting, and he’s always like, oh yeah. When Trump got elected, I started building houses. When Biden got elected, I stopped doing that. What? We have a housing shortage. Regardless who’s president, you’re gonna be oh no, no. I’m gonna get like, so I think we give too much credence to the President. And I think the biggest issue with whoever gets elected is that a lot of people are gonna be pissed that their person didn’t get in, and they think the other person is the devil. When you talk to people, they think that Trump is an egomaniac and that he’s a narcissist and that he’s gonna destroy the country, and yet he was president, and even during COVID And you know, here we are still going people think of comma is going to get in. Communism is coming back and, you know? And so that’s a concern for people. I think the bottom line is we’re concerned about the president, where we need to be more concerned about our own life and our own business, because they’re going to make whatever changes they’re going to make you better. Open up as many doors have as much value creation. And I would just say, more than anything, create your tax plan now, because if you wait, you’re going to get crushed, because taxes are going to get worse either way, it’s just, I don’t see how they’re not going to get worse. So
Brad Weimert 1:14:29
one of the one of the challenges that I have from a tax perspective with different tax strategists is you get this a lot, a lot of tax vehicles are about deferment. I hate deferment. I get it. And at the same time, earlier today, you were talking to JP about how important it is for people to be able to generate more money quickly, so that they can compound that money. So deferment does allow you to compound the money. Quicker.
Garrett Gunderson 1:15:00
Just have to have an exit, because you’re compounding your tax at the same time. And whether you did a Roth or traditional, just say you could do either one. You have less money going to the Roth because it’s after tax. Pre tax goes in the traditional. So the traditional grows to a bigger amount in the future. If tax rates stay level, when you pull that money out, you’ll end up with the same net amount as you had in the Roth. But if you’re going to live off interest of the two accounts, you’re going to have more interest kicked off in the traditional than the Roth. It’s just, again, you still have to pay tax on that unless you create an offset. So if someone’s like 5859 like, it’s a little bit different, because you can start taking that money out pretty soon. If you’re younger and you’re deferring it that long, I just don’t know what the taxes are going to look like in the future. Yes, it will grow to a bigger amount, but if taxes go up, you’ll have less. In the end, if taxes go down, you’ll have more. I just don’t think taxes are going down. So I’m all about, how do we find tax credits, tax deductions? How do we find tax strategy that actually permanently eliminates the tax, not just delays the tax, and you know, even in real estate, people roll it over, and that’s still a deferment, but at least you could borrow against it. You know, retirement plans, you can, but they have a lot more restrictions and limitations, whereas as a brokerage account, you have more opportunity. So, yeah, I’m just, I have a tax navigator. If people want it, they can just like, put bam, put BAM in Instagram. Garrett beginner, I’ll just give them the tax navigator. I mean, I’m selling it right now, but I’ll just give it to your viewers. Megan, just go down the checklist, immediate tax savings, intermediate and advanced tax savings, and then just find out what applies to them, what doesn’t apply to them. But I want them to have as many doors open so that if they do change taxes, they have a few things that they could pull to offset that. Yeah,
Brad Weimert 1:16:38
I love that. I feel like, I feel like the tax thing is a never ending game that warrants spending a shitload of time on because it is the largest line item, if you’re not careful, huge. How much time do you think you should spend on it relative to wealth creation? So
Garrett Gunderson 1:16:56
my feeling is, on the initial setup, it might be like five hours or something. If you have the right tax team, I can bring the right tax team to people. I’ve been vetting tax people for a very long time. If you’re gonna go find it on your own, it’s tough. It’s tough for me, and I’m in the business and so but for me right now, it’s 20 to 30 minutes a quarter that I meet with my tax team. We brainstorm, we go over the numbers, we talked about, we just had a meeting last week. You know, we talked about, hey, here’s where we’re at. What does everything look like? Is there any additional strategies we need to brainstorm? If we do, we might set up one more meeting. A week or two later, bring on a tax attorney, talk through a few more things. But if you meet once a quarter and you have a decent team, you can get it to his 2020, 30 minutes a quarter. Now that setup is the key. Yeah, that overhaul initially looking last three years, taxes, developing strategy like I’ve done events where I just spent a day and and help people build that out over a day. People hire me to do that one on one. We build that out. You know, it could be efficient. It’s just the overhaul that’s the pain.
Brad Weimert 1:17:56
Yeah, I was listening to somebody talk the other day, and he was a wealth advisor, like true tax strategist, planner, and somebody asked him advice. He was on stage. Somebody asked him advice. And he said, I mean, I can say a bunch of things to sound smart right now, but honestly, I won’t have any fucking idea until I spend like, four hours with you listening to your actual setup, you know. And I thought that was a I love hearing that honesty. I just love hearing that openness. Because everybody’s system is different. Everybody’s structure
Garrett Gunderson 1:18:26
is different. I’m trying to give people a framework with this, like three buckets, and like the ways, who’s on the team, what are the main tax deductions to look at? How do you classify your income? And then just a checklist where you’d be like, Oh, this could apply to me, or I’m not sure, or it doesn’t. So that way you now have a way to proactively navigate with your accountant. Because normally what happens is they are overwhelmed. They don’t have four hours to spend with you. So now you know what to ask. Now you know what to talk about, yeah, because I pretty much exhausted all the fairway strategies, all the stuff that’s right down the middle, black and white, no, gray area. You’re not going to get in trouble with a single one of those things on there. They’re golden. I mean, that that even means, I mean, Puerto Rico is on there. You can move to Puerto Rico. I just don’t want to move to Puerto Rico. No, me either, you know. And you have to actually move there. And you have to, you know, there’s a whole thing where people, like, I want to pay my kids, great. You can just have to have them do the work. And if they don’t do the work, then you can’t really take the write off. You know, that’s the rule. Like a lot of people want these hacks where they’re doing things that are a little bit in the gray area, yeah, just do the right things down the middle and you’re
Brad Weimert 1:19:30
fine, yeah. And my question with taxation is always, what does it look like on audit, right? And if I’m talking to can you sleep at night, and will you be finding an audit? Yeah. And I what I’ll ask anybody that’s trying to sell me a product for tax deferment, or, you know, heaven forbid, avoidment, avoidant avoidance, avoidance is, how many times have you seen this get audited, and what was the
Garrett Gunderson 1:19:56
result? Yeah. And there are tax strategies that I’ve personally done. On that increased chance of audit for me. And if I tell those, if I tell my clients about him, there’s only a few. I’m like, you could increase your chance of audit, but a never go to your own audit. You always have the tax team handle the audit. If you’re organized and they go on the offensive, the likelihood is you’ll save tax during an audit. I was just speaking at this event, and, you know, Jason Hartman, he was there. Oh, yeah, he got audited, $450,000 they had to give him back after that. Amazing. He’s aggressive, like, 450,000 during his audit, they gave him back. I thought that was hilarious. I love that. That’s a pretty interesting story, because I told the story about, I’ve had a couple clients get audited. Yeah, in the entire 25 years I’ve been doing this, two people have had to pay any money. They were negligible amounts compared to what they’re doing, because we’re not doing it like I’m not doing anything offshore. There are some legitimate offshore things, but you are definitely going to be a target if you do offshore stuff. It’s just how it is.
Brad Weimert 1:20:55
Yeah, I think since, since Obama, since oh eight, offshore seems to be scrutinized more heavily. I think he was the
Garrett Gunderson 1:21:00
one that remember the Panama Papers. I mean that I don’t remember that. Yeah, they found all these papers for all these offshore trusts and where assets were held that were very private documents, and then made it public information. God,
Brad Weimert 1:21:13
what’s the dumbest thing you’ve ever done financially?
Garrett Gunderson 1:21:15
I sold my business without reading the contract. The stupidest thing I’ve ever done, for sure, what was having an attorney review it?
Brad Weimert 1:21:23
What was the impact?
Garrett Gunderson 1:21:25
It was millions, millions of dollars. Awesome. Yeah, it was bad. It’s embarrassing. I love it, hey, being this honest, no, it’s great, dude.
Brad Weimert 1:21:36
I could see it on your face.
Garrett Gunderson 1:21:37
I wouldn’t allow a client to do what I did ever Yeah, had this. If it’s the right car, it’s the right person, no contract will matter. If it’s wrong person, no contract was due as a stupid statement that I thought that’s not true.
Brad Weimert 1:21:49
I think that. I think that is true, and you still need to have a contract, right?
Garrett Gunderson 1:21:53
Well, I wouldn’t transfer the shares when I did, I would have had a lot more control. Yeah, like, there’s a lot, you know, it worked really well for two years, and then when it didn’t work, it was like, I could have definitely negotiated. I could have had the database copy. There’s just a lot of things I could have done. This is what happens when you’re disenchanted, if you let things go too long. Yeah,
Brad Weimert 1:22:11
I do firmly believe, though, that especially you mentioned this earlier, like you’re making choices now for your business about how you want your lifestyle to be and one of those things. When you’re younger, it’s harder to do this. Or when you’re when you’re living in more of a place of scarcity, truly, it’s harder to do this. But if you feel like a situation or a human is questionable that you’re about to do a deal with, don’t fucking do it.
Garrett Gunderson 1:22:38
You’re better to miss an opportunity than to get it in something that is going sideways, yeah, I totally mess with your confidence. It takes it hijacks your time. It’s not good.
Brad Weimert 1:22:48
Yeah, the time becomes the most valuable thing. For sure. It occupies so much space. That’s the so much energy. The big thing is the mental bandwidth. The only benefit is you get sexy ass gray hair.
Unknown Speaker 1:22:58
But other than that, everything else sucks.
Brad Weimert 1:23:02
I love it. I love it. Well, let me go show you some real estate. We’ll wrap this up. Do you want to point people anywhere? Where do you Oh, you know what your your special just came out on Amazon
Garrett Gunderson 1:23:13
Prime. Yeah, American Dream. Love it. Amazon Prime. Garrett Gunderson, or my website. Garrett gunderson.com I got some cool tools there, I got a weekly newsletter every now and again, I try to sell people stuff that they’re on it. Can you believe that most of them just writing blogs and sharing my, you know, my insights, but yeah, and if people want the tax navigator, they just hit me up on Instagram. Garrett B Gunderson, direct message me, bam, and I’ll hook them up. Love it.
Brad Weimert 1:23:42
Love it. Man, always good to hang out.
Garrett Gunderson 1:23:44
They’re good to see you, man, you too. We went on a, you know, whole medicine aspect. We all over the shit on attorneys for a minute. We did. Yeah, we did. We’ll, uh, see how those reviews. Thank God for the good ones. Yeah, right.
Brad Weimert 1:24:00
I hope you enjoyed the episode as much as I enjoyed doing it. I need your help. There are three places you can find beyond a million. The podcast itself beyond a million.com. Which has some cool free resources, including a free course, and we finally launched the beyond a million YouTube channel. I would love it if you would go there and subscribe, and if you don’t want to, you still will probably enjoy seeing the visual content. Check it out, youtube.com, forward slash at beyond a million.
