Feeling like life’s demands have you tied up in knots while your financial future seems like a moving target? Time to take charge! Today in the basement, Anthony O’Neal pulls up a chair and shows you how to claim the head seat at your own table. He breaks down the power of having a personal vision, making intentional decisions that align with your goals, and being a stellar steward of your time and opportunities.
But that’s not all—we’re looking ahead with some of the biggest names in tech. What do Bill Gates, Sam Altman, and other visionaries think 2025 will bring? (Spoiler alert: AI isn’t just for sci-fi anymore.) We’ll chat about how these changes will impact your work life and share some practical steps to stay ahead.
And because life isn’t just about finances, the crew wraps things up with their latest binge-worthy TV and movie picks. It’s time to stack your entertainment queue as high as your Benjamins.
What’s Inside This Episode
- 🎙️ Texarkana Vibes: A chilly morning, winter woes, and Doug’s favorite Mickey Mouse mug.
- 🌟 Anthony O’Neal’s Vision: Practical tips to align your financial and personal goals.
- 🛠️ Stewardship 101: Why managing your opportunities well is a game-changer.
- 🤖 2025 Tech Predictions: How AI might reshape your work life and what to do now to stay ahead.
- 🎥 Entertainment Corner: The gang’s TV and movie picks to keep you entertained.
Episode Highlights
- Winter kicks off with Texarkana shivers, travel plans, and Doug waxing poetic about his mug collection.
- Anthony O’Neal’s advice: Learn how to take control of your life by building a clear personal vision and aligning your goals with your actions.
- The importance of stewardship: Make the most of your opportunities and turn them into stepping stones for success.
- A tech-driven future: Bill Gates, Sam Altman, and other leaders weigh in on AI’s role in shaping the workplace of 2025.
- Fear and finances: How fear might be holding you back and ways to overcome it.
- Basement banter: A round-up of the crew’s current TV and movie obsessions.
Want More?
Anthony O’Neal shares details about his exciting new project, Take Your Seat at the Table, plus some special offers just for you. And of course, Doug treats us to one of his legendary historical anecdotes (did he mention he’s a trivia champ?).
Stack Your Listening Queue
This episode is packed tighter than Mom’s basement freezer. Whether you’re looking for financial wisdom, tech trends, or just some good laughs with the crew, we’ve got you covered. Pull up a chair—there’s always room at the table in the basement.
Our link to Anthony’s book: https://stackingbenjamins.com/takecontrol
FULL SHOW NOTES: https://stackingbenjamins.com/define-your-purpose-in-life-anthony-oneal-1630
Deeper dives with curated links, topics, and discussions are in our newsletter, The 201, available at https://www.stackingbenjamins.com/201
Enjoy!
Monday Mentor: Anthony O’Neal

Big thanks to Anthony O’Neal for joining us today. To learn more about Anthony, visit Anthony O’Neal | Financial Author, Speaker & Educator. Grab yourself a copy of the book Take Your Seat at the Table.
Our Headline
Doug’s Trivia
- On what Benjamin-stacking, super-popular TV show did The Fonz make his debut?
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Join Us Wednesday
Tune in on Tuesday when we’ll meet people who saved too much AND we’ll help you pump the brakes to find your own happy ending.
Written by: Kevin Bailey
Miss our last show? Listen here: Avoid These Financial Blunders in 2025 with Smart Money Moves (SB1629).
Episode transcript
[00:00:00] Joe: It’s a cold morning in Texarkana. We actually got snow this last week. How about that? It snows two days in Texarkana and now we’ve hit the quota, which makes me happy. It’s early in the year we hit the quota. We’re done. Oh boy. Was it 34 there, Joe? [00:00:16] Doug: It was rain, snow. Rain snow, rain snow. Yeah. I woke up to 11 this morning, so I don’t want to hear it. [00:00:21] It’s [00:00:21] OG: 21 this morning. That’s, that’s respectable. 21. I’ll give you that. [00:00:27] Joe: It’s supposed to be a high here on Monday morning of, uh, 53 degrees today. Yeah. [00:00:32] OG: Yeah. Winter. I mean, winter sucks in Texas. It’s like, oh, it’s horrible. Least three or four straight days. [00:00:37] Joe: I gotta zip up my coat like halfway. You’ve no idea the pain. [00:00:42] OG: Well, I am so stressed about it. I am going to the Caymans in a day and a half, so you guys enjoy this little party. Oh. And uh, I’m gonna go sit on, uh, seven Mile Beach and drink, uh, champagne and. Oh, wine [00:00:58] Doug: fish, og. Getting into character right out of the shoot. [00:01:01] OG: Ah, that’s our annual trip. We try to go every year to this little talk about that little food wine festival as it as it works. [00:01:06] Sounds fantastic. [00:01:07] Joe: You know what else sounds fantastic. The fact that the men and women of our military, men and [00:01:11] OG: women patrolling the Gulf of America to make sure that Caymans are safe. [00:01:17] Joe: I on behalf too soon of the Men and Women Making Podcast in mom’s basement and the men and women at Navy Federal Credit Union, big Monday, salute to our Troops. [00:01:29] Thank you for all that you do. Keep [00:01:30] OG: Mickey mug too. [00:01:31] Joe: How about that? It is Mickey Mouse Mug Day. It’s [00:01:33] OG: Mickey Day. Sorry. [00:01:34] Joe: Cheers everybody. Let’s go stack some Benjamins together now, shall we? [00:01:39] Bit: You heard of this thing, the eight minute abs? Yeah, sure. Eight minute abs. Yeah. The uh, exercise video Uhhuh. Yeah. Well this is gonna blow that right out of the water. [00:01:48] Listen to this seven minute abs. [00:01:58] Doug: Live from Joe’s mom’s basement. It’s the Stacking Benjamin Show. [00:02:13] I’m Joe’s mom’s neighbor, Duggan. So far this year we’ve helped you grow your income, cut your spending, and define your purpose. And it’s not even February, so are you ready to take control of your life? Today’s mentor is the perfect man to do that. He’s financial author, speaker, and educator, Anthony O’Neill Plus in our headline, what Technology Will Influence Your Life in 2025? [00:02:38] Bill Gates, Sam, Altman, and others predict the future and we are here to share what it means to you. And I can assure you that no AI or robots were used in the making of my incredibly amazing trivia segment. And now two guys who think keeping up with the Joneses is just a great way to burn through your emergency fund. [00:03:00] It’s Joe and O. [00:03:07] Joe: Hey there, stackers and happy Monday. Welcome back to the Stacky Benjamin Show. I am Joe Sal. Hi. And I’m super happy to welcome back to the microphone after a glorious weekend away. Mr. OG is here. How are you my friend? [00:03:22] OG: Sorry, I was just, uh, Doug was yelling so much hurt my sensibilities. Good lord. Tone it down a little bit. [00:03:29] Did the open change indoor voice bro? Indoor voice. Oh, Doug, you got him already. You ever heard the open [00:03:34] Doug: before? It’s [00:03:34] Joe: literally what I do every time we got him back again on a Monday. Have you noticed how, how much hair I’ve lost lately? And people wonder why we got a great show today, gentlemen. Oh gee. [00:03:46] We’ve got Anthony O’Neill back. Nice. How about that? Former Ramsey personality. Financial educator. He is upstairs talking to mom right now because it’s time to take control of your life. Time to take control as he talks about, yeah, get a seat at the table he talks about and he’ll define what that metaphor means. [00:04:04] But, uh, og, have you ever thought that it might be time to take control of your life? [00:04:09] OG: No. I appreciate chaos. We were talking about this earlier. Chaos is what makes the world go around. If everything was easy, we’d all be lazy. So. You know, [00:04:19] Joe: I thought it was time for Doug and I to have the intervention. Like you came down to the basement and sat down. [00:04:24] You didn’t notice we were sitting here staring at you. Uh, og we’d like to talk to you about your life decisions. [00:04:28] Doug: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I’ve been blocking the door the whole time. [00:04:33] Joe: Well, that’s ’cause you won’t stay away from the Oreos, but that’s a whole different thing. So let’s review what Doug, you mentioned earlier about 2025. [00:04:41] Feel like me. There’s a lot you wanna do in 2025. So we began with make more money. Let’s talk about why we began there because in our Facebook group, the basement, there were a couple people that were like, well you gotta make sure that you manage your money before we even got to step two. So we’ll, we’ll, we will tell you how these dominoes play out. [00:04:59] You and I know OG that a big problem people have is we initially cut, right? We make cuts and we make cuts and we make cuts. And yet. We can’t shrink our way to greatness. We forget the thing that actually might be more fun and also is a thing that can allow us to keep maybe a bigger budget. And that is how do we make more income? [00:05:23] Like how often have you had to tell people, you know what, I think we need to just make more money. [00:05:27] OG: I mean, it happens probably. I, I bet on the conversations that I have 60% of the time, 70% of the time, there’s only so much that you can do short of like taking the, the drastic sell everything in the Dave Ramsey thing, right? [00:05:42] Like, like, oh, you, you screwed up. You, you, you know, you’ve got a little too, too much ahead of your skis. Just sell everything and restart. And that’s a solution I think that you can have in your back pocket if you absolutely need to. Hit the reset button, but for most people, I just don’t see that as a logical conclusion of like, oh, I’m a little overextended, or, you know, my costs have increased higher than I expected they could or would, and my income hasn’t. [00:06:08] Or I had a bad year of sales, and so my bonuses in as much as it used to be. The answer isn’t necessarily like, just sell everything, start over. You know, it’s like, well, how do I make a little bit more money? How do I leverage the skills that I have, whether it’s having a second income or a, a side hustle or, or parlaying it into, you know, some sort of self-employment. [00:06:31] Joe: This is clearly for us beginning the year with this rubric. Let’s work on making more money first, which is why we had the two episode Alex Har Mozy interview guy who’s made tons of money, but then to the point of one of our wonderful family members in our Facebook group, uh, who said, you know, you can end up the way that. [00:06:52] Joe talked about that. He was in the nineties and I totally was. I was always like, Hey, if I just make more money, that’s it. That’s why we followed it up with, it isn’t about just making more money, it’s also about what you keep and I love. Then we talked to frugality, uh, I’m gonna call ’em experts. They have the Frugal Friends podcast, Jen Smith and Jill Sirianni, and then followed that up with values, right? [00:07:13] Because then aligning this money that comes in with what do I really value or am I just wasting my so many times, og, I would talk to people that are just blowing cash on stuff they just don’t care about, and you’re like, you could, where are you spending money on that? It means nothing to you, like stop spending money on this crap that truly is doing nothing for your life. [00:07:33] That I would have to imagine also for you is the second conversation then that you have. [00:07:37] OG: Well, I think when it comes to expense management, at the end of the day, everything does count there. Short of selling everything and starting over, if you are just very intentional about it, and we go through this in our lives, you know, during different periods of time. [00:07:50] This is the beginning of the year, it’s always kind of a reset for everybody. So it’s reset for us too. And, you know, rethink all of the accounts on Monarch, you know, make sure everybody’s got the logins. And I’m literally looking at it every single day, watching all the different transactions. And most of the time, you know, we’re pretty established in terms of our rhythm. [00:08:09] I know when the mortgage is due and the insurance payment comes out and you know, it’s like I kind of got that vibe. I know when those things are gonna happen, but watching it happen in real time and there’s, you know, in a Monarch anyway, there’s a nice little chart that like shows you’re spending throughout the month and it’s like, and I’m like, we’re sitting here on the ninth of the month and I’m going, holy crow. [00:08:29] Is is, is this the pace? Let’s ease it back. Or is this like, [00:08:34] Joe: he’s like bringing the reins in is just [00:08:36] OG: like, there’s a lot of stuff at the beginning, you know, you just gotta, but it also helps from a cashflow standpoint, understanding that, hey, I can’t go into the beginning of the month with five grand in the bank. [00:08:45] If the first three days of the month have $10,000 of expenses. You know, just gives you some observational things that you can think about terms, I don’t know, Doug sounds like a [00:08:53] Joe: great fricking year. 10,000 bucks. The first four, like, we’re gonna rock this year. [00:08:57] OG: That’s No, I’m saying, I’m saying at the beginning of the month, like if you say my budget is 10,000 a month, but 5,000 of those expenses come out in the first three days, you can’t start the first of the month with two or three grand in the bank. [00:09:08] You’re gonna be upside down by 3000 by the second day of the month. A hundred percent. Even if the cash flow works out. [00:09:14] Joe: And I’m saying I don’t wanna be around you long term, but while that party’s going on short term, I wanna be in the middle of it. ’cause hey, if it’s a spending spree, I’ll help. [00:09:22] OG: Yeah, yeah. [00:09:22] We’re not in a spending spree right now. I’m trying to not be. Anyway, I think it’s just important just to. When you have good information, you can make good decisions. You know how many times, and Joe, you know this from before when you were an advisor, it’s like how many times would you say like, well, what’s your budget? [00:09:36] How much do you spend on dah, dah, dah, dah, dah. And there, and people would be like, I don’t know, $500 on groceries, and you’re going, family of four, $500 on groceries. Are you sure about that? Can’t be that. That doesn’t seem. Doesn’t seem, and then you seem track it, you haven’t track it for two months and they’re like, holy, this was a high month. [00:09:50] It was 1100. It’s like, okay, well what’s next month? Oh, 1100 and what’s the month after that? 1100. Well, it wasn’t a high month. That’s just the number, you know, that doesn’t make it right or wrong, it just gives you the information in order to make a good decision. Maybe that’s a lever that you wanna focus on, or maybe it’s not, but at least it gives you the, the data from which you can make good decisions. [00:10:10] Doug: Yeah, I, you know, I actually wanna rewind a little bit to something you said earlier, Joe. First, I think our listeners heads are spinning because you opened the curtain and let ’em know we have a rubric. Like there’s a plan to what we’re doing this year. And they’re like, what? Get outta here. You guys have no idea what you’re doing when you turn on the mics. [00:10:33] Right. It’s been, what, 14 years? I’ve seen zero evidence of pre-thought at all. Yeah. We started out the year with Alex Hormo and, and earning more, and we have talked about that before. And I think pretty consistently we can plan on people pushing back and getting annoyed when we talk about, or bring on guests that talk about earn more because it’s painful. [00:10:57] That feels painful. Like I’m doing everything I can right now to earn what I can earn. I don’t have any more time to earn more. And you do, you just don’t want to. And we’ve also talked about how you can’t save your way to a new lifestyle or save your way to kind of a whole new financial. You, you can improve things incrementally, but you’re not gonna make the big jumps doing that. [00:11:20] And it just makes me think of, uh, analogy that, uh, a former mentor used with me that said. Everybody wants the pill to get to better health. We want whatever that thing is, that’s easy to take with a glass of water. And sometimes you need the shot or you need the surgery and it’s painful, but you have to sometimes go through that, that discomfort to get to the next level. [00:11:46] ’cause if you’re not doing the little stuff you need to do to get a little side gig that’s maybe a little less painful, or to do these incremental savings things that OGs talking about, it’s gonna get painful. So figure out how you can do the little things now, whether it’s small side gigs or things you can do to improve the income side. [00:12:05] And the same thing on the, on the savings side so that you don’t need the major surgery. [00:12:10] Joe: I was telling you guys before we jumped on today, I’ve never received so many emails about episodes like I did the Alex Har episodes. Uh, so many wonderful emails from all of you going, what a wild departure. And that was so, it was so in depth. [00:12:26] It was so good. It was so, I took so many notes, just absolutely gratified by the number of people that jumped on that. But of course, Doug, to your point, I think one of the first things we received on that and we received very little negativity, but it was a negative comment going, uh, I did, I just gotta, [00:12:43] Doug: you know, I’m so tired of hearing people say, I just need to earn more. [00:12:46] Right. [00:12:47] Joe: Well, and it’s like Doc G saying people got upset with him Right. In his interview last week. People got upset with him when he was talking about purpose. ’cause it freaks people out to your point. Exactly. Doug, it’s, it’s incredible. So now that we’ve talked about earning more, and then let’s talk about what’s the purpose of that spending and where we kind of headed. [00:13:07] Anthony O’Neill today used to not be in charge of his life, which is why I wanted him to come next, because he’s gonna explain how he wasn’t in charge. But he’s gonna talk about creating your own seat at the table. Because if you are not working on your priorities, you’re working on somebody else’s priorities, by definition, you’re working on somebody else’s priorities. [00:13:25] So by the end of 2025, with all three of these parts intact, right, the earning, the spending, and what are our priorities, and we’re in charge of our destiny, we’re gonna be there. Uh, Anthony O’Neill, if you don’t know who he was, he was formally a Ramsey personality working with that guy in Tennessee today. [00:13:42] He’s rocking amazing YouTube channel teaching money and responsibility across America. And of course, today he’s on the Stacky Benjamin Show, Anthony O’Neill coming up next. Before that though, we have some sponsors that make sure that this is free for you so that, uh, you don’t have to pay for great mentors like Anthony O’Neill. [00:13:59] We’re gonna hear from them and then Anthony O’Neill teaching us how to grab a seat at the table. [00:14:16] And here he comes down the stairs. Have a seat man. Anthony O’Neill is here. How are you man? [00:14:22] Anthony: Ah man. I’m doing so good, Joe, how about yourself, brother? [00:14:24] Joe: I’m doing really well. Happy New Year to you. You obviously are a guy who’s very goal oriented. You’re very intentional about what you do. What are your goals for 2025 look like? [00:14:35] Anthony: Man, my main goal this year is to, one, get this book out and help a lot of people. But then number two, man, I’m actually back in school to get my executive MBA in church economics and management. And so my main goal this year is to finish that. I’ll be done December 16th of this year. So I, my bachelors and. [00:14:57] I’m really excited about that because, you know, I started out, if anyone remembers my story from the very beginning, I started out as a college dropout making some bad decisions. And so now that I have my MBA throughout this year as well, I’ll have the opportunity to be an adjunct professor teaching freshmens and sophomores financial management. [00:15:17] I’ll be teaching ’em how to budget, how to save, how to invest, how to stack them, Benjamins like you. And so, I mean, I’m really, really excited about that. But that’s really the main goal for this year is of course, keep the company going, get this book out there to help a lot of people. But the thing I’m most excited about. [00:15:33] It’s just really completed my degree, because let’s be honest, I don’t have, I didn’t have a degree. So then, now a lot of people could discredit my thoughts when it comes to money because I didn’t have the, the former education. But now all they can do is just disagree. But they can never discredit me because I put in a work, not only practically, but I also have the education behind me. [00:15:53] So I’m really excited about that. Then to add that I’ll be an adjunct professor behind my, my credibility, I just think that’s gonna be amazing, man. So I’m really excited about that joke. [00:16:02] Joe: A professor, uh, like you’re gonna be balled by me, like me when it’s all over, Anthony. [00:16:07] Anthony: I don’t, I don’t [00:16:07] Joe: know that you want, I’m [00:16:08] Anthony: starting to get a little bit of gray hair, man, you know, right here in the middle patch. [00:16:11] I dunno if you people could see me, but, uh, it’s starting to get there, but man, I hope I don’t go bad. [00:16:18] Joe: Well, a professor with gray hair, by the way, too. I mean, that’s good. That means logic. You’re in charge. Gray’s not bad. I remember that when I was first start off as a financial planner. I had this baby face where people would always disguise their question around how old am I to, so how long you been doing this? [00:16:37] Because I think I look like I was 13 when I started at age 27. [00:16:42] Anthony: Yeah, man. But [00:16:42] Joe: I didn’t know this. I remember your story from last time. We’ll link to the first time that you were here a few years ago. Yeah. But what I don’t remember was I never knew you were homeless. I don’t think I ever knew you were homeless. [00:16:53] Like how did that happen? [00:16:55] Anthony: Well, you know, it was honestly right around school. So I had made some real bad, bad decisions when I first went to school. I had my father’s GI bill and I had a, a partial scholarship from the National Forensics League. And uh, they just really made some bad decisions in school. [00:17:09] And I come from a very strong Christian faith home. And so once you make a decision out there at a grown age, my parents like, well, hey, since you think you’re all that and you got everything situated, then you go do that and you go live on your own. And man, I made some poor decisions. Um, so my family didn’t allow me to come back home. [00:17:26] Well, technically, my father’s, my mother’s was all like, yo, come home. Come home. But my dads was like, yeah, nah, man. Since you think you’re a grown man, go live that. And so my family thought I was living with my girlfriend at the time. Well, they didn’t know that me and my girlfriend had broke up ’cause she went back to another man, which was, that’s a whole nother story. [00:17:43] Oh man. And so everyone’s thinking I’m taken care of. But the truth of the fact was, no, I was homeless for a short period of my time. I’m not gonna sit here and, and act like it was for a long period of time. It, it wasn’t that long. It was a couple of months, three months. I was taking showers at the Boys and Girls Club to YMCA during the week, freshening up in the cars during the weekend, um, and just trying to make life happen, man. [00:18:05] But I, I tell this to everyone. It’s. Probably one of the worst seasons of my life, but probably also one of the best seasons of my life that really helped develop me into the man who I am today. I’m grateful for that season. I’m grateful that I got out of that season. ’cause during that season, Joe, man, I, I thought about completing suicide. [00:18:23] I thought about questioning my relationship with God. Like how can God put me here, homeless man. I questioned all these things and I realized that it wasn’t God. It wasn’t my parents. It wasn’t even my friends who I was trying to impress. I mean, it was me. I made those bad decisions. I wasn’t taking control of my life. [00:18:41] I wasn’t sitting at the head of my own table. I was allowing others to tell me what to do, tell me how to do things, and why I should do things rather than taking the seat at the reign of my own life and determining my own path, uh, technically the path that God put out for me. So, well [00:18:56] Joe: talk about seat at the table, Anthony. [00:18:58] I mean, you would’ve given anything, I think just for a table. I mean, you’ve got people. People telling you whether you can eat or not. Because if somebody gives you the handout that you need to make it to the next meal, then you’re fine. If they don’t, then you don’t. I mean, you’re, you’re so not in charge. [00:19:13] I gotta imagine in that situation. [00:19:15] Anthony: No, uh, totally agree. When you are, take it off from me and put on everyone. Sure. When you are at the place of everyone tells you what to do. Everyone tells you what time you need to be to work, what time you can get off, what time you can go to lunch, how to pay your bills. [00:19:32] If you can go to your kids’ game, the food you can eat, like if you’re in that place of life to where it’s like, man, I can’t decide if I wanna work there. No, I have to work there because I have to pay back all these bills. I can’t decide if I wanna go to my kids’ game because I have to go pay these bills. [00:19:50] So I gotta choose between the two. I wanna pay the bills, or do I wanna be a great mom and a supportive dad? No, I gotta go pay the bills because if I don’t pay the bills, then my kids won’t have nowhere to go play and less to eat during my life. At that time, man, I realized that man, I’m not taking control of my life. [00:20:06] I’m not doing it at all. And that’s what I mean when I say take a seat at your table. The table’s a metaphor for your life. Take a seat and take control of your life. No one should dictate what you’re doing, how you’re doing, when you’re doing it, and whom you’re doing it with. That should be solely between you. [00:20:24] And if you’re a Christian like myself, God, [00:20:26] Joe: you say that we all have the ability to get there, and yet most of us are poor stewards for our life. I think that’s a direct quote that we’re poor. How are we poor? Why are we, well, I wouldn’t even say, how are we poor stewards? ’cause you and I are, and all of our stackers, we know we’re poor stewards. [00:20:40] Mm-hmm. Why are we so bad? We all know if I get up and I do something with 2025, I can make it happen. Yeah. And yet, and we know we wanna be at the head of our own table. Why are we such poor stewards of our time? [00:20:53] Anthony: Let me tell you why. It goes back to the very first question, which you said, because me and you, we know what stewardship is, but I believe that a lot of people do not understand the meaning of stewardship. [00:21:02] And stewardship simply means it’s not yours. You are just called to manage it well, and as a Christian, I firmly believe that this life is not mine. I’m just called to manage this opportunity in this season that AB on this earth. Well, so we can’t steward something if we don’t know what stewardship actually means. [00:21:19] And so boy, once [00:21:20] Joe: we have your definition not to cut you off. Yeah. Once we have your definition, I feel like then we realize we’ve been given this gift and this responsibility. [00:21:27] Anthony: Responsibility. So everything that God has put on the inside of you with your podcast, like you are helping thousands of people really get right with their Benjamins. [00:21:36] What if you were to say, you know what, I’m gonna go get a job and just work a job and not do the podcast, not be a financial planner, but I’m gonna go out here and just work in a call center just so I can pay bills. Well, that’s, that’s you not being a good steward of your life because God fearfully, wonderfully made you to help people like myself, to help people who are listening. [00:21:57] And so everyone has to understand that you were created for a purpose. There is a purpose, there is an assignment. There is something for you to do. And if you don’t take the seat at the head of your life and understand that, then you’re never gonna reach your full potential. Now, watch this. I’m not saying that if you are working a job. [00:22:16] You’re not taking control of your life. No. What I’m saying is if God has called you into that job, you need to be there. Because if he called you to work a nine to five, if he called you to be the vice president, if he called you to be the supervisor and you are trying to be the CEO, you are not being a good steward of your life and you are not gonna get your full potential. [00:22:34] So it’s really about stepping back and understanding what is my assignment? What is my purpose? What is my being? Where am I supposed to be? And be there and watch how things open for you. Me and you both talk about wealth building and the reason why I came out my first book out of my own when they called Take a seat at the tables, because I could teach the principles of how to get out of debt. [00:22:55] I could teach you how to invest. You could do that well, but if me, you are being honest. I can teach you the steps, but if I don’t help you see things differently mentally, spiritually, and practically from your life in general, you’re never gonna succeed where you need to be financially. Because if I can help you get more money, but then you owe all this debt, it’s just going to make one end and it’s coming out the other end, but it’s not being fruitful in your life. [00:23:22] You’re serving a Citibank [00:23:23] Joe: and not yourself. [00:23:24] Anthony: That’s it. I mean, and that’s, and think about it, nearly 80% of us are serving Citibank. We’re we’re serving Bank of Americas. And I’m not knocking those banks because we all need checking accounts, savings accounts, and access to funding to get homes, right? But here’s the thing, you should not work Monday through Friday. [00:23:42] Get up every single day. Get your kids ready for school, drop them off at this, at the bus station. Stand in that long line, man. I had to take my nephew to school the other day and. [00:23:54] I stood in line for an hour just to take my nephew to school. Then I had to pick him up and no one told me, Hey bro, you might wanna go ahead and get there like 30 minutes early to get in line. Yeah. ’cause if you don’t, you’ll be there for an hour, hour and a half. Pick up your kid. I’m like, wait, wait, wait, wait. [00:24:11] What? What? Wait, say what? And so you are doing all this to get your kids picked up to get your kids dialed in. You are working a job that half of the people really don’t wanna work. You’re dealing with people you really don’t wanna deal with. Why in the world are you dealing with all of that for someone else to tell you what to do with your life for someone else? [00:24:29] Take all of the fruit of your labor and then you get the leftovers. So they’re getting a steak, they, they’re getting a macaroni and cheese, they’re getting a potato salad, they’re getting the collard greens, and then you get the leftovers of whatever they didn’t want or whatever they couldn’t take at that time. [00:24:45] And it should be the opposite way around. If I’m taking a seat at the head of my life. I’m getting a steak, I’m getting the macaroni and cheese and you know what? Bank of America, I owe you all a little bit of potato salad here go your potato salad. But I’m getting that. My family’s getting that. My legacy is getting that, but I still gotta pay bills. [00:25:02] I still gotta go to work. Like my job is not going to get the most of my time of my life. My family will get the most of my time in my life. And so I think that’s when we could take that seat at the head and understand, yo, this is my life. And I say this and, and, and you gotta cut me off, man. ’cause I’m a black preacher. [00:25:18] You know this black preacher keep going. And so cut me off whenever you need to this yourself. Uh, but it’s like, I remember this man, my young lady friend, her and I went to lunch and, uh, her husband was supposed to meet us, but she sat down and she sat down, was at Starbucks and said. My boss just told me what I need to do. [00:25:39] I was like, why would he tell you? She was like, well, he told me that I need to go, I need to be this. By this time next year I need to be this. By this time next year, and within seven years I could be in a position to be an executive VP of the company. I was like, okay, that’s what’s up. She said, yeah, but then he also said, if I wanna go there, I’ll be making about 150 to 200,000 a year. [00:25:56] I also can’t have any kids. And so I leaned back in my chair and I said, so did he ask you what did you what? She was like, no. I said, well, do y’all want kids? She’s like, yeah, my, my husband is saying he would like to start having kids. About about a year, year and a half, I said, lemme get this straight. Your job. [00:26:16] Never asked you, Hey, how can we best partner together? How can this be a win-win on both sides? But instead they told you, this is what we need from you, and we don’t care about your life and your desires. And she was like, I, I, I, I, I didn’t think about that. I said, yeah. I said, no, darling, you’re not sitting at the side of your life. [00:26:36] You’re not on the sidelines of your life. No. You are sitting at the head of your life. You are the VIP, you are the head coach. You made the decisions. And so if you want kids within the next two years, you need to tell them, Hey, we’re gonna have kids in the next two years. I’m gonna work my butt off. I’m, I’m gonna be a great team member here, but you’re not gonna tell me what to do with my life to benefit you at the cost of my pain. [00:27:00] No, no, no, no, no. And so, make long story short, man, she said, you’re right. She stood up and she took back reign of her life and they had a baby a year and a half later. And because the company was trying to talk her out of it, she quit the job and started her own business on the side. [00:27:14] Joe: Fantastic. You know what I like best about this? [00:27:17] I feel, and this is great, that it’s the start of a new year, Anthony, when people are really thinking about this stuff, is the fact that I feel like we’re always waiting for our boss to train us better. We’re always waiting for our boss to tell us. Like at first, hearing that story at the beginning, as you know, most of our stackers thought, wow, what a gift. [00:27:34] He’s telling us exactly what we gotta do to reach the top. But why are we letting that person sit at the head of our table? Why are we doing that? I, I never understand why somebody, like, nobody wakes up every day and goes, I wanna suck at work tomorrow. [00:27:47] Bit: Mm. [00:27:47] Joe: But how often do we go to the library or do we go to libraries anymore? [00:27:51] Do we go to the library? Do we look up on our phone? Do we look up anywhere? Like, how can I be better at this role that I’m at so I can give it the best that I can and be the best, not employee for you or for anybody else, but for me. Like, why, you know, the, uh, it just drives me crazy. Why we don’t create our own curriculum. [00:28:08] Speaking about going to school, why we don’t create our own curriculum to get there. Drives me crazy. I do have a question. Yeah. Which is, so right now for her, there’s somebody else, you know, this guy was sitting at the head of her table. Mm-hmm. In all of our lives. If we’re sitting here driving down the road, listening to you and me, they’re like, oh, well so and so I gotta, how, how do you move the people that are at the head of your table now outta there? [00:28:33] Because obviously. You know, maybe I gotta make waves, but if I can do this, I’m thinking of Sun Sue. The best battle’s, the one that’s never fought, right? Yeah. What is the way to get to the head of my table and remove the people that are there now? [00:28:46] Anthony: You know, Joe, this is a good question, man. I think for me, I recently had to do this, and honestly, I did this in December, coming into 2025, we gotta sit down and we’ve gotta have a clear, written, detailed vision on where we’re going. [00:28:57] So for an example, I know in 2025, as a single man who is dating, right? I know. In 2025, I [00:29:03] Joe: clearly have never dropped kids off at school before. [00:29:05] Anthony: Never, you know, never, never, never. I know for a fact that this year is gonna be a crucial year for me because I’m back in school, I’m in school, evening classes on Monday, Thursdays, running a business as. [00:29:23] I’m launching a book and then writing my next book that will come out next year. That’s gonna be my money book right now, since I laid down a foundation. And take your seat at the head of your table. Now I’m talking about money coming out in October, 2026. Hopefully I can get invited back on talk about that book. [00:29:37] Joe: I dunno, man. It’s, it’s a minute by minute, [00:29:41] Anthony: you know? And so for me, I wrote the vision. This is what I’m focused on throughout the year. 2025. Watch this. I identified people who do not align with that. Even as a man who was dating my single world, I’m like, Hey, listen, this is the vision of where I’m going, and if you can’t align with this vision, if you’re gonna complain that I’m in school, if you’re gonna complain that I’m working, if you can’t handle being on my team member knowing like, Hey, I need you to step up a little bit, then I gotta remove you from my table for this season of my life, because I only need people who align with my vision and watch this. [00:30:17] My vision aligns with theirs. It is a win-win situation. And so it’s never me saying, Hey, you know what, John? I can’t work with you no more. I don’t like you no more. No, it is. The vision is saying, this person has to go. And the vision is saying, we need this person at the table. I’m back in school. I need people who’ve been to school before, back at my on my table, helping me learn how to read better, study better, write better, think better, right? [00:30:45] I need people at my table who can honestly help my business run without me always doing it. I need a woman at my table who can understand like, Hey, I may not be able to give you a lot of time for this particular year, but if you ride this wave with me, it’s gonna be fruitful for you, especially after I graduate. [00:31:01] Because now look at it. I’m more educated. I have to have more experience. It’s gonna create more opportunities. More opportunities, create more funding and more resources, financial resources for this family. And so what I tell people is. You cannot make a clear decision who needs to be in your life, who needs to be out of your life without you knowing exactly where you’re going. [00:31:20] Because then what happens is you are making that decision based on do I like her or him, or are they cool? No, no, no. It needs to be, are we aligned? And when we are aligned, the vision itself will say, bring them or let ’em go. [00:31:34] Joe: You talk about other people at the table as well. I know that mentoring now is hard. [00:31:39] Everybody is. And by mentoring I don’t mean Well, I mean both. I mean, heck, mentoring somebody’s hard, but getting a mentor’s attention is difficult in this age where we’ve all got 5 million things that we’re doing every single day, I feel like. How do you get those people at your table? To actually be your, you know, Knights of the round table, [00:31:59] Anthony: man. [00:31:59] You know, I think for me, and, and you’re talking about specifically like mentors or just people in general? [00:32:04] Joe: Well, I’m talking about, well I think, I think if somebody’s gonna be at your table anyway, there’s gotta be a little bit of a mentor aspect to that, isn’t it? Or, or am I reading those this wrong? [00:32:12] Anthony: No, absolutely. [00:32:12] I believe that there has to be three particular types of people at Mentor. [00:32:26] You are a mentor. I’m a mentor, but people listen to our podcast. So we can’t sit at everyone’s table, but we can have a presence at the table by simply listening to our podcast, reading our books, uh, consuming our content because we’re coming from a genuine and a heartfelt perspective. And so for me, I have several mentors that do not have a physical seat at my table because I don’t have direct relation with them. [00:32:54] But I do listen to their stuff. I do read their books. I have mentors who are in their nineties who can’t even talk no more, but I’m consuming and reading their books because I’m constantly growing. But now when we talk about this from a practical standpoint, you do need to have a spiritual mentor at your table. [00:33:12] In my personal opinion, you do need to have a mentor who’s been successful in some aspect of your life. And if you can do that. This may be a pastor, this could be a, um, um, someone from your local church, from your local community. You can say, Hey, listen, I’m trying to do X, Y, z. I need someone to guide me through this and hold me accountable. [00:33:33] But then you gotta get a therapist and you gotta get emotional coach. Those are two things you can get today. You can Google that. Uh, but everybody needs a therapist. Everybody needs an emotional coach, in my personal opinion, because I do not believe you can truly grow wealth. Now you can be rich, but if your mind is not healthy, you can’t sustain. [00:33:52] Well, [00:33:53] Joe: how many people have we known that have violated that? They’re like, no, I, and we all know them. You look and you’re like, oh, I know this person’s wealthy and miserable. [00:34:00] Anthony: Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, no, no. I know a lot of people. I know a lot of people because I would say they’re rich and miserable. I haven’t met a lot of people who are wealthy and miserable. [00:34:11] No good. ’cause wealth to me is so much more than money. Wealth is man, peace, joy, abundance, um, happiness, money, right? Rich is, I just got a lot of money, but I don’t have peace. I just got a lot of money. I don’t really have a family that I’m excited about. So for me, I don’t know a lot of people who are wealthy and miserable, but I do know a lot of people who are rich and miserable. [00:34:36] But what I’ve learned with the wealthy people is one, they take a seat at the head of their own life. Two, they have the right therapists, uh, around them that’s constantly helping them, you know, medicine, their head and their process and thinking. Three, watch this. Wealthy people have the right partner in their life as a single person. [00:34:55] On the opposite side of the table as a metaphor. There’s an M empty seat that will always be there that my wife will take reign over and together we will partner together to build something of substantial. But every wealthy person that I’ve met, man, their partner, them and their partner are alive and it’s absolutely refreshing and amazing and I can’t wait to be there. [00:35:16] Joe: I feel like then once you have that partner, the very next thing would be like a family mission statement. Yeah. I feel like this is kind of built in Anthony. [00:35:25] Anthony: No, absolutely. One of the things that I’ll be talking about, I’ll talk a little bit about in this book, um, as far as in family members. My next book next year, I’m really be talking about the importance of, uh, family meetings, uh, family. [00:35:36] I call those family board meetings. [00:35:38] Bit: Mm-hmm. [00:35:39] Anthony: Uh, but every wealthy person that I’ve seen, and, and I’m pretty sure you see this in the financial planning world, is that Wealthy Families Inc. They have family meetings and watch this at family meetings are not just, hey, they let you know what happens after someone dies. [00:35:51] No. They take advantage of all the skills, resources, and tools that is inside their family today. And how do we build our wealth more today while we’re living? And yes, how do we position that to be, uh, in great use? After we’re gone. But how can we maximize the time that we have right now? And I think that’s important. [00:36:10] And I can’t wait to have kids at two years old. They’re gonna understand family meetings at three years old. They’re gonna understand money and, and they’re gonna see things that they may not be able to comprehend. But by the time they turn 18, oh, that’s what dad and mom was doing at the table. Oh, that’s what we were doing when we was doing that. [00:36:25] I’m teaching them before they could even start walking. That you’re gonna take a seat at the head of your table and that yes, I’m your mom and dad and it’s not my job to take the seat at the head of your table. It is my job to train you in the way you should sit. Sit at the head of your table for your life moving forward. [00:36:42] So, man, I I get excited about this message, man. I, I wish you [00:36:45] Joe: had some passion. If you had some passion, you’d be the whole package. I thought you were gonna say that by age seven they would know how to drive so that you don’t have to take ’em to school and wait in that line. [00:36:56] Anthony: Hey man, listen, uh, we gonna have somebody, we, because I mean that standing that line, they told me, Hey, needs to be at school at eight o’clock, so I leave my house at 7 45. [00:37:04] Yes. Yeah. And that’s not the case. And then I didn’t know if they’re not there on time, you gotta go. Check them in. And I’m like, yes, no, I was here, but y’all had 150 cars. [00:37:20] Joe: Well, the judgmental mom with nothing better to do. [00:37:22] Anthony: Right. Point the what [00:37:24] Joe: in [00:37:24] Anthony: the [00:37:24] Joe: world point at you, you horrible human being. But [00:37:27] Anthony: here’s what I saw that, and then they told me afterwards, they said, well, if you know you’re gonna be late and what you wanna do is just find somewhere to park and just walk them up there and walk back. [00:37:34] It’s just, or run. Or run. Short run. But I was like, yeah, but you do know it’s 40 degrees outside, so who’s, who wants to walk in 40 degrees? It’s, it’s a learning experience. But you know what, I look, I look forward to those days, believe it or not, man. Like I really do look forward to those days. [00:37:50] Joe: It was so fun. [00:37:51] I miss them so much. My kids are almost 30. I don’t miss being a financial planner. I love being able to talk to lots of people and mentor them about their financial planning, which is why I love this project so much. Taking control at the start of 2025. I. Thinking about what do I want now? What does the boss want? [00:38:08] What does everybody else want? But what do I want? Not from 2025, just from my life. Uh, your new project on this is called Take Your Seat at the Table. It is available tomorrow. Live an authentic life of abundance, wellness, and freedom. And I gotta assume, Anthony, it’s available everywhere. [00:38:25] Anthony: It is available everywhere. [00:38:26] All your bookstores, man. We’ve sold thousands of presale copies and, uh, man, Joe, what we’re doing, if this book with your link. [00:38:38] So we’re gonna give them the free study guide if they get it through your link. So it comes with a study guide where they can really write through with their spouse, with their partner accountability partner. We’re gonna give them some free courses to help them start out 2025. Well, so it’s, it’s gonna be absolutely amazing, man. [00:38:51] I’m excited about it. But they gotta click your link to get it so that we can know that they came from your site [00:38:56] Joe: deal. We will have the link a little later in the show. Anthony O’Neill, good to see you again, man. [00:39:01] Anthony: Hey, thank you man, so much for having me. [00:39:03] Joe: Happy New Year. [00:39:04] Anthony: Happy New Year to you too. [00:39:10] Doug: Hey there, stackers. I’m Joe’s mom’s neighbor, Doug, and today is a huge day in world history. Why you ask? Well, it’s the anniversary of the first time an ejection seat was used in an aircraft. Naturally. I thought today would be a great day to test one. Right here in Joe’s mom’s basement, but she quickly shot that idea down. [00:39:31] Muttering something about like messing up her ceiling and insurance not covering Doug related disasters. That maybe is a buzzkill. So instead of injecting myself into podcasting history, let’s focus on another historic figure who could be considered the spiritual mentor of this show. Horatio Alger. I know you saw that coming. [00:39:54] Right? Born on this day, Alger wrote those rags to richest novels about Americans pulling themselves up by their bootstraps, and as I always thought, getting into a healthy amount of credit card debt. Wait, what Joe? I’m recording. Oh, that’s not what he emphasized. All right. Okay, fine. My bad. Anyway, speaking of pulling yourself up and standing out, another American icon launched into pop culture this week, back in 1974. [00:40:22] The font. You know, leather jackets, slicked back hair too cool for school. He was the king of clashing, hilariously with older folks and definitely didn’t need Horatio Algers advice. He had his own motorcycle after all. So here’s the question on what Benjamin Stacking super popular TV show did the FS make his debut? [00:40:45] I’ll be back with your answer right after I see if Joe’s mom will let me use the ejection seat to get out of doing her grocery run. Fingers crossed. [00:41:03] Hey there, stackers. I’m guy with the exit plan and slicked back hair admirer. Joe’s mom’s neighbor, Doug. Alright, it’s time for the big reveal. The Fons made his debut on a show that didn’t just capture hearts, it captured wallet. This series was a moneymaking machine dominating the ratings and Stacking enough benjamin’s to make even Horatio Alger a little jealous merchandise check spinoffs. [00:41:29] Oh, we’re talking Laverne and Shirley, Morgan, Mindy, and even the blink. And you’ll miss it. Joni loves Chachi. God, the show was awesome. They turned nostalgia for the 1950s into a full blown empire. And yet, let’s not forget this show taught us some valuable lessons, like, uh, a confidence can fix anything, even a jukebox, and that leather jackets are apparently recession proof investment. [00:41:54] That’s what I keep telling myself. Meanwhile, I was down here trying to channel my inner fons with Joe’s Mom’s hot water heater. Spoiler alert. These things don’t fix themselves with a cool a and a well-placed smack. Oh, and, uh, speaking of fixing things, I’m still holding out hope for that ejector seat test. [00:42:11] Sure. Joe’s mom isn’t thrilled about me turning her ceiling into a launchpad, but I say, what’s the basement for? If not groundbreaking experiments, literally in this case, groundbreaking. Am I right? I mean, come on. Anyway, back to business. So what was the name of this Benjamin Stacking spinoff Spawning Motorcycle Riding Fs Fuel Show. [00:42:31] Happy days. Hey, and now two. I think I [00:42:36] Joe: nailed it. Maybe overdid a little. [00:42:39] Doug: Hey. And now two guys ejecting money tips at the speed of sound, Joe and og. You gotta try that at the Sizzler and, uh, scare the waitstaff with that. Hey, what I wanna do is my jukebox fix on Todd’s forehead C. [00:42:57] Joe: Can you believe that? Uh, that was Henry Winkler all those years ago. [00:43:02] And Henry Win, Mr. Reverse Mortgage. Is he a reverse mortgage guy? He is a reverse mortgage guy. Yeah. I loved him on, uh, Bernie Arrested Development. Like all the things that, he’s that guy, just an amazing actor. [00:43:14] Doug: He’s a really good comedic actor. Uh, he’s, yeah, he’s been a bunch of other things too. [00:43:18] Joe: I’ve heard from people that know him too. [00:43:21] I actually know people who know him and talk about. Okay. Just nice flex. Wonderful. Yeah, I know people who know people. Doug, I can get to the Fons if I need to. I don’t think I can. We actually tried once last year and they’re like, yeah, I don’t think I can do that for you. But, uh, but it would be fun to have Henry Winkler on the show. [00:43:37] That would at some point, if you know Henry Winkler stackers, tell ’em that we said hi and we’re big fans. We’d love to talk to him. But Doug, I know when you talk about merchandise. Happy days lunchbox. Mm. Like I was, I was super young back then, but I think everybody had a happy days lunchbox [00:43:52] Doug: or wanted one like me coveted the happy days lunchbox. [00:43:57] Couldn’t get parents to pull the trigger. [00:44:00] Joe: Oh, so, so sad. Being born into the wrong family. Mm-hmm. That’s, I mean, some people have first world problems. That’s a real problem in America [00:44:08] Doug: right there. Practically destitute. Had the hand me down Monkeys Lunchbox for my older brother. The Thermos was broken, sucked. [00:44:16] Let’s talk about a headline. [00:44:19] headlines: Hello Doling. And now it’s time for your favorite part of the show. Our Stacking Benjamin’s headlines. [00:44:25] Joe: Our headline, uh, comes to us from Business Insider and og. We’ve got some predictions here for 2025. Bill Gates. Sam Altman, other tech leaders share their predictions for 2025 technology. [00:44:39] If you think during our entire life becoming more and more just integrated into what we do every day, and I think it’s even becoming more and more integrated into our money situation, especially when it comes to earning money. I remember we were talking to downtown Josh Brown from CBC last year, and he was talking about, you know, the robots. [00:44:58] Everybody’s worried that the robots are coming for our jobs. The robots are coming. Yeah. So I click this wondering if that is going to be the case according to Gates and Altman and, uh, here’s what they came up with. OG AI’s significant impact on workforce and tech use will continue in 2025. That doesn’t surprise anybody. [00:45:18] Shifts in work dynamics, including the introduction of AI agents could be on the horizon. Now, I’m sure there’s some people that work in the tech world that have heard about AI agents a ton. I’m not one of those people. I may have seen it in passing a few times. Doug, I know that you were in the tech field. [00:45:36] Have you heard that term often? AI agents? Yeah, absolutely. [00:45:40] Doug: AI agents, of course. [00:45:42] Joe: Sam, glad you defined that. Uh, [00:45:45] Doug: Sam, you just asked me if I’d heard of them. Yes, yes. I was in the tech field. Yes, I’ve heard of AI agents, [00:45:51] Joe: Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI. Of course, people who dunno, OpenAI. They’re the company that runs chat. [00:45:56] GPT set in a blog post that AI agents could join the workforce this year and quote, OG materially changed the output of companies since generative AI became a more mainstream concept. Concerns about job security have risen among workers. Ag ai, which requires gen AI to work, is the technology that AI companies say could work alongside their employees as digital coworkers. [00:46:22] So it could be on the podcast here, OG You, Doug, me and a couple digital coworkers working side by side with us in the future. How about that? The future is now [00:46:32] OG: That would be great for me and then I can take Mondays off. [00:46:36] Doug: You’re already working as a consumer. You’re already probably working with AI agents, but just not vocally. [00:46:43] It takes generative AI to be more convincing and create that human voice interaction that you might get if you called in on the phone. But anytime you try to do a chat for customer support on, you know, pick a big company, they’re gonna start you out on an AI agent first. And then if it, you know, if they can’t answer your question, then you can sort of just like you would on the phone screaming into the phone representative, representative, [00:47:06] OG: rep, rep zero. [00:47:08] Oh, damn it. I wanna representative [00:47:10] Doug: you do that in chat. But uh, yeah, it’s coming vocally. I [00:47:14] Joe: think this is important headline today though, because with Anthony O’Neill talking about taking control, I mean I think part of OG taking control yourself is looking at what could be coming in my industry, what could be changing about my life, whether I wanted to, you know, there was a, a really seminal book back in the what, late 1990s, early two thousands, uh, who moved My Cheese where yeah, the cheese is moving not just at the start of the year, the cheese’s been moving, whether it turns 2025 or not, you just gotta acknowledge that the cheese is moving and what do I need to do to keep pace? [00:47:49] OG: Well, I think the reality is, sounds really silly to say, but the only constant is that change. And I think what’s really interesting is the rate of change. I was reading an article and it was a Gen Xer who was basically lamenting the fact that he felt since he was not, I. Keeping up with ai, he was losing ground. [00:48:11] He’s like, this is what I felt like in college when my friends were talking about Bluetooth and Google. And I was like, wait, what’s Google and Bluetooth? Like, what are these things? And he’s like, it took me too long to kinda latch onto that. And now I feel like AI is this next thing that, you know, I’m 50 and I feel like I’m behind already. [00:48:32] And uh, to Doug’s point, you’re probably not behind. It’s being used in applications you’re maybe not even aware of. I, I think the bigger issue is the nefarious uses of it and for people that are not, you know, like thinking about how this could be used for bad things. We had that, uh, notebook, LM thing a couple of weeks or months ago. [00:48:54] We talked about it, you know, that you could take a, take a book and turn it into a podcast and it sounds like real people, you know, and there’s enough content for Joe, for you or for me or for Doug that. Somebody somewhere could very easily take our personalities and turn it into something nefarious. And not having a way to protect that, I think is, that’s the concern that I have about technology. [00:49:18] Joe: Well, we just had the Golden Globes a couple weeks ago, and, uh, a movie that was mentioned around the Golden Globes, I don’t recall if it actually won award, was Thelma, which is a story about an older woman who has her identity stolen and oh gee, the, the chance of, of not just older Americans, but anybody getting their identity stolen is, is it’s, it’s becoming easier than ever. [00:49:41] I think with all the tools, [00:49:42] OG: we all know somebody who’s had, uh, some financial. Fraud due to technology or due to identity theft or whatever. [00:49:50] Joe: Let’s talk about this role of fear, though. You know, fear that something nefarious is happening to us, or fear that I’m not keeping up with ai, that I’ve, that I don’t know enough and maybe my job is in jeopardy in a financial plan. [00:50:03] Part of your financial plan is risk management, and I think to some degree og it can clearly be in insidious and be harmful to you. But I think there is a healthy amount of fear, don’t you think? Where being a little bit afraid that maybe I’m behind about ai, maybe I need to know a little more, that’s not a bad fear, and acting on that fear to get caught up when I don’t think you’re truly that far behind right now is a wonderful thing to feel. [00:50:30] OG: Yeah, I mean, I guess ultimately anything that moves and moves you positively in a good direction is probably a good thing. Tension is is a good thing until it’s not. There’s productive tension. Doug disagrees with that, but there’s productive tension and it’s like when you’re just fat enough that you need to go to the gym, but not too fat to recognize that it’s gonna really hurt when you go to the gym. [00:50:55] You know, it’s just to force you to not go to the [00:50:57] Doug: gym. No, I don’t. I don’t disagree with it. I think that whenever I hear that phrase in all of its many forms, X is great until it’s not. It just feels trite to me because the problem is we don’t see the, it’s not until, it’s not until it’s too late. So the goal is figure it out just before that point, or you know, even before that, so that you don’t, we’re like, holy crap, what happened? [00:51:21] How did I get this fat? That’s, I just don’t love that phrase. But I mean, the notion behind it is fine. [00:51:26] OG: I mean, when it comes to technology, the best thing that you can do is just play around with it. Open AI is free for some uses. Copilot is free for some use. Like there’s no, there’s no harm in. Messing around with it. [00:51:42] Although I will tell you the other day that I’ve, I saw this thing that was going on on Reddit about chat GPT and you know, super confident and it’s also confident and in being incorrect. And it was a math problem that was like super easy and it was, it was 1000% confident, but it was 1000% wrong. And it even explained why it was wrong and then still got the wrong answer. [00:52:04] And I can’t remember what it was. It was something like, is three eighths bigger than five 16? And it was like, no, 16 is bigger than eight. Yeah. Therefore five 16 is bigger than three eighths. [00:52:13] Doug: The old quarter pounder third of a pounder. [00:52:15] OG: This is a fraction. This is a third grader would be able to calculate this to like figure it out and simplify this to to see which one is better. [00:52:23] Joe: Well, and I think that should give us all confidence, right? I mean, you’re not too far behind right now when you see the AI is very confidently messing stuff up. You’re not too far behind. Just yeah, get on a play with, it’s like a little [00:52:33] OG: person. It’s like a normal person, just very confidently messing things up. [00:52:40] Joe: I love what Sam Altman at OpenAI says his quote is, we continue to believe that iteratively putting great tools in the hands of people leads to great broadly distributed outcomes. I love this ’cause I know so many people, OG, that are afraid for their jobs. They’re afraid that the worst is coming. And when you think about it as a tool, right? [00:52:59] Then you’re doing exactly what Anthony O’Neill said. Today, I’m in charge. I’m at the head of my table, and guess what I’m gonna do? I’m gonna use these AI tools. To get ahead faster. Uh, Josh Brown said it on the show. He said, the key to not being afraid of the robot is to own the robot. And even if you don’t have the money to go buy yourself a robot or, or buy some chat, GPT. [00:53:20] I think owning the robot is a confidence thing. I own it because I know that it’s not gonna be right all the time. I own it because I know where I wanna plug it in to help myself either be more productive, get more time off, whatever it might be. I can quote own it because I own my time the same way that Anthony O’Neill says, we just need to own our destiny this year. [00:53:42] This piece also says we’ll also reveal whether one of Bill Gates longtime predictions will come to fruition. I think this is another big point, guys. Gates has set up many occasions. Two thirds of all jobs in the US will require some form of education beyond high school by 2025. He said that for a long time. [00:53:58] That’s been his prediction. Two thirds. Yeah. I don’t know that 2025 is gonna be the year, but I think if you don’t. Hear that first, and then go back to Alex Ozzi at the beginning of the year, OG and go, don’t worry about a college diploma. Worry about creating and designing a curriculum that serves your life. [00:54:16] That’s where you’re gonna need to go. And that will be beyond high school. It’s gonna be, you know, whatever type of training serves you best. [00:54:23] OG: But it doesn’t have to be college [00:54:24] Joe: doesn’t have to be, no. [00:54:26] OG: Uh, I was thinking about this technology thing. The other, uh, was, was somebody the other day, like all these tech companies have certification programs in their ecosphere, right? [00:54:34] Like you can be Google certified, Microsoft certified, whatever, and they will run these trainings and you graduate with, you know, after six months of like learning their system and they’ve got this workforce that they’re building that’s really productive with their thing. I’m sure it helps to have some sort of tech background or at least be able to, to understand it, but there’s no requirement that you come in with a bachelor’s degree, you know, in in computer science to work at Google. [00:55:00] If you want to go that direction, there’s a path for that that doesn’t include a hundred thousand dollars of student loan debt. [00:55:07] Joe: Well, my son is in, you know, does, uh, coding with Microsoft. [00:55:11] Bit: Yeah. [00:55:11] Joe: And the first thing that they do is they give you a test to see if you know coding. I. I don’t really care. Oji, to your point where you learned it. [00:55:17] Yeah. It’s, it’s really the value of how can you think, how can you get this done? Certainly the recruiter’s gonna be attached to the sheet of paper that says, Hey, this university, show me the credentials. But we’ve heard lots of stories that point directly to what you’re talking about. We’re gonna link more to this and our show notes page, Stacking Benjamins dot com, head there. [00:55:36] And of course, we’ve also got the 2 0 1, which comes out tomorrow. Uh, stacky Benjamins dot com slash 2 0 1. If you’re wondering what the hell I’m talking about, that is our newsletter comes out once a week. It is free. And even if you happen to miss the show and you want to come back later and catch up with us on the podcast every Tuesday, we’ll deliver to your email address a free newsletter going over a bunch of curated links, the best of the internet on the topics we talk about here on Stacking Benjamins and the rubric. [00:56:04] We talked about the kind of the method behind the madness you’ll see on the 2 0 1. All right, that’s going to mostly do it for today. Let’s wander out to the back porch, Doug. What do we got today? On the back porch of this here podcast. [00:56:19] Doug: A couple of things, Joe, but I think I wanna start out with, last time we talked about this, we discovered that we had a member of the Detroit Lions Wide Receiving Corps, who was giving us a five star review. [00:56:31] Of course, of course. And apparently we are just, we’re spreading like wildfire through the NFL because now we have a Bills defensive back. Oh, I mean, the, the username is Bill SDB, I can only translate that to Bill’s db. So it’s, I’m, you know, I’m trying to track it down, but I think it might be Joe Andreessen, possibly Sul Douglas. [00:56:53] But, uh, here’s what they say. I don’t agree with everything that’s suggested, but I love this show. Exclamation Point, a good mix of comedy and real life money strategies. Love that. You like it when people disagree with stuff we talk about. I know that. I [00:57:08] Joe: do. I just like it. That we make you think, right? I mean, our job is to bring up this stuff that we feel like is relevant and what are you gonna do with this? [00:57:16] You know, what are you gonna do with making more money? Whatcha are you gonna do with being more frugal? What are you gonna do with taking a seat at the table? How are you gonna do that? If we can make you think more about that, even if you disagree with our take, wonderful. Love that. [00:57:27] Doug: Well, you know, and the, and the, hopefully the positive outcome of the disagreement in the listener’s own mind is, that’s stupid. [00:57:33] I’m not doing that. Here’s what I’m gonna do. At least you’ve then made a plan for yourself and something that you can, you can follow if it’s makes you think that objectively about it. Absolutely. So yeah, it should have a positive outcome. [00:57:45] Joe: No, and your point, Doug, it’s not what you know, right? It’s what you do. [00:57:48] It is a hundred percent what you do. Not at all what you know. So love, love that. Thank you for that review. By the way. Feel free to email me with this stuff. People that know me, no. That I will bore to tears talking about this stuff. And Cheryl will be very happy. Oh, please God. Email Joe and talk to you about it so he doesn’t talk to me about it so much. [00:58:07] That would be great. [00:58:08] Doug: It’s awesome. And you’ll, you’ll probably get more of what you want if you email than if you send the flaming review first. And, and, and here’s my experience with that. This is not a joke. Uh, I got a Christmas gift from an Etsy, you know, from, from Mrs. Neighbor Doug. But she got it off Etsy and it was not a great product. [00:58:27] In fact, it was a really bad product. I sent the person an email first saying, before I leave a review, I thought I’d reach out to you and say, here’s, here are the things that I have issue with. And they immediately refunded the money a hundred percent and then offered to send me a free new pair. Oh, that’s cool. [00:58:43] Of these mittens. And I think, you know, that was more effective than just going out on Etsy and leaving a review saying how much these. Supposedly real sheepskin mittens. They were so far from being real. These, these real fake sheepskin. Oh yeah. Anyway, uh, it’s pretty effective to send the direct email with stuff you’re not happy about. [00:59:06] Uh, Joe, let’s talk about where your traveling soon. You guys wanna come to Seattle with me? Why don’t you guys come to Seattle? No. Wow. [00:59:19] Joe: That [00:59:19] OG: was quick. Actually. I think Doug and I are gonna go skiing while you’re in Seattle. Why don’t you come skiing with us? [00:59:24] Joe: Well, because we got a bunch of stackers in Seattle that, uh, wanna do I bet. [00:59:27] Should we get a bunch [00:59:28] OG: of stackers that wanted to go skiing? [00:59:30] Joe: Well, you guys have a skiing meetup, wherever you’re gonna go skiing. And, uh, I will have another meetup and we could be two different places. We should do that. We’ll announce where Doug and OG are going skiing. And, uh, Thursday the sixth, I can tell you we’re gonna have a Stacking Benjamins meetup. [00:59:44] I don’t know where it is yet. Uh, Tina and I are working on that right now. But block off your calendar stackers. If you’re in the greater Seattle Tacoma area, we’d love to come down from Vancouver. Wherever you you’re at in the area. Come join us for maybe some, uh, of your favorite foamy beverage or non foamy beverage and some great, great, uh, geekery. [01:00:08] February 8th, I’m gonna do a appear at Retire Me an all Day Seminar, man. Apol, Merriman’s gonna be speaking there. Uh, your friend Apollo. I wanna say Apollo Creed, but that’s not Apollo’s last name. Different guy. What’s, what’s Apollo’s last name? Oog. [01:00:24] OG: Lap Pesky. [01:00:25] Joe: Yeah. Apollo Lap Pesky from Dimensional Funds, uh, is going to be there. [01:00:30] He’s always, he’s been on the podcast as well. Of course. Our friends, uh, Don McDonald and to Tom Cock, who are just good, most gracious host of the Talking Real Money Show. Put on that Retire me.com to get your tickets. Put Stacking Benjamins in the le promo code. And Tom assure me, you’ll even get a discount if there’s seats left. [01:00:48] I talked to ’em yesterday. They’re selling quickly, but, uh, and they, they sell out every year. But if you can come to retirement, like I’ve heard a couple of you already tell me that you’re coming. Can’t wait to see you either on Thursday or Saturday, or both. When I’m in Seattle. When, last thing I had, Doug, was that. [01:01:04] The book Club Ship is, uh, going to be sailing here fairly soon. What’s the book club? It’s where we go through my book Stacked and we take it lesson by lesson with a small group of people. We got great, great, great reviews on the book club last year. Our first group to go through it. If you go to Stacking Benjamins dot com slash book club, you’ll find out more there. [01:01:27] If you’d like to work on understanding your money a lot better, more thoroughly following all the tenets of good financial planning and how it works, it’s Stacking Benjamins dot com slash book club. [01:01:37] Doug: I know that’s going really well and people have raved about it, but when you first started that sentence. [01:01:43] I heard a different letter when you said the book club ship. I’m like, why is he what? Why is he harshing on this? I think it’s pretty cool. Like, people like it that ship. [01:01:57] Joe: It’s a whole different thing. Well, thank you to everybody for letting us your ears today. We always wanna make this well worth your time and, uh, certainly I thought Anthony O’Neill brought it today, but Doug, you’ve got the list, man. What were our big, uh, things that should be on our to-do list now that we heard the Monday edition of the Stacking Benjamin Show? [01:02:17] Doug: Well, Joe first take some advice from Anthony O’Neill. Not sure about your to-do list. If your priorities aren’t listed, someone else’s are dominating. Start with what you want and grab your seat at the head of your table. Second technology’s impact in your life if you haven’t already, 2025 is the year to study tech and figure out how you’re going to control it so it doesn’t control. [01:02:42] You see what I did there? But the big lesson, if you’re trying to create your own destiny, remember, the fons may have started with a leather jacket, but he never had to share a table with Joe’s mom. She’s now 100% convinced an ejection seat would be the perfect way to speed up dessert time at dinner. [01:03:05] There goes a pie a I’m just gonna say a whenever I can. It’s like it’s the best exclamation point at the end of a sentence. Get ready. Neighbor Doug 2025. Hey, thanks to Anthony O’Neill for joining us today. You’ll find his new book, take Your Seat at the Table wherever books are sold. You know what? I’ll also include links in the show notes at Stacking Benjamins dot com. [01:03:34] Hey, this show is the property of SB podcasts, LLC, copyright 2025, and is created by Joe Saul-Sehy. Joe gets help from a few of our neighborhood friends. You’ll find out about our awesome team at Stacking Benjamins dot com, along with the show notes and how you can find us on YouTube and all the usual social media spots. [01:03:57] Come say hello. Oh yeah. And before I go, not only should you not take advice from these nerds, don’t take advice from people you don’t know. This show is for entertainment purposes only. Before making any financial decisions, speak with a real financial advisor. I’m Joe’s Mom’s neighbor, Duggan. We’ll see you next time back here at the Stacking Benjamin Show. [01:05:09] Bit: Doug, [01:05:10] Joe: we promised last week that we’re gonna talk, uh, movies and TV shows. I certainly have watched, uh, a couple things that I’d like to dive into, but let’s do it, man. Oji, you, do you watch anything over the holidays? Anything good? [01:05:22] OG: Um, I’m almost through the final episode of Landman is, uh. I think this weekend. [01:05:29] So I’ll, I’ll finish that. But you love that series. Uh, love is a strong word. It’s funny. Well, this is one of the few [01:05:35] Joe: series though that, uh, you’ve told me about three. Have I told you about Landman? [01:05:40] OG: It’s just got a lot of good one-liners. It’s like Bad Santa, but in West Texas. So if you liked Bad Santa in terms of like all the one-liners that Billy Bob Thornton has, then you might like, you might like this. [01:05:53] There’s some really stupid storylines. I started watching the agency, so I’m on this Paramount Plus Kick because basically all the Taylor Sheridan stuff’s on Paramount Plus they give you two free episodes on YouTube tv and then you gotta subscribe. But they had a special for $2 and 99 cents to subscribe for three months. [01:06:09] So trying to get through all that. The agency has, um, got a ton of actors in it. Richard Gere is one of the main guys. There’s two other main people that both of you guys would recognize. I can’t picture, I, I can picture him, but I can’t pic uh uh, Michael Fastbender, I think [01:06:25] Joe: I haven’t seen him in something forever. [01:06:27] What a great actor. [01:06:28] OG: Anyways, I got through the first two episodes. Um, the first episode is really setting the stage. It’s a very slow, very slow, slow burn. And then the second episode starts, pick, happens. What happens? What’s the plot [01:06:39] Joe: line? What’s going on? [01:06:41] OG: It starts out with this guy, who is he? So it’s, it’s about the ccia a about, you know, um, [01:06:47] Joe: so that’s the agency they’re talking about the Ccia a Yeah, the [01:06:49] OG: agencys, the CIA, they’re in Europe and London. [01:06:54] And it starts out with him being sent home from wherever he was in Africa. And he has a love interest at the very beginning where he, it’s very clear that he’s lying to the, to the agency about how that ended. And then just all this other stuff is spinning up, right? Where it’s like, well, how did this guy get hauled into a jail? [01:07:12] Oh, he’s a operative now we have to try to find him. It’s not, it’s not like a shoot him up type of show, like, uh, like lioness was. It’s definitely more of a, uh, thinking one, it, it would be along the lines of like slow horses if that was kind of your jam. Like it’s just more cerebral of what’s going on behind the scenes than it is like, I still [01:07:31] Joe: gotta dive into that. [01:07:32] I’ve got such a backlog right now. [01:07:34] OG: I didn’t, I didn’t like slow horses at all mostly ’cause it was too slow. But in the second episode there’s a little bit of a gunfight where, where some stuff is coming to it head. But, um, anyways, so I’m watching that [01:07:46] Joe: while you’re in Paramount. Plus, make sure you watch the offer. [01:07:49] About the making of the Godfather. [01:07:51] Doug: Mm. [01:07:51] Joe: I really enjoyed that. Oh, [01:07:52] Doug: that’s right. You talked about that quite a bit a while ago. I did wanna see that. Yeah, it [01:07:56] Joe: was very impressive. Doug, you’ve got a bunch that you were watching. [01:08:01] Doug: Well, when we weren’t watching football, because it seems like every year football. [01:08:04] Joe: Oh [01:08:04] Doug: yeah. Football just, you know, goes onto every day of the week during the holidays, thank God. So there was a lot of football watching [01:08:11] Joe: and now for two weeks beyond the holidays. [01:08:13] Doug: Yeah. I mean, I’m not complaining, but it just ate into the, the time that we were watching other movies and shows. But we did squeeze in a few, one of which, uh, I went back and watched Sexy Beast from, from the year 2000 Oh. [01:08:27] Documentary [01:08:27] Joe: about me. Oh gee. [01:08:30] Doug: Okay. How did I not see that coming? I need more coffee. Uh, no. Sexy Beast is a, like a British mob movie, British crime, which has its, it’s like its own genre, right? That whole British mafia British, they have a similar tone to them, a similar pace. And this is not a Guy Richie movie, but it led Ben Kingsley to an Oscar nomination. [01:08:56] Wow. And he’s terrifying in this movie. He’s not in every scene. He is in a lot of scenes, but he is not in every scene. But he just takes over the movie because he is, he is terrifying. And so, and it’s, it’s cool. It’s like I said, a British crime movie, um, has a little flavor if you like Guy Richie stuff. [01:09:14] Lock stock and two smoking barrels, snatch all those Guy Richie movies. So good. So good. It has that with a little less humor to it. Um, so we watched that. We watch the Speaking of Guy Richie, we watched The Gentleman The movie. Yes. Oh, the movie. Movie, yeah. On this show we talked about the show, the TV show. [01:09:31] Sure. I love the Limited series. The gentleman thought it was hilarious. That’s a guy Richie produced show. Uh, sort of very similar to the gentleman, but just goes in more depth. There’s more, a lot more humor in it. And so I liked the show better than the movie, but I just felt like I needed to see the og. [01:09:47] I see what I did there. I would [01:09:48] Joe: agree with that. ’cause I saw the movie when it came out in the theater and I thought it was okay. I thought it was fine. [01:09:54] Doug: The show was better. Yeah. Here’s one that people should run away from if they haven’t already. Carry on, run from, run Away. From Carry on. Really? With Jason Bateman. [01:10:05] Oh my God. Did suck. Everything [01:10:06] Joe: I’ve seen about this is how good it is. [01:10:08] Doug: So bad. Dude. Are you wrong? About another series, Doug? It’s not a series. It’s a movie. Oh, it’s a movie. Jason Bateman should have never been in this. And even if you and, uh, Terryn. No, not Terryn. Tarn. Yeah. Tn. Asher Eggerton. Taryn Eggerton. [01:10:22] Taran Asher is a newscaster in Detroit. Uh, Tarn. She would’ve been great in it too, but she could have improved this. Right. And yeah, probably. Uh, man, uh, yeah. Carrie On’s so, so bad. There’s so many plot holes in it. It’s, it’s hilarious. Um, spent some time with Homestead Rescue. Got pulled into that more than I thought I would. [01:10:44] Uh, that was Homestead Rescue. [01:10:45] Joe: Yeah. Sounds like a low budget computer game. [01:10:48] Doug: It’s the same format as so many other reality shows. But there are people out there who are trying to go off the grid trying to, you know, raise their own chickens and sheep and have solar power and their homesteaders. And this is a dad and his two kids, grown kids, you know, and they’re in their twenties or thirties, but who will come to your homestead and help you get stuff under control, figure out how do you, you know, get better shelter for your livestock. [01:11:14] And it’s surprisingly engaging, mostly ’cause the dad is just a crazy character. But, um, it’s so funny [01:11:22] Joe: how much I love those types of shows, all the restaurant rescue shows. It’s that it’s the same format. It’s just I love the hotel one with the bald guy. [01:11:30] Doug: Yeah. [01:11:30] Joe: You know, save Bar being the [01:11:32] Doug: rescue [01:11:32] Joe: Oh, the, the Bar Rescue one. [01:11:34] Doug: Uh, but here’s a show we really are liking. The last one I’ll bring up today is that, that we’re into, uh, quite a bit and I would say it’s not a 10 out 10, but it’s a solid for us. It’s a solid eight out of 10. It’s called The Madness, a Netflix. It’s a CNN contributor. He is, he is a TV personality who gets framed for a very serious crime, and it’s him trying to get himself unframed. [01:12:01] Wait, documentary? No. No. It’s not a documentary. Did I say that? [01:12:05] Joe: This is all fiction. Well, when you said it was a CNN contributor, I was like, oh, oh, [01:12:09] Doug: that’s his character. His character [01:12:10] Joe: is okay. I’m sorry. [01:12:11] Doug: And there’s a lot of action in this. Og you might like this. There’s a lot of, there’s a decent amount of action in the show there. [01:12:18] People lose their lives. I know you enjoy that. Uh, okay. [01:12:28] Likes the harsh reality of the consequences of your decisions. Oh, gee’s. [01:12:33] Joe: About to [01:12:33] Doug: test out your objector seat right, right now. But, uh, but the madness is solid. It’s, uh, you know, the, the plot’s pretty good. You know, there’s, you’ve gotta always suspend some amount of belief in a lot of these shows. But it’s exciting, it’s well thought out. [01:12:46] Um, and the only actor that I recognize in it is, uh, I think he shows up in like episode three. It’s Bradley Whitford from, oh yeah. West Wing I think is his most. He was in West Wing and he was in, um, oh my gosh. What’s the dystopian show? The, um. Handmaid’s Tale. He was in that too. [01:13:03] Joe: Wow. Well, we filled your queue Stackers. [01:13:05] Yep. There you go. You’re welcome.
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