Itamar Marani had to control his emotions while working as a spy for the Israeli government. The way he worked through emotions, mental blocks, and more, though was not at all what you’d expect. Today he shares his process for working through deep blocks so that we can make better financial moves, bold career advancements, and take part in more of life’s great moments.
It appears many small investors may be about to lose money on real estate, and thousands already have. Alan Corey from our sister show Stacking Deeds joins us to walk through a recent Wall Street Journal story about investments in the sector suffering from recent interest rate hikes. Are there more to come? How do you find out if you may be affected? We’ll share.
Of course, we have an “amazing” TikTok minute sent to us by a Stacker, as well as an answer to another Stacker who called our Haven Life line. We’re glad to help.
Deeper dives with curated links, topics, and discussions are in our newsletter, The 201, available at StackingBenjamins.com/201.
Enjoy!
Our Headlines
- A Housing Bust Comes for Thousands of Small-Time Investors (Wall Street Journal)
Our TikTok Minute
Itamar Marani
Big thanks to Itamar Marani for joining us today. To learn more about Itamar, visit ItamarMarani.com.
Watch the interview with Marani on our YouTube channel:
Doug’s Trivia
- Which James Bond movie is the highest-grossing of all time?
Need life insurance? You could be insured in 20 minutes or less and build your family’s safety net for the future. Use StackingBenjamins.com/HavenLife to calculate how much you need and apply.
- Greg asked how he should be saving for a future house purchase while he’s still renting.
Want more than just the show notes? How about our newsletter with STACKS of related, deeper links?
- Check out The 201, our email that comes with every Monday and Wednesday episode, PLUS a list of more than 19 of the top money lessons Joe’s learned over his own life about money. From credit to cash reserves, and insurances to investing, we’ll tackle all of these. Head to StackingBenjamins.com/the201 to sign up (it’s free and we will never give away your email to others).
Written by: Kevin Bailey
Miss our last show? Listen here: Less is More: Simplifying Wealth for a Richer Life.
Transcript
You know, it’s a great day in America when you can have your in-laws over and they have a nice cookout on your grill and, uh, take down your grill. It’s a good weekend. He’s going there. Not as if, not as if it would happen to anybody here. That would never happen to anybody here, would it?
It’s
only a grill.
And your in-laws. See if they can’t like explode your whole backyard.
It’s just a grill. That’s what I was told. I said, please don’t let anybody use my grill. It’s just a
grill. Tell us right now, gee, how you feel about certain family members. How are you feeling? Well
let it out as they just left. The running joke in my family is as they drive outta the driveway, we wave.
I go inside. The wife comes in a second later and all she hears playing in the background is.
She’s like, stop it. It’s not nice. And the kids are laughing. The boys are like, you do that every time Grandma leaves. I feel like
your in-laws when they leave, they should have done the slow walk. Like action heroes. And there’s a big explosion on the background plane. Oh, just do that studly slow. Walk down your driveway.
Meanwhile, your house is exploding in the background. Big fireball. Yeah.
That’s what it feels like. Happens sometimes.
Alan Corey, do you feel that way about family members ever?
Uh, it’s the opposite. I, I have a hunch my family members feel that way about me and uh,
that’s what we’ve heard. So, yeah. Yeah.
They’ve written to us. Alan Corey from Stacking Deeds joins us for today’s toast. You know, why we can bitch about family members is because of the fact that the men and women and our armed forces kept us safe all weekend. So guys, raise your glass. Men and women, whether you’re driving, well, if you’re driving your car, leave the glass down.
But if you’re, you know, sitting at the table, listening to us, hanging out with us, what they can drive with their knees, uh, no. Please don’t. On behalf of the men and women at Navy Federal Credit Union and the men and women making this podcast, here’s to family and here’s to our troops. Thanks for keeping us safe.
Thanks everybody. Let’s go stack some Benjamins.
Uh oh.
Sounds like somebody’s got a case of the mundus.
Live from Joe’s mom’s basement. It’s the Stacking Benjamins Show.
I’m Joe’s mom’s neighbor, Doug, and get ready. We’re going deep undercover, and I’m not talking about hitting the snooze button again. Today we’re gonna dig in on what’s holding you back in life so you can take control of your money. Nothing’s holding me back except Joe’s mom. Man, she’s tougher than a pair of dull fingernail clippers at mi MA’s toenail cutting party.
Well, here to show us how to sneak past our money roadblocks, say hello to former Maad agent Imar Moroni for our TikTok. Minute we’ll discuss some prudent 4 0 1 planning. In our headlines, Alan Corey from Stacking Deeds joins us to chat about potential big problems for some real estate investors. Plus, we’ll throw out the Haven lifeline to stacker Greg, who wants to know the best place to save for a home.
How about in my checking account, Greg, and then I’ll share some thrilling trivia. And now two guys who eat mindset and tricks for breakfast. It’s Joe and
it’s a great
one. Two punch Doug. First the mindset, then the tricks, they go in and this podcast pops out. Hey everybody, happy Monday to all of you and the guy who also eats mindset for breakfast. Mr. Og, across the card table from me. How are you man? What’s up? Good morning. I am super happy to be here. Doug, good morning to you, my friend
Brighton Chipper this morning.
Joe, unlike some people here in the basement,
Why are you talking? Don’t talk about our guests that way. We’ve got Alan Corey from Stacking Deeds and he seems to be in a fine mood today. I’m always in a
good mood, Doug, I, I, I think, uh, yeah, Joe maybe came in a little hot, but pre-recording, but, uh, yeah, we’re, we’re all, we’re on a good
place now.
Why are you pointing the finger at me when it’s the two of you going on and on? I got no idea what’s going on here. Uhhuh. Yeah, we got a great, well watch out because I have a better relationship with Iran than either of you guys do, and he is former special Forces former Masad agent. People don’t know Masad.
Uh, you might wanna look that up. That’s Israeli secret agent we’ll be able to neither confirm nor deny that he’s here if it gets, uh, if it
gets too rough. So you can literally say, you know, a guy,
I might know a guy. I know a guy.
There’s question marks really around where you said you know him pretty well.
Is, is he investigating you for something?
No, I think we gotta move on
on that. You think this is his real name? Is this just a cover?
Would you go with I, . I used to, uh, work with a guy when I was, uh, giving speeches for American Express. His name was Tom Smith and he would always begin his speeches with, hi, I’m Tom Smith.
Yes, that is my real name. And begin every speech that way. , I’m sure Imar begins his speeches that way too. I’m Iar Meranti, and Yes, that is, that is my name. We got a great show today, by the way. We’ve got, uh, not only Imar here with some fantastic tips about mindset. If anybody knows about mindset, it’s a guy who’s been special forces and a secret agent, and now councils, CEOs, and heads of companies and entrepreneurs how to get more by breaking through those walls.
We all put ourselves, we all put ourselves behind these walls when it comes to investing. But first we got Mr. Corey here for a big real estate headline. But even before that, Alan, Alan, I think it’s time that, uh, maybe, maybe you heard what we do at the beginning of the show. Maybe you haven’t. So do you mind just pull up a chair over here and uh, well, let’s have a listen.
That
was amazing. Can we hear another one? Oh man. I did not need to be strapped the seat for that, but, uh, that was very enjoyable.
Yeah, we might have gotten a little too far. Alec Corey’s here. Iran’s here. OG and Doug. So let’s get playing. Hello Darlings. And now it’s time for your favorite part of the show, our Stacking Benjamins headlines.
Our headline today comes to us from the Wall Street Journal. This is, uh, written by three writers, will Parker, Conrad Pussier and Shane Shifflet. A housing bust comes for thousands of small time investors. Let’s dig into this, the triumph of Wall Street Journal rights. Few investors wrote the Pandemic Era Housing boom as high as j.
Ga, fewer still have fallen as far before GA found his real estate career. The 61 year old immigrant from India was just another information technology worker putting in 60 hour weeks for a middling job in Dallas last year, Gaia’s company owned more than 500 million worth of Sunbelt apartment buildings with more than 7,000 units.
It was one of Houston’s biggest landlords. Well, over the past four years, GA built his real estate empire using funds from dozens of small investors who wanted a chance to earn a landlord’s riches without any of the work he pitched. Double Your Money Returns In eent Can-Do Talk and investor conferences, and on YouTube videos.
Let’s talk about what’s going on when we talk about dozens of investors putting money in these things. This is what I think Alan is called, a syndicate or syndication. Can you talk about how this works for a moment? Yeah, sure. It’s someone basically
raising funds from passive investors to go invest it in real estate, and this is.
Honestly the majority of commercial deals, which are five units or more residential speaking, uh, like in this case where you’re talking tens, twenties, he’s got 500 million. Most people don’t have that money to do this all by themselves. So they identify the deal and then they go identify investors to invest in that deal.
And they basically are, you know, fundraising is the syndication aspect of it.
A lot of people OG think of this then as a mutual fund, right? My money goes in with a bunch of other investors. So I’m diversifying the risk over a lot of people. But that analogy might not be correct here.
I think the biggest difference is that there’s not as much, you know, financial oversight or regulatory oversight for that type of investing.
I mean, just listening to some things like. Quote, double your money, right? Like, there’s no way in the real investing world that you could stand on a stage and tell people that you’re gonna double their money and not have the s e c come come knocking on your door going, em a word. Please, sir. You know, because that’s just not anything that you can do.
But, but in that kind of private, dare say, back alley way of raising money, you can say and do whatever you want to do without a lot of oversight. And unfortunately, just like there’s, you know, plenty of people who do it the right way, there’s gonna be some, some unfortunate kind of bad actors along the way.
And I’ll,
I’ll jump in there. There’s, there’s no diversity at all diversification because you’re putting all your money into one project. Yeah. Yeah.
That’s a great
point. Yeah. These went into one apartment building, right? Each, he, he was selling one apartment building as a separate syndication. Yeah. Is my understanding complex one
apartment complex.
Yeah. Gaja described buying buildings with plans to upgrade units to raise rents and sell for a profit after as little as three years. That all sounds great. The idea that everybody needs a place to live was the bedrock of Ga Java’s pitch. The Wall Street Journal says, God’s not making any
more land. I haven’t heard that story before.
No.
Listen. Better. I never worry about the economy. Now, Gaja told investors in a webinar presentation last year, even if the economy goes down, still I make money. Well, here’s the thing. In a rising interest rate environment, We find that, that some of the commercial loans apparently that he had that were at variable rates.
And Alan, if your mortgages are at a variable rate, his whole pitch is wrong. He’s gotta worry about the economy because his monthly number, he is, got a beat, gets higher over and
over again. The downfall of real estate investing is that variable rate, that was the financial crash and, and more so unfortunately, that is how a lot of commercial deals, you have no option but variable rate because the sales pitch, the, the business plan, the financial modeling is let’s buy this property on a short term, one year, two year arm adjustable rate mortgage, let’s renovate the building.
And then once it’s stabilized, we do more of a fixed or a longer term. And that is just how this business works. But that is the risk. That’s the risk there. And it comes back to if you’re investing something, all the money that you invest, Should be earmarked that you may lose it. It’s not a sure thing. No investment is a Sure.
Did this guy do anything right? I mean, he’s not only, is he in one asset class, he’s in one apartment complex. Did it even have like a, oh no, he room in a pool
Doug. He’s actually in several different apartment buildings. Okay. Tons
of apartment
complex. Yeah. But each, each complex, my understanding Alan, is each complex is a different syndicate, right?
That’s
right. So it could be the same investors, but typically he’s probably gonna have different investors. So let’s say he’s got, he said the article says he’s got 500 million. I would, you know, maybe he’s got 10 different department complexes that are 50 million each, and then he has to raise money and has a plans.
To me, just from the outside looking in, I don’t, I don’t have any inside knowledge here. He’d probably bit off more than he could chew because with this variable interest rate, it’s all about speed. How fast can I get in, renovate the properties, get them filled up, change over the leases, whatever the business plan was.
It’s all about speed. But if you’re doing. That many properties at the same time, and you’re a one man show, uh, you’re just gonna run out of time. Just
to get people an idea of how bad this has gotten for Gaja and his investors. He had 7,000 units before he’s lost as of the time of this writing, according to the Wall Street Journal, he’s lost more than 3000 of the 7,002 foreclosure.
Let’s start off here, og. This idea at the top of this piece that really raises a red flag for me. He lures in investors who want to do none of the work and get these huge returns.
Well, you know, with any sort of, whether it’s syndication deal or capital raise deal. I was pitched a couple of weeks ago about a project in Kentucky that revolved around bourbon.
They’re like, I’m in, dude. Seems to be, uh, a connoisseur as it were. But all of these private equity deals, whether it’s uh, real estate syndication or it’s a bourbon manufacturing operation, or you know, an ice cream shop in northern Michigan, they all revolve around assumptions and they all revolve around somebody’s projection that this is how the plan’s gonna go.
This is how we’re gonna do it. I need to get all this capital to make it happen. Because like Alan said, few people have half a billion dollars lying around to go buy up a whole bunch of apartment buildings. And so all of that is predicated on all of these things happening exactly the way that we project.
And if that happens, then here’s what’s gonna happen with your money. But the interesting thing on the front end of that, for all of those deals, Is that generally the person who finds the deal gets a little bit of money up front, right? There was an article in the Wall Street Journal a couple days ago about the special purpose acquisition companies.
Remember those from a year ago? The SPACs and all the people who started the SPACs pulled out $22 billion of profit. Meanwhile, the people who own the SPACs still don’t have any profit cuz all of those, you know, went kind of belly up. And so like those, and like this deal and like other deals, the people who identify it get paid upfront.
And so when, when you’re looking at a deal, you’re looking at something that’s like, Hey, I’ve raised a half a billion dollars and the finder’s fee is 5% or 2%, I’m doing pretty good just by getting a whole bunch of people in a room to write checks for 50 grand. You know, that’s a pretty good use of my time from, you know, if I’m the money raised guy.
And Alan, like you said, you bite off a little bit more than you can chew and all of a sudden you go, huh, well that didn’t work. Sorry about that guys. Anyway, we got a new deal coming if anybody’s interested. My bad, that one’s on me. That one’s on me.
Coach. I like this idea, OG, of challenging the assumptions, right?
They all come with assumptions. They have to come with assumptions. Yeah. This is a forward ve. So what are the assumptions and question those, but Alan, specifically with these real estate syndications, what are some other questions I should be asking before I invest in a syndication?
The best way I’ve heard it explained is that, When you’re investing, you’re betting on the horse, but you’re also betting on the jockey.
So the horse is the deal itself, like do you think that these apartments can rent for what they say they will once they renovate and yeah, you’re not the expert, but maybe you can do a click Zillow search and seeing what apartments are renting for. That’s betting on the horse like that, the actual deal.
And then you’re betting on the jockey, and that’s the person who’s running the deal. So the man in this article who raised the money, who’s making the decisions, who’s hiring the contractors, who’s getting the financing? That’s the jockey, the guy running the deal. So you’re also making a bet on them. So you have to kind of combine the two and understand what you’re investing in.
It is meant to be passive. All these private equity deals, like OG was saying, it’s purposeful to be. Passive. And then that’s why it exists. And, and there’s a business for it that just like if I was gonna be an angel investor in a tech startup, I’m passive. I don’t make any decisions. Uh, but I like the idea, I like the team that’s in place.
I like their vision. That’s me betting on the horse and the jockey. This is the exact same thing. So if you do want to diversify in this, I would bet on different horses and different jockeys. And it seems like a lot of these people who lost a lot of money, they put all their money on the same jockey over and over again.
And then when that jockey didn’t work out
well, all the horses didn’t work out. Well, think about Alan, this particular jockey, this guy, it says right in the piece just a couple years ago. He’s just a mid-level IT guy and he goes out and buys 7,000. He has no track record. I mean this, this particular jockey’s got nothing except for a ton of buildings.
He’s built over the span of just the last couple years. Yeah, I
mean, I’ve done syndications and I’ve raised money, and to be honest, I would not even feel comfortable asking for money for something that I’ve never done before. You know? And it, it’s one of those things where if this is, oh, Doug, you know, let
him spin his own Doug, ask Doug asks for money for things he’s never done before, all the time.
He doesn’t, he doesn’t usually get it, but he ask sometimes. Well,
you know,
glasses half full. But yeah, it’s one of those things that’s betting on the jockey, right? Like, why would I give $70,000 to someone? And this is their first apartment building that they’re gonna flip. It’s, why don’t you go do it, get some experience, and then I’ll, I’ll, you know, come back to me.
And so the, if you want longevity in this business as a syndicator, it’s all about your track record. Because if you lose someone’s money, it’s gonna be very, very difficult to raise money again. And so it’s all about the team you have in place, all the experience because you’re only as good as your last deal.
Why do I feel like this is all. All one big lead up to an intervention and you guys telling me you’re not giving me the money that I was wanting to
invest. Maybe that’s at the end right after we finish the recording, og.
Yeah, I was just gonna say the, uh, the only problem with that is that there’s no ongoing record keeping.
I mean, other than a Google search, right? I mean, I could Google Joe Blow and find out that he is been sued for this or something like that, but I mean, we hear about these stories, a lot of the financial kind of shenanigans that happen, and there’s smoke there a lot where you can go, well, obviously if you looked you would’ve seen this, but most people don’t.
And even if you do, you, you know, a, a really successful salesperson can kind of overcome a lot of those things like, well, yeah, that was during the rising market, you know, say, you know, that sort of thing. I think what you said before, Alan, is kind of the most important piece out of all this, is that when you’re investing in something that’s very particular and it’s very, very, very high return potential.
You know, think about that from a variability standpoint. The reason that you don’t get double your money in your bank over the course of three years is because it’s guaranteed to be there when you need it. And if you’re investing in something that the projections are, and then I’ll double your money in three years, that’s one side of that, you know, variation.
That’s one side of that variability. The other side of the variability is, or it’ll be worth zero. We just have to accept that those are the two numbers. And you know, sometimes the private equity deals or syndication deals work out and maybe even, maybe even most of the time they work out. But you always have to remember that when you’re investing in something that’s very specialized.
And very uh, uh, high volatility. We always get, you know, lured in by the high volatility on the upside. You know, if I’d have just invested all my money in Nvidia options three weeks ago, I’d be a gazillionaire. Yes, true. Except for the fact that the alternative to that is zero. There’s, there was no like, well, I might just average eight a year for the next 20 years and it’ll be okay cuz that’s not sexy.
So if you’re gonna go down the path of something really, really high, high volatility, high return potential. You gotta accept the fact that this might be zero on the back end. And I think, I think that’s
what you’re talking. Well, let me throw a fuel on that fire. Sometimes if things are going poorly, there’s a capital raise and then they go back to their investors and they ask for more money to keep the project afloat.
Oh, I’ve seen that. So, uh, I’ve seen that. So that’s something I would, it can go worse
than zero. Yeah. Is that what you’re saying? Worse? It can go worse than zero. It can be worse than
that. Munzer Hack a former IT professional in Plano, Texas. Uh, the Wall Street Journal rights said he was Apple Way’s largest individual investor in the company’s four foreclosed properties.
And in two others he described as in trouble. Hack said he and his wife both in their sixties lost millions of dollars, the majority of their life savings.
Ugh. It just, yeah, that’s painful. Uh, yeah, I would, yeah, I would only put the majority of my life savings in something that you’re running point on.
You’re, you’re just, it’s just too much trust, uh, to put that into someone else. ,
Alan. I know there’s, there are a bunch of syndicates out there that have decent track records and can do the types of things people want them to do, but I think there’s a lot of due diligence that these people clearly didn’t do here.
Yeah, and that’s a lot of the gotcha investment strategies and it’s talking to other investors and just sort of confirming, fact checking. And it’s worth hiring a consultant and saying, can you just look at these projections? I’ll pay you 150 bucks for an hour to just review this to make sure that this is legit before I put in, you know, $50,000.
I think that’s money
well spent. There’s a good podcast on this topic called Stacking Deeds, our sister podcast that Alan is the co-host with, along with our friend Crystal Hammond. Alan, I remember on episode one you talked about the dangers of adjustable rate mortgages, right on episode one, and we see it in action right here, what’s coming up on Stacking deeds?
Actually coming up in
tomorrow’s episode on Stacking Deeds, we have Dr. Chow, who is a Airbnb sublease wizard. What I mean by that, he actually doesn’t own any property. He leases property and then he subleases them, uh, for midterm rentals and short-term rentals, and he’s created. Quite an income without owning any real estate.
So it’s something we’re digging into and it’s, it’s a really
interesting story. That’s fabulous. And that’s tomorrow on the Stacking Deeds Podcast, wherever you’re listening to us now. Thanks for helping us on this one, Mr. Corey. I appreciate your time, my friend. It’s been a blast. Thanks for having
me.
Let’s dive into the TikTok minute. This is the part of the show where we look at some amazing stuff happening on the internet, either amazing in air quotes, or amazing as in really incredibly brilliant Doug. We know what OGs already gonna say, so, uh, What are you thinking on this one? Man? I’m a bit
more of a wild card Joe, so I think I’m gonna go, uh, I’m not gonna, you know, I’m not gonna go the, the way that you think.
I’m gonna go, I’m going OGs route on this. I’m thinking this one’s hashtag ah, air quotes, whatever. Not really like italics. Brilliant.
I think that’s the, uh, understatement of the ear. Don’t you og When he says he’s a he’s a wild card. Oh, I’m a wild card. Last, I think we got 13 years proven. He’s a wild card right there.
Uh, let’s listen in. This is a gentleman talking about your 401k. Let’s hear what he has to say. Cause apparently og there may be some problems with your 401k.
401K facts. Most
financial advisors will recommend you only take three and a half to 4% max annual income outta your 401k to live on. Remember, your 401k is subject to market losses, so when the market does dip below, Whatever your 401K is, now your income goes with it.
Are you prepared to cover the income loss in your retirement? I know I’m not the great news. There’s a better way.
So what if you could take 6%
annual income, be protected
from market losses while only participating in market gains? Not only are you
protected from market losses, but you can take 6% a year and still grow your principle balance.
That’s crazy. Who wouldn’t want more money in retirement with a guarantee of not losing money due to market corrections?
So listen, if you’re like me, want and need as
much money in your retirement as you can get, click to learn more, button to get started. More money
less. Uh, I’m not gonna click the learn more button.
Let’s learn more button by clicking the OG button. What’s going on here, man? First of all, is it true that experts say that we should only take 4% out of our 401k?
Well, I mean, It’s based on some math, you know, math is kind of these, uh, this really fickle thing that requires you to use data and, uh, make decisions based on the data outputs.
Is it true that if I have to leave, you answered the question, is it true that if I leave my money, my 401k and the market goes down and I’m taking out 4%, well then I have to be prepared to maybe live on less if my money’s still in that 401k? Well,
the 4% thing is really based on the initial draw plus inflation from that point forward.
So if you have a balance of a million dollars and in year one you take 40,000 and the market goes down year two, you take 40,000 plus inflation. So that’s how it was originally designed. So that’s false. That would be false.
And then the rest of it, I think it’s a little more false from there. It’s
also gigantic bs, I mean, basically what’s he selling, what he’s talking about is a, yeah, what he is talking about here is an index annuity.
That has a guaranteed withdrawal benefit rider attached to it, which, you know, I mean, hey, it provides income. He’s not wrong about that. And it provides income based on the high water mark. So you put in a million bucks, you’re gonna get 60,000 out. But the return is capped, generally speaking, and also capped on the downside.
So you’re not gonna get the negatives, but you’re not gonna get all of the positives either because you’re taking out so much money. The only way the income continues to grow is if your balance grows, right? So if you have a million dollars and you take out 6%, you’ve taken out 60 K, you’re at nine 40. So what does the market have to grow by to get higher than a million dollars?
It’s more than 6%, right? It’s gotta grow at a, at, at a, at a rate greater than that to get, you know, cuz whatever, anyway, and then they cap it. So if the market goes up 30%, they go, yeah, cool, you don’t get 30, you get 10. And so there’s kind of a gimme, a gotcha there. So what really happens in practicality is that you stay at that 6% number, whatever that dollar amount is, that’s the number you have for the rest of your life, which the downside of course is inflation.
So you very comfortably get used to $5,000 a month on your million dollar plan. And in, uh, 25 years from now, when that $5,000 a month is worth half is what, what it is today just based on trendline inflation, then you, you’re just in as much of a world of hurt. And then what happens in reality is that people take extra money out.
They say, well, I know my balance has gone down because I’ve taken, you know, 60,000 out for 20 years, but I need some more today because 60 isn’t getting me where I need to go. So I need to take an extra 25 E. Can’t do it. And then my 60 becomes 55 the next year because I’ve made adjustments. So again, back to this, the only thing that you can do in retirement to outpace inflation is own things that outpace inflation.
There is no other alternative to that that you, there. There’s no secret sauce, there’s no silver bullet, there’s no magic carpet ride. It’s only you can own the things that outpace inflation. The only things that outpace inflation are the earnings of the biggest companies in the world, period. Full stop.
So if you wanna outpace inflation, you have to own those things that do that because in 25 years from now, you need to have your income continue to rise. And, um, and not, and this, and you know, other things that, that suggest that you have to be conservative at retirement, all that other sort of nonsense.
Make it so that you don’t have a rising income, which would be detrimental.
It’s so frustrating to hear him say words like, participate in the up with none of the down. You get to participate. Not even, you don’t
get it. Oh, you’re participating.
Yes. That word is chosen very carefully, very, very, very carefully.
Listen, here’s
the average return. I, if you’re gonna buy an index annuity, you should think of it as a fixed income component of your portfolio. Not an equity component of your portfolio. There’s nothing wrong with them, you know, cuz they have a, it’s an arrow in the quiver. There’s a use case for index annuities.
But the return you should be projecting in your plan is not, market returns not even close. You need to be projecting that they’re the three to 4% returns. That’s the historical return. And, and the income is nice, there’s no doubt about it. And the guaranteed income, uh, based on the insurance company still being around is, it’s a nice way to supplement your, your retirement plan for sure.
But I’m not sure that I would put all of my, like we were talking about before with syndications, I don’t know that I’d put all my eggs in that basket either. You know, because you have to have a way to raise your income as you go through life. And this is not a tool to do that.
We will dive more into annuities.
I know we spoke about annuities last Wednesday. Kevin Bailey, though our writer of the 2 0 1 had a much, uh, deserved week off last week. So we had a special edition of the 2 0 1 newsletter this week. Tomorrow we’re going to dive into all things annuities. So if you’re interested, wondering, I had a family member OG just this weekend reach out to me and ask, so what do you think about annuities?
And I said, yeah, we just had Rick Edelman on and here’s his credentials. And he said, uh, yeah, it hasn’t changed. We all hoped it would’ve changed the last 10 years. Now for sure, maybe, perhaps. No, probably sadly not. And she had, by the way, been fed the half truths, not the reasons why as you stated, they might be useful.
All the reasons that are just garbage to put these in your profile. Oh, it’s
all based on fear and panic. And, and if you look at the, and if you look at the data, the amount of money that’s gone into fixed index annuities in the last year is a record amount skyrocket. And all of the ads on TV are.
Pitching this, Hey, are you ticked off that your mar that your account went down 22% last year? Da, da da da da. Guess what? If you buy this thing, it’ll never go down. It’ll always be the same amount every year. And it’s like, I don’t, I, it’s not the down, it’s not the once every so often down that scares me.
It’s the never going up again. That scares me. That should be what scares you. Like
that’s the
scary part, right? The scary part is that you never go up ever again. I mean, despite what Doug says, he’s got the pills for that. There’s no pills
for this. My, my relative used the word that they use being the salespeople.
He is high commissioned salespeople use OG gambling. You don’t wanna gamble.
Don’t gamble. I don’t wanna gamble with my retirement. Don’t gamble. Yes. Yeah. Owning the biggest companies in the universe that make all the products that use every single day. Sure. Sounds like gambling to me
in a diversified manner so that I’m buying the entire economy that needs to continue if we’re all gonna live.
Boy, hey, uh, coming up next, I’m super happy that we have this, uh, former SPY and Xra Special Forces. Uh, he was the youngest federal agent in air Marshal in Israel’s history. He’s a Brazilian zoo. Yes, he
was Aion. He’s a bajillionaire. He’s a
gillionaire. Easy for me to say.
I had that procedure done. One, he’s a,
he’s a Brazilian Jiu-jitsu black belt, ranked top 10 in the world at the amateur level.
Managed multinational seal teams and nine figure assets. He is a mindset coach now to founders, CEOs, and well people like a lot of our stackers, he is a mindset accelerator. We’re gonna glean from him as much as we can and maybe. Hear a couple stories about what it’s like to stack your Benjamins being a spy.
Pretty amazing. IAR is next, but Doug, what do you got to get us there, man? You, you’ve, you’ve got a mission of your
own. Oh, I am getting ready to set off on a mission. Hey, there’s stackers. I’m Joe’s mom’s neighbor, Doug, and I am setting off on a covert operation of my own. I’m sick of Joe’s mom being the self-appointed cookie gatekeeper, so I’m sneaking into the kitchen to nab her super secret recipe.
No more wielding those cookie powers over me. Devil Baker Lady. Here’s the setup I just requested that we spend quality time together, you know, laughing and baking, lulling her into a false sense of security, and then I can grab the file, snap a quick photo using my secret lapel pin camera, and sharing the goodness.
So far so good. She’s on board and already asking me to wash, peel, and cut some carrots. Speaking of. Devilishly handsome secret agents doing work like this guy James Bond films made spy life look good. Since 1962, there have been 26 0 0 7 movies with seven different actors, but only one movie that brought in the huge Benjamins by making more than $1 billion worldwide.
So that’s today’s trivia question, which James Bond movie is the highest grossing of all time. I’ll be back right after I pretend like I’m asking Joe’s mom if I can lick the spoon when we’re done. It’s so on Brand. Me calling dibs early, she’ll never suspect a thing.
Hey there stackers. I’m Martini Shaker and not so secret. Agent Joe’s mom’s neighbor, Duggan, here’s your post commercial update. I finished the carrots during the break and she doesn’t suspect a thing. I told her she looks great in her new Harley themed apron, and she told me we could spend more quality time with me cleaning up the celery.
And more proof that she has no clue. She said that when I’m finished with that, get this, I can clean the cupboard right next to the recipe. I may have a new career waiting for me people. Maybe I’ll chat about breaking into the secret agent biz with Imar. When Joe’s finished, I gotta get back to the celery.
But did you figure out my trivia question? Which James Bond movie was the highest grossing movie earning 1 billion worldwide? The answer is Skyfall with Daniel Craig playing oh oh seven. The movie earned $1.2 billion. Nearly as much as I’m gonna make when I sell this recipe to the food network. And now here to help us get past roadblocks and what’s holding us back in life.
Former secret agent Imar
Meran. Well, and I’m so happy he’s here with me and a little nervous having a secret agent, former secret agent here with me. I Imar me’s here. How are you?
I’m good, Joe. I’m good. Thank you for having me. Well,
how does a guy. End up as a secret agent. Like I’m imagining you’re just at a cafe somewhere, somebody’s been following you around and then they take you into the restroom and, I don’t know, take you off to some secret headquarters where you find out that you’ve been, uh, you’ve been now transformed into this super secret agent.
That’s probably not true.
That would be much easier than the route I had to take if it could just have been transformed. So my route, I was in the Special Forces back home in Israel. Honestly, I had a bit of a chip on my shoulder left after the Special Forces cuz I suffered some injuries and I had a little bit of setbacks there and I wasn’t super content with finishing my service like that.
And I knew about the Shabbat the Shin be, which is our undercover program. It’s kinda like a high between the CIA and the fbi. Yeah. And it was something that I still wanted to do. I wanted to still prove to myself that I was capable of more than what that injury. Let’s say reduced me too at that point.
Well, so wait a minute, just a
second. Join you. You were almost done. I just wanna stop you for a sec. You were almost done with your service commitment when, when this happened. Like you, you could have been off and into civilian life. Yeah,
I could have, but I was, I was gonna go to officer school. Was supposed to go to officer school, basically our version of West Point.
Yeah. And then I elected not to, because I recognized I couldn’t do a certain role that I wanted to inside the unit because of that injury, and it would just take too long to heal. So I took a little bit of time off, but then two months after I was released, after the three year servicing, the special forces, then I went into the GR program, the shuck.
And that is very much the opposite of just transformation. It’s a 10 week program. It’s extremely grueling of a nonstop Krav maga shooting drills, tactical drills, uh, physical exertion. It was a very, very tough program that was only open to x-ray special forces. And when you graduate that if you graduate that then you’re certified as an agent.
Most of our listeners are familiar with, with SEAL training, with Green Beret training, ranger training. I would imagine it compares very much to a SEAL training program.
Yes and no. So it’s interesting. So their assumption, what they told us in the first day of that program was, you guys are all Exis, Rallye, special forces, you guys are all special forces here.
So that means you’ve already gone through something like buts, like the seal train. Gotcha. Okay. Yeah. So we’re not here to actually see if you have what it takes. We’re just here to train you in these specific elements. Now, if you can’t match the requirements for these elements of combat self, whatever it may be, then you’re not a fit here.
But we’re not actually gonna test your character because your character has already been vetted through the units you’ve all been in. So it’s a bit differently.
Gotcha. It’s a, it’s a little bit, I would imagine, more intense and more cerebral. In fact, you say that what you learned there? Yeah. When you and I were writing back and forth before this, that, uh, they don’t focus on motivation like our average stacker at Ammar.
They, they focus on trying to be motivated. They get up and try to get themself motivated. You say, That the Special Forces program does not focus on motivation at all.
Yeah. So what was interesting to me, so I had a big situation when I was working at the agency, when I was working undercover in Mumbai, India.
To make a long story short, someone who I thought was a friend that was in the local Gold’s Gym there, so this an acquaintance turned out to be in a operative, was trying to kidnap me. Wow. That left me with some ptsd and that got me in touch with the head of psychology of the moat to work together around that.
And what was very fascinating to me about how we started to work with me about getting me back to, let’s call it peak performance, it wasn’t about motivating me or figuring out a way how to break through certain things or overpower them. He was just saying, instead of you trying to exert more effort, let’s reduce the internal friction that you have around this.
Mm. Because if you can reduce that down, then you don’t actually have to be motivated to take action and it creates a much more sustainable system. And it was such a fascinating thing cuz I definitely did not expect that was gonna talk about, he’s like, let’s just talk about what fears you have here, what the beliefs you have of how the world works that are causing you to feel like you have to hear, really motivated in order to take a simple action.
Because if you can remove that friction, you won’t actually need to get that motivated, therefore you can just take it on a consistent basis and it’s not gonna feel as difficult. And to me that was, that was
fascinating. It seems like you’re working on a much deeper level and, and I, I mean motivation is one thing, but removing the friction is working on a deeper level.
Yeah. I think motivation is a fallacy. It doesn’t last like we’ve all been there where you read the inspirational book, you go to the conference, you listen to the TED Talk, whatever it may be. And that motivation, it might last a day, a week, even a month, but eventually it fades and then you go back into the old habits that don’t serve you.
So if instead of trying to hack at this action equation of. The level of motivation I have, minus the level of friction I can actually take action. If you just hack at the actual resistance and get down to near zero, even if you’re not very motivated, you can still take a lot of action, a lot of positive action.
And I think that’s the key. It’s like, the best analogy I’ve heard is instead of trying to press hard on the gas pedal, what if you put the hand break down and put effort on doing that? Yeah.
You know, you, uh, now run a consulting agency working with CEOs, high powered people on eliminating some of that friction.
What’s the friction you see the most? Do you tend to see the same friction over and over and over? It’s a great
question. Um, I think this, the friction I see the most is a sense of internal frustration of why can’t I do the thing that I know logically I should be doing? And it’s a blind spot that they’re having some kind of emotional reaction.
They have a logical blueprint. Blueprint, sorry, of what they’re supposed to be doing, but for some reason they’re not doing it. And when I pointed out, oh, you also have emotions, you’re a human being and we need to be aware of them first, and then we need to challenge some of them to see if they’re valid emotions to have here or are they not?
That’s when a lot of breakthroughs happen. So the way I like to say it is to most of these guys, they say these guys in galas, they have a certain goal, they have a certain blueprint, they think about it all the time, they dream about it, they write it down, they plan it out. They think they really want it, but they’re actually more connected to something else.
So they think they want this thing, but subconsciously they’re more connected to something else. And that’s what usually wins out. And nine times outta 10, that thing is usually a fear. It’s not a fear of spiders or heights, but it’s a fear of having a certain feeling they want to avoid. And that’s what I key in on.
Cuz once you can figure that out and resolve it, they really go to the next
level. I would imagine with a lot of these people, especially people that are in the limelight a lot, it’s a fear of looking stupid, a fear of leading an organization down this path that might be bad.
Yeah. The way I’ve seen it, there’s three main core fears that affect everybody in a various levels, but one of them usually sticks out happy to share with you.
Yeah, please. One of them please do is absolutely along those lines. Cool. So the first core fear is a fear of uncertainty or powerlessness. Now, what’s important to recognize about all these core fears is that we developed them about a hundred thousand years ago. They’re in our primal part of our brain, the amygdala, and they served us amazingly well to help
us survive.
You. You’re saying it about right now, that we can try to, you don’t how us actually go. You, you’re, you’re telling us right now that we can try to talk ourselves out of these fears. We can try to talk ourselves around them, but they’re so much older than us that there’s no way in hell we’re gonna do that.
. I don’t think
that’s true. Oh, good. I think if they stay there on a subconscious level, they will blindside you and they will win out. Ah. However, if you can flush them out and get ’em to a conscious level, then you can be aware of it.
Think of it as like a football analogy. If you see somebody running down the field and they completely blindsided, they’re gonna get knocked down. But if they’re anticipating the hood, they can put it in a shoulder, they can stiff arm, whatever they may do, then they can win. Carl Young said it really well.
He said that until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you’ll call it fate. And for me, what you’re saying, the biggest impact is helping making these things to a conscious level, because all of a sudden you’re not a victim is good and blindsided by their emotions without understanding what’s going on.
You can actually say, okay, this is happening to me. This is the fear that I’m feeling, and this is why I feel compelled to take an action that doesn’t serve me, but should I? And all of a sudden, when you get into that position of power, it’s a whole different ballgame.
That’s powerful. And so I’m sorry, and I completely derailed you.
You’ve got three of them that are our core fears.
Cool. So fear number one is a fear of uncertainty and powerlessness. This is, I feel terrified to feel out of control, that I’m not capable of controlling everything. This, a lot of people end up micromanaging and being the bottleneck, and if you’ve ever been called the control freak, that’s probably why.
Now the reality is that’s perfectly valid to want take control and ownership over your success. But when it comes to an illogical point where you’re just bottlenecking everything, and your micromanaging don’t need to be micromanaging, then you’re not doing something that actually serves you. You’re just feeding that emotional fear.
So that’s fear number one. Fear number two is a fear of worthlessness. This is, who am I to, or I’m not good enough, or I need to have this or that before. I need to have a certain accolade, a certain achievement, a certain sense to validate me. There’s a lot of times a fear of failure or a fear of success, even like, am I worthy of that success?
I’m sure you see there’s a lot of money. Yeah. People are like, do I deserve to have that much money? Is that okay? Sometimes it’s perfectionism or imposter syndrome or people putting glass ceilings on themselves. Yeah. And it’s just, a lot of times this comes from someone’s childhood or an early failure.
Like this is something that, this is the core fear for me that hits the most because I had that one failure that I talked about in the special forces earlier. Yeah. And for me, that’s still something that I gotta recognize. If I’m not conscious of it, it could derail me. That’s fear number two and fear number three.
And this is the fear that whenever I talk to big groups, nobody once admit they have what they all do. We all do. It’s that fear of abandonment. Oh, it’s that what happens if he or she or they leave me or I can’t do this because of what they might say. Like I was saying this fear of what will people think if I derail the company?
And the weird thing with this fear of abandonment is that most often than not, people don’t actually have a specific person in mind. They’re not saying, oh, what will Joe think about me if I do this action? It’s this ominous, they this fear of the tribe that if we get abandoned in the Savannahs, uh, we’re probably gonna be left for dead.
So we abandon the things that we know we should be doing so that other people won’t abandon us. And those are the kind of three main core fears that I see really affecting people. I
feel like throughout my career, I felt all of those, like as you’re walking through those, I think about all kinds of times.
Uh, I often think about, you know, if I’m standing on a stage in front of an audience, what if I lose the audience? And you’re right, it’s not of them. It’s not a specific person, and it isn’t even that audience. It’s what if that audience tells other audiences how bad I sucked? Right? And it’s this thing that’s way bigger in my head than it will ever possibly get.
I mean, there’s that, there’s no way that my fear will actually ever become realized on that level. And yet it holds us back from, from so much. And I feel like when you talked about this imposter syndrome thing, I wanna dive into that a little bit because often y you know, social media as you know, It helps us compare ourself to other people so often, and it’s so, it’s frustrating.
Yeah, it’s frustrating. Number one, I’m frustrated with myself that I do it. Number two, it’s frustrating that we have the ability to supposedly see into other people, and we all know it’s a lie, right? I mean, deep down, you know, people are only showing you their best foot forward. They’re not gonna show you their deepest, darkest times.
But I look at people and I think. He or she is achieving way more than I am. They’re getting all these things that I really want, and I feel like my skillset’s better. Like I look at the fact that I’m 55 years old, I’ve done all these things in my career, and yet I look at some 25 year old with 2 million followers on TikTok and I go, damn it, I could.
I could totally, could totally do that. I feel like we have these barriers holding ourself back. How? How did the Special Forces train you and now you train other people to kind of push through these barriers we make for ourselves so we can get this peak achievement out? It’s a great
question. Truthfully, the Special Forces did not train me in this way, and the Special Forces, you don’t need to really train in this way because the threat is so obvious in front of you.
If someone’s shooting at you, you’re gonna shoot back. The agency, it’s a bit of a different life because there’s a lot of lulls. You’re just basically undercover in a different country for a prolonged amount of time. So it’s a very different thing there. You have to be much more aware of your mindset cause it’s not just a quick action and you’re back to base or whatever it may be.
The way I would answer your question as far as how to actually overcome these things, these fears that I feel, imposter syndrome, let me ask you this, is it a fear or is it a frustration? What’s going on there when you see the person that has 2 million
followers? Oh, I think it’s a frustration with myself and it’s not that I want 2 million followers either.
I mean, I, I truly don’t care about that. I just look at somebody who’s making dumb videos online and I’m like, I have a skillset that where I can do that and I can do so much more. Like there’s so much I can bring to the world and I feel like, you know, you’re not bringing it and I’m just using myself as an example.
I know everybody driving down the road listening to us that they’ve got this going on in the background too. There’s somebody in the office, edmar. Who they’re looking at, who is succeeding way bigger than they are. They’re not getting where they want to go. And the other person is, what I would
ask you and them is to ask themselves, what belief do I possibly hold that’s constraining my ability to actualize that skillset.
So for example, that person who has a lower skillset than me, they’re not holding themselves back. They’re maximizing their skillset. Think of a skillset as a vault, even if there’s a million dollars in the vault, but you can only access 20% of it. That’s what it is. If that person has a vault of only 400,000, they have a much lower skillset, but they can access all of it.
They’re going to be winning. So the main thing I’d like to look at is, what’s the constraint here? Why aren’t you able to access it? Why are you afraid to perhaps speak to your boss about the thing you need to speak about? Perhaps try to give it your all on this project and put yourself in a position to swing big and possibly fail.
What are the reasons that you’re not actualizing all that skillset, but you’re only accessing a little bit of it? Do you have some fear around failure, like you said? Or you think imposter to him is basically you’re saying, I don’t think I’m good enough. I know logically that I have the skillset, but I don’t feel like I’m good enough, so I’m gonna go for small things because I feel confident that I can achieve those small things.
And that’s the thing. If you can break that barrier, that glass ceiling of what you feel you should be doing, which is probably associated to some fear and some belief that you have about yourself or how you interact with the world, that’s when you can access all that vault. Does that make sense?
It does.
And I, and I’m also thinking as you’re talking, that just by putting these little smaller goals into action, that movement creates more action. Like I gotta believe that on your missions, you’ve got these little tiny things and once you’re in motion, you tend to stay in motion. It’s
beyond that. It’s just an understanding that this is doable.
I think the reason most people don’t go for the big thing is cause they don’t truly believe that they can accomplish it on a high level. Yeah. They have some kind of voice. They saying they’re imposter sitting like, you’re not good enough. You can’t do it. Well, if you can’t do it, if you should be able to do it, why haven’t you done it yet?
And the moment you can break that facade and actually recognize, you know, this is achievable for me. There’s no reason if I have this skillset, I should be able to do it. Once you create that internal belief and recognize there’s no reason for me not to believe it, that’s when I’ve seen people being able to go and myself as well.
So when I was going out on the, in those missions in various countries, I had complete faith that I could carry out whatever I needed to carry out. And it wasn’t that I needed something to push me, it was just there was a vacuum of self-doubt. There wasn’t any self-doubt there, and that’s what really helped me propel forward.
It’s a bit different answer, but it’s a Makes sense.
No, it totally does. And that actually leads into what I think is gonna be. My last question, which I know is gonna be a long one, you wrote me that you have a six step process to help people break through that to get to that full potential. But before we get to that, I’ve been thinking all along Imar that there are people screaming at their devices into their headphones right now.
Why haven’t you asked him about this, which is this? So you’ve got this guy at the gym, I just need to go back to this. You got this guy at the gym, you find out that he’s trying to kidnap you. Like there must have been something finally that set you off. Like what was the little clue that you got? What was the thing that made you go, oh my God, this isn’t what I thought it was.
Yeah. So, uh, I’ll Kelly, rewind the story. So when you’re an undercover, undercover agent abroad, you do keep a cover, but you’re not expected to just be hold up in your room eating rice and not having any kind of social life whatsoever. Sure, there’s certain boundaries. You can never obviously tell people why you’re there, what you’re doing.
You can’t have anybody ever come to your house or know where you live. You gotta make sure you’re not being followed. But you can go out to restaurants, you can go out to the gym to work out and you can make very, let’s call it shallow social acquaintances. Yeah. But you gotta make sure that you never have a pattern they can follow.
So this person, I met him at the Gold Gym and I would be hitting the heavy bags and he was also hitting the heavy bags kickboxing. And eventually we would meet up in Spar sometimes and we swap when we swap phone numbers. And I would always dictate when we would meet up and how it would happen. He would sometimes offer me, Hey, why don’t I give you a ride back to your place?
Or do you want to come with me and my friends to eat? And I would always say no. I’d always make sure I wasn’t being followed. I would take my own path. So what happened, this was in 2010, it was the FIFA Soccer World Cup. And it was during the semi-finals, during halftime. He gave me a call and he said, Hey Damara, is there any chance that me and my friend could come watch the game at your place?
Our TV just broke. We’re really desperate to see the second half. I said, no. I mean, that’s a weird question. But the cultural differences in were like that where people were, would allow themselves to interject in a more free manner, would say no. You can watch the game. There’s a sports bar next to the golds.
Why don’t you go over there? Enjoy. Maybe I’ll call you next week. We can meet up in Spar. He says, oh, okay. He calls me again after a couple minutes and he says, Imar, they’re not showing the game. It’s a sports bar at the elbow room. Can we please watch the game at your place? We’re really desperate to see it.
And I said, no, it was weird. But I said, no, I’ll see you next week. Hope you guys figure it out. He’s like, oh, you know more please. We’re really, really experts. See the game. We’re right beneath your house anyway. And I was like, how do you know where
I live? Right there it is. Because there was absolutely
no way where you should have known where I lived.
And as soon as I said that, like I remember the hairs in the back of my neck standing up and my flatmate, who was also an agent, figured out that something was up. In a moment. I just, I looked at the phone and I said to, so, okay, here’s the deal. You know who I am, and now I know who you are. The call is yours.
Basically, like you blew your cover. You understood who I am, and you blew your cover by doing that. So basically we got our equipment on within a couple of days. I was out of the country. You told the guy on the call local,
wait, hold on. You told the guy on the call you said, you said, I know who you are.
Yeah. You
know who I am. This is obvious now and I know who you are as well cuz the reason was that I wanna create a deterrent. So he didn’t think that was a vulnerable target anymore because what he was trying to do was trying to catch me off guard. Yeah, it was hung up. Oh, that was it. Okay. It was hung up.
We called our, I called my superior as well and I, we got some police involved and that was kind of it. Within a couple days I was outta the country and our Masada attach confirmed with the I B I, which is the local Indian FBI that was indeed on a Kita cell. They had picked up the trace of my predecessor in Mumbai.
He was also a big white guy for lack of better terms in the middle of Mumbai. And he didn’t keep his cover and identity as sealed as he should. So when they saw me replacing him, they just figured out, okay, this is the next guy that’s in this role. And that’s what it
was. Wow. I had to hear the end of that story.
But now, but now, thank you so much. What’s the six step process we use to push through this self-doubt? Because I gotta believe even in moments like that, man, there’s a ton of self-doubt. Like am I gonna get out of this country? But for us, these, the six step process to get the unblock happening.
So it’s an interesting way you phrase it cuz truthfully, that’s not the process that I would’ve used then because there you have no choice.
I think the real challenge is when we don’t have a choice, when we have to do something, we’re gonna find a way to do it. Like if, for example, the example of a mother let’s a car off her kid, she’s not going through any process. Adrenaline’s just pumping through a vein. She’s gonna do it. The real problem is that sometimes we don’t have to do something, our back isn’t against the wall.
So we settle a mediocrity instead of going for something really great with our finances, with our career, whatever it may be. And when we have the option to not do something great, that’s when I think this process is phenomenal. So the first step in the process is getting really clear on what you actually want.
Not what you want just from a surface level goals perspective, but inverse thinking about that saying, well, the reason I want these goals is cause I probably wanna feel a certain way. Whether that’s accomplished, whether that’s proud. So let me flip that around. Let me say, how do I actually want to feel in the world and about myself, and therefore, what do I need to accomplish in order for that to be a reality?
That’s step one. Step two is then figuring out if somebody were to achieve that, those goals that I just said, what would they need to value? Forget about what are my top values, but what would they need to value in order to achieve that? And then you break down those values into very clear and tangible rules and say, if I need to value more courage, or I need to value more audacity or more strategic thinking, what are specific rules that I could live by on a day-to-day or week by week basis that would indeed prove, okay, this is a person who’s acting with courage, if that’s step two, step three is when we start incorporating the human factor.
We say, okay, you’re clear on what you wanna do. You’re clear on how to do it. But what subconscious fears could get in your way, and that’s when you gotta flush out your subconscious and figure out what belief structures that I hold that would be stopping me from doing this specific thing. Because if you can figure that out, you’re already way ahead of the game.
Well, we talked about the whole making the unconscious conscious so it doesn’t blindside you. All of a sudden, you’re not gonna be just blindsided and wrecked around on doing what you’re supposed to be doing. That’s step three. Step four, you falsify those things. Like I’m not a fan of the whole jargon of limiting beliefs, negative beliefs, positive beliefs.
There’s just false beliefs and truths. If something’s a false belief in your logical individual, you will decide, you know what? I’m gonna let this go. Even though it doesn’t feel comfortable, I will follow what’s true. For example, my process, the one that I had to go through, I had a belief that anybody who’s not Israeli, but I developed subconsciously without recognizing that anybody who’s not Israeli is going to try to harm me, because that was something that I experienced without Al-Qaeda attempt.
Now for me, I had to recognize, oh, this is something that, this is a story I’m telling myself in my head. This is a belief that I hold. Yeah. And I had to recognize that also. That’s not true. It’s not that anybody who’s not Israeli is gonna harm me. It was still challenging for me to start making new friends and new acquaintances with people that are outside of the country afterwards.
But I did that because I knew I can’t just fall into these old patterns. I can’t be victim to that. I have the power of choice now. I falsified it, and that gave me that. That’s step four. Step five is saying, okay, what do I need to remove from my life? In a very honest perspective, I’m a big fan of looking at this from a place of humility.
I am not Superman. I can’t take everybody and anybody on my back, especially if they don’t want to go up the mountain. So if we’re not hitting in the same direction, some people need to be left like it’s not a fit. Me trying to go in a certain way and trying to force ’em to go with me, no one’s happy.
I think for a lot of people that’s the difficult one, like removing this stuff.
I mean, there’s two things, there’s some tough conversations here, but number two, there’s this warm blanket feeling you get at night. You know when the air’s cold and it just, and, and you, you got these friendships that are much more, you’ve had them for so long that getting rid of it is a difficult, but w I mean, we may logically know we need it, but man, can this one be tough?
Yeah, I think it’s extremely tough when you’re not clear on what you want for yourself. People ask me sometimes, how do I have a hard conversation with someone? And I say that the first thing is you have to have a hard conversation with yourself. And the key to doing that is to be actually clear on what you really want.
Cuz once you’re really clear on what you want, you can say, is this a fit or not? Not, is this a bad person, good person, but is this a fit for what I want? While those things may be comforting, again, it depends what you value. If you value comfort or if you value growth and you value your own personal stuff, it’s different.
And that’s for everyone to
decide. , the
last thing, step six, is this evolution. What usually happens is that after you figure out what you really want, you figure out a roadmap to get there and you rem you flush out and then falsify the internal blockers that would stop you from achieving that.
Yeah. And you remove a lot of the weight from relationships that don’t serve you. All of a sudden you think differently. You’re a allowed more free and you set a new target and it’s kind of, it’s not this loop that ends, but it’s this upward spiral. And that’s the way I’ve seen it go. Which is really amazing to see people just keep evolving and now they have a toolkit to keep evolving.
That’s fantastic. And I love this evolution that it doesn’t end, it’s this continual, evolutionary process into, into greatness we didn’t know was inside of us. I know Edmar that you have, you and you and your consultancy, you have a, you have a cool program called The Arena. Can we talk about the arena for just a second?
I like the name of that. I feel like it’s, is it? Is it named after like the man in the arena, the Theodore Roosevelt. Correct. Yeah, correct. Fantastic, because I love that analogy. But tell us about the arena and how people can maybe get more coaching from you if they want to go to the next level. Happy to.
So the arena, it follows that six step process. Like I said, it’s a six week program. It’s very intense. It’s workshops at the beginning of the week with me and q and a’s at the beginning, at the end of the week with me, where every week we follow one of the pillars so we get really clear on what you want, figure out the roadmap and then remove anything that’s getting in your way from accomplishing that.
It’s small groups so everybody gets personal attention. It’s a premium program, it’s got a premium price, and as far as I know, it’s pretty much the only program in the industry that has a hundred percent money back guarantee. Think we help winners win and we only let people into the program who we think we can win.
It’s something that I love doing and I’m very grateful I get to do these days. And you can find out how to apply@edmrmoney.com slash apply. But please let us know that you came from the Stacking Benjamins podcast.
And that’d be awesome if you did everybody let, uh, Imar and his team know that we sent you, his mom said we sent you, and that we’re not Al-Qaeda agents either.
We can say that.
That would be appreciated if you mentioned that.
Yeah, man. I hope not. Yes. Uh, and by the way, if you are on your commute today or you’re walking the dog, whatever, we’ve got you covered. We’ll have a link to Imar Me’s site and how to apply on our show notes page at Stacking Benjamins dot com.
Imar, thank you so much for all of your insights. This has been incredibly enlightening. I think we helped a lot of people today. I
appreciate it. Appreciate you having me on. Joe, thank you very much.
This is Matt
from Gainesville, Georgia, and when I’m not delivering all this consumerism and a big brown package parcel, I’m Stacking Benjamins.
Man, how about that kidnapping story? Unreal. People
wonder how come I have a bag on my head sometimes
because we’re holding a hostage here.
I bet I just can’t afford to be kidnapped. Important commodity around here.
I thought you were insinuating that the real reason we’re in mom’s basement is we only take the bag off when, when the cameras come.
No, cuz I was thinking, you know, you speak to that camera and tell a bunch of financial facts
for the next Dave Ramsey’s like, Hey, so would you like to come out and play? I’m like, I don’t think I’m allowed. Because Dave Ramsey wants to meet on his show. He’s gotta kidnap
me from standing. Dave’s standing on your sidewalk
right now.
I know. Hey Dave, you know who I am? Yeah. And I know
who you are. Let’s get it out Dave. We about to
throw Hamas. I’ll get all my credit cards out. What are you gonna do? Now, Dave
can’t imagine like his kryptonite. You will have not only links to I Mar’s coaching, but also more in the show notes and in our 2 0 1, by the way, what a motivational interview that is.
We have cultivated five. Of our most motivational interviews that we’ve done in five different areas, and you can either search back through the 1600 plus episodes to just go find those yourself and listen to the entire shows. Or we have just those five interviews isolated in a YouTube clip. If you just go to, hold on, Joe,
do we wanna give them the answer like that?
Shouldn’t we just have them go listen to the 16? That’s more downloads for us. Have them go back and listen to the, the 1600 episodes or the
3,500 episodes. Maybe we’re not great marketers. Maybe we’re just in this to help people get better. Maybe that’s it. I don’t know. Stacky Benjamins dot com slash motivate, Stacking Benjamins dot com slash motivate.
Not only, by the way, will we share these five with you. You’ll also then also have a chance to sign up for our 2 0 1 newsletter there if you already don’t get it, because motivation’s not just one time. It is an ongoing thing. You gotta keep yourself, gotta keep yourself going. Og, as Imar said so eloquently.
Hey, let’s start with Haven Lifeline and tackle some of life’s most important questions. Our friends at Haven Life Insurance Agency, og, they put what you value first.
Uh, golf season, golf. Golf, and extra golf. That’s kind of my, my focus for the month of, uh, June. I get that handicapped up. You like
golfing in that 140 degree dry Texas grass where your ball rolls like 90 yards, even on a Duffed nine iron.
Yeah.
Yeah. That’s what you like. That’s good. I don’t hit Duff nine irons, but I can imagine what it’d be like if I did Uhhuh.
It’s your loved ones in your time, which is even better on a golf course. That’s why they made buying quality. Turn life insurance. Actually, simply go to Stacking Benjamins dot com slash HavenLife now for a free quote.
At Haven Life, their application is simple. It’s online, you get an instant coverage decision. Prices are affordable and they’re issued by their parent company, mass Mutual, more than 140 year old insurer. Greg wrote us an email, said that he’s a little, uh, camera shy. So unfortunately, Greg, we can’t send you some Stacky Benjamin swag.
Because you didn’t call in, but here is Greg’s question. So my question’s in regard to how I should be saving for a house in the future, my current housing, including utilities provided by my employer. I currently pay myself, quote, rent into a simple savings account. But I’d like to see this money work for me, suggestions on where I should be putting it.
Hope to hear back. Thanks Greg. Greg, of course. We got you back. And, uh, where should he be putting that house money? It’s in a savings account. Now, maybe a syndication hands it to this guy. Sounds like
Greg’s a Maat agent. Real estate syndication deal would be one place you’ll double your money in three years.
Or Yeah, or not one of the two. I think it all just boils down to when do you want the money? If you don’t have a determined timeframe, I need to buy a house in this period of time, then I would totally have it be invested. But if you’re looking at a time horizon and you say, well, my, my employer pays for my housing, but I need to get one on my own and I think I’m gonna need a house in three years, or I wanna buy a house in three years.
Then anything under five years has to be pretty safe and secure. The downside is that every time you look at the stock market, you’re gonna be like, gosh darn it, I should have invested this, this thing. And it would gone up. Except for the fact that if you would invest the money, then it’s gonna go down because that’s how Murphy’s law works.
So general rule, uh, you know, anything under five years, safe and secure, everything above five years invested in the great companies in the United States and the world. And, uh, and, and just let it, let it go and see what happens. The odds are in your favor on that longer time horizon, for
sure. Two things I think OG that he looks at versus a simple savings account.
There are money market accounts like Navy Federal has, as an example, if he is in the military, I know using a, uh, money market can give him a higher interest rate and he still keeps some insurance on that money Smidge more. Yep. Yeah. And, and it’s not gonna be a ton, but I think it’s a better place. And the second thing is, and man, we’ve been able to say this OG for a long time, but if he knows specifically when he needs it, a CD might be worth looking at again now.
Yeah.
Absolutely. Yeah, if you’ve got all of those things would be fine, right? Savings, money market, cd, uh, treasury bonds, you know, something that’s gonna have a known outcome over a relatively short period of time. So I like all of those things. I, I wanna stay away from, you know, stock ownership if you need the money in the next three to five years.
Thanks to that question, Greg. If you call us though next time, greg Stacking Benjamins dot com slash voicemail, we will send you a greatest money show on Earth, HavenLife Stacking Benjamins T-shirt with our circus theme to embrace the fact that we’ve got quite a variety show going on here with all kinds of high wire acts.
Like, uh, Doug is trying to apparently do here with,
uh, since we’re budgeted to give away a t-shirt every week and Greg didn’t leave a voicemail, that t-shirt has to go somewhere. I
think that’s the rule. I think the rule is we don’t send one that week, we budget for like 45 out of 52 cuz there’s always a Greg who needs help.
We just can’t, can’t get to after scratcher. Hey, I know that this is a valuable time for all of you, uh, so thank you for choosing to spend it with us. Thank you for people that have left us a review. You know, I haven’t said this in a little while, but, and this is not why we’d like people to give us a review.
We, we like reviews mostly because people wonder what the show’s actually really about. And if you do and you send it to me, we will send you out one of these many books that I get from all the different authors. Uh, Imar not an author, so he doesn’t have man, that guy, a book. That’d be amazing book. But, uh, I get these to review into prep and I just don’t have room for them all.
So some of these authors have fantastic work. Don’t leave this review because you want a book, but certainly if you do. Send me an email, joe stacky Benjamins dot com, tell me what the review was and I’ll be happy to put your name in the hat. And lately, by the way, I’ve been given everybody a book because we’ve just had so many great authors on.
So send those to me and thank you for people’s patience for the times when I’ve been traveling around the country, cuz sometimes it’s taken me a few weeks. He said to Julie in uh, Vermont specifically. So thanks to Julie for hanging out and waiting, but we made it worth a while coming up on our community calendar this week.
Tonight I’ve got Instagram live with Carl Brower from IC Cars. Every time I talk to Carl Brower, he’s got something interesting, a new stat about what’s going on in the car market. And in this one, he’s going to be revealing their research on high mileage cars, which brands of cars tend to last the longest.
So if you’re in the used car market, you may wanna focus on brands where. The cars are likely to still be around 200,000, 250,000 miles and and beyond. That’s at 5:00 PM Eastern, 2:00 PM Pacific, uh, on Instagram this evening. Much more. If you want more stuck Benjamins dot com slash welcome for all the different places to hang out with us.
All right. If you’re not here to hang out, you’re not here for used car outlook, you’re here because you’re frustrated that you’re not making decisions as well as you know you can with your money. Head to stacky Benjamins dot com slash og. That’s how you book time on OG and his team’s calendar to see how his team can help you make better financial decisions that the future you will thank you for at stacky Benjamins dot com slash og.
All right, that is it for us, Doug. You got it from here, man. Lots of takeaways, but what should we have learned on today’s show? Well, Joe, first,
take some advice from Imar and build your mental fortitude to stop holding yourself back. Second, from our TikTok, if it sounds too good to be true, probably is by the big lesson I’ve been had.
Turns out Joe’s mom is too timed me. She’s like a double agent. She never wanted to spend quality time in the kitchen. It was all just a rouse to get free labor, to make dinner of all the little down dirty tricks. She knew I wanted that recipe all along. Thanks for toying with me, lady. And no, I’m not cleaning that cupboard.
After we record what? Okay. Maybe I’ll clean half of it. What? You’ll what? Got it. Okay. Yep. Clean it all. I’ll clean it all. Thanks to Edmar for joining us today. You can find out more about his podcast, the Emotional Fortitude Podcast, wherever you are listening to us right now. Also, we’ll have a special link for his course, just for all the stackers.
We’ll also include links in our show notes at Stacking Benjamins dot com. This show is The Property of SB Podcasts, llc, copyright 2023, and is created by Joe Saul-Sehy. Our producer is Karen Repine. This show was written by Lacy Langford, who’s also the host of the Military Money Show. With help from me, Joe, and Doc G from the Earn and Invest podcast, Kevin Bailey helps us take a deeper dive into all the topics covered on each episode in our newsletter called the 2 0 1.
You’ll find the four 11 on All Things Money at the 2 0 1. Just visit Stacking Benjamins dot com slash 2 0 1. Tina Eichenberg makes the video version of this show. Once we bottle up all this goodness, we ship it to our engineer, the amazing Steve Stewart. Steve helps the rest of our team sound nearly as good as I do right now.
Why don’t chat with friends about the show later? Mom’s friend Gertrude and Kate Youngin are our social media coordinators, and Gertrude is the room mother in our Facebook group called The Basement. So say hello. When you see us posting online to join all the basement fun with other stackers, type Stacking Benjamins dot com slash basement.
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, Doug, and we’ll see you next time back here at the Stacking Benjamin Show.
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