Ever feel like you’re your own worst enemy when it comes to reaching a goal? Today, we sit down with Thais Gibson from the Personal Development School to explore how self-sabotage sneaks into our lives and—more importantly—how to kick it out for good. While you’ve maybe heard Thais on Mel Robbins or other shows, what you haven’t heard is what we talk about today – how specifically she walks Joe through limiting beliefs and then outlines how it’s done. Whether you’ve followed Thais’ huge social media presence consistently or it’s your first time with her, we know this will help you kick self-sabotage to the curb and get to work. From aligning your conscious and subconscious goals to overcoming limiting beliefs, this conversation is packed with actionable insights to help you get out of your own way.
But that’s not all. We also dive into a financial hot topic: influencer-backed crypto scams. Learn how a viral coin duped investors last week and why speculation isn’t the same as smart investing.
Of course, it wouldn’t be a Stacking Benjamins episode without some holiday flair. Joe, OG, and Doug share festive mall memories, debate the best holiday tunes, and throw in some trivia to keep things lively.
Why You’ll Love This Episode:
- Practical tips to recognize and overcome self-sabotage.
- Eye-opening lessons on speculative investments and influencer-driven hype.
- A nostalgic take on holiday mall culture. Remember that?
Episode Highlights:
- Kicking off with holiday concerns and a satirical take on seasonal trends.
- Festive mall memories: shopping chaos, holiday tunes, and the art of people-watching.
- Thais Gibson’s insights on aligning conscious and subconscious goals to beat self-sabotage.
- Turning resistance into opportunities and tackling the emotional costs of inaction.
- Practical steps to rewire limiting beliefs and visualize success.
- Lessons from a viral influencer’s crypto scam and the dangers of speculative investing.
- Speculation vs. investing: Why it matters and how to avoid costly mistakes.
- Holiday trivia fun and laughs with the Basement crew.
What You’ll Take Away:
Whether you’re looking to improve your mindset, steer clear of financial pitfalls, or just enjoy some holiday tunes, this episode offers a little something for everyone. Walk away with tools to set yourself up for success—mentally, financially, and maybe even musically (if Doug’s favorite holiday tune is your jam).
Keep the Conversation Going:
Have a story of self-sabotage you’ve overcome or a holiday memory to share? Join us in the Basement Facebook group to swap tips, laughs, and maybe a little holiday cheer.
Deeper dives with curated links, topics, and discussions are in our newsletter, The 201, available at https://www.stackingbenjamins.com/201
Enjoy!
Monday Mentor: Thais Gibson
Big thanks to Thais Gibson for joining us today. To learn more about Thais, visit Personal Development | Attachment Styles | The Personal Development School. Learn more about and enroll in her personal development course designed to help you overcome procrastination and self-sabotage at Break Through Self-Sabotage & Procrastination For Good.
Our Headline
- Hawk Tuah Coin warning (TikTok)
- Hawk Tuah Coin investor lost everything (TikTok)
Doug’s Trivia
- One Holiday song reached number one on the Billboard charts in 2019 a full 25 years after it was created. What song was it?
Have a question for the show?
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Join Us Wednesday
Tune in on Wednesday when we’ll share eight strategies to help you tame holiday expenses and gear up for next year.
Written by: Kevin Bailey
Miss our last show? Listen here: What Truly Makes a Life Worth Living? (SB1615)
Episode transcript:
Joe: Guys, a major news organization found out there’s a big problem in America,
Joe: We’re gonna go right to the audio that, uh, I heard yesterday.
bit: The particular concern is the growing gap between rich and super rich. Should the government be doing more to help the rich truly have become the disenfranchised segment of our society?
bit: That’s true. The, the average investment banker is only able to afford one boat, but the super rich family will have upwards of 5, 6, 7 votes. Mm. You have to have a decent yacht. We should have all kinds of programs to help these rich people. If the rich were just a little bit more motivated, they wouldn’t be such a drain on society.
bit: I take issue with that because, um, I grew up rich. I come from a rich background, tell my own experiences. Uh,
Joe: that’s from a news organization called The Onion. I dunno if you guys have heard of the Onion. Yes. Never heard of that. A very reputable place. Yeah. But we gotta worry about that this holiday season out of all the things we gotta worry about.
Joe: I think that’s the big one.
Doug: I have, that is the big one. I have like five boats. So does that, which categories? I mean, none of them have motors, but which category does that put me in? And they’re all on blocks in my backyard.
OG: I just wanna hear Doug say toy boat 10 times really fast.
Doug: Toy boat, toy boat, toy boat, toy boat
Joe: to boat.
Joe: Uh, at this point in the show is when we normally don’t complain about the growing wealth divide between rich and super rich, we salute our troops. So let’s raise our mugs gents. On behalf of the Men and Women making podcast to Mom’s Basement and the men and women at Navy Federal Credit Union, thank you so much for all the work you did this last weekend and continue to do this holiday season.
Joe: Let’s go stack some, Benjamin, shall we? Uh,
Joe: 12 podcast players. 11 horrible segues. 10 puns of Punning. Nine. Coleslaw’s Eating. Yeah. Not funny anymore. Eight Lifelines throwing seven interviews running. Six people whining about fees.
Doug: Five. Amazing neighbors. Hey, wait a minute, Richie. Five should be just one amazing neighbor. Think you got another typo, man.
Doug: I.
OG: Four trips to Bavaria. Did we tell you Joe went to Bavaria?
Headlines: Three trips to the Canadian Rockies? Joe told you he came to the Rockies, right?
Thais: Two trips to Asia. I’m sure Joe told you all the Southeast Asia trips, right? Wow. He’s gotta stop that.
Joe: No.
Doug: Live from Joe’s mom’s basement. It’s the Stacking Benjamin Show.
Doug: I’m Joe’s mom’s neighbor, Duggan. Remember those goals you set at the beginning of the year? How are those coming along if you’re like 99% of us? Not. Well, today’s mentor is a woman who helps people get out of their own way. Stop self-sabotaging and get rolling towards security. Tais Gibson. Plus in our headline, maybe some influencers should have put a little hawk to on their crypto coin.
Doug: Would that have eased the pain of many investors getting maybe ripped off? We’ll talk scams, crypto and online celebrities and don’t look now, but I’ll be stealing this show when I share an earworm of a holiday song that you’ll be humming all day. And now two guys who are about to put a little hawk to on this podcast.
Doug: So it’s all ready to go. It’s Joe and, oh,
Joe: hey, there’s Stackers. And that one guy on YouTube who says There’s too many sexual innuendos on our show. Welcome back
Doug: to the Stacking Benjamin Show. Just gonna get it outta the way right up front.
Joe: Just, just, wow, I’m listening to that open. Uh, and I’m, oh, yeah. Well, welcome back to Monday. It is the big week.
Joe: Big, big holiday week. Oh, gee, you got all your shopping done. Got all, yeah. Pretty much.
OG: Thank God for Amazon and, uh, and, and Shopify delivery systems. I mean, it’s the ability to have stuff come right to your door. I couldn’t even imagine going to a mall. You know, and, and that actually was kind of a fun thing, right?
OG: Walking around, have a little peppermint mocha latte. Yeah. Yeah. With all the stuff. But now I just see it as like a big place where all the germs are, and I just go, whew, I’m good. I’ll just, I’ll just have those people outside this big glass cage that I’m in, drop off the stuff to the front of my house, and when they’re gone off the porch, I’ll open the door ever so gently and grab the packages off the porch.
OG: But we do. We do go out, we’re gonna go, we’re gonna go do the, uh, the light tour’s. There’s nothing
Joe: psychological going on there at all. Wow. Yeah. There’s a whole no psychology happening there at, there’s a whole
Doug: sophomore level class in psych right there in, in, in
OG: that, trust me, OGs brain is graduate level.
OG: Graduate level psychology required,
Doug: but I mean, late eighties, early nineties malls at the Christmas, that was peak holiday. Yeah. Like vibe was sweet. Yeah. There were no
OG: germs back then. That was sweet. And now, now, you know.
Doug: No germs. No, I know. But when those little trains that are, you know, like the trains are going around through candy cane land and through the trees, and the music is pumped everywhere, then people touch it, and then there’s all germs everywhere again.
Doug: So, whew. Yeah. You get to sit, sit on creepy Santa’s lap.
Joe: I realized that I had a circuit of stores too, Doug, that are now all gone, like all gone. A circuit Inside the mall? Yeah, inside the mall. You would, you would go to the same stores every time. I would go see your seniors walking group radio. Sh always went to those stores.
Joe: Yeah, I would go, I would go to Radio Shack, I would go to the record store. You had to go to the record store that one and hang out there.
OG: The
Joe: record
OG: store. The record store. Everybody. Record
Doug: store was the heart of the mall. Yes.
OG: Also known as the eight track store. After it, uh, moved up and got rid of the records.
Joe: It was, it was clearly cassette tape, uh, deck. The records record store. Yes. And then, uh, Walden Books. And then Spencer Spencer’s is still around. Uh, so Spencer. So you kind of go to all those, but you know, most of those places are long. What about the board game store? There was no such thing back then.
Joe: Board games were like still no such
OG: thing.
Joe: Yeah, board games were not what they are today. Board games. Okay, so we got a great show by the way, speaking about OGs, brain and psychology, Tais Gibson is somebody who works with people to break through barriers. And you know what? This time of year, if you look back on your goals, like Doug uso eloquently said earlier, a lot of goals we didn’t reach.
Joe: And a lot of time it was nothing but what’s between our ears. Complete self-sabotage. Oh gee. You see it with people with their goals. Fairly often. I know I’ve self-sabotage. Just,
OG: yeah, it’s fun.
Joe: It’s so,
OG: makes things challenging. It’s
Joe: It’s so frustrating. It’s so frustrating. So she’s gonna teach us how to break through and it’s a great time to do this.
Joe: By the way. We want to come out in 2025, just absolutely rolling.
OG: If I need a lot of cookies between now and January 1st, I’ll have a lot of progress when I go to the gym on January 1st, and that’ll keep me motivated.
Joe: She has over 35,000 people use her personal development school. 300,000 people follow her advice on YouTube.
Joe: Ty Gibson is going to help us. First, we have just a couple sponsors that make this show go. We’re going to say thank you and hello to them. And then Tais Gibson Front and Center. She’s our Monday mentor.
Joe: And I am super happy she’s here to help us with self-development before the new year. Te Gibson’s here. How are you?
Thais: I’m really good. Thank you so much for having me today.
Joe: You are in Canada. It’s gotta be freezing there. Tais.
Thais: It is freezing and it’s snowing and there’s snow everywhere and literally we, we had to drive yesterday and if the roads were crazy and I’m excited to go to Austin for the winter.
Thais: That’s the plan.
Joe: Did that help you though, TAs? I gotta know That must have helped you become a self-development expert. You’re like I gotta figure out how to get myself through the winter. If I can figure out how to get through the winter, I can help other people do anything.
Thais: There you go. For sure. I would say probably stem from some other things, but winters are are not the most fun for sure.
Joe: Well, let’s dive into why you’re here, because so many of our stackers, Tais, we know what we need to do. I, I had this happen to me literally yesterday. There’s a project that I’m afraid of. I know that I’m afraid of it. I know that it’s between my ears, right? I just gotta get going. I know it might not be perfect, but I’m walking around my office and I’m walking around the basement where we record, and I’m doing every other little thing, and I know what it truly is.
Joe: It is this thing we’re gonna talk about today, self-sabotage. I have no idea why I do it. Why do we sabotage ourself from the stuff we know is gonna make our career better, our life better, our relationship better? Why do we do it?
Thais: It’s such an important question, and I think we have to really know two things in order to get into the topic, which is first, your conscious mind is responsible for three to 5% of everything.
Thais: So your conscious mind is the part that you see as yourself, like the one that analyzes, thinks things through, evaluates plans, things has desires. Your subconscious mind is responsible for 95 to 97% of all of your beliefs, thoughts, emotions, and actions. And that’s according to tons and tons of research, but also most recently, according to Harvard Business Review.
Thais: And so what happens is our conscious mind. Cannot out will or overpower our subconscious mind. So lemme say to people, there’s no actual such thing as self-sabotage. We’re not waking up consciously in the morning saying, today I’m gonna sabotage myself all day. Or No, I
Joe: got a great playup for today. I’m gonna f it all up.
Thais: But what we experience as self-sabotage is our conscious mind intending something and our subconscious mind having a different set of motives or habits. And so basically what that ends up taking place is we try to out will ourselves or we try to will ourselves into doing something. And our subconscious mind is really the one running the show.
Thais: And so it begs this really important question, well what in my subconscious mind is blocking me? And there’s always two things and we can go pretty deep on each of these things ’cause there’s a lot to each one of them. One is limiting beliefs or fears. Okay, so let’s say you have a project, and let’s say for example that you believe that I will fail or I don’t have enough time, or I’m afraid that I’m not gonna be good enough to finish the project.
Thais: Like these are the types of fears people would, would have around something, or I don’t know how to do it. I’m incapable. If you have these subconscious belief systems about either yourself or the project that you’re taking part in, then of course your subconscious mind is gonna block you. Of course you’re gonna feel this push pull of like the gas and the brakes on at the same time.
Thais: The other thing, and we can really go deep into each one, is we all have a subconscious set of needs. This set of needs, this hierarchy of needs is driving our behavior all of the time. You know, oftentimes what happens is we have something that we try to commit to, and I’ll actually share an analogy to really just map this out.
Thais: And again, we can explore each one in more detail, but. I had a client once and she said to me, Tais, I really want to lose weight and eat healthier. She was pre-diabetic, she hadn’t been taking care of her health. And she said, I’ve been working on this every single New Year’s for the past seven New Years.
Thais: I tell myself I’m gonna do this. I’m gonna finally change my habits and every New Year’s, I don’t even seem to bother after the first or second day.
Joe: Yeah.
Thais: We looked at what her subconscious needs were and her subconscious needs. You can think of them as these, these priorities that drive your behavior were social time, family time, security, and comfort.
Thais: And so what ends up taking place is she has this idea where she’s like, her conscious mind says, go to the gym, eat healthy exercise. And her subconscious mind says, no, that’s gonna take time away from social family and what we feel comfortable and secure doing.
Joe: I could hear just screaming at me now going, overruled.
Joe: Right,
Thais: exactly. That’s good. Yeah. Love that. And so that was her experience, so, so what we have to do is we have to learn what our subconscious set of needs are, and then we have to link our conscious goals. And so in her case, what we did, and, and you’ll start to see this sort of map out for different people’s experiences, is we looked at, okay, well if she really values and has these needs based around social, family, time, security, and comfort, we have to get her exercise and health goals to align with those things.
Thais: So in other words, we got her to do group fitness classes, got her to join a hiking club with her husband, got her to go to more walks to the park with her kids. So she’s incorporating social and family into her conscious mind goal. So her conscious and subconscious are now getting into alignment instead of in of the form of cognitive dissonance they were before.
Thais: And then we got her to, when she was gonna try to finally go to the gym, we made sure she felt secure and comfortable. She had comfortable clothes, she felt good, and she learned at home workouts first with free weights, so that by the time she went to the gym, she actually felt comfortable and secure with what she was doing and what exercises to do.
Thais: And all of a sudden all of this resistance that she had because her conscious wasn’t tending one thing. Subconscious driving her full steam ahead in a different direction just by understanding her needs hierarchy and aligning them. All of that resistance goes away. And so it’s almost like
Joe: I have this, I feel like I have this inner bully and I have to convince them that what I want is what the bully also wants.
Thais: And really that bully is, is it’s not ever really a bully. It’s a set of mechanisms designed to protect you. Mm. So if you look at like the flip side, again, like we go back to the first point, ’cause that second point was the needs. If you go back to the, the flip side, if you had an experience when you were a child, for example, where you tried something that was a big project outside of your comfort zone, and let’s say you were in sixth grade and it was this big project that you took on the group, the leader of, of the project.
Thais: And let’s say you had to give a speech for the group and, and it went terribly well, your subconscious mind. It actually stores everything and then it works to protect us from the things that seemed like they were threatening it. You can almost imagine, it’s like if you go into the woods and you see a bear, you run away from the bear and you’re safe.
Thais: But let’s say you have to go into the woods the next day. What does your mind do?
Joe: Don? Don’t go in the woods,
Thais: or it’s like, there’s the bear. There’s the bear. Where is it? And it’s looking for it everywhere, right? Right. If you have to go into the woods for whatever reason. And so what ends up happening is our subconscious mind.
Thais: We store limiting beliefs about ourselves because of past experiences, isn’t just like the bear. We project them onto everything. Am I gonna be good enough here? Am I gonna not be good enough in this place? Will I fail here? And so what happens is when we can start finding and unpacking, and there’s ways to do this, but when we can start finding and unpacking what it is that we’re afraid of or what it is that we’re out of alignment with, and then work through our fears and then align with our needs, we will literally get rid of any form of self sabotage.
Joe: Well, and I would think, tell you, some of these things may have happened so long ago, they’re hidden. Like I might’ve thought, my conscious mind might be like, oh yeah, that’s not bothering me. And then as we start to dig, maybe we find out that, oh, that thing when I was five years old is still hanging on out there.
Joe: I gotta imagine that’s the case for a lot of people.
Thais: Yes. But there’s some pretty easy ways to bring it up. Do you wanna go through it on your project together, just for listeners? Absolutely.
Joe: Yeah.
Thais: Let’s
Joe: do it.
Thais: Okay, cool. So if you can first tell me a little bit about the project that you found yourself sabotaging.
Joe: So I need to, uh, set up a second camera angle for our basement studio to have better graphics because we’re becoming much more involved with YouTube and video. And what’s funny is, is that my whole life, like I’ve done audio forever, I was on TV for nine years, but I didn’t do any of the technical stuff.
Joe: So now I’m buying these cameras, I’m getting all this, this equipment, and I look at this stuff and I’m like, I will deal with that tomorrow. That will be fantastic. I literally bought a $900 camera a month ago. Two days ago, I actually looked at the manual on how to set it up and thank God I had to charge the battery ’cause that let me off the hook to do anything else on that project that I know I need.
Joe: I know it’s gonna make us better. I know that our stackers will get more from it if they see, you know, you and I working together and we can cut through some of the noise by just having the graphics. But like it’s, it’s gonna be great. It’s totally self-sabotage.
Thais: Okay, cool. So that was a really good description, so, so now if you think back to yesterday and the time that you were like, okay, I’m gonna get back to it, or I’ll go to that later.
Thais: I’ll do it tomorrow. Do you notice what emotion you feel in your body? Is it sort of like a feeling of just resistance or frustration or a little stressed or overwhelmed? Like how would you describe what you’re
Joe: feeling
Thais: in that moment?
Joe: I felt overwhelmed all day yesterday. Okay. And I felt, oh, I just don’t have time for this.
Joe: I truly don’t have time for this. And then as I think about it and I think about my priorities, I’m like, no, this is priority number one. And I thought, well then I’ll, I’ll do it as soon as I do these other three things, then I’ll do it.
Thais: Okay. Beautiful. So you hear consciously it’s your priority, but subconsciously there’s some resistance, right?
Thais: And you feel this overwhelm. So in that moment where you are thinking about doing it, what’s the worst that could happen? What’s the worst case scenario that may be there? Like you try to do the camera, it just takes forever. It just isn’t something you feel really strong at doing. ’cause you’ve been on television, you’re good in front of the camera, but not necessarily good with the technical side in the same way.
Thais: Like what’s the concern underneath there for you?
Joe: The concern for me is it’s gonna take all day. I have 30 things we’re already doing. Well, let me make sure I get these other 30 things done well and then I’ll deal with the thing that, sure, it’ll make us better, but I wanna at least make sure we. Keep our promises to our stackers, the way we have promises to them now.
Thais: Okay. So it, it’s either one of two things. It sounds like there’s this feeling of feeling overwhelmed and kind of trapped ’cause you know, less of the technical side of it. Or perhaps there’s a part of it where you’re going, I feel like there’s all these other things I have to do, and maybe you even feel like there’s this conflict in your priorities.
Thais: Does either of those resonate with you a little bit?
Joe: Yeah. Uh, both. I do think that too much to do is an excuse. Like I really like, my conscious mind is like, that’s an excuse. ’cause I know what, what our game plan is. I know what’s gonna move the needle. I know that the reason you spend a thousand dollars on a camera is because of the fact that it’s gonna move the needle.
Thais: Okay. So, and do you feel a little bit trapped when you go to think about doing it?
Joe: I do. ’cause I feel like I’m not good at it and I don’t know where to start.
Thais: Some really good limiting beliefs there. So not good at it. Thank
Joe: you. I’m very good at this.
Thais: Not good at it. Um, dunno, where to start is often like a sense of helplessness, like learn helplessness a little bit and then a little bit of feeling trapped.
Thais: And so then you keep prioritizing other things. So conscious mind, nose, okay, this is gonna be a really good thing to do. Subconscious mind, there’s some limiting beliefs there. Now I have to ask you a question and you, you can omit if you’d like, but did you ever have times earlier in life, even though it was like big, small, where you felt trapped or helpless in any kind of situation or, or anything around that?
Joe: No, not, not trapped or helpless, but, but I did feel, I did feel when I was younger that um, there were some things that were such big strengths that if I just kept doing those, I. I wouldn’t have to do the stuff that I wasn’t as good at.
Thais: Yeah. That you weren’t as good at. Okay. And were there times instead where you felt more not good enough growing up, anything like that?
Joe: Oh, in lots of things. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I’ve always been a pretty self, a pretty self-confident person in a lot of ways. Yeah. But definitely my, I’m gonna avoid these five things just because I know I’m not gonna be good at them, and so I’m just not gonna even enter that arena
Thais: this and, and avoid these things over.
Thais: You’re okay. So you can also see it was like a coping mechanism for you a little bit. Like that’s how you would go through things. Is it, it through life is through like avoidance a little bit and then double down on what you’re good at, which is almost like you’re repeating that coping mechanism in a sense here.
Thais: Is that, does that resonate?
Joe: That does? Yes, very much.
Thais: Okay. So interesting. So the first, if I just
Joe: stay away from this and don’t look at it Tais, it’ll probably work out. Okay. So, which by the way is never a good strategy.
Thais: That’s fair. Okay. So now if you actually look at this, right? This is on the belief side.
Thais: Look, okay, I’m not good enough, good at this, I’m not good enough at this particular thing. If you just look at it consciously, like bringing that to the surface for a moment, where do you feel like you actually have room to, to move through that? Is it something you would delegate out if it was meaningful enough so that you still don’t have to do it?
Thais: Would that be a better strategy or would it be something where it’s like, Hey, look at all the ways I am capable of this and you know, let’s look for some supporting evidence to actually push on that idea that I’m not good enough to set up the camera and to get this done. And what do you see there as being a, a more appropriate strategy?
Joe: I think, actually it’s funny because my conscious mind keeps trying to tell me. Just do it. Because when you do this type of stuff, when you dive into it, you end up having a great time. It ends up being fun, kind of being bad at it, you know? And once you open yourself up to being bad at it, then, and you know you’re not gonna die like it’s gonna be.
Joe: Okay.
Thais: Okay. So in that case, if there’s no plan to like delegate or hire somebody to set it up for you, which seems like you know, you’re setting up a camera, you can, I’m sure you can do it. So then I would ask you like to check in with the opposite of that story. Like what are times that you’ve had to work on things that were out of your comfort zone, but you actually showed up really well, you did a good enough job.
Thais: And maybe if there’s anything specific to technology.
Joe: Sure. Like the this, I mean, podcasting, I show up, I know how this stuff turns on. I know all the equipment. That’s second nature, very easy.
Thais: That’s beautiful. And do you have anything else times where you’ve had to kind of overcome something and actually shown up really well?
Joe: Oh, I, it’s so funny you asked that. It’s, this is so weird, everybody because. It’s wild how this just, yeah. So when I was in high school, I joined the swim team and my buddy Dave and I, we were seniors and they were just starting a swim team at our school. And I always thought that would be kind of fun. So he and I decided to go out for the team and I remember the coach gave us a tryout.
Joe: He said, why don’t you just swim back and forth so I can watch you guys swim? It never, Tais occurred to me that the stuff they do in the Olympics was what we were gonna be doing. I was always the pedal around in the pool kind of guy. I’m like, do I need to get up on that thing? And the, the coach looks at me and goes, you mean the blocks?
Joe: And I go, I go, yeah, that thing. And he looks at me and he goes, no, just jump in. And I jump in and I do my little dog paddle and I go down and I go back and he literally looks at the wall, looks back at me, looks at the wall again, looks back at me and goes, well, we need bodies. He. And he let my buddy and I on the team.
Joe: And what was amazing was I was a really good runner. I was a college scholarship runner and for the first time in my life I was one of the crappiest athletes on the team. And I had to work my butt off really, really hard just to be average. And I realized what a gift I’d been given as a runner to just naturally be able to run and be and be good.
Joe: And it’s funny that that came to mind right away because t what’s really cool is in my memory, that is one of my happiest times.
Thais: Wow, that’s amazing. And if you look back to that time, what did you learn? What key takeaways? Like did you have any lessons that came out of it or anything where you were like, wow, I learned to have, to really work hard or persevere or be humble or what?
Thais: What comes to mind?
Joe: I learned first of all, that uh, I had been really egotistical about my running and how good I was at running and to keep that in check, maybe have a little humility and, and be a little humble. ’cause there are things that you’re good at that our people struggle with. And maybe you are the same just in different areas.
Joe: So people will treat you better if you treat them better. I also learned that, uh, yeah, the workout wasn’t gonna kill me. Like it was actually gonna make me better by the end of the season. I was a competent swimmer, like I was middle of the pack by the end of the season. I think if we would’ve kept going, I wouldn’t have been great, but I would’ve been, you know, a good swimmer on our team that actually was a good part of the team.
Joe: Like the last two or three events, I was finally, finally breaking into like what I think my coach had hoped I was at the start of the season.
Thais: I love that. I love that. That’s amazing. So, so what we did is, it’s funny, but you’ll see that we have these like subconscious pieces of resistance to things because we’re like, oh, you know, I’m feeling overwhelmed.
Thais: Or these limiting beliefs or ideas like, oh, what if I’m not good enough at this? And they can come from like previous times or experiences. When you bring them to the light and then you look for, you actually push on that. Can I really know I won’t be good enough? What are times I did feel good enough or did overcome things?
Thais: And what happens, which is so interesting, is your conscious mind speaks language, but your subconscious mind, it doesn’t speak language at all. So if I say to you, whatever you do, do not think of the pink elephant. Your conscious mind here is do not, but your subconscious probably thought of a pink elephant.
Thais: Or flash an image of one. And so what’s interesting is if you actually, if your subconscious is the one blocked, and that’s the case for almost every single time we’re like, we’re gonna do something and we don’t follow through. We have to find what that little limiting belief is, which you were like, okay, feeling not good enough around something and it being outta your comfort zone.
Thais: And then we have to look for evidence in emotions of the opposite. So you shared about your swim team and how it was hard, but they brought you these powerful lessons and you actually showed up and it was one of the happiest times of your life. And now you’re speaking in emotion to your subconscious mind in a way that can actually comprehend.
Thais: And so what you’ll find is that because of that. When you go to take action tomorrow or later today, or whenever you plan on doing it next, you’ll find that like, oh yeah, I can do hard things. I’ve done that before. And you’ll see that there’s a little bit of a rewired association to that experience. And so it’s a three step, um, tool that people can use.
Thais: It’s like, okay, what is my point of resistance? What am I believing? And I really know that’s even true, that I won’t be good enough. And I do, I actually have evidence because evidence elicits an emotional response. So it speaks to me. Wait a minute, can
Joe: we take these a little slower? Yeah. So number one, what is the limiting belief?
Joe: Yeah, that’s the first thing we’re asking ourself. What is the limiting, so the series of questions you asked me, how did you feel? Did you feel overwhelmed? Did you feel trapped? Did you feel we need to ask ourselves these limiting belief questions? Where’s it at?
Thais: And really, I was validating with you. So at the beginning I was sort of looking for what the belief was, but somebody can ask themselves like, what am I afraid will happen if I take action?
Thais: Or, what’s the worst case scenario? And it’s a really good way to actually make subconscious information conscious because you’re, you’ll see that like, okay, the worst case scenario is that I just don’t feel good enough and I feel really disempowered. Or I feel like I’m trapped, or I feel, you know, for some people it’s feel unworthy or I’m unsafe, or feel like they’re in a position where they’re helpless.
Thais: Like they’re, they’re gonna be these different beliefs. But you’ll know, like if you sit with that first question for a moment, what is my worst case scenario in fear will happen. And that’s the way of first surfacing that, that limiting belief to the conscious level of mind.
Joe: Boy, I think, you know, there’s all these studies that people are afraid to ask their boss for a raise, right?
Joe: Yeah. This feels like really important stuff. If you’re going in to ask your boss for a raise, like why? Why do I think I don’t deserve it? Why haven’t I asked? What’s the worst that happens if I go talk to my boss and I ask her to give me more money?
Thais: Exactly and for those types of situations, and you can even share some other ones, like the common ones are things like, I’m scared I’ll all be rejected.
Thais: I’m rejected, is a big limiting belief. I’m scared that my boss will think I’m bad. I’m a bad person. And you’ll see that be a limiting belief where people feel like they have to overexplain themselves and present as so sweet and innocent all the time. And then they’re so scared of anybody like offending anybody or affecting anybody’s feelings.
Thais: Or a lot of people have limiting beliefs like, I’m undeserving, or I’m unworthy of this, or I’m not good enough. And so you’ll see like, okay, what’s the worst case fear that I have? I feel like my boss says no, and then I feel like, oh my gosh, I’m just not deserving. I’m just unworthy. It seems to confirm that.
Thais: And so it’s a really good way to first surface that limiting belief and then we can take those next two steps to start pushing on it.
Joe: Yeah, so that’s step one. Then step two was
Thais: step two. We then actually question it. Can I 100% know that this is true? We can actually ask like, can I really know that I’m not good enough, that I don’t deserve a raise?
Thais: Or can I 100% know that my boss will reject me or can I 100% know that I’m undeserving of this? And so we, we actually hold it to the light of our conscious mind because a lot of times these things just come from previous experiences where we felt this way and our subconscious mind stores it. And like the bear in the woods, it’s like, where’s the bear?
Thais: Where’s the bear? What if this happens? What if this happens? And really, we are our own glass ceiling when that takes place because we have this experience of going, oh my gosh, what if these things happen? And then we just don’t take action and we just park it and we just leave it alone. And, and it’s terrible for us because we don’t get the opportunity to grow through those challenges.
Thais: It’s really those limiting beliefs that keep us stuck.
Joe: Well, and I gotta believe too, for a lot of us too, there’s regret, right? I mean, then you live with the regret that you just sat there when you, I. When there’s this, I don’t know, this inner pounding, that if I just did that thing, like I would feel like that would make the negative self-talk worse.
Joe: Absolutely.
Thais: It just builds on that. Right? So we have this limiting belief, then we freeze ourselves in the process and then we find ourselves not taking the action and, and you know, you have to ask yourself, what does that look like in a year or five years, 10 years, if I didn’t do the thing, ask for the raise, or, you know, start the business.
Thais: I always wanted to, or you know, all of these things. So that second step is we really have to question it. Can I really know that I’m not good enough to receive this? Can I really know that I’m undeserving? And so we ask that and then we can speak to our subconscious mind through emotion. So then we actually look for emotionally stimulating evidence that opposes it.
Thais: So, you know, that’s where we went for you and we looked at okay times where you did things that were uncomfortable and you were like, that was one of the happiest times of my life. And, and you know, I proved to myself I could do this and I learned these things and I grew and, and then what’s happening is this fear of not being good enough flips in your subconscious mind’s in a sense, perception.
Thais: And then your subconscious is actually thinking, oh, not good enough times. Those challenges are great for me. I’ve had happy moments around them and now those blocks will actually start to dissipate and breakdown.
Joe: You’ve written extensively about how this, uh, approach, what we attach things to, how we can attach this to more positivity, how we get our subconscious to believe.
Joe: It’s really a lot of what Carol Dweck writes about with growth mentality and really, I mean, for me, I guess. A way to personalize this is it’s enjoying the process. It’s learning to enjoy that, hey, even if IF this up with this camera, this is gonna be quite a journey I’m on. Like it was for my swim team.
Joe: Like I’ve just taken the journey of my swim team where I sucked to, now my camera I suck, and now I’ve, I’ve got this much better mindset than I had before.
Thais: Absolutely. It’s funny because a lot of times these things are bubbling beneath the surface. We just feel like, ah, I don’t wanna do this. And so we park it and we just don’t look at it.
Thais: So when we have that resistance, I often think that resistance is a gift that’s waiting to be unpacked or, or opened up. And if we just leave it as resistance. Then it’s painful and it’s hard and it doesn’t do anything for us. But if we’re like, oh, resistance, that means that I actually have the opportunity to open this gift.
Thais: And by poking at that resistance and being like, can I really know this belief I have here is even true? And do we actually have proof to oppose it? Like proof of the opposite. And then we actually turn it into something where we were seeing it one way we can re perceive it as something else, and now we actually have the opportunity to overcome it.
Thais: And there’s another couple questions we can ask ourselves sort of at the end here, which is, number one, what are the costs if I don’t take action? Because the,
Joe: oh, that’s a good one.
Thais: Yeah. And, and the subconscious mind is very emotionally motivated, speaks for emotion and images. So, so when you think of the cost, you feel the costs and it’s like, yet again, another way of, of getting ourselves out of that slump or that avoidance mechanism because we’re actually making our subconscious feel negative association to not taking action.
Thais: Instead of it getting soaked in the positive relief of, oh yeah, I’m just gonna avoid it. Okay. Short term gratification. I feel better temporarily. Okay. Let’s actually look, let’s actually feel into it and, and recognize, okay, what are the costs if I don’t do this? And just so we use, listeners can see as an example, what would you say about the, the camera costs of not actually taking action with the camera?
Joe: Oh, it’s ridiculous. We don’t make any, we don’t make any headway. I mean, nothing good happens with not setting this up. Nothing good happens.
Thais: Yeah. And, and people, when they’re doing this exercise, they can look at like. The cost in a week. If I didn’t take action, the cost in a month, the cost in six months, the cost in a year, if I didn’t take action, they can really extrapolate it out and see like, oh, I really lose out on all this potential and I wanna let people know we’re listening to that.
Thais: The more specific you get, the more your subconscious mind really takes in information, because the more specific, if you’re like, okay, I don’t do the camera and then my YouTube video doesn’t go out next week, and then, you know, as of that, no. Then the
Joe: Instagram live and then the, yeah, yeah. And
Thais: then, you know, people who are listening for the first time, maybe people don’t stay on and, you know, um, watch more in the future, or, you know, the more specific you get, the more it elicits emotion from your subconscious mind.
Thais: And then again, the more you’re motivated to take action. Especially because the subconscious mind is motivated to avoid pain and, and seek pleasure. And so if you can ask yourself, okay, what are the costs of not taking action? And then of course the benefits of actually taking action. You’re rewiring what was blocking you there at a subconscious level.
Joe: And then I feel the, the positive emotion. It, it’s almost like, you know, in training they talk about efficacy and about showing people the top of the mountain, right? So this is what the top of the mountain’s gonna look like when we get there. Isn’t that gonna be fun? Yes. Ahead of time. I feel like you just kind of walk me through that.
Thais: And the reason that you have to do that is show the top of a mountain is because your subconscious mind, like, it’s funny, I often talk to people about when, when they’re setting goals. People set goals and if they’re too ambiguous, your goal is only conscious. For your goal to actually like be taken in by your subconscious mind.
Thais: It has to be able to be visualized. You have to be able to see like what does it actually look like? Achieving it. Because now it’s imagery and it elicits an emotional response and now it’s actually permeated your subconscious mind. But if you only ever leave your goal at your conscious mind’s space of availability, ’cause you’re like, oh yeah, I’d love to, you know, have this this great new job one day.
Thais: Okay, well wait, what kind of job? What does it feel like to be in that job? What does it look like on a daily basis? What do you feel like internally? Do you feel proud? Do you feel excited? Do you feel passionate? If you can’t actually get into the mindset of any of those things, then it’s not reaching your subconscious mind and you’re trying to do everything with your three to 5% instead of your 95 to 97%.
Joe: Oh, this is so exciting. Tais ’cause so many people. Back when I was a financial planner, I. We’d have trouble saving because we can’t see the future. It’s like, I’m saving for this future thing. So the more that somebody would put themself in that future, hey, well, I’m not in as an example, I’m not in Canada now.
Joe: I’m in Texas now, now it’s warm in the winter. And I could totally see myself there, uh, in this much, much, much warmer place. But then, you know, then you know why you’re opening the Roth. IRA, you know why you’re asking for the raise? You know why you’re saving money? Because I have this vision that my subconscious is attached to.
Thais: Exactly, and that’s also a great place, right? I always think of this when, when I think of financial planners, like that’s a great place to also check that your limiting beliefs because hey, you know, some of the beliefs you’ll see for people are, I can’t save. That’s literally a belief that people have, or I don’t have enough money.
Thais: There will never be enough. A lot of people grow up in an environment that condition ’em to feel that way or feel that way. I can’t earn more money as a common financial limiting belief. And, and so if we have these limiting beliefs that show up for us, you know, for some people it’s money causes conflict.
Thais: Money is the root of all evil like we have, and as long as your subconscious is invested in that idea, and if you didn’t bring it to your conscious mind and question it and look for opposing proof like we did in that first three steps, that belief can run your life and can literally run your finances in your bank account.
Thais: Because if we think money’s the root of all evil, for example, and you think money is bad or I’m a bad person, if I care about money, I. Well then conscious mind’s gonna say, we wanna make more money. And subconsciously go, no, we don’t wanna be a bad person. Whoa, whoa,
Joe: whoa. Yeah. Right?
Thais: And so we have to ask ourselves, like, if I care about money, what am I afraid will happen?
Thais: I’ll be a bad person. Oh, I’ll be evil. ’cause you know, it’s the root of all li or I’ll be, you know, and if we don’t question those things, that can literally dictate somebody’s financial patterns their entire lives and they don’t even realize it.
Joe: And you see it over and over every day. I mean, you’re working with tens of thousands of people and your social media presence is huge.
Joe: You see it all the time. I have one more question and then I want to tell people how they can dive deeper into this and, and that is this, it’s very easy for me as we’re sitting here and talking Tais, it’s easy for me to go. I can see this in other people all the time, right? I mean, I think this is why gossip is so prevalent.
Joe: You’re like, did you see what she just did? Do you see what they just did? Like we can see these limiting beliefs all over us, but we don’t see it in ourselves, right? How do we set up these trip wires to go, whoa, wait a minute. I gotta look into this a little more carefully.
Thais: One of the easiest ways is if you have a goal and you feel like you’re just not getting anywhere on it right there.
Thais: Because goals are always of the conscious mind. They’re our intention and it’s our conscious mind that plans and analyzes and and thinks about things and desires. Our subconscious mind is our patterns. So our subconscious mind is our behaviors. So if we set a goal and we don’t behave in a way that follows through, it tells you right there, it’s a form of cognitive dissonance.
Thais: Conscious mind intends, subconscious mind is behaving against our intentions. And now it’s like, okay, well then there’s something here for me to unpack. And that’s the great place where we can go, okay, well what am I afraid will happen? Or what’s the worst case scenario if I do care about money or if I do ask for the raise, or if I do set up the camera, you know, what’s the worst case scenario here?
Thais: Right? And by asking yourself that question, you’ll be able to notice, okay, what you feel, and then what that belief is. We poke at it, really kind of know that that’s true. We look for emotional evidence of the opposite. And then we can ask, what’s our cost of not taking action? What are the benefits of taking action?
Thais: And now we’re really speaking to our subconscious mind in all of these unique ways that are actually gonna drive a shift in our behavior at the subconscious level, which is where we need that momentum if we’re stuck.
Joe: It’s such a great time to think about this too, stackers as you’re looking back over this year and going, you know what?
Joe: At the beginning of the year I said I was gonna do X and I didn’t do it. And then asking the Y and starting to unpack. I think it’s so valuable to set things up for next year for 2025. The great thing is Tais, you have a school where you dive into master classes with your students, you and your team. You actually have a course specifically on this called Breakthrough Self-Sabotage and Procrastination for Good.
Joe: I’ve thought about taking it, but uh, no, I’m kidding. That’s a joke. That’s a really,
Thais: I’ll send you a link if you, for free. I’ll send you a free link if you wanna check it out. Your camera up so fast tomorrow
Joe: if you procrastinate about the procrastination, of course. You, you might have an issue, but how do, how do people get here?
Joe: How do people dive in for more TAs?
Thais: Yeah, so they can buy me@personaldevelopmentschool.com. There’s a list of all the different courses there, and that’s definitely one of them. And there’s actually a free trial available for it if people just wanna check it out and get started. And then I put daily content out on YouTube that’s at Personal Development School, Chinese Gibson.
Thais: And um, I’m on Instagram as well at, at Personal Development School.
Joe: It’s good stuff all the time. I’ve, I’ve been following you for the last several months and it has been, it has been just a journey and this whole idea of just attaching is so, so, so powerful and it can change your life. So thank you for mentoring our stackers today and congratulations on getting warm next week, coming down and joining us in Texas.
Thais: Thank you. I can’t wait. Thank you so much for having me. It was so to chat with you today.
Doug: Hey there, stackers. I’m Joe’s mom’s neighbor, Doug, and sometimes during the holiday season, there’s unexpected magic in the air. You know, kinda like when Todd at the Sizzler actually does his job, right? You know how that happens maybe twice a year. That great feeling You get your stomach, it’s like a song.
Doug: Beautiful song. Speaking of one holiday song, reach number one on the billboard charts. In 2019, a full 25 years after it was created, what song was it? I’ll be back right after I try to stop singing. The Lion Sleeps Tonight. I.
Doug: Hey there, stackers. I’m holiday fun mixologist, and Guy who knows. The second verse of Rudolph, the Red Nose Reindeer. Not that I’m bragging. Joe’s mom’s neighbor, Doug Joe’s mom and I are wondering which song is better last Christmas by Wham or the subject of today’s trivia question. I love that song last Christmas, and I’m not really sure what she means when Joe’s mom says, last Christmas was the last time we should have played it.
Doug: Does that mean it’s going in the Hall of Fame or something? I don’t know. Well, one other song is A Real Ear Earworm. It came out a full 25 years before it hit number one in 2019, and that song, I’m sure you got it. Of course it was All I Want for Christmas is You by Mariah Carey. O GM at? I’m not sure you know.
Doug: Ugh, which song I’m talking about. It’s, it’s the one that goes Christmas. You. It’s awful song. You’re barfing. You’re barfing during my trivia. Alright, I gotta go before rg. Rg. RG and two. Two. Do they all hate it? I gotta go. All the Gs hate it.
OG: Rg. OG mg
Doug: OGs got a posse before the G starts throwing stuff again.
Doug: God, that microphone hurt last time. And now we’re just going back to Joe, just Joe, not RG or aj, just Joe, tell us how you really feel about Mariah Carey.
OG: Yeah, it’s a great song. Sure. Glad I get to listen to it a thousand times actually. I will literally. Just turn off the radio. It’s so bad.
Doug: I was gonna say, if you, you just explained how you don’t wanna leave your glass enclosure during the holidays.
Doug: Yeah, I would do that. And it seems like it would, it would be easy
Joe: to avoid That song. Doesn’t matter who’s listening to it, you’re out. Yeah. Yeah. Hey, let’s pivot to our headline.
Headlines: Hello Dobbs. And now it’s time for your favorite part of the show, our Stacking Benjamin’s headlines.
Joe: Big headline in the news in the last week, guys, because this person is a TikTok, we’re gonna go to TikTok for the play by play.
Joe: This is a talker explaining exactly what all the hubbub was last week.
TikTok: So the HK two, a girl who went viral a couple of months ago is now maybe not so surprisingly, a crypto scam artist. So after HK two A went viral, she got signed by Logan Paul. She announced a podcast deal, and she had celebrities like Mark Cuban on the podcast yesterday at the height of the Bitcoin price, it’s reached a hundred thousand dollars.
TikTok: She announced a crypto coin. The hot coin, uh, hit a $490 million market cap shortly after it launched, and then it lost more than 95% of its value after hours. I think this is going to be a common scam that people should be aware of. So listen to what the formula will be in it. I think this will be particularly common and people will be emboldened with the Trump presidency.
TikTok: So it’s likely that some shady crypto bros will approach an influencer with a coin. The influencer with a lot of following will agree to promote that coin to their audience. When they launch the coin, the audience inherently trusts them. Maybe they’ve built some sort of parasocial relationship in their minds with this influencer.
TikTok: So they buy the coin because they wanna be involved in whatever the influencer is involved in, and they see that people are making money in crypto. So they’re not educated, but they buy the coin. Then the init, the original crypto bros, and the influencer sells the coin and the value crashes. This is called a rug pull.
TikTok: So then the audience of the influencer who bought that coin loses everything.
Joe: Yeah, that is Ari on, uh, social media, by the way, when she talks about under Trump presidency. That’s just because of all of the, uh, discussions. During and after the election about, uh, crypto and discussions about crypto. So people are like, Hey, we’ve got a administration that’s all about crypto, so we’re gonna take advantage of that.
Joe: I don’t know how much of that is real. What I do know though, is this woman, Ari, uh, a RI on TikTok, I think did a really good job of explaining, oh gee, not what’s maybe going to happen. ’cause I don’t know what’s going to happen. But this isn’t the first time this has happened where an influencer tells people to go buy their new hot thing that they don’t know that much about.
Joe: I mean, heck, you guys, planet, Hollywood, restaurants, right? A bunch of superstars with a corporation behind them and you know, 99% of those, I think there’s one left in the entire world playing at Hollywood restaurants. This has been happening forever. OG some celebrity hawken stuff that they may or may not know much about.
Joe: And people lose a bunch of money.
OG: It has been going on in every marketplace of all time. And because of the focus on cryptocurrency and, and the stuff that’s going on with the SEC and maybe some possible d you know, and not that there’s a ton of regulation, but more access, basically insinuated from the incoming administration.
OG: Uh, it seems like it could be the hot commodity, but how is this any different, to your point, Joe of Planet Hollywood or I could list a thousand. Same stuff, different instrument.
Joe: Yeah.
OG: Thousand real estate investment trusts privately held, you know, non-publicly traded BS that we’ve highlighted here before.
OG: Three XETF. Things or Wallstreet bets or, I mean, the list is endless. If there’s an opportunity for fraud and for malfeasance, there’s always gonna be bad actors trying to figure out how to do that. And it’s kind of a weird, you know, I was listening to a podcast the other day and I was, uh, listening to their take on the incoming SEC chairman and, you know, some of the deregulation type talk, right?
OG: Half the panel was like, oh, this is amazing. How great is it that now everybody can be involved in these things? And, and they were talking primarily about private equity and saying, wouldn’t it have been great if mom and pop investors would’ve been able to get into PE funds? Oh God, back in 2008 and nine 10, when, you know, they’ve blown past market results.
OG: They’ve done really, really, really well over these period of time. Uh, wouldn’t have been great. Half the panel was like, yeah, that’s how you can help kind of people move to the next level. You know, we were making fun of the rich and super rich earlier in the show. Um, obviously a little play on that, but the panel in this discussion we’re talking about, you know, that that’s one of the ways that you can move up a tier, right?
OG: If you’re middle class and you’re trying to be upper middle class, you need access to investments that allow you to do that. The other half of the panel was like, wait a second. There’s all sorts of ways to become wealthy in America. You don’t need to have esoteric investment choices, and thank God that there’s protections there because the average person is not sophisticated enough to be able to unravel, you know, what’s going on with private investing or private equity investing.
OG: They just don’t have the expertise or time or energy to study it. And since they have less money, generally speaking, if they don’t meet these criteria that they’re trying to think or they’re thinking about lowering, then the problem is, is that a mistake there costs too much. To that tier, so to speak of people, right?
OG: If you only have 200,000, we talked about the other day, a guy who retired was $700,000, right? If the fine folks at Blackstone, or whatever the heck they’re called, lose 700 grand on an investment, it’s like a browning error, right? They don’t even notice it probably. But to the average American losing 700 grand on an investment, that’s their whole life savings, right?
OG: So there this balancing act of how much protection do we want, how much oversight, how much fences built around these types of products? Do we want to protect us from that sort of thing, right? Versus it’s the wild west, we can do whatever we want and that’s awesome because you get all the upside potentially, but, but then you can walk into a potential scam like this.
OG: So I, I don’t know that there’s a right answer to this, but when it comes to investing air quotes into, you know, odd type investments, whether it’s trip or you know, those strip mall down the street or whatever the case may be, whatever shows up in your world. I think you just have to go back to the idea that when you’re investing in something, you’re buying future profitability, you’re buying future earnings, you’re buying future growth, and if the thing that you’re buying doesn’t have a path to producing profits, then you’re a speculator.
OG: And you may still make money at being a speculator, right? But it’s not an investment. It’s a speculation. And that may pay off. That may be a good thing, you know, in terms of outcome for you. But I think it also changes when you use those terms, if you use the terms correctly, investing versus speculating, you can start compartmentalizing the types of decisions that you’re making.
OG: You can go to the casino and put all your money on the green zero and get 35 x to one. Like you can do it. It’s doable. But I think everybody would call that speculation and not investing.
Doug: It’s all speculation, isn’t it? It’s just what’s the level or degree of risk? No, everything is, you’re all it’s speculating is just you are expecting or anticipating that there will be some type of growth.
Joe: I loved it when we had David Stein on from Money for the Rest of Us, because he clearly delineated between two terms, what he thought was investing and what he thought was speculation. Speculation comes with. No historical path that we can truly follow, no breadcrumbs or of evidence that will allow us to invest money.
Joe: He talks about the ability to do research on an investment. There is no amount of research we can do on Bitcoin that will tell you, give you any clue as to what Bitcoin in a free market should do tomorrow. But with Coca-Cola, there certainly is. There very much is. So I really like that. And to your point, og, he talks about speculation not wrong, just there is a difference between investing in his mind and speculating.
Doug: Of course there is, but we’re just talking about, and I think what OG talked about is the level of risk you’re willing to assume in your attempt to gain wealth without manual labor. I think that’s what it comes down to, because you wouldn’t have called it speculating if you were doing all the research on GM in 2007.
Doug: Nobody, you could have done all that research, looked at the track, record all the bread crumbs and thought this company’s never going bankrupt. Yet It did. I would’ve
Joe: thought very much they were going bankrupt. Yeah. I think people would disagree with your, your assessment of looking at the results. I would’ve very much thought they were going bankrupt.
OG: To your point, I mean, listen, Doug, at the end of the day, obviously it’s varying degrees of it and owning an individual stock position is riskier than owning an s and p 500 fund. Right? I think we all accept that as sure as a truth. And if you’re putting together an investment portfolio, whether it’s an investment portfolio of individual rental properties or an investment portfolio of multifamily housing or an investment portfolio of your 30 favorite stocks, I think you look at that from a portfolio standpoint and say there’s a path to this being, uh, uh ha having a growth track record.
OG: Right? I can look back over these 30 stocks and say it makes sense that the entire economy I. There is some level of belief that you have to have and faith in the future, right? You just have to accept that. Otherwise, yeah, you can look at the world around you and just go like, it’s all going to hell in a am basket.
OG: I got a, I got a thing about that maybe a little bit later, but I think it’s fairly safe to say that if you’re investing in the economy of the world, that the wellbeing of the average person will continue to increase over our lifetime and the lifetime of our children and grandchildren.
Joe: I also wanna talk about when it comes to speculation, this idea of evidence.
Joe: ’cause I do like, Doug, you bringing this up. So if it is a degree of speculation, then what I do when I’m speculating is what’s my evidence that this might be a winning play? And I would submit that if we’re talking about a woman who had her three minutes of fame on the internet with a crude joke about.
Joe: Spitting on it. Who was able to parlay that? Now, good for her, by the way, that she was able to parlay that into a podcast that went to number one immediately, right? And all of these big names. Then all of a sudden, she’s in her face. She turns her two seconds. But really what she did was she had a microphone in her face, said something kind of sexual, and then took it and ran with it.
Joe: She’s gonna be the person to launch the coin that I’m going to invest in, like I’m gonna invest in, in that product. What’s the path that leads me from, yeah, good for her too. I’d need to throw money at this woman because I think this is gonna be a great crypto product. I don’t even think
OG: you have to go that far with it, Joe, and just, I mean, take all the backstory out of it and just go back to the idea of.
OG: What is the outcome that the, like what does this thing do? This is why gold sucks as an investment. And people say, I’m investing in gold. Gold doesn’t do anything, doesn’t produce any income. You could buy a pool full of gold and in 50 years from now you have a pool full of gold still. You know, it doesn’t do anything.
OG: You have to do something with it to turn it into something. Right? You have to melt it to turn it into a computer chip. And then the computer chip is the exponential return, not the gold. If I bought a pool full of s and p 500 stocks, yeah there’s gonna be some to Doug’s point, there’s gonna be some that go bankrupt.
OG: ’cause you go, well I didn’t see that coming. There’s gonna be some that go bankrupt. ’cause you go, I did see that one coming. And then there’s gonna be companies you didn’t even know that existed that are gonna come out of the woodwork like Nvidia. But the overall economy, you could say, I see how this path works.
OG: When you tell me something about crypto and go, oh, you don’t understand it’s the wave of the future. I go, cool. How does it make money? You see Michael Sailors doing leverage buyouts on his company balance sheet to buy it. That’s how it goes up, huh? No. No. How does it make money? How does this make, how do I make money with this?
OG: Well, you make money when every other idiot buys it after you and it goes up. Okay? So it doesn’t make money. It’s, it’s, it’s a price. You know what I mean? Like you just ask a few questions and I think it’s pretty quick that you get to, like, this doesn’t make money. You know? It could go up in value because of speculation, but it doesn’t make money collect collectibility
Joe: or whatever it might be.
Joe: Sure,
OG: yeah. That’s another great example, right? You could say that. You could say, well, if I own the Mona Lisa, how does it make money? It doesn’t make money. The rarity of it has a opportunity to become worth more because there’s still only one of them in the future. But I bet that if we went back through the history of time with art, and I know the art people would disagree with this entirely, but I bet on average.
OG: Appreciates at in, at inflation rates. There’s certain pieces that all of a sudden become really valuable because of some particular thing. Somebody taped a banana to a wall and all of a sudden that’s worth 6 million bucks. I don’t know. I taped an apple to a wall the other day and nobody came knocking on my door.
OG: But I think that’s bs. It’s totally, but on average, it, it’s, you know, it doesn’t produce anything. So when you’re looking at your investment portfolio or you’re looking at something to invest in, you just have to ask that one question. Go, how does this make money? If your brother-in-law says, I think you should, you know, go in and have these with me on the ice cream shop down the street, you just go, well, how does it make money?
OG: He goes, well, we sell ice cream dummy. We buy the tub of ice cream for five bucks. We sell it for 10. You go, oh, okay. Yeah. Now, the math might be wrong. He may be incorrect in his assumptions or market models, or how many people are gonna buy ice cream, but at least you can make sense of how an ice cream shop makes money.
OG: I, I don’t see how crypto makes money ever. That doesn’t mean it’s not gonna go up in value. Clearly it has. I’m glad I have a few dollars in, I was gonna say a few Bitcoin, but that’s not true. A few dollars in Bitcoin. And I know people who have an eight figure nine figure net worth in Bitcoin and, and I’m sure they’re happy that it’s a hundred thousand, but it doesn’t make money.
OG: See the difference. I don’t know. Yeah. This, this to me is a very obvious outcome. Like the woman was saying in the, in the video, it seems so obvious. It’s an obvious outcome to what everyone in the world knew except the 500 people that invested in this. And then they’re all mad about it. What did you think was gonna happen?
OG: And
Joe: what’s wild is, is that there are now these calls for her to go to jail. I don’t know to what degree this was. Premeditated insider trading, you know, the SEC could have a case if they decide to pursue that aspect of it, it’s not a security. What would they pursue?
OG: That’s the other issue with this.
Joe: The SEC though has taken action on, on crypto in the past, so different than what we talked about a year ago when they hadn’t, over the past year they have, so we’ve got some, we now have a little bit of precedent so they could, do we think that that’s gonna happen again?
Joe: I don’t know. But why are people crying? Because they didn’t do any homework because they got caught up. That’s why they wanted to be arrested. It’s
OG: like I said, it’s the same thing as going to the casino and going, rent’s due. I, I got a 50 50 shot on this black chicken. Here we go. Just about like, you know, we go and then being mad at the dealer that, that they dealt you freaking 12 to their king and you’re like, well, I got screwed.
OG: It’s like, well, yeah, probably, but also, you know, you’re in a casino,
Joe: but also look where you are. You’re in a casino. The dealer has an upper hand.
OG: I mean, I feel bad for it. Right? I hope you didn’t use all your Christmas money. And maybe if you lost some money on this, I hope maybe it was the fun money that you’re like, Hey, I’m gonna put $500 here and maybe it’s gonna turn into 5,000 ’cause there’s an idiot out there.
OG: But also shame on you, assuming that that’s gonna be the case. You know? I mean like, I know I’m gonna get in on this and I’m gonna hose the next guy. I don’t know. That doesn’t seem right either. Suppose that does not seem
Joe: right. No. Anyway, just how does this make money? Just ask the question. How does this make money?
Joe: We dive into topics like this and our newsletter, the 2 0 1 comes out weekly. Stack of Benjamins dot com slash 2 0 1. We will dive into all of what you need to know to make sure that you stay outta harm’s way. Kevin Bailey takes the best of the internet, curates the best of the best, the stuff that bubbles to the top and serves it.
Joe: Piping hot to your inbox. Oh, nice. Weekly? Yeah. Is it a good stuff? Is it a McDonald’s apple pie? It kind of sounds like, mm,
Doug: I think
Joe: that’s
OG: in a McDonald’s apple pie.
Joe: Uh, wanna say, uh, big thanks to everybody that hung out with OG and I and, uh, Paula and Doc G in New York last week. Had a fantastic time. It was a great time in New York.
Joe: Love hanging out with our stacker family. I’m glad that, uh, you guys could make it out. I’m gonna be in Seattle on February 8th for Retire Meet 2025. The tucking Real Money Guys host this and we’ve got our friend Apollo from Dimensional Funds will be speaking our friend Paul Merman. We’ll also be speaking and yours truly will be speaking.
Joe: So tickets are@retiremeet.com. Put in the word Stacking and uh, our friend Tom has told us that, uh, you’ll get a nice discount on the day’s activity. So come hang out with me if you’re around Seattle on February 8th. Also, the book club is open stack Benjamins dot com slash book club if you wanna be part of a small group to go through building your financial plan over 10 weeks.
Joe: Doug, what else we got in the back porch?
Doug: You know, Joe, here’s what else is happening. I wanted to take a minute ’cause we haven’t talked about reviews in a little while. It’s always great when we get reviews that, uh, make us feel better about ourselves. Uh, and here’s one that I loved from one slow five.
Doug: Oh, I’m guessing that’s a slow police officer. I don’t know. Uh, it’s, uh, titled Entertaining and Fun. It’s five stars so far. We’re heading in the right direction. Uh, I listen to all of the podcasts and they’re a good mix of information and fun. One of my favorites. And, uh, that’s kind of nice, like to have a lot more of those.
Doug: Uh, and any other constructive feedback you might have. I, we don’t need the ones that talk about how Doug has too much gray hair or, you know, OGs Beard. It’s way too handsome. Yeah, OGs Beard makes him look like Mandy Patinkin. We don’t need those. But, but we, we, it’s a
OG: nice compliment actually.
Doug: Why? Thank you.
Doug: I mean, he is a hell of an actor, OG or Mandy. Mandy. Oh, I thought you were talking about og. He’s a good actor. Mandy is a five tool actor. Yes,
OG: absolutely. He’s got ’em all. My name is a Nigo Montoya. Killed my father, prepared to die.
Joe: I think I owe a couple people still some books. I’m gonna be home, uh, during the, the last week of the year and early next year.
Joe: I’m getting those out. I’d, I’d love to send you a book as well. So if, uh, we’re gonna do the book thing again so I can clean stuff out for 2025, leave us a review, send me evidence of that and uh, I will get these, I think I have four still to send out. So if you’re one of those four people, it’s coming at the beginning of the year.
Joe: I just gotta get my butt home for an extended period of time. And then let’s send out some more. Send me Joe
Doug: in instead of this really cool backdrop you have with the giant bill. Behind you and like the theater can light. What if we just imprisoned you in the background, imprisoned you in all of the books that you have waiting to send out, and it’s like a free Joe.
Doug: And it’s like we’re trying to
Joe: break me. We’re trying to break me outta the prison. Exactly. That’s good. That’s fun stuff. All right. Uh, that’s gonna do it for today. Thanks to all of you for hanging out with us again this holiday season. It has been so much fun as usual. Doug, you got it From here, man. What should we have learned today?
Doug: Well, Joe, here’s what’s stacked up on our to-do list. First, take some advice from Tais Gibson when you’re stuck. Think what’s going on here. And then dig in. Also align what you’re trying to do with the inner block and you’ll be rolling towards your goals. Second, take some advice from our headline. I can’t believe I’m saying this one out loud.
Doug: Don’t buy the latest crypto from an influencer, especially one who’s claim to fame is just putting a little spin on it. But the big lesson. Don’t assume that OG doesn’t like all I want for Christmas is you just because he scowls when you mention it and threatens to, and I quote, choke the life out of you if I ever hear that song again.
Doug: I think that just means he is hoping for louder. Isn’t that what it, I think that’s what it means. Let’s do it. Let’s sing it loud. All I want for Christmas is How come I’m the only one singing? Yeah. Okay. Thanks ba.
OG: And mute. And mute.
Doug: Thanks to Tais Gibson for joining us. Today. You’ll find her work at the Personal Development School. We’ll include links to the school and her social media channels in our show notes at Stacking Benjamins dot com. This show is the Property of SB podcasts LLC, copyright 2024, and is created by Joe Saul-Sehy.
Doug: 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. Come say hello. Oh yeah, and before I go, not only should you not take advice from these nerds.
Doug: 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.
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