Home
cover of episode We're Back! Kiyosaki VS. Ramsey, Who's Advice is Better? EP 45

We're Back! Kiyosaki VS. Ramsey, Who's Advice is Better? EP 45

2022/4/19
logo of podcast Escaping the Drift with John Gafford

Escaping the Drift with John Gafford

Chapters

The hosts return after a two-week break and address their absence, mentioning a spring break trip and a birthday celebration.

Shownotes Transcript

From the art of the deal to keeping it real. Keeping it real. Live from the Simply Vegas studios, it's The Power Move with John Gafford. Back again. You never thought you were going to see us again. That was a two-week hiatus. And back again to spread the knowledge and the nonsense, which I think probably more nonsense than knowledge. Welcome back to The Power Move. My name is John Gafford. I am your host.

To the left of me, Colt, the Cabo Cobra, Amadon. Blackout Cabo? Yeah, Blackout Cabo. There it is. Like the Bulgarian mongoose. Yeah, it's going to be hard to top the Bulgarian mongoose. And with us, of course, always in the hot chair across is the counselor, Chris Connell. How are you, sir? Just trying to provide some advice. Trying to provide some advice, indeed. Legal or otherwise. First of all, man, if you were like...

Okay, dude, I'm in like I'm all in with the power move and then you guys bail on me. What's up? It's been two weeks. I get no episode. What happened?

well that we spring break break we're happy yeah spring break happened we went on a little bit of a hiatus you know it was my 50th birthday so we took a little bit of a break to go do that uh which we'll recap that real quick because it was a pretty amazing time it was amazing trip i'll say this you know you only turn you know 50 one time uh i guess you only turn one birthday every time so that's how it is but 50 i guess was a big deal and uh and yeah we just kind of

Went after it and and there were some bumps along the way there were some problems or some good times I would say you know first of all I agreed to take everybody down on my private plane Yes, I say my because I do own a private plane for those probably why I was gone there were some Haters that were out there trying to insinuate that somehow let me get strong. Let me be very clear with everybody I mean, I can't say too much a drastic part of agreement listen

If I was going to lie about possessing anything, it would be ungodly skills in the bedroom. I'd lie about that because that, I think, at least then it's hard to prove that you're lying. I mean, maybe my wife would know the truth. Dude, I'm not David Copperfield. I can't make a private jet appear and disappear because I just want to lie and say I got one. Well, my jail numbers are public records. Yeah, it's public records. Look it up. It's not hard to find. Anyway.

the challenge with said private jet is you make a commitment to nine people to take nine people down to a cabo and night before guess what happens oh you're talking in the world of private aviation yes private aviation well maybe you can tell me as much as i know well i'm sitting there and i'm like i'm looking i'm looking at the phone right and i'm like because i have a little app where i can track the plane and i'm like

why is the why is the plane still in memphis like why is it there and i can't figure it out and then i'm like as soon as i start to call jesse who runs the plane force at hangar 7 aviation for all your aviation needs if you want private jets call hangar 7 aviation anyway we called jesse calls me and he goes hey bro uh there's an avionics problem that was an avionics a battery problem and the the plane is stuck in memphis and i'm like what does that mean

And he was like, well, it means we're trying to find a replacement aircraft. I said, okay. And he's like, but everything out there is kind of booked. So I immediately like, you know, problem solvers. I'm staying calm. I'm using my stoicism that we preach on the show all the time. And I'm trying to be calm about it. And I'm like, all right, no problem.

you know, here's what we'll do. Let's just look and we'll get backup plans for commercial. We can get everybody down there. Commercial, no problem. I look on the commercial flights and there's like nothing. Everybody's going to Cabo the next day. Yeah, that's not going to happen. Except for you. Except for me. Yeah, it's not going to. Well, I couldn't get any of you guys down there. So we ended up having to bite the bullet on a very expensive replacement that, you know, did not own the replacement to have no interest in replacement. Got to pay to charter it just like anybody else would.

And it was a big check. And it was, and it was, here's, here's my, now that we did it, here's my recap of that. Number one, I'm glad that I maintained my integrity and my promise to all of you guys to get you down there the way that we did. And then number two was the second that I got on that plane. Look,

We have a private jet, and it's a private jet, dude. It is a private airplane. No, no, no. It's not just a private jet. No, no, no. The one we have. The one we have. Yeah. It's a nice plane. It is a serviceable plane. For those people that have never flown private, it's amazing.

But the plane that we wound up with to go down to Cabo, it was the damn Kardashian plane. It was just like out of control. And the second I got on it... We looked like the Kardashians. Well, yeah, the second I got on it, I was like, immediately...

That cost was like, you know what? You only live once, man. I can eat it. Let me say two things about that whole experience, not to throw you off the track. Go ahead. So first things first, private aviation is the most expensive hobby you will ever get into. Now, John, your issue is a battery. Now, it's not like your car when you can just put a trickle charger on it and get it going. Even if you have a good battery, it has to be signed off by an FAA-certified mechanic.

Literally anything goes wrong, right? And you have to figure out whether it's part of the essential equipment. As a pilot, we've had to go through these things and mark which things on our plane are necessary and which ones you can fly without. Right. But there's certain steps you have to take, even with things you can fly without. Well, I'm guessing the battery probably is one of them they had to have. Well, batteries aren't that big a deal when you're flying already because your engines are controlled by magnetos. But anyway, I don't want to geek out, but it just...

It's just one of those things that... Too late. You're geeking out. Too late. You're totally geeking out. Cole, you still waiting, Cole? I got a two thing. I saw you at a cocktail lunch. I was worried you're not going to make it through this. Celebration. It was a good day today, guys. Oh, yeah. What were you celebrating? Can you tell us on the air? Yeah, it's another business venture. Good. Finally approved, so... Okay. Good.

There you go. Finally, yeah. We'll talk about it more later. All right. All right. Colt's going to walk up like, I'm out of here. No, it's not that. You know, you got to diversify. I think all three of us diversify and we have other stuff that people don't know about. People know us. You real estate, me as real estate, you as attorney, but I know all three of us have different diversification. No, exactly right. Back to the playing because I got two playing things after. You go ahead. No, I like your geeking out.

All I can say is I love that I could get off of a plane with no shirt and a bottle of scotch. That was the second part of it. It didn't really matter once it got on. No. John had the foresight to buy literally everybody matching tracksuits from the movie The Gentleman. Magical. It was. I wore that up to Utah. It was magical.

My favorite thing. I think one of my favorite parts was the video we made going down there. And yeah, Colt gets off the plane, rocking no shirt, bottle of scotch, and Mexican immigration just looks at us like,

Okay, there's no way they have drugs because they're not even trying to hide. Like, we're not even going to bother searching these guys because there's no way they would be hiding. Yeah, they're like, yeah, obviously they're all hammered, but they don't have any drugs. No breakfast and 41,000 feet high and a bottle of scotch and a tequila shot does not mix. No, I get it. So, you know, we get the plane, we get to Cabo and the houses are rolling in, which is great.

And we had a great time, man. We had two big houses. We ended up with, I think, 27 people, 28 people were down for this. My family was there, which was great. Happy to have everybody there.

And then it's cool because a lot of my friend groups got to meet my other friend groups. You guys got to meet my buddies from New Orleans. They got to meet you. It was just kind of a cool vibe of what we did, and it was fun. And there were some highlight moments for sure. One of my favorite moments. We'll go through what was your favorite moments on the trip. So one of my favorite moments is we have a little game we play when we go down there.

And here's the game. This is probably going to make us sound like we're terrible people. But you find the nicest person that you're with. Like, literally, if you have a group of 25 people, like, who's the nicest guy here? Right? And then that, unfortunately. The great thing of if you're an asshole like us, we don't get chose. Yeah, you don't get chose. So if you're nice in here with us and you ever go to Cabo, this could happen to you. Who's the nicest guy that we haven't already done this to?

Yeah, exactly. So who's the nicest guy? That's a good point. Who's the nicest guy? We haven't done it too. So anyway, what we do is you wait about, you wait about a day into it, right? You're about a day into the trip and then you go up to him in the pool and you're like, Hey man, what did you say to the staff?

They're like, what? And you're like, no, I mean, because Colt, who speaks Spanish, obviously, is... I'm like, Colt overheard the staff and they were super complaining about you, man, like being rude. About you. About you. And they're like, what, what? I didn't do anything. And literally, you just... It gets worse and worse and worse. You let it just simmer and go. And unfortunately, where it normally cultivates is at dinner, but...

because we had so many people because both houses were eating from one house. We did buffet style most of the time because last year we did this. We had the servers, like we paid the servers to not serve this person. Poor Scott. It was Scott. And they didn't serve him. He walked around tipping a hundred bucks each.

Each person saying sorry for nothing. I'm really sorry. I'm really sorry. So anyway, this year we did it to my buddy Robert Stone. A.K.A. Rose All Day. Which was Rose All Day. You know what? We're going to do this real quick. I don't know if he's going to answer. We're going to try. For all your insurance needs, by the way. For all your needs. We're going to call him right now in the pot. Let's see if we can get Stone to answer. I don't know if we can get him to answer, but let's try. He's a sweetheart. It's his birthday, huh? You don't get to meet too many sweetheart guys like him. So we're just going to call him and see if he'll answer and see if...

We can wish him a happy birthday, but also, you know, tell him he's upsetting people. Stop being an asshole, Stone. He's a sweetheart guy. So what did you say to Chris Connell? What? Exactly. I'm totally getting that right. I can't mess with him. The answers were doing it. Oh, man, come on. This is why spontaneity doesn't work. Spontaneity is hard when you're doing a podcast. You got to plan spontaneity. Hi, this is Robert. I'm not by my phone right now. I'm giving you a call back as soon as I can. Here we go.

At the tone, please record your message. When you finish recording, you may hang up or press one for more options. Hey, Stone. Hey, Stone, what's up, man? I want to call and wish you a very happy birthday, but I also want to ask you, what did you do to Connell? Because, I mean, he was, man, he wouldn't stop talking about it. I mean, I don't know. Anyway, cool. Hope you have a good birthday. Later.

You know, sometimes a voice message is going to just have to suffice, and we'll go with that. He was so – the great thing about people that are genuinely that nice is they've never had that happen in their life. Ever. So they just dwell on it and are you guys sure it's me? It can't be me, right? I don't know. Oh, he was for the whole day.

Oh, just spun. Completely spun over it. I have a thing where I particularly care about how service staff view me. Yeah. If somebody said that to me, it would actually be very upsetting to me. If that ever got around on me, I would be completely defensive. See, now I feel like we've blown it. You did kind of blow it, by the way. Yeah.

I'm so cavalier. This is why I'm so cavalier about the joke. It's the one thing we could have gotten you in. Colt Diggs was like, oh, we're a bunch of assholes. No, no, no, no. I would be particularly upset if I thought I was being a staff. Speaking of you being an asshole, though, one of my personal favorite Cabo moments. One of my personal favorite moments. Me being an asshole? No, no. It's Conor being an asshole. My personal favorite. So we're at this beach camp.

club down in cabo we're at a beach club right and chris decides to get a random foot massage from the amazing the the the roaming the roaming foot massage people right so as chris is getting 11 out of 10 by the way so as chris is getting a foot massage right she's and she's into the calves i mean she's deep in there whatever i lean over to his wife and i go hey because he's got his shirt over his face so he can't sleep so i go over to kaitlyn his wife and i say hey

why don't you run down there and sub yourself in for the masseuse and start running your hand up his pant leg and see how it takes him to react. And she's like, okay, cool. He's going to kill us. It's going to be real funny. I had to talk her into it for a minute. It took a minute. So she goes down there and she does it. And I'm not going to lie. She was deep before he.

But to the point where she started to get concerned, like, you should totally be upset like six inches ago. Pants on. But she was like, you should have been upset six inches ago. Not now. That was hilarious because it did go pretty. Yeah, she was deep with those shorts, buddy. She never got past shorts. No.

No, no, no, no, no. That hand was upper thigh where you do carry all your stress. In my defense, I did wake up pretty startled. Yeah, you did. But then she comes back and she's like, wait, he let that go way too high. Way too high. I'm like, this is supposed to be a joke and now she's mad at you. Here's the thing. When you have assholes for friends, though, she could have literally brushed against my knee and I would have gotten the exact same response. Oh, you let that one go for you. Oh, yeah.

I stand by my reaction. Good reaction. I would say that was a highlight. Also, unfortunately for Colt, at said beach club, it was said beach club, we have 27 people.

It's with us, whatever it was. And your wife. Two of which get food poisoning. My wife and Colt get food poisoning. I don't know if it's a bad thing, though. No? Yacht day was the next day, and I felt like a skinny, sexy little model at the yacht day. So I don't know. But I tell you what, your wife, I think, was a little worse than me. I've never in my life...

thrown up so violently. I also got the same thing you guys all ate, by the way. What? Oh, did you? Canadian jeans. Oh, that's it. No, no. You know what I love? My favorite part of you throwing up. So Colt gets violently ill from food poisoning. Yeah.

and you know who this affected the most you no his wife who was furious that he was throwing up so loud oh yeah did you not know that oh yeah i come in and john's like all night i'm exhausted poor gidge i think got food poisoning i've been up getting her stuff and everything i'm like dude i've been throwing up violently i'm like my wife comes in ah

Fuck it. I ain't getting no fucking sleep. This guy's throwing up all goddamn night. I told him to go outside. Oh, dude, my wife. Marry a Mexican, they said. Marry a Mexican. It'll be fun, they said. They'll be sympathetic to your... God bless her. God bless her. No, those are tough people, man. I don't have time for your bullshit. No. It was a highlight trip. I got a lot of amazing, cool stuff from all of my friends, from guests. I mean...

It seemed like it was a Caymus factory. Every time we had a meal, bottles of Caymus were showing up on the table. It never stopped. It never stopped. It never stopped with that. Thanks to Mr. Connell, I am now Lord John Gafford. I am one square meter of Scottish land. Can we talk about... Those are great gifts for people. I love it. People like...

The two months leading up to this, everybody's like, what do you get, John? What do you get, John? Right. And this is an issue you have with a lot of higher end clients or stuff. You get them nonsense. You get them something that's funny and they can tell a story about it. That's why I love the flamethrower. I think that's such a great gift. Well, I mean, I could have practical use, I guess, of when the zombie apocalypse comes, but

But yeah, for the most part, that's just a fun. I'm going sword. It was a straight sword. You don't have to reload a sword. That's a good point. Axe. You're going ax on apocalypse. All right. There you go. All right. Now we know. Katana. But no, but the gift man thing, like your star, like my sister gave me a star. So technically I could be star Lord Gafford. Star Lord Gafford. Yeah. I could be, I could be, I could be a, like a porn. Yeah. Dark. Darth Gafford. That could be me. Yeah.

Yeah. Darth Gafford. Anyway. It could be Darth. Yeah. So anyway, but I got that. I got a bottle of Papi. Papi. Which was dope. That was good. I got a buddy in Canada. Reaches out to me like I'm some type of bourbon broker. And he's like, any of your friends want to buy this 23-year-old Papi off me? How much? Five grand. Yeah, that's about right.

Go and read for that bottle. 51 something. I got a bottle of that when I turned 40. It's down to about two shots. I thought we came over and crushed that one. We did. No, we did. We did. It's down to two shots. I got two shots of that bottle of 23 left. John, it might have been at your 40th. It might have been, but it's down to two shots left, and that will be a drink that I share with Hayden on his 21st birthday. Because I opened that bottle with my dad.

who's obviously with us in that though it will finish it with hidden that's pretty cool yeah we'll go from there and that's how that's how that worked with that bottle which is awesome but you know again it was an amazing trip it was it was so much fun um i was so grateful to do it and then immediately you come back and you go on spring break so i i'm going for like two weeks man i was the beach for like two weeks which was which i gotta tell you um i worked every day pretty much but the thing that i i came back and i was fine for two weeks and you can hear my voice right now

It's like literally getting smashed in the face with allergies as soon as I got back to Vegas. Oh, brutal, dude. It's been so ruthless and so, you know, just not ending. It's like it made me want to leave for the first time ever. Like I got back, I'm like, oh, my God, I don't want to live here anymore because of this. It was just, it's crazy. We were talking about that when we got back from Kabul, Scott and I. Same thing. It's just...

It's nuts. But I'll tell you something I did. Let's move this along. So something I did when I was in Anaheim this time, or I was in Newport. My wife, obviously, Disney fanatic. We've all talked about how much I...

you know, my, um, low, my, my anti-love affair with Disney. So I thought to myself, you know, my wife's always wanted to do the VIP tour, which is awesome. Now, have I talked to you guys about VIP? I don't think I've talked to you about this. You did. You briefed it. But let me just put it this way. Let me ask you this without, before we go into anything. So for five G's, right? You give, you give, you give old Disneyland five grand. What is your expectation of the VIP tour? What, what is your expectation?

I never wait again. I, I'm eating in places where, you know, I'm not going to normally be able to get to, I'm getting concierge treatment. I'm getting service by somebody or a team. Right. I think cut lines, the same thing, access. So what's 19, what's a bar? Uh, no, the restaurant 23 or 23, 23 restaurant, which is not access to that before. No, it's not. I've been there too, but yeah, I think just at least that, right. Well,

Well, here is the truth about the Disneyland VIP pass. Now, number one, it is my buddy Josh Avin that lives down there. He and his family split it with me. So I was only into it for about $2,500. You know, Josh picked up the other half because it's good for 10 people.

Still $600. It's a lot. It's a lot. So we get there. And first of all, I will say that the human being that walked us around was lovely. Like if Disney ever gets this, which I doubt they will. But if anybody ever, the girl that walked us around was great. She was awesome. She was knowledgeable. She knew a lot of cool stuff. Was pointing things out as we went through the park, which was awesome.

But we meet her, we get going, and we walk into the first thing. We walk up, and we walk up to Star Tours, right? And that's a ride that normally I would skip. I wouldn't go on that ride because, I mean, it just kind of makes you nauseous. My kids don't really love it. Like, we just wouldn't do it, and there's bigger, better to deal with, right? But I'm thinking to myself, we're on the VIP tour. We're going to ride everything anyway. Let's go, right? And we walk up, and we get in the Fast Pass lane.

That's it? And we proceed to wait for like 25 minutes to ride Star Tours. And I'm looking at my watch and I'm looking at my wife and I'm like, this is what we're doing today.

And it was. The whole time. And the only place where it was an advantage was like Peter Pan, Snow White, those rides which normally are like 90 minutes for little rides. You did walk right up because they don't have fast pass lines. They don't have the lightning lines. So you would walk right up. But everything else, it was essentially just like paying. Those lines were like just the same old carton. But it still takes a while, right? In the fast pass lane, it still takes a while. So essentially what you're buying is a perma fast pass, which if you're slick with the fast passes –

If you know what you're doing, it doesn't matter. We could have done exactly what we did for free, and here's how.

All right? This is my buddy Josh's method, and I like it. I do like it. Well, hold on. Before you start putting this out there. Do we want everybody to know this? Do you really want this? Do you really want to say the name of your favorite restaurant and have it blow up? Do you really? You know, here's the thing. We don't talk about said cigar bar that's half off. Here's the thing. I'm saying this is a specific situation you would have to be in to make this work. All right?

Because anybody can get the genie pass, get the fast pass, right? So here's what you do. Like, for example, we went with another family. So we have two families, right? They get a fast pass. We get a fast pass. So you got to spend most of the day apart. But you're like, okay, you go do, you get a fast pass for Space Mountain. We're going to get one for Buzz Lightyear. Then when they go here, you go there. Then you walk up and you're like, oh, we need a rider swap. And if they go, where's your baby? You just turn and point at anybody with a baby.

That's what he does. He just literally goes, oh, there's my baby right there. They're like, I'm sorry, sir. That's a 60-year-old woman. No, it's a baby. They don't question. So he just gets the rider swap, and then they come off of this ride. You come off of this ride. You swap the rider swaps, and you go again.

Which the rider swap has been a way of life for us because my daughter forever wouldn't ride everything. So we did do a lot. I mean, the rider swap was just part of what it is for us. And he's got two little kids too. So literally we just would have done that. We could have got the same experience. Can we honestly cut to the chase and say that Disney does not hold a candle to Six Flags anyway? No, not for rides. But just not at all worth, not at all at all worth. That's disappointing. I assumed you were going to come back and say, no.

No other way to do it. Nope. It was a waste of money. I would never do it again. It did not save me one second of time, really. Oh, that sucks. Because you're just standing in the FastPass line. Now you got to bullshit and talk to the girl randomly. Yeah, well, they do have like an Uber choice where they're like, do you want them to interact with you and talk? A lot of these ones, we kind of stand there and do nothing. So have you been to Universal Studios?

I have. So you know you buy that VIP pass? Yes, which is totally worth it. Totally worth it. You crush the lines. You could fly through that park all day. I love that. They started saying, oh, you only get to use it once per ride. What? Yeah. Really? Yeah.

That killed it for me too because it's like, well, now you're paying double to one time get a FastPass effectively to the front of the ride. The whole point of the mummy is I want to do it 10 times and I don't want to wait for it. Well, you know, there's all these loopholes they've closed at Disney because people used to buy multiple tickets and go in and just do multiple FastPasses. That was the point.

You would go in with an extra ticket because we were like, I mean, literally, because think about it. You could buy an extra day, you know, day pass to get multiple fast passes like they were and to be cheaper than paying them for the VIP tour. Yeah. The VIP tour doesn't sound like a lot of value. Now, let me ask you this. Here's an, here's an intro. We're going to bring this up. This is going to be a touchy subject. I'm bringing up.

Because I got in a philosophical discussion with this. Now, first of all, I believe that if you park in a handicapped space and you're not handicapped, there's a special place in hell for you. Sure. I believe that. Me too. Here's the debate. Because they had this service, and this service has now been shut down at Disney, where you could actually – there was ads running – where you could get a – this is so terrible, but –

I'm curious what you think. I feel like I already have an opinion. No, no, no, no, no. Where you could pay someone with a genuine handicap and their companion, whoever was with them, you could pay them to go with you to Disneyland so you could be in their party and go through the handicap. Totally fine.

So you think that's okay. Totally fine. Yeah, because my buddy was like, no, this is like, it's like I'm taking them to Disneyland. I'm not putting them to work in a sweatshop. Yes, I am definitely benefiting from this handicap, but that's their ability. So by whatever grace happened to them by accident, by birth, whatever, they've had certain things either taken away from them or they've never had, right? The fact that they can capitalize on them

Should be like something you should want to do. Oh, no, for sure. I think you're going to say they'll rent you a wheelchair. No, God. That's a special place to help you there. But hiring a handicapped person is the most Larry David thing ever. I just think it's wonderful. It's a complete Larry David thing to do. Yeah.

Yeah, they ban that. I don't know what they do if they catch you doing it or how they would catch you doing it. Larry David hired a prostitute to sit in his car to take the HOV lane to go to a Dodgers game. I forgot about that. I think that's genius. It's a service. You're getting her off the street. Speaking of baseball.

This is what are you going to John? What's your, I mean, do you have any pushback on that? No, I guess I, cause here's the thing. My visceral gut reaction was, this is a terrible thing. Yeah, but it's like, okay, I don't want to get into any kind of weeds here, but there's a lot of people that I was watching comedians talking and this person was like, you're a racist. This comedian is getting a shout for you. He goes,

What did I say about any race? He said, I said that this is a thing. He goes, that had nothing to do. I said something like, I do this because I'm Filipino was the joke. It was like, where did I say that that was bad? Let me ask you, that brings us to another question. Are you feeling bad?

Are you feeling the pendulum starting to swing back on the wokeness? Of course. Finally. Finally. Finally. I feel it swinging hard back. It was always going to. Hopefully it stops in a realm of reasonableness, but there you go. But it won't. But yeah, people all of a sudden they go to a point where...

you know like i said i think there's a lot of people with good intentions yeah and i'm i'm somebody that i don't think race should ever be a factor in deciding anything but this is gonna i was having a story i have you know very multicultural friends and it's a lot of fun when your friends and you together about like even stereotypes with each other right like they're breaking my balls for being an uncoordinated white guy yeah and it's like that's your friend

I wouldn't look on it too kindly if other people were doing it. I didn't know them. I wouldn't really care, but I'm saying if it's your friend, that's a part of the spice of life, right? Is difference. Difference is a lot of fun. That's what makes everything good. When you have good intentions, difference is awesome.

You know what has bad intentions? Baseball. And do you know why baseball has bad intentions? Take us, Cole. Why does baseball have bad intentions? Do you have something important to say? No, go ahead. Go ahead. Fuck. Worst first pitch fucking ever done. Was it the girl with the lacrosse stick? No. Wait, what? It was Tom...

Fucking Hanks. What a legend. Tom Hanks. Wow, guys. No one saw him throw a first pitch? Was it a strike? Your buddy Pell sent it to me. The only first pitch I saw. Oh, no. Okay, so Tom, go ahead. No, keep going. I thought it was going to be a general Tom Hanks rant. I didn't know there was a specific. So this weekend, he goes out.

And, of course, Tom Hanks going overboard on what Tom Hanks does. Instead of walking out waving and throwing a freaking pitch, he brings out Wilson. Yes. How lame. Like, bring out the worst character ever made, and then he sits there and the wind's blowing the ball away, and Tom Hanks is acting like he's stuck on a desert island. John, you know why he thinks Wilson's the worst character ever made? Why is that? Because he doesn't watch Star Wars and never saw Jar Jar Binks. That's a good point. That's an excellent point.

That's the worst movie made. I spent this week in the hot tub literally doing this character versus this character from best to worst with my son because right now he's playing a lot of Star Wars Legos on Xbox or whatever it is. So now he's in the Star Wars movies again. And the thing is, on the worst, you always want to go right to Jar Jar Binks, but there's nobody worse. It's not close. So you just can't even compare it. There's just nobody worse. Jar Jar what? Never mind, Colt.

It's a lot. No, seriously. Don't worry. How do you say it again? Jar Jar Binks. Binks? Yes. Yes. So when we finally getting around to say you are the Jar Jar Binks of this podcast, just understand it's not, it's not a compliment. Yeah, it's not good. Anyway, the

The first pitch I saw that was terrible, well, not terrible, but I saw Billy Crystal, I guess, throwing out the first pitch at New York. And he was kind of jerking around with it, I guess, and take it forever. And the starter for the Mets was fantastic.

furious in the dugout yelling like let's fucking go man because he was that's what they should know because he was warm and he had to go and now Billy Crystal's doing side stick up there on the mound and this guy's like we gotta go man I saw that and I was like yeah is City Slickers one of the best movies ever made it's funny Billy Crystal's

great from your criticism, but Tom Hanks catches up. Did you see dude? He was out there for like 10 minutes playing this old Wilson. Come back. Tom Hanks, get over yourself. Tom Hanks for sure. For sure. Well, when we come back, we're going to take a quick break. It's coming back. We still have stuff to unpack that was happening in the last two weeks, which is good. We're going to talk a little bit about the airplane. Jesus music.

We're going to talk about confirmation bias. We're going to talk about, you know, I got a big speaking gig coming up this weekend. And because of it, I went back and reviewed some Robert Kiyosaki books because I'm actually speaking with him this week. And I wanted to kind of, you know, have some stuff to talk to him about. So I read his books again. And I'll tell you what I agree with, what I don't right now. We'll come back in just a minute.

Hey, it's John Gafford. If you want to catch up more and see what we're doing, you can always go to thejohngafford.com where we'll share any links that we have things we talked about on the show, as well as links to the YouTube where you can watch us live. And if you want to catch up with me on Instagram, you can always follow me at thejohngafford. I'm here. Give me a shout. Back from the break. Back from the break.

For part two of today's episode, our back from sabbatical, I guess we're going to say what it is, whatever it was. Warm-up episode. Warm-up episode. Back from that. You know, honestly, if you're still listening after the cold couch episode,

personally. Thank you very much. No, yeah, we did this. Connell told me when he walked in and he goes, man, I tried to watch it. But when he started talking about, when he started reading texts off his phone, it was hard. It was hard. It was hard. Did we leave people two weeks with that? I think we did. I think we did. Here's the funny part. Here's the funny part. So the funny part is after that and nothing shows up for two weeks and now all of their podcast apps went, they look at their like,

Am I going down this hole again? So allow us to regain trust with this episode, which is great. But I'll tell you what. So this big event is here in Vegas this weekend on Friday. What's it called, John? It is called the Clever Summit. I'm actually going to put this out. You know, we're done. I'm probably going to put this out today just because this is your last chance today to actually buy tickets. You can't buy in-person tickets anymore. They sold out in like two seconds.

There's 500 people trying to get in-person tickets on a waiting list. They're all no way. The virtual tickets are now over like 5,000 sold. So this is going to be like 7,700, 7,500 people at this event. It's pretty dope. Awesome. And I happen to be speaking there, which is really, really cool. And you've, it's your last chance to get virtual tickets. So check that out. You might want to look, if you want to audit and look at the people there, it's going to be an amazing event. It's this weekend, but I got an interesting DM that I thought was, it was, it was interesting, which was this. And it was, somebody said,

sent me a DM and it was a local agent here in Vegas that said, man, you know, I wish you were still doing local stuff. I wish you weren't just talking at these national things because I miss seeing you talk about local real estate stuff. And, you know, you should do that again is essentially the message I got. And my response was that ain't my fault. Like, here's the thing. Here's the thing you got to understand.

Years ago, and again, a big part of this company, Simply Vegas that we're at, was built because of these things. But all of the different title companies and mortgage companies would invite me to talk at their events. They would do that. And almost all of those events as realtor events are hosted, sponsored, put on, brought by title and mortgage companies. They almost all are.

We are now, since I was doing those events, we are obviously knee deep in the title and mortgage business. We own both title businesses and we own mortgage businesses. So I don't blame those companies for not inviting me to talk to their crowds 'cause it would essentially be like me inviting a competitor to come and talk to my people. And so I get that. - But you probably would though. - What, go talk to them? - Well you would, so that's the one thing I never understood about people's perspectives in business, right?

I know some attorneys that won't add me on Facebook. And I'm not just talking about Nick Dosa. I mean other attorneys. Nick, please, for the love of God, I got to hear about this. For those of you who don't know, Nick Dosa owns Vegas Auto Gallery. Friend to everyone except for Chris Connell. Great guy. Anyway. Who actually told me because he's working on the Maz right now.

He told me I can come down there and get whatever I want. Why have you not done that yet? But regardless. Well, because I don't know how long it's going to take to get fixed. But I'm going to go down there tomorrow, I think, if it's not done. We're going after this podcast. I'm going to grab something tomorrow. I totally forget what I was saying. You were talking about other attorneys won't add you because they're scared of lawyers. If you're ever afraid of someone coming and taking your business, they could have taken it anyway. It doesn't matter.

I really believe that. Like, if you got somebody here, if you got Ivan Shearer to come and do a talk at Simply Vegas, do you feel like... Which we have. Which we have. Are you so protectionist? You think, oh, my God, my agents are going to run over there. Or do people go, oh, no, no. I just see that as someone else doing something in town. Well... You know what I mean? Like, if you water your own backyard, right, that includes getting others' perspectives. Well, I think one of the things I posted this week, because, again, I got blown up about, you know, somebody talking smack about...

about me and I didn't see it because I don't follow that person. But, you know, my response, you know, I let it simmer for a couple of days. And my response was this is, is, you know, if you can't tout an accomplishment, if you, if you have to like try to tear somebody else's accomplishments down in order to make yours look bigger, then you're not, you're not,

You're not a leader. You're a hater. You want to be – I try to surround myself in my golden years, as I'm calling them now, with people that want to see me win. Because everybody that's around me, even if they own a competitive business, I want to see them win. I mean there's never going to be a time where there's going to be –

one title company and one real estate company and one mortgage company. If you own a mortgage company, I want to see you win. If you own a title company, I want to see you win. If you own a brokerage, I want to see you win. You do something great. I'm not jealous of what you did. I don't hate on what you did. For example, Brandon Roberts, who I consider a friend of mine, owns Signature Real Estate here in Las Vegas, put an ad out, and I appreciate quirky good advertising. And he put an ad up for Easter that had peeps, and it just said, Signature Real Estate, great peeps.

That's cool. And I was like, ah, and I just, and I hit right in the comments, man. Oh, that's awesome. Cause I thought it was clever. I'm going to give him, you know, I'm going to give you some compliments. I'm not worried. My agents are going to see the peep at and run out of here and go to him. Cause how shitty is your business? Right. But, but if I see something clever and good, I'm going to call it. It's awesome. That's good. Anyway. Um, but, but so, but here's the, here's the, here's the Gucher.

Here's the Guccia. This is the Guccia. This is it. Four tails? Yes, this is four. Let's have a hypothetical conversation without nailing down specifics on the air today. All right, here's the Guccia. I'm going to run this down. Ready? Let's say there's a business model and half of the business model

services independent companies that sell this widget. We'll call it a widget. Okay. All right. And then the other half of that business model services brick and mortar stores owned by widget company that sell widgets right out of the widget store. Totally understand. All right. Got it. Now let's say that one of the people that opens their own independent widget store that sells widgets starts kicking the ass of the brick and mortar widget stores.

Right. So all of a sudden the widget store decides to try to impede the business of the agency by saying, Hey, we're going to let you keep selling out of your one widget store, but you can't open any more widget stores. We're not gonna let you sell widgets out of any of those. Essentially. So one of my widget partners on Friday tried to pull the rug out from underneath me because we're selling a lot of widgets. So that's an interesting thing, but that is actually, I think illegal.

I think it is. In a lot of ways. Now, you're not obviously compelled to have to do business with certain people. Right. But if you make it, like, there's certain conditional things. Well, I'm sorry. Let's say that this particular widget company sells widgets all over the United States. Right? All over the United States. And they allow independent widget shops to sell widgets in every 50 states. And there's one state where they are sopping to have let independent widget companies operate. And it's this one.

So there is something about anti-competition, right? And there is something with intentional interference with business relations that is a tort in Nevada. Intentional interference. So when you are so, I mean, that seems very short-sighted. You think? And it does seem possibly actionable. You think? I'd have to obviously have details. Well, I'm trying to get a meeting with the president of the widget company who made this decision.

because obviously the person that we deal with in the, in the widget department, um, it's in their best interest that we sell as many as widgets as we can. Sure. Um, so it's their boss that made this widget decision because I'm thinking that some people that work at the brick and mortar widget store, uh, are feeling the heat a little bit. Yeah. But that there is an issue with price fixing or there's an issue with, you know, competitions, but a lot of times you will get those, um,

that see it in their best interest to not do that. Sure. But the good news is there's a lot of companies that sell widgets. It's not hard for me to find another widget supplier. It's not hard to do it. John, you can just say the company because there's a lot of companies that will sell you six Cadillac margaritas that aren't chili. Not you, Chili's. Look, I'm not going to be, I will never name the name of a company and complain about it, but you Chili's, I will. You sold me six Cadillac margaritas. You totally.

my car Chili's for trying to be responsible and still still no response still no response I was right next to that Chili's I forgot should have gone up there anyway were you not last week I was seriously maybe a half a mile from that next time you go to Utah we're going to do a live remote from this for the podcast where you interview the manager of Chili's about their about their towing procedures John I actually want to hear what you have to say about that next thing you were talking about which thing is that about singing

Oh, oh yeah. Well, we're almost there. We're almost there. We're almost there. Cause I look, I'm complaining about stuff. I don't want to do really. No, no. If I'm going to come, if I'm going to complain, I got one more. I got one more. My whole house. And again, here comes another Star Wars reference that Colt won't understand. My whole house this weekend went down like the Death Star. Just like that. Why? Because my home automation company that I have 92 switches and devices programmed through their hub to

decided to go out of business and just turn their servers off. It didn't tell anybody it was coming. Nothing. Wow. Yeah. And all of a sudden I'm like, I didn't get bought out or anything. They got, but it's instant on. They got bought by Nokia and Nokia is going to move, I guess people over there to whatever they're doing, but they just literally shut everything down. So your force field. Yeah. So your house is not penetrable. Well, the alarm thing, God is still fun. No, everything's still functions, but it doesn't work together. And now it's, you know, it,

And yeah, it's like I have a lot of switches that like, like, for example, like you look at my kitchen, all of the cans over here on one switch, all the cans over here on the switch, all of the the lights underneath the cabinets are on one switch. The chandeliers are on one switch. So before, because it was programmed, I could push one thing and they would all come on.

Now, if I want them on, I have to go to each switch and turn them all on. So I spent- Welcome to the poor side. I spent the weekend investing, trying to figure a solution for this. I've got something that came today. I'm praying to God it works, but I'll be spending all of next weekend, not this weekend because I have that event, but the following weekend reprogramming my house because you got to do it one switch at a time, apparently. So hopefully it's going to work. But dude, I could not believe that this company just-

I mean, nuts. I mean, you think you would like open source solution? You think that's a bad... Yeah, I mean, open source a solution. Do something. If you know you're going to business, you're going to shut down. It would cost... What does it matter? It would cost... Yeah, I mean... You think it's...

Their issue or the people that bottom's issue? Well, I mean, at the same time... I think you take on the liabilities of your prior contract. But where's the moral responsibility for the people in management that are... Do you think that extends to moral responsibility? I think it does. I think if you took money in exchange for a product or service, I think...

You know, I think people think there's this imaginary line. We just become a big corporation. It becomes okay I don't believe that if if I take money from you to provide you with a service and I disappear I'm a scumbag and you ruin my reputation on town. Yeah, a lot of people Nokia does it it's just well It was a corporate buyout and there's just a lot of creditors in bankruptcy court feel the exact same way Exactly exactly right so I guess the moral of story with that is if you were going to go out on a limb and shut your business down

Give your customers a heads up. I mean, make sure there's a solution in place. Try to transition. Do that right. That's good corporate governance and responsibility. But here's the thing. When you're going out of business, what do you care? Yeah, I mean, I get it. So by the way, just as a point, by the way, when someone does file a bankruptcy, there's a thing called the 341 hearing. In a 341 hearing, all creditors get to come to the room where the trustee is with this person and ask them whatever questions you want. Oh, boy. If you've never seen one of these things, I've seen some things personally in a 341 hearing that...

That would blow your mind. Just absolutely just blazing people. Like blazing people. So why didn't you give me my money that you've stolen? Like all these things, right? But I had one situation where this guy goes, well, I had to pay my staff with your money because it's like you have to pay people to come to work, right?

Because, but you know, that was our money, right? It's like, yeah, but you got paid to be here. So why shouldn't my staff have gotten paid with your money? Yeah. Some odd justifications probably happen in those things. But you know, I saw this, I do want to talk about this today before we get into talking about some of Kiyosaki's philosophies for the weekend. But I saw this and I thought it was interesting, which was the airplane Jesus. Um, that's what I'm calling it. Uh,

It was a thing that I guess there was a bunch of church kids or group or whatever it was, jumped up on an airplane and started singing and playing guitars and, and singing hymnals. And, uh, I know that, uh, Oh, what's her name? Uh, Talib, the, the, the, the representative from, um, Michigan. What's her name? Oh, I, uh, um,

whatever her name is. She's part of the Google machine. If you're at home, you'll figure it out. Anyway, she's, she's Muslim. And she said, Oh, I guess me and my family should have a prayer, you know, prayer meeting on the plane. Let's see how that goes. Right. Right. So here's my thing. All right. Now, obviously she's absolutely correct. By the way, I agree. I agree. I, my thing is if I'm on a plane, like I can't listen to my phone without headphones, how are you going to get up and do a jig? I don't care. I still, no matter what it is, but,

I don't think we need to debate that. Is there any debate here that that's just lunacy, no matter what people are doing that are interrupting you? It's always lunacy if what you are listening to ever, or your kids, is audible to the next family over. Okay, got it. I don't care how people walk around with their phone on speaker. Got it. Okay, got it. So we're in complete agreement that it doesn't matter. Now, are we also in agreement that there's probably a line somewhere where you're like, oh.

oh my God, Mick Jagger just grabbed the damn speaker thing from the flight attendant and he's giving us a little, you know, a little gimme shelter up there. Might be annoyed by that. Yeah. I might be annoyed by it. No, but how famous do you got to be where it's okay to get up on the plane and do a little something? I don't think there's anybody out there. No, no, here's the thing. Like I remember a long time ago, my buddies in Beth and Ezra, I remember a scene where they were, where Kevin was on there playing guitar and singing, they were singing Good to the Passengers. I remember that.

and they seem to like it. But some people might not know who they are. So how famous do you got to be where it's okay for everybody? Probably Ezra would be on the other side of that line, which is good. Yeah. Right? Like, you don't know that song? Really? Yeah, Kevin is good. So I think there would be 50% plus one. I think you have to go by consensus. All right. Would 50% plus one...

Enjoy this experience. And how long and how, if it's, yeah, I saw it. One minute is all you got. Couple minutes, you're singing. One minute, you're good. And then people go, what the hell was that? Add a little flavor to people's lives. I'm all for that. Okay. Add a little fear and danger in there, right? Get up and start yelling like really harsh verses from the Quran. I think that's also. Dude. Okay. No, no, no, no, no. Can I tell you? That was one of the scariest moments of my life.

Me and Gidget went to Europe and this was probably, this was,

Call it 16 years ago. So that would have made it what? 2004, I guess we're going to call it. Yeah. No, we'll call it 2006. All right. We'll call it 2006. We went to, uh, what's a Europe and we were in London on the tube and there had been a bombing on the tube like two weeks before we got there. We'd get off on Gloucester station. We get on the tube and, uh, and there's a dude, a solo guy on the tube with us that does exactly that.

And I got to tell you, it was terrifying. Because you're like, this guy, and obviously he's just a dude that was touched. I mean, just happened to be...

You know, like some guys walk around themselves about nothing. This dude just happened to actually be reciting something in Arabic very loud. And dude, and you've never seen people run off a train faster than that. My, my poor wife, I did take her to Morocco one time and it's about dark. It's getting dark. I don't know what time it was five, six, seven dinner time. All of a sudden the fin them on the mosque at the end of the road in Morocco starts yelling out the call to prayer. Yeah.

Now, if you've never heard it, it's disconcerting because we only get the influences from media, right? Sure. Typically, it's followed by something blowing up, right, in our media. Sure. That's how it's presented. Movies. Meanwhile, it's like a house swear chiming. Let me back up before I get labeled as something with this. I don't know. Yeah, yeah. When I see a lone guy that starts screaming anything. Sure. Oh, God.

Okay, that was 50% of the experience. Totally. The fact that, yeah, so let's be very clear. It's not like, I'm not being the next door of podcasts. Like, oh my God, did you see this weird man in the neighborhood? I was terrified of him. That's all I'm trying to, no, this was legit. But here's the thing. This is why travel is so important because if you've never seen that, yeah, you're not going to understand. But then when you go see it, you go,

Oh, I get it. So me, myself, I've been to half a dozen Muslim countries. Now I just go, oh, it must be 5 p.m. It's just like a town square chime going off, right? That's the value of experience because it's less scary when you have context. But anyway, that was anybody on a tube screaming about literally anything. A little scary. But again, that comes back to confirmation bias. You look for things to justify your opinion, which I...

I mean, I just, I feel like everything I ever post on social media from now on, I want to include like confirmation bias. People need to learn this because there's way too many people on both sides of any issue that devoutly believe what comes out of someone's mouth. And you can look on social media. It's so funny.

Even some people that I know, man, you'll see like one of the top guru guys come on and rant about something and within 10 minutes I'll see somebody else that I know rant the same shit because they heard this person say it and they said, oh, I need to go rant that same shit. And it's nonsense. And I think...

You know, being able to look in any type of information, especially if it's something you're going to repeat or put out there, you've got to look for that counterpoint. I mean, a question, like where do you get your news? Here's a question. Where do you get your news, Colin? I think I get them from a couple sources. I don't, like, subscribe to the Wall Street Journal anymore. Okay. Because I just found that slogging through it wasn't too organic. Yes, it's cumbersome. I do probably find it most through social media. Online, where do you get your news? Online. Twitter. Twitter.

Um, a little bit of Twitter. We can talk about that. Jesus Christ. I follow like I'll follow the AP. I'll follow the BBC. Here's the thing. I have, I have my same routine, which is this just because not only do I want to try to figure out what's going on, but I also want to figure out what's going on in the minds of people. I'm probably gonna have to talk to or interact with at some point, which to me is more valuable than the information itself.

I kind of want to have an idea of what people are thinking. Sure. So I hit CNN. I hit Fox News. I hit BBC. I hit MSNBC. I hit all of them. Sky News. I hit all of them. I look at Newsmax. I look at all of them because I figure if I get a nice blend of the mania from every direction where it comes, somewhere in the middle of that, if I find enough common thread through all of these stories, okay, that's probably going to be true.

And I can decipher that. So I don't want to be completely nihilistic about that opinion. Go ahead. But here's the thing. I talk to my dad about this all the time. And my dad, through the years, has become, I mean, like, left of Bernie. Like, we were growing up probably pretty central. Issues like property taxes and like, you know. But the older he gets. Do you think that has to do with his overall disappointment in you? No. No. No.

I don't think so because I can fix that. He's just become left on some issues so strongly because he kind of feeds into this. Now, a lot of things I will agree with. Some I don't. I push back where I don't because I do try to think independently. But you do start feeding into this. And I always say to him, Dad, you realize that this news company that's giving you the news –

has no, its objective isn't to inform you. Its objective is to make money. Keep it here. Yeah, keep it here. Its objective is to make money. Its objective is to make money. All the news you've ever received in your whole life comes from a perspective of a company that pays somebody to make money. So in statistics and in math, you see these things, right? And Nicholas Tassim Taleb's Black Swan. I don't know if it was going to get there. Exactly.

I wouldn't have gotten the animal. So in the book, The Black Swan, there's this concept, right? All swans were white until there was a black swan. Or 500 days of a chicken's life, 499 days of it, the chicken just sees a farmer feeding it. It assumes after 499 instances that the farmer's its best friend. And the 500th day, it chops its head off, right?

So all of these things, we get our girls like that. We get our news, we get our news, we get our news. You have to, I think, broaden that so far to get what would approximate truth that I'm not sure that by going, uh,

At a local level, it's ever going to happen. And I don't even mean that from an AP. I think they have these, they try to be as objective as possible. But you talk to people that were there versus how the news presented, even unbiased. And it doesn't necessarily approximate truth. Because again, every time, and consider this, and John, that's to your point. Every single time you turn on anything, realize that you are a product.

Right? That you are consuming a product. That you are the inventory for this company. You're the data point. You're the data point. You're the inventory. They need you to be consuming their product in order for this to make them money. So just at the end of the day, I go...

You know dad you realize that this company its objective is not to present you the truth Its objective is to give you a message that you're inclined to hear and the more you're inclined to hear the same message the more You'll think like that. Well, you know again, you know confirmation bias for me is people spend so much time looking for Opportunities to justify their own belief system. Yes instead of looking for

to it and instead of looking for other ways, for other things. And it's so interesting with this thing I'm doing this weekend. You know, you've got guys that are coming to this and it's going to be a flood of the who's who of how to make money in and around real estate. I mean, you've expanded some of the crypto and NFT stuff now.

But you're going to have basically every 15, 20 minutes, a new guy or new gal get on stage and say, this is the way, this is the way, this is the way, this is the way. And every single one of those opinions is going to differ from the guy that was just there. The girl's coming on after you. I mean, there's some, there's some underlying painting theme themes that go there, but overall you got to look for, for biases in it. And I think again, cause Kiyosaki is going to be there. I went back and I looked through some of his books and a couple of things and I

I was like, who would be the counterpoint to a lot of what Kiyosaki does? Like, who would you guess? Who would you guess I selected as the Kiyosaki counterpoint? Who would you guess? The Kiyosaki counterpoint to me would be like...

You mean industry specific or just in general? In general. In general. Whose theories are altered most with his? It would be like Jim Chanos of Kinnikos Capital. No, no, no. A perma bear. I'm talking about somebody that is in the space. In the space of telling you what you need to do with your money. That a lot of his opinions are hardcore different. No, I'm not going to say grand. We're not going to play guessing games anymore. It's Dave Ramsey.

Okay. Who has a lot of polar opposite views in things that then Kiyosaki does primarily where they differ in the line in the sand is, is debt. Like Dave Ramsey will tell you debt is the devil and you should never be into debt and don't be into debt and this and that and pay for your cash, pay for your house with cash and all these other things. And you know, as I read that and I'm thinking how many people in America take advice from Dave Ramsey and I,

How many people listen to Kiyosaki? Kiyosaki is debt as a weapon. You use debt to buy assets that make more money and use it as a weapon. Now, like a weapon as well, debt has to be handled carefully because it can cut you. Is that up for debate?

What debt? Yes. Ramsey says, Oh yeah. I didn't know much about Ramsey, but they're at my kids' school. They really preach Ramsey stuff. I'm like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no

That's a Ramsey. If you're the kind of person that is totally unsophisticated when it comes to this. Okay. Well, let's back up. Paying the house for cash. Let's back up. Nowhere to put it. Exactly. Let's back up. But the point is,

The problem is, with financial literacy in this country, is there is a line where to the left of it, Dave Ramsey's a good idea. And you hit a point in that line where you go beyond that, where you've got to let those belief systems go and then move into Kiyosaki, those debt. Like if you're flat broke right now and you've got $12,000, $15,000, $20,000 worth of credit card debt.

Cut them all out. Go Dave Ramsey and figure out how to burn it down. I get that. Go Suze Orman. I get that. That's fine. Go that route. But at some point, you're going to have to let go of the debt is the devil if you ever want to really make money because you've got to create leverage and you've got to do it through those ways. Find me one financial analyst that ever said, you will actually get

boot it off a board of a public company if you are not levered enough. That means you're not using your cash appropriately. Like Dave Ramsey is, put it away, put it away, put it away. Put it away for what? That's the thing. He starts talking about, eventually he gets to the point where he starts talking about investing. He does talk about that. Ramsey's an investor, but it's like investing mutual funds. No, no, I do believe it. He's all safe. I believe that. It's very safe. 95, 90% of people plus, and I'll throw that number up there,

95% of people should invest in an ETF today.

And never look at it ever again. Put your money in mutual funds with the lowest MER as possible. And then never look at the stock market again until you're 10 days out from retirement. And then you realize that compounding interest works and that mutual funds over a period of time outperform all money managers ever. Other than like hedge funds. And there's reasons for that. But unless you're a high net worth individual that's getting, like Warren Buffett will get issued pipes. But here's the point of that. Yeah.

Exactly what you're saying is accurate because the problem is there are steps to financial freedom of wealth that people never get off a step because their belief system is tied to what got them out of debt.

The belief system you utilize to get you out of debt is not the belief system you're going to use to make you rich. Yeah, to flourish. It doesn't work. Well, here's the other thing. I was talking to somebody the other day about bankruptcy. I can't remember exactly who it was, but I said, you know, you keep over a million dollars in bankruptcy. There is a strategic time to use bankruptcy. Yeah. Now, again, if you want guys to come up and ask you horrible questions. No, but here's the thing. You should take shots. This country is built on taking shots. Take your shots.

Every eight years you can file a bankruptcy. Let's say you're not doing well. And don't be a piece of shit. Don't steal from people. Work for what you earn. Have a good idea. Work hard or whatever. But take a shot, okay? And other people, investors know that

John, you've taken shots that haven't worked out. You've taken shots that haven't worked out. I know that when I put money in a project that that money could be gone. I know that, especially when I take equity, especially if it's debt with somebody that has no assets. So when you understand that, you understand, look, I don't want to ruin people's life. This is what the value of bankruptcy is.

is that when you have a shot, we want you to take your shot. If you hit, you're the smartest guy on earth, great. The average entrepreneur fails seven times, plus or minus two, right? So take your shots, use money and leverage when you can appropriately, responsibly, and that's the only way to make. But yet so many people. I've never heard of that. No, Dave Ramsey's book, you go from...

No, we go from, but that's the problem in America, right? We go from no financial literacy to poor man's financial literacy, which is Ramsey, poor man financial literacy to, you know, and people don't bother to take the steps into some things that they see. Is he like, don't take student loans?

No, he doesn't believe in any, no, no debt. He doesn't want you to have any debt free. And he's out there. He's like, I want to be reading people to go preach his stuff. It's, it's like a look, there's kindergarten teachers, right? You can't take a college professor and tell them, go teach kindergartners. They don't know how to react to that. People. Same thing with,

vice versa same thing with someone that's in debt that doesn't understand that you can't teach them how hey take now go get more debt and you're going to make this much money get to the starting line again then i'll teach you find me the wealthiest people in any place industry city ask me one of them if they just just carry cash no they're no they're all they're all dead heavy they're all that you have to be well okay let's okay for serviceable debt for example for example um

You know a lot like one of things Kiyosaki says is your house is not an asset because it doesn't produce income Well, you can weapon you can and again store of wealth you better you better be sure to do this But like with me I lever the equity in my home through the through a home equity line of credit sure and then I get that it you know, I guess when I did it was 3.5 whatever was and

And I lever that money on high interest loans that I know I'll get back. So essentially I'm making eight points. It's arbitrage. That's how you get arbitrage. I know it's a hundred percent arbitrage. But Dave Ramsey would be like, oh, once you get your house paid off, you leave that alone. For what? Like you can't, you got to put that, you got to put it back to work. People are so sensitive about things like my house. Like I don't want to,

There's a lot of people, they don't understand what an asset is supposed to do for you. It's supposed to make, an asset makes money, period. That's it. And your house is appreciated. Yeah. Now, again, we had problems in crisis because people don't manage it properly or they over lever or they don't understand me. I can take leverage out because I have a job that produces income that I can carry swings.

If something happened to me, I could go out and earn enough income to carry the debt that I have. I didn't for most of my time in America because I couldn't get debt here. I had to live without debt. That's bullshit. And I hated it because I had to establish credit here and then slowly work that up.

It's terrible. It's one of the worst things you can do if you're financially literate because you understand the opportunities that you're foregoing. That on a cash-to-cash basis, that's the only thing that matters to me. Especially in real estate, you've got... Default risk and a cash-to-cash basis. You have to lever. If you don't lever, you're crazy. But anyway, if you want to... Obviously, I'm going to put this out today just so you guys can get it. I'll probably come out here in the next couple hours. But...

Last chance today to get tickets to Clever Summit. So if you want to get them virtual tickets today, if you don't, I mean, I can't help you. Smart people. Dude, these are some smart. Look, normally I do these events. I will roll in, you know, call it maybe two hours before I'm going to be on stage. I do my deal and then I'm, you know, I maybe linger around for a little bit and then I'm gone. It's like Sean Penn. Yeah. No, I'm not saying Sean Penn. It's what I normally do. This event, I will literally be at this event from,

the very beginning to the very ending, including all of the stuff in between. I'll be there. And I think I'm only on stage for 15 minutes. I think, you know, because there's so many people speaking. It's like, okay, you're all going to do power talks. And it's like, so trying to compress what we're going to say in 15 minutes. It's going to be like a blitzkrieg of information.

So I'll be there the whole time because, you know, obviously I'm going to try to bring as much value as I can, but I'm also not egotistical enough to not think that I'm going to get an incredible value myself out of this. That's why I'm doing it. So there you go. Anyway, well, dude, I'm glad to be back. I'm glad you guys are back. We have no more hiatuses.

on the schedule for the foreseeable future colton anything sorry that we left you with the couch episode yeah i didn't know that's what we left people with the cobble cobra the cabo the cabo cobra so there it is you know it's not working for me it's bulgarian it might just have to be that way forever

Anyway, thanks for listening, guys. Do me a favor. Like and subscribe every little bit helps. And remember, if you hate what we do here, make sure you tell a friend. But if you like what we do, tell a friend. If you hate it, tell two, because it doesn't matter if you're talking good or bad. What's the matter, Conor? As long as they're talking about you. As long as they're talking about you. See you next time. Hey, it's John Gafford. If you want to catch up more and see what we're doing, you can always go to thejohngafford.com where we'll share any links that we've things we talked about on the show, as well as links to the YouTube where you can watch us live.

And if you want to catch up with me on Instagram, you can always follow me at thejohngafford. I'm here. Give me a shout.