Bitcoin vs. The U.S. Dollar: The Financial War That Will Change Everything | Anthony Pompliano PT 2

In the second part of this thought-provoking discussion on "Impact Theory," Anthony Pompliano returns to delve further into the intersection of technology and finance. With Tom Bilyeu, they navigate the potential future shaped by artificial intelligence, blockchain, and the rapid technological advancements across industries. This segment of the episode takes a closer look at how these innovations impact global economic structures, contrasting the strategies of value versus growth investing in an ever-evolving market landscape. Anthony brings his expertise to the forefront, analyzing key trends and sharing his vision for the future of digital assets like Bitcoin, which he suggests as a potential strategic reserve for the U. S. The conversation also tackles societal shifts, the nature of competition, and how individuals can skillfully navigate the volatile tides of technological change. Whether you're intrigued by technological implications on the global scale, or curious about placing strategic bets on future trends, this episode offers critical insights. SHOWNOTES 00:00 Technological Advancements and Market Dynamics 05:19 AI's Impact on Employment and Economy 07:35 Investing in the Age of Rapid Change 10:46 The Rise of Digital Assets and Bitcoin 18:31 Societal Shifts: Competing vs. Complaining 29:44 Financial Theory: Inflation and Debt Dynamics 47:43 The Impact of Regulatory Change on Innovation FOLLOW ANTHONY: Twitter: https://twitter.com/APompliano YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@APompliano CHECK OUT OUR SPONSORS Range Rover: Range Rover: Explore the Range Rover Sport at https://landroverUSA.com https://landroverusa.com/ Audible: Sign up for a free 30 day trial at https://audible.com/IMPACTTHEORY https://audible.com/IMPACTTHEORY1 Vital Proteins: Get 20% off by going to https://www.vitalproteins.com https://www.vitalproteins.com/ and entering promo code IMPACT at check out iTrust Capital: Use code IMPACT when you sign up and fund your account to get a $100 bonus at https://www.itrustcapital.com/tombilyeu Tax Network USA: Stop looking over your shoulder and put your IRS troubles behind you. Call 1-800-958-1000 or visit https://tnusa.com/impact ButcherBox: Choose either grass-fed ground beef, top sirloin or organic chicken breast to get free in every box for an entire year. Plus, get an extra $20 off your first box when you use code IMPACT at https://butcherbox.com/impact What's up, everybody? It's Tom Bilyeu here: If you want my help... STARTING a business:join me here at ZERO TO FOUNDER https://tombilyeu.com/zero-to-founder?utm_campaign=Podcast%20Offer&utm_source=podca[%E2%80%A6]d%20end%20of%20show&utm_content=podcast%20ad%20end%20of%20show SCALING a business:see if you qualify here. https://tombilyeu.com/call Get my battle-tested strategies and insights delivered weekly to your inbox:sign up here. https://tombilyeu.com/ ********************************************************************** If you're serious about leveling up your life, I urge you to check out my new podcast,Tom Bilyeu’s Mindset Playbook https://open.spotify.com/show/47VE90Cittmo6TGGFqg2xf —a goldmine of my most impactful episodes on mindset, business, and health. Trust me, your future self will thank you. ********************************************************************** Join me live on myTwitch stream https://impacttheory.co/4fitmnJ. I'm live daily from 6:30 to 8:30 am PT atwww.twitch.tv/tombilyeu https://impacttheory.co/4fitmnJ ********************************************************************** Looking for more inspiration? Check out The best Serial Entrepreneur podcasts https://podcast.feedspot.com/serial_entrepreneur_podcasts/?feedid=5651453&_src=f1_featured_email#show_more_btn from thousands of podcasts on the web and ranked by relevancy, authority, social media followers & freshness ********************************************************************** LISTEN TO IMPACT THEORY AD FREE + BONUS EPISODES on APPLE PODCASTS:apple.co/impacttheory http://apple.co/impacttheory ********************************************************************** FOLLOW TOM: Instagram:https://www.instagram.com/tombilyeu/ Tik Tok:https://www.tiktok.com/@tombilyeu?lang=en Twitter:https://twitter.com/tombilyeu YouTube:https://www.youtube.com/@TomBilyeu Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices https://megaphone.fm/adchoices See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Tom Bilyeu?

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• 0:45Tom Bilyeu?

  Their dashboard tracks what comes next based on what your business actually needs. So EIN number, registered agent, licenses and permits, bookkeeping, business banking. I tell every founder the same thing, just make it official. Click the link in the show notes to check out Taylor Brands and get started on your business today. This is a paid advertisement. I'm Tom Bilyeu and welcome back to Impact Theory. In part one, Anthony Pompliano dug deep into the chaos that's reshaping the markets. Why speculation is running wild? How Bitcoin fits into the picture? And whether traditional investing is dead? But now we need to push further because AI isn't just disrupting jobs. It's coming for investing itself.

• 1:27Tom Bilyeu?

  If markets are already unpredictable, what happens when human intuition gets replaced by machine precision? How do you stay ahead when AI can move faster, think bigger and react before you even know what's happening? That's what I'm pressing Pom on next. And now let's get right back into it. I have to keep running this thought against more historical examples, but I have a feeling that a very substantive percentage of

• 1:53Tom Bilyeu?

  What's happening among the young people that are investing in things like Reddit Coin instead of Reddit the stock is, this is an echo of the Occupy Wall Street movement where they feel isolated from a financial system. They're in a worse place now than their parents were at the same age. They feel like the American dream of buy a house and everything else is going to take care of itself. It doesn't exist. That something has happened to the system that has leveraged it towards the old and against them. And I think there's a lot of resentment built up in the system. And the thing that people just do not think enough about is you're going to have incredibly intelligent people that are going to find a way to get out from under that system.

• 2:35Tom Bilyeu?

  And so I think there the old proverb of if somebody is not embraced by the village, they will burn it down to feel its warmth. Like this is, there is a reason that they launched Reddit Coin at the same time that Reddit the stock was going live. Now, part of it is, it's just smart because you know that people are going to be talking about it. So now there's going to be attention you can run in the parallel system. But you also know that you're going to take that liquidity, just like you were expecting that, oh, this is going to flood in because all these guys use it and they're going to want to be participating in the system. It feels like the stock that was made for them. And they're like, no, you guys had your chance. We're going to create a parallel financial system. Now, you're bringing up a really interesting point, which is in this parallel financial

• 3:20Tom Bilyeu?

  system, I think that there, there isn't the long-term trend. This is all cultural energy. It's very fickle, very high volatility. And so people that are day trading are going to get a lot of mileage out of it if they can win in the long run, which most of them will not be able to. But I get the attraction, not thinking about compounding, getting something right away. But over time, what will the market that they control turn into? Because boomers are going to die, and they're ultimately going to control what this financial system becomes. And I am so curious to see if it's just a classic example of you're very rebellious when you're young, and suddenly you start having kids and you realize, whoa, whoa, whoa, I can't deal with

• 4:04Tom Bilyeu?

  this level of extreme volatility. I need something that's going to earn over time. So I'm curious what it becomes. But I, again, going back to this idea of building a predictive engine, when I look at it and say, there's a lot of resentment here. It makes more sense than if I just assume that it's something that's more familiar or they're more digitally native, that's part of it, but it feels like if you don't account for the resentment, it doesn't make as much sense.

• 4:31Speaker 01

  There's this whole element of revenge or the resentment you're talking about. And historically, there's a lot of people who probably were upset by something, but they couldn't really do anything. And it's funny because in the book, one of the things I talk about is compete, don't complain. And what's really interesting about this idea is, let's take for example, the United Healthcare Shooter, which obviously is incredibly tragic. And in that scenario, you have an individual who was upset with the insurance company. And rather than compete, he essentially decided that he was gonna go find somebody in the

• 5:16Speaker 01

  industry and kill them. But in a competitive world, the better story and probably what would have affected more change, and obviously wouldn't have led to the death of an individual and then ruining of his life, is he sat down and he said, "I'm a smart guy. I've got an engineering degree. I'm gonna build a better health insurance business. And I'm gonna figure out how to do this so that it helps people." And so if you then extrapolate that and say, "Look at what Mark Cuban is doing with cost plus drugs. Healthcare system is pretty broken, prescription drugs are really high, he's figured out this model to go and actually do cheaper drugs online. Competing, not complaining." Right?

• 5:59Speaker 01

  And so it goes back to this idea of like, maybe a part of, in the financial world, is people are saying, "Hey, I'm done complaining. Occupy Wall Street, did it really affect any change? Or should we compete?" Now, you're going up against a highly regulated industry, and so naturally, there's gonna be a lot of questions about laws and securities and things like that, but...

• 6:20Speaker 01

  Is that part of the story? Absolutely. Compete, don't complain. And so I think that if you go throughout history, how many companies were started out of spite or out of revenge? Right? Somebody gets fired and they go and they start a company to take on their old employer? How many people, you know, applied for a job and didn't get it? I mean, if you look at WhatsApp, WhatsApp was bought for like $22 billion. Jan, the CEO and founder, uh, it's got a famous story. He applied for a job at Facebook and got turned down. So then he only started WhatsApp and then WhatsApp bought his company for $22 billion. Right? Like, how many stories are there of that in history? Tons. Creating a, you know, crypto coin almost seems amateur hour compared to building a $22 billion, you know, company that gets bought by the people who turned you

• 7:04Speaker 01

  down. But it's still the same theme, right? Is somebody got scorned somewhere and, you know, they're on a mission.

• 7:11Tom Bilyeu?

  No doubt. What's interesting here, to your point about this is a highly regulated industry that they're going to be competing against, one of the things that young people I think are really aware of and they're taking advantage of is the rate of change of these technologies is too fast for regulators to keep up with. And so they're able to get in, spin these companies up, bet like crazy, move on to the next, on to the next, on to the next, before regulators are going to be able to do anything. And if the thesis is right, that in the next 10 years, we're going to see 100 years of innovation, good luck keeping up with the regulatory burden on that. There's just going to be so much Wild Westery. Uh, it is going to be crazy. So yeah, what comes out on the other side really does feel like it's on the other side

• 7:54Tom Bilyeu?

  of the technological singularity. I, I can't see around that corner. Uh, I just know that when there is this rate of change and you get smart, fast-acting people, um, the, the change will be the thing that dominates. And the only option that the government will have, which I think will get pushed back on aggressively in America, is to be authoritarian and clamp down from the top down. And this is why it scared me so much with what the Biden administration was doing with AI, where, uh, they were just like, and this from Marc Andreessen, uh, was really unnerving when he said, oh, they just told us outright, do not build AI companies because we are going to control, there's going to be a very few. Uh, and while I doubt they

• 8:37Tom Bilyeu?

  use the phrase regulatory capture, that was the implication, that, uh, we're going to work hand in glove with them, uh, they're going to be compliant, there's not going to be anybody else. And when I think already how much I rely on AI, oh man, it is crazy to think that the government would be able to get their tendrils in there and really control it. Uh, so with Trump in office now, um, I don't think we're going to see that same, um, push for top down control. I think we're going to see a push for, um, innovation, things that hit the bottom line GDP so that he can point to that and, um, brag about it, quite frankly. And so it's going to be wild, man. These next four years are going to be wild.

• 9:21Speaker 01

  If you put somebody in the White House that measures the success of the US economy by the stock market and by the Bitcoin price, odds are those things are going higher. Right? And so if you need those to go higher, there's a bunch of, uh, manipulation that can happen with monetary and fiscal policy, but also you just need the companies to be better. You need to make more money. You need them to drive revenue. You need them to innovate. You need, you know, the R and D, et cetera. And so a great way to do that is to deregulate, is to empower them to do more. And so if you think about Trump's plan, uh, he is really saying, hey, I want to reduce taxes. I want to deregulate. I want to, you know, kind of empower our entrepreneurs, which likely should drive to more profits, higher stock prices, uh, higher asset prices, uh, more money in individuals pocket, you know, that

• 10:02Speaker 01

  are invested in the market. And all of that leads back to him claiming victory that, hey, I implemented my agenda. And so I think that the odds, you know, barring some sort of external shock is that that stuff's going to happen. And so if you take that to the extreme, you say to yourself, okay, with these AI companies, if now all of a sudden they do have the freedom to go and innovate, what are they capable of? We're probably underestimating. You know, one of my favorite quotes is, uh, Bill Gates has this famous line where he says, uh, we underestimate, or excuse me, we overestimate what is possible in two years and we underestimate what is possible in 10. And so if you think back, you know, 15 years ago, who could have ever thought coming out of global financial crisis

• 10:43Speaker 01

  that we'd be here where we are today? Nobody. Who would have thought, just look at Bitcoin, one asset. Who would have thought that Bitcoin would be a $2 trillion asset? Nobody. Right? And so if you, you start to look at this, you say to yourself, okay, well, what about 10 years from now, 15 years from now? It's crazy. The iPhone is less than 20 years old. Right? And you think about just how ubiquitous that is. Do you think about just how much this idea of a touchscreen supercomputer in our pocket has changed our lives? If you think about something like that iPhone release also came with GPS, which empowered things like Uber and food delivery in all of these other use cases, simply because there was GPS in the phone now.

• 11:27Speaker 01

  Those things all got unlocked by one single product release. And so if you then take that, what other product releases are going to come out? You know, what's possible now because ChatGPT or perplexity or name your different thing?

• 11:40Speaker 01

  Three years ago, four years ago, nobody talked about prediction markets. Prediction markets were the first and most accurate market to determine the US presidential election.

• 11:52Tom Bilyeu?

  That was crazy to watch.

• 11:54Speaker 01

  That's four years ago. No one, that wasn't even in the lexicon. And so you, you kind of look at these things and you say, man, we're, we're getting this rapid innovation now. And some of it's because we're all digitally connected. Some of it's because capital is more abundant. But a lot of it frankly is, I blame the social network, the movie. If you think about that movie, that movie red pilled an entire generation of people that they wanted to be founders. And they watched the movie and they're like, that looks cool. I want to start up. And it made startups from like the nerd activity that your parents would yell at you because you didn't go get a real job. To then all of a sudden it said startups are cool. You can go and you can do this and it's actually a high status thing.

• 12:36Speaker 01

  And we had an influx of people that went and started companies. And so if you think about things like even movies or music or whatever, completely change society in a way that is really hard to know in the moment, but you only can see it with hindsight. And so what movies are going to come out next? Right? You know, one of the stories right now that I think is just absolutely incredible is J D Vance. J D Vance was born, I believe in West Virginia to a drug addicted single mother. One of the poorest countries, one of the poorest parts of the country. He was just sworn in as the Vice President of the United States.

• 13:14Speaker 01

  Should not be possible anywhere on the planet that you can go from the situation he was born into to the second most powerful person in the world. Only in America is that possible. Economic and social mobility. And along the way, he was in the Marines. He went to college. He then went to Yale and got a law degree, right? He became an investor. He like did all these things. Then he became Senator. He was a Senator for less than two years, I believe. And then became the Vice President of the United States. So you look at that and you say, when is that movie gonna come out? Because that movie would probably be pretty inspiring and empowering to a lot of people in the United States

• 13:55Speaker 01

  who are saying, hey, I was dealt a bad card, a bad hand of cards. I need to figure out, how do I get out of here? I need to figure out, how do I improve my life? How do I improve my family's life? And the craziest part of that entire story is that when he was sworn in the other day, he had his wife, his three kids standing beside him. And a lot of people didn't notice, but there was a woman standing next to the person who was reading him, you know, what to repeat? That woman was his mother. And she's been sober for 10, she's been sober for 10 years. And I was reading into her story. And actually, one of the reasons why she got sober is because she was inspired by her son.

• 14:33Tom Bilyeu?

  Wow.

• 14:35Speaker 01

  And so you say to yourself, a story like that comes out in a movie? It will empower the country, it will inspire people, it will tell people that in this country, there is mobility. The same way that Social Network kind of red pilled all these people and said, hey, you can become a founder. And so then it asks the question of, we talked a lot about technology and the rapid, you know, kind of acceleration that we're watching. AI is going to change the way movies are made. And, you know, I know you know quite a bit about all the ideas of brands and various things, right? As AI starts to change the way that movies and content is created, now we're basically gonna empower and democratize access to movie making.

• 15:18Speaker 01

  And we can actually accelerate, how many people can we empower and inspire? How many people can help spread ideas in a way that's entertaining for folks? And so the same way that military movies are really, really instrumental for the US Army or Navy or Marines to be able to go and recruit people to join the military.

• 15:39Speaker 01

  These movies are really important for society. And so I think about these technologies, not just from a pure, hey, what stocks do you buy? But the kind of second and third order effect. If now all of a sudden we can triple or 10x or 30x the number of movie makers. And they can do it because it's cheaper and they got the tools at home. And they don't actually need to go spend all this money to, you know, film all these different scenes. What's possible? I don't know. I don't have a crystal ball, but it feels like that's a pretty important thing. That's really going to change the fabric of society as more and more people can tell inspiring stories.

• 16:13Tom Bilyeu?

  Yeah, no doubt about that. Uh, that, that is going to get weirder than people think in terms of, uh, just the amount of stuff that will come out. Uh, the way that people will try to influence slash control you with media. And now that the cost drops to zero, you're going to be getting pulled in a thousand directions. What's real, what's not real? Uh, yeah, that, that one is, uh, something I think a lot about as somebody who sees himself in that, in that world. Um, yeah, that I will say the entertainment side of my business is the one that has existential AI risk. Just because once it is truly ubiquitous, it'll be amazing from our ability to take in incredible stories.

• 16:56Tom Bilyeu?

  To your point, it will all be democratized, demonetized, will be very easy. Uh, for very talented, very incredible storytellers to make sweeping epics, you know, on, on the scale of a Marvel movie.

• 17:11Tom Bilyeu?

  Cutting through the noise is going to be a different story, but yeah, that's going to be really fascinating. Uh, before we go too far down that road though, I want to talk about inflation. So underlying all of this is a story of, uh, inflation. I think that the fact that we can't run a balanced budget and we're, um, printing money like crazy. Uh, Trump is in office and is going to do what some people think is going to be very inflationary. What do you think is going to happen to inflation in the near term? We'll be back in a second, but here's something to keep you thinking. Some people are about to cash in big while others will get left behind. What's the key difference? That's coming up. Luxury brands are not charging you more for better cashmere.

• 17:56Tom Bilyeu?

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• 18:39Tom Bilyeu?

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• 19:22Tom Bilyeu?

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• 20:05Tom Bilyeu?

  What do you think is going to happen to inflation in the near term?

• 20:11Speaker 01

  So inflation, the headline title right now is that inflation has come down. But that's not really true because inflation was sub 2%, meaning that it was growing 1.8% year over year before the pandemic. It then spiked at one point and was growing at 9% year over year. And that's the official metrics. There's an unofficial measurement that's much higher, but let's just use the official ones for this conversation. And so now what we have is inflation has come down. It's like 2.9%. And so people say, wow, it fell from 9% to 2.9%. That doesn't mean that inflation stopped. It just means that it has slowed and it's still growing at 2.9% year over year.

• 20:53Speaker 01

  2.9% is 50% higher than what the Federal Reserve's target of 2% is. So we are still elevated levels from where they would like us to be. The reason why that's important is because you compound inflation. So if it goes up 2% in one year, then it goes up 5% the next year, then it goes up 9% the next year, then it goes up 3% the next year, right? Obviously, that is not sustainable. And so what we have seen is there's been a bifurcation from an impact standpoint in the economy. People who had financial assets benefit from inflation. When inflation happens, those asset prices go up. So you see in countries like Argentina, or in Venezuela, or other places that have high inflation, those are some of the best performing stock markets every year.

• 21:38Speaker 01

  Because a stock is one share, right? And the denominator is usually the local currency. And so if you're devaluing it, well, it used to be 100 pesos to buy that one share, but now this currency has lost so much value that now it's 1,000, I 10x. And so the same thing happens in the US is as inflation hits, the asset prices go up. So if you're holding assets, you're getting richer. The problem is 50% of Americans don't hold investments. They sit in 100% of their net worth in cash. So what is happening is as that inflation is happening... The rich people with assets are getting richer and those without the investment assets are

• 22:19Speaker 01

  actually losing money. So if you've sat $100 in a bank account since January of 2020 till today, your $100 can buy only about 70 to 75 cents worth of goods from 2020. It's lost 25 to 30% of its purchasing power. And that is why you see the bifurcation and we have this wealth inequality gap. It's not some evil billionaire thing. It's not, you know, anything other than it's actually an education gap, which is some people know that you have to buy investments and they benefit from the dollar devaluation. Other people don't know that and they save. And so savers are losers in this economy and investors are winners. And so it's

• 23:00Speaker 01

  a structural thing that really affects people. And it's why you see, why are wealthy families or asset owners, their kids usually do pretty well. Some of it may be environment or maybe their parents are good or, you know, whatever thing. But a huge part of it is they teach their kids, buy assets. Don't sit in cash. Like that is the one lesson. If you could teach every kid in America, one thing, and you wanted it to have the most profound impact on their financial future, you would teach them, invest, don't save. So if you think about inflation going forward, we're still elevated at 2.9%. There are a number of things to be excited about that could potentially get inflation to come down. Technology is very deflationary. So if you look

• 23:43Speaker 01

  in all areas where technology has an impact, those prices tend to come down over time. If you think of Uber, used to be really expensive for you to get a private car. Now you can press a button on your phone and it's pretty inexpensive and it shows up within minutes. That is a deflationary element of technology. If you think of TVs, this is like one of the craziest things. If you ever wanted to go buy like an 80 inch, you know, screen TV, you'd go to the stores like thousands of dollars. You can go now, they're like 400 bucks. Still not, you know, $5, but the cost has drastically compressed and the TVs are better. They're higher quality, more definition, better surround sound, like all these things, right? And so you've got a better product for less money. That is technology being deflationary. And the beauty is that if

• 24:25Speaker 01

  you're able to get tons of technology into the economy, it's this downward pressure on inflation because that deflationary element is applying. Now, the problem is that while technologists and entrepreneurs and business owners are trying to create productivity, they're trying to drive this kind of deflationary aspect of technology, we have politicians who didn't get the memo. And so the politicians are spending money. They're creating inflation. One of my favorite quotes of all time is Milton Friedman, the famed economist. He says that inflation is only created in one place. That's Washington, DC. It's nobody else's fault. It's not created anywhere else. The politicians create inflation

• 25:06Speaker 01

  by spending money, by printing. And so if you look at right now, the US national debt is increasing by $1 trillion every 100 days. But here is the more concerning part, is that it used to be maybe every two years, then it was every year, then it was every six months, then it was every three months, it was every two months. Now, we're at 100 days. And so every 100 days, we are adding a trillion dollars to the debt. At some point, if we continue on this path, it'll be every 90 days, it'll be every 80 days, it'll be every 50

• 25:46Speaker 01

  days. Because what we're watching happen is not just that inflation is going, but interest rates are higher. So the interest expense on the national debt is higher, meaning that the government's having to pay more and more money to interest. Right now, we spend more money on the interest expenses for the national debt than we do on the defense industry of our country.

• 26:05Tom Bilyeu?

  That's so crazy.

• 26:06Speaker 01

  Crazy. We're basically paying more on our interest payments than we are to defend our country. And so you start to say to yourself, okay, that's obviously a big problem. So what can we do? Another thing that we can do to positively impact inflation is we can actually go and we can cut costs. We can say, hey, right now, we have a $2 trillion annual deficit. All that means is we spend about $6 trillion a year, and we take in about $4 trillion.

• 26:35Speaker 01

  There's $2 trillion deficit. That's not good. That's like making $80,000, but actually you spend 100. How long can you do that for? Right? Got to keep taking on debt. That's what the US does. And so what we can do is we can start to put a dent in that. And we have to get back to a surplus. Now, the United States has not operated at an economic surplus in more than 20 years. I think it was like 2000 or 2001 was the last time we operated at a surplus. So it's been nearly 25 years since we actually did not have that annual deficit. And cutting costs would be a big boom to doing that. That's why you see the establishment of the Department of Government Efficiency, DOGE with Elon, et cetera. And so can they do it? Remains to be seen. They're going to try, though.

• 27:20Speaker 01

  Pretty important. You have Trump coming into office saying, hey, we're not going to spend on some of this stuff. We're actually going to get rid of some of these departments. We're actually going to stop some of the insane spending that they're doing. But on top of that, he also wants to go and drive revenue. So again, if you go back to an individual's kind of financial statement or you go to a business, they have two levers. They can drive revenue or they can cut expenses. Cutting expenses is what DOGE is tasked with. That would really make a dent in that national annual deficit. But if you want to make more money as a country, you have two options. You can look internal, the Internal Revenue Service, IRS. They tax you. So we can raise taxes so that we make more money.

• 28:06Speaker 01

  It's like raising prices in the grocery store. The grocery store makes more money. And so naturally, people don't want their taxes raised. So the next option is, rather than look internal, we can look external for more revenue. And so Trump has established something via executive order called an External Revenue Service. It's exactly what it sounds like. Look outside the US. Rather than tax the people, find me other revenue. One of the areas where he believes there's a lot of revenue to be captured is tariffs. Tariffs are basically a tax on foreign countries and corporations if they would like to bring their products to the United States. So if you make the products in the US, you don't worry about the tariff. If you make the product somewhere else and you want to

• 28:49Speaker 01

  bring it to the country, you've got to pay a higher tariff. We have tariffs on some countries. Other countries have tariffs on us. It's the way that global commerce works. Now, if you go back in history and you look, actually, a bulk of, or majority of, the US revenue used to be from tariffs. And there was almost no income tax. So it used to be that we taxed other people to benefit the American people. But at some point, that switched, and now income tax is the bulk of the revenue, kind of internal revenue comes from taxing the people. And tariffs is a very small percentage. So now we are taxing the people in the United States to benefit people outside the United States. And so Trump's entire idea is, let's

• 29:33Speaker 01

  switch that back. Let's start tariffing and taxing these other people internationally, so that then it can benefit the United States. We don't have to raise taxes here. We can drive more revenue. We can get the balanced budget, and then we can get inflation to come back down. Now, that sounds amazing. One of the big questions that people have is if you add that tariff to these products that are coming into the United States, won't the companies just raise their prices? So now it becomes more expensive for Americans to buy these products, which would then contribute back to inflation. So the question of are tariffs actually inflationary? Very highly debated topic right now. And so, one, it really depends on how do you implement the tariffs, right? If you're talking about 1%,

• 30:15Speaker 01

  2%, 3%, 5%, probably not that big of a deal. There's been numbers like 25% that have been thrown out. A 25% tariff would have a significant impact in the market. And so how you do it and who you do it to is pretty important. And so I

• 30:28Tom Bilyeu?

  So he's already put 25% on Mexico and Canada. Do you think that that is going to be inflationary? Or do you think that it's somehow not?

• 30:39Speaker 01

  So I think that he's threatened Canada and Mexico. And he said, hey, I'm gonna do it. But both of them came to the table very quickly and said, hey, let's negotiate. Let's do, let's kind of make some deals. And so his supporters will say, uh, the tariffs are actually a bargaining chip. He, you know, he's the art of the deal. He's a master negotiator. What he's doing is he's threatening them with a stick. And then he's offering them a carrot in his other hand. And so they're showing up to the table and they say, I don't want the 25% tariff. Please don't do that. You're going to destroy our economy. You're going to really make a big problem for me. What do you want? He says, fine, I won't put the 25% tariff if you close the southern border. If you, you know, A, B, C, D, other thing. And so that's one idea is that these are just negotiating tactics. Remains to be seen.

• 31:25Speaker 01

  But the other thing is what he also has said is that he is trying to incentivize people to manufacture in the United States. So he says, look, the tariffs aren't a problem if you just make your stuff in the U.S. So rather than run around the world and try to go to Southeast Asia and find somewhere where you can manufacture really inexpensively. Build your manufacturing plant in Ohio. Build it in Arizona. Build it in a local area in the United States, employ American workers and you don't have to worry about the tariff. And so if I put a 25% tariff on something coming from Thailand or China or wherever.

• 31:59Speaker 01

  Now that 25% would make it more cost effective to actually just make it here in the United States. And so there's this game getting played in this kind of global, complex economic machine. Where what he really is trying to do is he's trying to drive American manufacturing, bring back American jobs. He's trying to drive external revenue for the United States to benefit the people here. And it really all falls under this banner of quote, quote, America first. Now, great plan. It remains to be seen what the risks are. And there's plenty of critics, right? And I think the critics have some validity in some areas. And I think the critics are wrong in other areas. But what you ultimately, I think I find solace in is regardless of who the president is,

• 32:42Speaker 01

  regardless of who anyone voted for, the path that we're currently on, we can't stay on. We can't operate with a $36, $37 trillion national debt, adding a trillion dollars every 100 days, an inflation at 2.9%, home affordability, the worst it's been in 40 years, and a southern border that's porous, right? A manufacturing jobs that are leaving the US en masse, and an education level. You know, there's a stat, one out of every five Americans can't read above a third grade level. Whoa. Crazy numbers. One in every five Americans cannot read past a third grade level. So you say to yourself, okay, we gotta fix that stuff, right? And so if we can't stay on the path we're on, the first and most important thing is

• 33:26Speaker 01

  we gotta do something different. He's at least, and him and his administration are gonna do something different. Is it the right plan? I don't know. I don't think anyone knows, right? It's kind of like, it's almost like we're gonna run an experiment. There's a lot of data, there's a lot of studies, there's a lot of things that have gone into formulating this experiment or this plan. But we really are not gonna know, does it work or not, until we get three, four, or five years from now. But we just know we can't stay on the path that we're on. So there's a lot of people who are advocating for this plan is bad. Maybe it is, maybe it isn't. But I know for sure, 100%, there's almost, you know, unified agreement that the path we're on is the bad, you know, wrong path. And so I think that becomes really interesting where you think about this inflation, because if the tariffs are inflationary, if some of the policies are inflationary, could we have inflation come back?

• 34:10Speaker 01

  Absolutely. Is it gonna happen? I don't know. But if we're already at 2.9%, if the Fed's cutting interest rates by 100 basis points already, and now you have these policies that come in that potentially could be inflationary, if you said to me, hey, we are, you know, in 2026, and sometime between now and 2026, we saw inflation at 4%, 5%?

• 34:31Speaker 01

  It's possible. Is it probable? Eh, you know, that's a pretty big leap. Something would really have to go wrong. But at 2.9, could we go to 3.5? Absolutely. And anytime that you start to creep up, again, it hurts the bottom 50% of Americans that just hold cash. But it will enrich the 50% of Americans that have investable assets. And so what I always tell people, kind of going back to the beginning of our conversation is like, how do you invest? I always say to them, whether you agree with the system or not, whether you think the the structure is fair or not, you, I, and them can't change it. Nothing we're gonna do. We can yell and scream all we want. We're never gonna be able to change it. But what you do control is if inflation is available or higher than it is right now,

• 35:16Speaker 01

  are you going to benefit from it? Or are you going to get hurt by it?

• 35:21Speaker 01

  And so if you want to benefit from it, you got to be invested. If you want to be hurt by it, you would sit in all cash. And so it's kind of this idea of like, regardless of how you view the structure of the system and the fairness of it, your personal thing that you can control is are you invested in the market or not? Doesn't mean you have to go take immense risk. Doesn't mean you have to go buy meme coins or any of this stuff, right? But it does mean that, again, where did I start with? S and P, NASDAQ 100, Bitcoin. You can make, you know, the S and P 500, the bulk of your investment portfolio. You can put a little bit of NASDAQ, a little bit of Bitcoin, probably going to do pretty well over the next decade or so. Right? But it really comes down to what you're betting on is inflation is not going to zero. It's just going to be above zero. And so these assets are going to continue to go up.

• 36:06Speaker 01

  Maybe the rate of change or the appreciation, you know, kind of percentage each year varies. But it is very hard to see a world where those three assets are not much higher 10 years from now because of inflation and maybe the issues that the country faces.

• 36:19Tom Bilyeu?

  Hang tight. We're about to pull back the curtain on what's really moving the money. And trust me, it's not what you think. More with Anthony Pompliano right after this. You're probably paying two salespeople to do one salesperson's job. That's where today's sponsor Pipe Drive comes in. An intelligent AI-powered sales CRM loved by growing sales teams. Pipe Drive just launched meeting intelligence built right into the CRM. Before every call, it pulls deal history and past conversations into one brief. During the call, it records and takes notes. After it, it drafts your CRM updates to review and approve. So there's less admin and more selling.

• 37:02Tom Bilyeu?

  Switch to a CRM built by salespeople for salespeople and join the over 100,000 companies already using Pipe Drive. My link gets you an exclusive 30 days free instead of the usual 14-day trial. There's no credit card payment needed. Just head to pipedrive.com/impact to get started. Again, that's pipedrive.com/impact and you can be up and running in minutes. All right, we're back. Let's get into it. Yeah, when I look at Trump's policies, it seems inevitable that in the short term, it is... He's either going to get every concession that he wants in the negotiations, which I doubt,

• 37:44Tom Bilyeu?

  or he will slap tariffs on as an incentive to drive manufacturing back to the US. It will create short-term inflation in that you're now... If he can generate revenue off of the tariffs, lower people's income tax, at least in that case, while you will get inflation, it becomes discretionary. If he is wise and makes exemptions for things that are the basics, the essentials that you need, food, shelter, energy, things like that, that, okay, cool, those aren't going up. Some of the discretionary things are going up, but at least I control my money. I have it. It's not being taken away from me.

• 38:27Tom Bilyeu?

  I think people will be able to handle that. I do think, though, there's going to be... They will have to put a focus on getting some of the regulations out of the way because as somebody living in California, we have these grand projects and we're not able to actually move forward with them because there's so many regulations that stop even the government from running its own projects. That people are going to realize very quickly that back in the day when we were able to live off of the tariffs and only to either not tax, not do a federal income tax at all, or keep that federal income tax in the neighborhood of 1%, which would be shocking for people to hear that we did that. But back then, we had a really strong, really strong manufacturing

• 39:08Tom Bilyeu?

  base here. We were not a globalized world, so we were making everything here in the US. So if somebody wanted to bring something in here and we tariffed the life out of it, and it became more expensive or hit parity, you had American-made options at that time, which we will not have now, at least for some amount of the future. And so while we spin up the manufacturing base, which I think is going to be measured in the three to seven-year range, it's not going to be super fast. This is not World War II where, you know, we turn on a dime, and all of a sudden, instead of making a bunch of Fords with the, the assembly line, we're making battleships and things. We're just not gonna, you're starting from scratch

• 39:49Tom Bilyeu?

  this time. So I think there's going to be a little bit more sloth in the system than people are prepared for. But to your point, we have to change something. And so it'll be very interesting. I want to get your take on this. So I think one thing people have to think about when you talk about America first is there are, there are two parts of that, and I think they need to be rank ordered. So part number one is you are born here, you're a citizen, and so we want to make sure that you're employed first and foremost. Okay, that would be one interpretation of America first. And the other would be that we want to make sure that America remains number one on the global stage. And so whether it's H1B visas or whatever, we are attracting the best

• 40:34Tom Bilyeu?

  and brightest from all over the world to bring here to make sure that we are out innovating everybody else in the world. And whether that's in military, or whether that's in technology, but we're just out innovating. We have the strongest economy in the world. And so we're already peers with China. In some ways, they are ahead of us economically. And so we really have to be thoughtful about that. Now, to me, America being number one, having the strongest economy is the most important thing. But I know that that's going to set some people on edge and they want to make sure that because you're American, that you're getting employed first. And I think that that could weaken our standing internationally.

• 41:16Tom Bilyeu?

  And I think having your standing weakened internationally is the more problematic because we are going to be able to do less things to make your life better here in the US, whether social safety net, job opportunities, whatever. And so while I think they are both incredibly important, and I do understand why Americans would feel betrayed if we're importing a bunch of people from all over the world. But remaining number one should be the most important because it will have the biggest impact on everyone's lives. That's my instinct. And I think it takes a very small number of people, relatively speaking, to ensure that we keep the strongest economy. What do you think about that?

• 41:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, you know, when you ask yourself, what is America? America really is a melting pot of people from all over the world. My family, if you go all the way back, somebody came here from Italy, then another person came from Italy, another person came from Italy, right? If you go and you look at many people, they came here from somewhere else, whether it's them or their families. And so, America really became America because we took the best from around the world. Whether it was the best risk takers, the smartest people, whatever. And they all came here and it was the land of opportunity. And people were able to take risk and get rewarded. And the capitalist, you know, kind of democratic system is the greatest system ever erected.

• 42:37Speaker 01

  The founding fathers were able to be incredibly prescient in their thought process. And this is probably, you know, the thing that has the best shot of continuing to exceed moving forward. But in the debate of H1Bs or other, you know, kind of immigration, illegal immigration, visas, et cetera, the hard part about it, and the reason why it's so controversial is everyone's right.

• 43:04Speaker 01

  That's the part that people don't want to talk about. So what do I mean, everyone's right? There's a cohort of people who say that American citizens should not be hurt and given less opportunity by people who are coming here from elsewhere. True. You're right. Americans should not be at a disadvantage in their own country. Okay? Another cohort of people say, hey, I operate business. I need the best people in the world. True. They do. We should find the best people, whether they're American or not. Everyone should have an equal opportunity to go and work there, and the employer should be able to hire whoever they want. Then people say, well, the H1B program is abused. True. There's definitely abuse in the system. You can go and you can look, you know? There's this famous example of one of the big four accounting firms. They're literally using H1Bs to find entry-level accountants.

• 43:49Speaker 01

  You're telling me you can't look in America and find an entry-level accountant? Why do you need to go elsewhere to do that? Right? And so, again, true. Then there's people who say, uh, well, actually, what we're doing is we're incentivizing all sorts of other issues where people are basically getting into certain universities simply to get visas, etc. True. Like, that's absolutely happening. And so you just go through this debate. There's, you know, maybe 20 different perspectives on the debate. Every single person is correct, whether it's a small correct or a very big correct in their viewpoint. And that's why it's controversial, is because when you go and you talk to each one of these, you know, kind of perspectives, and you hear them out, you're right. That 100% is happening. So what is the solution? Right?

• 44:33Speaker 01

  If everyone is right, what is the solution? And I think that one of the best examples is that there's got to be a merit-based system where the best person wins. With that, we have to educate American citizens. Rather than spend money internationally, doing all kinds of stuff, let's invest that here so that our people have the skills and experience that's necessary to build our companies here so that we can be successful on the national stage or on the international stage. And so what you can say is, the best analogy I've heard about this is kind of like a sports team. Right? A good sports team wants to really have a lot of homegrown talent. That should be the bulk of the team. And every once in a while, you want to import an overseas player.

• 45:17Speaker 01

  The Dodgers go, and they get a player from Japan. Pretty good player. Right? If you look at Wembley in the NBA, pretty good player.

• 45:28Speaker 01

  Right? And you go and you do this over and over again. But if you have homegrown talent, that should make up the bulk of the team. Then you go and you get specific skills or experience and you bring them in. But then what do you do? You invest in baseball. What do you do? You invest in your farm team. You want to have homegrown talent? You got to put money there. Got to give them opportunities, right? You got to go and you got to work. You got to hire coaches. You got to do all this stuff. And so I think that is the hard part about the conversation is that no one extreme is correct. If your position is the H1B program is perfect and there's no abuse, you're not correct. If your position is, hey, we should have zero legal immigration. Your position is probably not correct either. Right? And so the truth is that the answer is in the middle.

• 46:12Speaker 01

  And the middle is kind of the messy part. People don't like the answer of, okay, we should really spend a lot of more time, energy and money on helping Americans be better educated, more experienced, etc. One in five Americans aren't literate past the third grade level. We should probably fix that. Right? And guess what? The government spends, you know, $6 trillion. We got the money. Let's fix it. But also it's true that there are people who come from outside the United States that are just as capable, if not more capable in certain fields, that we should go ahead and we should have them go and do it. And so one of the things I always point to is there's a lot of people who say, I buy American-made products exclusively. Okay.

• 46:54Speaker 01

  Well, there's a lot of products that you use on database, on a daily basis that are not made in America because somebody could make it cheaper or somebody could make it better. Right? Are there American products that are great? Yeah, of course. I know a guy in South Carolina. He makes weights, like iron cast, you know, like barbell weights. Made in America. It's like one of the only people supposedly that make American weights. Got a good business. A lot of people want to buy weights made in America. Right? But there's also a lot of people who say, just give me the cheapest one. Right? Like, you know, it's all 225 pounds on a bench press, 225 pounds. Like, just get the weights on for the cheapest cost. So it's all different preferences for different people.

• 47:38Speaker 01

  And so I think that when you look at this, you have to say to yourself, okay, is it true that immigrants have come here and created a lot of value? Elon Musk, great example. Jeff Bezos, American-born.

• 47:54Speaker 01

  Jeff Bezos's parent, not born in America. And so you don't just get the individuals, but then you get the parents, the grandparents, the great grandparents, the great great grandparents, et cetera. And what you realize is ultimately, the debate really comes down to, do you prefer nationalism? Or do you prefer excellence? And rarely can you get both. Because the greatest nations throughout history have always sought the best technology, regardless of where it came from, the best people, wherever it came from, the best ideas, wherever they came from, the best capital sources, regardless of where it came from.

• 48:36Speaker 01

  And so the same thing here is, the most patriotic thing you can do is to make sure you, your family, your children, and those around you are as best possibly suited to succeed in America. But then you should also hope that we're able to build an all-star team of people from outside the United States who come here. Let's get them going too. Right? And so it's very much this like team effort, but people specifically on the internet like to debate back and forth on these like black and white scenarios. Should there be legal immigration or should we have no immigrants? The answer is that it's just, it's too simple of a, you know, kind of choice. Instead, why don't we take the people that we have, do as best of a job as we possibly

• 49:21Speaker 01

  can to educate them, make sure that they have equal opportunity? Like going back to your point about American citizens, I think where people get really upset is that they say, wait a second, I'm being penalized for being an American in my own country. That doesn't feel right. Level the playing field, give everyone an equal opportunity, let the best man or woman win. Sometimes it's gonna be somebody who comes from somewhere else. That's okay.

• 49:45Tom Bilyeu?

  Yeah, this is gonna be a raging debate because, yes, I agree with you, we have to fix the education problem, but it's gonna take a long time for that to turn out a crop of people. Uh, that's why I think we have to rank order this stuff. Um, yeah, so you've been getting more into politics and we've sort of subtly moved from uh, finance to politics and back again, the two are very connected. What originally got you into beginning to um, think more politically and commentate on it?

• 50:18Speaker 01

  I think that there's a lot of folks in tech and finance who were disinterested in politics, but politics became interested in them. And so it's really the political arena that's pulled a lot of people in. Bitcoin and crypto is a great example where I think most people said, hey, let's let us do our thing. Right? We see an opportunity, we're deploying capital, we're holding an asset, we're building companies, etc. Just let us do our thing. And the political arena kind of came for the industry. And so there's a lot of people who said, oh, man, I gotta pay attention to this. I don't know if Mark Zuckerberg or Jeff Bezos really cared about politics until the political arena kind of came for them. I don't think Elon Musk probably cared about politics until the political arena came and knocked on his door and said, you know, we're coming for you.

• 51:02Speaker 01

  And so I think that it's less about these people are getting interested in politics. It's more of they have identified politics as a crucial component of their business now because the politic kind of apparatus came for them. And so when you look at it from that perspective, you're right, they are intertwined. And if you look at Bitcoin as maybe the purest example, Bitcoin's success and failure on a day-to-day, week-to-week, month-to-month basis, very intertwined with banks, regulation, politics, etc. Now, over the long run, Bitcoin probably succeeds regardless. You know, we've seen in certain countries where the government's banned Bitcoin and adoption goes up. So, you know, doesn't mean that politics can kill some of this stuff,

• 51:45Speaker 01

  but it definitely means that it's a smoother road if you participate rather than ignore it. And what's interesting, I think, from my perspective is I don't really care too much for the actual politics themselves. I'm an independent, registered, you know, I frankly look at each topic and there's topics where I'll say, I think a Democrat's right, I think a Republican's right. And a lot of times it's not because they're a Democrat or a Republican, it's just because who they are. Right? We've seen a lot of people switch kind of parties in the last couple of years where they said, hey, you know, I was a Democrat, now I feel like I'm more aligned with the Republicans and vice versa. And so I think that this stuff is less black and white, it's become much more fluid.

• 52:25Speaker 01

  And so what we're really watching play out here is people are trying to understand, how do I think independently? How do I think critically? That's what I try to do. I try to say to myself, what are the topic?

• 52:37Speaker 01

  What are the different arguments? Who do I agree with? And sometimes I'm surprised. You know, I've had people come on our podcast and my favorite is people who lean really hard one way. And I'll always ask them to say something nice about the other side and something they agree with. And I don't know, 50% of people can do it. 50% their brains like broken. Like, there's literally nothing I agree with the Republicans on, or there's nothing I agree with the Democrats on. You're like, nothing. You know, let's start with, uh, do you think that everyone should be safe? Oh yeah, I agree with that. Okay, all right, like, at least we got some common ground, right? And so like, you know, you just kind of have to understand that, um, being able to think critically in today's day and age is really important.

• 53:21Speaker 01

  And the last thing that I would say is, um, I have a lot of friends who've gone to work in this administration. They frankly are both Republicans and Democrats. Uh, most of them were not political before. One of my really, really good friends I've known for a long time recently called me and out of the blue said, hey, I put my name in the hat for this position. I think I'm gonna get it. I looked up the position. That's a big boy job. Would have never thought that this guy would even be ever interested in politics. But he's like, I'm not interested in the politics. I'm interested in going and working on this problem. It's a hard problem. And so if you then go and you look, one of the beauties that Elon Musk in particular

• 54:02Speaker 01

  has really perfected is he's able to identify problems in society and explain to people how important it is that they get solved. And then he's able to attract talent to come and work there because it becomes a high status job. So we want to go and build a civilization on Mars. Wow. If you want to do that, come work at SpaceX. SpaceX immediately, high status job. You tell somebody you worked at SpaceX, immediately, hey, you get credit for working at SpaceX. Working in the government was about the low status job you could get, you know, outside of maybe being the president or somebody. But all of a sudden Elon and a bunch of these people from Silicon Valley, they've now made it another high status job.

• 54:46Speaker 01

  They said, hey, we're looking for the smartest people in the world to come work on this. If you can pass our filter and you can come here, uh, work here for a year, three years, four years, whatever. This is going to be a high status thing to put on your resume. Immediately, the quality of talent goes up.

• 54:59Tom Bilyeu?

  Is that what caused this rapid turnaround? Because all of a sudden, you've got some of the most successful people in the world wanting to participate in government. Is it just that, uh, Trump is like, all right, this is a return to merit and I've got the best and the brightest here and they're naturally going to try to get the best and the brightest? And by, uh, dent of association, people are now flooding in? Is that the whole game or is there something else going on?

• 55:24Speaker 01

  I think there's probably three things that are going on. I do think there's a lot of people who frankly, uh, said, hey, I'm just fed up, right? With whatever, whatever their issue is. Some people, there's, you know, a homeless problem in my city. There's a crime issue. The inflation's too high, you know, housing is unaffordable, the border is open, you know, whatever the thing is. And for each person, I think it's a little bit different, you know, kind of what their, uh, red pill moment is or their topic. But eventually they just said, hey, look, you know, I want to be part of the solution. I'm tired of complaining. I want to compete. I want to go solve the problem. So I think that that's some version. I think that Elon, um, Bezos and other people's kind of, uh, participation really, there's a lot of people who look up to them and are inspired by them. And they said, hey, well, if they can do it, I'm going to go do it.

• 56:09Speaker 01

  You know, if Elon can go and give away money and go door to door, I can go spend a year working in the government at a certain job, right? And so there's kind of, uh, that high status component of the job. And then the third thing, and this is probably the most controversial one, but, uh, I've talked to a lot of friends, frankly, that are Democrats and they've met Trump and they come back and they're like, I hated that guy. But I actually kind of like him now. He's cool. He, you know, he's charming. He's this, whatever in private. Blown away. Like, people who you're like, there is no way in hell they're gonna go meet Donald Trump and walk away and be like, I like that guy. Right? They would, they would literally be outside, you know, picketing more likely than they would walking away saying that. And they come back and they're like,

• 56:52Speaker 01

  dude, I hate to say this. You're never gonna believe it. But I kinda like him. He's charming. And so if you think about that, you know, if you think of quote-unquote leadership, what do leaders do? What is the definition of leadership? It's to get people to do things they otherwise wouldn't do without you. Right? And so, in a crazy way, one of the most unpredictable presidents that we've had is actually able to inspire a bunch of people who wanna go work for him. Now, the question that I would pose, which we don't have the answer to yet, in the first administration, there's a lot of those people. A lot of them didn't make it. His argument is, hey, I kind of, you know, really embraced the like, political machine.

• 57:35Speaker 01

  I put a lot of people in positions that were suggested to me by the political machine. I'm not making that mistake twice. Is that true? Is it not? I don't know. You go and you talk to some of them, right? No. I'm friends with Anthony Scaramucci.

• 57:47Tom Bilyeu?

  Literally who I was thinking of, yeah.

• 57:49Speaker 01

  Yeah. He's not super excited, right?

• 57:52Tom Bilyeu?

  That's a gentle way of putting it.

• 57:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, but like, you know, there's plenty of these people, right, that all kind of, you know, come together. And so you look at it, and I always say that whenever I hear someone be passionate about something, for it or against it, I always think to myself, there's probably some portion of what they're saying is true. Or some portion of it is, if you think somebody is smart and they make good decisions, and they're able to kind of evaluate situations, maybe they're exaggerating, maybe they're this or whatever, right? But like, nobody is 100% good, nobody's 100% bad. And so the question is just like, what are the things you care about? And it is 100% possible to look at every single president in American history and say, what's the best thing they did? And what was the most atrocious, worst thing they did? And you'll come up with something. Right? And so when you look at it from that perspective,

• 58:39Speaker 01

  I think that that is a much better way to evaluate this stuff, is not, you know, Biden is good or bad, or Trump is good or bad. Instead, it is, hey, on these different topics, how would you grade them? Do they get an F? They get an A? They get a B? What, you know, how do you think about it? And the truth really comes down to like, most presidents are probably more of a net positive than they are a net negative. But every president has contributed some damage, whether it is on spending, crime, you know, whatever the thing is. And so going into the Trump presidency, is he gonna do everything 100% right? Of course not. It's impossible. Right? I mean, just think, he sat there yesterday and he signed how many executive orders? There's no way that you can get every

• 59:24Speaker 01

  single thing right. Right? You're talking about like 200 things. And we're talking about like geopolitics, we're talking about the World Health Organization, we're talking like all this crazy stuff, right? And so you almost have to go into it and say to yourself, okay, for me individually, I'm going to evaluate the performance of the president, or my governor, or my city mayor. What are the things that I care about? I get to pick two or three of them. If they're good on these things, most other things, if they're just okay, I'm good with that. And I think that's where you see a lot of these people who hardcore Democrats, right, that are saying, hey, I'm gonna go and I'm gonna work on this, is because they're kind of saying to themselves, look, if I can have an impact, maybe, actually, I think that the administration is gonna be in trouble. Maybe I

• 1:00:08Speaker 01

  participating can help pull it closer to the vision that I have. And that is the beauty of democracy, right? Is that everyone gets to participate in some form or fashion. And so I just think that politics is like very polarizing. But what we now have seen is politics, tech, and finance are all meeting. And there's a lot of things to work out. But in my years of, you know, kind of participating in markets and building businesses, you can't work those things out if people aren't sitting at the table. And it feels like now we got everyone sitting at the table. And they still disagree on a lot of stuff. But like, I don't think Mark Zuckerberg and Donald Trump were gonna talk five years ago.

• 1:00:53Speaker 01

  At least now it seems like they're cordial and they got some work to do. Right? And so I think that I kind of put my optimistic view on and I say, all right, we got everyone at the table for the most part. Let's go figure this stuff out. And man, are we lucky that it's not just government officials doing it. We got some business people, we got some nonprofit people, we got some finance people, right? We got the politician people. Get them all at the table. Let's go. Let's all work together and try to figure this out. It's probably a better situation than not.

• 1:01:21Tom Bilyeu?

  What do you think about the people that look at this and go, yo, you've got like a handful of the richest people in the world effectively sitting right next to him at the inauguration. Working in different parts, either advising or what have you, that this is oligarchy writ large.

• 1:01:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, look, if you go back 50 years, guess who was sitting next to the president? The people who owned all of the industrial manufacturing businesses, the people who owned the big corporations, right? It was the same thing. It was just different types of companies. And so I think that's one is just like, uh, these people are, uh, the different people, right? That they're new people. The second thing is every single one of those individuals. You probably could put on a list of who's created the most value for society and they'd be up there at the top of the list. So it's a sign that capitalism is working in that if you create the most value, you should get the most economic reward. And so the richest people, for the most part, actually are the ones who created the most value.

• 1:02:20Tom Bilyeu?

  But should they have the most say? Cause that's how people are gonna push back and say, sure, let them capture the economic value. That's fine. But I don't want them in there telling them how to run the government. They're just gonna swing it all towards them.

• 1:02:31Speaker 01

  So it goes back to, okay, uh, who are the most effective people? Who are the people who quote, quote, are the smartest? And smartest isn't like IQ test, right? But smartest is like, can you take ideas? Can you implement them? Can you do all this stuff? Well, the people who won in the free market. Have a natural proclivity to be quote-unquote "the best." Like, the market has determined that Jeff Bezos is really good at allocating capital, you know, doing complex decision-making, thinking long-term, doing all this stuff. That's how you build Amazon, right? Elon Musk has been able to prove in the free market with merit that he's got really interesting ideas, that he can grow, that he can scale, that he can, you know, change the world, et cetera. And so, on the positive side, those are the people that you want trying to help you solve problems. 100%.

• 1:03:12Speaker 01

  On the negative side, those are exactly the people that you don't want steering things in their favor. Right? And so, again, it goes back to like, the world isn't just black and white. It's like, you get the good with the bad. Right? And it's not a Republican or Democrat thing. Like, Biden obviously had tons of people around him that were super-successful, that were probably trying to steer stuff in their direction. And so, I think that the best thing for the country is our smartest, most effective people are trying to help solve our biggest problems. But also, the beauty of a democracy is there's supposed to be transparency, and we should have people who are standing there scrutinizing it and saying, "Hey, they're doing this, that's actually, you know, helping them, they shouldn't do that." And that's how the system kind of course corrects.

• 1:03:54Speaker 01

  So, it's not, "Hey, just because there's a risk of somebody steering something in their favor, we shouldn't have our smartest, most competent people working on something." Instead, use sunlight as the best disinfectant. Have our smartest people work on the problems, but just have the ability to have transparency so that external people... That's what part of the media's job is. It's also the beauty of kind of the individual, you know, becoming a kind of their own media. Have these people critique them. The critics are actually a really important part of the system because they help make sure that we don't sway in any one direction. And so, in that scenario, what do we get? We get our best people working on the biggest problems. We get tons of transparency so everyone knows what's going on and feels confident that people aren't doing things to their benefit.

• 1:04:35Speaker 01

  And then the third thing is that the journalists, et cetera, are able to keep the people informed. It's like a win-win-win.

• 1:04:43Tom Bilyeu?

  Given though that Elon controls X, you've got Bezos owns the Washington Post, you've got Zuckerberg controlling arguably the largest media company in the world. Should people be paranoid that not only do they control the money, or have enough money that they can really sway politics, but that they also happen to control so much of the media?

• 1:05:08Speaker 01

  It's a perfect example. Transparency would solve a lot of it. Right? Have them public, what are the algorithms? Show the people. Just open them. And there's competitive secrets and all this stuff and everything. But explain to people, let them see what is being down ranked, what is being removed. Right? Imagine a feed where any journalist could go and they could see all the things that Twitter or Facebook or anybody else is deleting.

• 1:05:33Speaker 01

  How much confidence would that restore in these platforms? Where people would say, hey, we now get insight into what's happening. Again, how do you do it? Like, I'm not smart enough to figure out all those details. But I think that so much of the distrust with the mainstream media, with social media, with other things, really comes down to the fact that there's not transparency. And so Facebook is a black box. Right? And so you say to yourself, when the Hunter Biden laptop story got suppressed, at first, you don't know, is it because it got reported a bunch by bots or something? Or is it that they're actively doing this? Only when people find out they're actively doing it, people go, hey, what the hell?

• 1:06:18Speaker 01

  Right? And distrust explodes higher. And so I think that it's not, there'll be no perfect system. But I do think that there's an element of transparency that can be introduced. That again, at least you're not ever going to get to the point where there's blind trust. We don't want blind trust. What we want is cautious optimism. Right? We want people, like a journalist's job is to be skeptical. Go and figure out what's happening. And if they're doing bad stuff, tell us. Right, like, like, we should celebrate the journalists that go and find stuff that is actually bad stuff. We shouldn't celebrate the journalists that manufacture things just for the clicks, right? That ends up being kind of twisted facts. But I think that's really, again, it goes back to like, the world's not black and white, it's gray.

• 1:07:03Speaker 01

  And so adding that transparency would be really important. One of the things that's really interesting to me, um, that I like that Trump does, is when he was signing the executive orders, he sat for like 90 minutes and he fielded all these questions. And frankly, my observation was like, the guy likes it. He's like holding court, you know, like, you ever like, go and talk to a grandpa and he's like, sitting at his favorite bar and he's got all his friends around, he's like, holding court? That's kind of what Trump was doing. But it's like, man, you want to know what this guy really thinks? It's completely unscripted. And people are asking him questions. And guess what? He said a couple of things and of course, the media is like, hey, what the hell? Like, that's not cool. But that's what their job is to do. It's like, get, understand, what is he doing? What is he, what is he trying to do? Right? And so if we had to choose, would we rather a situation where the president doesn't talk

• 1:07:48Speaker 01

  to the media? Or would we rather a situation where the president sits and holds court and, you know, for 90 minutes, just answers random questions? You could say, hey, he's lying, or he's not, or, you know, whatever. But like, we'd much rather, obviously, the president who is more forthcoming and kind of transparent with his thoughts, um, than anything else. And so I think the same thing is true of social media. Right now, it's just a black box. And there's been attempts to build, you know, decentralized versions and kind of all this stuff. But I think the way you really establish trust is, you just keep giving people information. And maybe a theme through this entire conversation is, uh, we live in a society where, um, there are certain companies, organizations, institutions, and people who feel like they are smarter,

• 1:08:29Speaker 01

  better, have the moral high ground on the masses. Let's not give them information. Let's not let them talk. Let's not let them transact how they want to transact. Right? That is a key theme in society. But that's a losing strategy. I think the better thing is, where is their excitement? Where is their trust? Where is their productivity happening? It's when people say, I actually think the masses are smart. Give them all the information. Let them talk. Let them transact. Let them do what they want to do. Let's empower them rather than stifle them. And so whether it's social media, whether it's the president, politicians, whatever like that, that is the, you know, kind of bifurcation of approaches. And so hopefully we get the transparency

• 1:09:12Speaker 01

  and empowerment more so than we get, you know, kind of backroom deals and, you know, all the nonsense that, you know, the critics are worried about.

• 1:09:20Tom Bilyeu?

  Fingers crossed. We'll see. People have referred to Trump as the first Bitcoin president.

• 1:09:28Tom Bilyeu?

  One, what do people mean by that? And two, assuming that that is true, what would you want to see him do that would allow Bitcoin to flourish?

• 1:09:41Speaker 01

  The first Bitcoin president, I think originally started as, hey, he's the first president to openly say, I'm going to support Bitcoin. I'm going to protect Bitcoin. I'm going to protect your right to hold Bitcoin in self custody, all these things. So he kind of was like the first president to openly, positively embrace Bitcoin. Fast forward to today, it still means that, but it also means that the guy's got majority of his net worth right now in crypto, right? You know, between Bitcoin and all the other assets, it's something, you know, it's like, I don't know, like 80% of his net worth now is in the industry. So you could also say like, hey, you know, the first Bitcoin or first crypto president is just like, he's the first one to have majority of his wealth in the industry. But I think that's kind of the last, you know, couple of days or weeks, more so than what it originally started out, which

• 1:10:25Speaker 01

  is like, he embraces it. And, you know, in terms of what he can do, I think there's three major things that he should do, right? Will he do them? I'm not sure. The first thing is, I think that he should repeal something called SAB 121. It's a very kind of technical legislative thing, but essentially what it would do is it would drastically reduce the friction for banks to hold Bitcoin and other crypto assets. So right now you can hold the assets in self custody, you can hold them at Coinbase, or you can buy the ETF. Banks generally are pretty trusted, you know, institutions with high security and all this kind of stuff. And if you allow them to hold the assets, it probably would create a safe custodian kind of relationship for a lot of people. But also then those banks can offer tons of financial services. They can lend against those assets. They can, you know, use it on a

• 1:11:09Speaker 01

  personal financial statement to get a mortgage, like all those types of things. So I think that would be a really big boom. And the banks, recently the Bank of America CEO came out and said, hey, I want to do this. So the banks want to do it. The people want to do it. It's just kind of this regulatory situation. The Congress and Senate actually approved this to happen and Biden vetoed it.

• 1:11:30Speaker 01

  And so it was kind of like one person really kind of, you know, came in and stomped it at the end. And so I think Trump should repeal that and allow banks to do that. The second thing is we should establish a strategic Bitcoin reserve, which simply means that we should hold the 200,000 Bitcoin that are currently on the government's balance sheet, don't sell them, and we should start to acquire more Bitcoin. How much we acquire and how quickly, somebody smarter than me will figure that out. But I do think that if Bitcoin is a great reserve asset for individuals, if it's a great reserve asset for financial institutions and corporations, it will be a great asset for countries as well. And we know other countries are stockpiling Bitcoin, and so we should also be a leader there, and we should be doing it as well. And then the third thing, and probably one of the things that would be most complex,

• 1:12:11Speaker 01

  but but most important, is we should change the tax treatment for using Bitcoin to buy goods and services. So right now, if I go and I sell a stock, I obviously pay capital gains tax. But I can't use that stock to go buy dinner, right? I got to go from stock to dollars, dollars to dinner. With Bitcoin, I could, in certain restaurants, buy dinner, as an example. But when I do that, I pay for the meal, I tip the waiter or waitress, I pay the sales tax, and then I also pay capital gains tax when I spend the Bitcoin. And so what we'd have to do is create a way where you can spend your Bitcoin for goods and services, you do not pay the capital gains tax, but you also still need to tax people who are just trading Bitcoin. So basically, if you're selling Bitcoin for dollars, then you get hit with the capital gains.

• 1:12:56Speaker 01

  If you are buying a good or a service with Bitcoin, then you don't pay the capital gains. And I think that would be a big kind of tailwind for Bitcoin as well. So three things, I don't know if he'll do them, but I think all three of those would have a significant impact on kind of continuing the adoption of Bitcoin and obviously creating more value.

• 1:13:12Tom Bilyeu?

  If we created a strategic reserve, that would essentially be investing in Bitcoin with the expectation that it goes up. Does the US invest in the stock market and anything else? Or would that be a break with tradition?

• 1:13:27Speaker 01

  Well, the US has gold, you know, as maybe the closest proxy in the central bank reserves. It's probably one of the most popular, you know, central bank reserve assets in the world. Different nation states all hoard gold. And so I think that there's no reason why the US couldn't do it with Bitcoin, right? Bitcoin is kind of gold with wings, you know, digital sound money. And I think that's kind of the easiest argument. The US also has a lot of real estate, has a lot of land. It does buy, obviously via the Federal Reserve, which isn't so federal, but you know, Federal Reserve obviously buys a lot of debt and things like that. And so it really depends on kind of where you look. There's even things like, there's this new office that was created, and I recently met

• 1:14:09Speaker 01

  some of the guys there, called the Office of Strategic Capital. Basically, the government is making strategic loans to certain types of businesses that do business or could help the government. And so, you know, like, the government's like in the lending business. And so we definitely are buying various types of debt or, you know, kind of commodity-based assets. And so I think Bitcoin kind of fits right in there. And, you know, to your point, are they buying it because the price is going to go up? It's probably part of it. But I also think they're buying it because it's sound money. And even if the price just stayed flat, the dollar is going to continue to be devalued and therefore, you know, the US dollar price would kind of move more so the dollar falling rather than Bitcoin becoming, you know, quote-unquote, "more valuable" to the individual holder.

• 1:14:53Tom Bilyeu?

  Now, one thing I've heard you say that I thought was a little crazy is to print money and buy Bitcoin. And I'm like, hold on a second. Printing money is bad while good for the price of Bitcoin. I hate it for the price of the dollar. Would you still like to see the government do that?

• 1:15:13Speaker 01

  Well, my point was, you know, if we're increasing the debt by a trillion dollars every 100 days, if we printed $250 billion, we wouldn't even notice. It'd be a rounding error. And if we could then do that to buy a substantial percentage of the Bitcoin network, and it depends on where the price is, et cetera, but we're not talking about buying 1%, we're talking about buying a very substantial part of the network with that $250 billion, call it, you know, 10% to 15% depending on the market cap. All of a sudden, you say to yourself, is it worth it?

• 1:15:47Speaker 01

  Probably over the long run. Now, the question is, would I rather not print the money? Of course. So could we find $250 billion of savings somewhere in the budget? And then use that money? That would be better. Could we actually get to a surplus? And use the surplus amount to buy the Bitcoin? That would be even better, right? So it more so, I was using the like, go print 250 billion and buy the Bitcoin. For illustrative purposes, in terms of, hey, we should go do this like with size and kind of intention now. One of the most interesting things is everyone was really disappointed in the kind of Bitcoin world. That on day one, there was no executive order to establish the strategic Bitcoin reserve.

• 1:16:32Speaker 01

  But if you're a country, wouldn't you want to buy the Bitcoin and then tell everyone you bought it? Rather than tell everyone you're going to buy it, the price goes up and then you start buying? And so

• 1:16:44Tom Bilyeu?

  That's definitely true. I have an instinct that Trump isn't going to do that. I think he's going to be very slow to move on that. So I think there are going to be enough people that are freaked out by the idea of us buying a highly volatile asset. That that one feels more like a bit of a political hot potato. We'll see. He's certainly signaled obviously positive things. But my gut is the first two things you talked about, you probably got a pretty high chance of him doing. The strategic Bitcoin reserve, I don't know. I'm a little more skeptical. We'll see.

• 1:17:16Speaker 01

  Yeah. And look, I think that the probably the most likely common ground between the skeptics and you know, the enthusiasts. Is we have 200,000 Bitcoin in the US government's control today. Just say, hey, we're not going to sell that. So we're not going to buy more, right? But like, we're also going to commit to not selling. Again, that kind of feels like probably both sides are a little disappointed. You know, the skeptics are like, hey, why do we have to hold this? And the enthusiast like, why aren't we buying more? And as you probably know, you know, the best negotiations are where everyone feels like they left a little on the table.

• 1:17:44Tom Bilyeu?

  He's already making those noises, right? Like he said, ah, we're not gonna sell. I mean, in this typical Trump way where it doesn't feel exactly firm, but I think he's indicated that.

• 1:17:55Speaker 01

  Strategic ambiguity, I think is what they call it sometimes, right?

• 1:17:58Tom Bilyeu?

  Yeah, yeah, certainly when it's aimed at China, no doubt. So you wrote a book. Give us your hardest hitting. What is like, if you were gonna say, this is the way to live an extraordinary life. What, what is that most important thing that people could do?

• 1:18:16Speaker 01

  Well, I think the first thing is everyone has a different version of what their extraordinary life is, right? So what I want my extraordinary life to be is very different than yours versus anyone who's listening to this. And so understanding what is the life you want to live and being intentional about that is, is pretty important. And it doesn't mean like, hey, what job am I gonna get? But like, what are the things that are important to you? How do you spend your time, right? Do you spend your time going out and you like to go to a lot of business dinners and, you know, meeting a lot of interesting people? Do you like to spend your time sitting at home, hanging out with your wife and kids, right? You know, all these different components, but designing your life in terms of kind of your aspirational life puts you on a path to accomplishing that extraordinary life. And then when I wrote the book, I wrote 65 letters to my kids. And it's kind of all these different life lessons that I've picked up over the years.

• 1:18:58Speaker 01

  And it's everything from health and wealth to work relationships, to running a business, to how I think about happiness, et cetera. And the major theme throughout the entire book is that you have agency. We live in a world where every single thing around us tells us the world happens to you. Just sit down, shut up and let the world happen. And you have to take what the world gives you. But the most successful people I know, the happiest people I know, the people who feel like they've lived kind of the most fulfilling extraordinary life. They're the people who say, no, I have agency and I am actually going to act on the world. And so if I want something, I go and I get it. If I want to accomplish something, I set a plan and I go and I execute. If I want to feel better health wise, I put together a plan and I go and I do it.

• 1:19:42Speaker 01

  And so when I sat down and I started writing these letters to my kids, my wife and I had basically decided on two things. If we can only teach our kids two things, what is the thing that we want to teach them? The first thing was we wanted to teach them to be good decision makers. It is a very specific skill, but it's applicable to everything in your life. Should I go to that party or should I not? Should I take that job or should I not? Should I make that investment or should I not? Should I hang out with this person, should I not, right? Should I do drugs, should I not? You teach them to be a good decision maker, it applies to every aspect of their life and something that they can get better at over time. I think a big part of it frankly is you got to expose them to a lot of decisions. And then you got to talk through it, right? It's no different than trying to help a, you know, an employee at a company get better at decision making. You got to put them in this in scenarios and say, okay, here's the scenario.

• 1:20:27Speaker 01

  Here's your two choices. What do you think? Why'd you choose that? Oh, well, here's how I would think about it, right? And you just constantly are trying to get better, but there's no finish line. You're you never get to the point where like, I'm a great decision maker. You're always like, I can be better at it. And so it's kind of again, this aspirational thing. But that was one thing we really wanted to teach our kids was be good decision makers. You do that by exposing them to a lot. The second thing is we want to teach them that you have agency. You know, kind of the internet, you know, meme is like, you can just go and do things. And so if somebody is a good decision maker and then they know they have agency, every outcome in your life is ultimately determined by the actions you take. And so if you think about J D Vance, the reason why I think that story is so inspiring is because he basically was dealt the worst hand.

• 1:21:11Speaker 01

  If you were to concoct, you know, hey, okay, well, you think that everyone's life is all based on the decisions they make. Well, what about the guy who's born to a drug addict, single mom in West Virginia, who's no connections, no education, no money, et cetera. It's like the guy just became the vice president of the United States. Right? And most of the things that he did were decisions that he made. He chose to go into the Marines. He chose to apply to college. He chose to apply to Yale. He chose to study. He chose, you know, and you just go through these things. Now, everybody has help along the way, right? But part of that is he met, for example, Peter Thiel when he was at Yale. Peter Thiel seems to have been a pretty big part of the story. And so again, he went to the dinner, right?

• 1:21:55Speaker 01

  Like, all these actions are really important. And so imagine if you started off in a position in life that wasn't born to a single mother who's a drug addict in West Virginia with no money, no education, no resources, no connections. You already have a leg up on J D Vance and he became vice president. Imagine what you can do. Right? And I think that that agency is really important. And so, pretty much every letter in the book is reinforcing that across a couple of different, you know, ways. And one of my favorites is this idea of luck is not real.

• 1:22:25Tom Bilyeu?

  I was gonna ask you how much pushback you get on this idea.

• 1:22:28Speaker 01

  Probably the most controversial letter in the book. But really, my message in it is, let's say that, you know, you, Tom and I, we walk across the street and we get hit by a bus and we both lose our right leg. And our friends come to visit us in the hospital. And they say, "Oh, my God, Tom, you lost your leg today. What happened?" You say, "Man, I was so unlucky. I was walking across the street. This bus hit me and I lost my leg. I'm such an idiot." But then they walk over to my bed and they say, "Hey, what happened today?" I say, "Man, I am so lucky. I was walking across. I got hit by the bus and I'm still alive." You know anyone who got hit by a bus and lived? How lucky am I? Two people, same scenario, same outcome, two completely different views on luck. And so, when you realize luck is actually a psychological concept.

• 1:23:12Speaker 01

  There's academic studies that show that you can make yourself luckier by simply thinking you're lucky. It is all about perspective in life. That means that luck is not a real thing. It's all about how you think about the things that happen in your life. And once you begin to understand that luck is not real, it is all about your perspective and you are in control of your perspective. It goes back to you have agency. Whenever you think you're unlucky, you should say to yourself, "What is the good thing that comes out of this?" And in another chapter in the book, I talk about this idea of good. Jaco Willnig, who is a very well-decorated and well-respected Navy SEAL commander, he, you know, said one time that he had guys on his team who'd come to him. Whenever they had bad news, they'd say, "Hey, man, we got bad news, but I already know what you're gonna say." He said, "What are you gonna say?"

• 1:23:57Speaker 01

  He said, "You're gonna say good." And his point was, you know, "Training gets canceled today? Good. We got more time to clean our equipment." "You didn't get the job that you wanted? Good. You got more time to get better so you can get a promotion in the current job you got." You know, "You didn't get the grade you wanted? Good. It's a reminder that you gotta work harder." Right? You just go through this and it's looking at life through a specific lens that is much more positive and optimistic than looking at life through the lens of, "The world is happening to me. I have no control. I have no agency and, you know, everything is screwed." And so, again, you go back to this idea of, you wanna write letters to your kids. What do you want them to learn? You want them to be good decision-makers and you want them to learn that they have agency. Put 65 letters down, put it in a book and, you know, hopefully they learn from it.

• 1:24:40Tom Bilyeu?

  Now, even the luck one seems like a very positive empowering idea. Why is it controversial? What, what does that trigger in people?

• 1:24:49Speaker 01

  I think that people fall into two categories. There's definitely people who just, they're intellectually lazy. Like, they just don't think about anything and it's like much easier just to blame luck. Oh, I'm an unlucky person, something happened, you know? It's not my fault, I don't want to take personal responsibility. And so luck kind of becomes like the boogeyman. And usually that's when it's a negative thing, right? But then there's a lot of very successful people who they actually want to downplay their success. And so you'll go talk to like a multi-billionaire and they'll be like, I just got lucky. Nobody gets lucky and becomes a multi-billionaire, right? Like, obviously, they did things, they knew things, they acted, et cetera. And so luck in both the negative and positive sense is really used as a crutch.

• 1:25:32Speaker 01

  The people who think that they're quote unquote unlucky, they use it because they don't want to take personal responsibility for their situation. The people who are successful, they use it as a crutch because they're embarrassed that they were successful. They want to downplay what they did and they want to more so, you know, kind of claim a moral high ground and say, oh, I was just lucky, you know? If I ran the experiment 10 times, you know, this only happens once, I just, you know, lucky, not, not my fault. And so I think that luck, when you remove it both from a positive and negative sense, it gets back to the same thing. Your decisions, your actions determine your outcome, regardless of the details of where you start. J.D. Vance becomes vice president. You can go through history, you know?

• 1:26:13Speaker 01

  Elon Musk, born to an abusive father in South Africa, right? And you just look at this over and over and over again. And you say to yourself, why is it that so many highly successful people actually started out with really bad childhoods? Jeff Bezos, I think, he grew up in a single mother household at first. And then his mother remarried. And you look at it over and over and over again, you say to yourself, maybe actually a big piece of it is you've got to forge yourself in the fire. You've got to make the right decisions, right actions, and your outcome is then determined by those decisions and actions. It's fascinating, right? I don't have all the answers. I'm figuring it out alongside everybody else. But when you start thinking about why is this controversial?

• 1:26:56Speaker 01

  It's because it basically strips away a crutch from people. And it makes them look in the mirror and accept the fact that the outcomes that I get in my life are solely dependent on what decisions I make. Some people are happy with the decisions they made, some people aren't. But the beauty is, it's never over. There's people who turn their life around at 40, 50, 60 years old, after years of drugs and alcohol and crime and all these crazy stuff. It's okay. One of my favorite stories is Mark Wahlberg. People forget, Mark Wahlberg actually got arrested when he was a teenager. Pretty bad incident. He beat a man in the street. Probably not proud of it. But then he went and he became a rap star, Marky Mark.

• 1:27:38Speaker 01

  Today, he's a pretty successful businessman, obviously well-paid actor, highly, highly, highly successful. Doesn't matter what you did in the past. It's all about moving forward. And so again, it goes back to at any point you can choose, hey, I'm going to make the decisions that put me on the right path. And I think that for people I've heard so far from the book, the book's been able to get them to think differently about some of the things that they're doing.

• 1:27:58Tom Bilyeu?

  I love it. All right, well, if people want to stay on a good path, where can they follow you?

• 1:28:04Speaker 01

  Just go to Twitter, A Pompliano, at A Pompliano is probably the best spot. And then I write a daily email to investors, about 260,000 investors on there, just my thoughts on financial assets, markets, et cetera. And you just go to pompletter.com, just P-O-M-P letter.com.

• 1:28:21Tom Bilyeu?

  I love it. All right, everybody, if you have not already, be sure to subscribe. And until next time, my friends, be legendary. Take care. Peace.

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