#267 Rob Luna - 50-Year Mortgages, Government Band-Aids, AI Job Cuts and the Middle Class

Rob Luna is a prominent wealth and business strategist with over 25 years of experience in wealth management. Renowned as one of the nation's top financial advisors and consistently ranked by Forbes, he currently serves as CEO of Valtrion, founder of the Rob Luna Wealth Academy, and host of The American Capitalist Show. As an on-air contributor for Fox Business, Rob offers expert insights on investment strategies, market trends, and wealth building. Driven by a mission to help entrepreneurs and investors build, scale, and protect their wealth, he provides comprehensive services through Valtrion, including financial planning, asset management, tax strategies, insurance, and risk management—meeting clients where they are, from debt reduction to handling multimillion-dollar portfolios. Through the Rob Luna Wealth Academy, he mentors aspiring business owners with practical tools to achieve financial independence. A best-selling author, successful entrepreneur, and Ivy League alumnus with MBAs from Wharton and UCLA, Rob has built substantial wealth for himself and others while passionately advocating for accessible financial education and smart investing. Shawn Ryan Show Sponsors: Receive 30% off your first subscription order at https://armra.com/SRS or enter code SRS at checkout. Get the Harry’s Plus Trial Set for only $10 at https://www. Harrys.com/SRS. Rob Luna Links: X - https://x.com/realrobluna IG - https://www.instagram.com/realrobluna YT - https://www.youtube.com/@realrobluna Valtrion - https://valtrion.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

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• 1:05Shawn Ryan?

  Rob Luna.

• 1:06Rob Luna?

  Sean.

• 1:07Shawn Ryan?

  Welcome to the show, man.

• 1:08Rob Luna?

  Thanks for having me, man.

• 1:08Shawn Ryan?

  Welcome back to the show.

• 1:10Rob Luna?

  Third time, man. I'm privileged, excited to be here.

• 1:13Shawn Ryan?

  Third time's a charm.

• 1:14Rob Luna?

  But this new studio, dude, I'm just looking around amazed and it looks so badass. Congrats, man.

• 1:19Shawn Ryan?

  Oh, thank you, dude.

• 1:20Rob Luna?

  It looks really good.

• 1:20Shawn Ryan?

  Thank you. Well, congratulations to you too. So, new CEO, new company, Valtryon Wealth Management.

• 1:31Shawn Ryan?

  How long have you been? That's like brand new.

• 1:33Rob Luna?

  Well, yeah, we just launched it last year. Last year was our first full year in operation. And yeah, taxes, financial planning, and business integration. It's going really good.

• 1:43Shawn Ryan?

  Nice.

• 1:43Rob Luna?

  Thanks, man.

• 1:43Shawn Ryan?

  Nice. Well, we got a ton of stuff to talk about. I mean, just in the news and in the past. Look. First of the year is coming up, just like last year. I think this, I think you are the perfect way to kick off the year and trimming the financial fat. What should we be looking at? What stocks? What should we be thinking about crypto? What's with this new child savings plan? What's with the 50-year mortgage? I mean, there's just, what's, what's, what's the update with all the tariffs? How did that wind up working out? I can't remember if we talked about that last year.

• 2:16Rob Luna?

  I don't think so, because I think it was right, right before all that stuff. And then January came around and that was headline news, pretty much.

• 2:24Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah. So we just, we got a lot of stuff to cover. I just want, but that's, that's kind of what I want to do. Projections. What should people be focusing on financially, business owners in 2026 and kind of, you may be a little bit of a recap in, in 2025. But as you know, everybody starts off with an introduction. Rob Luna, spent a quarter of a century is one of the top investment advisors in the country, working with professional athletes, entrepreneurs, and ultra-high net worth families. Built a successful wealth management firm from your bedroom and eventually sold it for millions of dollars. Stepped away for a few years because of a non-compete and during that time started educating people,

• 3:08Shawn Ryan?

  me being one of them, on personal finance and entrepreneurship through your book, Wealth Academy, and a podcast. Then last year, you launched something completely different and you shifted personally from being an investment advisor to a business and private wealth strategies. This is Valtrion.

• 3:26Rob Luna?

  Yep.

• 3:27Shawn Ryan?

  You're a husband, a father, and most importantly, a Christian. And once again, congratulations on Valtrion. So just a, a personal testimony.

• 3:43Shawn Ryan?

  And a lot of entrepreneurs are looking for this, man. But, um, you know, I don't know much about wealth management, taxes, stocks. I think I know real estate, but, um, but, uh, I don't know anything about that. And, you know, I just want to say, man, that what you've put together over at Valtryon is fucking incredible. So, you know, me as a business owner, a business owner, an entrepreneur that didn't have zero education in business, I really don't even have any education at all. I'm a public school boy with no college education. So, and I've built a pretty damn good business. But, um, one of the, one of, you know, one of my biggest hiccups,

• 4:26Shawn Ryan?

  man, was fucking taxes, man. Taxes and, and planning and, and just anything with numbers in general. I totally winged it all the way up into this point. And I had fired so many CPAs because I just, I was like, hey, can you guys do the planning? You know, I want to, I want to, I hate paying taxes. I'm tired of paying the Taliban. I'm tired of paying all these other countries. Like, I want to, I want to save on taxes. I know there's planning and they all say the same shit. Yes. You know, yes, we can, we can, we'll, we'll, we'll do some tax planning. And then December 25th, 26 comes around and it's like, hey, Christmas is done. We got about a

• 5:09Shawn Ryan?

  week left. Let's come up with this plan. And nobody's talking to each other. They're not talking to anybody, you know, they're not talking to the bookkeepers, to any of this, any of these people. And then it's the same fucking story year after year. And then me and you talked and you started Valtryon and everything is under one roof. Everybody's talking to each other. And, um, this is just a key component that I think not only myself, but a ton of entrepreneurs are looking for us is all the financial stuff under one roof. Everybody's talking to each other and the fucking tax plan and the wealth strategy, all that stuff. Comes together and it's it's really cool what you built man. I've never seen anything like it.

• 5:54Rob Luna?

  Well, thanks, man. And I think, um, look, first of all, I think you totally underestimate yourself. I think you're probably one of the smartest business people I've ever met in my life. And certain aspects of what you're doing here with the show are unprecedented and you're actually creating markets. So don't sell yourself short, um, first of all. And so I think, you know, your success is largely because of you. But, you know, like you said, I think in being an entrepreneur, like most entrepreneurs, when I started Valtreon, like my introduction, he sold his business for millions of dollars, which I did. But, you know, our focus really there was just on managing money. I had a CPA for 20 years that I was kind of complacent with and I figured all those things were going on. And then when I sold my business, it's nothing like doing it for yourself.

• 6:38Rob Luna?

  I was like, shit, if I would have structured this like this or had this trust, I literally lost millions and millions of dollars. So kind of the cool thing about what I'm doing now, Sean, is the business I'm building today, or we built a Valtreon, I am the target customer. So selfishly, I'm building this for myself, not from an ivory tower. And when I started looking at taxes, let's just talk about taxes in particular because I think that's the biggest, biggest pain point. And when you talk to people about their tax situation or CPAs, I'm sure all your listeners are thinking about this. Everyone's disenchanted. The CPAs are taking on 300, 400 clients. Everything's reactive. There's nothing proactive and people are just losing millions and millions of dollars because of that.

• 7:22Rob Luna?

  So when I started this firm, I'm not a CPA, um, but I'm pretty smart with numbers and my team is pretty smart with numbers. And we said, look, we're pretty good at this stuff. We understand business and real estate and strategy more than any CPA does. And CPA is not to underestimate them, but there's a code of what you can and can't do. And what we said is, hey, we're going to reverse engineer that code. And to your point, when we find somebody, we're going to start at the beginning of the year tax planning and we're going to do every single thing that we can legally to make sure that we minimize taxes. Because coming from California to here in the federal government where that money was being pissed away, we didn't want to do that. And so, you know, it's really pretty much what it's about is get it back from the government, put it in your pocket, your family's pocket and help you use that to help your business grow. And we really focus on that.

• 8:05Shawn Ryan?

  Man, you guys have crushed it. I mean, you in first year.

• 8:11Shawn Ryan?

  Hundreds of thousands of dollars saved in taxes, hundreds of thou- just because you guys are talking to each other. And that's, I mean, we haven't even time, time to do everything. So anyways, I'm really excited for you, man.

• 8:23Rob Luna?

  Thank you.

• 8:24Shawn Ryan?

  And, um, and, uh, congratulations on that.

• 8:27Rob Luna?

  Let's help some other people save some money and make some money and protect them from, you know, the, the great thing about coming on right now, Sean, is we're talking about it earlier. This, this year, I'm, I'm a really optimistic guy. Um, but this year, looking out over the next 12 months, and I think with AI in particular. It's kind of like even more than dog years. Like every year is 10 years in business and your personal life and things are just moving so quickly now. And when I look at the next year, I've never been more optimistic about what's going on in the country and the opportunities for entrepreneurs, but also. I'm pretty frightened and pessimistic about the things. And the reason being is because all of the opportunity that maybe we'll talk about with AI.

• 9:10Rob Luna?

  I think there's very few people that are prepared to take advantage of that. And because of that, I think there's going to be a lot of unemployment, a lot of things that are going on that, um. Are really going to put the American dream, which at the end of the day. Besides God, number one in my family, the thing I fight for and wake up every day for is to keep the American dream alive because. You know a little bit about my background. Without that, I wouldn't have been able to accomplish anything that I have today. And I think day by day by day. The decisions that we're making politically, whether it's the left or the right in this country is threatening that. And I think never more so than today.

• 9:46Shawn Ryan?

  All right. I wanted to start with the 50 year mortgage, but since we're going down this road, I, I am.

• 9:54Rob Luna?

  Well, that's part.

• 9:56Shawn Ryan?

  I want to have this conversation because it sounds like you think that the American dream is drying up.

• 10:01Rob Luna?

  Yeah.

• 10:01Shawn Ryan?

  I, I don't think that. I think that the American dream is alive and well, but you have to figure out what sector you're going to grow that in. And so let me give you an example.

• 10:10Rob Luna?

  Okay.

• 10:14Shawn Ryan?

  We see all these illegals come in here and they take up all of the trades. They're the plumbers, they're the carpenters, they're the electricians, they're they they're the lawn care. They're everything. They do all of it. And you know, you see these guys in in in they come in this town and I've hired them.

• 10:36Rob Luna?

  Mm hmm.

• 10:37Shawn Ryan?

  I mean, there's not really a market. You have to hire.

• 10:39Rob Luna?

  Right, exactly.

• 10:40Shawn Ryan?

  You know, and I remember in my old studio, that guy came in and built that, studded that entire studio out on Easter Sunday. I couldn't get, I could not get an American to get in there and do it.

• 10:53Rob Luna?

  Mm hmm.

• 10:53Shawn Ryan?

  They wouldn't even give me a price because it was too small of a project for them.

• 10:57Rob Luna?

  Mm hmm.

• 10:58Shawn Ryan?

  So I go, I find this guy. He's on a site somewhere. I'm just like, hey, I need somebody to stud this out. He was work. Yeah, he was working right, right across in another building.

• 11:06Rob Luna?

  Mm hmm.

• 11:06Shawn Ryan?

  Comes in, does the studio, call him a year later to do something else. Now he's got his own crew. He's got a brand new car.

• 11:14Rob Luna?

  Mm hmm.

• 11:14Shawn Ryan?

  He smells like he just got the most expensive cologne out of, out of wherever the hell he was shopping, but. And he's proud, man. And I talked to him and he's, I'm like, man, looks like you're doing good. He goes, I got my own crew now.

• 11:28Rob Luna?

  Wow.

• 11:28Shawn Ryan?

  I got six different projects going. That's the fucking American dream.

• 11:33Rob Luna?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 11:34Shawn Ryan?

  Right?

• 11:34Rob Luna?

  Yeah.

• 11:34Shawn Ryan?

  It is alive and well, but we got a bunch of people that are too fucking lazy to go out and do learn the trades. They wanna, it's you have to be able to adapt and overcome. You can't just go this. I mean, am I wrong here?

• 11:48Rob Luna?

  Well, I, I think you're a thousand percent right. And I think when I talk about the American dream being threatened. Um, I think it's more about the things that you're talking about. It's the mentality, right? And when you think about, you know, I was talking to your team a little bit earlier about my disenchantment with, what's going on with New York right now, because my grandfather came from Ellis Island through Italy. Um, and helped build that city brick by brick. Um, didn't speak any English at first, learned how to speak English. Would never speak to us in anything other than English during that period of time, worked seven days a week. He was a bricklayer, wound up creating his own business, bought a home. He did all these things without having any college education, without speaking English.

• 12:32Rob Luna?

  But he understood that nothing was gonna happen for him, nothing was gonna be handed to him unless he did it himself. And when you think about all these policies. Well, I don't like the 50-year mortgage. Why don't like all these Band-Aids that we keep putting on things? That is softening America. And that is the American dream is people and intuition and motivation and understanding that you are responsible for yourself. So the further you take that away from people, everybody gets a trophy. That's going to deteriorate. And that's why we talk about New York. Everyone says, oh, it's going to come back and invest in it. It's not coming back. It's not coming back because the people that built that city live in Florida now and Texas and Tennessee. New York isn't buildings.

• 13:12Shawn Ryan?

  They're not living here, are they?

• 13:15Rob Luna?

  Yeah, but but but think about it. The reason it's always came back is because the people made it come back. After 9/11, the people made it come back. Those people are gone, Sean. They're not back. You look at the immigrants that are in New York today. And I'm all for a legal immigration process. Like, we need that to be able to prosper. Otherwise, you become Japan, right? You need immigration. But you need the right type of immigrants. You need the right incentive. It's not the immigrants that are in that city today that are absolutely destroying it and looking for handouts and have created that problem. And everyone says, oh, it's just a mayor and it's just New York. No. That is a metaphor for what could be happening to this country unless we start changing those things. And that's the problem with the 50-year mortgages and all these Band-Aids that we're trying to create.

• 13:54Rob Luna?

  To kick the can down the road and not take the medicine that we need to put our boots, to put our boots, boots on and start getting back to what made this country great.

• 14:02Shawn Ryan?

  Man, I mean, I'm like, I can't argue that. I mean, we've seen massive outfluxes out of New York, Washington, Oregon, California. And and so I know, I mean, if I remember, I think it was Polly Market. I think I think Polly Market predicted that a million people are going to leave New York.

• 14:26Rob Luna?

  Yeah.

• 14:26Shawn Ryan?

  Uh, if he was elected.

• 14:29Rob Luna?

  Yeah.

• 14:29Shawn Ryan?

  And and he was elected and from what I've been hearing, real estate, real estate prices in Florida is

• 14:37Rob Luna?

  Of course.

• 14:37Shawn Ryan?

  is inflating and real estate prices in New York are deflating.

• 14:40Rob Luna?

  Right.

• 14:41Shawn Ryan?

  And, you know, but I don't know. I just, I'm still not, I'm still just not there with the American dream is dead. I mean, another example, another example.

• 14:53Shawn Ryan?

  Friend of mine, started, American dude, started a fence company this year. He was a cop, or he was a marine, then he was a cop, then he started a fence company, like six months ago. He's already done, I think he's already done over a hundred thousand dollars in sales.

• 15:10Rob Luna?

  Yeah.

• 15:10Shawn Ryan?

  Six, in six months with a new business, just by getting his fucking hands dirty and doing the work.

• 15:17Rob Luna?

  Answering the phone, showing up.

• 15:19Shawn Ryan?

  Taking the risk.

• 15:20Rob Luna?

  Doing what he says he's gonna do.

• 15:21Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, so I mean, I just, I'm not, yeah, maybe the American dream is dead in certain sectors. I'm not, I'm not gonna, I mean, but maybe those sectors are fucking dead all over the world because of AI. You know, and, and, um, but anyways, I know we're gonna get more into this, but I do, I wanna ask about this 50 year mortgage right now. Because, and, and, and I am not a big fan of anything that's gone on this year.

• 15:45Rob Luna?

  Yeah.

• 15:46Shawn Ryan?

  And I had really fucking high hopes. I think a lot of us had really high hopes, think it's a disaster. But I will say that, you know, and like I said at the beginning, I'm no financial expert. I don't know my ass from a hole in the ground with it. But when I, when I, with the 50 year mortgage stuff, like, I understand why everybody's bitching about it. But I almost, like, to me, I think it's a good thing. I understand, yes, the bank's gonna make a shit ton more money in interest. If you take a 50 year mortgage, because if you, if you, if you hold that note for 50 years, then yes, you're gonna pay a shit ton more

• 16:24Shawn Ryan?

  in interest. But, you know, I don't know anybody that's held a home for 30 years that's

• 16:34Shawn Ryan?

  not in the baby boomer generation. Most of them haven't. That's, that's, that's actually, that's like the World War II generation that was holding homes for that long, not baby boomers and under, correct? I don't think people, I mean, people buy and sell their homes all the, all the, all the time now. It's hard to find somebody that's lived in a home for more than 10 years. You know, and so when I, when I, and, and you hear all of the, all of the younger generations bitching about housing prices, and I think they have a great fucking point. I think housing prices are super inflated.

• 17:08Shawn Ryan?

  And, and it is hard, but you know, then when, you know, and it sounds like there was a battle between the Trump administration and, and, and, and lowering the interest rates, so they didn't get that, and they came up with this 50 year mortgage. To me, I feel like the 50 year mortgage is a great thing. It cuts your payment at damn near in half. Yes, you're gonna pay more in interest. Are you gonna hold your home for 50 years? Probably fucking not. You're probably gonna hold the home, you're gonna build equity, and then you're gonna sell that home, do a 1031 exchange, or you know what I mean? You're gonna, you're gonna sell that home and you're gonna upgrade to a bigger home as your family grows and you have kids, you're gonna... So, so how am I wrong? How am I wrong?

• 17:51Rob Luna?

  You're not entirely wrong. Um, and the thing is, I know you, Sean, and we kinda share this philosophy of the value of homeownership. And so, one of the, you know, things that I have to always balance is the art and the science of business planning and financial planning, because there's numbers, like you said, right, to say, hey, if you amortize this over 50 years, you're paying X amount of interest, stupid horrible idea. Then there's the human side of being able to lay your head down on a pillow at night and know, I own this. I could paint my walls purple if I want. I know that the landlord's not gonna say, hey, my brother-in-law wants to move in there at the end of this term. You gotta get out there and find somewhere else to take your family. The value of your kids being able to come to a place that you know they know is their home. So, all that has

• 18:35Rob Luna?

  some dollar value that might be exponentially higher than the interest that you're paying. And I get that and I, and I, and I love and respect that. But here's the problem with it. Um, when you think about it, and we've done a lot of work on this, when you look at a half a million dollar home, okay, and you have a 6% interest rate somewhere we're at right now, when you have a 30-year mortgage, that payment roughly is about $3,000 a month. When you extend that out to 50 years, that doesn't get cut in half. If it did, I might be more on the side. It goes to 2,650. So it winds up saving you-

• 19:07Shawn Ryan?

  What were the numbers again?

• 19:08Rob Luna?

  Uh, so it takes you from about 3,000 a month to 2,650. So you save about-

• 19:12Shawn Ryan?

  That's pretty fucking bad.

• 19:13Rob Luna?

  350 bucks. For that, instead of over thirty year, taking a half a million dollar home and paying a million for it, you pay one point five million for it. So it's three times more. The problem also with, like you said, upward mobility, because you have so much interest now that's built in this and amortized over a fifty year period. The first fifteen years, you basically build no equity in the house. You're paying back that interest over that period of time and then it starts to accelerate.

• 19:41Shawn Ryan?

  But hold on.

• 19:42Rob Luna?

  Yeah.

• 19:42Shawn Ryan?

  Wouldn't you, I mean, let's say you bought a house in middle Tennessee.

• 19:46Rob Luna?

  Yeah.

• 19:47Shawn Ryan?

  And you technically didn't pay any of the, any of the, the principal down.

• 19:53Rob Luna?

  Yeah.

• 19:53Shawn Ryan?

  But your equity will be skyrocketing because real estate is going fucking insane in this part of, in this part of the country right now.

• 20:01Rob Luna?

  Yeah.

• 20:02Shawn Ryan?

  So you would be building equity.

• 20:04Rob Luna?

  Okay.

• 20:04Shawn Ryan?

  If you, if you did, if you put the research in and you bought in the right market.

• 20:08Rob Luna?

  Yeah.

• 20:08Shawn Ryan?

  Which, I, I think it's, without even looking, I would bet if you're buying in New York, California, Oregon, or Washington.

• 20:18Rob Luna?

  Yeah.

• 20:19Shawn Ryan?

  You're probably not going to get any fucking equity.

• 20:21Rob Luna?

  Right.

• 20:21Shawn Ryan?

  Because everybody's leaving.

• 20:23Rob Luna?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 20:24Shawn Ryan?

  If you buy in Florida, Tennessee, Texas, Nevada, Arizona.

• 20:30Rob Luna?

  Yeah.

• 20:30Shawn Ryan?

  Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, I don't know, tax-free states? Maybe you might get some equity.

• 20:37Rob Luna?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 20:37Shawn Ryan?

  I mean, it just takes a little bit of research, I mean, but, and I'm, look, I'm not, I'm sorry. I'm going off here because

• 20:47Shawn Ryan?

  I'm not mad at the younger generations. I think they just need some guidance and I think that, you know, I'll, I'll tell you this, my son the other day, we were at the fucking creek. He wants to get up the hill. He can't get up the hill. He wants help. And I'm like, no.

• 21:04Shawn Ryan?

  Look for another way. If you can't find another way, then I'll help you. And I think with a lot of these younger generations, they go, they hit a roadblock and they're like, see, fuck, tried to do it, can't do it, we're done, I'm fucked. You know what I mean? It's like, no, dude, you're not fucked. Now you need to go find another way out.

• 21:20Rob Luna?

  Yeah.

• 21:20Shawn Ryan?

  You know, and that's what I'm trying to teach my kid, like, don't just give up because you can't get up the hill.

• 21:25Rob Luna?

  Yeah.

• 21:25Shawn Ryan?

  Walk fifty meters that way and fucking go up the side, you know, and, and.

• 21:30Rob Luna?

  But dude, that's, that's.

• 21:31Shawn Ryan?

  People don't think like that anymore.

• 21:33Rob Luna?

  That's where, why you're at where you are today. And that's why your son will be in a very similar position. It's because of that's mindset, right? And so when we say, well, let's just give him the fifty year mortgage. All right, well, I already told you, it's only three hundred and fifty bucks.

• 21:49Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 21:49Rob Luna?

  Dude, you can't go make an extra three hundred and fifty dollars a month somewhere? I bought my first home at nineteen. I grew up in Southern California. I brought that in Mesa, Arizona. I fucking hated Mesa, Arizona, but that's where I could afford to live. That's where I could afford to go to school. That's where I could afford to start a business. I was nineteen. That home was fifty six thousand dollars. It was a two bedroom, one bath, nine hundred square feet. By the way, I went to school full time. And I worked two jobs to be able to afford to pay for that. That's what it fucking takes. But for that home, fifty six thousand, I sold for eighty thousand. Now I'm on my like sixteenth home, right?

• 22:27Rob Luna?

  But people want to live in Southern California and people want to live, they don't want to live in Dixon, Tennessee or Alabama, where you don't have to even have a half a million dollar home. You can get a home for three hundred thousand dollars. So the thing is, it's about choices and life's about choices. So instead of trying to accommodate all these things, which puts our self in more and more debt, which I'm sure we'll, we'll talk about and create bigger and bigger problems. Why don't we just say, man up and get an extra three hundred and fifty dollars a month, figure out how to get that done? And housing isn't as unaffordable as people say, because we just talked about a half a million dollar home being twenty something hundred bucks. My housekeeper pays twenty something hundred dollars a, a, a month for an apartment in Tennessee.

• 23:08Shawn Ryan?

  Hmm.

• 23:08Rob Luna?

  You can get it done. It's still out there. This, this whole narrative of everything's unattainable and everything unaffordable, not true.

• 23:15Shawn Ryan?

  Well, that's, that's, that's good to hear. And that's, that's, um, you know, I sound frustrated, but I just, I really, I just, I just want to help and I just, I, I want the best for.

• 23:25Rob Luna?

  Yeah.

• 23:25Shawn Ryan?

  The younger generations.

• 23:26Rob Luna?

  And I do too.

• 23:27Shawn Ryan?

  My kids are in the younger generation.

• 23:28Rob Luna?

  Well, that's the big thing, right? You've got young kids. I've got a two-year-old. It's not, it's not really about us. It's about what does the world look like in 20 or 30 years and are the same opportunities that we have gonna be available to them? Are we to be drowning in so much debt? That they're not gonna be there. And that's really what I'm mostly concerned about.

• 23:48Shawn Ryan?

  So 50-year mortgage, bad.

• 23:50Rob Luna?

  You hate it. Don't need it. We don't need it.

• 23:52Shawn Ryan?

  Well, you know, uh, now that you say it's only 350 bucks enough, a $3,000 mortgage, I was wrong too. So, um, but let's, let's talk about the tariffs.

• 24:04Rob Luna?

  Yeah.

• 24:04Shawn Ryan?

  How did those work out? Everybody was really excited.

• 24:08Rob Luna?

  Yeah.

• 24:09Shawn Ryan?

  And then then it quickly went away.

• 24:12Rob Luna?

  Yeah. Well, I think it depended on what side of the aisle, right, was really excited about it. I think some people hated it from the beginning. Some people loved it, but I think that was on both sides, right? Um, you know, I, I, I voted for, for Trump to get into office for a lot of the same reasons that you did, but I'm not one of these dogmatic guys where it's, oh, everything he's doing great. I disagree with a lot of what's going on right now. And a lot of people ask, ah, see, you're, you're getting, you're getting what you, what you asked for. Well, no. Had it all been done over again, I still would have voted for him because the alternative was a complete freaking disaster. So, but when you think about tariffs, I think this is, I'm a free market capitalist, right? In general, I want to let the free, for me,

• 24:54Rob Luna?

  less government is better. If you could just stay out of my way, I don't need social security. I don't need any handouts. Just leave me the hell alone and I'll figure myself out. I realize not everybody can do that. But when you think about tariffs, inherently, I don't really like tariffs. I don't like government intervention. I don't like trying to dictate what's gonna happen in free markets. However, because the way the game has been played, we have been put in, been put at a significant disadvantage when you think about countries like China. When you start taking a look at national security, and I think we've seen this, right? One of the great things about tariffs, it exposed our weakness in supply chains. It exposed all the problems that we have to where, hey, we are really relying on China and other countries for our economy to run. And that's not

• 25:38Rob Luna?

  sustainable. It's kind of like The great thing about COVID is exposed to a lot of problems like are you going to open up a restaurant today? Without having some backup for outsourcing or delivery or something or not. And so I think what it's done for businesses and I speak from this from working with real small businesses. One of our clients who is a one of the largest floor distributors in California, about 90% of his supply chain was coming from China. He had a lot of problems. Things were backed up. His he had one of the worst quarters in his life, but you know what? He figured it out. He went to other countries. He supply. He broadened his supply chain. He got more negotiation and he was able to increase prices.

• 26:20Rob Luna?

  Now his actual net price is about the same as it was. Those prices will stay up. He's figured out a way to get it done. And as someone who's spent time in China, a lot of people don't, you know, there's a lot of components to this. The Chinese have a different cultural way of doing business and the way we've been kowtowing to them. For years and allowing them to dictate thing. I think the way that Trump is handling with this with them is the way that you need. To deal with the Chinese like you need to take a hard line or they are going to take advantage of you, steal your intellectual property. They are playing the long, long, long game. We play a very short game. So for me, I think when you look at the major impact, we haven't had the inflation that people talked about.

• 27:03Rob Luna?

  I think it's caused business owners to be to diversify supply chains. And I think over a long period of time, look at Taiwan Semiconductor. They're expanding, putting tons of money to create new jobs in Arizona now, right? So at the end of the day, it's working. Uh, what, no matter what it's, it's working. I think it's working. It's putting us in a position where. We're not going to be relying on these countries. Now it's a long game. We still have to do a lot of things to broaden our supply chain. But again. Do we want to be real? Are we want to just be the services business? We don't make or manufacture or can't sustain. Uh, our own quality of life here. I don't, I don't think so. And I think especially when you talk about AI. The time we do need those blue collar jobs to come back here to be able to sustain ourselves.

• 27:47Shawn Ryan?

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• 30:15Shawn Ryan?

  What about this child savings plan? What is that? That's a new thing.

• 30:21Rob Luna?

  Yeah, so it's kids that are born this year. Basically, they're getting a thousand dollars of free money that you can put into a child savings account that that money grows tax free. And so, look, a thousand dollars in and of itself is not a lot of money. However, if you get it invested in something like the S and P, and we did a little thing on this, where if even as a parent, you can contribute another three to four thousand dollars on this, by the time the kid's 25 years of age, they could have almost a million bucks in there. One of the secrets to investing is the earlier you start, the returns are usually the same over a long period of time. It's a smaller amount of money that you have to put in to compound into a very large amount of money. And so, the magic of compounding works for you. So, what do one of people want to do, though?

• 31:06Rob Luna?

  Complain, it's only a thousand bucks, or it's only this, or it's only that. Take it, put it away, invest, because you know what? That's a thousand dollars more than most parents are putting away for their kids right now. If it is going to be a challenging economy and our kids are going to need a leg up to help them buy a home, or help them educate themselves or start a business, you might as well take this money now. So, I see any, any, look, this is, I hate socialism, but so people are like socialism. No, it's our tax dollars that are going to this. I'd rather have my tax dollars go into something that our kids could actually get a benefit from, new parents, their kids could actually get a benefit from, than paying for all this other shit that we've been paying for years that we get absolutely zero benefit from. So, I'm a, I'm a large proponent of it.

• 31:52Shawn Ryan?

  So, is this every child that's born?

• 31:54Rob Luna?

  Every child that's born. Yeah, I don't know exactly what dates this year, it has to be this year, that they're born. So, anyone those kids were born in 2025, like my son, it doesn't, it doesn't work for. But yeah, you get a thousand dollars, it goes into a tax free account that you can invest in basically the equivalent of the S and P 500, which over a long period of time has returned about 10%.

• 32:12Shawn Ryan?

  Could we open an account?

• 32:14Rob Luna?

  Uh, so you would open this account.

• 32:16Shawn Ryan?

  You know what I mean? Can you open the account and invest in it without being penalized? For your, for your kids?

• 32:22Rob Luna?

  Yeah, no, it has to be used for certain things like education. You have to hold it for a certain period of time. But yeah, I mean, it's basically free money now. Is there more that people should be doing for their kids? Yeah, we can, we can talk about that, especially if you're a business owner. There's a lot more things, but. As of right now, is it political, fire, what, whatever? Yeah. But the way I look at it is it's a thousand bucks. That we're paying in taxes that gets put to a much better use than what we're spending most of our money on.

• 32:46Shawn Ryan?

  That's good. That's, I mean. I feel like, I feel like that's a good thing.

• 32:51Rob Luna?

  Yeah, I, I don't see anything negative about it.

• 32:53Shawn Ryan?

  All right. This is probably the biggest topic that we're going to talk about today. Artificial intelligence in the business world, in the job place. What? What is gonna happen? I mean, we talk a lot about third class being, or middle, excuse me, middle class being wiped out.

• 33:08Rob Luna?

  Yeah.

• 33:09Shawn Ryan?

  AI is gonna take a lot of jobs. AI is also going to be a force multiplier to. Type A players. I mean. What are we looking at? What are you seeing already?

• 33:22Rob Luna?

  Yeah, well, that's the thing. It's not like what's gonna happen. It's already happening, right? And it's not that. AI is gonna take most people's jobs. It's people that understand. Finance and strategy. And scaling. That are gonna use AI to take the jobs for most people. So that's really what it is. It's not that this thing of AI. It's how are you utilizing AI or not utilizing AI? And if you're not, you're gonna be wiped out, right? It's kind of like. The horse and buggy. You, you've got to upgrade. You've got to learn new skill sets and you've got to be able to do that. And the problem is. I think there's a lot of complacency that still doesn't believe in what's gonna be happening with AI. And we've got this baby boomer generation where they don't even want to learn. How to use an iPad, let alone how to put AI into their world. And the, and the problem is.

• 34:07Rob Luna?

  With society today is you have to be more innovative. You have to be more entrepreneurial. You know, I have entrepreneurs or people ask me. Everyone asks me whether they want to start their own business or not. What is the skill set I need to learn? You have to learn to be an entrepreneur. Why? Because every entrepreneur, including you that I know, wants to hire entrepreneurial people, people that can come in, critically think, take a division, run it themselves, understand it themselves, work their ass off, do the things that they need to do. And do that, if you can do that, using AI to leverage yourself, to get the power of 10 people, you are going to be very, very successful. And so what everyone needs to start learning is, how can they create, first of all, a valuable skill set? How can they connect with people?

• 34:51Rob Luna?

  And how can they use AI to be able to multiply that? I use AI on a daily basis. My productivity personally versus what I always 12, 18 months has gone up significantly, right? And so when you talk about this just practically, most of the time what I do is spend time with businesses like yours. Everybody, Sean, is saying, okay, what do I need to do for my business to be able to win, succeed, pivot today? How do I build a business? And really, it comes down to a couple of things. It's first of all, you need a small team of all-stars, right? And I'm talking about billion-dollar businesses. And when I say small team, to put that in perspective, like eight to 10 people. To find eight to 10 really good people right now, no matter if you're

• 35:32Rob Luna?

  Apple or if you're Sean Ryan, it's very, very difficult to find those people. So you got to find those people and put them in a position to succeed. Then you need all-star processes that they're following, that are scalable. And then you need all-star technology to be able to develop and scale all that. And so what people are doing today is building flat organizations with really high-quality people, high-quality processes, and high-quality technology. And so the middle management is getting cut out. The average nine-to-fiver is getting cut out. Somebody who just shows up and dots the I and cross the T is getting cut out. And those people are becoming unemployed and businesses are becoming better. They're faster, they're leaner, they're more profitable. And at the end of the day, as a capitalist, when I invest in a business,

• 36:18Rob Luna?

  this isn't a socialistic endeavor. It's I want to invest in businesses that are good. They're solving a problem faster, better, cheaper, and they're doing it more efficiently, and that flows to the bottom line. And that's exactly what AI is doing. So you figure out like, well, how is that killing the middle class? Well, the middle class is not ready to adapt to that. And the biggest problem I have with that and why I worry about this country and all the debt is, you know, when you think about pensions, for example, you know, what my grandfather had, maybe our parents had, working for General Electric or all these companies, Boeing. Pensions are gone. There's no more pensions anymore. So when you retire, if you didn't put money away for yourself, if you don't have a skill set to maybe have to work longer, because with AI, people are actually living longer now.

• 37:02Rob Luna?

  People are going to be in a lot of trouble. And so the debt that we have, the savings that people don't have, the lack of financial literacy, and if people are not understanding that AI is here, it's not going to happen, it's happening. I'm consulting, my firm's consulting every single day. And one of the first things we look at is, what are you guys doing? Who are doing that? Who's doing that? And we're getting rid of people, right? That's, I mean, just being honest, Sean, we're getting rid of people that don't serve a purpose anymore. And the people that serve a purpose have high specialization. They understand that it's not going to be a nine to five anymore. They have to be critical thinkers. They have to pivot and adapt. They have to use technology to leverage what they're doing. They have to demand more. They have to have that entrepreneurial mindset to understand and know

• 37:46Rob Luna?

  that this person is hiring me because they want to make more money. How do I become more efficient, more specialized and become an asset, not a liability to the company? If you're a liability, AI is going to wipe you out.

• 37:57Shawn Ryan?

  Wow, wow. So what is going to happen? I mean, let me ask you this. Do you have a percentage of the workforce that you think will be wiped out?

• 38:08Rob Luna?

  I don't, you know, I haven't done that work and I'm just not a guy that comes up with random numbers. I think it's a lot, though. I think it's a lot of people because, you know, you talked about it before and you talked about like this analogy of your son walking up the hill. There's just a lot of average people. And this goes back to, you know, everyone gets a trophy, you know, this whole woke situation, right? Where, that's one of the things I do love about this administration. At least we don't hear about that shit anymore, right? It's like, it, people just don't want to work hard anymore. And it's every single service that you need, whether it's financial services, whether it's getting your dog's haircut, whether it's getting someone to come out and fix your electricity.

• 38:50Rob Luna?

  Nobody answers the phone. Nobody wants to show up. Nobody wants to work hard anymore. And so I think. Okay, if that's the median, then what are those people gonna do? I don't know. Because it's not just like retooling their their skill set, it's retooling their mindset. And understanding to be able to succeed, that shit's not gonna fly anymore. So that's who you are. I can easily put an algorithm, a robot, a trophy. I'd rather deal, I'd rather walk into a Chase bank today. And deal with a kiosk than I would talking to one of these people. Who doesn't know shit, who doesn't wanna work, who doesn't wanna make a second call, they're just there. As a as a cutout, basically, to deter me and nine out of 10 times, I'm gonna have to leave and call a

• 39:32Rob Luna?

  customer service number anyway. That's Southwest Airlines, everything these days. I'd rather just deal with a robot. That's me at 51. My daughter's never grown up without technology and an iPad. She's 18, getting ready to go to college. Think about that with the millennial generation, which is larger than the baby jumer generation. They wanna deal with robots and technology. They don't wanna deal with Joe Blow, has no value and is wasting their time.

• 39:54Shawn Ryan?

  I mean, what what does? What does it look like? I mean, what does that look like with the middle class wiped out? AI is gonna, if AI wipes that many jobs. I mean, obviously, it means a lot of government assistance.

• 40:09Rob Luna?

  Yeah.

• 40:09Shawn Ryan?

  And that's great. That's great, right? No, that's horrible. What I'm saying is that's great entrepreneurs, like, cool, you got a bunch of A players, AI. You know, fucking jet launched, you know, a force multiplier for you, business is going great. Cool, who's gonna buy your product?

• 40:25Rob Luna?

  Yeah, exactly. We're still, we're still.

• 40:27Shawn Ryan?

  Because everybody's broke.

• 40:29Rob Luna?

  Exactly.

• 40:29Shawn Ryan?

  It's a real question. It's a question.

• 40:31Rob Luna?

  No, it's it's a great question, and the answer is, who's gonna be able to provide for your product is the people who can afford it. Which is gonna be a smaller subset. And so this is why I believe that, you know, I've spent time, you spend time out of this country in India. You've got ultra wealthy. I spent time there where I watched basically a castle, gates open up. Rolls Royce pull out of there, kids out there trying to squirt it and wash it. Who live five feet away where they don't even have running water or sewage, right? That's kind of, I mean, that's maybe a little bit polarizing, but that could be close to what our country comes, or how do you solve for that is through socialism? And see, that's why I'm really worried going, I hate to keep going back to this whole New York thing.

• 41:13Rob Luna?

  But it's the canary in the coal mine, right? Because this narrative, and we've seen the way he won. Very smart. He went as far left as possible and he stood there because what his message does is it resonates with those people who don't want to work, who aren't going to have jobs, who are going to be flushed out. How are you going to solve that? Free handouts, free cells. And so that will continue to spread throughout this rest of this country and socialism is what's going to kill the American dream. And you think about our deficit. How are we going to get out of that? We can't grow our way out of that. You need to have like 8, 10% GDP. You know, are we going to get out of it? Higher taxes. Higher taxes will kill the American dream. We're already paying enough in taxes.

• 41:55Rob Luna?

  And but hey, tax the 1%. We don't care. You can you make $500,000 a year for some people that's so far removed from what they're making. Tax those people, tax those 10 people, tax those people. That will get passed and will become uncompetitive and you won't be able to work or live here anymore. Because or you just, you know, you become Europe and that's where I'm what I'm afraid of.

• 42:18Rob Luna?

  I mean, I hope there's something different, but what happens to those people? I mean, they've got to learn and adapt, but it's I don't think it's going to happen quick enough. It will happen eventually. New York will come back in 20, 30 years after it burns down, just like we saw in the 80s before Giuliani came down. Once it hits the bottom, it will rebuild. But how long does that take and at what cost?

• 42:41Shawn Ryan?

  Do you have any good news for us, Rob?

• 42:44Rob Luna?

  Yeah, I mean, look, I think like that's what I told you at the beginning.

• 42:47Shawn Ryan?

  We get $1,000 if we got a baby.

• 42:50Rob Luna?

  Yeah, hopefully that works. But like, that's what I kind of told you at the beginning, right? I've never been more optimistic because I know I'm going to win. I know you're going to win. I know all my clients are going to win.

• 43:06Rob Luna?

  And that's why every business, Sean, that I'm dealing with today.

• 43:11Rob Luna?

  Is they're going up market? How do I deliver services to people who could afford those services? Cause even if it's a smaller percentage of people, it's a higher price point. And what you need to do is you need to look at wealthy people. What's their most valuable asset is this time? So how do you find a problem that gives them that you can solve that gives them their time back? They're willing to pay for that because that's their most valuable asset. So every single business I'm talking to do is going more and more towards that. More and more towards leaner, flatter organizations, more and towards cutting middle management out more and more being fit. All these things for businesses are very, very highly profitable. Investing in the businesses. If you look at capex spending of all these big technology companies, where is all their spending that they're already telling the market about going?

• 43:53Rob Luna?

  To AI, to robotics, to artificial intelligence, to increasing productivity, increasing profits at the cost of what? Their highest input cost, which is labor. So if you can get labor out, you're look at your P and L, look at my P and L. I've never seen a P and L where labor wasn't the most cost, the highest cost. So if you can reduce that and that, and I, I believe, again, going back to the chase example, not only in this, when I consult with businesses, it's not about, how do we just get rid of people and get more profits? It's about how do we get rid of these mediocre people and create a better solution and service for your customers? So what they're getting is actually better and faster and a better experience. And at the same time, you have higher profits.

• 44:38Rob Luna?

  That's a win-win. And so it's not just like, let me put this money in my pocket. No, it's like, how do I reinvest that into technology and solutions to make it a better outcome so that I can compete at the highest level? And that comes at the cost of these average people. So, I mean, that's the truth, Sean, it's just going back to like, you, you just gotta figure it out. And I'm just somebody, Sean, you, you know, my background, I grew up super poor, like my, my, you know, food stamp type of poor, horrible. I had every excuse in the book to be a loser and fail and not win. My brother and I, same situation, he's in prison, I'm where I'm at today, it's mindset. It's realizing that nothing's fucking going to be handed to you. You gotta work your ass off, the environment's always going to be changing.

• 45:19Rob Luna?

  You have to pivot and adapt, you have to find out what the skills are that are valuable today. It's never comfortable, it's never going to be easy. You're never going to sit back and be able to pound your chest and win. You're always going to have to go out there and grind and add value. And that means I'm 51 years old today, I'm my, I'm my second business, I'm in a pretty good position financially. When you call me, do I answer the phone? Yeah, it's what you have to do. I don't care if it's Sunday, I'm shopping, whatever it is, you know why? That's your expectation and it should be. It's just not America today. We need to get back to that.

• 45:52Shawn Ryan?

  I don't know if that's gonna happen.

• 45:54Rob Luna?

  It has to. It is not. It's not for everybody and probably not fast enough. And that's why when I look at out into the future. When I look at the list, the laundry list of things that we need to do to save this country.

• 46:08Rob Luna?

  I don't think people are gonna get it and do it in enough time. When I look at the flip side of what we need to do to let New York expand and proliferate throughout the rest of the country, it's very easy. So we have to battle against that in everything that we do, how we raise our kids, how we vote, how we hire. What our expectations are as CEOs for the rest of our employees, wherein we're investing our dollars in unless we make those decisions. And that's why. Not to beat up on the 50 year mortgage, I hate Band-Aids. I'm tired of Band-Aids. I'm tired of, I mean, think about that last time we tried to. Do something for homeownership with Barney, on the other side of the aisle, Barney Frank and Nancy Pelosi, everybody should own a home. Liar loans. How did that work out? Collapsed.

• 46:51Rob Luna?

  Everyone short sold their home and their government and their infinite wisdom, what did they do? They gave them actual debt forgiveness. So before, if you short sold your home, that hundred grand or whatever, you had to pay taxes on this. Ah, no. Let that go. You know who paid the bill? Me. Because you, because my house sunk in value and I stayed there and I continued to pay the mortgage. It took me six years to get out of that. What about PPP loans, all that shit during COVID where you know what? We just sucked it up and worked. I didn't take any of that money. I could have took a million dollars free from the government. They offered it to me. I didn't take it. Why? Because I didn't need it. But you know how many assholes took it and bought Lamborghinis and Ferraris and Rolex watches? True story. I could point to them. Some of them are in jail, but not enough of them.

• 47:33Rob Luna?

  This is the shit and the moral hazard that we're creating with all these things that we need to get away from. But you know what? Soundbites sell. The way politicians run today, people want easy, fast. They don't want to really fix the problem. I don't think Trump or anyone else, it's not that they. Can't fix the problem. It's what it's gonna take to do that and be honest with the American public. They're never gonna say it because it'll never get them vote. Voting in.

• 47:59Rob Luna?

  They're not that stupid Sean, they know what it takes. I'm not smarter than them. But I can get it fixed, but you know what? No one would ever vote for me.

• 48:08Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 48:11Shawn Ryan?

  I mean, we could talk about that with the economy, we could talk about that with the energy grid.

• 48:16Rob Luna?

  Exactly, yeah.

• 48:18Shawn Ryan?

  We've about a lot of things.

• 48:20Rob Luna?

  Yeah.

• 48:21Shawn Ryan?

  But they, they just, transportation.

• 48:23Rob Luna?

  Yeah.

• 48:24Shawn Ryan?

  The roads, you know, I mean.

• 48:25Rob Luna?

  Well, yeah, to your point, I mean, I, I, I know finance and that's kind of the lane that I stay in. Um, but money's pretty important, right? Um, but when you think about the military and all like your expertise and experience, you see the same shit there. That's this whole mentality proliferates through everything. And yeah, not just that, but again, going back to New York. The NYPD, like when I grew up. When I went to New York, you know, I was born in New Jersey, so and I didn't move to LA till I was nine, like. The NP, NYPD, wow, wow, that's something you really wanted to be, you felt safe. When the NYPD was there after nine 11 NYPD fire department. You go there today and it's like.

• 49:09Rob Luna?

  Crap, no one wants that job anymore. You're looking at like, I feel like I'm gonna have to go save these people if anything goes down. These aren't the people that I could protect and you talk to them, they can't recruit anybody anymore. Nobody wants to do that. So this whole mindset, this softness, this weakening of America. Not wanting to take our medicine, which I think tariffs are. And I think other things that we need to do to take a step back in order to take three steps forward. It's just, it's just very hard to get those things done and it frustrates me Sean, because I look at every single thing that happens. The PPP loans, the, the short selling, all these things that we do for me to reward mediocrity. And then what do we want to do is we want to take the 1% and the 1% isn't billionaires, guys. They always point to these billionaire assholes.

• 49:54Rob Luna?

  The 1% the people that are making eight, 900,000, million dollars a year, trust me, guys, that's not ultra wealthy. That's not private. Those are people like me or you that grew up, busted our ass, that lived in, lived with it, within our means. Had sacrifices. There's a reason I'm on my second marriage, Sean, because I wasn't there. I missed birthdays. I missed everything. I sacrificed to build a business that was able to put myself in a position. Do I regret any of it? No. Cause my daughter wouldn't have gotten to the schools that she's going to. Like, that's just the shit it takes. If you want things in life, you have to give other things away. And I hate to keep going back to the, but it's, it's, it's, it's every single thing. And so when I say the American dream is dead.

• 50:36Rob Luna?

  This is what I'm talking about. We gotta, we gotta fix the mentality. We gotta start taking our medicine. We gotta understand that. It's not gonna just be a magic pill that we're gonna be able to take and everything's gonna be okay. But that's what politicians, that's what, that's what gets people voted in. That's why most people vote off 30 second news clip. Like you can't even, no one even wants to watch more than 60 second reel anymore, right? It's, it's amazing how well you're doing with this long form content that people actually watch the whole show. I can't even get people to pay attention for, for 60 seconds anymore. Rob, I wanna be wealthy. I wanna, cool. I could teach you how to do. I just can't do it in three minutes. They don't wanna spend the time.

• 51:13Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 51:16Shawn Ryan?

  Man. How about the national debt? We're approaching 40.

• 51:21Rob Luna?

  Trillion?

• 51:22Shawn Ryan?

  Trillion.

• 51:22Rob Luna?

  Yeah.

• 51:23Shawn Ryan?

  What is that? I mean, we, we keep talking about this. What are the implication, what are the actual implications?

• 51:28Rob Luna?

  Yeah.

• 51:29Shawn Ryan?

  Who do we owe the money to?

• 51:30Rob Luna?

  Yeah, well, to bondholders, right? Some of them to China and other countries and, you know, internally we hold that debt. So, yeah, it's a lot of debt that we have. The, the big problem about it also is the vast majority of it is short-term financing, which is another thing, like when we had near zero interest rates. I don't know why we just didn't look to refinance all our debt at longer term and zero interest rates, because now as interest rates tick up, the debt that we're having to pay is much higher. So now we're paying over a trillion dollars in just the, the debt service, which is more than we spend on defense just to service that debt. We're still, with this administration running annually near a $2 trillion deficit that we're just adding on to that.

• 52:12Rob Luna?

  So then you start thinking to the point I was making before, like, well, how the hell do we get out of this? We can't grow our way out. Like you have to do eight to 10% GDP. We're at like 2% GDP and we're already adding to that. The only way that you get out of it is you start cutting entitlements like social security and all those things. You start raising taxes. You start doing all the things that we don't want to happen. So social security is pretty much almost bankrupt, right? So all of this, so the implications are is that social systems will fail, taxes will have to go up. The the US debt could be downgraded again, which means we'd have to pay even higher interest in that. The US dollar is the reserve currency right now. Does it stay that way forever? Well, not necessarily if people lose faith in what's going on there. It's just like an individual, right?

• 52:58Rob Luna?

  You can keep racking up debt and living beyond your means as long as you can finance that and put that, you know, people are, you know, credit card debt, I think is an even bigger issue. We've got 1.3 trillion dollars in credit card debt that the average American has right now. They're paying 24% interest on, not four or 5%, 24% interest. How are they gonna get at that? By the way, that's an all time high. And by the way, we've had the highest delinquency rate we've had since the Great Recession in 2009. By the way, just the last 24 months, that delinquency rate has doubled. There's real problems out there, Sean. And these are the same people that are racking up credit cards to get by, to have their experiences or whatever they're spending that that money on right now.

• 53:40Rob Luna?

  They're probably the same people that are not going to have jobs. And so what I'm thinking is, you're not gonna hear this, the people that are not paying their credit cards are probably the people, the companies that I'm working for that are getting fired. They don't have jobs because they don't have value to add to an organization. So this gets worse.

• 53:59Rob Luna?

  And I'm an optimistic, I'm an optimistic person. Sounds like it. You know, I know I, I am, I am. I'm just, but what I'm not optimistic about is the largest part of the US, which is the middle class, adjusting and adapting and doing what it takes for them to be able to win. So it's just a smaller subset of people that will win, but they'll win bigger than ever before. So you gotta, as an American, you gotta choose which one do you wanna be, which one do your kids wanna be?

• 54:20Shawn Ryan?

  Well, I mean, the thing that I don't, the thing that just not computing for me is if we lose the consumers, then, you know, then there's nobody to buy the product.

• 54:31Rob Luna?

  Yeah, well, look, I mean, if you're selling cheap product, if you're Procter and Gamble and you're selling toilet paper and people are still gonna find a way to do those things, right? Um, but it's kinda like the middle, those middle levels of services to the middle class are the things that are gonna be wiped out. If you're selling, you know, Ferrari's still doing good and Rolex watches are doing good and our firm's like having mega years. Like, we're doing way more in our first year of business than I did in the first 10 years of business in my firm before. Why? We're dealing with successful, like-minded people like you who are gonna just make shit happen. And so that's who we're selling to. If I was creating a business right now for the middle class, I wouldn't be creating a business right now for the middle class. Not what I'm looking to do.

• 55:11Shawn Ryan?

  What, what, if you were creating a business, what sectors would you be looking at?

• 55:15Rob Luna?

  Um, I would be looking at sectors, again, that are solving problems for people who don't have a lot of time. And by solving that problem for them are willing to pay for that. And that can be just about anything from financial services to, like, I, I talked about it before when I was saying, when I, when I say anything, it's from personal experience, getting someone to come and groom your dog. Like, these people are booked out four, five, six months to be able to do that, right? Um, we don't groom our own dogs, right? And we're willing, and it's not cheap, like, every time they come, the dog's like 250, 300 bucks to get groomed. There's clearly, just in our neighborhood, a demand for these services. There's no supply, so there's a problem.

• 55:59Rob Luna?

  We don't have the time to cut our dogs ourselves, there's no one who wants to show up and do it. Why not do that? Why not go out there, learn how to do it, be the person who does it yourself, then hire somebody else to get the second van out there going, and the third, it's almost anything, pick anything, Sean. But it goes back to, are you willing to do what's, an electrician, plumber? Like, you, you can become a, I've worked with multi-multi-millionaires, close to billionaires in everything, plumbing, landscaping.

• 56:26Rob Luna?

  Pest control, all these are services that people with money are willing to pay for. And if you understand how to build, scale a company, use technology to motivate that, you can really go out there and win today. So I'm not going to say like the big thing is be an AI consultant. Yeah, maybe, whatever, but just do anything on scale and show up. That's, that's really what you need to do today.

• 56:49Shawn Ryan?

  You know, we're, we're talking about all the, we're, we're just going back a little bit. I was just thinking about things and, and, um, you know, we're, we're talking about unmotivated, average folks.

• 57:01Rob Luna?

  Yeah.

• 57:02Shawn Ryan?

  But I mean, you,

• 57:05Shawn Ryan?

  that's a choice.

• 57:06Rob Luna?

  Of course.

• 57:06Shawn Ryan?

  You know, and so, I mean, for business owners, you know, how do they motivate their staff? Can you? Cause that's another, that's, I mean, we, we, we're sitting here talking and we're, you know, we're attacking, you know, a, a, a large percentage of the workforce.

• 57:28Rob Luna?

  Yeah.

• 57:28Shawn Ryan?

  You know, and, and, but I mean, how can you incentivize them, you know, and, and turn them into a motivated employee? Motivated team member, you know, how do you do that?

• 57:40Rob Luna?

  Yeah. Well, I think first of all, um, you know, I'm not somebody who needs to be motivated.

• 57:47Shawn Ryan?

  Well, I'll tell you what I'm getting at.

• 57:49Rob Luna?

  Yeah.

• 57:49Shawn Ryan?

  You know, is back to, back to Valtrion. So, been a bit of a crisis here and, uh, we work together and, you know, I needed to know how to incentivize, you know, my, my people here.

• 58:03Rob Luna?

  Yeah.

• 58:04Shawn Ryan?

  And, um, and, and, and, you know, the vast majority of them, even there's not very many of us. I mean, pretty much everybody here is a fucking killer.

• 58:12Rob Luna?

  Yeah.

• 58:13Shawn Ryan?

  And, um, otherwise they wouldn't be here.

• 58:16Rob Luna?

  Right.

• 58:17Shawn Ryan?

  But, you know, when, when, when, when I hired you and your team to come in and, and do an assessment and do some consulting and stuff and, and, you know, one of my bigs things was how, how can I incentivize these guys? And you put that structure in place. You put that incentives, instead of incentive bonus structure in place. And, you know, net, you end of the year now approaching the beginning of the year and we always do end of the year reviews and, you know, when I tell them about the new bonus structure, you see their eyes light up immediately.

• 58:48Rob Luna?

  Yeah.

• 58:49Shawn Ryan?

  And they're like, oh shit. And it's already fucking working. It's already working. I mean, One guy, phenomenal editor, fucking phenomenal editor. And, you know, told him I need him, hey, you know, here's a new structure. Like you to get to know cameras. You need to learn how to run a camera a little bit better. Guess what? Two fucking days later, I come down here, he's working on fucking cameras immediately. And so that it works. And so, you know, I think that it, I guess what I'm trying to say is, you know, there's also ways

• 59:21Rob Luna?

  Yeah.

• 59:21Shawn Ryan?

  for business owners to not just go, oh, you know, you're fucking lazy. You're not working. You're not doing this.

• 59:28Rob Luna?

  Good point.

• 59:28Shawn Ryan?

  You can, you can incentivize them and you proved that to me.

• 59:32Rob Luna?

  Yeah.

• 59:33Shawn Ryan?

  Uh, through your company and, and, and it's been, I mean, I just started those this week.

• 59:38Rob Luna?

  Yeah, yeah. Rolling it out.

• 59:40Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, and they're not even finished yet. And they're already fucking pumped. I can see the fire.

• 59:46Rob Luna?

  But, but yeah, so let's talk about that and let's, and let's share with the audience what it is. Cause I think there's either, there are a lot of entrepreneurs that listen to you and a lot of people that want to become entrepreneurs. But I think more importantly, Sean, most of the people that I've worked with over my career that have become very, very wealthy were actually entrepreneurs. They were people who work within a larger organization, but they were really on, the best people I know that have made a lot of money inside of other organizations, small, mid and large, could have themselves been entrepreneurs, but they had a better opportunity to go in somewhere else where there was a team in place that could allow them to leverage their skillset. And for most of them, that was a smart decision. I always say, I started my own firm primarily because

• 1:00:29Rob Luna?

  the person I was working for before kept that carrot of, hey, you're going to get this or get that. And then it was always like, ah, sorry, can't get that. No bonus, no that. It was just finally, I was just like, mm, I'm never going to be able to grow here. So no one ever gave me the opportunity to have my work rewarded. So I went out and started my own thing. For most people, they don't have to do that. Right? And so when you talk about this, um, First of all, going back to how you build businesses today, small team of all-stars, all-star processes, all-star technology, part of the all-star processes is how do you reward and compensate those individuals? And a lot of entrepreneurs, it's like, especially the first few years, like you, it's like head down, let me just work. When I did your show,

• 1:01:12Rob Luna?

  I was episode 42, the first time. Like, I was so shocked when I showed up. You're like, "Come over here, take a picture, Rob, I'm looking for the, like, where's the camera crew? There's no camera crew." Like, everything-

• 1:01:21Shawn Ryan?

  Oh yeah, it was just me and you back-

• 1:01:22Rob Luna?

  It was just me and you, dude. And now it's like this, like, dude, there was nobody else. But like, that's kind of what it takes, right? When you start, same thing when I started my previous, not this firm, I'm a little further along now, the first firm I started, dude, it was just me. I was the guy who traded the stocks and did the business development, mailed the applications and all those things, right? And so here's the thing, though, you can do a lot of things to go from zero to a million bucks. It's just work your ass off seven days a week, but to go from a million to five million to 10 million to 100 million, which is what everybody wants to do, especially if it doesn't take any more work, especially like, if it could be less work, if it's just done within a strategy, like this whole world's word "scale." Everyone says, "Scale, scale, scale, scale." I went back and did an MBA at

• 1:02:06Rob Luna?

  38 because I didn't know what the fuck "scale" meant, right? And I'm not advocating that for everyone, but I needed to understand what that was. And then what I understood was, it's like, "Oh, it's just processes, and it's just transparency, and it's just alignment, and it's just actually really simple. And wow, if I do this, it's actually easier to run my business this way." But it took me 20 years to get that knowledge and information. And so for most entrepreneurs, they're just head down, buried in the sand. And then what happens, though, is you hit that proverbial glass ceiling, and you can't grow. And then you're like, "Man, is this a business, or did I just buy myself a job?" Right? And that's ultimately what it becomes. And the problem there is, you can't increase cash flow because you can't scale, you don't grow any enterprise value, so your business isn't worth anything. And

• 1:02:48Rob Luna?

  then what it is, it's like, "Okay, now I've sacrificed, missing out on my kid's life, I'm constantly fighting with my wife, I'm in constant stress." And all these things of being an entrepreneur, it's like, is it really worth it? It's not unless you can get- Past that hurdle. And so that's kind of what I do is like, I just take what I learned, right? And then I come in with your team and to back to your question, how do you incentivize average people? You don't, you don't, you fire average people, you hire exceptional people. And what I found interviewing your team, these are exceptional people. These are great people, but now the idea is, okay, if you're a business owner, the hardest thing is to attract talent. And because a lot of your success, it's brought the best people to you. The second hardest thing to do is to be able to develop talent.

• 1:03:34Rob Luna?

  And the third hardest thing to do is be able to main talent, maintain talent, right? Because you got to get them to come in. No matter who, what business you are, you still have to develop them to understand what is your culture? And how do you get there? And then once they do that, Sean, is the grass greener on the other side? Do I, and this is every business, do I go and leave? How do you get them to stay? Because now you've invested tons of money and time on them. Do you want to train people to go out to a competitor and be there? No. And so I always tell entrepreneurs, when you hire, we put these all-star processes and we hire these all-star people. We have to incentivize them to be here for a long, long period of time. Because your ROI is not going to be in the first year or two years. You're actually losing money. So you got to keep time on them, you got to spend money on them.

• 1:04:18Rob Luna?

  And the last thing you could do, the most expensive thing for an entrepreneur, the most costly mistake is hiring wrong. So it goes back to we work on your hiring process, setting job descriptions that are right, bringing the right people in. And then when they come in though, a lot of times people are like, oh, this person sucks. No, you suck because you didn't have clear expectations, you didn't have clear processes. They didn't know what the hell they were doing. And their compensation and their incentives weren't in alignment with the goal that you were trying to achieve. So what we do with you, and this is what every entrepreneur can do is we figure out first and foremost, where are we trying to go? So what is our revenue we're trying to get? What are our margins? Who's our target customer? And then we figure out that what are all the activities we need to do to make that happen?

• 1:05:02Rob Luna?

  And who are the people that do the activities to make those things happening? From answering the phone, in your case, editing, all those things. They are the people within your organization that play a role. So then the question I always ask people is, okay, here's what you want them to do. How are you compensating them? And what I find out is the compensation is almost never in line with the incentive. And then they wonder why are they not doing the activities they want because they're not rewarded for doing that. So what you have to first do is figure out the strategy, figure out what you want from that person. And then you need to structure compensation and bonuses incentives for them to be able to do that. And there's two components I use with every business, including our own. First of all, keep KPIs. We've been talking about this key performance indicators.

• 1:05:45Rob Luna?

  Like what are the activities that you need this individual, individuals, and they're usually different, to be able to do to get you towards that goal because everyone's playing in a role to getting there. And they should know what their role is and what that ultimate goal is. So those are, that's one thing, and that's an individual. So your individual should be reported or rewarded based off of his or her own contribution. So if you've got someone who's crushing it, they're doing their part. But Joe's asleep at the wheel and sucks and has got family problems, isn't showing up, doesn't want to work. Like, should they be penalized because of that? No. So you might not ultimately hit your revenue goals. But Joe shouldn't be penalized because everybody else sucked. He should be rewarded. So that's number one is make sure individuals are rewarded for their contribution.

• 1:06:29Rob Luna?

  And number two, what I always like to do is incentivize the group as a whole for hitting those big top line goals because every business, your business, my business, every business I work with, it's not altruism. We need to hit a top line and we need a bottom line to be able to pay and do things and give you raise increases and buy more products and have a better, create better products, all those things. So what we then do is have a bonus for everybody. Hey, if we hit these guys' goals, guys, we all get more money, right? We all get more incentive. And then if we crush it, like I like to reward for overachieving, right? Stretch goals. If we crush it even more, more money. So what I always tell people is, you have to remember, once you educate them, get them, they have a couple of options. They can go work for a competitor, they can do it themselves.

• 1:07:14Rob Luna?

  What are you creating? What type of environment, culture, which I think you do better than anybody else here? Are you creating to maintain that talent? And what type of incentive compensation do they have? And what I was always able to do in wealth management and kind of starts with my own background, is I was able to create a situation to where it's like, Why would I go out and start my own business at 10 or 15% margins when I know right now I'm making 20 or 30% margins? Have the headache and the hassle and leave this great team that I know makes me better. Because being on my own as an individual, probably not going to be able to compete. But these guys were playing, especially that's what's so good about you right now. And why you're at where you're at is your expectations are super high, super high.

• 1:07:55Rob Luna?

  Everyone, anyone that's ever achieved anything good that I work with, I work with some of the best athletes in the world. Best entrepreneurs, best entrepreneurs in the world. You don't need to motivate them. You don't need to. They are harder on themselves than they will ever be on you, you will ever be on them, right? So your team is already there. This culture is phenomenal. You're the number one. Like, everybody wants to be here, which creates that competition also. But what I can say about you also and every client that I personally work with is.

• 1:08:29Rob Luna?

  You want them to win. You want them to buy that next house. You want them to be incentivized. Every time I talk to you, it's like, I have to stop you sometimes. Like, how do we get them to make more? Like, okay, Sean, and this is everybody. This is like, I won't work with them if they're not like that. Because if you want to succeed as an entrepreneur, you have to get joy from watching your team win. And when I see you with your team, nobody cares more about their team winning than you do. So when you think about all these things, Sean, it comes back to what I said. Hire all-star people, put all-star processes in place. Most people don't know how to do that. Find, get yourself educated and find how to do that. Get them the all-star technology to be able to replicate themselves because you're not going to be able to find a thousand of them. You don't need a thousand of them anymore. That's the great thing about AI.

• 1:09:12Rob Luna?

  Our firm we're building today, when we first started three years ago planning for this. Like, we're numbers people. So year two, we're going to hire this many people. And three, we're going to hire, like, we're at today, like, we're like, we've cut like 70% of the hiring that we thought. 70%? 70%. Why? Because there's just roles that are being eliminated in these. But you know what? The type of people we're hiring is different. Most of those people are like mediocre, average people. We're like, no, no, let's just hire the best and give them the best technology. And let's 10x their own individual productivity versus having a bunch of mediocre people just sucking the air out of the room.

• 1:09:50Shawn Ryan?

  I hope that answers the question. I'm pretty long-winded. I'm sorry sometimes. No, that's, that's, that's perfect. That's perfect. But, um, thank you. Let's take a quick break. When we come back, I want to ask you why the hell gold's at $4,200 an ounce? All right.

• 1:10:07Shawn Ryan?

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• 1:11:33Shawn Ryan?

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• 1:11:40Shawn Ryan?

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• 1:12:37Shawn Ryan?

  All right, Rob, we're back from the break. I forgot a couple of things at the beginning. I got too fired up, too excited here. So, you know, it's probably the only reason you came back.

• 1:12:46Rob Luna?

  That's the only reason I came. I heard these are almost sold out.

• 1:12:50Shawn Ryan?

  They're almost done.

• 1:12:51Rob Luna?

  I won't put it on eBay, though, I promise.

• 1:12:54Shawn Ryan?

  I wouldn't blame you if you did. But, and then, you know, we got a Patreon account.

• 1:12:59Rob Luna?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:59Shawn Ryan?

  It's a subscription account and, you know, they're the reason that I get to sit down here with you today. So, we offer them the opportunity to ask every single guest a question. This is from Steve Lanthier.

• 1:13:14Shawn Ryan?

  "If 50 years old, the company I work for is closing with eight months severance, with eight months severance pay and a little over $100,000 in this 401k, how can I set myself up to retire and cover expenses till I can draw my military?"

• 1:13:31Rob Luna?

  Yeah, I mean, look, so most people know if you've got 100 grand, people will wanna know, what does that mean in terms of income? It's usually about 5% to 6%. That's only gonna provide them about $5,000 to $6,000 in income, so more than likely not gonna be enough. Hopefully, Social Security and military, when that kicks in, will help them get there. But, look, I mean, it's just one of these things where he's gonna have to have eight months severance. I think at 50 years of age, hopefully, we talked about it before, he's got a skill set that's viable today. He's just gonna, he's gonna have to work more. I mean, that's the, at 50 years old, I think no one's gonna be retiring at 50 anymore. He's just gonna have to figure a way how he's gonna work, because with 100 grand and eight months severance, I'd love to give him a magic pill, but it's not. He's just gonna have to find another, another company to slip into, or look to start his own thing if he thinks he has a skill set

• 1:14:16Rob Luna?

  to be able to do that.

• 1:14:17Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, yeah. Well, thank you. Thank you. All right.

• 1:14:23Shawn Ryan?

  Gold.

• 1:14:24Rob Luna?

  Hmm.

• 1:14:24Shawn Ryan?

  Why is it at forty two hundred dollars an ounce? What's silver? Is it sixty?

• 1:14:28Rob Luna?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, I mean, I think the thing about silver and gold is silver typically follows some increment of what gold does. So silver is done just that this year. However, it's done even better. Why? Because of the industrial use of silver and everything AI that's going on right now. So you've got this whole concern about, okay, is there going to be inflation because the Fed's probably going to have to cut interest rates again because of all the things that we talked about and all the debt that is piling up. We didn't even, you know, we talked about the national deficit, but real estate debt over a trillion dollars that needs to be financed next year. So there's a lot of worry out there right now. And I think when you have that type of worry, um, you'll have people talk about Bitcoin being a hedge,

• 1:15:12Rob Luna?

  and maybe we'll talk about that. I think it's not gold over five thousand years, especially over the last hundred years, has proven, especially during inflationary periods, to be a very good hedge. Uh, and so I think you've got gold doing what it typically does during this period of time of uncertainty. It's doing pretty, pretty well. And I think silver is just following.

• 1:15:31Shawn Ryan?

  Man, I started buying gold in twenty twenty because I, you know,

• 1:15:35Rob Luna?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:35Shawn Ryan?

  I started buying a lot of different things.

• 1:15:36Rob Luna?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:37Shawn Ryan?

  Twenty twenty that I.

• 1:15:38Rob Luna?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:38Shawn Ryan?

  Toilet paper.

• 1:15:39Rob Luna?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:40Shawn Ryan?

  But, uh, I mean, I, I think when I started buying gold, it was twelve hundred dollars an ounce.

• 1:15:45Rob Luna?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:15:47Shawn Ryan?

  Five years later, it's forty two hundred dollars an ounce.

• 1:15:50Rob Luna?

  No, it's done.

• 1:15:50Shawn Ryan?

  Silver was, I think, twenty.

• 1:15:53Rob Luna?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:54Shawn Ryan?

  Two, twenty-three maybe an ounce.

• 1:15:56Rob Luna?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:56Shawn Ryan?

  Now it's sixty something an ounce.

• 1:15:58Rob Luna?

  Yeah, gold, gold is one of those assets, I think, over when you're, everyone should be putting together diversified portfolio, right? You know, when all your eggs in one basket, that's pretty, pretty common saying, but it's true. The question is, how do you diversify those eggs? And so when you think about gold as an asset class, um, I think everybody should have between about five to 10% of their overall portfolio in gold. So if you've got a hundred thousand bucks total, five to 10,000 of that would be in gold. Um, I prefer.

• 1:16:28Rob Luna?

  Using actual gold bars, coins versus like the GLD ETF that you can access. Maybe that's second best, or if you've only got a 401k and you have GLD in there, that might be the way. Same thing, SLV is an ETF. I'd rather hold the silver because it's just more of a hedge. The challenge is that it's a little bit harder to get in and out of gold and silver. There's very few places that do it. There are some good ones out there, but look, I think long-term it's a hedge. If you're so inclined to be able to time it a little bit around inflationary periods, when you think those are going to be happening, it tends to do a little bit better versus deflationary periods. But arguably, with what we're getting into, which I think the Fed will have to cut interest rates a lot more aggressively than they're telegraphing,

• 1:17:13Rob Luna?

  a lot more aggressively than even the market thinks. I think that is a really good backdrop for precious metals to continue to do well. So it should be part of every portfolio, in my opinion.

• 1:17:23Shawn Ryan?

  Why has it gone up so much? I mean, it didn't do this before, did it?

• 1:17:28Rob Luna?

  Yeah, I mean, there's been periods. I mean, it's always held up well during uncertainty. 2008, 2009, during the dot-com crash, during COVID, gold has held up exceptionally well. So that's the thing I love about gold, too. Like I said, it's been around 5,000 years, but you just look at the last 100 years, there's a track record. Unlike cryptocurrency, like we've only got 15 years of crypto. When you think about data sets, and I'm very big on data, 15 years is nothing. You can't make any determination, but gold has been very, very reliable over that period of time. And I just think with tariffs, all the uncertainty that's going on, all the things that crypto was supposed to do and hold up well during, which it hasn't. I think 2025, pretty much everything's down, right? Bitcoin's down significantly during that period of time.

• 1:18:13Rob Luna?

  Gold has done what it should be doing. And so I think during of all the alternative asset classes to stocks and bonds and real estate, I do like precious metals. And I don't have enough. I wish I would have bought more.

• 1:18:27Shawn Ryan?

  I mean, should people be buying it now or is it going to come back down?

• 1:18:31Rob Luna?

  Yeah, I think, look, it's very hard to time any market. And so one of the things about investing in general, the shorter your time horizon is, the harder it is. The longer it is, the easier it is. Think about the S and P, the largest 500 companies. Over any 10 year period, it does well. Over a longer period of time, it's always done 10%, but it comes like this. If you needed to know, what is the S and P going to do in the next 12 to 18 months? I have no idea. So if the money, if what you're investing for, those needs need to be liquid in 12 to 18 months, I wouldn't touch the S and P 500. Longer period of time, five, 10 years, absolutely. Same thing with gold. If you're trying to time it over the next, if you need to take this money out of gold and buy a house in 12 months, I would say don't touch it, especially after a big run.

• 1:19:15Rob Luna?

  It should pull back. Nothing, trees don't grow to the sky. It should pull back. I wouldn't be going all in on it now. If you have no position, maybe buy a little bit right now. I would look for a little bit of a pullback, which I think could happen. But I think longer term, again, 5 to 10%, if you've got more than that also, the thing about gold is it doesn't pay a dividend. The only way you make money on gold is you buy low, sell high. So someone like yourself, if now you've seen that it was 10%, but it's become 30% of your portfolio. The corollary is it might be time to take a little bit off the table of that. But if you don't have any, it might be a time to start a small position and try to look for some pullbacks.

• 1:19:50Shawn Ryan?

  Okay, okay. What about crypto? I mean, I've had a lot of crypto guys on here.

• 1:19:56Rob Luna?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:19:57Shawn Ryan?

  You despise crypto.

• 1:20:00Rob Luna?

  Despise is a relatively strong word.

• 1:20:03Shawn Ryan?

  Okay, you're not a fan of it.

• 1:20:05Rob Luna?

  I'm not, I don't own any. I have owned.

• 1:20:08Shawn Ryan?

  None?

• 1:20:08Rob Luna?

  Zero, no. I closed the last of my cryptocurrency out, which was not a lot, about six months ago. I sold all my Bitcoin a year ago.

• 1:20:19Shawn Ryan?

  The crypto bros are not going to be happy with you.

• 1:20:21Rob Luna?

  Anytime, I told you before, if I talk about penny stocks that I don't like, or I talk about not liking crypto, like the cult comes after me. They, you don't know shit about crypto. Neither do you. So, and that's the one thing, look, about cryptocurrency, Sean, my view, only it is, is my view.

• 1:20:40Rob Luna?

  What I believe is. There is no way, and I've asked multiple people in terms of the technology of it in blockchain. And even if you talk about really, really, really smart people and some of the vulnerabilities and potentially with blockchain and crypto, with supercomputing coming out that everyone's closing their eyes to, but just say this, the technology and all those things are solid. As a substitute, which still people say it could be a substitute to the dollar, never going to happen. There's not enough liquidity. It's way too volatile for that to happen. Um, there's still a lot of problems with nefarious types of things being done through cryptocurrency. So governments are finding very hard to regulate. How do you value cryptocurrency? The truth is it's only worth what someone's willing to pay for it. You can say the same thing for the dollar, kind of true.

• 1:21:26Rob Luna?

  But if you look at the usage of the dollar, if you look at the reserve currency status of the dollar. Uh, if you look at trading in currencies, the dollar has actually increased over the last 10 years. So as bad as we talk about the dollar, it still continues to be the gold standard, if you will. Cryptocurrency, again, the, the big problem I have with it is how do you value it? What's the intrinsic value? I can do that with gold, either even with silver, because there's a use case for it. There's no utility for cryptocurrency. So now can that change in the future? Can this be adapted by more people? Potentially, but in terms of again, what, who I work with myself. We build multi-asset class portfolios, gold and real estate and private equity and stocks and all those things.

• 1:22:11Rob Luna?

  And so what would be the reason to put cryptocurrency in there? Now, if you maybe had a small idiot bet, you're like, I just don't want to be proven wrong. I want to have two to three percent, and this is why I bought it before, right? Two to three percent, yeah, maybe. Um, but the truth is like the people that got in in 2008, 2009. Like that run, like that's done, that's not going to happen, right? And so all everyone's saying, oh, you're still going to be in crypto because Bitcoin might go to 150,000. All right, so. You don't know how to value this. There's a tremendous amount of risk in it. Um, I can't touch it. I can't feel it. It might go to 150, but I've got multiple AI small cap stocks that are up over 300% this year.

• 1:22:52Rob Luna?

  While you sat in an asset class that lost 18%. So like, I don't see it's like not a great speculation. It hasn't worked out super well. I can't really use it. And then the one thing I just want to talk about is I think, you know, the crypto bros or whatever you want to call them, they always come back all of a sudden. The guys who are investing in this stuff because they hate the, the industry and they don't want to bank. They're now using Bank of America as offering it to their clients, Rob. Are you smarter than Bank of America? Um, yeah, I am. You remember Bank of America in 2008 was essentially bankrupt because they also backed some prime mortgage and me and you had to bail them out with our tax dollars. Now they're all of a sudden the authority on risk management and how to allocate assets and oh,

• 1:23:34Rob Luna?

  yeah, but what about them? The biggest ETF company in the world, BlackRock, now offers Bitcoin. Dude, they would offer a turd if they could put it in ETF and put a fee around it. And that's what they're doing. They're collecting a fee and it's very, very profitable. And the biggest problem I have with cryptocurrency is that when these big organizations validate it and they make it available to more people to put in portfolios and other things. It then could create a systemic risk, just like subprime housing did. And so people who didn't get in in 2008 and make all this money are just sitting in it now and bought the Bitcoin ETF and are actually negative. Now if this gets infiltrated and over levered inside of other organizations, does it become a systemic risk where that's the next bailout? And now we have to worry about cryptocurrency because there's some systemic systemic risk to it.

• 1:24:18Rob Luna?

  Again, I'm not in it, but am I going to have to pay the tax bill for it at some point if it continues to spread? Probably. That's just kind of the path that we've been on with all these things.

• 1:24:26Shawn Ryan?

  Jeez, jeez. Can't wait to see the comments.

• 1:24:31Rob Luna?

  I'm an idiot, dummy, don't know anything. I'm missing out. Boomer.

• 1:24:35Shawn Ryan?

  Are you, are you tracking BRICS at all?

• 1:24:38Rob Luna?

  Uh, Brazil, Russia, India, China, the currencies that are going on there. Yeah, I, I, I do. And it kind of, again, it goes back to, um, if you look at the dollar, its reserve status, how much it's traded. Yes. Some of those currencies have gone up. They have great and greater depreciation. The one that's done the worst is the Euro. Like money's just flowing out of the Euro. And I think we, we kind of all know why there, but. Why? Uh, uh, because of socialism, because of unrest that's going on there. And like the government's continually like socialism destroys countries. It really does. Um, you, that's the reason, right? When you look at voters, uh, and I'm half Cuban. And you look at Miami, right? These are immigrants that came here. Uh, most of them vote Republican. Why? Because they know the problems with socialism, right? They know what it does to countries.

• 1:25:23Rob Luna?

  You look at Argentina, you look at, um, going back to places like Russia, 1998, going back to systemic risks. And smart people knowing what to do. Nobel Prize laureate started a hedge fund of trading currencies in 1998 called Long Term Capital Management. They didn't think Russia's currency can go to zero. When it did, collapsed. The rich people, yeah, maybe they lost some money, but then our government again had to come in backstop banks that were doing this. And taxpayers once again had to be able to do it. So, you know, what I would say is the dollar as of right now, from what I could see, is still a very safe place to be. I just talked about all the deficit and the long-term sustainability and all these things.

• 1:26:04Rob Luna?

  And I think it is a house of cards. The big question that you and I always have to answer. And especially because every, I've been on TV 17, 18 years. I have to go out there and make an opinion. When I made those opinions though, my clients are like, is that consistent with the things that you're doing for us? So there was always hundreds of millions of dollars that had to be accessed and put to work through my opinions. I don't have the luxury of 300-year bets because my clients don't live to 300, right? And so if I sit here and say Bitcoin is great, guys, and in the end of 2024, when I was on your show a year ago and say, hey, go all into Bitcoin, and you just lost 18% this year, why small cap stocks skyrocketed, nuclear stock skyrocketed, some of these, uh,

• 1:26:48Rob Luna?

  We talked about some of the psychedelic stocks, uh, Sky. If we missed out on all of that because I was so in on this one strategy, I would have gotten fired. Right. And so what we have to do is eat is be aware of the risks. And I started as a risk analyst. I always look at what could go wrong first. Right. We have to be aware of the risk with bricks and all these different things. But the question is, in putting our money to work, are we willing to take a bet on that? That collapsing and those things. And I would say as of right now, no, that's not where I want to put my money. I came in the market as a professional in 1998 and I was hearing the dollar is going to collapse. All this, all valid arguments, right? Why this guy was pretty much a hundred percent in T bills and like, he did have some gold,

• 1:27:32Rob Luna?

  but very little in the stock market, very middle in private equity. And what happened during that period of time? S and P hit, eh, the thing about the S and P, which is, I say S and P, it's the U S. It's the largest barometer of the U S economy, the largest 500 companies here. 100% of the time, every time there's been a dip, it's been a buying opportunity. Not 99, not 98, for a hundred years, every time it's been a dip, it's been a buying opportunity. So if you just bought every time it declined, you're going to do well. So when you look at that, that's consistent, gold, consistent over time. But when I look at something and I have, and I, I've learned over 28 years of doing this, my opinion doesn't mean shit. All that matters is what is in front of us, what are the risks, what are the opportunities?

• 1:28:16Rob Luna?

  And what does the market as a whole believe? And that was my, why am I out of crypto? Well, I understood why it went to where it was. I understand why was it there. But then what I also talked to you about is last year, I said, okay, if you're going to be in crypto, have a small amount. Why? Because I believe this administration is so crypto friendly. And the narrative that they've been putting around crypto and the investments that they have in it. If anybody can get this to run and get enthusiasm around, and that's what you need from an asset class is enthusiasm. It's going to be this. So then I looked at like, if they can't get it to go, then what's the next? I'm always looking at what's the catalyst? And when you start running out of catalyst, then you start thinking of, am I going to just sit in something with the hope and pray strategy? Or am I going to go to something that has intrinsic value?

• 1:28:58Rob Luna?

  It's discounted and there's going to be some catalyst where at least I'm putting myself on that side of the table. And that's kind of why I sold my crypto.

• 1:29:06Shawn Ryan?

  Makes sense. Does make sense. What about real estate?

• 1:29:09Rob Luna?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:29:09Shawn Ryan?

  Realist, I feel like real estate market since 2020 has been really, just really weird because.

• 1:29:16Rob Luna?

  Yeah.

• 1:29:16Shawn Ryan?

  And I say that because before that, it seemed that it was the country. The country's doing good, the real estate goes up. The country's doing bad, it goes down. You know, now, I go, I mean, I'm not terribly familiar with all, with all the different markets. But I mean, you know, we, we kind of mentioned it before.

• 1:29:38Rob Luna?

  Yeah.

• 1:29:38Shawn Ryan?

  But, you know, Polly market predicted a million people leaving New York after that election. I mean, California, it's been an exodus of people coming out of there. You know, and I don't know if that's slowed down enough or at all, but Washington, Oregon, I mean, and, and you, you, you, we travel, I travel.

• 1:29:58Rob Luna?

  Yeah.

• 1:29:59Shawn Ryan?

  You know, you, every, everywhere I go, they're complaining about the influx. You know, and, and, and so, and so it's, I would, I would think that there's markets in the U.S. that are skyrocketing. I would think there's markets in the U.S. that are plummeting. You know, and, and I think that is, and I think that is the result of a very, very divided nation. Am I right?

• 1:30:24Rob Luna?

  You're a hundred percent right. And then, but essentially that's how real estate has always been. It's very, it's always been market by market, certain, like some of the same markets that you're talking about plummeting now. For a long period of time, did exceptionally better, exponentially better than Tennessee, for example, right? What would you rather have done 20 years ago by beachfront California property or Tennessee property? Well, maybe up and maybe not now, but five years ago before COVID, you definitely would have rather had those beachfront properties. Now, and I think especially after COVID, for a lot of reasons, all those things have changed. So I think the real estate market today, going back to your, you know, you were saying this before, is it's market by market. It's really dependent on where you're looking at.

• 1:31:09Rob Luna?

  And just like I said, this is for any investment, what's the catalyst for it to go up? And so the catalyst for Tennessee or Texas or Florida real estate to go up is there is an exodus. Because the reason.

• 1:31:23Rob Luna?

  My wife and I left California. It wasn't just because of taxes. It played a role in it, but I stayed there a long period of time, paying an exorbitant amount of taxes because the weather was nice, right? And I had the beach there. I lived one house off the bay. Like, that's pretty nice. But when I couldn't wear a Rolex watch to the mall, and I was worried about my daughter's safety, um, there's no, there's no climate out there that I'm willing to not feel safe in. So I moved out of there. So the catalyst for real estate here is that. So a lot of it, yeah, maybe it's political, but it's also economical. Cause when you look at all these big companies moving out of California,

• 1:32:02Rob Luna?

  Tesla going to Texas and Oracle now opening their health headquarters here in, in Nashville. So what does that mean? People are leaving, jobs are coming here. You don't have to be a rocket scientist or an investment analyst to understand, well, supply, demand, that's gonna cause real estate prices to go up here. So back to your point, follow, like Gretzky said, go to where the, skate to where the puck is going, not to where it's been. And so that's, you know, the funny thing, Sean, like my wife and I talk about this all the time, and you talked about it. So my wife came here from Kazakhstan when she was 19 years old. She spent, she's 38 now. She spent her whole life primarily in New York City for several years, and then lived with me in Los Angeles. Like, that's all she knew of the US.

• 1:32:46Rob Luna?

  Uh, not too much unlike me. If you would have ever asked her about living in Tennessee, or anywhere in the South, she'd have been like, what the hell are you talking about? But now, and I, I wanna, I don't wanna shout too loud about this, is it's like, this is what, this is a luxury to live, yeah, to live here. And you hear, but I was just reading about a little town in North Carolina. It was just, I forgot where I even read it a couple of days ago, but small town, like 800 people, but the amount of billionaires that are moving there is like, it's huge. So people are starting like,

• 1:33:21Rob Luna?

  Places like, and again, I don't want to mention towns, I don't want them here, but uh, places like that are the new New York City and the new Los Angeles. It's just retraining your mind. And then, like I told you the other day, we spent some time together and it's like, and I've been out of California for two years now and it's just like, you know, surrounding yourself with people who have good values, right? And they're, you know, put God first and when they look at you, they're not sizing you up to what do you own? And what do you have? And they just want you to win and they want to win and they just want a good place to raise their kids. Like, that's a luxury and um, I think that's worth overpaying for. And I know your question was about real estate, but um, I think there's certain places in this country

• 1:34:06Rob Luna?

  that have become more and more desirable and they're not the New York cities and they're not the Los Angeleses. They're the places where real people, real Americans who care about their families, who care about their, the dream and who put God first. I think those are the areas where the money's gonna flow.

• 1:34:21Shawn Ryan?

  You're saying values are coming back.

• 1:34:23Rob Luna?

  I think so. And I think so, I know so. They are.

• 1:34:25Shawn Ryan?

  Man, that's good to hear.

• 1:34:27Rob Luna?

  But there's a war though. And it's, you go back to this division, it's a division on values. I mean, at the end of the day, Christian values, family values, and traditional American values. There's people who are now speaking out and speaking up like you and me and don't really give a shit. But at the same time, Sean, I think like, that's the opportunity. We always all want more money, but when you hit a certain amount of money, it's just like, okay, I don't have to be in fear of losing my job right now. And like, hey, maybe I'll make no more money, but it's more valuable for me to say how I feel, to say what I believe. Um, because I think at the end of the day, whatever we collect here is all bullshit.

• 1:35:09Rob Luna?

  Our real reward comes after this life and I want to be able to go up there and say, hey, I did everything that I believe was right. And when you're in places like we talked about in California, I think sometimes, um, you can be the most ethical Christian person on there, but when you're constantly surrounded by shit.

• 1:35:26Shawn Ryan?

  You turn into shit.

• 1:35:27Rob Luna?

  It's tough. You turn into shit. You do. So I try to get shit out of my life.

• 1:35:32Shawn Ryan?

  Done a damn good job. What do you, what do you think about, what do you think about Ohio? I mean, Vivette's running there. I don't know. I haven't checked in a while, but. Last time I did check, he had a pretty good lead.

• 1:35:46Rob Luna?

  Yeah.

• 1:35:46Shawn Ryan?

  And he's talking about taking the state tax-free and Dural headquarters is there now. I mean.

• 1:35:53Rob Luna?

  It's catalyst. It's a catalyst. I think you've got more traditional values there. You've had Vivek on your show here before. I think the things he's talked about conceptually, right? We only, we can only vote what they talk about, whether they go in there and they're able to execute or want to execute on that. We don't know. But conceptually, like you said with Anduril, with Vivek going there, the prices are pretty low right now in terms of national standards. That's what I'm talking about. Is it guaranteed? You buy real estate in Ohio and make money? Of course not. But there's every catalyst for that to happen. So would I rather buy it there than New York or California? Of course I would. So that's the other thing. We got to like, everything we're talking about is a shift in mindset. And that's what I said earlier about New York real estate always comes back.

• 1:36:38Rob Luna?

  It's not coming back this time.

• 1:36:41Rob Luna?

  I don't, I believe that. And people, again, just like the crypto, ah, you don't know anything about. Okay, we'll see. I hope I'm wrong. My son was born in New York. My, my, my wife there lived there for a long time. My grandfather helped build that city. I love the idea of New York. But it wasn't the buildings in Central Park. It was the people, the culture that build that and made that great. Now that they're gone, it's been replaced by a whole new immigrant that doesn't care about this country, that doesn't care about Christian values, that's tearing it down, that's out to get what they can and pilfer New York and this country, and then they'll leave once it's all gone. That's not going to allow real estate in New York to come back.

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• 1:38:18Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, yeah. There's no culture there.

• 1:38:21Rob Luna?

  There's no culture. It's just building skylights on Fifth Avenue? I don't know, it's not enough for me.

• 1:38:29Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, but you said something earlier, you know, and I've been thinking this for a long time, but you know, there's this, this, you know, well, you get what you vote for. And, and, you know, I've been, I've been guilty of this. It's like, oh, you fucking voted for that? You live in that.

• 1:38:44Rob Luna?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:38:45Shawn Ryan?

  And, you know, now I don't feel like that. And now I'm like, this shit is way too close to home. And it is spreading, just like you're saying, it's percolating. It's getting bigger.

• 1:38:59Rob Luna?

  I mean, you see it here in certain parts of Tennessee already.

• 1:39:02Shawn Ryan?

  Yep.

• 1:39:03Rob Luna?

  Unfortunately.

• 1:39:04Shawn Ryan?

  Nashville.

• 1:39:05Rob Luna?

  Yeah.

• 1:39:05Shawn Ryan?

  I'm saying Nashville.

• 1:39:06Rob Luna?

  Yeah.

• 1:39:07Shawn Ryan?

  But, um, yeah, people really got to start paying attention and you can't, you, this is, I mean, everybody warned me about diving into politics.

• 1:39:19Shawn Ryan?

  Now I get it.

• 1:39:21Rob Luna?

  It's all connected though, man. It's not just politics. You're right. You know, I know Maria Bartiroma, she left CNBC years ago to Fox. And they criticized her like for making a political move and talking about politics. And she's like, you don't think politics drive the economy and the stock market? You think you can totally disassociate yourself from that? It's, it's, it's all connected. Politics is the way you feed your kids. Uh, it's how safe or not safe that you feel. Like your healthcare, are those, are those three things not important to you? But yet we make political decisions based off of twenty thirty second news clips. And like you said, like, the thing is, as I get older, right? I realize how much I don't know.

• 1:40:05Rob Luna?

  Uh, and I start to realize that it's, the world is a lot more gray than it is black and white. And you have to be comfortable living with uncertainty. And whenever you vote for somebody, you're not going to get a hundred percent of what you think you're going to get. Right? Whether they can't do that, or they don't want to do that. So you have to make, going back to investing.

• 1:40:23Shawn Ryan?

  You might not even get one percent.

• 1:40:25Rob Luna?

  You might not even get one percent of it, right? Yeah. So is that frustrating? Of course it is. So what do you do? You just crawl into a ball and leave? Like, I, I love this country and I've been into a lot of other places. And every single time, I'm really happy to come back here.

• 1:40:39Shawn Ryan?

  I mean, I'll tell you what you do. You fucking figure it out.

• 1:40:43Rob Luna?

  You figure it out.

• 1:40:43Shawn Ryan?

  Find another way, just like we were talking about earlier. You, you quit putting all your faith in a fucking political prostitute. And you make shit happen for yourself instead of thinking, instead of fucking voting for a handout or voting for somebody to come save your ass. That motherfucker isn't going to save your ass. You're going to save your ass.

• 1:41:01Rob Luna?

  Yeah.

• 1:41:02Shawn Ryan?

  You gotta find your way out. You gotta find a new way. That fucking retard isn't going to do it for you.

• 1:41:07Rob Luna?

  On either side, Sean.

• 1:41:09Shawn Ryan?

  That's what I'm getting.

• 1:41:10Rob Luna?

  Yeah.

• 1:41:10Shawn Ryan?

  That's what I'm getting.

• 1:41:11Rob Luna?

  Yeah, on, on either side, right? And I think, and a lot of that, even like I said, coming to Tennessee and you're part of that decision. I saw how you were living and I was like, it's just that, right? Like, like I said at the beginning, I don't need shit from the government. I don't want shit. I don't need, I just need them to stay the F out of my, my life and let me create things for myself because I'm capable of doing that now. Does everybody in America have that opportunity? No. If you're disabled, uh, you're mentally ill, you're a veteran who's come back and you're destroyed because of the situation. I think we should help those people, but I think there's things in place. They could be better to do that.

• 1:41:51Rob Luna?

  But the vast majority of Americans are just getting soft and lazy and they don't want to take the hard medicine. They don't want to work and I've got a problem with that. And so when I came here. This is like the opportunity to where like I look at things like you have of farmland and plays like, hey, let me just, let me, let me be responsible for my family. Let me surround myself with friends and family who are like-minded, who put God first. And at the end of the day, we might not be big enough, but we're gonna put up a damn good fight if something happens and I'm not relying on anyone to protect my family or feed my family and I, and I never will until I take my last breath. I will work, I'll work to get better at everything I'm doing. I don't need shit and um, I only surround myself with

• 1:42:36Rob Luna?

  people that think that way.

• 1:42:38Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah. Yeah. You can still make it happen.

• 1:42:41Rob Luna?

  Yeah. Yeah.

• 1:42:43Shawn Ryan?

  Well, Rob, did we miss anything?

• 1:42:48Rob Luna?

  Taxes?

• 1:42:49Shawn Ryan?

  Well, you gotta have on taxes.

• 1:42:50Rob Luna?

  It's kind of like off into the topic now that we could end it.

• 1:42:52Shawn Ryan?

  Hit it. Is there anything, we got any good news? We getting some tax cuts?

• 1:42:55Rob Luna?

  There's some tax stuff. Should we hit that?

• 1:42:57Shawn Ryan?

  Is it for everybody or just the top?

• 1:43:04Rob Luna?

  Yeah, I mean, if you got money is where, well, here's the thing about taxes. If you don't make money, you don't pay taxes anyway. So who really gives a shit?

• 1:43:10Shawn Ryan?

  That's a good point.

• 1:43:12Rob Luna?

  Yeah, we have a progressive tax system, right? So the first forty, fifty grand, you don't pay any taxes on it anyway, right? So if you're making money, right? And like, dude, my goal in being on this show, right, which is a huge opportunity for me to be on here. Why? Because I'm fighting for the American dream. I'm fighting for Christian values and what you've created is a platform for people, whatever their message is, is to get that out to a larger audience. And so we talk about how do we change things as you fucking speak up and you give people tools that are gonna allow them to be the type of American and create this country that's gonna get us the ability to compete. And so the tax system, uh, look, you've gotta use it to your, if you're making money, do you wanna give more to the government or less than the government? So you have to be proactive.

• 1:43:55Rob Luna?

  And so when you think about some of the tax incentives that have come back, you talked about real estate. Okay. So there's a couple of things with real estate. Um, number one, there's something that's called cost segmentation, bonus depreciation. So when you buy a piece of real estate, there's really three different components of what. Make it real investing in real estate good. Um, their income that you can get off of real estate. There's appreciation that you can get off of real estate over time, whether it's raw land or a single family or a commercial building. And there's also tax advantages of depreciation that you can get from real estate. So all in all, when you take 5% from a piece of real estate versus 5% from a, from a government bond, real estate is better because you don't pay taxes on that full thing. So you're getting actually

• 1:44:39Rob Luna?

  a higher yield. So two things now with the new administration that I will give them credit for a lot of it may be self-serving because they own a lot of real estate. Um, but you get bonus depreciation now reset back to a hundred percent. So instead of having to, let's say depreciate a building over thirty something years, right? There's a big percentage of that now that can be taken in year one. And so that'll dollar for dollar help lower your income. So it makes investing in real estate more attractive now. So if you're starting to make some money, you're going to be able to lower your tax basis. So you get to buy an asset, not pay as much to the government. That's one thing. What I also like about in terms of how do we create and incentivize people uh to do more, build the economy, there's something called opportunity zones.

• 1:45:24Rob Luna?

  Where if you go to disadvantaged areas, pretty much in any state where there's not a lot of economic growth out there. And you invest in qualified opportunity zone funds, which there's companies like Cantor Fitzgerald that are out there that put them together. I think Blackstone will probably create them next year. Now that this is back because they can make some money off of it. If you want to do it yourself, you could set up your own LLC. If you buy in those areas and you invest money into those properties. Two things that are really cool. You can roll capital gains into here, meaning let's say you bought a property 10 years ago for a hundred thousand. Now it's worth a million in Tennessee. That's happened, right? You've got nine hundred thousand in gains. You could pay taxes to the IRS on that if you want. Probably don't want to do that, or

• 1:46:07Rob Luna?

  you can roll it into this opportunity zone fund, kind of like a 1031 exchange. But you don't pay taxes on that money that you made that nine hundred grand. The other cool thing is when you put it into this fund, if you hold it for 10 years, now you've let's say have a million dollars that goes into This opportunity zone fund that grows to three million dollars. That two million dollars, if you hold it for 10 years is tax free. You never pay one dollar on it.

• 1:46:31Shawn Ryan?

  You you put it into a fund or you buy real estate in the.

• 1:46:34Rob Luna?

  So you're buying real estate, but it has to be structured a certain way. You can do it as an individual. We do it for clients. You set up an LLC that's structured to meet all the requirements. But for a lot of people, if it's a smaller amount or they don't want to deal with that. There's companies that structure those funds out there for you. So you can invest in a long side, other institutions and still get that same benefit. The the the difference there is you don't have as much control over doing that. So this is something that's come back that was gone in 2022 that you're starting to see people now. So two things, if you're a real estate investor, again, to your question, should I invest in real estate? Now it's more attractive, especially if you do that than it was before. Uh, in in terms of investing in real estate.

• 1:47:14Shawn Ryan?

  So is this, is this? Where are these zones? Is this Memphis, Detroit, Baltimore?

• 1:47:22Rob Luna?

  It's it's pretty much.

• 1:47:23Shawn Ryan?

  St. Louis.

• 1:47:23Rob Luna?

  It would be probably like Memphis, maybe uh in in Tennessee. It would be areas of Los Angeles. There's zones that you can go.

• 1:47:31Shawn Ryan?

  New York.

• 1:47:32Rob Luna?

  Uh, yeah, the whole whole Manhattan, uh, you know, but basically you can go look it up. Use chat to be to Google, you'll kind of break down maps of these zones. You can go to some of these large sponsors like I don't even know if they have them open right now. But now that this has just been passed, I'm sure you'll see in 2026. Like all these big companies will be coming out with new opportunity funds to.

• 1:47:51Shawn Ryan?

  Well, I mean, what do you think about that?

• 1:47:53Rob Luna?

  So I think it's.

• 1:47:54Shawn Ryan?

  When you're talking about New York and you're saying this isn't coming back.

• 1:47:57Rob Luna?

  Yeah.

• 1:47:57Shawn Ryan?

  You know, in in. I would, I would, I mean, I guess I shouldn't make assumptions, but I would, I I am assuming that. You know, the the the majority of these places are in areas that probably aren't coming back. I mean, when you look at Detroit, St. Louis.

• 1:48:11Rob Luna?

  Yeah.

• 1:48:11Shawn Ryan?

  These areas, I mean, manufacturing left Ford's gone.

• 1:48:14Rob Luna?

  Yeah.

• 1:48:14Shawn Ryan?

  McDonald Douglas is gone. Boeing is gone. I mean, St. Louis is. It's fucking destroyed.

• 1:48:21Rob Luna?

  Exactly. There's gonna be some areas that-

• 1:48:24Shawn Ryan?

  There's no industry coming back.

• 1:48:25Rob Luna?

  Yeah, yeah. I think there's gonna be some areas, like even in Tennessee, and I don't have the map in front of me, where you've got all these values and everything that we're talking about, there just hasn't been a lot of economic growth there. So those could be opportunities in those areas to where it's like, hey, Williamson County Mount is maybe a little bit more expensive, but let me move further south into some of these areas, which still have a lot of the same benefits. There just hasn't been as much economic growth or investment in those areas.

• 1:48:50Shawn Ryan?

  Okay, so it's not necessarily-

• 1:48:52Rob Luna?

  It's not just all the shitholes in the-

• 1:48:53Shawn Ryan?

  Okay.

• 1:48:54Rob Luna?

  There's a lot of that.

• 1:48:55Shawn Ryan?

  It's not all the most dangerous cities in the country.

• 1:48:57Rob Luna?

  Most likely to get killed opportunities. No, it's not. It's a lot of that, yeah. But again, back to doing your due diligence and doing the vestment and hand selecting it and making sure that there is a viable strategy and catalyst for this to work, you can look at that. Um, but then the bonus, then, but for everybody, the bonus depreciation of now being able to write off a lot of that, especially if you're having a good year, um, you're selling an asset, a business or something, you're selling some Apple stock that you bought 20 years ago, you could take some of that profit and put it into real estate and get a lot of, uh, use that to offset some of that, right?

• 1:49:32Shawn Ryan?

  Interesting.

• 1:49:32Rob Luna?

  Now, there's, there's caveats around all this stuff, so talk with your CPA and everything like that. But these are things that people need to be aware of. Another one I want to talk about-

• 1:49:39Shawn Ryan?

  That's pretty cool. I like that.

• 1:49:40Rob Luna?

  That's really cool. Yeah, I like that. I'd rather invest in these areas versus just give people more social programs, right? The other thing that's really, really cool that we've talked about is, uh, for small businesses, qualified small business stocks, I think it's section 1202, um, you can set up a C corp today. So, hey, you're gonna start a new business. I talked about, hey, I think there's huge opportunities in plumbing and HVAC and dog care and, you know, all these things, right, to get in there, work your ass off scale, um, over, under promise, over deliver, and you can build real businesses today. Well, the cool thing is, again, this is why knowledge is power. If you set that today up in the right structure, uh, it has to be a C corp, right?

• 1:50:23Rob Luna?

  There's some, again, look, talk to your CPA about it. You can set up this company.

• 1:50:30Rob Luna?

  If you hold it for five years, so you set it up today, you put 10,000 to get it started. In five years, you build up this great landscaping business, you build up this great pest control business, or this mobile dog grooming business, or fencing business, whatever it is, you get offered by somebody, and I think there's gonna be a lot of M and A mergers and acquisitions, people buying businesses going on in the next five years. You build it up to a $15 million asset, $10 million asset, $5 million asset. Anything up to $15 million is tax-free. What? Tax-free. Wow. As long as it's structured that way, the first 15 million, there's some caveats around there, but it's not really that difficult. The main thing is, before you start making money, or you have some other entity set up,

• 1:51:15Rob Luna?

  it has to be structured the right way from the beginning. You have to hold it for five years. Now, I think after two years, it's like 50% tax-free. But at five years, 100% of that is tax-free, and that's huge. For small businesses, right? Versus giving 20% of that to the government, plus whatever your state is. So if you're in California, 34% of that go to them. If you're in California even, you'd have to pay the California tax, but the federal on that is zero. You pay zero federal tax on that. So that's something a lot of people don't know. The other one that I just want to hit on is R and D credits have been restored back. Now, R and D credit's a little bit more complex, but every business, your business, my business, all has research and development. We're trying to expand new products, especially with AI.

• 1:51:58Rob Luna?

  We're trying to see, how can we use AI to create new processes or procedures? And so, there's some metrics that need to be established. So if you talk to your CPA, a qualified team, we're doing it. We have tons of work in R and D right now. Everything, from the products you buy, to the big thing for people we talked about is labor cost. The percentage of time that your people are spending on that, that can be associated towards this R and D credit. There's no limit on that. It's as much as you need to offset your taxes. If you're just starting up and you're not profitable, the only thing you can really do is offset payroll taxes, and there's a half a million dollar, I believe, exemption there. But what you'll see is, a lot of what everyone's doing today, their time, what they're spending on, does qualify for this.

• 1:52:43Rob Luna?

  A lot of people don't know about it, don't talk about it. CPAs don't know how to do the work. What you will see is you will say you talk about how are we going to save you some taxes? R and D credits are huge because they're credits. And the difference between, if you don't know, a tax deduction and a tax credit is a duck deduction. If you get a hundred thousand dollar deduction for buying real estate, okay? What you get to write off is your own tax bracket. So if you're at a 30% tax bracket, you don't get to write a hundred thousand off the taxes you owe. You get to write off 30,000 off the tax you owe. A hundred thousand dollar R and D tax credit? It's a hundred thousand dollars to offset income. So you get a hundred thousand of that.

• 1:53:27Rob Luna?

  And there's companies we're working with right now. When you start taking the percentage of people's salary and the things that they spend and new locations, there's hundreds of thousands of dollars of tax credits that are now available that are reset back that people should be looking to those R and D tax credits. Interesting. So again, there's never been a better time. That's the one thing I would say with this administration too. The barrier to entry, the ability for M and A to happen. The taxes, taxes aren't going any lower, guys. If anything, if you look at the deficit and all these things we're talking about, taxes are going higher. So you want to structure that. And then there's, that's the tax work. But there's a state planning work that we've talked about that you can do trusts to maybe double that $15,000 exemption where your trust owns some and you own some. Now it's 30 million.

• 1:54:13Rob Luna?

  But this is the idea, like I said before, Sean, of the people that are going to win are the all-stars, just like they always have, the all-stars in sports, the all-stars in business. And you want to be working with the A-list. Do you want to be working with Joe Schmo and the shop who doesn't have any resources? And just telling you, just be grateful to pay your taxes because you made money this year? Or do you want to work with a team who kind of understands the code? Do you want to self-educate yourself to make sure that you're taking advantage of these things? Because the difference between people who are poor and people who are wealthy isn't because they're, you know, doing anything that much difference because they have knowledge. Right? And that knowledge is power and it turns into dollars. So the tax code is there for everyone to access. It's up to you whether or not you know how to use it and if you want to use it. And again, if you're not making any money, don't worry about it. It's not going to help you. Don't listen to this.

• 1:54:57Rob Luna?

  But if you're making some money, you probably want to pay less in taxes.

• 1:55:01Shawn Ryan?

  Man, great interview. Thanks, man. Lots of knowledge there. Thank you. Yeah, it's interesting you said that because that's what my last guy told me. This is the price of success. Congratulations. Yeah, it's funny. I said, wrong answer. You're fucking fired.

• 1:55:20Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, exactly. But, well, Rob, seriously, man, thank you for all the knowledge. And, uh, yeah, what a, like, really good discussion. I think this is the perfect way to kick off the year and, and, um, you know, as always, man, I just, I wish you the best of success. Good luck with Valtteri. Same to you. Thanks, man. Cheers. Thanks.

• 1:55:52Shawn Ryan?

  No matter where you're watching Sean Ryan's show from, if you get anything out of this, please like, comment, subscribe, and most importantly, share this everywhere you possibly can. And if you're feeling extra generous, please leave us a review on Apple and Spotify Podcasts.