Will Lehr – Damn The “Man”, It’s Your Money

This episode of the opt out life podcast with me your host Nate I’m here and also my friend Dana hello hello he’s wearing an opt out life t shirt we are in the opt out life studio here in San Diego and we’re talking to a guy named Will Lehr who made a drive over from the coast not too far away and he’s got some interesting stories about alternative investments. cryptocurrency precious metals. This is a guy who’s worked in the financial services industry for some time. And he’s got some different ideas on what people should be doing with their money and some very specific thoughts about the financial system and all things investment related. So it’ll be fun to kind of talk through Dana. Any comment?

Yeah, I think it’s a really cool interview. Because for those entrepreneurs that are opt out, and looking for alternative approaches to money and investments, it’s really practical and get really practical advice. And for those that are skeptics, peppers, and people that are, you know, farming their own food and off the grid, here’s a guy that has really good understanding of that, and sort of bridging that by opting in enough to kind of keep the urban life but a really identifies with people that have the approach of conspiracy theories. And it’s, I think it’s kind of cool interview.

Yeah, it’d be fun to get into it. And before we do that, what is the opt out life? Well, the opt out life is something that we created on the backs of 10 years of networking with people like us who make their income through alternative means we’ll use that word since that’s kind of the theme of this year episode. But uh. We make our money with side hustlers and with businesses that we own and starts and run and but we do with a focus on lifestyle, so you don’t have to chase $10 million exits and hundred million dollar exits, opt out, life is about something that’s achievable. It’s the stories of real people. These aren’t people that you hear on other podcasts. These are people who are everyday people that we know that we who do this and take back control of their income and their time, and they live a cool lifestyle along the way. That’s what we champion, that’s what the opt out life is. And it is based on a book called opt out, written by my dear friend here, Dana, anything to add to that

all I did was steal everybody else’s ideas. Well, for the most part, I looked around at our network, really, that the stories are partly mine, but the stories are really of the people that showed up at my house, including you, Nate. And, you know, we find each other and realize you have this commonality, you’re living on side gigs, I’m living on side gigs, I don’t have a traditional job, you don’t have a traditional job. And that commonality became the glue that I think pulled together the book and now is really what’s breathing life into the outdoor life podcast. And in a sense, all we’re doing is trying to motivate a movement of people that need permission to be opted out.

That’s right. And if you want more proof of that, as we’re recording this, I am hustling out of here for 17 days in Hawaii with my family. My two young kids were I’ll be working a bit remote and also having some fun along the way too. And we both traveled quite a bit this year. As we’ve built this opt out life and the the tools to do this stuff, and the motivation to do it and the tactics to do it or something that we talked about a lot in our email list and our newsletter, go over to opt out life. com, hop on the email and come hang out with us on our free Facebook group, check out opt out life you can just look it up in the Facebook search bar apply to become a member we love to chat with you about your opt out. And there’s a whole lot more behind the scenes outside of this podcast. We’re helping people and bringing in our friends and their stories to help you get started with your opt out so do that and then the meantime This episode was of course recorded here and it is the opt out life story our boy will learn

here’s a simple question do you think the system is rigged against you if you’ve had money in the stock market for any length of time you probably felt a little burned at times somehow you didn’t make as much on the highs and yet you lose money on the lows big money wins little guy losers that’s not an uncommon way to feel Today’s guest is will there is one of the many Americans who feel that the system is indeed rigged against it Wilson investment consultant who spent the past two decades in the financial services industry these days is businesses the opt out version of that world and it’s called perpetual assets precious metals cryptocurrency IRA LLC These are his and his clients alternatives to the vanilla IRAs and 401 K’s that so many of us have been sold. That’s right we’ll tells us there’s a way to take that stale old IRA and take full control of it and use those funds to buy real estate to buy businesses or to invest in gold or silver perpetual assets helps people do that. And with a focus on precious metals. His company also offers for unique debit card that allows you to transfer exact gold or silver on a debit card that you use every day wills personal journey was brought in the post 2008 financial collapse when this financial consultant realized that there was a better way and that you never again wanted to be subject to the whims of the traditional financial industry will cruised into the studio after a hike along the coast with some windswept hair and a suntan. Even though we’re willing to fall here, as you’ll hear, mixed in with all this fun all money talk. This guy’s got his off that lifestyle dialed into here’s well

today on the opt out life. We are going to talk about opting out with the monetary system. We’ve decided, right, we’re out. We’re out screw the monetary system. I don’t even need dollars. Is there a chapter in the book, Dana, that is about opting out of the monetary system because it could be an addendum

not technically. But we’re pretty critical of the traditional approach to stock investing.

Yes, so we will talk about that today. Our guest is will layer Hello,

hello friends.

I’m in he’s brought some tea. He’s been on a nice hike. Today, he looks refreshed and sun drenched and very opt out. So I think I think you fit

awesome.

And we were just discussing this thing called a metals card. So we’ll owns a site. I mean, he’s much more than a site owner. But if you wanted to check them out, you might go to perpetual assets calm, which is a cool, cool name that I like for site. One of the tab says metals card as we’re somewhat joking about opting out of the monetary system, but somewhat serious, tell me what the metals card is, let’s start there.

It is a Visa Debit Card whereby the client deposit is instead of being Fiat reserve notes, US dollars, they are ounces of precious metals, gold, silver, platinum, or palladium that are housed at our participating vault up in Washington State. And it is a means of transactional exchange whereby the end user is able to, as we were saying, opt out of the monetary system, the traditional monetary system, if you will, while still having a transactional capability using this, this debit card where the balance is every time you swipe the card, you’re in effect spending down bounces of metal that you have on reserve, how rare is this is something you dreamed up? Or is this something that you’ve become a franchise or in some some cases or how does it work? Yeah, there’s been a real need for it in the precious metals community for quite some time, a lot of gentlemen, much smarter and more connected than myself, have tried to set it up on a much larger scale and have failed because of banking regulations. While I was in the throes of a financial services career with a great company enjoyed what I did, but quickly came to realize, holy cow, this is a lost faith in what I was telling people to put their, you know, life savings into, and quickly realized that it was a bit of a shell game led me into precious metals. At that point, when you start studying the monetary system, you know, the metals have a huge instrumental role, historically speaking, and there a way to, you know, opt out. So, we started the company, my partner and I, Gus started the company with we had learned about a little known strategy within retirement accounts, a type of self directed IRA, that allows the individual to take full control of the of the assets and invest in just about anything under the sun. As long as it’s not the IRS is specific in what you cannot invest in, they’re not very specific, and what you can invest in, and the only two items on the list are collectibles, and life insurance contracts. And then self dealing transactions, those three items I should say, you have to stay away from, but otherwise, with this platform, it allows the individual to invest in anything from private loans, private equity, real estate, precious metals, cryptocurrencies, I mean, we’ve had clients invest in firearms, and ammunition, it’s all going to be for investment purposes. Again, you can’t personally use or spend or utilize the assets. But for investment purposes, it really opens up and if I was gonna say, Fine Art, but that can go down the collectible routes, you have to be careful there,

let me jump in the lawyer. So most people have an IRA, an individual retirement account, many of them get that from a job. And then when they quit the job, they’ve got a rollover IRA, it stays in the retirement account. And so most people believe that all you can do with your IRA is buy stocks and bonds. And so the self directed IRAs sort of a moniker that has been given to organizations that will become an management company, for your IRA, and let you dictate more investments or broader investments and just stocks or bonds. And so the self directed IRAs away, for example, that somebody might be able to invest in real estate, as long as the ownership is structured the right way or cryptocurrencies or precious metals using that IRA money in ways that, of course, the traditional money managers don’t want you to know, because they want to continue to collect their fees for managing your IRA. So a good summary,

yes, very good. The IRA LLC sort of takes it a step further, it’s whereby the IRA on the trustee, or custodial level invest into a limited liability company, a newly formed LLC, that is set up as an investment holding company structured, whereby it’s owned, its single owner is the account itself, but the manager or managers is the individual. And so that then allows for, rather than having to get approval, again, the approval process is getting the LLC approved and invested into one of the last steps, the client opens a bank account of business checking account at their local bank or credit union. And that’s ultimately where their rollover dollars go. And so from there, they have what’s called checkbook control, and are able to literally write a check for any of these investments mentioned, and there’s many others as well. So, yes, great summary.

So let’s do this in real time. I have one of those IRA accounts from a previous incarnation of my life. It has $25,000, and and I guess, I don’t know the login. I don’t know anything about it. I’m sure it’s stretched it

in year.

Yeah, I’m sure it’s invested in a nice healthy balance of growth and middle market mid cap, or whatever the fuck it is. Stocks, what can I do with it? Can I open up I have to open up a new LLC, I can work with someone like you. I mean, what can we do?

Yeah, so our service is totally turn key. So once you decide, hey, I want to unlock this money. You know, I don’t want the typical vanilla mutual funds over at fidelity or Merrill Lynch or whatever, I’d like to put this to work myself, then people come to us, we have a, you know, application, right on our website. Of course, we’re available via phone and email and contact us and stuff. But we make it pretty simple for the client. So fill out an application on our site, we get the process started vs series of documents, do I have to contact my existing one, tell him I want to cash out pay the fee and tell them where to send the money to send know if it’s in an IRA, we have a form that does that and enter institutional request transfer request form that that you just sign select how much you want to some people, I just want to bring over half of it or a fixed dollar amount, or the whole thing. Usually, there are no, you know, there’s there aren’t fees associated. I don’t think legally they can charge fees to to transfer out of course, there’s liquidation fees.

Yeah, that’s what I was thinking. That’s what I do. So my other one, yeah. And just to be clear, so that one in what I when it was given to me, it was a 401k now is that different than an IRA,

yes, 401, ks 403, these five threes. And similar plans are group retirement plans. Much like, think of it like health insurance, you’ve got private individual plans that most of us self employed, people are limited to, and then you have group plans through an employer, they’re structured in a similar format, the 401 K’s are typically when you’re still employed, when you’re actively employed under a 401k, usually those funds are locked up, and you can’t move them out there, you know, until sometimes when you hit 59 and a half, or maybe they have a vesting schedule at a certain age, you might be able to roll out a certain percentage of it, but typically, they’re locked up. Now, in your case, you left this old employer or this group plan. And sometimes the funds when you leave, stay in the group plan. Sometimes they’re rolled over to an IRA, if they’re still in the old group plan. It’s pretty simple. It’s a phone call that we would certainly love to do for you. But it’s the individual has to, that’s one of the things we can’t do is call your 401k admin or actually opened the bank account for you when that when that time comes. Otherwise, we try to do all the heavy lifting.

Okay, well, yeah, we should do that. You can

tell me more, tell me more. So say I sent 25 k your way. You know, we, we’ve talked a little bit about what’s on the menu, but what might you be prescribing today, for clients in that size,

it depends on, you know, your risk profile, it depends on, you know, what your portfolio looks like, what you where you like to have your money, let’s do the little more aggressive one, let’s give them a little more the opt out plan here. Let’s go that way. I personally, I believe that blockchain technology is just a revolutionary technology that is here to not only to stay but to integrate into the way we do so many different things. It’s not just you know, Bitcoin is a monetary instrument. It is a peer to peer cashless transactional currency, and also store value. But there are, and there are numerous other competing crypto currencies. And there’s also this entire tokenized economy where you have companies that instead of offering equity in the company, they do so through tokens. And the token, which is a crypto cryptographic token, or cryptocurrency serves as a mechanism of operation within the equity of the company. So for example, one that I really like is populace. And it is a tokenized company that does invoicing there in the factoring business it which is a huge, very profitable sector. And these gentlemen realized that utilizing blockchain technology, it’s it’s on the Ethereum blockchain, utilizing this technology, we can cut out numerous middlemen and women, middle people, and harness quite a bit of a percentage in this factoring business. So this is like invoice factoring. When you have short term corporate loans. If I’m not not mistaken,

I can describe it please, factoring is when you buy accounts receivable from somebody. So when I actually owned a small business that did this before the market crashed. And so a cleaning company, commercial cleaning company would clean and accumulate invoices and say, Come to me, and I’d buy $4,000 worth of the AR. So I’m not loading the money and buying a car than I tell the person that company that was the cleaning company, hey, I now have acquired that you need to pay me the $4,000, I give the cleaning company three of it. And then when I collect the four, I take my fees out. And then I give them the remainder of what’s left besides three I gave them and the as points go, it’s two to three points a month in some cases. So if you it’s not interest because it’s not alone. So you’re not under usury laws and your from most of the lending compliance as long as it truly is factoring it done, right. So that business from a you know, if you compare it to interest is making 40 or 50 or 60% per year

and there’s huge need, right? Because a lot of small businesses have a are issues

just cash flow

facility, cash flow help, you are just helping small businesses survive when you’re doing this. Yeah, the tokenized application, the use of blockchain is to, I guess, primarily to cut out the, the shuffle of paperwork and the middleman that go in between this process of person to person solution, is there

a way to securitize it as well? Yeah,

yeah. Like what do you mean? You’re the person I have to pay now

it’s on the blockchain.

Cool. So, uh, so you’re a, you’re an advocate for a crypto and blockchain investments as far as aggressive alternative investments from the from the self directed or the, the IRA IRA LLC. Mm hmm.

What else? metals? Yeah, yes, silver, I think physical silver has a huge amount of potential, not only from a monetary perspective, but an application. I mean, it is used in like everything, I’m picking up a cell phone here, it’s used from a technology as we move them to a more technological world, there will be more and more silver applications. And they’re, they’re finding more and more and there’s really not very much of the stuff. Silver’s 10 times the valuation relative to gold is right now probably 8085 to one, maybe even 90. Now has Silver’s come down a little bit ounces to one ounce, and they come out of the Earth’s crust at about a 10 to one ratio above ground supplies are nearly nearly par. And gold is great. I love gold. for portability purposes. If you want to move a lot of wealth, you can do so pretty easily with silver, very much wealth. And silver is quite bulky. So there are stories concerns often. But the upside is pretty tremendous, I think for silver.

All right. Now, let’s break in here and talk a little bit about what will is getting at a lot of people don’t understand the banking industry, the financial industry currency, we kind of live in this world where we just know that the dollars the dollar and we hear people talking about the Federal Reserve, and the only people that really these days talk about fractional reserve lending money. And all of this are either the economists and they speak in a language none of us understand, or the conspiracy theorists and so it’s probably worth breaking in for a minute to just talk about this because I know a little bit I’ve taken banking law with a Rhodes Scholar who was presidential economist for a season of his life before he taught in fact, I had him as a professor on the brink of y2k. And if anyone remembers y2k, it was the first era of the proper everybody thought that the economy he was going to crash when all the computer shut down. And we would not have water supplies or power. And so I said to this professor, what do you think of all of this, and he basically said, You know, I don’t think it’s going to happen. But I got a bag of silver quarters, just in case that’s funny. So yeah, like the sort of skeptic in him was like, you never know, I’m going to have some water prepared in my garage, and I got some silver quarters. But he’s not liquidating his, you know, his traditional investments are selling off as real estate, he’s not moving to the mountains. So there is a reason to be a healthy skeptic of the banking system. It is a rather scary system that has, you know, sort of bankrupted the country several times, including in our recent history. And many of our guests, I have been through the gauntlet of the crash. So on the one hand, I’m a skeptic. On the other hand, you know, I’m not burying quarters in my backyard, on the on the idea that we’re going to be, you know, having the zombie apocalypse in my lifetime.

Yeah, healthy dose of skepticism is a good thing. And I think, you know, there’s certain group of people who will hear this and be really into what he’s saying. And I think another group that probably I fall into, were probably going along with what you’re saying as well, this is a good reminder that bad shit can happen. And skepticism is a good thing. And it’s all about diversification in all aspects of finance and of life. And I think that’s very opt out, we say you should diversify your income sources to take back control. You should also diversify where you invest. We’re, we’re big advocates of real estate investing. And that’s always going to be a big bucket for us. But I like crypto, I like putting some stuff in gold. I think it makes sense to spread all this stuff out and just be a skeptic in that just don’t take what you’re spoon fed from a financial advisor and some retail location in a suit, and do your own research, make your own decisions. And Will’s a really cool guy to get on here and have to talk because what the stuff he’s saying is stuff that I’m not always aware of as an option. And I don’t think a lot of you guys are either,

yeah, even if you don’t think there’s going to be a big financial collapse wills, right in the sense that detaching currency from a reserve like gold puts the inflationary control in the hands of the government. And when you do that, you basically have the government creating an sort of Phantom tax. So this thing we call inflation we’ve all experienced, it used to pay rent for $1,000 a month, and now you’re into 2000 a month used to be able to buy a house for $300,000, and now it’s $600,000. And that is the government taxing you in a sense, because they can create and control inflation. And, you know, we are strong advocates of hedging against that inflation with real estate for a long term plan so that you’re not worried about how much income you’re going to get from dollars in an IRA if you own a four Plex outright. Because as the rent goes up, income for you, goes up. So I think we’re in many ways on the same page with the same understanding. But for me, I’m not one who would sell real estate, for example, to just pile up gold because I think that it will take a lot longer for the big collapse that many people think is coming to happen. I the Roman Empire to hundreds of years of bad management before it collapsed. And with modern technology, I think we can make it last as long

like it. Let’s get some more from will.

Okay. And you’ve been able to turn this into a career After leaving a more vanilla job will say, in financial services. And what around 2010 is that when this happened? Yep. Okay, so eight years running, you’ve made this part of your opt out, it’s kind of a multiple OPT outs happening at once here. But for you going off as an entrepreneur, tell me a little bit about how this business has evolved in the the challenges and how it’s working. Now,

it’s been really awesome to build something like this and have the freedom, the flexibility, I get to spend my days as I choose, of course, there are all of the, you know, challenges with owning your own company and servicing clients and dealing with all the different metrics within my partner. And I, you know, I think we do a pretty good job of keeping the wolves at bay. But yeah, it’s it’s, it’s it’s quite liberating, really. And the, the scalability is something exciting to for, you know, we’ll find ourselves just kind of cruising along, not really not working ourselves to death sometimes, but making a nice income. And then as we sort of step things up, and scale things up, it’s a very scalable model as well. So, and there’s like, 43, to your, to your point. And I think there’s 43 million, so 2016 statistic 43 million households with IRAs in the US. So that’s a large pot, you know, of people. And I think more, you know, not not everyone is really suited to manage their own investments clearly. But more and more people are waking up to the fact that the system is, you know, the, those vanilla mutual funds that you’re forced into, may not be the best place to have your, your money, your investments, you know, especially if they have connections to people who are doing any type of private equity or real estate or or other, there’s just, there’s so many different places to put your, your nest eggs.

Yeah, and I think they just the general idea of being more in control is a bit of a trend in healthcare and the gig economy and whatever. I think that this goes along with that generational changes. As the younger generations get a little bit older, more cynicism or skepticism, there’s probably a rising tide that’s going to bring people your way, I think, but a lack of awareness of being able to even do this is probably the biggest challenge because I’m, of course, it sounds nice to me, you know, I’m the host of the opt out life but uh, and but I think it would resonate with a lot of other people too. But I think that they just don’t know that it’s out there. How do you how do you help combat that awareness other than going on famous podcasts like this one?

Well, that is very much how we’ve built the company. my step dad told me years ago as an Italian immigrant who ran his own restaurant series of restaurants and sports bars. He told me it’s not what you know, in life, it’s who you know, and we’ve probably all heard some version of that, of course, it’s both, I would weigh a little bit heavier, maybe 6040, or even 7030 on the who, you know, if you can train yourself to know quite a bit and have the relationships and connections then you can be pretty dangerous. My partner and I actually met at the silver summit wasn’t only physically met for the first time, but we were working together for a mint for minting silver, copper and gold medallions. And we were doing so for cause I celebrities, people in the in the precious metals, space analysts, people with the following people with a YouTube channel where we’d meant their their logo or whatever on the coin, and then they would sell them to their subscribers. So we built some relationships doing that in this alternative media space. And that’s where we have built the majority of, you know, of our branding. And that space is growing. There are more people entering that space as they sort of step away from these traditional media outlets. So they’re printing them, like, I could get coins that have like Nate’s face on one side and my face on the other. The double headed

retail, what would be on the tail? I don’t know that’s middle finger, the middle finger so we could have opt out silver dollars. Mm hmm. Yeah.

And that’s the thing that people are doing it is Yes,

yeah. So that’s really the, the source of our of our marketing is through these relationships with people. We have some private equity firms that we’ve that we work with that one gentleman who’s just an old friend of mine that send some business our way, of course, networking into the real estate community is certainly a good idea. There are plenty of real estate investors looking to invest their capital and this platform, yes, there are self directed IRA platforms where you can invest in real estate, but typically the ones that most people are familiar with is where you get the trustee or custodian to approve this purchase of this home or property. And that can be pretty tedious. That’s the process that we go through to get the LLC approved. And once the LLC is approved, the client can buy and sell properties on his or her own with any oversight.

Okay, let me let me interrupt because that’s I want a practical question. Somebody wants to use their IRA money to buy a franchise business to start a launch of business by a side gig or to buy a rental property. Those are the things that I think a lot of people are itching to do with that money that’s tied up and some mid cap fund like Nate’s can they do that with your program? Absolutely.

Yeah, the biggest thing with real estate, you can purchase any type of real estate with this, the bigger there are a couple of, you know, guidelines, namely there between you, this is an IRA asset. So, as the individual you’re typically the prohibited party, you a spouse, parents, children can’t live in the property, couldn’t office in the property and shouldn’t provide sweat equity. So you should hire that work out, right? Don’t cut the grass or paint the house, hire it out. You’re really just the investment manager, you can perform all those managerial duties. But yeah, everything you mentioned would be feasible

cool. You and you could buy a subway franchise or something with your IRA that’s sitting there right now, maybe not doing so great.

Would you have a similar restriction on not being able to work inside the subway? Correct? Okay.

Okay. So you’d be the owner of the subway couldn’t be them. You couldn’t be the operational manager of the subway, the asset manager,

correct. Technically, your your IRA would be the owner? Well, the your IRA would own the LLC. So the entity the company would be the owner of the subway and you would be prohibited from working there Yes,

by a laundromat. Can you collect quarters from the machines? Yes, you’d have to have a laundromat that’s all automated so you don’t have to do that

where you can pay someone to do the collection. Right.

I would argue that while

you’re quarters, man,

this is certainly not one that’s been tried in court. So we don’t have precedent but I would argue that yes, you could because that that’s like collecting rent, you know, you can handle money’s you just don’t want to. That’s not sweat equity. Right. Right. So you don’t want to improve the asset with your own labor? Okay,

very cool. This this is interesting, because it is a lot more control than you get with a self directed IRA program. Absolutely. Yeah,

another interesting one of folks that might be listeners to this for self employed folks, the the Sep self employment pension IRA is a great vehicle for higher income, self employed individuals that are eligible to contribute to a Sep because you can contribute up to like $55,000 annually, which is tax deferred, consult your CPA. But that is advantageous for that demographic. Because you can set one of these up, you can defer all that income every year and then actually invest, choose how to invest the money yourself. So that’s a big one.

Let’s talk about some personal stuff. Then you travel a bit here, you spend some time in foreign lands here and there. Tell us about that,

you know, studied Spanish, I did a study abroad and chill a summer between freshman and sophomore year. So it was about what 1819 and just fell in love. I mean, the experience was incredible being on foreign lands and, and just, you know, it’s a pretty different culture down there, at least it was, you know, 20 years ago, loved that quickly bettered my Spanish I mean, came back I was pretty fluent by the time I got back, and then I figured out, okay, how do I convince the old man to do a full semester looking at the metrics of it, it was actually I went to College of Charleston, in Charleston, South Carolina, and the semester abroad was like the same cost as the semester at home. So I was able to say, all right, looked at I’ll work all summer, I’ll save up my money. So I’ll have my pizza and beer money over there. But my room and board and tuition is the same as tuition at home. So what do you think I did that for a semester? So junior year,

sophomores junior year? And that was just another awesome experience to, you know, walk in Europe walk in those lands and experience that culture actually met my wife there. She’s not a Spaniard. No, she’s a Texan. Somehow. I went to Spain to meet another gringo. But yeah, I love I love it. You know. Speaking speaking, the language we go down to Mexico often have a little place south of Rosarito. It’s just sleepy and relaxing and right on a cliff from the ocean. And it’s you know, the time sort of stops or slows down over there. There’s just the bustle sort of doesn’t exist. Really, of course, there is short drive

down like our

it’s about an hour north of into nada. Mm hmm. What kilometer marker.

It’s a 3838 38

famous surf spot, actually there that I couldn’t find last time I went down there, because when I served as a teenager, k 38, it was just a bluff and the so that you can find south of probably San Francisco.

It’s incredible. Yeah, beautiful. Break. It’s beautiful. Well, next time you come down, we can still at least market our place.

How long you had that spot? Just about a year? Okay. We share it with some friends that introduced us down there. And

it’s great. What about Spain? What’s your favorite highlights two or three spots in Spain that you think are worthy of listeners? attention?

Well, I’m quite partial to Grenada. That’s where I was in school. And it’s a beautiful city nestled at the, you know, in the foothills of the alcohol. Us Now, the Sierra, Sierra Nevada, actually in the alcohol dresser, the foothills there so you’re like 45 minutes from scalable mountains. And then you’re also about 45 minutes to an hour from the beach. In fact, that was the first and only place where I did that, you know, ski in the morning and beach in the afternoon. It’s a lot of hustle, but you can make it happen. Yeah. Granada’s beautifully all hombre is there which is the centuries old palace, that’s one of the wonders of the world. Beautiful, beautiful place and a lot of really interesting cultural cultural history there as a city that has been conquered back and forth from the Moore’s to the Spaniard to the Spanish. There’s a really cool, yeah, you’re not far from Morocco,

the food architecture, all of that, that that blend of cultures over hundreds of years.

Yeah, it’s pretty beautiful. Otherwise southern Spain, I mean, just the whole all over pretty miraculous. Gibraltar was a really cool little town right at the tip at the very tip before you take the boat to go to Morocco, Morocco was amazing. The coolest place I went there was down into fez. And then we went into the Medina, the old you know, the old part of town, which was like, as bustling as Manhattan but it was all dirt roads, dirt buildings, you know, camels, I mean, we literally whole group of gringos we get dropped off by the bus or whatever. And we have our multiple Moroccan tour guides. Morocco blew my mind because there were everybody spoke so many languages. Even the kids maybe we would have kids running up to us wondering whether we were French or Spanish or you know, English and they would speak all the languages that wasn’t killer experience being in the Medina of fez. So if you if you do if you can make it that way, that was just incredible. Don’t drink the water learned that the hard way

as advice for about half the world. Yeah,

it’s you say fez. I’m one of our podcasts. I was like where we go and we do our game.

I think

I didn’t say fez. Bethesda’s are actually on my list. So I’m excited to hear someone thought fez was awesome. Yeah for sure. I have not been in Morocco at all and keep having people tell me cool stuff about being in Morocco maybe on top of Morocco maybe if we transported where I want to go would be the place to film the Star Wars

tattooing

or something you know that little village they’ve turned it into like a homestay i think but I don’t think it’s convenient to get to it all so I need your Star Trek

yeah my teleporting Hello

Porter to get there enjoy it and teleport the hell back out okay okay

yeah it’s cool you can get all in the desert I mean it’s you can take the guided tours and camp in these little makeshift tent villages and you know and then they take you on Camelback to the next one. It’s it’s pretty awesome.

I want to get a little bit more on like the client side like playing through in my mind You know, people like to get the in their head they want to do alternative investments with their IRA they come to you we’ve talked about options with precious metals and real estate buying a franchise cryptocurrency. What’s the experience like though as they’re working with you? Or do you check in on a quarterly basis? Do you send statements? Do you

put out a monthly newsletter with like, here’s some new office to check stuff out. How do you engage with your clients? Good question. We threw out the account setup process, which is two to four weeks, we’re back and forth quite a bit, phone and email just to getting the administrative things taken care of. We are available for consulting with all of our clients, they go through the process for whatever their investment desires or needs might be after the fact we have a not really a regular newsletter that goes out but we we’ve got, you know, a newsletter that we put together we do anytime we’re on a podcast or YouTube interview or something like that. We blast those out to everybody. If we write articles or whatever, those go up as well. Occasionally, we’ll have promotional things. But yeah, I mean, we have, it’s, it’s a really cool group of people. This client base that we have, a lot of people are very opt out that come to us, especially working in this alternative media space. You know, we have different different analysts. I mean, I’ve worked with survival blog is the least a couple years ago, the highest traffic survival survivalist website out there. James Wesley Rawls is a friend of mine, he and it’s a very successful blog. And, you know, a lot of those subscribers are hardcore peppers, you know, are people that live out in the sticks and grow their own stuff. And, you know, I mean, and that’s a very, very interesting group of folks to work with, we’ve got but run of the mill people like us that living their lives, their everyday lives that come to this realization at some point in time, you know, a lot of folks in this space have, they’ve gone through this sort of awakening, like, Oh, my gosh, I’ve got a chunk of money over it wherever it is, and I don’t feel good about it. And I like to get it out. Some people before they learn about something like this might even take a drastic approach, pay taxes and penalties and pull the whole thing out, which a lot of people do, I’ve had people say, Man, I wish I would have learned about you a year ago, but my wife has an account. So let’s work with that. So it’s a cool, very awesome group of people that we get to interact with, and, you know, stuff clients from years, years back 567 years ago, that call or move or share this or share, share that so it’s it is it is quite a bit of fun. Yeah,

okay. Dana, as we’ve gone along with will, you know, part of this conversation was me throwing out there that, you know, I have 401 K or an IRA, I can’t remember which one it is. But it’s a good example of a situation that a lot of people are hearing this probably in its invested in some mix that we joke about, of like mutual funds and growth and non growth or whatever. I mean, clearly, I haven’t paid much attention to it. But partially because it’s not interesting to me, I don’t think that those investments are really going to do much it just kind of got parked there from a former employer situation and hearing we’ll speak about these alternative options got me excited. And he kind of walked us through how I could set this up into an LLC and transfer it over and then start using it to invest in things like real estate that I really liked. So I liked getting those practical tips I hope people kind of caught along as I was doing a real world client example with him. And if you do want more Definitely check him out over a perpetual assets calm, this may also be a guest that we bring back in kind of behind the curtain that opt out life. So come over to our Facebook group on Facebook, look for the opt out life Facebook group. And maybe this is a reason to start to think about getting into one of our educational courses to so head over to opt out life. com. We’ve got a bunch of stuff where we talk nitty gritty about this with people like will, if that sounds interesting to you. But But back to the story.

Can I just say that, yes, we’re not getting paid anything promoting what we will tell you when we have a sponsor and will tell you to go by their shirts, because they’re our sponsor. We got a tactical partner here with really cool stuff. And we’re sharing it with you, because we think it’s good opportunity. The thing I thought was a really good opportunity is if you’ve got that still IRA that isn’t doing much like yours, Nate hasn’t done much in 10 years. I bet. I bet 10 years ago, if you had just bought a single house in Missouri, where you’re from, for $25,000, it probably be worth a lot more right now. And you’d have been generating income the whole time that would have been going into that IRA. And so you’d control that IRA, it would own real estate, it would now have accumulated rental income and the equity of the increase in value of that property probably would have been a lot better investment for you made you feel a lot better than having $25,000 sit there for a decade and grow by, you know, whatever. It’s grown 10%.

Yeah, maybe. I don’t know. I can’t remember the login. That’s That’s right. You’re absolutely right. I mean, if you give it that, that amount of time, that realistic time window that I’ve had this thing, so getting there. Yeah, it makes me feel a little foolish to be perfectly honest about what I’ve done. And Will’s conversation is a great kick in the pants for me to go do something with mine. And I hope it is for you guys to you know, we also talked to him a bit about crypto. It’s just something that Dana and I have dabbled in and I think is very interesting space. I think we’ll make some cool comments about blockchain technology. And you know, the people that aren’t caught up in the frenzy of crypto as this way to just make a bunch of money real fast, usually come back to a conversation about the fundamental usage of that technology. And we’re at the very, very, very beginning of even being able to understand it, I think, and to see the practical applications of it. But it is an interesting space to keep tabs on for a couple reasons. And I think it was cool for him to bring that up. We haven’t talked a lot about its on the opt out life podcast, although I can tell you that a lot of our guests and a lot of the people in the opt out life community are crypto people. So check that out to because if you’re looking for side hustlers, or if you’re looking for places that are going to be exploding over the next five or 10 years, that’s not a bad place to be placing a bet. If you want to have a success story where something took off on a hobby had crypto is a cool place to go.

So

yeah, good, good place to network as well with a lot of people say, I don’t know what I want to get into. If you’ve got a blank slate and you’re thinking, where should I go from here, get into some meetups, start learning about crypto, maybe you don’t pull the trigger right away. But this is a revolutionary technology as well as indicated and we agree with that we don’t know what bet on but a great opportunity to start gaining knowledge. Well, there’s a lot of people out there that think it’s just a flash in the pan.

Yeah, and you’re you know, the side gig example g always bring up Dana free legal aid website you started 20 years ago or something like that. It’s kind of an example of something you could do in crypto today. In a way, you know, it’s not always going to be apples to apples, but you were playing around on the internet and with publishing at a time when that was very nascent and look what it’s done for you. I think that’s a good instructive story. If you haven’t heard that one yet, then you’re probably not consuming enough opt out life content we need to get you over onto our email list but uh. But yeah, it’s it’s a good example of a side hustle of someone who is a hobbyist who was tinkering at an early time that’s still paying off 20 years later and it’s brought Dana along into a world of a bunch of other interesting entrepreneurs to so so there’s a lot of reasons to play around in those early industries and cryptocurrencies is one I guess last but not least with our boy will he’s definitely an opt out dude they’ve got a couple employees no office seem too stressed up seem pretty nonchalant to be someone who’s a money manager yeah

spends a lot of time in its place down in Mexico was planted right on the best surf break and baja done some some traveling though he’s a scaling back a little bit on that right now. Family,

right, right, right. But a guy who’s who’s doing it all he’s living the opt out life and doing all kinds of fun things. So hope you guys are enjoying this one. And we’ll get a little bit more now mentioned the survivalist blog like that is a huge and peppers in general, huge online community from all kinds of media, online media podcasts, people buying flashlights and shit. Like there’s a lot of people into that stuff. I feel like there’s a large market opportunity for you or your part or whatever you you choose to be a persona that’s got a voice that’s saying this there’s so much built in potential fear to play on

like, I don’t say here. But I mean, the I’d say empathy. I mean, in a sense, say at the nice way you don’t Well, you don’t have to sell someone that already understands why, you know, it’s given the why I mean a lot of people listening right now like why why why should I take this 401k that’s got proper allocation of stocks and bonds and mid cap and small cap Why Why should I do that? And so if you’re talking to prep they’re out right that they know why you just have to explain the mechanics and show them how

yeah just like webinars to their lists, right like I feel like a huge opportunity

yeah i mean i guess the I get the sense that there are pretty cohesive community which is good and bad I mean it’s good if they get you an embrace you it’s probably bad if if if they think you maybe aren’t completely all in with them I guess I’d be interested to know that like can you can you be friends with and hang out with and sell stuff to rappers and be empathetic but not necessarily be all in with them are they are they cool hanging out with someone that doesn’t grow their own food

I think so yeah I think so i mean i’m not sure

i haven’t met too many of these folks at at events and things

the fire movement to like it’s kind of play on that a little bit like the finance

financial independence retiree

thing huge online definitely some threads of that where this would be interesting to people yet Mr. Money mustache to do one of these and write about it like it. Tons of people calling you all day long.

Yeah, I think there’s definitely a market for you for you. And fire.

Right.

Let’s just start opt out financial. How

are you?

Good plan?

Can I ask you about the business?

Yeah, yeah. Like, is it just you and your partner and what’s

what’s it what’s sort of your entrepreneurial journey? Because I mean, I think what’s cool about having you here is that there’s a whole bunch of people learning that there’s financial tools they have access to the day didn’t know there’s a whole service that offered to facilitate that. So there’s an opt out opportunity and a tool to leverage but you’re here and you’re an entrepreneur and most of our listeners are on somewhere along their opt out path and entrepreneurship as part of that, tell us your journey. I mean, were you I mean, be honest with us, you know, financial crisis, I’m honest about it, I went from a very positive network to a very, very negative one. And it took an awful long time to get out of that it was a sad and difficult time for many years, I mean, to walk us through that phase for you.

Yeah, I had a similar experience went from pretty awesome lifestyle to, oh, my gosh, you know, the range just got pulled in. At the time, I was working with a

very opt out financial product that was utilized for paying off it was a way to pay off your mortgage in a fraction of the time utilizing the banking product, a simple interest rather than a compound interest type of loan, where you would basically leverage from the simple in simple terms, you would leverage from the open ended interest account in tranches to pay off the compound interest mortgage account. And that was a very successful time, and then the credit crunch happened. And that really put a big damper on things, it was hard to even get equity loans, which was the primary product that we were using, utilizing an equity loan, an equity line, I should say, to funnel money in and out of regular everyday money income in and paying bills out of which would, by design, lower the effective interest rate that was charged and allow you to leverage these chunks of money at lower rates.

Sounds like cool. Yeah,

yeah,

interesting. Very cool. Everything. The guys that put this together, we’re, we’re, we’re brilliant. And so yeah, 2008 moved back to San Antonio, Texas, which was ultimately where we launched the company, I quickly realized that I wanted a virtual business where there was a lot of freedom to move around. My wife and I have moved something when we tell people all the places we live, like we’re in the military, you know, a lot of times actually, prior to prior to that engagement. I was working in resort real estate selling real estate projects for developer and so I work at one project and then I’d hop over and sell the other project. So lived in like Park City, Utah, lived in some fun places, the virtual aspect, I mean, just all of these tools in front of us Mac books and computers and cell phones, we can do so much virtually. And I really that that’s just been very attractive to me to have that sort of virtual and now as we’ve gotten bigger, we’ve had to bring on help. But we’ve, we’ve we’ve tried to even do that from a virtual sort of standpoint as well. So that there’s my partner is just killing me to get an office and you know, come in every day and I have a little space that I use, but you know, a place where we can have and we’re probably getting close to that especially as I think with the next cryptocurrency wave of money that comes in there will be a pretty, you know, a lot of business that comes our way. So how many staff do you have now? Three. Okay.

Yeah, perfect virtual business, no obligation to be at an office where a lot of times you’re just going to get bugged by time to do things that make your productivity go down? Yeah,

our guests most read on a recent episode has 200 employees completely remote in 35 countries. So as possible, that’s not possible. Yeah, they do a lot of a video chat. Yeah. And they have a rule that even if three of the four people in the meeting are in person, they have to disperse and use video chat. They’re not allowed to be in the same room. So So yeah, they’ve had a few fundamental decisions, I think that have made it realistic. It’s kind of cool to hear what’s going on. Yeah.

So the back to the inception, you you’re leaving the financial industry or the financial industry is leaving you you find yourself back in Texas?

I don’t know living in a tent on the on the range of your why I’m just guessing what I would probably have done branch of my wife’s family, Emily, figure out my life existential crisis. And did you start the business with your partner? What was the the founding we did?

Yes, the two of us started in Dallas, actually, with the intention of getting the word out about this type of self directed IRA, specifically in the in the precious metals community, for people who wanted this exposure. And then with the metals card as well, separate product or service, but just kind of a unique thing. So we launched with that, and leverage the relationships that we had at the time friends with microphones, if you will, and the beginning was not easy. The there were so many different great stories at some point at my partner, and I should get together and write some of this stuff down. But just, you know, like, all those tales of adversity, right, all that, you know, from,

we were kind of cheap when we started the company. So we, we had it built, we had the website and everything built by Indian programmers.

And so we found ourselves we’re awake, you know, like thing, I remember being with my family in Florida for Thanksgiving. And I had to, like, stay up. And I had to get up at 3am to communicate with the Indians about the project development. But yeah, we built it out, we, the model was such that we’re pretty lean. So just a little bit of business was able to, you know, put some wind in the sales. And then once we had some success, we realized, okay, let’s get out of Dallas where we’re going to move. And my partner, he’s a bachelor, God bless him. He He’s from Chicago originally, and said, he put out a few places to Eric and I said, San Diego, la or Chicago, San Diego was a no brainer. So we moved out here six years ago now. And the rest is history. We continue to try to get exposure in media spaces. And with organizations like the fire that you just mentioned, and and others where we can have referral sources. We have an affiliate model and program that we’ve built, where we pay a referral fee for clients that come in, we pay that to the affiliates. So that’s been a good way for us to, you know, get our foot in the door here or there with with different people.

Do you ever have a point where you thought, I’m not sure we’re going to make it this week, we should roll this thing up and go back and get a job,

you know, early on. Yeah, when we were still back in Dallas, there were, you know, that Series of Unfortunate Events that sort of keep keep kids kind of like the universe testing you to see how much you can take. I I was in my mom was a motivational speaker. And I was just sort of brainwashed at an early age with this positive, you know, opportunistic attitude. And so,

there was actually a time though, when I told my wife, you know, I can’t remember the exact words, but I think, Gus and I’d probably gotten in a big fight to that, then, you know, we’re both opt out or so, you know, don’t tell me what to do here. Oh, yeah, there was definitely a time where I said something to that effect to her. I don’t know about this. I don’t know, you know, if this is gonna work back to sling and stocks or whatever. And she said, she lit a fire under me, you know, she said, Go and go make you can do it. And so glad I did. We’ve helped a lot of people. We’ve built a really awesome network of people that we work with, and having the freedom and flexibility and income is all you know, it’s what people dream of. So my partner, you should have him on and talk about travel. You know, he’s, he’s a bachelor, so it’s funny. I’m wife and two kids. And he’s a bachelor, and so we have very, you know, polar lifestyles. Yeah, in fact, where was he was, he was in Europe not long ago. He’s, he’s adding he’s, you know, doing the pages of the passport right now. So where he lives here in San Diego. He does. Yes, downtown.

Okay. Sounds about right. Yes. Does he work out of fit? pick up chicks. If it

seems like the place to be

gym? The gym? It is. But he sent me a picture. it overlooks the bay.

Yeah, I mean, it’s, this one’s right on the ballpark. So maybe you can see the bay too, but I think it’s

like a club and jet. I think that actually

right over the Bongo. And you’re like, I gotta dress up better. Sick. His gym. I’ve

seen Yelp. yelp. Elite event after opening.

Yeah, yeah, they have parties if carriers prob hopefully. Yeah, yeah. When Petco has been opened that long. Yeah. Sick. They’re open a new one. And mission Mission Beach though. The buildings I was there this morning. can close. Well, cool. I mean, I mean, real quick, what, uh, what’s, what are the ambitions I mean, more of the same, it sounds like said you said, you guys have reached a point of a contentment and to and it sounds like it’s been a nice somewhat steady rise, at least from the getting through the early days, which kudos on that. But a more of the same, a little bit more and more.

Well, we about two years ago, we realized a rush was coming with cryptocurrencies and specifically the, the need to invest in them, especially with people’s IRAs, and we’re like, God, this platform is literally the best thing out there for taking locked up IRA money and putting it to work in crypto, you know, that the centralized sort of trustee approved crypto IRAs are thankfully very expensive, I mean, 10 to 15%, they’ll charge of the entire portfolio and then the clients limited to a handful of different crypto coins or currencies they can invest in, and it’s all it’s all centralized. It’s all like in a fund where the individual doesn’t actually take custody of the private keys. And one of the old sayings it from the precious metals industry as if you don’t hold it, you don’t own it. You know, when you’re buying these risk assets, many people with the impression that the current monetary system is, you know, waning, you need to be in custody, you need to have control of custody yourself, you will look at precious metals, for example, and there are numerous multiples on the actual underlying physical asset that are lent out on top of the fractional reserve sort of lending, if you will, on ties like Bernie Madoff only much, much bigger, so you’ve got to hold it yourself. But with crypto is we just we’re in the process of launching a an internal exchange where we’re able to acquire directly for clients getting new money. So we’re trying to add, you know, to our existing model as best we can, if we can add products or services that are complimentary will will do so, we’ve even toyed with doing a newsletter or some sort of paid subscriber ship model, maybe a consulting or something because of that ongoing revenue component. I mean, I have friends in this in the alternative media space who record podcasts and write articles for a living and a very fine living at that travel and do all kinds of fun things. I want to

be friends with them too. Yeah, yeah, I got somebody to have a crypto group with 40,000 members and they live out in your neighborhood really be that be beneficial for an on launch of your platform, marketplace, whatever. And then we can hang out with your friends with the podcast life. Alright, that’s exciting, man. Yeah, I’m ready for crypto to go on another run. It’s a I remember January 4, or whatever. very fondly 3am in the club. And it all went down from there. So waiting for that to come back patiently, patiently, but it’s going to come eventually. Yeah, yeah. Cool. Well, we’ll have a big party on that day. And thanks for coming by. Man. This is really interesting. I think Dana and I were more

interested in the nuances of what you do most of our guests. So I hope everybody enjoyed that. And we’ll see you soon. Thanks for having me. Thanks, Jim. If you like what Dana and I are doing these stories of cool people sprinkled with our insights are valuable to you. Do me a favor. Wherever you get your podcasts, go and click the subscribe button right now. Our goal is to spread these stories to as many people as possible and change lives. Let’s do that we need subscribers. Hopefully, we’ve helped you to start to see things differently. And there’s more to come after you subscribe to the podcast. Go over to opt out life. com, get on our email list and join the opt out life movement. Being on that list will get you early access to our course which is called the opt out life blueprint as well as our tribe membership and upcoming events hosted by the opt out life I promise you I’m sitting watching my inbox right now waiting for you to sign up so come say hi so I don’t get lonely deal. Alright, opt out out.