Alright, welcome in to Vision Pros Live.
I'm Jackson Callum, I'm your show host.
We will be doing interviews for visionary entrepreneurs and guests, guest leaders who
are building fantastic visions out there.
Ultimately, I just want to go through some of the things that might help you with your
vision.
If you have a vision that you're pursuing, drop a link in the comments and let us know
what that is.
If you're a business or a brand, if it's a non-profit that you run, be happy to promote
it, be happy to talk to you about it, and if you'd like to apply to be on Vision Pros
and be interviewed about that vision, then by all means, feel free to reach out.
Awesome everybody and welcome into Vision Pros Live, where I'll be hosting Tony Lopes
today of Freedom at Risk, fantastic book and Dirty Boots Capital.
Beyond that, he's just got so much power and vision for what he's doing and what he's
trying to do for people that I can't wait to bring him up here.
This is actually an impromptu interview.
The person I met Tony through is Ashley Demoque de Teo, de Teo Publishing.
She wasn't able to make it in today.
Last minute, Tony and I are texting back and forth and I'm like, hey man, you want to come
and talk on Vision Pros Live?
He's like, absolutely.
How further ado, Tony, let's bring you on and we'll get the full bio in as we go, but
we won't get the full bio in.
Come on, we'll get portions of the bio because your bio is probably much longer than you
even give yourself credit for.
So Tony, welcome today.
Appreciate having you.
Thank you so much, Jackson, for having me on.
This is going to be some really exciting content that we're creating today, so I'm super excited
for this.
Dude, I'm stoked as well.
You're right about that.
This is a very rare opportunity.
If you get the chance to hear this.
I'm going to talk about Tony in a way that may make some of you feel uncomfortable with
the reality of just how successful he is and what he's been up to.
But when you can retire at 44 years old, you become a multimillionaire and then you want
to help spread the wealth by teaching people about it and how that's done, but you do so
in such an authentic way, it can be like, well, wait a second.
I don't know if I can relate to this guy, but Tony's also got a background in understanding
what the hard knocks life looks like.
So we're going to go full circle on that.
Look at each of those spectrums.
And if you're listening in and you're looking for somebody to advise you on relation to
wealth, I've never found somebody more authentic than Tony.
I found some equals out there, but I've never found somebody more authentic than he is.
And we had a fantastic experience as we got to know each other on a trip recently.
I really got to dive in, but we'll dive into all the details that I've seen because I want
you guys in the audience to understand the power and value that Tony is to my life and
why I like to keep them as close to me as possible, any chance I get, no matter how
many states apart we are.
So Tony, just let me go there.
Thank you for your friendship, man.
That's the main thing I want to say.
And likewise, thank you for yours.
I'm so blessed in so many ways, but I'm certainly blessed to have you in my life and be helping
guide me, help me with branding, with thinking through different things.
There's not a lot of people out there who can just have the power of pure thoughts, and
to be able to sit down with you and to brainstorm through different topics, be able to, again,
just have different thoughts and not flow with the masses.
I so appreciate you and being that sounding board.
I love you calling me out for that.
You're so right.
I don't flow with the masses.
No, it's wild.
As you know, and as you do yourself, right?
We come across a lot of different people, and the important thing I try to do is have
some new thoughts.
And those new thoughts inspire me to do great things.
And sometimes you get stuck in your own head, and you need to talk to others to be able
to get out of that gudge.
And I'm sure your viewers know it as well, right?
You get stuck, and we need other people in our lives to inspire us to do greatness.
And that's what you help me with, Jackson.
You truly do.
And sometimes it's not even me jumping on a phone call with you.
It's me just thinking about you, and then these thoughts come.
So I appreciate you, man.
Thanks, man.
I appreciate that.
So Tony walks, he runs on a rocket ship laps around me in terms of financial advice and
the opportunities that are there.
And it's really cool because he can speak to me and others in a way that the people can
get.
But I want to just give you an array of things.
If you're into learning about gold, like in the investment, and what that would look
like to invest in gold, or if you want to know about investment in real estate, you
know, and complexes and the ups and downs, the ins and outs, there's so much that he
has to give there.
But again, I don't want to limit that.
If you're into any type of financial discussions, I've found Tony to be the type of person where
I can go to him.
And if he doesn't know what the answer is, I've found he's the type of person that will
guide you to the right type of person to talk to as well.
He's very well connected.
Tony, what are some of your favorite financial freedom topics to explore with people or to
put out to discuss with people?
Well, my number one is definitely real estate.
That's my background.
I've been heavy into real estate for 20 years now.
It was the thing that allowed me to obtain financial freedom at the age of 44.
And now I get to do beautiful things that I want to do.
And one of those things is actually coach people on real estate and how to get into
real estate and all the benefits that real estate offers them.
It's not just something that the rich can do.
We can all do it, right?
I mean, I am the product of immigrant parents.
My parents came to this country as immigrants with very little in their pocket.
And they advised me to, like a lot of our parents, this is probably going to sound very
similar to a lot of the viewers out there.
My parents told me, go to school, get an education, get a good job.
You'll be taken care of all your life.
And a very powerful message.
And they supported me through that.
And I thought, okay, that's what I'll go do.
And that's what I did.
I went to school.
I got a good education.
I got a good job.
And I worked at that job for about four years.
And then I got laid off.
And that was never in the mantra that my parents shared with me.
For a young person, that was a eye-opening experience.
And that was my first awakening to say, I got to do something different.
And unfortunately,
Hold on.
You said a young person, right?
And you and me both, we get to talk about our 20s of being young too.
How old were you when you got laid off?
I was 20, 26, I think.
I think I was 26.
That's awesome.
Yeah, somewhere around there.
And you know, it's so strange.
I remember being 20s.
I think I remember being 26.
And around that time, you feel a little boxed in sometimes.
You feel like maybe I can't do something else.
I was at a lifetime fitness as a sales rep when this guy came in and wanted to buy membership
from me.
And it turned out he had won a Super Bowl with the St. Louis Rams.
He was, and then after he got out of the NFL, he went back to school at 42 years old to
become a dentist.
And people said he was crazy.
And then when I met him, he owned the nicest spa and recovery rehabilitation center for
athletes in San Antonio.
And I was like, I was 21.
He took me to lunch.
He was teaching me about this because I have found that the people who are wealthy and genuine,
they want to spread the love.
They want to teach.
They want to share that abundance with others.
And it probably comes back.
So to rewind a little bit though, the struggle started before that.
We had other opportunities to learn about jobs, mowing lawns, doing paper routes, things
like that.
When did that start?
When did you start your hustle as a child?
Well I go back to my parents were immigrants.
So we weren't a wealthy family.
So that's something I press because a lot of us are in this situation.
I was not born with a silver spoon in my mouth.
So it started when I was young.
I would actually deliver, I had a paper route.
When I was 14 years old, I got a paper route.
And I had that for two, two and a half years.
And I saved up money.
Every single dollar bill I saved to be able to buy my first car.
I had to buy it.
My parents, you know, sure they helped me out along the way, but I had to buy it.
It was instilled in me at a very young age that I had to work hard to get the things
I wanted to get.
So yeah, it started back then.
Nothing was, what's the word today?
There was no entitlements.
I didn't just get money from my parents or just get money from the government to go to
school or I had to work several jobs to pay for my college.
So when I got out of college, I had an appreciation for my degree because I paid for it.
And I talk a lot about education and there's good and bad associated with college educations.
But I worked hard and it took me five years.
Actually, it took me five years to get through college.
So right there you can see I'm not a smart guy.
I took about four years to earn a four-year degree.
So yeah.
Oh, man, Tony.
Well, what does that make me?
Because it took me two semesters to get a.33 GPA and realize college wasn't me.
And you're like, college isn't for everybody.
That's okay.
And you know, one of these things going on now is, you know, just the whole government
wanting to pay for student loans and kind of give everybody the okay to go to college.
I don't think there's a lot of right with doing that because it sends the wrong message.
It's like everybody needs to go to college.
And if you don't go to college, you know, you're a lesser person.
You know, I treat my plumber and the guy who mows the lawn and the roof.
I treat everybody the same as I do my CPA, as I do my financial advisors, right?
I treat everybody with the same dignity and respect.
Good morning.
How are you?
How's the wife?
How's the kids?
How's the family?
Right?
Everybody.
And it seems like sometimes the government tries to put down the blue collar labor as
a lesser class.
And that's not good.
That's not right.
And it's not healthy.
Right, either.
And you know, it's funny.
I grew up in, you know, two different homes, one where there was a silver spoon, but we
were emotionally beaten with it.
And the other where we did not have silver spoons, but I was, you know, I had five older
sisters and my mom and they took care.
They coddled me.
You know, they loved me.
So I didn't know what hard work looked like.
And I grew up with the law of the microwave.
You know, microwave was my best friend all the way through, throughout the time I was
19 years old.
It wasn't until then where I started to really think about, you know what, like all this
quick access to easy, you know, the, yeah, I could go get a job at Sonic or something
and I pretended to work hard and I felt like I was really getting after it.
But there's a lot of depression that comes from a life of not working hard.
There's a lot of lost purpose that occurs.
There's a lot of realizing, wait a second, I might be robbing myself of things of my
future and it's, it's good when you have people in your life who can point that out and help
you get on track, but you remind me of the law of the harvest, right?
You did five years to learn, learn it.
Well, you, you were cultivating, you were building and you've taken advantage of opportunities
and I'm glad that I got on that train eventually because we live in a society right now where
people are adverse to, to a degree of hard work and a diligence where they almost feel
like you should not work hard.
And I don't, I don't want to condemn those individuals.
I don't, I want to help open their eyes because what's the person who's suffering in that
equation is not me.
You know, I don't, I don't have to go eat a fast food.
I can go get food wherever I want.
You know, I'm not going to wait there at McDonald's while somebody doesn't take care of me.
I'm going to, I'm going to go make my fast food a different way or order out.
So how do we inspire people?
How do we do that to inspire people to take on the principles of the law of the harvest?
What goes into that?
It is, it is difficult.
I'm not going to lie.
One of the biggest challenges I have is getting folks to take action.
And sometimes it's just taking small, low baby steps.
I've had this conversation with neuroscientists.
I've had this conversation with, you know, very, very powerful international speakers
who are on stage trying to encourage folks to take action.
I've had these conversations where I share with them, I have trouble getting folks to
take action.
And I guess the good news is that they have the same.
They've experienced the same.
And it really comes down to the individual.
The individual needs to be in a, in a space, mind space, physical space where they can
take action and they're ready to take action.
I had a lot of, as I call it, highs in my life, good moments in my life, but I've also
had a lot of lows in my life.
Getting laid off was just one of them.
And so I think people sometimes need to experience those lows in their life to jolt them to take
action.
And unfortunately, to a degree, that's just the reality of it.
Outside of that, I do as much as I can to encourage people because I do, I do a lot
of research, you know, we've had these conversations, I do a ton of research.
I speak with a lot of very, very smart people who are educating me on what's coming down
the pipeline for society and civilization.
And unfortunately, it's not a tremendously rosy picture.
I don't like to go negative.
I don't like to preach doom and gloom.
That's not my goal.
My goal is to educate people.
And that's why each and every day I coach, I do YouTube videos, I create content.
You know, reason why I wrote the book is because I'm trying to reach so many different people
to be able to encourage them in some way.
Read a book, watch YouTube videos, do something, take some small action to better your lives.
I love that.
And Jaime is actually going to be pulling up the book so we can see what it looks like.
He'll be pulling up the YouTube channel as well, which I love the branding that you have
on there, by the way.
It really, it made it easy for us to kind of piggyback some components of your designs
to start that portfolio that we worked on.
And you know, so does just the inspiration of knowing that the person we're working with
is centered on their purpose, right?
And then you're out there doing so much good for others.
That's what we're always looking for on our end.
Now, with this, we talked about another thing.
We talked about propaganda.
I want to circle back to it.
We talked about critical thinking skills and that being a big key.
Everybody who's listening right now, as Jaime pointed out earlier in his comment, he said,
surround yourself with the right people.
I am a huge believer of that concept because the right people can inspire you to take the
right types of actions and they can teach you how to think through things.
And we're never done learning how to think.
We've got to maximize our capabilities to think through our scenarios in order to protect
ourselves and not be a victim of our environments.
You know, that's hard to admit.
But in all truth, we're all victims of our environments.
There's not a single person who can escape that.
You know, and an example of that is if a hurricane hit right now where I'm at, or rather a tornado
hit right now in the spot where I met, or an atom bomb hit right where I'm at, guess
what?
I am a victim of the environment.
I can't escape that reality, right?
I have to accept to some degree I will always be a victim.
But do I make excuses for areas of my life, or perhaps I'm not a victim, and have more
control over escaping it?
What are your thoughts on that, Tony?
Well, I thought what you said was very powerful in terms of, you know, your greatness stems
from those that you surround yourself with.
I don't even know if you realize how incredibly powerful that is.
So I have to have people around me that support me.
And likewise, I recognize that in a lot of other very successful people recognize that,
right?
I know I'm not the smartest one, you know, at the table.
I get it.
I'm not.
It took me five years to get through a four-year program.
Remember that.
But, you know, so, you know, again, just the stuff, I want the viewers to understand the
immense value that they get from you.
And what I'm going to share right now is, I think, you know, gives the perspective.
I coach with my clients, my students, I coach with them.
And I've always gone through what I've described as my three-by-five plan.
And it revolves around, you know, the slogan of, your net worth is a result of your net
work, right?
Yes.
And so I go through on a very detailed basis what I call my three-by-five plan, where I
say on a day, week, or monthly basis, who are the five people you're interacting with
on a daily basis?
Who are the five people you're working with on a weekly basis?
And who are the five people you're interacting with on a monthly basis, right?
So that's my three-by-five plan.
And I do it, whether you have a business or whether you have a, you're looking to get
started with a new business or with real estate, you know, who are those people you're surrounding
yourself with on a day, week, and monthly basis?
And this has been incredibly powerful for folks to surround themselves with very powerful
people.
If they don't have them, we go find them, we create them, we get them thinking a little
differently than how they may have been taught in school or maybe taught at home.
We want them to think in a very more powerful way.
And so back to what you're doing and the value you're creating, I used to do that one-on-one
with folks to be able to help them.
I just recently posted that video to my YouTube channel for free.
Which video?
It's on my YouTube channel.
It's one of the more recent ones.
I have like almost 146 videos out there and things, but it's one of my more recent ones.
Your network, your net worth is your network or your net worth is your net worth.
Awesome.
We'll grab the link and we'll make sure to drop it in the comments afterwards for the
viewers too.
But it goes back to, you know, you're trying to help people.
I'm trying to help people.
What we need folks to do is understand today that we have a tremendous amount of free content
being provided out there that is so valuable.
You just need to absorb it and watch it or read it or go to a website.
You need to take that action.
YouTube is free.
You don't have to pay for any of those videos.
I'm not asking you to give me money.
Jackson's not asking the viewers to give him money.
This is all free content that we're all just trying to help each other with.
I don't make a buck.
Jackson isn't paying me to be here.
I don't pay him to do what he does.
He does it because he's a good guy and he wants to see people be very successful.
So it's just trying to get that message across.
It's like, you know, I share with folks.
It's amazing sometimes the thought process that I come against.
You know, I go to a lot of conferences and meet people.
And one of the things I hear occasionally are, Tony, why are you going to that conference?
You know, they're just going to try to sell you on a program or sell you on a course or
sell you on this.
And I'm like, you know, and some of them are put on by real estate experts.
And a lot of folks know like Robert Kiyosaki.
So Robert Kiyosaki will be at these events.
And I'm like, do you think Robert Kiyosaki really needs Tony Lopes's money?
He doesn't.
He doesn't care if Tony is there or not.
So Robert Kiyosaki is not at these events educating and helping people to think different
because he needs more money.
He doesn't.
He doesn't need their money.
And I can tell you, he doesn't.
So I think folks just need to get out of their own way and just think that, you know, stop
thinking that that that victim mentality, you know, that somebody's trying to make a buck
off of me and somebody's trying to step on me.
Right.
And I mean, at the end of the day, when it comes to something like that or an investment
of mine, I have to also be aware of thinking about the return on investment.
Right.
So it's not to say that Robert doesn't make money.
If you don't have very good listening skills, you're hearing Tony say that Robert doesn't
try to make money.
Right.
If you, or that he's not going to make any money, but you're purchasing his books.
That's not what Tony is saying.
Right.
But some of us have these mental baggages where we react internally to what is said
versus listening to understand.
Right.
So we have to take a step back from it as human beings and say, you know what, I'm not
going to let my emotions get the best of me here.
I'm going to try to understand and ask questions about what the heck does that mean?
So that doesn't mean that Jackson doesn't make money.
That also never, doesn't mean that I will never invest in Tony either.
He's on my hot list.
Right.
I am looking very forward to getting to the point where my real estate portfolio expands
and where I get to that point where I'm like, Hey Tony, how do we do things together on
this?
You know, how can I rope in your attention and time on this?
Not because he won't give it, but there's a certain honor that exists.
There's a certain timing, right?
That we all choose how we follow it, whether we listen to our heart or our mind or the
alcohol or something else that influences us to make our decisions, you know, or the news,
right?
Alcohol may not even be as strong these days as Fox news and CNN in terms of influencing
and brainwashing people and into what they should think and how they should feel.
I'm sorry.
I love, I love getting news from all sources, but I'm not trying to hurt you.
I'm trying to open your eyes, open your minds, open your hearts to realizing that critical
thinking skills, can and should be constantly developed according to level, which you play
at.
And Tony talked about a level that I call the paid to play level, right?
When I'm going to a conference and I invest in that conference.
I know that the people who go to that conference I pay for are going to be at a different level
than when I go to a conference that is free.
And therefore the conversations are going to be of higher quality.
The types of activities that are quality.
It's a very important opportunity, not something that we, we want to, that I ever think of
myself as a victim of investing in that opportunity to learn.
So let's talk about critical thinking and propaganda, finding truth, you know, and understanding
that there's an opportunity to gain.
What is happening right now?
What are some of the tactics, Tony, so we can start recognizing those that are utilized
and mainstream influence that keeps people from seeing and hearing truth?
Yeah, so the politicians are the experts at it and following them is the media.
And it goes back a long time.
This propaganda did not just happen overnight or in the last two years since COVID.
This has been happening for a long time.
And it goes back actually, it goes back to the days of Lucky Strike.
Do you remember those cigarettes?
They used to be called, they were called Lucky Strike.
I don't know if they exist anymore, but it's a story that goes like this.
So Lucky Strike was peaked out at their revenue and their profits.
They were peaked out.
So they brought in a guy to help them with their marketing and this guy looked at their
marketing plan and he said, well, you're only advertising to half your market, your marketing
to men, you're not marketing to women.
And so he developed for Lucky Strike, he developed a marketing campaign which allowed Lucky Strike
to double their sales, double their revenue, double their profits.
And it's all through marketing.
And it was described as that it was during the days where women were looking to get more
more liberation, voting rights, things like that, all goodness.
But he used the campaign of the cigarette being a freedom torch.
And so that took hold and was very successful.
But the politicians took notice of this individual, this marketing pioneer and hired this marketer.
They hired him for their own political agenda.
And he went on to be very successful working with politicians.
He ultimately ended up writing the book titled, appropriately so titled, Propaganda.
And so he knows Propaganda well.
And so the politicians latched on to him and ever since have continued to use Propaganda
through marketing campaigns to shape how we think, to shape our belief system and how
we also act.
And in many ways how we act when we go to the voting booths.
So you see a lot of things going on.
We spoke about student loan forgiveness.
And to a large degree, that that's a campaign that they are using, they are weaponizing,
some would say, to act upon us so that when we go to the booths, voting booths, we vote
a certain way because many young people, they look at student loan forgiveness as a good
thing and that's going to help them.
So they're going to vote a certain way for those particular politicians who are endorsing
student loan forgiveness.
But that's only one way they are weaponizing the...
Well, and this tactic, right, so there's a tactic of a 0% interest loan with the asterisk,
asterisk, asterisk.
And most of society does not have the discipline or the algebra skills to understand that if
you don't...
And I'm not talking about you, you people listening, you guys might have it.
I'm not trying to say that society is bad.
What I'm trying to say is if we do not teach the society who does not understand the tactic
and who does not understand the math, how to avoid becoming victims of such plans, such
propaganda, they will end up making investments or decisions that are contrary to what it
is they actually wanted as their outcome.
And so what I hear you saying in this one political instance I've seen done in a lot
of political instances, are you saying that sometimes the politicians will put a fancy
title that plays the emotions on a specific law or a specific regulation or series thereof
and they might put some things in there that you didn't agree to and didn't want, but they
put it under the guise of something that you did want?
Yeah, you're absolutely right.
We need to start flexing our critical thinking muscles, like you had mentioned earlier.
We need to flex those more and more.
It's more important today to do that than ever before.
In those fancy titles that they put in front of some of these bills, some of this legislation
like the Inflation Reduction Act, where they just end up creating more money to put into
the system that actually will increase inflation.
Let's look at that.
So the Inflation Reduction Act, are you saying that it's possible that human beings who have
their own motives and desires might possibly think, oh, people know that inflation reduction
is good, so I'm going to vote for that no matter what?
Are you saying that happens?
That happens.
And it's so, we see it time and time again.
Bill comes to the floor of Congress or the Senate, and it's a 5,000-page bill, and they're
voting on it the very next day.
So let's talk about the solution on this too, though, Tony.
I want to hear from you.
What do I need to do as a responsible citizen and freedom seeker and wealth seeker, to be
able to recognize what's truth and what's not then?
Because I think if you empower the audience with the tools of critical thinking, what
goes into that, some people just did not pick that concept up in their five years or four
years or nonyears of university and beyond.
So one thing I'll say is, I have to have references.
I have to.
Multiple references that do not associate with each other.
I need to know that this person who's atheist and this person who's Christian and this person
who doesn't know either of them and is a business person, and I have to look around and see
who all is talking about this and from what angles are they talking about it?
I can't just take somebody's word for it.
This is not, I won't allow myself to.
It's a barrier for me to avoid falling victim of toxicity or ignorance.
Yeah, and it's a critical thinking muscle.
And as we know, much like when we go to the gym, we're not going to be there on day one
or day five or day 10.
It takes time to develop these skills such that when you read an article and you might
just take it at face value when you first read it, but as you develop these thoughts
and this process of thinking, you start to unwind things and you start doing just exactly
like you're talking about Jackson Jackson, you start going to alternate sources.
You start reading maybe some different articles or watching some different YouTube videos
or find yourself searching like I many times do.
We're starting to hear a lot about central bank digital currency.
Is that good?
Is that bad?
Well, there's a lot of people out there saying that's good.
That's the way of the future.
But how is that going to impact me?
So I'm doing deep dives, not only which accessible to all your viewers, go to YouTube.
Start watching YouTube videos on central bank digital currency.
And from there, you'll get good.
Let me be clear to you, Tony.
Make sure you go to the right sources to watch these things.
And I know that sounds like, well, that's a general statement, but how do you do that?
Watch for certain words too.
If somebody uses a lot of pressure on you to make a decision, that person is somebody
that I have a boundary against.
Like I don't need that person.
Oh, I mean, they're influence or if somebody is saying everybody knows this or everybody
does this, that's a hyperbolic statement that isolates you.
If you feel different, makes you feel weak and vulnerable and makes you want to jump
on the track.
I don't, I don't subscribe to people of that nature.
And then there's the people like Tony, who are willing to be open or willing to be friendly,
who are willing to say, take another look, feel free to research this yourself.
And that can sometimes be used as a tactic as well.
Right.
The higher you get up the totem pole of influence, the more you realize like, wow, you can really
be tricked here.
But guys, I'm telling you right now, Tony is one of my favorite people to turn to for
financial advice in these matters, because I know how hard he studies and I know what
he cares about.
I know who he cares about.
I know how well he cared about me and cares about me by the way that our interactions
continue to go.
And it's so important to surround yourself with people who genuinely care about you and
genuinely do their research.
So Tony, feel free to keep going on the thread you're on.
I think where you are in terms of, be careful who you listen to.
I'll give you my example.
There are, and I research central bank digital currency, but I also research cryptocurrencies
to some degree.
I'm not an expert.
I don't ever pretend to be an expert.
I'm always a student.
I'm always learning, trying to seek new information.
That's the true sign of an expert.
I don't know if I'll ever get there, but I see some and your listeners, the viewers
out there are going to resonate with this.
When you find somebody that is such a fanatic, in this case on Bitcoin, I find so many people
that are so fanatic about Bitcoin.
It's difficult to have a conversation with them, like Jackson was saying, to talk about
the pros and cons.
They're only ever going to throw the pros at you.
They're never going to see the cons.
They have their blinders on.
That's not a conversation I want to have.
I want to be able to have that higher level or that different thought, not even higher
level, but just be able to see both sides of the coin.
This is actually one thing that I did learn from Robert Kiyosaki.
I share it with a lot of folks, a lot of stuff that I share freely because it's so powerful.
And not for nothing, like you had up there on the screen a moment ago, pay to play.
I speak with a lot of people freely to get advice and just different thoughts and systems
going on.
I go to a lot of conferences.
I'm basically at a conference once a month to at least be able to.
So I'm paying to get a bigger network, more thought leaders in front of me, more conversations.
I also pay substantially to be part of a mastermind group.
Now, I'm not saying everybody needs to join a mastermind, but I joined one because I felt
it was important for me to have some different thoughts, some stimulation in a different
way to be able to expand my knowledge and expand how I think and how I see the world
and how I see, create my own opinion.
Okay.
I don't want to just hang on the words and recycle the words that I saw someplace or
I heard on YouTube.
I don't want to just recycle that.
I want to be able to make it my own in terms of how I see things.
And so now when I coach folks, it's a lot of folks.
It's amazing.
I have a lot of fun with people.
Yes, we do.
Folks will be like, because I do primarily real estate coaching, they'll just want the
answer.
That's like 100% of the time.
Tony, tell me the answer.
Tell me what to do.
And I'll just go do that.
And I'm like, it's not that easy.
The answer is different for everybody.
And so I just don't give the answer.
If people are looking for the answer, then I'm the wrong coach for them.
It's a process.
I want to teach you how to fish.
I want to strengthen your critical thinking muscles.
I want to strengthen your real estate investor muscles.
I don't want to just give you the answer.
That's doing you a disservice.
So we will struggle through that.
And that's OK.
We'll struggle through it.
But at the end of the day, you're going to be more powerful and just a better person,
better investor at the end of the day.
So I don't know where I was going with that.
Oh, I love that.
Well, we're talking about developing these critical thinking skills.
It can be difficult to talk through the process of how to do that while also empowering people
to find their own answer.
That's ultimately what you're striving to do in this call where you and I are talking,
but the person, the learner is not present.
The learners are all at different levels of this equation.
The person, the audience is listening to needs.
Yeah.
Everybody's at different levels.
And I don't work to just go in at my level and start pontificating or talking about certain
things.
That doesn't work.
When I start either coaching folks or trying to have some conversation with them, I try
to meet them where they are.
I think that's incredibly important.
And that's another sign in terms of, again, I'll go back to the Bitcoin example, because
that one is so prevalent.
Some of those folks will just want to take you where they are already.
As opposed to meeting you, where you are, understanding where you are, where your perspectives,
where your thought and your beliefs are at, and then helping bring you along.
I'm not looking to brainwash anybody, but there's a path to helping people come to where
they need to be.
And you can't just say, be here.
It just doesn't work that way.
It takes time to bring them along, to educate them, to, again, create and strengthen those
critical muscles that they need to have.
So that's right.
And some of us, those of us who are a bit more feminine in nature, get caught up in our
emotions.
It tends to be the case and that.
And what does that?
Sometimes it's the music involved.
Sometimes it's the fun that's involved, the energy that's involved.
And energy and fun and music can all be fabricated or can create a reality that's not quite there.
I'm going to adjust the position, Grant Cardone and you.
And I've participated in both programs.
Same thing with Robert Kisaki.
And Robert Kisaki, I love, by the way, he's probably going to come up in almost every
episode that we do at Vision Pros.
And the, but Grant Cardone's program, when I went through and was listening to how he
pitches the REI stuff, because I'm just, I'm not a fan of the tactics, but I wanted to
learn from this scenario because he's obviously got a degree of success from self.
Right.
He's obviously able to get massive attraction out there.
And you know what he reminds me of is Bruno Mars.
Bruno Mars came out with this song that became very popular called Today I Don't Want to
Do Anything.
I'm not going to do anything at all.
Right.
So here he is singing this song about not doing anything.
And this is a man who outworks the entire music industry.
Yeah.
He, the, the coordination they had for the music video associated with it too.
I went and looked it up because I was so frustrated about the song.
The fact that not only does he disrespect his audience so bad that he puts garbage out.
He puts garbage out that lies about what he does for a living and as a lifestyle because
he knows that people are sheeple enough to follow and buy it.
And it makes me cringe.
It makes me sad for that audience.
It makes me feel like, wow, like how inauthentic can you get in the process of also making
sure it's easy, it's easy money to take advantage of that.
But I don't see how somebody can sit well and sleep well on that.
And you know, Grant Cardone, back to that one more time, I saw, I was, we sat for two and
a half hours through this really crappy presentation of, I'm going to get to it and I'm going to
tell you in a, yeah, we're going to get there.
Let me give you a little bit of fact that has nothing to do with what I'm talking about.
Let me talk about this and a little fact about something that has nothing to do with
what I'm talking about.
And oh man, you better know all that about taxes or you're not going to get it.
We're going to talk about that in all just a minute.
Oh man, I can't wait to drop this value bomb.
Oh my goodness.
I could not believe he laid nothing of value down.
And it's hard to do.
It's hard to lay nothing of value down for an audience for two and a half hours while
entertaining and feel, I don't know how your heart would feel after something like that.
I love the man as a human being and I cannot stand the tactics or the methods.
Again, juxtapositioning that to Tony and I met.
He treated me like an equal, like a friend right away.
We had great conversations.
He made sure to make super space for my level and where I was.
And I eventually got his email about a real estate deal.
And in that email, I got to see a video of him and a few other real estate investors
who are not REI people throwing that title on their Facebook thing just because everybody's
doing it right now.
The real estate investors are everywhere right now.
Nope.
They're video and a matter of 10 minutes.
In fact, in a matter of two minutes, I learned more from them than almost every other real
estate investor that I've ever spoken with.
And we've been behind some amazing real estate investor program and leaders, but it was so
easy to see the neurosurgeon level of what Tony and his team, that team of members of
friends that were doing.
I don't know if our friends, investors, collaborators, I don't know how it worked, but it was so
impressive, Tony, that I was like, yep, I found the guy that I'm turning to for everything
first when it comes to real estate.
So well, way to do your work and figure it out.
And I wish people had the patience to evaluate, man, I don't need somebody fun.
I don't need somebody entertaining.
I need somebody who's going to teach me the right thing.
And that's you, man.
So I appreciate it.
Yeah.
No, I appreciate you, Jackson.
I appreciate the kind words and the perspective.
I keep going back to...
So I do have fun at this.
I do find it entertaining.
There's some folks who don't, but I spend a lot of time, a lot of hours on what I do
because I truly enjoy it.
I have fun.
I've found my passion.
Again, I am so truly blessed.
A lot of people don't find their passion in life.
And I feel so horribly bad for those folks who don't find their passion.
I found mine.
I love what I do each and every day.
Some days I wake up at three o'clock in the morning and I grab my cup of coffee and I'm
already going at three o'clock in the morning.
So for me, this is not work.
I am not looking to profit off of people.
I'm not looking to...
Obviously, there's some amount of, in some cases, pay to play because it takes a lot
of my personal time.
And I think to some degree, if you want my attention, I need to make sure that your
you're going to take action.
And when you pay for something, there's this thing in your mind that says, I'm paying for
this.
I got to make the most of it.
Whether it's you're reading, you go to Barnes & Noble and you buy a book, you're not buying
a book, spending $20 on a book just to sit it on the coffee table and look at it.
You're buying a book because you want to read it.
You see, they're going to bring some entertainment to your life.
If it's a Harry Potter book, it's going to bring you some entertainment.
If it's some meditation or religious book, maybe it provides some clarity to your life,
some value in that way.
If it's a real estate book, maybe it helps you gain some education in terms of how to
invest in real estate.
But you read it because you know you're going to have some defined benefit as a result of
reading it.
And that's why the big thing with me on having folks pay for coaching is having that behind
them to say, I'm paying for it, I need to take action and make it worthwhile.
Yes, absolutely.
Here's my biggest secret for critical thinking.
My biggest secret I can think of regarding it.
And that has to do with the fact that enthusiasm, right?
Enthusiasm and hype and all that, it does not have the same power as celebration.
And I learned that from Glenn Moore Shower.
Not to say that enthusiasm is wrong or that hype is wrong, but if hype and enthusiasm
is leveraged to influence you and you don't feel a sense of true authentic celebration
and gratitude with that person and with the sense of life, if they're kind of in your
face and pressuring you, you probably not going to feel those other two things.
I love what Glenn Moore Shower laid down.
And to me, you emulate that so well, Tony.
And this is a photo of Tony and I at a conference with Ashley Deteo, Scott, a few other individuals
who are amazing.
And you know, this is what he's talking about.
Like, yes, I agree with you, man.
I absolutely love what we do.
I love to go to conferences.
That's where I find the people that are thinking like me and after big things in life and you
get to just like open your mind to so many new cool things.
And it's just one of those opportunities to like sit around the table with people who
are leveling up to big degrees and at the same time, appreciate everything that you're
up to in the world too.
So if you haven't gone to conferences, I don't care what conference it is, as long as it's
driven around purpose, right?
And as long as it's driven around celebrating the values and virtues of life, take out 20
bucks, take out 100 bucks, whatever it is, and commit yourself to go and allow yourself
to go and make new friends and participate.
It can be a life changing experience, whether that's a church retreat, a business venture
or a retreat to work on your copy for your book.
For instance, like we were at with Deteo Publishing.
So Tony, dude, thank you so much for being here today.
Any final thoughts?
Where can we contact you if we want to reach out?
Well, first, I appreciate you, Jackson, for having me again.
This was a lot of fun and I think a lot of value for your listeners and your viewers.
They can find me a couple of different places.
If they're interested in the book, Freedom at Risk, it shares a ton of different value
propositions for folks.
They can find that at freedomatriskbook.com.
If they're looking for more real estate stuff, they can go to my YouTube channel, Dirty Boots
Capital.
I share real estate.
I share freedom ideas.
I share a ton of different content here in terms of what's happening in the world.
So Dirty Boots Capital on YouTube.
And then they can always go to my website, also called dirtybootscapital.com.
They can go there, check it out.
Again, I offer a ton of different options here for folks to try and help.
Everything from real estate syndications to coaching to just blog posts, a ton of free
content here as well.
So hopefully, folks, check it out and love it.
I love it.
Well, thank you, Tony, and welcome to Vision Pros.
Everybody, we appreciate you being here today and we will see you on the other side.
Excellent.
My name is MYL Visit.
Thanks, Tony.