Achieving Future Prosperity by Being Open to Change – Episode 448

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[00:01] Welcome to the Prosperity Podcast. Hello, Prosperity Thinkers. This episode is the future of prosperity. To me, I’m excited for this because we’re going to talk about things that we’ve maybe read or reflected on that we think may happen in the future. Don’t hold us to it, no crystal balls, but I think this is a great opportunity, at least a good exercise to go through. Ah, delightful. So, Kim, you’re first, let’s set up the foundation. You assemble yourself and navigate in a world that you’re very intentional. So the information that you bring in are from some of the brightest minds. You take the time to reflect and you push out the chatter, be it news and the stuff that won’t clog your brain.

[00:55] And so with that, you’re around a lot of forward thinking, future thinking people. Where do you see prosperity in the financial world? Where do you see future in your world that you’re navigating in right now? I love this. I love reading and listening and thinking about the future, super future focus, both short-term and long-term, and you are correct. I love listening to those that are out there doing the research and the work to lead us into that future. And I’m also very grateful about things that have stood the test of time and been around for centuries. So talk about a bookend. We’ve got both the beginning and the, it’s not an end, right? It’s the next. So the beginning really is the mutual life insurance company.

[01:47] And I can be so grateful that they are there, been around for centuries. And have made that model work for years and years and years and have overcome literally every financial disaster that our country has thrown at that industry. And I’m also very much looking forward into specifically Bitcoin, but a lot of the cryptocurrency space because of what it can do. And I mentioned earlier on another podcast, my favorite Bitcoin professor, if you will, is an actual PhD in economics and speaks to the long-term and low time preference, in other words, long-term nature of all of the good that space can do for our families in removing some of the governmental control and the very false sense of peace of mind that is out there on that

[02:52] supposed control that really is now going to be put back into the hands of individuals worldwide. And I’m excited about that because I believe that when our finances are operating on a worldwide basis, we will have less chance for some of the extremely negative things that countries do to each other in the name of prosperity and control. And I am looking forward to the day when those are gone. And I also think there’s a lot of mental models that are really being questioned right now. And we think, oh my gosh, how can that, it’s been in, in existence for so long, how can that mental model ever change? Well, I’ll give you an example. There used to be a mental model of the earth was flat and literally every

[03:46] single person thought that the earth was flat until it was proven otherwise. And then it took them quite some time, them, whoever discovered that it wasn’t flat, it took them quite some time to convince the rest of the world that the world was round, the rest of the people in the world, that the physical world was round. And so that’s an example of a middle, a mental model, completely transforming. And so we have a lot of those going on today. There’s our medical model. There’s a particular finance model with fiat currency. There’s a governmental control model and many other mental models that we’re very stuck in today that may or may not be actually serving us well anymore and someone could question whether they ever served us well.

[04:35] And so I’m excited for the breakthroughs that will occur. And one of the people that I do enjoy following you, you mentioned Peter Diamandis, he has a great quote that says the day before something is invented, it’s a crazy idea. I might be butchering the quote, but you can get the essence of it. Like we can look at something and say, oh my gosh, that’s insane. That would never work. That’s crazy. And then the next day somebody’s actually doing it. And so really we need to be super careful these days because of what technology is doing and how fast it is doing it and the other improvements and challenges that come with it. I’m not blind to the challenges and yet I know that human ingenuity and

[05:23] entrepreneurial thinking will help us not only overcome, but take advantage of the challenges that arise and put us in a better place. It is the law of human progress that we are moving forward all the time. It is a progress, in other words, is a law of human ingenuity that is in existence and happens and will continue to happen and human beings will continue to do and get better and better results. And yes, sometimes it’s two steps forward and one step backwards and that’s okay. Yeah. I mean, we have to look at the example of Thomas Edison that is often cited. Creating this light bulb was not a thousand failures. It was a learning process of what actually worked and then getting there. And you’ve mentioned Bitcoin and we have this whole new world and because

[06:23] of the unforeseen changes and circumstances in the world, we have two categories of people, we have a group of people that want to hold on to the world that they, and then we have a group of people that are saying, I think there’s something better. I don’t know what it is, but I’m going to run towards it. And for you and I, we’re in that category and the listeners on this podcast are in that category. So we’ve talked to Bitcoin. What are some of the other future things that you’re seeing? Cause we’re coming up rapidly. It’s not like it’s slowly creeping along. Well, I think back to Thomas Edison, I believe that I have this story, right? At some point, his entire factory burst into flames and was burned to the

[07:12] ground and he brought his wife out to look at it, the fire and said, I just wanted you to see the gloriousness of this fire and all that, like there was fireworks going off because of all the things that were in there that were exploding and the amazing sight, because we’ll probably never see something this beautiful again. Factory is burning to the ground. I mean, that’s incredible. Yes, there absolutely are some other things and another quick story. And again, I hope I have my facts at least in the ballpark. I heard just recently that the blockchain, so if you’re not clear on the difference between Bitcoin and blockchain, please do yourself a little research on that Spencer, I know you’re very clear, but for listeners, that’s an important

[07:59] thing to be clear on the difference of. Well, Walmart was tasked with finding out the source of an individual mango. And pre blockchain, it took them six days with the blockchain. It took them two minutes. That’s unreal. So this blockchain and whether or not it’s going to actually come to fruition, whether or not it’s actually web 3.0, there’s a whole bunch of unknown questions, but there is already good being done with the blockchain and this source of truth and this distributed ledger, meaning lots and lots of people are contributing to it, helping it, working with it, et cetera. There is amazingly good things that can go on with it because it is shared amongst the people and it is a verifiable source of truth.

[08:56] In the investment world, we used to say trust, but verify well in the blockchain and I think also in the Bitcoin world, it’s verify first and then trust, so that, that alone is a nice switch. Yes. And to mention a couple of things about the blockchain and Bitcoin, because oftentimes the naysayers out there, the people that don’t want to invest in Bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies, there can be a myriad of reasons. One of the common ones I’ll get amongst an older generation is they’ll say, well, what if we have this cataclysmic event in the internet’s wiped out or computers are wiped out or someone takes hold of it? Well, one, the blockchain is decentralized. Could at some point a supercomputer take hold of things?

[09:50] There is, is the probability, is it going to happen? No. Could it happen? Potentially. But all we need for Bitcoin and blockchain to work are two computers in the world and once two computers talk to each other, everything syncs up and moves along. And for us to think that way, let’s rewind the clock a couple of hundred years, all it would take is two prosperous people to put their heads together in a world of naysayers and then they get to create something new, something innovative. Well, really what you’re speaking of is the beginnings of a network. And we forget the value of a network. And the network effect is me to you and then maybe you to somebody else and maybe me to somebody else and et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

[10:42] It truly is one of the strongest elements in the world. And there’s lots of physical world things that we can think about that are like this. Spiderweb is like this. Chain is somewhat like this. Anything that links one or two another. And so that can give us a lot of confidence in just knowing that whatever the space is, yes, there are things that are going to go wrong with it. And again, human ingenuity and our, shall we say proclivity for good are going to override and supersede and take care of piece by piece the elements that are not good and will the not good ever stop? Probably not. And yet again, human ingenuity and our proclivity for good will keep us moving forward. And so just like you can rewrite history, you can rewrite future too.

[11:44] You can rewrite how you are looking at the future right now. And so what you’re feeding your mind just as important as what you’re feeding your body. And if you’re reading stories that are with negative aspects about a particular element of whatever it is, awesome. That can be good information and go seek out positive stories that are about that same subject so that you can get both sides of the story and then choose your own perspective. Well, yeah, the key word there is choosing. So I love that. Let’s dive in a little bit to futures where we’re seeing. So I’m going to, I’m going to touch on a couple of things. So real estate is an example. As a country, we’re dealing with a real estate market that

[12:31] needless to say on fire. It really is in almost every area you go to. We have interest rates that are really low. And if we are zoomed in and looking at the details, it’s easy for a person to think that they may be missing out if they’re not involved right now. But if we zoom out and let’s even go out 20 years, the real estate world is going to look vastly different because we have a baby boomer generation that will. May may no longer be with us or their housing situations are going to change. We have a population that hasn’t been having as many kids. So we’re going to have a lot larger supply. We’re going to have a lower demand. We also have geographic areas. I mean, just in the past year to two years, we’ve seen floods of people

[13:27] leave places like California and New York. And we’ve seen areas like Texas and Florida grow like abundantly more than we could have ever imagined. So what do you see with real estate? And as you have been involved with real estate, I know that’s not your favorite tool, but talk to us about that. Where do you see it going? Well, I’m happy to comment on it because I do watch it. And we have many clients, including, as you mentioned earlier, or some of our family members that are very involved in different aspects of it. And to me, the best thing about real estate has always been the cash flow. And when you buy real estate for cash flow, and now this is not your own home because that’s an entirely different discussion, but when you

[14:11] buy investment real estate for cash flow, it really shouldn’t matter whether the value is up, down or sideways. If the deal is a good cash flowing deal, the deal is a good cash flowing deal and thank goodness Todd Langford built us a real estate calculator inside truth concepts so that we can verify that for people, because a lot of people really do not understand the rate of return that their cash flowing real estate deal is earning now and there’s a lot of real estate out there that’s negative cash flowing too, and that is not something I can help much with. Nevertheless, I do believe that for those who feel like real estate is the right focus for them. So again, back to our choices, that’s the most important

[14:51] first choice for you to make. And sometimes you can’t really make that until you get in and try it. We’ve owned offices and apartment complexes and other buildings and just decided it wasn’t for us, but for other people, they absolutely love that. So try to figure it out a little on your own, if not weighed in and see how it’s going and then choose to continue to scale up in that space or not, and again, the focus on cash being your measuring stick, not so much what I would call a net worth play. In other words, a fix and flip or a buy and hold that’s going to turn into something someday. Those are perfectly acceptable spaces. Frankly, there truly is no quote bad investment because it doesn’t matter what you bring up.

[15:40] There’s somebody somewhere that knows how to make money in that environment with that thing. So stock market’s up, stock market’s down. Real estate’s up, it’s down. It’s for net worth, it’s for cash flow. They go on and on with examples. Somebody somewhere knows how to make money in that space, in that market. And so I think what’s most important is that you figure out for yourself what works and that’s not an easy thing. That definitely takes some trial and error and then focus on that and continue to serve and let a lot of your income be because of the serving that you’re providing. Might be a product, might be a literal service, and then let the investments continue to be the learning and the growing.

[16:24] Ooh, so good, so good. Another thing in the future that is changing is going to be a massive wealth transfer with businesses. So a lot of baby boomers own businesses and the number that I’ve heard, and this number could be totally wrong, but, and I was reading a report this morning that approximately $70 trillion will be transferred over the next 20 years. And we’re going to see trillions of dollars transfer. So we have people that have built these businesses and they have kids that don’t want them. They’re going to be selling those. We’re going to see businesses change. Have you heard of Cloud Kitchen? I think so. Go on though, others may not have. So I’ll explain then in our world, the traditional way of

[17:10] doing a restaurant, what it looked like was, Hey, I’ve pulled together my money, my hard work. I’m going to do this. And most restaurants fail. They’re, they’re very difficult. Well, they’ve come up with this concept called a cloud kitchen. And in many cases it happens in an industrial area where it’s a large kitchen or kitchens. And you can have several different restaurants and chefs in there. And everything in that restaurant is something that is shipped to a person’s door or they can come and pick it up. So they no longer have to worry about this overhead. They no longer have to staff it with all these people. They’ve changed the model. And we’re seeing this in the business world with automations and

[17:55] things that we can do where there are, I know people that are single man operations that are making tens of millions of dollars a year. And they have software that is doing most of the work for them. So it really is something futuristic. And I would love to hear some of the thoughts on through a prosperity lens, the future of business and maybe how listeners can apply and get more involved. Well, it is so important to realize that many of our existing structures are changing. So back to my earlier example of mental models, the mental model of a business used to be a brick and mortar store with lots of people in it called employees churning out whatever it is that they did. And now that has been completely shifted to whereby you can create

[18:46] a business from anywhere to serve anybody, anything. And again, knowing yourself is so valuable so that you could pursue a business, whether you’re purchasing an existing one or creating something new or taking an old one and overhauling it, but knowing your own strengths and then also knowing the people’s strengths that you’re involving is the most important first step. So we’ve talked about the Colby profile before KOLBE.com most valuable thing to do to know yourself. And the entrepreneurial mindset is not something that everybody may feel like they have immediately. And yet I believe that within every single person is a small portion of that entrepreneurial mindset. I think it’s a very important lens with which to look at things.

[19:41] And there is a friend of mine that strategic coach named Gino Wickman. So Gino, G-I-N-O and he has a book out a couple of different books and also a little quiz that we’ll find the link for including the show notes that actually can help you figure out what type of business would be good for you. Because what I do love about the space where I believe Bitcoin is taking us is a focus back to entrepreneurs that are doing good in their own work, but also have a little bit of extra money and time to experiment because they have the good systems in place, the software that’s doing the job, et cetera, et cetera. So as an example, when you look back at the entrepreneurial landscape in the 1900s, the Wright brothers were bicycle shop owners,

[20:37] but they had time to experiment and then they had a little bit of extra money to experiment to create the airplane. And so this entrepreneurial space is something that I’m very much looking forward to becoming a larger and larger part of our society, where less and less services and products and things are provided by the government and more and more are provided by entrepreneurs who are closer to their clientele, can do a better job to serve that clientele, can shift with the landscape as things continue to change and do a better job on a more holistic basis or a niche basis, however way the business ends up rolling, that can then have so many more benefits, not only to the provider, but also the people that get to purchase the product or the

[21:25] service that the business is there to provide. Yeah, it’s a better experience for everyone. And we are definitely headed that way. And I think one thing that I have said to many of friends, and I even had this conversation last week with a friend asking about Bitcoin and I’ve been involved with it for a long time. And I said, have you invested yet? Have you done? And his answer was no. And I said, you have to participate in order to change the relationship. And that doesn’t mean that we’re participating with everything that we have, it just means being involved. And at the beginning of this episode, we mentioned some of, you mentioned some of the things that aren’t changing, meaning life insurance.

[22:15] And when we talk with some of the best, and I’m using air quotes here, investors in the world, like Warren Buffett, Warren Buffett’s actually more interested in what’s not going to change in the future than what is. So again, changing that relationship. If you’re listening to this podcast and you haven’t set up your legacy plan and involved life insurance, you need to change the relationship with that. Send an email to hello at prosperity thinkers.com and take the first step. That might be asking questions or that might be just filling out paperwork and going, but changing the relationship and taking action is how you’ll change your future. Well said. Adopt that, go slow, start small mentality and make it happen.

[23:03] And we’re here to help you make it happen. If it’s life insurance, we can actually help you get the paperwork to get it done. And there are other things that we can help you get results with and provide maybe even just that accountability partner to make sure that you can check it off your list. Wonderful. Well, thank you for contributing on this, Kim. Like I love these ideas. And this may be something that we’ll come back to a year from now and we’ll look at it and we’ll say, wow, can you believe that Bitcoin just crossed a hundred thousand this year or whatever it may be? And then we’ll look at it and say, can you believe all of these businesses and opportunities and who knows what it is? Because the future is so bright and it’s going to be prosperity

[23:45] thinkers like you that make that difference. So thank you for taking the time and investing that time with us today. Thank you for listening to the Prosperity Podcast. To take control of your money and have it work for you, visit us at partnersforprosperity.com. If you liked this episode, make sure you subscribe and leave a review.