Episode 232 – Dan Thompson

Richard Matthews: [00:00:00] more important than

what the flaw is

how have you worked

to overcome it so that you can

continue to grow and hopefully

sharing your experience

will help our help

our listeners learn a little bit

from your experience

Dan Thompson: you said something that rings very true with I started a YouTube channel 10 years ago

and I was so worried that every video

was perfect — that I said it just right

and I just drove myself crazy sometimes

with my scripts everything

just making sure that it was perfect

when it was better to get the content out there

so I ended up writing I wrote four books now

but listen to this

the last book I wrote took me about two days

it only takes about 90 minutes to read

and what was funny is

I gave it to a good friend of mine who’s a doctor

he called me up a couple days later he says

you know, you have a lot of grammatical errors

in there, and I said, “awesome”

that’s great

let’s just get it out there

let’s get people reading it

because those grammatical errors don’t mean anything

we gotta get the [00:01:00] content out there

so, yeah my kryptonite was

a little bit too perfectionist and worried about

you know, saying things absolutely perfectly

instead of just getting the concept

and the content in people’s heads (OPENING SEQUENCE) ​

Richard Matthews: [00:02:00] Hello and welcome back to The Hero Show. My name’s Richard Matthews, and today I have live on the line. Dan Thompson. Dan, are you there?

Dan Thompson: I’m here.

Richard Matthews: Awesome, come to us live from Boise, Idaho. Is that right?

Dan Thompson: That’s the place.

Richard Matthews: So our, just outta curiosity, I know winter happens early there. Have you gotten there yet? In October?

Dan Thompson: Not too bad. I mean, we actually were just swimming in and at the lake just last week.

Richard Matthews: Nice. Yeah. The last time I was in Boise, we were there in the dead of winter. It was cold, but it is such a gorgeous part of the country. You know, I would love to go back and visit some more and see, you know, I wanna go floating down the rivers there when it’s warm.

Dan Thompson: Oh yeah, no, it’s a lot of fun. I’m a California implant. But I’m legal ’cause I’ve been here long enough and have all my, we had all our kids here, so I’m okay, but I don’t miss California at all. Love it [00:03:00] here.

Richard Matthews: Yeah. Yeah, we have been traveling for a whole bunch for a long time and for those audiences paying attention to our travels. We’re still in Florida till the end of November. But yeah, we moved ourselves, our, they call it the domicile when you’re traveling. Our domicile is no longer California and it’s now Florida and I don’t miss California either, so.

Dan Thompson: But it’s a great place. Loved growing up there. It’s just changed so much that it’s.

Richard Matthews: Yeah. Yeah, it’s unfortunate. One of the most beautiful places in the country. But it is not doing well. So what I wanna do before we get too far into the the content here today is just do a quick introduction. So I’m gonna look over here at your your bio here and get people an idea of who you are and then we’ll dive into your story.

Dan Thompson is a financial expert, speaker, author, investor, business owner and educator. He’s the owner and founder of Wise Money Tools, Equal Capital Management, and Oakmont Signature Homes. Dan has written several books and uses videos, social media, and podcasts to teach and educate about the various investment and wealth building concepts and strategies.

Dan is committed to providing financial knowledge to help build wealth and income for his clients. And he feels that traditional financial planning methods simply are not working and he shows you ways to safely build wealth, produce [00:04:00] more income and tax advantages.

And your website is WiseMoneyTools.com. before I wanna do before we get too far into any of this, why don’t we start off with who you are now, what you’re known for.

what’s your business like? Who do you serve? What do you do for them?

Dan Thompson: Well, you know, I guess maybe let me go back and start how this all began. Back when I was 15 years old, I was sitting in the back seat of my dad’s car when he was talking to a friend of his, my parents were really hardworking people, but just never could make ends meet. And he’s talking to this friend of his who said he made $30,000 that month in the stock market.

And I’m like, what? How could that possibly be? You know, I was making $2.50 an hour working for a landscaper and framing houses, and I quickly did a little calculation. I’m like, okay, that would take me 20,000 hours or something, you know, crazy. And four years to make 30,000.

So literally from the time I was 15, I said, okay, somehow some way I gotta [00:05:00] be a stockbroker. And that at put me on my journey into my early 20s. I finally got hired and thought that was the way to go. It unfortunately took me almost 15 years to realize that’s a tough road to hoe for so many clients because the volatility in the market.

I really had to find a better way, and that’s what kind of put me on my journey to find this more safe, predictable, productive way to build wealth and save on taxes.

Richard Matthews: I mean, that makes a lot of sense. My story is similar. I remember, it wasn’t a stockbroker, but I was 15 years old and I, one of the things I used to, live in Southern California and we had the town that we lived in was like, there was us the Plebeians, know, the people who lived in the normal housing, which was, you know, it was all upper income, middle, upper middle class area.

And then there was the rich families that all lived in the hills behind that like, you know, it was a five acre buy-in and every house was a mansion. And like those kids drove their dad’s Lambos to work while they were to school while they took their helicopter into L.A or San Diego.

And I used to, I had just learned to drive. I would take my motorcycle or my car and I would drive through and like just [00:06:00] look at all the mansions. And I remember finding one that I really liked one day, and I convinced my dad to go with me and I was like, come check out this house. And I went check and, you know, so this cool mansion that had like a waterfall down the front and I was like, by the time I’m 30, I’m gonna be able to afford a house like that.

My dad looked at me and he goes, don’t get your hopes up. And I remember thinking like at that day I was like, I have to get different mentors in the business world ’cause my dad is an employee. He’s a successful employee. He is a great guy and I’ve got a great relationship with him. But he’s not a business owner and not an entrepreneur.

And so I remember thinking at that same age, and I was like, I need to find a different path and started looking into business really seriously. And I’m a few years late, but by the time I’m 40, I should actually be able to afford that house. Not that I wanna it anymore, but.

Dan Thompson: I know, I can remember that myself. We lived kind of in the I don’t wanna say poor part of town, but certainly not the fluent, but just maybe three miles from my house where all the, it was called Del Rio Estates, you know, this huge golf course, major houses, all this. And I’m thinking, man, is there [00:07:00] any way possible I’ll ever live in something like this?

And just, you know, and honestly, from my upbringing, I thought there was just no way to get past, you know, just living in paycheck to paycheck land. And luckily I found some mine.

Richard Matthews: So what is it that you teach and do for your clients today?

Dan Thompson: I think our biggest effort, so to speak, and where we kind of, get most of our attention is what we do is we pack life insurance full of cash and we use that life insurance to leverage into other income producing assets. Multifamily, we like equipment leasing. We’re just starting to get into car washes.

Almost anything that somebody’s interested in, as long as it’s productive and can produce some passive income and cashflow we like to get involved in, but. Starting from that life policy really lets us leverage that dollar once, twice, three times, but it also will increase our rate [00:08:00] of return by using the policy as our collateral. So there’s some really unique ways to keep the tax man at bay as well.

Richard Matthews: Yeah. So for those people who are not in this world, what you’re talking about, I believe is your whole life insurance policies where you can fill up the cash balance of those, and then take the cash, take a loan against that cash to acquire. You know, cash producing assets, and then you have that money essentially at work in two places at once.

You’re getting the return in the whole life policy that’s anywhere from, you know, four to 8% on the market, and then you’re getting the return from your assets. You’re actually doubling the money. Is that about right for what you’re talking about?

Dan Thompson: That sounds great.

Richard Matthews: Yeah. Yeah.

Dan Thompson: A little double dip in there.

Richard Matthews: Double dipping. And because it’s a loan against the policy, you get to pay them back. So you get, you earn the interest that you create there in the policy. And then as you pay the loan back, you pay yourself interest. So you’re paying interest on that. And then once the loan is paid off, you have the initial loan balance plus the money you made in the market, plus the interest you paid back in.

Plus you still have the cash producing asset that you [00:09:00] acquired that is, you know, producing cash. And if you sell that, you end up with. It’s one of the tools that the rich use to get richer. It’s a fascinating tool.

Dan Thompson: Yeah, exactly. And I’ll tell you, like I said every asset actually gets better if we’ve used the policy as the collateral. So it yeah, we get a lot of benefits from it. Not to mention, and unfortunately we don’t talk about this too much, but I just had this happen in a client situation.

We hope nobody ever dies. Right? But the fact is we’re all gonna exit the planet sooner or later. And having that final death benefit tax-free can really help a family. It can help an estate, it can help a business. So even though that’s not the emphasis, it sure is a nice little icing on the cake.

Richard Matthews: On the cake, an extra benefit for it. And there’s other cool things too. I know you can like you can build up the cash value so that you take loans out against them when you’re in your retirement age. And then the death benefit actually covers the loan payments back to it.

So it ends up being like a, Tax-free retirement. So there’s all sorts of different [00:10:00] ways you can structure those kind of things. I guess my first question for you before we get like too far into like the rest of your story is when does looking at investments start to make sense? Is this like, you know, I got a hundred bucks a month I could put towards something like this.

Or like, Hey, when you got 20, 30, 40, $50,000 and you can start putting into assets, when does this make sense to start calling someone like you and putting assets into tools like that?

Dan Thompson: Yeah, as soon as you got $10 to save I mean, get saving as fast as you can. You never, I always say you never get back. Yesterday, time is such a commodity that we all never know how much time we actually have, so don’t waste a day compound every day. So save as much as you can as soon as you can. And you’ll be amazed what happens over the years if you just start early.

Richard Matthews: Yeah, absolutely. So I wanna get in and talk about your superpowers, right? Every iconic hero has a superpower, whether that’s fancy flying suit or, you know, made by their genius intellect, or the ability to call down thunder from the sky or their super strength. Heroes in the real world have what I [00:11:00] call a zone of genius, which is either a skill or a set of skills that you were born with or you developed over the course of your time, energize all your other skills.

The superpower is what sets you apart, allows you to help people slay their villains, come on top of their journeys. And the way I like to frame this for my guests is if you could look at all the skills you’ve developed through your life, you probably have a common thread that sort of ties all those skills together and that common thread is where you would find your superpower.

So what do you think in your business your superpower is?

Dan Thompson: Oh man, that’s a great question. I would probably have to say my superpower is being able to take a complex financial idea or concept and make it simple to understand and easy to implement.

Richard Matthews: So for those of us who are not in the financial world, you can make it the stuff that we need to do, understandable and simple so we can actually implement and do the things we should be doing.

Dan Thompson: That’s exactly right. Yep. And when you know, it is complex out there, you start talking about everything from internal rates of return and taxes and tax [00:12:00] bracket. I mean, it does get a little complicated. So being able to simplify that, make it easy and understandable.

Richard Matthews: And I know in the financial world, so many people get really terrible advice that sometimes when you actually have someone who can explain things, well, like one of my favorites this was something that I learned from another, you know, wealthy friend of mine. At the the financial meetings that companies put on where they bring in the financial advisor who’s like, we’re gonna help you get your 401 (k) set up, or whatever.

And I remember one of the things he said. The first time I heard one of these pitches was, when you retire you should plan to make less money. And so you want, you’re gonna be in a lower tax bracket. And I was like, I raised my hand back there and I was like, I don’t want to plan to be poorer.

Like I wanna plan to be wealthier. And I was like, wouldn’t it make sense to put, you know, already taxed dollars and let it grow tax free? So I’m taxed on the seed instead of on the harvest. And he was pitching something where you’re not taxed on the seed, but instead taxed on the harvest.

And I was like, that gives you a much larger tax bill. He is like, yeah, but the assumption is you’ll make less when you get older. And I was like, [00:13:00] well, I don’t like that. That’s not a good plan. So,

Dan Thompson: Oh my gosh, you and I speak the same language. That drives me crazy. When I hear these guys talk about, oh, you can live off of 80% less, no, I want 80% more income than I had while I was working, so I can really enjoy retirement. So yeah that’s crazy. Talk.

Richard Matthews: It’s crazy talk and it’s the kind of thing that you don’t hear those messages until you get around people who know how to do what you’re talking about. How to actually make the financial. The complex sort of financial world makes sense. And if you’re only ever presented with terrible advice, then you know, you end up planning for making less money, planning for a poor retirement instead of planning for a wealthy retirement.

Dan Thompson: You know, I often say that the 401 (k) has become one of the biggest burdens we could ever have because we think it’s the end all and the answer to retirement. But it has let down so many people, not only because of the volatility, but just because of what you just suggested. And that is all we’re doing is kicking [00:14:00] a can down the road. And having a tax bill that’s larger than it would’ve been, you know, had we paid it 20 or 30 years ago. But the other thing is it’s not designed for income. There’s no way you can just say, oh, I’m gonna turn on the 401 (k) income now.

Because what that really means is you’re gonna have to start selling off assets, selling off your mutual funds or whatever you have it in, invested in, I would much rather start young getting into. Passive type investments. You know, multifamily, leasing, things like that, that produce income, and let’s build up your income so high that you could literally retire anytime you want. But we don’t focus on the income side of things until they’re 65, 66 years old, and by then it’s just too hard to create that income stream.

Richard Matthews: Yeah, absolutely. So if your superpower is the ability to sort of explain these complex financial systems to people who need to understand them. The flip side of every superpower of course, flip side of that coin is the fatal flaw. And, you know, every Superman has their kryptonite. [00:15:00] Wonder woman can’t remove her bracelet of victory without going mad.

You probably have a flaw that helds you back something that you’ve struggled with. For me, it was perfectionism, right? I spend a lot of time in my life struggling with wanting to keep, get everything exactly right. And so I wouldn’t ship anything. I never got to the point where I was actually like producing what I wanted to produce.

So, you know, I had some ways I had to help myself get over that. But I think more important than what the flaw is how have you worked to overcome it so that you can continue to grow and hopefully sharing your experience will help our help our listeners learn a little bit from your experience.

Dan Thompson: You know, you said something that rings very true with me that is, so I started a YouTube channel. Oh gosh. 9, 10 years ago, and I was so worried that every video was perfect that I said it just right, that it, you know, and I just drove myself crazy sometimes with my scripts everything, just making sure that it was perfect when it was better to get the content out there.

So I ended up writing I wrote four books now, but [00:16:00] listen to this, the last book I wrote took me about two days. It only takes about 90 minutes to read. And what was funny is I gave it to a good friend of mine who’s a doctor, he called me up a couple days later he says.

You know, you have a lot of grammatical errors in there, and I said, awesome, that’s great. Let’s just get it out there. Let’s get people reading it, because those grammatical errors don’t mean anything. We gotta get the content out there. So, yeah my kryptonite was a little bit too perfectionist and worried about, you know, saying things absolutely perfectly instead of just getting the concept and the content in people’s heads.

Richard Matthews: Yeah, absolutely. I’ve been in the same boat. I know. For me, I had a good friend of mine who changed my mindset on the whole perfectionism thing. And she was like, perfection is the lowest standard you can hold yourself to because it doesn’t exist. And so if you’re striving for perfection, you’re not striving for anything at all.

And so she was like, what you should be striving for is like [00:17:00] production. Like, you actually ship something, right? Get the content out, get the book published, get the service live and you know, take someone’s you know, actually get something done. And, you know, get that whole life insurance policy set up even if it’s not right.

Right? It’s not right the first time. Maybe you could fix it in the future. Execute and iterate is significantly more powerful than getting it right the first time.

Dan Thompson: Well, you know, and if you, I assume you’ve got a lot of business owners in your audience. And one other thing that I kind of big mistake on is not marketing myself sooner. And again, maybe that perfectionist kind of a thing, but I would’ve spent a lot more money on marketing and getting my message out there younger in life than waiting for it to become perfect.

Richard Matthews: Yeah. I would, I feel the same way, right? Like I , if I had started doing what I’m doing now, 10 years ago, man, they would be, I’d be in a completely different world. And, you know, building your own personal brand, creating the content, getting that stuff out there, it’s. I let fear [00:18:00] of, you know, how am I gonna sound, what am I gonna come across out to keep me from putting anything out at all?

And for years and, you know, I finally started changing that, four or five years ago and it’s had a huge impact and on our business growth and everything. That’s a big one for sure. What I wanna talk about next then is your common enemy, right?

So every superhero has an arch nemesis. It’s a thing that they’re constantly have to fight against in their world. And in the world of business, it takes on a lot of forms, but we generally put it in the context of your clients, and it’s a mindset or it’s a flaw that you’re constantly having to fight to overcome so you can actually get people to results.

That they came to you for, so in this world of helping people build wealth and cash flow and you know, acquire cash producing businesses and stuff like that, what is your common enemy that you constantly have to fight against?

Dan Thompson: I would say it’s traditional financial planning. And the reason why I can say that is because that’s where I started. You know, again, I started as a stockbroker kind of transaction, transitioned into a financial advisor and af it was after the dotcom boom and bust that I realized [00:19:00] I had to find a better way.

That’s the hardest thing to overcome because people think, again, they, all they gotta do is buy that 401 (k) or invest in that 401 (k), get their match hope the market performs well and they’re gonna be fine financially. They don’t use leverage wisely. Debt a little bit too much. But the fact is that traditional model and what we just discussed, living on 80% less when you retire. All those things they’re just flawed concepts that aren’t working. They’ve let down so many Americans over the years, and we’ve just gotta wake up to realize that it’s not working and there’s gotta be a better way.

Richard Matthews: Yeah, absolutely. I couldn’t agree more. I know everything I have learned in both the traditional financial planning space

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Richard Matthews: The traditional financial planning models, I remember, ’cause I went through I started getting into wealth creation and wealth management when I was like 17, 18 years old.

And all the stuff that I could find at that time was all the stuff that you find out is actually like, terrible advice later . And, it’s all that’s available and it’s not until, you have to really search to find the people, and the information, that is right. I don’t know how to say this without coming across weird, but it’s like, there seems to be the information that the masses get and then there’s the information that the wealthy have.

And it’s not like that it’s hidden. It’s just that it’s not widely available. And it’s not taught. It’s not made easily accessible. Which I guess is fine, but you know, there’s a lot of that traditional stuff that is just not effective for growing businesses, becoming an [00:22:00] entrepreneur, creating wealth, creating good cashflow and cashflow, producing assets, all that kind of stuff.

Yeah, so it’s definitely an enemy.

Dan Thompson: Well, and you know, I kind of, I say I curse my kids with this entrepreneurial gene because none of ’em have quote unquote jobs. They all own their own businesses. They all do their own things and they’re all, you know, extremely successful, especially at their ages.

But that’s one thing that I tried to, you know, come across that the eight, you know, nine to five job, the get a boost in your salary every year. That’s just not the way to really build your wealth. And if you can find ways to help enough other people, Get what they want. You get what you want. I can’t remember who said that years ago, but.

Richard Matthews: Yeah.

Dan Thompson: It stuck with me ever since I was in my early years. And so that’s really the whole focus is if I can help enough people get wealthy because that’s what they’re after, it just naturally [00:23:00] falls back to me as well.

And if I do, if I just follow my own advice, I always say I’m my best client. ’cause I do exactly what to say. Tell my clients to do, and I’m always the first one in the pool as well. If we’re gonna look at a new investment opportunity, I’ll be the first one in, make sure we like it. It makes sense.

It’s doing what it needs to do before we start exposing it to our clients.

Richard Matthews: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And I know, I have the same sort of thought . You hear a lot of people about the you know, I’m gonna get a promotion at work and make 10% more this year, or 5% more, or whatever it is. Right? Get a small increase in your wages. And I remember, this is probably early twenties, where I was like I don’t want that.

I want to be able to constantly expand my means. Where I can do the things I wanna do in my life. Right? Like, you know, my wife and I have been traveling full-time for six years. My business operates on less than four hours a day, four days a week kind of thing, right? And like, so I’m always asking myself questions like, how can I increase my income and decrease the amount of time it takes to create that [00:24:00] income?

And how can we do things like, you know, we’re you can’t see the backdrop on my computer, but my backdrop is a big sailing yacht that we’re working on moving a sailing yacht. So travel around the world, and those are the kind of things you can’t do.

The kind of lifestyle experiences you can’t create if you are working a nine to five job and going for a 10% raise once a year. And so we’re constantly fighting for how can we have, I’m gonna forget the word, exponential increases in your life and exponential increases for I, you know, I call ’em the five freedoms, right?

So the five freedoms or political freedom, time freedom, location freedom financial freedom and health freedom, right? And those are the things that, like if you’re doing things in those areas, you know that then they won’t restrict your ability to make decisions and to do the things you wanna do. And it requires looking at and operating your life differently than what almost everyone is taught.

Dan Thompson: Oh, no question about it. I mean, again, I don’t know why I keep picking on the 401 (k) today, but think about that. It’s just jail for your money.[00:25:00]

You can’t touch it till you’re 59 and a half, call it 60 years old. It’s gonna be taxed when you take it out. And all those years, had you been able to use that capital to get into other. Investments, other passive income activities, you would have so much more income and maybe you could have retired, quote unquote, at 50 or 45 or, you know, years and years earlier and yet we still believe this Wall Street way. And they’ve done a great job in promoting their market.

But the reality is man, you can just do so much better if you manage your own money and look for opportunities outside of traditional methods.

Richard Matthews: Yeah, I don’t know sure why. This reminded me of what you just said, reminded me of this, but one of the “Rich Dad Poor Dad” series of books and I can’t remember which one. It’s like, why we want to be rich? Or something like that. He talks about the four quarters of life and he’s like, your first 20 years are pre-game and you’ve got, you know, 20 to 30 is first quarter, 30 to 40 is second quarter, you know, [00:26:00] 40 to 50 is third quarter, and then 50 to 60 is fourth quarter.

And he is like most of your traditional stuff have you working all the way through the fourth quarter only to get into retirement and be poor. And he’s like, you wanna try and is, how do you win the game? Second or third quarter, right? That’s where you wanna be. How do you win the game of money in the second or third quarter?

And you know, that’s where.

Dan Thompson: No, and that’s exactly right, and man, by the time you get to that third and fourth quarter, you kind of want to be enjoying life and being so far ahead of the game that you can kind of put in cruise control.

Richard Matthews: Yeah, so I, and that’s one of I’ve had that metaphor in my head for a while now. I’ve still got like three years, slime 40, and I keep looking at it. I’m like, man, third quarter starting soon. I want to be to the point where like everything takes care of itself by the time I get to the third quarter. But you know, it’s definitely a good goal, I think.

Dan Thompson: Well, and you know, and I’m fortunate I do this ’cause I love it. I mean, I love going around speaking, I love doing my YouTube channel. I still like working with clients, but [00:27:00] it’s not that I have to, it’s that I want to and it’s actually my enjoyment and no longer work.

Richard Matthews: Yeah, that’s a good place to get to, which I think drives, gets us right to our next question, which is your driving force, right? So just like the superpower has the flip side of the comment of your fatal flaw. The common enemy has the flip side of your driving force. So just like Spider-Man fights to save New York or Batman fights to save Gotham or Google fights to index and categorize all the world’s information.

What is it that you fight for your mission, so to speak?

Dan Thompson: Yeah, it’s funny ’cause my partner and I, we talk all the time about this and we say that if we don’t have a trillion dollars in our system, you know, through our clients and so forth, by the time we die, then we failed.

Richard Matthews: Yeah.

Dan Thompson: So we’re trying to get that word out, as many people you know, involved as we possibly can. I don’t know if a trillion will hit in my lifetime. He’s about 10 years younger than me. Maybe he’ll hit it in his lifetime, but that is the mission.

Richard Matthews: You know, if they keep printing the dollar the way that it is, you might get there [00:28:00] faster

Dan Thompson: Yeah, exactly. We wish we had a printing press then we could do the same thing.

Richard Matthews: Yeah, that’d be really nice. You know, I’m not a huge fan of the way that they’re treating our dollar, but it’s, at the same time, it speaks a lot to learning how to protect and manage your wealth because it is assets are not dollars. They can create dollars and create cash flow, but assets are assets and it helps you protect against things like that.

Like the inflation and over printing of your currencies and whatnot. So there’s even more to like what you’re talking about than what we’ve, you know, it’s just wealth is just scratching the surface, but protecting your wealth and a lot of other stuff that goes into doing what you’re talking about.

Dan Thompson: No question about it. And one of the easiest ways to get wealth and the largest bill that any of us will typically ever pay is taxes. And just by teaching people how to reduce, if not even eliminate their taxes, can be the biggest wealth creator. That’s out there, the greatest rate of return is just to not have to pay taxes.

Richard Matthews: Yeah. [00:29:00] I love that. I know, you know, since we’re talking about driving force for, you know, my personal financial mission. I’ll share with you ’cause it was one of my other guests it’s in the same sort of world that you are. Said this to me and it has stuck with me for years now and he calls it the four fours.

So the four fours of wealth and he is like, you should have four hour workday four days a week. And then, you know, you should be able to take off, you know, one month every quarter or one week every quarter. I can’t remember what it is, but it’s like, take off time in your business to be able to operate without that.

And he was like 400,000 in income, on a yearly basis after taxes and all those other things. So, and you can do pretty much anything you want with that. It’s pretty much, it’s a functionally unlimited budget for anything. And and then 4 million in assets. And so he calls those four fours.

And I was like, those have been sort of like my guideposts for like, hey, that’s where I want to get to. In my goal where all my goals is four hours a week for, you know, , four weeks off a year at least if not more. And 400,000 income and 4 million in assets. And I was like, that’s a really good starting point I think for wealth creation.[00:30:00]

Dan Thompson: I like that. That’s a good, little goal to shoot for. Does, would he mind if I stole that?

Richard Matthews: Probably not. He preaches it constantly, so I talk about it all the time and.

Dan Thompson: Maybe I’ll make it all fives just to changes.

Richard Matthews: Yeah. Just to change it up a little bit. Or maybe, 4.5, whatever. But the point is you have a goal, right? And the thing I liked about it is it was not just wealth, but also your time, right? ’cause your time is part of your wealth. And so you’re that’s stuff that goes with all of that.

And I know like you could certainly grow beyond 4 million in assets and grow beyond 400,000 in income, but as first like stated goals. And I know like where my current personal goal is to get our business to the point where it is producing the $400,000 a year in income and then to start taking that income.

And rolling it into cash producing assets as the second goal. And so we are probably a year, maybe two, out from hitting the $400,000 a year personal income from the business. And like that’s where. Will we move into the next stage? And so like I sort of followed that as like, let’s get the time commitment [00:31:00] down and let’s get the business to the point where the systems run everything, where the business without me so I can, you know, take time with my family and other things.

And then let’s work on getting the income to that certain level. And then let’s work on getting the assets. So I’m working on the third category right now, which is the personal income and then it’ll be into the asset category. And I don’t know if that’s the right way to do it or not, but at least I will hit those goals before I get for through that third quarter.

Dan Thompson: Oh, that is awesome. Well, you know, really, your business is an asset. So, if it’s producing income, then you’ve got the right kind of asset. And there’s nothing wrong with it being a business or an apartment building, or, you know, whatever that other asset might be. If it’s producing cash and giving you freedom, you’ve got great asset there.

That’s awesome.

Richard Matthews: That’s what we’re going for. So I wanna switch gears a little bit and talk about your I call it the the hero’s tool belt. And this is the practical portion of our show. And just like every superhero has a tool belt with their awesome gadgets, batarangs and web slingers and laser eyes, you know, or big magic hammer like Thor has.

I’m gonna talk about the top one or two tools you couldn’t live without to do what you do. [00:32:00] It could be anything. It could be your notepad, could be your calendar, could be the marketing tools, could be something you use for your actual delivery of services. Something you think is essential to getting your job done on a daily basis.

Dan Thompson: Well, from a just an absolute practical perspective, it’s that camera for YouTube. Didn’t have that. I, couldn’t get my word out. So that’d be definitely the first thing is that the YouTube camera.

Richard Matthews: I love that because I am, I, you know, my audience probably knows I run a podcast production company. And the what’s funny to me is for the first four or five years I have roughly $10,000 worth of camera equipment sitting here in my little mini podcast studio, and. The iPhone in the last generation, the iPhone 13 was the first time that I, like, I started switching to using the iPhone for my production.

I mean, this is actually, this is, it’s legitimately my iPhone that is attached to a little MagSafe mount that I’m using to record nowadays. And so, you know, people say you gotta have a good camera, and you do. And most people now have[00:33:00] a production worthy camera in their pocket already. And so you go right back to.

Use it to get your message out right? You got a good enough microphone, a good enough camera, and you have a message that’s worth getting out to your audience or to your potential audience, people who have problems that you can help. And so I love that answer as a practical tool because I think more and more, being able to get your content.

And get your message out is going to help create trust in the marketplace. And we are no longer in the information age anymore. I tell people now we’re in the trust age, and you’re gonna build trust with your potential market by getting on camera and sharing your message and sharing your stories, and sharing your experiences.

So, I couldn’t agree more personally.

Dan Thompson: Nice. Nice. Yeah. And you’re exactly right. You’re carrying around a 4K camera in your pocket. So no excuse. If you get the message, get it out there.

Richard Matthews: You got the message, get it out. I love that. So I wanna talk to then about your own personal heroes, right? Every hero has their mentors, just like Frodo had Gandalf, or Luke had Obiwan, or Robert Kiyosaki had his rich Dad, or even Spider-Man had his uncle [00:34:00] Ben. Who were some of your heroes? Were they real life mentors?

Were they speakers or authors? Maybe peers were a couple years ahead of you. And how important were they to what you’ve accomplished so far in your business?

Dan Thompson: Yeah, my hero is kind of an opposite of what you would think, but I’d have to say my dad is one of those. Because he taught me how to work really hard, but what he didn’t teach me is how to make money doing it.

Richard Matthews: Yeah.

Dan Thompson: He was kind of a bad example of a great example. I really feel, you know, he unfortunately passed away about as broke as when he was born.

I just never really. You know, made a lot of money, but man, the guy taught me, he taught me how to communicate with people because he was a great sales guy. He taught me how to work hard, taught me how to never be outworked. And so from that perspective, he’s definitely a hero. I just wish he had the fruits of his labor pay off at some point in his life before he passed away.

Richard Matthews: And [00:35:00] a lot of that is just not having access to the same information that you went and built for yourself, which is really cool. And you know, which means other people can, they can change that. And, you know, I’m the same way. My dad is still alive. He’s great. I love my dad to pieces and, but he’s the same way, right?

He taught me, but like the two biggest things, maybe three that he really taught me were to the value of hard work. And I remember, like, I remember thinking growing up that I was like, there’s no way that you could actually work start, but I’m like, at this point in my life, I’m like, listen, you can’t compete with me because I will work you under a table.

Like if I have to. And then at the same time, I’m gonna put a lot of that effort into figuring out how to build systems that work for me. But like, it’s that mentality that he gave me. And the other one was the just learning how to learn. He taught me how to learn, and that was such an invaluable skill that has allowed me to do so much in my life.

And then probably the most important lesson I learned from my dad was, was this idea that you don’t wait until you’re ready to do something. And I remember I was like 18 or 19 years old and I was, you know, gonna get engaged to to this girl. And I remember sitting down and asking, I’m like, am I ready [00:36:00] to get married?

And he is like, there’s no such thing as being ready. It’s like there’s only, you know, the act of taking action is what makes you ready for something. And that one little piece of advice has stuck with me for so many things, and it’s allowed me to do so much in my life. To just be like, Hey, you just take the action, take the next steps, because taking the next steps is what makes you ready to do things.

So I’m in the same boat. My dad’s one of my personal heroes,

Dan Thompson: Yeah, well, and that hard work is just invaluable. When I started as a stockbroker, I was in my early 20s. I’m in an office with 35 other guys who’ve been around 5, 17, 15 years. Older guys at the time. And but no one could outwork. I would go home and grab a little bite to eat for dinner and then I’d be heading right back to the office, you know, back then, no internet, no computers really, and I had to run back to the office and open up the phone book and start calling people to see if they would take two minutes to listen to me.

And I mean, I just worked them all to the ground and within a year and a half. [00:37:00] I was the number one guy. I ended up leaving that firm and opening my own because I thought I could do it better than they could. And I ended up within just a couple years of being in the business, having five offices, 60 guys working for me. And it was all just because no one could touch me on the work ethic.

Richard Matthews: Yeah, absolutely. That is, wonderful lesson. And I remember I was a lot younger. I don’t work that long anymore because I’ve learned how to build, how to work smarter than that. But I would work 12, 18 hour days and I’d be like, listen, I will show up and I will just work you under a table if I have to win.

And so you can take that same sort of mentality and apply it to better outcomes . But yeah, it’s a really important. So, my last or not my last question, but my next question here for you is about your guiding principles, right? So one of the things that makes heroes heroic is that they live by a code, for instance Batman never kills his enemies.

He always brings ’em to Arch Asylum. So, as we get near the end of this interview and I talk about the top one or two principles that you use regularly in your life, maybe something you wish you knew when you first started out.

Dan Thompson: I think, the biggest principle [00:38:00] is, I will be just downright honest with a client, no matter what, even if it hurts their feelings. I mean, not their feelings, but I just will never do something shady with a client. I’ll take the hit. I’ll forgive or forgo my commissions or my income or anything to just make sure there’s not a client out there ever point a finger back to me as being some something shady.

Or not quite as honest and so that’s just number one in my book is just treating the client as fairly and as and as honestly as I possibly can.

Richard Matthews: I think you’ll probably like my response to this because, you know, we’re pushing on 250 episodes for this show, and I ask that question all the time and. The thing that has always stuck out to me is how, probably 99-100% of the people who are on this show and ask them that question, they respond with some variation of integrity.

And the thing that sticks out to me there is that the [00:39:00] full purpose of this show is to change that cultural narrative, that entrepreneurship batarangs and, the desire to create profit and wealth in your life is somehow evil. And, you see it in all of our stories, like, you know, you can’t come across a TV show or a movie or a kid’s show where the storyline is not some variation of entrepreneur pours oil on ducks for money, right.

And the reality is they’re in the real world. It’s entrepreneurs WHO are looking to create value to make the world a better place. And that always starts with integrity. So, I appreciate that and I love that you are living that message in your own business.

Dan Thompson: Yeah, I always tell my advisors that work with us that there’s no business worth having if it’s not good, honest, straight up business because it’ll come back to bite you.

Richard Matthews: Yeah, absolutely. Well, I think that is a a great place to wrap our interview, but I do finish every interview with a simple challenge I call the Heroes Challenge. And I do this to help get access to stories that we might not otherwise find on our own. So the question is simple. Do you have someone in your life, in your network that [00:40:00] you think has a cool entrepreneurial story?

Who are they? First names are fine. And why do you think they should come share their story on our show? First person that comes to mind for you.

Dan Thompson: Oh, my gosh. And it’s just because of the name of this last question. My son has a school called The Heroes Academy and.

Richard Matthews: Cool.

Dan Thompson: It’s a private school, and it’s made to teach kids how to learn the excitement of learning. There’s no teacher standing up there, you know, wah wah, wah, like Charlie Brown. They learn at their own pace.

They learn the things that they’re excited about. And every year they have an entrepreneurial what would you call it? A fair, if you will. And these kids in second and third and fourth grade already have their own businesses. And they share what they’re doing and what they’re making and their productivity. But you would love talking.

Richard Matthews: That is awesome.

Dan Thompson: The other side to that is just a few months ago, he was on his way to spend a year on a yacht with his family. Until he got offered the [00:41:00] entire national school so it’s called heroes academy private school kids just love it. They just excel I think he’d be a fun guy to talk to.

Richard Matthews: I’d love to see if we can get him on. We’ll see if we talk afterwards and get an introduction. Sometimes they come on, sometimes they don’t. But we always get cool stories when they do. So, in comic books there’s always the crowd of people at the end who are cheering and clapping for the acts of heroism.

So right now, I guess to that as we close is we wanna know where can people find you If they want your help in the future, where can they light up the bat signal, so to speak? And more importantly, who are the right types of people to, you know, light up the bat signal and ask for your help.

Dan Thompson: Yeah, WiseMoneyTools.com is my website. It’s also the youtube channel I’m using Wise Money Tools or wise money Dan on just about every social media I think our perfect client is someone who’s just looking to build their wealth, potentially reduce some taxes entrepreneurs, business owners, lots of professionals, doctors, dentists, things like that high net worth, but really [00:42:00] we want to help anybody that’s that’s on that path to creating their wealth.

Richard Matthews: Absolutely. So Dan, thank you so much for coming on and sharing your story today. It’s been fascinating to hear just your thoughts and your way through money and wealth and your approach to it. So if you are in that boat where you’re looking to grow wealth I would definitely reach out and talk to someone like Dan.

‘Cause you know, people like me, we don’t, we’re not in that business. . I learned a lot of the things from people like Dan and it’s been really helping grow my life and my lifestyle and everything we do. So, you know, definitely take the time to reach out. It’s WiseMoneyTools.com. We’ll make sure the links to that are in the show notes on the website.

And thank you so much for coming it today. Do you any a final words of wisdom for my audience for this stop record button.

Dan Thompson: You know, this was so much fun and I love the, you know, the mantra of the heroes. I think that was awesome. So thanks for having me. I really enjoyed it.

Richard Matthews: Thank you.

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