Episode 073 – Daniel Ameduri

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Richard Matthews 0:02
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Hello, and welcome back to The HERO Show. I am your host, Richard Matthews and I’m on the line, live, with Daniel. Daniel, are you there?

Daniel Ameduri 1:16
I’m here.

Richard Matthews 1:17
Awesome. Glad to have you, Daniel. For those of you who are regular listeners on this show, we are currently in St. Louis. We are getting our RV worked on. So, if you’re hearing any banging in the background, that’s the workers outside taking the radiator out of our RV. So that’s a fun thing that happened when you’re running a podcast while traveling. A quick introduction to Daniel, and hopefully I don’t butcher this for you. Is it Ameduri?

Daniel Ameduri 1:45
You nailed it. Ameduri.

Richard Matthews 1:47
Ameduri. Perfect. So Daniel Ameduri is a self-made multimillionaire, a full-time skeptic of conventional thought, and a proud father of three. We were just chatting about that before we got on the interview here. He is the co-founder of Future Money Trends Newsletter and FutureMoneyTrends.com, which has nearly 150,000 subscribers. It is widely recognized as the online authority in investment ideas and economic advice. You’ve been featured in The Wall Street Journal, ABC World News Tonight, and Russia Today TV. Daniel is the Best Selling Author of Don’t Save for Retirement. I want to hear a little bit about that, because I sort of agree. I probably don’t have my reasons as well thought out, as you do. You correctly predicted the collapse of Lehman Brothers and AIG, and Washington Mutual on Vision Victory – the YouTube channel you launched in 2007. It now has more than 13 million views.

I actually remember Washington Mutual. The whole collapse of that bank because my dad was an investor in them. The whole scandal and everything between Washington Mutual and the bank that I can’t remember which bank took them over.

Chase.

Yeah. Chase. And there were lawsuits and everything. All my dad’s stocks, I guess preferred stocks or whatever it turned into something. I can’t remember exactly what happened. But I remember he told me a whole bunch about it as it was going down. So, really interesting stuff. My first question for you, Daniel, what is it that you’re known for now? What’s your business like? What is it that people come to you for?

Daniel Ameduri 3:23
You know, most people come for personal finance advice it that is an alternative to what they’re typically told and that is to save for retirement for 30 or 40 years. A lot of people who email us or subscribe are coming from some sort of video or interview or article that I’ve written about building a life that is focused on cash flow. On buying things that make money.

Richard Matthews 3:48
Absolutely. That’s a huge difference. One of the things that I’ve been really interested in is how can I build a business that throws off cash to use to buy cash flow producing assets. As opposed to building, I don’t know, a huge retirement savings account. Because cash flow to me is really where the meat is for being able to live the life you want.

Daniel Ameduri 4:18
That’s certainly what the wealthy are investing in. If you look at the wealthy, they’re focused on preservation. They’re focused on cash flow, multiple sources. And of course, the middle class is focused on this pipe dream that, “Hey, let’s just keep throwing money at Wall Street. Maybe in 30 or 40 years from now, we’ll be able to tear off the chunks of that savings.” like a pound of flesh off your own body. It’s just – the whole thing is crazy when you think about it. But yeah, I mean, it’s just the idea of speculating and hoping that, “Hey I’m gonna buy the Dow at 29,000.” And hopefully by the time – let’s say you’re going to retire five years from now. I mean, what’s your upside investing in stocks right now? Do you really think stocks are going to 60,000 In the near future? I’m sure it’s gonna happen one day, but I think unfortunately, the retirement system has turned the entire middle class into speculators.

Richard Matthews 5:10
Yeah. I think one of the things, like when I worked in the corporate world, I got some funny looks from our financial advisor that came in to talk to all the employees about our 401k plans and everything. He would tell us you could put money into the 401k for whatever reasons, and when you retire, you’d be able to pull back out of it, blah, blah, blah… The standard pitch that you get for 401k. “Put all your money in here.” And I remember I raised my hand. This is like, 10 or 11 years ago. “I got a question for you.” And my question was, “Why would you invest your money here?” Basically, you get tax benefit. I can put money in before it is taxed in 401k. And then, it grows tax-free. But then you get taxed on the harvest later, right? There are strategies that the wealthy use where they get to put money in post-tax. It gets taxed now as the seed money and then it grows tax-free and you can pull it out tax-free. And I was like, “It makes more sense for me to put in money in some of these other vehicles where you’re not getting taxed on your harvest and stuff like that.” Anyway, so those kind of questions…

Daniel Ameduri 6:33
The pitch is that you’re going to be in the lowest tax bracket.

Screw that. I don’t want to be in the lowest tax bracket.

Yeah.

Richard Matthews 6:40
The other question that I asked him was like, “Why are you assuming that I’m going to be poor?” I was like, “I want to be in the highest tax bracket possible when I retire.” I don’t want to be in the lowest one.

Daniel Ameduri 6:54
And now with the Trump tax cuts, if you look at the federal income tax, essentially they haven’t been this low since the 1930s. And so now, the pitches with 23 or 23 trillion in debt and socialist rising up in this country. The pitch is, avoid paying the lowest taxes in practically 100 years, because taxes will be even lower in 20 or 30 years.

Richard Matthews 7:23
It’s just ridiculous, right? Like, let me put in post tax money now and grow it tax free. And then, pull it out later. You know, I get funny looks from family and friends, because I tell people that my goal is to have the largest tax bill possible. I want a tax bill that makes other people’s yearly income. Like, that’s my goal. That’s how I look at growing my business. Of course, I would like to figure out how to then reduce that tax bill as much as possible. But I want to get to a point where my tax bill is just humongous.

Daniel Ameduri 7:54
For sure. And I know what you’re saying.

Richard Matthews 7:56
Yeah.

Daniel Ameduri 7:56
The Audence is like, “No.” We’re not saying we love paying taxes. We’re saying if you’re paying a lot of tax, you’re making a lot of money.

Richard Matthews 8:02
Yeah, I mean, you got a big business. Something’s going right. So anyways, I’ve always been interested in the way the stories that we get told in the middle of class are not the same stories that the wealthy get told–or tell their children. And so it’s really cool that you’re teaching in that space. So my next question for you is your origin story. We talked on this show all the time. Every entrepreneur has their origin story where you started to realize that you were different. Maybe you can help people. What got you started on your entrepreneurial journey?

Daniel Ameduri 8:34
Well, since I was a child, I’ve always been interested in entrepreneurship. And my mom has plenty of stories of me getting in trouble at school for selling pencils, trying to undercut teachers and whatever they were selling. Or selling candy, doing garage sales, random garage sales. You know, I had an uncle one time who work for Nabisco. He gave us a bunch of cookies. I threw them in my wagon and went running down the street trying to sell all of them. So, I’ve always been fascinated with it. I always felt destined that I would become wealthy and that would happen. And then, I started buying houses right out of the gate at 18 years old. I bought my first rental property at 19. I bought my second rental property and invested in my first business at age 16. I started buying stocks and did really well in life and I ultimately did have a crater sized, devastating moment in 2008 with many other people.

The big crash.

Yeah. I mean, even though I accurately predicted it on YouTube six months before it happened, I made a bad bet. I bought a lot of silver, thinking that the deflationary crisis would be overwhelmed with inflation from the central banks. I was right about a lot of these things, but the results did not happen. Silver did not go to the hundreds of dollars an ounce that I thought it would have went from $21 to 890. And then in the meantime, I was being greedy with the real estate market telling everybody to sell their real estate. And I was out there trying to do just let me squeeze in a few more flips here in Southern California and ended up having…

Richard Matthews 10:10
…before the market really dies.

Daniel Ameduri 10:12
Yeah. Foreclosures, the whole thing. And it was devastating. So there was a time there where I had let go of that destiny, and was just trying not to be poor. And ultimately, it lead me to starting a personal finance, blog website, Future Money Trends to track what I was doing. My wife and I were doing on how we were going to become financially independent. And ultimately, that evolved into not only helping people become financially independent, but it also evolved into getting involved in venture capitalism. It’s something I never even considered, but it’s now it’s a passion of mine – of helping seed around new companies.

Richard Matthews 10:52
That’s cool. So, The Future Money trends is a newsletter subscription?

Daniel Ameduri 10:59
Yeah. It’s a free newsletter you can get our Weekly Wealth Digest at FutureMoneyTrends.com. The advertisers pay for basically the website, the cost and everything else. And the profit, of course. So it’s free for the users because there is no subscription. There’s no paid subscription. You’re going to see ads on the website. You’re going to see ads in the emails. But you’re not gonna have to pay for anything. And you’re literally getting everything that I did and everything that I’m doing.

Richard Matthews 11:30
That’s really awesome. So how did you? How did you grow that to a point where it started to attract advertisers?

Daniel Ameduri 11:37
You know, it first it just started out as building it. And for six months, I didn’t even think about making money. I was just sharing my story. In fact – prior to that with the YouTube channel. For two years, I was just doing it for free. And it built an audience. And of course, once Lehman Brothers collapsed and all those predictions came true, the channel blew up. It became very successful. It rolled that momentum into the Future Money Trends newsletter, and then eventually I decided how I was going to monetize. And the first go to thing was, “Hey I’ll contact Google.” And, you know, generate revenue. And then I thought about it. I was like, “You know, what if I could make it in a way where I would advertise what I’m also investing in.” So you know, affiliate programs and

Richard Matthews 12:23
That makes a good idea.

Daniel Ameduri 12:25
Contact Fundrise. You can get an affiliate link for Fundrise. One of my favorite cash flow places to go to. If I’m doing a venture capitalist deal, I’ll say, “Hey, why don’t you guys pay me? You guys can use all of our web banner ads for advertisements. We’ll even help you guys do some of your PR or something.” And that’s how the relationship would develop. I would write checks in these companies, but I’d also help run some of their marketing. And so that’s how it evolved into a personal finance letter that’s mainly focused on cash flow. But about 10 percent of the letter we do profile, small opportunities in the cannabis space, blockchain, gold and silver, that type of thing.

Richard Matthews 13:07
That’s really awesome. So that’s your your primary revenue-driver in your businesses, the newsletter subscriptions and the advertisements for the newsletter subscribers.

Daniel Ameduri 13:17
Yes. For the business itself for Future Money Trends. The primary income monetization for that is the advertisements. However, the majority of personal income I make is actually from the venture capitalism, at this point.

Richard Matthews 13:31
Yeah, I mean, I can imagine the venture capitalism is big money when you start playing with a plan – with some of those things here. Huge ROI if you get in early on some of those products and stuff.

Daniel Ameduri 13:41
Correct. And what I try to do is I try to give the subscribers the same opportunity. So I’ll let them know “Hey, I’m investing into this company. They’re launching today, they are launching next week.” And you know, it’s something that I’ll be in for years because these companies – especially in the newer companies, They’re very volatile. So it’s important for people to understand that you don’t buy these as day trades .This is not – you’re not buying Walt Disney. You’re buying something that will either grow 10 times or will go to zero.

Richard Matthews 14:13
Yeah, and that’s sort of the way that businesses work. But it’s really interesting because I’ve seen a number of my own friends that have started businesses. And myself like, that first growth – that growth hockey stick is really big. But you know, the statistics one in five businesses fail in the first couple of years. So you probably invest in several, to have the one that takes care of any of the losses and really makes up for all the losses. All the rest of it makes big money.

Daniel Ameduri 14:46
That’s true, and I don’t invest in a lot. So, I’m talking five a year, maybe. So I think also being just disciplined is also something that will help protect yourself. Because, one of the things is every deal that these guys are going to pitch you is always going to feel like the opportunity of a lifetime. And it’s going to make you feel like you have to have urgency because you’re going to lose money if you don’t get in quick. And what I tell…

Richard Matthews 15:11
That’s the intention of a sales pitch.

Daniel Ameduri 15:13
Yes. And so, what I tell people is anytime you feel like you’re gonna miss out, don’t do it because you’re about to lose money. Anytime you feel rushed to buy an investment, don’t do it because you’re about to lose money. Anytime that takes over my mind, I usually step back and I kind of just take a breath and just like they’ll tell “You gotta let me know by Friday, otherwise you can’t get in.” Another lesson I’ve learned is they want your money. So you’re in the driver’s seat.

Richard Matthews 15:42
Yeah, you’re the one with the power. You have the thing they need. So my other question is related to that. Are you still in the real estate space at all? Are you doing any investments there? Or not since 2008?

Daniel Ameduri 15:53
So what I do is everything I make for my business, I typically put into the real estate market. So I’d say net worth is 50% Real Estate, but investable assets is probably in the 70% to 80% range.

Richard Matthews 16:07
Any particular asset class you’re doing? Like Self-Storage, multifamily, single family, industrial? What’s your go-to for the real estate holdings?

Daniel Ameduri 16:17
So, prior to 2019 I had single family homes, duplexes and fourplexes. However, in 2019, I decided to upgrade the portfolio. So I’m almost done with the transition of selling all my houses and all my smaller multi families. And I’m transitioning them into commercial real estate holdings apartments. You know, 30 units and above type situations or commercial properties are going into private funds that perhaps family offices invest in and maybe owning a sliver of a Costco building or a JW Marriott, that type of thing.

Richard Matthews 16:57
That make sense. Remind me when we’re off the call. I have some introductions for you, because a lot of my clients invest in commercial real estate. So they’re always looking for more people that are looking in that space. So that’s fun and interesting. So my next question for you has to do with your superpowers. So we talk all the time on the show that as an entrepreneur, what do you do or build or offer this world? It really helps solve the problems for people. And the framing I’ve been using for this lately is if you were to think through your skill set and realize that you might have a lot of things that you’re really good at, or things that you might consider. Superpowers. What I’m really interested in is what’s the one thing that is the common thread between all your skills. The thing that empowers everything else and makes you who you are and allows you to do what you do.

Daniel Ameduri 17:49
I think it’s the understanding that I have to deliver more value than people expect. And I put that into the entire company. I Put that into my children. Everything I do. Whatever I promise you, I’m already thinking how I’m going to promise you how I’m going to deliver more. And oftentimes, I like to over promise to put myself in that horrible situation. So, I like to put my back against the wall. And I like to over promise. And then on top of that, I’ll over deliver on something I don’t even think I can deliver on. But I got to add more. So it’s just really a focus on stack value to whoever you’re trying to serve.

Richard Matthews 18:30
And so I assume you bring that to all of your various businesses to where it’s not not just for your newsletter, but also like when you’re purchasing real estate moving in and like the you just how can I How can I add value to this transaction.

Daniel Ameduri 18:46
And I treat all these properties like a Marriott or a JW, or or Ritz would treat their customers. You know, when a tenant has an issue. They they get it resolved right away. I send I send Christmas cards. And you know gift certificates for date nights. Now people would say this is stupid. Why do you do this? Guess what, guys, I don’t deal with problem tenants. I don’t deal with people, you know, my tenants, their kids send me Christmas cards. Like, I’m not trying to make best friends with people. But I am letting them know that I’m going to treat you great. If you’re in my property, and you’ve got a problem, it’s going to be taken care of. We’re going to make sure these properties are dealt with same thing for businesses. Same thing for with my my newsletter, subscribers. If I’m investing in something risky, I will maybe even exaggerate on how risky it is. I’ll tell them. You know, like, Look, you can lose all your money. Because I want to make sure that when people look at our content or anything that I do, they’ll always say, Look, he did his best more than his best to make sure I was positioned to make money or to make sure I was positioned to not put myself in a situation where I would lose money or I couldn’t stomach the volatility.

Richard Matthews 20:00
Yeah, and I know, particularly in the real estate space. I know a lot of investors don’t always think of the people their tenants as their customers, right? And so, it’s really refreshing to hear how you see the business and see the people that you’re transacting with and how it has to be a win for everyone. Or it’s not going to grow and be really good for you. The flip side of your superpower is your fatal flaw, right? So just like Superman has his kryptonite, or Batman is not really a superhero. Your fatal flaw is something that you’ve struggled with when it comes to growing your business. And I think more more interesting with fatal flaw is what have you done to overcome it so people who are listening to the show, if they’re suffering from the same thing will learn from you on how you overcame some of the things that have held you back.

Daniel Ameduri 20:55
So it’s promising too much and then trying to always be the “Yes Guy” for a client or subscriber. In the beginning, not even that recently, I ended this. But I used to do phone calls with subscribers. And of course, as you can imagine, this would take –

Richard Matthews 21:14
350,000 of them.

Daniel Ameduri 21:16
Yes. So people would schedule appointments, some people would be long winded, some people would be very needy. That was a bad idea. I stopped doing that. Now I just communicate through email. With the advertisers or the clients or the investments, I might have tried to have too many. You know, I told you I do 5 a year. Well, in the beginning, I tried 25 a year. And so what I did was I said, “Okay, where and how can I cut this down?” And what I did was I just created simple rules for myself that would not only help the quality of my life, but get rid of that kryptonite, and also enhance the value. What I did was, I made a rule that any company I VC or any company that I charge for advertising that we’re also VCing… the most important thing right from the very beginning is the CEO or whoever founded the company. They had to be doing this their second time. So that immediately got rid of a lot of people because a lot of Venture Capitalists there – you know, I’m not saying these guys are bad because everybody has to start somewhere. But they might have been a CPA and now they’re running a cannabis company. They might have been a geologist, and now they’re trying to run a mining company, which is a totally different beast. So what I did was I cleared all that out and I focused on the 20% – or even less than that. They would come to me and say, “I built a billion dollar mining company and now I’m starting my new one. I launched Cannabis Wheaton and now I’m building a new cannabis company.” So that’s what I started doing. I started focusing on people who had already gone through all the mistakes, who had already gone through all the the problems and who had a success. That is one of the things I accomplished in my life. And it certainly raised the quality of my business, my life, and my investments. I’m focusing on people who are on their second or sometimes even third or fourth go around.

Richard Matthews 23:15
Yeah, so that’s like, a really interesting thought process that you went through there. And it’s like, how can you trim the fat in your businesses to make your life better, right? So in your newsletter, you’re like, “Hey, I’m spending too much time on the phone, or I’m running into this problem here.” So you’re like, “Where can I cut these things out and still get the same or better result for myself with my clients?” And with the venture capital, the same kind of thing? It’s like, “I’ve got all these investments, but were are the ones that are causing the problems?” And I know, in business like you mentioned this, right? The 20%. It’s like The Pareto Principle, right? You know, 80% of your clients are going to cause you or 20% your clients are going to cause you 80% of your problems, and 20% your client can create 80% of your revenue. So how do you cut it down to the most important things?

Daniel Ameduri 24:03
Yeah. And I would tell people, “Pareto’s Law. 80-20. 20% of the efforts is delivering 80% of the results and vice versa. But then I want you to take it a step further. Look, reflect on your life, get a clean sheet of paper. On your business, on your entrepreneurship, personal finance, whatever you’re looking at, do the 80-20. But then, I want you to do it again. Then 80-20 the 20 that’s left. And now, you’re down to what is really truly delivering the maximum leverage, the maximum – use the maximum value in my life. And so, I just talked about the real estate. I looked at it. I had all these properties and some of them, you know, they get two tax bills, each one. They got insurance. It became kind of difficult to keep track of. I was always just kind of… there’s a lot going on. And so, in order to focus on quality control, that’s what I did. I basically took the 20% Best properties. And then I 80-20 that I kept a handful of them. But the rest of them I’m like, “I’m getting rid of everything else.” Everything else is going into these funds that I don’t have to do anything. And again, I didn’t partner with the newest and latest thing that FinTech just launched in 2018. I went to companies like Watt Funding who’s been around since the 1960s. They’ve gone through multiple recessions, multiple real estate crashes, and of course, the most important criteria that anyone you’re investing with in real estate, they better have gone through that 2008 crisis. I want somebody with a deep scar on their face from that 2008 crisis. Because it’s those guys who are not going to blow up on the next crisis.

Richard Matthews 25:43
Yeah, they know what’s going on. Yeah. And so, in the real estate space – for our listeners who are not terribly familiar with it. There are two big sides to it in the investment space. You have the people who are doing the work of the investing. This person who’s buying the house, our buying the property and I call it the – let me see if I can get this word right. The one who puts everything together the dealmaker. And then you have the other side, which is the investor. You’re talking about someone who generally puts up the money for the deal. So it sounds like you’re making that transition where you’re the one who was doing the deal, making and putting the property together and taking care of it and managing and getting in front of a property manager and all that kind of stuff, to being the money that’s funding the deal. So you’re getting a smaller slice of the pie, but you have none of the work is that sort of the transition that you’re making.

Daniel Ameduri 26:34
Absolutely. And it’s raising the quality of the deals too. Because, let’s be real, I can go out and buy all the duplexes I want. But me owning a slice of a Costco building – it’s really not in the cards for me right now. However, I can join with a group and have Costco and Walgreens and Chevron and McDonald’s be my tenant?

Richard Matthews 26:54
Yeah, yeah. Those are the single tenant leases.

Daniel Ameduri 27:00
For me, would you rather have a tenant of an individual home that – let’s say they’re paying $900 a month? Or would you rather have JP Morgan as your tenant?

Richard Matthews 27:14
They’ll stay there forever.

Daniel Ameduri 27:15
Yeah.

Richard Matthews 27:17
I was just just looking at a couple of things in Murrieta, actually. Some of the properties there that are for sale with single-tenant leases. It’s amazing how much revenue those things can generate. But they’re top to your property. So they cost a lot of money to invest in. Like a lot of money. So it makes sense that you’re going in with groups and getting a piece of the pie.

Daniel Ameduri 27:39
Absolutely.

Richard Matthews 27:40
Yeah, so I want to just drive with you for a little bit because it’s not something we’ve gotten to discuss on this show a lot. One of my favorite things about real estate investing, particularly with commercial real estate, and making that transition into the investor side is how the money actually works for people. So I’m going to just lay some numbers out here from one of my other clients that I thought was really, really fascinating to sort of get your opinion on and see what your thoughts are.

They were talking about a multifamily deal that they were buying – an apartment. And so, the dealmaker person who was buying the deal was buying an apartment or property. I can’t remember the numbers exactly. It was like, they’re buying it for a million bucks. And they were going to put about another million into the property. So all in the property, they would be at about $2 million. The investor, the bank, they were loaning something like 80% loan to value. So they had 800,000. So they needed to raise the $200,000 extra for the price. And then the million dollars they’re going to put into it. So they had to raise 1,000,000 from the investors. And so they raised the one two from investors for the property because they knew the turnaround for it. It was worth probably about 5 million when they were done. And so, those all sound pretty good. But what was really fascinating to me was the person who put up the cash. They don’t do anything in the deal, right? Like they just put up the money. And they had a 12 month turnaround where they actually were able to turn the property around in 12 months and get it up to its highest and best use and all those things. And then they do a cash-out refinance on the money. And so, the cash out refinance, they pay back the investor, he gets this one two back, they pay the banks back. They’ve got the new loan on the property, and then it’s cash flowing. The investor had an equity position because of the money he put up. So he gets his one two back and then for the next five years, which was the plan for the property, he makes 10% cash flow on that and then at the end of the property now, it’s not worth whatever it was now. It’s worth like twice that price, right? And they sell it. So they pay back the bank and then they split the – he gets his cash flow there. So the person who put up the money over the course of five years, he got his money back really quickly. Right? 12 months. So he gets his $1.2 million back. Plus, he gets cash flow for five years, plus he gets the 10%, or whatever of the sale price at the end. And to me, that’s a really, really cool way to talk about how you can make your money work for you. Like, at a really high level, because a lot of people don’t ever see that side of the transactions and the money and how it actually works for people. And that’s sort of what you’re talking about doing. It is getting your money in and making those kind of plays. Is that right?

Daniel Ameduri 30:33
Absolutely. And I love the way you described it. Because, two things there. For people with money, you should demand a return on your investment. First of all, people have thought about that. You know, when my wife and I were building our personal passive portfolio, income portfolio, we had an expectation that if it wasn’t sending us money every month or every quarter, we would not buy it. So no speculating, only buying things that bring income into the house. Secondly, in that story, anyone out there that doesn’t have money, consider the other side. Somebody structured a deal without any money. They just structured a great deal and the money will come. I always tell people that. You really don’t need money. Because if you can make a deal structure, a good deal that rich people want to invest. There is no rich person or group out there that just loving holding cash. They just want to get that cash and let it sit there and do nothing. No, that’s not how they…

Richard Matthews 31:35
They’re going to put it to work for them.

Daniel Ameduri 31:37
They want it… they want to put it to work, man. I would love. I’d love to have somebody to come and tell me, “Oh look, there is a great property in San Diego. It’s worth 3 million but we can buy it for 1.8. But I need 300 grand. He can get 300 grand right now!” Like, let’s do this! It’s is a no brainer. So, you can always find money but you have to be willing to do the work to get the deal and then for the people of money… My goodness, stop buying things that have to go up and just start focusing on the cash flow. Inflation and time will take care of the appreciation.

Richard Matthews 32:11
Yeah and it’s it’s just fascinating to me that it works so well for both sides of that right so if you’re the one who’s putting the deal together you can you can always find the money for a good deal right so you don’t like that? I know that it’s a question that investors people who are want to be investors always ask me like I don’t have the money for it. Well, you don’t you don’t have to have the money money exists there’s so much money you I mean, you couldn’t you couldn’t couldn’t even shake a stick at it. Right? There’s it’s just everywhere and so on the but on the other side, once you once you’ve made it, right when you have you have the cash from things that you’re doing, you can you can step out of the work and just let the money do the work for you. And and create cash flow into those other things. So it’s, it’s really fascinating to me the way that whole world of finance works, you know, and it’s, it’s really fascinating. When you see That, like, you can compare that, to like the story we talked, we started the interview off with, which is, you know, you put your money in the 401k. And in 40 years, maybe the stock market went up and maybe you can, you’ll have money, right? Or maybe not, right? Like my, my grandpa lost most of his retirement because he retired at one, you know, one of the big market crashes in the 80s. Right. And so he didn’t have anything and you know, there it’s it’s speculation versus like learning how to actually how money actually works.

Daniel Ameduri 33:30
Yeah, and it’s good to condition your mind too in buying income because that is what the wealthy do. They don’t wait to become wealthy and then start investing. They start investing that like right now and watch yourself become wealthy.

Richard Matthews 33:45
Yeah, yeah. It’s like once you learn some of those strategies and you realize like, there’s just a whole other set of rules that you’re never taught. What do they call them – the cash flow banking where you can basically put money into whole life insurance policies and then loan those to yourselves. And it’ll continue to earn a percent while you put it into an investment that also earns 8%. So, you can like stack interest while you’re buying things. It’s just, there’s a whole different game that you play that wealthy people play. It’s not even like you don’t have to be wealthy to play that game. You just have to get the knowledge. Find out that those things are available. Which, I assume is what your newsletter teaches people how to do – those things.

Daniel Ameduri 34:36
I have 18 of those whole life policies that you’re referring to. And I’m actually – before you called, I just texted the Asia’s board. we’re setting up the 19th policy. But yeah–

Richard Matthews 34:47
I’ve only got one so far. I got a ways to go.

Daniel Ameduri 34:50
Well, it’s something that of course the middle class has no clue about. But they call these the Rich Man’s Roth and yes, cash flow – bank on yourself. Nelson Nash and then Pamela Yellen bank on yourself but you can get educated in those. I highly recommend them to be able to dual–compound and it’s a great place if you’re going to have cash, store the cash there.

Richard Matthews 35:19
Yeah it’s a it’s really interesting. I had a someone who gave me a middle-class example of how they work which I always thought was really fascinating. So, for our listeners, this was really funny to me. A normal person in the middle class will go out and buy a car, right? So they would buy a car like say BMW. They got a really good resale value. They’re really nice cars, they cost 30 grand. They go out and they get a loan for 30 grand from the bank and then they use the car. They pay it off over the course of five years. At the end of the five years. They sell the car. So they spent, you know, whatever the cost of the car is plus interest it cost them $36,000 for the car. They’re out $35,000. And you know, they sell the car, they get, you know, a portion of their investment back, right? They might get a couple of grand back from it, but you know, all in, they’re probably minus like $15,000 to $20,000 from where they started. And it’s like same situation using the cash flow banking. A wealthy person might pull out the 30 grand from their cash flow banking thing and buy the BMW with it and they pay themselves back plus interest. Alright, so they’ve the BMW for the five years. They pay themselves back while it’s being used. The $30,000 is still in the cash flow banking earning at 68% a year. So you’re paying it back plus interest. So you’re getting another couple of points that you’re paying back into it. And at the end of the five years, you still have the BMW. You can sell that. Whatever it’s worth. In 10 years, it’s still worth $10,000 or $15,000. You can have that on top of it. Now, instead of at the end of the five years, you have the 8% interest you earned on the money that stayed in the policy. The 5% interest you paid yourself back plus $15,000 for the car. You’ve made significantly more money. Plus, you got to use the car for five years. It’s just a different game that people play. And they’re like, that’s a depreciating asset. Well, you know, imagine what happens if you started using that money to purchase something that’s actually appreciating in value and creating cash flow while you’re doing it. It’s one of those things that gives an unfair advantage to just continue to grow your wealth.

Daniel Ameduri 37:33
I look at it as a flow through. So if I’m going to make a major investment into something that yields let’s say, eight to 10%. I first throw it through a whole life policy. And then I just simply borrow the money right back in a policy loan and I throw it in that investment that I want to put it in anyway. But now I’m set on one side and say 7% on the whole life policy. Now it does have a Florida half percent interest only on the policy loan but it’s very complicated what we’re talking about.

Yeah.

If you don’t get it… It took me like four or five months

Richard Matthews 38:10
to figure out how it worked. I had to like put out Excel spreadsheets together and sort of like try and figure out how it was going down.

Daniel Ameduri 38:16
And then, to add the confusion is that its whole life. Like, to really understand this, we’re not buying life insurance for life insurance. We are the largest holders of these policies Wells Fargo and PNC Bank, Bank of America, Walmart. So, we’re not buying these for life insurance. We’re buying these as a place to store cash. This is tier one capital that you have access to that you could use to dual compound

Richard Matthews 38:41
Yeah. The dual compounding is the thing that just blows my mind because you can stack interest and what is it – Albert Einstein said like compound interest is the greatest force of nature. And you can stack that which is just fascinating to me. So I look forward to the time of my life and I’ve got 19 policies going and running investments through them. So, just out of curiosity, how do you – cuz this is just my own naivete on this subject – I thought you could only pull out like one policy on a particular person. How do you pull out that many? How does that work?

Daniel Ameduri 39:20
So the way I understand it, you can get a life insurance value up to 15 times your income. That is for the regular one. There’s actually another one, actually. A secret, super secret one called Premium Life financing where you could actually get like 60 times but that’s a whole complicated thing. Let’s not get in there. But no, as long as your income – you take your annual income and times by 15, that’s how much life insurance you can get.

Richard Matthews 39:49
Okay, so you can actually pull out more than one policy than if you haven’t hit that cap. Absolutely. Yeah. Okay.

Daniel Ameduri 39:57
My kids all have two policies each as well. So, They have one policy where I pay something every year. And then they have one policy where I did something called a “One and Done.” And I’ve also done this for myself and that’s where you literally just give the whole life company a big chunk of cash and it’s done. You never pay off. You never pay again ever. It just goes up every single year, contractually. And the whole life policy holders, like a REIT, the profits from running the Mutual Insurance Company are being distributed in the form of a dividend to the whole life policyholders. So, I just want everybody to understand that you’re actually making money from the insurance company doing the business of insurance. And of course, insurance is the best business in the world, because you’re taking payment, and you may never have to provide a service. There is no other business like this where you take money, and you potentially never have to give them anything.

Richard Matthews 40:57
Yeah, it’s really fascinating that uh, that it even exists that way.

Daniel Ameduri 41:05
It’s how Berkshire got wealthy, right?

Richard Matthews 41:08
Yeah.

Daniel Ameduri 41:09
They’ll talk about it. They had all this pool of capital just sitting there. “Well, let’s just use this money that’s sitting there.” And so of course, they were able to do a compound by running Geico.

Richard Matthews 41:19
Oh, yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And so, anyways, for those of you listeners who are interested in this topic and want to get more into it, we’ll post some links to some of the books that you mentioned. That’s because the Bank on Yourself is the book that I read that sort of got me started into that. So we’ll make sure there are links in the show notes for it. It’s a huge topic. And if you’re interested in how you can do some of that we’ll make sure there are links in here so you can start looking at some of those policies because it’s such a huge topic for this kind of interview. But it’s really fascinating when you’re talking about how you build and compound wealth. It’s sort of like black box tools of the rich, right? You know how they actually managed to work with their money because they don’t do it the same way that you and I do, right? Normal people put them in banks and earn half a percent interest from our savings account that’s being eclipsed by the inflation.

Daniel Ameduri 42:15
You and I didn’t even mention so many of the benefits and these things are lawsuit proof even from IRS as long as you haven’t done anything illegal. They are tax free if the money after you die is going to your your family.

Richard Matthews 42:31
Because you put in after tax dollars, they can’t tax it because it’s already been taxed. So you’re not taxed on your harvest, right? You’re not taxed on the growth which is just fascinating to me. Because that’s not the way most people do it. Most people are like “Hey, I get to put in my money before it gets taxed at the paycheck level.” And then, after it grows $200,000 it gets taxed. Which doesn’t seem like it’s a benefit to the person who’s doing the investing that way. Yeah, there’s a lot of cool things and I know that even if you take the loan out on them, the loan proceeds are not taxable. And if you do actually die, the death benefit pays the loans back. And then anything that’s left goes to your beneficiaries. There’s just there’s a lot of things that happened with the whole life insurance policies that are really worth taking the time and looking into.

Daniel Ameduri 43:24
Sure. When people do a loan, it’s not as if they’re doing a credit report or anything. Your cash is the collateral. You can only borrow 95% of your cash value. So, there’s zero risk of default. So if you want 100 grand and you got 100 grand in cash value, you just call them up and say, send me the hundred grand, here’s my name, here’s my account.

Richard Matthews 43:44
…

The last time last time I did it, I had a program I wanted to invest in. And I was like, I needed 3500 bucks. And I just called up and said, “Hey, can you send me a check for 3500 bucks?” and two days later, the check was in my mailbox.

Daniel Ameduri 43:57
Exactly.

Richard Matthews 43:58
No questions asked. And then you can just pay it back. I put it into an investment, we made like 60 grand over the course of the next few months. We paid it back but you know, it’s really really easy as opposed to going to a bank where they have to pull your credit report and they deny you for this or that or the other thing. Or you have to like – after 2008, you’re probably really familiar with this. It used to be before 2008 you could fog a mirror and you could get a loan. After 2008 it was like really strict like I even have a hard time. We make good money but they’re like, “Your money’s not w two money it’s it’s a you know, it’s k one money or whatever, from a tax standpoint. So it doesn’t count. We can’t give you a loan.”

Daniel Ameduri 44:42
If you’re traveling all the time, you need to make your residency in another state.

Richard Matthews 44:47
I totally do. It’s currently still in California, which is insane.

Daniel Ameduri 44:55
Texas or Nevada

Richard Matthews 44:58
Yeah, Texas. We currently we have a secondary residence address in South Dakota and the only reason we have it in South Dakota is because they don’t require inspections on the vehicle every year. Texas does which is like… We like their income and their homeschool laws and everything. But we’d have to plan our trips around making sure we made it back to a Texas station every year.

Daniel Ameduri 45:23
So, I was a Texas resident for five years. It’s every other year. And it’s 50 bucks, no matter what you drive. Whether you’re driving a Lamborghini or a Honda. It’s $50.

Richard Matthews 45:34
Yeah, California is like, “It doesn’t matter what you’re driving, it’s 800 bucks.” Yeah.

Daniel Ameduri 45:40
That is really bad in the regular car registration as well. Definitely.

Richard Matthews 45:45
Cool. So let’s move on just a little bit. And I want to talk about your common enemy. And this makes more sense if we frame it in one of your businesses. I know you’ve got several businesses. So let’s frame this in side of your newsletter, subscriber, business. It’s the one thing you could remove from your client’s life. If you had a magic wand and you could just remove something that is holding back your subscribers from actually getting the results. They’re looking for the thing that use, you see questions popping up all the time that you wish you could just solve for everyone in one go. Then what do you think that would be?

Daniel Ameduri 46:20
It’s trying to get people, the subscribers, to understand the difference between risk and volatility. We make investments things go up and down, but that doesn’t make them more risky. If I owned Disney stock, there is zero percent chance that Disney is going to zero. If I own a rental property in La Jolla zero chance the property’s going to zero. But it does not protect me from volatility Disney could go from 150 today to 100. People will be puking and thinking all kinds of crazy thoughts. But they really need to step back and say “Wait a minute, is this risk that’s happening?

Richard Matthews 47:01
Or volatility.

Daniel Ameduri 47:02
And that is probably the biggest thing that I have to help people with because in 2008, I had a duplex. It goes from 130 grand down to 65 grand. And that duplex, the rent went from 1000 to 1300. During about a 24 month period, the volatility was high, but I lost nothing. I actually made more money because of the cash flow. So it’s the volatility and I would say definitely getting people to start focusing on cash flow and not speculation when it comes to subscribers.

Richard Matthews 47:36
So, how do you sort of learn the difference between volatility and – I already forgot about the other thing you mentioned. – versus volatility and risk.

Daniel Ameduri 47:51
I try to focus on teaching people to ask themselves “Will my grandkids be doing business with this company if I’m going to invest in it? or could my children live in this property 30 years from now as a desirable area.” Really focusing on now.

Richard Matthews 48:08
Like long term?

Daniel Ameduri 48:10
There’s real risk and there’s volatility. It’s going to be extremely volatile and you can lose all your money. But you know, if you’re on the flip side. If let’s say you just bought the S&P 500 Vanguard, it’s not going to zero. I mean, the 500 strongest companies in the US, they get swapped out, by the way. Everybody’s like, why does it always go up? Well, guess what? It ain’t even the same 500 it’s like the only 80 of them are left of that original 500. Every June they clean them out. They get rid of the weak ones and they bring in new ones that are strong. So it’s things like that. You know, yes, it could. But the S&P 500 could crash tomorrow and go to 1500. But does that mean Google and Apple are going away? No.

Richard Matthews 48:52
They have humongous businesses. Just in Apple’s case, Apple is being undervalued a lot because based on their actual revenue projections. That’s probably the case for a lot of businesses just because of the political environment we’re in.

Daniel Ameduri 49:13
Absolutely.

Richard Matthews 49:16
So, the other side of that, if the common enemy is something that you’re removing from your life, your your driving force is the thing that you fight for. Right? So just like Spider Man fights to save New York or Batman fights to save Gotham. Or we just mentioned Google – fights to index and categorize all the world’s information. What is it that you fight for in your businesses?

Daniel Ameduri 49:37
Well, with my subscribers specifically. I really like to teach. And I enjoy helping people realize that, you know, the financial path that’s been laid out in front of them is not written in stone. It’s not even that old. It’s an experiment and perhaps a failed experiment when it comes to retirement. So, unlocking the potential of the subscribers and letting them know and realize that they could chart their own course. Certainly that is my drive when it comes to my subscribers. When it comes to like the real estate side of my business, I’m focused like a laser and my drive is how do I keep stacking more income? Every week, I hope to have more income coming into my life.

Richard Matthews 50:23
That’s a really interesting goal, right? I know one of the things that I get questioned on all the time by my family and my social circles that are not in the same entrepreneurial circles that I’m in is like, “Why would you look at things that are beyond your means?” Like, one of the things my wife and I do all the time is we do it just because I think it’s fun, right? We’ll go places like, the rich area of town and like look at the mansions that have open houses, not because we’re particularly looking to buy one right now. But just because I think they’re cool, and we’ll go and do some of those things. We go to the art shows and look at yachts and things like that. My dad always ask me he’s like, “Why do you look at stuff you can’t afford?” And I’m like, “What makes you think I can’t afford it?” Like, my life has always been like, “How can we adjust the income to afford the things we want to afford?” So we know we bought this RV and started doing the traveling. When we started, it was outside of our income, right? But we just adjusted the income to match you know, next step – we told you we’re talking about traveling around the world. And you know, we’ve got an idea of like, how much it’s gonna cost to do that. And you can just… your income is not set in stone if you don’t want it to be, right? And that’s where, most people – I think they look at their lives and like, “Hey, I can have a job and make 50 grand a year.” So they try to fit their life into 50 grand a year. Instead of trying to figure out how to like, here’s the life I want to build. How do I build an income that supports it?

Daniel Ameduri 51:58
That’s beautiful. You just said designing your life instead of just accepting this thing that this cookie cutter life plan we’ve been given.

Richard Matthews 52:07
Yeah, absolutely. And it’s like, it’s just a mental shift, right? There’s nothing stopping you from doing that, right? It’s just a change in your, own mindset. And I think it comes from from one of those really important concepts people have to learn. It is to learn to ask themselves better questions, right? So if you’re asking yourself, “How can I afford my life?” Then you’re asking yourself a poor question. Instead of asking yourself, “How can I design my own life?” And then, “How do I build an income that matches that?” That starts to unlocking things for you. You start asking better questions, and you start getting better answers.

Daniel Ameduri 52:45
Yeah, if people just do that one fundamental shift right there, what you’re talking about. Just focusing on outcome and then working backwards from there – in everything in their life. Whether it’s their marriage, what kind of parent they’re going to be. If you just focus on ultimately what you want to be… what does that look like? Write it down. And then just say, “Okay, how do I get from point A to point B?”

Richard Matthews 53:05
Yeah. And like, that’s exactly what we’re doing right now of the businesses that we’re growing. It is Push Button Podcasts. And like, here, we want to hit 40 clients this year. What do I need to do to hit 40 clients? Right? And we just, we back up from that. It’s like how many people do I need on my team? What kind of sales process do we need? What do we need to have in place in order to hit all those things? We just work backwards and I get down to like, “Okay, here’s where I’m at now and the next thing I need to do is I need to get the website design.” I have steps that go from here, all the way up to hitting our 40 client goal this year. And like, easy is not the right word.

Daniel Ameduri 53:44
Yeah.

Richard Matthews 53:45
Because it’s not easy. You still have to put all the work into it. But it’s not difficult, right? It’s not something that’s outside the realm of possibility. It’s just, once you start asking yourself those questions, it’s a simple matter of just doing it.

Daniel Ameduri 54:00
Absolutely, yeah.

Richard Matthews 54:02
So I want to talk a little bit practically for a second and talk about your hero’s toolbelt. Maybe you got a big magical hammer like Thor or a bulletproof vest like your neighborhood police officer. Maybe you just really love how Evernote helps you organize your thoughts? What are some of the tools that you couldn’t live without? Today, when you’re talking about growing and managing your business either your newsletter subscribers your investment of your venture capitalist business… something that just makes your business run? You couldn’t do it without it.

Daniel Ameduri 54:32
Well, I mean, this might sound wrong, or maybe it’s not the answer you’re looking for. But I would say it’s the people that I’ve placed in my life. So maybe it’s an Avengers type ensemble here. Certainly… Look, I’m very disorganized. Horrendous. I hate it. I don’t even want to try. So I have a partner who’s the most anal person on the planet. I mean, he annoys the shit out of me because I’m unrganized but he’s organized. And that’s important. Then I hate paperwork! That’s my chosen kryptonite. I don’t want any paperwork. So I’ve got another partner, that’s what he went to college for as a finance degree. And you know, he deals with all the subscription forms for these private placements. He deals with all the taxes, he deals with all the corporate entities, all that stuff. So I would say it’s the people that are around me. And then I have a personal assistant who sets all these interviews up and coordinates things and does the bookings for flights. So it’s really that team around me that is… I wouldn’t call them a tool belt but certainly they’re what makes all these businesses work. I have placed strategic people in my life who are strong where I am super weak.

Richard Matthews 55:48
Yeah, that’s a really powerful point. That’s one of the things that like… Just this last year was when I started hiring people. I just had my one year anniversary with my first employee and he’s been fantastic. He has changed face my business. Just by having someone who can shore up the areas that I needed help with. And it did a lot of things for me. It unlocks you from doing things that you’re not good at. And, like, it’s an interesting thing. You see, a lot of times people talk about, like, “Hey, you have your strengths and your weaknesses. And you know, if you could bring your weaknesses up just a little bit, you can have a lot of results.” But I think the reality is, the wealthiest people in the world ignore their weaknesses. They focus on just the thing that they’re the strongest at and they let other people deal with everything else. And I think that it’s really telling that here is someone who’s doing the kind of work that you’re doing or how important your team is to your success.

Daniel Ameduri 56:50
Absolutely, I mean, look, I would tell everybody, take it to the next level. When you really allocate – really think about your life and the things that you can get rid of like grocery shopping or doing lawn or doing the pool. You can broker these things out to somebody else, and then double down on what you’re good at and more efficient at. So let’s say instead of me, instead of my wife going grocery shopping, we get a better return on value if somebody else does it. And now she’s focused on the children and the homeschool. Instead of me out there cutting grass for whatever. 15 or 20 bucks an hour, I can now focus on Future Money Trends or a VC deal where we’ll get a much more turne around value. So reflect on your life, and especially if you’re a small business owner. You know, should you really be the CPA of your business? The web hosting guy for your business? I mean, should you be all those things? Or if you’re a really good salesman, would you be better off running your business on the phone and hiring somebody to run the website and hiring somebody to keep the accounting?

Richard Matthews 57:53
Yeah, absolutely. And I know it’s like, I’ve got goals for my life. Like I really like to cook. But I would like cooking to just be a hobby I do on the side. Like, I want to get to a point where I’ve got a personal chef, right? Who’s making our families dinners and all the way down to those kind of things. Grandpa, there you go. And I have alternate reasons too. I also want to hire them as personal chef, but I also want them to teach me so it’s like a culinary school for a cheapskate who doesn’t really want to go to culinary school. I just like I want to learn from someone but I don’t want to do it for my business. So like I just, you know, when I can, I can sit down and want another lesson like teach me how to do whatever that was that you just did. So, but anyway, that’s a personal thing. But yeah, like finding those areas in your life that you can pull out and have someone else do. And one of the things – just an encouragement for people who are thinking about that. The thing that held me back the longest from actually hiring people and bringing someone on was thinking in my own head that I couldn’t afford them. And it was a mental block I had, because I was like, “If I hire someone, I’m going to have to then make sure that you know, –” It is a shift in your business. Because now it’s not just you that your business has the revenue for. I have payroll, and like, payroll is the most important thing that I have every month, right? I have to make sure that it gets met. Because those people rely on me to make payroll. So it does shift a little bit of your priorities in your business. The other thing that happened with that shift was it took so much off of my plate. My business doubled within three months. And suddenly affording that person was not just easy, it was like unthinkable. But I waited as long as I did. So that’s sort of my encouragement. If you’re in that space in your business thinking “Who can and what can I take off my plate?” Just do it. And like, I remember the first month I was like, “I’m gonna have to eat this because I don’t know where the revenue is going to come from.” But if I never do it, I’m never going to hire someone. And I hired someone and just within the first month, they more than paid for themselves. So it’s definitely a big win for your business, when you start moving up that direction.

Daniel Ameduri 1:00:14
It forces you to grow too. Just like a regular household. You know, the car needs new tires, but then you don’t have any money. But guess what? When the car needs new tires, you find a way to find that $500 and you make it happen.

Richard Matthews 1:00:27
You make it happen

Daniel Ameduri 1:00:28
The employee just becomes part of the operation. And you’re good.

Richard Matthews 1:00:32
Yeah, yeah. And it’s not nearly as scary as you think it is. And then once you do it, you’re like, I can’t believe I waited as long as I did. So, and I’ve heard that time and time again from people who have started hiring staff and really growing their organization. It changes their business and really allows them to grow exponentially. It’s a form of leverage that I think is just fascinating. For me, the thing that I’ve really focused on this last year with my business is “How can I put an hour’s worth of work and get 10 hours of work out of it?” And so we’ve done a lot of work with systems and processes. Our business is really streamlined right now. And for the most part, 80% of my business runs itself without me which a year and a half ago I ran everything. If I stepped away, the business stopped. You know, this last week I went to a business mastermind with our group of people. I took four or five days off and I come back everything’s running smoothly. It’s just a really good place to be in your business and then it allows you to remove yourself from the process and actually have it continue to grow. Yeah, it’s really cool.

Daniel Ameduri 1:01:46
…

Richard Matthews 1:01:51
…

So, talk a little bit about your own personal heroes, right? Frodo had Gandalf. Luke had Obi Wan. Robert Kiyosaki, his rich dad. Who were some of your heroes? Were they real life mentors, speakers or authors, peers who were a couple of years ahead of you? And how important were they to what you’ve accomplished in your life and your business?

Daniel Ameduri 1:02:20
Well, my number one would be my dad, because he taught me to never quit. And literally, like, you’d get spanked with a belt if you quit, there was no quitting.

Richard Matthews 1:02:29
So it’s just not optional.

Daniel Ameduri 1:02:31
He taught me to go all-in. That’s for sure. I also had a mentor in my life when I was 13 who taught me about real estate and that kind of opened my mind up to doing different things as far as not going to college and stuff. And then, Robert Kiyosaki, you know, I’m so lucky that that man wrote that book at the right time. I was young, I was still a teenager, and I read all of his books and just in the last year, I got to actually interview him, which was really cool. So, those three people are probably the most influential people in my life. And later, with when it comes to VC, I end up meeting a gentleman by the name Keith Neumeyer. And he really taught me how to evaluate these companies and really, really how to kick the tires on these things.

Richard Matthews 1:03:19
That’s really cool. Actually, Robert Kiyosaki was my catalyst for getting into the business world as well. I was probably – I can’t remember – like nine or 10 years old. My dad brought home the Rich Dad Poor Dad book, and he was like, “Hey, one of my friends at work gave it to me, I thought you’d enjoy it.” And I read that book probably four times the first week that I had it and I became a boy obsessed at that point. And you know, you were talking earlier that you used to sell candy and stuff. But when I was 13, my first business, I was buying candy wholesale – I got my dad to give me a loan for candy. And I got 50 bucks and went to the Smart & Final down there in Murrieta and bought a bunch of big blocks of candy and brought them to the school. I made about 1500 bucks selling candy at school before they before the school authorities shut me down for not having a business license to nice chunk of change. Yeah, worked out really well. Yeah, he’s definitely been a huge inspiration to me and my son’s just started reading some of his books. We’ve been listening to him on audio book and realizing how much of my thought processes and my character and my decision making came from those early years reading those books from him. So definitely I agree with you. It was a huge impact on me as well.

Daniel Ameduri 1:04:36
Yeah, I play the cashflow game with the kids too. Yeah, we do.

Richard Matthews 1:04:41
My son loves that game. So we’ve recently got a tablet version of it now so they don’t have to like pull all the stuff out. So we played on the tablet and he likes that game a lot.

Daniel Ameduri 1:04:51
Well it’s awesome I didn’t know that.

Richard Matthews 1:04:52
Yeah, yeah. So that you don’t have to have all the money out, like all the the paper money. You just have the income sheet and it does the calculations.

Daniel Ameduri 1:05:03
Oh. I didn’t know that way to play that. I didn’t know that you could. Because the the kids one is not so bad. But the adult one…there is so much writing going on.

Richard Matthews 1:05:12
So yeah, it takes all the hard part out of the game. The stuff that makes it feel more like work than a game. And it does the calculations and keeps track of all of your investments and everything for you. And it’s free too. You just go to another website and play the cashflow game. You have to have a couple of devices because you have to have one device per person. My son has a school tablet and I’ll pull up my tablet. My wife has a tablet we’ll play the game. But yeah, it’s super cool. And it definitely helps him start thinking along those lines. How do you build investments. When he started me questions in that direction. He’s got all sorts of business ideas now. It’s kind of fun. It’s awesome. Yeah. So I want to go ahead and bring it home for our listeners here and talk about your guiding principles, top one or two principles or actions that you sort of use regularly every day that you think contributes to the success and influence that your companies have now? Maybe something you wish you had known when you had started out on this journey.

Daniel Ameduri 1:06:14
Oh, my number one principle is over delivering in value. I think that’s one of the most important things I can teach my children and teach anybody who works with me. Anything that I do in life is to over deliver. And that’s principle number one. And principle number two is to be appreciative and grateful. Show gratefulness to other people. I reward people who work with me with plenty of raises. We’re a company that does probably three to four bonuses a year. Just you know, wanting to let people know how appreciative I am, whether it’s the subscribers, the clients, or the people who work with me. So over delivering and showing a spirit of appreciation.

Richard Matthews 1:06:56
Yeah, I love that. I like the idea of of giving your workers and even your clients like how can you surprise and delight them? Right? And because it really changes the game for people, right? And it’s one of the things I’ve really focused on with my employees. I’ve got a few of them. I’ve got a small team that is growing, but how do you make it that I want this company to be something that, either they want to work with forever? Or they look back on as a very fond time of their life… that they really enjoyed working for our organization. And, you know, finding ways to do that. Whether it’s, we have video games we play together on the weekend like virtual games that our team plays together because you know, a bunch of them are young gamers and stuff like that. So we try to encourage that and connect things. aWe put together a weekend channel where we share our adventures and things with each other just to keep connected and actually make connections with the employees outside of work.

Anyways, just, how do you go just a little bit above and beyond things that they don’t see everywhere? And you know, if you can bring that to every area of your life, like you were saying, with your clients or with your venture capitalists, how do you always think about over delivering? It probably has a tremendous impact on the results you’ve created in your businesses over the years. So that’s a good thing.

Daniel Ameduri 1:08:27
Well, it’s good to corner yourself. As we all know, if you want to have it, you might not have it. But if you have to have it, it’ll happen. So if you put yourself in situations that you have to over deliver, it will happen. But if you just say, I’m going to give them a great service, they’re gonna love it, blah, blah, blah, maybe they will, maybe they won’t. But if you put yourself in a situation, “Man, and if I do this for this person, they’re freaking going to be a raving fan of mine.” And you got to corner yourself. Do that to yourself. You’ll make it happen just like the guy who finds the 500 bucks to fix the car that he doesn’t have, you’ll make it happen.

Richard Matthews 1:09:03
Yeah, it just, it’s got to happen. The cornered dog syndrome. The cornered dog will do anything to thrive. And you just have to figure it out. I call those psychological triggers. How do you get yourself into a place that you know you’re going to do the things you need to do? And give yourself the triggers to make it happen. That is basically it for the interview. Thank you so much for coming on. I do have one last thing I do with all of my guests. We call it the hero’s challenge. It’s really simple. It’s basically this: Do you have someone in your life or in your network that 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 with our audience?

Daniel Ameduri 1:09:44
Oh, I mean, I would say it’s a Lior Gantz of Wealth Research Group. Because, 10 years ago when I met him, he was running a small education company in Israel. And now he’s traveled the world. For the last year and a half, with his wife and his daughter, he was able to leverage his knowledge of investing into the public domain. He simply travels the world looking for investment trends. He goes to China, Thailand, Europe – all over. And I don’t think he’s been home for 18 months. And he’s traveling with a three year old as well. So I would say he probably has one of the more fascinating stories I’ve ever heard.

Richard Matthews 1:10:30
That’s really cool. Yeah. You probably heard my – I got a three year old and a six year old who are fighting in the background here. So I know what it’s like traveling with kids. So yeah, we’ll see if we can connect later about maybe we can get him to come on the show. But thank you so much for coming on the show, Daniel. I really appreciate it. Where can people find you if they’re interested in any of the things that you do? Whether they got a company that needs venture capitalists or if they want to hear about your newsletter? where can they find you? and who are the ideal types of people to reach out?

Daniel Ameduri 1:11:02
You know anybody. We help millennials. We help baby boomers. It doesn’t matter. FutureMoneyTrends.com you can subscribe to our Weekly Wealth digest. If you want to read the intro and the first chapter of my book, Don’t Save for Retirement. You can go to FutureMoneyTrends.com/save.

Richard Matthews 1:11:20
Awesome. I look forward to it. I assume that book is available on Amazon?

Daniel Ameduri 1:11:25
It is. Yeah.

Richard Matthews 1:11:26
Yeah, sounds like something I need to go pick up and read. So again, thank you so much for coming on the show, Daniel. I really appreciate it. It’s been a fascinating conversation. Is there any final thoughts you have before we hit the done record on this episode?

Daniel Ameduri 1:11:41
I think we’ve covered a lot of ground. The only thing I could say to everybody is just, there’s nothing like looking in the mirror and realizing that’s your number one source of income. That’s the person who’s going to solve all your problems. It doesn’t matter what happens to you. It’s how you are going to respond to everything.

Richard Matthews 1:11:57
It’s a powerful point. Thank you very much, Daniel. appreciate having you on.

Daniel Ameduri 1:12:00
Thank you.