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Unemployable with Jeff Dudan
Why 91% of Millionaires Own a Business (And You're Missing Out) with Garrett Gunderson
01:19:46
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- [00:00]
Garrett Gunderson
91% of people worth 5 million or more own a business. It's a pretty, you know, it's an important wealth engine.
- [00:07]
Jeff Duden
Nobody's going to take as good care of your money if you don't pay attention to it.
- [00:11]
Garrett Gunderson
Nobody's going to care more about your money than you.
- [00:13]
Jeff Duden
Yeah.
- [00:14]
Garrett Gunderson
And there's so much wealth to be gained by eliminating four eyes. I started doing the Rockefeller method at 19 years old, before I was even married with 50 bucks a month. It was really rudimentary. It was very simplistic, but it was a start. You don't have to be extraordinarily wealthy to leave a legacy. You just have to be really intentional and have the right framework.
- [00:33]
Jeff Duden
Welcome, everybody, to the Unemployable Podcast. I'm Jeff Duden. If you grew up in a small coal mining town in Utah, embrace scarcity at first early in life, but soon discovered that becoming wealthy and keeping it demanded a different set of rules. If you have worked with over 12,000 entrepreneurs through your financial advisory firm Wealth Factory, and authored multiple best selling books including what Would the Rockefellers Do? And Killing Sacred Cows, your name can only be Garrett Gunderson. Welcome.
- [01:06]
Garrett Gunderson
Thanks for having me, man. Look forward to it.
- [01:13]
Jeff Duden
Yeah, yeah, Right on. I'm pretty excited about today. I've been reviewing your content, listening to your podcast, reading your books, and man, does financial management ever not hit home? At any phase of our life, do we not be like, man, we are wasting. I'm wasting money looking through my credit card bills. And, and it's just like, where do you the, the bigger your life gets, the more difficult it is to know where to focus.
- [01:38]
Garrett Gunderson
Yeah, that's a good point. I mean, and yet just yesterday I was talking to someone on our team and I said, all right, my wife and I are hiring you. Because he's just so detail oriented. He does such a good job with clients. I'm like, I'm just going to be even more of a product of the product of what we do. Because my wife actually is more of a planner than I am. I'm kind of a big idea guy. I'm a, you know, I, I know a lot about money, but I'm a philosophical guy more than I am a get in the spreadsheets guy. I can get in the spreadsheets. And she just wants to be a little bit more intentional because the way that we do it right now is we just automate the savings off the top and then kind of spend the rest. But she's like, well, I'd like to do like a full. And with AI, there's so many cool things you could do to kind of really see what the trends are, where you're spending, what's going on, and then, you know, just figure out what's worth the money, like dial it up on the things that matter and get rid of the waste.
- [02:28]
Jeff Duden
Yeah. Knowing what to do is the first part of it, but then actually being disciplined to do it, I think AI is going to help with that. It really, you know, if. If. If something's not getting done that needs to be done on a regular basis anymore, it's. It's unacceptable.
- [02:44]
Garrett Gunderson
I was like, I put my P and L in AI yesterday just to say, hey, like, what? What do you see? Is there anything I'm not seeing? And it was interesting, the suggestions that it gave, you know, fairly useful. It was just a conversation I was having with my team around it anyway. And, you know, places that we're actually going to up our spending because we could get more value from that. And then other places where it's like, is the juice worth the squeeze? Is this where we want to keep allocating certain funds and where are we heavy on our costs and where we may be light? It's just, you know, because there's not just one type of expense. I mean, a lot of people get taught just to reduce expenses, but that's. You can't really shrink your way to wealth. You got to increase your productive expenses. What are the things that really produce for you? Don't get stingy on those. Get mindful on the things that don't matter, but get increasing on the things that do.
- [03:33]
Jeff Duden
Yeah. I'll ask you later. Can somebody save their way to prosperity? I've heard it both ways.
- [03:40]
Garrett Gunderson
I mean, you could save your way to a lot of money, but here's the deal. If you have millions of dollars and never travel but want to, or you're broke and you never travel and want to, there's not that much difference, you know, I mean, so yeah, there's the book like the millionaire next door that says if you just don't spend money, you can have millions of dollars. But again, what good is it if you're just handing it off to kids that didn't know it was coming and they blow through it because you never talked about it because everything was about how you could reduce expenses and what of times we spend life at the. At the, you know, notion of trying to reduce an expense or we spend energy just to save money. I'd rather spend money to, you know, save Time, essentially. Yeah.
- [04:26]
Jeff Duden
Well, here's an opening question. Why is business ownership so central to the ability for families to build wealth?
- [04:35]
Garrett Gunderson
91% of people worth 5 million or more own a business. It's a pretty, you know, it's a, it's an important wealth engine. I mean, first, when you own a business, you just pay a lot of tax. You know, it's, there's a punishment for salary, essentially, where when you own a business, you have a lot of benefits and you get kind of multiple dimensions. You can build enterprise value at the same time. You're building cash flow most of the time. You know, when people get a salary, they try to save 10% of that money. They put it into something for 30 years hoping it's going to pay off, never really enjoying it along the way. Where in a business you can get cash flow and the more cash flows, then you don't have to be there, the more equity you're going to have and you get that tax advantage. So tax advantage, equity and cash flow. I like that. Three dimensions to that business. And it's just, you know, I, I see that if you have a business, you have a lot of opportunity to grow, but if you don't have a business and you're just going to, what are you going to do? Work more hours? Are you going to get stock options? I mean, it's just, it's just a harder game, essentially trading time for money and being at someone else's will.
- [05:37]
Jeff Duden
Yeah, I think that's a big part of it. And when we talk about it here with our, with our candidates and with our franchise owners, it's number one, it's about the tax and it's the ability to not only have tax efficient, efficient structures, but it's also to defer tax, to manage tax, to take advantage of the tools that the wealthy have made for the wealthy. And, you know, so now you're in the game, right? If it's your first business and your first business owner, now you're in the game. The next thing that it does, and I'm interested that you touched on it in a way when you talked about growth, was it gives you the freedom to pursue your own curiosities. So I know that you've been affiliated with Strategic Coach and with Dan Sullivan. And you know, Dan's got a new book out on ambition and it talks about, he talks about being, you have to be more ambitious every year than you were the previous year. Because when you're wildly ambitious, you get to, number one, leverage your capabilities that are your superpowers into that. But then it also forces you to identify capabilities that you need that you don't currently have. So now once you say, all right, well if I'm going to 10x my business then I'm going to need these capabilities around me. Now do I build those in myself or do I go out and use his other book who not how and go find somebody who can who has those capabilities and build a team. And so you know, but at the end of the day, I know that you've been a member of Genius Network. I know you've been a strategic coach. I'm a YPO guy, CEO guy. I've been in coach, I'm currently in Coach and Genius Network. I've been in Vistage. And none of those would have been available to me or accessible to me if I weren't a business owner because my employer is not sending me to those roles rooms.
- [07:30]
Garrett Gunderson
Right? Yeah, yeah, definitely.
- [07:32]
Jeff Duden
Yeah. And then on top of that the, the other thing that you know, like real estate businesses are a great hedge against inflation.
- [07:40]
Garrett Gunderson
So wages adjust pricing.
- [07:42]
Jeff Duden
Yeah, we adjust pricing and wages are not going to track up in that way. So you know, for, you know, when you know, and we get people in here looking at, we're a franchise platform and we get people and they're the first, not only first time business owner, first time business owner in their entire family and people just don't have an idea that they have to get into the game with a business to start playing Monopoly and taking advantage of all the things.
- [08:13]
Garrett Gunderson
Yeah. And I mean, interesting because I, you know, I just don't really enjoy real estate even though it can have those advantages. So I, I kind of hate the game Monopoly because it's more like how do you take from people than how do you provide value? You know, it's like where franchises are actually offering a value to the market versus like Monopoly, you have to pay someone because you landed somewhere, not because you wanted to be there. And but I do feel that not everyone's meant to be a business owner. So there's this like notion of being an intrapreneur where you work inside of an organization. But you know, a lot of people say they want to own, but owning means well, if there's a capital call, that's on you. If there's a lawsuit, that's on you. If there's you know, a cash crunch and payroll and you got to do like there's just what people really want is upside potential. So the way I built my organization is everyone has Upside potential. I always say we're not really good at salaries because there's more than one type of compensation. There's five main types. One is, you know, the salary that you pay. The second is non monetary bonuses. People just trips they wouldn't take on their own but they really love or technology. You know, another thing would be like just you know, monetary bonuses because they've hit certain objectives or group bonuses that the entire team benefits or even stock options which, which may or may not come with voting rights. And that gives someone a sense of hey, I'm part of this and you know, I can have some upside potential because I've been here for a while. So there's I, I like that kind of a, a mentality so that everyone can kind of win. But there's definitely positions that are more transient positions and entry level positions where you're just giving someone a job when they're young and they're learning some basic skills that doesn't merit a lot of those other types of compensation. But then you might find somebody like man, this is someone that really wants to grow. They have tons of ambition, as you brought up ambition and we can do this together. But you know, if as soon as it enters a partnership it becomes much more complicated as you know, because usually the person that initiates the business holds the bag and has to do a lot of the stuff and you know, the other person just wants equity because they want to tell someone they own a business that's not necessarily owning a business unless I guess you're in a venture or private capital. And so I would really, you know, urge business owners to be more mindful of that and caution just bringing someone on to have any ownership that includes voting rights or you don't have first Friday refusal or there isn't some type of like vesting period or some type of cliff like there's a lot of things to protect that business.
- [10:33]
Jeff Duden
Yeah, early in my career I had partners and then we went through a 12 gosh, I guess, I guess it was a 10 year buyout of each partner where I ended up owning the business 100% and then I built that business and that's the way we finished. Although I did have equity incentives, I had profit sharing plans and those types of things. They were equity equivalents though. And they really didn't give any control to the people. But people did well with them when the business ultimately sold in 2019. But then late in my career I've, I have focused on understanding how to be a better partner and how to use, I guess, more, I mean, real equity instruments, profits, interests, and things like that to really get the talent that we need to be able to build fast. So there's no perfect model to it. Certainly a lot more complexity when you're bringing more people to the table. And I think it's incumbent upon the leader to. To really understand what you're trying to build and, you know, time horizons. And then, you know, I had to. I was. I was doing something this morning, and it's just like. And what was it? It was, it was. It was something. But the. But the punchline to it was only if you're willing to hold people accountable to results. Yeah. Because not everybody, not everybody that comes into a business that didn't start it has that true ownership mentality. They don't want to take, to your point, the lawsuits. They don't want to take the capital walls. They don't want to, you know, they. They want the upside, but they, they want to limit their downside.
- [12:13]
Garrett Gunderson
Yeah. No responsibility, no relationship.
- [12:16]
Jeff Duden
Yeah. Yeah. So tell me a little bit about the wealth factory practice. How do you get your customers who
- [12:23]
Garrett Gunderson
sold that company in 2021?
- [12:25]
Jeff Duden
Oh, geez. Okay. Well, my AI didn't do very good on that then.
- [12:30]
Garrett Gunderson
AI is so inaccurate. Like, I was on someone's podcast and I looked up like the. The nine myths and Killing S Cows. It got eight of the nine wrong. Eight of the nine. And they're like, tell me about the myth of the silver bullet. I'm like, don't know what that is. They're like, tell me. I was like, it's wild. Like, I. I was asking, you know, I use chat GPT, like Google, where I use Claude, like in my actual work.
- [12:51]
Jeff Duden
Yeah.
- [12:51]
Garrett Gunderson
And I was asking GPT about some things I was trying to figure out, and it lied four times in a row. Just making stuff up. And I was like, that's not accurate because I. I was looking at something. I'm like, who is this person? I'm trying to find out who it is. And it's just making names up. And I was like, dude, AI is so, you know, good in some ways and so frustrating in others.
- [13:08]
Jeff Duden
Yeah. I went to the website, checked it all out. Looks. Looks like a great company you built.
- [13:13]
Garrett Gunderson
Yeah, I mean, I sold it in 21 just because, you know, it was kind of just depart. Like was departing from the values that it originally started with. They really wanted to scale, and that's fine. I just wanted to make sure that we are adding the value. So, uh, I just started something New in July of 2024. And that's already kind of on a like, better trajectory than the company that I sold. But man, I forgot how hard it is to start something. You know, Like, I, I forgot like, because that other business, I, I, I had a business I started in 2007 and then I bought a business in 2014 that I merged with that business and then I sold that in 2021. So I'd been doing that business for quite some time and I was even in that field since 98. It's just that I had two business partners that died in a plane crash in 2006.
- [14:03]
Jeff Duden
Oh, man.
- [14:04]
Garrett Gunderson
And so, yeah, so I had to kind of like, you know, when they died, it created some like our merchant account shut down because there's all of a sudden two partners were no longer there, you know. So I decided like, okay, I gave it like a year and then I was like, I'm going to create my own thing instead of this like, old company that, you know, it's, it just wasn't, it wasn't really like able to do it with just me and without those other partners. And so I just created something that was similar but new and then took that, took off pretty well when I bought that company because these guys just had tons of capabilities. When you co and you buy a company, if there's someone that's just like really good team inside of that and then all of a sudden you fast forward with capability because they have better, you know, online skills than what I. We were very in person and so all of a sudden we could merge those two. And then after I sold my business, I was like, yeah, what am I going to do? And I decided to do comedy for a few years and got my comedy special on Amazon Prime. It is around money because I'm not the funniest comedian by any means, but, you know, money comedian, that was like a category one. So I knew I could do well there, got some representation, got that on Amazon prime that I was like, is this really my life's going to be being on tour, doing comedy? Because comedy is fun, but being on tour not as fun. And plus I have a, you know, family. I've, I really enjoy like hanging out with them. And we all live by each other for the most part, so being on the road wasn't necessarily the best thing. And so I gave it like a year to figure out, like, what do I really want to do? And I, and I asked stuff like you'd hear from strategic coaches, like, what could I dedicate decades of my life to what really matters and moves the needle. What are, what are the skills that I want to employ? And you know, the difference this time around is, man, I've just built like a really amazing team that I took a few weeks off for a family retreat with my kids because my son's about to leave the house and head off and who knows if he'll ever come back. He's 18. He's gonna go do summer door to door sales, which I think is awesome. I'm like, hey man, you need to learn sales or AI. That's like, that's the game. I'm like, if you go to school, that's fine, but like, it's probably not gonna matter that much other than building relationships. So he's gonna go do these door to door sales. And we were, we were in Hawaii and at the same time, like some of our marketing just wasn't dialed in. And my team just figured things out while I was gone. They built sites, they built an entire experience. They told me about it when I got back. Like, that's a sign of a pretty awesome team. And that's what I love about businesses. First, it's like this mirror to be like, am I the kind of leader that I need to be? Am I learning the lessons that are important? Do I have the right mindset and consciousness that can, that can lead? Am I willing to have the tough conversations? Am I willing to receive feedback so that everybody feels like they have a voice? Uh, you know, how do I make sure everybody wins when we work on this together? You know that like, that's something that is consistently challenging. And as you said, you don't get like points for trying. It's either works or it doesn't. It's a fully accountable system. Yeah, you know, it's. This isn't the government where you're like, ah, it didn't work. Let's print more money or let's, you know, vote ourselves into the treasury. It's like, that didn't work. There's an expense that goes along with that. I hope you learned the lesson. Cause if you don't, it's probably going to be more painful the next time around.
- [17:05]
Jeff Duden
Right? What was the run up to the Amazon special in terms? Did you go out and just start doing open mics and how'd you develop your content? And then, you know, how did, how did, what was it? Was that, did that start in 21?
- [17:19]
Garrett Gunderson
No, I. And I went to Italy for the summer with my family in 2017, which was like, a big deal, because my family's from Italy, at least my. On my mom's side, right? And they left because they couldn't provide. They couldn't make enough money in San Giovanni and Fiore. And they come to America to become coal miners, you know, goat herds and then coal miners. And I was like, it felt weird to go back and just have this summer, just hanging out, going to places they'd never seen. And I had to kind of overcome some of the scarcity deep down, which was, how am I going to be gone for a summer and have my business still operate? Well, I had 18 months of Runway, so brought it to the team. We figured it out. The team grew up a lot while I was gone. They figured out, again, marketing stuff that they wouldn't have done if I was there. And I had the biggest year to date that year in revenue and net profit, even while I took that summer off. And I just had a lot of time to think. And I was like, what do I want to do? What would make life more fun? And so I had written at an event that invited me to speak in 2014 that I wanted to stand up. They wanted you to write a letter to yourself about something you want to do. So I wrote a letter, and I kind of remembered that. So when I came home, I was just hanging out with my wife on the first trip that, like, we just went to a baseball game right when we came home. And, you know, those are slow, sometimes a little bit boring. So I'm telling some jokes, and she's like, that's. She laughed, and she says, it's kind of funny, which I translated as comedic. God, you know when your wife says something like that? Oh, my God.
- [18:46]
Jeff Duden
Yeah.
- [18:46]
Garrett Gunderson
And. And then that Sunday, I gave my first speech. My buddy Keith was like, oh, our next speaker is hilarious. And he kept saying hilarious. So I got up and I told a few jokes. It went really well. So I had that ping, like that, you know, internal ping to be like, I should do something about it. So I called my buddy when I left stage, and I said, could be at my office tomorrow. I'm flying home tonight. I want to write some jokes. My hair was down. I was like, I look like Jesus. I don't have his powers. That was kind of the premise. And my. My youngest son was there laughing his butt off while we were sitting there talking. And so a couple days later, I did an open mic, and my comedian buddy's like, hey, dude, you should open for us. You're good. So I just started opening for them. And then when they filmed their special in 2019, when I opened, it was in the round. It was an arena, you know, like this Hell Center Theater here in Utah. And it was like, I just had a great set, and this manager, Barry Katz, was there, and he's like, hey, dude, I think you've got what it takes. And I said, well, this is kind of a hobby. So I kind of messed around for, like, a year. And then In November of 2020, I watched the Zen Diaries of Gary Shandling. And, you know, it was just, like, really useful to hear this guy go through insecurities and still figure it out. And I was like, all right, let's do it. I said, April 15th, we'll. We'll film the special because, you know, that's a. The tax day. That's the name of the special is the American Ream. And we filmed it. Took a couple years to get it on Amazon prime because I just had no social media presence. I wasn't known as a comedian anywhere. I'd sold my company. I didn't have a database. So I did two tours after. I did. I did two tours after the special. So to leading up to the special, I just turned my basement into a comedy club. We put a curtain up. I had a bar stool. I had a mic and a mic stand. I moved some couches around, invited people over, did zoom meetings every day for. On Monday, 5 to 6pm I did comedy sets almost every single day, sometimes to one person, just to rehearse, just to put in the reps. And then when my buddies were doing comedy, I'd go open for them, maybe get 20 minutes. The most time I'd ever spent on stage doing comedy was 33 minutes before. I did four hours the night of the special. So I just had to do it in chunks and figure it out.
- [20:52]
Jeff Duden
I mean, 33 minutes, that's still a lot. What do you mean you did four hours the night of the special?
- [20:59]
Garrett Gunderson
Each. I did two filmings that night because, you know, they just said, hey, you should do two shows. Because sometimes you might fumble on a word or there's a light that goes out. And there was. There was a light that went out during one of the shows for just part of the show. And so, yeah, and they're like, sometimes people are just loose with their second show. You know, you, like, maybe you have some tightness. My son opened for me, and he was 13 at the time, and he kind of loosened it up. Where I was, I was pretty loose. I was. I'd been Visualizing. I'd been like, preparing every day. I'd put in the reps. And we're talking April of 2021. A lot of people hadn't been hanging out together, so everyone gets to see each other. That were my buddies that hadn't seen each other for a long time. People were flying in and that knew each other. So it was like a huge energy of just people being excited that they're out of the house, they're having a good time, and just kind of cheering me on, because I think it was like, oh, this is cool that I was, you know, because when you get there, like, my set designer did a bunch of chappelle sets. His name's Tom Lenz. My eight, you know, I think there were eight total Emmy winners on the crew, you know, like, that included the editor that wasn't there that night that won an Emmy doing Chris Rock's, you know, one of his specials. And so my. My executive producer won an Emmy with Seinfel. Like, I was in the big boy league that night. It was a, you know, a little bit nerve wracking. But at the same time, like, I just had this terrible rehearsal right before and my manager came up, he goes, hey, dude. That like the first 40 minutes was. Was not you, like, but someone asked a question because I was all my buddies and people that couldn't make it in. I just doing a zoom. And I was tired, you know, and sometimes zoom just sucks because you can't hear the laughter or.
- [22:37]
Jeff Duden
Right.
- [22:37]
Garrett Gunderson
Like my buddy Walker, who has the best laugh in the world, he's on mute. I'm like, dude, it was just rough. And I was in my. And I was like, well, I was out of my head and I was just talking and you know, and he's like, yeah, just don't just. And that night I went to bed, I was like, hey, I'll just say anything that comes to my mind, whatever it is, because that's what makes it funny. If you don't. If you have a different conversation in your head than the audience, you're not present. That's what ruins the fun. And it ended up going really, really well.
- [23:00]
Jeff Duden
Yeah, it's so tough to do things when you're. There's no audience engagement even doing talks. Right? I mean, it's just like you gotta. Once you see them smile or shift or what you like, you know, when you have. Because you've got their eyes and. And then like when you get into that flow of, of speaking or presenting, like, you just know when you Got them. And it's. And then it's. Now you're together. Right. And you have to be fully present.
- [23:29]
Garrett Gunderson
Yeah. So this was just kind of an adventure for me. But at the same time, I thought, man, if I could make money just a little less intimidating, make some jokes, there could just be a few points that really resonate with someone. So maybe they just entertain, but they take something back and they're like, oh, that was a good point. And, you know, so fun for me, but also kind of like a foray into, hey, can I just make money a little bit lighter? Even though it's a serious topic and, you know, not. Not like. Not make it lighter in the sense of, like, discount it, but just that it's not so heavy that people don't learn about it. They don't, you know, feel fear around it.
- [24:02]
Jeff Duden
Yeah. So did you. Are you done with that, or is. Is the door still open for you to go back and do some of that?
- [24:08]
Garrett Gunderson
I've been filming these things called the Financial Roast. We haven't released them yet, where we have an audience, and I take a topic like debt or crypto or something, and I just roast it. And so it's like a 12 to 15 minute segment. Yeah, we're going to start filming those quarterly and probably do like an hour worth each time, or maybe an hour and 15, which would be like going to a comedy show.
- [24:28]
Jeff Duden
Sure.
- [24:28]
Garrett Gunderson
So we filmed six so far. We've just tried a few different formats. I was just meeting with my team last night. We'll see how it goes when we. We're going to start releasing them, you know, here really soon. And if those take off, I've written a book on money around that's using humor. I have my, you know, kind of editor coming in, and we're spending a couple days together in a few months. So there's still going to be a humor tint to it. And then when my friends are in town that are comedians, I open for them or I love to roast people. You mentioned Genius Network. I roasted Joe Polish at Genius Network, you know, at one of the main events, and that was a lot of fun. I've done that with other people, you know, over the years. And so that's probably what my best gift is, is I love roasting, and that's what I'm best. So I see doing this. I just don't see doing it like a standard comedian. I don't see being on tour. I don't see, you know, going to the clubs unless I can drive home. That Night.
- [25:17]
Jeff Duden
Yeah, it's tough. Tough life, right?
- [25:20]
Garrett Gunderson
Yeah. And I think Seinfeld says no one that's really, like, rich and successful is going to make it as a comedian. You kind of have to go through, like, that period of, like, struggle, and, you know, I'm. I'm not going to do that. It's like. Because even if I got there, like, what's the end result? Like, I'm on the road all the time, you know.
- [25:39]
Jeff Duden
Yeah. And you just.
- [25:40]
Garrett Gunderson
We traveled so much for business over the years that. Yeah, I'm. I'm pretty selective of even getting in an airplane now.
- [25:47]
Jeff Duden
Well, it's not the easiest way to make a buck. And then the natural progression would be go and do more television stuff and, you know, just, you know, get your face in this movie or that movie and you just. If that's. And that's all for the purpose of making money, which you already have.
- [26:03]
Garrett Gunderson
Yeah. And I think what I do, like, there's just some amazing comedians out there that. That world's taken care of.
- [26:09]
Jeff Duden
Right.
- [26:10]
Garrett Gunderson
We're going to go see Andrew Schultz this weekend.
- [26:13]
Jeff Duden
Oh, nice.
- [26:14]
Garrett Gunderson
He's pretty amazing. We went and saw him in New York, and he interacted with my son the whole time in the front row, like, probably 70% of his set. So we're excited about that. I'll leave it to the pros. There's plenty of good ones out there, and I'll just bring some of that into what I do on a daily basis to help people transform their relationship with money. You know, create a lasting legacy. Like, that's. That's what I think I'm more here to do.
- [26:33]
Jeff Duden
Yeah. Did you work clean?
- [26:36]
Garrett Gunderson
I was probably PG 13. When I did the American Ream, I said. The only swear word I said was dick. And I had some sexual innuendo that would have made a.pg 13 telling, you know, some stories at the end. But my second tour, because I grew up in Utah, so you kind of like, you know, growing up in Utah, there's a lot of people that would judge you for swearing and all that kind of stuff. And so my second tour, I just decided to, like, let it go. Like, just, you know, just whatever came to my mind, talk how I wanted. And there was not. There's, like, a lot of clips that I took from that. There wasn't, like. It wasn't like, something that I was like, oh, I should turn this into a special. It was just more of me being more expressed. But I thought it was, you know, it's a little bit tougher. To do it clean and was able to do that. And so I'm, I'm proud of that. But at the same time, I just wanted to feel like, what is it like to push the edge a little bit, tell some jokes that are, you know, I was just on a. I was just being interviewed in an event with a few hundred people and, you know, probably four or five jokes that I told. They're just in the moment, like the crowd. Laughs it resets the energy of the room. That's where it comes in really handy. You know, they. I was the last speaker of the day, and so it's like they've gone through a lot. Really good content, but really dense and heavy content. So just being able to tell a few jokes, you know, making fun. The guy interviewed me saying he had like, like deep pockets but short arms or, you know, he's talking about this health stuff that he was doing. I'm like, I could barely tell you of AIDS anymore. Like, you know, like, I still push the line a little bit, but it got, it got good. Laughs and, you know, it makes me more approachable after because sometimes as, you know, like, if you're on stage or you're behind the mic, like, people could, you know, be a little bit nervous. But as soon as you tell jokes, man, everyone comes up, they, like, you get a laugh. You could have a good time. I, I like just, I like just putting it as part of the system instead of being the system. Right. Just checkering it in here and there, sprinkling it in.
- [28:30]
Jeff Duden
Yeah, that's. That's what I do. And it breaks it up. I mean, you've got to have something every five or 10 minutes or people, or you just, you know, like, people, people like, oh, what's the next thing he's going to say? And just, you know, have a, have a pattern interrupt. And, and it's fun too. You know, at the end it feels good to make people laugh or smile or, you know, and all of that. And, you know, they, they maybe they enjoy it more and they're not even sure why they did it. Just time went fast and it was good and it was, you know, there's. There has to be an element to entertainment, to education.
- [29:03]
Garrett Gunderson
For sure.
- [29:04]
Jeff Duden
Yeah. What's the business that you started in 24 called multiplier?
- [29:10]
Garrett Gunderson
And so what I found is the best financial firms out there, they kind of go for the wells. They go for the ultra high net worth and the ultra high net worth get really good advice, you know, and I saw that from the time I started in 1998 in finance.
- [29:28]
Jeff Duden
It's still like 30 million. Like, oh, it used to be ultra high net wealth was 30 million liquid.
- [29:36]
Garrett Gunderson
Well, as soon as you're over 30 million, you have an estate tax issue. And so now you're dealing with, you know, putting things in a trust so that you're sheltering taxes that isn't below 30 million. Right, but you know, yeah, I mean, there's some firms that they have minimums of $9,000 a month in fees for a multifamily office where they're, they've got a, you know, a bunch of clients, but they handle full service from A to Z, legal tax, you know, the whole thing. But I look at like, what about the market underneath that the entrepreneur, that a lot of money's tied up in the business or they're on the way up. And so multiplier really serves that market where we're going in. And thanks to technology and thanks to how we can deliver, we can give them a lot of value for a lower price point, you know, like 500amonth to 3,000amonth instead of 9,000amonth. But we could still make sure that their taxes are done and that they get all the tax strategy, not just some limited strategy that some CPA doesn't really know about and just files their taxes and they have the right entity structuring and trust. And so we kind of plan from A to Z. I teach once a week in a group setting, just kind of help people with like, how do we get them financially fit? Was their financial house in order? That's what they get one on one people in my firm to do. But I talk to them about financial independence, which is creating recurring revenue from assets to cover their expenses, which is a radically different, you know, view than most people in finance that lock their money away for 30 years. But my real focus is financial freedom, which is how do I help them have the mindset where money's no longer the primary reason or excuse they would do or not do something, and so help them heal their relationship with money. So I do that on a weekly basis, you know, sometimes just depending on what's going on in the community. I might, I might talk about something that here's how to make more money, here's how to keep more of the money you make without cutting back. Here's how to grow your money or here's how to grow yourself so that you just, you know, expand overall. And then we get these results facilitators that meet with them one on One to navigate their financial house. And then we have a network of attorneys and accountants and investment advisors and cash flow specialists so that we can pull them in for that precision work to get the implementation done. Now if they just want coaching from us, it's like they're paying a down payment with $500 a month, month to month contract if they want. Like we're filing their taxes, we're setting up their legal documents, we're doing the done for you program. That's going to be somewhere usually around 1500 to $3000, depending on the number of entities they have, the complexity and the revenue. But the cool thing is I just don't know many financial people that want to serve this market because they love big transactions because then they can do, you know, they're making money on assets under management, they're making money on insurance transactions, they're making money on all that kind of stuff. Well, we're fine making consulting fees and just serving them a lot more people because when someone's making a million or two of revenue, we can get a lot done in a short period of time. When someone's making 30 million of revenue or has a $50 million net worth, they're getting hit up with a lot of ideas. They're investing in private capital, they're dealing with venture capital. They've tons of people on their team and layers and complexity. So it takes 10 to 20 times longer for that person to get the same things done because of those layers. So that's kind of what the focus is. And I feel like that's where I came from. That's how, why I like serving those people.
- [32:49]
Jeff Duden
Yeah, well, look, you get feed to death. I mean, you get trustee fees and then you get your management fees. And then, you know, every, you know, you've got different money managers and banks and whatnot. And they'll say, hey, we've got, you know, we've got this, we've got that, we've got the, the other thing. But I, I do find that nobody's going to take as good a care of your money if you don't pay attention to it.
- [33:17]
Garrett Gunderson
I mean, nobody's going to care more about your money than you. Yeah. And there's so much wealth to be gained by eliminating four eyes. As far as like minimizing tax with irs, tons of people tip the government partially because what they have is either like a tax historian, which is usually like their cpa, or an enrolled agent that does their job is compliance and filing, not strategy. So I think, oh, I have a cpa. But look, the best tax strategists I know are financial professionals that navigate the tax world and inform the CPAs what to do because they have the full picture. They know what's going on with the legal documents and the corporate structure. The second I is interest. A lot of people just overpay interest because they, you know, they don't have the right collateral, they don't have the right cash flow reporting, they don't have the right credit score, or they just don't have the right connections. And so maybe they have to refinance a loan to get a better, you know, a better cash flow or restructure or renegotiate an interest rate or just reallocate underperforming funds to pay off higher interest rate loans to free up that cash flow. But a lot of times it's really simple. They just haven't looked at it. Then the third eye is investments. Like for the, for someone that isn't investing in private investments, because private investments have a huge variance where people can either make, you know, 24% a year or 0% and lose everything. There's a huge variance. Where in the public markets like an index fund or even an ETF or some type of mutual fund, you know, the variance between the best and the worst are not that high. It's not a huge difference. It might be a couple percent a year where we're talking about a huge difference in private capital. So if you can't, if you don't have the money for private capital, my philosophy is like, why go pay a percent management fee when an index fund beats the managed fund? I believe it's 92% of the time after 20 years. And I think after 30 years it's 99% of the time. So what are you paying the percent fee for? We just want to eliminate non performing fees with what's actually historically accurate and more predictable. And then the fourth I is insurance. We're just looking at how do you ensure something catastrophic, not something inconsequential. How do you design this where more money stays in your pocket, less goes the insurance company? You know, it's, it's very simple. But again, it's things people don't look at, people don't do because they get professionals that come and say, here's this great product, you should buy it. But that's isolated, it's a silo. It doesn't look at like the big picture. And so they're, they're touting everything great about the product that may or may not be a fit for the person because that's how they get paid. And then you know, does that actually fit their plan? So we begin with like what's their perspective? What does someone actually want and are they in scarcity about something that's limiting what their belief system is? Let's help address that. Then when they're really abundant, we have to create purpose to narrow it down and say what makes sense based upon your investor DNA. Who are you? What do you know, what don't you know? Let's start removing that risk, let's stop diversifying and things you know nothing about. Then we build the plan. The plan begins with where you set financially so you have that financial confidence, clarity and peace of mind where you not set so that we can get that set so you know if something happens it's not going to derail you. And where there's a blind spots that would be lurking in the future that could actually confiscate wealth. Let's address those and help educate you. Then we can bring in the professionals, Then we can bring in the products where most people just have a product that comes they hear about or a professional that approaches them and tries to sell it to them. And so it's just kind of too fragmented. And there's about 10 different places where people can just save money by having things coordinated. Like the biggest one by far is if you have the right legal structure, llc, S Corp, C Corp. You know, those are the main three, there's many other entities but those are the primary ones. That makes a huge difference on your taxes. You know, if you have, if you could be retaining earnings, if you could, if you're going to sell your business in the next five years, a C corporation might allow you to sell for up to $15 million per partner tax free where an LLC and an S corp wouldn't. So that's really important to know. And just again a lot of people, they're not, they're not being asked the right questions or looking at this. So there's just tons of slippage and leakage that if we just plug those leaks they keep way more that they make. It's like 10% or more of their income. And then we kind of pay for ourselves right? Then it's like great, now we're gravy. What we're coaching you on, we're helping you with, we're assisting you on, we've already paid for because we found all these leaks and plugged them and then you know, the next thing is I'm going, hey, before we put this into some investment, is there something in your business that could use some attention? Would more money be able to give you the right hire? You know, would more money give you better infrastructure? Would more money allow you to market better? Would more money like allow you to get yourself more educated in an area where you feel, you know, insufficient? Like that's, that's the first place I'm looking is where could they invest in themselves before they just lock money away? I mean, so many people are taught to lock money away till 59 and a half. No cash flow along the way, no control, and then just pray for and hope for the best. But 95% of Americans that are 65 are not financially independent. So if they stop working, they can't have the same income that's coming in pre work. And that's why financial planners will say, oh well, you only need 70% of your pre retirement income. This is crazy. 70% of pre retirement income. This is their argument because you don't have kids in school anymore, that you don't have to pay for that and you won't be saving money anymore. So you don't have to worry about that. But what they're not thinking about is they become in bondage to three factors. Number one is what if you're in retirement, interest rates change. The worst case scenario for retirees was 2022. Interest rates were anemic. So if you want to put your money somewhere Safe, you're getting 2%. And by the way, it's not that safe because then interest rates skyrocket over the next several years, lowering the value of their accounts because it's, you know, bonds have an inverse relationship. Interest rates go up, your values go down because you have to sell them for less because someone can go buy a new one and get a better interest rate than what you'd offer them. So that was bad. And then, you know, if taxes go up, I mean, they haven't necessarily gone up, but I mean, we now have more debt than we have gdp. So that's kind of an issue. That could be an issue that it goes up because even if tax rates stayed the same, everyone's taxes go up because of inflation. Because if you're making 100 grand 10 years ago, you need to make 200 grand today to have it spend the same way. Guess what? There's more tax on 200 grand than there was 100 grand.
- [39:44]
Jeff Duden
Right?
- [39:45]
Garrett Gunderson
So they don't even consider that inflation creates a taxable issue for them. So they're going to be at a 70% of income. And then the thing that really crushes them in inflation. Inflation just is a punishing thing in retirement. So if you think you're going to live off 70%, I mean, if I went back in 1980 and I could interview people and say, how much do you want in a retirement account? The numbers would be laughable today because they would be talking about what money was worth then, not what it's worth today, which is pennies on the dollar. So they thought, well, a million might seem like an extreme example, but a million dollars today is $50,000 of income.
- [40:20]
Jeff Duden
Right.
- [40:21]
Garrett Gunderson
That's not a lot of income. You know, it's, that'd be hard to live on in retirement for most people. There might be some towns you could move to, there might be some spending you could cut if you didn't have a mortgage. And you know, but the thing is, 10 years from now that's going to spend like 25 grand. Right? That's going to be rough. Yeah, it's going to be really like. So it sets people up for failure and I want to set people up to be financially independent. So retirement's an option, but it's optional. Like I'd rather see someone retire in business than from their business because their business still can operate maybe without them on a day to day. But they can get more involved if they need more money and they can, you know, have that inflation hedge and they can have that tax haven and they can like if they just sell it. I mean, look, I'm pretty financially savvy when I sold my business, it's like, now what? Right now what? Like, and, and I'd rather earn the money through the business that I know so much more about than invested in things I know very little about. Yeah, like we have an intimate relationship with how to make money from our business and yet financial advisors want us to sell it because then they can invest that money and get a fee off of it. There's a conflict of interest and most businesses that try to grow their EBITDA in a very short period of time end up hating their life and their family ends up hating them because it is relenting, it's, it's punishing. And yes, they'll end up with a pile of money, but they won't end up with the memories they missed along the way. They might have estranged relationships in their family, their health might suffer. And I just think that's a broken model that. And plus I would hate to ever sell to venture capitalists because they do not care about the value that's being provided to the employees or to the customers. They care about shareholder value and nothing else. And I don't think venture capital has had a good track record at providing value in the marketplace. I think they've got the best track record extracting value from the marketplace. Entrepreneurs create the value, venture capitalists extract it. They're at odds, they're not friends. It's just that they sell them a seductive story and then try to, you know, sell it for. For parts.
- [42:15]
Jeff Duden
Yeah, yeah, there's a lot there. I do have a detailed question about insurance. Has the time of insurance agents kind of gone to the wayside? I mean, these people extract fees. My experience with insurance agents, if you don't watch them, they're going to continue to increase your rates every year. And then when you go shop them every three years or so, you can find something online that's much cheaper for the same coverage. Like what? When you're buying for a business, you might need an insurance agent or an insurance broker because of the complexity of it. DNo, you know, insurance, things like that. But for everyday table stakes, for small business owners or individuals. Do you. What do you recommend?
- [42:59]
Garrett Gunderson
Well, look, I think that I have a couple rules. Like if we're talking property capital insurance, that's different than disability, talking disability insurance, that's different than life insurance, or we're talking business owner policies. I have an amazing insurance agent because from the time he was seven years old, he knew we wanted to be an insurance agent. And so, for example, I moved in this house and we had an issue with our roof. And so I contacted the insurance company. They're basically, you know, they're just like, well, we're going to do this, you know, a minimal amount of work to fix it. And guess what? He quotes the law calls him 15 minutes later. Like you have, we have to replace the whole roof and they have to pay for the whole thing. Because it has to be perfectly continuity. There has to be continuity. And he knows that. I had a client that was sued once. They were $400,000 into this lawsuit, and I barely got referred to him. And as I find out, they're in this $400,000 out of their pocket. They're very successful. I said, why are you not using your business owner policy for this? Why are you paying this out of pocket? Like, our agent said that we couldn't use it. So I call this my agent. I go, hey, it's a Hartford policy. It's this. This is what the lawsuit is, and he goes, turn to this page, go to this section. Here's where it says right here. So, like, the problem is a lot of insurance agents, especially in property and casualty order takers, all they're doing is going, can I get you the same or better price with the same coverage. They don't go, hey, Jeff, your coverage is actually problematic because you're super exposed and you don't have uninsured, underinsured, which means if someone else hits you and they're not covered, you're just out of pocket because they don't have anything to get. But if you add uninsured underinsured, your insurance company covers you because you are less, you have less control over someone else doing something to you than you doing to something, something to someone else. So, and, and 50% of people that get in an accident either don't have coverage or have the state minimums, which isn't enough for someone that's wealthy. So I think AI is going to solve a lot of this. It's just that people have been slow to adopt AI even though it's moving fast. You know, AI will be able to look and say, here's all the different companies out there, here's what the prices are. And part of it is my, another, another rule I have on property casualty is I would never have a property and casualty insurance company advertises. The companies that advertise are using claims dollars for advertisement. This is my opinion, because you can hear horror stories of the good neighbors not paying out because they're denying claims. The companies I've used, they've never given me a hassle with claims. But you've, they're not, they have not a single commercial. It's not what they do. They're just, you know, so that's, that's part of it. And you got to realize, like, these companies are not profitable. They bring in money and then if they just paid claims on the money that they bring in and pay for everything, they're not going to make money. They have to make money on the spread. So they have to invest the money, make enough and keep from the investment proceeds. And so that's why you're seeing so many, you know, problem areas where they're like, hey, we're not going to cover this. We're not going to cover flood in this zone. We're not going to cover earthquake in this zone. We're not going to cover, you know, like, because they're in business for a profit. And so a lot of the issues design, I just See people with low deductibles, which means you're going to have a higher claims rate. Higher claims equals higher premium as time goes on. Why not raise the deductibles? Why not let the umbrella policy do the heavy lifting so you get more coverage and bang for the buck instead of have it individually with your car and your home? But the reality is your agents just aren't going to tell you that because they're just busy going, can I beat your rate this year? And, and you know, some of these companies have really good first year rates and three years later the rates are up high because people aren't checking enough because it's just another thing on the plate. So yeah, do I think that, do I think that there's going to be a lot more AI that's happening with this process? Absolutely, because then you can at least know what's the philosophy, learn about it. Instead of someone that maybe, I don't know, I'm lucky that I just have someone that's really good and someone that serves our network that understands this deeply. And I've heard him just school people in that industry. And then another one that's really problematic is life insurance because different types of life insurance and you got people that would die on a hill on their type being the only type. I've written a lot of books about insurance and so I have my, you know, I have the things that I would talk about there as well. But I have a philosophy at least in a framework where I think some people just have sound bites that sound really cool but they haven't been around, they don't know how it works, they don't see how these things can implode. And there's just a lot of people that were, you know, or a few economic issues away from people seeing just how bad life insurance is the way it's sold and what people have and, and they're going to end up finding out that they didn't have what they thought they had and there's going to be major problems in the future.
- [47:46]
Jeff Duden
Yeah, I'm super interested in your take as it relates to your, your take on the Rockefeller habits and how that family used instruments to control their money and you know, versus some of the other families. But also applied to small business owners because when you hear the name Rockefeller and let's just say you own a two million dollar painting business and you own a house and maybe you're, maybe if you sell that business between your retirement and everything, you've got a, you might, you might see a path to a 3 to 5 million dollars estate. At what point do you need trust instrument? Like at what point would you employ the Rockefeller thinking? And if you do, are you going to be better off? Are you going to end up with more of an estate because of the disciplines there? Or, you know, is, is, is it a. Do you have to have a certain net worth to really benefit from what the Rockefellers did?
- [48:50]
Garrett Gunderson
The way I wrote, I wrote what would the Rockefellers do? And what I did is I distilled what is this thing that anyone can learn from the Rockefeller method, okay? Because yes, there's, there's basically super advanced, you know, dynasty trusts and different things that the Rockefellers do that isn't going to apply to people that aren't billionaires. But there are certain fundamental pieces that anyone could apply and learn from. And so look, anyone, I would, I would really argue everyone should have a trust. It's just which trust makes sense. There's two main types. There's the revocable living trust, which is very transparent. You can put stuff in, you can take it out. It really doesn't do anything while you're alive. It only kicks in after you die. But then there's the irrevocable trusts, which actually mean you own nothing, but you still control everything because it removes it from the estate, protects your assets not only from tax potentially, but also from financial predators and liability.
- [49:41]
Jeff Duden
Sure.
- [49:41]
Garrett Gunderson
So the wealthy you are, the more likely you want an irrevocable trust. I like domestic asset protection trusts for people in the United States because you can still access your cash through your distribution trustee. But it's going to be more onerous and more expensive than just a revocable trust. So if you're doing $2 million and your net worth is a few million bucks, a revocable trust is going to be suffice. We can still deploy the Rockefeller method in both trusts. And the Rockefeller method comes down to two key factors, trust and insurance. Trust allow us to have a set of instructions of what we want to have happen to the money, avoid probate so the money remains private and doesn't go through the court system and help preserve, perpetuate and protect that money for generations to come. Many trusts are inadequate because they don't think about that. They just go, hey, one of my kids turns 30, 35 and 40. I'll just give them a third, a third, a third. And then all of a sudden I call that divide, distribute, destroy. That's what most non Rockefeller method trusts look like. Right where Rockefeller Method is like, let's have incentives in this, let's create a set of instructions and guardrails that say why would a family member be able to benefit from this? And when could they benefit from this? How could they benefit? And it's just a set of rules and instructions so that if they're doing something that's productive and they're in a good place in their life, they could have access to it. And if they're not, they don't have access to it because we don't want to make it worse. There's people that just inherit money, they have no purpose and everybody goes, they should be happy. But they're not because they're devoid of like, what do I do? On a day to day basis? They think people love them just for their money, they didn't earn it. So they feel a sense of guilt and shame and they become kind of those trust fund babies. So the second piece of the Rockefeller method is insurance. So it's about buying the type of insurance that's permanent in nature, that'll be around one day longer than the individual is. So when they die, it goes into the trust and replenishes any money that was potentially lost because of inflation, because of taxes, because of, you know, maybe a business that didn't go quite as well because those kind of things happen. It helps replenish the money from generation to generation instead of just starting over from generation to generation. So would it increase your taxable estate? Only if done improperly. Only if you didn't set up the right trust and have the right ownership of the insurance. If it's properly owned and properly handled, you'll have more money, but you won't have a bigger tax problem because you'll be able to avoid income tax in all cases. But there's also a way to remove it from the estate so that you don't have the estate tax if you start early enough. Estate tax is kind of a procrastination tax. People that just are successful, they didn't prepare early enough, right. They end up paying it, you know. But even if it's. If, as long as you're not dying soon, there's probably ways that you could get that out of your state. You just need a little bit of time to do it and a good attorney. So you know, we look at like GE back in 1947. They use the Rockefeller method as a company. They just said, hey, we want to recruit the top talent. The best way to recruit that talent is offer a pension. The way that we could pay for that pension is we buy life insurance on the executive when they come on board. And that way when they die, it replenishes all that we spend on the pension and more. And so they had a positive return to help protect that. And they would do that for years. And then they eventually stopped doing it because Wall street said, why would you go for something that's going to get you 5% tax free when we can get you 10% conservatively in the market? Because in the 90s, the stock market was doing double digits year in and year out. And it was a great economic boom. And the problem was in 2000, 2001 and 2002 was three negative years in a row and they had to still pay out pensions.
- [53:08]
Jeff Duden
Sure.
- [53:08]
Garrett Gunderson
And it started to kill the account. And so they, they decided to be risky instead of risk averse and it cost them. There's some strategies that make sense to be more risk averse. There's other strategies that make sense to take risk. What's the strategy? Well, take some calculated risks in your business, but then when you take money out of the business, reduce the risk on that because you have influence over the business. Stop taking risk on things you know nothing about. Right. So there's a lot to this Rockefeller method overall. But you know, people just DM me at Garrett B. Gunderson on Instagram the word Rockefeller. I'll give them the audiobook. It's my most popular book. It's, I think number, you know, one or number two depending on the day in life insurance top five and wealth management on Amazon top 12 on retirement planning most days. You know, it's, it's super easy to listen to. It took a long time to make it that simple. And it's really useful on how you can get 20% more cash flow from existing assets when you use the Rockefeller method. Or how you can create 33% more income from your retirement plans because you don't have to take from them every year if you have a separate set of cash that when their market downturns, you don't pull money out of the account, you pull it from something more stable. And so it teaches distribution, diversification, tax diversification and boosting. You know, I mean, there's one strategy that you probably get 50% more cash flow, pay no tax if you're going to sell a business. So there's some really, really useful things for business owners in that book. But if anything, I don't care where you're starting. If you're just barely starting a business, you don't have two nickels to rub together. I started doing the Rockefeller method at 19 years old, before I was even married with 50 bucks a month. It was really rudimentary. It was very simplistic, but it was a start. You don't have to be extraordinarily wealthy to leave a legacy. You just have to be really intentional and have the right framework.
- [54:51]
Jeff Duden
And that's your Instagram at Garrett Gunderson or G. Gunderson.
- [54:56]
Garrett Gunderson
Garrett B. Gunderson. As in Breck. Garrett B. Gunderson.
- [54:59]
Jeff Duden
Garrett. Garrett Gunderson on Instagram. And just send you Rockefeller.
- [55:05]
Garrett Gunderson
Yeah, just DM me. Rockefeller. Follow DM me, Rockfeller. I'll put out a couple videos a day that are just daily nuggets on how to think about legacy, how to think about tax. Like, just stuff that's going to put more money in your pocket, help you keep more of what you make. I think it's helpful.
- [55:20]
Jeff Duden
What's your take on debt in your. In your book killing sacred cows 2.0, you had a section on debt. I thought it was very helpful. And can you go over that a little bit? The different types of debt and what type of debt to absolutely avoid.
- [55:37]
Garrett Gunderson
What's interesting is, like, we've. You know how there's like, just certain words in the world that we kind of use and it's not the real. Like when we call Kleenex tissue. Kleenex is the name brand. Yeah, but it's actually tissue. You know, there's just certain things, like we call it a Coke, but it might just be another soda that someone's drinking. But like, we kind of do this with debt. Anytime someone borrows money, they call it debt. But that's not the technical definition. If we look at a balance sheet, it's our assets versus our liabilities. When we have more assets than liabilities. Like, let's say tomorrow you and I find a business that we could buy for a half a million dollars. But we know it's worth $750,000. It's just the person is in bad health and they just need to get the money now. So if we borrow the 500,000, the world tells us we're in debt. But we know the truth of the matter is we have $750,000 asset that we borrowed $500,000 to acquire. We're $250,000 in equity. Equity is actually the opposite of debt. Yet everyone's going to say they're $500,000 in debt when the reality is they're $250,000 in equity.
- [56:42]
Jeff Duden
Got it.
- [56:44]
Garrett Gunderson
And that's just. That's just the semantics we've chosen as a society. Then you get people that go, well, there's good debt and there's bad debt. Okay, well, that's. I know what they're saying. They're saying, hey, are you borrowing to consume? That's a bad debt. Agreed. We put money on a credit card to go on a trip. We come back, we have the memories, but now we have the lingering amount that needs to be paid and we didn't have the money for it. That's debt. Agreed. But on the other hand, what they're talking about with good debt is, oh, well, what if you buy a piece of real estate or business? That's good debt. Well, it's leverage. It's not debt. It's a loan. So I know that this seems a little bit like, ticky tacky, but it's everything because it's a mental game. And the mental game is if you think borrowing equals debt and debt equals being a slave to the lender and that you should avoid debt like the plague, then you might do things that aren't actually helpful for you.
- [57:36]
Jeff Duden
Yeah. And very few companies would get built like, look, if nothing would get done.
- [57:42]
Garrett Gunderson
Bonds. This is what's fascinating to me. If you have bonds in your portfolio, that is debt for that company, that means they issued a loan to you and agreed to pay you an interest rate. And you have these financial gurus saying you should never borrow. But if you're putting money in a bond, you have someone else borrow. So that's hypocritical.
- [58:03]
Jeff Duden
Right.
- [58:03]
Garrett Gunderson
It's just a matter of, like, what they're saying is you're not smart enough to just let the big corporations, which I kind of disagree with. We have to look at a couple things. Like if you borrow money, does it destroy your peace of mind? It's probably not worth borrowing. But I have a loan on this house I'm sitting in right now. 2.75% interest rate. That's pretty cheap money. Yeah. I can put money in Treasuries and do better than 2.75%. So I'm fine having this loan. But, you know, if it was 15%, I would want to pay this off really fast. Yeah. Because it's hard to get a guaranteed 15% sustainably, you know, because you're going to take certain risk with that, where it's pretty Easy to get 2.75% with almost no risk.
- [58:47]
Jeff Duden
Yeah, I got that Same loan in 2020. Same rate and bought a house on a lake and it's doubled. So yeah, and the cost of inflation, I mean, that's a valuable loan because inflation has gone up more than 2.75%. I mean, everything's more expensive. And now the house has doubled. And I mean, yeah, I've paid interest on it, but you know, yeah, people
- [59:10]
Garrett Gunderson
love to argue with me about that point, which is, let's just say that I have a. Let's say my mortgage is ten grand a month just to easy round numbers. Ten years from now, my mortgage, if I'm still paying, would be ten grand a month.
- [59:24]
Jeff Duden
Right.
- [59:24]
Garrett Gunderson
How will that ten grand a month feel versus today ten years from now?
- [59:28]
Jeff Duden
Much less expensive.
- [59:29]
Garrett Gunderson
And I feel like five grand. Yeah, inflation helps you when you borrow, it punishes you when you save. This is why it's such a mental kind of like messes with people because they're like, I'm just going to pay off my mortgage and then I'm going to have all my money in a retirement plan. I'm like, yeah, but that retirement plans, if it's deferred tax and not a Roth, you're going to have to pay tax on the future, in the future. And you don't know tax rates are going to be because they're actually historically low right now. You know, from 1944 to 1981, they were above 50% for the, you know, top tax rate. So what happens if you defer and then they raise the tax rate? And by the way, you don't have, you sell your business, you don't have the write off, you pay off your mortgage, you don't have a write off, your kids have moved out, you don't have a write off. That's a, that's a pretty dangerous way of kind of going about doing it. So yeah, I want people to be responsible with their borrowing. But we either have debt or equity. The question is, when you borrow, does it lead to debt or when you borrow, does it lead to equity and can you manage it? That's the real question. Kiyosaki would say, you know, hey, you should always borrow. Dave Ramsey should, would say, you should never borrow. I think it depends. The guidance is, who are you? What do you want? What difference would it make if you paid it off? Would like, would your spouse just be able to sleep at night? Because that, that's worth something even if it doesn't make financial sense. I have a friend that had a 3.1% mortgage and when he wanted to start his first business, his wife Said, can we just pay off the mortgage? Because he had stock options. And he goes, those stocks are going to go up faster than, you know, 3.1%. She goes, I just sleep better. So he paid it off. He sold 19 businesses since. I think it was the right move because then there's less tension, there's less stress. Like, I believe that we're our greatest asset. And if we're stressed out because we're making a good economic move, but it keeps us up at night and then also we don't have the energy or we give more grouchy or it creates stress within our family. It's not worth it. Like your ability to produce value, protect that, grow that. Don't do that at the expense of someone else's like, story that says, oh, you should put your money in this crypto thing because it's going to do amazing, or you should put your money in, you know, this penny stock or whatever it is. Like, people buy these stories because they want to make up for lost time, because they want to get rich quick, because they want to get rich easy, because they want to, they want to have the result without the effort. And that's where I think a lot of like, people get taken advantage of. And I've been there before. I, you know, in my 20s, I started a hard money lending fund. I was doing bridge financing. I didn't love that stuff I was buying. I had over 100 doors of real estate. Didn't love it, but I was like, oh, this is what rich people do. But I also was never present when we had a family event. And during the best years of my life, during my kids being young, I just learned later the fortune I learned before I was 30. I remember I was sitting down with Dan Sullivan. We're both speaking at this event. And I was like, 29. I was like, man, I'm just going through it right now. It was 2008. And he's like, ah, you're just early. Most people go through this in their late 30s or early 40s. You're just doing it. You're just getting there early to learn the lesson. I was like, all right, I guess, I guess that's the case. But you know, because focus is a hard thing to have where distraction is easy. It's easy to get distracted. It's easy to say yes to something that feels productive, that but might not be in your best interest because you're chasing something at the expense of yourself. And you know, that's. I wouldn't go borrow to buy a Bunch of real estate tomorrow because it also come with property management and taxes. And it would come with, you know, I'm selling some land right now that has a cabin on it. Because it just. I spend more time there in my mind than I do with my feet. And it's like, all right, why do I need that? You know, it was only because I, you know, I do have my dream cabin that we're definitely going to keep. But sometimes more is not better. Sometimes more equals a distraction. So don't borrow so much that it destroys you or, you know, hurts your family. But at the same time, my wife is totally comfortable with having loan on this house. She's, you know, that's so, so we kept it. It's just very efficient.
- [63:14]
Jeff Duden
I was doing some deals with a billionaire. His name's Ryan Jumoville, lives down in Florida. He was, I think he United Dental, I think was a company. He built something like that. And we would look at a deal and at the end of it he would always ask, is this the easiest dollar we could make? Like, is this the easiest dollar we could make? I mean, he had this, he had a cupcake business. It was on a licensing deal and he wanted to know if we should turn it into a franchise. And the complexity of turning it into a franchise versus just keeping it as a licensing deal and getting that recurring revenue and not having to provide any service whatsoever. And he's just like, I get it. I see that that'll be bigger. But that's not the easy but wouldn't. Why wouldn't I take the easy three points and do nothing and literally do nothing and take the three points? And that was a big lesson for me in terms of. Because, you know, as a serial entrepreneur we like to just. We see an opportunity, then we get excited about it and then we just, you know, then sometimes it's, you know, ready, shoot, aim, and we just start going and then the next thing you know, we're tied, tied into it. One of the things that helped me was I built a business over 25 years. I sold it in 2019 and when I sold it, I did the exercise of figuring out, including the pre tax sale price and all the money I made along the way. While I was in the last phase of that business, how much money did I make an hour? I just calculated it and then I said, okay, that's my floor going forward. And what that does is it I have to say no to almost everything. Because if it's not going to, most things won't generate that and it keeps me from, you know, having a startup compunction and just, you know, just saying yes to things. Now I will say that some of the learning and you know, and maybe, maybe, maybe it would be helpful for you to share a little bit about some of the things that people do wrong when they get wealth, they acquire wealth, they sell a business. But one of the things I did was I started making small investments. 100 $250,000 that would, that I, I didn't research properly enough. And, and then you and everybody else
- [65:35]
Garrett Gunderson
that sells a business and then.
- [65:36]
Jeff Duden
And then what? And then the other side of it was the cost to just account for it.
- [65:41]
Garrett Gunderson
Exactly.
- [65:41]
Jeff Duden
The time, the time and the cost and everything. And now, I mean, it's like I got, now I have all these AI companies coming at me and they're just, and I'm, they're just like, you know, you should, you invest in. And I'm just like, I don't have the time to research this and I'm just, I don't want another headache that I'm running around trying to figure out how to get out of in two years.
- [66:02]
Garrett Gunderson
Yeah, I mean I have a lot of clients and they've given away a lot of money.
- [66:08]
Jeff Duden
Yeah.
- [66:09]
Garrett Gunderson
In the old days like, and like there's really good private capital deals, but there's a lot of bad ones.
- [66:15]
Jeff Duden
Yeah.
- [66:16]
Garrett Gunderson
And pre revenue startups just get destroyed all the time, but they have compelling stories and it's who sells the vision and you know, it's like they sell the story that people buy into. So I'm really clear that, you know, focus is the better game. You know, it's not diversification, it's distraction is what most of them are in. I'm like, unless you have intimate knowledge of how it works, I think you'd, that you would know why it would work, who's involved. Because you could have a great idea in the wrong team and it doesn't matter. You can have a decent idea in the right team and it does. Like it comes down to the people that are behind it. How do they deal with economic changes? How resilient and resourceful are they? You know, what happened? Like, and I don't want to be on investor meetings most of the time. And you know, like, I've, I've given away more money than I'd care to admit in my 20s and you know, doing that. And you know, and I still thought I learned the lesson. And yet I invested a very small amount like two years ago because someone tugging my heartstrings I put the minimum in and now, like, they're not even involved with the project. I haven't heard what's going on. It's like, you know, but it's still, it's money that I could have just deployed in a much better way. It could have been a tuition for a semester for my son. It could have been, you know, it could have been a number of things. It could have been a coach. I mean, there's. And it's. I get how tempting these things are, but that's why being clear about what you do and what you want and being clear about the value that you provide and sticking to a model that you're engaged in is game changing. So many people sell their business and now they're bored. And now that boredom, they make bad investments because people come with these seductive stories. And it sounds cool to be an angel investor. It sounds cool to, you know, get involved in those kind of things, but it's not. Because you had such an intimate knowledge of your business, now you're investing in things there's no way you understand at that level. Right. And it's like, you know, yeah, find purpose. Find a way to be a value creator again, because if not, you're probably gonna lose a lot of money.
- [68:12]
Jeff Duden
Yeah, you had some really interesting experiences at a young age in business. You were, you were resourceful. You were. I heard you tell one story on a podcast about when you were 20 years old and you went and won an account that you pitched somebody. But my question is, is very specifically, how do you advise people to involve their children? And what level of transparency is the right amount for financial iq? Financial fluenc. As people are building their wealth, building a business, and they have a family.
- [68:48]
Garrett Gunderson
I know families are really scared to tell their kids, and I'm like, they're going to find out, you know, And I, I have a. I tell my kids, I'm like, hey, my, my son was really young. He said, dad, are we rich? I'm like, well, I am. I don't know about you. That's yet to be determined. I'm. I'm clear that, like, they're not getting a pile of money. They're getting some additional support. You know, maybe a percentage of a down payment towards a house, maybe a small percentage towards a business that they start up. But there's rules and requirements for those kind of things and strings attached. They have to decide if that's what they want or not. I. We have our kids from the time they were 7 and 9. We started talking about basics, and now they're 18 and 21. We're talking about details. You know, I want them to know, I want them to understand. I don't want it to be a surprise. And the more. We have quarterly retreats. We just did the one in Hawaii. The one before that, we just did our cabin. So in those retreats, we have these conversations and talk about these things, which I think is a relief to them in some ways and also a bit of responsibility in other ways. We, you know, worked on a family constitution, our family values. We, you know, have our guidance and rules and, you know, we're not perfect with these things, but we just talk about them. We just have conversations around the table. And sometimes when it comes to money, it's when they're ready. Sometimes early on, I feel like I'm lecturing and they're like, whatever. But then when they're asking a question, I'm about to go to bed, I'm like, well, it looks like I'm staying up a little bit later tonight because this is the moment to have the conversation. Yeah. Share. If you, if you withhold, like, ask yourself, what are you afraid of? And how could you address those fears with better communication? And what parameters and guidelines could you set that would avoid the destruction that you think is going to happen of them? Knowing, you know, some. The times where I've seen it be really like, like difficult is if we have a blended family and, you know, the other X doesn't know about the wealth, that becomes a little bit trickier when kids are little, you know, because all of a sudden it could really create some rifts. So I, I get like, I don't. I don't know how to professionally navigate those situations quite as well. And, you know, it's because now we're dealing with legal ramifications and all that kind of stuff. That's why, you know, it's funny, like, when someone's in the middle of a divorce, we don't ever take them on as a client because inevitably I say, how do I hide my assets? I'm like, you're talking to the wrong people. We don't do that. You know, we don't do hide assets. We're grow assets. Even if you end up spending more money because you grew the assets. And some people just aren't in that mindset. So my kids, we started early. We've had a lot of conversations about it.
- [71:19]
Jeff Duden
I advise our franchise owners, ask them, why would you go through all of this and not let your kids benefit? Why Would you put them onto the world at 21 years old after you've gone through 10 or 12 years of struggling as a business owner, learning all the things about employment, getting, you know, having an issue with an employee, how it got worked out, like just having these conversations. You're giving them an MBA that they're not paying for by the time they're 18 years old just by having these conversations. And then money management. And it just, it's, you know, why would you start them from zero? And if the dollars get bigger, you know, leave the zeros on and say, you know, and then this is what comes with this kind of responsibility, and this is what comes with that, and this is what you have to think about. So now they, they already have this entire, you know, 10 year history of dealing with real issues that, you know, maybe they, you hope they have one day, but, you know, and then not, not sharing that with them. How old? If it's too personal, but like, how old, how old were your kids when you first published family values?
- [72:31]
Garrett Gunderson
7 and 9. We did a two and a half day retreat. They were young, but we had them circle words on family values. And we circled where she had a big sheet. Right, okay. And they would circle the things that resonate with them. We circled my wife and I, so there's four of us. And then if we had commonalities like, ooh, look, we're common on this word. And then we narrowed it down, Right. We had a couple hours to work on it. And then we figured out, all right, here's our five most important values. And we took those values because they were young and we created mottos out of them. So instead of having a word like love.
- [73:05]
Jeff Duden
Yeah.
- [73:05]
Garrett Gunderson
Or integrity, we had stuff like we hug and kiss to greet and say goodbye. We have each other's backs. We finish what we start. We created these like, mottos that they, they would start saying, you know, like, love and respect your mother. Like, you know, we had these sayings and so we could reference them and we, like, I have them inside my closet now because they're 18 and 21. Have one sitting on the wall over there. Our family mission statement. But I just, I just had them printed out and designed. We put them all over the house.
- [73:34]
Jeff Duden
Yeah.
- [73:35]
Garrett Gunderson
So they were like little, you know, little 8 by 11 kind of card stock. And we just put them everywhere where people could see when they came in, mud room, you know, in their bedrooms. And, you know, we did really good with the family values. We did terrible with the technology rules. They, we, they defeated Us, they were. They were like Muhammad Ali. And we were, you know, we just didn't have the ability to fight them off on. On technology. We did better than not having the rules, but they were just so good at, like, you know, wearing us down. So. Yeah, but seven and nine. And then what's cool is last October, we revisited all those statements, and they all. They're. They're now in the family. They're now part of our family constitution, which is the preamble to our trust that. That we wrote that says, here's the guidelines, here's the rules, here's. But, like, they're not hard, fast rules. They're philosophies. They're suggestions. They're signposts. I don't want to be a dictator. I want them to. I just want to say, hey, I want you to find the career and fulfillment that you want. And if there's ways that we don't have to start from scratch, like, if we could finance the house and we'll earn the interest in the family, instead of a bank preferred interest rate, preferred underwriting. And then if you just buy and sell that house, you're gonna have to share some of the proceeds with the. With the trust. If you live there for five years, it's yours. Like, we just created cool little things like that. We're like, oh, cool. So what if interest rates go to 10%? Well, we can charge them the minimum required by the IRS to make it a valid loan for, you know, tax deductibility and stuff like that. And that's just inside of our family constitution. Now, they know that that's there. If they start a entrepreneurial venture, we'll. We'll contribute up to 10% towards that entrepreneurial venture. But if they fail or don't have it work out, there's requirements to ever get another loan. Like, what are the lessons they learn? They have to talk to their sibling and to the board and that kind of stuff. So we've just kind of created good incentives to kind of make this work. But, yeah, the family values turned it into mottos and statements that served us really well. I'm really happy that we did that.
- [75:34]
Jeff Duden
Yeah, we have the same. And they were up on the refrigerator and several other places. They would show up in a. In a photo book. You know, when you build those books, like for the holidays or something like that, they might show up in there. So they. They'd make these appearances. But what you realize is, even though you didn't talk about them time, that they would come up in the kids language, you know, occasionally. And, and so, yeah, very, very valuable. And honestly, I mean, I think I did that originally because it was just this blend over between business and personal. It's like you should have company. You know, you read a book in the business, you should have business values. And then it's like, oh, well, we should have values. Yeah, we should have set of family values. You run it. You know, we should run it the same way we're going to have this meeting. You know, you try not to run it like a business meeting, but it, it takes some variation. I mean, you're of a organizational health. And what are the things that an organization needs to be healthy? And a family is certainly an organization. It's got economics to it. It's got roles. It's got all the things. So. Well, that's. Thank you for sharing that. I think that's valuable for people. I have a book and I do talk about that in it. And when people reach out to me or I see them after they've read the book, that's one of the more powerful things that they took away and they sat down with their families and did it.
- [76:57]
Garrett Gunderson
If they get to what the what would the Rockfellers do book, the guide's in there for these pieces that we're talking about as a download.
- [77:03]
Jeff Duden
Okay.
- [77:03]
Garrett Gunderson
So they can download the family values guide and all the, the things we circled ourselves. And there's an entire kind of workbook called the Legacy Builder Toolkit. That's super helpful.
- [77:13]
Jeff Duden
Nice, nice. Well, hey, let's use that as a segue and let's kind of tug on the reins and move this podcast towards the barn a little bit. I've got a, I've got a curveball and a fastball for you. And if you want to play and then. But before we do that, tell people all the ways you would like them to get in touch with you.
- [77:34]
Garrett Gunderson
Garrettgunderson.com jump into the newsletter. You know, take five minutes a week and I should just add thousands of dollars to your bottom line and help you navigate the crazy financial world. And you know, YouTube, just search Garrett Gunderson or YouTube.com Garrett Gunderson TV and putting out video every week there, that's helpful. A little bit deeper dive. Those are probably the best things. And then obviously get what would the Rockfellers do by putting Rockefellers at Garrett B. Gunderson. Yeah.
- [78:04]
Jeff Duden
Tell you what, great content. Really enjoyed it and really enjoyed this conversation. Thanks for being on. Here's the curveball. Gun to your head. You've got to start a business in the next 30 days, and it can't be something you're doing right now. Where do you see the opportunity in the marketplace to start a business?
- [78:24]
Garrett Gunderson
I mean, well, there's two places, one that'd be more likely to go, but I mean, the world of like, peptides and GLP1s, I have clients that are just absolutely dominating in that field, just crushing it. And, you know, now that some of the new rules and laws and that's such a huge technology, you know, people are on Tri, Zepatide or Retatrutide and they're losing a ton of weight. And I think that they would pay whatever it takes to get that feeling and get there. So the second one would be, I think that anywhere where educating people on how to adopt and use AI, because there's a lot of people that know that they should use it. They know that it's valuable, but they feel like they're not sure how to or where to start. And so I think there's a lot of opportunity. There's.
- [79:07]
Jeff Duden
But, yeah, I'm not sure how long term that's going to be, but certainly most of the companies we're dealing with are under adopted.
- [79:16]
Garrett Gunderson
Yeah, it's. It's moving much faster than the adoption rate at this point. Yeah.
- [79:21]
Jeff Duden
Yeah, absolutely. Well, cool. Well, thank you. Fastball straight down the middle. If you had one sentence to make an impact in somebody's life, what would that be?
- [79:30]
Garrett Gunderson
Create a life you don't want to retire from.
- [79:33]
Jeff Duden
Perfectly said. Garrett, thanks for being on.
- [79:37]
Garrett Gunderson
Thanks for having me, Jeff.
- [79:38]
Jeff Duden
Appreciate it. Absolutely. I'm Jeff Duden. We have been here with Garrett Gunderson on the unemployable podcast. Thanks for listening.