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The Everyday Millionaire and Mindset Matters Podcast
Episode #249 – What Happens When You Stop Trusting Paper Money? - With Dana Samuelson
01:19:39
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Foreign. Welcome to the Everyday Millionaire podcast. My name is Patrick Francie and I am your host. And I want to begin by saying thank you for listening. On this show, I am having conversations with seemingly ordinary individuals who have achieved some amazing and extraordinary results in both their life and business. My intention is to inspire and help you learn and grow by having my guests share their journey of how they face and overcome their challenges, but also how they celebrate their their many wins. And now let's get on with this show and have a conversation with today's guest. Today we're going to have a real money conversation because we live in a world where currency can be created with a simple keystroke. Our debt keeps climbing and inflation is quietly taxing us as savers. So question is not simply should I buy gold or silver? The better question is, what kind of money do I actually trust? My guest today, Dana Samuelson is the founder and president of American Gold Exchange. That is a precious metals firm he launched in 1998, right near the bottom of the gold cycle. Now, Dana has been in the precious metals business for more than 45 years. He started in the trenches, literally handling product in the vault, then went on to become a senior trader and buyer in the rare coin and bullion world. And at he was spending tens of millions of dollars in the marketplace. What makes Dana interesting, amongst many things, is not just that he understands gold and silver. It is that he understands the market psychology, the history, the risks, the traps, and the practical mechanics of buying and owning physical metals. In this conversation, it matters right now because gold is no longer just a niche conversation for people worried about the end of the world. Central banks have become major buyers. Countries like China and India have a very deep precious metals culture. Silver is being pulled between its monetary role and a huge and growing industrial demand. And investors are starting to ask a very real question. If debt keeps growing, currencies keep weakening, and trust and paper assets starts to shift, where does real wealth go? Dana's here to help us cut through the noise. We're going to talk about gold. We're going to talk about both silver, physical ownership, counterparty risk, and what beginners should understand and why precious metals may be moving from the fringe back toward the center of serious financial thinking. Without any further delays, let's get this show started. Listen in. Enjoy. Dana Samuelson, welcome to the Everyday Millionaire podcast.
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Thank you, Patrick. It's great to be here with you. Thanks for having me.
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Now, I'm excited about this conversation for a number of reasons, not the least of which is that, you know, over the years, I started investing in precious metals back in 2008, a little bit dipping my toe, understanding that, you know, the dynamics of what's going on kind of in the world, you know, after the 2008 great financial crisis, meltdown, whatever they refer to it as, and all of a sudden, monetary policy changed. That really got my interest in. When I looked into the future, and based on the people that I was following and what I was reading, I said, oh, this is starting to make sense. I kind of went in quite heavy back in those days and then took a bit of a hiatus. Life seemed to be going pretty good. Then, of course, the proverbial shit hit the fan and March of 2020, and I've got back in and got way more interested and continued to invest in gold and silver. So let's talk about what you're seeing today. You know, when we look at the global macro, we see what's happening. There's wars all over the place, everybody's fighting with everybody. The US Is printing a lot of money again. So when you look into the future, let's look at it from an economic perspective and then where precious metals fits into that. So do I have a specific question? Not yet. I'd like to just kind of get your overview of what you're seeing, how you're feeling about what's going on economically and where precious metals might fit into these conversations.
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B
Great. Well, your, your path is pretty typical. People tend to invest in precious metals when they're scared, and it can be an emotional reaction to what's happening. And, you know, the great financial crisis scared everyone.
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Right.
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The wheels were about to come off the bus, and then we went through a period of complacency where the, you know, global economies gained traction, things settled down. And then, of course, Covid, you know, was another episode where we had another debt explosion. And that's, that's primarily what has driven gold to record highs in 2025 and early 2026 is gold has been tracking the growth of global debt. Fundamentally, number one, it does climb a wall of worry when there is uncertainty. And last year, in particular, with the election of President Trump to his second term and his deploying tariffs that were much higher than most people thought they might be, he basically threw a monkey wrench into the global trade order. And it caused two kind of panicked buying episodes outside of the US in gold. Last April of 2025, when we tariffed China 145% at one point in time, the Chinese went on a gold buying spree that drove the gold price from a little under 3,000 to $3,500 an ounce in about five, six weeks as a direct result of that 145% tariff. And then later last year, President Trump tariffed India 50% over their buying Russian oil, which was supporting the war against Russia. The Ukraine for Russia and the Indians went on a silver buying spree that helped to drive the silver price double to triple what it was before that started. And that's really what caused a big run last year, was uncertainty over US Trade policy. Who might be tariffed. Tariffs on, tariffs off, tariffs high, tariffs low is really a knee jerk policy. And the uncertainty caused the world to distrust the US a bit, to the
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point where they were looking for an alternative to the dollar. And our treasuries and metals got a lot of momentum underneath their wings. And that momentum created a bit of fear of missing out mentality which throve them to speculative highs in January of this year. And now we're in a consolidation phase, which is very typical when you have
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a big gain like we've gone through,
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similar to what happened following the highs in 2008, 2009 into 2011, and again in 2020, 2021. You know, after Covid. It's, it's debt, it's uncertainty. And now we've got, you know, an oil shock, an oil supply shock that is creating a lot of turmoil.
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But gold is not really reacting to that yet because we've kind of been
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the redheaded stepchild for Most of my 45 years in the business as a, you know, a shunned asset.
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You know, I like to say we don't have a gold culture in the United States because we've never had war on our shores and we've never had our currency fail. And if you've been in a country
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where that has happened to you and most countries have experienced that over the last hundred years, you have a gold culture. My brother got me into the business in 1980 after he'd been in the business for five years, starting in 1975,
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and his first job was going to a Vietnamese relocation camp in Arkansas.
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And the Vietnamese citizens who were fleeing
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the war carried gold sewn into their clothes.
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That's how they carried their wealth out of the country.
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And my brother's job was to, you
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know, cash in the gold for them and give them dollars at the time and help them get their start in the US and that's a typical example of what, you know, happens when you have war on your shores or Perhaps your currency fail. So having the world's reserve currency has insulated the US from a lot of economic shocks that other countries go through over time. And we've got the best economy in the world, the best. We've had the best manufacturing capacity, although China's overtaken us there. So these are the factors that have
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helped to drive, you know, gold and silver to record highs that now we're consolidating from. And gold's still near a record high. And silver's, you know, trading at the highest level it's ever traded at consistently
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right now, around $75 an ounce.
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So it's usually when we get these gains, they don't give a whole lot back and then we go sideways for a while and then they can base build and go, go, go higher still because you can't print gold and silver out of the ground as fast as
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you can print currencies. And the governments around the world have
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been quite good at printing currencies out of thin air over the last 20 years.
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In particular, global debt has exploded to record highs.
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And the dilution of the purchasing power of fiat currencies against precious metals is what's really driving precious metals values higher. It's not that the gold and silver are that much more valuable, it's that the currencies that buy them are that less valuable.
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You know, I think it's probably one of the most difficult things I know for myself, but, you know, in the world that I live in, you know, for 25 years I've been coaching and teaching people how to invest in real estate, you know, and to buy for cash flow. Look at the economic fundamentals that drive real estate. So in Canada and to a large degree many parts of the US it seemed like all real estate all the time. And then now we're at a point where we're going, hold on, you know, things are changing dramatically. And when we look at and just what you just talked about, there's so many points of entry of conversation. So, you know, to me, I was always kind of gold and silver like precious metals as you know, in parallel with what we had done in real estate. Now I don't sell real estate. I was just in the business of coaching and education. And really my part of my forte is just in the economic fundamentals that I follow along with looking at what's happening, global macro and of course regional. And I set that up in this way. So here's my view of it, and I'd like you to kind of have your comments. Dana. When we look at what a lot of what you just said. So first off US Reserve currency, there's some that are saying that's hugely at risk given what's going on in the world. I don't know if I would buy into that. But ultimately we look at the division of east and west, you know, the tariffs on China, India, Russia, the fight or the, you know, the wars between Russia, Ukraine, of course, now Middle East, Iran. To me it's, I always, you know, would kind of buy into the argument that really the, all these wars are just a proxy for the fight between China and US and whatever global, whatever we might refer to as global dominance. But then we also start to see China getting out of US Treasuries and doing more business with Russia, with Iran, with it kind of coming in the back door, if you will. So when we look at all of this kind of uncertainty that we talk about, I've kind of shifted my view of precious metals of I'm not investing in precious metals. I'm holding gold and, or silver, primarily gold, but lots of silver because of its use and demand in the industrial side of things. And so I'm looking at it more as a, rather than holding fiat currency, dollars that seem to be or are certainly vulnerable, at risk of losing even more value to the possible dynamics of what would happen if we get some kind of a cyber attack and banks are shut down, what do we use for currency? So I know that's kind of vague and high level, but that's where the uncertainty lives. So I guess my question for you is that we look at gold and silver as a potential and some call it an investment. I look at it as insurance. I look at it. If I'm buying gold and silver, to me I'm just exchanging fiat currency dollars, paper money for what we would refer to as real money. So I don't know if that gives you some kind of context for maybe how we would inform listeners about how they view gold and silver because we know at least I'm made aware that retail investors aren't even looking really at gold and silver right now. I know when I speak I could have a room for with a couple of hundred and I've mostly Canada, a couple of hundred real estate investors. And I asked them is there any gold bulls in the room? Because I'm illustrating the devaluation of dollars. And there'll be maybe one hand goes up and it's kind of a half hand is like that. So you know, having said all that, you know, give me some Insights into holding it versus investing in it, how it protects us, perhaps against the devaluation or the ongoing watering down of dol. Does that give you enough to go on? Did I give you an entry point there, Dana?
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Well, you gave me about four of them. That's a lot to unpack. So I think your mindset is correct in that most people think of precious metals, you know, in the. What they're valued at for the dollar value as they get into them. Right. And will they go up and be an investment for them? They're really not an investment in. In the true sense of the word, they are an insurance policy. If you own a small portion of your assets in gold and silver, 5 or 10%. 10% is actually enough to give you a counterbalance against uncertainty in traditional investments. And gold did its job perfectly during the great financial crisis when real estate was falling, when stock values were falling, gold more than doubled in price while other assets were dropping 15%. So they offset and hedged that risk asset that you held in other places. And that's typically what they're best for. Also, they're a better way to save what you've earned and taken it out of a depreciating currency. And so they're a good savings policy as well, but for longer term, not for short term. You know, physical gold and silver have some friction to the transaction because the buy sell spread tends to be about 4 or 5% for gold and 4 or $5 per ounce now for silver. So it's not a trading vehicle. But the mindset that most North Americans have is investment, not insurance or not savings or not protection. The bifurcation of the world, which really started when Russia invaded the Ukraine and we weaponized the dollar for the first time, and we use the world's reserve currency power that we have against Russia and sanction them and seize their assets, caused central banks in the global south in particular, to go on a gold buying spree, which is really what also led to the breakout for gold. Over $2,000 an ounce in 2024, cumulative
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buying had doubled from 2022, 2023, 2024 to what it was for the 10 years before that. And that became material in the price in 2024 into 2025.
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So when Central bankers around the world are buying gold at record rates, they're the most conservative bankers in the world. What they're really doing is hedging their
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bet against their trading partners, against the currencies and treasuries that they hold. And we have seen Russia dumped All their treasuries after they invaded the Crimea in 2014, they got rid of them by 2018 and they bought a lot
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of gold and that got them out of the dollar.
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Now the dollar's not going to go anywhere in the short term. So I do think the dollar is the world's reserve currency. It won't be dislodged easily. It's embedded in the world's financial systems and there really isn't a good easy
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alternative except for gold to a degree.
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It doesn't have the same facility, network, trading ability that the dollar has, of course.
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But what gold does have that virtually
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most other assets just don't, is no counterparty risk. Its value is not contingent upon the other side of a transaction living up to their end of the bargain. If you have rental properties, and I love real estate also, it's another tangible asset that's a good inflation hedge as well. Gold doesn't produce cash flow, real estate does. But what gold doesn't have is counterparty risk.
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And that's really, it is a lure. And like you, I follow macro events because gold is literally just a rock and its value is impacted by a lot of other factors externally. So it's uncertainty. Interest rates affect the value of precious metals against how much you can get as a yield. So if interest rates are 5% and inflation's 3%, your positive yield is only 2%.
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Right.
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And gold doesn't do well because it doesn't offer a yield and there are some storage costs associated with holding it. Whereas if real yields are negative, where if inflation's higher than interest rates and your real yield is negative, gold tends to do well in that environment. So interest rates matter. Right. For a period of time we had interest rates at zero for years, which was.
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How often has that happened in history? Well, that was a new course of history.
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And that's part of the reason why gold never really got that cheap after it ran up during the great financial crisis. So you've got global demand, you've got a good way to save money outside of the system, a good way to store value.
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It's also a great way to pass
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wealth on privately to your heirs. Because once you have gold out of the system or silver out of the financial system, you can simply, it's an asset you can just give to your
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heirs if you want to.
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And you know, in the U.S. you know, if I own precious metals and I pass away and I give them to my parents, my kids rather, they'll get a stepped up cost basis like most assets, and they won't pay taxes on the gains that those metals have
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earned while I have them.
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So there's. That's another advantage. But, you know, it's not so good
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for you when you pass it on,
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but it's good for your heirs. So there's. Those are some of the reasons why
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I think gold is important and silver, too, to individuals, and why we've seen it become much more mainstream in the past year with this higher price. Really has drawn a lot of attention. And now even the big Wall street financial firms are saying, you know, 6040
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portfolio of stocks to bonds should really
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be 60, 20, 20 with 20% in precious metals. And that's where I think we have really kind of elbowed our way to the big boy table of financial assets
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from, you know, the kids table at Thanksgiving, you know, and we're not the
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redheaded stepchild anymore, if that makes sense to you.
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So when. When you look at what's going on, global macro, I mean, let's think about a couple of things around all of this. You know, how do you view. So when I look at when I started buying gold and silver, you know, my whole thought process around it was, you know, let's take a look at what's going on economically. Let's kind of pay attention. And I started to create a thesis back then, of course, back in 2020, when we went through the lockdown and the pandemic and all the things that that created, the challenges that created and the money printing that really escalated through that period of time when I started to kind of wrap my mind around that devaluing of all of this printed money, that was one of the things that kind of led me into the precious metals space in a bigger way and protecting buying power and understanding what. You know, one of the things that really hit me was when somebody said to me, you know, you put an ounce of gold in your jeans and you go to any country in the world, and if that's all you've got is that ounce of gold in your jeans, there's always going to be a place where you can buy that and trade that ounce of gold in whatever country's currency you want to do that, that means as a Canadian or an American or whatever, you're not exchanging your dollars for somebody else's dollars and taking the hit on that. You're actually buying in real dollars, whether that be a peso or a yuan. I mean, I guess, ultimately, so. So when we start to create that thesis and really buy, then we get into the Next level of understanding is gold and silver. Now we know that gold has always been considered money, but so is silver. What's changed, I think has changed. And you would know this being in the industry for as long as you have is just the industrial application for silver in all of the electronics and of course with AI and all the things that are being built. And now in the middle of a war where bombs are, you know, smart bombs or whatever, they are driven by technology, huge demand for silver. So to me, the silver part of it is more of the investment, if you will. Like you would look at. I would, I look at silver as an investment, not the same as gold in terms of money, although it is. So can we sort that out a little bit? Because really what I want to get is, you know, when you think about the individuals who are listening to this, they're going, what are you talking about gold and silver? Like, how would you kind of explain to them that holding one and or both, One or the other or both is a direction that you should really consider as part of your portfolio, given what's going on?
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Well, you're, once again, you're on the money with how you're looking at them. So gold is about 90% monetary metal and 10% commodity value of metal. You know, it's used in electronics, but not very highly. It's jewelry. Most of the gold that's ever been mined survives today and is above ground and, and re recapturable if it's been used in one form or another. You can, you can get it back where silver is about 50% monetary metal and 50% commodity metal. And it's used much more heavily in industry because it is the most conductive element that there is for electricity and temperature. I can literally take a 1 ounce silver coin and hold it between my fingers and cut an ice cube in half in about five seconds just from the temperature of my hand transmitting through the metal, through the ice cube. And it's used in solar vehicles, in, I'm sorry, electric vehicles, solar panels, heavily. And with these AI data centers, the demand for silver is increasing exponentially. But it's a byproduct of mining of other metals, so it's not easy to replace it once you've used what you have. And it's used in missiles as well. So those we lose. So the demand for silver over the last six or seven years has exceeded the supply significantly. And that's what's been helping to buoy the price higher because of all the needs for its uses in electronics, primarily and some of the other ways it's being used. Samsung has just come up with a battery for EVs that is silver based, that can charge in about nine or 10 minutes and go 600 miles on a charge. And it hasn't been commercially deployed yet. But they also invested directly in a Mexican silver mine last fall. Substantial investment going directly to the source to secure a supply of silver. And that's kind of what happened over the last six months. There's kind of been a run on the silver bank because there isn't a lot of above ground supplies of silver
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stockpiled because it's used more heavily in
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industry where gold central banks hold a lot of gold physically because it's compact and you can store a lot of value in a small space and move value easily. Silver is much bulkier. About 75 parts of silver equals one
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part of gold in value today. So silver is much more sensitive to supply and demand changes. And we've had a structural physical supply deficit over the last six years. That's become material now as well, which means we're eating into above ground supplies more and more. And what's available has become less and less. And that's part of what moved the price last year. In addition to ETFs in gold and silver, especially in India, there was huge ETF demand in silver last year because you can buy it on paper, but the ETFs are supposed to hold it physically to back the ETF that they're selling. And India has a gold culture, so does China. But India also has a big silver culture. And this year, for the first time, individual Indian investors can use silver as collateral against loans. And that's what's helped to drive demand for silver in India and helped push it into a much higher phase in this past cycle that we've gone through. So silver is more sensitive to economic changes than gold is. Gold is kind of like the turtle and silver can be like the hare, but it can also be more volatile in price, in fluctuation both to the upside and the downside because of that sensitivity to economic conditions. And right now with the war that's going on, you know, it's disrupting markets because we're not sure how long it's going to last. Oil is, you know, sharply higher. It could go to, to new record highs the way things are going, if it continues to be impacted for supplies. And we don't know how that's going to translate into the economy. And metals are underperforming right now because of that. But What I think will happen is we'll see the global economy slow down, and we're about to get a new Fed chair, Kevin Warsh, who may be more accommodative than Jerome Powell has been. And we do know that gold likes lower interest rates, as I mentioned earlier, because it makes that gold more attractive, especially when the inflation rate is higher and we're going to see inflation go higher. So I think we're going into a cycle like that. You know, the great financial crisis showed us what could happen. And like you when Covid hit and we knew that the economic closures were going to force printing of money and potentially lower interest rates. You know, I. I loaded up the boat personally on precious metals at that point in time, because we'd always seen the cycle happen once before, right?
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Yeah. I said I went in uncomfortably heavy through that period of time. And, you know, at one point I was paying, you know, I paid even like as much as 50 bucks an ounce Canadian for my silver. And I was like, oh, my gosh, it seems like, am I crazy spending that or paying that kind of dollars? Right. So whatever that is, you know, $38 US or something. And look where we are today. Right. There's a lot of controversy around, and there's so many points that I want to kind of hit on, Dana. So, you know, first off, we hear a lot, or I'm hearing a lot based on who I follow, and I follow some very, very credible people that are in the space and pay attention to what they're saying, you know, whether it be guys like yourself. And there's a. I follow Andy Schectman and I follow a number of technical analysis guys and all of the things. So. And I've also learned not to buy into the narrative per se, but I am paying attention to, you know, some of the information that I see consistently happening. So the first question I would have for you, and I mean, given that you're the president of American Gold Exchange, are you seeing a shortage that we often hear being talked about, that there is a literal shortage of silver and it's going to catch up to us at some point? You know, the futures, you know, on the exchange, futures are not mispriced, but they're. They're actually what I think it was. What you buy today is higher than what you are paying for futures. I don't remember. It's a funny. I'm trying to think of the term. But anyways, the point is, is that, you know, that that phase of what's being invested in silver is starting to shift, come to public attention. We're starting to hear about shortage, given the demand and how long it takes to set up mines, et cetera. I mean, it's a year, it's years to, to bring a mine to any kind of fruition. So can you comment at some room there in that space, Dana?
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Yeah. So I know Andy. We're friendly competitors. Andy Schectman, and he is, you know, kind of built his brand on focusing on things that might happen and not necessarily things that will happen.
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Right.
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And I want to be in the realistic part of the world, you know, looking at what actually might happen. And part of the dislocation that we're seeing in physical metals has been caused by the Trump tariffs or potential tariffs. The phenomenon you were referring to was backwardization, where the metal on the futures exchange is more expensive right now than it is for future delivery because demand right now is high. And we're seeing that in the oil market right now as well because there's an immediate need for oil. There's not enough available. So the, the current month's price is substantially higher than the what you can buy oil for, for three or four or six months forward. Right. And we got into a situation last year where there was fear that President Trump might tariff gold and silver. So we saw record amounts of gold and silver move out of the London vaults where most of it is typically stored and into the COMEX New York warehouse vaults, which created physical shortages where the market is typically physically traded in London. And that's what caused a dislocation last October when Indian demand ramped up substantially due to the Trump tariffs. There wasn't enough physical silver in London and the price for physical silver in London skyrocketed over what you could pay for it. In New York, interest rates surged and the, the London Bullion Market association association actually went into dislocation for about two days where deliveries were defaulted on and pushed way out. But there was a record amount of that silver in New York. Right. So there's still ample supplies. They just were in the wrong place at the wrong time. Now we're eating into that and the demand is growing. So we could get to a critical tipping point at some point in the future. Right now the market's acting normally. Now the fundamentals are leading to that. But it could be years in the future before we get to that point where we really have a true demand imbalance over available supplies. That is more than just an event or a knee jerk reaction to something like we're Seeing in oil right now? No, it's going to happen. I mean, we just saw something in the oil market yesterday where the United
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Arab Emirates, you know, are opting out of OPEC and OPEC plus because they have been constrained in what they can actually produce. They're producing about 2 billion, 2 million barrels a day and their capacity is 4 million or more, but they haven't been producing that much. So right now we've got a really high oil price because of the shortage. But once this passes, the UAE is going to turn open the spigots and oil is going to come way down eventually at some point in time.
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Right.
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It's going to take time for it to happen. And that's just getting the, you know, more of it coming out of the ground now. It's harder for precious metals because of the time and effort it takes to produce them. And as I said, silver in particular is a byproduct of mining of other metals. But we're not to that critical point yet in my mind. Now, we have seen waves of demand hit the market where the retail public will come in in a frenzy when they're scared, and they can overwhelm existing supplies. Premiums can surge for a period of time. And we've seen that three or four times now in the last 15 years that I never saw in the previous 30 years of my career, which is interesting. But the market's pretty acting pretty normally right now.
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Interesting that you would say that it's acting normally. And I've kind of been watching it, of course, a lot. And I'm thinking, oh, when you say it's acting normally, I'm going, oh, isn't that interesting? I would not have had that perspective. But I guess when you look at, to me, there's just so much attention on it right now. And so I don't know where I want to go with this, but let me, let me go back to a couple things.
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Well, let me just, let me just say one thing for a second. Prices right now are volatile because we've had record highs and we're settling into where is real value, where's the market really going to support it, where's the market going to reject it at a higher price? Price volatility is one thing. Normal market behavior of supply and demand and premium market to market is something different. And when I say the market's acting normally, that's what I'm referring to.
- [35:04]
A
Gotcha. So when we consider, you know, there, I, I don't know who coined the phrase, but it is an interesting phrase. It kind of, I guess on one side of it, a little bit conspiratorial or maybe a lot conspiratorial, but the phrase was, you know, when all else fails, they take you to war. And of course, when we, we hear that statement, then it of course, you know, goes back to monetary policy. You know, the US Is now, I think, ramping up their printing of dollars. I think Trump's gonna print a bunch more money is what I, what I think I heard. I don't remember what the number was. Canada is in fact doing that as well. So we continue to devalue our dollars when we go to the oil and right now the oil shortage. And where I'm going with this is that we look at what the US and or Canada are suggesting is our inflation, and we know that the CPI is really the cpy. They manipulate that basket of goods. They do all the things. I don't know if that's a. I don't believe the general public really kind of understands that. All they understand is that when you're telling me that it's 2.4% inflation and I'm going to the store and paying double what I, you know, for some goods that, you know, four or five years ago were literally half the price. So to me, that, that speaks to the fact that inflation is, in fact, real. It is happening whether they produce those numbers or not. So I think from a general public point of view, do they believe those numbers and then what's the options for them in terms of, does it bring more attention to gold and silver as a way to hedge against that inflation? To your point about what gold and silver like low interest rates, real interest rates versus inflation, and what's coming in terms of inflation, the lag between the oil shortage today and what we can probably safely anticipate over 2026. I mean, I've heard all sorts of doom and gloom stories. I don't know what your view of that is, but when I look into the future in that regard, I see a very strong case to hold gold and arguably silver from and from that perspective, maybe from an investment perspective, but I don't know. What's your thoughts on that, Dana?
- [37:19]
B
Well, I think you're right. Most of the public doesn't understand all the nuance that we're discussing today. But, you know, I do the grocery shopping for my family about 75% of the time, and I know that I get about 25% less for the same dollar amount today than I got three or four years ago and we are going to go through another inflationary impulse. It's already started. I've already looked back to what happened with inflation and oil after Covid and then especially after Russia invaded the Ukraine. And you know, Russia invaded the Ukraine in February of 2022. And you know, inflation peaked in the summer of 2023, I believe. No, no, the later that year. Later that year at 9%. But that was also part of the COVID spending effect as well. Right. So there was two effects there. And now this war is going to, you know, it's creating, you know, we're, we're, we're going to get another inflationary impulse. But precious metals don't often react to that immediately. And I think that's what confuses a lot of people also. They're like, well, gold should be higher. But what's happened, we've saw Turkey sold 60 tons of gold a month ago to raise cash.
- [38:37]
C
Why?
- [38:37]
B
Because gold is also extremely liquid and they weren't selling oil, they needed to raise money. So what did they sell? What they could sell. And that's typically why you see precious metals not always react immediately to some of the crises that happen because people are selling them to raise capital or traders or speculators are going to cash. I do think we're going to get an inflationary impulse. I don't think higher interest rates are the cure for that like they were during the last cycle to slow people from spending. This is an oil shock, an oil supply shock driven inflationary impulse. And what can the Fed do that, you know, by raising interest rates? Nothing. I don't think that's going to matter that much. But I do think they will be forced to lower rates to stimulate an economy that's going to slow down due to demand destruction of higher prices that are going to ripple through the system and that will be good for metals in the long run. So I'm buying the dips when we get dips in this market right now because the fundamentals to me are still pretty strong. Central bank buying continues, the governments continue to print money. I think gold could be substantially higher in silver, even more so over time, which is why stacking or accumulating on a regular basis is really the best way to cost average and to build your position rather than knee jerking into the markets when we get an event that scares you, which is what most people do.
- [40:12]
A
I think it's such good advice what you just stated there. You have to be able to first off create a thesis saying that gold and silver is something that I should have as part of my portfolio. I think liquidity is going to be a huge issue for many especially when you consider what's going on in the real estate space. And I don't mean just with do it yourselfers mom and pops. I'm talking about commercial and big. Even REITs who are actually, they're not paying out stuff right now. As a matter of fact you want to get out of the particular REITs and some of them, and I mean more along the private reit were in the private REIT world they're kind of going no, we, you there is no withdrawals right now, we don't have the cash. So that's an interesting kind of component of what's happening which leads me to say this is why you need to hold some degree of precious metals in your portfolio. There's another side of this which is for me which is a clear signal. It's the old follow the money. And we know central banks globally are, have been loading up for a number of years and certainly ramped up in the past few years. Except for Canada by the way. I don't think we hold you have more gold in your desk drawer than Canada holds as a country. You know, it's quite embarrassing to think about anyways, that's a governance. We won't get into politics. Although sometimes I get pretty fired up about how that's going. So when we start to look at, you know, follow the money we start to understand that central banks around the world are in fact holding more gold and silver and primarily gold. I think, you know, they're looking at silver just strictly as an industrial application. So that's more I think on the business side of things. Corporate world, I don't know that. Do governments hold silver? Is that a, is that a thing?
- [41:55]
B
Well, the US declared silver strategic mineral when their 262 review this past fall. China has apparently been stockpiling a lot of silver, ramping up purchase of it over the last three, four, five months. And they've stopped some of the exporting of silver. So I think that they're in an accumulation phase as well. They're also producing more solar panels than any other nation. They've got the biggest production of solar panels. So they need silver for those solar panels. And now with this war, which is going to make suddenly renewables more attractive because of the higher oil price, I can see why that makes a lot of sense because they need to secure the supply. There's really not enough above ground supplies of silver to go around. If the whole world decides they want it, and we haven't gotten to that point yet, but that's really where silver could be. You know, $150, $200 an ounce. You know, if my phone has $20 worth of silver in it for connections
- [42:58]
C
and the silver price doubles and the silver, my iPhone goes to $40, you know, how much is that really going to affect the price of that phone? Not much, but you got to have it. You have to have it. You have to have it.
- [43:09]
B
It's one of those minerals where there's not a good substitute, except for copper, which is much lower on what it
- [43:15]
C
can do to replace silver for conductivity. There's also going to be a lot of need for copper in the future,
- [43:20]
B
too, and that's part of this whole kind of inflationary phase that we're in for tangible things.
- [43:27]
C
If you know who Rick Rule is,
- [43:29]
B
he's a. I do.
- [43:29]
A
I follow. Rick? Yep. Yeah, Rick.
- [43:32]
C
I've known Rick since 1993.
- [43:34]
B
He's brilliant.
- [43:34]
C
And he's been making a case for
- [43:36]
B
copper for years because, primarily because of India, you know, bringing a lot of
- [43:41]
C
people who don't have electricity.
- [43:44]
B
Electricity. He says, you know, how much. How many miles of copper wire we're going to need to electrify India?
- [43:49]
C
A lot.
- [43:50]
B
And that's just a fundamental supply and
- [43:52]
C
demand equation over time.
- [43:54]
B
So I think the same argument can
- [43:57]
C
be made to a degree for silver
- [44:00]
B
simply because there aren't other good substitutions for it.
- [44:04]
A
So let's just kind of pivot a little bit here, Dana. And, you know, considering that, you know, we could go on for a long time about having and creating a a strong argument or, you know, supporting people and building a thesis for why they might want to hold gold and silver. But if somebody's listening and they're going, okay, okay, I got to really kind of consider at least adding some to a portfolio. Where do we enter. Where does somebody who's new to it enter the game? I know I've always been just really, you know, buying maple leaves or maybe some buffaloes out of the US and gold, know, 1 ounce coins, but where does the. Where does that fit in? Or. Or even a, you know, both in both silver angle, but where does somebody who's kind of just interested, how do that. How does it fit into collectibles versus just a standard gold coin, even a blank gold coin? They're, you know, like, there's still gold. There's still an ounce of gold. Gold's worth what it is, what sets it apart. And why would somebody buy a strictly a maple leaf or a buffalo versus a collectible?
- [45:13]
B
Well, I've got a couple points to make there. So, first of all, we usually think of gold and silver bars made by refineries, which are private mints that purify the metal and then turn it into a form that we can own it, which are usually square bars. Now, the sovereign mints around the world, the US Mint, the Canadian Mint, the Austrian Mint, British Royal Mint, Australian Mint, even the Chinese Mint, have been making 1 ounce coins since the 70s and 80s. But what's happened in the last five, six, seven years in particular that's material is we've seen a growing modest problem of Chinese counterfeits entering the marketplace. I'm a past president in the US of the Professional Numismatists Guild, which is the leading organization of rare coin dealers. And as president in 2016 and 2017, it came to our attention that these Chinese counterfeits were starting to come into the marketplace. And the mints around the world, to defend the integrity of the product, have added minute design elements into the picture that's stamped on the coin to make it harder for the Chinese to replicate those gold and silver, you know, ounces where the various refineries around the world haven't had the same product defense that the mints have done. So I highly recommend that if individual investors are interested in buying physical gold or silver, they buy US Mint, gold eagles or buffaloes.
- [46:51]
C
The Canadian Mint has been making the
- [46:53]
B
Maple Leaf since 1979 in gold and silver, I think since 2000, no, 1998. The Maple Leafs have a little tiny maple leaf on the back that's frosted. Inside that maple leaf is another maple leaf. And inside that maple leaf is a date and it's tiny. You need a jeweler's loop to even see these things. But the Chinese just can't replicate them. Well, now they won't fool me, but they might fool you, which is why you need to do business with a long standing, reputable dealer in the marketplace. I like to say find a guy that's got some gray hair, a little snow on the mountaintop like I do, because we do have opportunists that come into our space who normally when opportunists are in our marketplace, we're unregulated, they overcharge.
- [47:40]
C
But some people just don't know what they're doing where professionals that have been around for a long time do. And this is our livelihood and our word and our integrity matters more than anything else. And as soon as we lose that, we've lost everything. So we defend our product by testing it rigorously. We know what these metals are supposed to look like. So that's what I would recommend. Stick with the sovereign minted products. U.S. canadian, Austrian minted 1 ounce gold and silver coins, if they were ice cream, I'd call them vanilla, chocolate and strawberry, the three most popular flavors. And there's sometimes, you know, the US Mint can't keep up with demand where the Canadian mint can. And we see premiums for US Coins be higher relative. So that's when you want to go from vanilla to chocolate or chocolate to vanilla, whatever your flavor preference is. And they're all great products. So that's what I would recommend is very basic, sound advice. Now, as far as collectibles like I'm also a vintage US gold coin dealer which are the old $20 $10 gold pieces the US Mint made from 1795 to 1933, they're collector pieces today. And their premiums can wax and wane depending on supply and demand in the market. That's a little bit more sophisticated and requires a bit more due diligence to do it well in the marketplace for yourself financially. And that's where you all again, you need someone you can trust who knows what they're doing in the marketplace. But for most people who just want to own metal for metal's sake, they should stick with the big three. U.S. canada and Austria for gold and silver sovereign minted products with reputable dealers and you can price shop easily. Just look for people that have been in business for a long time and look for the people underneath the business. Not just everybody can have a fancy website with nothing behind it really. These days you want to look for who's actually running the business.
- [49:37]
A
And there's gotta be, I think, a little bit of a strategy. This is something I've learned over the years and I, I don't know that it's right, but it's what I've decided on doing. And, and there's a, there's a part of it where, okay, so we buy some gold and silver. You mentioned it earlier, you know, when we talk about storage and there is a cost to storage, you know, but it's to me, I look at the cost of storage and I weigh it against number one, safety. You know, I don't want a gold and silver hanging around in my house and doesn't even matter that I can hide it or not. I mean, I may hold a little bit of gold and silver the same as I'D hold some cash. But the point is, is that the other side of that, number one, is safety in terms of, you know, a security. The other part of that, for me anyways, is the gold and silver. As liquidateable as it is, it's not necessarily easily liquidated, you know, if you hold it. In other words, you got to get to a dealer, you've got to trust that dealer, you've got to think about the price that they're going to pay. Whereas for me, if I'm storing it with you, for example, however you are set up just for storage. I'm making a phone call going, I want to sell you back an ounce or two of gold or silver or whatever that might be. Am I thinking in the right terms there, Dana?
- [50:54]
B
Yes, except for one piece of advice I would give you. You don't want to store with your dealer. That can be a recipe for problems because we've seen dealers in the past go bad and left people that stored their metal with them holding the bag. So having an independent storage facility, not a safe deposit box at a bank, but an independent privately run storage facility run by professionals who do this, who dealers can do business with you through, gives you that same flexibility for ease of transaction and storage for you. So you counterparty risk, truly, that a dealer might give you.
- [51:35]
A
Yeah, but I guess. Yeah, and I should have clarified that. So, you know, depending on. You might. You might have an agreement with, you know, so American Gold Exchange might have a. An agreement with Brinks, for example, or Illumis, where they are literally designed to hold precious metals and In a very secure facility. And so that's. That's. I guess I should have clarified that. That. And that's what you guys do at some level. Yeah.
- [52:02]
B
So we just have an account like you have an account at the same facility. And if we're transacting business, we just simply move the metal from our shelf to your shelf or vice versa, and instruct the facility what to do. You know, we give them written instructions and you're authorized to act on your behalf. We're authorized to act on our behalf. And we tell them what we've done and they verify it and, you know, they'll do whatever they need to do to make that, facilitate that transaction. So that saves you the logistical issue of having to move the metal, which is the biggest hurdle that most people run into or think is a hurdle. It's really not that big of a. An obstacle to overcome. And we can help people, you know, show them how to move the metal. Through the U.S. postal system, which is actually safe but slow with insurance. Or we have private insurance that is unaffordable for most private individuals because this is our business where you can ship on our account, where we're insured, or sometimes we can help you get an armored car to move real metal around, which you can't normally get easily yourself. So these are things your dealer can do for you to help you. And that's why it's good to have a relationship with a dealer who can help you. Because if you're shopping around and buying from a B, C or D dealer when you really need one of them, they may not really respond to you the way you want them to. But if you do find a dealer you can stick with and do a business with regularly, this is our livelihood. We'll help you. That's our job, is really just to help people in this sphere. And that's how we build. Our business is helping people. And most dealers will do this if they're real legitimate dealers that want to have repeat business with you. Simple.
- [53:50]
A
How do you answer the question, Dana? When we consider, okay, so we're having a conversation and I've had many over the years, but you know, we say, okay, you know, the, there's no doubt. There's, you know, there's a high risk of a zombie apocalypse happening. And you know, somebody would argue, yeah, okay, so what, you know, what are you going to do with an ounce of gold? You know, what are you going to be able to do it? You're not buying bread with an ounce of gold. So what's your kind of response to that pushback from individuals who can't wrap their minds around the thought of holding gold and silver because, you know, banks are locked down for whatever reason or maybe there is a cyber attack that's very real. It sounds kind of far fetched, you know, when we talk about it, but the reality of it is, especially in Canada, we know how quickly banks can move and what they can do. We saw that with the truckers convoy where they literally lock bank accounts. So we know there's a risk. That risk is real and it's out of our control. And we may not even understand why the government does what they do, but ultimately that's where it goes. This would be a kind of a hedge against that possibility. But what do you say to somebody who says, yeah, well, you know, what are you going to do with it? You know, you're not going to buy a loaf of bread with an ounce of gold. I don't know. How do you respond to that?
- [55:06]
B
Well, gold is portable, transferable wealth. It's compact wealth and it's high value now. So it's not a transactionable ounce, to be honest with you, like you mentioned, but that's really where silver comes into play. It's more of a spending money in a crisis. I started my company in 1998 during the fears over Y2K and I sold a ton of gold and silver, small coins, to investors who were scared that the computers would fail. And the biggest question I got was, well, if they do fail, what do we do? And my response has always been and continues to be, if we get into that situation, you know, it's your ability to negotiate with what you have to get what you need. We'll all be, you know, trading by the seat of our pants. But if you have an ounce of silver and the guy next to you has some paper money and you both want to get that loaf of bread, you might be, you know, a little bit preferred to the vendor because you have something that's a bit more tangible than announce, you know, fiat currency. So that's how I look at that. I hope we never get to that point. But gold, you can really carry a lot of value in your pockets and move with if you need to. Silver is a much more transactionable metal because of the way it's priced in the marketplace.
- [56:30]
A
So would you. Even though, considering that happened, my kind of thought process simplistically is that at some point, if you have that ounce of silver or that ounce of gold, you would probably be exchanging it for. For what? You know, you would be change exchanging it quite likely for fiat currency. The only difference is, is it would be a. A much higher. You'd be getting dollars in exchange for that silver, perhaps, but it would be at that inflated price. So you would be still getting fiat dollars. You're still exchanging for dollars that you're going to use to transact. Is that kind of a reasonable thought process?
- [57:05]
B
Well, you could be bartering for goods. That's what I meant by seat of the P. See the pants transacting. It should be just for goods, you know, water, bread, milk, you know, protein.
- [57:17]
A
Are you optimistic, Dana? I mean, when we. Are you optimistic about. It's hard. You know, we want to remain optimistic. But to me, there's this kind of underlying, especially given what's going on at a global macro. I mean, we've never been in this position before. I mean, the world. For me, the line of demarcation was 2020. And when we look at all countries are huge debt. We're seeing all of this kind of unrest, the wars, the fights that are going on. I mean it's, it's hard to be optimistic, but I guess we have to hold some space of optimism and hedge our bet where we can because we still have to live and survive. We look at what they refer to as the K shaped economy, which is those that hold assets versus those that don't hold hold assets. And it's a very small percentage of, you know, when you look at a population, it's a very small percentage of individuals that actually hold hard assets or stores of value. So when you look at into the future, you, you know, you're kind of probably along the same age as I am or similar. Are you optimistic about the future?
- [58:32]
B
I am. I'm an optimist by nature. I really believe in man's ability to solve problems. What I don't believe in are politicians abilities to handle our financial system well. And I think that they've mismanaged it and that's really where the rub is. So I'm kind of pessimistic about the financial system as it stands, especially when you can just print money out of thin air. But I think the human spirit has conquered so many things over time and so many problems. You know, we're going to hit road bumps and they could be substantial but we'll get past them. It's just, you know, how do you deal with the bump when you hit it? You know, I'm friends with Robert Kiyosaki who is also a big gold bug and a big real estate bug. And Robert says, you know, I like to talk to the real estate guys because they're optimistic and then I like to talk to the gold guys because they're doom and gloomers. I mean, I like to stand on the edge of the coin because there's three sides to a coin and then look at both sides and weigh it and you know, it's like, oh, Robert, am I a doom and gloom just because of what I do? And I'm really not. You know, I've been very fortunate in my life, in my career, in my business. We're blessed to live in two of the best countries in the world during what could be the pinnacle of man's existence. And I hope we're not the pinnacle of man's existence. But right now, the way the financial system is set up, I'm not happy with the debt load that we just keep building. We haven't let the markets let the Steam out of the equation when we've had that real problem. And we got into that during the great financial crisis and again during COVID which would have kind of settled markets and allowed things to fail that should have failed when they didn't. And that's helped to blow up bubbles that still have yet to pop some. And that's really, I think, where the rub is.
- [60:29]
C
And I wish we were more responsible with our finances.
- [60:33]
A
Yeah. And to your point, we have politicians that can't seem to be held accountable for the decisions they make, yet we pay the price for it. So those are the frustrating parts of politics. Politics. You know, like you, I have certainly want to remain optimistic. I in the work that I do just around economic analysis and how I present it, I mean, at the end of the day, I'm only giving data. I'm looking at it saying, let's take the emotion out of it. Let's just look at the data, make our decisions based on that. But I was referred to on a few occasions as the doom and gloomer Boomer. And I went, no, quit it. You know, as much as this is doom and gloom, I don't want to present it as doom and gloom. This is just the fun facts. This is just the reality of the data. And within whatever cycle you want to look at it, whether it's a real estate cycle or a metal cycle or whatever cycle we happen to be economically within that cycle is opportunity. And so as much as it sounds doom and gloom got it, it is just the reality of what's happening economically. We are bumping up against different economic factors and slowing GDP and rising unemployment, all the things that are happening in real estate and, you know, wars and all this stuff within that, our job is to look at it and say, where is the opportunity in all of this? To your point, human nature and humankind is innovative where we have the ability to solve problems, but within those solving of problems. And that innovation is where opportunities exist. So I look at that and say, okay, we can get all bummed out by it, or we can look at it, know what's happening, and say, within this lives opportunity. And for me, when I look at it, part of or one of the opportunities I see is in the precious metals market holding some gold and some silver within your portfolio to hedge against whatever we decide we're hedging against. And whether that's a shift of reserve currency or a collapse of the dollar or inflation or interest rates, where we could have gone on that whole tangent around interest rates and where we see Them going. And to your point, I don't think interest rates are going to have an impact. They can raise interest rates to maybe think they're slowing down inflation, but inflation isn't driven, isn't being driven by consumerism. It's being driven by supply or lack thereof. So interest rates aren't going to fix that problem. So whether they, they may in fact lower, who knows, you know, what's going to happen on the interest rate side of it. So all to say this is that we, I think have to remain optimistic about the future. But you know, in our own preservation, financial preservation and creating financial futures, given what's happening, I think precious metals is an important conversation and that's why I was happy to have you on the show today. Anything you want to expand on that, Dana?
- [63:23]
B
Well, I thank you for having me. You know, it's all a matter of perspective. You know, I'm in my 60s. I don't know how old you are, but if you're a boomer, you know, you're close or maybe a little older, a little younger. You know, we know that interest rates at 5 or 6% are normal, but if you're 30 years old, you might think that 0 interest rates, percent interest rates are normal.
- [63:46]
A
Right.
- [63:47]
B
It's just being realistic. And I think you're looking at, from a fact based standpoint, being realistic about it and then trying to find the opportunity is a great way to teach people outside of the mainstream media, which is not being, it's not doing anybody any favors these days.
- [64:07]
A
Right. As I want to know a little bit more about your journey, you know, when I look at how long you've been in the industry and where you've come to. Give me a little bit of background of where you started, how you got to where you are today.
- [64:22]
B
So I got out of College in 1980 with a German degree, which was because I wanted to graduate with my class. And I changed majors between my sophomore and my junior year was the only way I could get out of school with my class. And that was during the first big run up in medals. And getting out of College in 1980 with a German degree made me basically unhirable, just like every college graduate was unhirable in 2009. But I mentioned my brother earlier in the show who got me into the business. He got me literally working in a vault where he worked because I could be trusted, counted, shipping, weighing the material. So I spent two years working in a vault, literally at the kitchen sink, if it was a restaurant, washing dishes, handling the product and then I got a lucky break. The company that we sold a lot of metal to and coins was Jim Blanchard's company. Jim was the man who was most responsible for the private re legalization of gold ownership. In 1974. It was illegal to own gold physically in the U.S. the only country that had this law from 1933 to 1974. Jim spearheaded that re legalization effort because when the dollar peg to gold was discontinued in 1971, he knew that the dollar would lose purchasing power to gold
- [65:43]
C
and he wanted to champion the re legalization of it.
- [65:46]
B
And he got it done. He ended up having the largest mail order precious metals and classic coin company in the country in the late 70s and early 80s. And I got a job working for Jim as a coin appraiser. This was before independent certification services existed. So my job was literally, I sat in a room for two years and I valued the surface qualities or appraised vintage gold and silver US coins. When my boss would go to trade shows, I started going up to the trading desk as a substitute trader. I was good with people, I was good with numbers. And I'll never forget one day my boss said to me, do you want to wallow in the obscurity of the vault forever or do you want to come work for me? And I said, why John? I want to work for you. So from 1984, 85 to 1989, I got to spend about $50 million of Jim's money with the industry. And we were one of the biggest buyers from the trade and sellers to the public in the country. So all the dealers loved us because coin dealers are good at buying and
- [66:55]
C
selling coins amongst themselves, but not getting them off the market. And we were good at getting them off the market.
- [67:00]
B
So my dealer colleagues loved it when
- [67:03]
C
we called and wanted to buy something from them.
- [67:05]
B
So I got to know a lot of industry players at that point in
- [67:08]
C
time when Jim ended up selling the company to General Electric, of all people who thought that they could buy up
- [67:15]
B
five or six cottage industry companies and turn them into a brand. And that never worked. But I literally made a lot of
- [67:22]
C
industry connections at that point in time that have served me to this day. And I toyed with the idea of going into business for myself for a couple years. I did actually, in a very modest way. Jim's non compete expired. He started the second company. So I literally started a new company with him. And it didn't really work out for me. Sometimes, you know, you can't go back. And that didn't work out.
- [67:49]
B
So I ended up moving to Austin,
- [67:51]
C
Texas, and I started a company with a friend of mine, and that didn't work out either. I didn't own anything.
- [67:57]
B
And I toyed with my brother about
- [68:00]
C
starting a company between the two of us. And he was tragically killed one day in a car accident. And he was my mentor, my best friend.
- [68:11]
B
We'd been seeing each other at trade
- [68:13]
C
shows for 15 years, and now he was gone.
- [68:17]
B
And I really wanted to do it,
- [68:19]
C
but I was scared.
- [68:19]
B
I had an internal block. And after Clark was killed, I said, what are you scared of?
- [68:26]
C
The worst thing that could have happened, just did nothing else. Worse is going to happen to you if you go into business and fail.
- [68:33]
B
So I hung my shingle out, and that's during COVID And we ended up
- [68:38]
C
selling, I'm sorry, during the Y2K scare. And we ended up selling a lot of gold and silver, earning some clients. And then when that passed without incident, we ended up, you know, building a real business over time. But my whole path has been very organic from the beginning to now. And I hired people that I could trust that I wanted to be around. So most of my people have been with me 15 or 20 years because I've literally built a family around me. You spend more waking time with people you work with than you do with your own family.
- [69:11]
A
So true.
- [69:12]
C
And when I was with Jim at Blanchard and Company, we had 45 salespeople,
- [69:17]
B
and some of them were a little eccentric.
- [69:22]
C
And managing people is the hardest part of any business. And I knew that I'm good at what I do, but I've never had that true experience. So I wanted to make sure I made that part as easy as possible for myself by hiring people I liked and I could trust. And we taught them, and they learned, and we treated them like family. If something happened, you know, go do what you got to do. Your family matters more. We'll be here to support you. And it's. It's worked well for us over time.
- [69:51]
B
And it's also helped that when I hung out my shingle, some of my
- [69:55]
C
friends from the 80s who are now running US Mint distributorships gave me more credit than I deserved at the time because they knew me, they trusted me. And I said, look, if I ever fail, I'll come work for you till I pay you off. And I've never had to be that indentured servant, and I don't intend to be. So that.
- [70:14]
B
That's my career path.
- [70:16]
C
And it started out of tragedy, but I've tried to make the best I could out of it. And I miss my brother, you know, every day to this day. But I've tried to build something that would be good for me and my family and my colleagues and my employees in particular, as a result.
- [70:36]
A
Yeah. So I love that story. So thank you for sharing that. When I like to investigate the one other question that I often ask guests, you ended up going on an entrepreneurial journey. Is it nature or is it nurture? Did you come from a background? Parents. Were your parents entrepreneurial in spirit? Or was this truly just a kind of an entrepreneurial accident that evolved over time, as you say, organically. But was there some background that. Because what you said was, you know, pretty savvy, a pretty sophisticated thought process of surrounding yourself with the right people, which is often not an entrepreneur's journey. They're more technicians than they are strategic in how they operate. So a little bit of that background would be interesting.
- [71:23]
B
Well, our business is different because we're dealing with physical precious metals. You have to be able to trust the people in the office. Right. And that's really one of the driving things. And no, I didn't come from an entrepreneurial family. I came from a traditional working class family. My dad worked as an accountant for Shell Oil. But Jim Blanchard was a true entrepreneur. And being close to Jim for 13 years directly, he taught me so much. He's the man that enabled me to be who I am today. And my organic path of learning how to handle the physical product, value it, buy and sell it with the connections that I made, starting a business, starting a second business, I knew what I had to do when I started my own business. I'd already done everything necessary to get to that point. I was just scared. So that's really. It was nurture and kind of nature as well. I'm not the most. I'm not the smartest person in the room, but when I decide to get a hold of something that I want to accomplish, I'm a bulldog until I get it done. I was always a kind of a runt in my class, and I love to play soccer. I learned how to kick with my other foot because I knew it would make me a better player against my competitors. And I ended up playing varsity in college for four years and being a captain my senior year because, you know, I was just dogged in that pursuit at that point in time. And the same pursuit has been inside me. I knew I wanted to be my own boss. I didn't want to be beholden to someone else. I wanted to control my Own destiny. That was my driving force that led me to be an entrepreneur after I lost my brother or before I lost my brother. But that's really what enabled me to have the confidence to try. And I wasn't scared of failing. I really wasn't. I knew I'd end up landing on my feet one way or another, just not the way I wanted to be.
- [73:27]
A
Got it. So as we start to wind down, I get into what I often call what we call rapid fire. Questions that are not always that rapid fire. So you ready to have a little bit of light fun?
- [73:39]
B
Let's go.
- [73:40]
A
Okay, let's go. Simple question. Android or Apple?
- [73:44]
B
Apple.
- [73:46]
A
Favorite swear word? Oh,
- [73:50]
B
probably literally. Should I say it?
- [73:53]
A
Sure. Yes, please.
- [73:54]
B
Shit.
- [73:55]
A
Shit. Oh, gosh. That's pretty tame. We usually get f bombs coming across the page.
- [74:00]
B
I got kids.
- [74:01]
A
You got kids? Yes. Is there a favorite quote that comes to mind for you? Something that you kind of use as a guideline?
- [74:10]
B
Well, yeah, we say what we do and we do what we say. That's my own quote because that's how I live my business and my life. If I tell somebody I'm going to do something, I do it. We literally do hundreds of thousands to million dollar transactions over the phone. So I have to live up to my word. My word is my bond. You know, I do like JP Morgan quote, which is, you know, gold is money, everything else is credit. I like that one.
- [74:40]
A
That's a good one. That is a good one. Yes. A book, a favorite book that was really impactful in your life or one that you even recommend or gift.
- [74:50]
B
I'm sure you've heard this before. Rich dad, Poor Dad.
- [74:54]
A
When you mentioned that you're friends with Robert Kiyosaki, that Rich Dad, Poor dad, without question is probably the single most referred to book as a book that shifted. It was even for many a real fork in the road moment reading that book. I know it was for me. But it is really quite fascinating that the impact that book had. How big an impact on how many people?
- [75:20]
B
So I've been on. I've been on cruises with Robert, I've been in restaurants with Robert. More than not. People line up at the door to shake his hand when he walks out of a place. Wherever he is, if they're serving him in some capacity, his impact has been tremendous on the world. He's amazing guy. That book hooked me about the, I don't know, 9th or 10th page when his father told him to go and make some money and he literally melted toothpaste tubes down and Counterfeited nickels. I said, robert, you're a counterfeiter. And I literally figured out what year that was and gave him a box of nickels that were real vintage nickels from that year. I think it was 1955 at the time.
- [76:09]
A
That's awesome. So good. Do you have a favorite band? Favorite genre of music, favorite song?
- [76:16]
B
I grew up in the late 60s and early 70s, so I'm a classic rocker. I saw. I grew up in northern New Jersey, and virtually every major band came through the area during that period of time. I saw the Eagles play their first tour. I saw, you know, everybody. But the Grateful Dead just kept coming over the years. They never stopped. So I'm a huge Grateful Dead fan and I you. This is the first time I've ever really publicly said that. But they were never played the same song the same way twice for 30 years, which kept it interesting for us as listeners. And they were. They were really good musicians with great. With a great songbook. And they've. They're outliving themselves now, literally, in a second generation and third generation of musicians.
- [77:09]
A
You know, you mentioned I'm an old rocker too. You mentioned the Eagles, and I was thinking about. I'm not a big Eagles fan, but I do remember going to their concert, and I can't remember what it's called. It was called. I think it was like When Hell Freezes over, because they had broken up and got back together. And that concert and the DVD that I bought afterwards, which was unbelievable in the quality of. And the recording production, to this day, I'll still throw it in and crank it up because it's so freaking good. Yeah. Anyways, I don't want to wander off on a tangent. Favorite movie?
- [77:41]
B
The Godfather.
- [77:42]
A
Ah, good one for sure. If there is a God, what do you want to hear God say when you get to the gates? Dana, welcome.
- [77:51]
B
We've been waiting for you.
- [77:53]
A
Beautiful. Final question. What are you grateful for?
- [77:59]
B
My health, my family, my wife, my children, my people. Not so much the business, but my people, and my ability to be resilient because of my people.
- [78:16]
A
I love that. I am grateful for all of the same things. You actually couldn't have expressed it better any different. I'm along that same lines and realizing in business that, you know, really it is about your people. I mean, what is your business without a great team? Our job is to empower and support that team. So I love that and I'm always grateful for having the opportunity and the platform called this podcast to meet people like yourself, hear those stories gain those insights. So today I'm particularly grateful for this conversation. So thank you. Dana thank you.
- [78:52]
B
Patrick. This is wonderful. You really are are a great host and I really appreciate your having me. Thank you so much.
- [79:01]
A
Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for listening. If you found value in the podcast, please take the time to rate and review and share with others. Share with your friends as it is my goal to always improve and to provide the highest value for you, the listener. If you have any comments, suggestions or questions you'd like like answered, please email me at CEO@raincanada.com. that's CEO@reincanada.com. i look forward to hearing from you. And until next time. Patrick oh.