0 (3s):
Shake the room Fire Nation. JLD here and welcome to Entrepreneurs On Fire brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network with great shows like Business Made Simple. Today, we're pulling a timeless EOFire classic episode from the archives, and we'll be breaking down how to pay yourself first to drop these value bombs. I brought Curtis Ray into EOFire studios. Curtis is an Arizona native, married with five children, a Collegiate Wrestler at ASU, Best Selling Author- "Everyone Ends Up Poor", inventor of the Financial Strategy MPI, and a Business Owner with Revenues of $75mm. And today Fire Nation, we'll talk about where we focus too much on we'll talk about what money does not buy, which is happiness, but what it does buy hint freedom and the most important decision that we make.

0 (48s):
Fire Nation. It has nothing to do with how much money we make, but something else that you must listen to when we get back from thanking our sponsors. Roll by ADP is the only chat-based mobile payroll app, specifically designed for small business owners to keep payroll easy, like ridiculously easy visit getroll.com/fire to download the Roll by ADP app and get your first three months free business made simple hosted by Donald Miller takes the mystery out of growing your business. Check out recent episodes like how to escape a villain mindset and the framework that makes marketing easy. Listen to business made simple wherever you get your podcasts.

0 (1m 32s):
Curtis say what's up to Fire Nation and share something interesting about yourself that most people don't know

1 (1m 39s):
What's up. Fire Nation. Something about me that most people don't know is on a funny side. I've never eaten a hot dog in my whole life, but on a more serious note, I lost $2 million in a single day, a little bit over $2 million in a single day. I don't share that with too many people recently. I've started sharing that because it's part of my story. But if you have one of those days, you know what I'm talking about, it does not feel very good.

0 (2m 4s):
What a gut shot. I mean, I don't want to go too deep, but can you just give us the basics of that? Cause that's, that's pretty brutal.

1 (2m 12s):
It was pretty brutal. It's part of my story about business and entrepreneurship on how we, we focus so hard on getting home runs and growing our business and scaling our business with out, considering the risk that's in our business. And if you don't take in consideration the risk, your business and go out of business in a blink of an eye, whether it was your fault or not. And that's kind of how I got where I am today on helping people understand why we're in business, the purpose of business and not to not to do the mistakes I have and avoid the pitfalls that the majority of entrepreneurs do because we have this mindset that we can always make more money. And, and we were taught that is as entrepreneurs we're go getters and we just go kill it.

1 (2m 55s):
And then when we lose, we shrug our shoulders and say, Hey, we'll just make more money again. And that is my story to the world, that it has nothing to do with how much money we make, but how efficient we are with the money we made.

0 (3m 6s):
And I love that message. And that's one thing we're really going to be focusing in on today, Fire Nation. And I guess that if you're going to hear that full story of how Curtis lost too many dollars in one day, you gonna have to go check out his websites and see where you can uncover that story that is brutal to hear, but maybe a lot of value bombs within. And I know my audience Curtis, they want more freedom. You know, however, they define that word freedom because freedom is the pinnacle of happiness, because then you're doing what you want. You're helping who you want. You're supporting charities, you're supporting your family, your loved ones. You're traveling, you're living where you want to like that is freedom to do what you want, where you want with whom you wants.

0 (3m 46s):
How do we achieve that very elusive goal?

1 (3m 50s):
Funniest? Cause one thing I say in almost every presentation is money does not buy happiness, but it does buy freedom. And what you do with that freedom can equate to happiness. And so I've taken the last, I mean my pitch to the world and everything I tried to explain to the world is how you not make money, but how you understand money because there's two big distinctions between how you make money and how you keep it and efficient with it and grow it and all that. And all the different things that come with money. And most people in this world don't know what that means. They don't know the difference we've been taught. Like I said, to go get home runs. And when we strike out, we shrug our shoulders when the key to actual financial freedom, which equates to the freedom, we're all looking for lies and singles and doubles, not taking risk, being slow, steady, simple, and secure.

1 (4m 38s):
And if you understand the rules of the game, there's a quote out there that says money is plentiful for those who understand the simple laws, which governance acquisition. So why are we not putting more time in understanding money and not only just making the money?

0 (4m 53s):
So let's talk about paying yourself first. What do you mean by that? And how can we as entrepreneurs, as small business owners, take that advice and start making freedom.

1 (5m 5s):
So pay yourself first as the first rule of money. It comes from a book called richest man in Babylon, if you've ever read that book, it's one of the most inspirational money books there possibly can be because it took money, which is extremely complicated and simplified it and said, if you want to be financially secure and you want the freedom to be able to do what you want when you want, where you want with whom you want, this is exactly the blueprint, but it's not exciting. It's simple. And the first rule of money is pay yourself first. And what that means is making a decision where your future self thanks you for making the decision because there's a lot of things. When I, you know, I gave a talk in church the other day in front of 300, 400 people. And I said, the key to happiness and the key to freedom is pay yourself first and put yourself first.

1 (5m 50s):
And you can only imagine in church, what would, what was the reaction when I say something like that? Cause it sounds completely opposite and go, no, it's exactly the way it's supposed to be. Because selfishness is where you make a decision. You regret it, you make a decision. You're like, oh man, I wish I went to done that. Or you know, you just don't feel good about it. But when you pay yourself first, it's making a decision where your future self thanks you for it. How that equates to money and how that relates to money is I started a business in 2004. I was 22 years old. I had never had a job in my whole life. I was a collegiate athlete. I wrestled at Arizona state. I was a three sport athlete in high school. So I was never required to have a job.

1 (6m 31s):
My parents just, Hey, go train, train, train, and maintain good grades. And you're good to go. And at 22 years old, I, I had one of my friends come. We were playing ping pong in his basement. And his older brother comes downstairs and says, Hey Curtis, Hey guys, we should totally start a granite countertop company. There is so much money in granite countertops and me being 22 years old, never having a job. I said, man, I love money. I want to make a bunch of money. Let's do this. What's granite countertops. I'd never met someone, put granite countertops. It was right before the construction boom. And, but this guy said, let's make a bunch of money. So I said, let's do this thing. So as I was going for the next 10 years, I build this granite countertop business and I made two or $300,000 in my first year net profit.

1 (7m 17s):
And I was 23 years old. And there was like, I had more money than anybody I'd ever met. And every single year, from that point on all the way up to 2014, I made more money every year after the following year, you know, the previous year to the point where I was making millions and millions and millions of dollars. And then 2014 happened, it was a partnership dispute, something so small as a partnership dispute with an investor who had a whole lot more money than me. And we started butting heads. And all of a sudden I realized with lawyer fees and all the different things that add up, I ran out of money really, really quickly. And it happens so often. And, and so I had this multimillion dollar business that I did, everything that I was supposed to do.

1 (7m 60s):
I took all my profits. I reinvested back into my business. I scaled my business. I paid for all my inventory paid for all my real estate. Everything was paid for in cash. And I still lost. I still lost on that day. And why? Because I never understood the simple, simple concept of pay yourself first, meaning I'm in business for what reasons to make sure my future self is protected. And there are a million examples out there. And I'm just one of millions of examples of people who grow their business and build their business and have, you know, millions of dollars of real estate or all the different things in a blink of an eye it's gone. We can, we can look at 2008.

1 (8m 41s):
You can look at, you know, someone dies, dies on the job site, someone sexual harassment, partnership, dispute, a market, turn evolution toys R us blockbuster, Blackberry, you know, Sears. I mean, we have these so many examples that you can't trust your business. And I'm a prime example. I put all my trust into my business. I grew it to 10, $15 million of annual revenue and then have a blink of an eye it's gone. However, if I would've understood pay yourself first and that my business, I'm only in business to protect and secure my future self to provide this freedom that we're looking for.

1 (9m 21s):
I could have easily shoveled off a hundred to 200, 300, $400,000 a year every single year. And it wouldn't even hurt my business. I wouldn't even have noticed. And when 2014 happened, guess what would have happened? Two to $4 million in a bank account compounding for me and I could have easily restarted or I could have just done whatever I wanted. I would have achieved the freedom. I would have worked my butt off and got to the point where I was secure. And I had the freedom I wanted, but instead just like millions of entrepreneurs, just like me, we hit a home run. Then we strike out. Then we hit another home run and then we strike out again. And then we hit another home run.

1 (10m 1s):
And one day I just got really tired of it. And I went on a four-year journey from 2014 to 2018. I became obsessed with the laws that govern wealth, the principles of money, the principles of how you maintain wealth, how you keep it, how you transfer it to your beneficiaries. What do billionaires do that millionaires? Don't because there's no real difference there. They don't have a different skillset. All they do is they understand the simple laws that govern wealth.

0 (10m 28s):
I am in business to make sure my future self is protected. Fire Nation. You need to hammer that phrase into your head over and over again. You're in business to make sure your future self is protected. If you are always saying that to yourself, you are going to take the steps necessary to pay yourself first, to have the cushion necessary for when that struggle, that obstacle, that challenge that is ahead of you actually happens. So Curtis, we can talk about a lot right now, but I want to talk very briefly about the lie about money. Talk to us about that. Lie about money.

1 (11m 4s):
The lie about money is that our financial freedom and that everything that we do to work is about making more money. You know, we go to these conventions, we buy these seminars. We read these books that is about, go kill it today, make it today, all this stuff, because you need to make more money in order to accomplish what you want that. But the problem with that is you're never satisfied. There's always another convention. There's always another deal. There's always something out there that tells you that you can, you just need to make more money because your, your, your clothes, you have 1 million, oh crap. That's not enough. I don't feel secure enough. I need 2 million. I need 4 million.

1 (11m 44s):
I need 10 million. And you never, ever, ever get there. Everything we've ever been taught. And I say almost everything, almost everything we've ever been taught about and wealth and security and the freedom that we're trying to accomplish in our life is backwards. It is all designed in the wrong order. We're all doing everything in one order. When, if we just understood the simplicity of money and the simplicity of how wealth is accumulated and then maintained and secured and accomplished all the way through our life, we got to flip the whole script around. And the moment we do that, it becomes really easy. And I don't know if you want me to go directly into what that means.

0 (12m 24s):
Yeah. Let's go into what that means. And I also kinda want to talk about that. Exponential thinking versus linear thinking. So kind of a loop that in.

1 (12m 31s):
Yeah. And so typically how people understand wealth and money and freedom is we're taught typically is you start a business and these are for entrepreneurs since that's mostly who's listening to this is you start a business, you make money. And what's the first thing we're typically told to do, reinvest it back into our business, you know, grow our business. And then once we get to a certain point where we're growing our business, what's the second thing we're told to do, pay off our debt. Everything is about getting our debt paid off and, and, and making sure you don't have that liability over your head. And then we go and start buying stuff. And then we go start having recreation. And then finally, what do we do?

1 (13m 12s):
We pay ourselves. We start putting money away. We start getting in our fifties and we're like, oh crap. I'm getting really close to retirement age. And I still don't feel secure at all. So I need to start saving money, but the rules of money are slightly different than that. The rules of money are require us to think about our future. Right now, there are two types of mindsets. Forbes magazine just came out with an article on March 31st, 2019. So we're talking, you know, six weeks ago. And it was how compounding is the key to your long-term success. There is a linear mindset and exponential mindset. The two different mindsets are polar opposites of each other. One is about immediate gratification.

1 (13m 53s):
The immediate, when right now we're told, you know, you got to have your immediate wind. You got to fill the benefit right now. You need all the different things in some linear results. Things that we're taught that produce linear results are pay down your mortgage faster, pay off your debt, real estate rentals. Risk-based investments going for home runs immediate cashflow, passive income, deferring your taxes in a retirement plan, worrying about your net worth and equity. All of these things give a short game wins the, the, the, the short, immediate satisfaction of we won. However, there's another side of this store and it's called exponential, but there's a problem with exponential linear wins in the immediate linear will outperform linear functions are linear things that produce linear results when in the first five to 10 years.

1 (14m 46s):
So if you're to go invest into compound interest, or you had to go pay down your mortgage, you are better off paying down your mortgage in the first five to 10 years, but investing in compound interest and secure investments and paying yourself first from year 10 to year 30 will outperform the other one by three to 500%, Three to 500% more money. So when people go, well, I feel so good when I pay off my debt. And I, and I got this real estate rental that I'm making 500 bucks of cashflow or immediate passive income. It's awesome. That is really, really good. However, if you, if you flip the order and put yourself first, put it into compound interest, put it into security, understand how leverage works, working on things that give your future self, the benefit, not your immediate self, your retirement income and your freedom that you're seeking from year 10 on will be 10, 20, 50, a hundred, 200, 300% more money as time goes on.

1 (15m 49s):
And that's how you accomplish true freedom. Understanding that the exponential growth curve is something. I wrote this really nerdy thesis on called the exponential growth curve, because it allows for you dollar for dollar investment. One here in all the things you've ever been told, or one in the thing that Albert Einstein called the greatest discovery of all time, the most powerful force in the whole universe, the greatest invention man's ever come up with. If you can believe in that, but wait for five to 10 years, all of a sudden it snowballs it doubles and then doubles and then doubles. And it outperforms all the other traditional investments. We do buy three to 500% in our retirement

0 (16m 30s):
Fire Nation. I want to give you a breakdown of exponential thinking versus linear thinking. Linear wins in the immediates, exponential wins over time. You have to absorb that quick summation, pay yourself first, give your future self the benefits, not the present self in. You will think your future self will thank yourself. Believe me, that will happen. And we're going to dive into the four principles of money to maximize exponential growth in your life Fire Nation. As soon as we get back from thanking our sponsor. Roll by ADP is the only chat-based mobile payroll app, specifically designed for small business owners to keep payroll easy, like ridiculously easy one example, roll automatically files your payroll taxes, local state, and federal you're already crunched for time.

0 (17m 23s):
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0 (18m 4s):
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0 (18m 46s):
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1 (19m 15s):
Thank you. So there are four laws that govern exponential growth. And, and when I do a presentation, I have a lot of visual. So if anyone wants to see what these visuals look like, it may make a little bit more sense, but there's this really nerdy equation that Albert Einstein really pushed. And he goes, this is the most important thing you can ever learn in your whole life, how you achieve that. The exponential growth curve, unfortunately, all the books and seminars don't do that. They almost get there, but they fall short and here are the four laws that govern exponential growth curve. First loss pay yourself first. It is the most important decision any entrepreneur or human being can make because it is the first law of wealth.

1 (19m 55s):
No one has ever become wealthy, super wealthy, cause there's a difference between rich and wealthy, wealthy has been able to sustain it, be able to keep it, grow it well, transfer, you know, generational wealth, all of that things, but pay yourself first money going to your future self. And it's exact, it's actual dollar bills. I know we hear this concept of invest in yourself, which is totally good. It's totally good. But this is a little bit different concept. You pay yourself first money, go into yourself. The second thing, the second rule or law of exponential growth is compound interest, understanding positive and negative compound interest. This is something that's mind blowing that most people don't know.

1 (20m 36s):
And even when I talk to financial advisors and I go, why don't you put more attention into negative compound interest than you do? Because a lot of people don't realize that negative compound interest has more impact on future and your freedom and your retirement income, then that have positive compound interest. What that means is imagine you had $10,000 or let's go a hundred thousand dollars inside of a retirement account or inside of your pay yourself first account. If it is at risk and you lose 50% of it, you have a hundred grand and you lose 50% of it. How much money do you have? John

0 (21m 11s):
$50,000,

1 (21m 13s):
50,000. If you gain 50% back, you have a 0% average, how much money do you have?

0 (21m 19s):
$75,000,

1 (21m 22s):
75,000, the financial world. And the typical investment world will tell you, you broke even you're still negative 25%, a negative 50% from the.com bubble or close to the, you know, the 2008 crash required a hundred percent return just to break even just to start over. So the race didn't even get started for three to five more years after that, whatever you lost in 2008, you didn't have back until 2013. And in that timeframe, the world was telling you, dude, we're kicking butt. We got 20% this year, 25%, 18%, 30%. And you're like, oh my goodness, my portfolio is killing it right now.

1 (22m 1s):
You didn't even understand that you didn't even break even yet. Most people don't realize that. And so understanding the second law that governs the exponential growth curve of understanding positive versus negative compound interest. So what is the third law that governs exponential growth, protect your money at all costs you cannot lose. Losing is catastrophic to your freedom. It is catastrophic to your wealth. It is catastrophic to everything you want to do in your business. And that's why business becomes, you know, quite risky when you're just putting all your money back into business. If you lose, you have years and years and years before you make it back up. So the third row, third rule of money is protect your money at all costs never lose.

1 (22m 46s):
You have to understand that losing is the enemy risk is the enemy to all freedom. Risk is the enemy to all wealth. And if you can eliminate that, then, then you're on your way. So those three things are the exponential growth curve. Unfortunately, when you take those three things, it takes about 60 to a hundred years to really get the snowball, to really get that point where Albert Einstein called it the most important thing you could ever learn your whole life, the most powerful force in the whole universe. So that's where we throw in the fourth rule. The fourth rule is called OPM other people's money, how you leverage, but there's one little caveat to this.

1 (23m 31s):
How you securely leverage. Typically leverage and security are polar opposites. They cannot coexist in the same sentence because the second you take someone else's money and you start trying to gain money off. If you lose all of a sudden, you still owe that money and you lost all the money. You have a double whammy, and that's why 2008 and the real estate world completely and utterly collapsed. And the baking world completely collapsed because they were using someone else's money to double dip, to supercharge, you know, to amplify their returns. And then when you went, you know, you had the downmarket, you just had a, I mean, it was Armageddon, but what if John, what if you could leverage without risk without the traditional risk of leveraging?

1 (24m 16s):
What if you could do that? How, how often should you do that

0 (24m 19s):
All the time?

1 (24m 21s):
All the fricking time. That is correct. And so

0 (24m 24s):
I think we're glossing over. I'm getting like all of these questions, right? That you're saying even financial advisors are getting wrong. I mean, can I get a gold star please? Yes,

1 (24m 33s):
I have a book. So I wrote this book called everyone ends up poor Amazon, number one seller. And it details a four year journey on understanding why everyone ends up poor. And that's a very, very bold title, right there. Aren't too many books that come out and say, everyone ends up poor. But the true nature is of it is in the traditional financial sector and investment sector and all the things we do to pay off debt and pay off our mortgage and all the different things. 99% of Americans, 99 retire on low fixed income with never feeling the freedom that we're trying to accomplish here.

0 (25m 10s):
Wow,

1 (25m 10s):
$50,000 a year or less is 99% of Americans over the age of 65. With the average being 31,000, even the people who have 401ks IRAs, real estate rentals, et cetera, et cetera. If you don't accomplish the exponential growth curve, you can never have your money produce you that freedom or it's coming in faster than you can spend it. What if we can have a retirement where it's coming in faster than we can reasonably spend it. That is what we're talking about. Freedom, the absolute freedom to do what you want when you want, where you want with whom you want. Non-profit go on vacation, spend time with your grandkids. All the different things we actually want in life.

1 (25m 51s):
99% of people are taught something or follow something that's never going to accomplish it.

0 (25m 56s):
Fire Nation. These four principles are critical in key. So I kind of want to run through them real quick. Right now. Number one, pay yourself. First. Curtis went through that. So powerful number two, compound interest. It can be magical if you let it be number three, protect your money from loss and the number four OPM other people's money securely leverage. That is such an opportunity here. And I want to use this phrase. The Curtis you used that I loved is that risk is the enemy to wealth and Fire Nation. That means risk is the enemy to freedom. So I don't know if you're going to be getting into this. I'm just going to curious, but what are some secure ways to leverage money?

0 (26m 38s):
Like what are some opportunities out there that Fire Nation can actually use leverage in a secure and safe manner?

1 (26m 46s):
So in 2014, when I had my bad day and it was November, first of 2014, I took my kids out to a Halloween trick or treating and I got home, put them to bed and I didn't sleep that night because I went from X to, I had $11,000 in my bank account. And on that day I said, I will never be vulnerable with money again, ever. What is it going to take that I never feel this feeling again of home run, strike out over and over and just got tired of it. And so for four years I researched everything. 401k IRA, mutual funds, index funds, currencies, real estate insurance products, cash. And I said, what do they all do? Well, how do I accomplish this thing that Albert Einstein said is the greatest, most important thing I could ever learn in my whole life?

1 (27m 30s):
Why has no one ever taught us how to get that? And so for four years after researching, I came to realize that because there is no system out there that produces it, it doesn't exist. And that's why no one's ever retired on a 401k or IRA and just said, wow, that was the greatest thing I've ever done in my whole life. The most powerful force, the whole universe it's never happened because it mathematically could not happen. There are people who are billionaires, who just make a bunch of money, you know, those, those makers. And there's nothing wrong with that because that's awesome. That's a piece of the puzzle is pay yourself first making money. So me and my brother, we sat down for four years and literally systematically said, what does the 401k do? Well, mutual funds, index funds, things like that.

1 (28m 11s):
And where do they fail? Where do they fell and not accomplish what this exponential growth curve is? Because it is compound interest, but why does it never actually achieve the exponential growth curve, real estate where real estate is compound interest also it's money doubling and growing and all that other stuff. But where does it fail? Because why does it never achieve the exponential growth? Now, one by one, we saw the pitfalls and it's an algorithm and it's pretty easy to notice once you really go after one reason and one reason only, and that is the exponential growth curve. And so we saw all the benefits and all the pitfalls. And one by one, we all accorded. We said, what does index funds do? Well, we want that.

1 (28m 51s):
What do insurance products do really well? We want that. What does cash do? Well, we want that. What does real estate do really well? We want that. And we made a system. We legitimately created something it's in patent pending right now. It's an invention on the only way. And when I say that, I'm not trying to understate that or sound overly arrogant. The only way to date that you can securely leverage. There's no other way to do it. At least that I'm familiar with or anyone's ever presented to me. But there is one way to securely leverage. And I ended up taking this. We finished it in 2017. At the end of 2017, we finished it. And it was like, it was this aha moment that I've never like it was, was one of the best moments of my whole life.

1 (29m 34s):
Cause we finished it. And on paper it says that this system, if you do it like a science and take the emotion out of money, because emotion doesn't belong in money. If you take the emotion out of money and you say, how do I achieve what I want? And that is financial freedom. All of a sudden became really easy. And when I did it on paper, it would outperform any IRA, 401k mutual funds, index funds, real estate, rental portfolio cash, or insurance products by three to 400% in every single scenario backdating it to 1900. We took every scenario and backed and said up to three to 400% every single time.

1 (30m 16s):
So I was really excited, right? I'm this guy out of Gilbert, Arizona. Who's like, I got a 36 on my act is in math, a 16 in English. I don't read very well, but I can do math. Right? But I didn't graduate in finance. I'd, you know, I'm not formally trained, but I am a thinker and I did take this. And so I ended up writing this thesis called the science of retirement. And I said, Hey, if you do it exactly like this, it is so easy to accomplish the exponential growth curve. And once you accomplish it, it is a force that Albert Einstein called the most powerful in the whole universe. So this giant company, I'm not going to call their their name because we're not supposed to do that for compliance reasons.

1 (30m 56s):
But this giant company said, holy crap, we just read your feets thesis. And when I say giant, I mean billion dollar company, we read your thesis and this thing's pretty insane, but there's no way. Some guy out of Gilbert, Arizona created a system that outperforms our best, our actuaries, our MIT actuaries by three to 400%. And I go, well, tell me where I went wrong. Two or three months later, they called me up and said, holy crap, it works. I, I told you it worked. And they're like, how did you come up with this? And I go, because I came from a different direction. I did not care about my rate of return. In my early years, I cared about my rate of return. In my later years, how do you get the exponential growth? How do you do the definition of exponential growth is who rate becomes more rapid over time.

1 (31m 41s):
It's got to get faster over time, not slower and traditional stocks and bonds and real estate and business and health and life. We always slowed down. As time goes on, we can only run so fast and then we start jogging and then we start walking. Not how everything is designed is get the immediate win today and go sprint, sprint sprint, and then slow down. As time goes on, I came up from this, Hey, let's jog out of the gate and then let's run and then let's sprint. And then if you, if you flip that script, it becomes real easy. So this company read my thing. They had their actuaries try to break it. And they came back to me and said, holy crap, this works. Let's let's, co-op, let's take this national let's, let's take this to the public.

1 (32m 25s):
That was in October of 2018. The next 30 days I wrote my book. I documented my last four years and said, here is everything that's happened since I was born all the way til now. And now we have a system and it's called everyone ends up poor. Why financial planning is all backwards and how to fix it. Now we have a system and it's the coolest story John, that I get to tell people is it does not matter how much money you make. It's about how efficient you are with the money you make. So you can make 30 grand a year, $30,000 a year. And if you understand, pay yourself first compound interest, protect your money at all costs. And let's leverage the money you are saving. You can have freedom 20 to 25 years.

1 (33m 8s):
You can be retired with more money than you're making today. Same thing with you're making 50,000 or a hundred thousand or a million. It does not matter. It's just about the efficiency of money, not the home run of money, not the excitement of money. Take the excitement out. And I promise you in 15, 20, 25 years, when you look back, you'll be like, holy crap, best decision I ever made because I took the time to not understand how to make money, but I took the time how to understand money itself and the, the laws that govern it.

0 (33m 37s):
I feel like this is a cliffhanger. What do we do?

1 (33m 41s):
Cliff hangers is what I'm good at, right? So it's funny as I'm writing a second book right now, and I'm not doing this to sell books because as you know, you've written a bunch of books. We make like a dollar, a book, like it was never about the book itself. It's about the education I provide the world, but my second book is called. Everyone ends up rich. Literally I'm calling it. Everyone ends up rich and there is an algorithm out there. There is a formula that Albert Albert Einstein gave us in 1940 that says, if you follow this blueprint, a 100% success rate, you will find the financial freedom you're looking for. And so this, what this system is, it is the best of a life insurance policy. It is the best of the indexed concept. It is the best of cash concepts, and it is the best of real estate concepts merge into one.

1 (34m 26s):
And so what it is is there's this there's this. I don't know if I want to get lost in the weeds on this because visuals work way better when I'm talking about this. But I designed a life insurance policy. Why did I build it inside of life insurance, inside of life insurance, you get something special to three, very special things. One life insurance has tax and legal protections. Like nothing else. When your money goes into life insurance, it is now there is a system designed where you have a hundred percent tax-free retirement income, no capital gains tax, and 100% inheritance tax. It always confused me.

1 (35m 6s):
Why billionaires have life insurance plans. It didn't make any sense. They don't need life insurance, right? But billionaires have life insurance plans because they can stuff millions or billions of dollars into them. And now they're 100% tax exempt. They don't have income tax. They don't have capital gains tax and they don't have inheritance tax because they want to generationally wealth, transfer their money, you know, Rockefellers and Rothschilds and all them. They know how to transfer all of their money without taxes. The second thing is insurance. What is their job? They are risk mitigators, 1999. And insurance company designed this really cool feature inside of a retirement plan that exists inside a life insurance.

1 (35m 49s):
And that is you cannot lose money inside your plan. It's called the 0% floor. You have no risk of your money inside of, of this retirement plan. No risk means what you never take. Negative compound interest. You never have those make-up periods where you lost a bunch of money and now you have to make it up. So the insurance company comes out and says, Hey, we'll just give you slow, steady, and simple secure. We'll give you something that will make you about 7% rate of return on your money. Nothing great. No, one's going to get hot and bothered by that. The financial world is going to say it's weak and they can go get more. And, but we're never going to give you a home run, but you're never ever, ever going to strike out.

1 (36m 29s):
So what just happened right there pay yourself. First just happened in 1999, they created the first system that will pay yourself. First. You can get about 7% compound interest and you never lose money. It just satisfied the three rules, the first three rules of the exponential growth curve, but we don't have 60 to a hundred years, like I said, to actually maximize it. So here's where OPM comes in. Here's my invention and how we do it in 2017, 2017. And people always ask, why is this never been done before Curtis? Because it couldn't be done. It just happens to be that I was researching it extremely. I mean, obsessively in the moment, the fourth piece of the puzzle was brought to the table.

1 (37m 13s):
There are four pieces of the puzzle and three of them were always there. One of them was lacking and that fourth piece of the puzzle was OPM. The insurance world came out with this feature where you could leverage money from the insurance company at a fixed rate for life fixed rate for life. It will never have a variable. It is fixed for life. And that fixed rate ranges between four and 5% depending on the carrier. So now you could go borrow money from the insurance company at four to 5%. We have a system over here that is protected. That has no risk of losing money. Gaining us around 7%.

1 (37m 54s):
If you can connect the dots here, all of a sudden we can leverage money at four, make seven on it. So we're making a 3% secured on average, a 3% secured interest on someone else's money without the risk of the downmarket. You're always protected with that 0% floor. When you add all four of them up together, slow, steady, simple, and secure. We're just going for singles and doubles. We never need to look for the home run as long as we never strike out. We're just going to get 7% on our money. All of a sudden we can leverage it. We're going to go get 7% on the leveraged money also, but it's going to cost us around four. Now we're making three on their money.

1 (38m 35s):
Seven, our money. When you add those two together, what's the result, financial freedom without all the stress and anxiety and frustration of the stock market

0 (38m 46s):
Fire Nation, as Curtis alluded to this is obviously stuff that's a lot easier to comprehend and understand visually. And he has a lot of those visuals are going to be pointing you to pretty quickly here. But I think as you can tell, we've gone through these four principles of money to maximize exponential growth in your life, paying yourself first compound interest, protect your money from loss. And of course, what we've just been going off on, which is securely leveraging money in a very powerful way. So what I want to do right now, Curtis is have you give us the one theme, the one takeaway that you want to make sure our foundation gets from our chat point, us to where we can go learn more with the stuff that you have for us. And then we'll say goodbye.

1 (39m 26s):
Perfect. The most important thing I try to tell, especially entrepreneurs, because we're at least I'm going to say me, but I know a lot of entrepreneurs is that man. We just believe we have to make more money. The most important decision I believe people can make, especially the ones out there who are just killing it because that's what we do is it has nothing to do with how much money you make, but how efficient you are with the money you make and why pay yourself first and understand the laws that govern wealth is literally the most important decision you can make. Put yourself first, make it so that you, you are the first person who benefits from your hard work, not your debt, not more inventory, grow your business a little bit slower because you never know how long it's going to be there for.

1 (40m 11s):
But if you can pay yourself first and be tremendously efficient with your money in 10 to 15 years, you can be fully retired on six figure income. I have ample clients who intend to 15 years. Obviously this is only four years old, so we don't have the exact person who's done it, but we're on the path to get there through that security and the four roles. But in 10 to 15 years, you can be 100% that freedom and retirement has nothing to do with not working. Cause I love to work. You love to work, John, I can just tell you're a

0 (40m 42s):
Worker, right?

1 (40m 44s):
It is about the freedom to do what you want when you want to, where you want and with whom you want, because maybe your passion is the nonprofit or starting a business or spending time with your grandkids or coaching the little league. But you cannot have that without the financial security and freedom you need. And the system to do that is exponential growth. Go find exponential growth. Even if you don't want to call me about it, you now know the four rules that govern it, find the system that does it, and it will lead back to me luckily. Right? But so how you get it? The first thing is a lot of people want to know, well, Curtis, how did this all come B? Cause it's a really intriguing story.

1 (41m 25s):
Amazon, everyone ends up poor. You can go get my book and that book, you know, it's nine bucks or something like that. The audibles $3 or like that. I didn't want to make it very expensive because it's an education piece. I don't really care about the money. Money is always the result, not the reason. And I want people to win. And if we all have a bunch of winners, the world's just going to be better. Society is going to be better. Life's going to be better. So Amazon, everyone ends up poor. And in about two, three months, everyone ends up. Rich is going to be out. Then my website is www. SunCorFinancial.com. That's S U N C O R Financial.com. And you can always email me at curtis@suncorfinancial.com, C U R T I S.

1 (42m 10s):
And I will give anyone my attention. And I know my wife gets frustrated when I say that. Cause I say, I sometimes give my cell phone number out. I go, Hey, if you legitimately want to change your life and understand the rules that I love to talk about, and I will talk 24 7 about it, today's your day. Wow. Pay your soul first, go do it, contact me. I will never push you. I will never contact you. You don't want to, if you just say curse, not for me, case closed, you will, you know, in 10 to 15 years, I believe this is going to be common knowledge. And so I believe it's going to change the world. Legitimately. I personally believe poverty is going to cease to exist. Once society embraces exponential growth and that's what I want to provide to everyone.

1 (42m 54s):
And then also I'm on, I'm on LinkedIn. I'm on LinkedIn Curtis Ray. I'm on Instagram. That's how I met you, John. Curtis, the financial guy. And then my Facebook is Curtis Ray. So

0 (43m 5s):
Fire Nation, you're the average of the five people you spend the most time with. And you have been hanging out with CR and JLD today. So keep up the heat. And if you do head over to EOFire.com and type Curtis. That's Curtis with a C in the search bar, his show's page is going to pop up with everything that we've been talking about today. Best show notes in the biz links galore. And of course, check out his book. Everybody Ends Up Poor. I don't know what it's going to be at the time of this airing Fire Nation, but I actually just bought it literally on a Kindle $3 and 47 cents. So I made a fast in the hot, a steel SST. I mean, I was just like, this is so good. I should just add the audible on top of it as well. So Curtis, you'll be joining me on my evening.

0 (43m 47s):
Walk tonight. As I listened to the audible book, everyone ends up poor. And if I like it, I'm going to, I'm going to go ahead and get everyone ends up a rich, which is a very high probability. So want to definitely encourage you to do just that Fire Nation. And of course you can reach out to Curtis@suncorfinancial.com. That's his email, catch him on LinkedIn on Instagram, or just check out SunCor, that's S U N C O R Financial.com to see what he has going on over there. And Curtis, thank you brother, for sharing your truth with Fire Nation today, for that we salute you and we'll catch you on the flip side.

1 (44m 24s):
Thank you, John.

0 (44m 26s):
Hey, Fire Nation today's value bomb content. It was brought to you by Curtis Ray ends. If you're ready to accomplish your number one goal. How about doing in a hundred days? The freedom journal is going to take you step by step in accomplishing that number one goal with a incredible process that I created personally. So go to the FreedomJournal.com use promo code PODCAST for a nice little discount. And thank you for listening to my podcast and I will catch you there Fire Nation, or I'll catch you on the flip side. Roll by ADP is the only chat-based mobile payroll app, specifically designed for small business owners to keep payroll easy, like ridiculously easy visit, getroll.com/fire to download the Roll by ADP app and get your first three months free business made simple hosted by Donald Miller takes the mystery out of growing your business.

0 (45m 20s):
Check out recent episodes like how to escape a villain mindset and the framework that makes marketing easy. Listen to business made simple wherever you get your podcasts.