0 (3s):
Shake the room Fire Nation. JLD here and welcome to Entrepreneurs On Fire. Part of the HubSpot Podcast Network with great shows like the MarTech podcast and today Fire Nation, we will be talking to Derek Moneyberg. Derek is a world renowned wealth coach and is known for coaching, innumerable, celebrities, sports, personalities, and athletes, including Ben Adams, Max Richards, and many others. Derek is also a highly skilled investor in distressed assets. And you can learn more at Moneyberg.com and today financial will be going through Derek's journey because it is a fascinating one. He has a lot of really interesting insights that we dive deep into today.

0 (46s):
And one thing I want to mention is that Derek actually flew down to Puerto Rico for this interview. So we are outside by my pool. The audio quality is not the best, but just enjoy the birds. Enjoy the Caribbean breeze and life is good. We'll be diving into Derek's fascinating story. As soon as we get back from thanking our sponsors, according to a survey over two thirds of Americans are planning to travel this summer. This means that airlines restaurants and more have been ramping up their hiring, who do they turn to ZipRecruiter. ZipRecruiter as technology finds qualified candidates for your job, and you can easily invite your top choices to apply. And right now you can try ZipRecruiter for free at ziprecruiter.com/fire.

0 (1m 28s):
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1 (1m 48s):
Alright, well, first Derek, welcome to the level of the island of Puerto Rico. There's a reason why they call it idle day on concept the enchanted island, because it is a little enchanted for those people who aren't watching us on video right now. Just kind of set the scene where here in my backyard in Palmas Del Mar Porto Rico, I'm talking with Derek, and I know you guys heard all about what he has going on right now in the introduction is of course what we'll be talking about here today. But as I was kinda mentioning with you, pre-interview is there's a reason why history is broken down into two words, which is his story.

1 (2m 29s):
Or of course, if it's her story and this case is his story, which is you. So I kind of want to talk about Derek's story and you're an open guy. You are transparent, a lot of things that you do and you grew up not rich. In fact, you grew up poor talk to us about Derrick's early years. What was that like transitioning into you becoming a young adult? Yeah, sir, starting around age seven through, through my teenage years, you know, my family is on welfare, collecting the government check and I used to really hated it that my father had money before.

1 (3m 13s):
Then he found a way to destroy that wealth formatically. And, you know, we went from having, you know, several homes and too many vehicles and things of that nature and being around other wealthy and still famous people to, you know, sitting at home with your underperforming mother, collecting your welfare check. And I just, I sufficiently hated that. I wanted to make sure I can spend my life that way, that I had a good taste of, you know, what a financially abundant lifestyle looked like and felt like. And I thought that was normal as a child child. And then I had the taste of what, you know, American poverty.

1 (3m 55s):
I don't want to say real poverty because I've, I've traveled a lot in your family to want a dollar a day. I don't want to call it a, you know, oh, we were so poor, but by, by American standards, we were certainly in the bottom one or 2%, it was pretty shit. And I didn't want to stay there. So, you know, a few thoughts that I had, I, I started being involved in entrepreneurship around age seven. You know, when that happened, when that wealth went away, you know, my, my brain is like, you know, well, how, if we, you know, go earn money and go do things. And you know, I was walking dogs and shoveling snow and raking leaves and painting fences like huckleberry Finn, and that sort of thing around the neighborhood. Good old Huck Finn.

1 (4m 35s):
Yeah. So yeah, I had that entrepreneurial thought in my head rather early of, you know, well, you got to go do something, you got to go build something. So that's all very natural. I'm looking for opportunities in the marketplace so that, you know, how he got the, the best way to get money is to make it, make yourself useful to somebody who has some money. You know, one thing I love saying about making money, this goes from a seven-year-old to 107 year old is find a real pain points that people are having and provide an amazing or best solution to that pain point, whatever that might be in that moment in time. And I love how you kind of compared yourself to Huck Finn in a way of like painting the fences, or maybe even eventually convincing your friends to whitewash defenses and, you know, to have that opportunity going forward.

1 (5m 20s):
And it's just really fascinating to me when I get to talk to people who started their entrepreneurial journey so early, and that's not the case for everybody. Like for myself, actually my entrepreneurial journey started at 32 years old. And I like showing that contrast because there's a lot of people who may be like, well, I'm not like Derek, I wasn't walking dogs and shoveling snow at seven years old. So I can't be an entrepreneur. The reality is maybe not, but there's always an opportunity for you to say, you know what? I want to sit down, identify an amazing opportunity to become the best solution to and become an at any age 32, like me 52, like others and beyond.

1 (6m 2s):
So you had these entrepreneurial impulses at a very young age. What was like the first like semi adults, entrepreneurial parlaying off your, your comment of enlisting other people to help, you know, by the time I was 10, I had a paper route and at 11 I had four paper routes and I didn't do any of the paper routes by the time I had the four paper routes. But so maybe that's my first foray into, to management if you will, is around age 11, but not, you know, a bigger, bigger picture of what you're saying this, I, I think everybody's an entrepreneur whether you want to be or not. I think this, and then I see other people in my area that for me say this, and now they're repeating it as if it's their own, but you're the CEO of your life.

1 (6m 51s):
Whether you want to be, or not, whether you want to be or not, nobody's more responsible for your outcomes and you are, and you know, a person that wants to ignore that responsibility or defer that responsibility, I think they do. So to their own detriment, to your you're the CEO of your life. And, you know, as a CEO of your life, you're going to have to decide how are we going to allocate our resources? They're going to allocate your time. You know, what are the goals of our company or in this case, what are the goals of your life? What are the endeavors that one should be engaging into to pursue those goals and to guarantee those goals in the future, to guarantee that your goals get met and people that don't want to take that personal responsibility to, you know, to look at their own outcomes, you look at their future potentiality and be able to know what's the best use of my time today to get what I want three years, five years, 10 years from now, and the people that don't want to do that, that, you know, success is not for everybody.

1 (7m 43s):
And those are not going to be successful people, but you know, people that do do it, that the more personal responsibility you take, and as you said, you know, entrepreneurship is just looking like, how could I help people in the marketplace? Where is somebody suffering an inefficiency or, you know, either real suffering or perceived suffering of inefficiencies or, you know, lack of goodness that you could provide them. And the other, the more you can make yourself useful to others. You know, it's funny how the world works. A lot of people are delightful to delight it, to reciprocate and make themselves useful to you. So I just found that as a, a hallmark rule in my head is, you know, there's a subset of naysayers out there. It'd be like, you know, I don't like business business bit. No business is the best thing that ever happened in human history.

1 (8m 24s):
When, when, when humans have commerce together, they tend to get along really well when they're very useful and valuable to each other. When people don't have commerce is when communication breaks down and they start thinking of people as you know, other versus allies. And I think businesses the, the best and most noble thing a person could do and to be successful, I don't think you'll disagree to be successful in business. Like the best way to be successful is to make yourself extremely valuable to other people, to, to be considerate of their, their perceived and real needs to be of how can I help these people achieve their goals. So I've got to help them do better. So two things, number one, I think it's incredibly important that our listeners and our viewers really think about what you just shared about the importance of working together, the importance of, you know, when you are providing value to somebody else and somebody's providing value to you, and there's that exchange of value, it breaks down these barriers.

1 (9m 19s):
It's not them and us it's, we it's the world. And that's why business is so special. That's why commerce is so critical, so important in this world. And we're seeing it, you know, as countries like India and China are literally like clawing their way out of extreme poverty and actually forming some form of a middle-class for the first time ever. It's literally because of commerce and the ability of that. So the second thing I wanted to talk about what you brought up, which is so critical is responsibility, Derek, 100% responsibility. When you can just look in the mirror and say, everything that happens in my life is 100% on me is my responsibility.

1 (9m 60s):
That was the biggest gift. The army gave to me was knowing as a Lieutenant in charge of four tanks and 16 men in war, I was a a hundred percent responsible for everything that happens. I don't care what it was. It was my responsibility to be a hundred percent responsible for my men, for my equipment, for my mission. And I was able to take that going forward into business and life post-military. And I was shocked, Eric, that other people didn't have that mentality because it was literally life and death, death in the army. You had to have that mentality, or you were literally putting yourself at life and death risk, but in business it was like, everybody's wanting to blame everybody else. I'm just like, how are you just not taking responsibility and moving forward?

1 (10m 43s):
So I love how you shared your evolution of, you know, you started early at seven with doing different things and evolving to maybe more of a business management role by having people do paper routes for you, let's get into like your, you know, late teens to early twenties like that era. Like what was the first entrepreneurial venture you took in that timeframe of life? Yeah, you know, I, I was a misfit kid as I had a great work ethic. I like to learn things nobody needed to tell me when I wake up, I wanted to, you know, get busy and do something, you know, work 14 hours a day and productivity and get things done. And I always had that, that urge to wake up and be productive, get things done.

1 (11m 26s):
You know, I got into plenty of trouble as a teenager, as a high school dropout, I got myself locked up for 90 days as a teenager, as a 17 visit and then local county jail for 90 days for a disagreement I had with a violent disagreement with another young fellow. And you know, that that was a good, you know, crossroads, if you will, or decision point in life decision though, that you're like, well, if you keep associating the people that you're associating with and engaging in the customs and traditions of those people, you know, what's that gonna look like? You're just down the line and know that encouraged me to go get a job as a short period of time. But I went and got a job at Walmart and, you know, you have to be there at least six months to get a promotion.

1 (12m 12s):
I was there four months. They gave me my first managerial promotion. Debbie they're two years to get your next promotion. I was there 11 months, total look at my next promotion and people talked bad about Walmart. I thought it was great, actually that, you know, if you're, if you're actually willing to show up and perform, they were willing to reward you pretty well up to a point. Yeah. But you know, th th th that helped me. I went back to college, you know, I went to college, I went to, I got my GED. I went to a community college, highest honors private school, highest honor, as much as the university of Chicago for graduate school later, which isn't just any graduate school by September one business got a 416. It was ranked number one number was there incredible out of 416. And so I want to spend on your education as far as entrepreneurial things, while I was doing that, I didn't go to college to party, but I didn't go to college to go make friends.

1 (12m 55s):
I went to college, I wanted to grow my business and I wanted to learn things. And I didn't give a damn if I got along with all the other students there, they were going to go be managers in somebody else's business. I was already past that point. I quit my last job when I was 19 and I never had another job since then. I just turned 42 and never had a job since I was 19. And I can't imagine how something would have to go awfully wrong for me to get another job with my life. I can't fix it. So I don't think that's what's going to happen, but it ain't it. Yeah. I, I just thought that you gotta wake up and yeah, if you want to serve yourself, you're going to have to serve other people. You're going to have to be a cooperative member of society. You can't be hanging around people that are destructive. You can't be hanging around with people that are having negative mindsets or short-term mindsets. And if you want to create long-term value, you're going to have to take time and think about that every day.

1 (13m 39s):
So I did that in real estate. I made money in real estate. At that time. It's very easy to make money in real estate in the early two thousands. And I did, I took some of that money and I invested, they had when we had our recession in oh 8 0 9 and so on, and that allowed me to multiply the net worth I had. And I did quite well. And that's about a public speaking companies that friends of mine built one. And I built another one. And that has been involved in that space since 2003 or thereabouts. And I, I I'd say today, I'm primarily an investor much more than an entrepreneur, but you know, if you were a half-ass entrepreneur, I think entrepreneurs this all powerful. And I think your show is very special because you talked to some of the entrepreneurs that, you know, again, I think you'll read with this is entrepreneurship is so special that you don't have to be, you know, you don't have to be Elon Musk.

1 (14m 30s):
You don't have to be, you know, get a a hundred billion dollars. If you were, you don't have to be the best entrepreneur in the world was that I really mean to say, you can be like an okay entrepreneur. You don't have to be a great entrepreneur. You, you listen to it. You could be an okay entrepreneur and find a way to make a few hundred thousand dollars a year. You can make yourself useful in a way that people would be happy to give you a few thousand dollars a year. If you were an okay, entrepreneur, not good, not great, that world's best. And you know, that that's a pretty reliable system that if you're, if you're willing to look stupid and feel stupid for a while, while you're learning, and while you're, you know, failing your way to success, if you will, you probably gonna make a few hundred grand later, if you did.

1 (15m 10s):
Okay. And then you don't make that make that transition. You and I were discussing this casually earlier, making that transition from, you know, entrepreneurial income to turning that into investments and allowing your investments to multiply that. I, I really believe it. You know, there's, there's a point in entrepreneurship that, and I think this is a beautiful, beautiful thing about it, that after you made enough entrepreneurial money, that you're, you know, you've invested, they have done your, your net worth is enough to help you to sustain, you know, more of a lifestyle than maybe ever imagined up to this moment. Well, it doesn't mean you don't stop doing it. You don't stop doing entrepreneurial things, but you don't have to do entrepreneurial things. You don't enjoy anymore. You can really work on the parts of your business that you find most fulfilling and most enjoyable, and, you know, serve the people that you care about most in the world.

1 (15m 56s):
So I've thought about entrepreneurship like that. Quite a lot, that a job as a stepping stone, to get you some seed capital to start a business, a business, this is a place to get some seed capital to be an investor. And, you know, if you're a relatively, if you're a moderately, a moderately successful investor, you're gonna make enough money that you, you don't have to do things that you find distasteful. You don't have to be somebody that you're not in a corporate job today. You can't be yourself. You're not allowed to be yourself. You should just show up and pretend to be somebody else to take orders from somebody that you, you may or may not respect. You know, if you, if you went about your life reasonably responsibly and planned a few years ahead, you can make enough money in entrepreneurship that at some point you're an investor, not an entrepreneur, and you can continue doing the things that you care about most so many value bombs, as I like to say, Fire Nation.

1 (16m 44s):
And the thing I actually want to start with was where you started, which was you are the average of the five people you spend the most time with. And you were in this situation at one point in your life where you had to honestly look around and say, I'm the average of these five. Let's just call them probably underachievers. And if I continue with these five underachievers, I'm going to be an underachiever. And you made a decision in that moment in time to say, Hey, I don't want this to be my future. So I need to change my five. And it doesn't always happen overnight. Your five doesn't go from terrible to amazing overnight, but you built up over time, this amazing network of individuals through different ventures.

1 (17m 30s):
Obviously you had your stint at Walmart, which was eye opening for you in some, in some regards. And then you moved into some real estate investing because you now have some capital in your life. And we're able to capitalize on some pretty ideal market situations. And also you looked around not the next day, but years later and said, okay, I'm the average of the five people I spend the most time with and my fives pretty vulnerable. You don't have to take on the world's biggest problems. I think that the biggest failure that a lot of people who would be fantastic entrepreneurs, or at least very good entrepreneurs, their biggest failure in this, they don't get started. They think this is too daunting. It's too hard. I won't be successful next week. You know, maybe my friends will judge me. I'll make less money this year, but yeah.

1 (18m 11s):
Yeah. But how many more years are you going to be alive? Maybe you'd like to do a little strategic planning on the front part of your life, that you could have a lot more financial freedom and the latter parts of your life. So I, I totally agree with what you said. And I just say that, you know, the, the number one thing that, that might help a person has, you know, lower those expectations. You don't have to make, you know, billions and trillions of dollars that if you could contribute in any significant way. And even as you mentioned, in, in any particular niche that you can make any significant impact, there's probably a few hundred thousand dollars a year there. And if you just kept your living expenses and, you know, in a reasonable place that you probably enhance your, your current standard of living and also start creating quite a lot of sapiens.

1 (18m 54s):
Well, that's where I want to move next to Eric, because you were able to acquire a few hundred thousand dollars, you know, with some strategic investments and by working hard and by solving problems. And now you've been able to turn that into real significant wealth. So share the Fire Nation, how, you know, we can go from making a couple hundred thousand dollars a year, hopefully living well below your means. So you're saving and able to investing into a place where that money can turn into real money going down the line. Like, what is that, what does that trajectory look like? Yeah, if we go rewind time to my mid, late twenties only had a few hundred thousand dollars and I had less than a million dollars.

1 (19m 34s):
And then, you know, when you have the opportunity that a, that appeared in the stock market in oh eight, when everybody panics and there start selling and aggressively, and, you know, September, October, and by December things look very grim and, you know, the market didn't buy them till early March or nine, but I didn't even get my timing. Right. I, you know, I took the money that I did to add. It's a bit less than a million dollars at that time. I as investing heavily through December into January and just ran out of time, down, down, down, down at one time, my portfolio, I was with one of my buddies. He's, he's rather wealthy today himself he's worth 50, $60 million. We were both, you know, we had less than a million bucks each at that time, but we were in new Orleans. You know, you see this Lamborghini drive by and canal street in new Orleans.

1 (20m 17s):
And it would have been, you know, February, 2009, and he's looking at the car. I never really cared about sports car as much, but he's looking at the car. And I said, you know, I just lost that car again, the stock market in the past month and things got worse from there. So at the bottom, my portfolio is down about 70%, you know? And in the, after the map that they had to turned into a few million dollars, right? And then I got to take that money. And, you know, you, you reinvest that and you make some money and you go build your business. And again, you don't make a, make your money in your entrepreneurship. I was making a couple million dollars a year as an entrepreneur. You know, I had that, that seed capital that, you know, that'd built from early entrepreneurship and investment before we move forward from there though, let's just talk about one of your favorite investments during that timeframe.

1 (21m 1s):
Like as specific as you want to get within that, I loved casinos at that time. So I'm a contrarian. So I like to buy what things that I think will be valuable, that nobody else likes it at that moment. But I think they'll like it again in the future. And if you want to think of a very simple investment thesis at that time, I was buying a lot because he knows I bought a MGM. I bought when I bought Las Vegas, gave me an ice cream, a couple other pinnacle, a couple other casinos. So, you know, you go to Las Vegas. I grew up around Las Vegas. I spent a few years of my life over there total. And you go to Las Vegas, you look at the strip and in about a three mile area, there's $50 billion of infrastructure. Wow. And those are the numbers at that time.

1 (21m 41s):
And I think to myself, like, are you telling me the best adult playground on earth when Las Vegas sands stock went from about $155? Right. I start buying it at six. He went from 155 bucks. I start buying it at six. I doubled that position when it was four. And I doubled that position when it was two, it went down to a dollar 38, went down to a dollar 38, you know? And you don't, you don't feel smart when you're down 70% in your portfolio, you know, you're, you're financed your fees and your little honors certificates, you know, it doesn't seem to be worth the paper they're printed on, but yeah, I've thought about that. Yeah. Here, when I was selling it in the forties, you know, it went up to like $89, you know, MSL when they at 42 46, 48.

1 (22m 24s):
Yeah. So you felt when you were selling it and getting $45 back for every dollar, right. $3 and change to invest. If you get a 1300% return, you felt better about that part, but it's not a straight line. You know, you're going to have volatility. You're going to feel stupid some days. And you have to believe in the bigger picture. You have to have faith in yourself to acquire the knowledge, to, you know, to be calm and be rational when other people are behaving irrationally. Yeah. And if you can do that, it's just, it's equally amount temperament as it is, you know, understanding finance and, you know, and I know you have a finance background as well, and that's great, but you know, I think about it like this.

1 (23m 5s):
I have fantastic finance mentors. I think I make money. I think I'll make more money being a good psychologist than, you know, a finance person. And if you had a proficiency in finance, if you could read and understand why you must be able to read and to understand financial statements, to, to be a great investor, you must, that's the language of business is financial statements. You have to, but beyond a proficiency on that, if, if I could choose to be like a good psychologist and, you know, PhD level of finance education versus, you know, a very good finance education and a PhD level psychologist, I'd pick that combo that a lot of the market's driven by human perceptions.

1 (23m 45s):
And, and you'll, you'll find times where prices are just dislocated from, you know, anything shorter would refer to as objective reality. Yeah. So those are the moments that I like to buy things. So things are very much in our favor during those times. And, you know, as Warren, Buffett's always been known to say, be greedy when people are fearful and be fearful and people are gradients. I mean, to kind of just skip ahead because of that quote, and then we'll kind of backtrack a little bit afterwards, but yeah, before

0 (24m 14s):
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0 (25m 7s):
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0 (26m 29s):
The smartest way to hire people seem to be pretty

1 (26m 31s):
Greedy right now. In what context are you thinking? Just thinking like I'm seeing a lot of people who are using a lot of their stimulus checks, a lot of their disposable income they may have, and, you know, fairly speculative instruments that seem to be, you know, providing a lot of return for individuals over certain bull runs. And are we in a, in a situation right now here in the mid 2021, where people are being greedy? I mean, it depends on, again, it depends on the context and in some cases you, you know, speculative bubbles come and go all the time. If you look at the macro market, I don't think so. I think that, you know, the government's just added 40% to the money supply and, you know, people are, people are coming out and the other they're beginning to claim their freedoms back from their governments and, you know, go live their life in a more traditional free spirited way.

1 (27m 25s):
He had 40% of the money supply, but that's going to stop housing prices from going down dramatically. So, you know, disaster reverted there that you don't have the mortgage foreclosure chain of events that we had in the last recession. So you're at least stabilizing the perception of housing prices. And meanwhile, if you know, when that money starts changing hands again, and I don't mean to get too nerdy, but when, when the velocity of money increases because of that extra 40% out there recently printed in the last year or so then, I mean, the, the you're, you're, you're going to be more concerned about inflation that, you know, prices of things are, I think there's still room for things to go up. And I think there's some just as in the last few sessions, I loved value stocks that were out of favor at that moment, right?

1 (28m 8s):
I mean, an investment thesis in that recession we talked about with the casino is, is that, you know, people have been gambling for 5,000 years, at least for all the documented human history, people are gambling. Do you think that's just going to fall out of favor? Like nobody's going to go use that $50 billion in infrastructure we talked about. Of course they are. So, you know, I, I love buying things when they're on sale like that, but you know, and this last recession right now, I bought a lot of retailers. I bought, I bought high quality models of what high quality retailers, because everybody says they're dead. Get on my portfolio is up 500%. Everybody says this stuff's dead. Oh, nobody wants, you know, I'll take the best malls in the world. And I don't mind buying some of the best commercial real estate in the whole world. What everybody else says is trash. And, you know, am I really up 500%?

1 (28m 49s):
I think that could double from here and some of those things. So I don't really recommend stocks, specific stocks. It's not really what I do. So I don't want somebody to hear this. And, you know, if they don't know any better, go buy this thing or that thing, you know, this ticker symbol, because if you don't know what to do with it, or if you don't know how to read those financial statements again, then you might be causing yourself a lot of grief. So I'd caution anyone against doing that. But those are some sectors that I looked at here that I think there's, y'all undervalued. And I think some of these other skills double or more from current prices. So to backtrack just a little bit, you know, last, we kind of left off. You were, you know, up a couple million dollars in your total net worth because of some great investments that you made. And, you know, let's be Frank and S you know, some days that numbers around the era for you.

1 (29m 33s):
So you obviously been able to turn that couple of million dollars of net worth back in your late twenties, early thirties, you know, into some of these significantly more, a decade later, as you just turned 42 years old. I'm 41. So, you know, I definitely resonates with the age in life that you are right now. And how did you make that transition from continuing to go from strength to strength and what were some of the bumps along the way? Oh yeah. Plenty of bumps at the county jail stint that probably wasn't fun, helped my life a lot. It wasn't fun at the time. And that was when you were 17, 17 years old was 20 twenty-five years ago. If you want to judge me for something that happened to quarter century, it says something more about the person.

1 (30m 14s):
I did a lot of things in the last 25 years. So haven't, we all, you know, when you're down 70% in your portfolio, you don't seem too brilliant. You know, you don't feel great about it. That moment. I learned that, you know, you just started to have to tolerate that volatility, that if you, if you have the right knowledge and you're, you're engaging in behaviors that have a high expected outcome, high expected value, then you're, you're doing about as best you can. And then you got to wake up and learn new things every day and be willing to admit your ignorance that the dumbest people think they're really smart. You know? So my smartest friends are always asking questions are always willing to learn something new that, you know, you, you and I very much have that sort of philosophy that always learn. I'd feel very bad if I went to sleep and didn't learn a few new things today, you know, you gotta, you have to be willing to, you know, admit there's plenty of things that you don't know and try to try to banish some of your ignorance day after day.

1 (31m 2s):
So you can do a little bit better tomorrow. So I, you know, as a philosophy, I'd say that, but in practice. Yeah. You know, a couple months ago I was down two and a half million dollars in, well, first I was up two and a half million dollars in a day. And then that, you know, that day about a million and a half of that went away same day. But if I would've sold internet, you know, I was up two and a half million, 2.55 that day. And then that went down the next day, it went down another million, the next day, went down another million and changed. So from that peak, where if I, if I would've sold it there, you know, in two and a half days, I was down $4 million, you know, no, I'm not gonna throw myself from a bridge over that or something is I'm doing considerably better than that.

1 (31m 43s):
But you know, you don't enjoy it that now it's never fun, but it does, you know, I, I have a disposition and I recommend anybody who doesn't, you know, really tries to look at the bigger picture. It'd be be kind of calm and try to be as rational as you can. Crazy. You use, look at the macro trends. Like, yes, there's a lot of this in the micro trends, but the macro trends looks like this up until the right there's and there's plenty of people that are richer than me. Something that you say that I think there's a lot of wisdom is, you know, compare yourself against the person that you were yesterday, you know, learn something new and to take action on that knowledge. If you're winning that comparison, you're winning at life. If you could just do that every day, you can make a bit of progress every day. You've got to do better in the future.

1 (32m 25s):
People procrastinate taking those first steps. I think that's a disaster. I think it's the biggest disaster. It's a silent killer for them. There's not tomorrow. Not tomorrow, not tomorrow. You're just older and dumber. If you didn't learn something yesterday, the next day, you're just, you're older. And to other people around you got Samira. Yeah. Well, your competition is out competing you, if you want to lay in bed and you know, you don't have this affliction on neither do I, but the type of person that wants to lay in bed and do not much just expect your future to be in that much, but type of person who wants to get out of bed and you know, what can I learn? What can I contribute? What could I do? I'm not the most altruistic person out of sheer selfishness for you or anybody else out of sheer selfishness.

1 (33m 5s):
You should want to help other quality people accomplish their goals. It's the number one way to accomplish your goals, helping other quality people get what they do. I mean, it's a great Zig Ziglar quote. You can get anything you want in life. If you help other people get what they want in life. And it's so true. So one thing, you know, in preparing for our chat today, Derek that I've seen is you've kind of been building over the past few years, more of a personal brands. Like you've been, you know, very active on social media. You now do a lot of work with people and a one-on-one and more of a group environment. And you see, like, you really look into kind of build your authority, build your influence, build your personal brands in this world that we live in.

1 (33m 45s):
So kind of talk a little bit about that transition. Like what made you decide to move in that direction and, and what have you done to become somebody who is now followed by a lot of people? Yeah. I, I, I, I bring it back to what you said about the people you spend the most time with. And the real answer to that is I'm not, I'm not so concerned about building my influence in some way, as I am building a high quality social circle, I like to be around other people that are current and future winners. That's a language in my own head in myself talk. And it's what I talked to my clients about is if you're a current or future winner, I could help somebody like that. We'll probably have a great time to go there. I can help them make that transition from a career to an entrepreneur, like help them through those dark days of entrepreneurship.

1 (34m 28s):
And you're going to have some, there are some dark days guys. I could help them from that, you know, the entrepreneurial situation to, to, you know, be in a full-time investor. So you could spend your life doing what you want, that word, freedom, you know, you and I chatted on that briefly. Or we hear that. It's bizarre to me that a person would sacrifice their freedom to show up at a job that, you know, if you did, if you did anything wrong, if you did nothing at all wrong, you might get fired from your job today, for any reason or no reason at all, they replace you next week. And you know, it's bizarre to me that anybody would want to show up to a job instead of taking the same steps for, for less psychological frustration, you could be a quality entrepreneur for less psychological frustration.

1 (35m 11s):
You could be an investor and you know, it just because it won't happen overnight. It's like the sooner you start the process, the sooner it's going to happen, but you could have that freedom. You could have your independence to live your life the way you want. So I I'd say that's a, it's something that I felt deeply inside. When I was a child, I felt like I didn't have much freedom. I felt very constrained and I really hated that. And I hated it enough to make sure that, you know, I moved myself out of some pretty agreement, dire situations to have a truly, a life of my choosing and that I, I really spend my time with the way I'd like to. And I like telling my clients with that. I like to have friends like that. You know, a lot of my clients who would be traveled together in my mastermind groups, out of the people that come to my home, you've invited me to your home right now.

1 (35m 52s):
Here we are Puerto Rico. I think that high quality peer group is more important than I just focused on the long-term money from that. You're going to have more lifetime satisfaction and you'd accidentally make a lot of money hanging out with high quality people versus anything else I could do with my time. So that's the most important part of that. To me, I've got about a million followers and you know, it's growing very rapidly, but I don't people say this word like social media influencer. I don't want to be a social media role model. I don't think of myself as I'm trying to influence them. No, no, no. I'm trying to sort through them and find the few people that are serious about their own life. They're serious about their financial future.

1 (36m 34s):
They know if they learned more or they'd earn more, I'd like to associate with those people. I'd like to have other high quality people that are current or future winners. Some of my guys are 19 years old, but they ended up and they work their ass off every day and they're going to go be somebody. Yeah. And one thing that you and I actually talked about, pre-interview, I'd like to kind of circle back to, because we both are believers in this is I think one of the reasons for your success, there's a lot of reasons, but one of the reasons is you're just not afraid to be controversial. You're not afraid to be polarizing. You're not afraid to actually take a stand. And what you believe in plant your flag in the sand and say, this is what I believe. This is how I look at life. This is my outlook.

1 (37m 15s):
Whereas a problem. I see a lot of individuals right now is they're just trying to please everybody. There are people pleasers. They stand in the middle. I like to say they try to resonate with everybody. Whereas that means they actually resonate with nobody as a result. So talk a little bit about how you've kind of built, you know, your following, by some ways being controversial and polarizing, I'm better Trinity person. And I don't think anything that I say should be controversial. If you, the person would have logical brain, that's halfway rational about how they live their life. I don't think they'd find it controversial in this world is happily rational. Come up with, there you go. No, it's not. And then do I care about the opinion of some halfway?

1 (37m 58s):
They're more concerned about their emotions than they are a thought, you know, a big, a big subset of society today, and it's not entirely their fault, but they've been trained by the media. They've been trained by their education education. You call it education, kind of they've been trained that they don't even know what a thought is. They experience an emotion and they confuse their emotion for being a thought. And they think that thought is valid. And they think that if they have a, if they have an emotion that they find to be uncomfortable, you should change your life to accommodate their whimsical emotion. And if you did that, you don't have a planet anymore. You don't have a civilization at all. So I'm not a trendy person. I'd like to do things that work consistently over time.

1 (38m 41s):
I'm not trying to be trendy. And I'm trying to influence that idiot to be smart. I don't want to associate with people like that at all, but I would like to meet other people that are, you know, happy to think for themselves, willing to think for themselves and tolerate the social pressures of doing that. And it doesn't me. They have to agree with me. I just like people that are independent thinkers, you know, their brain works good. They're capable of looking at data and coming to a conclusion about something. We might have different conclusions. Yeah. Those are the most interesting conversations because you learn things from each other. So I love being around other smart people that I can help them accomplish. Some of their goals. We're going to learn things together. It'll be a fun adventure. Those are the type of people that I want to meet.

1 (39m 21s):
Let's even dive deeper on that. Because one thing that I talked to my audience a lot about is knowing your audience, but even more importantly, knowing your avatar, like your perfect customer, clients, follower, whatever that might be consumer of your content, go a little bit deeper on who you think your avatar is. I th my ideal client is somebody could be from any number of diverse backgrounds. So yeah, there's, I have male, female clients. Some of them are very successful business people, you know, a hundred million plus net worth. Some of them are, you know, 18, 19 year old kids that are working their ass off. And they're, you know, they're dedicated to go be somebody, right? So I wouldn't nail it down by that age range or gender. But what I wouldn't say is, and they had this people all around the world from all sorts of different countries.

1 (40m 5s):
I've been to 66 countries. So I have friends and fans, you know, literally around the world, but the people that I, that I would say that we would benefit each other the most we'd get along. They actually, well, they'd have a peer group of supportive people like them. It's somebody that you have above average work ethic, above average education, above average motivation that they, they want to go do something. And that they too are frustrated that no longer it used to be an academic environment was a place. He used to go to a university to get smarter. And a lot of young people are frustrated because the university today is a place where you go to get dumber as a place where you go to get indoctrinated into things that are literally be Rooney as to your life in many ways.

1 (40m 46s):
So that I see a lot of people, you know, a lot of young entrepreneurs that, that are frustrated with that circumstance. I see a lot of people that are, you know, well-educated hardworking people that they did a lot of the right things that, you know, society tells you you're supposed to do to be successful. That they went to college. They got the great jobs. A lot of them went to graduate school, got that career. And now they're in an environment where they're there can't possibly be themselves. You couldn't communicate sincerely at all. Who's your, you might possibly offend a coworker. If you say something, or if you say nothing, or if you look at them the right way or wrong way, or if you don't look at them the right way, you could be fired, never, never in human history. Has your job been less stable? A person would, a career could be fired for any reason or no reason at all, because you know, the wrong person, some, some loony, you know, you know, oh, I made me feel uncomfortable in some way, or it didn't agree with me in some way.

1 (41m 38s):
Yeah. A lot of my clients have those frustrations that there, again, don't have to agree with everything I say, but there are free thinking. People. There are people that are, you know, they want to live a sincere life. They're, they're willing to work hard. They're willing to learn things. They're they're team players and they want to live a life of their, their own design. Those are the people that I'd like to spend time with. If everybody was like me is now a lot of things would be better in the world. I like being around people that are similar work ethic, value, education, failure, working hard value, independent thought. And I love the conversations we have together that we all learn a lot of fantastic things from each other that are mutually beneficial. So I'm learning a lot of things too, that I like to spend time.

1 (42m 20s):
I'm learning a lot of things today. And I, I definitely get inspired when I get to hear, you know, individuals who are passionate about what they do or committed to what they do and have a life experience. That's, you know, backs that up as well. And one thing that you've offered, which is very generous, and I'd love to take a couple of minutes to talk about right now is, you know, you're open to having conversations with people in my audience with Fire Nation. You're open to, you know, having, you know, a smaller group conversation for maybe my audience who can ask questions of you directly to you and get those specific answers. So can you talk a little bit about what that is and where foundation can go to find out more? I thought it'd be fun. And you and I chatted about this.

1 (43m 1s):
If we just did a little Q and a that any of your followers, any anybody that loves your show, I'd like to continue a personal conversation together that maybe I'd schedule a zoom call for a couple hours. We spend 90 minutes or three hours, or whatever feels natural. And, you know, if you, if you're a type of person that has a good work ethic, you know, value is learning and willing to work hard, wants to build a better life for yourself. You're serious about your future. And you'd like to be with some other people that where you can have an honest and open conversation, which is hard to do in society now. So if you're that type of person, I'd love for you to join. And I think the best way to do with that is just, you know, follow my Instagram. Find me on Instagram at Derek Moneyberg, D E R E K M O N E Y B E R G at Derek Moneyberg.

1 (43m 48s):
And you know, if you sent me a DM, just say, ah, you know, EOF or Entrepreneurs On Fire. Now, let me invite you to a zoom call. We'll have a private zoom call just with your people, just with your audience and giving them a context to, to meet some of the other high achievers and most high quality people from your audience. I'd love to get to meet them. They get to meet each other. And maybe I just spend 90 minutes or two or three hours, whatever is natural to have a chat together, Fire Nation, jump on Instagram at Derek Moneyberg. He just spelled it out for you. So hit the rewind 32nd button. If you need to get that one more time. That's Derek Moneyberg, follow him on Instagram, send him a private message, you know, just say, thank you for the content he provided today.

1 (44m 31s):
Let them know that you're interested in jumping on a group, zoom call to meet some other awesome people in Fire Nation and have a conversation with Derek and with some other freethinkers and with some other just really interesting, committed, hardworking individuals that you Fire Nation are and Derek, cause we kind of close up here. We've talked about a lot, a lot of awesome stuff. Like I love how we've talked about his story and his being your story today. I found, I found a fascinating, the evolution of Derek moneybag. I really enjoyed it for a lot of reasons of everything that we talked about. All of the really cool topics and takeaways. What would you say is the number one importance life, lesson, business lesson.

1 (45m 17s):
You really want to make sure Fire Nation walks away with today. You're the CEO of your life. Nobody has work control to change your life. Then you do. And you know, if you fail to take responsibility for those outcomes, if you're going to do not much, then just expect that much. But if you're the type of person that's willing to work, willing to think you surround yourself with other high quality people like that, you could do a hell of a lot more than you think you do. You have a lot more success financially, socially, you have a lot more fun, a lot more freedom in your life than you think you can. If you're willing to get started and take those steps. 100% responsibility, Fire Nation be the CEO of your own life.

1 (45m 57s):
You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with. And hello. You've been hanging out with myself and Derek so far today. So keep up that heat. Make sure you head over to EOFire.com, just enter Derek in the search bar. And the show notes page will pop up with everything that we talked about here today. Best show notes in the biz, timestamps links galore follow Derek on Instagram at Derek money, Berg sending the private DM a thank you a desire to actually go in, to have a conversation with him and other people in Fire Nation. Derek, thank you for sharing your voice, your message, your mission with the world, for that.

1 (46m 38s):
We salute you and we'll catch you on the flip side. Thanks so much for inviting me. Appreciate it.

0 (46m 43s):
There you have it. Fire Nation and today's value bombs are brought to you by Derek Moneyberg. Just remember if you are looking to create your very own podcast, Free Podcast Course, we'll teach you how to create and launch your podcast so you can get your voice, your message, your mission out to the world. Visit free podcast course.com and I will catch you there or I'll catch you on the flip side. According to a survey over two thirds of Americans are planning to travel this summer. This means that airlines restaurants and more have been ramping up their hiring, who do they turn to ZipRecruiter. ZipRecruiter as technology finds qualified candidates for your job and you can easily invite your top choices to apply.

0 (47m 25s):
And right now you can try ZipRecruiter for free at ziprecruiter.com/fire. Ready to finally have repeatable, predictable and scalable operations for your business Trainual can help. Pre-order a free copy of the business playbook, how to document and delegate what you do. So your company can grow beyond you today at trainual.com/fire.