Preparing for the Recession What to Do Now Part 4

Hey, this is Laurel and welcome back. Chris and I are now we're going to talk on our four-part series about the economic shifts. We're going to talk about debt. We're going to talk about financial controls and how do you manage and navigate from the pandemic of 2020 to here in 2025. What are the rules of engagement? We've got tariffs. We've got all sorts of interesting conversations that are going to fix the nation, but we're going to have to go, I'm going to say down before we come back up. So listen in to part four of Chris and my interview. You do trainings where you walk people step-by-step through all this, don't you? A hundred percent. A hundred percent. Because I mean, like, I'm sure there's a lot of people listening in audience. You know, if you're listening, comment below, but you know, you're thinking, oh my God, that's so much stuff. And you just nailed it. I don't have time to know all of that, but you know, you don't need to know all this stuff. You just have to get around the right people and then they will do the bulk of the work. Like, listen, like if you think everything I did with my trust structures and everything I've done was all done by me sitting down with a pencil. No, it was using tax attorneys and professionals that know and have done this hundreds, if not thousands of times that have literally given me bits and pieces. Now I kind of had to construct what I wanted from it, what my needs and goals were, but they gave me the language. They gave me the ideas of this is how we've done it for this family. This is how it worked for that family. So you know, again, when you're hearing all that, I know it's kind of like drinking from a faucet or a fire hose actually, but just know like, all you need to do is get around the right people. They've already done it sometimes thousands of times, and they will just basically show you the way. And then you just need to add your flavor to it, right? Maybe you don't like lemon lime and you want the raspberry flavor. Great. That's all you need to know is what is it that your needs and goals are. Let the experts do the rest of the work. So can you just talk a little bit about how you've helped people navigate this difficult landscape of trust and planning and leaving proper legacies that 1% of the people that are prepared, how have you done that? Well, through all the books and the work that I've done, but the big one was in the fall of 2022 is when we did this three-day legacy workshop. We filmed it. We did a three-year process, and again, not really a program, a process. So we did three days with all five of those team members. Everybody met them. We dug deep. We started filling out these journalist vaults. The information needed in a vault. And then a year later, we did another review. So I'm really your advocate, your educator. Talk to your family. Talk about the differences in the family. Talk about the trust structures. What's the best structure to hold it together that it doesn't fall apart? Because again, you leave the kids the mess, what ends up happening majority of the time too, the kids all start fighting and end up in litigation because they don't want the land. They don't want this. They want cash. They want to just go buy the Lamborghini or the new car. If you have those kinds of kids, I mean, again, stage it to be successful while you're alive. I build any of this, if you're not going to do it right. I mean, just for your ego, that's an interesting idea. But if you're really going to do it with mindfulness and purpose, then you are involved. So I work with them really as their advocator. And it's really, I've grown into that role more. I started more as a financial coach and then more of a mentor. And now I have a whole army of coaches, a whole army of financial experts. I stay the educator and not licensed intentionally because I can talk freely. Absolutely. Broker-dealer scripts without all the restrictions around me. Dr. Phil actually helped me a lot when he taught me that TV is 100% entertainment. Don't be mesmerized by anything that's educational about it. So I just knew that that's who I was going to be. And I love the education part. And again, I'm going to do it. I love this part of my life. And I have other things. I'm in real estate. I'm in gas and oil, cannabis. I'm just getting ready to buy a bunch of water rights in June. So I do a lot of other businesses because I love them, but this is my core. And I love helping families get it right because it's heartbreaking. And for those of you that are out there just listening and going, well, I'll get around to it. Like Chris said, our teams will do a lot for you. Mine will be the conversation and having you make some decisions as quickly as you can make them. And then like he said, the teams of people, we have teams of paralegals. They're going to put all these documents together. They're going to make sure it's notarized, your I's are dotted, your T's are crossed and that the documents really get in there. Because you know, those 99 cent store or those online portals, you don't even have any help. You don't even know if you're clicking the right button. You don't even know the difference between revocable and irrevocable trust or annihilate trust or non-depletion trust. Like you don't have enough knowledge to make those decisions. I actually won't make those decisions for you either. I'm just going to educate you on the pros and cons. And then the lawyers and the legal compliance teams will actually help you make those decisions. And then they'll do the work. You've just got to be in the purposefulness of I want this kind of life and I need to get it organized. Let's pivot a little bit. I want to talk about something that I think is on most people's minds today. And that is, you know, where we're at in this economic cycle. And you know, people are starting to really feel the pinch. I mean, we talk to hundreds and hundreds of people every single month. I'm seeing it frontline. You know, credit card debt tells a story. If you look at statistics, we're at the highest credit card debt we've ever been at. Well over a trillion dollars in credit card debt. And now we're starting to see those delinquencies creep in, starting to see the defaults come up. I mean, the charts don't lie. The data's all there. We are entering an interesting time, which is weird because just a few short years ago, going back to like when you got a road, but you know, when the pandemic hit savings rates were going up at that time and debts were going down. And then when the world opened back up, everybody went out and started spending like it's 1999, like the world's ending tomorrow. Well, I feel like we're there again, but now when we're talking about all this legacy, I feel like that fits more of an affluent client. Somebody that's already got a legacy already got the stuff in motion, but what about the people that are living paycheck to paycheck buried in debt? And they're seeing everything that's unfolding in the economy, wondering, Oh my God, how much worse can it get? I definitely tell you, it can get a lot worse than it more than likely will. So how are you talking to people about the current state of the economy, what they should be doing, how they should be preparing? Because listen, for people like me, you, and a bunch of the other folks listening to this podcast, it's going to be an amazing opportunity because listen, during a recession, during a declining economy, everything goes on sale. Things become cheaper. Things become more readily available. You can get more talent out there because it just opens it all up. The floodgates, I guess, break open. But for other people, they just feel trapped right now. And I've been doing a lot of work in our webinars and all the stuff we do of preparing people for what's going to happen and how to just be on the right side of it so that it can be an opportunity. I know I've lived through many recessions as a financial advisor. I was always on the wrong side of it. Always a buck short and a day late. And this time I'm not going to be there. And I want to take as many people along the ride of being on the right side of it where you're ready for it. And it does look like an opportunity instead of just a tragedy. How are you looking at this? Well, I want to add a few things to that too. I mean, the amount of people who took out PPPs, EIDLs and took money, which I mean, I'm a fan of the EIDLs. I mean, that was 3% money and 30 year notes. Are you kidding? I said, get as much as you can and then use that in arbitrage and in debt and use it to make money. Use it as an absolute benefit. The problem is most people don't understand debt, right? Let's break it down. Debt's the cost of money. You're either on the right side of that equation or you're on the wrong side of that equation. I don't believe in total debt elimination. I think it's debt management. And where I focus most of my clients getting through this is they have to make more money. And it's not just a job. So it's not get a second job, third job. It's not the Susie Orman talk. It's what's the part of your- Thank you for bringing that up because that is what Susie Orman tells people. No, you're not going into job land. You're actually going to become an entrepreneur. So you control your money, your upside, because as an entrepreneur, you have an unlimited upside, right? In most employment jobs, you're in a fixed income and you don't have fixed potential. So I go after what can you do to create more with your life and create more money and then not go pay off your debt, which is what most people do. They make it, they spend it, meaning pay off their debt. So I want you to make it, invest it so you get the compounding power starting as early as you can, as fast as you can. We'll manage the debt. So I help them get over 500, I know you probably have the same resources, to get 0% debt. So we help them restructure it. We don't go through debt elimination programs or debt reconciliation programs like the National Debt Institute. I mean, all those things are scams. I mean, in my opinion, I think they're overrated. The fees are hidden. People don't know anything about it. They just feel like, oh, I just have one low monthly payment now. I don't believe in any of that. I mean, you got to be responsible for all of it. So if you overspent, you overspent. The only reason you have credit card debt is you've outlived your ability to make money in your job. So you put the rest of the life that you want on a credit card. So if you just learn to make the money you want, you're never going to have debt. You can buy what you want. You can have what you want. You can invest what you want. The pattern that I work on the most is make an invest and then manage your debt versus make spend and then one day you'll start investing. You've got to start the investing cycle immediately. And one of the things I said, like in my Make Your Kids Millionaires book is the minute those kids are born, day one, open a Roth IRA and load it up and fund it every year. So that's one of the gifts I do with my kids. I make sure every year since they were born, they were funded. And so the Roths missed a few years during some of our travel, during just being out of the country completely. But for the most part, if you just from zero to 20, if all you did is max out the Roth component and do some really strategic investing, like the probably most strategic one I did is I bought Bitcoin at four and nine in mine and my kids' Roths. A lot of it, a lot of it. And then just between four and nine, just kept buying and buying. And so, I mean, those are well, well, well into six figure accounts. So you can make your kid a millionaire in 20 years by just funding their Roth. That doesn't make them responsible or smart, but you've got to do some stuff. So hope you enjoyed that first of four parts with Chris and I. We're going to keep digging into legacy, wealth building, a wealth warrior, how that actually works. Before we continue on to the second part, I want you to subscribe to our channel. We're here five days a week. If you have any questions, ask a question, make a request, go to askworld.com and we're there 24 seven. We'd love to help you. The last thing I want to do before we wrap up this episode one of a four part is give you two tickets to my Millionaire Intensive. Once a month, we do an event that's all day long, 10 o'clock to six o'clock Pacific, where you learn about how to be a millionaire, how to market, how to get a funnel, and then how to do a marketplace. How do you actually sell online and make some money? It's been great to have you. Hope you've enjoyed the four parts. I would highly encourage you to go back and bolt them together with your family, listen to them in an entirety, save out about an hour and listen to part one, two, three, and four all in one, and then repeat it a few times. It's going to come together and your opportunity for a legacy from Chris and I is right at the table.