The Hidden Wealth Building Tools The Financial System Doesn't Want You To Know | Ben Oberg DSH #1380

gold i'm a little more uh bullish on silver right now you buy the physical or you buy the i buy the physical i don't buy utfs the reason i buy physical is because i can stack it all up and i can get a line of credit against it i know i have a line of credit against my silver and gold so brilliant because then you could buy more i literally when i say i am my own bank i am my own bank

Okay, guys, got a very interesting story today.

We got Ben here today from $0,000 to $400,000 a month.

Thanks for coming on, man.

Appreciate it.

Thanks for having me, man.

Yeah, I got to hear how you pull that off because that is not an easy number to get to.

I started by losing all of it every month for a very long time.

That's usually how it goes, right?

Yeah, yeah.

I basically,

you know, when I got out of high school, I was just looking at people that were going to college and getting degrees and then coming back and working at Subway.

And I'm like, man, this doesn't make much sense to me.

So, like, is the information in college just not working?

Like, if you're a doctor, lawyer, engineer i get it but i'm like man i i want to own my own business i don't know anybody going to college that's you know learning from successful you know business professors so i just took a minute and i'm like you know one thing i like is cars i'm a huge car fanatic so i ended up going into sales and being in the car business for like four years taught me just the foundation of everything i use today in my business and when i was about 22, I quit.

You know, I didn't have a college degree or not a certificate in in the world.

And so I started out on my own, no money in the bank, a mortgage, a car payment, all the typical, you know, American debt, and just scraped by at a coffee table on a laptop, started my own business.

And then I got into investing and learning from people that were multi-millionaires and billionaires.

But I went from zero to three, $350K a month and lost it, had to build it back from scratch.

I did that twice.

Damn.

I went through three or four lawsuits in business.

And I learned that if you are successful in business and you've got a product or service that that industry wants, they'll just exhaust you in legal fees because they can outspend you.

And so I learned my way around kind of our business legal system.

And I'm like, man, the more I can do with investments and things that are a little bit in my control with less people and less big businesses, the more passive I can create.

the more it's going to have freedom for me.

What did you figure out in the business legal side of things to, I guess, protect yourself better?

Trust, super important.

Have a trust.

Holding companies where they're like non-disclosure states like Wyoming, for example.

LLCs, very important.

Bracketing assets where, you know, if you've got a certain amount of, you don't own anything.

Like Sean doesn't own anything.

On paper, Ben doesn't own anything, right?

It's a business that's owned by another business that owns that stuff.

Because at the end of the day, it's not, you're not trying to screw anybody over.

It's if you are ethical and you hustle and you show up and you get big enough, people will want to fuck with you.

And that's just the truth.

I've dealt with two so far.

And yeah, it's unavoidable.

Dude, I used to think like, I'll just have, like, my lawyer calls me.

He's my lawyer in my phone.

You can't have just my lawyer.

There's like six lawyers now.

You know, you need to allocate like 10, 20%, they say, just to legal.

Literally every month.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Part of the game.

And you have to just go, you know what?

Accept that that is going to be.

something in business because if you let it consume you, it's like, I don't look at lawsuits as a bad thing.

it built my character as long as you're on the good side of it right you can be the defendant you can be the plaintiff but if you're the honest one you're the ethical one you're on the right side of it exactly so you just have to know that that's part of business part of scaling unless you're staying at 30 40 50k a year probably not but you scale you're you're gonna get with yep you could be running a charity you could be mr beast you're gonna get sued absolutely yeah it doesn't matter you could be the nicest guy in the world doesn't matter if you're making a million a month you're getting sued absolutely absolutely that's just part of the game, man.

You just got to smile.

It literally, that's why I smile.

It makes me laugh because it's like, man, there's so much bullshit that I have been through and all at the same time, but you just got to grow.

How'd you bounce back the second time or first time, I guess, too?

Oh, man.

You know,

I'll keep the names and the details out.

But long story short, I had helped a company.

I had a marketing firm, still have it.

And I'd helped

this company scale to about $140,000 a month.

And on stage, in front of 15, 20,000 people, another company took credit for it.

And I asked them immediately after why they approached me and said, we heard you do good work.

And I said, of course you did, because I can just shut all these ads off right now and just turn all the income to zero, but you took credit for it.

You know, it wasn't your work.

I had a cease and desist the next day.

And then they instilled a lot of doubt in my clients.

And I started seeing them drop left to right.

And I went from, like I said, about $350,000 a month to zero.

And about.

If you're building something, doesn't matter if it's a business, a brand, or just a better version of yourself, then you already know.

The work never really stops.

Your brain is always on.

Ideas at 2 a.m., problems at 3, plans at 4.

But here's the truth.

If you never shut down, you're going to crash fast.

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It's not hype.

It's not some trendy sleep hack.

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You take it and 20 to 30 minutes later, you're out.

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Then you wake up clear with no brain fog, no dragging yourself out of bed.

You get your hours in, and you actually feel like you slept.

Sleep isn't optional, it's not self-care, it's strategy.

If you're not getting it right, you're leaving energy, focus, and money on the table.

Sambrosa helps me sleep, it helps me execute.

That's the only reason I talk about it.

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Out six six weeks, I had to fire like 20 people.

And like, I'm 27 or something at that point.

So, like, I'm like, just sitting here, like, dude, I'm doing good now.

My lifestyle is becoming good.

I'm able to start achieving some of the goals I want.

And that just gets swept out.

And right during COVID, too.

So it's like, man, like everything's shut down.

It's, it's hard to scale.

So I ended up ironically, you're marketing for all these different clients in all these different industries.

And two of them happen to be financial advisors.

And so just out of the necessity to have to adapt and overcome, I'm like, well, it's hard to get results for everybody in all different directions in all different industries when you're marketing.

So why don't we just niche down into an industry?

So we ended up working with financial advisors.

And this is like five years ago at this point.

And in that five-year period of time, I got really good results for advisor one.

Advisor one referred me to advisor two.

And then my company went and started working with a lot of advisors.

So we kind of snowballed that back in.

But I, looking back on it, I'm really glad all of it happened because if I hadn't started working with financial advisors, and some of them are great and some of them aren't, I wouldn't have been able to see how little they actually know about building wealth,

creating income, paying less taxes.

They don't.

They don't know anything about that.

So I, in one hand, am marketing and generating appointments for what would be considered America's top 5% of financial advisors,

cumulatively managing billions of dollars.

These are my clients.

And in another hand, I'm learning from guys that are absolute billionaires in assets where they pay way less in taxes and they have way more leverage and they're not waiting until they're 65 to retire.

And so it kind of gave me that contrast to go, well, I'm not going to listen to any of these people about my money advice.

I'm going to go over here.

And so I got the agency back up to making multiple six figures a month.

But, you know, I didn't invest for quite a while because, you know, you could probably relate to this.

If you're making 400, 500 a million a month and you're looking at passive income where you're generating 10, 11, 15% a year, you're like, well, I'll just keep earning my income.

Right.

Yeah.

And so I'm like, but these guys over here are doing 25, 30, 40%.

And their effective returns are much higher because they're in assets where they're paying less taxes.

And that's the problem here is like, we learn the stock market, we learn mutual funds, we learn a little bit about crypto because that's all easy to access.

Maybe fix and flips, like that's the mainstream information, but that mainstream shit doesn't help you create wealth.

It gets you where everybody else is.

So the stuff that I started diving into, I realized, well, I was very fortunate because I just really happened to network with the right people.

And When I start working with people, it's like, how do they treat people?

Do they show up on time?

Can I trust them?

Do they do what they say they're going going to do do they make excuses if if they up are they accountable and i'm like okay all these people i'm starting to work with meet all those metrics and so i was able to establish really good relationships with a lot of top dogs in real estate and oil um and institutional grade financial products that most people don't even know exist and so i learned a lot of these strategies started implementing them myself and um did really well with them wow and it's impressive man yeah you're providing a really valuable service absolutely not only are you helping them save tax, but a lot of people are happy with 5%, 10%, you know.

Right.

But that shouldn't be the norm, especially with inflation and everything going on these days.

You might lose money if you only make 5% a year.

Well, that's the thing.

So it's like, look, if you, if you go into, let's talk about what, what we're taught, right?

Go to school, go to college, right?

Get a job.

And if you want to go to college for the experience, I get it.

And then networking, I get it.

But most 18, 19, 20 year olds aren't thinking about networking, right?

Thinking about partying, girls, guys, whatever, right?

If you're an athlete, you got to go to school.

If you're a doctor, you have to go to school.

But it's the only form of debt collateralized by something that doesn't exist, your future job.

You have no idea what you're going to earn.

$2 trillion of student loan debt, largest debt of the United States, or largest asset, excuse me, of the United States government.

And so you graduate, and now you're going to go become an employee with benefits where you get a 401k or an IRA or whatever.

And so I look at this stuff and I'm like, here's the thing.

Smart money moves.

Institutional grade investors, the big, big, big companies, they move their money around that is dependent on economic cycles.

You go into a traditional IRA, you're in it from, let's just say, 20 years old till you are 60 years old.

That's 40 years.

And in America, on average, in a 40-year period of time, we're going to have six recessions.

So why are you keeping your money locked up in something with all this red tape, riding out these recessions when you can't multiply that investment, you can't increase it, you can't leverage it.

So you go into a traditional IRA, 7% annual return, let's just say you put in $10,000 a year, you're going to have $1.2 million after investing in it for 40 years.

Now, if you do not live in a state with income taxes and you go to collect that, you're going to pay about 37% in income tax.

So you've got $700,000.

that you've actually collected against your 400.

So you've netted 300,000, but because of inflation, as you mentioned, averaging 2% to 3%

historically on an annual basis, it's been higher in recent years,

your purchase power is like 160K.

So

you're going to deploy money for four decades, for half of your life, and get 160 grand after it.

And like I sit here, and I'll go over all of this in a little bit here.

But like, before I do anything with my money, I'm making almost 11% on it.

Before I even invest it, insured, I can't lose it.

I can't lose it.

And very, very minimal taxes as well.

Wow.

And the reason I know most people don't know about what we'll get into here is the type of stuff I use.

There's only about 30 financial advisors in the entire United States that are even allowed to sell or offer the type of financial products I use.

Wow.

So you've got to work with out of the hundreds of thousands of financial advisors.

I get disputes all the time with them.

They're like, what you say is a lie.

It doesn't exist.

I'm like, you're ignorant.

You literally do not know.

So that's the crazy shit.

Why is it so gay, KPG Bank, to only 30 have access?

Well, you know, that's a great question.

And I don't even know if I know that answer, but I could tell you this.

So I use

a whole life insurance policy.

And everybody's got this big thing about insurance policies.

They're like, oh, no, they don't make sense.

Use term insurance.

I only use IULs, whatever.

Everybody's been very misinformed about how insurance works.

95% of policies sold in the United States are term insurance or they're what's called an IUL index universal life policy or they're a VUL variable universal life policy and they have hidden insurance costs.

Only about 5% are what's called a cash value whole life policy.

And only about 30 advisors in the entire United States can actually provide institutional grade whole life policies, which are what a lot of banks and institutions buy, not regular everyday people like you and me.

So what I do is I'm like step one how do i pay as little taxes as possible and that's not the only thing i look at because if you are in an investment that has a very high return but it has some tax implications it's not just taxes you want to look at like how long is your money locked up is it liquid can you uh manipulate around market cycles so you don't have to be part of them right can you leverage them can you lower taxes can you accelerate the cycle of how you're investing so you can keep repeating and so like my steps are one, I got to be able to be more tax savvy, lower taxes.

Okay, so how do I do that?

If I'm an employee, there's like a book that's about this big that you get to operate out of.

Here's the codes in the IRS that you can use.

The minute you start investing under a business, an LLC, okay, and running your expenses, your costs through there, you have a whole different play of tax rules.

And this is where a lot more deductions and things like depreciation and cost segregation and all these huge, huge terms that that sound confusing, but really aren't, you get to play in that rulebook.

So it's like step one, I got to get in a more tax-friendly manner of investing.

Step two,

some people call it building your own bank.

I use two assets to stockpile and I borrow against them.

So, well, one of them is what I call whole life insurance.

I use something specifically called a HEC-V policy.

It stands for high early cash value.

Now,

a really, really, really good carrier, which has a credit rating higher than the United States Treasury, all right, so highly trusted, and older than Wells Fargo, Bank of America, Chase.

This is the kind of stuff that Ray Kroc used, the McDonald's, right?

JCPenney, Walt Disney to expand like the Disney portfolio and all the real estate that Disney owned.

He would use whole life policies that were institutional grade.

And so they give you two things.

They give you what's called a guaranteed return, and that usually varies like 2% to 4%.

It's not anything crazy.

Nobody's happy about that.

But then they have a dividend so long as the company stays profitable.

So the carrier I have has never had less than a 6% dividend in the last 50 years.

Damn.

So I have 4% that's guaranteed to me.

And that dividend, since it's technically not guaranteed, even though, again, they've never failed to pay out less than 6% in 50-something years.

I'm getting 10% before I do anything.

It's insured.

I can't lose it.

So I buy very little insurance.

I don't give a shit shit about the insurance.

I don't care so much about the death benefit.

I care how can I use it as a wealth building tool while I'm alive.

And so HEC V policy stands for high early cash value.

Let's just say somebody dumps $10,000 in.

It means the majority is going to go towards cash value.

The minority is going to go towards insurance.

And if I have a 4% guaranteed return, I'm going off with the policy I have.

and a 6% dividend.

Mine's actually 6.4 this year.

I'm making 10.4% before I've done anything.

I'm going to put it back into the cash value, compound the interest, right?

And I let that build up.

And then at a certain point, I go, okay, I'm going to get a line of credit against this.

Interest rates right now on houses are 6%, 7%.

The interest rate on my line of credit is 4%.

So I have cash growing.

I don't keep my money in the bank.

It's growing at 10.4%.

year after year after year, but I can borrow against it at 4%.

So before I've done anything, I'm already making 10.4, right?

And then I go into assets that provide me cash flow, that have very little tax implications, and that allow me to pay that line of credit back and repeat the process, keep the rest of the money.

So I use, again, step one, pay less taxes.

Step two, I use a HEC-V policy.

And I don't get anything for saying this.

This is, I'm not an advisor.

I'm not insurance licensed.

Like, this is just the shit that I do.

Yeah.

Right.

And I learned this from a guy that owns 60-something rental properties, manages 600 million in assets, and is one of America's top 0.5% recognized financial advisors.

Like big deal, dude.

Yeah.

Right.

Most advisors, average financial advisor makes $110,000 a year.

I will put more money into silver and gold this week than they make in a year.

That's crazy.

So it's like, and I'm not saying that as an egotistical thing.

It's like, why do we listen to people?

that don't have money on what to do with our money.

It's ironic, right?

It's ridiculous.

In everything, it's you listen to the guy in the gym that weighs 420 pounds about what you should do for a workout.

You listen to your parents about all their opinions of what they think you should do with your life, but they, they're not in your head knowing what, what your goals and what your ambitions are, right?

So I sit here and I'm like, okay, I stack this money in this policy and then I go into gold and silver.

And these are the two things that I have found I can get lines of credit against for very low rates.

And the third step is what am I going to go into now that provides me cash flow and allows me to pay that line of credit back?

Because I don't want to make this too confusing for people.

Imagine you get to a point where you've got $100,000 saved up in that life policy, for example, and you have a line of credit against it.

You can go into things like oil and energy wells, that cash flow 25 to 35% a year.

And you're already making 10 in that policy, right?

So this is where that 35, 45% annual returns come in.

Very easy to pay that line of credit back very quickly, get all your money out of the deal.

And now anything is an infinite return after that point.

You have no money in the deal.

And what I have learned is that if you were to just study IRS tax codes and laws, which most CPAs don't know what I'm saying, right?

You would find that real estate and investing in oil, not the stock market, but actual wells, pumping oil and natural gas out of the ground, have the biggest tax deductions out of any asset class in the entire tax code.

Wow.

So, I just sit here and I invest in real estate.

And you can do this whether you want to be like that active investor that's buying single families or duplexes.

I'm busy.

I'm a business owner like you.

So, I go into

funds that I trust and I invest passively alongside them.

I pocket the cash flow, pay the line of credit back, keep the rest, and then I repeat.

I get all of those tax benefits extended to me, write-offs on the cash flow.

If

I go into a deal and there's like a big exit, like say I invest in an apartment complex alongside somebody that is in charge of it, I don't do anything.

I just give them money.

They pay me a check every month.

When they decide to sell that apartment complex, I get a big payday.

I can 1031 that into the next deal, right?

Defer the tax.

But you also get what's called depreciation.

So let's just say like a business has depreciatable assets.

The lights in this room, the fixtures in here, this table, that mic, this mic,

all the stuff that's on this table right here, you can depreciate.

So if you've got $100,000 a year of passive income, but you have items that the IRS is saying will wear out at a certain point or will lose value, you can take that value loss right now against that passive income.

So if I just, let's say I have $100,000 a year of passive income and I have $60,000 of depreciation, I can only be taxed on $40,000 now.

And since it's passive income, that rate's only 20% anyways.

Damn, I need to start doing that.

So it's incredible, dude.

And I have a financial advisor.

He never talked to me about this.

Doesn't talk about this stuff.

And I pay them 6K a month.

Yeah, so stop that.

Yeah.

$72,000 a year, man.

Yeah.

Yeah.

No, I don't.

No, we'll talk about that after this then.

So like I go into that and then I go into oil where like I love oil.

Oil is so cool because with oil, you have what's called tangible drilling costs and you have what's called intangible drilling costs, IDC deductions.

So, at the beginning of the year, if you're like, all right, my name's Sean, I want to invest in an oil well.

You could put, let's just say you put $100,000 into an oil well.

If that oil well is already permitted and it's already drilling, it's already pumping oil out of the ground, you can write off as high as 80% of that investment capital, right?

So, that investment, you get rid of almost 100 grand and lower your tax basis to just that remaining 20.

Right.

And then when that oil well starts pumping oil out of the ground and paying you cash flow, there's what's called a depletion allowance, which means your tax basis is only 85 cents for every dollar that comes out.

Right.

And then you have what's called tangible drilling costs, which are depreciated over a seven-year period of time.

So the cash flow that you get.

from participating in oil, you also pay very minimal taxes on.

And a lot of people don't know, but when you participate in an oil investment like that, you can also 1031 the exit into another oil deal, or you can go back into real estate.

You can go back and forth.

And so what I do is I look at oil as an investment that a lot of times is good at the beginning of the year because you get the most write-off on your capital that you're investing.

And then real estate.

A lot of times you see people make decisions before the end of the year where they're trying to 1031 and stuff like that.

So those are the assets that I go into because I'm like, look, I'm going to build my own bank using whole life insurance.

It's dividend paying, high early cash value, institutional grade.

I don't want something from Prime Merica or an inferior carrier.

I want to pay less taxes, step one.

I want to become my own bank by building up value and a cash value life policy or gold and silver, which I can talk about.

And then I use that, I borrow against them.

So I'm holding these assets that are going to continue going up in value every time they do i increase my line of credit as they continue growing wow and then i just keep repeating oil really real estate oil real estate and so the amount of leverage is crazy and it's not all of this you know is maybe something that somebody needs to like rewind and go back into but again i keep it simple i work very very very hard i'm busy all the time i've got a quality of life i you know other things outside of business that are important to me so it's just a matter of learning having the proximity to the information having having the right mentors, and having the opportunities to go into.

And you get that policy set up, you get good CPAs that help you pay less taxes.

These are all people I have.

And then you start going into these investments completely passively.

You don't have to own real estate.

Like I, I own very little real estate.

I have a little bit, but I'm passive.

I invest in funds that are like high rent growth areas, that are red markets, that are landlord friendly, where tenants have to pay their rent, you know, and I just pocket that cash flow.

I do the same with oil.

I'm not out there being like the landman like that show that is super popular right now.

I just invest alongside people I've identified that are the top industry experts that I've done business with for several years and know them, trust them, have seen their results.

Brilliant.

You know, partnering with the right people.

Yeah.

And another one is like golden, you have gold or silver?

You know, I have gold.

I don't have, actually, I have one silver watch that counts.

Okay.

You can melt it down.

Silver.

Right.

So, you know, if we look at gold and silver, it's really interesting.

So,

you know, when we had 1792, we had this act called the Coinage Act of 1792.

And it basically set the gold to silver ratio at 15 to 1, which basically meant that for every 15 ounces of silver, that's equivalent to one ounce of gold.

The prices are related, right?

If you go back to biblical times, you're literally talking 10 to 16 to 1.

If you go to Roman times, you're seeing that 10 to 12, 16 ounces of silver was equivalent to one ounce of gold.

Like, I don't know what they were buying, like hay or horses or spears or whatever during the Roman Empire, but that was the ratio.

So for thousands of years, it's remained that.

And then in 1834, there's the Coinage Act of 1834.

In the United States, we regulate the ratio at 16 to 1.

And that stays in play.

all the way into about the 80s.

And in the early 80s, we have a recession, and then this ratio starts separating.

We see gold gradually go up, up, up, up, up and hit $3,300 an ounce, right?

While silver, you know, silver's been as high as like $50 an ounce.

Right now it's about $3,3 an ounce.

But the point is that ratio is now like one to 100.

100 ounces of silver is equivalent to the price of one ounce of gold,

but it makes no sense.

You have to look at 2,000 years and prior of gold to silver and you see only in the last 50 years has that ratio gotten way skewed.

And so what that symbolizes, you could say that silver is immensely undervalued or gold is way, way, way too high, right?

Then you have to look at other economics.

Only 28%

of silver that is mined comes from silver mines.

We have extracted all of the high-grade shallow deposits out of the earth that are easy to get to.

and that don't cost much to actually mine.

And now silver is mainly extracted from the earth as a byproduct of like a zinc, copper, or a gold mine.

And we look at what's called the ASIC cost, all-in sustainable cost of mining.

That's about $28 to mine an ounce of silver.

So only about a $5 margin,

$33.

Gold, the all-in sustainable cost is about $1,350.

So it could literally go down to $1,500, $1,600.

You know, it could afford to.

What's it at right now?

It's at $3,300 an ounce.

Holy crap.

Yeah.

So we look at, we have depleted what's easy to get to with silver.

We have to go after lower ore that is farther into the ground, which emits more carbon dioxide and emissions into the air.

So there's some mining difficulties with that when it comes to, you know, going green and being environmentally conscious.

Silver is the best conductor of heat out of any metal, better than copper, out of anything that's ever been found.

We need it in solar panels, need it in medical equipment, need it in vehicles, need it in batteries now.

And

it's literally the most undervalued asset that I see right now.

So we're reaching this point where it literally has to go up in price.

So stock up on some silver.

Stock up on some silver.

And what I do is I just stock up on silver.

I stock up on gold.

I'm a little more bullish on silver right now.

You buy the physical or you buy the

physical.

I don't buy UTS.

And the reason I buy physical is because I can stack it all up and I can get a line of credit against it.

No way I have a line of credit against my silver and gold.

So brilliant because then you could buy more.

I literally, when I say I am my own bank, I am my own bank.

I have a bunch of silver and gold here.

Got a line of credit against it.

That's interest only.

So it's not like a car payment where I got to pay, you know, a thousand bucks a month.

It's interest only.

And then as long as what I invest in makes more than that interest with my whole life insurance or with this gold and silver, then I'm cash flowing.

So smart.

And we have to look at what

do people go to?

What does the smart money go into to hedge inflation?

You've had inflation very high in the last few years.

In 2008, gold went up 25%.

During COVID, it went up 24%.

In the last 18 months, gold's up 65%.

In the last 18 months, silver's up 40%.

Well, there is 15 to 17 kilograms of silver in a Tomahawk missile.

You know, all the military equipment we have.

Silver is very much needed in industry.

We've got a supply deficit.

In 2023, I think Mexico mined 23 or 24% of the global production of silver.

If it's not something to worry about, why do countries like Russia, which is the sixth largest holder of silver, they have the sixth most amount of deposits?

that they can extract out of the ground.

If that's the case, then why do they plan on buying $532 million of silver at a federal level, at a country level in the next three years?

So all of these things, like I come very much from fact.

I'm not that conspiracy theorist that's, you know, this way or this way or Democrat, Republican, whatever.

It's like, I come from well-researched fact.

What I'm saying is just all facts you can go research and go, oh, yeah, no, that's, that is true.

Yeah.

So I sit here and go, I think silver is great.

It's hedged against inflation since the beginning of time.

And between that and that life policy,

I'm my own bank, man.

I love that combination.

Absolutely.

Yeah, we'll definitely see how it plays out.

But silver sounds like it's pretty safe for the most part.

I can't see it crashing.

No, no,

I don't really think so.

Yeah, gold, you really could, but gold's also what the U.S.

government recognizes is the only tier one asset of the United States government.

But there's a lot of stuff happening because when we went away from the gold standard in 1971, we became what we refer to as the petrodollar.

And we were supposed to be the dollar that you purchase energy with, oil and natural gas and different things like that.

And when we decided, hey, we're not going to allow the Keystone XL pipeline, we're going to shut it down, that pipeline is designed to carry 600,000 to 700,000 barrels of oil per day through it.

And when we were, this is not a political statement.

This is just a fact.

During the Biden administration, we withdrew from Afghanistan.

No Karen's on here can argue that with me.

We literally withdrew.

Karen, we moved.

We left, right?

And when that happened,

we left the Persian Gulf unprotected.

And the Persian Gulf is what is on the other side of Saudi Arabia.

And you've got countries in the Middle East that don't agree with Saudi Arabia, that don't like Saudi Arabia, that want their oil.

So when we seize our pipeline, our operations of this very big pipeline that already existed, and then we withdraw from Afghanistan.

It tells countries like Saudi Arabia, it tells the world we're not the petrodollar anymore.

Combined with going green and all these solar panel initiatives and everything like that, they're like, all right, so the U.S.

is going back on that.

So, have you heard of what's called the BRICS nations?

BRICS, yeah.

Right.

And so now it's not just Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa, it's Ethiopia, it's Senegal wanting to go into Indonesia, just joined.

All these different countries, 24 more have formula.

And they make up 33% of the world's gross domestic product.

They've now figured out how to get rid of the SWIFT banking system, which is our Western system of transacting country to country.

And they just opened up their payment system to non-BRICS members.

So all of that combined with...

countries like India stocking up on a record amount of silver, Russia, one of the biggest leaders in BRICS, China getting gold and silver.

Meanwhile, we don't see that in the news here.

Not at all.

I didn't even know this was going on.

Not at all.

So it's like,

I think the lesson to learn is that smart money moves.

It doesn't trust its financial advisor that charges them 1% annually or $6,000 a month

to make them 7%, 8% on their money, 10% on their money, keep them in capital gains territory, keep them in assets that are locked up.

All I do, I don't make it complicated.

I look at what does history say about

how gold moves, how silver moves, how the stock market moves.

I tend to do less in stocks and more in hard assets because

they can be more controlled.

I can see what's going on.

I can understand them more.

I get the tax leverage and I'm able to call my own shots here and keep it passive.

So I don't, I don't know how much you work, dude, or how many hours you put in.

Good amount.

I'd say 60 a week.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

And it's like, you got to stay mentally healthy, emotionally healthy.

If you're managing a relationship and you need time for yourself, like, I don't want to make it a job of investing.

So you learn this stuff and you go, gosh, it's not that complicated.

Absolutely.

Man, this is all really good stuff to know.

I'm going to have to switch to you for my advisory.

So you believe the financial system is designed to keep people poor, basically.

A million percent.

A million percent.

When you become a financial advisor, you've got, you know, Series 6, Series 65, all these licenses.

if you look at what these licenses are it's you need by law to become what's called an ria a registered investment advisor if you manage more than a hundred million dollars if not you're what's called an iar an investment advisor representative this is if you're actually managing money and not just selling insurance products like annuities and life insurance and things like that and it's all regulated but if you look at stocks, bonds, mutual funds, annuities, life insurance, that is like this much of the whole financial world, investments.

There's private equity, there's business events, there's venture capitalism,

there's private deals that people don't even know about.

Those are the ones that you want to know about that actually create wealth.

It's not this, in my book, I refer to it as the circle of bullshit.

But if

you're listening to people that make 110K a year on average about what to do with your money, that don't have any personal wealth.

that pay high taxes, that still earn their income at a very high level, that don't really have any investments that are paying off.

And they're talking to you about retirement and building towards that.

It doesn't make sense to me.

I just don't personally believe in the concept of retirement.

I believe like what, what made you smile as a little kid?

And people lose sight of that.

And I'm all about how do you do more of that and truly love what you do in life, live an aligned lifestyle.

Because if you're...

If you're doing what you love doing,

the energy is going to follow that and the money will come.

I don't believe in, I've done the grinding, I've done the not a lying, I've done the get sued and climb up the wrong ladder, you know, against the wrong building.

And I've been through the balancing relationships, having to juggle that, dealing with mental health and trying to stay just, you know, emotionally well, physically well, balancing the business, showing up for, you know, the people on your payroll, making sure that they all can put food on their table.

Like it's a lot to juggle as an entrepreneur.

So the last thing I want to do

with all of that hard-earned money is pay more taxes, which for the most part, I think taxes are just legalized theft.

I mean, look at where it's going.

Yeah.

That's been getting exposed recently.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's, it's ridiculous, dude.

I'm not here to help the government buy sushi and cake ups.

You know, like we work freaking hard.

And this whole, you know, tax the rich and stuff, you know, I didn't grow up wealthy by any means.

I have a very middle-class mindset, dad, amazing work ethic, phenomenal with work ethic, you know, and I learned a lot from him.

And mom kind of checked, I don't, neither of them know what I do, right?

I had to figure everything out myself.

So I know what it's like to have nothing.

I know what it's like to have to decide, are you buying dog food or are you feeding yourself this week?

And I've been in that situation multiple times.

I know what it's like to have nobody in your corner, nobody believe in you, nobody know the thoughts in your head.

All the entrepreneurs that have started from nothing and leveled up, they know what I'm talking about.

So

to say tax the rich more,

I don't 100% believe in that as a blanket statement.

They can afford to be taxed more, sure.

But are you the one that's employing hundreds of thousands of people?

Are you the one that's creating those opportunities so you can live and have a good quality of life?

So I think people need to look.

a little bit more into that.

And I think about, you know, police officers and firefighters and military and service workers and people that just slave their ass off 50, 60, 70, 80 hours a week for low pay, they should be able to keep as much as they can and have the actual means to invest smartly, not with this average information.

I think it's a disease to get to 65 and go, now I can enjoy life.

I think if these people knew they could get exposed to better strategies to create wealth a little bit more efficiently at a little bit higher return in a way where they don't have to go back to school or make a job out of it.

They go, holy shit, this is time, money, energy.

I can give back to my family,

get to working on cars in my garage or riding dirt bikes or going hunting, whatever it is they want to do, you know?

And

we just don't do that.

We distract people with the news and about bullshit that usually doesn't even exist.

Absolutely.

I agree.

Well, the compound is crazy because I know people listening to this will be like, well, 20% a year versus 10% a year is not a lot of money.

Right.

But when you compound that, it ends up being millions of dollars over time.

Right.

It's, it's huge.

And I mean, you could take out a compound interest calculator.

You know, like if I put,

you know, $250,000 into a whole life policy and the cool thing is I can just contribute to it once or twice and just let it grow.

And then all the profits just cycle back in.

That thing compounds, you know, four or five X in return after only 15, 20 years.

Yeah.

But people might look at that and go, it doesn't excite me.

It doesn't excite me either.

It's how you can leverage it by going into assets that create you more of a return.

Like we go back to what I said, I'm making 10% on my policy before I do shit.

Right.

So if you put a million there, you're making 100K.

Sure.

Yes.

And you could put in millions if you want to.

You can have multiple policies.

You know, you don't just have to have one.

You can have policies on your kids.

All this stuff.

And it's like, if I'm making 10% there when the average savings is making 0.43 losing to inflation, I'm insured, right?

I can't lose it.

It's gone one day.

And then.

Is it insure the full amount or is it 250K like FDIC?

It depends on the policy.

Okay.

Yeah.

It depends on the policy.

And again, what's guaranteed is that 2% to 4% guaranteed return normally.

And then that dividend is, again, non-guaranteed.

But if you look at...

carriers like Mass Mutual, Northwestern Mutual, Penn, New York Life, Guardian, these are some of the like top five carriers, I would say.

Their dividends have been like 5%, 6, six, seven percent, as high as nine percent in certain periods.

And so you combine that with the guaranteed return, like there's times where you're making more than 10%.

But let's just look at that.

Like oil deals that I look at are doing 18 to 28 percent a year.

So if I'm making 10 and 18, that's 28.

Or if I'm making 10 and 28, that's 38%.

But then you have to look at what is the effective return in that compared to an annuity that all these advisors sell these retired people that they have to pay income taxes on.

Right.

Like the effect of what you keep in your pocket is much higher because the taxes are so much lower.

You know, so when I say 30, 40% returns, it's, it's real.

Yeah.

Because people don't factor in the income tax, which is like 30, 40%, and depending on the state you're in, right?

Right.

Absolutely.

Damn.

You mentioned bricksellers.

So are you confident in the U.S.

dollar over a lifetime?

I think we still have the world's strongest economy.

I think that we've got a president in here that has more testicles than he is a politician.

I think that he negotiates deals that

other people were afraid of.

Running a country is like running a business.

It's not, you don't want to go start wars, but you're not, your first goal is not to make friends.

Right.

It's like you set boundaries.

It's just like a relationship.

Set boundaries.

Hey, you cheated on me.

I didn't like that.

We're not together anymore.

Boundary.

Yeah, tariffs.

Like, yeah, tariffs.

And, you know, you go back to,

you know, the founding of America.

We were founded as a tax-free nation.

And it was only the 16th Amendment, which came around in 1913

that made it a thing that income taxes exist.

Wow.

So you're changing 112 years of taxation in the United States.

People don't get that.

Leave it out of the history books.

Like, I could debate about this stuff all day long, you know?

And so, do I believe in the U.S.

dollar?

I believe that we're the strongest economy.

I believe that we're the strongest nation.

I believe when we are weak, other countries see that.

And that's when they capitalize and try to help make us weaker.

And I believe that we're probably going to move into more of a hard asset backed economy.

We see oil production.

We see Trump wanting to drill more.

We see the World Reserve Banks.

And in 2022 through current, our Federal Reserve Banks have stocked up on more gold than any other time in history.

So just that's a fact.

It cannot be denied.

That's a fact.

Does that mean we're going to a gold-backed dollar?

I don't know, but it means that we have bought a record-breaking amount of gold.

But

why is it that like one in 10 people actually own gold or silver?

It's that low.

It's that low.

Wow.

You know, I think it actually might be one in 12.

It's the institutions and the banks that own gold and silver.

Why is it that the institutions have the institutional-grade cash value whole life policies?

And 95% of people watching this, if they have a policy, it's not that.

It's not a speculation.

It's just a fact.

That's crazy.

Yeah.

I think the tariff stuff scared a lot of people, but now you're seeing all these trade deals this week we just had one with china i think yesterday right uh there was someone else last week uh uk maybe yeah and uh the economy seems to be picking up again and you have to look at like um building materials like this building we're in a lot of costs are lumber copper aluminum big costs and we get a lot of lumber from canada there's a ton of forest up there a lot less people there's been a lot less deforestation So we have exemptions on lumber tariffs.

People think it's just a blanket tariffs on everything.

And I don't think they understand, you know, like there's been some word thrown around, no income taxes on people that make less than $200,000 a year.

If that actually happened, if that happened, and I believe that the tariffs would support that and allow that, create that opportunity.

If you're watching this and you're making $150,000 a year, that's 30 grand more in your pocket.

Wow.

30 grand.

So if your living expenses remain the same, you have $30,000 more to invest with annually.

In a short period of time, you can fuck up a lot of wealth creation strategy with 30K a year.

You can do quite a bit.

And you can turn that into a million over time.

You can do quite a bit.

And I don't think people understand that.

So,

you know, and I think oil is another really good thing.

We're at like $60,000 to $70 a barrel right now, which is a little bit lower.

But here's a secret.

Blanket statements in investing are not good.

Blanket statements is what gets you an average return.

It's what I call American mediocrity.

It's part of why I wrote the book this way, right?

And

if you go into oil and you don't know just basic understanding about it, and you were to go into an investment right now in oil where they're just pumping oil out of the ground, okay?

It's $60 to $70 a barrel.

That's what's happening.

But right now,

natural gas is up.

And so while oil I believe will probably stay around $60 to $70 a barrel for the next three years-ish, natural gas is up.

So, partners that I work with, I work with a guy that's been drilling oil since before I was a sperm.

That wasn't even an idea, right?

And he's a big deal, dude.

He works with Robert Kiyosaki.

Robert invests with him.

Like, he's a big

Robert talk about this.

Yeah.

He made a lot of oil.

Yes.

And silver.

He owns a silver mine.

Really?

Wow, what a caller.

And

so if you are drilling in an area where there is natural gas, say

one of the opportunities that I'm involved with, it's 50-50.

So for every, you know, 50% oil, 50% natural gas.

Got it.

And if you've got a natural gas that is highly refinable,

you can make propane, butane, you can make methane, right?

All these different gases, you're getting a premium for them.

So as you're getting this oil out of the ground, it's maybe $60, $70 a barrel, but you've got all this natural gas that's highly refinable.

If you're investing in an area that doesn't have that, you're not making as much money.

But it's not rocket science.

It's where are these deposits?

So it's just knowing that.

And that's why I've been really blessed because if you get sued enough and if you start over enough, you end up getting enough connections to figure out who's real, who's not, and who's full shit.

Everything happens for a reason.

Absolutely.

Yeah, I believe, like I've dealt with a couple of lawsuits I mentioned earlier, but I'm thankful for them looking back at it.

It taught me how to protect myself better, taught me who to trust, who to work with.

Yeah.

And in the long run, I'm glad it happened.

Dude, it's, it's, it's important because, like, a lot of people, you know, I came from the online course world when that was a big thing in 2016.

And a lot of people, a way of selling is click fun all the shit out of it, bonus stack your offer, write a bunch of good copy, make a couple cute digital images, put a girl on the cover of whatever that looks cute, and it'll sell.

Then people, and it will sell.

Then people get in, they're like, this is bullshit.

There's no value here.

It's not what it is.

It's been completely oversold.

And I don't believe in that.

And so one of the things I pride myself in is like, if I say I'm going to be somewhere, I'm going to be somewhere.

If I say I'm shaking your hand and here's the deal, I'm going to do it.

And if I shake your hand and you tell me what your end is and you don't hold it up, I'm going to hold you accountable to that.

And it's the same in a business relationship.

It's the same in a

relationship relationship.

It should be the same with anything.

And I think lawyers exist and law exists because we've gotten so bad at keeping our word.

And so when I see one of those very few people, you know, I've got a handful of people I'd consider really good friends.

It's because my standards are, I don't consider them high, but it's like I'm the business owner.

I'm the one with all the risk.

So if I do a deal with you and I refer you to somebody and you screw them over, who are they going to come to?

They're going to come to me.

Right.

And they're going to talk shit about me.

I don't want anybody else ruining my reputation.

If it gets ruined, I'll do it myself.

Yeah.

So it's like all of the partners that I work with, that I invest in oil, real estate, my financial products, gold and silver, I've worked with them for years.

So I didn't turn them loose on anybody until I knew repetitively, you're going to treat people with respect.

You're going to do right by them, and you're strategic.

You're the best in the business.

Yeah, makes sense.

Let's end off with the book, American Mediocracy.

Talk to everyone about that.

Yeah, so American Mediocrity, I spent four years writing this.

It's really my story, my upbringing, the valuable lessons I learned in sales.

It's a book for you if you're an entrepreneur, if you want to become an entrepreneur, you're a business owner, you want to get into investing, salesmanship, marketing.

It's all the valuable skills that I have learned that I use to this very day.

I share my stories of going into the car business when I was 19, the lessons I learned in there.

I get into some of that lawsuit stuff.

I get into my battle with getting so far out of alignment, trying to build a career in one industry and balancing a relationship simultaneously.

And then having to face all that at the same time.

Not too long ago, I had a relationship end that I was in for six and a half years.

Wow.

And

I was very emotionally, financially, physically invested in it.

And it just didn't work.

I'll never talk poorly of her by any means, but it didn't work.

And I dedicated a lot of time in it where I was taking my foot off the gas and the things that were important to me

and like literally in the last year it's been almost

I very rarely shocked myself I became like unrecognizable in the sense of I always maintained my physical health but as like

holy shit I am allowing myself to become vulnerable for one of the first times as what I would consider a masculine man, you know, being vulnerable hard.

I picked the book back up and I continued writing it.

I added chapters to relate to like people that have been through relationships where it didn't work and you're an entrepreneur, you're a grinder, and it doesn't mean that you fucked up necessarily.

Like there can, we can both speak English and not understand each other.

Yeah.

Right.

So it's like, how do you scale life in an aligned way where you're doing things for the right reason with the right people, with the right purpose in mind?

And being that entrepreneur, that's go, go, go.

How do you find time for yourself to just relax and be in your own space um how do you evaluate your mental health how do you still show up for these employees and i'm i'm going through all this while in a couple lawsuits dealing with the emotions of not being in a relationship anymore uh that was you know at that point like 24 of my life right

um i had two dogs die like back to back

one got uh cancer and i didn't know like a week earlier and she was gone um and i'm like you know I moved out of my house that I had purchased for us.

And

out of respect, I was like, look, I'm more of the breadwinner.

You stay and I'll, I'll, I'll go and enjoy the house and take a little while to just get a foothold.

And I'm like traveling around with my three dogs, having to do business cross country.

I think I drove 60,000 miles that year.

Damn.

It was crazy.

You couldn't fly with the dogs.

Couldn't fly with an 80-pound cow, you know?

Yeah.

And so she ended up passing.

And then a few weeks later, another one did.

And,

you know, in between emails, of you got to show up for this deposition, you got to do this.

And I'm finishing this book.

And I'm building out the capitalist network and all this stuff.

And showing up for my employees every day.

And like, dude, and then to get to a point where you're working, you know, 18 hours a day and your brain is going.

It's spinning so much that even when you're in the shower, like the moment you should just have peace, it's still going.

You wake up, feel like the day isn't even a new day.

And so all that is in this book, because I think there's a lot of people that don't talk about it, especially men.

It's for, it's for anybody

that

have been through some shit and at least want to know somebody else made it through.

And I smile because I'm like, motherfucker, I'm still here.

You know?

I love it, dude.

And I'm going to definitely give that a read.

A lot of what you said, I've elated with.

Appreciate that.

Yeah.

Appreciate it.

And I will send you a signed copy of that.

Oh, yes.

Thanks, brother.

But that's what my book's about.

And, you know, ultimately, it gives you that foundation for everything that I teach inside the Capitalist Network.

We'll link your stuff below.

If anyone's interested in working with you, what's the best way for them to hit you up?

Best way, visit thecapitalistnetwork.com.

Again, that's thecapitalistnetwork.com.

That is my entire platform, introducing to all of my mentors, introducing to all of my investment partners so that you want to partner with the right CPAs, pay less taxes.

We got you.

You want to have your entity set up correctly from like a protection standpoint?

We got you.

You want to get arguably the lowest prices on silver and gold in the entire united states we got you

like literally a hundred percent i work with one of only 27 licensed resellers the u.s mint nice you want to get the line of credit you want to get the institutional grade um life insurance policy you want to learn how to passively invest and which opportunities to go into in real estate you want to go into the oil funds get the tax incentives we have all of that i do a newsletter every monday which i actually was typing up before i showed up today uh we do events every single month we do masterminds, retreats.

And there's a whole community of entrepreneurs to network with from 18 years old all the way to 70 years old.

So that's thecapitalistnetwork.com or get me at Ben Oberg on Instagram.

Sounds good.

And YouTube is, of course, a great source of the videos I drop because I teach a lot on there.

I love it, man.

Thanks for coming on, Ben.

Yeah, thank you, man.

Yeah,

guys.

See you next time.