Wall Street Veteran Reveals: The $1T Debt Crisis You Can't Ignore | Ross Mandell DSH #982

Coming up in the 80s on Wall Street, it was like a big thing.

What was so crazy about the 80s?

Prior to about 1980, you couldn't cold call.

You couldn't sell securities over the telephone.

So all of a sudden, a bunch of very aggressive young guys said, you know what?

I don't want to wait for clients to walk in.

They came up with this whole plan.

They went to the FTC, the Federal Trade Commission, and all of a sudden, Wall Street was introduced to Main Street.

All right, guys, got a legend here today, Ross Mandel.

What a crazy first time meeting.

You knew the previous guest's father.

Isn't that crazy?

Small world.

It's a small world.

It's a shock.

She was a very good-looking woman.

I just thought she was somebody else, and I wanted to say, hey,

and she says, Annabella Rockwell, a shout out to Thorson Rockwell,

worked for me in the stock market years ago, so it's pretty cool.

Yeah, you said you've employed over 100,000 people?

Well, I wouldn't say 100,000 people, but thousands and thousands.

Yes.

Thousands and thousands of stockbrokers I worked with, or they worked for me, or we worked together, and all that stuff.

Wow.

Yeah, coming up in the 80s on Wall Street, it was like a big thing.

And people say, why?

What was so crazy about the 80s?

Well, you know, prior to about 1980, you couldn't cold call.

Something that everybody's so used to, the phone ringing, hanging up on people, you know, telemarketing, all that.

But prior to the 80s,

you couldn't sell securities over the telephone.

So all of a sudden, a bunch of very aggressive young guys sitting in Lehman Brothers on 55 Waters said, you know what?

I don't want to wait for clients to walk in.

They came up with this whole plan.

They went to the FTC, the Federal Trade Commission, and they got permission and approvals through corporate, through their firm and all that, to co-core securities, telemarket securities.

And all of a sudden, Wall Street was introduced to Main Street

for the first time in history.

And, you know, it's created a whole bunch of growth.

And that's why when they talk about

the bull market of the 80s, this is what blew it up.

Because prior to that, you know, you had to be a wealthy guy or an institution and you would make an appointment to see your financial advisor.

And you come down to lower Manhattan or Chicago or LA and you'd go up into this ivory tower

and you'd sit down and you make an appointment and you lay out all your stuff.

All of a sudden, you got a bunch of very young, hungry guys.

calling you in your house, calling you in your business, calling you, you know, everywhere.

And so that's how, what's what really caused the markets to blow up.

So when I started the business, the Dow Jones was at about 1,000,

1,200.

Okay.

It took four or five years just to get to 2,000.

That was a huge deal.

Today, the market went down over 1,000 points.

Today,

talking about inflation.

What?

I mean, that's a crazy story if you think about it.

Yeah.

You know, it's come full circle.

I mean, all of a sudden, I used to be the young,

crazy,

the crazy, young wild stockbroker.

And then all of a sudden, now I'm like the old stockbroker.

I'm the old man.

I'm the OG.

Of course, I'm not in the business anymore, but very close to the markets and

created

a curriculum called the Wealth Formula.

Because over the course of my life, people have been coming to me.

You know, Mr.

Mandel Ross, I've been training people on Wall Street.

I've been training some of the most of alpha males on Wall Street.

And then, you know, I went to prison.

And when I was in prison, I was teaching the stock market, the wealth formula, how to turn an idea, a product, a service into a business, how to go from zero to a million-dollar business.

You know, not everybody went to Rutgers.

Not everybody went to the University of Maryland.

Not everybody has a Wharton.

Stanford MBA.

And kids don't know.

I mean, I was in a place where kids never had a

kids.

30-year-old people never had a checking account,

never filed a tax return.

And all of a sudden,

these are not just

not stupid people.

They just grew up in a bad neighborhood.

They had no guidance.

The streets were all they knew, the neighborhood, et cetera.

And,

you know, they had no nurturing, no parenting.

And so...

They were sort of off the reservation, if you will.

And they would come to me and they say, Mr.

Mandel, I got a great idea.

You know, my wife, my girlfriend, my cousin, my aunt has this, has that.

How do we turn that into a business?

And like, well, do you know how to incorporate?

They're like, what's that?

I mean, so I created a sort of a one-stop shop program.

It's called the Wealth Formula.

You can go to RossMandel.com, 2S's, 2Ls.

And it actually goes on sale.

My partner's Brad Lee

in Nevada.

Lightspeed VT, one of the best companies, if not the leading company in this genre, anywhere.

And we're launching the Wealth Formula, which is 108-page text with about 250 hyperlinks that shows you where the source material comes from.

And then 13 modules of video, of

beautifully produced video that's very entertaining, that helps walk you through the actual text.

Because we all know text can be a little boring.

And we live in a sort of a show-me society.

And people want to see video.

And so I do my best to make it entertaining, energetic, funny.

And I litter it with personal experiences along the way.

I don't just tell you something.

I tell you how I learned it.

And I give you an experience.

I give you a history lesson from, what deal it was done in, all this and that.

And it's really an incredible, comprehensive course.

Nice.

Yeah, so I'm very, very excited.

It goes on sale next week.

That's cool.

I like when you can take action right away.

Yeah, you have to.

I'm not a fan of the courses where they just teach you like hypothetical situations.

Mine is real life.

And you know, it's my story is very public.

My story's out there.

So, yeah.

And I tell stories, legit stories, how I got screwed over on Wall Street and that's how I discovered X

and how I did this deal, and that's where I got you know, got to Y.

And so it makes it a lot more relatable.

You know, you're looking at a guy like me.

I'm a plain-speaking fellow.

You know, I'm not

high-falutin'.

I'm not a Rockwell.

Just playing.

And

people can relate to me because I keep it simple.

And you had humble beginnings, too.

I had very humble beginnings.

I really did.

You know, when I was 16, I was grew up in a middle-class family, middle-class neighborhood.

And we were living the American dream.

We had everything we thought.

And then my father passed away suddenly.

He just died of a heart attack.

He was 16 years old.

I was 16 years old.

He was 48.

My mother was 39.

And

I woke up a day later and found out that everything we owned was mortgaged, borrowed, or leased.

The American dream, bro.

We owned nothing and were just living, you know, they were just grinding my parents to pay for a better life for their kids.

Can you relate to that, anybody out there?

And

I became very angry and very bitter.

I just sort of kind of went nuts.

I was like the kind of kid you stayed away from.

I went from being a great kid on a wrestling team, the football team, a straight A student.

And I went sort of crazy.

Wow.

I was very angry.

I was angry at God.

And I was angry at the circumstances.

And

I just acted out.

I just said, screw it.

If you could just drop dead like that, what the hell am I, you know, toeing the line for?

I drank, I smoked, I took pills.

I had random wild sex with strangers, and I just went nuts, really.

And

luckily I had been such a good kid and such a good student, I got into all these colleges early.

So right away they pushed me through and I was in school and

I hooked up with a very aggressive crowd.

You know how it is in school, right?

You find like-minded people.

So

all the kids that like to do drugs and party and hang out and run around with women, we all found each other somehow.

And we had this crazy, great time in college.

But when we got out, which, you know, I actually graduated early, which is a crazy story.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

You're still doing good in school.

Well, here's the thing.

I didn't, but like

we figured out a way to finagle our way through.

And because

I was a reader all my life,

and I love to read, and

I'm very book smart that way.

And so I was able to get through school.

In fact, some guys used to steal exams, you know, before the test and bring them to me.

And I fill in the answers for them.

Wow.

I'm good like that.

And I used to be at least.

And

I got out early and they put me in a family business.

I was selling ladies' handbags.

And I became a, we found out I became a pretty, I was a pretty good salesman.

I happen to love people.

I love, I'm chatty.

And I'm a guy's guy.

I love women.

And women found me cute.

And we're doing great.

But, you know, I was with a bunch of very aggressive young kids in college.

And

back in 1982, they found Wall Street.

We used to go to the clubs in Manhattan.

And we'd see these guys.

Everybody's waiting out line at Studio 54.

There'd be thousands of people on 54th Street outline.

Don't let people in.

And we'd watch all these celebrities going in.

But there were some guys pull up.

in Ferraris and limousines, you know, and in Bentley's, Lamborghini, you know, you name it.

And they always had the the hottest women, and they'd come out and they'd toss the keys to some valet kid, and they'd go, the ropes would open, thousands of people waiting, and they would go right in.

Wow.

And they would be sitting at the best tables in the best section in the clubs.

And, you know, I'm an aggressive type of kid,

usually stoned.

And I would just go up to these guys and I would be like, excuse me, you know.

You're like a really cool guy, and you're with the best-looking woman, and you've got a great car and you're sitting at the best table.

Can I ask you, what do you do?

And, you know, men generally like to talk about themselves.

That's true.

You know, that's why you got me here.

That's why he's got the number one podcast in America, this kid.

I have on a lot of guys that like to talk about themselves.

What?

And women.

And women.

People generally like to chat about themselves, you know.

You know, when someone asks me about myself, I get to talk about myself.

It's on my own favorite subject.

You know what I mean?

So

guys would say, yeah, I'm a trader or I'm a stockbroker or I'm an investment banker.

I'm an arbitrary.

Be like, what's that?

Well, we take advantage of economic dislocations.

I'm like, I don't know what that means, but like, sign, what do I sign up?

So in 1983, I went down to Wall Street and I, I got, like everything else in my life, I finagled my way in and got into, because I was still using and drinking heavily.

And I got, I, I got into the E.F.

Hutton training program.

And at that time, there were like three training programs that were like legit,

heads and shoulders above everything else.

There was Merrill Inch, there was E.F.

Hutton, and there was

Dean Witter.

And everything else was like just sort of a lower-level way of trying to get it to the markets.

It was much more difficult.

And,

you know, when you are addicted to drugs, addicted to alcohol, addicted to that life.

It's expensive, Sean.

It is not cheap to be in Manhattan living it up,

you know, spending money, going out every night, drinking, drugging.

And so I needed money.

So I learned how to sell stocks and

do investments, so to speak, over the phone.

And I became like sort of a stud, a celebrity at that.

And it didn't matter how difficult the situation was.

On a day like today,

most financial guys are hiding from their phone.

You know, when Mrs.

Winthrop calls, they're like, tell her I'll call her back up in the meeting.

People get

nervous, anxious, shy.

I'm telling you to spend all your money on X, and all of a sudden X is down 20%, and you're like, what?

And

I was never afraid to speak to people

in the worst of times.

And I always made my fortunes in the worst of times.

And I can tell you this today.

We are heading into the worst of times.

Wow.

This country is fucked.

And I love this country.

What if Trump wins?

Trump is a hope we have.

Trump is a business guy.

He's a smart guy.

I lived in Trump Towers.

I lived in Trump World Tower for six years.

I did a couple of deals with Donald Trump, and a lot of people have an opinion of him.

They never met him.

They never spoke to him.

And they never did a deal with him.

Facts.

Well, I lived in one of his buildings,

and I did two deals with him.

And I could say one thing, he's a tough guy, but he's honest.

He's a straight shooter, and he lives up to his word.

And I bought two apartments from him and sold.

And I lived in the building, and it was the best experience that you could have.

I wrote a book called Rock Solid, also available on my website, the e-book.

Rock Solid by Ross Mandel, RossMandel.com.

And I say, for any of you that think that money can't buy happiness, you never lived in a Donald Trump building.

Because

that was the bomb, bro.

I had a beautiful 2,200 square foot apartment, floor to ceiling, 10-foot glass windows,

eastern exposure, southern exposure, and western exposure.

Corner apartment.

Magnificent.

All

glass, you know, smoked-out glass, 90-story building.

And I actually lived in most of the time in Florida or London, but I kept an apartment apartment in the city.

And myself and my family loved it.

In fact, my oldest daughter learned how to swim down in the swimming pool in Trump Tower.

Nice.

Yeah, yeah, it was beautiful.

That's cool.

Yeah, he could probably prolong it a bit, but I think the economy is pretty.

Well, look at the country.

Imagine this country with $35 trillion in debt.

The interest just to carry that debt is $1 trillion a year.

That's more than our entire defense budget,

which is the biggest line item in our

up.

We're suffering from terrible inflation right now.

The inflation rate is slowing, but the prices are huge.

We're struggling with an energy situation,

problems with jobs.

There is the open border.

Inner cities laden with crime right now.

All my friends left New York City.

Wow,

it's so dangerous.

Friends that have been living there that said, I'll never leave, they all left.

Companies moving out, Chicago, L.A., New York.

York, the cities are a wreck.

If Trump wins, there's a chance we can right this ship.

But in order for this ship to right, the markets have to correct themselves.

The markets, the free market is a self-correcting mechanism.

It'll go up, it'll go down.

There are certain economic principles and psychological principles that apply to it.

I think that if Trump wins, it's going to be very good for corporate America and very good for America, especially economically.

But there's going to be a lot of cultural issues.

You know, the Democrats are not going to go quietly into that good night.

You're going to have riots and all these different things, and there's going to be

a lot of upset liberals, et cetera.

And I'm not political.

And if Kamala Harris wins, I don't know what's going to happen.

But I can tell you, we're still

a trillion dollars

in debt, and that's before we paid off a penny of principal.

Crazy.

And we're still borrowing.

We're borrowing every day.

So Japan's market crashed 12.5% last night.

The Bank of Japan dumped $24 trillion

in United States treasuries.

How long before China and Russia do the same?

You know,

there's a big movement now internationally to remove the dollar as the reserve currency.

It's going to happen.

It's going to happen.

And, you know, Trump is so smart.

He comes out and he says, Bitcoin, crypto.

He sees that feud.

There's no other way.

The dollar's gone.

It's toast.

The BRICS countries, the BRICS alliance is bigger than the Western Alliance now.

Brazil, Russia, India, South Africa.

I mean, you're talking about they're bigger than we are from a GNP standpoint.

We have really...

If this country is the corporation of the United States, gross mismanagement.

Everybody would be, all of Washington would be fired.

I mean, let's just keep giving the Ukraine hundreds of billions of dollars while we're in debt for a war that can never be won.

Does that make any sense to anybody?

You know, not to me.

It's all political.

Everybody's getting kickbacks and all kinds of crazy shits going on there.

And I'm not a political guy, but whoever wins, the market

has got to go down.

And I would say roughly in half.

Damn, it's already pretty low right now.

Well, it's down a few thousand points.

This is nothing, bro.

Really?

In 1987,

I was sitting on Wall Street.

I had $100 million of managing.

And the Dow Jones goes down 25% in one day.

Damn.

And that's just the 30 most important biggest companies in our world.

Went down 25% in one day.

That's the equivalent of today.

It went down 10, if it goes down 10,000 points.

We only went down 1,000 points.

But what you don't hear about that day, the rest of the market, the rest of the stocks went down 40, 60, 80, 100% in one day.

Jeez.

Yeah, it was just bad, bro.

And

it's going to be rough going for this country and for most businesses.

My man is in the right business.

And I'm going into the media business.

Raw Media is a company that is being developed right now in conjunction with some really smart guys

and Bradley in Nevada.

And

I'm talking to your boy Justin as well.

Justin Waller?

Your boy.

Oh Justin Waller, yeah.

Yeah and it's

this is the new media.

People don't watch CBS, ABC, NBC anymore.

Most people don't even buy televisions anymore, most young people.

Only smart TVs.

Right.

And

my kids watch TV on their phones.

They watch Netflix and Hulu

and

that sort of thing.

And so

there's been a change because when we say the media business, my generation, people in the marketplace, they look at the traditional media and that's already gone.

You're getting more eyeballs than almost 90% of any TV scheduled show.

But yet you're not making that money.

No.

You're not charging the advertising.

I am, but it's not enough, yeah.

Well, you're not charging the advertising that someone on the major networks charging that has a fraction of your eyeballs.

Yeah, you see Mr.

Beast dealing with those too.

Correct.

So now if you put together a few guys like yourself, like Brad, like Mr.

B, you know, the boys,

as a group,

you've got your you've got your own network.

It's a media company.

It just has to be positioned.

It's got to be tweaked.

There's got to be an architect.

There's got to be a little financial engineering.

But that's it.

The hard work's done.

The hard work's done.

It's an unbelievable thing.

It's a good model, yeah.

Patrick Bed David's doing it.

Correct.

Ben Shapiro.

Correct.

They see it.

They see it.

Yep.

Patrick Beth David, very smart guy.

Very.

Yeah.

He sees it.

Yeah.

And so, and there's power in that.

There's power in the eyeballs.

Absolutely.

So you're fully out of stocks right now?

I am fully out of stocks right now.

Wow.

Yeah.

So you're not taking this loss that everyone else is dealing with?

I'm very happy right now.

Any crypto?

Depends who's asking.

Ah, smart answer.

I got wrecked this week.

I'm sure you did.

Dude.

Yeah.

Holy crap.

I'm sure you have it.

But crypto is pretty volatile, so I've seen this before.

It is.

I think it's a great opportunity to buy Bitcoin.

It's a great entry point for Ethereum.

Really like Ethereum long-term.

That's my biggest bag.

Yeah.

That's the way to go.

And if Bitcoin gets a little cheaper, I think it becomes more exploitable.

The big boys are in it now.

Yeah.

Yeah, the ETFs, right?

Blackstone, Vanguard, Fidelity.

This is like my generation.

You think that's good or bad?

Because you were dealing with these guys years ago.

I think that

it's a very good thing.

It means that

it's not going to take as long for them to come back.

They're not going to ever get as beat up.

They'll get beat up.

But, you know, you have that underlying support.

You know,

these boys control trillions and trillions of dollars.

So when they put some capital to work,

there's an underlying layer of support.

You know, prior to them coming in, something like Bitcoin could go down to 3,000 a coin.

It could go back down.

Wow.

If they weren't in.

But, see, I know these guys are greedy.

They'll never let it go that low because they're in.

They're vested now.

You understand?

So there's an underlying level of support because

they have more money than most countries do.

Right.

So they would do that with stocks.

They do that with stocks.

They're going to have to backstop the market.

Sure.

But they're also going to buy, you know,

I've made

the majority of my capital in the worst of times.

You know,

when times are good,

we tend to, whatever our income is, you know, when you're a kid, you know, and you're struggling in business, you're making $3,000, $5,000 a month.

You know, you spend it.

You know, you save a little bit, but you spend it.

And then all of a sudden, you do great.

You're making $10,000, $20,000 a month.

You get a better car, you pay more insurance, you get a better apartment, you spend more money on rent.

You take your girl off for better dinners.

You go on better vacations.

Before you know it, you're spending your income.

The way real wealth

is created or constituted is from earning chunks of equity.

Like, I hate to say, but the majority of people in this country have little or no net worth.

Basically, they moved in a home, they lived there for 30 or 40 years, they bought it for like 30,000, and now it's worth a million three.

And when they sell it and they get their condo in Florida, they just became millionaires.

They have a million dollars.

That's how the majority of, you know,

sort of my generation

have done it.

Right.

Your generation is much more clever with crypto and just sort of cool stuff that

a lot of people don't really understand.

Internet money, they call it.

Yeah, I love that.

See, I don't even know that expression.

Wi-Fi money.

Wi-Fi money.

I love that.

I love it.

And

it's relevant.

I mean, it's the real thing.

I have a very open mind and open eye to all these, you know,

I think that

great vision is had by the youth, the up-and-coming guy.

Not the regular youth.

The

regular youth are a bunch of young, stupid kids.

But look at the guy like you.

Look at Justin.

You know, you kids at Rutgers, and look what you've made of yourselves.

You had a vision and you worked hard and you stuck at it.

And, you know, there's something special about you.

And I watch guys like you, guys like him, and I watch his whole podcast movement grow.

I mean, you know, there were people that didn't believe the internet was going to be around.

How crazy.

I mean,

it takes a minute for

an establishment to become fully accepting.

They still haven't accepted digital currency or cryptocurrency.

No.

But that's coming.

So smarter, older people are starting to buy some.

You know, it's a very, very interesting proposition.

Yeah, it took podcasts years.

Rogan was doing it for like five years before people really started making them.

He was.

And, you know, it just so it makes such sense.

It makes sense.

I record your podcast.

You know, I go to YouTube.

I watch watch it when I want.

No

interruptions.

I can stop it and start it.

Come back in an hour.

I could see who are your guests to see who's intriguing to me or who's interesting.

I mean, it's amazing.

Yeah, it doesn't feel forced.

Sponsors love it.

I know shows where my friends will go on.

They'll make $100K in a day.

Yep.

Yep.

Like it just happened to my friend the other day.

Really?

They go on the right podcast, offer the right product, boom, 100 grand in an hour.

I get it 100%.

Yeah.

These lives are like insane.

I mean, Trump just did a live.

Did you see it?

I heard about it.

Yeah.

So 2 million viewers with Aiden Ross.

He's a streamer.

How crazy.

If they promoted a product or a donation link, even would have done $10 million.

Just like that.

Easily.

Yeah.

So the lives are really where it's at, right?

Yeah, the lives, podcasting.

I think that's the future.

But I think you need to be, you need to, see, this is my take, because I've been looking at the industry.

You need to offer a product.

So

I'm an educator now.

This was something that I wanted to do.

I mean,

some magazine just wrote a story about me.

Oh, yeah.

Good or bad.

It turned out it was the best story anybody's ever written on me.

Really?

And I had no idea it was going to be like that.

Yeah.

And it called Simply the Best Magazine.

And it's a Florida magazine.

They have 100,000 people that subscribe to this.

Wow.

And

it says that a former wolf of Wall Street has turned educator.

And that's what I'm doing.

I want to educate.

I want to share.

I'm in a situation now where my experience and my resume

allow me this opportunity.

It's not like I'm forcing it.

I'm not like faking it.

I think one of your guys over there in your production crew said, you know, you were really an OG.

I am.

You know,

I was famous.

I was on the front page of newspapers long before social media and the internet.

Wow.

You know, most guys in this sort of business we're in now,

before 2015 or 2010,

try seeing what they've done.

They'd never really done anything.

I mean, I was already, I was in Forbes magazine, you know, front page Wall Street Journal, front page, 100 different newspapers, good stuff, bad stuff, you know, like I always say good, bladder, bad, and ugly.

But I was a big name, and I was accomplishing great things.

I was the first American to take a regulated company public, a regular American business public on the London Stock Exchange.

That stock exchange, 100 years older.

than the New York Stock Exchange.

And I did it twice before anybody else did it once.

Wow.

Yeah.

Well done.

Yeah.

And

I created that footprint, that blueprint.

I actually did something.

I'm not famous because I'm big on social media.

There was no social media.

I was making millions and moving markets and had thousands of people working for me and getting in all kinds of trouble and raising all kinds of hell.

I love it.

You know what I mean?

So it's real.

I'm real.

I always say, you know, you put me on camera, people say, who the hell is this old guy with the big fucking mouth?

But when they look at me, when they Google me, they say, whoa, this guy's OG is real.

And so there are things that I can teach even guys like you, smart guys like you, and people that are maybe not as smart as you and not as fortunate as you.

And so I become an educator.

And that's sort of my hook

because that enables a company that I create the opportunity to create revenue, profitable earnings.

Now, once you have a company that's making $5 million a year, $10 million a year, $20 million a year, $40 million a year, Brad has companies under Leitzburg that make $5, $6 million a month.

And I expect to be at that level soon enough.

And so now that

gives you the leverage and it gives you the ability to pivot.

You can go left, you can go right.

There are different opportunities.

Again, this is again an advantage that I have.

I have founded,

funded, and floated, taken public, over 100 companies.

Dang.

There's not a handful of people in the world that can say that.

You might be the number one.

I'm right up there.

I'm right up there.

But I'm also, you know, doing it since 1983.

Yeah, Chamoth might be up there too.

Oh, there's a few.

There's a few guys.

But most of those guys are not going to talk about it.

No, he did it through SPACs, too.

Which is different.

Listen,

my crew, the guys I grew up with in the business, we created SPACs.

Oh, yeah.

We were doing SPACs in the 80s.

Wow.

And the SEC shut us down.

I didn't know it was around back then.

Nobody did because they said, this is criminal.

This is illegal.

You guys are out of control.

And then 30 years later, everybody's doing it.

Wow.

Right.

We did the first pipe transactions, you know, a private investment on public equity.

That's what they prosecuted me for in London.

Now, today.

They're doing $35 billion

every month in American stock exchanges.

Holy crap.

They prosecuted me for bringing that to London.

You're like the weed dealer before weed was legal.

Thank you.

Thank you.

I actually did time with guys that were in jail for 20 years for some pot.

That's crazy to me.

And they tell the story that now,

right in the neighborhood where they doing time, they said the crime was committed,

they were prosecuted and jailed for.

There's dispensaries all over.

It's legal.

Nuts.

And they're in federal prison still.

Wrong time.

And it's still a Schedule I drug, like heroin, just so you know.

Weed is?

Right now?

Weed right now, federally.

What?

Like heroin, methamphetamine.

They've lowered it by now.

Et cetera, fentanyl.

They're intending to.

The Biden administration has threatened to reduce it, to take it down.

That's terrible.

But it's still

somewhere in Congress.

Think about that.

How crazy.

This is our government that's telling us what's right and wrong and who to lend money to, that they have marijuana.

as a schedule class one drug all these years.

Does that make any sense?

Makes no sense.

Look how much money Colorado is bringing in.

Right.

All the states where it's legal, bringing in so much money to its residents.

Right.

In a country that's 35 trillion in debt.

And we're still jailing people for it.

Paying $35,000 a year for this guy to be in jail every year.

Terrible.

It's terrible.

Think about the broken families on welfare and all this and that.

It's just, it's just the decisions that come out of this Washington.

It's just, it's frightening.

It upsets me because I pay hundreds of thousands of taxes a year and I see where it goes.

When do you start paying millions?

Probably next year, man.

That's your goal.

That's your goal, baby.

That's your goal.

That's a good problem.

You know, I have a friend.

He said, my goal is to pay $10 million a year in taxes.

Why not?

Probably making $150 million at that point, right?

Yeah.

Depends if it's business or personal, but yeah.

Yeah.

It's all, you know.

Let's do it, dude.

You've made and lost millions multiple times in your life.

Tens of millions, yeah.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

This is Ross 3.0.

Wow, so this is the third time?

This is 3.0.

Yeah.

This is actually,

you know, it's,

yeah, this is my third real business life.

And

third time's the charm, right?

I'm telling you, bro, this is it.

This is it.

I'm 67.

I mean, you know, and I got another five years.

You know, let's do it.

But,

you know, what the hell?

Boss.

I love how you still have this energy at 67.

That's impressive.

Oh, my God.

You know.

I'll be talking when I'm in my coffin probably.

Wow.

Yeah.

You know, I love this podcast because they say, all right.

I said, what do I have to do?

They said, just go talk.

I said, what do you mean?

Just go talk.

Be yourself.

All right.

That's why podcasts are successful.

It's not fake like the news.

It really, it's so, it's not staged.

There's no agenda, right?

I don't even, you know, there was no prep, right?

No.

We didn't discuss it.

You didn't say, Ross, I want you to do this.

I just know it's a digital social hour.

Yep.

And it's a business podcast, essentially, right?

But, you know, you're so clever, bro.

Thanks, man.

You don't guys know he's six foot six?

Yeah, people don't know that.

And what a head of hair you got, bro.

Yeah.

You know, when you get older, you start noticing everybody else's hair.

When I was young,

who cared, right?

Yeah, when you get older, I'll really say, Does that guy have hair?

I wonder how old that guy is.

Does he color his hair?

I don't know.

I don't see the gray hair.

It's the funny thing that, you know,

your perceptions change what you look at and how you think.

It's really, really cool, bro.

Wow.

Noted.

I'll keep that in mind.

Yeah.

And you know, something, so you know, someone said to me the other day, you know, aging really sucks.

And, you know, I was nodding my head, but then the alternative, what is the alternative?

Dying Young?

I don't know.

It's horrible.

Well, there's guys aging backwards now.

Have you seen that?

Yeah.

Brian Johnson, a few people reversing it.

You know, today with peptides and medicines and all these therapies, and you know, you know, it's amazing.

I mean, really, it's like 60s, the new 40.

When I was a kid, 40, guys, 40, like so old,

you know, 67, I would be in a home already.

Instead, I have this young hot wife and, you know, hanging out, young guys, guys like you, we're podcasting, we're making content, we're posting on social media.

I'm doing selfies in public and household foods, talking about the price of these eggs.

Those are expensive.

Bro, if they're I tell you some funny stories.

So, you know, they have these like sort of,

I guess, jobs at some of these supermarkets.

And some of these kids are special.

You know, they

the corporations give them jobs as packers.

So I'm doing a selfie about these eggs.

They're organic.

God forbid, I bring home something that's not organic.

God forbid.

You know, I'm banned for the house.

Dad, bring them back.

And then they have to be pasture-raised.

That's the new thing.

God forbid my cow didn't get massages or had to live in a cave.

You know, he had to be free to roam the countryside, right?

These cows are living better than we are.

And

that's half and half.

We've got to go yeah no five minutes with tight and these eggs i said what are these magic hens 11.49 a dozen they're little brown eggs but they're uh they're organic and they're pasture-raised

and so i'm i'm complaining on the selfie and then the guy goes yeah but mister these are the best eggs you bought the best egg

A dollar an egg?

And, you know, he's like, you know, some kid and he's like lecturing my audience.

Crazy.

It used to be a dollar for 12 when you were growing up, probably.

I have no idea.

Now it's a dollar an egg.

I hate being like these old guys that talk about, oh, I used to be a dollar.

You know, I used to buy two slices of pizza and a Coke for a dollar.

Damn.

Inflation.

When I was a kid.

This isn't sustainable, man.

It's not sustainable.

And I hate to say this, but inflation is the death of capitalism.

Everyone says, who cares?

I make more money.

Inflation.

Inflation.

equals the death of our society as we know it.

And I'm not going to explain that to you because that'll take a half an an hour.

Well, the average person can't out-earn inflation, in my opinion.

I agree.

I think guys like us possibly can.

No, we can, and I have.

I have too, but most people don't have that still.

They're struggling.

People are struggling.

If you're working on a regular job, you're not going to out-earn inflation.

It's impossible.

It's terrible.

You know, if someone said the average cost of living now

in some cities is $250,000 to be middle-class.

In San Fran, right?

What?

Yeah, crazy.

What?

In San Fran, people are sleeping in the streets.

There's needles everywhere.

People are getting getting robbed.

Stores are closing.

I mean, that was my favorite city for many years.

I don't even wear a watch there anymore.

Do you ever go to San Fran?

Yeah, but I don't wear any jewelry or anything.

You can't.

They'll steal you.

Yeah, even if you got to be careful with your phone.

You can't even leave a backpack in your car there.

No, definitely not.

Even if it's empty.

Right.

No, no.

That's like asking for trouble.

But if a six-foot, six-inch young dude is worried, what chances an old guy like me have?

Crazy, man.

You know?

Ross, it's been fun.

Where can people find you, get your course, and learn more from you, man?

RossMandel.com.

R-O-S-S-M-A-N-D-E-L-L.com.

I'm on Facebook, Ross Mandel, Boca Raton, Instagram, Ross H.

Mandel.

YouTube, the real Ross Mandel.

I'm on Twitter.

I'm on TikTok.

I mean, you know, what's an old guy doing on TikTok?

Actually, old people get a lot of fun.

Having fun.

Having fun.

We're having fun.

We're making content.

Thank you, my brother.

The wealth formula hits up next week.

Sign up.

You will not regret it.

Oh, thanks for coming on, out, man.

Sure.

Thank you for having me.

Thanks for coming on.

Thanks for watching, guys.

See you tomorrow.