Speaker 1: Is it multi layer chess from President Trump? Or is
it chaotic? Zach Abraham joins us on The Todd Herman Show.
Courtesy of God Almighty.
Speaker 2: The Todd Herman Show is one disapproved by big pharma
technocrats in Tyrone, Sabrian Where from the high mountains of
Free America. Here's the Emerald City EXI Todd Herman.
Speaker 1: Today is the day the Lord has made in. These
are the times to which God has decided we should live.
Joining me, my friend and brother, Chief investment Officer Bulwart
Capital Management at Zach Abraham. Zach, welcome back to the
Todd Herman Show.
Speaker 3: Good to be back.
Speaker 1: Happy New Year, Happy New Year to you, man.
Speaker 3: It's been a while, I know, man, it feels like
it's been a fortnite.
Speaker 1: A coon's age, Coon's age. That's a lie.
Speaker 3: It's like a line from the Outlawed Josie Whales or
something like that. That's right.
Speaker 1: I'm always careful as a white dude saying anything about coons.
Just I'm yeah, yeah, you know, I'm just because I'm saying.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I hadn't be thought of that. I hadn't really
thought of that angle. But you got to be cure.
You know though. The one thing I will say is
is the crazy wokeness as it relates to mainstream it
is significantly better than it was five years ago. Yeah,
you know what I mean. Remember when you'd get called
Somebody reminded me this the other day. It wasn't that
long ago where I remember I said black and people
are like, that's racist, or it's the color of my
wife's skin.
Speaker 1: Like do you remember the brown bag lunch thing? That
there were brown bag lunch seminars at the city of
Seattle and that was banned.
Speaker 3: Well, I mean that's clearly racist, right because.
Speaker 1: Brown bags and all that. And I know, and it
has gotten better. And I think part of this is
that credit cards expired. And I think the other thing is, man,
there are so many serious things that people are dealing with,
and I think that people have started to get kind
of a handle on Maybe words aren't our problem, maybe
some other things are problem. And I wanted to ask
you because I've heard the reporting around this in every
significant way. I don't think I've ever heard a more
interesting argument then one thing. We didn't talk about this beforehand.
I need you to explain this to me. President Trump
has a plan to take two hundred billion bucks and
purchase housing bonds and therefore lower housing prices. And I'm
not getting the mental gymnastics on this one. I truly,
I'm not doing this for the show's sake. Because I
hear someone saying I'm going to purchase all the housing
bonds with government money, injecting money into the housing market
or the aftershoot of the market the bonds does that, then,
how does that then say I will sell my house
for less money or house buyers yourself for less money,
or the market will go down. There has to be
an argument for this. I'm at a loss.
Speaker 3: There isn't one.
Speaker 1: There isn't no no.
Speaker 3: And again, I hope, I hope your listeners know this
by now. I think it's one of the reasons that
you and I get along really well, one of many.
But I'm a fan of President Trump. I voted for
him twice. But when he says something that I don't
agree with, I'm gonna tell you that will do nothing
to home prices. If anything, it could maybe have a
slightly upward push on home prices. And here's why. Because
banks have a certain amount of assets and a certain
amount of cash, they got to deploy right, So if
you buy, and that's the whole point of quantitative easing,
if we go, what he's advocating for is a form
of quantitative easing that's focused strictly on what we call mbs,
or mortgage backed securities. Yeah, and the FED bought a
bunch of these. The reason you buy them is because
you replace that asset on a bank's balance sheet with cash.
And what does that bank need to do. They need
to redeploy it. Okay, so they might get a little
more aggressive on rates, right, they might give somebody a
little but if that brings rates down a little bit,
that's going to push home prices up.
Speaker 1: Right, it could be more aggressive, meaning, okay, we've got
some cash. President Trump injected, took money from the taxpayers
force us to purchase housing bonds even though we didn't
want to. Necessarily, they can say, okay, so maybe instead
of some of this and have great credit, maybe instead
of seven and three quarters, we'll give you seven and
a half. Yeah, and that's being aggressive.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And I don't look, I don't think it's a
horrible idea. I mean, you know, it's so funny to
me that people are up in arms. Oh, he can't.
You're like the FED. The FED splashes the pot for
three times that all the time. And they're like, well,
it's not the same, and I'm like, yes, it is
the same thing. If I pull cash out of my
right pocket, it isn't different when I pull it out
of my left right Okay, like so whatever I mean
it and cash was fungible, right, So in fact, it
is the same, I honestly think, and this isn't a knock, right,
President Trump plays a political game. I think this along
with what he said about corporations buying homes, I don't
think doing either one of them would have a deleterious impact.
I also don't think that either one of those things
will have a really beneficial impact. But I think that
they're fairly low cost to things that wouldn't be a
bad political move to do before midterms. I think that's no.
Speaker 1: Politically speaking, the optics are great.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think that's what it's all about, because, like
you said, there's that will have no I mean you
look at the US housing market. What are we talking
about fifteen trillion in size? Right, So, like a purchase
of two hundred billion dollars in MBS that doesn't do anything.
Speaker 1: Okay, then the capping of this is an executive order,
and our mutual friend Tom wrote analysis this. I wanted
to share with you because I think Tom he's one
of those guys who does investments on his own. He's
an engineer and he thinks that way. And you remember
when moving out to pizza, you guys end up gravitating
towards each other and sharing shartstoles a whole stick at night, right,
your drug sharts and the pizza pies and etc. So
this is about President Trump's is going to use an
executive order to stop Black Rock and Vanguard and others
from buying up entire neighborhoods of single family homes. Tom Rights.
We know Trump to make some pretty dramatic moves his potus,
but this one really caught my Attentionion I'm conflicted. On
one hand, he's talking about violating free market principles, which
is perilous, But on the other hand, do we really
have a free market when it comes to home affordability.
I think I have something to say about this. Since
I'm a city councilman, I'm asked to make quasi judicial
decisions on land use. Inner cities. Cities throughout the country
have been building codes which I had a layer of
red tape and bureaucracy to building homes. This raises single
family home costs uniformly. On the other hand, institutional investment
companies buying up homes is a real thing. Blackrock is
well known to do this. It's been reported in red
Finn in a recent market analysis, and they target the
lower tertiary, the most affordable of housing stock. That buy
up whole swass within a municipality of neighborhood and then
they literally sell to themselves, raising the market value of
homes as a way of creating investment margin. Another effect
that is to reduce the supply of housing stock, which
under free market principles, raises the prices of homes. Then
municipalities like mine are encouraged to authorise more land development
in order to raise the supply and obtainability. It's a
vicious cycle that can destroy communities. I'm interested in hearing
what other people have to think about this. I won't
know what you think about that about that analysis, I
didn't know they were selling homes to each other. They
buy up neighborhoods.
Speaker 3: What they do that that's so vicious. Well, oh, it's Look,
there's so many games and it's frustrating and somewhat disgusting
to me because it is the ultimate form of window dressing.
I mean, if you want to look at what another
really good example of this is stock based comp stock
based compensation.
Speaker 2: Yeah right.
Speaker 3: You look at how big stock based compensation has been
in the tech world and they're, oh, they're giving people
a skin in the game. Yeah they are. But the
reason they do it is because when they pay you
stock based comp they don't have to realize that as
a cost right, that doesn't hit their cash Okay, it's
just it dilutes shareholders, and then they turn around at
the end of the year and announce a multi billion
dollar stock buy back, so they keep the dilution at minimal.
But then you turn around and look at it and
just right, so they're not technically spending money on labor.
They're spending money on stock buybacks, and so there's tax
advantages to that. And it's not bad. It's there's nothing
illegal with it. But what it does is it obvious
skates what's really going on. It makes the things look
better than they really are. So painting the tape.
Speaker 1: So they're doing the same thing in the housing market.
They're making you Oh, except that does affect real people.
That does seel there are like kids my daughter's age
who may not own a home ever.
Speaker 3: So look, any time we're getting into and I love
the way Tom put it because he if you notice,
like he addresses all of his concerns, but he's still
he's it's conservative style of thinking, right, He's being logical.
He's sitting there going here are my concerns. I'm not
really sure what I think as opposed to oh, businesses
are bad. So I've moved on this and I have
not deep dived this, but here here's my thinking. When
I first talked on this, I think I was a
little bit off the cuff and came out a little
bit hard, and I was like, oh, it's inappropriate for
corporations in mind. Here's the problem where I'm at now
is I do not believe that we should allow Now,
how do you define corporation? I think that that's a
big deal, right. I think a lot of time needs
to be defined on how we define that. Are we
talking about an escort that a husband and a wife own,
that owned fourteen rental homes right, that doesn't meet the cue.
To me, what I think when we're talking about more
major corporations like Goldman, Sachs, black Rock Goldman, or Berkshire Hathaway,
where I'm at is I do not believe that they
should be able to buy existing construction. But if they
want to build their own, have at it. Okay, I
like that. And here's now I'm not sure on this,
but this is where I'm at right now. Here's why
I think that if think about free markets, if you're
building a home for the purposes of renting it out,
the person that's going to rent that home out to
you or rent rent that home from you is a
person that can afford the rent and actually the payment
of a nice home, but probably aren't in the financial
place to get it. That's a wonderful service you're providing them.
You're providing them both parties are winning, right, You're giving
them thirty two hundred square feet four bedrooms for their
three kids. Everybody's winning. What you don't want to do
is you don't want to see big corporations come in
and take over neighborhoods, right and all the problems that
can come or that can happen. You could also, and
I think that it's a big stretch, but you could
also make the argument by buying existing construction, they could
start cornering certain markets and dictating too much, if you
call if you confine them strictly to new construction, I
don't think that's going to pose any of those issues.
Speaker 1: I would go with that. I would go with that
because black Rock buying up neighborhoods. I've talked about this
vertical and horizontal marketing. So they buy the integration, they
buy up a neighborhoods yep. Then they buy up the
cable service, then they buy up the delivery service. Then
they own the airspace above it for drone deliveries right right,
and they just now and then they are now they're
going to create private roads and access and the smart
cities are coming all the signs of that. I don't
know if you saw this. This is a great big
I told you so. I've been saying this for years.
In Massachusetts, they're floating a bill to limit how far
you can drive your own personal car per day. So
this would clearly be about we need you all to
move within the beautiful city Corps There's one other thing
I want to talk with you about, and this is
a big one because there's a huge debate on this
and it has to do with President Trump and Jerry
Powell and Jerome Powell put out an unprecedented statement. I
heard someone say that Jerome Powell is the most ethical
public servants today, and I don't know how you determine that.
In that we aren't allowed to look into Jerom Powell's performance.
So we'll talk about that in a second with Zach Abraham.
A reminder, but both Zack and I get pretty caffeinated,
and I think, Zach you would agree that we like
the caffeine and Barbara successes the caffeine and their high RPMs.
And there's some caffeine carriage systems that are good summer great.
One that is great is bone Frog coffee. And the
other day I was talking to Alex, who started to
drink the frog because he and I were sitting around
the other day. This is about six months ago, and
Alex said, I gotta try bone Frog and I stopped
and went, what.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Zach, you also need to dust up your resume.
Speaker 1: It was right, you're not you' drinking the frog up
a beat it, so he finally got it. He loves
the frog, and God blessed my young friend's door Kicker
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the door Kicker is the brand that has the highest
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dot Com, slash Todd, promo code Todd, So Zach Jerry
Pow is that kind of call him? Jerry Yeah?
Speaker 3: J Powell Jay you know something like that?
Speaker 1: So Jpo Uh Jpo came out and put out what
I call a sad face video. Here's jerown Powell. He
is not a king, mind you. He's talking democracy because
he's into the democracy. Good evening.
Speaker 4: On Friday, the Department of Justice served the Federal Reserve
with grand jury subpoenas threatening a criminal indictment related to
my testimony before the Senate Banking Committee last June. That
testimony concerned, in part, a multi year project to renovate
historic Federal Reserve office buildings. I have deep respect for
the role of law and for accountability. No one, certainly
not the Chair of the Federal Reserve is above the law.
But this unprecedented action should be seen in the broader
context of the administration's threats and ongoing pressure.
Speaker 1: All right, So he goes on to sad face that
this is trying to pressure him to change interest rates,
et cetera. It's an unprecedented attack against democracy. I can't
get past Jerry Powell j Powe saying that he is
not above the law, No one is, and that he's
in favor of democracy and accountability. And I'm listening to this,
and then I get comments from people saying this is
the most ethical public servant working today, And I want
to know how they know that. Did you have any
similar response to this dude saying he's into accountability in transparency,
et cetera.
Speaker 3: Well, no and no you didn't have that response, Well, I, yes,
and no I'm more like you where I'm confused. I
saw comments that were similar to that. Yeah, and I
was just confused. On the face of it. I went, Guys,
since when did virtue signaling become real morality? I mean, like,
I'm not saying he's not the most moral public serce,
but because he came out and gave a scripted speech,
that means he is. Now, what that speech ensures is
that he's still accepted to all the best cocktail parties
on both sides of the aisle. That's all that speech ensured. Now,
if you want to get into does he have a point?
Okay again, fan of you know supporter President Trump, I
do think he's got a point meaning what he's saying. Look,
the reason he's going after Powell is because Powell won't
lower rates. It's not because pa Look I don't I
don't know enough and I haven't gone through and audited it.
I do not think Powell and the FOMC are rigging
the system to get extra spending on on renovations FED buildings.
And I just, I just I could be wrong. I
could be wrong, and I will issue with me may
a couple if I am. But this this kind of
feels a lot to me, like and I don't disagree
with this, but this feels a lot to me, like
making Venezuela about Fenno, Right, Like does do drugs go
through Venezuela?
Speaker 2: Yes?
Speaker 3: Is that why we're down there? No, we're down there
because of the oil and the power that it gives
Venezuela and the ability to sway geopolitical issues and and
and to Trump's credit, he's also said that too. So I,
unlike any other president, right, when we when we ever
go into another country, there's always a humanitarian reason why, right, And.
Speaker 1: Like always it's always colored that way. There's a lot
we could talk about with Venezuela. There's the China cooperation,
there's the Russian cooperation. Their radar systems failed Cuba, Like
we we need to remember that China has promised to
be the sole superpower. They have promised to be the
number one purveyor of chemical and biological weapons. They do
speak the language of racial supremacy, just as everybody remember
that there are reasons to say we'd actually like to
secure the Venezuelan oil for ourselves because we see some
chips adding up against us. And I don't God forbid,
we go take Greenland by military for US guys. If
that happens, I'm out. Yeah, if we attack Greenland, count
me out, count me out of megaalands. I'm done. There's
ways to approach this attacking Greenland. No on this topic.
Let me go back through with what I'm watching here.
He probably perjured himself in front of Congress. Okay, there's
a ton of problems with his testimony around this build
number one. Where is the budget? Well, we don't have
to show that to you. We're the Federal Reserve. Okay,
we'd like to understand the vendor process. That's not supo.
We need to show you. I don't like the fact
that that entity has so much power and no boss
and no one running it, and that this guy speaks
the language of democracy and accountability. And I'm sorry. I
would like to see this audited. I would love to
see Jerry Powell or JPO sit in front of some
people who could ask them some questions. Hey, while you're here,
why can't we audit you?
Speaker 3: Hey? Now, hold on, if that's what this is for,
if this is the camel getting it under its nose,
underneath the tent in order to begin auditing the FED.
Then I am in full support of that, full support
of that. My whole thing is, do I think that
they're misappropriating funds on a FED building build out? I don't, Okay,
Do I think what you just said and the inability
for us to verify that as a problem. Absolutely, Hey, look,
we one of the things we talk about. I think
everybody's familiar with that two trillion dollars that's missing it
out of the budget at some point over the last
twenty five year or thirty years something like that.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Right, think about all of the things that we have
or haven't funded with dark pools, you know, stuff that
we've funded, Like you think about like the the uh,
the Sandinistas down there and in Nicaragua when we were
doing that, right, how Like, think about how easy it
would be for an entity that isn't audit and it
has no oversight or no regulator and has the ability
to print the world's reserve currency with virtually no restrictions.
Like meaning, I'm not so my adult brain tells me
that the likelihood that funds have not been used for
untoward things have got to be like zero. Okay, But
I'm not even accusing them of that. I'm sitting there
saying the fact that we have no ability to oversee that,
or to verify that, or to check it. I mean,
that's like leaving your front door open with a neon
sign above. And it's saying, Robney, this is exactly what
I'm saying. And look I'm looking at this is a
grand jury, sy Penis. It's not congressional testimony. But if
he gets in front of a grand jury, and he
lies in front of a grain jury, now Jerry Powell
has his significant problem, then there's some leverage on this.
Speaker 1: Now. Is it to get interest rate?
Speaker 3: Sure?
Speaker 1: President Trump's trying to blackmail him the way they tried
to blackmail him, And don't tell me Jerry Powell wasn't
part of that. Jerry Powell played with interest rates when
it helped Biden and the people who ran Joe Biden.
They lowered interest rates. They knew what they were doing.
Jerry Powell's playing politics on this as well. He could
have lowered interest rates. He has the power to not
because he's not auditable. If this is what you said,
the camel getting the toe under the tent and the
nose of the tent, I am in because I would
love to see the questions on this. It is an
obscenity that these people get to invent debt, hand it
to us and say pay us. That's obscene. And what
they've done with this, particularly the COVID, was so obscene.
That has to change. It has to be audited. And
furthermore on this, look at USAID and all the things
we've learned about that money laundering and that whole thing
that came up. If it's too dirty for the CIA,
give it to you AID. Tell me an entity that
gets to conjure debt and force the American people to
pay it back, isn't doing the same thing. Man, If
you're the CIA, I'd be I'd have I'd have offices
all over the Federal Reserve, I'd have everybody on my payroll,
and i'd have everybody hung up on a blackmail thing,
everybody I'd.
Speaker 3: Own and well, and here's the problem I've got with
it is what are the chances that that isn't happening?
Right again? I don't want to be a conspiracy theorist.
Speaker 1: I don't know.
Speaker 3: I've got no clue, but you know, you just sit
back and you look at the different parts and you go, Okay,
it's possible nothing untoward is going on here. I mean,
look the people that occupy Washington, DC. For me to
believe that nothing untoward was going on there, you'd have
to convince me that a bunch of Midwestern pastors are
are what's occupying DC right now for me to believe
that story, right, I just you give those kind of
people access and proximity to unlimited amounts of printed money
and no oversight ability, Like that's crazy to me. That's crazy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's the absolute fraud playground of the world. There's
one thing about that though, what you just said, this
Midwestern pastorn thing. Let's remember that everybody can fall everybody
and you can be any process. Satan is always hunting us.
I can't count how many times we're told in the
Bible believers are told Hebrews fourteen through thirty one is
telling believers, do not depart the fath, do not be fooled,
do not turn your back on the Holy Spirit, don't
do these things once you know the truth, to practice sin,
look forward to the fires of hell, etc. So I
know you're making a joke about the Midwest pastors. We
need to talk faith and we need to talk to
finance faithful finance with Zach Abraham here. And really it's
very sad because it's coming off of the death of
a guy who is known as the Dilbert creator. And
then the headlines around this. Have you seen the headlines,
They're calling this guy disgrace. It says we'll talk about
this in just a second. Was that Gameraham, I'm a
guy who's going to be going back down. If it's
good travel and it's safe and all that, I'm gonna
be going back down to renew Healthcare in about the
February April timeframe. They're now doing anti aging and they
sent me this kit that will determine the age of
min internal organs and in that then what they can
do is if I've got a problem with the specific
internal organ they have stem cell treatments and hyperbaric treatments
and IV treatments that can effectively reverse the aging process
of an organ. So if my heart is extra old, kidneys,
et cetera, they can do that because it's the inside
of us that powers the outside of us. The way
the stem cells work is they regenerate tissue miraculously. Because
this is God's design. The stem cells that Renew uses
are not assigned any purpose. They just build. Nor are
they from random people. They're from people whose healths have
been screened, the health of the Babiesman's screen during and
after pregnancy. The screen so much that Renew has the
luxury of rejecting ninety percent of the stem cells and
then culturing the ones that remain. That's what I'm going
to get done the next time I go down there. Now,
you could say you could get that done in America. Sure,
if I want freeze dried stem cells taken from whomever
stored however long and skip toob Ernie twenty thirty times
around the country, I could roll the dice in that
I'm not willing to do that. You can do the
same thing as me. Go to renew dot Healthcare. It's
r E n U E dot Healthcare, telling me you're
part of the Todd Herman Show family. It's Renewed r
E n U E dot Healthcare, directly the deside of God.
Speaker 2: Said cells.
Speaker 1: So on the faithful finance topic, Zach Abraham's with me,
chief investment officer Bulwart Capital Management, Scott. You saw the
sad news of Scott Adams dying, Zach.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: So Scott was a very wealthy man, very successful. Would
you agree that after Dilbert's had kind of it reached
zenith and we saw him online explaining system thinking and
psychology and politics. I think he was gifted with an
incredible and incredible intellect.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, brilliant guy, brilliant guy.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah. And the coffee with Scott Adam's thing showed
him to be a very approachable man, showed him to
be someone that you could turn to like as a friend.
He was apparently a very very good husband. But it
brought up a topic that you and I have kind
of florded with talking about before, and it has to
do with rich people in the Kingdom of Heaven. I
want you to hear the statement that his ex wife
put out, and it was something Scott wrote he wanted
people to hear this after his death. Here's what his
ex wife read for people's consumption.
Speaker 5: Next. Many of my Christian friends have asked me to
find Jesus before I go. I'm not a believer, but
I have to admit the risk reward calculation for doing
so looks so attractive to me. So here I go.
I accept Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior and
look forward to spending an eternity with him. The part
about me not being a believer should be quite quickly resolved.
If I wake up in heaven, I won't need any
more convincing than that. I hope I'm still qualified for entry.
Speaker 1: So that's part of what he said in his note.
There's Zach and it begins with I do not believe
your God, paraphrasing I do not believe, but I'm willing
to issue what I would call an incantation Harry Potter
type incantation. I'm going to say some words that will
have a magic effect, and then I'm going to offer
a negotiation with God. I'll die, you wake me up,
then I'll believe. And what's so sad about this to
me is, guess what if Scott Adams, God forbid, woke
up in hell he also believes? Yeah, and you right.
He was a very wealthy man, a very smart man,
and in that that's what I wanted to talk with
you about. In the faithful finance front. Then we can
expand this. I think that's an example of why it's
so hard for a rich man to make it into
heaven because a rich man can look around and said, well,
I did all this on my own. You spend a
lot of time around wealthy people. You've been very good
in finance, so you've met more of them than I do.
You work with more of them than I do these days.
Why do you think it's hard for rich people to
make it into heaven?
Speaker 3: At the risk is sounding arrogant, I don't think. I know,
and I've experienced at firsthand through a lot of other people,
and I've dealt with it to a certain degree on
my own. And there's a thing that my wife and
I referred to that when we started Bullwork, I think
we started with about twelve million dollars under management, and
now as of today, I think we're about forty million
away from the one billion dollar mark. Wow.
Speaker 2: And I.
Speaker 3: There's not a there's not an ounce of brag in that.
There's nobody more shocked by it than I am. I
see the numbers and people are like, well, wasn't that
always your goal? And no, man, my goal was that
I didn't lose my house and I fed my kids
like that that was the you know. I mean, sure
we all have dreams, but you know, when you're staring down,
when you're staring down on viction, you're not thinking about
getting to a billion dollars under management, you know what
I mean. Right, But with each step that we've taken
and we've reached these different financial platforms, it kind of
caught me off guard a couple of times, but then
it started getting to very predictable. And my wife and
I talk about it. We refer to it as equalizing,
meaning you hit these different platforms and these different things
open up to you because you've got the freedom and
the and the financial wherewithal to do these different things.
And that's a new reality. And I've equated it to
like deep seed, like like deep diving, Right, you need
to stop every twenty twenty feet and calibrate and blow
your ears and all that kind of stuff. And I
found that I needed to do that, not because I
was like going off the rails, but it's a new reality.
It's a it's a place you've never been to before, right,
Like most people have not experienced making in a month
more money than they need to live over the next year,
you know what I mean. That's a that's a different reality,
and it's really easy for it to mess with your mind,
to get you focused on the wrong things. And the
other part of it is that as you get more money,
you are able to mold and shape your life and
your work life and everything around you to exactly the
way you want it. And if you think about it,
that's not normal, right, Like everybody has to deal with
things that they don't want to deal with it they
don't like. The more money you have, the less of
those things you have to deal with. Again, I'm a
perfect example. One of my primary goals when I started
bullwork was to get to the point where I didn't
have to do my own paperwork, right, like, just a
little thing like that. Now you know, Now I have
hired people and built a team to where I only
do the things that I like to do about my job.
I've outsourced that around. Is that a realistic life for me? No,
I've been unbelievably blessed and very few people get to
do that. And it's really easy for that to start
bleeding into other parts of your life. Nobody tells you, No,
the more money you have, the more your butt gets
kissed every time you walk through a door. That's not normal, right.
You can mold your reality around you. You can effectively
be your own God. Right, So you said.
Speaker 1: You did guess you weren't guessing why it's hard for
rich people to make it into heaven. You said, you know,
is that the kapper that you're treated like a little
baby God.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and you treat yourself that way that if you
want this, you buy it. You don't think, right like
it distorts kind of the normal human experience to a
certain degree.
Speaker 1: Well, right, I'm looking at Scott Adams. I mean there's
Zach Abraham's you know, the work that you've done and
the challenges you and your wife face and building Bulwark.
I've got my challenges. I've had my seasons of plenty.
As a podcast. World changes. We were here right now
retooling some things. So some things we're going to focus
on differently, and some things were do differently. The radio
world change. So you go through plenties, you go through
seasons of plenty. And God is the god of the mountains,
He's the God of the valleys. He's with us. My challenge,
Zach is actually trusting God. And I'll tell you I
trust God, but sometimes I will be fearful about financial
outcomes and then I remember, wait, God has me, always
has had me. What I hear in Scott Adam's statement
is something that my daughter will sometimes joke about. If
my daughter's in the house and I remember this, I'll
never forget this. I was on the phone with my
agent when I had a radio agent and we were
talking about the contract renewal. And I was on the
phone with Heather and hung up the phone and said, hey, honey.
She goes, ooh, Daddy's doing business. That's daddy's business voice,
the deal making voice. I go, I'm that different. She goes, oh,
my gosh, you're so different. I'm in command, and I'm
in charge, and I'm hearing from Scott Adams, and that's
something that really makes me sad. I heard him negotiate.
I heard him say, all right, well, so if I
understands your deal correctly, Lord, it is that I repent
of my sins. I come to you in humility. I
recognize that you are the King of the universe, the
Lord of all things, my personal savior. I can't do
it on my own. I beg you to forgive me
to be my savior. I accept you as my savior,
and then I ask you to change me and to
sanctify me, and then I begin acting that way. Okay,
I hear you. I mean, and that's an attractive offer.
I'm not here to say it isn't. But I want
to counter you with this, God, how about this. I'll die.
I don't believe in you, but I'll die, and then
when I die, you wake me up and heaven, and
then I will believe. So that's my counteroffer, and it's
my final offer. And sadly it was his final offer.
So I see a guy who spent a lifetime negotiating
rights for Dilbert in cartoons, in syndication, in books, in merchant,
and look at what he did financially for his family.
And it was just Dilbert he did. He wrote books
about work, he wrote books about marketing. He became, hey,
I don't need a publisher, all self published. He created
a social media platform of notes, he became political thinker. Right,
that's what I see him trying to do negotiating with God.
Speaker 3: He never didn't have leverage. He never didn't have leverage.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 3: He is not used to and nor should he be.
He's not used to operating without leverage. He got into
a negotiation that he didn't realize he has their leverage.
It's not a negotiation, it's an offer, take it or
leave it. Yeah, right, And this gets back to my
you ever see the movie Devil's Advocate?
Speaker 1: Yes, al, but she knows in that there's some horrifically
nearly pornographic scenes in.
Speaker 3: That there are, and what I would advise people do,
And I would say probably like seventeen years old would
be the cutoff, maybe sixteen if they're I.
Speaker 1: Say seven at least.
Speaker 3: Okay, but figure out where those scenes are because the
ironically the message that movie sense was phenomenal, which is
what the seduction of power and money and prestige and how.
And there's a scene at the end where Keanu Reeves
does the right thing right, He stands up for right,
He vanquishes his foe, walks into the bathroom, and the
reporter pulls up next to him. He goes, man, you're
incredible in the courtroom, and there's kind of that twinkle
in his eye. Keanu Reeves walks out of the bathroom.
All of a sudden, the reporter flips back to being
an al pacino and he goes, pride, it's my favorite, right,
and and you sit there and you're like, oh, and
that pride. You and I were talking about this off
the offline the craziest. I got a little choked up
when I listened to his wife talking just now. And
the reason I yeah, And the reason why is because
I hear the words of a man negotiating with somebody
it doesn't need to be negotiated with, and you realize
the penalty. It's so much easier to see faults in
other people. And I think that we should all sit
back and look at that. What we just saw was
the horrific impacts of pride. And you and I were saying,
if you have five, ten thirty days to live, think
of how illogical it is to take the approach that
that very logical man took. Right. Why why wouldn't you
at least say it? Why wouldn't you just go No,
I do believe right, Like, if it's not the case,
you don't have to spend the next twenty years going
to church. No.
Speaker 1: Right, And I I can respect him saying out loud
to God, I don't believe in you, right, because better
so not a lot of God's face, because God knows right.
But that so my question then is with all his money,
all his success. You said, never time, or he didn't
have leverage. Well, you know what, I guess I'll just
take my cartoon away from you. I guess you don't
really need the Delbert calendar. If you're not willing to
pay that, that's fine, because I don't need the Delbert
calendar either. Right, I've got plenty of time.
Speaker 3: Ielf published.
Speaker 1: Right, I'll self publish a good idea calendar. I like that.
I'll do that on my own. Thanks for the idea.
No no, no, no, no no no, Scott, no no. We
can work this out. Baby. We love you seriously, No,
we love you very much. So what are the keys
to people who have reached financial success? Zat Abraham? What
are the keys to staying grounded? One of the things
I had a friend of mine tell me when we
started building a startup together. He was my mentor in tech.
He said, promise yourself. There's things you'll never do, Like
John said, my rule is I'll never buy a Porsche
because everyone I've ever seen buy a nice Porsche turns
into a jerk. So I've given myself rules. In politics,
I used to tell my staff. I used to say
a very very racy phrase. I'd say to them, the
first trick you turn is the hardest. After a while,
you just get in the car and you let the
John drive. Meaning the first time you violate your principles
is not going to good. After that, you'll get used
to it. So I had them create a plaque that
they put up on their wall with a mirror. These
are things I'll never do. And the day you do one,
you quit. You leave DC and give your best friends
and your parents a copy of that plaque as a poster.
And if they ever see you doing one of those things,
they come to you and say it's time to leave DC.
You took your first bribe, yep. And everybody gets offered
a bribe in DC. Everybody gets offered a bribe. Eventually,
if you have any job of note, you get offered.
You can get offered a bribe as a hotel maid. Hey,
there's a guy staying in the room. We need you
to put this on his shoes. Okay, we need you
to put this on his belt, and we'll pay you.
So how do you stay grounded? Then? What are the
rules for people who are really wealthy and they don't
want to fall away? From Christ. How do you handle
that for yourself? And what do you suggest the rules
of other people?
Speaker 3: So this is this will sound kind of weird, but
one thing that I've experienced, and I've seen a lot
of other people experience it to greater levels, but ownless stuff.
And the reason I say that is when you have
the ability to purchase whatever you want whenever you want to,
within reason, you know, it can be very exhilarating and
there's parts of it that there are a lot of fun.
But what happens to a lot of people is you
start acquiring things and inadvertently a you start spending more
time focused on the maintenance and the care and the
those things take. They start taking a very bizarre place.
And the other thing they start doing is they start
sucking up in ordinate amounts of capital and they start
restricting you. You know, you're wealthy, You've still got plenty
of flexibility and you can do things. But I've seen
many times where people probably should have and felt led
to give, but they couldn't because they were juggling vacation
homes or someone you see what I'm saying, And there
and there's these these stuff is so stuff is so
much less fulfilling than people think it's going to be.
And it's so much more of a pain than people
think it's going to be.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we did.
Speaker 3: We ascribed so much value to things that we do
not have. Yeah, and it's and it's a huge mistake.
Speaker 1: I saw a person do a spiritual balance sheet, and
I thought, this is a really interesting approach. Profit loss
for the family, for the home, okay, the business, investments
in the kingdom. And they put a line item down
there and it blew their minds. Four homes, vacations, college funds,
and we tithe, we give ten percent, and they, as
a husband and wife, sat back and looked at us,
said that is pathetic. It is flat pathetic. We could
afford thirty percent and it wouldn't even make a dent.
Speaker 3: So I was just gonna say one of my biggest
tips to people, as you start making amounts of money,
if you're fortunate enough to come into an income that's
reflective of the top one percent or something like that,
piece of advice. The best thing that you can do
for your marriage, you can do for your own peace
of mind, for your soul, for your family. Make the
number one, because this is the beautiful thing about money.
I think people always miss this. When you have big
amounts of excess, you can prioritize anything however you want to.
So make the giving the number one priority, like my
wife and I have. And it look, I don't do
everything perfect. I'm not saying at all, but I've set
these things up because I'm not perfect. Meaning We've got
to the point where when we want to do something
with money, but a financial an opportunity to give crosses
our path, we know immediately that don'e put that thing
on the side, give to that right. And I love
it when it happens. I didn't at first because it
was an inconvenient right. Well, I want that we got
to do the right thing. What I learned over time
is like everything else with God, right, it's protection it.
Three months later I'd sit back and go, I'm so
glad we did that because now three months, four months,
five months later, I got it anyway, and God was
just saying I didn't say no. I said, wait, and
just say, what do you prioritize? What do you prioritize?
Speaker 1: Love the guy? YEA, love Lord your God, with your
entire heart, mind, soul and strength. Love your neighbors yourself.
I love that. Thank you, Zach. There is one of
the things I wanted to play for you. DC style.
You talk about money and never having had enough.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: Rick Scott, Yeah, senator from Florida. He was going to
be governor at one point. And Rick Scott kind of
plays the the hardcore Republican routes. He's the rock rib conservative,
all those kind of cliches. He had the defense of
something I thought you'd find interesting. He decided to go
out and defend insider trading. Rick Scott has a nine
figure net worth watches.
Speaker 6: But somehow it's suspect because I made money. How many
people in the artists, how many of you don't want
to make money? Anybody want to be poor? I don't,
right it. So this idea that we're going to attack
people because they make money is raw, is absolutely raw.
We should cherish all of our different backgrounds. Every one
of us has a different background. I've got a business background.
But what I was just accused of is making money
is somehow I can't do. I can't be fair and
do things the right way. So I think it's disgusting
with this is what is going on here?
Speaker 1: So we're talking about limiting insider trading. And Rick Scott's
defense of this is that people don't want him to
make money. I was trying to figure out nine figures.
That's he's got a significant little basic capital work from Disney.
It's over one hundred million dollars one hundred million bucks,
and he needs more from insider trading.
Speaker 3: So I'd look at it. I'd look at him and go, hey, buddy,
go back to the business world. You chose to be
a public servant and take the public money. With that
comes certain responsibilities. For instance, you can't purge yourself in
front of the Senate, can you. Okay, you can't. There's
all these things you've got to do. You can't delete emails.
I can you know another thing you can't do. You
can't take public funds and use them to enrich themselves
off of access to information that the public doesn't have.
And Rick, don't sit there and play make this a
moral playground. You are that. You are the virus that
has infected the Republican Party and you're one of the
reasons that we're at this place because you guys have
been all mouth and no action for the better part
of my adult life, and when it comes time to
stand up and do the right thing, you issue some
bs feigned disgust about protecting your ability to make money. Rick,
you got over one hundred million, you could stick it
in treasuries and make four and a half million a
year off the interest. Give me a freaking break.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it was sick. And the fact that he can
do that and hold his head up high shows that
he is not just the virus. He has become the virus.
It's not just that he has it, He's become the
actual virus in our system.
Speaker 3: He talk about a guy that didn't make his chart
of things he wouldn't do in DC.
Speaker 1: Right, or if he did, he lost it. So when
Kivin had stole it, it's just gone sorry about that.
Speaker 3: They traded him nine figures for it, right, exactly.
Speaker 1: Always good to have wise counsel for my friend, Zach Abraham,
Chief Investmentster Bollet, couple of management. Thank you for coming on.
Stay safe over in this separate country of Seattle, and
hopeful those daycare businesses work out for you. That was
a wise investment you suggested. I thought you were smoking
something when you said go get the smality daycare fund.
But that was a goodbye. It's a thousand turn time
return and thank his act.
Speaker 3: Yeah, talk about the investment opportunity there, we missed one there.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's right. This is the Todd Herbanshelby. He's gonna
be well, Be strong, be kind, Please make every effort
to walk in the light of Christ.