Financial Investing Radio

What are the main challenges that I need to solve as a company trying to apply AI to help my business? In this episode, I have a conversation with an organization that provides an AI platform to help you overcome those.

Grant
Hey, everybody, welcome to another episode of ClickAI Radio. This is Grant Larsen. And today I have someone that I bumped into the not too long ago, I was at a conference and literally went to their booth and said, Oh, I want to learn more about this technology. I've been tracking your team, your organization, so it's my chance to learn more about it. And so I got to meet a Atalia Horenshtien I hope I said that right. I'm so excited to have Atalia here with me today. So first of all, "A" welcome I tell you and "B" did I say your name right? And then "C" the first question out of the box, explain the meaning behind your name.

Atalia
Thank you so much for having me. And you actually pronounced the name correctly. So kudos to your best. The meaning behind my name. So first of all, thanks to my parents for choosing such a unique name. It's actually a Hebrew name. I'm originally from, from Israel. And I totally I need Hebrew pronouncing it as a Talia is actually the first claim in Judaism kingdom. So it's a name from the Bible. And it's actually very unique even in Israel. Very cool.

Grant
Really. The queen in the Bible, I'm gonna have to go look that up. That's awesome. You should. That's very cool. Do we? Do we bow in your presence? Then? Do we do anything like that? Do we do we say Hey, this is me?

Atalia
No, no, no, no, not not at all.

Grant
Excellent. Well, thank you. Thank you for taking the time here today. Now as I understand that, I want to make sure I get this right. Your title in your organization is Global Technology Product Advocacy Lead, I actually had to write that down because I can only remember three things. And that's five words in a title, Global Technology Product Advocacy Lead for DataRobot. Did I get that? Right?

Atalia
Yeah, that's actually correct.

Grant
What do you do in that role?

Atalia
So we did a robot. I started as a customer facing data scientist, where I work with customers in different industries, and helping them how to solve complex AI and machine learning problems. And learning from this role, and those use cases. I shifted a bit towards to the advocacy side. So how we tell the technical story of DataRobot, how we educate the market about what's possible. Some of the use cases I implement, and some of the stuff I saw was working on collaboration with our marketing sales. And our customers as well.

Grant
Okay, got it. So that global part, I think, is critical, because I'm assuming that you go across multiple markets, you're not focused on any one. I gotta believe that gives you a sort of broader industry cross industry view on on AI and machine learning. Is that correct?

Atalia
Yeah, so I was very lucky to work with different industries in different geographical locations. And obviously, I see a lot of different trends and maturity around AI, where they are in the stage, how are they adopting? What's the process? There, technical knowledge, their technical stage? Yeah. So from United States to Europe to the Middle East. It's really, really interesting. And I'm very happy that I have the opportunity to do so.

Grant
So that's awesome. What know what got you into this world? What got you into AI and machine learning?

Atalia
Actually, it's a really interesting path because I started actually the software engineer Not not a, as a data scientist, and over time, obviously the software engineer you work with, with software development, system design, etc, some stuff that you see today in in machine learning operations. And then when I did my masters, I was mostly specific around business intelligence and machine learning. And I learned a lot, it was super interesting. So I took my software skills into a different level. And it's a funny story, because a professor of mine is actually working for DataRobot. And he's one of the main reasons I'm here.

Grant
Oh, really? Oh, that's interesting. So was the professor already at DataRobot when you were like, Okay, got it. Got it?

Atalia
Yep, he's still here. His name is Ted Kotler is a world class Person, both on the personality side, and he's a technical knowledge. So I'm very fortunate to work with great people in the company.

Grant
That's fascinating. I have a similar journey myself, meaning I too, came through the software engineering path, and then sort of stumbled into  through a whole range of things into the whole data science and ML/AI space. So a lot of people certainly do that. But it's sort of a shift in the thinking, isn't it the first time you come into the ML thinking, you're thinking about your data in a much different way. And algorithms and such you're like, wait, okay, I'm solving it. So much different. But I thoroughly enjoy that. All right. So I want to get to some of the things that are unique to, to DataRobot itself. I've worked with multiple AI and ML platforms. And as I mentioned in the intro, I had been watching and looking at DataRobot, watching your organization over time, take on more and more capabilities. When I when you demonstrated the latest capabilities and gave me a sense of where things are going. It started me thinking, what are the main challenges when you think about the AI and ML world? And the problems that are in this space? What are the main challenges that we face? And ultimately, I want to get to what is it that differentiates the way DataRobot does it in the market? But could you first start with what are some of the main challenges you see today, especially with your global perspective, in the AI space?

Atalia
Yeah. So I think the main main challenge today around the machine learning lifecycle is how you move models into productions and how you make sure your models are still accountable, and accurate with all the factors and new reality that is coming up, right. And get this today, everyone can just build psyche learn model or simple, you know, regression model. But when you work as an organization, and you have different infrastructures, different tools, different skill sets, different personas within your team, and you localize the development side of it, and every model has completely different requirements. So you're getting to inefficient lifecycle. So moving a model from development phase to production is a process that takes usually a lot of time, and it can be super complex. So something that I personally like about there rather than this is something I learned from customers, right that this is the biggest pain today is having an ability to have a platform that will be interoperable and flexible around how to support models that were created in variety of environments and languages, but also how to serve and manage and monitor models that were deployed to different endpoints necessarily to data on production server.

Grant
So sorry, just interrupt there. That was one of the things when you showed me I was fascinated with which was this ability to bring in models produced from a wide range of platforms and tool sets, if you will, and still bring them into the management aspect that I thought that was a critical characteristic around DataRobot itself. So when when you do that work, when you bring those models in and you manage those, what is it that that you're doing that makes that easier? A it's a it's helpful for me to have one place to bring those together but be what value then does that help me with as I tried to, to update those and refactor those moving forward?

Atalia
So it includes several other aspects. So first of all, as you mentioned, you have a single place where you can see all your models regardless where they've been created and regardless of the word have been deployed to. So like single pane of glass where you can see everything and, and being able to see at a glance which models are stale, which eventually preventing any risk to your business. Because it's not just about having the visibility to those models. It's also the ability to manage, monitor and govern them. So what is the service health status of this model from the the all endpoints, and what's the accuracy of the model, how it's changed over time, maybe some features that have been drifted. When you see those aspects, it's really helpful for you to understand, maybe you need to retrain your existence project, maybe you need to swipe your existence model with any challenger model, something that is performing better now with the new data that is coming up. Think about COVID That can be a really great example, right? When you train models on certain data set, but then all the reality has changed. All the products you did at that time are irrelevant today with the existence data.

Grant
Okay, yeah. And this this ability to see the either the drip, like you said, or the staleness of that that's such a critical capability. Is that is that a visual thing? Is it notification based? And how is it that you're being made aware of this?

Atalia
So it's definitely a visual thing. So you have an ability to see on a specific time when something happened, but you know, we're not expecting from people to go in consistently checking the platform, you can automate the whole process with notifications, if you want to get notified that, let's s

In this episode, I talk with the CEO and founder of an organization that has been applying AI to help them develop products. Will AI help you develop your products faster? Come and see.

Grant
Hey, everybody, welcome to another episode of ClickAI Radio. So today I have this opportunity to speak with one of those brains out there in the market that's being disruptive, right? They're making changes in the industry in terms of not only the problems are solving, but it's the way in which they're solving the problems using AI very fascinating. Anyway, everyone, please welcome Paul Ortchanian here to the show.

Paul
Hi, nice. Nice, nice of you, happy to be here on the show. 

Grant
Absolutely. It's very good to have you here today. When I was first introduced to you. And I started to review your material what it is that your organization has put together as fascinated with the approach because I have a product development background and in in the software world. AI was late comer to that right meaning over generations when I saw the approach that you're taking to that I'm interested to dig more into that. But before we do that big reveal, could you maybe step back and talk about the beginning your journey? What got you on this route? And this map, both in terms of product development, and technology and AI itself?

Paul
Yeah, absolutely. So I started out as an engineer, headed down to San Francisco in the early 2000s. And, and I was more of a thinker than an actual engineer, or just be the type of guy who would figure things out by themselves. But if you were to ask me to really do things that the real things engineers do, you know, creativity was there, but not the solutioning. So being in San Francisco was a humbling experience, I guess, Silicon Valley, you get to see some really, really good engineers. So I had to make a shift in my career. And since I had a passion for user experience, the business aspect, product management was a great fit a function I didn't really understand. And I got to learn and respect, and did that for about 10 years. 

In the mid 2000s, and 10s, I basically moved back to Montreal for family reasons and cost of living, of course in San Francisco. And I started a company called Bank Biddick, which in French stands for public bath. And the idea is that most what I realized in Canada was that people here in accelerators, incubators and, and startups just didn't understand what product management was. So they didn't really understand what they do and how they do it. And I saw a lot of organizations being led by the marketing teams, or the sales team and being very service oriented and not really product LED. 

So basically, it basically stands for public bath, which means every quarter, you want to basically apply some hygiene to your roadmap, you have a galaxy of ideas, why not go out there and just, you know, take the good ones and remove the old ones and get rid of the dirt. And we started with that premise. And we put we said, well, what does a product manager do on a on a quarterly basis? Because a lot of the material you'll read out there really talks about, you know what product managers should do in terms of personas and understanding the customer's data and this and that, but nobody really tells you which order you should do it. Right. If that was my initial struggle as a product manager, do you try to do it all in the same day and then you realize that there's not enough time? So the question is like in a one quarter 12 week cycle, as my first three weeks should be about understanding the market shifts the industry, the product competitors and and the users and then maybe in the next three weeks working with leadership on making sure that there is no pivots in the organization or there are some some major strategic changes and then going into analyzing the DIS parking lot of ideas and figuring out which ones are short term and re and making business cases in order to present them for, for the company to make a decision on What to do next on the roadmap. 

So there is a process and we just call that process SOAP, which goes in line with our public bath theme. So the idea was like, let's let's give product managers SOAP to basically wash their roadmap on a quarterly basis. And, and that's what being public does. And we work with over 40 organizations today so far, on really implementing this product LEDs process within their organizations, we work with their leaders on identifying a product manager within the organization and making sure that marketing support sales, the CFO CEO really understand how to engage with them what to expect from them, and how product manager can add value to to the organization. And so they just doesn't become, you know, this grace towards them as many features as you can pump out, right.

Grant
Oh, boy, yeah. Which, which is constant problem. The other thing that I've noticed, and I'm wondering if, and I'm sure that your SOAP methodology addresses this, it's the problem of shifting an organization in terams of their funding model, right? They'll come from sort of these project centric or service centric funding styles, and then you've got to help them through that shift to a different funding model round products. You guys address that as well.

Paul
Yeah, we address that a lot. One of the things we always tell them is if you are a service professional services firm, and you know, I have no issues basically calling them that. If and I asked them like do you quantify staff utilization in percentages, like 70% of our engineers are being billed? Right? Do we basically look at the sales team? How many new deals do they have in terms of pipeline? Are we looking at on time delivery across those, so double use that to serve the sales team closed? And what is our time and technical staff attrition, that usually tends to be identifiers of you being a service firm? And we often ask them, well, let's let's make the shift, when we identify one little initiative that you have that you want to productize because they all these service firms, really all they want is recurring revenue, then the service is tough, right? 

That you constantly have to bring in new clients. So this recurring revenue, the path to recurring revenue is, you know, being able to say, Okay, I'm going to take two engineers, one sales person, one marketing person, one support person, and a product manager. And those guys collectively will cost me a million dollars a year, and I'm going to expect them to basically bring me $3 million in recurring revenue. That means that they're, they're no longer going to be evaluated on staff utilization, they're no longer going to be evaluating the number of deals they're bringing in. And they're, they're really going to be evaluated on how are they releasing features? Are they creating value for those features? are we increasing the number of paid customers? And are we basically, you know, staying abreast in terms of competitors and market industry changes. 

And so that's a complete paradigm shift. And that transition takes a while. But the first seed is really being able to say, can you create an entity within your organization where the CFO accepts that those engineers are dedicated and no longer being, you know, reviewed in terms of their utilization rate in terms of their know how much they're billing to customers? Once they do that shift in the recipe is pretty easy to do.

Grant
Yeah. So it's become easy. So the thing to I've seen and experienced with, with product and product development is the relationship of innovation to product development. And so I see some groups will take innovation, and they'll move that as some separate activity or function in the organization, whereas others will have that innate within the product team itself. What have you found effective? And does self addressed that?

Paul
Yeah, I mean, we always ask them the question of what how are you going to defend yourself against the competition with the VCs that have to call their moat, right? And that defensibility could be innovation, it could also be your global footprint, or, you know, it could be how you operationalize your supply chain make things really, really cheap, right? Every company can have a different strategy. And we really ask them from the get go. We call this playing the strategy, we'll give them like eight potential ways a company can, you know, find strategies to differentiate themselves? And the first one is first the market? 

And the question is, it's not about you being first to market today. But do you want to outpace your curlier closest rivals on a regular basis? And if so, you know, you need an r&d team and innovation team who is basically going to be pumping out commercializable features or r&d work. And then we always give him the two examples, the example of Dolby Dolby being completely analog in the 70s, but really banking on their r&d team to bring him to the digital age and from the digital age to set top boxes to Hollywood and now into Netflix compression, right? 

So they basically put their R&D team as the leader to basically keep them a step ahead of their competition. But it but on the other hand, we also Welcome, you know, talk about Tesla, where Tesla is basically doing the same thing, but they're not doing it for intellectual property like Dolby, they're not suing anybody are actually open sourcing it. But there's a reason behind it where that open sourcing allows them to basically create the, you know, what we call the Betamax VHS issue, which is making sure that there's compatibility across car manufacturers for Tesla parts and overproduction of parts that are Tesla just to increase their supply chain, right? So we ask them, Do you want to be that company, if you don't want to be that company,

In this episode I talk with Dr. Pranay Parikh, where we look at the question, how can you do your full time job while being an entrepreneur to fill the gaps that are missing in your life?

Grant
Hey, everybody, welcome to another episode of Financial Investing Radio. So today I have this opportunity. It's taken us a few times for me to chase him down. He's very busy. Dr. Pranay Parikh. I'm excited to talk with him when I when I first saw the profile on him and realize the journey that he both has done and the one that he's on and his vision of that I got to talk to this gentleman. I'm gonna read his the little clip that I got before even let him say a word. I just want you to hear a little bit about him. Alright, here we go. Okay, hold on. Here we go. It's Dr. Pranay. Parikh is a physician co founder and president of ascent equity group, a serial entrepreneur, we're going to want to ask him about that. Okay, online course creator and host of the MD to entrepreneur podcast, which is really cool. Continuing on his unconventional journey, and I add it is which is what makes us really cool. His unconventional journey to medicine helped him learn the skills to excel in entrepreneurship. He's launched a seven figure online course. And he's bought over $1.1 billion in real estate. Wow. And he's helped hundreds of physicians launch their own businesses. His goal is to help launch 10,000 physician led businesses. That's amazing. So I want to welcome here to the show. Dr. Pranay Parikh. Welcome.

Pranay
Thanks, Grant. I'm super excited to talk.

Grant
It's so good to have you here. Now, we were both talking before we got started. We're both in the southwest part of the country. We sort of enjoy that. In fact, I think you and I might have even had our earlier grown up years in the Northern California area. So we got a lot in similar but the key difference is, I am definitely not a doctor. You know, I went bought band aids last night. And it took me awhile just to figure that out. So I'm more of a tech and investing guy. But I am not a doctor guy. But I'm excited to talk to you about this and your journey. So thanks again for being here.

Pranay
Yeah, super excited to talk to you and your audience. 

Grant
Okay, now something happened, right? You were growing up and you said, hey, I want to be a doctor and you got moving down that path. But somewhere along that line, well, first of all, what kind of medicine? Have you been practicing?

Pranay
So I did a residency in Internal Medicine, and I practice hospitalist medicines. So that means if you ever have to spend a night in the hospital, then I'd be your doctor.

Grant
Okay. Is that is that the same as as an internist? Is that? Is that what that is? 

Pranay
Yeah, so it's the same residency, but usually what internists do they do outpatient medicine, so you know, your primary care doctor, they do some inpatient, but I'm kind of sub specialized. I only see people in the hospital, the hospital itself. 

Grant
Okay, got it. Very good. All right. So you were on that journey doing that work. And something happened somewhere along the line, you sort of sat up and said, I need to add something, either to my life or my purpose or my vision on top of this medical route. Tell me about that. What happened?

Pranay
You know, so it's kind of funny. So to get into medical school, you have to be well rounded, right? You have to be doing all this other cool stuff, right? You can't just be a nerdy like I was really good at Sciences and maths and all that stuff. They want someone you know, reads a lot of the books and does all this stuff. But after you get in all that stuff gets taken away gets subtracted. And it kind of sucks for people like me that like doing a lot of other stuff, but you're so busy in medicine, doing your job learning that there's not much else you can do. So as soon as I got an opportunity to start doing other stuff I did. So for example, in medical school, I used to hold art shows. And then the money that we grades go to the doctors without borders, I was always trying to do stuff that was, you know, a little bit outside the box. So as soon as I graduated finished everything, I was like, okay, what can I do? What? Where can I go and all this stuff that's been suppressed for so long.

Grant
That's amazing. You talked about Doctors Without Borders, I have a friend just Sunday night I was talking with he, he spent a number of years I think went five times down to Central America, they were taking both dental as well as medical help and support into some of those areas there. It's fun to hear the service and the blessing that that is to people that are missing those things. So you did these art shows that was providing support to them. That's a cool thing. So it sounds like there was either there's altruistic thing that you needed to get filled in your life, right? I mean, something to reach out further, in addition to the work you're doing that led you to doing this kind of work. Now, there's that what led you at some point to say, I'm going to build sort of a business or be an entrepreneur on it is that what led you down that path?

Pranay
Still, so you know, when I when I looked at the landscape after being graduated, you know, at a pretty decent salary, but I realized the most important thing is what I do with that money, not how much I can make, you know, I could have just gone and bought a car or bought a house. And I'd be, you know, I wouldn't have a ton of money to consider for my future, right. So I decided to rent a little bit longer, keep driving my Honda Accord, which actually still have 2012. So you know, it's what I do with the money. So you know, I did the stock market, but in this world, people that are most well off and buy well off, you know, I don't care about the total number that's in my bank account, I care about freedom, I care about providing for my family, and I care about providing for my extended family. So the people that I've seen that been have been able to do that are the people in business, business and real estate. So I thought how, how can I incorporate one or, you know, fortunately, now, both of those into my life? And what's the quickest way to do that?

Grant
Okay, excellent. So you have a broader vision about, I want to make a difference, right? I want to help someone in the world, what not just my own family, but but the people within my reach that I can access or get out to? Is that right?

Pranay
Yeah. And as a doctor, it was great. Because I there's a lot of job satisfaction and being able to help people. But I was limited by time. And that's, that's one of the big issues that I had, I wanted to create this impact. I wanted to help as many people as possible, but there was only one of me, right? So if I'm not at the hospital, I'm not helping people. So how do I take that impact that I want and spread it to, really the whole world, and the what I thought was, if I can help other people, after I got my business up and running, I can help other people get their business up and running. And if they're able to either find financial security and be happier doctors, you know, you might have heard of this epidemic of a burnout, that's just been an issue. And a lot of that is not being able to pick your own hours and being forced to do things that you don't necessarily want to do a lot of administrative work. And if you're able to take control of your life, then those happy doctors are making a bigger impact. And that's something that I can, I can help people do as well.

Grant
So you're going after this audience of people that have proven that they have the ability to be disciplined to dedicate their time and their resources, their energy, not just to not just to their practice in their craft, right around medicine, but but now to take that and apply it to businesses. And those businesses the purpose of those sounds like have twofold one is to provide an outlet for them sort of emotionally, right where they can get outside and, and maybe really, you know, benefit their own family but also to use their businesses away then to further their reach to help people when they're away from practicing their medicine. Did I get that? Right?

Pranay
Correct. Correct. And you'd be surprised how often someone comes up to me and says, Hey, Pranay, I'm just a doctor. You think I could start a business? And it's funny because you have to get to get into medical school or, you know, dentistry lawyers, and I'm just talking about medical school because that's what I've been through. But you know, any professional degree, you've gone through a lot. You've studied, you've been taking all these tests and you've really stood the test of time. So you can pick up a lot of these other things pretty easily, you know, a little bit of trial and error. So a lot of it is just showing people that they have this innate ability. And a lot of times in medicine, we're taught not to try something, unless we have 100% chance of success.

Grant
It's interesting is about a year ago, I was running a class for a group of people on starting your own business. And, and one of the people that came into that class was an oral surgeon, and doing doing just great, you know, in terms of financial, right. And I said to him, why, why did you take this right to mean, you certainly don't. Okay. I mean, and he said, well, the, the one area that he felt like he was running into that it was creating a challenge for him was that, while he had figured out and was successful at the procedures, at some point in the career, those procedures became procedural. In other words, I was just doing I'm quoting him, I was just doing and still doing the same thing every day. And what I found that I

Today I had the opportunity to speak with "The Land Geek". Fascinating conversation. He's got over, well over four and a half million downloads on his podcast. He's got some interesting ideas and insights on investing with land that the returns higher than normal, I guess normal, what's normal, higher than, you know, eight 10% return, if you will, returns on these investments. So I'm very excited to have Mark here with me today. Thanks for joining us, we learn the secrets from the land geek.

Everybody welcome to another episode of Financial Investing Radio. So I have been chasing this person for some time. He is super busy and has an amazing profile. I hope you take the opportunity to look into what he's done. We're going to be having conversation today with Mark, Oh man, Mark. I didn't even ask at a time. Podolski!

Mark
Perfect pronunciation.

Grant
Did I say that? Okay. All right. Very good. Mark. Welcome. Thank you for being here today. I appreciate it.

Mark
Grant Larsen, an honor. Privilege. Thank you.

Grant
You know, we found out that we are not too far from each other geographically, which is a real treat. There's some neat, neat things about the part of the country we live in for sure.

Mark
Absolutely. We've lost our complaining privileges living in Scottsdale, Arizona.

Grant
That's right. That's right. That's right. Even when it gets a little hot. I've learned to quit Quit complaining about it's not a Houston hot right.

Mark
Houston hot. It's 80 degrees in the pool. 

Grant
Yeah, that's. That's right. It's fixable with the pool. That's right, right. Okay, so the land geek, you are known as the land geek, you've done a great job getting your name out there as land geek, not only getting your name out there, but proving a framework. But we'll get to the framework here in a moment. Because what you've done is pretty unique compared to other real estate investing strategies that are out there, of which I actually participate in some of those others, right, but I won't get to that yet. So I'm interested to learn more about what you do here. But let's back up. You were doing what what got you started to say I'm gonna go after land investments in this way.

Mark
So if we rewind the tape now, to 2000 I was a miserable micromanaged. 45 minute commute to work and back investment banker specializing in mergers and acquisitions with private equity groups. And grant it got so bad for me. I wouldn't get the Sunday blues, anticipating Monday coming around. I'd get the Friday blues, anticipating the weekend going by really fast. And having to be back at work. On Monday. I was pretty much yeah, really blue. So I first hired this guy, and he's telling me that as a side hustle, he's going to tax deed auctions. He's buying raw land, pennies on the dollar. He's flipping them online, and he's making a 300% return on his money. Grant. I'm looking at companies all day long. And a great company great has 15% EBIT on margins are free cash flow, average company's 10%. And I'm looking at companies all day long, less than 10%. So of course, I don't believe them. And I've got three grand saved up for car repairs. I go to New Mexico with them. I do exactly what he tells me to do. I buy 10 Half Acre parcels and average price of $300 each. I flipped them online. And they all sell for an average price of $1,200 each. It worked. So I went to another auction and in Arizona, where we live. And again, this is 2000 There's no one in the room. I'm buying up lots of acreage or nothing. And I sell all that property. You know that what auction I made over $90,000 So I go to my wife. She's pregnant at the time. I said Honey, I'm going to quit My job and become a full time lead investor. And she said, Absolutely not. Yeah.

Grant
What do you say? And what are you doing on?

Mark
Yeah. So it took 18 months for the land investing income to exceed the investment banking income. And then I quit. I've been doing it full time ever since. And I absolutely love it.

Grant
That's incredible. So you just sort of stumbled into it, someone happened to say, they'd already sort of figured this out. Now, it sounds like what you did with that is after you've done this for a while, you've created a system out of this, then is that right?

Mark
Yeah, I mean, after a while, you start picking up things, and you start seeing, okay, well, how do I make this job, myself. And, really, my whole philosophy is, I can always make more money, I can't get more time. And so we want to use three levers to scale and grow a business, other people's time, software and automation, and other people's money. And so once I combined all three of those, I was really able to grow and work really about 30 minutes a week, in my business.

Grant
What, 30 minutes, you're at a point now where you work 30 minutes a week on your business? In the business? Yeah, that's amazing. Wow. But it took that scaling, right, took that automation to figure it out the team around you to help take care of certain aspects of it took all of those pieces, as well as other people's money. That's interesting. That took five years. Oh, that was gonna ask you so five years to get to that point, learn the lessons, learn the business processes that you should automate, and so forth. Right?

Mark
Well, five years just to start getting myself out of business, probably another five years, to get to my point where I can work 30 minutes, 30 minutes in the business, rarely, I'm just meeting with my Acquisition Manager. And we're looking at the numbers and saying how many deals are pending? How many offers went out? How many deals will be closed? How can I support you?

Grant
So when it comes to finding these opportunities is the auctions is that your main input, or source or how well find these.

Mark
So Grant, I'm going to walk you exactly through how I do it. So you live, I'm gonna use these as a case study. You're in Scottsdale, Arizona, but let's assume that you own five acres of raw land in Texas, and you owe $200 in back taxes. So essentially, you're advertising two important things. 

Number one, you have no emotional attachment to the raw land, you're in Arizona, the properties and taxes in Texas. 

And number two, you're distressed financially in some weird way. Because we don't pay for things like our property taxes, we don't value them in the same way. As resolved, county treasurer, keeps sending me notices saying, Grant, if you don't pay your property taxes, you're going to lose that five acre parcel, tax deed or tax lien investor. So all I'm gonna do is look at the comparable sales on your five acre parcel for the last 12 to 18 months, I'm gonna take the lowest comparable sale, let's say $10,000 and divide by four. And that's gonna give you a Warren Buffett would call a 300% margin of safety. So I'm gonna send you an actual offer on your five acre parcel for $2,500. Now you accept it. Why? Because for you $2,500 is better than nothing. In reality, three to 5% of people accept my quote unquote, top dollar offer. But now that you've accepted it, I have to go through due diligence or in depth research. I have to confirm you still own the property. I have to confirm back taxes are only $200 I have to make sure there's been no breaks in the chain of title. There's no liens or encumbrances. And because it's only $2,500 investment, I outsourced to my team in the Philippines, connected to an American Title Company. It cost about $11. I was investing $5,000 or more, I wouldn't take any title risk. 

You have to close traditionally through a title company. But since this is a smaller deal, everything checks out. And now I'm going to sell your five acre parcel 30 days or less and make a cash flow. So I have a built in best buyer grant. Do you know who it is? Who is the neighbors, the neighbors? So I'm going to send out neighbor letters saying hey, here's your opportunity. Protect your privacy. Protect your views. Know your neighbor. So oftentimes the neighbors will buy now if the neighbors pass a gun to my buyers list, if they pass. A good little website you may have heard of, it's called Craigslist is the 15th most trafficked website United States. I'll go to one I know you've heard of called meta, or Facebook, buy sell groups in the marketplace, and then I'll go to the lands land moto.com lands of america.com land and farm.com land flip.com Land hub.com These are platforms where people buy and sell raw land. But the way that I'm going to do it is the secret. I'm going to make it irresistible for my next buyer. All I'm going to ask for is a $2,500 downpayment, to control this five acre parcel, and then I'll make it a car payment, let's say 297 a month, for the next 84 months at 9% interest. So it's a one time sale, I'll get my money out on the down payment. I could go six to 10 months out. And now I'm getting a passive income of 297 a month, next 84 months. No renters. No rehabs, no renovations, no rodents. And because I'm not dealing with a tenant, I'm exempt from Dodd Frank RESPA. And the SAFE Act, all this owners real estate legislation. So grant, it's a simple game, can I create enough land notes where my passive income exceeds my fixed expenses? And now working? 

Grant
Because I want to not because I have to guess you have to? So on those numbers, then Mark, when you look at that, and what's the percentage of those that carry all the way through, you know, you're obviously I love, I love how you have the profile for that best buyer, how you create that, that passive income, what sort of risks does that put on your shoulders, where there's potential for them not following through on the cash flow, any issues there?

Mark
We don't mind it, because we u

In this episode, I have the opportunity to talk with a self made entrepreneur who's followed the footsteps of her amazing dad, and in the journey has discovered what the tips are that the wealthy use to invest to change your life.

Grant
Hey, everybody, welcome to another episode of Financial investing radio. So I have been trying to track down this person multiple times and admitted it was my fault. I could not get my calendar right to meet with Stephanie Walter. So glad to have her here with me today. I'm fascinated with her background, what she's done in terms of growing wealth. But before I go any further, Stephanie, welcome.

Stephanie
Thank you so much for having me. I appreciate it. 

Grant
Yes, this is fun to have you here. Your journey is a fascinating one to me, because it's this journey as I reviewed it, of gathering some financial capabilities, but then not resting on that, but rather using it to leverage for future wealth. So I don't want to give that away because I want I want our listeners to hear this cool journey that you've gone on. But let's rewind. Okay, let's uh, we won't go back to where you were raised as a kid. But let's go back to you get out of school, and you're thinking I'm gonna go do some work. And that led you down a certain path? Would you talk about that? Yeah, I did what like most people do, I got it. I just got a regular job with a corporation.

Stephanie
I had some interest in insurance. So I became a claims adjuster. And, and I sort of moved up the ranks pretty pretty quickly to where I was working kind of as a liaison between the attorneys in that represented the insurance companies and, and the insurance company. So that was, that was really interesting, but just, you know, working in a corporate setting, I remember that, you know, my pivotal point was I was getting a 2% Raise after my superiors had said, what a fantastic job I was. You're welcome all 2% Did you get to keep all that 2%? Or did you know you got to keep? 

Grant
That's impressive. Yeah.

Stephanie
And I went home to my Dad, I just bought a house and was like, Dad, I just, you know, look at how much gets taken out. But with taxes, it was a big learning experience. I mean, well, as you know, I did put, you know, seven years into it, but just realize that, you know, if I'm making these 2% races for the rest of my life, you know, what is that going to look like? And my dad was an entrepreneur, actually, he's a second generation entrepreneur. And he's like, Well, you know, what you're gonna get if you stay in this, but if you go out on your own, you know, really what you build will be up to you. And it's your choice to do what you want to do. And I gave my my two week notice probably the next day, did you really? Oh, wow. That's okay. Wow, a woman a decision and action. That's awesome.

Grant
So, all right, so you gave you gave the two week notice you left, and then you didn't go to the pool? That's for sure. What did you go though?

Stephanie
Well, I have a I have a lot of relatives and insurance. And that's kind of how I started in doing in claims to begin with. And so I just knew, you know, the company I was really familiar with, went and signed up with them, took all the classes to become an agent and and just, you know, started started working, you know, right off the bat, state and insurance agent for about 16 years. 

See, I started that I'm trying to think of like timeframes, I think it was 2004. And then right around that same time, I kind of decided, you know, with the when the bottom fell out to buy some real estate, single family homes, right in an area in Denver, I'm a native, as I mentioned, where I felt like if there would be growth, from Denver that, you know, over time, these would probably be good, good investments to have. And that was in the Sloan's Lake area if people are familiar. And so I became, you know, a untrained landlord, as well as a business owner at the same time, all in one shot. So quick question. So when you did this transition out of the corporate world, into the entrepreneur going to do myself.

Grant
How many entrepreneur books did you read before you got started?

Stephanie
You know, I? I didn't read that many. 

Grant
Yeah, that's like I could tell you just jumped in and went after it. Right? You got going on.

Stephanie
I think also my my step up in that area was I'd see my dad growing up who had never, who had always had businesses and so to I never saw him work a nine to five job, you know, have a two week vacation or anything like that. So I had a very good example of what an entrepreneur looks like. And so that's probably why I didn't need to read books. I have since read a lot of books. 

Grant
But yeah, yeah. But you had a role model, you had a mentor to follow after. Alright, so you go through this journey, you run your real, or excuse me, your insurance agency for 16 years. What happened?

Stephanie
I mean, as time went on, there was you know, also some distaff dissatisfaction. Because you, you know, you really like your clients, and they're doing business because of you. But then there's this big, you know, corporation behind you, mine was Farmers Insurance, who, you know, ultimately makes the decisions based on, you know, the claims and the the rate changes and things like that. So that became kind of frustrating. But then also, you know, again, my dad was, you know, pretty. He passed away, actually, shortly after I started my agency, but I'm sorry, yeah, thank you. But I had, I remembered a lot of things as time went on. I was like, Oh, I remember when Dad said that. And one of the things he always said was, don't put all your eggs in one basket. And that was for me, that meant just, you know, don't continue, farmers was very big on, take a loan out, to keep running your visit business, make it bigger, make it better, all these things, where I just sort of directed my money in my growth into real estate, because I felt like it wasn't so attached to to the business. And I loved real estate. I didn't know much about it. I certainly wasn't very educated about it.

Oh, I think it was 2016 I had gotten an invitation to a boot camp and about buying apartments, which I had always been curious about, oh, cool. Went into there. And that's where I first heard the term syndication. And I was I was just blown away, I'd never heard that I loved the idea of a group of people buying something that no one could do on their own. And I from that point on, I was all in there. I did about three years thing me maybe it was only No, I think it was only two years of education, which, you know, was an investment, but you come out of that bait being able to be very knowledgeable about commercial real estate, which is very different than residential real estate residential. 

Grant
So if I hear you, right, I think you said that this transition to real estate, it was a diversification strategy for you following your dad's counsel, right not to have all your eggs in one basket. You still had the insurance company at least for a while, right? And then then you started investing in the real estate, is that right? 

Stephanie
Yeah. i And well, I had all I had invested, you know, in the single family homes and they're, you know, through the last crash and then wanted to do the apartments and then in 2016, that really was probably, I mean, I kept running my agency obviously, until actually last year when I Um, my investing had my income from investing had exceeded my, my business income. So I was able to retire, or in my case, just do do a different career for a while.

Grant
I love that when I saw that in your profile, I thought that was the ultimate, which was to sort of break away. It's that, hey, I'm no longer just going to be a business sort of operator, right? I'm actually going to step aside and let let your income or your assets generate that income for you, right. It's the money's working for you. And I saw that in your notes too, which was a, you said some interesting about the way the wealthy do it, which is the wealthy have their money working for them? Was that always at the forefront of your mind? Or did you sort of discover that along the way? 

Stephanie
No, that's a that's a big, I think it was big, the aha moment for me. And how I describe it is that I believe most people, and I was one of those most people believed in an accumulation model of money, which meant for most people is I'm going to accumulate the money in my 401k. I never really, you know, went down that path from owning my own business, I wanted to accumulate my money in real estate. But yet my idea was the same, which is I'm going to buy this property and manage it for 30 years until the loan is paid off. And then I will live off of the rents or whatever at that time. But when I started raising money for the syndications, I started becoming friends and, you know, meeting really, very interesting, you know, wealthy people, and just notice that they were doing stuff differently than than I was, I couldn't quite put my finger on it. But after a while of working with them, I realized that they look at their money as a good word is utilization. They're always using their money. They're using their money to give them cash flow. And there was kind of the light bulb that came on for me. Later on. You know, I started doing syndications in 2018, and I think it was the end of 2019 that I started to sell my properties one by one, and invest them in syndications. Because I realized I had these this great big chunk just sitting in and it's really not doing much as far as you know, cash flow, helping me out at all. Whereas, you know, if I just shifted my focus and where I put my money, the ret

In this episode, I have the opportunity to sit down with Christopher Nelson. A technology executive out of Silicon Valley who's figured out the secrets to helping you achieve passive income as a W-2 employee.

Grant
Hey, everybody, welcome to another episode of Financial Investing Radio. So today I have in the house with me, Mr. Dr. Why don't want to call you. Sophisticated, brilliant. Christopher Nelson is in the house here with me today. I love his subtitles technology executive real estate investor, author, podcast hosts and inventor of the space station. Was that right? Or did I get that right?

Christopher
I think you may have stretched on the space station. But I you know, space has always been a dream of mine. Right? I am a low tech tech technologist, a bit of a geek. So yes.

You can learn more here:

• Wealthward
• Thrive Community

Grant
Excellent. Excellent. Well, okay, so let's start with that. technologist geek. What does that mean? What? Tell me about your background?

Christopher
Yeah. So So my background, you know, interestingly enough, I started with just a love of technology, right? You know, I heard some people tell stories, the other day of how I think exploring and wanting to take apart, you know, televisions and, you know, anything remote controls, understand how they worked. And I just was fascinated, especially as the computer age started taking off. What can we do with these? So, you know, my thought was, I wanted to go to university and I wanted to learn how to become a software engineer, so studied very hard. And then when I went to my first internship junior year, with a large database company, and I was by myself working on this code, I started going crazy. I started thinking, what am I going to do? Like, I, I love this, I do not like this. And it was actually in a job fair that I met somebody who, who had a similar major who was working in technology consulting, he said, Hey, there's different things. It's not all you have to be a software engineer, I solve difficult technical problems with people moving businesses forward. And so that really, I mean, hit a lot of cylinders for me and took me off into technology, consulting, which is where I started my career.

Grant
That's awesome. I love that background. i It's funny, I didn't know that about you. I had a similar journey. I come through the technology world. But I ended up bouncing from doing my first startup right out of college. Because when you come out of college, I don't know if you know this, but you typically have all the answers, right? So so I jumped, I jumped right into startup, I'm gonna go solve these world problems. Clearly, everyone's having struggle with course, I failed miserably on my first startup. So then I jumped into the technology consulting world with back then one of the big six, you know, in Chicago doing some technology work. But yeah, it's funny, I jumped to the people side of it, also. And that, that was liberating for me, because if I spent all the time just and I love I still code today, don't tell anybody. But I use it as a tool to keep my brain active. But if I had to read every day, all day, I think I'd go crazy.

Christopher
Right? And, you know, it's, I actually tried to now actually take that message to people, kids graduating from college is the fact that you can actually be involved with technology. And it doesn't have to be this one way like we see, you know, again, media, movies presents this one view, but there's a lot of other things that you can do. And I found that it was great start to my career, to really get me launched. Give me a ton of skills. Give me a great background, because I did I went to work for Accenture, right that came out of one of the you know, the big six became the big four. Yeah, it was, you know, one of the big four back in the day. Well, well, we're constant names. 

Grant
Yeah, I did. KPMG. So there you go. Yeah, technology. There we go. Wow. Okay, which office were you located? Where were you?

Christopher
At San Francisco. I mean, I felt like that was a great opportunity because I while I was doing the tech consulting thing I did want to work for high tech, like I wanted to work for companies that were really, you know, moving the needle. And that's actually set me up. So about eight, nine years into my career, I realized that I had this great experience. And this is what I call in my book, Your career capital, which is a combination of your education, your experience and results. And I realized I could actually go trade this for equity in startup companies, because like you said, I've been working for these tech consulting companies, I got that figured out, right? Well, I went to work for my first startup, abject failure, right, I found myself and then a year nursing and Ulster having a bad boss. And I didn't know how I got there. But taking a step back, and I think a lot of us figure out pass through failure. And so I don't think we should fear that. And I realized I did not look like I did not think like an investor with my time. Like I'd been, you know, in the in the stock market investing since, you know, the 90s. But I had not thought like an investor with my time. So went back, put together a due diligence criteria started work in my network, what did people recommend? The next company I chose employee for 17, at a company called Splunk, in 2011, and up IPO in 2012, and it turned out to be a big win for my family.

Grant
Yeah, that's absolutely cool. Yeah, Splunk, boy, they have done a great thing for the industry. It's funny, united, similar routes, I, after I did my KPMG route for a number of years, I had this itch to get out to Silicon Valley. And so I was chatting with this startup company out there. And, and I said, my wife, you know, I'm just gonna fly out, you know, we're in Chicago, the time's gonna fly I just checked, probably won't do this, right. Uh, probably, but I just gotta go check them out. And of course, I get in there. I'm talking with them. And after several hours of whiteboarding and brain, brain exciting things, they go, do you want to, you know, come join us? And I'm like, Oh, I think the answer is yes. You know, and I remember being on the phone in the little conference. You know, maybe my mind's changed. You know, I think we're switching. We're moving out here. Yeah, I did several startups out there as well. And those course weren't much different. So you know, you need to have that first one that kicks you in the teeth, right? And it's like, okay, wait a minute. You do, you do?

Christopher
And I think sometimes, right? It is, you know, those those learnings that help like anything else, right? I mean, this is where I'm trying to now build this thesis and conversation around, it's an investment of your time. So sometimes you go, you get skin in the game, and it's not the right thing. But then does that mean you stop investing altogether? No, you go and adjust your lens and you you go, and you get feedback, and then you go, and you do it again. And maybe this time you say, I'm just gonna, in my head, I may sign a four year contract, maybe let me just do two years, see what's there and track it as they go along. You're going to also be looking at those quarterly meetings, when they're giving readouts a lot differently, you're going to look at the market a lot differently and say, What can I do with my time?

Grant
So I think that's one of the cool things that I noticed about you when I was reviewing your profile. And it was this, it was not just let me go after doing this startup. But it was to leverage what I'm getting out of this either equity opportunities, but to move it into some passive opportunities. And I think that was, for me a real Aha, like, you know, earlier in my career, I wasn't even thinking that right? I'm doing the various startup companies. I'm like, go, go, go, go go. And you think you've got all this endless energy. And at some point, you think that way, but what I love is a year connecting the dots from take that energy and translate it into this passive mechanism that's going to benefit you. So I don't want to steal your thunder. But talk more about...

Christopher
Well, well, what led me to that is it was actually that first IPO. So all of a sudden, you know, I'll never forget that day was you know, April 18 2012. Phenomenal day. And but the most memorable moment wasn't this big party, the fact that it went out double what we thought it was, was when I went home that night, my pregnant wife is sitting there, she asked me two questions. She says, When can we get the money and when can we buy the house? And I had no answers. And I literally went into the next room and started emotionally, you know, falling apart a little What I didn't realize is I was experiencing what's called a sudden wealth event, which is sudden wealth syndrome, which is a psychological syndrome that when you have these things you feel lonely, depressed, stressed out. If you're not prepared. You're not and I wasn't like I'd fought so hard to get there like most of us do. I wasn't prepared aired in so what I found grant is that many people aren't prepared like they like and I literally have been interviewing a lot of people from my book a lot of technology in place. And they will. I heard Mark Cuban say like you have to work for equity if you want to get ahead or, you know, I heard Gary Vee or somebody, Robert Kiyosaki gives them the idea that they want to be an owner. They go get it, and then that's it. They stop. And so my experience was okay, now we got this. I was okay. How do we now start getting this? You know, because I was tired during the six month lockout period

In this episode, I have the opportunity to sit down with someone that has digested and synthesize the tax code and brings the tax saving secrets to you.

Grant 
Hey, everybody, welcome to another episode of Financial investing radio. So today I have with me someone that just barely met. But as I review, his biography, his profile what he does, it is in one of those places, which I admittedly know so little about, I lean on so many people for help in this area. Now I get to meet with and speak with an expert in the area of how to take it to the tax man. All right, let me welcome Mark Meyers here today. Welcome, Mark.

Mark
Hey, thank you so much, Grant, I'm excited to chat with you about this. And, you know, hey, if you can keep more of that hard earned profit. It definitely helps in the wealth accumulation realm for sure. So this exciting topic.

Grant
Boy, for sure. You know, when when you think about taxes and talking about taxes, you know, it's probably right up there with flossing your teeth, right? It's like, oh, everyone should be doing it. Right. But oh, my gosh, do I really want to talk about taxes. Turns out, as I was reviewing some things that you have done to help people, individuals, businesses, really reduce their tax burden. And putting that money, like you said, or leaving that money back in your pocket, suddenly, it becomes really an interesting topic to address. But before you give away any secrets, let's back up. How is it that you got interested in taxes? What is it that even got you to this point? 

Mark
Grant, you know, it's an interesting story, because I started out my career at the University of Florida, with as an undergrad in exercise physiology, get my Master's in sports management, moved to New York City to manage health clubs, and then moved to Los Angeles to edit, manage more health clubs. And in the process of doing that, I helped a really large high end brand, open a number of different locations. And in that they were they went from a 10 clubs to over 100 clubs. And in that process, I really learn to be an owner operator, every club that I would open or go chant, you know, help return around, I'd have to really be mindful of driving revenue, minimizing expenses, putting the operations in in place, you know, the best practices in place to get the best output. And of course, I was compensated on EBIT margin, so I'd get a base, and then I'd have cash bonus based off of how profitable is the company process, I realized, you know, hey, I might be running health clubs. And I might have a background here, but I have a knack for running companies. And I know there's a lot more opportunity in the financial markets in the financial world, particular to consulting with business owners, that's when I said the light came on after, you know, working well over a decade, you know, 365 days a year, and these clubs are open from, you know, five in the morning till 12 At night, you know, they never got hit. So I'm like, Okay, I'm going to shift gears here and do something fun that can ultimately help other people, and also helped me kind of increase my income opportunity here. Get out of this glass ceiling environment.

Grant
Yeah. So So you are living this life of just constantly being on right, the lights on, right, because your clubs are on right, the gyms are open, and so you're trying to optimize as much as possible. Talk about school, hard knocks, right? I mean, you learn the lessons along the way, for sure, right? Oh, for sure.

Mark
I mean, it's one of those things where you know, every penny counts, particularly in that industry. And of course, I worked in a higher end layer. So it was, you know, we're looking at 200 plus dollar a month memberships with spa packages and training and Pilates and Yoga. But at the same time, you still have to be mindful of your margins. That's really, really important. So it was it was a nice experience. It was a nice way to understand how to really learn the p&l, learn the people, learn the drivers, and then of course transitioned over to say, hey, I can speak to business owners, I could speak to those that are looking to, you know, increase efficiency. And there's a lot of opportunity there. So that's kind of where this all kicked off.

Grant
So in the course of doing this, you start uncovering, I'm assuming, oh, here's a little secret about how I could save a little more money or take some out of the taxes. I imagine over a period of time you started to build up this cadre, or list of or selection of wait, here's some best practices of actually taking the tax back from the tax man and leaving it with you. There's it was it was it that it was a 10 year journey that you invested in to build up that knowledge base? It sounds like, Right?

Mark
Absolutely. And you know, you really said something important, and it was very accurate in that my, my getting to where I am now didn't happen overnight. In particularly shifting gears, I'd say the last seven or eight years is when I really really shifted gears, to not just talk about can I just not consult with with individuals on their businesses and help them with maybe some financial planning, really shifting gears and saying, hey, there are a lot of different opportunities to reduce tax. And I just went out there. And just like in the past, in my first few years of this, I was kind of more of an advanced insurance specialist and consultant to business owners, and I could go out there and work with any insurance carrier. And I could basically look and say, you know, this is the carrier need for this solution. And this is why this is I realized I could do the same thing in the tax realm, there's just not 100 different, you know, tax savings providers out there, there's probably about 20 to 30 that you want to do business with. And these are small groups are generally fairly boutique, they're not huge. And they offer something very, very specific. And it's somewhere in the 70,000 pages of tax code. And they just so happened to analyze it, apply it. And basically, that's their gig key. So I have a lot of different tools in the tool chest, I have a lot of different relationships with groups that do these things. And I break when I do consulting work, I just put all the pieces of the puzzle together. And it's really cool. I'm not a CPA, I'm not a tax attorney, I'm really literally I call myself a tax savings architect, I've just developed this ability to consult, oh, that's a great title. 

Grant
Wait, say that title again, you're a what?

Mark
A tax savings architect, Oh, I love it together, I just build I build the plan. And then I bring the vendors in, right, the right team on the on the coach, I'm bringing the right team in to put the right plays in at the right times. And then the implementation goes, you know, off, you know, from there.

Grant
So, what I want to highlight is you have developed this by doing it again and again, maybe making a mistake fixing it again and again, oh, learning more again, and you put in that 10 year effort to gather and build that experience and that that's the value platform that you bring to the people so they're not off doing 10 years of learning the lessons, right?

Mark
Oh, for sure. Grant, I'll tell you, these are types of things that, you know, people don't have time, even the best CPAs right. And you can think about any CPA out there, you've got out of every 10 You're gonna have to my experience, you're gonna have two out of 10 that have developed their practice in a way that they'll have forward looking have a forward looking approach. And they'll have more bandwidth than just, you know, recording and tracking and filing right most of them record track and file. Do you have any more expenses? Are you sure you don't have any more you know, you can buy this capital, we get section 179 it so why don't you spend $1 to save 35 cents? No, that's, that's really a good idea if you need what you're buying. But two out of 10 are forward looking right? They're actually stepping outside of the box and seeing what's out there. They're 70,000 pages of tax code. So this is where the key is at 10 years, you're talking about their 70,000 pages of tax code you if you're going to win a championship. If you're a team think about a just a collegiate team or a professional team. They have multiple coaches. They have strength coaches, they have quarterback coaches that are talking about football they have offensive line coaches defensive line coaches look at businesses the reason why Amazon and Microsoft and General Electric and Nike and DuPont the reason why they pay significantly lower taxes than the average individual is because they have teams they have accounting teams, more than one CPA, they have attorneys they have business strategists. So this is what I really do is I bring that team approach to the small to medium size business owner or you don't even have to be a small to medium sized business owner to have tax savings you can be a high income earning executive. Oh really how to Matt navigate the tax code. There's things that you can do to reduce your tax.

Grant
Okay, so that gets the the question I was gonna ask around who is this for? Definitely the business owner. But if you're, if you're in the High Net Worth areas and individual this is applicable to you as well.

Mark
Absolutely. There's three there's three He kind of avenues, business owners. And the reason why is business owners are great to work with because they have control over their income, they can determine how much salary they take, they can determine how they take their income. It really they have the control. The other side would be high income earning executives that maybe don't have as much control but they're they're looking at, you know, half a mi

In this episode, I have the opportunity to speak with someone who demonstrates true grit to make a whole life.

Grant
Everybody welcome to another episode of Financial investing radios. So today I have with me, someone who is more than what you might think she is an expert on whole life. But do you really know what whole life is? She's going to help us to understand what that means. I'd like to welcome Svetlana.

Svetlana
Thank you so much. It's such a great joy to be here with you and sharing this space. Thank you for having me.

Grant
Oh, it's so good to have you here. So I had this opportunity to interview your wonderful husband twice. He's so gracious with his time. He's really skilled in the financial markets. I've even gone through a whole bunch of his courses and applied those. And so it's been I'm a Jeremy Newsome fan. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And and while I was talking with him, he said, Hey, have you thought about interviewing my wife? And I'm like, Well, what is she talking about? And says, well, she talks about whole life. And I'm thinking well, yeah, whole life such a critical part of life, no doubt. But let's back up set. Svetlana, would you tell us a bit about your origin story where it all started? And how you got into this business?

Svetlana
Absolutely. Yes. So I'm originally from Kazakhstan. And I moved to America at 19, turning 20 with big American dream as the $100 in my pocket, and I had an opportunity to come and create opportunities and live here. And it wasn't as easy as I thought it was, right. But it is a beauty of a young person that, you know, be 19 and 20. And so courageous, and so naive in so many ways, making those leaves a lot easier than when we become a little bit older. And we have more things that we start considering. Yeah. And so I was blessed that that time, was that mindset, like, what can happen? I'm just going to go and have all of these dreams come true.

Grant
I'm just gonna go to America, everything's gonna be fine. Right?

Svetlana
Exactly, exactly. That was like people are so nice there. And so how cool is the wonderful, and it's really a beautiful way to see the world. And I kind of when I was telling my mother, I will come to America. And in five years, I will have all of my dreams realized, I will have, I will get married and I will have a baby and I will have a beautiful home and nice cars and travels. I will have my papers like all of it. I just kind of described for the life that I created. And I knew like just give me five years, it will take me a lifetime in context and to create those things. Wow. But it'll take me only five years in America. And that is the beauty of an opportunity that exists in this country that most people don't recognize. Because when you're born here, you can't think this is how it is.

Grant
Yeah, you take it, you take it for granted. I mean, I've traveled the planet for 35 years doing business. You do recognize that when you're in other countries, but it is easy to forget it or not be aware of it.

Svetlana
Absolutely, absolutely. And so when I came here I was like in a Candyland. Like oh my god I can do all these things like it's so amazing. And to start a business you just go on mine create LLC pays $150 get a business license, build a website and you're ready to go. Right like it's a marvelous back home who do you know who do you pay it on the table? Is it my favorite though because the government like I was just like was so impossible, and it couldn't like believe the ease and I recognize truly that there is only one obstacle, truly one obstacle in us. And it is us in our mind, our mindset.

Grant
The mindset is the obstacle.

Svetlana
That's a like there is no actually real worldly obstacles that you have to seriously overcome. And yes, you might have a harder life and different things. And not everyone have the same cards dealt. However, you can I was going to library, right, using the computer in the library, did you write emails and just start doing some things. And I was walking for two years didn't have a car. But that still felt like I'm gonna Candyland. And it was amazing because the hardship that I experienced before in my life.

Grant
So compared to the hardships that you came from, you looked at this hardship of oh, I have to walk somewhere. Oh, I don't have a computer and in your mind, those weren't showstoppers. Those are just things you're gonna go do because you're pursuing that dream, that vision?

Svetlana
Yes. And the computer is in the library. And it's on the 20 minute walk. Yeah, I mean, my did it was Las Vegas. 120 degrees in the summer. Still possible was a bottle of water.

Grant
A bottle of water and maybe a hat or an umbrella. Right.

Svetlana
Exactly, exactly. And so you know, life started. First couple years were very difficult. And then life started to add folding. And indeed, I got married to this incredible man. And we bought our first home. And we have two BMW in the garage. And we I have a great job. And he has an amazing job. We are here pregnant and having a baby boy. And I'm getting my green card in the mail. And I was looking at everything. And it's like four years and eight months. Mike, oh my god, like everything that I told my mom totally can show every single dream. Wow. Yeah. Oh, my how incredible that is. And I was just in the jail and then thinking, Okay, what is next? What is next in my life. And then, two months later, the biggest tragedy of my life happened. Oh, no. And it was the darkest time of the darkest time of my soul that I ever experienced. And I wish no one ever experienced that. But my husband died very unexpectedly, within a week, within a week. Wow. And we had all this plans for the future. And we had tickets bar to go and travel and visit my family and the plants for like, we will come back and get pregnant again. And all of it ended. All of it ended. And I once heard that the hardest thing about heartbreak, and then the hardest thing about deaths is having a funeral to all of your dreams. Right? Because what you saw your life would be is no more. And then it's a time of void. Yeah. And a very deep healing is that in sir in search of what's next. And so during that time, I was very blessed. He was in a new position for the six for six months, and I got life insurance proceeds. Really, and I didn't have to go to work right away. So that money that came into my life allowed me just to lay there and cry, and grieve, and pour into myself, allowed me to get help allow me to do all that I needed and my soul needed and to really rest in grief. And I took nine months off to be with my baby because it was so unfair if he would lose his father to death and then his mother at the same time because she had to go straight to work. shut down everything it just started providing for the home that was created for two incomes, right?

Grant
Yeah, very difficult. There's some level of an emotional suffering, maybe even an emotion No doubt that you went through as well, I would imagine.

Svetlana
Absolutely, absolutely. And that was also an awakening into, wow, I need insurance. Because what if I go? What would happen to my baby? Boy? Do I have actually any paperwork? Because I didn't, I had no way or no trust, we didn't have any of that stuff. And I remember when we bought our first home, we received a letter in the mail saying, Would you like to add insurance for 9099? That in case one of you die, the mortgage will be paid off? And my husband was like, ah, should we do it? And I'm like, why would we spend $20 a month?

Grant
Oh, yeah, at the moment, just now why would we write?

Svetlana
Yeah, because we never think it will be our story. It's never our story until it's our story, right? It's never our life until it is our life. And that's the unfortunate part about it. And an insurance world we say the money pays for the, for the insurance, your house is what buys it. Like so many people reach out to me when they in a health crisis. And I Hey, can I have a life insurance policy? And the answer is no. Most of the time it is now because now you're not insurable. It is that time where you are well, and everything is going good for you. When you need to just put a month into it, get everything put together will trust Power of Attorney insurance and be done. And hopefully you will never ever ever in your life again, need to look at it. Next 15 years.

Grant
I mean, the best time to buy insurance was 10 years ago. But if you didn't do it, well then the best times today, right?

Svetlana
Absolutely. Absolutely. Yes. And so really, that was my coal into insurance runs? Well, because I had to learn about it for myself. And I remember I called my you know, car insurance plays whoever was insured at the time. And they asked me, well, What type do you need? On my there are different types. Like I had no clue. Like, well, I didn't know like, and there was no one really to educate me. And I recognized Well, I'm not the only young woman that is a seeing single widow, with a baby that has all of this questions and insurance world world is huge. You open the door, and there are millions things.

Grant
So how did you educate yourself on this? What do you do?

Svetlana
So I got a lot of information here, a little information there. And then insurance agent came into my lif

In this episode, I have the opportunity to speak with Alex Hagerup who is solving the problem of using AI to take costs out of your business.

Grant
Hey, everybody, welcome to another episode of ClickAI Radio. So today I have someone that I have been admiring by looking at his background, here with me today to talk about some amazing aspects of his journey to solve business problems leveraging technology, specifically AI which is quite cool. Anyway, let me stop right there. And welcome Alex Hager group. Hello, Alex.

Alex
Hey, Grant. Thanks for having me. It's a pleasure.

Grant
Thank you. Thanks for being here today and for taking the time. I know you're getting ready to head off trans continental here pretty soon on a trip. So thanks for for jumping on this conversation here today.

Alex
Absolutely. It's exciting being able to travel again. So I going home to the Motherland for a few weeks is exciting. I haven't been there for more than a few days, for the last three years, actually. So I'm definitely excited.

Grant
Have have have the COVID situations and those numbers pretty good over there at this point.

Alex
Yeah, everything is fine. So Norway is completely open again. And it's all good. But But Norway was one of those countries that really looked down hard. And also since the US didn't allow non US residents to actually come back into the country. If you left. It was just a problematic situation to go to Europe in general. Wow.

Grant
Yeah. What a great opportunity to get home to family. Well, thanks for taking your time here with me today on this. So Vic AI. All right, who is Vic AI? What happened here? How to what are you? What are you solving? What what problem? Are you looking to address with Vic? Ai?

Alex
Yeah, absolutely. So I'll take a little bit of the background to set that up. So I, I've always been very interested in both accounting, finance and technology. So this is a company that lives in the intersection of those. My mom had her own accounting firm. So I grew up there, which probably influenced my interest for for accounting in general. And I built a couple of companies. But one that I spent three years with just prior to starting, Aki was a cloud ERP system, an accounting and accounting platform that was being used by about 30 40,000 companies back then it's about 80 90,000. Now, and during working there, you know, observe the sort of, let's say, the challenges of accounting and the manual, repetitiveness, the tediousness, all of that from, you know, every day you felt it?

Grant
Where? I mean, what is the excitement in that? Right? I mean, where's the excitement? Yeah. Did you credit that properly? 

Alex
Oh, gosh, yeah, exactly. So so we were we were just observing this. And then this was back in 2014 15. Just before we started with AI started having a new, you know, like a new summer or a new renaissance in a way and, and we were thinking like this has to be we can maybe like we can solve this in a better way than how the technology has solved it so far. And after some deliberation, we sort of thought that we could create AI algorithms that would be able to actually do accounting transaction processing better than humans.

Grant
Because that's a really key point I think you're making. So the way that we've been solving this problem up to this point has been, let me take the tasks that we do and just automate the tasks themselves. Right. In other words, let me take your actual transactional activities that you're working through, and just put some increased processing to that. That's how it's historically been done, right?

Alex
Yep. Correct. And that's been entirely driven by rules, right? So, you know, transaction, Uber, transportation, as, you know, rules based automation, right? And there are all sorts of problems with that. It's obviously better than doing everything manually, right? So we aren't we're progressing through stages there. If you go back before the spreadsheets, you know, everything was done entirely manually. So we are progressing here, but, but what we're building is not next face that comes off there, you know, what everyone is using today, all over the world. And, you know, AI will solve this in a more scalable and gracious way and more more effectively. So that was all right. Yeah.

Grant
Yeah. So real quick on that, can you articulate how is that different? Right? Because all of us come from this rules based way of thinking. So what is it that AI is going to do better? How will it do it differently than what we're used to?

Alex
Yeah, I mean, that's a that's a great question. It's kind of the essence as well. So when you when you look at how it happens today, it's not only rules are not only automation, it's automation, and a lot of human hours involved. So you can always ask yourself, why are all those human hours involved? If it's automation, right? So so it begs the question, right, so what happens in reality is that sort of rules and templates and RPA isn't sufficient, because there's so many edge cases, and there's so much variability in the world of accounting. So you know, rules only takes you so far. And then you have to staff up and have human cognitive reasoning step in and do the rest of it. So where AI comes in is that it can do both of those things. So it does the automation without rules, and it can do the reasoning that humans are there to do today. So I always say that AI is, is great at sort of mimicking that reasoning that humans are doing. So one of the areas that we're in is invoice processing. And when I give an invoice to any human, you know, it will always tell me, oh, that's the vendor, you know, that's the invoice number, lots of total costs. But that's not obvious to a computer. And if you're gonna write rules for every variability in the world, you can just end up writing too many rules. So it's just not a, it's not a great technology for it. And AI is way better. So it's just like in the early stages, so that's next sort of digital transformation, transformation journey that we're all. So as

Grant
So as you know, when you're working in the AI space, and you're saying, Oh, I'm going to apply AI to a particular problem, you end up building different models with different AI characteristics based on the nature of the problem, some more aggression based some more sort of classification based, as your people as your customers look to use your platform, do they get exposed to any of that? Are they even aware of what elements or aspects of AI are at play? Or? Or do they just jump in and start solving the problems they're used to, and then the right sort of AI model behind the scene is executing on their behalf?

Alex
Yeah, we've hidden all of that from our customers. So we do try to keep sort of Explainable AI in the way where our user interface is explaining why our AI predicted something. But we've kept all of the complexity, so sort of models and model training. And all of that is in the background, we decided to do like an end to end service where the customer, they don't really need to do anything technical. It's, it's, you know, just another SAS subscription that they're using, that they plug into one of their processes. And then we deal with all of the complexity of the models, both global models and AI models, specifically the same for each customer. So we keep all of that complexity hidden.

Grant
That's awesome. That way, I'm not touching any of that as the end user. So if I see the name Vic AI, I don't need to shy away and say, Oh, wait, I need to be an AI expert. It's more that this is the enabling technology. And it just turns out that you've made that simple for the people without needing to know that Wait a minute. So that brings a question on my use, you know, one of the challenges around AI is the whole notion around bias. And, and, and with the cognizance that's required for humans up to this point, and still largely today to do you know, counting processes. Therefore, that has the opportunity for some bias that comes in right terms of the way things get handled. How do you deal with that then in terms of applying AI so that that bias doesn't creep through?

Alex
Yeah, it's a great question. And it's a challenge for everything where we're data sets are involved in training, AI. So one of the ways that so one of The one of the good things with accounting data, if you start with that is that it's ultimately numbers and classifications. And you, you kind of want to have that, right? Because otherwise your your books of your business is wrong. So unless you want them to be wrong, you know, you have a very good incentive to keep this right. SO into SO, you know, I think we generally see kind of less less bias in accounting data, and then some other more like subjective data in a way. And then also we draw on data across 1000s and 1000s of customers. So we have customers in both Europe and the US and many other many other regions as well, but the little fewer and most of the concentration in Europe and US. And in all sorts of industries and all sorts of sizes, we have about 13,000 customers on the platform now. So when you start looking at such a wide data set, you also hopefully reduce some of some of that bias. And then you also have auditing processes that sort of sits at the end of their accounting. And hopefully also they'll you know, annually they'll catch corrections, and also fed in as well to make AI. So those are some of the tactics. Basically, it's all about keeping clean data, so that our predictions are accurate. That's really what we're trying to get to.

Grant
Yeah, boy, that's that's so critical, especially as you pointed out with the with the need to of course, be accurate for

In this episode of Financial investing radio, I speak with the person that introduced overnight trading to the financial markets. He will give you some guidance on how to build your wealth, I speak with The Wealth Architect.

Grant
Hey, everybody, welcome to another episode of Financial Investing Radio. Okay, so today I have in the house, it's taken me a couple of tries here actually, literally, to catch Mark Yegee with me here today, longtime expert in the investing world. So grateful that he took the time to come here today and talk with us and share some of his secrets on how to grow your wealth. In fact, I think he's known as The Wealth Architect anyway, without me saying anything else. Mark, welcome.

Mark
Well, thanks. I'm not I'm not sure I like the title of longtime expert. But you know what, I guess it goes with the territory. But thanks. Great to be here, Grant, and I can't wait to get into what we do and what you do and have some fun with your audience. It should be great.

Grant
Yeah, thanks again. I appreciate that. So one of the things that caught my eye when your organization reached out and I was reviewing your profile, I just have to start here. There's this tip here about you getting into this world into the investing world at the age of 12. I mean, holy smokes at the age of 12. I was milking cows and hauling hay. I mean, there was not a stock market in sight. So I asked you, I mean, the only stock I saw had horns, right. And where I was milking it. So you know, if you'd have said, How's the stock market? We're like, well, we got, you know, 50 cows in the pasture, but like, What are you talking about? So, how did you get into this at 12?

Mark
Well, you know, my dad was a grew up on a farm. I didn't, I grew up in the city. And so I you know, I mowed my yard and cleaned my pool and got paid to do that. And every day, I would see my dad reading the Wall Street Journal, and it had all these symbols in it with numbers by them, and he would circle stuff. And I was so curious about what he's doing. And finally, one day, I'm like, Dad, what are you doing? I think it's like you thought I was ready. And so he said, Oh, this is how you invest in other people's businesses. And I was like, Oh, great. So over time, he started to kind of teach me that, you know, you're running your own business, doing your lawns, but you can also go out and invest in other people's businesses. And I thought that was fascinating. And after a while, after maybe a couple of months of telling me about it, he goes, but the only way you're gonna learn it is to take some of your money and put it in and I did. And so my first stock, I think it was 12 or 13 years old. It was right around that time. It was it was 100 shares of a company called Ailey company.

Grant
I've never heard of, I haven't heard of them.

Mark
No, I don't think they're around anymore. But they were they was this women's clothing store in the malls. And it fit all the criteria. Low P I mean, my dad taught me a few things. And it was alphabetical that I went, you know, I finally went, Hey, here's one. So I circled it. And I bought, you know, $300 worth of that stock was 100 shares at three bucks. And I just would watch it every day. And I was fascinating. Oh, there's the new print on it. And there's a new price. And the stock went to $6. So it's it was probably the worst thing that could ever happen. It's like, it's like when you grab the golf club and you hit it right down the middle. You think you're a good golfer? This is easy, right? It's as easy as like this, you know, or if you go to play craps and you hit it on the first you know, first dice roll. And so I I invested again, I saw commercial on TV, you know, and it said us, it said Allegheny Airlines is becoming US Airways or us there. I think it was at the time. Yeah. And I was like, Wow, what a cool name for an airline. And I you know, that was the only reason yeah, I think it might have might have met some of the other criteria as well. So I bought it and it went from 17 I remember to 35 so I doubled it again, which is probably the the next worst thing that could have happened but now I'm like, this is a piece of cake plus I don't even have to work the money is doubling and yeah, anyway, so you know, I guess I could buy more candy than I could. But that was it. That was the beginning and then he started intermediate. introducing me to books. My dad was a big Personal Growth Guy. So I had read, I had read books, you know, by Dale Carnegie very early on, I read books by Edward Thorpe McShane, the business who wrote a book called, oddly enough, he wrote, this first book was called beat the dealer need to deal with a guy who was an MIT professor. So he taught math at MIT. And he went to Las Vegas, and he figured out how to beat the roulette tables. And they, you know, he had another guy helping him and this was kind of a rudimentary metric computer in the 50s. And he figured out where the ball was coming out, and how quickly it was anyway, he figured out a way to get the probabilities in your favor, and he started to beat the roulette tables, and they kicked him out of Las Vegas. So he went back, and then he figured out well, I'm going to figure it out on Blackjack, and you've heard the story, there's been a movie made about him. Is that the movie? 21? Yeah, yep. All these kids went to MIT, you know, the students. And he brought them they all cleaned Vegas out and then finally got kicked out of that. And then he turned his his efforts to the market. And then he wrote a book called beat the market. And it was basically how to buy a stock and sell the warrants against the stock, which today are basically known as options. They're still warrants, but most people don't know what they are. And it was covered. It was a system of covered calls before they even had options. They didn't have options until 1971 or 1974, I think. And so but I was fascinated by because my dad was like, Oh, you got to learn this. And it was this thick book. It was really boring. And but I, I started to apply it. And I applied it so much that when I was 16 1718 years old, by the way, I bought my car with the winnings and the monies that I made in that those first few investments. I set up a brokerage firm at EF Hutton and my dad had this old timer broker. And I said okay, Harry, I want to buy 100 shares of IBM and I want to sell the you know, the call options against it. And he's like what? So we had to call in New York and get the options principal from EF Hutton on. And he understood why zoom, but my broker didn't even understand I did teach him what I was doing. And so all through high school and college...

Grant
And this was a high school you did that you sold your first in high school high on IBM?

Mark
Yeah. So IBM, and this is back when you pay a commission of $300 to do IBM. And they had quarterly options. And you know, the different it was a different game. And now we have so many more tools that are at our disposal. That's great. So yeah, I did this all the way through college. And finally, you know, I had several different entrepreneurial ventures and then I actually sold copiers, which for me was the worst thing. Anybody.

Grant
Like they just sort of jumped into the white when you're selling options, and you went from that to copiers. What happened? Mark?

Mark
Well, I mean, when I went to college, I didn't think that making money in the stock market was going to be on my my career. So I went to college. I got a marketing and business degree, and everything was hunky dory. And then I got out and pretty. I I started an entrepreneurial company in college. I was back when the Swatch watches were this big craze. Oh, yeah. And you remember those people put 10 Swatch watches on their wrists? Yeah. And I thought, Well, I went to the University of Florida and I thought why isn't there a swatch watch with a gator on it? Like a University of Florida Gator, you know? And, and I went to the I went to the, you know, the alumni office and I said, Can I license the gator. And this was back before the internet. This was back really? Right around the time faxes were becoming popular, but still pretty early back in. In 1980. What was this 85? Yeah. And they licensed the Florida Gator trademark to me. And I figured out a way to get to Hong Kong. I had no money at all. And when I was a junior and senior in college, I went to Hong Kong and I met manufacturers and I figured out a way for them to put the gator on these watches that I wear orange and blue the color the exact colors of the school. Yeah, and I brought back these you know, 2000 watches are added, manufactured and shipped. And I had them in my college wasn't my dorm room was my fraternity. I lived in the fraternity house last semester. And so I had them stacked floor to ceiling all these watches, right? So I go to the games, and I would sell these things and and I learned a lot about a lot, right? Traveling, manufacturing business, you know, buying good quality products versus crappy products. And I expanded to 23 schools in the southeast and finally just got out of that business about four years later. And then I sold copiers after that. And I that was miserable. But it was that was again instructive. And then finally I I said why I've been doing the market all these years. Why don't I just go do that? Amazing. Yeah, I got a couple of I got a job with a guy named Ernie Ollie who had already discount old discount stockbrokers. It was a discount broker like, like Charles Schwab, they were actually good buddies and they started when those got deregulated in the 70s. And I worked for Ernie for or a year and a half, two years, something like that started my own brokerage firm with a partner. And then we grew that to a to a pretty big venture became a Wall Stree