Cosmos

Welcome back to the show, my fellow extraordinary Americans. For today’s guest, we have Paul Gabriel. Paul Gabriel is a prior principle-driven investor whose wealth-building strategy relies on value investing. He’s also the host of Everything Money, a digital show investment education YouTube channel that teaches his audience how to build long-term wealth through stocks, real estate, and business development. 

Born in Mosul, Iraq, in 1981, Paul and his family moved to England when he was six weeks old. His parents, both doctors, received extra training while in England, and three years later, while vacationing in the United States, they sought and got political asylum. The family moved around the States for six years until settling in Ohio. Paul started investing during the Internet go-go days of the late 1990s, and he participated in an investment club and became familiar with billionaire Warren Buffett. And something clicked in him. 

He graduated from the University of Michigan in 2003 with a degree in economics and, in 2004, started what eventually became the Crossroads Group, investing in apartments in the Ohio area. He also purchased homes, renovated them, and rented them. As a step ahead, while everyone shied away from real estate and stocks in what they considered toxic investments during the Great Financial Crisis in 2007 and 2008, Paul invested heavily in both, buying hundreds of apartments and billions of dollars in stocks, which has proven to pay off. He’s an extraordinary American, and I’m glad and honored to have him on the show. Paul, are you there?

Paul

I’m here.

Cosmos

Thank you so much for taking the time to do this podcast with us. I’m honored.

I started COVID in 2004 and have been CEO since then

Can you tell the audience more about yourself, your background, your story, and how you got started?

Paul

I think you covered it in our—I assume that was a bio, probably off our website. You know, I have always been interested in numbers. I remember, as a kid, always being very fascinated by numbers. I couldn’t sleep, and I was 5 or 6 years old until college. It was hard for me to sleep. 

So, I would try to think of shortcuts to do numbers for no other reason than boredom. At that time, everybody wanted to make a lot of money. I just wanted to be rich. And I was, I was trying to learn how to invest. 

And you know, one thing led to another. The one thing that’s different for me is I get irritated when people say, well, I’m a stock investor; I don’t do real estate, or I’m a real estate investor; I don’t do stocks or have a business. I look at all three as a way of building wealth. And I like a diversified holding of all three. And that’s why I have all three. 

And you know, the last few years in stocks have been. Since COVID, it has not been easy because of the high-flying market. And you know, I own a lot of them. I want over a thousand apartments. I have 26 or so stocks and seven or eight businesses. Three or four are the focus of our company. But yeah, that’s where we stand right now. And I’m 43. I started the company in 2004. I stepped down as CEO six or seven years ago. My brother took over, and I’ve enjoyed life ever since.

Cosmos

Well, Paul, you’ve had a lot of success during your time, like investing in stocks and real estate and doing business. So, what was your strategic vision and motivational factor that led you to do all of this in the first place? Because, you know, like most people, I.

Paul

I wanted to be rich. I wanted to be rich.

Cosmos

Is there? Was there something more than being rich?

Paul

Or was that, like, was? It started with me; I just wanted to be rich. I didn’t. Now, my goals have changed. But back then, if you asked me why I wanted to be rich, that was it. That’s all I cared about. That was a very different version of me than I am today. But that’s all I cared about back then. I’m not this guy who will try to sugarcoat it from back then; today, my views are very different.

One hundred eighty degrees, almost not 180 degrees, but call it 150 degrees. But that’s. Back then, all I cared about was how I could get rich.

Cosmos

So, you wanted to be rich back then. But what are your vision and goals now? And how is it different from back then?

Paul

 I want to be satisfied, but now I don’t. I have more than I need now. So, my goal now is to enjoy life and only do what I truly enjoy. Luckily, I enjoy investing. Luckily, I enjoy investing in businesses, real estate, and stocks. So, you know, that’s a good way for me to generate income. But I don’t need more income. I do it because I want to do it. 

And that’s. I mean, it’s hard. It’s. It’s. I don’t want to be. I don’t want to be broke tomorrow. But before, it was all about accumulating as much as possible as fast as possible. Now I’m more of the How do I accumulate? How do I accumulate consistently and only do the deals I feel comfortable with because the money will take care of itself?

Cosmos

So, Paul, one of my questions was how you scaled your business, where you did a thousand apartments in stocks and real estate. Was there a strategy that you had that allowed you to mitigate risk consistently?

Paul

The strategy I had was to be born into the right family. My parents were both doctors. They did very well. That’s how I started. There’s no shame about that. I love it when people criticize that. I was like, listen, it’s much harder to start with money than people think. I’d rather start with money than not. But when you start with a when you start with the cockiness in me says when you start with an emotional ability to do the opposite of what Everybody’s doing. 

And I don’t have any addictions. I don’t have any drug addictions, alcohol addictions, gambling, or anything. I have an addiction to investing. It’s an addiction. For example, I get a dopamine rush when I invest capital in something. It also helped that my well-due family believed in and supported me. And the rest is that we’re starting to raise investors’ money for our real estate deals. But we started it all with our own money. 

And how do I mitigate risk? I just didn’t buy what everybody else was chasing. It made sense to me not to. I didn’t have some pre-thought-out plan for that. It just made sense to me that why would I buy this real estate over there and get a 5% return? I can buy that one over there and get an 8% return on the cat. Like a cat. It doesn’t make sense to me, so I didn’t do that. Why did I buy a company in stocks just because the stock was going up, but the fundamentals weren’t going up as much? That didn’t make sense to me, so I didn’t do it. That’s it.

Cosmos

 So, Paul, a question follows up on this. Let’s say somebody wants to invest in real estate and be like you, where they end up getting a thousand apartments, but they have a certain amount of money and want to start with one. How would they scale to where they’re successfully expanding their real estate holdings?

Paul

You must bring up partners. So, you bring up partners by doing a few deals on your own, showing a track record, and then going out there and asking friends and family, and the network will grow. That’s the only way to do it, just like now. 

You know, it’s funny. When we raise money now, one of their bragging points is that the first thousand units we did were all with our own money. We made our own mistakes on our own money. And I had plenty of mistakes in real estate. We did it with our own money, though. And now, when we go raise money from investors, it’s a much easier sell because we already have a thousand units we bought on our own.

Cosmos

I see.

So, you must get partners. But my question is, how would you mitigate a financial risk while getting partners in? Because there’s always a risk component to it. So, is there a strategy you must follow when it comes to that?

Paul

What’s your definition of risk?

Cosmos

 financial risk. Okay, you invest in, like, let’s say, something with a partner, and then the partner does it, or they lose money. And then now you must deal with the fallout of that.

Paul

 Don’t lose money. Listen, I’m not. I view risk as purely the price you pay. If you overpay for something, that’s a risk. If you underpay for something or overpay for a good thing, that can be riskier than underpaying for a bad thing. There are limitations that you must, you know, you should. Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger speak about buying top-quality businesses. The perception is that you might be overpaying, but you might not be overpaying because it’s a top-quality business. I never invested in the hot markets of New York, California, or anything else. To me, those are risky. 

Why? Because you were paying a lot more money to get the same revenue and profit as you would in the Midwest. That, to me, was how I mitigated risk. I just paid a lot less for revenue and cash flow. That’s it. Understanding what you’re buying and why you’re buying it, understanding what drives value and how that’s. 

And how that happens over time will make you a lot of money. But if you’re just going since I have to go to the hot markets because everybody’s there and it’s going up, there will be a problem. You know, we have a lot of people who follow our real estate channel and people in the hot markets. I look at them as going like, D***. They must make quite the assumption to get a good return on their capital. It could work in pockets, but I look at it over long periods and have a longer outlook. Don’t look at just a quick money-making scheme. It’s not going to work. It’ll work. It can work temporarily but won’t work in the long run. 

So, whenever people talk about mitigating risk, I think that’s like saying to me, Well, how do I avoid mistakes? It’s like, well, just don’t make them. But then, how do I not make mistakes? Well, you’ve got to understand what’s going to drive the value of the property, and you’ve got to understand what you’re buying and the returns you’re making. 

One of the most common mistakes I see from real estate investors, for example, is when they buy a single-family home, they go, Oh great, my rent is 1,500, and mortgage tax insurance is 1,400. I’m netting $100. No, you’re not. You’re going to have maintenance repair, you’re going to have vacant utilities, and you’re going to have grass cut. All these things are going to happen. You might not make as much as you think, and people might not understand those numbers. Understanding what you’re buying and paying as low a price as possible for it, as hard as that is, is a way to mitigate your risk.

Cosmos

No, I mean, yeah, I see, I see what you’re saying. And yeah, the reason I’m asking is that there are a lot of people that are watching that want to get into real estate investing, and they want to get into, like, the stock market, and they’re there, but they don’t have, like, the right guidance, and they don’t have, like, the right mentors on how to go about it.

 As you know, one of the things I learned during my journey is that mentorship is key to tracking your progress to success, and going to the right areas to get knowledge regarding business and investing is key. That is why I appreciate that you have your Everything Money channel; it teaches a lot about that. 

Paul

Yeah, I never had a mentor. I just had my own mistakes as my mentor.

You also have to; I think many people so badly want to say, I have a mentor. I’ve had people call me a mentor, and it’s kind of cringy for me. The reason is that you have to find somebody who makes sense to you. Everybody will invest differently when things are how they look at the world. The things that make sense to me might not make sense to you. The things that make sense to you might not make sense to me. 

But if I try to emulate how you do things exactly, I will sometimes encounter problems. Part of being good at investing is understanding how you can make and lose money. If you don’t understand how it’s going to happen, you’re going to freak out. When you’re losing money and when you’re making money or somebody else is making money, and you don’t understand why they are, it might make you jealous. 

So, understanding what will make you money is the ultimate in confidence. Mentorship can be important. Of course, I’m biased. I believe in mentorship, but I’m biased. I never had a mentor; many people wanted to be my mentor. That was only because, you know, they saw me on the fast track, and it was kind of like, oh, let me get this guy under my wing. And I never took that because I wanted to do it my way. 

And I thought that the things that made sense to me made sense to me. I don’t know. It’s, it’s, I wonder sometimes. The mentorship thing is kind of one of the things, like saying leverage and synergies, which we love saying. Having a mentor is wonderful, but you must go out there and implement it. You’ve got to go out there and get things done. I believe in surrounding yourself with several like-minded people, not just one person. When I say like-minded, do they think the same way? Are they doing the same things? When I say the same things, are they getting things done? Many years ago, I remember meeting with somebody who was starting a business, and she was bragging to me about her board of directors. I go, What’s your revenue? 

No, we haven’t; we don’t have revenue yet. Oh, well, where did you start your business? Oh, we don’t have a business. I’m like, why do you have a board of directors? Well, I need to have the right people around me. I’m like, no, it’s important to start. Then you get, how do you know what people you need around you sometimes? Sometimes, you need somebody to help you get started. But I was looking at her board of directors, saying, nobody’s told you to start now. 

She’s like, no. I’m like, oh, well, that didn’t make sense. You know what I mean? For me, I was like, no, get started. Go up, make a mistake. And then, and then from there, you’ll have some things to go, hey, I tried this. This didn’t work. I tried that. Well, have you thought about this? If you haven’t started yet, get the ball rolling on something. If you have a hundred thousand saved up to buy a piece of real estate, spend 25 buying something. Because if you screw up, you probably won’t lose a lot of money, if any at all. 

So, try that: start something, watch videos, understand what you’re buying, and get a group. But really, go out there and get started. If you lose even half that, you’ll survive. You’ll survive losing half that. But just ensure you know you won’t blow your whole 100,000 on something. That’s the whole key there.

Cosmos

I love that you were action-oriented, like jumping into the water, swimming, and learning from there. Many people have the other mindset: to test the waters first, see and observe, and then go slowly. But obviously, your approach has given me a lot of success.

Paul

 So, I think mine is going slow. I think everybody else is just not moving. Like, you’re either moving, or you’re not moving. And some people are addicted to learning. If you’re addicted to learning, it will be hard to pull the trigger someday. 

But people have to remember there’s no perfect scenario. One of my partners upstairs told me, “Oh, I hate failing. I don’t like to fail. I’m like, well, that’s stupid. I literally can say that’s stupid. He laughed. Because I know you think it’s stupid. I’m like, you have to be okay with failure. Almost to the point of almost forcing failure. But you have to get started. If you’re just addicted to learning, there’s always some other time you can all do this stuff; then you’ll never get started. You have to be honest with yourself about what you are. And many people just like talking about doing things, not doing things.

Cosmos

No, I mean.

And Paul, what are some of the biggest lessons you learned in real estate? For example, during your time investing in real estate and stocks.

Paul

In real estate. Don’t ever trust a realtor or broker. You have to make your own decisions. If they’re talking to you, they’re lying to you. They just want to close the deal. Never hire a third-party manager if you won’t manage it yourself. Don’t hire, and then don’t buy the property. Third-party management is one of the biggest scams of all time. I’ve had 10 or 12 third-party managers work for me every time I fired them. Revenue went up, expenses went down, and profits skyrocketed. Terrible. They’re never going to watch it. You’re, they’re going to be too distracted with all the properties they’re managing. That tip is for real estate. Those are the two biggest ones. 

And everybody’s like, oh, a real estate agent or broker knows the market. No, they don’t. They don’t know the market. They never know the market. They might know what’s for sale in the market but don’t understand how real estate works; they’re not investors. That’s what I’ll say for stocks. You have to be okay looking stupid. When I say looking stupid like you have to be okay with not buying something for the right reasons, and it is going up a lot, or buying something for the right reasons and it starts to fall, are you okay with buying more? 

That’s the hardest part about stocks. Unequivocally, if you can’t do that, stick to low-cost ETFs. Because you’re betting on America, you’re betting on 500 companies. That’s good. Do that. But when it comes to individual stocks, you’ve got it. You must realize that you’ll probably not buy at the bottom when you buy a stock. 

So if it goes down further, can you buy it even when it’s falling? If the fundamentals are the same, they are getting better. Not many people can determine if your thesis is the same or getting better.

Cosmos

So, Paul, one of the things I noticed was for the 2007-2008 financial crisis, right? That was a time when everybody thought it was a bad financial time. But for investors, it was a great time because, like, when the chips are down, when everything is at a low price, like, invest, and they succeed. 

So, from your perspective, how would you advise somebody when there’s a financial crisis, which I feel will happen within a few years? How should they invest and allocate their resources accordingly during such a time?

Paul

If you can’t pick individual stocks, buy the market. Because at the end of the day, if you think the market’s going to zero, you might as well buy because it’s going to zero. None of this will matter if the markets go to zero—none of this. Individual stocks can go to zero because they’re bad companies like they did in the financial crisis—Lehman, Bear, Sterns, etc. But if you thought the market would go to zero, I tell people to buy everything; just buy the market then. Well, Paul, I don’t want to go to zero. Well, if it goes to zero, your money will mean nothing. 

So, you might as well buy more Buffet psychology of money. Morgan Howell has a great quote. Every past crash looks like an opportunity. Every future crash feels like a risk. No, every crash is an opportunity. If you don’t know what to buy individually, buy the market, buy the S&P 500, buy QQQ, or buy something like that because you’re betting on the entire U.S. economy. 

If you think it’s going to zero, why even have money? Why even have a job? It doesn’t make sense, but we get caught up in its emotion. When I was, by the way, my other thing for real estate was to trust bankers. They don’t understand real estate, either. These are the same bankers. I used to make fun of bankers because they would lend $150,000 on a property in 2006, and then in 2010, I’d buy it for $5,000. And they tell me that they can’t lend me money because it’s a toxic asset. 

So, I would say, Wait a second. At $5,000, it’s a toxic asset. At $150,000, it’s a great investment. Got it. It just didn’t make sense to me. But I have to have those; I have to have those mispricings or make a lot of money.

Cosmos

No, I mean, people have a lot of opinions on, like, bankers and, like, basically, like, about, like, as we were talking about the financial crisis, like, a lot of people are, like, thinking that there’s going to be even more inflation, and there might even be hyperinflation.

So they’re thinking about investing in stuff like gold and silver. Some people think of investing in things like, I’d say, cryptos, but from your perspective, if you had to advise somebody on a portfolio or investing, how would you advise them?

Paul

They are in the S&P 500. That’s it. If you want to buy individual stocks, you’ve got to be good at understanding financials, and you have to. More importantly, the most important one is you’ve got to have a stomach to watch your stock fall. I own PayPal. Yesterday, PayPal went down 2012%. Guess what I did. I loved it. I was like, oh, good, it’s getting to the price again, and I can buy more. That’s what I thought. Most people thought, Oh my God, PayPal’s death, okay. People in our community love it when the stock is down a lot. I bought Adobe, and it fell to 403, and I was excited, and then it shot right back up to 435, and I was like, Ah, crap. 

So, you know these things. I bought Sprott’s farmers market at 32.33. It’s up to 160. That does not make me happy. That truly does not make me happy. I’d rather have it stay at 30 for a long time as the business gets better and better and I keep accumulating more shares. That’s the hard part about buying stocks. That’s the only time you should buy individual companies. If not, you can make very good strategic purchases by dollar cost averaging and a low-cost ETF, and they’re selling from below. Historical metrics, fundamentals. You can buy more like QQQ for more aggressive when things make more sense.

I think there are just two that you, if you believe in crypto as an investment, just don’t tell you. Besides, you’re not an investor. That’s it. It’s just that it’s purely speculative. I don’t care what anybody says. It’s purely speculative. I don’t. I look, and people say, well, so is a dollar. I agree. However, the dollar is backed by the US government. I don’t invest in the dollar because I don’t consider it an investment. I see it as a way to buy goods and services. It’s not an investment. Investment, to me, is something that, if the market went away tomorrow, I could still make some money from. 

And that’s the way you get it with stocks. If the stock market went away tomorrow, every company I own would still increase its revenue and profit and bake its balance sheets better, and ten years from now, when the market opens up again, those companies would be worth a lot more money. Real estate. If I had an apartment building and could never, I couldn’t sell the apartment building for 10 years. I’d still make money off it. It would still grow in value. Now, that value I probably couldn’t get for 10 years. With Bitcoin and crypto, there’s nothing. If it goes away, if the market goes away tomorrow, what’s it worth? What, how do you make it? Will the market go back tomorrow? It’s useless. It’s useless. It’s gone. It’s just, what’s the purpose of it? 

So, you know, if people get rich, they will just match the market. That’s all you have to do. Just match the market. You can do that with low-cost ETFs. It’s not sexy. But you know what is sexy? This. The wand of cash you’ll be sitting on at the age of 65. That’s sexy. Because most people don’t. Most people underperform the market by 3 or 4% over their lifetime because they jump into stocks at the wrong time and sell stocks at the wrong time. That’s hard. That’s what happens.

Cosmos

No, I find your take on crypto interesting because I interviewed some other people, and they have quite the opposite opinion.

Paul

Yeah. You know what they’re called? Know what they’re called? Every crypto bro in the world who says they’re a crypto expert. That’s how I know you’re stupid. The second you say you’re a crypto expert, I just go, okay, you’re brain dead. You’re a dummy. It’s no coincidence that all the best investors in the world don’t like crypto. Suppose I hear one more person tell me, Bill Miller. I’ve never thought Bill Miller was a good investor. He beat the market. He beat the market 15 years in a row. Got it. I get that. But since then, he hasn’t done much. 

And 15 years in a row has more to do with timing than buying good stuff. I don’t consider him a good investor at all. Well, maybe I’m wrong. I don’t like his process. Even Warren Buffett, you know, in recent years, has outperformed the market. I just look at crypto. If you’re a crypto enthusiast, I think you’re brain-dead. And this will probably go down in history as a great comment. I don’t think crypto in its current form makes it now. Maybe it gets adopted in another form, and people go, See? “I’m like, okay, but it won’t be how they think it is. It’s not going to be 10 million a coin. It could, but it’ll be based purely on speculation.

Cosmos

 So when people say that Bitcoin is like digital gold, what? What is your opinion on that?

Paul

Gold has other uses besides some sort of value. We use it in products. We use it for jewelry and a lot of other things. Bitcoin is not. And another crypto pops up every second. Pop up every second. Like, okay, could Bitcoin be the crypto? Sure, but it’s got to get adopted for them to get adopted. I saw one person, a crypto bro, admit this on Twitter. He said, Listen, guys, I like crypto, but we must all admit that it is not what we originally intended it for. It was supposed to be off the radar. There is no government regulation. Now it’s on the radar. Fully taxed, full government. Like, guys, I love the whole intention of crypto. I love the idea of having a decentralized currency. It’s a brilliant idea. 

But so is communism. But communism, I’d love for you and me always to live a great life together and always work as hard as we need to work for the greater good of everybody. But in the day, there’s one problem. We’re humans, and we don’t want to. We don’t want to work more than somebody else can live the same life. That’s why communism doesn’t work. It’s the whole joke about, in theory, communism; in theory, crypto works. Oh, great. You have this guy. But guess what? The very, very thing they wanted to do was have people who pay in crypto. 

And so look at it this way. How many stories do you hear about people losing their key for crypto and their crypto being gone forever? Is that the world you want to live in, where you have $10 million of your net worth tied into something where you lose that key? It’s gone forever. I don’t want to. If you want to, more power to you, but it ends up bad. People will be very upset and then ask if we want more regulation. Great. That defeats the purpose of crypto.

Cosmos

So Paul, you know it’s for the current generation, right? For example, when they’re, let’s say, they want to become like a great investor like yourself, and they look at the current world with technology, the rise of AI, and then cryptos, and then there’s gold, and like, they don’t know how to go about making investments and everything. How would you advise such a person on what leads to a successful investor versus somebody less successful?

Paul

Well, first off, I don’t consider myself a great investor. I consider myself a principle-driven investor. That means I don’t care if my assets don’t do as well in the short run and do average in the long run. I’m okay with the result if I like what I’m buying and buy for the right reasons. That’s what’s most important to me. If I take on more risk for something I want to take on, I want to gain more for it. If that works out, great. I took on a lot of risk in 2008. 9. Perceived risk in buying real estate. Banks were not lending. I had to pay cash. If I had stuck with those things in cash forever, it would have done okay. I was waiting to say that, eventually, the banks would turn around. Guess what? They eventually did and started lending money. And I made a killing off of that. 

But if they never did that, let’s say forever banks never lent money on real estate. I would have done okay; I would have done 12 or 13%, which is good for real estate, for having paid off real estate. But it wouldn’t have been good for real estate overall.

But now, the banks have started lending more. That’s what counts. That was my entire thesis. Banks went from we’re not lending to they finally started lending two or three years later, and then my return skyrocketed. Being a good investor is not just about getting a lot of returns. Suppose you can get a lot of returns by taking on debt; that’s not a good investor. If I can get 15% by putting 40% down on a piece of real estate, but you need a 10% down payment to get 20%, my return is better than yours because even though I’m getting a lower return, I have much less risk involved. I’m getting a much better risk-adjusted return. Being a good investor is about being disciplined and not making as many emotional decisions. When you buy something, understand what you’re buying, why you’re buying it, and why you might sell it, keep it, or buy more. Those are the things to be able to do. 

But reacting based on what other people say. I always joke with my friends. I want to hear what they discuss with investments to avoid those things. If I hear them talking. I always joke with people. I started buying PayPal. I was interested in PayPal. There’s a guy on the Internet who has a channel that I do not respect at all. And he likes PayPal. And I’m like, Ah, crap. What am I missing? I’m probably wrong on PayPal. If he likes PayPal, I probably will. Then it’s probably wrong. I think if he likes it, it’s got to be garbage. You know what I mean? Like, that’s. By the way, I didn’t sell PayPal. I just kind of made that joke. It’s kind of like a joke. But the point was, I want to buy things people like, but that’s a stupid buy. 

Okay, that’s fine with me. You know what I mean? That. That’s hard to do. It isn’t easy to do. But the same thing that everybody told me was how stupid it was. For buying in 2000, I bought an apartment building in 2009. Sorry. I bought an apartment building in 2009 and two homes in Mexico in 2012—the apartment building in 2009. Everybody’s like, You’re stupid. I made $3 million for it. It was recently appraised at 25 million. I bought the two houses in Mexico 10 years ago. My. My lawyers were begging me not to buy in Mexico. It’s terrible, dangerous. Since then, I’ve been making 20% returns on those houses, which is worth double what I paid. If that’s happening to me, I’m like, okay, it’s probably something to look further into. That doesn’t mean they’re wrong, but most people are wrong for the same reason. Most people are wrong because they don’t know. They just go off emotional responses. 

And I believe that if everybody hates something, that’s the time to look at it. If everybody hates it, it’s cheap enough or getting cheaper. 80, 70, or 80 percent of the time is why everybody hates it. They’re probably all right 70 or 80 percent of the time, but it’s at 20 or 30 percent where you can make a lot of money if you can go against the grain.

Cosmos

 Yeah, the department, like you just said, if some people, the masses, are going in one direction, you have to go in the other. That’s the key to success and investments.

I want to hone in on that for the audience because to be a good investor, you must go against what most people think.

Paul

We see it all the time. Look at how many. Look at PayPal, which is at $310 a share. Look at Alibaba, which is at $310 a share. Look at them now—Alibaba’s at 100. PayPal is at 77. Yet they both have more revenue and profit than when they’re at 310. Go figure. Why? Perceptions change. Okay, Nike. Nike had an all-time high of 180. It got down to 70 and had more revenue and profit. Okay, anybody who tells me otherwise, you can’t tell me you liked it at 180, and now you hate it at 70. It makes zero sense to me. And, when it’s at 180, I guarantee people would say, I’d love to buy it at 70. 

But they don’t. Do you know why? Because then the news starts to come out. Because news follows the stock price. When the stock falls, all the negative news comes out for it. The negative news is always there, but the news always follows the stock price. If the stock price rises, all people care about is the news of why the stock is going up. The stock’s going down. Here’s the news as to why it’s going down. You have to be able to say no. Fundamentals are getting better. I’m going to keep buying it.

Cosmos

No, totally.

Paul, I wanted to ask about your YouTube channel, Everything Money, because I know you have one. So, can you tell me, the audience, a little bit more about this channel and the premise of how you got it started?

Paul

Yeah. So, it started as a podcast, sitting here at this desk, and we just interviewed people and got four or five hundred listeners a week. And then one day, somebody in the office said, Paul, we should be on YouTube. And I was like, yeah, I never watch videos. To this day, I rarely do. The only videos I watch are music videos. Like, I love watching music videos. Or I’ll watch, you know, I’m dabbling in guitar. Like a video on how to play a guitar. Song. It’s a song on guitar. So the guy said, Let’s go on YouTube. Let’s try it. 

So we did it. We had a great setup; we were very classy, and people were like, “Damn, you have nice stuff. I’m like, yeah, because I like teaching. Let’s do this. And then it just started to snowball. You know, for January 1, 2020, we had 83 subscribers. 

On December 31, we had 8,300. The next year, on December 31, we had 83,000. And it just keeps growing and growing. I had software I made for myself, and whenever I used it, people would say, Hey, how do I get that software? I’m like, well, you can’t. It’s a data feed, blah, blah. And finally, one day, I said, Just make it for people. 

So we did, and it’s been very successful. We have thousands of people in our community using our software every day. The software is what I use every single day to buy stocks and buy real estate. Last year, we closed on some 30 million in real estate that we use in our real estate calculations. I use our software myself; I just make it for everybody else. That’s it. Because I figure if it’s good enough for me, it’s good enough for everybody. And that’s it; that’s all it was. And the YouTube channel just keeps growing. I love talking about the things that make sense to me. I love being wrong and right in the public image. It’s fun to own your mistakes. The only hard part is that everyone is so short-term-oriented. 

The hard part for our channel is that we’re looking for long-term-oriented people who are few and far between. I still get messages from people saying, Paul, thank you so much. I was up 27% because of you. I’m like, no, you weren’t. You’re up 27% because the market’s up 27% or 20%. You’ll do it well in the long run by living by owning this principle-driven investing idea and buying things that make sense to you; that’s when I want the accolades. 

Call me in 10 years and say, Paul, because you beat the market by 2% yearly. Wonderful. And even then, I wouldn’t say it’s because of me. I’m just teaching what makes sense to me. If it doesn’t make sense to you, don’t do it. If it makes sense to you, do it. Many people in our community buy investments that don’t make sense to me, but they still do. Well, one of the guys in the house here has been making 21 a year for the last three or four years. And I don’t buy his stuff, and he crushes me. I love it. I don’t, I. None of his investments make sense to me. That’s. It doesn’t make sense to me. I have none; I don’t mind losing on that. It doesn’t make sense to me. I don’t mind losing and losing out.

Cosmos

 Paul, it’s amazing that you have this YouTube channel. You’re educating and showing people how to invest. I recommend that my audience look at your channel and better understand how to invest, especially in stocks and real estate. And Paul, are there any other projects you’re working on that you’d want the audience to glimpse?

Paul

No, I don’t think so. You know, I have dedicated my life to starting all these businesses. We’re trying to. I’m very fortunate to have everything I need and want. So, I’m trying to make it all about my time and family. I’m recently married. My wife has adult children who have kids. And you know, we spend a lot of time with the family and kids, so my project in life is to enjoy life with them as much as possible and to enjoy life investing because that’s a lot of fun. And build this channel. This channel will have 5 or 10 million subscribers sometime in the next 5 or 10 years. 

And I want to teach people a different way of thinking that’s, you know, 8 billion people in the world, 8 points whatever billion people in the world. If I can help 5 or 10 million of them become better at thinking, great. Along the way, I’m going to change my way of thinking. It’s already been five years since the channel started; I’ve changed the stocks I buy. I used to buy, you know, small companies that had big upside potential, but then I’d sell. 

No, I don’t want that anymore. I want to buy companies that just grow and grow and grow and grow and grow. I don’t have to think I will make less money, but I’m okay with that.

Cosmos

That’s, that’s amazing, Paul.

And I wanted to ask you another question about happiness because you know the Americans’ pursuit of happiness. You initially said that your main drive was to get rich, but now, it’s about something else. So, from your perspective, how should people go about pursuing happiness? Is it all about wealth, or should they have it? Should they look at other avenues when it comes to happiness?

Paul

 Listen, being able to pay your bills, retire, and support your family can create a lot of contentment in life. To think that somebody with 100 million is 10 times happier than somebody with 10 million is a fallacy. You’ve got to find the things you enjoy doing and the people you enjoy being around. That’s hard to do. 

You know, I remember this first sparking me about 12 years ago. I remember finding immense happiness when I would play tennis on a weeknight because I thought to myself, what a luxury I have that I can play tennis anytime I want. I entered the tennis club and put my bag down at 6:30 or 7 p.m. Being able to play, my wife and I travel a ton, probably 60 or 70 days out of the year. That’s immensely satisfying, as we can choose anywhere we want to go and enjoy it very much. The traveling part is very beneficial. 

We should be able to make sure that our kids are always safe. When I say that, I mean the right car. Like us, we, you know, we don’t pay for our kids’ cars. But you know, being able to tell them they couldn’t afford nice cars. Tell them we’ll pay for part of the car, so you have a safer car. Those small things are like, and when I say that, I don’t mean buying a Range Rover; I mean like, hey, buy a Volvo that’s $45,000. Nothing glamorous, but it’s something that’s, hey, you need that versus a small two-door or four-door car. You have a family now. Those are the things that make me happy. 

Being able to help, you know, the people I love and care about. And that’s not cliché. I’m not saying that from a fake standpoint. I say that from a complete, honest standpoint. You know, not caring about being Uber, uber when I say uber-rich, like a multi-billionaire tomorrow—enjoying the journey more than the result. My life used to be all about the result. Now it’s about, it’s becoming more about the journey. I still have a lot of results, kind of like gold, which I hate. But I’m working on making it all about the journey. I told somebody about three years ago that I said this in passing, and they’re like, Wow, that’s different. I would never go back to 10 years ago, and I never go to 10 years ahead. I love exactly where I’m at today. And I realized that probably three or four years ago. But I heard my old college roommate of mine yesterday say, Oh, man, remember the good old days of college? I go, no.

So what do you mean? I said I would never go back to college for anything. Because, Paul, it was such a much simpler time. I’m like, no, it’s simpler now. It’s like, God, it’s so aggravating now. I’m like, not for me. And I’m sure he thought part of it was, “Well, you guys have money, Nick. No, it has nothing to do with that. It happens to be like. Because I had money before, I still thought the future would be better now. I am okay with it. I like getting older because I feel like life is more enjoyable, but I like the things I can do along the way. Like every single day. Going to work. Like, I don’t dread work. I love going to work. I don’t dread anything in my life. Besides, I don’t dread anything in my life. Try anything in my life. Nick, have you heard me complain about anything in my life? No, I don’t think so. 

And by the way, that’s from years and years of realizing that I wanted a lot of money. And as I got a lot of money, I realized my happiness wasn’t increasing. It was probably making me more anxious and frustrated. So, yeah, I just had a little like, okay, something’s not right here. I just started reading more and thinking more about things, and, you know, you start googling things like, why am I? I. Why do I have money and I’m not happy? This leads you to an article that was in my journey, and it continues.

Cosmos

Well, I mean, it’s fascinating, right, because a lot of people think that when they’re young, youth is when they’ll feel happier, but versus when they get older, that’s going to be a more miserable time. But your take is the opposite of that.

Paul

Quite the opposite. In fact. I tell people that if you always look back at the past as your best times, it means you are up somehow. I was like, literally, every year is better than the last. I, I, I, I, I love life so much. I go, man, if every year is better than the last, imagine when I’m 60, and then I’m like, God, I don’t want to die. I don’t want to be a hundred and die. I want to, like, keep enjoying life. So we’ll see. If I live to 100, I have 57, 56, and a half years to go. That’s pretty exciting to think that I have 13 more years than I’ve already lived. But we’ll enjoy them along the way. I’ll have grandkids. It’s possible. I have great-great-grandkids because when I’m 100, my oldest grandchild will be 59. And it’s possible, 59, that they have their grandkids. 

So I could have great-grandkids at that point, which is truly amazing, as I could live to see that many generations.

Cosmos

Yeah. I love your mindset, Paul. While many people fear old age, you see it optimistically. So that’s, that’s, that’s amazing.

Paul

I fear it. It’s going to happen. Embrace it. Enjoy life more. Do the things you want to do. And that’s, it’s, by the way, that’s not going to click.

It takes time to get behind that mentality. I only dread that you’ll lose friends along the way.

People are going to die. You know, I’m going to—I’m a hundred. I’m going to—if I’m a hundred, there’s a good chance that very, very close loved ones will pass away along the way. Very close, you know, friends will pass away. And it’s like, oh, that sucks. It’s terrible. You know, I, that’s a part of life. And I think losing a friend at 85 is going to be a lot different than if I lost a friend like yesterday. I didn’t lose a friend yesterday. I’m saying if I lost a friend yesterday, it would have been like, oh my God, so premature. But I already, you know, I have a lot of older friends, so it’s probably going to start happening to me sooner rather than later. But it’s a part of life, and I’ll get through it. They’ll hopefully be in a better place.

Cosmos

 So, Paul, how can our audience connect with you and learn more about you, your work, and everything you do?

Paul

I have an OnlyFans account, so if you sign up on OnlyFans, you can pay for feet pictures. I’m just kidding. Go to YouTube.com, everything money. That’s us, that’s us, that’s our YouTube channel. Yeah, that’s our community as well. Don’t join the community until you’ve read, watched videos, and truly believed in the process. We don’t want this to be something people are just joining to try it out. We want high-quality people who will add value to other community members. That’s very important to us.

Cosmos

That is amazing, Paul. I appreciate that you took the time to come to this podcast and share your knowledge, wisdom, and insights into investing. This is very important for people who want to succeed in life. I appreciate you doing that, and I do hope that you take the time to come back at a later time.

Paul

That’d be great. Thank you very much.

Cosmos

Yeah. And I want to conclude this podcast by letting my fellow extraordinary Americans know that, hey, look, there’s an extraordinary within every one of us. We must awaken it and unleash it. Until next time. Bye for now.