The Money Mondays

The 40-40-20 Formula: How I Invest My Money for Safety, Growth, and Big Wins

46 min
Jul 15, 2025about 1 year ago
Listen to Episode
Summary

Host presents the 40-40-20 investment formula: 40% low-risk investments (5-9% returns), 40% medium-risk investments (10-30% returns), and 20% high-risk investments (3x-12x potential returns). The strategy emphasizes diversification, compound growth, and deploying capital consistently to combat inflation while building long-term wealth.

Insights
  • Diversification across risk categories protects against total loss while maintaining upside potential through the high-risk allocation
  • Inflation erodes purchasing power at 8-9% annually, making passive cash savings a losing strategy; even 4-5% returns help preserve wealth
  • Experience and track record reduce investment risk significantly—backing operators with 80+ successful projects is materially safer than first-time entrepreneurs
  • Compound interest over 30+ years can turn modest annual contributions ($10k/year) into millions, making early and consistent investing critical
  • Bitcoin's fixed supply (21M total, 4.6M lost) combined with growing institutional demand creates structural scarcity supporting long-term price appreciation
Trends
Rising CD rates (4-5%) making low-risk fixed income competitive with historical equity returnsInstitutional adoption of Bitcoin by hedge funds, venture capital, and sovereign wealth funds reducing volatility floorAngel investing shifting toward proven operators with $2-20M revenue rather than pre-revenue startupsReal estate franchising models (EverBowl, etc.) demonstrating faster scaling and lower per-unit costs than traditional restaurant modelsIndividual stock investing driven by consumer brand loyalty (Netflix, Apple, Amazon) rather than fundamental analysisMulti-location business model validation reducing perceived risk of single-location investmentsCryptocurrency becoming mainstream portfolio allocation for wealth preservation against inflationCo-investment platforms enabling retail investors to access institutional-quality deals with lower minimums
Topics
40-40-20 Investment FormulaLow-Risk Investing (CDs, Gold, S&P 500)Medium-Risk Investing (Real Estate, Individual Stocks, Cash-Flowing Businesses)High-Risk Investing (Bitcoin, Angel Investing, Startups)Inflation Impact on SavingsCompound Interest and Long-Term Wealth BuildingDiversification StrategyBitcoin Supply and Demand EconomicsReal Estate Fix-and-Flip InvestingAngel Investing in Proven OperatorsStock Market Individual Stock SelectionFranchise Business Model InvestingCapital Deployment StrategyRisk Reduction Through ExperienceDollar-Cost Averaging
Companies
EverBowl
Acai bowl restaurant chain grown from 13 to 103 locations; host invested $500k in 2018, exemplifying medium-risk cash...
Netflix
Streaming service cited as best-performing stock in history; host argues consumers should invest in companies they al...
Apple
Tech company highlighted for AirPods revenue potential and iPhone ecosystem; host calculates $15k in iPhone purchases...
Amazon
E-commerce platform noted as one of best-performing stocks; host suggests matching shopping spend with stock purchases
Tesla
Electric vehicle manufacturer mentioned as example of company to invest in if you use/believe in the product
Google
Tech company mentioned as example of established company suitable for individual stock investment
Facebook
Social media company listed as example of established company for individual stock investment
Skinny Pasta
Food brand that host raised millions for through angel investing syndicate; example of proven operator investment
Icon Meals
Meal prep company host raised capital for; example of food/beverage brand in angel investment portfolio
Joy Ride Candy
Candy company host raised $4M for; example of consumer brand scaling through syndicate capital
Key.co
Luxury real estate platform with 7,000+ homes; recent angel investment raising millions for expansion
Cards and Coffee
Sports car store chain owned by host; example of cash-flowing business model for investment
Bank of America
Major bank offering 4-5% CDs; cited as safe low-risk investment vehicle
Chase
Major bank offering 4-5% CDs; cited as safe low-risk investment vehicle
Wells Fargo
Major bank offering 4-5% CDs; cited as safe low-risk investment vehicle
Acorns
Investment app mentioned as tool for automated micro-investing and compound growth for children
Cash App
Payment platform offering Bitcoin purchasing; mentioned as accessible entry point for crypto investment
Robinhood
Trading platform offering Bitcoin purchasing; mentioned as accessible entry point for crypto investment
Coinbase
Cryptocurrency exchange offering Bitcoin purchasing; mentioned as accessible entry point for crypto investment
Elevator Syndicate
Host's angel investment group with 930 investors; raised $56M+ for companies doing $2-20M revenue
People
Jeff Fenster
CEO of EverBowl; host invested in company and praised leadership during scaling from 13 to 103 locations
Cody Sanchez
Small business and creative financing expert; recommended for studying cash-flowing business investment strategies
Pace Morby
Small business and creative financing expert; recommended for studying cash-flowing business investment strategies
Marcus Timonis
Small business expert; recommended for studying small business and creative financing strategies
Quotes
"Bitcoin is the single best performing asset in the history of the world. Let me repeat. Bitcoin is the single best performing investment asset in the history of the world."
Host~1:20:00
"When was the best time to buy real estate? 20 years ago. When's the second best time? Today. When's the best time to buy Bitcoin? 14 years ago when it first started. When's the second best time? Today."
Host~1:18:00
"I reduce my risk by investing into experience. By investing in something that's been a proven track record over and over and over."
Host~45:00
"If you could be contributing capital to S&P 500 year after year, there can be losses along the way. There could be a bad quarter or bad year, etc. It just hasn't happened very much over the last few decades."
Host~30:00
"You've been paying for Netflix 15 bucks a month for the last 10, 15 years, but you're listening to this and you probably don't have even $10 or $15 worth of Netflix stock. That is one of the best performing stocks in the history of the world."
Host~55:00
Full Transcript
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to a special edition of the Money Mondays, where we cover three core topics. How to make money, how to invest money, how to give away the charity. But today, we're only going to cover one topic focused on investing. I call it 404020. My investment philosophy, you may have heard me sprinkle in some clips here and there over the last two years of the podcast, but today I want to explain everything about 404020 so you can understand why I've used this investment strategy for my whole life. First, the first 40% is low risk investing. I want to make between 5% and 9% for the year. The second part, 40%, is medium risk investing. My goal is to make between 10% and 30% for the year. And lastly, the final 20% of the 404020 is 20% into high risk investments. This is where I want something crazy to happen. I'm hoping for 3x, 7x, 12x, something wild to happen or a big return. And if I get it wrong or it takes a long time, I'm hoping that the low risk and the medium risk covers the high risk 20%. I want to have that as part of my portfolio so that I can have some major things happen to shift my financial situation. Now let's use a real life example of $100,000. Again, for you, this might be $10,000. You might have $10 million or anything between. All the math percentages, they all equate to the same thing. So I'm just going to use the $100,000 as the core number. But I want you to understand as you're listening to this, if you've got $10,000 to work with or you've got $10 million, it's the same concept. We're just going to use $100,000 as the number. And 404020 is the same math whether you have $10,000 or $100,000. Okay. I'm very passionate about this topic. I use this as part of my speeches. And sometimes it changes with the time because things happen in the markets. The 404020 part does not change, meaning I stick to the same principle, the same model, but I might be looking at certain things that change within the category. So there might be some new things in low-risk investing or might be some new things in medium-risk investing or might be some new things in high-risk. Right now you're seeing Bitcoin at $119,000 breaking records. So you might be thinking about within your high-risk that 20%, maybe you're switching some things around of allocating some extra capital to Bitcoin or on the low-risk side, there might be something new like a CD that's being offered at over 4%. Maybe there's some switches there in low-risk. So let me walk you through real-life situations, real-life investments that I've done over the years so you can pick and choose for yourself what might fit for you or you might do my entire strategy of 404020. You can adjust this number based on the type of investor that you are. I like this strategy because it keeps me focused, it keeps me safe, it diversifies me and allows me to make good decisions with my capital as it comes in over the course of time. What I do is as income is coming in, I'm consistently deploying it into one of these three categories and into the subjects within those categories to make decisions for myself. And so that I'm constantly investing and deploying the capital, I'm not keeping some big piggy bank at any given time. You'll often hear real estate investors and a lot of strategic investors that don't keep a lot of cash on hand because they're deploying it into investments on a business basis because of this one concept, inflation. Inflation is very, very real. We've been battling with 8% to 9% a year inflation. Some people argue over the numbers, but let's just use those are the general examples. 8% to 9% a year inflation. So let's see, you do have $100,000 saved up in the piggy bank. So you've got $100,000 in your Bank of America or your Chase or your Wells Fargo account. $500,000 in 2025. Next year in 2026 will spend like it's $91,000. 2027, it'll spend like it's $83,000. Then $74,000. Then $65,000. Then $58,000. The numbers can vary even if it goes down to 4, 5, 6, 7%, which it hasn't, or it goes up to 10 or 11%, which could be scary. Each year your 100K becomes 91K, then 83K, then 74K, etc. And so your physical cash number in your bank account stays the same. Let's say you just saved up $100,000 in sitting in your savings account at Bank of America or Chase, for example. It'll still look like you got $100,000, but if you go try to buy a Ford truck, and that Ford truck was $55,000, and now it's $64,000, or you go try to pay for valet parking, and it was $25, and now it's $30, or you go try to buy bread, and the bread was $4, and now it's $4.70, or you buy a t-shirt, it was $25, now it's $28. That is real-life inflation, so that $100,000 that's in your bank account, it still visually looks the same, but the spending power is less, around 8% or 9% a year less each year. That's why you have to deploy into investments. The majority of your capital should be at work, and if you don't feel comfortable when I say that, put it into low-risk or no-risk investments, even if you're just making 4% or 5% a year, which is great, at least you're fighting with inflation. At least you're not making your $100,000 go down to $91,000 in spending value. What you're doing is battling it, let's say you're $100,000, physically and appearance-wise becomes $105,000, at least now you've battled with the inflation a bit. You're not covering the whole 8% or 9%, but you have increased by 5% in your bank account. All right, let's walk through some real-life investments. I think you can hear about the passion in my voice, because this is such an important topic. The money Mondays, it came to be because of my passion for this 40, 40, 20 principle, me wishing and hoping and spreading the message around the world through my speeches, books and events about this concept. All right, on the low-risk side, again, I'm hoping for that 5% to 9% arrange, but I'll be taking 4% or 5% if I could, just for the safety. If you want to blow your own mind, if you go look at a compound calculator, compound calculator, if you want to really mess with your head, after this podcast, Google search, compound calculator and just put in your age. Let's say you're listening to this and you're 43 years old. Put in the date of retirement. Let's say you want to retire at 75 years old. That's 32 years. Put in the interest amount that you want to earn. Let's say it's 8% a year. Put in the amount that you can contribute upfront and then you can contribute consistently over the course of time. Let's say you can contribute $10,000 upfront and an additional $10,000 a year for those 32 years. If you put in a compound calculator, $10,000 a year and then you put in the $10,000 upfront and you put in 8%, it will blow your mind what that number turns into, like a staggering amount of money, not a couple hundred thousand dollars. Typically, it could have ended up being a couple of million dollars if you can say consistent adding in $10,000 year after year after year. By the way, if you all of a sudden on year four or five, you could add $11,000 a year or $12,000 a year or $16,000 a year. You could increase it over time as you're getting older, as you got more savings, as you have more of a career happening, et cetera. Maybe you've got some exits or you have an inheritance or you have a dual income with the husband or wife. As things go, you could increase the rate of return at a staggering amount just by going from $10,000 to $12,000 to $16,000 to $16,000 to $18,000 a year contributed to this pot of gold, to this investment of this 8% a year. It will blow your mind. If you just do it $10,000 a year without increasing, I still want you to look at a compound calculator and see the magic of compounding interest. Imagine you do this for your four-year-old son or your nine-year-old daughter and you're putting in $1,000 upfront and you're contributing $1,000 a year. Let's say you're earning $40,000, $50,000 a year or maybe you're earning $80,000, $100,000 plus a year. Could you contribute $1,000 a year to your son or daughter's consistent compound calculator savings account for them? It is staggering what would happen if you did that. Like actually staggering that. Again, you can hear it in my voice. What would happen for them when they're 35 years old? You've been putting in for 31 years, for example, and at birthday parties instead of taking in presents, you ask people to contribute to that investment account and you can do it with Acorn or one of those type of companies. It's just consistently now instead of someone buying them $100 a present, they're putting $100 into their Acorn account and you've invited 35 people to their birthday party. You can imagine what happens over the course of time if you as a family are contributing and friends and acquaintances are contributing into your child's savings account. When they're 20, 30, 40 years old and they need money for college or they need money for their wedding or for their first house, they could have tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands saved up depending on your contributions. If you put it in over time, a little bit larger amounts, a couple thousand dollars a year and you do it over those 30 years, then again, you're going to see something that could be one or two million dollars saved up for them. Not to mention if you did that until their retirement, obviously, now you're talking about five, ten million dollars, which will, again, compound calculator will blow your mind. All right, so on the lower subvesting, what are some of the things that you can invest into that are safe? Well, your banks are offering CDs right now of four to five percent for the year. That may not sound that exciting to you, but when Wells Fargo, Bank America, Chase type major banks are offering that, that is very, very safe. Now, could a bank go bankrupt? Sure. But if a bank goes bankrupt, especially a household name bank, our economy is in complete disarray, something tragic happened in our society. You can think about it to the times in 2008 when we had a humongous economic collapse. And so the likelihood of a Bank America, Chase or Wells Fargo is pretty close to zero percent of them going bankrupt when you're using a household name bank like that. Is there some risk? Sure. There's a very, very much, much less than one percent chance. So I look at that more as a no risk investment than even a low risk investment because highly unlikely that a household name bank is going to go bankrupt and there would be signs and situations ahead of time that you could pull your money out along the way. So think of that as a no risk investment as close to it as possible. Now, four or five percent a year doesn't, may not sound like a lot to you, but just a few years ago, typically CDs were one percent, two percent or three percent on specials. It was very rare that you would ever see something like this. And now it's being consistent at four to five percent for the year. Another one is gold. Again, gold might seem like a high risk investment, but if you go look at the last 30, 40, 50 years, gold has been very consistent. Have there been some drop offs along the way? Of course there have. Drop offs can happen during economic turmoil, war, recession, et cetera. But look at the consistency. Over the decades, gold has consistently gone up and it is outpacing the stock market and so many different things that people can invest into and you can physically have gold at your house or in a safety deposit box at the bank and it's something that you can see, feel, touch, or you can invest into it as a commodity. But gold has just been one of those things that has been tried and true for many, many years. The next thing is, people are surprised when I say this is in the lowest category, is the S&P 500. I mean, how dare I say S&P 500 in a low risk category when this is betting on the top 500 stocks on the stock market, people hear stock market, this should be medium risk or high risk, but it is not. Here's why. It has been 91 years of the S&P 500, which has gone through recessions, depressions, and so much craziness and it has averaged 11 percent a year return if you dollar cross average or you just look at the investment over the course of the last 91 years. That number has been extremely consistent. If you look at the last few decades, there's only been a few losing years. Just go look at S&P 500 or Google search it or chat GPT. S&P 500 returns the last 25 years, for example. You'll notice there's only been a few losing years over the last few decades. Decades. That is a very rare thing in most investments. Typically, investing, you're hoping to win here, lose there, win, win, win, lose a couple of times. You're thinking about ups and downs. S&P 500, if you look at it, has only had a few losing years in the last few decades. Those few losing years were nothing in comparison to the consistency of growth. When you think about 11 percent a year and go back to that compound calculator that we talked about, oh my gosh. If you were getting 11 percent a year return and you were putting in 10 grand a year, for example, you would have millions and millions of dollars at the end of the rainbow. If you go look at it after 25, 30 years, what would happen at 11 percent return? It is mind blowing. The S&P 500 is the top 500 stocks on the stock market. It is very easy for you to invest into. You don't need an investment manager. You don't need a wealth manager to do this. You can handle this on your own. All right. The lower risk investing, CDs are around 4 or 5 percent, which is amazing. You can do them on six-month, 12-month notes. You can do them longer if you like. Gold you can buy physically. There's typically gold pawn shops and gold stores and gold things. You could go to those stores in your area if you want to buy physical gold or obviously you can buy it online and buy it as a commodity. The S&P 500 is something you should be taking very seriously. If you could be contributing capital to S&P 500 year after year, there can be losses along the way. There could be a bad quarter or bad year, etc. It just hasn't happened very much over the last few decades. I look at that as the safe category. Medium risk investing. There's three core topics that I like. Again, there's other categories. There's lots of options, if not infinite options for you to be an investor into. In the medium risk category, I look at three core topics. Real estate, the stock market, individual stocks, and cash flowing businesses. On the real estate side, there's obviously lots of options. There's long-term investing, there's fixed and flips, there's Airbnb rentals, and so many different options. You could try to look at Section 8 houses. You could try to look at short-term rentals. You could look at vacation rentals. You could look at fixing and flipping cheap houses that are 100K, 200K, 300K. You could look at fixing fancy houses that are $1M, $2M. You could look at multi-family storage units, commercial. There seems to be so many options. I like to study as much as humanly possible or co-invest with someone that's really good at real estate. There might be someone in your local market or there might be someone that you've been following online that accepts investment capital. Think about people that are experts in the category. You might want to co-invest with them. That could be co-investing into a real estate fund that has fixed returns or that has average returns over the course of time. There might be someone that has a $50M fund. You could put in 50 grand, 100 grand, 25 grand, 500 grand, for example, depending on their minimum. Then in that fund, those funds are typically five years or 10 years. You could be earning return on that. That same person might also have individual projects. They might be buying a house for $600,000, putting $100,000 into it. Now they're in for $700K. They're hoping to sell it for $840K or $900K, for example, after they pay commissions and fees and things like that. They're hoping for return of 12%, 18%, 22%, 14%, etc. You might be able to co-invest with someone into a real estate project like a fix and flip if they are a seasoned expert. I don't mean your cousin or your friend from high school that's doing their second or third flip. I'm talking about someone that has done it dozens of times, if not 50 or 100 plus times. That is someone that you can safely co-invest into. Now when I say safely, we're still in the medium risk category. Can someone that's done 80 flips lose on the 81st flip? Of course they can. However, their likelihood of messing up is much less than someone doing their second or third flip. They have so much experience doing 80 flips. They have so much knowledge in their area. They probably know the county officials, they know the contractors, they know the people at Home Depot by name and face because they go to Home Depot so often. They know the people and the things, they have the experience, they know the real estate agents, they know the market, they know a lot of the things because they're doing their 81st flip. Can they lose on flip number 81? Sure. Can they lose a lot a little bit? Sure. Ultimately, you could feel safer someone doing their 81st flip that they're likely to win or break even. Most of the time they're going to win and you typically aren't just going to invest into one fix and flip with them. You might be wanting to invest in three, four, five, six with them and then the likelihood of them failing is tiny because again, they've got an experience doing this 80 times in the past. On the real estate side, you can research for yourself to try to do it yourself which I would consider more high risk if you don't have the experience or you could consider co-investing. What you're going to want to research also is do I like short term? Do I like Airbnb in this city? Do I like multi-family or fourplexes? Do I like storage units? What is the type of real estate that you'd like to invest into? What is the type of return you're looking for? Again, in the medium risk, I'm hoping for that 10 to 30% range of return. Businesses, cash flowing businesses. An example for you is I invested into a company called EverBull. I put in $500,000 back in 2018 when there was around 13 locations. When they got to around 17, 18, 19 locations, helped them raise $5 million for the company to help them scale. It's helping protect my investment. It's helping the business by adding gasoline to the fire. I believed in the company watching their growth. Then I invested more buying some locations in 2020 and 2021. Owning physical locations of EverBull which is an AcaiBull chain. If there was only one or two locations, that would be high risk investing. No matter how much I like Jeff Fenster, the CEO, if he only had one or two locations, that would be a high risk investment. But the fact that they were at 17, 19, 22, 24 locations, et cetera, that became a lower and lower risk. Can any individual EverBull close down or have a bad year? Of course, they can. But again, over the course of time, they're going to learn, get better, better menus, better experience, better staff, et cetera, better marketing. Now fast forward to 2025. Remember, I invested when there was around 13 locations? Now there's 103 locations. It has grown by over 800%. There's eight times as many locations as my investment back when I put in 500K back in 2018. They're opening one new location every six days. Think about this for a second. It's a cash flowing business. These restaurants can do 600K, 700K, 800K, 900K, maybe even a million dollars. Some of them more out of a location that only costs around 160,000 on average to open. The risk rate of return is, let's say it costs around 160,000. Again, this number changes based on your market, changes based on the size of location. Let's just use that as an average for this EverBull. You guys can look at everbull.com. If gross is, let's call it 600K, 700K, 800K, let's say it makes around 20 to 26% profit, that becomes interesting. That means after about a year and a half or so, I'm starting to get most of my money back, all my money back on investment, where other franchises could take three or four years and cost more than double the investment, meaning another type of restaurant could cost $350,000 on average, and it might take three or four years to get the money back that I invested into that franchise. I like this model and I look at it as a cash flowing business. I've invested into gyms. I've invested into other types of businesses that are cash flowing businesses. Look for yourself. Is there someone opening their ninth hair salon or their ninth pizza restaurant or their 14th dry cleaners? Think about someone that has experience if they have their first or second location that is considered high risk investing. If someone that has nine locations, 14 locations, 25 locations, that becomes medium risk to low risk investing. Can it fail? Of course, I have to keep saying that, yes, any one location or any one situation can have a bad quarter, a bad year, et cetera. Over the course of time, companies with experience, people with experience, businesses with multiple locations are less likely to have failure. There is going to be and there can be failures in investing. I reduce my risk, if you notice from the theme and the trend of my topics, I reduce my risk by investing into experience. By investing in something that's been a proven track record over and over and over. If someone has their 13th location of something, I know going in, I could lose some of my investment on their location 14, but it's unlikely because of the experience. Because of the things that have taken them to get to their 13th location, now they're opening number 14, I like co-investing in something like that. That's a cash flowing business. You can study people like Cody Sanchez, Pace Morby, and people like that, Marcus Timonis, that are showcasing small businesses and creative financing in ways you might be able to even buy cash flowing businesses, but you got to make sure that you study and really understand that cash flowing business. Really understand what is it doing, what is the profit, what is my risk, who is going to be the operator, how can I help scale this business, the marketing, the ads, the efficiencies, etc. On the other part of medium risk investing is the stock market, but individual stocks. These individual stocks are companies that you believe in or that you like or that you're a customer of. So I'll use an example. There's thousands of stocks to choose from. I'm not looking at penny stocks. I'm not looking at the next new shiny thing. I'm investing in the companies that I believe in for the long term and or I'm a customer of and I know that a lot of other people are. So Netflix. Netflix, you've been paying 15 bucks a month for example for the last 10, 15 years, but you're listening to this and you probably don't have even $10 or $15 worth of Netflix stock. That is one of the best performing stocks in the history of the world that you've been paying for. You've been spending hours of week watching and your kids, your friends or your parents or your neighbors, all of them are watching it too and you hear about Netflix all the time and you could have invested in their stock. You could have thrown in a few hundred dollars here and there into their stock and the few hundred dollars would be a few thousand dollars now. If you would have invested a few thousand dollars, you probably have 10 or 20 thousand now. If you would have invested 10 or 20 thousand dollars, depending on the year, you'd have hundreds of thousand dollars now because Netflix is one of the best performing stocks in history and you've just been sitting idly by watching it. You're paying for it under your credit card. You're watching it, consuming it, you know about it, everyone talks about it and you're not investing into it just like the Apple iPhone, the Apple laptop. You might be listening to my podcast right now, The Money Mondays, you're listening to it on Apple AirPods. Do you know that if AirPods were their own company, they'd be one of the biggest companies in the history of the world? The AirPods has done hundreds of billions of dollars in revenue and it's going to keep growing year after year because people lose their AirPods or they want the newer version, etc. Sometimes AirPods does a launch and does like 13 billion dollars on a launch of just the AirPods itself. Just one little category, one little product inside of the Apple portfolio. You might be listening to this on your AirPods or on an iPhone or on a laptop and you don't have Apple stock. Think about this for a second. You could afford to buy an $800 phone, a $1,200 phone, a $1,400 phone so you cannot tell me that you couldn't afford to buy $800 of Apple stock, $1,200 of Apple stock, $1,400 of Apple stock for example. There's a fun fact. Do you know that each time that you bought the iPhone, there's been 15 iPhones and let's say they averaged for $1,000. They were $800, $1,200 and everything in between. Let's just call it $1,000 times 15 iPhones. If each time the iPhone came out and it was $800, that same day you bought $800 of Apple stock. The next iPhone comes out and it's $920 and you bought $920 of Apple stock. If the 15 times that the iPhone came out on the exact same day, you bought the exact same amount of stock so you can't tell me to have the money because you bought that phone that day. Do you know what would happen if you spent that $15,000-ish on stock? You would have over $1 million of Apple stock for $15,000. It's a really fun fact. You can go research it. It will blow your mind and it will keep growing up. That number will keep rising year after year because Apple has been consistent year after year. It is staggering the revenue that they do, the market share that they have. It is super impressive. If you like a company like Apple, research it and buy some Apple stock. Often times people say this is not investment advice. This is investment advice. I want you to do your research, choose companies that you like and make an investment that you can afford to do. It fits a few hundred dollars. Fantastic. I don't want you to go put all of your capital into any one thing. I don't want you to put your life at risk. I don't want you to put your finances at risk. That's the whole point of this model of $40, $40, $20. You're diversifying your investments into small, bite-sized, different amounts so that no one investment can hurt you. I don't want you to put all of your money into Apple or all of your money into a CD or all of your money into a real estate deal or all of your money into an EverBow restaurant. I want you to pick and choose things that you like as you're listening to this that you feel comfortable with. I want you to invest a small amount or a portion that you can that fits into your life. Each year, year after year, as you bring in more income, deploy more investments into the categories that you like. I diversified in this 40-40-20 model, but I want you to think about for yourself what type of investor are you? As you're listening to me, are you liking when I say low-risk stuff that you're like, oh, yeah, I want to invest with a CD for 4.2% and that'd be great? Or you know what, the S&P 500, that is right. I did research it. It does crush it. Maybe I just do that. Or you know what, I want more action. I want to invest in real estate. I want to fix and flip houses every seven months. Well, you can research each of those different categories and make a decision for yourself or split it up the way I do. So in the stock market, to wrap that part up, think about companies that you shop at. If you drive at Tesla, you should consider some Tesla stock. If you buy from Amazon, like most people on the planet do, well, Amazon's one of the best performing stocks in human history. Why don't you have some Amazon stock? If you're buying $265 on Amazon every other week, maybe you should be buying a matching amount of stock and after years of you buying and shopping on Amazon and you at the same time buying Amazon stock, wow, what would happen for you if you just look at the Amazon rate of return over the last few decades, it is again mind-blowing how well Amazon is done as a company. Think about the thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars that you spend on Amazon every year. Imagine if you bought thousands and thousands of dollars of Amazon stock every year also. Again, these numbers are adjustable. You might be able to afford millions of dollars of Amazon stock. You might only be able to afford $500 of Amazon stock and both are fine. Just investing where you're at. Don't try to keep up with the Joneses. Just consistently invest in things that you like, whether it's Amazon, Apple, Google, Netflix, Facebook, Tesla, et cetera. Research the companies that you like, put in a comfortable amount and just keep contributing to that same thing that you feel comfortable with year after year after year. The last part is high-risk investing 20%. Now, again, you can change this number based on your comfortability. If you get nervous when I talk about high-risk investing, maybe it's a smaller percentage. If you're obsessed with high-risk investing, I would still not suggest a higher than 20% percentage. Here's why. If you all of a sudden deploy 50% of your 100K that we use as the example into high-risk investing and things don't work out or they take a long time, you are essentially gambling. High-risk investing is called high-risk for a reason. You might be able to change your financial life if you get it right with that 50% investment, putting 50K into something in the high-risk category, but this is not a safe strategy. I'm going to walk you through the safe strategy, which I say is 20% or less, into high-risk investing. Let's just use the 100K example. That means $20,000 goes into this category for this year. What are some high-risk investments? There's a couple. One is cryptocurrency, mostly I'm talking about Bitcoin and Ethereum and really Bitcoin. Two is angel investing. Angel investing is similar to what I mentioned about EverBowl. When I put in that first 500K in 2018, that was into the parent company for parent company stock and shares. That is a long-term angel investment. People talk about the statistic that 9 out of 10 angel investments fail. 9 out of 10 anything fails. 9 out of 10 comedians fail. 9 out of 10 musicians fail. 9 out of 10 lots of things fail. You can reduce your risk, which is the theme of my speech today. You can reduce your risk by finding things that already have experience, that already have proof. If you're angel investing into your friend's first restaurant or first year of their clothing line, that is not just high-risk investing, that is very, very, very high-risk investing. If that same friend of yours is doing 12 million in sales of their clothing brand and they are raising capital for their business and you throw in 25K, well, you are now angel investing into a still considered startup company. You're buying some equity of that company. Let's say they're doing 12 million in sales. Let's say they have a 25 million valuation. You're buying a percentage of that company. You're buying a little piece of that company with your 25K. If that company goes from 12 million in sales to 19 million, and 19 million to 31 million, and 31 million to 42 million, the valuation of that company will go up and your 25K will be worth 45K, then 70K, then 100K, et cetera, on paper. That is not a liquid investment. Let me repeat this. On paper, your 25K in equity could now be worth 45K, then 71K, then 100K plus, et cetera. On paper based on the valuation of the business does not mean you can pull that money anytime soon and the company cannot give it to you. When angel investing, why I'm saying that so clearly is, even when you get it right, it might be right on paper. When I say angel investing, sometimes it takes long, well, the liquidity event for a company is typically five to seven years. I invest in the companies that are already doing two to 20 million in sales. That is my message. That is my thesis. Elevator syndicate, you can look at elevatorsyndicate.com, is my angel investment group. I have 930 investors in the elevator syndicate. I've raised over $56 million for companies and we deploy three to $6 million per deal into companies that are doing on average two to 20 million in sales. I'm not just telling you guys a theory. When I talk about all these investments, when I talk about investing in Everville, when I talk about the stock market, when I talk about real estate, these are my real life investments. These are the things that I actually do. When it comes to this, with angel investing, I've actually raised $56 million. You've seen some of the brands. I've done it for Skinny Pasta. It's called It's Skinny Pasta. I've raised millions of dollars for icon meals. You can look at It's Skinny Pasta.com, iconmeals.com. I did $4 million for Joy Ride Candy. I've raised money for multiple different brands, a lot of food and beverage brands. We just did it for Key.co. We raised millions of dollars for Key.co, which has over 7,000 luxury homes on their platform. I like angel investing into companies that have got good traction. I try to find businesses. I've done it for Cards and Coffee, my sports car store chain. When you hear about Skinny Pasta, icon meals, Joy Ride Candy, etc., I'm raising money for these companies to help them scale. You can co-invest into deals like that. You can find people in your neighborhood on social media, people that you trust that might be raising money for their companies. Again, you've got to vet it and make sure that you trust this business or this brand or the CEO. When you get it right, you could have a big win. There's been some companies I invested into that they were doing, let's call it 7 million sales, and now they're doing 60 million sales. That is a huge return. When you hear about EverBowl, I invested at 13-ish locations. Now there's 103 locations. That is a big return. That is on paper. I've not gotten cash back from my investment for that. Now, I got some distributions along the way. Obviously, I've gotten some payouts along the way from EverBowl, but for the most part, this is a really good example. My 2018 investment has now been seven years. The company is obviously doing tens of millions of dollars in revenue, opening a new location every six days. I'm not pulling cash out. I'm not selling my stock. On paper, my stock is worth obviously a lot more going from 13 locations to 103 locations, but that is on paper. When you have to keep in mind, when you do an angel investment, that has to be, let's say that 25K that we use as an example. That money, you have to be comfortable locking up for a long period of time, even when it works. All right. To wrap it up, Bitcoin. Bitcoin is the single best performing asset in the history of the world. Let me repeat. Bitcoin is the single best performing investment asset in the history of the world. Now, you might think you're too late. There's a famous quote or famous theory. When was the best time to buy real estate? 20 years ago. When's the second best time? Today. When's the best time to buy Bitcoin? 14 years ago when it first started. When's the second best time? Today. You don't have to try to dollar cost average or wait for it to go down and wait for it to spike up and wait for it to go down and try to trade. Buy little bits of Bitcoin that you feel comfortable with and do not watch. I want you to put it on the side. So if you're throwing a thousand bucks in Bitcoin, for example, and it's going to have fluctuations, it could be at 119,000 today. While you're listening to this, it could be 114,000. It could jump to 122,000, 122,000. It can have fluctuations. But over the course of time, because it's a 24-hour market, there's a lot of liquidity, a lot of fluctuations, a lot of movement that happens in a 24-hour market. Bitcoin is very volatile from that perspective. However, if you look at the last 14 years, it's only had a couple of losing years. I think two losing years out of 14. To me, that is a great, great, great thing to consider. Now, can it keep up with this growth for the next 14 years? Maybe. What we've seen is the consistency that year after year, year after year, Bitcoin has fought through bad marketing, bad situations, bad people, all the things, bad press against it. But year after year, it has gone up consistently for all 14 years. There's been two losing years and really just one losing year of any substantial matter, which I think was around, let's call it around 30-ish percent. And guess what? The very next year, we've got it all right back. Consistency, if you look at the Bitcoin track record, is what you should be looking at. Now, you're buying in at the all-time high. Bitcoin is at an all-time high this week as you listen to the Money Mondays. However, I'm not asking you to go spend hundreds of thousands of dollars if that is a big amount of money to you, don't. Put in 500 bucks. Put in 200 bucks. Put in two grand, 10 grand, 20 grand. Whatever is a comfortable amount for you that you can leave in a volatile thing that has shown consistency. To me, mathematically, over the course of time, should end up being worth $1 million, $2 million of Bitcoin in our lifetimes, maybe even more. And here's why. Now, as I say that, it could also go down tremendously this week, this month, this year. Bitcoin could go from $119,000 down to $90,000 really quickly. It could happen. But there's so many wealth funds, wealth managers, venture capital, hedge funds, whole countries, major, major moguls that are buying up Bitcoin. And so there's support. Bitcoin cannot go to zero. Just be clear. That is a physical impossibility because there's support from so many people that would buy it along the way. It is unlikely or mathematically at this point impossible for Bitcoin to even go down to $10,000, $20,000, $30,000 because there's so much support from so many wealthy people that have a vested interest. So what is that threshold? What is that number? I don't know the exact number. No one does. But I would assume if you just think about the amount of support that is out there from so many wealthy people, wealthy companies, corporations, countries, et cetera, that are supporting it, I don't see how Bitcoin can even go down to $50,000 really because there's too many people that would buy it up at $70,000, $80,000, $90,000 because they've got investments at the $100,000 range in this example. So is it scary to buy Bitcoin at the all-time high? Well, not actually that scary when it's had an all-time high so many times in the past. And so thinking for yourself, are you comfortable with the high volatility investment? I don't consider it high risk, even less in the high risk category because of the consistency year after year. There will be swings. So you have to be ready to put it in and trust in the consistency. If it goes down, I'm not asking a dollar cost average. If it goes up, I'm not asking to throw in more. I'm just asking to be consistent. You could buy it, Bitcoin now on Cash App, Robinhood, Coinbase. There's a lot of options. But I would be looking at Bitcoin as something that you put in a small amount of money over and over and over and again, small is relative to your situation. And you just keep buying in over and over, whether it's a $119,000, $104,000, $150,000, whatever, Bitcoin is something that mathematically, why do I think it's going to be worth $1,000,000, $2,000,000, $3,000,000 over the course of time? In our lifetime is this, and I'll end with this. There will only ever be $21 million Bitcoin. $4.6 million Bitcoin are missing, and people don't talk about this or realize this part. And more than $4.6 million, that number will grow month after month, year after year, for the rest of eternity. Why? $4.6 million are missing because people lose their wallets, people lose their phones, people lose their cold storage, people lose their lives. And so when someone loses their wallet, if they don't find that wallet, there's no way to get their Bitcoin back. If someone loses their little cold storage, that little device, there's no way to get their Bitcoin back if they lose that passcode. If someone transfers it incorrectly, they send Bitcoin to an Ethereum wallet. Or they send Bitcoin to someone else's wallet incorrectly, there's no way to get that back. If someone loses their life, it is very difficult to go get their Bitcoin out from their phone or their laptop or their app, unless you know exactly what they're doing. Exactly where it is, you know all the keys, you know all the access, etc. It is actually very difficult if someone passed away to get access to their Bitcoin unless they've left protocols for someone or left it in their will, the information on how to get it out. So if there's $4.6 million Bitcoin missing already, and then it goes to $4.7, $4.9, $5.2, this is a supply and demand issue is why I am mentally focused on Bitcoin over the course of time, because I believe in supply and demand. Very, very greatly in all things that I do, sports card trading, sneaker flipping, inventory and low amounts of like the Michael Jordan rookie card, the 1986 rookie card of Michael Jordan, because there's only 430 of that perfect 10 card, there's a low supply. I know the number and I know that Michael Jordan will grow in demand year after year because he's the goat, he's the legend. The supplies in all things that I like supply and demand. So if there's 4.6 million Bitcoin missing, that means that there's 16.4 million, right? Bitcoin that are out there. And that number goes to 16.3, 16.2, et cetera. And we're not even fully mined yet. There's going to take to around 2045 to all 21 million Bitcoin have been mined. And so if the supply keeps getting less year after year because people lose their lives, lose their wallets, lose their storage, et cetera. And the demand as you can see keeps growing from people in the past, present and future. Well, if the demand keeps growing and the supply keeps getting less and keeps weakening, what happens to the price? Well, you've seen it. You've seen what happens to the price year after year as it continuously goes up. Even though there can be drops along the way from people selling for liquidity or people selling for different reasons or trading or whatever they're doing, there can be drops. The consistency, if you look up the Bitcoin chart year after year has gone up, except for two years. If the supply keeps getting less, not if, it will keep getting less because people will keep losing their phones and wallets. They'll keep losing their lives because that's just what happens. Sadly, I don't want to say it so bluntly, but it is the reality. So the supply will keep getting less. The demand will keep growing. To me, you will see Bitcoin over the course of the long term be worth $1 million, $2 million per Bitcoin. But you can still invest just $400, $800 to a grant. You don't have to buy a whole Bitcoin to invest into Bitcoin. And if something you should be considering, you should also be considering it for your family, for your corporations, for your children, etc. Buying small amounts that you're comfortable with, setting it aside and do not make an emotional decision, whether it goes up or down. There's plenty of people that have FOMO, plenty of people have regrets. Ah, I could have bought Bitcoin at $80,000. I could have bought Bitcoin at $400, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. This is the reality of the time now. Buy little bits of Bitcoin that you're comfortable with, hold on to it and do not sell. Whether it goes really, really high up, really, really low down, or has a roller coaster up and down along the way, buy an amount that you are comfortable with to stick in there for the long term. And if you could keep adding to that for yourself, for your children, for your future, you will be very happy over the course of the long term, even if there's some fluctuations along the way. All right. So you were listening to the Money Mondays cover three core topics. Typically, how to make money, how to invest money, how to give away charity, but today was called 40, 40, 20. If you'd like to look at the Elevator Syndicate, you can go to elevatorsyndicate.com. You can join for free. If you are an accredited investor, then we send out investment updates on things that we're investing into every four to eight weeks for people to optially invest into deals alongside of us. If you're looking for a mortgage, we have Elevator Mortgage. You can go to elevatormortgage.com if you were here in America. We have the Elevator Nights. The event is actually this Thursday. I don't like to be time sensitive, typically, on my podcast, but it happens to be this Thursday, Elevator Nights. That is my 57th time throwing a free event. You can look at elevatornight.com. I'm throwing it in Los Angeles at Hubble Studio this Thursday. And if you listen to this after this, there's going to be more Elevator Nights all over the country as I throw event number 58, 59, 60, etc. Completely for free. We have Elevator.Studio. That's my social media agency. We've spent over $60 million with influencers for brands, products, mobile apps. And so Elevator is my brand. Elevator Nights, Elevator Syndicate, Elevator Mortgage, etc. Because I want to help people in different categories, especially in the financial markets, things that are important to them. Like mortgages, like social media, like investing, etc. I appreciate you guys listening to the Monday Mondays. Make sure to spread the message with your friends, family, and followers about money. We grew up thinking it's rude to talk about money. I think it's ridiculous. We have to talk about investing. We got to talk about loans. We got to talk about bills. We got to talk about overhead taxes. Those are our real parts of our life. So make sure to have blunt discussion with your friends, family, and followers about money. Have open conversations. Learn as much as you can. Research as much as you can. And we'll see you guys next Monday on themoneymondays.com.