BREAKING: Warren Buffett Just Made Huge Prediction (Investors Beware)

Starting a business can be overwhelming. You're juggling multiple roles, designer, marketer, logistics manager, all while bringing your vision to life. Shopify helps millions of business sell online. Build fast with templates and AI descriptions and photos, inventory and shipping. Sign up for your one euro per month trial and start selling today at shopify.nl. That's shopify.nl. It's time to see what you can accomplish with Shopify by your side. We were just at the Warren Buffett annual event this weekend, the Berkshire Hathaway event in Omaha. We are going to discuss what he is seeing and doing right now, as well as what he thinks about real estate and what it means for you. And today we've got Travis Hasse on with me. Trav, that was a fun little trip we had, huh? Yeah, it was a good time. Welcome. Yeah, especially to get finally to the Midwest. you know i'm a midwest boy based in madison so it was kind of nice to get you into into my neck of the woods a little bit versus me being in phoenix all the time so yeah it was really interesting there was 40 000 people there the conference was amazing uh first come uh you know first it served you basically sit down wherever you want in this huge arena uh the reason we wanted to go this year is because um buffett was there of course and he stood up and talked but um was it Greg Abel? I think did most of the talks. And it was really, really interesting. And they had all their execs there. And so the question is, everybody loves Warren Buffett. And the question was, how is this going to transition over? He's been such a great stock investor for all these years. And my question, the reason I wanted to go is because a lot of times he omits real estate in a lot of his discussions. He has said some things here and there, but we're going to get into that in a minute. But Trav, before we start, let's talk about what he said about inflation, because I think, you know, with the war and everything going on, obviously, he's very, very, very consumed. He was very direct that runaway inflation is something that he's concerned with. He's saying it's a nightmare that you cannot manage. He referenced back in some of these Nebraska farmers saying that, you know, they were borrowing at 12 percent and they just got crushed during this period of time. And, you know, so you have any questions or any thoughts around the inflation piece? Yeah. You know, first of all, it's kind of, you know, you mentioned Greg Abel, you know, and him taking over. I do got to say, kind of go back to somebody who wasn't there just to kind of paint that picture. It was pretty impressive how he sat up in front of that conference. He had no script. He had no teleprompter. And he was able to all day actually talk about all their investments and not say that he was prepared, because you can tell that obviously he had the knowledge of it. And I just thought it was pretty impressive how he actually rounded that whole stadium together. You know, for somebody that wasn't sitting there, you can imagine sitting in a basketball stadium and he was just sitting at a black chair, a black table. By himself. By himself. Yeah. And, you know, with the crowd and it's looked almost like a graduation set up. If that's if that's a good way to set it, you know, people sitting on the floor and looking at it. But, yeah, it was definitely cool. And, you know, with Warren Buffett there in the front row and his family, definitely something really cool for you and I to see. I mean, I'm glad, you know, while Mr. Buffett's still alive, he's a legend that we were able to as investors and real estate people, that it was an honor to actually be in that room and to see their setup. Definitely. And we could get into that later, too. But yeah, it you know, and Warren spoke there for a little bit. You know, they gave him the mic. They gave him the floor. You know, they honored his 60 years of service with with the pendant, you know, that they actually hung from the ceiling. They got Charlie Munger was hanging there as well. Obviously, rest his soul, he was a big part. But it's interesting on the inflation portion, like you mentioned, because he talks about farmers being in Nebraska, that they got crushed by borrowing and inflation's killing them, just kind of moving backwards. And he really does shy away from real estate. If anything that actually pops up into there, you can tell that he is a Wall Street guy. And, you know, you and I are pointing, you know, kind of putting our own investments in our own hands and actually outdoing inflation with real estate, you know, and trying to keep up with it. So it was just kind of kind of interesting, you know, just, you know, truly you can see, obviously, you know, he's, you know, Berkshire. It's actually not Berkshire. That's another thing that I learned. You know, they all pronounce Berkshire. but you can actually see that there definitely are, you know, they're tied into the Wall Street with insurance and everything else. And, you know, kind of definitely shy away from real estate just because you got to be active instead of just being a passive investor. And if I had to take away the investor crowd was there, you know, some of the people that we spoke to, I definitely would call them passive investors versus active into real estate like we are. Yeah, I think it's important to, really good points. Thank you. I talked to a lot of people that were there, and I think obviously what he's done for them is incredible, right? Like if you invested in their company and their stocks years ago, you've done extremely well. And so you have this, they call him the Oracle, right? He's invested just so well for people. And I think the real question is, who's next? Like, who's the guy that because he's in his 90s now, is it going to be the person that he's is succeeding him? And certainly there aren't any others that I can think of that even hold a candle to what he's done. And and so if you invested there, you've done really, really, really well. It is a story for me as I kind of was reflecting of, you know, Wall Street versus Main Street. Right. Because the Wall Street model is give us your money through, you know, how whatever means it might be through a pension, through insurance, through through even the banking system. And we know best and we will invest it for you. And in this case, that would have worked right in the Warren Buffett case at work. And, you know, but I think a lot of the people that were there were kind of oblivious with how did this all work? Like how, you know, how did we get these phenomenal returns? And they sit there and they listen and they ask great questions. And it's all because of the Oracle and his team, of course, and investing in these right companies. So what's really interesting is he he invests in businesses, not necessarily direct ownership of real estate. Right. And I'm going to get into that kind of nuance. And so we all talk about passive income in real estate, but he invests in stocks, which is really even more passive. Like it's basically you don't even have to think about it. You just got to invest with him and let him do his thing. So to me, it's less control. If you really want to know what's going on with your money, it's way less control than understanding on, you know, call it Main Street investing. Yeah. And I think, too, when you look at I just want to kind of answer your direct question about what are they doing about inflation? Right. If we look at it on that standpoint, and I think one of the ways that they're doing that, they spoke a lot about insurance and that can just relay into us as real estate investors. And when you even look at the demographic, you know, the big push was into Japan, you know, with their insurance portfolio. If you remember that they, you know, they brought the gentleman that's the head of the insurance company. If you look at how to outdo inflation and if you look at the cost, one of the biggest costs for us, because, I mean, we had great conversations with Mike and Phil, you know, during this whole time about even our portfolios with insurance and the costs are going up. And obviously they're right in the heart of, you know, selling policies. You know, Greg Abel actually even talked about it with individual policies that they were selling and how do they keep their current consumer and how many people are actually out there bidding out their insurance. and you know i think that obviously they're addressing their insurance inflation how they can run with it is just in that wall street system as you're talking about you know base you're there and getting the worldly you know push um that demographic play actually going to japan um and getting into the insurance market there and there's nobody you know better ahead of the u.s with debasing of their currency is japan so you kind of just look at the future kenny of kind of where the currency is going and keeping up with real estate, you know, kind of holding those real assets. Definitely, you know, listening to a company like that, you know, definitely kind of assures my position where I'm actively investing and controlling my own real estate on my own deals. And, you know, alongside Danny, you know, and some syndication stuff, but you're still controlling the deals. Yeah. And I think that people might know that they own Geico. They, you know, and Omaha is where Mutual Omaha, you know, there's all this insurance, all these insurance companies in that market. They just bought the largest insurance company in Japan. And they have all kinds of plans to obviously expand that. And so to your point, Trav, I think, Jerry, if you could put up that inflation chart, I think that might be really, really interesting. So this is obviously historical inflation. And one of the reasons why I wanted to start with this one is, you know, he again, Warren Buffett said this was a direct runaway. Inflation is something you cannot manage. You can only avoid being in its path. And now, obviously, we don't know that we're going to hit these, obviously, but these are some of the worst case and the consensus of where we think things might be. It's interesting, as you can see, potentially it's going down to the 2% range, which I think is a really, really interesting point. Both of these show that they go down. So what that would mean is that could mean lower interest rates. Thanks, Jerry. I appreciate it. Because as you guys know, in June of 2022, when the inflation went up to 9.1, that's when the Fed reacted and started increasing their rates to try to combat inflation. But he's very, very, very concerned about the, you know, the potential inflation he kept talking about through his, you know, through the day. Right. yeah starting a business can be overwhelming you're juggling multiple roles designer marketer logistics manager all while bringing your vision to life shopify helps millions of business sell online build fast with templates and ai descriptions and photos inventory and shipping sign up for your one euro per month trial and start selling today at shopify.nl that's shopify.nl it's time to see what you can accomplish with Shopify by your side. Yeah, but you know, when you go into your core ethos about, I think one of the good things of the takeaway that I took from there is listening to them with big cash holdings, right? I know you've been talking to your, by listening to you, you've been talking to people about holding some cash, being disciplined, you know, underwriting a lot of deals and looking through them. But obviously that, you know, discipline over hype and your patience is going to win. Yeah. Right. He talked a lot about patience. Yes. And I, and even too, I'm looking at it on the real estate deal. You know, if they're holding a record cash hold. Right. And I know that you and I talked a little bit that you're, you know, you're holding some good cast positions too, to be disciplined, to take advantage of some of these deals that you've been talking to everybody for the last three to four years. And obviously inflation is doing its thing. You know, we're watching it in real life where, you know, that dollar is being debased and, you know, using that good debt to, you know, that purchasing power, you know, and as, you know, debt induced inflation, you know, what Hartman always says, right. And, uh, it's, it's interesting to watch. Well, he's got, this is another point that I had is he's sitting on 400 billion with a B in cash, right. Now, obviously they're invested, I think in treasuries, making, what is it, like 5% or 4% or 5% right now. But the point is, what I got the sense of is that he's got these cash positions getting ready for this disruptive period of time, right? Is that what you had? Mm-hmm. Yeah and when you look at it too he definitely concentrated into energy insurance and obviously transportation with the rail systems right And which which I is a big key And it interesting too they touched on it real briefly right When you look at Apple okay? So Tim Cook was present, obviously CEO of Apple. So when Berkshire Hathaway has a big position in Apple and you have Tim Cook that's sitting second row right behind Warren Buffett, But the interesting thing, right? I mean, that's a major core consumer ecosystem, right? That they're still involved into it. But if you look at the history of it, in 2024 and 2025, they reduced 75% of their position in Apple stock. Yeah. And they're still and they're still holding 62 billion. And at one time they started at thirty five billion dollar investment, which at that time was 10 percent of their cash holding. That grew to one hundred and eighty billion, remember, of the brand. But then obviously, too, if if it's telling you that a major consumer product like that and they're reducing it to 75 percent, but still a strong holding. and Tim Cook is there for a reason because he probably doesn't want him to pull out that investment that they have. But obviously they got to sell their stock slowly. They just can't dump it all. But it's interesting too, to even look at the consumer of inflation going out of control. And does that consumer not have enough disposable income to keep buying the next greatest iPhone, right? So when you look at the crunch of the expenses. Well, I think I like, if I was to look at this as I was kind of, you know, reflecting on, you know, real estate versus stock, you know, stocks win in a lot of areas. So, so certainly they're fast. They're very, very, very efficient. And, and of course, you know, you, you know, they're passive, extremely passive, right? Whereas real estate, this is, this is Buffett's position. Real estate is there's negotiation, there's time, there's multiple parties involved um you know there's the management piece and and there's actually a quote he didn't say it at the conference but there's a quote that said if i could buy hundreds of thousands of homes i would except for the management right like so he he's not opposed to being a landlord but he always pokes at the costs of owning a home which is legit but what's very, very interesting to me is that he completely omits everything that has to do with depreciation, everything that has to do with the tax benefits that you get from real estate completely. And of course, you don't get those with stock. As stocks distribute, you pay tax on those. As real estate distributes in the early years, for sure, it's offset by depreciation. So the real estate cash flow in the beginning, of course, is tax deferred and the stock distributions are not. And he doesn't really talk too much about inflation as it relates to the hard assets as well, which I found very, very interesting. But if you go, because I did a lot of prep for this today, I was actually trying to see why does Warren Buffett not talk about real estate depreciation? Why does he not talk about the tax benefits? And it's very interesting because it's completely omitted. I mean, I went on Claude. I went on Chad. I went on Gemini. I was trying to figure out like I went everywhere to try to figure this out. I couldn't find it. He basically doesn't address it. And I think so. So all of his talks are, you know, they're they're pre-tax arguments, all of them, every single one. So when you just look at real estate, oh, there was one thing that he did say, which is very interesting. And it was cool. Or you and I drove by his home. When he bought that home in 1958, he bought it for $31,500. And he said it was the third best purchase he ever made, which I thought was really interesting. And the first two were his two wedding rings, which Jerry told me. He said those are probably made of gold, which is very, very interesting to me. but um you know so he does talk about real estate but the really cool thing was is that when you and i have during the break we went down the four of us and what is the biggest thing in the conference center clayton's homes clayton homes modular homes and he made that investment i think it was 1.8 million in 2008 2009 it's a modular home business right so he's in affordable housing but he's in the manufacturing of them. He's into the financing of them. He's into the retail selling of them. He's not actually into the direct ownership of them. So he is bouncing around, right? Wasn't that interesting? Yeah. And Greg actually touched on this, Greg Abel did when he was doing his talk. He stepped back and actually was one of his highlights of talking. He was very proud because he directly talked about affordability. And if you can remember, this is the exact numbers that he used. I just remember it because we were sitting there because he was comparing to a $40,000 land purchase. So not including land, or in this case, his example he used was a $40,000 land purchase and their 1,000 square foot home, and it was a one car garage, would sell for $240,000 all in, said and done on land. With the low, obviously he was very descriptive of, if you're in Nebraska, let's just call it $40,000, or if you're going to be in Phoenix or Scottsdale, you're paying a lot more money to put a $200,000 home on. So you're looking at $200 a square foot, right? For a thousand square feet. And let's relay that to both of us, right? for a two bedroom, one bath apartment unit, you know, from that, from that standpoint. Right. And we really look at that affordability gap is truly going to be driving that renting and even looking at a modular setup, not even, you know, knowing what your lot is going to be. You still got hookups. You still got a lot of utilities to put into there. And that cost, I would believe, you know, he's just looking at the true cost of the home, everything, put it in on a modular setup, but you still have site work, et cetera. Maybe he's figuring that into his land costs, but that just tells me that they're truly really grinding on the affordability and looking at the modular home. Because you and I have talked about this. I mean, we had Mike that was with us, one of our buddies, and he's in construction. And I directly asked Mike of just a question, when do you see wood or 3D printing or what can take out like these homes to drive this cost down? And you both said, you know, wood and timber, you know, you can grow pine pretty fast. And there's still today, there's not a technology that can replace that, you know, and technology is one of the things that can hopefully drive that cost down. But still a home's a home and the labor is going to be the labor. And the affordability is what I take from it. People are still going to be pushed into renting. Yeah. And by the way, they've owned Clayton Homes for 15, 16 years. and, you know, they had a two-bedroom and a three-bedroom option, remember? So they had a big sign right on the house that is super cool. And we're with Mike Lofton, who is a production home builder, right? So he's like, these are extremely well-priced. They're modular. And so it's interesting to me that, you know, that was like one of the main pieces in that conference center that we were walking around. Uh, but he, uh, and I was, I was, I was excited that Greg was talking about it. I was actually in their main talk. Um, you know, but they're, everyone's talking about this affordability issue. And I personally think it's, it's really, really going to be something that we need to embrace as real estate investors is exactly the same. What we have an opportunity to do that they don't do is they're, they're manufacturing something brand new and selling it for $200,000, let's say, if you can buy that home for $50,000, $60,000, $70,000, $80,000, $90,000, you're in a way better position. And so that's actually what's happening right now as we're starting to see this real estate dip. But one thing too, Trav, we got to take a break in a minute for our sponsor, Monetary Metals. But I want to tell you, you guys may not know because I really dug into this. Buffett has other fingers into the whole ownership, the financing, the credit and all that stuff. We're going to talk about that after the break because they are the largest, the largest, number one in the country, Fannie and Freddie Mac Lender, commercial lender. So right after this break, Trav, we're just going to take about a minute. Perfect. near all-time highs. But appreciation isn't the only way to benefit. Monetary metals, you could potentially earn a yield on your gold, paid in physical gold, without selling it. Here's how it works. When you lease your gold through their platform, pre-qualified companies pay to use it under strict guidelines, like renting out real estate, but with gold. Instead of paying to store your metal, you may earn up to 4% annually in gold. You stay in control, and you can choose which leases to participate in. Monetary Metals handles the due diligence, lease terms, and all the administration. Thousands of investors use this approach to grow their gold, not just sit on it. Visit monetary-metals.com forward slash Ken to learn more. Leasing gold involves risk and returns are not guaranteed. This is not an offer to buy or sell securities. Please review all risk disclosures at monetary-metals.com. Visit monetary-metals.com forward slash again to learn more. It's time to see what you can accomplish with Shopify by your side. So Trav, okay, so just to summarize, Buffett is not a landlord. He owns the businesses, right? And so what I wanted to talk about was on the residential side of the equation, he acquired a couple different Vanderbilt Mortgage, 21st Mortgage Corp, and he's got the Berkshire Hathaway Financial Corp and Credit Corp. That's on the residential side. And then on the commercial side, which is the area that you and I are in, of course, on the multi, I already knew because I had a friend that sold his business to him about 10 years ago. He's now crept into the financing side when he bought Capmark and Jefferies Financial. So these are two other companies where he's actually financing. And he actually, he was the number one lender in the country for Fannie and Freddie and the third largest HUD lender. Can you imagine that? So he doesn't really talk about the, you know, the back end. So he doesn't actually own the real estate itself, but he certainly owns the financing, the manufacturing, the retail piece. So he, and he, but, but of course, as you know, with that, he doesn't necessarily get the depreciation of the tax benefits and all that. And two, and he's owning the, one of the largest brokerage firms too. Oh, there's that. I forget about the simple things of just the transactions, you know, and, and I do agree with you, Kenny. It's like, so we kind of named it out. We hit on the insurance piece at the very beginning. Right. That's, I think that that's it. That's a big one to look at. It's a major cost that all of us have, and they're tied right into the middle of it. They're tied into the middle, you know, transaction middle, you know, piece between financing government, Wall Street, you know, that he's playing the middle part of that. Right. And then he's tied into utilities. It's like Greg Abel, who's actually running the company, who's the successor CEO. He ran their utilities portion is what is me, what his main item was. And the two executives that you saw up there for most of the time during this entire convention addressing the shareholders was Greg. And then the gentleman, we could probably find his name, but the gentleman that runs the insurance division. He sat up there for a long time and they actually had him up there a couple of times. And Warren, when Warren even spoke there, when they brought the microphone to him, because he was sitting in the crowd in the front seat. He said that they're going to spend a lot of time of what they're seeing in the insurance arena. All those are directly tied into real estate. And I agree with you too, but I think what we come back to is kind of like, why doesn't Warren talk about this? My simplicity is is most of his investors don want to actively be involved into anything like we are actively involved into real estate Of course there going to be some management into it But when we using the banking debt then we're using depreciation. We're using taxes to our advantage. Most of your investors that are sitting back, he needs their equity or their money to be able to invest into these businesses. Right. So, you know, he's I also think, too, you know, Warren is obviously a sales guy. You look at, you know, we were talking about personal branding and businesses, et cetera. Like you can walk around that convention center. There's great hats with his picture on it. You know, we all discuss, too, about Elon. You know, everybody knows Elon and his, you know, brands that he's involved with. You know, Tim Cook is there. You know, obviously, he's the successor CEO from the founders. but they're tied, you know, he's tied into a lot of things that affect affordability, building, you know, utilities, operating and insurance and funding and selling. So he's definitely tied into the real estate play, but obviously, you know, is holding back and not saying that he's going to invest in a real estate because he's a wall street guy. Yeah. I know. And that's actually what was my epiphany is, is, you know, I completely get it. Like, I mean, it is it is fast. It's it's it's efficient. And certainly it's extremely passive. But but if and if so, if you're him, it's awesome. Right. Because you get now a chance to and he's made, obviously, arguably one of the one of the best investors in our lifetime. He's made some incredible purchases and and done extremely well for people. And I love to see that for sure. The question is, is who's going to replace him? And are we going to see somebody with that kind of discipline that can do that again? And so in a lot of ways, I'll bet you a little bit lucky, right? And getting on with the right platform, the right philosophy. But sometimes you don't always know when you're investing. and and so that's you know kind of the whole point of this channel is so so if if that is you that's you know what i call the single point of failure right um you know and so the the right thing to do is look at the bigger picture right what you know inflation adjusted assets right like whatever those are using other people's money opm and by the way over the years i've borrowed, borrowed from retirement plans. I borrowed from insurance companies. You know, these are companies that invest money. So as, as main street gives the money to wall street, what they really do is look for ways to reinvest it. Um, and, and, and I think that, um, I just kept kind of bouncing back and forth to, you know, um, how much trust you have in your wealth manager, your financial planner, that stock, you know, the bundle of goods that they're investing in, the fees and all that kind of stuff. And obviously, I was incredibly impressed with impressed with with the who he is, what he's done. The real question is, you know, who's going to be next? And should you completely put all your chips with that? Or should you be taking a different position on your, with your own money and, and learn because most of those people don't really know where their money's invested. They, they, they come to the shareholder meetings and they talk about all the different companies, but they for sure don't know the allocations. Well, you got member too, when Greg was sitting up there and having a conversation, he says decentralization operators win. That was something when, and where that's going to go, where they, You know, it was actually really cool. So like Greg Abel sat up there and he addressed, you know, everybody talked about their position, but then they had a Q&A section, right? Where they had a microphone set up and shareholders could come up and actually ask the question. And, you know, of course, you know, the hot topic or the buzzword that's out there is to AI comes up into the conversation. Right. And when he he actually said that decentral decentralized operators win. And when you look at that, when you look, you know, if you're if you're just investing into the stock market, like you're in a centralized system. Right. But if you can pull out and get on your own a little bit, you're removing yourself from that. But even on the AI, he truly wouldn't directly answer AI and where he sees that it's going to go. Because if you remember, he called it narrow AI. He did. Yeah, that was really interesting. I do. He also said that it was for sure going to reduce labor costs. Yeah. He didn't say how much. He didn't make a prediction on the percentages. But he did say that is actually going to be a savings, obviously, for some of these companies that they've invested in. Yeah. And, you know, and he talked about it as being a threat. You know what I mean? And how did they, you know, how did they secure that? And what they, you know, he didn't go into specifics, but they are definitely, you know, allocating a lot of resources to protect their shell from that standpoint. But that decentralized operator wins. You know what I mean? I actually kind of chuckled at that just a little bit when you look at inflation, our currency, when you learn from a guy like George Gammon, who's definitely talking about macroeconomics, but just myself as an individual investor and obviously invest in other people's money where you're looking at it. It's like, how can we control our own deals and how can we control our own destiny versus just the set or forget mentality and being actively involved in where your wealth is being allocated? And one thing I wanted to mention that he said, he says, I understand fewer businesses today as a percentage of the whole than I did 10 years ago. I thought that was really interesting because what, remember he was saying that, well, he's, I mean, what I love is they pulled their financials up, right? So their financials come up. They look at the individual sellers. A lot of zeros. Yeah. It was really cool to be able to see from a transparency standpoint, which businesses were doing extremely well, which ones were kind of flat year to year, which ones have really, really, really grown. But I thought that was a really interesting point is, you know, back, call it 10 years ago. I mean, like when he bought Burlington Northern BNSF Railway, which was also in this convention center, he specifically did it for the distribution of goods and services. And I can't remember how many trains they have on the tracks every day, but they were talking about that. So the stuff that he's investing in is stuff that it will not go away. It's not cyclical. It's not, you know, they're very, very easy things to understand. And so I really appreciated that simplicity about it. And for a lot of people, they should invest in these kinds of things along with him. Because the bread and butter is not going to go away. Once you unplug from that, first of all, you should understand that. He certainly does. But once you unplug from that, I think there's tremendous opportunity, you know, on a you know, I call it like a speedboat versus a cruise ship. Right. He's like a cruise ship. But he's also reinvesting back in those businesses that he understands. So he's not really doing these, you know, these like the stuff we were talking about, these these tech, the stuff that you read about a lot, the stuff that the media talks about a lot. I really appreciated his simplicity and his investing. Yeah. And remember, even Warren had the mic. He mentioned this, too, where he was just kind of talking about, you know, succession, you know, the history of what they've done. And, you know, Greg Abel, obviously, too, you know, he said, you know, he said that the simple thing of thinking decades, not quarters. you know if you go back to their ethos and that's always been the ethos of obviously Berkshire Hathaway is they are thinking decades and you know everything that they're talking about the long-term hold of all these companies that they're they're operating in and when you actually do walk through that convention center and you heard me say it all the time it's like they own that brand they own that brand I know you know what I mean it's just like it was amazing like there's Duracell right there's yeti coolers you know i didn't know that i bought the meta glass i bought those meta well you bought those metal glasses for me yeah you know like a ray-ban like all these businesses that that you know you guys would would would not really net jets i think was another one obviously geico sees candy uh as we walked around you know imagine having a convention like we've all been to conferences this was a conference of businesses that that Berkshire owned like it was it was but get this and they have their own shareholders in there and they were on a drive to sell two million dollars hey invest with us make us this money but come back and support your brands but does that also drive consumerism and it's just good marketing too right you know I mean all those brands when you think about it too when you actually relay it into what we're doing. All those brands too, what are they? They're steady cashflow machines that are just generating cash back into their portfolio. And just like your ethos that you taught me and how many other people that are out there is you're buying for cashflow and they're buying businesses for cashflow. And if you can learn anything about being an investor, it's those basic, simple principles and they're just you know they're allocating it and holding 385 million of cash waiting to deploy it starting a business can be overwhelming you're juggling multiple roles designer marketer logistics manager all while bringing your vision to life shopify helps millions of business sell online build fast with templates and ai descriptions and photos inventory and shipping sign up for your one euro per month trial and start selling today at shopify.nl That's Shopify.nl. It's time to see what you can accomplish with Shopify by your side. Yeah, and just, I'm just going to quote here. He said, it's not ideal for deploying cash. The $380 to $397 billion sitting of treasures is essentially a statement of opinion about valuations. And he called the market a church with a casino attached. I thought that was really, really, that was a great quote, right? He's known for those. That I thought was a really, really interesting one. But, you know, so again, kind of like with real estate guys, like I keep telling you guys, this is the time to build your team, get your cash together, start putting your war chest together and start paying attention to these valuations. Cause you guys all know, and I've been talking about this forever, cap rates went from four to six. Interest rates are certainly significantly higher than they were. Expenses are up. Occupancies are down. Valuations are down. So what does that mean? It doesn't necessarily mean that you deploy cash today, but it also doesn't mean that you should maybe bounce along the bottom. But it's a fantastic time to have cash, to deploy cash, to put aggregate money together, and to start looking for opportunities. And that's precisely what we're doing, right, traveling and you're, you're in the same boat, right? It's, and I'm going to just come back and say the simple investing is always going to beat the complex. Does that make sense when I say, of course. And it's the, it's the, you know, simple base hits. I'm not looking for the home run. You know, I mean, I exited a company that was cool. I didn't know any better. Right. But I'm just taking that cash and I'm just doing simple investing. You know, we're still delivering packages, uh, which is kind of ironic. I had dinner with Skylar that, you know, he's a fellow DSP, you know, Amazon DSP operator in Phoenix. And he actually worked for the rail system, BNN. Yeah. So he used to build bridges for him, which was really interesting just to see how that operated and to say, you know, how did that company operate where he would ride up and down a rail station and, you know, they would, he was on the road all the time, just building bridges across that obviously railroads can go over. So it was real interesting to see for years how he did that because he was a firefighter in the Navy, you know, got out of the Navy. Then that was his first job. And then he got in, obviously, into the Amazon delivery service partner, you know, business that he operates now. But he still has the exact same mentality. You know, he's doing simple investing. You know, he owns a body shop. He owns a maintenance shop. He's buying, you know, he owns his own shop that he's working on his own vans. He understands it. He's not Peter Pan, as I call it, spreading himself out all over the place. And he's just doing those simple investing and he's buying real estate with the cashflow from those companies to take advantage of, you know, taxes, like, you know, everybody, like you talk to everybody and just really simplifying it. And obviously coming from what we learned from traveling to Berkshire Hathaway, they are still doing their simple concepts They staying in their lane They not getting into everything else they holding cash and waiting for the right buy deal And they buying on cashflow just like you teach all your you know everybody that all your viewers There was just a big acquisition this week of an HVAC company, like by one of the big boys, you know, and it's interesting. So why would that be like, cause though you can't AI that, right? Like, you know what I mean? Like in Phoenix, man, when it goes to cracks, a hundred, 110, you know, you want an AC unit now, you'll pay whatever. And, you know, it takes people to put it in. So it's interesting how the trades and the blue collar, you know, kind of back to, you know, the rail system and some of these real basic blocking and tackling businesses. Buffett's been there the whole time. And meanwhile, everybody's, you know, trying to make money up and down. It was really, really amazing to go. It's great to look under the hood to see how they invest, what they invest in. But I did see a big difference between the people who are shareholders. They're all in the stock market, in the stock market, right? They do not understand how and why. I found that to be very interesting. The people, I was talking about, I talked to them about what, what, what I did. And they just look at me like, like I was speaking a different language, you know? Right. Yeah. And we got out and, you know, it's the whole thing came up. I don't actually know if you actually shared with your viewers about how this came up, but, you know, you met a gentleman by the name of Ben actually at Limitless, which is great. And not, you know, not to tie in Limitless into this conversation, but obviously it's a great place. I mean, I met my, my business partner, Dan Brisey at Limitless, you know, through you four years ago. And, you know, now I own, you know, almost, you know, going on a thousand units with him, which is kind of cool. Right. But you met Ben and he did. They had the cowboy exchange. And I know that you did some with them that you got us four passes in two nights. But it was fun because Ben came out to dinner with us and actually showed us around. He's the one who drove us by, you know, Warren Buffett's house. He kind of gave us the lay of the land. But he also drove you around as a real estate investor and showed you new projects that were out. But he really wanted to educate you on a different market, you know, because you're basically in the Southwest. And he wanted to show you what the Midwest was like, because I know that you invest in Ohio. You know, you and Daniil talk about this a lot, but it was really fun to go to dinner with him. And he was so proud of the area. And he's still and he's a real estate guy. You know what I mean? We're going to this big convention, which is a major thing for Omaha. Right. I mean, a lot of people put a lot of money back in there. they're putting that new rail car through the downtown that people can, you know, really come to there. It's nice and clean, but it was interesting where he was talking to you about, you know, prices showing you brand new office space that was being built and there's nobody in it. You know, it's just those simplistic models that you're talking about always on your channel. And it was interesting to see a whole new market and it's right in front of you. Yeah. That's one of the benefits of dropping into a city. You know, as you know, like we, I want to know what's happening. Right. So we all know some some cities are shrinking. Some cities are growing. They don't grow equally. They grow in areas, you know, around something. It could be employment, could be freeways. It could be, you know, who knows what. But, you know, and so he brought us to some of these really, really interesting areas of Omaha. First thing I'm asking is, you know, how like I was asking, how much is Warren Buffett's house and how much is that new new development? you know, that we went to, you know, I mean, it's a very interesting, right? Starting a business can be overwhelming. You're juggling multiple roles, designer, marketer, logistics manager, all while bringing your vision to life. Shopify helps millions of business sell online. Build fast with templates and AI descriptions and photos, inventory and shipping. Sign up for your one euro per month trial and start selling today at Shopify.nl. That's Shopify.nl It's time to see what you can accomplish with Shopify by your side Yeah, and yeah, and Buffett's, he said Buffett's house is worth a lot less than some of those new development just side by, you know, those skinny tall homes, let's just call them, right? Yeah, and I would rather be in Buffett's neighborhood. Like, I would rather be there all day long. It's absolutely spectacular. That neighborhood's gorgeous. And it's kind of fun, too, because you and I have had a cool area to see. Like you were in Milwaukee with Kiyosaki, you know, we flew up obviously from Phoenix and with the Latino Creativos, they had their real estate convention and you and Robert both spoke there. And, you know, it was kind of fun after dinner when we had dinner at Carnivore, you know, downtown Milwaukee. You know, we hopped in my, you know, fancy F-150 pickup that has my name on it because I can't, you know, peg it out of anywhere else that you made fun of me on. But, you know, but we put Kiyosaki in the front seat and he wanted to see what downtown Milwaukee was like. And he's like, wow, look at all the blue cow that built this. Look at all the hard labor that built this. And and Omaha had a lot of that. But you can tell definitely there's a little bit more, you know, financial investing with with war in there. He made a lot of millionaires, obviously, in the town in Omaha. But there is still just a lot going on in Omaha and in the Midwest. and seeing some different markets and looking at a house like Warren's that he said was maybe a little over a million dollars, maybe two max. And what would that house be in Scottsdale? Oh, a lot. Yeah, I know. Yeah. And I think the message there is, don't overlook this made in America is where it's at, these hardworking folks. Some of these markets are booming. Like that area of Omaha, that area of Milwaukee that we went to was booming. Now there certainly are areas that aren't. So if you look at Milwaukee or you look at Omaha overall, it's going to equal out. But you got to pay attention to the path. What's the path? Where do people want to go? There's still money to be made in all these markets. Yeah. And like I said, it's interesting too. I'm down in Naples currently, in Naples, Florida. And you mentioned a little bit before the trades and, you know, everybody looking at the trades and, you know, my friend Hector down here, actually what he does is he puts in sprinkler systems and all the landscaping in these big, huge home areas. Let's call it like GL Homes is a big home builder that's down in Naples and all across Southern Florida. and you're looking at what wall street is actually looking to put their money is he gets contacted all the time to sell his company because they're looking for the cashflow residual okay so think about this you go into a thousand home area and you're putting in the landscape the lawn service and then what he tries to do then is he tries to get with the homeowners association to keep the landscaping going on where everybody's paying their hoa fees because he wants that residual cash flow. And he's expanding that when you mentioned the heating and air company, now he owns a heating and air company. So when they're going in, so he can actually sign a contract to do the service in all these homes. So he's thinking as a business, just like us and looking for the long-term cash flow play, you know, going in and building a relationship with all these home builders and all these homeowners associations. And he's getting contacted by wall street all the time because they're looking for a place to put main street people's money, you know, the walls back into main street. Right. And he's, you know, he's a great guy. I mean, he's got over 2000 employees. I mean, he's doing, you know, he's, and he's, he's a street guy. I never went to college, you know, never went to college, kind of like Mike, you know what I mean? Mike never went to college, you know, that we were talking about Mike Lofton doing home building. And, you know, he just saw a different approach where he's looking for that long-term cashflow, as you're always talking about with real estate and it's uh the model works well it's interesting but but wall street is always chasing main street it seems like always has always will and uh any final last thoughts uh trap first of all thanks for jumping on i know uh we bumped to neil because i was like hey we just got back from the from the conference so uh this is kind of cool you know this is what the passes looked like you know i remember i ate up one with you and Mike Lofton on there, which is kind of fun, you know, which is kind of cool to see this, but you know, the thing too, it's another thing I didn't know that, that, that Berkshire Hathaway owned was that bookworm company, you know, selling books and you bought me this book. Yep. You know, the author was there and signed it. Right. Yes. Yeah. And, uh, he lives in Tempe, Arizona too, by the way. Uh, I got one as well. And, uh, that's my next read. And, and, uh, yeah, I tell you, you know, you, you, one of the things I learned is you get, you got to get out, Right. Like I was like I'm in my own lane. We all I go to real estate conferences. I go to lender stuff. I go to private equity stuff. I all the stuff that we all do. This was completely different for me. But man, my learning was like this. It was steep. I was curious. I walked in there. I was excited. And unlike a lot of times where you're like, OK, this is kind of a rinse and repeat conference. you know that's why we put together limitless is you know it's so different obviously it's a financial education conference but it's really not a real estate conference at all we try to bring in all these different folks that are you know talking about different things so i know trab you're coming again this year uh what are you what are you going to talk about whatever taro lets me talk about taro he says i'm i'm kenny's little minion so i got to put him on stage now i'll talk about i'll talk about operations a lot i i you know operators like a key operators was a big thing last year that that that i you know i always talked about but i do believe that my new term this year and josh that obviously does social media i you know i met with him and talked to him and quality qc quality control i think is the next area where everybody's got a mix into it even when you look at greg able to even look at what berkshire hathaway's talking about on retaining their customers in a policy that they don't go out and shop them. But you got to look at the quality control and AI coming into everything. How do you control the AI? You know, where is that quality control going to come in? That's a weakness that actually, I think a lot of people think that that's a strength, but I think a lot of humans are going to just rely on the AI and they're not going to look at the QC or the quality control of what information they're getting. And are you making the right decision? And to even kind of go on and thank you for taking me on the trip. It was fantastic. But the major benefit, A, we got to see, you know, behind the scenes, what a major company like Berkshire Hathaway got to see Warren Buffett, you know, Warren Buffett, Tim Cook, Greg Abel, you know, met a lot of great people like Ben, you know, that we met there. But I'll go back and say the most I learned about the entire thing were the people and the relationships that actually met while we were all together, you know, yourself, Phil, Mike, and I just four of us. And collectively, you know, I was kind of, when we were flying home, you know, I was just thinking to myself between all four of us, we have more than 2000 employees. Yeah. When you look at the, not to say the jet and all this other stuff, right. When you look at kind of like not an ultimate flex where you actually look at, you could put together something And it just for even like myself of delivering packages or like Mike building homes and, you know, Phil involved into oil and gas. Like that is where I learned the most. Right. And we're sitting there just asking simple questions to each other. And all of us had that good specialty, especially like Phil with AI. You know, I really hope that Phil is going to get an opportunity to talk to people at Limitless so they can come listen to him. Just sitting there. Him and I are both the same age. We're 49 years old. And it's really cool to be able to have a great relationship like that and sit and just have a coffee. What are you seeing out there? I mean, you're even asking him questions about how does a patent work. Yeah, for sure. Yeah, because I'm going down a road on that right now. And of course, he has so many patents. So to your point, that is kind of the idea. Your network is your net worth. We hear that a lot. It's absolutely true. You know, there are different things that you need from different people at different times. And you got to be in the right room. So that's for sure. And otherwise, you can't just do it through Claude and chat and online. That's for sure. Yeah, for sure. But so Trav, hey, man, thanks for stepping in, you know, pinch hitting for Daniil today. And that's great. She'll be back. If anybody wants to see great, great, you know, wall art, I got a piece of wood on our wall. That's an inside joke. Yeah. I was showing Kenny, but there was this, you know, we were in a cool bar. There was a cool picture up there and we were laughing about it. I go, in my house, we got a piece of walnut with lights lit up behind it. So that is hard these days. I love my wife. Did you pay for that? I know. All right, Trav. Thanks, man. Awesome seeing you. Thanks, everybody, for listening. We'll see you next time. Thank you.