Speaker 1: Joshua Marine said, challenges are what make life interesting and overcoming them is what makes life meaningful. Personal finance, folks, is 80% behavior. It's only 20% head knowledge. The behaviors and the way you operate your life cause you to be able to build wealth or not. In spite of all of the things that come against all of us, is systemic racism real? Absolutely. Does it keep someone of a minority who is a minority from becoming wealthy? No. When you're in a situation where you're not able to do anything, you're not able to do anything. We know this because there are minorities who are wealthy that started from nothing. Lots of them. Lots and lots and lots of them. But extra hurdles to overcome? You bet. Absolutely. What are your options? Not win and blame it on systemic racism? Or win in spite of systemic racism? These are your two options. Do some people have an easier path than others, depending on their upbringing, their education, the area of the country that they're born into, which country they're born into? You bet. But you can find people who have built wealth and live a life of abundance from every possible... from every possible walk of life. Starting from nothing. They're there. They just chose to fight through the obstacles. Some having more obstacles than others. There are legitimate obstacles out there. The pandemic has slapped some folks around harder than others. Legitimately. But the question you've got to ask yourself is, what are your options? What 10 years from now is going to have led me to a life of abundance? Is it a government program? Well, the historical answer is no. There's never been a government program that led to abundance of anything except in Washington, D.C. But individuals out here in the real world, we don't become wealthy and successful because of government programs. Stimulus checks, $15 minimum wage, socialist ideals. We become successful because of our behaviors. We become successful because we choose our character to be that. Now, does that shame someone that hasn't become successful? No. It just tells someone that hasn't yet become successful how to do it. And it's not sitting on your thumb waiting on a stimulus check. It's not sitting on your thumb waiting on AOC or Biden or Trump or anyone else to fix your freaking life. There is not an answer to your problem that's going to come out of Washington. The sooner you take responsibility, the better off you are. And that's not to say that where you are is your fault. It is to say that where you're going is your fault. And your beliefs cause your behaviors. And if you believe the government is going to fix or some person or some movement or crusade is going to fix the barriers that are in your life, you're wrong. And if you believe that, you're going to sit and wait on someone else to fix your life and it's never going to get fixed. It is up to you. So I started from nothing when I came out of college. And I started buying and selling real estate. And I became wealthy, at least by a kid, from my neighborhood standards. I had $4 million worth of real estate. Made $200,000 a year back in the early 1980s. And that's back when $200,000 was a lot of money. I did. I did a lot of stupid things. Like borrow too much money. Like borrow it on short-term notes. And our bank got sold to another bank. And they called our notes. And we spent the next two and a half years of our life losing everything we owned. Some of what caused that were changes in the banking laws that encouraged and allowed the banks to do that to me. And for a while I sat around and blabbed. And I blamed the mean old bank. And I blamed the IRS. And I blamed Ronald Reagan for changing the laws in banking that affected the S&Ls. And caused the S&L crisis, by the way. The destruction of an entire section of the banking industry. I blamed everyone else. And I sat there for a while getting absolutely no traction and not recovering at all. From my losses. And I just sat on my thumb and whined about everybody else picking on poor old Dave. But the revelation came along that if you're going to have that many lemons, you might as well make some lemonade. And a good friend said, you need to stop your whining. You want some cheese with that wine? And you need to get up off your butt and go fix this. And oh, by the way, figure out what you learned from all this pain. What'd you learn? What'd you do wrong that you'll never do again? Figure out what your never-agains are because of this. And so I started studying rich people. Not broke finance professors with a theory. How'd they get rich? Where'd their money come from? And how did they get it? And I was a baby Christian and I started studying the Bible and what it has to say about money. And both those sets of principles lined up. They're called common sense. Get out of debt. Live on less than you make. Work like a maniac and create income. There's a great place to go when you're broke, my grandmother said, to work. It will change everything when you do that. Everything. And so when pandemics come, bankruptcies come, when 2008 comes or 9-11 comes, when racism comes, or wealth inequality comes, or someone treats you poorly because you have a southern accent or a northern accent, or you have a college degree or you don't, or you have student loans or you don't, whatever your mountain is that you have to climb, and you have a mountain you have to climb, some are taller than others. But you've got to climb the mountain. So you need to sit down and say, you know, what have I done? What have I done wrong so far? What are the lies that I believe about life that are holding me back? And what am I going to change? A lot of the things I believe came from the neighborhood I grew up in. And a lot of the lies I had to lay down and never again believe came from the neighborhood I grew up in. Some of the best qualities came out of the household I grew up in, and some of the lies that I had to lay down, came out of the household I grew up in. And that's true of every one of us. Every one of us. So growing up is setting down the lies and embracing the truth and hustle and grind. Get up and leave the cave and kill something and drag it home. If you believe someone is coming to your rescue, you're screwed. Because no one is. It's up to you, baby doll. Suck it up. Buttercup. You got this. You can do it. I know you can do it. Because I've watched tens of millions of you do it. Lay down the lies. Pick up new beliefs. Embrace new behaviors. And change your freaking life. Don't wait on the government to do that, for God's sakes.