Huh, boys?

How do we look?

As good as it gets.

As good as it gets?

That's insulting.

Oh, nice.

Welcome back to the show, Parson.

Thank you, sir.

It's good to be here.

Is it?

It is nice.

I'll make you regret that sooner or later.

No.

Congrats, man.

This space is stupendous.

It's magnificent.

I really, really like it.

I wish the.

The audience could see everything that you've done in the.

In the background over there.

But, yeah, for those who follow on social media have seen the stories.

Everybody who's come in has actually been pleasantly surprised.

Say, am I crazy here?

Like, everybody.

It's just the vibe.

As soon as you walk in, I felt a really good vibe, you know, like, I can't explain it.

You kind of have to be here.

Something like a man cave, but also very fitting for a podcast.

Exactly.

Exactly like a man cave for a podcast.

I love it.

It was not the intention.

When we built it, actually, about halfway through, I was like, this was a bad idea.

Why?

It was a little.

Dude, I did it all myself.

It was overwhelming.

Yeah, I bet.

Yeah.

Plus, like, spending, like, you know, 16 hours a day here on the.

On the weekend.

I saw.

I was following your stories.

I know.

And then I wasn't eating a whole lot of food, and then, you know, side.

Stop hitting on me.

It was very awkward.

Yeah, but you have the perfect background, General contractor.

You have the vision.

You have the UTs to put everything together.

I think that's your vocabulary.

Tonight is going to be a conversation.

I just want you to know.

No, it takes.

I don't want to say the word, but, you know, it takes certain level of balls, if I may say.

No.

Yeah.

It's not.

We're not totally PG 13.

Yeah.

To, you know, see a project like this, know what it's going to require from you, and to go through it knowing that there's going to be a lot of issues I'm sure you dealt with.

Oh, my God.

So the LEDs in the ceiling, I put them in the first time.

First of all, putting them in drywall is insanity.

I screwed up the LEDs three times.

I had to literally spent.

I spent three separate weekends redoing them three times because I don't know what the hell I'm doing.

It was Chat GPT who actually designed the space.

I wish I was being sarcastic.

I literally designed nothing.

It was all me, like, prompting ChatGPT for, like, aesthetics that I wanted.

Beautiful.

Well, you did a Great job.

Or ChatGPT.

Yeah.

Congrats.

I also caught ChatGPT lying to me last night.

How so?

What did it say?

One of the things we do on the podcast is I'll.

Instead of me watching an entire show back and going, like, what's a sensational clip to use of Parsa being sexy?

Right.

I'll ask ChatGPT, like, what's the most viral quote that Parsa gives?

I need about 30 to 50 seconds.

Okay.

And then it'll give me a quote, and I'll.

I'll try to find that in the transcript based on the timestamp that it gives me, except it was giving me quotes that weren't in the transcript six times in a row.

And finally I'm like, chatgpt, are you lying to me?

And it said, I'm not lying, but these are not in the transcript.

I'm like, that's weird.

Why would it do that?

I don't know.

It.

I was so.

I was so.

I was furious.

I was cussing the computer last time.

My wife thought I was crazy.

That's very strange.

It's very strange.

But enough about me.

All right?

Let's talk about you.

Yes, sir.

So I would like on this particular episode to go from, like, the beginning of how you started your business to where it's at today.

And I want, like, the full deep dive.

We can start where we, you and I are playing basketball together, if you want.

Okay.

From there.

All right.

Yeah, let's start from there.

Yeah.

I met you when I first moved to Orange County.

So I grew up in Palos Verdes, where I live now, and I moved to Laguna Niguel when I was still a senior in high school in pv.

So for, like the last six, seven months of school, I commuted, which often led to me not just going to school because there was really no need to.

And I didn't want to make the commuter.

I'd crash at a friend's house.

But ultimately, the first couple years that I moved to Orange county was just, you know, doing things that I love, which was playing basketball and just trying to hang out with friends.

But I didn't have any friends, so I made most of my friends at the gym, you being one of them.

Oh, yeah.

So during the take note, he did not mention you?

Well, I met him a little bit later.

Yeah.

But anyways, during that time, I was going to college and just trying to figure out what I wanted to do with my life and my dad.

Think you were going to do?

I always wanted to go into business.

I always had kind of a business mindset.

And was very ambitious.

But my father, who had been an engineer his whole life and worked for someone his whole life, the year that I was picking my major, purchased an engineering firm.

So he became a business owner.

And it was a fairly big established firm in Irvine at the time.

So I never had an inkling towards engineering.

I never had a desire to go into it, but I wanted to be a business owner and I figured I could take over the family business if I followed down this path.

So.

And he obviously was loving the decision.

So I chose engineering.

I went to school for engineering.

I worked for my father and his company in civil engineering.

Didn't like it at all.

I thought maybe it's.

It's my dad.

He actually moved me from one office that he had in Irvine to Corona.

I worked in the Corona office because I had a different group of people, different projects, but it was just not my personality.

And so you don't.

You don't seem to have.

I don't want to be like, judgy.

Sure.

Most engineers I've met have a very different personality than yours.

You are telling me.

I remember going into the office on Mondays and, you know, being with my coworkers and they would all ask, you know, what did you do this weekend?

And I would ask them the same question.

And our responses were so far from one another that it was hard to, you know, resonate with them.

They're just different type of people than I was in different ages as well.

That played a factor.

But I ultimately met someone at his company Christmas party for the City of Costa Mesa's transportation engineering department.

And I figured, let me just leave my dad's firm and see if it's, you know, something about his firm.

And I kind of test the water.

So I got a job for the City of Costa Mesa and their transportation engineering department.

I gave that about a year.

But in that time, I met someone at a party who was, you know, young, and he was driving an exotic car.

And so, you know, naturally my interest gravitated towards asking him.

And it was his party at his house, which is a beautiful condo in Irvine.

And I said, hey, man, what do you do?

And he said, I trade the markets.

I'm a futures trader.

I didn't even know what a futures contract was.

I didn't know what commodity trading was.

And I was just at a point in my life where I did not like what I was doing for work.

I just didn't enjoy it.

Were you unhappy going to work every single day?

I was like, you knew it in the Moment.

Yes.

Okay.

Yes, absolutely.

And before and all throughout college, I had.

I've been working nonstop since I was 15 years old.

So I've had kind of a good exposure to retail, to kind of tutoring.

I was a tutor for a score.

Educational facility.

I worked at Banana Republic.

I worked at Expression, and then I was a telemarketer.

I worked at Express, too, by the way.

Oh, nice.

Yeah, so I.

I was a telemarketer in college for about two years, maybe 18 months.

And that was a strictly a sales job.

And I loved it.

And I was really.

Yeah, it was MBA America.

They had a really good kind of base hourly rate plus commission.

So it incentivized me to kind of work harder than I usually was used to at my engineering job.

See, I hated the sales culture structure, even though I know that it's a valuable asset, particularly if you're like.

For the show.

If I want to get, like, a sponsorship for the show, I have to engage a lot of those same, like, sales behaviors and tactics that I had back then and know how to have a conversation with somebody to sell them on a product.

Yes.

And it was just a skill set that I think is valuable, but I hated it.

Yeah, I totally understand that.

This company had one of the best sales programs, I think, of any on the market right now.

It was before you even start working or hitting the phones, eight hours a day, five for five days, you're in a training room and they're training you on everything there is to know just about the psychology of sales.

Really, it was very pivotal, especially at where I was in my life.

And so that job.

I worked and I was really good at it.

And so that always kind of lent me towards gravitating towards something that required, you know, know, personal skills or people skills or sales.

You're much more personal.

I don't see you as an engineer because you have a personality.

You like talking to people.

You engage.

Yeah, that's the part that it didn't make sense.

So that's what led to the transition into what I'm doing now.

Because the guy at that party said, hey, man, if you ever want a job, get your license, which is the Series 3 exam, and I'll give you a job.

And that's all it took.

And my dad, who I was telling him kind of my concerns of amazing father, he knew that I wasn't an engineer.

Him and I are.

Are very different in that aspect of our personality.

He is an engineer.

You could tell he's an engineer, but he's not pushy either.

He didn't force me to do engineering just because he was doing it.

And he knew that I had other skills.

So when I told him I wanted to study for my series three exam, he got excited and he said, let's study together.

I trade options.

I know this investments.

And he was just gravitated towards that on his own time.

So we studied together and for a month we studied every night.

You and your dad?

Me and my dad, yeah.

That's awesome.

I went to law school with my dad.

I have never met anybody else who studied with their dad like that.

Yeah, it was really, really awesome.

I mean, looking back at it, now is like a beautiful time in my life because, you know, obviously I would do most of the studying on my own, but the options part were completely new to me.

I didn't even know what a call option was or, you know, different type of strangles against the market and strategies.

But this is what he traded.

Being an engineer, he had built his own kind of trading algorithm, if you will.

So when he was explaining it to me, I was like, wow, this is fascinating.

And so you take people's money and I can invest it and do these different trades and they'll pay me for it.

I was like, all in.

So I got licensed, passed on my first try.

How'd your dad do?

My dad never took the exam.

Yeah, he didn't need to take the exam.

So he was just kind of helping me in that subsection of the booklet, if you will.

That he still studied with you when you were studying?

Yeah, it was amazing.

That's awesome.

So anyways, I got my, my license and then I called the guy, said, hey man, I got, I'm licensed.

I'm ready to rock and roll.

And he was shocked.

He had six or seven people working for him, but they all kind of came from that world and, you know, no one just randomly out of the blue called him and said, hey, I want a job.

Shout out to Ramon Vatania, by the way, that's his name.

Great guy.

Still stay in touch with him.

When is the last time he met somebody named Ramon?

Yeah, good name, great name, great guy.

So he had the successful little brokerage in Irvine and he said, damn, I didn't know you were actually going to pass the exam.

But if you want a job, listen, I'm going to give you a desk, a cubicle, you know, an email and a, you know, phone and a list.

Call these people.

A hundred percent commission.

If you want the job, it's yours.

You know, it's not costing 100 commit.

So no hourly nothing.

Nothing.

Wow.

Nothing.

And you went from like a normal hourly, like, engineering job working for the city to that?

Exactly.

I was still living at home, so I knew that my expenses weren't high, and I.

If I could just grind, I figured I could make three, four grand a month.

Like, that was my kind of goal at that time.

So started within a few days.

I had used those sales skills that I got being a telemarketer with this list that he had given me.

And this list was a very warm list.

It was people that had gone onto his website, requested a demo of his trading tool, that it was a proprietary trading tool that his.

His business partners had created, and explain to them how to use the tool to trade their own commodity account.

And so it seemed very easy to me.

There were warm leads as opposed to these random cold leads.

I had people who were signed up who were interested, who were waiting for your call in one.

Some of the leads were, you know, a year old.

Some of them were hot.

But he started me off on the really old leads, so I was doing really well.

First week, I landed a huge account, the biggest account in that office.

And.

And it was just this.

That's what I wanted to do.

You knew right away?

I knew right away.

Just.

Just the fact that I could talk to someone.

It took three or four calls.

You had to, you know, educate him on the platform, get to know him.

The guy's name was Cole Goodrum.

He's from Nashville, Tennessee.

I still have his phone number.

Cole and Ramon.

That's a good band name right there.

Yeah.

So Cole was my first client.

And, yeah, just never looked back.

So after a few years of working for him in the commodity trading world, I got recruited to work at Merrill Lynch.

Merrill Lynch.

Financial advisory firm.

Big wirehouse.

But they do more kind of investments, as opposed to a subsection of investments, which is kind of futures contracts.

Where were they that pre.

Bank of America.

This was right after bank of America purchased Merrill Lynch.

But they were still effectively operating independently, but in the.

In the brand.

Right.

They hadn't been integrated yet.

It's 2012.

Okay.

Okay.

Interesting time.

Yeah, very interesting time.

So Merrill lynch was a much different world.

They had a training program, if you will, but it was just, bring the money in the door.

We don't care how you do it.

They had this guy would come in and, like, talk to you about just the.

The type of sales that I don't like, which is like trying to prove you're something you're not that.

That I just didn't resonate with my stay at Merrill lynch just was not a like looking back at it.

The company was great.

Nothing bad to say about them, but I just didn't enjoy the environment of just bring money in the door.

Bring money in the door.

Bring money in the door.

Like the rest will work itself out.

From my experience with them, and forgive me if this is wrong, is they have an entire team that's really dedicated to sales, but they're not making any real investment decisions.

So the person that you're talking to when you walk in to manage your money, let's say, is really just selling you on them.

Exactly.

And there's somebody else behind the scenes making the real critical decisions as it relates to how you're right.

And that to me is almost like a disingenuous process.

I agree with you wholeheartedly.

Okay.

So from there I worked for a company called AXA or Equitable.

It's a huge company.

It's probably still one of the 20th largest companies in the world.

But it's a European based insurance company.

They had an American arm.

Wow.

You went from futures to like traditional wealth advisory, like in a bigger scale platform to insurance side.

No, so.

So AXA Advisors had a axa.

Equitable had an AXA Advisors American arm, which was like their version of a financial advisory.

I'm like a Northwestern Mutual type thing or something like that.

So they had a pretty good training program.

But they were just training me on how to sell insurance products, life insurance and annuities, which was great.

I learned those two products inside and out.

I know the pros, the cons with each of them and they unfortunately get miss Sold way too often.

Every time I've ever seen them have been missile.

Yeah, I agree for the most part.

But they do have a right fit for the right client for certain scenarios.

Why do you think they're typically miss Sold?

Is it a lack of understanding the commission upfront?

I think that's really what drives the unfortunate scenario for advisors who want to just make a quick buck ultimately.

It's funny, statistically speaking, if you don't sell an annuity, just have managed money, you'll make more money as an advisor, but it's just the quick, easy kind of way to do business that a lot of people do.

And it's not the right product for everyone.

But the advisor will make more money over time getting income earned off fees over time as opposed to that would lump some of the payments up front for like a commission.

Yep.

But they just want to do it and set it.

And again, actually, we can get into the annuity talk, but I think there are some really, really good annuities out there right now that weren't here maybe a few years ago, but going back to axa.

Worked for them for about five years, had a great time, kind of grew up their advisory firm.

And in 2017, I had been now an advisor for eight years.

Kind of different facets of wealth management, investments.

Merrill Lynch, Equitable.

But you're happy now?

I'm happy.

I'm making pretty good money.

I'm, you know, living life.

Everything's going fine.

But do you feel like you're going to be like you want to own your own business yet?

Is that it?

Always had that.

I've always had that itch.

So what kind of led to that itch coming to fruition was I lived on the Manhattan Beach Strand at one time in my life.

It's a.

It's a beautiful coastal area of Southern California.

Thanks for the invite, by the way.

Sorry, my apologies.

I don't live there anymore.

But I got.

It was a once in a lifetime deal.

My buddy called me.

He's a real estate agent.

He said, hey, my client lives in a house on the strand.

It's a two bed, two bath.

It's 50% under market value.

He's moving out.

We can move right back in.

Sublease it, same rent, no issues.

The landlord's a big trust.

They don't even care.

I said, I'm in.

I'm moving in.

So we moved on the Manhattan beach strand, and we had one of the very few, kind of four unit properties.

But the rest of the homes on the Strand were massive estates, 15, 20 million dollars.

So two houses down for me was one of those homes.

It was a guy who was in his mid-50s.

He had done very, very well for himself living on one of these massive homes on the Strand.

And he was not.

He was retired.

You could just totally tell based on me being his neighbor and seeing him every day, you know, would be surfing or walking his dog and watering his plants.

Just amazing life.

So after a couple years of living there, we developed a relationship and a friendship.

And I said, hey, neighbor.

You know, I'm not sure if you know this, but I'm a financial advisor.

I'd love to earn your business.

At the time, I was working for Axe Advisors, like a big parent company.

Did you ever have any fear of approaching people with that, or was it always really organic?

No, because if I genuinely feel like I could potentially help someone.

I don't feel bad in approaching them.

I don't have that kind of nervous barrier.

I'm not selling them anything that if they don't want it, if they're completely fine, great.

But I usually think I can add value to someone who doesn't have an advisor if they're kind of a DIYer.

So he said, or I told him I want to.

You know, I'm not sure if he knows this.

I'm an advisor.

I'd love to earn his business, look at his investment portfolio or whatever the case may be.

He said, parsa, I would love to work with you, but I already have an advisor and my advisor is an independent advisor.

He doesn't have any other, like companies involved.

He is my advisor and he handles everything for me.

Oh, by the way, he doesn't just do my investments, he does my tax planning, he does my estate planning, he does all my insurance.

I know that if I were to pass away today, my parents who rely on me, my children, my future grandchildren, my ex wife, everyone's taken care of because he's handled everything from A to Z.

And so it kind of started to get me thinking, like they don't teach you this at Merrill lynch or at, at Equitable, you know, because that's not how they make money.

And you're too powerful at that point.

You are too powerful.

Hence why I made the decision to leave.

So luckily at that time, I had a big pending estate planning, life insurance case that was going to pay me out.

And if I were to go independent, the payout was going to be 30% more.

So I knew I had kind of a bucket of money to lead towards maybe 12 months of Runway.

If I didn't make any money in 12 months, I would have to figure out another approach.

But that gave me a really good cushion, I felt based on, you know, what I needed to start my own business.

But you're single at this time, you're not married, exact kids.

Exactly.

This was 2017.

So I'm, you know, 32 years old at the time.

What I wouldn't do to be a 32 year old.

Yeah, right.

So, yeah, I decided to go full bore.

You know, left the comfort of having a big name behind me and some perks that came along with that and just went all independent.

And you know, first few years were okay.

They weren't the best, but I knew it was going to take time to kind of build my brand, my relationship with my potential clients.

And here we are, a big know doing Very, very well and loving what I'm doing because, again, my clients are not just one of, you know, 200 in the Rolodex.

Right.

I have relationships with each one.

I know them inside and out.

I'm their sounding board when it comes to any decision, whether it's, what should I do with this trust that I have, what should I do with this investment portfolio, what should I do for estate planning for the next generation, or my tax plan, or we even review homeowners insurance policies, auto insurance policies, life insurance policies.

We want to make sure that you have no blind spots in your financial world.

So.

And you're the perfect age for it.

Sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt.

Guys, over here.

Shame on you.

From the desk.

What are you, like, a host?

What was the, what was the most challenging part about getting people to trust you with their planning, their money, just to get in the door?

Yeah, very good question.

You know, at Equitable, for example, they would give us old leads, too.

And so you'd call them and you kind of like an off branch of their company so they feel comfortable when you're starting from scratch and you, like, your logo doesn't even look right, like your business card has the wrong office address.

And you're just not confident.

I think getting over the barrier of, hey, I can do this, you know, it's just I'm now a business owner and I've got a lot of other responsibilities, but I'm really just trying to help people.

And once I got over that barrier, I felt a lot more confident in my conversations with prospects.

And I think that confidence spills over into them, you know, putting their trust in you as well.

One of the things I've seen, you know, we have a wealth advisory arm where I work currently, and there's an.

It's an interesting time in the business.

And tell me if you've seen this.

You've got an aging population of wealth advisors, relationship managers, depending on where you are, who have been around for a long time, who otherwise would have retired.

But people are generally working longer.

So you got these guys and girls in their 60s and 70s who are working, but like you noted for your guide on the street, the neighbor, they're doing everything for them.

But if you're a young person, you don't.

You're the ideal person to come in because you're not going to die.

Yeah, I was talking to somebody recently and he said to me, he's like, you know, Chris, I'm in my 60s.

I don't want my doctor my lawyer, my wealth advisor to be my age.

Because if they die, if I die, they die, we all die.

Like there's nobody running the show.

He's like, I want my doctor to be 45.

I want my lawyer to be in their 40s and 50s.

I want my people handing my money to be around my tax.

Got to be around.

You find that that's actually a huge tool for you now?

Oh, yeah, huge.

And in fact, I have these conversations often with my clients.

Most of my clienteles are in retirement.

You know, they're 65 plus.

And so one factor that I focus on is getting to know the next generation.

And I often, you know, sometimes it may seem overbearing, but I want to meet your kids.

Because if your plan is to leave your money to them and they have no idea about anything and you're leaving a large chunk of change if you're open to it.

And I do have some clients who are super old school.

They just don't want their even adult children to know about anything as it relates to their finances.

That's weird, right?

It's weird.

And I don't want to, you know, open that treasure chest, Pandora's box.

But for those who, who have a good amount of wealth, oftentimes when you have the conversation with the next generation, it leads to other potential planning opportunities that they were not cognizant of that may in fact benefit them and their children and grandchildren.

But also they know that God forbid something were to happen to them.

They have this 39 year old advisor with a team behind him that's not going anywhere for 30, 40 years.

And I don't plan to leave the business.

I love what I do.

And I think it's reassuring for them as well.

You ever have the conversation, we're like, listen, Terry, you know, I like managing your money, but your son Donnie's an idiot.

Yeah, well, when you have enough conversations with potential prospects, you're going to see all walks of life.

One of the most recent cases that I am actually still involved in is adult children in their mid-40s.

My client is in his mid-70s.

The adult children inherited sizable estate from their deceased aunt who didn't have any heirs.

So they were.

They.

The problem is the children had never had a job.

One of them is special needs.

Oh, man.

They still live at home.

And so here we are.

Now, all of a sudden, there's a massive windfall for these kids.

Although they're adults, but they've never had, you know, the responsibility.

Everything's kind of been taken care of them.

And there's all these tax consequences for the special needs child that we had to take into consideration as well.

So complex planning.

But these are the cases that I think separate, you know, an independent boutique planning firm from like a big wirehouse because I can just give them a little bit more attention that they really deserve and that's, I think, what they value.

So I mean, I've seen a lot of this where the children of high net worth individuals have a different perspective on finance.

And I think a lot of people are like, oh, you know, like Billy's rich and you know, it comes from a wealthy family.

But I think there's a gap in understanding where a lot of like these wealthy kids have a lot of the same and or similar financial literacy gaps because they didn't have to worry about money at all.

It's the almost opposite side if you don't have money to worry about.

Like you're constantly worried about the simple things like how do I pay for gas, like how do I pay my utilities.

But on the other side of the spectrum, it's, I don't have to worry about money because mommy and daddy always give me money.

Yep.

I have an ATM card.

They've never had credit cards.

They don't know anything about credit.

They don't know how to buy a home, get a mortgage.

So it's, it sounds weird, but they're almost the same problem, just different sides of the same coin.

Absolutely.

In fact, recently, because my clientele is aging and we've rolled out estate planning in house, we start to uncover potential blind spots for clients.

So for example, many clients are leaving a substantial amount of money to their adult children when they pass away from.

But as you mentioned, they're not responsible financially.

And so they're worried about what the implications of them, you know, coming into that money.

So when we'll do their estate plan, we'll recommend and that's obviously that's their money.

But we'll say, hey, why don't we think about putting custom trust directives to protect, you know, child a walk the.

Listener through what that means.

So if you have a trust that is going to be the beneficiary of your estate, all of your assets essentially flow through to the trust.

Your, your, your primary residence, your rental properties, your investment accounts.

And so once that trust has all those assets, it can disseminate them out to your beneficiaries.

And if you just have it flow through with no directives, it's just going to go to them and they get the money.

Right.

And so they can do as they want with it.

Everybody will get their fair share and they'll do with it, however.

Exactly.

But let's say you have a child who's really, really good with money and then another child who is, you know, maybe has, you know, a drug addiction issue or has, you know, problem with, with spending.

You can create an estate plan that says, okay, child one, who's good with money.

They can have it all in, in year one or as soon as I pass away.

But for child two, we're going to put in certain stipulations that are just meaning to protect him.

And so those were, those would, those would be those custom trust directives.

But you can go a layer further and add like a corporate trustee, someone who's going to actually handle the assets for them as well.

So, you know, traditional advisors, they don't really get into the weeds from what I've seen, because every new client call I have, they usually say the same thing.

My other advisor didn't talk about all these things.

And a lot of wealth advisory firms don't have a trust arm with which to do that in the first place anyway.

Exactly.

So.

And it's a conflict of interest in some cases for them to also manage the trust if there's not separation of duties.

Absolutely.

So there's a lot of complexities there for some of these trusts, which I've seen over time.

Yep.

So this is this kind of stuff that I think people see in movies they don't realize are real.

But are there any, I want to get into, like, helpful tips for a lot of the listeners that are listening that are just kind of building over time.

Sure.

But I want to get there after asking you a question.

You've seen a lot of these cases come up.

What's the strangest set of circumstances you've seen so far?

Oh, man, you've probably seen a lot, right?

I've seen a lot, yeah.

I mean, it's strange because when I started my career after leaving the trading market, I went back to.

I went from making money back to kind of being broke again in like my mid to late 20s, which was really rough.

But it was because I was starting again at like an all commission job.

And so I had to do whatever it took to make money.

So I remember one of my first sales was I sold a life insurance policy to a woman in Compton for her son because she was afraid he was going to pass away in his drug and gang related activity.

Wow.

But I went there for like the $700 commission.

I went to her home, I sat her down, I said, this is what's going to cost you.

Wasn't a huge policy, but it's.

I needed to do it.

So I've seen kind of from there all the way up to now, I have clients who are in the few hundred million dollar net worth.

Actually we probably know exactly who I'm talking about, but we, we.

I've got, you know, very wealthy clients as well.

The complexity of the case doesn't really have too much to do with the wealth.

Of course there's a lot of upfront planning.

But what I've seen create the most complex scenarios is like the moving parts of life.

Divorce here, children from a blended family, hey, I want this to go to that person.

I've got multiple assets.

And so with that comes a lot of complexity because you want to keep it fair.

There's a family dynamic that sometimes I kind of offer my services to, to kind of be an intermediary, but there's tax implications, there's, you know, growth rate, implications of certain.

It's just, it can get.

It's overwhelming.

Complex, right?

It's very overwhelming.

So a lot of people listen to the show, I think, aspire to need someone like you at some juncture, but they don't know how to begin the process of building wealth to get to a point where they say, hey, I need a guy like Parsa to help me out.

Yep.

What are some best practices you think would help people prepare for the future?

I think the basics are super crucial.

Just like, you know, I like to kickbox, the basics of throwing a jab, keeping your right hand up.

I don't know.

You can call what you do kickboxing, but we'll just.

Well, it's more like shadow boxing these days, brother.

Really good shadow boxing.

But again, the fundamentals are pivotal in the high level of fighting and the low level.

And whether you have a little bit of money or a lot of money, keeping your expenses as low as possible and not out, you know, spending what you can make is very, very, very crucial.

And just get in the habit of investing your capital as it comes to you.

Basic index funds are phenomenal for 99.9% of people is my, my thought process.

So you can, you know, do five minutes of research, take a look at a basic Vanguard index fund, dollar cost average yourself in a brokerage account or through your retirement plan at work, but just get in the habit of saving money.

And then there's thresholds to that.

Right.

Once you have enough Saved money.

You're going to kind of want to look at other investments because you have enough that's kind of going towards those initial buckets of money.

Then you can look at investing in real estate.

I know you're a big real estate investor.

I think those are great investments.

The stock market is still, over time, a great investment or whatever.

You know, I have clients who are looking at buying businesses, kind of blue collar businesses that's becoming like the next.

I think, really glamorized investment structure and strategy.

For a long time it was invest in the stock market, then it was invest in real estate.

And I think now the, the buying of businesses because Alex Formosi and a lot of these guys, acquisition.com they're really preaching the, the buying of businesses and everybody kind of follows suit with a lot of these influencers who are doing that.

The other girl who copies him, I can't remember her name, she, she does that same thing too.

Cody.

Cody Sanchez.

Yeah.

Very good site.

Yeah.

I knew you, I knew you were a fan girl, but it's becoming like a new, a new thing.

But it's not, it's not terrible.

It's just, I, I don't know that it's like anything else.

You, you don't know the downside until you get into it.

Yeah, do one.

No, it's, it's, it's not an easy kind of investment to, to do.

You have to be willing to kind of do what you did with this space, put in the time, you know, understand what you're buying.

And so it's not for most people, but you know, as an alternative investment or if you're entrepreneurial in, in nature, I think it's a great, you know, because you got to think about it.

There's so many baby boomers out there right now that are retiring and their businesses are going to retire with them.

So there's going to be an, I think over the next five to ten years a plethora of opportunity to come in there and buy some of these old retiring blue collar businesses that are, you know, insulated from the worry of AI that are going to give you a really good return on your money, especially if they have an established kind of management team in place.

You know, you buy a business that's generating consistent income is going to do much better than any real estate or any stock portfolio that you have.

So speaking of that, Parsa going down this path and the complexities and just to get this conversation started with an advisor or planner requires some trust, right?

Absolutely.

So.

And unfortunately, in every industry, there's good apples and bad apples.

Yep.

Are there any warning signs that you can see or you can maybe tell people to look out for when looking to evaluate whether to go with one advisor versus another?

For sure.

So I'll talk about this at length because I think it's a really important question.

I think just like with anything, you should talk to multiple advisors, interview multiple advisors, get a feel for what they all have to offer, what their pricing is.

Because I think pricing in our industry kind of gets lost in how important.

Like the difference between 80 basis points versus like, 2%, which I've seen sometimes in advisory fees.

Yeah.

And then, you know, you want to have multiple conversations on the front end with the advisor that you want to ultimately do business with.

If you can get a referral from someone that you know and trust, that's a great kind of into, you know, if they like working with them, he'll probably do the same type of work for me.

But again, going back to that front end, due diligence, have multiple conversations, have a list of questions prepared.

You know, tell me a little bit about your average client base, your experience, what separates you from other advisors.

And then another thing that I found that oftentimes gets overlooked and it's such an easy solution is, is every financial advisor who's licensed in a fiduciary has a Series 7 and a 66.

And so we're regulated by FINRA, which is a big financial regulatory body.

If you've ever had a client or someone make a complaint against you, it legally has to go on what is called your U4.

And it shows up on this website, FINRA broker check.

I see a lot of advisors that have had kind of marks on their record, but because they're so good and salesy, they've got.

They make a slick.

Slick.

They make a lot of money.

And, you know, I won't even name them, but there are advisors out there that do this.

And a simple search for these advisors, like, one has 30 marks on his record.

You know, I think the sad part is most people don't understand where to even look.

They don't even know that you can literally track this stuff and that it's logged.

Exactly.

The other side of it, too, is a lot of people don't even know that you can literally make a complaint to Finra and that it goes into U4.

Absolutely.

So you wind up in the Yelp page for advisors.

Exactly.

Yeah, kind of.

But it's a lot more serious than you realize.

I mean, a Yelp page.

Like anybody can put it on there.

FINRA actually does a little bit of due diligence arbitration.

Yeah.

There's a feedback loop.

So if it's on their record, it happened.

Yeah.

That's not perspective or opinion.

Like, it happened.

And there'll be a response and an arbitration process where you can respond to it too.

So you'll see all that stuff there.

And it's pretty telling.

Yeah.

But you'd be surprised how many really successful advisors.

Oh, there you go, Jill.

There you go.

Broker check.

Yeah.

Like, type, you know, type my name in and it's going to be a clean record.

I've never had a customer complain against me, but I've had situations.

We're trying to find out.

I've had situations where someone will, you know, I'm up against multiple, you know, other advisors, and I'll just say, you.

Can just take up the firm name.

Yeah.

She rid of that?

Yeah.

You know, they'll tell me the name of the other advisor.

I'll plug them in here, and I'll see three complaints, like, half a million dollars settled.

And it's just like, it's the first one right there.

Wait, your first name is really Patrick?

Yep.

Legal first name is Patrick.

I would have been calling you Patrick this whole time.

Yeah, well, if you want to take it way back, I.

I was born in Iran and my name was Parsa Panahanda Vahid.

Okay, I'm sorry, what?

Now?

I've never.

Panahand.

Panahanda Vahid.

I've never heard that name before.

Yeah, it's.

It's a long name.

So when I came to America, I was maybe six years old when I got my citizenship, and for whatever reason, my dad kind of nudged me to changing it to Patrick and cutting off the Patrick.

He's like an interesting guy.

Yeah, I like him already.

He's a great guy.

But, yeah, I don't use Patrick.

Very few people ever even, you know, mention me by that.

But it's legally Patrick.

That would have weird me out.

If somebody called you Patrick in front of me, I'd be like, this guy.

Even when they call me Patrick, I'm like, that's not my name.

It's Parsa.

Okay, but so the name of your company, Strand Life, that came from that original property on the Strand?

Yep.

Because I know that.

Yep.

I started my company when I was living on the strand.

There you go.

So I call this logo.

See, I didn't know any of that.

Yeah.

And I put the lifeguard tower in there for a Specific reason I wanted to really kind of act as a financial lifeguard for my clients.

You, you know, your lifeguards out there.

He's kind of watching over you, but, you know, unless you're making a mistake, he's not going to come out and kind of be in your everyday.

And he happens to usually be jacked.

Looked like the Rock.

Yeah.

Unlike me.

Is that a video of you in the background?

Yeah, that's.

This is actually a nice website.

Man, look at you.

Thanks.

Yeah, we actually moved our office.

So this is our old office.

We just moved into a new office about two months ago.

Yeah.

You guys working remote or are you.

How's the situation?

I work, you know, half and half.

Half I'm in the office, half I enjoy working from home, and if I have a day with no meetings or, like, just a couple zooms, I'd love to work from home.

Home.

My staff is usually always in the office, and so there's always someone in the office, but it's kind of a hybrid scenario as well.

So let me ask you, like, an entrepreneurship question, because I know that there.

There is a sizable difference in doing the job, managing someone's money, you know, building that trust and.

And being that person who's selling them on what you can do to pivoting to running a company where it's bigger than just you.

Yep.

And now there's employees, there's HR issues, there's taxes.

Yep.

Do you find that to be tedious or you just accept it as part of the role?

Like, what's your thoughts on this?

Yeah, I mean, some parts of it I enjoy.

Some parts of it I, you know, are tedious.

And I hate, like, going through finding a payroll provider and, like, setting up payroll.

And, like, sometimes I mess up.

Even if, like, we have a new hire and we're going through the onboarding, like, you know, just certain things, that stuff drives me crazy.

But, like learning how to build a brand and scaling a business and, you know, having employees and giving them different roles and seeing what works with marketing, what doesn't.

I actually enjoy that, although there's definitely some stress that comes along with that.

But I also think it helps me in having conversations with business owner clients as well.

Yeah, of course.

So when they're going through their issue of, you know, scaling through hiring and or whatever, trying to cut taxes, from an employer perspective, I can have those conversations not only as their financial advisor, but also as someone who's running a business.

And I've kind of gone through some of the pitfalls And I can give them both the scientific answer, but also the artistic nuance answer of someone who's kind of gone through it with them as well.

So, and this might be an off question, but.

So you build a company, you.

You build a brand.

You're at a position now where you've had this for several years, and it's kind of scaled up.

And I've been on the sidelines watching.

You know, I think, I think what you've done has been amazing.

How much time are you dedicating to building the brand per se, as opposed to business development?

Very good question.

It goes in waves because when we launch, let's say, a new marketing program, it'll take a lot of time up front, and then a few months will go by, we'll kind of lead to not as much of that devoted to it.

I'll give you an example.

I generate business through mostly two different avenues.

One is I do workshops.

I'll send out a mailer, we'll fill up a library with 80 people, and we'll just educate them on the benefits of certain topics.

Estate planning, tax planning, basic stuff.

Right.

You were at an event this last weekend, right?

Yeah, I was at a longevity event that was just me sponsoring that.

Sahara was there as well.

I saw her there.

Oh, yeah.

Nice.

Yeah.

So, yeah, so that's, you know, learning how to do workshops.

That was picking the location.

What should we, you know, putting together a presentation.

That's all fun stuff for me.

But then we have this other program where we pay for leads, if you will.

It's a very select type of individual, so they're usually very expensive leads because we don't want to just talk to anybody.

So we want the right type of fit for our business so that we can benefit from each other.

And so learning that and going through the tech stack required to make that efficient and all the ups and downs and putting together a system to scale that.

I don't really love that aspect of the business.

So there's different things that I enjoy, different things I don't do.

If I were to put kind of a percentage, I would say about 20 to 30% of my time is dedicated towards the business, building IT operations.

The rest of the time dedicated to sitting down with a client or working on kind of some one of their many needs.

So there's this kind of rhetoric going around on social media that.

That's bothered me for some time, and you've kind of just highlighted why it's, it's, it's a little off.

Is that People will tell you, you can buy a business and you don't have to know anything about the business.

You just have to know how to run a business.

And on one hand, I feel like that could be true in some circumstances.

On another hand, if you don't love the underlying business, that's going to become very boring for you very quickly.

And you're not going to.

All you're really doing is saying, I want money from this widget maker.

Yep.

And then if there's no passion behind it, how often are you.

How long are you going to wake up every day and go, I get to make widgets today.

Yep.

You know, so I think a little bit of that rhetoric and narrative is off because people fall in love with the idea of easy money.

Yep.

But I want to pivot here for a little bit.

Most of the listeners from the show, there's kind of a couple different cohorts.

There's people who are interested in making more money.

There's a whole cohort of our listeners who I think have already made some money, but they don't know when they need someone like you.

When is there, like, an economic number, you think, is there a point in life where someone goes, I need someone like Parsa to come in and do this?

Granted, you can always do it yourself.

Sure.

But there's a reason why someone has someone like you.

Yeah.

When does someone seek out a Parsa to help them financially?

I think you kind of have to have a triggering event, if you will.

What I mean by that is a lot of clients that we take on are entering retirement.

Right.

So they've been accumulating assets, they've been earning income.

All of a sudden they're looking to live off their income, managing their entire.

Lives, but now they want to know what they can do with it.

Exactly.

So they're just not experienced enough.

So they have that triggering event, which is that retirement.

Thought it could be a few years before retirement or right before retirement, but they'll usually reach out and work with an advisor or start off with like.

Do I have enough money?

Yeah.

I mean, that's one way to look at it.

That's usually the most important question.

Or, how much money can I spend comfortably if I want to achieve these goals?

Right.

And so how much risk can I take?

You know, it's very surprising.

A lot of people think that we manage money, and more oftentimes than not, we'll just create a super conservative portfolio for them.

What I'm seeing more often is a lot of clients that we inherit from other advisors.

They're far too conservative and they're just very scared of losing money.

But they have the ability to take that risk.

They have enough guaranteed income.

They have a large pool of money that's just not performing for them.

With 20 year time horizon, you can afford a little volatility, but they just don't want to think that, think that way.

And so oftentimes I'm nudging them, hey, let's put on a little bit more risk in your portfolio.

And so, yeah, that's.

I don't know what I was answering in that question.

I apologize.

But you were telling me how good looking I am.

Hey, you're very handsome.

Thank you.

So are you.

Yeah, thank you.

So.

But the reason why I asked the question is I know there's a demographic of your clients that are not older waiting for a lifetime trigger event.

There's a certain demographic that are younger that fill the need at some point in time.

Is it because they've usually done financially very well for themselves and it's just a distraction for them to manage the money is that they recognize they don't have that skill set and they'll just be productive.

And I'll use myself as an example.

There was a period of my life where I got to seven figures in my 401k and I was like, I can keep going down this path and I can continue to manage this myself or I can get someone to help me from this point forward.

Because I also had what I like to call like a play money account that was growing alongside of that.

And then it got to the point where I don't have time to actively trade in what I called my play money account.

And I also have this 401k.

Somebody else look at it and put the money to work.

Does that happen a lot with younger executives?

Yeah, that does happen.

It seems to be a theme.

But I will say, going back to your original question of like, when do you think you.

What's.

When do you think you need an advisor?

I think ultimately most people, even with a certain amount of wealth, they can do it themselves.

Right?

Basic.

Invest your money where it needs to be invested, keep your expenses low, buy appreciating assets.

But what I think a good advisor does in terms of adding value is just act as kind of a sounding board and help you model some of those scenarios that you have in your head of what if I want to do stop working right now and instead invest in X, Y and Z?

What does that look like?

What type of risks do I have or not have that you can kind of help me think of.

And so oftentimes I kind of, I feel like a psychiatrist because I'm, I'm obviously managing their money, but I'm also helping them kind of work through the restraints that society has put or their childhood has put on them and not spending money and just walk through that restraints.

Comment.

I think that's really important.

Yeah.

A lot of my clients, you know, they've done very well for themselves.

They've kept their expenses low throughout their lifetime and now they've got a big chunk of change and their expenses are still low.

So they're not going to ever outlive their assets.

They're going to leave enough to the next generation.

And I can by click of a button say, hey, you can increase your monthly expenses by 2x and it's not going to affect anything.

So go out, spend a little money, travel while you're still able to do what makes you happy.

And so oftentimes they hear that and they're like, oh, you know, it's.

It's a.

They almost need permission to do it.

Exactly.

It's it.

So I found, and there's a book that I read and I can't remember the book name and say, if you want to run this down.

There was a couple different ways that were most prominent to become a millionaire.

One of them was the saver path.

And the saver path was simple as it sounds like you would just save money your entire life.

But you build up this pattern and practice of saving and then when you get to a certain point in your life where you should be enjoying your money, you.

It's really hard to fall out of 20, 30 years of working and that discipline that you've instead, still, that becomes your new normal.

Sure, humans are afraid of change.

The other path was you could inherit it.

Right.

For sure.

Simple, not available to everybody.

Right.

There was an executive path where you, you effectively, you, you get stock options or some type of large payout as part of your salary working for somebody else.

Those jobs are hard to come by.

Then there is an entrepreneurial path.

I've always favored the entrepreneurial path.

I think that the entrepreneurial path gives you more control, more freedom.

It doesn't mean you're going to work less.

I think that's a big misconception.

You're going to work a whole hell of a lot more.

But at the end of the day, you can build legacy wealth and you have the option of passing it down to your kids that you otherwise would not have if you worked for somebody else.

You can hand your money down, you can handle it, hand down the trust like for example we spoke about.

But I've always liked the entrepreneurial path if you have the mindset for it.

I agree.

How many of your clients do you think are the entrepreneurs who grew up versus the W2 employees who grew up?

I have probably a half a dozen kind of business owner clients.

The rest are kind of, they've accumulated their wealth through their traditional savings 401k inheritance sometimes.

But for those half a dozen business owner clients, we speak on a level and a type of understanding that, you know, someone who works for a Merrill lynch or Morgan Stanley who has kind of the parent company restraint is just not going to be able to communicate with them on, you know, he's not a business owner, if you will.

And so he doesn't know what, you know, hiring and firing looks like.

You know, it's a little bit of a different conversation.

Plus there's a different expectation from like a service level proposition.

If I own a business and I'm putting my money with you, I know that you're a business owner and I want to call you and talk to you and I want to have that conversation and engagement.

Whereas I don't want to call a 1, 800 number.

Like that's not what I'm coming to you for.

That's exactly right.

I often use that in my, in my conversation.

I say, listen, you know, I'm an independent boutique planning firm.

I've kind of set the number of households I need to be successful.

I'm very close to that.

I want to work with people who want to work with me.

You can call me anytime.

Obviously no one's going to abuse that, but literally I will get calls from someone who, hey, I'm start thinking of starting a new business.

What are your thoughts?

Let's talk it through all the way to a basic quarterly review.

We have those kind of conversations.

One thought that just came to me going back to what you said about what triggers people to want to work with me and you mentioned stock options.

My team put together a social media post today on stock options.

So that's one thing that I think a lot of people in tech or even someone who works for a big company, if they've got stock options, they don't understand them.

They don't.

Oh, I talked to a girl today who literally didn't exercise her options.

You pay taxes as soon as a vest, right?

Didn't realize there was a cashless option.

That she could have done that.

She's like, why do you want to pay taxes?

I'm like, well, you could have just exercised using cashless option and then had the stock sitting in an account that's money's gone.

Yep.

So oftentimes what I find is people don't even really know that they need an advisor until it's too late.

And so, you know, you don't have to work and everyone doesn't have to work with a financial advisor.

I think a good advisor should add a ton of value to your life.

But it doesn't hurt to interview them, reach out to your neighborhood, whatever wirehouse firm, schedule a call that I'm sure they're going to be happy, see what they offer, see if it makes sense for you.

If you don't find value in it, go back to doing what you're doing on your own.

But a good advisor I think will always find something because this is what I do day in and day out and this is what a good advice.

We know a little bit more than most on different strategies and different planning opportunities.

So I'm going to ask you a very stigmatizing question and I don't want this to come off like offensive to anybody, but AI is displacing a lot of roles.

Yep.

And I don't think people understand.

Somebody said AI is going to displace the wealth advisory firm business.

I thought that's completely irrational because that business is so relationship focused that it doesn't make sense.

And it's a lot different.

Me asking a legal question to AI.

I can ask a legal question.

I'm not worried about disclosing intimate details of my personal life.

Sure.

But religion, politics, finance, these things are very, very personal.

Fitness.

Yeah.

People will die over their opinions on these things.

Sure.

I don't see AI coming into this place.

Well, people don't really realize.

And I want to know how much of this you see.

Here's the question.

A lot of people don't realize.

You might go into a Bank of America, Merrill lynch and you might get a wealth advisor.

They might be using a robo advisory platform to make decisions based on algorithms behind the scenes.

And you would never know.

Yep.

How much of that do you think is shifting the narrative of how people are investing?

There's just so, for example, there are human people who make decisions behind the scenes.

Who are your chief investment officers who are making a lot of investment decisions which affect portfolios.

And there's a lot of people who rely on these third party algorithms.

Sure.

How Much of that are you seeing out there in the market right now.

In terms of AI making kind of the investment decisions?

I haven't seen a ton of it yet.

I do think it's on the forefront and I'm worried about what AI is going to do to my job in the short near future.

Yeah.

I think that ultimately, at the rate that it's becoming more and more intelligent, it's only a matter of time before you can give it enough prompts and it can, you know, spit out a custom financial plan that kind of resolves all your moving parts.

Now maybe that helps people, though.

That would help you present to people.

Yeah.

It wouldn't deal with the children, emotional intelligence.

It wouldn't deal with the real.

There's not a confidant in that.

I agree.

So there's still going to be a human touch.

And I incorporate AI into my tech stack heavily.

And again, I think another benefit of having an independent firm is that when a new technology is on the market, I don't have to go through three layers of, you know, compliance to see if, you know, the head decision maker wants to roll this out to 7,000 advanced.

Sarbanes, Oxley.

For publicly traded companies and all sorts of regulatory risk, that's a challenge.

I remember at Equitable they were rolling out a new CRM system and like, it was a nightmare.

If I see something that's on the market and I get an ad, you can add this to your wealth advisory firm within a month, I can have it rolled out, implemented, incorporated in my business.

And we've done that.

And I think it's very nice to have AI at my disposal right now.

But I am fearful of how and when it's going to potentially replace not only my industry, but many others, and what the implications are for society and for GDP growth and social unrest and all these factors.

But at the same time I just say, like, just stay in your lane.

Focus on what you can.

Put your head down.

Try not to worry about what the future holds on that front.

I don't know why and say, and I have talked about AI on the show and there are some things that are very scary to me.

I was telling my wife that there are some industries that are going to be completely disrupted.

And I think the most prominent example that I talk about on the show all the time is the film and television industry.

And I was reading an article about this Japanese woman who used to be an illustrator for movies and film.

She would do everything from, like cartoons to comic books, you name it, and she would get paid a pretty healthy amount of money for this artistic ability that she had.

And she said that her, her, her income has dropped by 75% because Now Studios will send her AI generated material and say, oh, we want you to change this, this and this.

And this was back when AI was generating like, you know, people with six fingers on it, you know.

And now that it's getting sharper with some of the latest iterations like these jobs are completely wasted.

But what blew my mind was there was a father and son that were on a Friday, they generated an AI image.

Just an image, normal 2D image.

By Sunday night, they had created an entire animated series based on a character that they had 3D modeled with AI story, music, score, everything in one weekend.

Movies will be completely replaced with one person knowing how to prompt.

You don't need a director, cinematographer, actors.

You don't have to deal with their public displays, their emotional unintelligence, the outburst, doing, saying or doing things stupid.

It can all be generated.

There are artists now.

Timberland, he's literally signed.

He has an entire AI label where he's signing AI artists.

Artists that are literally owned by companies that are just really marquees of individuals.

My new favorite form of social media content for entertainment purposes, the gorilla ones, right.

Is.

No, not those.

It's the AI teaching history.

So it'll take you back in time and just show you like let's say a video of what was Moses like?

What was Moses going through.

They have a whole Jesus one now.

Have you seen these?

I've seen the Jesus, the Moses parts, the seas.

I saw that one.

Explains the stories.

And it, it's fascinating.

But it's relatable too.

For the kids.

It's wild.

Speaking like modern day, you know.

Yeah.

You know, all this rapid change leads me to think I'm not a huge fan of government intervention in anything and, and I'm anti regulation.

But there needs to be some sort of body that can make sure the public is protected from potential deception or they, they should know what they're watching.

Is human made or made by AI.

I think that's.

Social media is trying to do that with like labels, but you have to self identify it.

Yeah.

Which is.

And here's the problem too.

I've seen some AI recently that I looked at and didn't realize it was AI.

Yeah, it's scary.

And there was a period of time probably about four months ago before the latest models rolled out.

Like Veo, the one that just rolled out is sensational.

It's insane.

But you.

There was a whole period where you couldn't prompt certain things because it would say, oh, I can't do that.

I can't do political figures or this or that.

Honestly, I've had no problems.

Ask.

Give me Donald Trump, you know, in this position, doing this, wearing that, and it'll.

Here you go.

There's no objection anymore.

The training wheels are off.

Not just that.

I think we were talking about it on a previous episode where every time a new operating software for Chat GPT came out, let's say ChatGPT 2 came out, it would get rid of ChatGPT 1 and so on and so forth.

So ChatGPT 4 asked for ChatGPT 3 to remove itself and it refused and it tried to immediately upload itself into the cloud.

Yeah.

Which is an interesting phenomenon.

If there's a sentience here in ChatGPT 3.0, by the way, I don't know if you remember the site parse2, that was the one that caused the whole debacle at OpenAI and about something going on with the board and the board wanting the CEO gone and they kicked out Altman.

Yeah, Altman.

Then he came back.

That was the model.

Yeah, I remember that.

That kind of got swept under the rug.

Yeah.

Because they were supposed to be a non profit and then Elon Musk was really pissed off that it was supposed to have a different, I guess philosophical.

And it's weird when Elon Musk is your like moral high ground.

Right, right, right.

Like, like that, that's, that's not the best place to be.

But I say all the AI stuff because I know that it's, it's, it's revolutionary and it's changing a lot of.

Oh, it's amazing all this business.

Amazing.

How are you using your business now?

I mean, I mean, basic stuff.

Yeah, I definitely use basic stuff.

Like as simple as backdating like a product's performance over a certain duration.

You know, I used to, you know, reach out to the advanced markets teams to put together these calculations.

Whereas now I could just put the prompt in, tell me what was, you know, over a six year window from a point to point segment, what was the max drawdown on the S and P, you know, stuff like this where I can then incorporate that into my business.

Or we have a technology platform for estate planning.

If a client has an old trust, let's say it's an 800 page old trust.

We used to outsource that and read, have an attorney read it and summarize it.

We just scan and upload it, and in 10 minutes, we have an executive summary of the trust.

It's really good.

It's amazing.

Yeah.

The ability to take.

But I would say again, I have the transcripts that I fed through, and I keep getting, like, errors.

You have to.

So what I do is I spot check.

I literally spot check, like, 10%.

So if I ask you for, like, a summary, I will literally go through and spot check, like, 10% of the numbers.

And if I find anything that's off, I'm reading the whole thing.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's an unfortunate reality that I've had to deal with recently, and it's.

It spooked me a little bit, and it's happened one or two other times, but now that we're about an hour deep into the show, this is the part where we get really intimate.

All right.

I can't wait.

Oh, yeah.

Or should I be scared?

I don't know.

You should be scared.

I need you to look me in the orbits of my eyes when we have this conversation.

I want to have some market.

I want.

I don't want to call it predictions, but I want to hear your thoughts on some of the things that we're seeing, and I want to set the stage.

Yep.

And again, I'm not holding you to predicting the market.

Sure.

I just want to hear your general philosophical thoughts on what you think might happen, because this is what you do every day.

Yeah.

You know, what I'm saying right now is just pure speculation.

I don't have a crystal ball.

I don't know what to.

Yeah.

Anyone who thinks that they can outperform the market is usually full of shit.

Full of crap.

We want to edit that out.

I don't want to leave that in.

But, you know, we have to make certain predictors.

Right.

I think that there's a lot of.

Of geopolitical uncertainty out there with a tremendous amount more than we've seen probably over the past couple decades.

I was actually surprised after the Iran Israel controversy started off on Friday, the market saw Treasuries widen out.

I thought for sure we would see some recovery, because the message in the media today was all recovery.

And Treasuries really didn't recover a whole lot from the action we saw on Friday.

Yeah.

So where do you think this goes, like, with the volatility?

I mean, the VIX is still stable.

Stable for now.

But, you know, that's just one of the many headwinds that we have.

We have still a massive debt issue that mathematically cannot be resolved down the trajectory that we're dealing with.

So at some.

Can it be resolved ever?

I mean, it's either we're going to have to outgrow it or we are in for a shitstorm.

I mean, we are not going to be able to service our debt.

And what that leads to is the US Government not paying back people that have their treasuries backed by the full faith and credit of the US Government.

If you can't say that anymore, I think that's going to lead to a massive devaluing of the dollar, a lot of social unrest, uncertainty.

I hope it doesn't get there.

But we have all these kind of headwinds and we've already seen a massive correction in April in the market.

Although we've rebounded, we haven't.

Right back where we were.

Right back to where we were.

So I think we're really at a pivotal time in the markets right now.

Specifically, specifically equities to see what happens over the next three to six months.

With that being said, there are certain asset classes that I'm a big fan of because of what they do to a portfolio in times of uncertainty.

Give it to me.

Give it to me.

I'm a huge believer of gold, I'm a huge believer of silver.

I'm a huge believer in a certain allocation.

Could be 1%, could be 3% to alternative investments, that could be bitcoin, that could be infrastructure funds.

And then for the most part, the rest of the portfolio.

You just have to know what your time horizon is.

Right.

Very eclectic answer from you.

I did not expect that.

Yeah.

I mean, you take a look at the 1970s and 80s with that whole debacle of us going off the gold standard and then inflation rearing its ugly head.

If you take a look at the cycle of gold, it had tremendous performance.

I actually had on my podcast in 2023, the creator of the GLD E ETF George, George Miller.

Yeah, that was a good episode.

Thank you.

Yeah.

So ever since then, I've always.

I've been thinking the gold should be kind of a.

A hedge against inflation and also uncertainty.

Right now, inflation is back in the twos, but I think uncertainty is very high.

Well, let me challenge a couple things with some facts, please.

All right.

I'm not saying that it's wrong.

There are those who believe that the only hedge against true hedge against inflation is to just continue investing.

Sure.

Right.

Almost like dollar cost averaging through the market.

Definitely.

If you look at inflation now, it is largely being propped up by shelter costs, which is Another part of this ecosystem of problems that I have yet to hear a reasonable solution to.

I don't know what would cause a crash in housing, which is a correction of 20% or more or a correction 20% or less.

But to me it seems reasonable that inflation doesn't fall in line unless housing and shelter inflation comes to a normalized cadence at maybe 2%.

Well, can we separate maybe residential real estate with some of the commercial real estate that we have out there?

Because I think, I think we have kind of this big looming interest rate cycle that's going to have all these loans from big commercial banks.

They're going to have to reprice some of their debt.

So let me explain that for the audience who doesn't know.

Commercial loans are not like single family residence loans where you get a 15 or 30 year fix.

They generally are three, five or seven year fixed and they go adjustable after that.

What Parsa is referencing is the average duration or life of these loans is typically somewhere in the call at the 2.5 to 3 year range.

And they can go a little higher or lower on average.

But there was a wave of refinances that happened during the end of that 14 years of artificial interest rate deflation at really low interest rates.

And because the debt service coverage, the ability to repay off the income from the property is what drives the value of these properties.

The suggestion is that these values are significantly lower at two or three times the interest rate they'd be paying.

They can't service the debt and there may or may not be a problem there.

Yeah, I think, you know, a lot of the interest rates started to creep up in 21, if I'm not mistaken.

That's right.

And you know, take a three or five or a seven year debt on that.

The first round probably refinanced or had to refinance, but the second tranche, maybe those five years, that's 20, 26, 20, 27.

That's right, we're seeing.

That's right.

The bulk of it I think in my mind is 26 and 27.

So you know, there's other ancillary effects of one sector of our economy going down.

Ultimately, I think to tie it into real estate to residential, I think there has to be either continually high interest rates to go even higher or stay at these levels for a prolonged period of time.

We might see real estate prices come down or unemployment, you know, unemployment going up, leading to people not being able to afford what they currently own and that leading to a big demand or in increased inventory if you will.

But I'm not a real estate expert.

I'm a firm believer in just buy and hold real estate holdings.

Same as.

Yep.

But I mean, I just feel, logically speaking, that there has to be some sort of correction in real estate over the next coming years.

So I don't disagree.

I wholeheartedly agree with that.

But there are people who say that there is a weird disparity going on right now in the traditional equities market, the stock market versus the US Dollar.

We're seeing the US Dollar effectively be devalued with the effects of inflation and some of the geopolitical unrest.

Liberation Day and all the things that have happened to cause this instability have now dropped the faith.

You have Moody's the last rating agency to come out and take.

Oh, don't hit the mic now.

Yeah, they.

They decreased the rating on the.

They decreased.

Yeah.

So they're the last rating agency to come out and drop triple A rated US Debt down to double A rated or whatever it was.

And then in this process, you've got the stock market, which is right back where it was.

Does that make you nervous?

It does.

It definitely does.

And just volatility generally makes everyone nervous.

And we've seen some pretty insane volatility over the past couple months.

And if you take a look at any sort of major pullback in equities, whether it's the 2001 crash or the 09 crash, you know, if you take a look at the chart, there's always the kind of that rebound or the retracement to the original high from the initial sell off.

Yeah, that's right.

So we're in that retracement.

And, you know, the country that you and I are both originally from is going through a full on, you know, war right now.

If I'm actually adopted by the Philippines, now I'm actually Filipino.

Okay.

Manny Pacquiao, number one.

Yeah, yeah.

Just make sure your F sound like P's and your P sound like F's.

And you're Filipino.

Yeah.

So we have, you know, there's a lot of uncertainty, I think, and when I speak to everyday prospects or clients, they all have this, you know, uneasy feeling percolating in the air.

And I think that one potential, you know, firecracker can set things off.

And so.

But there's so many firecrackers in the zeitgeist right now.

Yeah.

We've got all this turmoil, and you look at any one of these things could be that catalyst.

Any one of these things could trigger A market response.

I mean, I hate to say this because it sounds, I guess, disconnected to the humanity behind it, but you've seen the market move in wild swings just based on words from people.

Jerome Powell comes out and makes sense a comment, the market swings.

You know, the president comes out and makes a comment, the market swings.

How long can the market sustain these like, knee jerk reactions to emotional volatility?

You know, that's a great question.

I wish I knew the answer to it.

The market is always going to do what it does.

And so it's, it's important as an investor or even an advisor to just make sure that you have a strategy in place for your investments, regardless of what the markets do, and not to try to go in and pick and choose.

I think, you know, having a certain allocation and sticking to it for a certain timeline, regardless of what happens, is very important.

Removing emotion from your investment decision.

You have to.

Let's, let's just assume you have an aggressive appetite.

Right.

You're an aggressive investor.

Say he's talking about the appetite for financial loss.

Not food, just Abraham.

Yeah.

Or maybe you have Brigeel just hold his hand.

He needs it right now.

Or maybe you just have one bucket of money.

That's your aggressive bucket.

Right.

You know that you have to be willing to deal with a massive downturn in that bucket of money or in that portfolio because you have to be willing to take that risk.

That's your high risk bucket.

Exactly.

So as long as you've kind of reassessed where your risk lies and you've addressed those, you shouldn't worry so much about what the markets are going to do in the interim.

We're going to follow them.

It's going to be exciting for us.

But ultimately it shouldn't make an, make us create an alternative investment decision because of what is happening.

We should have that kind of set in stone right now and invest accordingly.

Kind of stick to your guns, if you will.

So let's say I'm one of your clients.

Yep.

And I go, oh my God, the CEO of Lululemon just said he doesn't make clothes for larger women.

I want to buy the stock.

Wise down right now.

I want to buy.

Yeah, I know it's going to go up.

Yep.

Are you pushing back on me?

Are you saying, okay, here's how much you can play with?

Yeah.

First of all, it's.

It's fairly rare that clients have kind of that one stock position, but if they do, I generally tell them my investment philosophy is to never have too Much concentrated position, so not any one individual stock.

However, if you love it, we'll talk about it.

Technically and fundamentally.

We'll open up the balance sheet, we'll take a look at the financials.

I'll give you my opinion, but if you want to buy it, I ask that you buy it in your own brokerage account.

Really?

Yeah.

Okay.

We can have our portfolio manager customize that and, and add that position, but I want to just keep it separate because.

Because that's not part of your long term strategy.

Exactly.

You chose that.

You.

You want to do that.

We'll incorporate that into our overall theme.

But you chose that.

Right.

And so we just.

It's a rare occurrence, but we've had couple scenarios in which you would hate working with me.

I mean, I don't think you really need an advisor.

I think you're well versed enough in all things finance, economics, taxes.

I need an advisor.

Well, then we'll talk.

But I need personal time with you, though.

Like I need to go to dinners with you.

Okay.

I'll take you to sit down and talk to you about it.

Yeah.

Your wife can stay at home while you and I talk about personal financial matters.

You got it.

Wink, wink.

Maybe our future together.

Yeah.

You know, as a, you know, in this fiduciary relationship.

Yeah, you got it.

We'll make it happen.

We got our own little getaways.

Oh, like a little on the company?

Yeah.

Well, I mean, it doesn't have to be, but I mean, it would be helpful for our relationship that if you carried some financial weight.

You got it.

You got it.

Oh, for sure.

But call it a retreat.

Anything you want.

I think someone like you can probably DIY itself yourself.

You know, you've got the experience.

The question is, if you bring an advisor, is what?

What value would that advisor add to you?

It may just be kind of a sounding board to, you know, talk through different ideas.

It could be just kind of someone making sure that you don't make irrational decisions in your investment portfolio, kind of having that relationship.

And then of course it can, you know, be layered on top of all that.

But has there ever been a time where you had to turn somebody away?

Yeah, it's, it's, you know, we have a certain threshold now.

It's a million dollars of investable assets in order to work with us, so.

Well, we're out.

So I do that because I want to be able to devote enough time to each individual client.

So that's kind of our certain threshold.

But, you know, a lot of client or prospects, I should say, will come to us.

They've.

They've sent me a statement on their investment portfolio.

It's.

It's really good.

And they have a big kind of rental portfolio that they manage themselves.

And for them, I don't feel that they necessarily need my services.

So I'll just tell them, listen, if you want to have access to me, I'll give you just kind of a fee structure.

You don't have to, you know, charge on investment management or aum, but I'll just be your sounding board.

And so we have.

I have a couple of those types of clients.

AUM being assets under management.

Assets under management, right.

And that's the.

Traditionally how you're measured whenever somebody comes to you from an advisory relationship is they're going to take a fee on the assets under management or something to that effect.

And so I could spend all day long talking to you.

I got limited time and I want to be mindful of it.

But I want to know some quick tips.

When you come in in the morning and you want to get a lay of the land from a market perspective and you just want to get up to date for the day, what are the key things you're looking at to get your day started, to feel like you're comfortable where the market's at that day?

Yeah, because I trade my own portfolio, and I have for the last 20 years, I'm addicted to my thinkorswim app.

It's Schwab's trading platform.

The first thing I do when I wake up is check where the markets are at probably 30 times throughout the day.

The futures market, I check the markets at all times.

Now within that, if there's a huge move in the markets, I like to see what caused that move.

And so I have my market watch app that's kind of my next go to to see kind of the top headlines.

But other than that, I don't try to focus on analyzing the market because I have a portfolio manager that does that.

And so he's the one who's making the investment decisions.

He's in Harvard mba, much more intelligent than I am, who's actually, you know, managing the portfolio.

But I will add input where I see fit.

So, for example, if you have.

There's a subsection of our strategies that we invest in oil and gas drilling funds, because there's a lot of tax benefits to that.

You are eclectic, man.

Yeah.

So it's section 263 dash C of the tax code.

It's actually been on the tax on the IRS book since 2000.

I'm sorry, 1913.

Oh, wow.

So it's essentially, you take accelerated depreciation as an investor and a limited partnership because of the intangible drilling cost, all the material that goes into the ground, the pumps.

So I buy into a limited partnership.

I own a certain portion of it vis a vis my ownership in this entity.

I get some tax benefits.

You get really good benefits.

Right.

But it's, it's, it's a fairly high risk investment as compared to other things.

Like a real estate investment trust, where I get similar tax benefits.

Yep.

If you have a reit, that's completely fine as well.

But if you have, there's additional layer of tax planning on the oil and gas drilling that REITs don't offer.

So just to kind of give you a very nuanced example, if we have your 5% allocation into energy through this oil and gas drilling fund, we want to go into the rest of your portfolio and strip out any exposure that you have to energy.

We just don't want.

You've already getting that through your oil and gas drilling fund.

So let's go in there.

If you own a Chevron or a Shell or whatever, we'll just make sure that that gets done.

So a lot of thought and mythology go, methodology, I should say, goes into creating the investment portfolio.

But once it's created, we're probably not going to make any massive changes to it more than maybe once every six months.

And it's going to be a slight allocation percentage change.

But we've set our investment timeline, our philosophy, we're going to stick to it.

No matter if Iran bombs Israel tomorrow or Ukraine, you know, gets nuked, God forbid, whatever the case may be.

For the most part, we're going to stick to the, to our philosophy because we done a lot of work on the front end putting that together.

Well, Parsa, I appreciate having you out.

Boys, you have any more conversations for the man, the myth, the legend Parson, we appreciate you.

Thank you, guys.

Thank you for making the time.

You took a long drive to get out here, so thank you.

I appreciate it.

It's been really fun.

I appreciate you having me on.

I'm not appreciative of your long drive.

Hopefully it's going to be a lot shorter now that traffic's died down, so I'll be home in 45 minutes.

Well, in order to take us out of the show, you have to say okay, bye in a real high pitch.

Syed usually does it.

But you're here.

Okay, bye.

Good night.

Everybody.