Scale Up On Your Own Terms with Taylor Welch – EP 92

Interview with Taylor Welch

Scale Up On Your Own Terms with Taylor Welch

It’s not often you get the chance to speak to a man who dreamed of being a church pastor but instead became a real estate investing mogul.

It’s why I’m excited to talk to Taylor Welch, internationally acclaimed business consultant and entrepreneur. Taylor has advised and serviced over 50,000 businesses worldwide in the last five years and currently sits as CEO of several multi-8-figure companies.

One of the things that I love the most about Taylor is that even amid adversity, he never compromised his mindset of learning and surrounding himself with people smarter than him. Using that mindset, he scaled his first business, Traffic & Funnels, from zero to tens of millions in just five years.

No wonder he built a name for himself in hundreds of industries and is nearing three-quarters of a billion in client revenue.

He’s now pulling back the curtain on how other businesses and individuals can achieve the same level of success. In this episode, we go over his journey from wanting to be a pastor to making millions in real estate, the importance of mindset for creating abundance in every aspect of life, his thoughts on the future of crypto, and so much more.

Featured on This Episode: Taylor Welch

✅ What he does: Taylor Welch is a business consultant, entrepreneur, and co-founder and Chairman of Traffic and Funnels, a digital marketing consultancy that helps entrepreneurs build online digital marketing systems and shows them how to scale their businesses to seven figures a year. Taylor has worked with over 50,000 businesses worldwide in the last five years and currently sits as CEO of several multi-8-figure companies. He’s also the co-author of The Consultant Next Door: The Modern-Day Consulting Playbook for Getting Clients & Getting Paid, which distils hundreds of hours of powerful coaching and marketing frameworks into powerful and actionable lessons that entrepreneurs can apply.

💬 Words of wisdom:  “The only limit is you and your thinking.” – Taylor Welch

🔎 Where to find Taylor Welch: Facebook | Twitter | Instagram | LinkedIn

Key Takeaways with Taylor Welch

• How Taylor’s wife inspired him to go the entrepreneur route.
• Learn how Taylor developed his winning skill set while also having a day job.
• Taylor’s start in property management and how it propelled him to a successful career in online marketing.
• The best advice he ever got.
• To have abundance, focus on providing value to others.
• How he and his partner developed Traffic & Funnels into the monster of a company it is today.
• How you view the world will dictate the success you’ll have. Change your thinking to change your circumstances.
• How the 2008 crisis led Taylor to think more strategically about his finances.
• Take control of your income, so you don’t rely on a failing financial system.
• Is it worth it getting into crypto? Hear what Taylor has to say about this.

Taylor Welch – Shift Your Money Mindset from Scarcity to Abundance

Taylor Welch Tweetables

“People stay stuck because they can't make decisions outside of the scope of their current circumstances, which makes it perpetual. They just spend and spend and spend.” – Taylor Welch Click To Tweet “If you can't control your money, there are very few other things in life you'll be able to control. It starts with your resources.” – Taylor Welch Click To Tweet

Resources

• Taylorawelch.com
• Taylor Welch on Twitter | Instagram | Facebook
• Traffic and Funnels
• Taylor Welch’s Passive Income Empire Workshop (Free!)
• Erik Van Horn
• Kent Clothier Sr
• REI Nation (formerly Memphis Invest)
• John Carlton
• HubSpot
• Allstate Insurance Company
• Patrick Lencioni
• Front Row Dads
• IFM Restoration
• Todd Herman
• Amy Porterfield
• Michael Saylor
• Peter Schiff

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Read the Full Transcript with Taylor Welch

Justin Donald: Hey, Taylor. Thanks for joining the show. So glad to have you on.

 

Taylor Welch: Thank you for having me. I’m thrilled to be here.

 

Justin Donald: Yeah. This is going to be a lot of fun. I think you and I share a lot of mutual friends and a good friend in Erik Van Horn. And Erik has just raved about you and he’s like, “You guys are on the same page. You have to know each other. You have to just talk about what you do.” And so, I’ve had a lot of fun getting to know you and learning about all the cool stuff you’re doing in the world of entrepreneurship and investing. And I just want to say hats off, man. Congrats on all the success you’ve had and I’m excited for you to share some of your stories with our listeners today.

 

Taylor Welch: Man, thank you. Thank you. I’m excited to get to know your world even more. Erik raves about you as well. Funny. He’s like, “You got to talk to this guy.” So, it’s like, “Sign me up. Here I am.”

 

Justin Donald: I love it. So, let’s go back. When did you figure out that you were going to become an entrepreneur? Did you know this early on or is it something that you figured out through like the pain of corporate America or just maybe working for someone else, that it wasn’t a good situation? Give me the scoop.

 

Taylor Welch: Yeah. So, my wife, who was my fiancée at the time, the first time that I ever thought, “Oh, maybe I don’t have to work for a boss,” we were like about to get married. It was like a week before we got married and she just decided that she was going to take off for a week. And I was like, “What do you mean you’re going to take off for a week?” She’s like, “I’m just not going to work. I’m not going to take clients,” so she owned a salon. And that was the first time I was like, “Man, I don’t know if I’m just like dumb or I’ve been living like under a rock but like how can you take off for a week and survive?” Like, I had no idea that that world existed. And to the point where I think in hindsight sometimes that I’m jealous of people who you hear the stories of like, “Man, I started my first business when I was six and selling lemonade,” and like I just didn’t have that. Like, I didn’t really know what entrepreneurship even was. My whole life I had one goal and I wanted to be in the ministry and I wanted to be a pastor, which is fine, but I got that wish and then promptly decided I no longer wanted to work at a church because you don’t get paid. And it’s like I got to figure something else out. I transitioned from that into real estate and from real estate mixed with just the exposure to Lindsay, who’s my wife like working for her own salon and owning the business.

 

And it’s like seeing that day in and day out, I was like, “Man, I think that I could develop a skill set and I could go on to do my own thing.” And so, I did that. And one of the cool things about what I did is like I actually learned marketing and did it for my employer. And so, I tell people today, the first time I got my own client, I stayed at the day job because I kind of treat it as like two different incomes and one income I would sort of invest with. And the other income I would use to pay our bills. I see people today like they quit their jobs so quickly and then they’re left in a position of struggle and pressure. And so, that was my story. I worked for 14 months after figuring out the entrepreneur side. Let’s use that to bankroll investment opportunities and courses and things like that.

 

Justin Donald: Yeah. That’s very similar to the way that I did it because I could have cut the cord but I didn’t because I wanted a smoother transition. And it’s funny, different people like in that moment that was the best, that was the smartest for me but at the same time, I figured out really fast once I had my time back. So, I actually wonder, should I have just left sooner because of how quickly I was able to figure it out once I was in control of my time? But to me, the way that actually got me to feel like I could do it was easing out of it, feeling like I could invest with these dollars, but I could cover my bills with the day job. Or at that point in time was like a separate business, but it was under the banner of someone else’s business so it wasn’t fully mine. It was like partially mine. So, that’s interesting. And it’s also cool hearing your story like, “Hey, I want to be a pastor.” And what I’ve learned is there are so many ways that we can impact people, inspire people, teach people, build authentic, genuine, strong relationships outside of the parameters of the box of church, right? And so, I love that you’re able to do that in this world of entrepreneurship and really where you’ve kind of specialized in this world of online marketing. Before we get to that, though, before we get to the fact that you’re a founder and CEO of five multi-eight-figure companies and how quickly you were able to scale those, I mean, your resume is incredible.

 

Before we get there, though, you made the leap first to real estate. Walk me through what that look like and how that scaled and then maybe the transition there. I love transitions because they’re like defining moments.

 

Taylor Welch: 100%. It was totally random. I was looking for a place to go because I didn’t want to work full-time at the church. I wanted to be involved in church as a volunteer. One of my friends was working at a property management company. It was a turnkey real estate company in Memphis. You might be familiar with the Clothiers. It was Kent Clothier Senior. So, this dude is like ancient. He comes from old grocer worlds and he gave me a job, and I had never done real estate before in my life, had no idea what was going on. I worked for a guy named Nate in property management. And it’s funny because I felt so cool that I was working in real estate and people would ask, “What are you doing?” I was like, “I’m in real estate now,” but I was really in property management, which is slightly different than real estate. It’s like it’s not really real estate. It’s more of the cleanup side, the management side of real estate. But I learned how important it was. Nothing works without management, nothing. It’s the engine that makes everything profitable. And I inherited the Head of Maintenance within a couple of months in the property management firm in Memphis Invest at the time. I think they have a different name now. What we were doing, managing 4,500, 5,500 properties.

 

And so, it was crazy. And you had to go from having no idea what real estate is to then like really the bottom or the underbelly of the real estate empire. Single-family housing in Memphis, Tennessee, it’s not the most, you know, it’s not a beautiful market. We’re talking about Memphis versus like blue-collar cash-on-cash is good. And one of the owners whose name is Chris one day was just like, “We need somebody who can help us with the newsletter.” At the time, the company wasn’t doing a lot of marketing. Everything was mostly partnerships and JVs and things of that nature. And unbeknownst to him, I started learning marketing because my wife wanted more clients and I was like, “I think I can figure this out.” So, I picked up a couple of courses by John Carlton. He is a famous copywriter and I started learning and I was sending direct mail, Justin, to random houses inside of the Memphis area and she was getting clients from them and I was like, “Oh my goodness. Like, this is amazing. Like, we will never worry about money again like I’m the greatest marketer of all time.” Little did I know I was getting lucky because I was taking templates and repurposing them. But anyways, I learned how to use HubSpot at Memphis Invest and I started running the newsletter for the company.

 

And so, I think one of the things about me and when you talk about the resume, but one of the things that I learned because of, to be honest, like an incredible mom and dad like I got lucky or blessed or whatever you want to call it, to have a father who trains me as I was growing up. My dad was the VP of Sales at Allstate, is he would drag me around to these stupid conferences. I was a kid and I’m like, “This is a boring thing.” I’ve never done anything this boring before listening to Patrick Lencioni as a 12-year-old. And I’m like, “What is this guy talking about? I don’t care about any of this.” And my dad would barter with me and he would feed me Chick-fil-A to get me to go to these things and we’d go play basketball afterwards. But, man, there was something about it when I came of age, as you would say, or like I got into the workforce. I had this thing about me where I was just like, “I’ll do it. I’ll become more valuable. Let me expand, let me expand, let me expand. Let me go over here. Let me go over there.” And Kent and Chris and Nate and all those guys, they recognize that and they just kept giving me more, you know? And as soon as they would give it a couple of months, I’d have myself worked out of the job with systems and people, and they would give me more.

 

A couple of months later, I’d work myself out and eventually it became like, I’ll never forget sitting down with Kent Senior. And I was like, “I don’t have to leave, I’m sorry, but like I’m making $35,000 a month on the side on weekends and I’m getting paid $40,000 here and there’s this $40,000 a year. I got to leave.” And he gave me some of the best advice ever of just like prioritizing the right things. This is a man who had done arguably tremendously well for himself financially and some of the regrets that he shared with me of just like participating in the lives of your children and being there for your spouse. It never left me. And I think even though we talked about it on our calls, it’s like, “Man, I want to be a good dad, I want to be a good husband.” But that was my transition path is like I learned marketing while at the firm and then I got into the marketing worlds and forgot all about real estate then to get back into real estate in 2019, several years later. And that’s kind of the transition story of my life from the ministry to real estate to marketing, was all within about an 18-month window, like really quick.

 

Justin Donald: Wow. You know, it’s interesting to kind of go bird’s eye view and look at the breadcrumbs that are left and this trail that you follow, right? It’s like this one decision and the trajectory that you had on is incredible. And by the way, we have so much in common, because when I first started in single-family homes, I started on kind of buying them and realized it takes a lot of money to buy a lot of them. And then I transitioned into maintenance and started a company to really be the maintenance arm of the largest institutional owners of single-family home rentals, which is a huge business, huge opportunity. And like you said, like, if you don’t have property management, it’s going to be a train wreck. And that maintenance component of it is an integral part. And so, that’s been huge for us where you don’t have the massive cash outlay that you would in acquiring the homes, but you can have the consistency and cash flow of having a ton of work. But it’s hard to scale management and maintenance for homes that are spread out across the United States. You know, in your case, it sounds good because at least they’re all over Memphis. But let’s just take Memphis. Memphis is huge. It’s not like one apartment complex. We have 500 units all in one spot. Even in the city of Memphis, logistically, it’s a nightmare to coordinate everything that needs to get done.

 

And so, for us, we built this proprietary software that really helped and we figured if we invested heavily on the tech side, we could transition and become a tech company instead of a service company, which was a really cool strategic play. And we raised our money from three ventures here in Austin, the largest Texas VC, based on being a tech company. So, that strategy was good.

 

Taylor Welch: What’s that called? How do we get on that?

 

Justin Donald: It’s IFM Restoration is the name of that company. And we’re all across the globe. And I think recently we’ve kind of moved most of our clients or 10,000 homes or more but I think we recently started lowering that number to like 1,000 homes but in the right markets where we already have staff established, that’s definitely a possibility. So, I mean, that space is booming but it’s work, right? Like, there is an aspect of really needing to build out the systems like I know that you’re good at because, otherwise, it’s total chaos, right? I love, though, that you’ve been able to transition and say, “Hey, alright, I’m going to help my wife scale her business and I want to make sure that I’m present in supporting her. I’m present for my kids.” You know, another shout out to Front Row Dads, a group that I’m part of that is about being really family men first and businessmen second and prioritizing the family. We’re actually heading to Nashville, your neck of the woods here for our event here in, what, two weeks? Two-and-a-half weeks. Three weeks.

 

Taylor Welch: Yeah. Yeah.

 

Justin Donald: So, that’ll be really fun. And I love, though, that you said, “Hey, let me prioritize this for my wife. Let me help scale her business. Let me figure this out.” And then from that, because of wanting to serve her, you figure out this niche of a market that you are able to tackle and grow your wealth and grow your influence to a level that you may never have been able to get to with maybe just the church or maybe just in real estate. I think that’s incredible because you are a who’s who in that space. And I’d love to hear you speak about that a little bit.

 

Taylor Welch: Yeah. Which part?

 

Justin Donald: Really like just the online space of kind of coming into your own. I mean, basically, you’ve advised and worked with, I believe, like 50,000 individual businesses on a pretty regular basis across the globe. So, I’d love to hear about some of that story and some of that evolution because you’ve got some monster companies now that you’re the founder or co-founder of.

 

Taylor Welch: 100%. One of the things that go back to what you’re saying and then I’ll hop into more of the service online space. I have a thread on my Twitter, which I just discovered Twitter, like maybe nine months ago, and I’m like it is the best thing in the world and it’s the worst thing in the world. And there’s not a lot of in-between. But I have a thread on that, that talks about some of the principles of focusing on service first because you’re right, it came from a place of wanting to serve my wife and then serve my company and then serve my clients. And when you’re focused on service, two things begin to grow exponentially just because of who you are. But the companies that we have now, believe it or not, like for the most part, they’re running without me. I have a couple of projects that I’m sort of prepping and trying to get flipped around for some items in the future. But Traffic and Funnels was the first one, and I started this with my business partner, Chris Evans, who’s also kind of a – you can call him maybe an OG in the online space. Some of the bigger names, Todd Herman, Amy Porterfield. He was responsible backend of their business for running their ads and their funnels and their setup.

 

And so, we connected when I was transitioning out of the real estate space because I was doing copywriting. I learned the copywriting stuff from my wife, Lindsay, and I was like, “This is so much fun.” It sounds like a scam, like when I say it this way but like I’m printing cash, like I’m literally creating money. As a copywriter, you create offers, you put them out to the market, and people send you money. It’s crazy. So, I was in this headspace of just like, man, I want to take as many clients as I can. And me and Chris teamed up because he was running the advertising. And TF blew up into a monster. Like, we didn’t really see it coming. I think last year or the year before, we did like 75,000 customers for that business. When you look at that, you’re 10X that and that’s the amount of leads you’re bringing in. So, it’s substantial like three-quarters of a million leads in a fiscal year. And then shortly after that, we got back into the real estate and shortly after that, we started the staffing company. And the thinking there was what does every company need is salespeople. They need copywriters. They need media buyers. So, there are these different tranches that organizations need and every organization needs it and they’re hard to find. Like, staffing salespeople is not easy. Finding the right salespeople is a tough thing to do. So, I kind of got tired of training salespeople.

 

And then what would happen, Justin, is these salespeople would get trained by me, and then they would be like, “I can go teach sales,” and they’d leave and start teaching sales. And it’s like the third or fourth time this happened. I was like, “I’m not doing this anymore.” You know, I’m an abundance thinker. I want to let people go that are called to other things but I was like, “It’s just so much work to develop these people and then they move on.” So, we created a training for salespeople. And so, now rather than training people from scratch, they buy training. And then if they want to work for us, we stack them for ourselves and we staff them for other businesses, the new salespeople. And so, last year that business did like 1.6 million leads, like leads from a customer standpoint is 35,000 customers, 10,000 clients, like just ridiculous numbers. They don’t make any sense but when you find something that’s really needed in the marketplace, it’s high value to your TAM or your addressable market. Really, the only limits on like that scale, the only limit is you, your thinking. And so, I think one of the things we figured out is like through exposure to people like yourself and different masterminds is you can hack your thinking by being around people who think bigger than you. And once you figure that, it’s game over. Like, you don’t have to go through 30 years to develop your own thinking. You can now all of a sudden like I spent time with Justin. Justin thinks bigger than I do, and through osmosis, I begin to replicate his thinking.

 

And I think that that’s like the secret of the universe right now, man. Like, imagine if we could go back to the 1800s and we can sit down and hang out with the Vanderbilts and Rockefeller. You could do that. There was no access, no way to do it. So, I think it’s funny today when people, sometimes people develop a stigma with like paying for masterminds and paying for proximity. I’m like, man, it’s one of the biggest gifts to our generation is the ability to pay money, which is cheap for experience, which is expensive. The trade is beautiful. And I figured that out and that’s like the rocket ship growth is from the proximity to the people that are better than I am at certain things. I don’t know if that makes sense, but it gets me excited talking about it.

 

Justin Donald: Oh, I love it. I mean, it’s awesome because I believe so much of the same thing. I mean, you’re spot on, Taylor, that like how do you take yourself, your education, your knowledge to the next level? Well, you surround yourself by the smartest people that you can find, and sometimes they reside in your network. Most of the time they don’t. So, if they’re in your network, be intentional and collect time with them. And the reality is most people you probably want to spend time with, they’re going to elevate your thinking, elevate your ability to create, produce. They are not in your network. You have to intentionally go outside of your comfort zone and find them by joining groups. And it’s like the Junto group is like the original mastermind, like the group that Ben Franklin and some of the greatest minds that ever lived like they were part of this small little mastermind get together. And masterminds have kind of grown since then into what you have and what I have. And I think it’s incredible. You know, I’d love to hear even more. I mean, I have a chapter dedicated in my book to peer group, to mentorship coaching, really the need to really grow and expand your mindset.

 

I’d love to hear more of your thoughts on this because I know that we’re in total alignment with the need to place people in our lives that get us out of our comfort zone, that think differently than us, that think bigger than us, that challenge us. And it’s funny because the way that I think today it feels really normal but had I not made the moves that I made the last ten years or 15 years or 20 years, my thinking would be in a totally different place. Like what’s normal today is only normal because of who I’ve spent time with over the last decade or two. And if it was other people that influenced it, maybe I wouldn’t have the conversations, I’m sure I wouldn’t have the level of conversations that I have today.

 

Taylor Welch: Yeah. Everything comes down to what I’ll call your frame. You can call it perspective. You can call it whatever you want. But it really is a lens or a frame through which you view the world. And an example sometimes, like if I’m speaking or talking and trying to explain it is like I’ll ask an audience like, “Who here feels like $50,000 is a lot of money?” Everyone raises their hands. A few people who know what we’re doing, they don’t raise their hands. But most of the audience is like, “$50,000 is a lot of money,” because the frame that they’re currently in is one of, to be honest, like limitation or they’re playing a little smaller. And then I’ll change the question and I’ll say, “Imagine that you are unable to work, you’re in a catastrophic accident, and $50,000 is the amount of money you have to last the rest of your life. Who here feels like $50,000 is a lot of money?” Nobody raises their hand. The frame changed, and therefore the answer changed. And life is just like that. Life is the same way. Like, depending on the frame you have, and frame comes from exposure, frame comes from people like everything, I tell people, “Everything starts in the mind.”

 

And it’s funny how majority of society does not want to believe that. They don’t want to accept it because if they accept it, that means that it’s not the president’s fault. It means it’s not capitalism’s fault. It means that all of the excuses and the things that we’ve used to incubate ourselves from responsibility no longer work. And the best part about what I get to do and no doubt like I already know this is the best part of what you get to do as well, like you probably enjoy this way more than the money, way more than anything else is unlocking someone’s frame, seeing their eyes change like, “Oh my goodness, you’re right. Like, I can do this.” And sometimes all it takes like everybody prioritizes the lesson, the knowledge, teach me the tactic, Justin, like show me how you’re doing this. But what it really is, is this the cup of coffee before the event even starts where one sentence said and it’s like, “Oh my God, it changes the frame for my entire life.” And the only way you can get that is through proximity. There’s an energy to it and that’s my favorite part of the game. It’s my favorite part of the game because it’s so simple and it’s so difficult. It’s both ends. You know what I mean?

 

Justin Donald: Totally. And it’s funny because I think that most people don’t even realize what they’re looking for. Like, they show up thinking they want one thing and they realize pretty quickly it’s something totally different, right? And with some people, it’s hard for them to mentally justify a big expense. Like, for me, I’ve invested in myself my whole life. I’ve spent, I mean, easily over $1,000,000. I had one coach that was $250,000 to coach with him for the year and my friends thought I was crazy. But that $250,000 investment netted me significantly more. I mean, it’s been an exponential return. And playing the big game, the long game, it’s easy to see that. Playing the short game, it’s like, wow. Like you could say 50,000 or 250,000 is a lot of money or it’s a little money but what’s the value? Like, what value do you get? What’s the return on that? If you can spend $50,000 and truly buy your time back, is that worth it? I think most people would say, “Yeah.” If you can spend $50,000 and make $2 million in a year or two, is that worth it?

 

And so, again, it’s changing the frame, as you said, but it’s being in a place where you eliminate the scarcity of holding on, where you feel like, “Oh, I can’t lose this money. I can’t let go of it. This is so much money,” versus like, “Hey, how do I use this wealth that I have to take things to the next level? How can I be a little more abundant and think, ‘Well, hey, I might lose this $50,000,’ but I’m going to learn some lessons along the way that are going to help me make much more than that in the future?” And really, that’s it. Because once you get to the point where it’s like, “Hey, money’s not finite. I can go make more if I need to, or I can connect with other people that make 50,000 a lot easier than I make 50,000 so I can learn their playbook, so I can copy it the rest of my life.” I mean, that’s the game-changer, right?

 

Taylor Welch: 100%. You’ve also got self-fulfilling prophecies in there. And this is something that I think people have to realize is if you make a decision based on $50,000 being a lot of money. $50,000, there’s always going to be a lot of money for you because you’re making decisions that are validating a frame. And sometimes the fastest way and I’m not advising and neither are you, we’re not advising to go buy a Ferrari just because you want to change your frame, but sometimes you have to realize, “Hold on a minute. The vantage point from which I’m making this decision is going to validate a vantage point that I no longer want to live in.” So, it’s hilarious. Like, people will get on the phone with our reps or whatever and they’re like, “Man, I’m only making $200,000 a year and I’m sick and tired of only making $200,000 a year.” They’re like, “Well, for proximity to us is 25K,” and they’re like, “Oh my God, I can’t afford 25K.” Well, you’re making a decision from a circumstance that you said you’re sick and tired of being stuck in. And so, your choices are validating the current reality perpetually forever.

 

And sometimes the fastest way to break through that is you get into a position that you want to be in and you say, “Would I make the decision on it if I was making a million, if I was making 1.5? 25K wouldn’t be as big of a deal.” Then you can behave your way into a certain frame, you can behave your way into feeling a certain way, and you can behave your way into circumstances. And so, self-fulfilling prophecy is a big deal here because people stay stuck because they can’t make decisions outside of the scope of their current circumstances, which makes it perpetual. They just spends and spends and spends.

 

Justin Donald: Yeah. And here’s something else. So, I love that frame. I love you discussing that self-perpetuating nature of being in scarcity and remaining in scarcity, something that I learned that was pretty valuable for me. You know, early on in my life, it was pretty easy to set the goals of like, “Hey, I want to earn this. I want to earn X dollars or achieve this much or save this much or invest this much.” And that is really easy when it’s kind of coming to you. What I have found is I started making these goals of like, how much could I give away? Could I give away more than I was earning in a year at certain points in my life? And I found that once I became good at giving money away, that’s when money lost its grip on me. I think at points in my life I was a slave to ego, a slave to achievement, a slave to earning or saving or investing a certain amount. And once I was able to get to a place of being willing to just part with that money, I’ve had much more abundance enter into my life because money lost the grip and that was huge for me.

 

Taylor Welch: That’s true. Validated.

 

Justin Donald: So, you’ve got a book coming out and this is super early on because we’re not quite at this space where you’re doing any sort of promotion for it and hopefully, you’re alright with me talking about it. But I love the – I mean, this is Good at Money, right? I mean, first of all, that’s a brilliant name. It’s very catchy. Everyone wants it. But I’d love to hear some of your thoughts on this. Like, what is this book about? Why is this important to you?

 

Taylor Welch: Love the question. There are two seasons, I think, of my life. And I was like we talked about earlier, I was blessed to have great family, great parents. We lived well. I don’t remember times in my childhood where we couldn’t afford something. We didn’t grow up with yachts or planes, but we took a couple of vacations a year and everything that I needed, I had. The first time I really remember struggling with money was in 2007, 2008 because my family went through a very difficult time due to the Great Recession. And my dad lost his job and I was just coming out of high school. Honestly, it was bad. Like, for the first time, I was like I have to go pick my mom up because they don’t have gas. That’s bad. When you compare and contrast from how I grew up, that was a really bad position. My mom was working at a Starbucks and she didn’t work the entirety of my childhood. She didn’t have to. My dad was able to take care of us. And I kind of learned the hard way that just because you grow up with something doesn’t mean you learn how to control it. And I had no control and I had no idea what was going on. I just knew that money was in my bank account. One month I was like about to get kicked out of my apartment for my roommate because I didn’t have money because I got laid off from shifts.

 

And so, it was really bad. Like it was a fight for me to figure out. All of a sudden, like I’m used to calling dad or my mom if I needed something and I can’t do that anymore. And so, when I got successful in the corporate world and real estate and marketing kicked off like you got to realize, I’m going from a position of not having that much to like multiple millions of dollars sitting in a bank. I have no idea what to do with this money. Our first tax bill was like I almost passed out. When you go from making like you make $150,000, $250,000, $350,000, and then just 18 months later, you have a seven-figure tax bill. It’s like, wow. That’s why we’re in real estate now, which I’m sure you talk about and teach inside of your stuff is like how to take care of your tax situation. But good money for me is the documentation of the lessons that I should have learned as a kid but didn’t learn until later on. And it’s just the most of humanity, most of society, when they are looking at can they afford something, where do they look? They look at their bank account, right? Do I have enough money? And it’s like no, no, no, it’s all wrong. Look at your plan. Don’t look at your account balances. Look at your plan. How do you set aside money for taxes? How do you become more valuable but not just valuable for the sake of value but actually negotiating that value for more money and negotiating raises?

 

What’s happening in the fiat system? What was the Federal Reserve even doing? Why are bonds flipping upside down? Like, there are some stuff where we get into the book where it’s like, let’s talk about what happens when the gold reserve stops and how that spiked inflation and really teaching people how to build a plan for their life, a plan for their money so that they are not on a hamster wheel, working, working, working, working, working forever. If you make above $200,000, $250,000 a year, reasonably, you should have enough control over your income so that the next ten years you’re able to kind of escape that madness if you want to. But people aren’t taught that because it doesn’t service the system. It doesn’t service the economy to do that. And so, I’m passionate about the topic simply because money is like that. It’s one of the top reasons for divorce. It’s probably the most emotional topic that people get stuck into is when they have a lot, life is good. When they don’t have a lot, life is bad. And it’s like I’ve watched enough people. Their identity changes when they get rich and then it changes again when they lose it all. And it’s like, whoa, whoa, whoa like money is in control of you right now. Like, you’re not in control of this. And I think having a daughter and like building a family, it’s like, man, I’m going to begin documenting the things that I know and the things that I have learned because I don’t want just my kids to get access to my brain and the material that I’ve developed. I want everyone to have this ability to teach their kids is such an important tenet in your life.

 

So, we can go on and on and on about this. But it’s one of my favorite projects right now because it’s simple while at the same time it can help you. It can help anybody build a good enough plan, they’re living their lifestyle the way they want, and they’re still preparing for the future in a way that is not stealing from them.

 

Justin Donald: Yeah. This is powerful. I mean, there’s so much that I want to extrapolate from what you just said. And the reality is true. Most people are not good at money. Why? Because most people rely on a system that doesn’t work. The system itself is broken. The system is obsolete. This whole idea of nest egg investing is obsolete. There’s such a small percentage of people that are actually going to build a nest egg in qualified plans using predominantly the stock market where they retire at a point in time that they have enough money, that they can just live off of that money until they die, dwindling it down or live off of just the interest that that lump sum produces. And most people don’t realize until they get there that that plan didn’t work and now, they’re out of time and out of luck.

 

Taylor Welch: They’re stuck. Yeah.

 

Justin Donald: And that’s not even to take into account like what if the stock market crashes right when you want to retire and your net worth is cut in half? And really the powers that are influencing the financial education in our country and all across the world are the institutions that want our money. There’s a conflict of interest and there’s a misalignment. And to me, I don’t like when other people make money even when I don’t make money. That does not feel good to me. You can find this in both the public and private markets but you can structure deals and investments where that’s not the case and you can find people that only make money when you make money, and there’s a total alignment. But I think you’ve got to be careful with what is the common education. And kind of rule of thumb for me is if everyone else is doing it from a financial standpoint, then I need to run the opposite direction because almost no one has it figured out, right?

 

Taylor Welch: That’s right. Yeah.

 

Justin Donald: So, I love this book. I’d love to know more of what you’re teaching because I know you talk definitely about asset protection. I know you talk about investing as well. So, part of it’s like, how do you make money? And then part of it’s like, how do you ensure that no one takes the wealth that you have built?

 

Taylor Welch: Yeah. And even into some of the nitty-gritty of like, how do you track your money? You know, like there’s this thing where it’s like when people start making good money, they just stop budgeting. Now, I don’t know about you but like when I think about budgeting, I think about like my plan for future money. It’s like, “How do I tell my money what to do? Like, let’s reverse the control here, and like I’m going to give the money in my accounts a job to do. And if it doesn’t do its job, then I’m going to hold it accountable to that.” And so, really not looking at tracking and budgeting and some of these things that are just kind of like negative connotations, not looking at them from a place of weakness or slavery but looking at them from a place of control and power. Just like the better your planning is, the more your money will do for you long term. We get a little bit into some of the asset protection. Not a lot, though. I think some of it but just because like you need to have a will and testament or you need to have a trust. Some of the softwares and the technology that I’m able to use today just to set my estate up, we get into a little bit of that but I think this will turn into a series over time.

 

Like, the first one is Good at Money. The second one might be Good at Deals. What does the deal structure look like? Good at real estate, good at marketing, good at business acquisition. Like, there are so many different topics that you can’t put everything into one book. But I think this is kind of the central cornerstone piece because if you can’t control your money, there’s very few other things in life you’re going to be able to control. It kind of starts with your resources.

 

Justin Donald: Yeah. I love that. I love the framework there. There’s just so many directions that we could go. But overall, it’s smart to have a financial plan and to track it and to do so with regularity. Even if your plan is just, “What does it cost me to live on a monthly basis, and how much then do I need to make to cover that? And then how much do I want to like what does the ideal lifestyle look like on a monthly basis?” Generally, it’s a lot easier to get to this ideal lifestyle than people think. And when you break it down, at least on a monthly basis, right? And when you break it down, it’s like, “Oh, well, that’s actually reasonable. That’s achievable,” and it gives confidence to being able to move towards it. But I think at a bare minimum, at least knowing what it costs you to live like survival income, at least what it costs you to live your current lifestyle, and then maybe where you want to go. What would be an inspiring life where you would feel excited, fulfilled? What does that look like? What are you doing and what does it cost for you to be doing that?

 

Taylor Welch: 100%. Yep.

 

Justin Donald: So, this said, I think another interesting topic that we could get into is cryptocurrency and Bitcoin and reserve currencies and sovereign currencies and where the value of the dollar is going to go. Do you have any thoughts on that that you want to weigh into?

 

Taylor Welch: Yes, absolutely. I discovered cryptocurrency and, again, you could be like, “Man, Taylor lives under a rock.” I really kind of do. Like, I focus and I go blinders and I just zone in. But when I discovered that just the idea of Bitcoin like because everybody’s talked about it for years but it’s kind of like, ah, whatever, nobody cares. When I actually got into the technology, it didn’t stop there. I went into Ethereum and Solana, and NFTs and became like obsessed with it. I fell in love with the idea of a store of value that cannot be manipulated by one organization for power. That’s kind of what kicked me off on the topic of the book as well. And I think it’s just fascinating what we’re seeing right now. It’s like, man, everything really, even though the USD is kind of like the current leader, everything still sort of revolves back to the Eurodollar and the token system. And I feel like Bitcoin is a significant threat to the current powers that be because it’s unhackable unless you have quantum computing like you can’t change the code. I don’t know if you’re invested in Bitcoin or Ethereum or any of those cryptos or not.

 

Justin Donald: For me, no.

 

Taylor Welch: Dude, I don’t see any way that Bitcoin is not worth several hundred thousand dollars a coin over the next couple of years just because the supply is fixed and declining and it’s based on adoption. So, you see people talk about value investing, but what is probably the new tier of this world is actually adoption investing. So, the Internet, the adoption curve of the Internet, the adoption curve of Bitcoin, the adoption curve of the Ethereum blockchain, like there are so many people who are hopping onto this technology. As somebody said, “Well, Taylor, what about regulation? Like, what if the Federal Reserve just creates their own version of the coin and tells you that you’ve got to trade your Bitcoin into that thing? It’s like they would have to force us to use it because the value is not even coming from the value of the technology. It’s coming from the adoption of the technology.” And I just don’t think that it’s necessarily in the realm of possibility at this point for anything to shut down Bitcoin or Ethereum or Solana or any of the cryptocurrencies because there are so many people that are now financially intertwined with its upside. Once it hits Washington and the donors hop on it, it ain’t going away, man. Like, it is never going away.

 

And so, we have this weird fiscal battle like war between like kind of the older elite who are financially tied to inflation and being a profit center and then the newer kind of version of those people who are tied to their investment into future technology. It’s going to be really interesting and I don’t know that there’s a clear winner right now. I know that there is a clear loser, which is fiat currency. I don’t think that we’re going to see enough deflation over the next couple of years to fix anything, but I don’t know. That begins to get speculative. I just can see that if you reverse the indexes and you reverse the stock market, you put everything in a denomination of like a more sophisticated or a more salable asset, everything’s crashing. So, while we’re touting like, man, the S&P is higher than it’s ever been, it’s not actually coming from value. It’s coming from the crashing of the fiat system. And I think that’s concerning.

 

Justin Donald: Yeah. It’s coming from $10 trillion being pumped into our financial system that’s making all assets inflate in price. You know, this is artificial. This is not based on true value creation. And I think that’s really important. And you had said, “I don’t know who the winners and losers are going to be.” I can tell you that nations that don’t adopt it are going to lose. And so, people say all the time, well, it’s a direct competition to our sovereign currency. Yeah, it is. And if laws are put in place to prohibit people from having it, there are always going to be workarounds. It’s impossible to shut Bitcoin down because no one’s ever going to get 50% control. So, there’s always going to be a workaround. But the nations that adopt it and say, “Hey, we’re going to embrace this because it’s the inevitable,” they’re really going to win. And I hope that governments recognize that instead of being fearful and like, “Hey, we need to fight this,” embrace it and say, “Hey, let’s be a first adopter that we can benefit also.” So, there can be a win-win long term.

 

Taylor Welch: Yeah. You just look at even like I think it’s MicroStrategy’s…

 

Justin Donald: Yeah. Michael Saylor.

 

Taylor Welch: Saylor. Yeah. They’re putting I think he just put leverage on new bitcoin purchases which is like, okay, man, some of the smartest people right now, not only are they long bitcoin, but they’re now going long levered bitcoin, which is when it’s like, whoa, like there’s a new level of commitment. They’re just upping the ante even further. And it’s going to be fascinating to watch their balance sheets just like balloon-out based on the new adoption of Bitcoin. I’ve been buying a pretty substantial amount since the crash end of last year. And one of the things that I’m fascinated with right now is the utility of something like Ethereum because the merger is coming up and they’re moving to the proof of work or no proof of stake. And it’s just like, man, the whole Internet is going to be built on this thing in the next couple of years. It’s at this point, it’s not even possible to prohibit it unless you want to have no, like, Internet with where we’re headed, you know?

 

Justin Donald: Yeah, there’s no doubt. I mean, a lot of the investments I’m doing right now are companies that are really building on these blockchains. They’re building their protocols off of either Bitcoin’s blockchain or Ethereum’s blockchain for a decentralized way to authenticate whatever it is, a smart contract, payment, whatever it is. And so, people who don’t get on board will get left behind because this is the wave of the future. I mean, I still think the vast majority of cryptocurrencies aren’t going to make it but cryptocurrency as a whole, there are always going to be these new innovations and they’re going to be unbelievable technologies that revolutionizing. But blockchain in itself is revolutionary. Bitcoin in itself is revolutionary. And so, it’s going to be interesting to see. And I’ve shared this before and I’ll continue sharing it. There is probably little risk to owning Bitcoin, especially if you’re looking at it as like a hedge against a devaluing dollar. Like, people buy gold for that same reason. Why are you buying gold? Well, if you’re thinking about it the right way, you’re not buying gold to make money. You’re buying gold to not lose money, right? It’s insurance.

 

And so, Bitcoin, so even if you just put like, and again this is not financial advice, but what I share all the time is like why not have 0.5% or 1% or 5% in some of these cryptos or specifically in Bitcoin? Maybe it’s just Bitcoin and Ethereum, whatever that split looks like because it’s probably not going to zero. But if you are just sitting in cash, it’s becoming worth less. So, it’s interesting to think about like just trying to take some sort of an opportunity for the upshot.

 

Taylor Welch: But here’s the thing. Like, even as a secondary opinion on this, what is the point of gold? There is no point. In the 19… When was it? Like, 1918 or whatever, when we took the first step towards like coming off the gold standard, literally, you had to turn in your gold or your gold receipts or you go to jail. Like, the United States took your gold and forced you to sell it to them at a predetermined price according to the US dollar. It’s almost a mind switch of things that are physical can be taken from you and things that are digital cannot. And so, you have the majority of the population who’s like, “Well, it’s a picture of a monkey. It’s digital. You don’t really own it. It’s not a real thing.” It’s like anything that is a tangibility can be taken from you. And I feel like we’re approaching this place like Peter Schiff wants to talk about gold stuff. He’s like do one thing good with your gold. What are you going to do? You’re like trying to go buy Taco Bell with it? How easy is it to convert? Like, he may be talking about ETFs and whatnot, but there’s really no utility in gold except for it’s difficult to produce. That’s it. So, when people are like, “Well, bitcoin has no real value,” it’s like, what are you talking about? Like nothing has any real value. You know, the backing for fiat currency is planes and military and agreements. The backing for gold is you can only harvest 2% of extra supply. We’ve got this technology that has like vast and far-reaching utility. It just almost doesn’t even make sense to buy gold anymore. Put all of that into something that is like digital. That’s my thing.

 

Justin Donald: Yeah. And it’s interesting, a lot of people talk about the ETFs of gold without recognizing that that means there’s counterparty risk. So, like if you’re going to do gold and silver, you should own it. You should physically own it and have it in your possession or have it in another jurisdiction overseas to the amount that you’re legally allowed to without disclosing or disclose if it’s at that level. But sometimes it’s nice to have. I mean, I think it’s good to have assets in other countries and outside of the borders of your own country. And I think it’s really smart to just diversify into different things. So, I’m not opposed to gold as a hedge to a dollar. I’m very fine having gold knowing that the utility maybe isn’t to do something. It’s just to protect against my dollar that would sit in my bank account and go become 10% less valuable. Right?

 

Taylor Welch: Don’t do it then. Well, here’s the thing, though. Let me ask you this. Really, if things hit the fan in a bad way and you’ve got gold stuck in a locker somewhere, what are you going to do? How are you going to get it? Like, you can execute trades on it and whatever but, to me, the utility of gold is expiring and maybe there’s still some life in it. But when I look at like your gold maximalists, I’m just like, “Yo, man, you’re headed in the wrong direction.” Like the world is digitizing everywhere like the NFT technology and the blockchain. And to me, it seems like there’s one holdout and it’s kind of like these tangible, yeah, we’re not talking about gasoline or commodities or plastic. Like, I’d rather own a bunch of plastic right now or windows than gold because at least with windows, there’s such a need for them that I could do something. Gold is worthless. Like, there’s no point in having gold unless you’re going to, like, make a hammer and like go out and harvest your crops. To me, I’m the opposite of that where the things required for gold to be valuable are civilization. And if we lose that, we lose the utility.

 

Justin Donald: Yeah. I think the danger is being a maximalist on any single thing because so many opportunities and the goal is to have a piece of each of them or as many of them as you can get your hands on, right? Hey, this has been incredible, Taylor. I really appreciate your time. Where can our audience learn more about you and all the cool stuff that you’re up to?

 

Taylor Welch: So, easiest way is I’m on Twitter, I’m active on Twitter. They can go to the site, Taylorawelch.com. The team, we actually put together a training specifically for your crew. This is a free gift. I did an event because the book that’s coming out in a couple of months, I had to create a bunch of graphics and doodles and concepts and I just said, “I’ve got to do this anyway so I’m going to sell an event, have people hop on it, just hear me talk about money and fiat and things like that.” So, we sold $1,500 tickets. We did this event. We talked about inflation, fiat currency, investing principles that they’re probably very aligned with yours. And so, we’ve put together something for your audience. It removes the payment, it’s totally free. It’s just a gift. People can go through that. Taylorawelch.com/Lifestyle. And then anything on social media, hit me with the message. I love engaging with people. Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, it’s all the same, taylorawelch. And then we got to have you on our podcast as well and drop some knowledge bombs.

 

Justin Donald: Well, I’m excited. Thank you so much for your generosity and for your expertise and just sharing all the cool stuff that you’re up to. I want to leave this episode the way I leave each one, and that’s this. What’s the one step you can take today towards financial freedom and towards a life that’s truly on your terms, not by default, but by design? We’ll catch you next week.