Seth: Hey everybody, how's it going? This is Seth and Jaren with the REtipster podcast. And today we're interviewing Kathy Fettke. Kathy is the host of the Real Wealth Show, which was one of the first podcasts on iTunes. It's got over 1,800 episodes in 5 million all-time downloads. So, she's a pretty well-known voice in the real estate podcast world. Kathy is the co-founder of the Real Estate Investor Network and the bestselling author of “Retire Rich With Rentals." And she's a frequent guest expert for major media outlets like CNN, CNBC, Fox News, Bloomberg, NBR. Kathy specializes in teaching people how to build multimillion-dollar real estate portfolios through creative finance and planning. So, with that, Kathy, welcome to the show. How are you doing?

Kathy Fettke: Thank you. I am doing well. And I’m looking forward to this interview.

Seth: Yeah, we'll see where it goes. As I just mentioned in the intro, you're somebody who has clearly done a lot and accomplished many things in the real estate world. Maybe you can tell us how it all start for you. Take us back in time and tell us the story of what circumstances led you to pursue this kind of career path for yourself.

Kathy Fettke: Sure. I think most people want to invest in real estate. Most people know wealthy people who do or have heard of them. And often if you talk to people about if they won the lottery, what would be the first thing they do and often it's, buy real estate. I think Rich and I thought we had to be wealthy like that, to win the lottery in order to buy real estate. And that is probably the biggest mistake most people make is thinking they need to have a bunch of money.

For me, it wasn't until I learned that you could leverage it, highly leverage the purchase of real estate. And in some cases, when I started, even to be able to put no money down on the real estate. Now that takes some skill, and it's not like you can just go to some seller and say, “Hey, I want to buy your house for nothing down." But it actually does happen.

So, once you learn and understand what other people have done and the creative strategies people use to acquire real estate and how some of the best investors in the world don't ever use any of their own money, then it opens up a whole new world. And that was the case for me back in the early 2000s.

My husband was really, really at the top of his game as a motivational speaker. He'd written a book called “Extreme Success." He’s traveling the world, traveling in the U.S. on the top media networks, talking about how to create extreme success. And basically, he's an extreme athlete when he was in the ESPN games and stuff. So, it was kind of relating to pushing through your fear to create the life you want.

Well, he had one of the biggest scares right at the time that he was launching this book, the scare that he hadn't really written about. He was talking about doing scary things like asking me to marry him. Like that's a scary thing. Like calling a client and asking them for their business. That's scary.

But what was something he never really thought about was illness. And he had been a bodybuilder, had done a lot of the tanning in tanning beds. And he didn't think that that might cause melanoma. He's a redhead.

Seth: Oh man.

Kathy Fettke: I don't know. To me, it makes sense, but it didn't to him. So anyway, he ended up having melanoma during this book tour when he was talking about extreme success and overcoming fear. For him, I will say here we are in the midst of a health crisis. And I do just want to share this one point, which has nothing to do with real estate but also has everything to do with real estate, is the doctor at the hospital looked at him and said, “You have melanoma, it looks like it's spread. This probably means you have three to six months to live." That's a horrible diagnosis. And this is a lot of things that people, the kind of fear people are experiencing today.

Well, we have a friend who was kind of a natural healer and I begged Rich to go meet with him. Rich is like not into that, but he did it for me. And being a motivational speaker, he was able to hear this part of the message, which was this healer looked at him and said, “How much have you believed you're going to live?” And Rich was like, “Well, 90%, I'm healthy. I'm a healthy man. But there is this 10% of me that isn't so sure because when I go online, I hear about so many people who have died of melanoma." And the healer looked at him and said, “Well, that 10% is killing you."

And as a motivational speaker, Rich was like, “Well, I know that you have to be a hundred percent all in." So, he just shifted to “No, I'm going to win this 100%." And he's 10 years later. No, gosh, what am I talking about? 17 years later, he's as healthy as can be, and he did beat it. It is the doubt that can take us down, even if it's a little bit. And that does apply to real estate too.

So, at the same time he had that awareness, I had this awareness that well, for him to get better, I need to take over the finances. I have no idea how to do that. Now at the time I was a stay at home mom, two little kids, we just bought a house way too big for us, way too expensive. How was I going to take on the $4,000 a month mortgage when I just had no idea how I was going to take over the finances? But I had the same epiphany. Like I've got to 100% believe I can. And that was the beginning of the journey.

Seth: Yeah. That's a really interesting concept there. Right? Sometimes I wonder how much of my fate do I actually have control over? What does the power of positive thinking really have to do with it? Like, can I direct my future? Is it about the decisions I make, or did things just sort of happen to me? And I just have to deal with the aftermath? And it's kind of a tough thing to wrestle with right now because you better believe there's all kinds of stuff that's out of our control, but not everything. So, where is the line? Do you think his positive outlook was really what made the difference or was it the kind of treatment he did or what do you think went into that?

Kathy Fettke: Well, I can tell you, my sister got the same diagnosis a year and a half ago for stage four lung cancer. The doctor said the same thing. Actually, he said she probably had three months. She is a woman of such strong faith, such strong faith. She said, “No, I refuse. I refuse to believe this." And she would get up every morning and sing and dance, be happy and picture her life healthy. And the doctors are just stunned.

Well, you've also got Wim Hof. Definitely check out Wim Hof. He believes that he can control even viruses in his body through his thoughts and his breathing. And he's proven it over and over again and done things that seem impossible. So, I do think we have more power than we realize. But with that said, when it came to real estate and I thought, or not, it wasn't even real estate. It was more like, how am I going to do what I want, which is to continue to be a stay-at-home mom and raise these children. I wasn't ready to put them in daycare. But I also knew that I needed to take over the money. So that that stress wouldn't be on Rich, which is something he didn't need at the time.

And I was lucky enough that I had been in broadcasting. I'd worked in the newsrooms in San Francisco, pretty much all of them. And I still had this really horrible radio show in San Francisco that no one listened to, but it was something that kind of kept me feeling like I was a part of the business when I had left the news business to raise my family.

But I had this show and it was just kind of all over the place. It's whatever I felt like talking about. But all of a sudden, I just had this epiphany of instead of trying to just go out and get a job, why don't I do what I already do and leverage this show? And this is something I love to do. But how can I make money at it?

When we do make that 100% commitment to make things work, that's when you start to ask questions like, “Well, how could I make this work? What other people do who have great radio shows that make money and mine wasn't?” Well, great advertising, right? You need a big following. And that big following will attract advertising dollars. So how do I get a big following? That was one thing. And how do I get advertisers?

So, I just started calling sponsors, people that were sponsoring other shows and it was mortgage brokers at the time because it was 2003. And mortgage broker, oh man. That was every ad on the radio, a mortgage broker trying to sell loans because there was so much money in loans. And so, I just went and started calling mortgage broker after mortgage broker saying, “Hey, would you like to sponsor my show? I heard you were on so and so show." And they were like, “No, we're already spending our advertising dollars."

It was just one after the other of no’s. And again, instead of giving up, it was like, “Well, what are these people doing that's right? How can I make this next person say yes? How do I have the next phone call I make be an absolute 100% ‘Yes’?” Okay. Maybe it has to stop being about me. Hey, I need this money. I was like, you don't want to advertise on my show.

It was like, “Wait, what can I do for them that they could not refuse it?” And so, the next call I made was, “Hey, how would you like to be a star in San Francisco? I can make you a star on my show because I have a following and we can really position you in a way that makes you a complete expert. How does that sound?” He was like, “Yeah, yes. So when can we meet?”

We met that day and I suddenly had a very big sponsor on my show that was a mortgage broker. And the luck part of it, because oftentimes when we do take steps forward, luck does show up. And so, the luck was, this guy was not just any mortgage broker. He was a real estate investor. The mortgages that he was giving people were helping these people build wealth.

And so, I got to come home to my husband and said, “Oh my gosh, honey I've completely sold out. And now I have a mortgage show." And he was like, “Well, what if you just profiled his clients instead of talking about rates and boring things like other people are doing? Talk to his clients and find out what they're doing." And that's how the Real Wealth Show started. We just started interviewing people that were using bank money, which was super cheap at the time and easy to get, to just build these massive portfolios.

And I was interviewing people under the age of 30, some 25 years old that were already retired because they started at like 18 years old, never went to college, but were already retired and very, very wealthy. So that was inspiring. And my show grew. And of course, I was inspired and I learned from these people. That's how I got the bug.

Seth: Yeah. I bet that's a great way to make a lot of connections with people that you can partner with and find deals from. And I imagine you've probably met and talked to a lot of big people through that, right?

Kathy Fettke: Oh, my gosh. Well, what ended up happening is suddenly I got an audience because everybody wants to know how to build wealth and everybody wants to understand real estate. And it seems so overwhelming and complicated if you don't know much about it, which was the case for me.

And all of a sudden, I would ask, well, what if you have bad credit? Oh, well we brought a credit repair guy. I was like, it turns out you can increase your credit score, it's not that hard. Okay. Well, what if you don't have a down payment? Oh, well, there's these ways to do it. And you could borrow from the down payment from your family. I mean there's so many ways. You just gotta start asking “How." How are other people doing it? And that's again, what I did.

There weren’t a lot of people doing that at the time. Today, you can get so much information. Because I was able to interview so many people I did start to learn and I got to interview Robert Kiyosaki because I was on a main San Francisco radio station. So, he was willing to talk to me.

And at the time he explained to me what he was doing. And you're right. These kinds of connections were mind-blowing to me because nobody was talking about this kind of thing. And by then it was like 2005, maybe 2004. I think it was 2005 because 2004 is when real estate doubled in value in a lot of places. And that's when the bubble really blew up.

And so, that's when Kiyosaki said, “Yeah, the crowds are going to follow that and think just because 2004 value's doubled, it's going to happen again and again and again." And he goes, it doesn't work out that way. He said, these loans are going to reset in 2007. That's a known fact. And when they reset, people aren't going to be able to pay them. That's a known fact. They didn't qualify for these payments. They're not going to be able to pay them when they're due.

And so, for people who understood what was going on and were paying attention, there was no surprise that there would be a crash in 2008. It was very much planned. And I was lucky enough to have Kiyosaki there to teach me that and to show me what he was doing, which was sell in the areas that were bubble markets, take all that profit and use that profit to buy in places like Texas, where there wasn't a bubble at the time, but there was job growth and there was population growth. And I could buy a new home for $140,000 in the path of progress where all these freeways and new jobs were going and rent them for $1,500 a month.

Well, that made sense. He said he sold all of his California holdings. He was buying in Texas. And I'm like, if it's good enough for Kiyosaki, it's good enough for me. So Rich and I got on a plane, I ended up becoming a mortgage broker because our show was so successful. So many people wanted loans that…

Seth: Yeah, why not? Right?

Kathy Fettke: Yeah. Get your license and take these deals. I can't keep up with the business. I'm like, yay, the sponsorship worked and I became a mortgage broker. You could get loans for no money down unlimited back then. So, Rich and I jumped on a plane and went to Dallas and bought five properties in that one weekend.

Jaren: That's awesome. Well, I want to jump in there and ask a question. I want to circle back a little bit to what you said about your husband, with fighting cancer and dealing with doubt. My background, like my version of Christianity that I subscribe to, is charismatic Christianity. We talk a lot about the power of thinking and we talk about faith. We talk about the importance of not having any doubt in certain life circumstances when you're facing a really big trial, like I need for healing, et cetera, et cetera.

But something that is an area that is a little bit fuzzy for me or cloudy for me and I feel like it's helpful in the realm of success and worth exploring on the podcast with you, Kathy, is how do you get to that point when you're faced with literally a death sentence and you're faced with “10% of me is doubting this,” how do you go all in? How do you make that shift in your heart and in your mind? Because that's really the key to success, right? It’s a lot of it. Or at least having a lot of faith really starts working in your life. But it's hard to do.

Kathy Fettke: When it's our time, it's our time. That's a fact. So, I do believe that there are some things we can't control, but our time is our time. It could be in your own home, sitting on your couch. Like in San Francisco, when the PG&E blew up, some pipes and people were sitting on their couches and their homes blew up. I mean, you can't control a lot of things. And that's where just faith and afterlife and God's plan, I think, comes in. But I can tell you with my sister, having just gone through this with her stage four lung cancer, and she is cancer-free right now.

Seth: That's amazing.

Kathy Fettke: The doctor, it's amazing. It’s amazing.

Seth: How was what happened? I feel like that isn't supposed to happen. Right?

Kathy Fettke: Exactly. When I was with her and there were so many stages of this where I just... Miraculously, I was in town when she got the diagnosis. She needed to get to Mexico where she got this kind of free health treatment. And I happened to be going to San Diego and they would be able to pick her. Anyway, though, I was with her through all of it. And I had to make decisions with her because once I got hurt, we were down in San Diego together, she was afraid to leave.

And for three months it was just me and her without her husband, without her family. It was just us making very difficult decisions together. But my experience and I did grow up Christian and I will be the first to admit that I also lost faith for many years. And it was this time period, that when I was with her and I saw her demand that this leave her body. And that she literally just lived in the space of “Yes, whatever God's plan is for me is what I choose. But also, I choose life and I choose an abundant life. And this is what I will focus on." And the joy and the love.

I mean, she would go in and just hug the doctors and the nurses and tell them how beautiful they were. And even in her deepest pain, when she was going through surgeries and in just horrible pain, she was singing and the doctors were just blown away by her faith. And so, a lot of times, at least our attitude is a choice that we have no matter what trial or tribulation we're going through.

Jaren: Yeah. So, let me re-ask the question in the context of success. A lot of our listeners are in the beginning of their real estate journey and a lot of them may have never done a direct mail campaign, or they may have heard of something, but they are scared beyond repair because they're just paralyzed. Like what if this isn't true? I see a lot of people saying it is, but all the head trash that goes on? Do you have any practical principles or practices that might be helpful for somebody who is getting in their own way of their success because of the limiting beliefs that they have?

Kathy Fettke: You just nailed it. It is doubt. It's limiting beliefs. It's whatever, internally, is blocking your success. And having grown up in a Christian faith, there is a block to wealth. There is a sentiment that it is not of God. That you can't have both. And that may be one block. There may be like, for me, when I really started to imagine myself wealthy, I had this horrible fear that I would become a target and people would try to take it from me. Or I'd be a magnet and people would just like me because I had money and the things that they wanted.

So, whatever, they are blocks that are subconscious. That's exactly what they are. They will stop it from happening. So until you can recognize what the block is and really work through that, that's like even with my husband's book, “Extreme Success," when he's talking about dealing with fear, the way he would say to deal with it is get to know that fear, become friends with that fear, get to know what it's really afraid of.

Because at the end of the day, it's just trying to protect you. It's just trying to love you. It may be a voice of a parent who is just trying to protect you from talking to strangers. So, you're afraid to talk to strangers today. Whatever it was in your formative years in your first eight years of life are your formative years. It's the beliefs we hold. When you go on Facebook and you see, “Wow, there is nothing that's going to change this person's mind on Facebook." They are committed to their belief, regardless of what evidence, maybe otherwise of that belief. It's because of those first eight formative years, I think.

So, as we get older, we need to question that. And just question the fear. Like well, what is it I'm afraid of? Like I said, I'm calling all these mortgage brokers and they're just like, “No, no, no, we're not interested." But that would have been enough to stop me normally. But instead it was just like, “What am I doing wrong? What's not working? Oh, it's about me. I need to make this about them."

So, the more we educate ourselves, and this is really important. Oftentimes fear comes from lack of knowledge. So, the more we educate, the less power fear has. So, I had learned from my husband, actually, who is a great salesperson, to never give up. That's what sales is. You just keep going because you'll find a “Yes” eventually.

And of course, part of sales is making sure that the person buying understands the benefits of what you're selling. That's education on sales. So, the more you educate more people that listen to this show and raise their consciousness. The wealth consciousness does not come naturally for a lot of people because it's been squashed by religion.

And so, again, the fear would be discovering what it is. And really, as soon as that fear shows up, it's going, “What? What is this? What am I afraid of?” And that will open up the doors to healing that fear.

When I look at the biblical passages that basically say, “You can't have both the love of money and follow God,” it's really the love of money. It is without a doubt. It's sexy. Money can bring out more of what is in your heart. So, if you have an eating problem, you're going to eat more when you have more money. Maybe you're going to eat more, maybe, stuff that's not good for you. If you have a drinking problem and you have more money, you might drink more. So, you could see there's more temptation with money. And that may be what that is saying.

But if you have decided beforehand that this money is going to be put to good use, you're going to make a difference in the world. Well, that's very different. I met somebody who is extremely successful in real estate, who decided very early on, you know what? I can live on—I think it was—$200,000. I can treat my family very well on $200,000, but he's making millions. So that was a commitment. Yes, $200,000. That's mine. Anything more? I'm going to be serving the world with that. He's doing that. Feeding children and giving to charities and starting charities.

So, again, exploring it and then getting down to what matters most, removing those blocks, when you can really visualize what a perfect life looks like. Oftentimes when you visualize that perfect life, that's when those little fears creep up. And that's the moment that we can start addressing them and becoming friends with them, with those fears and researching more.

That's one of the things in Rich’s book, “Extreme Success” is that it's an opportunity to research that fear that's trying to protect you. So, if you have a spouse, maybe you don't have the fear, but your spouse does, or your business partner. Then instead of being like, “Oh, you're so scared of everything," find out what you are afraid of. Oh gosh, it looks like you need more information. This is great. This is protecting both of us. Let's get more information on this.

Jaren: So, it's really interesting because I was just having a conversation with a friend just within the last 24 hours about the importance of clarity. And I literally said, I think I'm going to be making clarity a core value of mine because clarity solves a lot of problems. Like if you really, really, really know what you want out of life, or you really like, you're just honest with yourself and you get clear as to what's holding you back and what you really want, you can then know the target. It just demystifies the whole thing when you do the soul-searching required to know exactly where you want to go and who you want to be.

Kathy Fettke: That's it! You've got to get clarity on that. Such crystal-clear clarity, but not on the details of it because it will show itself in different ways. For example, I wanted to do TV. I was in TV news for my career life and I wanted to have my own TV show. And it just kept not working. I mean, I gave it my all. I gave it my 100%. I was meeting with directors in Hollywood on a regular basis. And I was almost there. Like I would be second in line, but not first. And I was just like, “What's going wrong? I'm really giving it my all."

And then one day I finally, I was like, you know what? Once again, there were two of us in front of the directors down from thousands of people, it's me and her and she got it. And I was like, okay, that's it. I'm done. This is a sign.

I went outside and had a cup of tea and prayed. I was like, just give me a sign. Is it time to give up? Because I'm tired. And I just look at my teacup and it says, “Stop banging your head against the wall, thinking it's a door." And I was like, “Oh, great, great. I'm done. This is great. Thank you for the sign."

And then I just went inside and I don't know if it was on my cell phone because I don't even know if we had cell phones. I think we did. Anyway, I got some message. I think it was in an email. I got an email from a brand-new radio station in San Francisco looking for hosts. And it had never occurred to me to do radio. And I was like, “Oh, well maybe this is the door." I call them. I do the pitch that I had given to so many directors for the past several years. The guy's like, “Oh my gosh. Amazing, great. Yeah, let's do it."

So, all that prep work, I was ready to use and deploy in a matter of moments and it worked. So, all that time spent banging my head against the wall was not ill-spent. I had my whole pitch ready, my whole plan ready. What I needed to let go of is that “how” and “it's got to be TV!” Well, it turns out radio could reach more people because only about a year later, iTunes came out with podcasts. I already had a radio show. My husband was like, “Oh, let's just put it on this new thing called podcasts." And I was one of the first podcasters and had listeners in 27 countries within a week.

Seth: That’s a huge claim to fame. I remember back in those early days of podcasts, it was a totally different world than it is today. There just weren't that many voices and to be one of those big prominent people, that's a big deal.

Kathy Fettke: It was amazing. And so, this whole pattern, like, have the vision, but let go of kind of the “How." Just keep going and realize, “Oh, well maybe it's supposed to be this way." So as soon as Rich loads this radio show that I never imagined, I just wanted to broadcast. I had to let go of the TV side. It ended up being radio, which then was a perfect fit for podcasts.

All of a sudden, I had listeners worldwide and the U.S. market crashed. Well, a lot of my U.S. listeners didn't have any more money to invest. They lost it. But I had an international show all of a sudden, like literally all of a sudden. And I got a call from this woman in Australia who said, “Oh, we heard that real estate's on sale in the U.S. and our Australian dollars has doubled in value. We'd like to buy some real estate." And I had Australians coming over by the busload to buy real estate.

So, again, it's just having that clear vision, but also allowing it to evolve the way it's supposed to and just not giving up. Not giving up.

Seth: It's kind of a random fact but I remember hearing, I don't know if this is still the case, but years ago there were castles you could buy in France that were less expensive than like a two-bedroom apartment in Australia. It was crazy how expensive properties were there.

Kathy Fettke: I think that’s true today still. Castles are really hard to maintain.

Seth: That makes sense. Who wants a castle, right? I don't think that I need that garbage in my life.

Jaren: I'd take one.

Seth: So, to kind of switch gears a little bit. We were sort of hitting earlier about your conversation with Robert Kiyosaki and how—he’s sort of known for doing this—like foreseeing market cycles. I've heard him tweeting about investing in gold and silver and how it's going to go through the roof and sure enough, it's going through the roof already.

And I'm just curious, where do you think we were in the real estate cycle in like, late 2019? Like where was it? And then where is it now? All this weirdness going on? I guess what I'm getting at is like, say if I was going out to buy a rental property, something right now. Is this a good time to do that? Or should we wait like three to six months and then try to do it? What are your thoughts on that?

Kathy Fettke: It's a multimillion-dollar question, right? It's like where are we in the cycle? I can tell you my experiences from the past. And I can tell you what I think. There's never been a time where it was more difficult to predict because things are so manipulated. But also, at the same time, not so difficult.

So, one of the things that I learned from Kiyosaki and from many of the guests I had on the show, on the Real Wealth Show that had been there before me, that's what's so great about podcasts and these kinds of interviews. It is like, “Oh, we get to learn from people who've already done this." I was brand new to real estate at the time. I didn't know anything, but Robert Kiyosaki did. And all of the other guests I had on.

So basically, what he taught me at the time is that the smart money sees things that nobody else can see. And the smart money buys early and gets out in time. Usually the rest of the world comes in after the smart money is left. For example, we know right before the Great Depression, stocks just kept going up, kept going up. That's when the masses came in and bought, when the smart money sold to them.

When real estate values get to a peak, the smart money knows, “time to sell.” They get out and all the dummies or the people that are uneducated come in and bite the peak. And then things crash. And then they sell at the bottom. And then the smart money comes in and buys when it's cheap, values go up and it just repeats. It repeats, it repeats.

So, 80%, maybe 90%, buy at the wrong time and can't see what the smart money can see. Like I said, in 2005, I've got Robert Kiyosaki telling me loans are going to adjust in 2007 and people aren't going to be able to make those payments. Make total sense to me. Why could the rest of the world not see that? I mean, he's got a big voice. A lot of people just weren't listening. They didn't want to hear it.

So really being able to see what others can't see. Well, what does that mean? It means that we've got to be able to look at trends and ask a lot of questions and not follow mainstream media for sure. I was in mainstream media for much of my career, my early career. And I can assure you that we had no idea what we were reporting on.

I remember at one time there were thousands of pages of the new Hillary Clinton healthcare bill. Thousands of pages released. And I had 20 minutes to read it and report on it. I didn't know anything about it. It's very difficult. Mainstream media is challenging because you got to be first out with the story, but it's breaking news. So, you don't know.

And so, you've got to just be careful, just like, don't pay attention.

And so often now when I go on interviews, like, oh my gosh, they're asking me the craziest questions so I just have to just change it to give them the answer, regardless of the question they asked. Anyway, you've got to really look at the fundamentals.

And let's just get back to real estate because stocks, I don't even want to try to figure that out. But with real estate at least, we need to know that there's demand, right? That there's people who want and need real estate and then that they can afford it.

So, then the most important metrics to look at are “Where are the jobs going? Where are the people going that are getting hired? Where's the population growth? Where's the job growth?”

And the third factor that helps make it a profitable venture is affordability. If you can get a property that hasn't gone up in value yet you've got an upside. If you're buying, it's already at the peak, where's it going to go from there? If the average person can't afford it, how are they going to afford it later?

People from California have seen values go up consistently. So, they think that that is just the way it always goes. But if you really look at it, that is not the way it goes. If you bought a California property in 2006, it took you at least 10 years to get back to the value that you’ve paid. In cyclical markets, prices go way up and then they come crashing down. And yes, in places like California, you buy when it's low and you will make a ton of money, but don't buy up here. That's when everybody buys, and unless you're going to hold it forever, it's going to be an expensive proposition.

But if you can buy low and if you can get ahead of the crowds and see, “Oh, okay, this is where jobs are going. This is where the trends are. This is where the demographics are going and the average person can afford it.” That's going to go well for you.

And then if you add a fourth element in there, and that is where cities and governments are investing. Because if they're putting billions of dollars into an area, you're probably going to see that area in proven value.

For example, the reason he picked Dallas at the time in 2005, and the reason we followed him, because like I said, Texas was becoming a very friendly place to do business because during the 80s and the S&L crisis, Texas was far too dependent on oil and the banking system, they did junk bonds and crazy stuff. And it just trashed the Texas economy.

The politicians came in and said, “You know what? We’ve got to recover. We've got to have lots of job diversification. And so, we're going to make this the most attractive place in the world to do business." They gave all sorts of incentives and tax breaks to businesses willing to move. And it worked and businesses moved there. They're still moving there. People are moving there because of the tax incentives. And along with that, came new freeways, new buildings. So, if you can buy around all that activity, you're going to benefit from the increasing tides.

Seth: Yeah. That seems like one of the inherent challenges with looking at things like “What is the unemployment rate? And where's the job growth? And where's the population growth?” It’s that a lot of times when you're just looking at raw data like that, what you're looking at is historical information. This is what has already happened. This is not what's going to happen. It's like, what kind of things would you look at to say, okay, this is how I can sort of see the future. Hey, Amazon's going to build a huge plant right here, or a distribution center. That's kind of like a future-looking event, right?

Kathy Fettke: Yeah. Absolutely. Demographics would probably be a really important metric to look at. So, you've got Baby Boomers. We know that's a huge population. They are aging, they are retiring. They are going through another recession. What are they going to do? We see a massive movement of Baby Boomers to more affordable markets where they can sell their high-priced home, buy maybe even a bigger, nicer, newer home in an area that's fine. It may not be their dream place, but it's an area that's been revitalized.

And even Ohio. The little streets of Cleveland, Ohio are beautiful. Tree-lined streets with gorgeous homes. And they're hundred thousand-dollar homes. And Cleveland has become pretty cool. They've got really nice restaurants. If you went to Cleveland in the summer, you might not know that you're in Cleveland. It's a really nice place to live in.

If you own a home for a hundred thousand dollars in Cleveland, well, gosh, you can spend your winter somewhere else. You can afford to. You could go to Florida for the winter if you want to because life is cheap. And that's the way people are thinking. I'm going to maybe trade this expensive home, and this market—maybe it's overcrowded. Maybe I don't really like it as much as I used to. Maybe the amenities that I used to enjoy, I don't want to anymore because people have germs. I don't want to be around people right now. There are all kinds of things going on.

So, following up the demographics and realizing there are millions of Americans who are facing retirement are going through yet another recession right when they had built their nest egg back after 2008, bam, this hit. They're going to be downsizing. They're going to be going to cheaper areas that are also nice. So of course, Texas, Florida, Nevada. These are areas that have no state income tax, very attractive to that demographic.

Then you've got, now we already have a trend in place of working remotely and more people being able to live wherever they want. Wow, did that just get accelerated. Like our company's been a remote company for 10 years, so we already had the system down, but a lot of companies hadn't figured that out. They're still forcing people to live nearby and go to work. Why? You could do so much on your laptop with certain jobs.

In fact, and for us, we just hired an acquisition manager for apartments because we think that's going to be a really great opportunity over the next six months as rents go down and people who were expecting rents to go up didn't underwrite well. We think that there's going to be opportunity. So, we just hired an acquisition manager. Well, guess what? I live in California. I didn't have to just look an hour from me. I can look across the entire country because we're remote and I could find the best person. The person we hired lives in Vermont, across the country and in a remote little area in a fishing town, that's where he wants to live, it’s cheap. Great. That means we don't have to pay as much as I'd have to pay someone in California.

That trend has accelerated. It was already in motion. So, people are finding out, “Wow, I could live in Utah near a ski resort." We're building homes at Real Wealth. We do buy land and we retitle it and sell it or we build houses on it. We bought some land from a farmer outside of Bozeman, Montana. Seemed really like, why? But we kind of knew this trend was already happening because there's great fishing, great hiking, and some of the best skiing in the world right there. And we could build houses for $350,000 at really nice houses near all of those wonderful amenities. And Bozeman's a really cute town. It's a college town.

So, there are people who would love, already before coronavirus, and were like, I could probably do my New York city job in Bozeman. And so, we were already sold out before we even broke ground on these houses. Well now, oh my gosh. Now we have a waitlist for these homes in the middle of nowhere. It's amazing.

Seth: Wow. Crazy.

Jaren: That’s awesome. Well, hey, you mentioned realwealth.com. Tell us a little bit about what you guys do over there. What's the website all about? What do you guys do as a company? Because it sounds like you have your hands in a lot of different cookie jars when it comes to real estate.

Kathy Fettke: Yeah. And I don't recommend that. I think it's really important to focus, focus, focus on one thing and become really good at that and just do that for a while, until you've really succeeded at it and then do something else. Because real estate, there's a lot of shiny objects. There's a lot of opportunity. I would say that the mistake I made is trying to do too many different things.

Although at the end of the day, it really is one thing. It's mostly residential housing either for rent or for sale, retail. So, I guess I'm not so far out of my realm of understanding. The one thing I shouldn't have probably done is this wine village that we've invested in because it sounded so cool. That's been difficult because what I've learned is as sexy and exciting as something might seem, if it's too weird or too different, no one's going to finance it. The wine villages that exist are incredibly successful. It's tough finding a lender for that, especially today.

Seth: Where is that? Out of curiosity.

Kathy Fettke: It's in the Shasta area and it was like five years delayed because it's so different.

When starting out, just pick a lane, something that has been done over and over and over again. Just learn it from the experts like you're doing with land. Like there's experts you can learn from who can tell you exactly how to do it. If you're going to do rental property, there are people like me who have written books on it and can tell you exactly how to do it.

But if you're going to go into the hemp business, that's kind of new. So, you're going to be taking risks. If you're going to go into whatever the newest trend is, even Airbnb. Like we have some Airbnb’s, but we know it's more speculative because we know it's dependent on laws and certain things.

But if you go with the age-old, been done a million times theory, you can really learn and do that well and follow the program. Just like in mortgage. When I started on mortgages, it's like, “Oh, you mean all I have to do is this, this and this, and I'll be successful? Okay." And I did this and this and I was successful.

With Real Wealth, that first time I listened to Robert Kiyosaki, I went to Dallas, bought five homes. They immediately cash flow. I talked about it on the podcast and I had my phones ringing off the hook with people who wanted to do that too. At the time I was a mortgage broker. So, it was like, “Oh sure. I'll take you to Dallas. I'll help you use the same agent I used and I'll just do your loans." And that was the business model for me.

And I literally helped so many people sell their California overpriced property buy in the areas we were buying. They tripled, quadrupled, quintupled even their cash flow when they did that. Bought nicer homes in growing areas they've since tripled, if not quadrupled their equity, those homes have gone up so much in value because of where we bought and the path of progress. It was a huge success.

So that kind of created this new business model of, I'm going to help investors buy in areas that we think are really about to take off and that have these things in place. There's the job growth. There's the population growth. There's the affordability and the investment, the infrastructure development the city is doing. So, when we find these areas like little corners of Atlanta now that a lot of the film industry is moving to.

I live in the LA area. So, I know this personally that a lot of people have second homes in Atlanta because they're filming there, not here in California where it's impossible to do business. So, we found those little neighborhoods that are growing but still so cheap where you've got Californians going there and saying, “Well, this is super cheap, no big deal. I'll just rent this place while I'm filming."

Little areas in Florida. There are parts of Florida that are way overpriced and don't make sense, but there are little corners that haven't happened yet. Like St. Petersburg, it's next to Tampa. Downtown Tampa, overpriced. Downtown St. Petersburg, not so much, not that far away, just as adorable. That type of thing where you can just find the opportunity that not too many people know about.

Detroit, being another example. People were terrified to invest in Detroit, as they should be. But when the bankruptcy happened, the city restructured and then two billionaires came in and completely revitalized the downtown. So, it's a super cool, hip place, but you can buy a house for $60,000 in the suburbs and rent it for $900 to $1,200 a month.

So, finding these little pearls, these little areas that nobody else knows about, but we kind of get there first and we see the signs and we just cash flow while watching the whole area grow.

Jaren: Real quick, Seth. I just wanted to ask from a market research standpoint. You mentioned something really interesting. You said, you want to look to see where governments are investing millions of dollars for development. How do you find that information? Is there a particular website? What's your resources to find where they're investing that?

Kathy Fettke: I mean, honestly at this point, because I'm the CEO of Real Wealth Network, we have a massive network, so people are constantly sending us information. So, at this point it's really more of a boots-on-the-street kind of thing where people tell us what's going on. And I think that's even more powerful because these are like real, real estate investors who know who this is coming on, will you partner with us on this deal?

So, a lot of that we shared on our website at Real Wealth. We have a whole list of cities. And when you click on that, describe all the things that we're seeing there. So, our website is probably one of the resources for that information. So, we compile it there.

Also, you might hear a city like Austin is growing. And so, you can go on a website like city-data.com. And really, I would say learning city-data.com. Once you really learn that site, you can find out where wages have increased in little neighborhoods and where crime rates have maybe decreased and school ratings and stuff like that. You can get a lot of data that way.

Unfortunately, what you also might find is some areas that look really good and have a lot of the demographics and the job growth and the population growth don't quite have the cash flow. Because a place like Austin, great market, but it's kind of gotten more expensive. Same with Denver. Like a lot of the metrics are there that we like except for the cash flow. So, we want to find all of those great metrics, but also just kind of get there first before prices have gone up.

Jaren: Yeah. I just want to drop a link in the show notes for you guys. I did a blog post recently on what I look for in market research using a website called bestplaces.net. And we'll go ahead and link that in the show notes. It's how to find the perfect land market.

Seth: Yeah. I'll drop city-data.com in there as well. I know I've used that for years. That was a really valuable free resource when I was in banking that we always had bookmarked. Because there's lots of helpful stuff there.

Kathy Fettke: Yeah. When you really dive in, it's unbelievable the amount of data on it. And then there's sites that you could pay for like Yardi Matrix.

Seth: Yeah, you bet. We've got just three final questions we're going to ask Kathy. This is sort of like an exit round that we deal with most of our guests here. And these are not really real estate-related. They're more just higher-level things to learn more about you and how you think and how you tick. So, the first question is what is your biggest fear?

Kathy Fettke: Right now, my biggest fear is more political and it is something I don't have a lot of control over. So, I've learned over the years to just again, trust faith. But I would say my biggest fear is that there seems to be a movement toward socialism, which is kind of the opposite of what I believe, which is we have the power to create wealth on our own terms.

So, with this kind of mindset, there seems to be a lot of anger and hatred toward those who have created wealth. And like somehow, we're to blame for the issues in society where, in fact, people like me, I've spent my whole life just trying to help other people build wealth. So, the sentiment scares me a little bit. Like we're seeing with the riots and so forth.

I understand where it's coming from. I know that money manipulation, if you don't have education, you're going to be left behind and it's terrifying. It's terrifying for people who don't have financial information, they will not be able to survive in the future.

So, I get where the problem stems from it. It stems from poor management from our government and printing so much money, which only benefits those who have assets, which is why I'm constantly trying to help people to get assets because you got to get on this train or else you're going to be on that train. The separation is huge.

So, my fear is that it will be less and less attractive to be wealthy, honestly, and that people will want to attack those who have. And I understand why, but I just do hope that people like you and me can continue to empower people to realize they can do it too.

Seth: It really is unfortunate. This is just the reality of the world we live in, but like, whether it's the coronavirus or economic stuff or whatever, there's so much pressure in the world to pick a side politically. You're either over here or you're over there and it's our job to just hate each other. Like that's just how it works. I feel like there's such a lack of just people who know how to think about both sides and it's like, “Hey, I get where you're coming from. I know why you think that. I'm sure you're a smart person. I just have to think differently." And you're not the enemy because you think different.

Kathy Fettke: I'll tell you what. The one thing that would save our country is Americans uniting and listening to each other, because we are really on the same team. And what would take this country down is if we can't communicate. So hopefully we can come together as a nation. That would be amazing.

Seth: I hope so.

Jaren: Me too. So, for our next question, what is something you're most proud of?

Kathy Fettke: Well, I would say being a mother of two and having a grandson now. I'm really proud that I was able to step up with two young children when my husband had his illness and live that dream of being able to continue to still be a mother to them and create this empire. And so, I really am proud of that and I can tell you it's possible. I did it. I had no money.

Seth: How did you do that? I feel like that's like a whole separate hour-long conversation. Like how is that possible?

Kathy Fettke: You know what? You would just make it happen. I found a gym that was a really high-end gym that was like $140 a month or something, which was enormous because this was a long time ago. It would be like paying probably $300 or $400 today. And I did it because they had three hours of childcare. So, it was basically like getting three hours of childcare per day for $140 a month plus I could work out. And so, I would literally take the kids, put them in this really fun daycare, because it was very high end. And I would go in and just do the lobby and work for two hours. I would meet clients there and know that my kids were having a blast and I was there if I needed it.

And then I could do like, a quick 20-minute workout and then they would be so tired they'd go home and take a two-hour nap and I get a couple more hours. And then, my husband would take over for a few hours and we just made the kids the priority. If they had something important, like a recital or a dance show, I'd be there. I would schedule everything around it.

So hopefully in their memory, I was always there even though I was really working when they didn't see. I just believed that my kids would be protected and that they would have the right guidance. And so, I could put them in really wonderful camps during the summer that maybe were Christian-based camps or whatever. And then I could just work my tail off and then be a hundred percent with them when they came home.

Seth: Yeah, especially right now, given what's going on in the country where, whether there's single-parent homes or even with two parents and all of a sudden, their kids have to be at home all day. How am I supposed to work my job? Like how do I juggle this stuff? And I don't really know how people are doing this. I really don't.

Kathy Fettke: I'll tell you another way. I really kind of almost hope that this is all reversing the way we live. It is for me. And I think it's for a lot of people. This whole pandemic may be shifting us back to a more simple life to maybe the way things used to be more community-focused.

So, for example, when our first house, when we're going through this difficult time, remember I said, we had bought this huge house and all of a sudden, I'm like, “How do I take over this payment?” Well, we overbought. And that ended up being kind of a good thing, even though it felt like a bad thing because it was a six-bedroom house. So, there was an in-law unit and an office and we turned them into two separate units.

So, we basically house-hacked, before that was a word. But we house-hack to friends with children. So, we had one of Rich's friend who is a single dad with a son, the same age as our kids. And then in the other place was another friend of ours who had kids. So, we basically had a house full of kids, but always separate units. So, when our friend Dave, he's a musician and his work was at night, we put his child to sleep and I'd read stories with all the kids and his child was taken care of while he worked.

And then when I needed to go work, I knew Dave was there and the kids. It was basically like a big commune and I never paid for childcare because we had each other. This is what I've been telling a lot of parents is, well, gosh, if your kids are home, why not just talk to the neighbor? And maybe one day that neighbor is doing the homeschooling with them while you're working and you just trade-off. It's a community.

Because I can't imagine having little kids right now. I mean, my daughter is doing it, my daughter and her husband and their new baby, they're both working at home and they were feeling a lot of stress and thank goodness I'm grandma. And I'm like, “Hey, I'm here. Let me take the kid." But not everyone has that. So that is what I would do is build more community.

Seth: Yeah. Cool. So, our last question here, what is the most important lesson you have ever learned?

Kathy Fettke: Oh my gosh. The most important, I am going to say really understanding your values and what matters most, because I can tell you from someone who's had no money, and then had a lot of money, that you can get lost in either place. You can get lost in despair when you don't have money and you can get lost in things that aren't good for you when you have money. Even just an addiction to work.

I know so many people who could be retired, who are multimillionaires and they still don't spend time with their family and are still workaholics seven days a week working. It's like, why? So, addictions are important to pay attention to. And as long as your values are in line, like I said, when we had no money, I knew my values. My values were raising my children. That was my value. And I made it happen and still got the business going. So, when I didn't have money, my kids were my priority. And when I had money, they were my priority. So, it’s like you just know. I get very, very clear about what's most important and make sure you honor that at all times.

Jaren: Yeah. It's a clarity thing again. It's funny. That thing is chasing me everywhere I turn.

Kathy Fettke: It's everything. It's everything. Because especially today, there's too many distractions.

Jaren: And I think that something that is evolving in the concept of clarity is that it really is at an individual level too, because what is important to me, what I really value the core values that I need to be faithful to might not be the same for somebody else. I really like formulas. I wish that there was an A plus B equals C for success, but it's not like that. It's just what success for one person really isn't the same for another person.

And so, I think that for our listeners out there, if you can go sit down and have just some quiet time with yourself and really get clear on what's important to you, I feel like knowing your mission in life and knowing what you have to live up to, like why you have to be faithful to you from a value standpoint is the key to happiness and fulfillment and success. Because if you know your mission and you know what values you need to live up to so you don't walk around with a bunch of guilt and shame, I think that's kind of a key. That's really what I've been chewing on a lot. And look at this podcast, it's chasing me. We've talked about clarity a lot.

Kathy Fettke: I'll tell you Rich has a webinar on our website that he does every January. It's called the Focused Investor and really what it is, is a focused person. And he walks people through like a vision of your future self, which he does every day actually. He stops every morning, says his prayer, meditation, yoga and his whole routine. And part of that is visiting his future. And that's really important. I mean even going to the point where you might even write your own obituary and know like, this is what I want to be known for. This is the life I want to live.

Like for me, I want my kids to just say I was the best mom. I want lots of kids to think that. Like I've adopted most of my kids’ friends, even my daughter's first boyfriend, we were just like, “Oh, we love this guy so much." He's actually living in our guest house right now, helping us with our properties because we've just sort of adopted so many kids that love children.

I would just recommend if you're not sure what your values are, your core values, you could go to realwealth.com and click on “Archived Webinars” and look for the Focused Investor. And it's about an hour long and it will really walk you through that process. It's really powerful.

Seth: Yeah. I’ll try to find that. And if I can find it, I'll link to it in the show notes. This is episode 80, by the way. So retipster.com/80 if you want to find links to all the stuff we talked about.

Kathy, if people want to find out more about you, realwealth.com, is there any other place they should go or is that sort of the home base?

Kathy Fettke: realwealth.com is just a really literally a wealth of information. The Real Wealth Show on iTunes and then Retire Rich With Rentals you can find on Amazon.

Seth: Awesome. And I will link to that stuff as well.

Kathy Fettke: Wonderful.

Seth: Yeah. Thanks again, Kathy, for spending your time with us. We really appreciate it. I know you've got a ton of knowledge and insight to offer. And yeah, it was just great to hear more from you.

Kathy Fettke: Thanks so much for having me.

Seth: Okay. So that was their conversation with Kathy. Jaren, what were your thoughts on that? Anything jumped out to you?

Jaren: Yeah, man. It made me very nostalgic of my life in California. I could definitely tell she was from California. No, but it was really good. An interesting conversation. I was very impressed with her speaking abilities. I don't know if she's been like trained or are just the years of being on radio and news and all that, but you could just tell that she could take something like a common, well-known principle, like it's best to buy low and sell high, but make it way more engaging and way more beautiful and really bringing it home a lot more. And I just was really impressed by that.

Seth: Sometimes I wish I had more of that. A lot of times, if there's something I think I just kind of say it and it'll come out short and to the point and that's it. And sometimes that doesn't always lend itself well to trying to make an entertaining show like this. But we're getting better at it.

Jaren: Yeah. I mean, I think you're really engaging, but that's a whole other level, man. I've seen there's this other guy I saw speak once named Dan something in real estate. It was this lady that comes to mind. And then this guy who is a public speaker. And like literally his entire presentation was like, you should wake up and you should work out. Like, that's what he said. The key to success is to working out and having a good breakfast. But the way he did it, he was like, “And then in the morning when the sun rises, you have to move." He just had this inflection in his voice where he just made you be at the edge of your seat and super… I don't know. It's just, I wish I could speak like that, man.

Seth: First of all, I actually think you're way better at that than you're giving yourself credit for, because you're pretty good in the live medium. Like you know how to just sort of wing it. You're the alchemist and it just comes out good without a whole lot of preparation.

This reminds me of people who do live streams on Facebook or YouTube. I was watching one about a week ago from a guy that I know who I know is very good at this. Like he just knows how to be engaging and interesting on the spot with zero preparation.

And the purpose of this live stream, I think was to talk about real estate. I never actually even got to that because for the first 10 minutes until I turned it off, literally all he was talking about was just like, whatever ideas entered his head. Like, “Hey, I live here and I love drinking this beer today. And how's the weather today?”

And so, the guy came on and the whole time when I was watching him, I wasn't thinking to myself, “Man, just get to the point. Like this is boring. I don't care." Those thoughts were not going through my head. I was thinking, “Oh, this is kind of interesting." So, it was kind of eye-opening to me that even though the point of your live stream or whatever it is, is a certain topic, it doesn't mean you have to stick strictly to that. Like you can waver as long as you somehow bring it back together.

Jaren: You are engaging.

Seth: Yeah. You really are engaging. It's almost like headspace personally that I have to get into if I was to even try to do that.

Jaren: Yeah. But with people like Kathy, they're like the rare breed where I understand why she does so good in radio, because I would like to just listen to her all day because it's like, soothing or comforting. Like I don’t know. It was a very out-of-worldly experience. It was something, it was interesting.

Seth: This is quite a compliment. Well, lots of interesting stuff there. The thing that got me that I was like, “Man, I want to figure this out," I don't think we necessarily got the answer in that conversation. But when she was talking about Robert Kiyosaki and how he sorts of predicted the 2008 downturn, I know in hindsight it seems very obvious, but pretty much nobody saw that coming, which is just kind of crazy. They should've seen it coming.

But the fact that Robert Kiyosaki did see it and he was able to sort of get to the bottom of why that was going to happen and it ended up being right. I don't know, that it just makes me wonder, what are the things I ought to be paying attention to right now? Like what loans are people getting today that are going to readjust at a certain point that they're not going to be able to pay. I never would have thought to look for that, but when it's spelled out so clearly it seems obvious. I would love to become a master at that. Like figure out how…

Jaren: We need to get Robert Kiyosaki on the show and just ask him personally.

Seth: Email him with the subject line “Will you be my friend?” and see if he is going to respond.

Jaren: Well, hey, if anybody in our audience knows how to get a hold of Robert Kiyosaki, we'd love him on the podcast. Kathy would be like, don't have any limiting beliefs, Seth. Come on. Why are you doubting? Robert is going to be our next guest.

Seth: That's one of my problems. Like, I think too small. I'm not saying he would come on our show, but maybe. I've seen him come on other shows of people I know. So, it's not crazy to think that.

Jaren: And the people who've been on our show like Keith Weinhold, he's been on his show. And he has been on ours.

Seth: So, it's one of those things, but in my head, I'm just assuming “Nah, he’d never want to do that. So, I don't even ask." But it makes me wonder how many things could I do in life if I just had the courage to think bigger and just ask those hard questions. I don't know. It's a flaw of mine and I'm sure it's hurt me though.

Jaren: But you're doing good. I know a lot of people who'd rather be in your seat, man. So, it's interesting with success, man, because it's all relative, right? To some guy, to pick on Kazakhstan because I can, because my wife is from Kazakhstan. Like if some orphan in some remote Kazakh village saw you and they were like, “Man, I just want to be like Seth Williams." That's a huge gap to get to your level of success. It's huge. If they do that in their life, it's like, worth a life pursuit to accomplish that.

But for you to get to the point where it's like, I don't know, like in my mind Robert Kiyosaki level is like, I mean, he hangs out with presidents and stuff. Like literally Trump and him wrote a book together. You know what I'm saying? That guy's legit.

So, to get to that level of success, like in my mind, it's like, “Man, is that even possible?” But it has to be. The guy goes to bed and uses the bathroom just like everybody else.

Seth: Okay. So, let's jump into our little final question Jaren. So, the question here is, in your opinion, what is the most significant event that has occurred in world history during the last thousand years? And you may define significant however you wish.

Jaren: Man, that's a tough one. I think for me, what comes to mind is my son being born, but that's like not on a world scale.

Seth: For the whole world, right?

Jaren: I mean, that's how I feel about it.

Seth: People’s lives in China were changed forever when that happened, right?

Jaren: Yeah. I mean obviously, probably Covid-19. That's probably…

Seth: The best in the last thousand years?

Jaren: Oh, the last thousand years?

Seth: It’s been a lot of pandemics in the past thousand years.

Jaren: Probably the Nazi regime and the World War II. I mean even the rise of communism and socialism as an ideology, just as a thought. It's interesting that Kathy was bringing that up in the show today. Like a lot of what started Nazi Germany and a lot of socialist countries is this vilifying the rich and vilifying capitalism. I feel like it's really dangerous. It's like really scary stuff. So that would probably be the biggest for me. What about you?

Seth: The Nazi Germany thing?

Jaren: Yeah.

Seth: I was going to say the first thing that came to mind was just World War II in general, because so many people died and so many countries were involved. And really the trajectory of the world changed in a huge way. Even the U.S. wouldn't be the superpower that it is today if it weren't for World War II. There were all kinds of just major monumental directions that everybody went in because of that, their involvement for better or worse. So, when I think a thousand years, I don't know. And that was also like the first, I think that was the first big war in modern times where there was like, huge advances in technology and just weapons that nobody had ever seen before.

Jaren: Crazy.

Seth: If I had been alive during that time, I seriously would have thought the world is going to end. Like just when you see all the crazy stuff going on.

Jaren: I mean, there's a reason why they call it the Greatest Generation, man. Because it's like they had to just have an unreal level of bravery. I think I saw some interviews of some people that talk about, I saw an interview with a guy who was there at, I think D-Day like on the shores when they actually like, ran it and he said, I never talked about this because there's nothing more talking about, but we'll talk about it today. It was like a Memorial Day tribute or whatever.

And he's like straight up saying that he was in this kind of blocked-off tank thing when they would open the gate, it was his job to run the machine gun. And every single time they opened the gate, people would die. Like it was understood most people in that room are going to die. So, they would open it up and he's like… And he's like literally seeing his friends just die.

To live through that and to not only live through that, but to be the kind of person who's like, you know what? People were fighting 17-year-old guys and stuff like they were fighting to enlist. They were lying to try to get enlisted sooner rather than later to go and give their life to this thing. That's just super inspirational to me.

Seth: Yeah. Well, and even obviously now we know what happened. We know who won, we know the outcome of everything, but imagine being in like 1943, like at the height of the war, when things are just nuts. People are dying everywhere. Nazi Germany seems like it's all-powerful and they're just wiping out one nation after another. When you think of how evil it was in the thought of like “Man, this country could possibly take over the world." And at the same time, Japan is trying to do the same thing. It just would have been insane to come to terms with what is happening. I mean, it makes it look like Covid-19 is nothing compared to that.

Jaren: That’s true.

Seth: Just how insane of a time that was.

Jaren: Just the uncertainty man would just drive people insane. Because you wouldn't know if you were going to school, if you were going to get bombed. You think you'd be okay, but they bombed Pearl Harbor. Like what are they going to do next?

Seth: Have you seen The Man in the High Castle? That show?

Jaren: No.

Seth: It's a show about what if Germany had won the war and Japan, and the U.S. lost, and both countries came in and just divided up the continent U.S. And it's pretty interesting. The first couple of seasons I thought were good. And then it got kind of weird, but the stuff it talks about just makes you realize how important it was for the U.S. and the Allies to win that war. It just would have been so bizarre if that had happened, like with the way the world would be even today. So, I don't know. It's hard to imagine.

Yeah. I think I had heard that. The reason the U.S. dollar is still the main trading currency worldwide, a lot of that stems from World War II. Because the U.S. had such an influence and impact on the way everything went down. I might be wrong on that, but I think I had heard that. Anyway, cool, man.

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