484 | Brian Decker 14x'd His Portfolio in Only 1 Year Using THIS Strategy

Nov 4

00:00
Brian Decker
Anybody that is entrepreneurial, we have that shiny object syndrome. We think it's a gift because we're coming up with all these ideas. What happens is they get this great idea, they start a business, it doesn't go exactly how their plans. Two years into it, they're like, I'm not making money. This was a wrong decision. I'm going to scrap this and go do something else. And what happens is they end up partially completing 100 different things to 30%. When they didn't realize that, like most recently in our AI software business, I poured my life savings into it. It's been two and a half just to bring it to market every day. I've wanted to quit. I'm like, why did I give up a seven figure a year salary to focus on this?

00:39
Brian Decker
And what ends up happening is your resume is left with a bunch of partially completed projects and that's what you become known for.

00:50
Chaz Wolfe
Welcome to Driven to Win. This is the show that helps entrepreneurs who want to win in all areas and aren't afraid to do the work to get there. I'm Chas Wolf, a serial entrepreneur in multiple industries. And my mission with this show is to help entrepreneurs win in business, family, health, faith and lifestyle. In today's episode, I welcome Brian Decker. He's the CEO of Soar Energy and a leader in clean energy. He's also an expert in cryptocurrency, real estate investing, and all types of wealth building strategies. Brian has an incredible story of turning $500,000 into over 7 million in crypto in less than 12 months. So if you're ready to hear from an absolute firecracker in the wealth building industry and maybe catch an upcoming crypto tip, this episode is for you.

01:38
Chaz Wolfe
All right, Brian, I want to hear, I mean, you've been a part of just so many different industries. A lot of people have even looked at my history and been like, wait a second, retail and real estate and consulting and real and equipment and all these different things, how do they all go together? And someone might say the same. I'm sure you've answered this question before, but yeah, you've got all these different types of investments, different types of businesses going on. Is this just an add thing like me or give me your madness behind having so many different collections of things?

02:10
Brian Decker
Yeah. So really the way I've always kind of looked at business is I never tried to like, go from selling cars to selling wood. Right. But what I look at is if I'm a home builder, for an example, what harmonious Verticals could I basically help monetize and offer value to my existing customer base that's in a harmonious vertical. So, and so really what I base it all around is we all know in business the hardest thing many times to acquire is the customer. It's the most expensive thing to acquire. But once we acquire that customer and we do a good job fulfilling whatever need that they had where they originally sought us out, I look at what opportunities are in place where I consistently hear over and over again that there's a pain point in that industry.

02:58
Brian Decker
And once I've heard it over and over again, then I use that pain point to then use my team. And my team is, I like to say they're like a SWAT team where, you know, I have the key players on my team and we can go in. And what we look to do is to try to disrupt an industry. And so when I look at businesses, I really first focused on becoming an expert in kind of the finance space, particularly home finance. But when you're dealing with a homeowner and home finance, you know, what you're dealing with is there's so many other needs that go into that are an offshoot of that property. And so what I really look to do is to kind of see that pain point and then I look to develop a solution to solve that client's pain point.

03:40
Chaz Wolfe
Yeah, spoken like a two true. A true idea guy, but also a focused idea guys. So talk about that because I'm sure, you know, were just talking about, you know, the graffiti behind you, the flowery golf shirt, you know, the red hair. Like, I'm sure you're a firecracker from like a personality perspective, which probably plays into like a lot of things going on all at the same time and a hundred miles an hour in all different types of directions. But there's power and focus, which you've just described. So how did you go from maybe a little bit of wild to like dialed in focus, even though you're doing different things?

04:13
Brian Decker
Yeah, no, exactly. And so what I kind of have lived my life by is I kind of live my life in quarters. And so what I look at is I have, what I like to term is my short term vision list and my long term vision list. And so what I do is once I've come up with an idea, like for an example, our AI software company, what I had was when I came up with that idea where we utilized high resolution imagery of a property and then what I did is within that. I said, hey, you know what? There's going to be a real use case here to provide the roofing industry with a predictive for the very first time, rather than being a reactive industry of, hey, I have a leak in my roof.

04:55
Brian Decker
I need to call a roofer to be predictive and say, hey, this roof is going bad, roofer. They need your service ahead of time. And once I have that idea, any other ideas that come on my list, which I call my shiny objects list, I have an actual thing I kind of run my life by. It's a software called 90io. And it's really good for us guys that have ADD or the consummate Visionary. And what it does is so I don't forget about it. I put it on that list, but I'm not allowed to look at it. I'm not allowed to talk about it. I'm not allowed to do work on it. My integrator keeps me very focused.

05:31
Brian Decker
And then once I'm able to solve my current task at hand, which I kind of live on the quarterly rock system, where I really focus on two or three things to solve, then after I've done that and I've monetized it, then I can go back to that, you know, kind of, you know, shiny objects list and see what are the shiny objects of an idea will actually be able to be brought to market. Monetized it. And I can basically use some of the foundation I've already built within my other businesses to then put it in there to that play.

06:02
Brian Decker
And if it's something that's completely obsolete, then what I'll look to do is just say, hey, who do I know in this space that I could provide the idea to and give them that idea and just work an affiliate relationship and let them go and really run. Because it exists in their superpower.

06:17
Chaz Wolfe
Yeah, yeah. In order to have that, you've got to have a network of contacts that you would even want to give, you know, an idea to. How have you gone about in, again, different industries? I understand that they're connected, but you're building a customer base, but it sounds like also building a network. How have you got about building relationships in that way?

06:35
Brian Decker
Yeah, so one of the things I think a lot of people make the mistake of is they spend so much time bouncing around that they never become an absolute expert in a single field. And so one of the best ways to build a really strong network is to really hone in on a skill. So for myself, that was within the mortgage Space. So I spent, I mean, 20 years in the space, but I really, the first 10 years, I was building my business, constantly learning these things. And then after about 10 years, I kind of rose to becoming one of the most recognizable names in the space. And from that, it led to lots of consulting, a lot of public speaking, and a lot of becoming an expert where people would ask me to help them solve a problem that was within my superpower.

07:18
Brian Decker
And just like we all live kind of through the law of reciprocity, I would give them value. I would help unexpectingly, and then they would, you know, through the law of reciprocity, they would store some credits that I could use at a later date just from me helping them. And so I used and really focused and kind of pushed all those shiny objects out of the way to really become like, an expert in that space and be really kind of put as a subject matter expert. And once that happened, it began. I became a resource for so many of these people. And then I really started speaking a lot and really exposed myself, you know, kind of publicly. And then I really ended up through my social media channels, really grew a very large audience that way, which is really in annuity.

08:03
Brian Decker
And because I kept giving them so much value, then when an idea would come up, I'd be like, oh, my gosh, I happen to know the guy that owns the second largest restoration company in America. Or, shoot, my mentor just bought the Phoenix Suns. I bet I can call him up and ask him if he knows somebody here. And so, because I stayed so focused in an area for so long, which is, you know, many people don't want to do that because it takes hard work. But the good thing is, anything that takes a lot of hard work, there's real value there because, you know, competition, you know, can't necessarily just come in and penetrate that and take that away from you because it takes so much time to do it.

08:37
Chaz Wolfe
Yeah, you're speaking the language of every entrepreneur. You know, they look at guys like you and think that, oh, well, he's got multiple businesses and lots of different types of investments, and I should have the same. And then it becomes, like you said, really just a box of shiny objects distracting them from one, you know, one from the other. What would you say that the younger Brian did? That maybe a young, or maybe even just a newer entrepreneur, maybe not necessarily young, is struggling with today with that. Like, I don't know which way to focus because I got three things going on at once. When you're saying I really Just did one thing really all in, became an expert for a really long period of time. How did you do that?

09:14
Brian Decker
Yeah, so one of the things I think it, anybody that is entrepreneurial has, we have that shiny object syndrome. And we think it's a gift because we're coming up with all these ideas. But it's the reason why most entrepreneurs fail is because what happens is they have this great idea, they start a business, it doesn't go exactly how their plans, you know, they saw it in their mind working out and then two years into it, they're like, I'm not making money. This was a wrong decision. I'm going to scrap this and go do something else.

09:47
Brian Decker
And what happens is they end up like partially completing 100 different things to 30% when they didn't really realize that, like even like most recently in our AI software business, you know, I poured my life savings into it and I spent, it's been two and a half years just to bring it to market. And every day I've wanted to quit, I'm like, why did I give up a seven figure a year salary or other business to focus on this? And so you quit. And what ends up happening is your resume is left with a bunch of partially completed projects and that's what you become known for.

10:25
Brian Decker
And so what you have to understand is what you see on social media is somebody's best moment of the best day of the best, you know, year of their life, and that's what they want to project to you. That is not reality. And so I think that social media and media in general is ruining the average entrepreneur because they just think they can start an E commerce business, buy a Lamborghini and sit on their hands and make $100,000 a month when the reality is that is not how things are built or are made. And so when you are going through those hard times and you feel like you want to quit, it's probably just a slight tweak or two phone calls or one different version of what you're not thinking. You are away from that success.

11:13
Brian Decker
You're just not giving your Runway long enough to ever find that out. And I'm sure, you know, like our original AI business that we started, it was literally just designed for the solar industry to determine if there were solar panels on a house or not. Well, here we are three years later, some of the largest financial institutions, and it's a completely different product, you know, and your business plan is your guide, but your business plan will change and your product and what you think is product market fit will shift and adapt and become and be molded. It just. People want to sculpt their masterpiece in a year when it really takes five to seven years.

11:53
Chaz Wolfe
Yeah, yeah, I love all of that. I was in a quarterly planning, it sounds like you guys use EOs as well as in a quarterly planning a couple of days ago. And one of my integrators said describing the team that we're focused or demanding of the result, but flexible with how we get there. And I think that's the way you're describing this, which is, you know, we can be so dialed into, you know, whether you're building an AI tool or a new company or whatever. And we can have a picture of kind of what it looks like and we can demand certain results or be focused on those things. But like the path of how we get there or sometimes even the results itself, it just looks completely different. And I think that's the flexibility.

12:32
Chaz Wolfe
How does the entrepreneur know from like being flexible on the path to shiny object? And I, and I, I switched from solar to roofing and because it got hard. Like what's that? What's that line?

12:45
Brian Decker
Yeah. So, you know, it's probably the greatest single decision I ever made in my life. And I was really mad. I never did it before. So were really struggling with figuring out product market fit and I think what they do. Yeah, we're talking about the AI tool or, and even a couple, even another of my wealth society business. I was, and I was thinking, oh, you know what, I'm just not marketing it right the right way. I'm not having the right messaging the right way. And so what I did was I said, you know what, forget this. I have a big audience on social. I'm going to offer anybody that meets this criteria. They're a homeowner, they're in these areas. This, this and this. I'm going to pay you $150 to get on a 30 minute call with me as my own market study.

13:37
Brian Decker
So what I did was, is I spent 50 hours over two weeks recording every single zoom call where I went through a preset list of questions and then also showed them the product, the service, the messaging, all the tools with it and I recorded them all on read AI. And then what I did is after doing 50 interviews plus which went 30 minutes to an hour, I then took all of that ready information and I built a prompt in chatgpt like SWOT analysis, for lack of a better word, fed all of that read AI transcript to it and said, hey, what am I missing? Where am I off? What are their pain points? How do they want to be spoken to?

14:22
Brian Decker
And the results were shocking because we out many times what we think the customer wants or the messaging they want to be told is how we want to be told. But they're not.

14:35
Chaz Wolfe
Yeah, we're not.

14:36
Brian Decker
Like they're not. And so I took that and what I got back from that were so many unbelievable things. And then I brought it to my board and was like, hey guys, I just spent 50 hours. This is what I did. This is what I did for all this stuff. And they were like, I don't know why, nobody ever has done that before. I was like, well, probably because most CEOs don't want to spend 50 hours of their time doing it, you know, and that's how. And then that's how I pivoted. So I think what you have to do is you have to have a data driven approach. We make things too often on an emotional standpoint. And so I changed the perspective from my emotions and what I thought and what I felt and what I assumed was wrong to forget all that.

15:21
Brian Decker
Let's just look at the data and let's evaluate that data and then let's make a decision. And as soon as we did that, we ended up like having the first 20 people told us no to, then went back to the dev table, spent six months and now I've had my phone blow up with five or six Fortune 200 companies competing for exclusivity on our product in a matter of a six month period of time. And now our biggest problem is deciding what investment bank we want to go with for a $20 million round of funding versus trying to get the average X, Y and Z contractor to want to use our service.

16:00
Chaz Wolfe
Yeah. Yeah. Incredible. Would you describe it as humility or would you describe it as like exhausted in that moment where you're just like, can't figure it out. And you, and you started doing the college, you said, I'm going to do something different. Was that you being exhausted or are you going, you know what, maybe I'm wrong and I should listen to someone else.

16:17
Brian Decker
Yeah. I was defeated. That's the real feeling. I was feeling, I was just defeated. I'm like, I don't get this. And it was really humbling because in May of this year I had gotten asked for the third year of row to keynote like a 7,000 person event. And me and Tony Robbins were the two keynote speakers.

16:34
Chaz Wolfe
Wow.

16:34
Brian Decker
And here I am on stage, everybody think I have all the answers. When in my mind, I'm like, little do they know on this business, I've been pounding my head. I poured 5 million bucks, which was like 70% of my liquidity, into this thing, and I just can't figure it out. And everybody I ask gives me a solution I've already tried. So forget asking the experts. Let me ask the end user. And I just had to humble myself and be like, I'm calling regular homeowners on the phone, asking the same questions over and over again. And everyone's like, why didn't you just hire a marketing firm to do this? Here's the thing. A marketing firm isn't going to ask the right questions, and they don't care like you do.

17:19
Brian Decker
They are just going to take a paycheck, do a market survey, and just give you something. But a lot of what I saw from that homeowner was their emotion. And they. And they were so willing to tell me so much more than some market study participant, because in their mind, they're like, I know this guy. Follow this guy. Like, I've seen him do a lot of things, and he's taking 30 minutes to an hour out of his day to ask me, the little old homeowner, how I feel about these topics. And then wanting to provide a solution that actually is what I want. They just vomited the most incredible information to me possible.

17:58
Chaz Wolfe
Yeah. Yeah. That's incredible. I'm going to ask you a question that might feel like I just totally took a left hook on you, but this intentionality that you're talking about, this, you know, you felt defeated, and so it drove you to really figure out the solution. It drove you to win. You know, no pun intended, but it brought humility. And then you tried something brand new. And I want to know, when have you done that same thing? But in your family, when have you felt defeated?

18:22
Brian Decker
Yeah. Oh, I think, you know, I'm sure many entrepreneurs can feel this. I call it dad guilt. Is the best way I can explain it. Right? Dad guilt. You know, and what it is, you know, I grew up with nothing. My dad was a forklift driver. We came from very humble meanings, beginnings. And I found success, you know, just because my dad always taught me as a kid, like, there's going to be people smarter than you. There's going to be people with a lot more money than you. The one thing or the two things you can control that nobody can ever take away from you is your reputation and your work ethic so your word is your bond. You say what you're going to do when you're going to do it, and then you just outwork everybody.

19:03
Brian Decker
And eventually those are two things that most people are too weak to be able to hold as their core values and just hold those up and you'll eventually get there. And it took me a while to, I mean, I was probably 21 when I started my first business and it took me to 29 to become a millionaire. So it was eight years of living in apartments and, you know, doing, being behind on bills. I mean, it took me a while, but then I conquered that success only to get married that same like shortly thereafter and had two kids right away. And the one thing very different about a family is data does not translate into relationships. So my data showed me, hey, he's home by 6:00. He plays with his kids, he doesn't drink or party. He likes to spend time on the family.

19:51
Brian Decker
But what the emotion from my wife was is I don't exist. You only care about the kids, your clients you will go bend over backwards for, but you don't want to take me out for a date night. And so you can't bring the same strategy of data to analyze your relationships because there's a human being involved with emotions and how I say something to her and how she reacts to that are two different things. And I learned very quickly that even though financially went from being concerned about how we're going to pay the mortgage to hey, we could. I could now I couldn't live the life I want to live forever, but I could retire and be okay and survive to, hey, you know what? My wife feels like I don't care anymore.

20:40
Brian Decker
My kids call me phone boy because I'm on the phone all the time. And so what I had to do was, you know, and I kind of ignored it. And then it wasn't really until my kids were about four and six and mind you, I wasn't not coming home. I wasn't doing these things. I was, I was what I thought was present, but the reality was, is they, I was showing them by my actions. They weren't that important to me. And so what I had to understand was, is, hey, data. And the hours you are at home don't mean anything. It's your interaction and like the emotion and the attention and the being present, that is what matters. And so I had to say, slow down your growth and your businesses. Say no to things. To keep my family together.

21:27
Chaz Wolfe
Yeah, good for your wife. For Speaking up, I recently had, I don't know, this is in the last couple of years. I was talking to my wife about previous years, very similar to how you described it. And she was like, yeah, there was several years there where I basically was a single parent. And I'm like, wait, what? I was there. What are you talking about? I grew up actually with a single mom. What are you talking about? And it was exactly how you've described. I was there, I was, you know, tucking in the kids at night, doing my evening routine, but I wasn't really there. I was always in the future and somehow in our businesses doing a deal somewhere, you know.

22:03
Brian Decker
Yeah, yeah, that doesn't exist. We're pre planning for a potential opportunity.

22:08
Chaz Wolfe
Yeah, yeah. I'm going to share with the, I'm gonna share with you and the audience what I did in that moment. I want to, I want to hear what your thoughts are and maybe how you did your version of it. But I used to say things like, you know, the man doing a deal is just way more exciting than, you know, playing UNO with my four year old. And, and eventually my mindset switched to, you know, I'm not just building businesses, I like to build. I'm a builder. And so I get to build my daughter or my son or I get to build my wife or I get to build my family. And then you can fill in the blank with any of that now, because the identity of a builder is I get to build and I get excited about that.

22:42
Chaz Wolfe
And so UNO didn't become just this game that was taking me away from doing a deal. It was a game that, where I got to use winning or losing or I got to use elements of attitude or competitiveness or whatever to build my 4 year old at the time. And so I'm curious, what are your thoughts on that and maybe what's your translation to how you made that switch in your mind as you made those moves for yourself?

23:08
Brian Decker
Yeah, no, it's at hits home because one of the things that I had done for a long time was I used to, up until about a year and a half ago on like once a quarter, I would invite all the local high school kids to come to my office and I would teach them the basics that they didn't learn in school for free. Like, and we ran a foster kids foundation and we did all these things to really help educate, you know, kind of the next generation on the things that, you know, unfortunately aren't being taught in the school system. And, and people would Always come up to me, oh, you help my kid this or that, and all these things.

23:42
Brian Decker
And my wife made the comment in a very kind way, but made the comment of, like, you know, you do this for all these other people, but, like, what do you do with your own kids? You know? And I like your wife, like, just because, you know. Yeah, me too. She keeps being checked, you know. And so I started realizing, shoot, you're right, because I get home from work and I'm so tired a lot of times that I'm not implementing many of the things I'm teaching other people how to implement. And so we use something that is called minor chores at our house. And what minor chores is, it's kind of like a task rabbit, but for kids. So what it does is it allows them to post job opportunities that they're willing to do.

24:29
Brian Decker
And people in the neighborhood, well, can actually go on and book the kids. And as the parent goes over with them, whether it's pulling the trash cans out, picking up dog poop, doing these types of things, and then within it, you can allocate and say, hey, 25% of what you bring home, you're setting that aside for taxes. We're just going to call because I wanted them to understand the tax element. You know, 10% of what you go, you're going to give that away to charity. Then 30% of what you take home, you can spend it on whatever you want to spend it, and then the rest of it, you're going to invest it. And we started doing that at a very early age.

25:05
Brian Decker
And so all of a sudden, we gamified chores and hard work and showed them, look, work equals money and enjoyment and happiness and making a difference in other people's lives. This is why Daddy works. So that when I'm away at work doing these things, I'm not just not wanting to be with you and the family, I'm doing these things. And that is why hard work, why we have more than most, is because of we are working hard. So guess what? You know, when we're playing the game of Monopoly or all these things, I try to equate it to things we've done in our life. Like, hey, why did dad go in and not buy this house? And I bought four rental properties here. Because, look, every time you're landing here, you're paying Daddy rent. Just like this person.

25:51
Brian Decker
They don't buy a house, they pay daddy rent. They're paying off my house and doing that. So I've really tried to find those particular things in Our daily activities to try to teach it as an entrepreneur's lesson.

26:04
Chaz Wolfe
That's super cool. We play the cash flow for kids. My oldest is probably ready to start playing the adult version. But this was probably two years or so ago. We were on our way to Costco, and she was like, daddy, we're. We're on our way to buy a bunch of liabilities. And I was like, yes, maybe we are. And good thing Daddy's got a bunch of assets to pay for those. Isn't that right? He's like. Like it just ding. Like it just made sense, you know?

26:26
Brian Decker
Yeah.

26:26
Chaz Wolfe
It's funny how that happens, you know, Talk to me. I use. I use the language. I mean, I'm sure you're familiar with thinking grow rich. I'm sure it's even just some of the language that you've used. I can tell that you're. That you do some brain training. And so I'm curious, what does that mean to you? Does think and grow rich or other types of subconscious training? Is that something that you've used yourself with the kiddos? That example that I just gave, basically, after a couple of years of talking to my. My daughter and then playing the game and those types of things, I was basically just training her subconscious. And then eventually she got it, you know, and she became conscious of what it is I was depositing in her. And so what is that? If I just throw that at you? What.

27:05
Chaz Wolfe
What are your thoughts and how have you used it? How have you. How are you using it with your children?

27:10
Brian Decker
Yeah, no, great point. And so I think the hardest thing for me to get around was the understanding that the way our school system works, especially in the public school system, is trained so that we rely on the government and assistance as kind of our parent. And if you think about it as a parent, we send our kids away to an institution to learn the things that in previous generations were really either taught by a church or taught by some type of organization. Because the public school system really, you know, in the United States is not thousands of years old. Obviously, it's. It's a newer system. And, you know, in the 1700s, 18 hours, that was something that was typically taught by schools.

27:56
Brian Decker
That's why most universities were founded by some type of church or some type of family to give back as an endowment. And so once I started to really break it down and realize that the foundations that we are being taught in the day, and I like to look at this way, and I. My grandfather said something to me one time, and he Goes, your generation is screwed. And I'm like, why? He goes, because you guys think it's okay to finance a mattress. And I thought in that thing. And I was like, you're right. He goes, you guys don't fix any automobiles anymore. You guys don't do any of these things anymore. You're taught, if it's not new grain, perfect, buy a new one. And that's the way you're taught, like, accumulate as much liabilities and live your life as monthly payments. I make this.

28:42
Brian Decker
I can afford this. That is the way I live my life. And you just want your budget to be up some zero every month is the way we're basically taught. And so once I started getting my brain around the fact of that is so much of what we have been taught is actually the antithesis of what we should be taught. I had to even myself go back and be like, I know I have a finance degree. I know I'm. You know, I have a good business acumen. But a lot of the principles that I have are formed because I went to public school. And so I went back and started to start looking at things not as a monthly payment standpoint, but what is that true cost of homeownership, using animation table, using these things. And so I started looking at that.

29:27
Brian Decker
And then once I started really looking at every dollar has a place, and where does that dollar best serve? And once I looked at that as a finite number and said, okay, if I'm putting a dollar into my checking account, and I know that the United States government is inflating away our purchasing power by 7% per year, I got to make 8% to make a net neutral of 1% return on my money. And so we, what most people are taught, put your money in a savings account, invest in stocks, like, don't go into debt.

30:00
Chaz Wolfe
Right.

30:00
Brian Decker
All these things. When you actually look at it, I realize I had to really reprogram my brain and then made the decision for me and my family personally to put our kids in a school that actually, like, they go to a private school and what's. And they mostly go, that's easy. You have money in Arizona, they actually give you $8,000 per kid per year if you choose to put them in private school versus public school.

30:25
Chaz Wolfe
Wow.

30:25
Brian Decker
And so my kids, like, their education is only like 350, $400 a month net cost to me, which people spend that on dance competition for a week for their kids.

30:38
Chaz Wolfe
Right.

30:38
Brian Decker
And so for me, I found an education system where my kids weren't going to be brainwashed seven hours a day, five days a week that I had to un program along the line. So that's really how we equated it for that. And then what happened was and it wasn't like, well dad's teaching me this at home, but Mrs. Taylor is teaching me this in school. And so you have to make sure that the authorities in their life are communicating a similar narrative. Otherwise it just becomes very confusing for the child.

31:08
Chaz Wolfe
Yeah, I couldn't agree more. Julie and I just decided to become the authority. We hope score. So same exact thing though it Are they going to get what I need them to get by carrying on the legacy of the all these things that I'm creating by being around me or by being around their third grade teacher. And there's nothing wrong with being a third grade teacher but if I'm trying to create something in my child that is intentional around developing or even carrying on something that I'm building right now or building up their own thing, then they're going to need a little different perspective.

31:42
Brian Decker
And so yeah, and you think about it, I mean, you know, I'm sure you went potentially to public school too is we learned about the Pythagorean theorem, what Edgar Allan Poe was thinking about when he wrote the Raven or all these things that are completely useless. But we're not taught about compound interest, right? Or depreciation or all these things. And we're brain we're programmed in our mind to be like well they're going to need it someday. Here's a news flash. Anybody that has kids right now, your kids are never going to need to learn how to do long division. They're never going to need to learn how the Pythagorean there is going to be chat GPT on steroids in their phone that they can ask every single thing to.

32:20
Brian Decker
They need to be taught how to think critically, evaluate investments, evaluate their time because that is not something that ChatGPT will ever be able to do. So the school System, they spend 85% of their time being taught things that we know. They're never going to need to be able to actually know the why behind and who cares? I don't need to know why. The why behind long division and how you do it doesn't matter. I mean and I'm in finance and you know, and I think that's where But a lot of parents use it as an excuse because it's easier just to put their kids in public school because it's more convenient for their schedule and time and I'm sure people don't want to hear that, but that just really is the truth.

32:57
Chaz Wolfe
Yeah, yeah. I was just sitting down last night with my 11 year old and. And she was frustrated. Why do we need to learn this? This is, you know, whatever it was. I can't remember what mathematic topic were on, but I remember asking those questions at 16, 17, but she's asking them at 11. It's like, oh, it's working. Some of these things we need to learn just to just help creativity in your brain and force it to do things, you know, but you're right. Whether it's chat, GBT or an easy calculator, like why would we, why would I not teach you how to use this tool just to force you to learn it on paper? That, that just doesn't make a whole lot of sense. You've spent a lot of time Speaking of ChatGPT in AI, we've talked about your tool.

33:35
Chaz Wolfe
You spent a lot of time in crypto, in real estate investments. You know, give us just a quick idea. I mean, it's the end of, you know, we're in Q4, 20, 24. You know, there's a lot of potential looming things or maybe there's not. Maybe there's a, maybe there's just an incredible ride ahead of us. But what are you projecting over the next 12, 18, 36 months.

33:57
Brian Decker
Yeah. So one of the things that could be helpful for a lot of people to understand is we all know, we learned in school at the economy runs traditionally in four cycles. You have the expansionary period, which is why most people think, oh, real estate runs for 10 years and then crashes. The stock market runs for this period. And then after a period of expansion, we go into a period of what's called, you know, the, you know, the fall season of macroeconomics or like the slowdown. Right. And then we go into, you know, the contractionary period, that recessionary period of the winter time where unemployment's going up, GDP or, you know, productivity is going down, it's the doldrums. And then we usually caused by rising interest rates during expansion to kind of slow down that growth.

34:46
Brian Decker
And then what happens is a lot of things that they do, like dropping interest rates, putting stimulus out there, all these things start to speed back up the economy. And we go into that spring time period and then we repeat that cycle. And were, and those cycles were kind of elongated. We were said, you know, recession is one to two years. You know, your expansion's 10 years. And then you kind of got, you know, the slowdown and the starting up again, which could be six months to a year. And that is the way the world worked for a very long time. But all of that changed in 2009, and I'll explain why.

35:20
Brian Decker
So you and your family and if you guys are in $5,000 of credit card debt and you go through a little bit of a slowdown with your business, you can make it through it okay, because you're not extremely sensitive to the interest rate hikes that will come up on your credit card because you have a very small amount of balance on your credit cards. Now imagine you have $500,000 in credit card debt. One, you can't survive very long when those credit card rates double. You can't survive very long on not having much cash, you know, coming in a reduction in your cash flow. And so you end up being much more sensitive because you are so riddled in debt to the slightest changes in the economy and the interest rate environment. Sure. Well, you look at the United States government for an example.

36:11
Brian Decker
You know, it took us 220 years to get $1 trillion in debt. And it's taken us 25 years to go from 1 trillion to $35 trillion in debt. We're adding $1 trillion of debt every hundred days right now. So imagine this, you have the Federal Reserve and you have the treasury. Just like in your case, you and your wife, one of you maybe makes the money, one of you maybe pays the bills. Well, imagine if the person that made the money could also determine the interest rate on the bills that you are paying. Well, guess what? If you aren't having a lot of cash flow, you can go to your wife, be like, yo babe, cut these interest rates for me real quick. Because we're bleeding cash and it's our business, are doing well.

36:53
Chaz Wolfe
Right?

36:54
Brian Decker
Great, perfect. I'm going to call mom and dad and say cut the rates down to the loans we borrowed. Well, what happened is because the United States and all these other nations, when the clap, the financial collapse, and then again in Covid, got so riddled in debt, what happens is they raise interest rates to slow down inflation. When we have expansive growth like we did in 2020 and 2021, the problem is when you are riddled with $30 trillion in debt, the 1% interest rate hike, guess what? It's not just us that suffers that interest expense. The federal government on their $35 trillion in debt is paying the interest at whatever the rates that they set. Is. And so guess what, they are unable to sustain long periods of high interest rates. So what happened is we've seen that interest expense go through the roof.

37:49
Brian Decker
So what now dictates our economy as much as we want to say companies aren't doing as well. And this, and this, here's the fact, look it up. The money supply in the country, in the world today, just think of the money supply is how much money you have in your checking account as a person. When that money supply goes up, all assets that are considered risk on assets, real estate, crypto, stocks, those go through the roof. And the reason for that is the same way you, with your checking account, you make more risky investments the more cash you have in the bank, so does the entire globe. And what causes money supply to go up is banks with lower interest rates can lend out money faster.

38:35
Brian Decker
People when their debt expense goes down, even if their cash flow stays the same, they have more money to be investing. And so what happens is when you start to see an interest rate cycle start to begin to tick down, you also feed it with an election year, which is free candy for all the voters to vote for me, through stimulus, you get a period of time where liquidity comes up. And so we are going through right now in the last three to four months, the first time in two and a half years, the money supply is ticking up. And with a 100% certainty every time the money supply goes up within a four to six month lag time, we see stocks, crypto and real estate start to move up.

39:22
Brian Decker
So what we have to do is just like I removed all the emotion of what I thought the customer was feeling until I did that survey, remove all the emotion where you're told real estate has to go down after a 10 year period or when the economy is not doing well, there's no reason stocks, crypto should go up. Doesn't matter guys, M2, money supply goes up, stimulus gets printed. Maybe not you, but guess what? Institutions, countries, sovereign nations, hedge funds, pension funds, they're investing in the market and they're pushing those assets up. Well, what we also know is during these cycles within Bitcoin has a pre programmed cycle where once every four years, the amount of bitcoin that gets pushed into society being released every single day gets cut in half. That occurs in the election year of the United States.

40:18
Brian Decker
That just happened in April. Well, every single time that corresponds with an increase in the money supply which leads to a massive crypto run like clockwork. Every single time that usually starts the month before the election and runs really hot for about four to seven months after the election. This is where I've made most of my wealth every cycle. Like in the last cycle, I did it publicly on social. I invested half a million dollars and turned it into 7 million bucks. In a year cycle before that, I invested 50 grand and turned it into 400 grand. So what you have to look at is you have to understand what economic season am I in and what assets perform great during that season. Remove your emotion, follow the data, and make that investing.

41:07
Brian Decker
So with that, yes, I think many real estate markets are going to suffer. And the reason why they're going to suffer is markets that have a high level of Airbnb properties, which I call shadow inventory, that people bought in 2020 and 2021, but tourism is down, they're bleeding that capital. And two also have a high level of new construction, which is forced inventory into that market. Those markets are going to suffer. Markets that have a low level of Airbnbs and a low level of new construction have low inventory. They're going to continue to do well and grow in those environments. So you have to look at and say, okay, if I'm an investor right now with 100 grand, where am I putting my money?

41:55
Brian Decker
I'm putting probably $40,000 of that into crypto right now because it's that four to eight month period of time we get once every four years to make crazy gains. Then I'm looking at disruptive technologies, because us, as a society, we are having less children, our population is going down. There is more people retiring every day than people entering the workforce. So the only way that we can offset some of this rising interest expense, we can't just do like we did in previous generations, which has just become more productive because we have more bodies in the workforce, like India, for an example. No, we got to do it through efficiencies, right? That's where AI, robotics and technology come into play.

42:39
Brian Decker
And so three years ago, if I told you about ChatGPT, you called me a crazy person and be like, there's no way this exists and look how far it's come. And so from an investing standpoint, you want to invest in things that your kids are going to use in the future. You want to invest in things that have a finite supply that are going to do well during that season. And you want to invest in hard assets where, you know, in that real estate market that is not being oversupplied by Airbnbs and oversupplied by new construction.

43:10
Chaz Wolfe
Dude, I appreciate the thoroughness and they should hit the pause button and hit the replay, but like go like hit the 32nd backwards, like back, back, back, and then do that all over again. Incredible advice. Thank you for not only just sharing that, but breaking it down. Super interesting about the split, you know, that happened earlier this year with Crypto. We don't have time to go into that, but I love your direction there. Jump in while the, while the picking is good. Before, before this next run happens. And so all of that to say I was. I had a couple more questions, but dude, I, I don't know how I can even follow up that type of answer. You just gave such thorough advice there, so I just want to appreciate you for that. How can, how can someone connect with you?

43:50
Chaz Wolfe
They're listening today going, holy geez, I gotta know this guy or I need to do business with this guy or I want to buy his product. How can they find you? What's the best way for them to connect?

43:58
Brian Decker
Yeah, for sure. So one of the things, so you guys can follow me on, I'm super active on Instagram. I have a couple hundred thousand followers there, put out a bunch of free content out there. But just like I was saying, the public education system was kind of screwed up. It's not a big money play for me. I just, I truly feel like the education that we get from the average person, financially, they're. They're not going to be able to retire. When they want to retire, these things aren't going to happen. And somebody like Dave Ramsey does a great job of the baby steps of how to get out of debt and then you get other programs that are unbelievable. Becoming a master trader.

44:33
Brian Decker
But that whole gap of the middle of what does the average person do, how do they invest, how do they learn from that? That's where I built something called Wealth Society. And I wanted to make it so inexpensive for everybody. So we launched that on school through Homozy's team and all of that over there about 30 days ago. And we made it for 39 bucks a month. And they get weekly training by me. Wealth labs. There's like 40 different lessons. I put picks and trades and all that stuff in there. And they wanted me to price it at like 500amonth, but I refused to do that because it didn't solve what I was trying to aim to solve. And I do well on my other ventures. So you guys can check out Wealth Society. You can go to school dot com.

45:13
Brian Decker
That's S K O l dot com and wealth Society and look it up in there. There's also a free one that I put on there that gives you the basics of it as well that you can find on there. But that's the best way to get some financial education and the best way. Just kind of follow me in general.

45:27
Chaz Wolfe
Perfect. We'll have your Instagram account and then of course your, your school connection in the show notes and just appreciate you doing that, man. Like I said, even if they just, you know, just reversed the podcast here and listened, like actually listened to what you just gave that five minutes, it will change some people's lives. And so I hope that they do that and I hope they also take you up on your offer to connect and jump in on your community. So, dude, thank you for being here. Just spending the few minutes with us is a pleasure to host you and to ask some of these questions. We're going to have to get to know each other because I got so many more questions I didn't have time to ask. But thanks for being here.

46:01
Chaz Wolfe
Thanks for being a firecracker and bringing the heat and just blessings to you and your family, man. Thank you.

46:07
Brian Decker
Likewise, man. Thanks so much for having me, brother.

As someone who’s built businesses, I know how tempting it is to jump from one big idea to the next. But is that what really leads to build wealth? Brian Decker has been there — and found a way to focus, lock in and grow. Brian is the CEO of SOAR Energy and a powerhouse in crypto, real estate, and wealth building. He joins the Driven To Win podcast to break down the mindset and skills that led him to turn $500,000 in crypto into over $7 million in less than a year. Brian shares how he achieved massive success across multiple industries and explains why most entrepreneurs struggle with “shiny object syndrome.” He also gives us an insider look into the economic cycles in volatile markets like real estate and crypto and shares how he brings financial literacy into his family life, teaching his kids values around hard work and smart investing.

Brian Decker:

Website: https://www.thebriandecker.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thebriandecker/
Skool: https://www.skool.com/thewealthsociety/about

Chaz's favorite morning drink to fuel him for his day:

10% off Code: GATHERINGKINGS10