Jack Jill Interview M.C. Laubscher (586)
Jack Jill Interview M.C. Laubscher
Transcript:
Jill DeWit: Jill and Jack here.
Jack Butala: Oh it’s the Jill and Jack show now.
Jill DeWit: Yes, it is today. Welcome to our show. In this episode Jack and I talk with M.C. Laubscher who is the cash flow ninja, so here’s a little bit about M.C. He is a wealth architect and strategist, educator and financial freedom fighter. He’s the President and CEO of the Valhalla Wealth. Financial creator and the host of the popular business and investing podcast Cash Flow Ninja. Yeah. His mission is to help as many people as possible eliminate the control banks and financial institutions have over their lives by building their wealth in a variety of ways outside of Wall Street. He believes the best way to achieve this is in the Information Age is by reclaiming the banking function in your own financial life through structuring an efficient cash flow management system and creating and building assets that provide multiple streams of income.
Jack Butala: Boy we have a lot to talk about there.
Jill DeWit: Yes we do. M.C. teaches actionable education to his listeners and helps his clients collapse time in their wealth plan and achieve 40 years of financial results in ten years or less. M.C. challenges existing societal belief systems and misinformation around concepts such as money, saving, investing, wealth and retirement. Thank you M.C. and welcome to our show.
M.C.: Thank you so much for having me on guys. I’m honored to be on your show.
Jill DeWit: Thank you.
Jack Butala: Great.
Jill DeWit: Thank you very much. You have a lot of big words in there and so I want to ask you, I want to remember where are you from and how long have you been here and what’s your background.
M.C.: Yeah, so I’m originally from South Africa. I came here in about 2001 to the United States, so I kindly reside on the East Coast, Newtown, Pennsylvania which is in Bucks County. Yeah, but came here in 2001 with a back pack, about $500.00, sense of humor and a sense of adventure. Yeah, I played in a sports league here. That’s kind of how I started. My investment career started around about the same time and yeah as you guys mentioned, I have a podcast, The Cashflow Ninja where we talk about different asset classes and how to create income streams from them in this new skill economy, no longer a jobs one.
Yeah, I’m also the President of Valhalla Financial where we help people build their wealth outside of Wall Street in alternative investments which a couple of years ago people would kind of look at you like you’re some kind of a weirdo when you talk about that, but it’s really found some traction out there and I think a lot of people are starting to wake up, well more and more people when you say that, even though markets are at all time high and the tides are high in the ocean, right?
Jill DeWit: You mentioned the market, so do you use the markets in part of your financial stuff or is it is just a gauge of what you’re competing with?
M.C.: No so we do it completely outside of it. We play in our sand box, so I think from a philosophical standpoint we like to have control over our own lives and our own cash flow and our own money. We position it outside of the system, utilizing actually insurance vehicles with mutual insurance companies, which that’s kind of the liquidity side of it. Then we leverage some of these contracts which are structured a very specific way and invest in real estate syndications, real estate investments, land investments and then also other vehicles which we have more control over. We can affect an impact and we know how to protect out downside all right in risk management. With the markets it’s a, unless you’re a professional or a computer, because there’s so much high frequency trading right now and algorithms, it’s not really set up for the person on the street or anyone rather.
Jill DeWit: Okay.
Jack Butala: You just answered the question that I think all our listeners have. What’s this really all about? Can you walk us through a regular way to make money at the eighth grade level?
M.C.: Yeah, so basically to touch from the system that we do, we’re all out greatest and number one asset, so that’s the first place to invest. After we realize we do that and we have invested in ourselves, we know exactly what we want, which is very important when you’re trying to go somewhere. Otherwise, well what is it Alice in Wonderland, said if you don’t know where you’re going any road will get you there or any road will do. Yeah, we have to be very specific of what our goals are, our cash flow goals. We have to understand why that matters and why it’s important and it’s kind of like the cart before the horse. Then we also have to understand we need to become to do that, because if you come in, a client comes into me and they say well M.C. I want to make a $1,000,000.00 a month in cash flow.
Jill DeWit: Right.
M.C.: We can take a look at that but let’s see what we have to work with here and are you the person that can already develop a million dollars of cash flow per month, because that requires a certain level of financial I.Q. The system that we then put in place and the processes is basically we first set up the liquidity. Liquidity is extremely important and key for any investor and we utilize that through a strategy that’s known as infinite banking. Some people have referred to it too as just high cash value life insurance which is structured on a chassis of whole life insurance, designed a very specific way. Not the one that’s sold by most agents out there. We kind of craft it and design it for maximum cash value.
The reason that we do that is because the money inside there is guaranteed. The money inside there grows predictably. Tax free. You also get to participate in dividends, because you are a shareholder of a company as a policy holder with a mutual insurance company and that’s also a very key component to this. What it allows you to do is borrow from your own policy, but it’s a little bit different than borrowing from an IRA or a 401k or any of these other vehicles when you actually borrow money from a mutual insurance company, you don’t draw down the policy or the value of your account. It’s actually a separate transaction.
To give you an example if there’s $100,000.00 of cash value in your policy and you borrow 90% of that which most companies allow you to do so $90,000.00, you still have $100,000.00 in your policy growing predictably and safely tax free and you get to leverage the $90,000.00 at 5% to then go invest in other investments that produces an 8%, 10%, 12% or whatever percentage return you can get, so it’s a great place to park your money. Wealth has to reside somewhere. I don’t feel comfortable putting it in the banks as all, especially with the regulations, the Dodd Frank Act is another podcast we can cover with all the landmines that are in there for the average person. We feel safe having it outside of the system and the banking system. Outside of Wall Street and then having a little bit more control over it, so that’s kind of how we structure the cash flow side of it, our liquidity.
Then the second step is income, so we help folks to look at other investments, alternative investments that produces income for them and then we also have a growth portion where once you set up your income, you’ve achieved your income goals and now we’re continuing to build the wealth, we look at growth strategies as well. That’s kind of it in a nutshell. We’re playing in a different sand box here. Not the Wall Street Casino one, right.
Jack Butala: It sounds like you’re taking the basic rules of investing. Put a bucket full of play money and knock yourself out. Use some secured money and you’re applying basic accounting principles, balance sheet, income statement the whole thing. I have an accounting background so it sounds like a new twist on saving and investing money for retirement with different vehicles, right?
M.C.: Right and this is definitely not something new. This has been done for quite a while by a lot of wealthy families and there’s two asset classes that the wealthiest families really position their assets in, which is real estate and insurance. Once you get to look at all of the basically dive into the IRS code, you start to chuckle when you look at the two of them.
Jack Butala: Yeah.
M.C.: Because you’re like oh my goodness, these guys really write the rules.
Jack Butala: That’s right.
M.C.: Because these are from a tax point of view, which taxes is a huge wealth destroyer. These are two of the most favorable assets and then it’s no coincidence that these are some of the strategies that are used in family offices across the country. To your point very basic principles. The first one is to have control over your investments and your money. This is your life. In the second principle is we want to, you know Robert Case he talks about we want to it’s not how much money you make, but how much money you keep and how hard that money is working for you. I’d like to give that money as many jobs as possible simultaneously at the same time and really work it. Then the risk management is a big potion. You have to understand how to position yourself with risk management and manage the downside.
Then also the economic efficiency which I just touched on the taxes. We’ve got a mine field ahead of us in the next five to ten years. We’ve got a pension crisis which is rearing it’s ugly head if we just look at the Federal Government’s balance sheet it doesn’t get any prettier with just trillions of dollars in debt and under funded liabilities and all these things. We kind of slowly start to see how this is going to play out if we look at what’s happening in Illinois, which has become kind of like the poster punching bag for this crisis and impending bankruptcies of a lot of cities and municipalities and so forth, but then other factors play into that too. Commissions and fees is a huge one when it comes to wealth and building your wealth.
Jack Butala: Yeah.
M.C.: That’s very important to position yourself favorably and reduce that and look at the ROI for it as well. I don’t feel comfortable giving someone money and they take 1-2% of it over 30 years and then hope something’s there for me right? Principles that have been used over and over, so we’ve just looked at the blueprint, copied it and that’s what we teach our clients.
Jack Butala: That’s great. Jill and I, one of our peeves is fees.
Jill DeWit: Commissions and fees.
M.C.: Right, right.
Jack Butala: We have a whole show about real estate agents and why they’re pretty much crooks. Not all of them, but some of them.
Jill DeWit: I had a guy, I’ve got to tell you this little side note. I had a guy I talked to yesterday. I’m hiring for my team M.C. and this guy, his resume came through and he never put on his resume that he’s a licensed realtor and I’m like oh no, in our world that sinks the ship. I’m like doggone it.
Jack Butala: Did he sink it?
Jill DeWit: Well you know what? He said well wait, wait, I can go inactive. He’s totally like will that be okay? It was really funny because he really wants the job.
Jack Butala: He just picked the wrong person.
Jill DeWit: I’m doggone it. It was so funny. I’m like you’re not a licensed realtor are you? I’m like please say no, please say no. He goes ah is that a problem? Oh no.
Jack Butala: One of our favorite, adding exactly to what you’re talking about M.C. my favorite type of income is operating income. We have the other ones pretty well in place and we always have, but operational income, money from companies that we run. I’ll tell you, we’ve got I don’t know eight or ten companies running right now, cash flowing well. It’s just like printing money. Let’s say some of the really large equity funds like KKR, do you get involved with that at all?
M.C.: No, so we, it’s a little bit smaller syndications that we get involved with. There are some funds that we’re looking at right now. Some of my clients are very interested for instance in the mobile home park industry, so there are funds that actually are really good operators in that space. That’s something that we look at as well, but yeah, the whole thing and to touch upon what you guys had mentioned about fees and commissions and so forth. The big thing to for me is price, cost and value. I always run it through that kind of screener for me. Everything has a price. What’s the true cost of it and what’s the value. If we just look at the conventional, I like to call it the conventional kind of planning right now which it’s a train wreck waiting to hit something, right? The Wall Street one is what am I paying for? The price is absurdly high if you’re just basically giving your money to someone else.
You don’t know, there’s no feedback loop mechanism so it’s going to take you 35 years to figure out if it was the right, because even in downturns they’re just going to tell you just ride this one out. I know we lost 40% of your money or 50% of your money or whatever it is, but hey that 2% override that we take, trust me we’re worth every cent and in the value in the end. You kind of have to look at that whole picture. I think John Bogle from the Vanguard Group which is here in Pennsylvania did a study where two-thirds of your gains over 30-35 years could be eaten up by fees.
Jack Butala: Right, yeah.
M.C.: When I look at that that’s almost predatory. The game is rigged and it’s designed for certain folks to win. What we are talking about, what you guys are talking about which is fantastic is just guys there’s other ways of doing this to rig the game in your favor.
Jack Butala: You know what we’re seeing too is a lot of these, the younger kids, the Millennials. They’ve had it. They don’t even have any experience like we do, but they’re disgusted with it as much as we are. They’re very, very, very open to the fact, exactly what you’re saying. It’s pretty much rigged. It’s right out of 1955.
Jill DeWit: Right.
Jack Butala: There’s got to be a better way because of the Internet.
M.C.: Right.
Jack Butala: A ton of our members come to us with an open mind, which is that’s all we require. If you come into this with an open mind that things need to change, there’s usually a really positive outcome.
Jill DeWit: Exactly, that is exactly right.
M.C.: That’s exactly what I’m seeing as well. Millennials had a ringside seat to seeing that their parents went through and a lot of households, the majority of households in the United States, it wasn’t pretty. You know this whole go to school, get good grades, go take on more debt to get a degree and whatever, where they don’t really teach any skills. It’s still shaped the education system for the job economy, not a skills economy. Then buy that white picket fence and basically hand your money to someone to manage for 30-35 years and everything is going to be rosy. You’re going to have that, what’s the movie? The Stepford Wives pictures on your walls, right?
Jack Butala: Yeah.
Jill DeWit: Uh-huh.
M.C.: It just doesn’t work out that way. For them, good on them that their timing to see all of this, that there’s a lot of holes in this holey story that’s been pitched to them. They’re starting to wake up. They’re big in all kinds of stuff. I think if you look at where Millennials are looking towards as well, there’s a lot of them involved in the Crypto space. Talking about rigged games, to move out and away from the system. They do come with an open mind. They come looking at different ways, because they said well you know this hasn’t worked for mom and dad. This isn’t going to work for me. I’m in a mountain of debt. I don’t know what to do really and they’re willing to look at other ways to do it. It’s been quite something to see the development and all these open minds starting conversations.
Jill DeWit: Uh-huh.
Jack Butala: I’d like to try out a Stepford Wife. You come home from work and your slippers are there and there’s a warm meal.
Jill DeWit: Yeah and I greet you with a Scotch and I’m wearing a skirt . . .
Jack Butala: Keep going, keep going.
Jill DeWit: High heels.
Jack Butala: This is turning me on, go ahead.
Jill DeWit: I have an apron on.
Jack Butala: What else, what else?
Jill DeWit: My hair is all bouffant.
Jack Butala: Uh-huh. Like B-52s, up there.
Jill DeWit: Yeah, there we go. How’s that?
M.C.: You have to be wearing a smoking jacket right?
Jill DeWit: There we go. I hand that to Jack with the slippers.
Jack Butala: Can we do it for just like two days? Just see if we like it?
Jill DeWit: I don’t know. M.C. would your wife do that?
M.C.: I could try. I could try. We have a five month old baby right now that might interrupt this whole scenario.
Jill DeWit: So . . .
Jack Butala: You guys are married to your baby right now.
Jill DeWit: When you get the door now, it’s like take him. I’ve got to take a shower.
M.C.: Yeah, that’s right, that’s right.
Jill DeWit: I remember those days.
M.C.: I’ll see you on Monday, thanks.
Jill DeWit: Here it’s all yours. I had it all day, here you go. You had a relaxing day at the office, your turn.
M.C.: Right. Exactly. Exactly, you get to have fun and talk on podcasts and have conversations.
Jill DeWit: Yeah.
Jack Butala: Here you go.
Jill DeWit: You got to have lunch all by yourself. I’m so jealous. I remember those days. That is awesome. What kind of people, how do they find you? What kind of people come to you?
M.C.: Yeah, it’s been very, very interesting. A lot of the clients that we have is professional, so we’ve got quite a bit in the medical arena. A lot of busy working professionals that we kind of, we work with. Then there’s also, there’s a place for everyone. There’s a lot of young ones. I mentioned Millennials that are doing that find us through podcasts. The Millennials love the podcasts. We work with a lot of them. We do a lot of family planning. I’ve had a lot of Baby Boomers from the Boomer demographic coming over, because one of the greatest transfers of wealth is about to happen as well with a lot of Boomers that still have some money left after the last ten years are looking to not only retire, but transfer it over to the next generation.
That’s kind of the legacy planning that we get involved with. Then there’s also planning for, part of the legacy planning is planning for children and grandchildren and so forth. That’s one thing that we do as well, but yeah investors, entrepreneurs, small business owners and then also families that we work with. The podcast has been a great one, my podcast, because the idea actually started. A lot of my clients asked me hey I’ve set up liquidity. I’d like to learn more about X right? Like real estate or gold and silver or Bitcoin or whatever. I thought to myself, you know I’m not the expert in a lot of those fields.
There are people that know a lot more about me and my philosophy is always to partner with people that know more than me do in their respective areas. I figured hey let’s grab a microphone. Let’s have some phone and let’s interview some people that are experts in that arena and have that expertise in that asset class. That’s been fantastic, because it gave my existing client base a big exposure of different ideas and then also there’s new listeners then come as the show is growing. Yeah, we’re a complete virtual wealth management firm. We operate all over the United States and there’s even Canadians which we then partner with advisors that we know, like and trust and is in the same frame of mind that we do in Canada. To make a short answer extremely long it’s very diverse our group of clients.
Jill DeWit: That’s cool. You know what’s interesting is you touched on what I was suspecting. We have a lot of these individuals in our group which are really smart people.
Jack Butala: Oh geez. Smarter than us, way smarter than us.
Jill DeWit: Exactly. You don’t find out until six months down the road that they’ve got three PhDs and they’re running a pharmaceutical company.
Jack Butala: They’re just as sick and tired of everything else like we are.
Jill DeWit: Exactly.
Jack Butala: All those degrees and all that money doesn’t change their attitude. We all have the same attitude. We’re all disgusted.
Jill DeWit: Exactly. It is so interesting. What do you think is the, because you too have a wide variety of individuals that you work with? What is you think is one of the biggest wealth building tools that you have found in the last few years that you didn’t even expect? Is there something new that you went oh my gosh, we all need to be doing this?
M.C.: Yeah, that’s a really good question.
Jack Butala: It is a good question, I’m curious. You were smooth Jill.
Jill DeWit: I did.
M.C.: I guess I would answer, before I get to the asset classes I’ve mentioned that we talk about investing in ourselves, but the other one too is relationships. The second greatest asset that we have. Even if they take away like I can talk about real estate which has really performed well in syndications and the tax advantages and the passive income and so forth, especially in multi-family, but even if that’s taken away, you have yourself and that relationship. They can take everything away from you. You can start back up again. I think that’s the first two things that you have to have in place, because I think there’s some head winds ahead.
Jill DeWit: Uh-huh.
M.C.: Just looking at what’s out there in our environment. If you have those two things in place you can rebuild or you can not only thrive or survive rather, but also thrive. The other thing that I would mention to you guys I mentioned wow everybody should be doing this, is find different ways of how money can work simultaneously at the same time for you in many different places. When you dovetail certain things, like we teach people to do with the insurance and then the real estate. I mean it’s quite remarkable the many different jobs that one single dollar has. There’s different asset clauses to do it as well. For instance one of the things that I researched back when I started to look at this as well is folks that were trading, I believe it’s called asset based lending of where they basically through managing positions in the market can leverage that to invest in land or in real estate or any other asset classes.
The old way of doing it was CDs at a bank used to pay like 15%. Folks would put CDs in the bank and then basically get a loan with it as collateral to go out and purchase investment grade real estate. I would say that there isn’t a particular one, obviously Bitcoin right now. If somebody had told you about crypto-currencies and you bought a bunch of Bitcoin at $3.00 a Bitcoin, you’d be smiling like a Cheshire cat right now, if they do smile at all, but yeah I would say that yourself, your relationships and your network and then look for different ways of dovetailing certain asset classes to maximize the usage of every dollar.
Jill DeWit: Well I have to say my favorite of that answer was the first two and you’re sounding very spiritual M.C. and I really really like that.
Jack Butala: Yeah.
Jill DeWit: That’s near and dear to my heart, because you’re right. How many people fall down and don’t get back up. If you have the strength to fall down and get back up and do it again, you can do it again.
Jack Butala: Well, you are going to fall down.
Jill DeWit: Once you figure that out, oh that’s true.
Jack Butala: Let’s just start off all being honest with ourselves in the mirror.
Jill DeWit: Things are going to go wrong.
Jack Butala: You’re going to fall down. Stuff is going to happen, so just plan for it rather than be surprised by it.
Jill DeWit: Uh-huh.
M.C.: Yeah, absolutely. It’s going to happen as you mentioned. We’re going to fail. Hopefully we do, because then we keep growing and learning, right? I think once you’ve failed a couple of times for me personally, I’ve embraced it and I’m looking forward to the learning. The other thing is there’s a mentor of mine that talked about human live value. Since I took it in a little bit of a spiritual direction, but all of us have a value to the world and once we increase our value to the world by investing in ourselves and our relationships and so forth. It doesn’t matter. There’s a lot of doom and gloomers out there on the economy. The world is going to end tomorrow. The dollar is going to crash. We’re going to all live in bunkers and all that kind of stuff.
Regardless of what happens, once you’ve established your human live value to the world and you have those relationships, goods and services will always be traded between people. There will always be certain needs, the basic human life needs. How they will exchange, you know the global monetary system changes every 30-40 years. We’ll probably, we’re do for another change in a different direction, but people still exchange money regardless of what it is. Whether it’s crypto-currency or gold and silver coins or Federal Reserve notes. It’s a medium of exchange and a representation of value.
The value that you have to the world, that is your real, real power inside to be able to exchange with other folks. Regardless of how you fail and fall down and lose a little bit or lose everything, once you have those things in place, I think you’ll be able to get up and build it right back up again.
Jill DeWit: Uh-huh.
Jack Butala: You know Jill we have, you and I have I don’t know five or six basic income streams.
Jill DeWit: Uh-huh.
Jack Butala: That we’ve all created.
Jill DeWit: Uh-huh.
Jack Butala: Off the top of your head without really thinking about it, which one is most profitable with the least amount of work.
Jill DeWit: You want me to say it?
Jack Butala: Yeah, just say it.
Jill DeWit: Flipping land.
Jack Butala: That’s what I think.
Jill DeWit: I do.
Jack Butala: I have the same answer.
Jill DeWit: I come back to that.
Jack Butala: What’s number two? Flipping houses.
Jill DeWit: Yeah.
Jack Butala: Then all these websites and these tools that we have like office owners and all that.
Jill DeWit: They require a little more work.
Jack Butala: Is a tremendous amount of work.
Jill DeWit: Yeah.
Jack Butala: Let’s just call a spade a spade. A lot of work for both of us. They’re profitable as hell.
Jill DeWit: It’s funny.
Jack Butala: As a percentage, but flipping land, buying a piece of property and selling it for more, whether it’s land or houses right now.
Jill DeWit: Don’t get greedy.
Jack Butala: I am never surprised at how much money it makes.
Jill DeWit: Uh-huh.
Jack Butala: I’m never surprised about how consistent it is. We just put the thing in place and it just seems like it runs itself.
Jill DeWit: I don’t think about it.
Jack Butala: With two or three people involved and that’s it.
Jill DeWit: Can you get to that point with all the, I mean I’m sure you can M.C. with all the stuff that you coach and you teach people to do. Is there ever an autopilot situation or how much work do you have to put in to typically manage your portfolio the way you guys do it?
M.C.: Yeah, so that’s another great question. You’re on fire today.
Jill DeWit: Thank you.
M.C.: No, yeah . . .
Jack Butala: You have no idea M.C. You have no idea how true that is.
Jill DeWit: Thanks.
M.C.: I mean a limited amount of time we can spend on it, so to give an example for instance once you build up that cash value in your policy for instance, that’s a phone call or form that you fill out. The money is coming in and it’s in syndication. I’m just using that example because there’s a lot of clients that prefer to do that and that’s monthly checks that they get in the mail. They can set up a loan payback schedule on autopilot. Yeah, this is something that you could sit back once a month to manage it. Look at it to see what’s happening. Then there’s of course other folks that want to be more hands on and they’re a little bit busier in what they’re doing.
You can truly look at this with a minimal amount of time manage it and still be in control of how this work and where this is going and where this fits in into your overall wealth plan.
Jill DeWit: Thank you I appreciate that. I have a question too I was wanting to ask? What do you do to relax? Because you have so much going on. What is relaxing to you? I imagine when you’re relaxing M.C. you’re researching something new, so what do you do?
Jack Butala: That’s a good question.
M.C.: Yeah, no I do like to research and read a lot, so I’m always looking into something and reading up on something and try to learn something new from someone else, but yeah relaxing right now to is just quality family time.
Jill DeWit: Have you heard of that word relaxing?
Jack Butala: He’s got a five month old baby.
Jill DeWit: I know.
Jack Butala: That’s a load question.
Jill DeWit: No.
M.C.: No, I think relaxing has taken on . . .
Jill DeWit: I’m not here trying to find out for his wife or anything, no I’m not trying to throw M.C. under the bus or anything, no.
M.C.: No, no. It’s taken on a different meaning for sure with a five month old, I’ll tell you that. Because, that’s relaxing is spending some quality time with him and my wife. No, it’s definitely taking on a different meaning.
Jack Butala: Are you aware that in this country in the 80’s there was a character called M.C. Hammer who filed bankruptcy?
M.C.: I’m absolutely aware of that. I usually joke and say, because my full name is [inaudible 00:31:24] Laubscher, the First and my mom looked at this and she goes yeah we’re going to call him M.C. and that was before M.C. Hammer and the pants, so I have to give her credit.
Jack Butala: All right fair enough.
Jill DeWit: Okay.
Jack Butala: He was named after you then?
M.C.: Yeah. M.C. Hammer with pants. I still see people with those pants on by the way now and again.
Jack Butala: I know me too, it’s coming back.
M.C.: Yeah.
Jack Butala: All that stuff is coming back. That whole Madonna thing.
Jill DeWit: Yes.
Jack Butala: It’s really silly.
Jill DeWit: It is so hilarious.
Jack Butala: Well you’re a woman, what do you think about the fashion of the 80’s?
Jill DeWit: Oh I think it’s awful.
Jack Butala: I do to. It was awful in the 70’s.
Jill DeWit: It was awful.
Jack Butala: It’s worse.
Jill DeWit: I think the 60’s was fun. I would have done the 60’s.
Jack Butala: I do too. I think the 90’s is okay. It’s back to normal.
Jill DeWit: The 90’s is okay, so yeah the 80’s that was awful.
Jack Butala: I think it was all based on the . . .
M.C.: It’s almost cyclical right? Because, I think, was the bell bottoms from the 60’s and that kind of came back in the 90’s too, so it kind of like, there’s kind of this recycling cyclical thing going on with fashion, right?
Jill DeWit: Exactly.
Jack Butala: Remember that hairstyle for women where it would just be all stuck in the front, stuck up like they got hit in the forehead with a 2 x 4.
Jill DeWit: Yes, that was hard to do with a blow dryer and a lot of hairspray.
Jack Butala: Right and why?
Jill DeWit: I know this is a question Jack’s been dying to ask you, so?
Jack Butala: Oh here this is a trap too.
Jill DeWit: Well know this is funny, because Jack’s from the East Coast and we live on the West Coast now.
M.C.: Right.
Jill DeWit: Jack has this conversation often with other men about the difference of East Coast women and West Coast women.
Jack Butala: What?
Jill DeWit: What? Just what they look like.
Jack Butala: This is so off topic.
Jill DeWit: No, I know this is kind of funny though. What are women like in Pennsylvania? Are they uptight? What’s it like living there? I’ve never lived there?
Jack Butala: This is a trap.
Jill DeWit: No, I’m curious.
M.C.: No I would say, so I lived in Chicago for 12 years and it’s got kind of like the Midwest charm and Pennsylvania is very, very similar to that, because a lot of people think East Coast, they think New York or right the big cities. I wouldn’t completely say that they’re big citiesque so, I find them very friendly and nice. Yeah, so now I’m going to be alive for a lot longer too.
Jill DeWit: I love it. I love it.
Jack Butala: Do you remember how during the pre-talk M.C. talked about pleading the fifth?
Jill DeWit: Oh yeah.
M.C.: Yes.
Jack Butala: That’s what I’m doing right now.
M.C.: Right.
Jill DeWit: You’re silly. You are so silly.
M.C.: I was thinking about that, but that might have even gotten me in more trouble.
Jill DeWit: Oh, you guys are awesome.
Jack Butala: I’m a big fan of the West Coast. I like the attitude. There’s nothing wrong with the East Coast. I think again the younger generation is a little bit more calmed down. They’re younger so they have less stuff to be upset about.
Jill DeWit: Wait, wait, where? Here?
Jack Butala: No. There’s just some huge differences between the East and West Coast. That’s just the way it is. Yeah, just think in general. People are just a little bit more calmed down. Some of the most wealthy people I’ve ever met live where we are right now Jill and they’re also some of the nicest most calm people ever. I just think that the opposite in general on the East Coast it seems like with wealth comes this responsibility to be somewhat of an anus.
Jill DeWit: Oh no.
M.C.: You know it’s funny that you say that, because every country to has different regions and it’s kind of funny that. Growing up in South Africa, it’s the same thing. I grew up in the south just outside of Stellenbosch which the closest major city is Cape Town and then Johannesburg is kind of where the stock exchanges is. There’s a lot of gold companies there which was big drivers of the economy, so you’re almost like Johannesburg was kind of there’s a different speed and intensity of life there than down in the south where it’s kind of more, I mean I guess Cape Town or parts of it, it reminds me a lot of the West Coast. Very picturesque and beaches and so forth. There’s a different pace of life so that I’ve definitely seen in the US as well when you compare like for instance New York City is it’s own planet.
Even like Chicago and then compare it to the West Coast, but it definitely is interesting seeing it in different countries and different regions, kind of how, yeah the different speed of life and the quality of life.
Jill DeWit: Uh-huh.
Jack Butala: I spent a lot of time in Chicago in my really early commercial real estate years and I have nothing bad to say about it. I love it.
Jill DeWit: I liked it too. A little cold in February, but I do . . .
Jack Butala: It’s cold, except for the weather.
Jill DeWit: My brother lived there for a while and I got to visit him.
Jack Butala: That’s right.
Jill DeWit: It was really fun.
M.C.: The summers are amazing in Chicago.
Jill DeWit: Yes.
Jack Butala: Incidentally it’s a little late to bring it up, but Jill’s little brother is the master of high velocity trading.
Jill DeWit: Oh yes.
Jack Butala: He got in and got out.
Jill DeWit: Some of the things you touched on, that was one of the things. He got so big he designed a program that really took the automated trading to the next level. That’s why they did so well.
Jack Butala: Yeah, right.
Jill DeWit: Yeah.
M.C.: Yeah, there’s some stuff. I usually joke and say there’s things right now in algorithms and computer software and programs that we don’t even know exist.
Jack Butala: When I think about it, why didn’t I write a program. It’s probably six lines of code.
Jill DeWit: I remember watching him, like what do you do all day? He’s like nothing, I just sit and watch. Seriously.
M.C.: I’m sure Michael Lewis is going to write a book about it eventually.
Jack Butala: Yeah.
Jill DeWit: Exactly. Well thank you very much M.C. We’re happy to have you on our show, so M.C. Laubscher, am I saying that okay with my West Coast accent?
M.C.: Yeah, that was great.
Jill DeWit: Thank you very much.
M.C.: Thank you so much of having me on.
Jill DeWit: Creator and host of the Cash Flow Ninja and this is Jack and Jill and you are not alone in your real estate venture.
Jack Butala: Join us for the next episode where I report back on how the whole Stepford Wife program went.
Jill DeWit: There we go.
Jack Butala: Thanks M.C.
Jill DeWit: Thank you.
Jack Butala: Talk to you soon.
M.C.: Thank you guys.
Jack Butala: All right bye.
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