Ep616: Aaron Velky – Go Slow and Think Through an Investment Before You Commit

Andrew Stotz 00:02
Hello fellow risk takers and welcome to my worst investment ever stories of loss to keep you winning. In our community we know that to win in investing, you must take risk but to win big, you've got to reduce it. Ladies and gentlemen are on a mission to help 1 million people reduce risk in their lives. And that mission has led me to create the become a better investor community. In the community. You get access to the tools you need to create, grow and protect your wealth go to my worst investment ever.com right now to claim your spot. Fellow risk takers this is your worst podcast host Andrew Stotz from a Stotz Academy, I'm here with featured guest Aaron Velky. Aaron, are you ready to join the mission?

Aaron Velky 00:49
I'm super excited to join this mission man. Let me in.

Andrew Stotz 00:54
Here we go. The train is leaving the station ladies and gentlemen, and I want to introduce you to Aaron. Aaron is an entrepreneur, author, a high performance coach and speaker from Phoenix, Arizona. He's the CEO of money club, a movement in a business believing that while money matters, financial intelligence matters more. Money Club offers employee employers a meaningful way to retain their talent, deliver amazing company culture, and empower their people taking their team through a series of workshops on personal finance and wealth building, one part motivating and high engagement workshops and one part financial tools, courses, app recommendations and action steps to better their financial future money club also has an online community courses and content to help those ready to invest and grow wealth. I think I'm going to stop right there. Because that's pretty interesting. Maybe you could take a moment and tell us about the unique value that you are bringing to this world.

Aaron Velky 01:55
I will thank you for that man. I'm happy to share about this. This has been a passion of mine for a long time. When I graduated college, I had a degree in financial economics and suddenly realized that that didn't help much. Right, it prepared me to work for someone else prepared me to build wealth for somebody else didn't really teach me personal finance. So when I started learning, I spent a little bit of time actually a lot of time coaching, soccer coaching kids girls soccer. And while I was doing that, and I was learning about money, and I was side hustling my way into a couple extra coins. It struck me that they were never going to learn about money. And I didn't learn about money. And so the idea initially kicked off with a buddy and I, we started a nonprofit to teach kids. Well, that catapulted a whole change in my life, because in order to wow, my lights went out, Alexa, turn on balloon. The thing that changed my life is now if I'm responsible for learning, to teach others I've got to I've got a mission got my own mission to be on. And it took me a long time to get to a place where I felt confident in teaching down to kids, but we built that up we converted to a C corporation venture money, left the nonprofit shackled behind and grew and grew. And somewhere in that midst COVID happened. And the entire education industry was like a dumpster fire. So our entire business was gone in like 14 hours. It was crazy. I got the day the US shut down march like 14th or something. We lost every one of our contracts indefinitely. And so through this panic moment, we settled down we simmered and we realized that adults needed help. And since that moment, we really spent that first like year just volunteering our time in different companies to say, hey, can we help your people panic less? Can we give them some tips on financial stability. And that pivoted us really into what we have now, which is a solution for employers that want to show their team they care. They want to show them that they're invested in their personal growth. So we come in and offer a very structured and very dynamic experience for them to learn about money, learn about the basics of personal finance, learn about credit, learn about investing less from an angle of a financial advisor, because we can be very wide as an education company to really empower them economically, as a part of a company culture. And I think culture is a big conversation right now. And we're excited to be a part of really, really special companies that want to show their team, like, Hey, I'm on your side. And I'll show you that with this investment in you.

Andrew Stotz 04:47
So how did they find you? Your customers?

Aaron Velky 04:51
It's either word of mouth, or an individual is at like a leadership summit, a leadership training and here's maybe a speech that I give If they might hear a coaching call, often though, it's word of mouth. And what I find is that it takes a certain kind of leader to understand that this is key to your employees, right? When we're the entrepreneur on top. We don't, we don't necessarily connect that our financial situation is very different from everyone else's. And it takes a very aware leader to say, hey, you know, I want my team to be successful financially, it takes a leader period to do that, not just a boss or an employer. And usually, it's referrals that send us to the next level.

Andrew Stotz 05:34
And how would you describe like, what if someone, if an employee attended all of the activities and all the core stuff and everything about what you guys teach, and they finish, you know, your whole program? What are they going to be? What's the difference that they're going to feel and see in their life?

Aaron Velky 05:52
We strive for two things. And they're simple. Not necessarily easy. And there are a lot of benefits beyond these. But the first is to be comfortable talking and asking questions about money. For many, that's a big milestone, can I confidently have a conversation? And can I have a conversation where I raised my hand and say, Hey, I don't I don't understand. Right? That's really important. And the second is, we want them to understand how wealth is built. We break it into four parts, four variables, everyone has their own equation, investable, income, assets, leverage and time, we all have our own mix of those things. And they all come in various different shapes and sizes. But that formula, we call that the wealth creation formula. It's our sort of like, quote, unquote, secret sauce, although it's not super secret. The objective of that is to give them a little bit of momentum moving into their choices. So we like to change and shape behavior, because we know choices change everything, but that formula, really contextualize things for people.

Andrew Stotz 06:54
Can you walk just briefly through that formula for the audience, so they understand what you're talking about?

Aaron Velky 07:00
Yeah. So investable, income is variable one, this isn't just income, you can make 500 grand a year. But if you spend 500, you have no investable income. This is the income that you set aside with purpose of investing. And it's often there's a lot of friction in saving, because it feels like you're saying no to a lot of things, you need to have some kind of income ready to move, some kind of capital ready to deploy. The second is assets. Assets are things that generate income, if it doesn't generate income, it's not an asset, at least by our definition. And that's really important to understand. So when people are like, Yeah, I bought a house is my first asset. I'm like, No, do not buy an asset, you have debt on it, you have a liability. let's reframe that, let's give you a healthy definition that so you can buy art, you can buy crypto, you can buy houses, you can buy all these things, but it needs to generate income to count. And that definition and redefinition really gives people power to move forward with what they purchase. Right? Things like stocks have much lower barrier to entry, you can do it for $5, you can do it for $50. Whereas something like real estate, you need several 1000s of dollars to be able to get started. So though that leans back on your investable income. Leverage is your ability to borrow this is the length of your seesaw and the strength of your fulcrum, some real physics terms there, the point of leverage is to extend our ability to acquire. So we might use our credit card that's a form of leverage, not the healthiest form, it's still a form, we might use debt and buy a house with $20,000 when the home is worth 200. And without that borrowing, you couldn't buy that $200,000 home. So levered is a really important piece and understanding how that works and why that's important is a function of the entire formula. You know, I find that many people have an aversion to debt. And we try to maybe proliferate the concept that debt as a tool is important. You know, if I give somebody a hammer, and they put a hole in the wall, that's a problem. But if they build stairs, well, that's a win win. So let's not make it a one sided coin. The last piece is time. And we have two functions there. We have short term time, what do I do with my day to day, how do I use my minutes? Do I feel good about them? And then we've got the effect of compounding the effects of growth over the long run. And that means that we've got to make some choices in the short term. And we've got to make some choices in the short term that favor our long term. We may not see the outcome right away. And I think that's a big part of the general conversation of investing is what's that threshold look like? And how patient can you be? And those four things, really, because they're variable and they change for everybody, in our opinion, gives some kind of maybe safety to a person saying okay, what's my strength, what's not my strength? How do I feel good and allows them to kind of customize formula to themselves with a little bit of education behind it, so that they have a runway forward rather than just, you know, blindly walking in the dark with no sight or vision.

Andrew Stotz 10:10
Great. So investable income, assets, leverage and time. Excellent, that's valuable stuff. And I can imagine that if you can go into a company and empower the workforce, the boss is going to also feel like they've really contributed, you know, to the financial health of the employees and the employees can feel like they're getting that benefit from from their, from their job, whereas many companies don't really do anything like that.

Aaron Velky 10:41
Beautifully said, you know, we've had people that their credit score has gone up 100 points, some were able to buy a car, some have bought houses, some have put money into a 401 K or an IRA, that they, they would have been, essentially retirement less, unless they started. And it's those simple things that, you know, it's really hard for us to track our success, because we can't ask people to divulge all their financials. But we do have these nuggets, these stories, these victories that come up, where people share some major milestones for them, right, we all have our own journey. That's the other tough part about financial education is like, we all start at different places, we all want to get different places. Yeah, if we can move you forward, one or two spaces on the board. We're very happy. And companies are happy people in the companies are happy. And leadership is often like, wow, this is so exciting to see my people winning.

Andrew Stotz 11:36
Where's the best place for people to go to learn more about this?

Aaron Velky 11:40
Our website is really simple. www.we are money club.com. We deliver everything virtually. So we can serve all over the US all over the world. And most of our conversations are not specifically about like the dollar, right? That's a big part of the conversation. But it's generally learning about how money works. So we've been able to do some really cool work across the globe.

Andrew Stotz 12:02
Right? Well, we'll have that link to that in the show notes for anybody that wants to check it out. I always tell the story of my mom and dad, and one of the things is so different. My dad worked for DuPont all of his life. And my mom was a housewife. And they had a 22 year retirement. And when my mom came to Thailand, she still had plenty of money left over to live on here. And that's kind of remarkable when you consider that my dad wasn't like a super senior executive making huge bonuses in money. He was a excellent, you know, employee, but and also part of it is that in those days, the company took care of a lot of stuff. Yep. And that is something that's, you know, really gone nowadays. That's that. So in some ways, it's kind of funny, because it's like you're bringing it back to the company. Yeah. And using the company as a communication tool, let's say to help. So that's fascinating. Well,

Aaron Velky 13:01
yeah. So that's a fun mission. And it's, it's exciting to see change in that space.

Andrew Stotz 13:06
Yeah, well, I enjoyed learning about that. So I appreciate it. So now, it's time to share your worst investment ever. And since no one goes into their worst investment thinking it will be. Tell us a bit about the circumstances leading up to and then tell us your story.

Aaron Velky 13:22
Well, like all of us started with a dream. I was researching various different investment platforms. I'd felt like I'd hit a plateau. And I was really struggling with this identity, where I was regularly wearing the like money club hat the success hat I was, I was doing all that. And I just I felt stuck. I didn't feel like I was grown enough. I didn't feel like I was accelerating enough. So I find myself in this like Inquisition mode. And um, if there's a skill bar of research, I would not really be on that skill bar. My research skill is almost zero. I'm just I'm fast and furious. So I was rather fast and furious. And I'm looking around for ways to go quick. And anytime anyone in investing says I want to go quick. There are two pieces to that equation that most people ignore. One is the only way to do that is really dial up like a lot your risk. And if you want to go quick, there is likely going to be way more collateral damage than you're going to research on the surface. It's only going to be underneath it. But I ignored that because I felt prepared. And I found a you know I was looking into real estate and look at all these things, but they're slow. So I found Forex. Forex is really interesting, because Forex is all about leverage. Forex is like,

Andrew Stotz 14:57
done in like Forex means trading and Foreign Exchange.

Aaron Velky 15:01
So more or less your, like betting on currency relationships is just anytime you watch it. I mean, you could watch it just like a TV show, there's that much entertainment and it's wild. So I start, I start with like a Play account, and I find a broker, have a conversation with them. The broker was overseas. And all things check out enough. Did I do all my research, I was really excited. I thought this would be I thought this would make me more credible. That's the irony. And the fear that I had was that if I didn't find a way to like, dig a books, people would say, Hey, do you know about this? And the reality is, it probably did better for me losing than winning, because now I have all these battle scars along with my other investment stories. But I start down this pathway I sent a couple grand did. And the way Forex works, you kind of bet on the change more or less. And you have leverage that you can essentially borrow for so that if it changes the way you bet, you win. So I was having these moments where you know, a couple grand turned into another couple grand pretty quick. It was like $100 days, and then it suddenly was $300 days. So I put a couple more in. So now I'm having like $500 days, like Man, if I do the math here, this is a pretty good like, this takes me 15 minutes, 20 minutes, 30 minutes during the day is great. Any machine. Here we go, no downside, this is great. I'm the one on the special one. And maybe four or five days in straight to zero. So naturally, as a competitive and aggressive and like excitable human being, I'm like, Okay, well, obviously, that was a flaw. Total flaw. I'm gonna try again. So just just,

Andrew Stotz 16:58
just to make it clear, when you say it went to zero, the currency didn't go to zero. But the position that you put on that currency using some sort of leverage in derivative instrument, basically went to zero.

Aaron Velky 17:10
Yep. So you can have when you, when you place these exchange bets, you're sort of writing the change in the chain, if the change goes the way that you say it's going, your account goes up, if the change goes the opposite direction, your account goes down. And so you have these, you know, might be loss, win loss, win loss, win loss went up there, I always like an EKG machine that you have an interesting relationship with, right? It's like being at a slot machine. And that's sort of the problem. And it has this addictive tendency to attract individuals that want a way out. And so I put up a bit more, write it a couple days, down. Okay. All right. And we'll talk a bit more. And now I like playing with serious swings, like my swings are a couple of $1,000 a day, like I'm having a field day, you know, I have a day where it I'd be up five grand. Next day, I'd be down four grand, up six, down three up for down set, like it was nuts. My emotional turbulence was through the roof. And I was so unstable during this period, looking back at it, like, I would have a great day and feel good. And have a awful day. And I didn't know what I was going to do. And in my head, I'm like, Okay, what on aggregate I'm growing, so I can justify this. Well, then it started to become these swings that were large enough where I got like, like Googly, googly eyes because it was like, I'd have I'd have a day or an afternoon where it was like 30 grand. And I'm like, This is it. This look at this. If I can make 30 grand in a day. It's only 30 days before I'm like chi Ching chi Ching is great. Well, $30,000 days became like, this emotional euphoric state. And then $25,000 $28,000 losses became like depression. And it was just this huge tennis scrimmage the ball just knock knock, knock knock. If my life was wimbledon Now all I was doing was observing this like back and forth just knowing that this couldn't possibly end well. Not because I thought it would go down but because I like I was watching myself deteriorate mentally. Well, eventually, I had one day where my like winning was like 100 grand. And I was like, This is great. I'm gonna stop here and I'm gonna, I'm gonna pull it out. I'm good. Let's go take it and run. So I have like a really sizable account and feeling good. And I put a call on it. Well, for some reason that day, I was like, Man, this. I'm gonna try one more. Try one more and tanked out. Negative 12 grand. And I'm like, oh my god, I remember I'll never forget this. I was in Tucson. And I set up all night to try to go one more go one more go one more. And I forgot us are crying. And I was just sitting there sobbing like, I don't even know where to go from here. What? What do I do? When I've totaled all because I had to like put in these small numbers over and over and over. I didn't even know. I knew how much I'd put in. But I've never done the math to add the sum up. And I've realized at that point, I was down 12. And I had lost $56,465. And I was like, Aaron, what the hell have you done? So here's where the plot twist. So I'm like, oh my god, I now owe this company 12 grand. So I tried to get in touch with them. Actually don't know, they try, they get very quickly in touch with me. So we start having a conversation. And I'm like, trying to feel these dialogues through like WhatsApp or something. And something comes up and like something gets said, and I'm like, wait a minute, hold on. This son doesn't seem right. So I started researching and checking all this stuff. And the further I dig and the further I inquire the more distant they get me while I'm being told I owe 12 grand, and I've just lost 56 even if nothing else, like I'm not feeling happy about this. Talk about an emotional swing, I'm stuck at low. I'm stuck at EA. And I dig and dig and dig. And I finally realized that the entire company, they put me on a fake trading account, because the entire company was a hoax. And there was a strange feeling of relief, because I didn't I didn't know I wasn't not going to pay anymore. But also this whole like, it's like a soul the whole story. Finally, I saw that. Here here. I was a rather young entrepreneur, I don't remember when this was a couple years ago, I was this young entrepreneur that thought I could like bypass these things. And I could Yeah, I could just jump in the fast lane and skip steps. And I was really low and scared. And I made so many phone calls like Dude, what do I do? Like, I don't know what I'm in trouble. And I was so low, that the hardest thing not to do was to blame myself. That was probably the biggest personal growth was, you know, I had this experience. If there's anything I'm good at. This applies to my coaching what we do in money club, it's like awareness, I can be in a moment and have the moment so I was in it suffering and I was of it like, do there some magical lessons in here. You're gonna get some real wizardry out of this. You paid for them. You know, good education, I suppose. But it taught me It taught me a lot of talk. I think the biggest lesson was, you know, you could say skips, don't skip steps, you could say like mangiare risk sale, they say trust, or like research people better. The biggest lesson for me, it was like Aaron, what your gift is, your gift to the world is not this, like, I get that you want to go and you want to have it. But like you were put here to give it you'll have it, you got to give it first and that was just my epiphany. I tried to get out of my ethical and moral responsibilities that these are just my values to say, I'm gonna go make people better. I tried to skip out on that being the pathway for me. And I was like, oh, man, I've deviated from the path from my commitment, my inner commitment and what a lesson there.

Andrew Stotz 24:10
So maybe I'll summarize a few things that I took away from that. The first thing is if you for the listeners and the viewers out there if anybody approaches you with Forex, just start from the point that this is a scam. Yep. Because even when you had that 100,000 I thought what you're going to say is I told them Hey, send me the 100k and they didn't send it and so I know it's a huge already when you said offshore I knew this is gonna be a problematic one. But generally Forex you know for anybody out there think scam now, if Forex if you find a Forex situation that's not a scam. Still get out of it. Why Because with Forex, you're betting against the balance sheet of the biggest banks in the world. And the best traders in those banks, trading those currencies. And even they don't make money all the time, but they have the power of the balance sheet. But the second thing that you're up against is the power of the central banks. And at any moment without any notice, they can pivot on a dime, and all of a sudden, your positions are gone. So the first thing that I take away is do not get involved with Forex. If you really are obsessed with Forex, go and apply to be a forex trader in a bank, and get that job and work it for five years, until you really understand the forex markets. The second thing is, you know, you talked about what I call the emotional rollercoaster. And everybody who gets into investing in the beginning, they just jump on this. I mean, it's like going to amusement park, who's not going to get on the emotional roller coaster. Come on, let's go. It was so fun the last time. And everybody gets on that emotional roller coaster. And I worked as an analyst as a broker for 20 years. And I can say it's all about feeding that emotional rollercoaster. And the hardest thing for me to do at that time was just to somehow make sure I was detached. And I also brought my clients, I tried to get my clients off of that emotional roller coaster. And now what I do is I don't really, I don't watch the news. And I don't watch the markets, because I know how damaging that motional roller coaster can be. And so I think my biggest takeaway for the listeners is, if you feel that you're on an emotional roller coaster of the highs and lows, that's gambling, that's not investing in. So take a step back. And as you said, Be What did you say about be in the moment and of the moment, take a step back, look down, you know, imagine yourself on the ceiling of your room, observing yourself as you're pounding away, and you're so excited. Observe yourself. So anything you would add to that.

Aaron Velky 27:14
Those are really strong takeaways, you know, investing in the moves I've made since then I've been much more thought out. They've been much slower. And in many ways, what that lesson taught me was that speed doesn't come from like transaction rate, speed comes from capital magnitude, right? If I put a bigger investment in a home, I've got a we just sold a luxury Airbnb and that thing was kicking out really awesome cash and sold really well. That sold two weeks ago. But it did that because there was a large capital investment in a reliable asset. There was an asset tear, a inconveniencing. Yeah, and it was producing. And Forex didn't have either of those. It just looked at. And, you know, even if it had been real, it wouldn't have mattered that the false premise is that this will generate cash, assets generate cash, I was simply playing a slot machine. I was simply on a craps table, hoping that the guy next to me knew what he was doing when he was rolling, when it didn't follow the formula. And if it doesn't follow the formula, don't put your money in.

Andrew Stotz 28:29
And you weren't even actually at a craps table table. You are at a virtual craps table. It existed in your mind. Yep. So. So now, based upon what you learned from this story, and what you continue to learn what what action would you recommend our listeners take to avoid suffering the same fate?

Aaron Velky 28:53
Well, your two pieces of insight will solve that. Just say no. It's like the old drug campaigns. Here's what I would advise. The amount of financial education that's available, free or otherwise, is profound right now. Most people want to skip those steps. And I think like, if you look at Michael Jordan, we're all like idolizing who he was. He was a master of the fundamentals, saving, budgeting, earning, those things matter a lot. And most people would do very well. To start with education before investment, get educated, then go invest. You'll do way better.

Andrew Stotz 29:40
So what's a resource that you'd recommend for our listeners?

Aaron Velky 29:45
So this is an interesting one. It's one of my favorite books called The War of Art. It's a book by Steven Pressfield. It's largely about creativity. But the theme of the book is resistance. I was encountering a lot of resistance internal I was like you're not going fast enough. Go fast. struggled fast. And that book many, many times over, I've read it several times has been a comeback story for me to really anchor and come home. And I would recommend that anyone that's really eager to grow and has ambition wants to accelerate, read a book about where they're headed, and why they might want it so much. And then our website, we are money club.com, we got a hell of a lot of resources, that if people want to get educated, we've spent a lot of time a lot of money, building out really, really high class resources for people.

Andrew Stotz 30:40
Fantastic. You're the first person to recommend that book. And I've read 1000s of books and I know of this book, but I've never read it. So I think you're prompting me to pick it up and read it. Last question, what is your number one goal for the next 12 months?

Aaron Velky 30:56
Number one goal Wow. Hmm. There have been a lot of changes in my life. Recently, a change cities had a kid that I've sold the investment property that I had, like, I just feel like a different human. And the major work and the major goal 12 months, not even an investment goal is a purely human goal is to get incredibly good at pushing people past their comfort zones. And I'm getting there. And I haven't made it made it very loud publicly. But my goal is to help at least 150,000 people in my lifetime, that's a number for another story, get to a point where they feel safe and stable. And to do that, I feel I have to push them past their comfort zone. And I'm approaching a point and the goal for me is to get so good at it, I can do it like that. I can find someone's button, what's getting them in their own way. And I can push it and I can help them see the other side. So the goal for me is to get so sophisticated, it looks really simple, and how you make change and a human being

Andrew Stotz 32:17
fantastic. Well, listeners, there you have it another story of loss to keep you winning. If you haven't yet joined to become a better investor community, just go to my worst investment ever.com right now to claim your spot. As we conclude, Aaron, I want to thank you again for joining our mission and on behalf of a Stotz Academy I hereby award you alumni status for turning your worst investment ever into your best teaching moment. Do you have any parting words for the audience?

Aaron Velky 32:47
Men don't do as I say not as I do.

Andrew Stotz 32:54
And right there, ladies and gentlemen, is a wrap on another great story to help us create, grow and protect our well fellow risk takers. Let's celebrate that today. We added one more person to our mission to help 1 million people reduce risk in their lives. This is your worst podcast hose Andrew Stotz saying. I'll see you on the upside.