Ep711: Rick Warner – Be Careful When Investing in Banks

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 risks but to win big, you've got to reduce it. Ladies and gentlemen, I'm on a mission to help 1 million people reduce risk in their lives to join me go to my worst investment ever.com and sign up for my free weekly become a better investor newsletter where I share how to reduce risk and create grow and protect your wealth. Fellow risk takers this is your worst podcast post Andrew Stotz from A Stotz Academy, and I'm here with featured guest, Rick Warner. Rick, are you ready to join the mission?

Rick Warner 00:42
I am ready, Andrew, let's do this.

Andrew Stotz 00:45
I can say that I haven't. I haven't been so excited about an interview as I am right now after our pre interview chat. So ladies and gentlemen,

Rick Warner 00:56
get ready was a lot of and a lot of connection there that in that pre interview. That's awesome. Yeah, that was

Andrew Stotz 01:01
that was great. So let me introduce you to the audience. Rick is a personal development coach, mentor and highly respected real estate broker based in California, you so they, Rick story is one of triumph over adversity. At 20 years old, he found himself homeless and addicted to drugs. But with the help of a supportive community, he was able to turn his life around. Now, over 30 years later, Rick remains committed to personal growth, and helping others achieve success. He has developed the navigator program, a groundbreaking approach to personal productivity and purposeful living, Rick, take a minute and tell us about the unique value that you are bringing to this wonderful world.

Rick Warner 01:45
Well, thank you, and thank you for having me as a guest. I think unique value is a tough one, we are talking about this a little pre pre show here. But one thing that really, I think, makes me at least useful to other people, hopefully, is that I'm really willing to capitalize on all my failures to help other people, right. So this idea that failure is bad, which I certainly try and avoid failure as much as anybody else. I certainly have gotten so much out of my failures that at some point, I started going, Wait a minute, I really can capitalize on these failures because we can help other people, right. And then within the context of that, the the navigator program that you kind of mentioned, as a person who really struggled with having great intentions in the morning, and then somewhere mid day, in the morning, maybe somewhere in the afternoon, just kind of letting all that go, I really needed something to keep me on track. And to put me in a position where I knew that if I were taking the right actions, I could get to where I wanted to go. And I knew what the right actions were most of the time, but getting myself to actually hold myself accountable didn't work at all. And so we created that navigator program. And that's really been quite helpful for a lot of people.

Andrew Stotz 03:02
And what's the ideal person that that is? That's using your navigator program? Like, what is it that they want to get when they join?

Rick Warner 03:11
Yeah, so the way we coach right now is almost exclusively for realtors. However, what I will say is knowing that your audience is really not probably filled with too many realtors, the navigator program will work for anybody, and I teach it for free, I give it away, it's not something that I'm selling, because it really is so helpful. And for me, I've been lucky. And I think maybe you've experienced something similar in your life where it's like, I've had so many people that have taken the time to be helpful with me, whether it's a mentor or other relationships, and and, and so it's just something that I'm just kind of giving away and you know, trying to just make the world a better place.

Andrew Stotz 03:53
And maybe you could just summarize a couple of the key things that you let's just say for the audience, that's thinking, Okay, that's interesting. What, uh, what would be one or two things that you teach in that program or that you know, that that you that are the most valuable things so that people can think about it and

Rick Warner 04:12
yeah, right. So basically the navigator program, it's, there's actually four parts to it. But the main thing I'm talking about right now is called our daily navigator, which it helps people that are, like I said, have good plans, they have good intentions, like so for example, for me, I have on my daily navigator, meditation, exercise, drinking my greens, you know, reading or listening to a spiritual or personal development podcast, kind of in the personal category, and then I have some work stuff in there. So I want to talk to a certain amount of people every day I want to meet face to face with a certain amount of people and so forth. So it's just kind of cafeteria list that you can put anything in there doesn't matter like mine happens to be mine. But the idea is that every day I look at that list and I go, what are the things that are going to make sure my are going to make my day successful? Now, so far, there's a lot of lists like this. But here's the difference. I checked the boxes, and I send it, I take a picture of it, and I send it out to an accountability group. And that is the difference between what we do and what other lists are. And you know, a lot of people have a to do list for the day and so forth. Ours is a must do list. So we're being very purposeful about what we choose, we send it out to our accountability group. And then as we go through the day, and we start to get distracted, and we start letting our mood determine what we're doing. We oh, wait a minute, I told my accountability group I was going to do those things that were on my list takes me back to getting those things done. By the way, I've signed it like a contract. And once I get everything done, there's a little opportunity for write down to write down three things. I'm grateful for a little mini journal, maybe my struggle or a wind that I had that day or whatever, take another picture of it, send it back out to the group. And I'm done. And so it's kind of like, take your every day and turn it into what's going to make a great day for me, and wrap it up in a nice little, you know, nice, nice little envelope at the end, and I'm done. And then I can be with my family and not worry about what did I get all the things done? You know, did I, you know, am I doing all the things that I want to do to be become the person I want to be?

Andrew Stotz 06:23
And what do you do for people that want to join your group, but then they think, oh, it's I mean, my day is kind of out of control. I'm working all the time. And I you know, I'm afraid that I'm not going to be able to be consistent in that, you know, how do you how do you handle someone like that?

Rick Warner 06:42
Well, so this is a great question. Because this is the most common thing we get up front people are like, I'm too busy for that. Ironically, that's exactly why they shouldn't be doing it. Because a lot of times what too busy means is that you're, you know, you are running on your distractions, you're not doing the things you intended to be purposeful about, you're just letting the day run you versus you running your day. And so once we get people on the program, they find out, they get rid of a whole bunch of stuff that they didn't need to do. And they are just much they're nailing it down to the things that they truly wanted to do when they were cleaning Ryan in the morning. And they were really taking the time to look at their day. It doesn't add to their day, it actually makes her day less complicated. And the other thing is, it's a windy day program, right? So let's say that you do that, and you just dunk on it. At the end of the day, you were not able to get stuff done. Now there's two ways we coached that one is, what did you put on there, that was unrealistic and wasn't going to happen, because we want it we really want the success of the day. And then the other thing is what happened during the day that got you distracted. So we kind of want to coach people around that. But it's not a beat over your head kind of thing. It's like we're, we're really trying to get you committed to this new habit of being purposeful, and not letting other things get in the way of doing what you wanted to do.

Andrew Stotz 07:59
And how do you provide support, either from yourself and your team or from other members of the community without providing overwhelm? You know, like sometimes in groups, you can just get a flow of, you know, all kinds of messages. Other times it's dead quiet. And, I'm just curious how you handle them.

Rick Warner 08:20
Yeah, so the groups that we keep are actually on the smaller side. So even though we'll have maybe a large amount of people doing it will keep the groups to 10 to 20 people, which may sound like a lot, but when you're talking about just these one forms coming through, it's a little bit more, it's kind of easier. And then we've kind of coached people on how to be supportive of each other. So there's no, there's nothing that's like holding somebody down. It's all how can we be supportive? What can we do to help you get there next time and that kind of thing. And the other thing is, it is community driven. So your accountability group is made up of three kinds of people. One is a mentor. So a mentor could be a coach, an actual mentor could be your boss, anybody that you look up to maybe within your industry, somebody that you look up to. And then the next category person is a peer, somebody that's, you know, similar to you on their, they're on a similar track, they're in a similar place in life, whatever it is. And then the third one, which is really important, is to have somebody that you are mentoring somebody that's looking up to you that you're being a good example for. And so by virtue of having those three kinds of people on your accountability group, and it could just be three people that's in your accountability group. You know, we find this is a great way to just keep you on track. Because as you're going through the day, you're like, I don't want to do that thing. I said on my must do list that I decided nobody else is deciding what's on your list every day. I want to I do actually shoot me and I want to be a good example of that person or I want to be I want to do good for my mentor, my mentor to know that I'm working hard or that peer that I have. So it's a pretty good formula.

Andrew Stotz 09:56
So to summarize that, you said groups are about 10 to two Money, the community driven, you talked about the it's important to have three different types. So let's say the mentor, coach boss, so someone that you would consider to be someone that you aspire to be or that you see as a good role model, or you want to be accountable figure. Yep. And then somebody you want to have somebody people at your own level who your have the camaraderie like we're going to the same, you know, we're going to the same place. And then the third one is someone that you're mentoring so that it's, it's incredible how in how valuable that is. To kick your ass to do what you said you're gonna do, because here you are mentoring someone, and they're gone. But Andrew, you're not.

Rick Warner 10:42
You're not even doing it yourself. Yeah, exactly. That's right.

Andrew Stotz 10:45
That's beautiful. And, and it's this, this community that you've built, and the navigator program, it is for certain people and to non for certain people. I'm just curious, like, have my listeners, if there's anybody that's interested in that, what type of person would be the type of person that you would welcome into that? What would be the type of person that you'd say, probably not suitable for them? And where would they go to learn more?

Rick Warner 11:10
So, right, so great questions, the first thing I would say is, you can take everything that I just said, and you I've given you enough information to create your own version of this, right, there's no proprietary I mean, we, we call it the daily navigator, we coach it, we train and so forth. But you literally do not need to come to me, you can go replay this podcast, listen to all the things I said. But we do have a website, FL academy.com, where we have classes that people can sign up for. And then we do, and I don't think we have them on our website. But once a month, we're going to be training, we're giving this to people that are outside of the real estate industry just as like a community service. So that people that are I mean, jeez, even if you're a stay at home mom or dad, or if you're like, it doesn't even have to be for business. Like some people, I have a person who actually is in the fine isn't a financial advisor, or financial, you know, her business is fine, but she wanted to use that accountability for all of her personal stuff. So anyway, I think I went off topic there. But that's the idea is you can do this yourself, you don't need me to do it.

Andrew Stotz 12:21
Okay. And I'm just looking at your website, I'll have a link to it in the show notes. But let's just look at the vision, the vision of flow Academy, that's F LOCADMY is a learning and skill development program created to exhilarate you and drive success in your professional and personal life, work with peers and professional coaches to ignite your creativity propel your business and nurtured your life's flow.

Rick Warner 12:49
Exactly. So our idea is we're trying to coach people in the flow, right? You talk people talk about it all the time I'm living, I'm in the flow, man, things are just working for me. We're trying to create what seems to be kind of elusive for people sometimes, or something that happens occasionally. And we're trying to we are coaching people into living in the flow as much as possible. Part of that is our navigator program.

Andrew Stotz 13:12
That's a great description. And I'll have all that in the show notes. And I really love the tips that you have, I have a community and I am a little bit nervous about overwhelming them, you know, and so, but I do think that what you're talking about is something really valuable. And for those listeners that say, Well, I don't have any time or money to do anything like this, or whatever. I think you know, you've given them a great pathway to just create something like that a channel with your friends and start exactly what you just taught. Before we get into the big question of the day, I just wanted to highlight something that's interesting. And that is, my audience knows that, you know, in. Well, most of my audience knows that when I was 14 years old, I was locked up in juvenile detention center because of my parents filing income chargeability charges against me. And I lived in a foster home over summer. And then I went back to my family. And ultimately, I was caught up in drug addiction and alcohol and all of that, and ended up in a really dark place. And I went into a rehab and started using after that rehab and then I went into a second one and then I went into a third one. And it was September 15 1982 that I had my last drug and my last drink. And basically I have lived a life following 12 Step Program, which has been very helpful. And I always try to tell my story also to provide hope for people that are suffering and struggling either with addiction themselves or with someone in their family that literally there is help right around the corner because here even in Bangkok, we have 12 Step programs and meetings and all of those things. So I know my audience knows a little bit about my background, but maybe you can just give us a short journey through you know, my goodness. 20 years old five Getting yourself homeless, addicted to drugs and then supportive community. So maybe just give us a short version of that?

Rick Warner 15:06
Sure. Yeah. Right. Well, I mean, that was the short version, the, the slightly extended version would be, I don't know how I ended up being in the spot where I could not see, living my life without getting loaded one way or the other, it was just so essential to how I function and how I reacted to the world. I remember thinking regularly, like, if I could just be loaded all the time, that would be great. And I really meant it, I wasn't, I wasn't doing it for fun, I was doing it just to function. And, and so you know, as it turns out, when you live that way, you take yourself down a path where ultimately I, the other thing is that I had a baby, when I was, or my girlfriend had a baby, when four days after I turned 19. So I was just jumping right into, you know, adulting, as they call it, now, I had a baby, I was terrified of what that meant. I you know, all the things, and and really ultimately chose being loaded over being a dad over being responsible, and all the and all that and moved into a tool shed behind a driving range where I used to be a golf instructor. And I was there for about a month. And then luckily for me, and this is what I was alluding to at the beginning, I had an absolute failure, where it just getting loaded just did not work for me anymore, that that night, all of a sudden, what it used to do for me, it just didn't do and I could see my life for what it really was, which was I wasn't my life was going, you know, nowhere. And I was shocked at, you know how I got to this point I, you know, my family didn't have just given right, you know, lots of love and thought, right from wrong and all that. So, yeah, I do, I walked into a 12 step program the next day. And I was very fortunate that, you know, within that window of opportunity, and I'm imagining you've noticed this too, like, there's a window of opportunity that you get, and maybe it's a few hours, maybe it's a few days, it's not very long and and so when you get into one of these 12 Step programs, getting immersed in what they're, you know what, they're availing to you for nothing. And doing the actions, not just sitting in the peripheral, but actually doing the things. It's all the difference in the world. And I was very fortunate to get in with a bunch of people that were very serious about this thing. And it is absolutely the foundation of all the great things that have happened to me after that.

Andrew Stotz 17:36
What an inspiration. It reminds me of when I was 17, I had gone to one treatment center, and in Minnesota, and four days later, I was getting high again. And then and then I just decided I'm gonna run away. And that's it. I'm just gonna go live my life. I mean, I can figure this out. So I I ran away. And where I ended up was in a chicken coop behind a friend's house. Yeah. And it was, yeah, it had been cleaned out, obviously, by this time. But I was living in a chicken coop. And eventually, my parents never gave up. They called the police. They tried to, you know, find out where I was. And eventually the cops got me. And in fact, there was a guy named John Wyatt, who was the principal of our high school that later became a cop in little town of Hudson, Ohio, where I grew up. And basically, he kind of took an interest and he chased me down and he found me. And then it wasn't so much that he was you know, saying, you know, I was a good kid or anything like that. It was just like, you know, he just did his job, but he did it well. And, that was the beginning. But it's funny, because I reconnected with him over Facebook, you know, I don't know, five or 10 years ago, and just was able to say thank you, you know, but, you know, the point is, is that there's bottoms, and when you're facing a bottom in your life, or you see someone facing the bottom in their life, you know, act and help them to get to a 12 step program, find somebody that's been through it. And that's what I think what really helped me in my 12 Step journey is just that, you know, there's people around me that had been through it, and then all of a sudden the pathway was clear.

Rick Warner 19:19
It was yeah, it's all the difference in the world. And it's amazing. I think, I've just feel so lucky that that happened. But I do have this sense of responsibility, probably as you do, too, which is, hey, I want to make sure I'm there for the next person that comes in, in that situation. Because you know, I don't I cannot imagine what my life would be like if there wasn't something like that. Yeah.

Andrew Stotz 19:47
Yeah. And that's where I think in your program, hearing about having that third person, the person that you're mentoring is a clear, you know, tip of the hat to what really works which is You know, having an accountability to people that you admire, and you want to, you know, deliver for, but also having an accountability to someone that you're really helping. So that's a great, you know, contributor to what you're doing. Well,

Rick Warner 20:13
and it's and by the way, it's a totally selfish thing, as you know, like the I do when you get an opportunity to help somebody, I've got a guy right now, he's retired firefighter, and he's just under six months, and, and he, you know, the watching the changes happen in his life, he's 48 years old, like, you know, you get to do this over and over again, to help these people. It's almost selfish to help these people, right, because it feels so good to make a difference and make a contribution.

Andrew Stotz 20:43
Yep. It's so so true. Well, thanks for being authentic and sharing your journey and what you're doing. We certainly appreciate it. Now it's time to show your worst investment ever. And since no one goes into their worst investment thinking will be tell us a bit about the circumstances leading up to it, then tell us your story.

Rick Warner 21:04
Well, I have a couple of these but so I am, I am the worst. So by way, I didn't mention this. But I used to be a Siri seven licensed guy. So I've actually at some point was managing people's money just 20 years ago. And of course, you know, you're always telling people trying to time the market doesn't work. It's not a thing and all that right. This is great advice. Well, guess who absolutely thinks that doesn't apply to him right to story, my life. And so about three years ago, I had made some pretty good investments in some decent stocks. And I just felt like, you know, things were going to go sideways. So I took my money off the table, all of it, I went into 100% cash, and I was waiting, you know, and, and I waited. And then I waited, and I waited, and I waited, and I waited, and just the market actually went up. And then it kind of basically stayed up. And so there was really no opportunity for me to get in. until just recently with the banking crisis. I saw this, you know, first republic bank, this is in the United States, for those who I don't know if that's around the world if it was known or not. But first republic bank, big regional bank, well known in our region, they've done lots of business with them great reputation, formally $300 stock, I think, and it went down to $30. And I said, holy moly, this is it, this is what I need to do. I'm buying this thing, 10 cents on the dollar. This is what I was waiting for. And so I bought, I think 700 shares, right? The day that I bought 700 shares, it went down 30%. I bought it at $29 at the open. And by the end of the day, it was $21. Welcome. And it was it was fantastic investment right away. But amazingly, it got worse. So then, if you're, if you haven't known for listeners don't know, it went from $21, all the way down to like 14 or $13. And I thought, well, this is a great company, I'm going to double down. So I bought another 700 shares to dollar cost average. So now my average share price is at like 20 bucks, I'm feeling pretty good about it. Really. I'm like I got 1400 shares, all this, all that needs to happen is it needs to go back to you know, 20 bucks for me to break even. And then I get a text, I don't know, a few weeks, or maybe it's a week later from a buddy who was falling out with me. And it just said, that's terrible, or something horrible like that. And I knew what he was talking about and look in the stocks trading at $3. It's 1250. So for here in California, that means the market is going to close in 10 minutes. And I had to have this conversation. Do I drop another $2,100 to buy 704 shares the dollar and luckily, the market closed, I didn't do it. And the next day or the day after that they were bought by cheap Chase or you know, JP Morgan, whatever. And then I thought, Okay, well, I thought what would happen it was a convert into their shares, which would still be a horrible investment, because while I was gonna get two shares, and JP Morgan, whatever, but that didn't even happen. I literally went to zero, you know, or I still have like 1400 shares, but the value is like eight cents a share or something. I don't know what happened there. But that's my worst investment ever.

Andrew Stotz 24:33
And how would you describe the lessons that you learned?

Rick Warner 24:37
I'm not sure if I learned really anything to be honest. I think I would probably do something. I mean, I'm a swing for the fences kind of guy. You know, I don't know if that's good or bad. I would never hire me as a financial advisor. You're a professional. I'm not. And obviously would after that story, nobody would hire me anyway. I think I probably should have done more research in terms of like just going off of my gut that was stupid. Obviously, I bet there was people that were probably like, Listen, man, it was probably obvious what was going to happen, it was obvious to everybody else that it was going down. But by the way, I did the same thing with Enron in 2000 ish whenever that happened, but at least that one was only it was down to $1. And I bought 1000 shares for a buck. And I thought, Oh, it's a flyer. And I also lost that 1000 bucks.

Andrew Stotz 25:24
Well, maybe I'll share a few things too, related to this story. First of all, I was a bank analyst for my first 10 years as in my financial career, and the Thai banks are what I covered in Thailand. And so they were in a boom phase. And then they collapsed in 1997, when the Thai baht collapse, and we had the Asian financial crisis, and basically, then I was a bank and was through that time as they recapitalize. But I learned an important lesson when you invest in banks, and there's a reason why I don't invest in banks, and that is, banks have only a sliver of capital. Whereas normal companies have about 40% of their total funding comes from equity, or Canada, and the rest from borrowing and accounts payable and stuff like that. But banks only have 10% or so of their total funding coming from equity. And what that means is that all that has to happen is that the assets of that bank can fall in value by 10%. And your investments wiped out, right? And that, that for the listeners out there, when you invest in banks, you're investing in a highly speculative asset. And therefore, that's part of the reason also why banks rarely trade at very high multiples, like P E multiples of 20 or 30. times you're never going to get that in a bank, or traditional bank, at least in the second thing is that when you have a bank crisis, the way that governments want to handle it is they want to have other banks by that bank. So you may think to yourself, yeah, I'm going to this is going to work out because I'll either get shares in that other bank, or they'll buy it at a reasonable price. But those banks that are buying it are crafty. And what they say is no, I'm not buying it, basically, I'm gonna let it go bust, and I'm gonna let the government take it over, and then I'm gonna have the government then sell it to me, and then I'm going to demand that the government give me some guarantees about that, I'm not going to lose more and more and more. And so that's why it's not a good idea to run it down to the top, you know, once it starts to really collapse, that there's not a recovery as unlike some other businesses where there is, but there's not in the case of banks. So those are some of the things that you know, and I also actually recalled you, I should have called you. Now, now, you know, but banks are just, you know, they're, they're volatile. So you got to be really careful investing in banks,

Rick Warner 27:50
which is funny that you say that, because I just wouldn't, I would never, I appreciate you saying all that I would have never thought of a bank as volatile at all. And that said, everything you said, totally makes sense. And, you know, I really should have been, you know, what the margins of interest rates and what they did, that should have been an obvious thing, because all of a sudden, you know, all the books gets completely screwed up with those interest rates, too.

Andrew Stotz 28:14
You know, I have strategies that I implement, and my clients follow those strategies. And basically, one of the strategies that I have, you know, I have frameworks that I follow, I have systematic investing style. And one of the things at the beginning of this year, that Style Set is by US banks. Interesting, the signal was a buy. And I could see there was some positive momentum, and there were some other things. So I put on a 7% position of the total portfolio into these US banks, within a couple of days, Silicon Valley Bank went bust. And then that went down, you know, immediately. And then it bounced back a little bit. But I knew at that time that my thesis of what I was investing in was momentum, positive momentum that was in the sector was gone. And I also knew enough about banks that, you know, it's a long dragged out, you know, fight. And therefore, I don't want to be behind this trade. And so within about a week of putting on that trade, I took it off at a loss. And I had to go to my clients and say I was in and now I'm out. And it's a little bit embarrassing to go and say something like that. But it's such a relief to be able to get out of something. So that's one of the big takeaways that I would say, in your case with your story is that if you find that you're invested in something, and it starts to really go down, and it wasn't really your plan that it was going to buying this because it's going to go down, you know, like it's not favorable right now, therefore, I'm buying it, you know, but if this starts to go against you, there's nothing wrong with getting out. You can always get in again at another point. So that's Yeah,

Rick Warner 29:56
right. i This is where I said this is the part where I didn't actually learn anything. I don't know that. I don't know. I mean, aside from what you've already told me, which was it was just a bad investment from but from the standpoint of it going down a little bit more, I mean, clearly it was a dead cat bounce, it even did come up just like Silicon Valley Bank did a little bit because the, I think at the time, the government came in and said, you know, we're gonna guarantee everything, and that kind of made it feel better for a minute. But ultimately, the too big to fail, guys got it. So

Andrew Stotz 30:28
let's now think about a young person who is exactly like you. They just haven't been through this. Yeah, based upon what you learned from this story and what you continue to learn in your life, what's one action that you'd recommend our listeners take to avoid suffering the same fate?

Rick Warner 30:43
You know, I think that the thing that's been most beneficial to me is availing myself to the people that have been around before me just like what you're talking about. Like, it's hard when you're 20, or, you know, whatever, you kind of, at least for me, I totally thought I knew everything. And where I got where I was the most willing to ask other people for help, is when I, like you said, I hit a bottom, I hit that. I mean, I really was just determined to do everything myself. But if there's a way for you to listen and go, Hey, maybe I don't have to go all the way down. Maybe I don't actually know this thing. As much as I think I do. You know, this idea that there's blind spots out there, you know, that you there's things that you don't know that you don't know, that's something that I would, you know, consider. Even now I'm still I'm even talking to myself now, as a 53 year old man, there's still things that I don't know, I don't know. And the more I can avail myself to other people, read books, learn stuff, listen to people like you. I think that has been my biggest game changer. After my case, mostly, it's after I fail, which, by the way, I wasn't done failing when I was 20. I've had multiple failures since then. But almost all of them, especially the big ones. It was like a catapult like a trampoline to much bigger things.

Andrew Stotz 32:09
So what's the resource that you'd recommend of yours or any others for our listeners?

Rick Warner 32:15
Um, well, gosh, I mean, I am so into personal development, there's so many things that I mean, I love the landmark program that's out there. I'm a big reader of books, you know, the big catalyst for me. And this, the last five years had been a big Personal Growth Time for me. And the first book I read within that was the book, The Four Agreements, actually by Don Miguel Ruiz, that was really simple. And it really changed my brain around a lot of things that was making it hard for me to react to life. Also, I would just say, you know, I'm easy to connect with. So look, look, look me up on the website, if you want to just have a conversation. I love talking with people and helping people and mentoring people. So you just call me directly?

Andrew Stotz 33:00
Fantastic. And we'll have all that in the show notes. Last question, what is your number one goal for the next 12 months?

Rick Warner 33:10
My number one goal for the next 12 months, this is totally top secret. So you're only your listeners get to know this. But I'm can

Andrew Stotz 33:18
hold on, wait a minute, let me just pull down the cone of silence, hold on, the cone of silence has come down. Now nobody can hear us go ahead and tell

Rick Warner 33:26
her good. That's good. Thank you. So I'm converting my very successful real estate business, which I'm super grateful lucky to have. However, it makes me I'm regionally dependent, I have to be where I'm at, for this to work. And so over the next 12 months, and if you'll give me 18 months, I'm converting that business into where I can leave it more and I can be location independent. So if I want to go to, you know, live in Asia, for the next 30 years, I could do that if I wanted to so and really beefing up and spending more time in my coaching and mentoring program and becoming location independent.

Andrew Stotz 34:10
That's exciting. Well, listeners, there you have it another story of laws to keep you winning. Remember, I'm on a mission to help 1 million people reduce risk in their lives. As we conclude, Rick, 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?

Rick Warner 34:34
I'm so pleased do I get like a like a tassel? A hat that goes with coming? Okay, very good. I'm excited. Thank you so much for having me on the show, Andrew.

Andrew Stotz 34:43
I appreciate you sharing and that's 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 host Andrew Stotz sang a I'll see you on the upside.