Randy Lorensen’s Story: From the Farm to Entrepreneur

Show notes

Randy Lorensen's Story: From a Minnesota Farm to Sales, Poker and Premium Cabinets

Who is Randy Lorensen? Dr. John Oberg interviews his co-host about growing up on a farm, learning to sell, and the setbacks and comebacks that shaped how he thinks about freedom and abundance.

Randy grew up on a farm in central Minnesota. He talks about working for his dad, what the farm taught him, sports, and a mom who told him he could be anything. Those years shaped his drive for freedom and sovereignty.

He explains why he walked away from computer science and started selling at Vector. He was scared and not very good at first, but he was stubborn. Before long he was running a division with 14 offices, and learned about money and running a P&L along the way.

Then come the swings: a partnership that fell apart, delivering pizzas, playing poker full time and what it did to him, and the systems thinking that grew into Premium Cabinets. He closes with the impact he wants to have, and why he got into Bitcoin.

Randy's Story: Sales, Setbacks and Freedom

What you'll discover:

How a farm childhood shaped Randy's drive for freedom
Learning to sell at Vector by being stubborn
From rep to running a division with 14 offices
Starting over, and what poker taught him
Building systems, and building Premium Cabinets
Why he got into Bitcoin

This episode reflects the hosts' personal views and experiences and is not financial advice.

Timestamps

[00:00] The Randy Lorensen episode
[02:13] Growing up on a farm in central Minnesota
[04:19] How his childhood shaped his drive for freedom and sovereignty
[06:24] First jobs: working for his dad
[10:33] Lessons from the farm
[12:36] Sports, baseball and biking across town
[14:39] A mom who said he could be anything
[16:42] Spreadsheets and detailed models
[18:45] Computer science in school
[20:48] The NFL front office that might have been
[24:54] Working nights at a bar
[26:58] Turning down programming projects
[29:02] Walking away from computer science
[31:06] His first sales job at Vector
[33:11] Learning to sell by being stubborn
[35:15] From rep to running a division with 14 offices
[37:19] What he learned: work, money and running a P&L
[41:28] Early success in his early 20s
[43:33] Poker and the math of the game
[47:39] Thinking like a play-caller
[49:44] Managing top reps
[53:51] A partnership and a multi-level business
[55:55] Starting over delivering pizzas
[1:00:02] Rapid growth and a delayed IPO
[1:02:05] Craps, odds and doing the math
[1:04:09] Playing poker full time
[1:06:15] What poker did to him: game theory and patience
[1:10:24] Believing he was there for a reason
[1:12:27] Systems, and building Premium Cabinets
[1:14:30] Wrapping up: the impact Randy wants to have
[1:16:34] Why he got into Bitcoin
[1:20:39] Closing

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About Randy Lorensen

Randy Lorensen is a co-host of Tales of Abundance and an entrepreneur behind Premium Cabinets. This is a hosts-only episode with Randy Lorensen and Dr. John Oberg (Anthony Marino isn't on this one). Host bios are on the host pages linked below.

Find us online:

🌐 Website: https://talesofabundance.com/
📺 Watch this episode on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=psF-BXi864g
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Related episodes

Meet the hosts: Randy Lorensen · Dr. John Oberg · Anthony Marino

Transcript

A full transcript is below. It was generated automatically from the episode audio, so expect some spelling errors in names and terms.

[00:09] this is the Randy Lorensen episode Randy a co-host of tales of abundance along with me Dr. John Oberg here with you and Randy this one is all about you you're the guest and the co-host all at once all right I'll try and be in two places at once yeah I'm not sure I don't know if I've ever seen a podcast where the guest and the co-host are the same person maybe we're breaking some new ground here yeah good or maybe we just haven't listened to enough podcasts I'm sure somebody's pulled this off before yeah normally if someone has pulled it off before I would know because we'd have a framework for this and tried it out yes you would so this is like uh this is new ground for us so yeah let's jump into it all right well so this is for you the listener to hear about the you know co-host Randy Lorensen and to know what things have impacted him his life to give him all of the expertise and uh ambition to bring you stories of abundance you know things and tools and gifts that you can have to create abundance in your life in in whatever way that means abundance for you and so Randy I thought we would go through an exercise we've done before which is your life in decades and really all we're going to talk about is what impacted you in each decade of your life let's jump into it let's go well you started at zero okay when were you born I was born in 1969 all right uh just basically right as people were landing on the moon love it like literally same day uh I was born on July 19th and I believe they got to the moon on the 18th or 19th and landed on the 20th or thereabouts so pretty I I could be off by a day or two on that but pretty much yeah wow that lets us know how far how long ago we were on the moon and you're old yeah I am first 10 years of your life what are the things that impacted you the most so I grew up in central Minnesota on a farm uh and I think my dad was an incredibly hard worker uh he was up before the sun came up and worked until after the sun went down pretty much 7 days a week primarily a bee farm uh but had horses and you know occasionally a cow to milk or a pig to slaughter and you know or whatever we'd get chickens from the neighbors and uh at the same time uh my mom always worked and everything from the Dairy Queen to you know whatever job you could get in rural Minnesota and she was hardworking as well but they were good parents they were divorced when I was seven so I think the things that I think a lot of my belief systems came from being independent and responsible for your own actions yeah and watching them and you know we were I guess you'd have to say we were poor I don't know that how aware I was of that because everybody everybody around me was was poor and I didn't I didn't fully realize that till I went back from my grandma's funeral uh a few years ago and driving back to the area that I grew up in a rental car and just driving around and looking and I was like Wow people have a lot less money here than and I and I I don't know that I was aware of it as a kid right uh so I didn't really know any rich people but in r in retrospect but financially Rich right that's financially Rich yeah but everybody was happy I mean we had a good you know family was strong you know both of my grandmas and uh both of my grandpas died when I was young but everybody's happy and I noticed that even at my grandma's funeral where everybody was sad it was still everybody was really really happy living in that small they're kind of blissfully unaware of what they don't have and I think sometimes living in a city like Austin I think we're kind of blissfully unaware of what were missing out on in those rural areas or in those small towns so I really think the first 10 years of my life it was just work ethic and individuality in individuality and I think a lot of that impacted my striving for freedom and sovereignty throughout my life I I grew up in suburbs of Los Angeles so a little different than rural Minnesota right and and you were on the farm past the age of seven no I mean I I moved with my mom at that point and we lived close for a while then my mom got a job in Hutchinson Minnesota which was about 3 hours away and at 3 a.m. uh I had an uncle that worked there and actually when she I I take that back she moved to Hutchinson hoping to get a job at 3:00 a.m. and worked somewhere else um at at a different Factory for a while and then eventually got hired at 3:00 a.m. and worked there so a lot of my next several years were in Hutchinson which was also a 10,000 person small small farming type town we lived in the city uh but my mom worked shifts and uh some days you know she was gone all day I mean it was uh 11 some nights she worked overnights 11: to 7: 7 to 4: 4 to or whatever screwing up the yeah I got it 7 to3 and 3 to 11 so I think that also made me more independent me a lot of times I'd come home from school my mom would be working and I would go play with my friends make my own dinner put myself to bed and there was a lot of what age was nine I think I was in third grade when we moved there and I remember when we first moved there my mom got a babysitter and after like two times having the babysitter come over I told my mom to quit wasting money on the babysitter because all she did was sit there and watch TV and she was just wasting her money and I could take care of myself and so she probably needed the cash and thought that was a great idea and she did when was your first job my first job yeah well when you grow up on a farm your first job is working for your dad for nothing as slave labor so it would really would have been doing whatever jobs he didn't want to do around the farm for the most part and it could have been feeding cattle or moving cattle but also there were hay fields and hay needed cutting raking you know raking is the easiest thing so I would have been driving a tractor and raking hay when I was fairly young but when a busted chops we're going to call it free labor for this one now in 2024 yeah if fits wear it fre free labor yeah so so you're so you're doing work for him at how old as long as I can remember I mean I I remember back in the days of the square bales when I I couldn't have been more than 5 years old and I certainly wasn't big and strong enough to lift a square bale but there were these hooks that you would take and you would could I could pull them along the wagon or in the Hao uh I remember doing that when I was really young four five six years old in that range but even in Hutchinson I used to work in the spring there were some farmers in the area that they would need rocks picked in their field and they would drive a tractor with a big wagon and you would just fan out beside it and the bigger the rock the better they wanted the rocks out of the field because the Rocks destroyed their F their uh their Machinery as you go through it and uh I remember doing that and then I started working for my dad when I was in my parents were divorced but I would go spend Summers and he would actually pay me I think I was in seventh grade and uh I think he paid me $50 a week and uh that was for yeah you know I don't know 80 or 100 hours of work or whatever it was but that was what I would do during the Summers for a few years and probably at the time I thought it was the worst pay I got one summer I showed up and he wasn't doing financially and he told me he couldn't afford to pay me and I remember being disappointed but it's kind of shrug my shoulders and went on with it and then after a week or two he decided he had this extra horse that he didn't want he didn't he he didn't want to deal with basically it was like a 10-year-old mayor and he didn't have the energy to break another horse that had never been broke and he told me if I broke it it was mine so that was sort of my pay for for that summer or was my pay and really that was a better deal that horse was worth more I broke that horse really fast I used to ride it every day and uh I had it that paid me more than the $50 a week if you if you figure it out so so big impacts work ethic in your first 10 years big impacts divorce of family obviously moving big impact yeah I was lucky my parents handled divorce better than most parents do they not once they divorced they got along pretty well and uh they they neither one of them ever put me in the middle you know or used me as a tool and uh I still saw my dad fairly frequently and I got along with my mom more than my dad when I was a kid because my dad was my dad was tough and uh my dad was had just had super high expectations and impossible right I mean when I was 7 years old if a 2,000lb bull would come at me and I would move out of the way you know I probably weighed what 40 PBS he would get furious he's like stand there it's not going to run you over well you know when you're 40 PBS and a 2,000 pound animals running at you it's it's pretty hard to convince your brain of that right yeah I think today I wouldn't I wouldn't convince my brain of that today so so uh but my dad was tough he worked hard and he just he just got got done yeah right I mean I I remember a couple of times having a cow that would not go like trying to go through a gate and it wouldn't go and it wouldn't go and I remember a couple of times my dad just getting mad and literally taking a swing and punching the cow in the head and knocking the cow out cold like the cow would just fall straight down legs go jell oh my gosh and go out cold right and then he'd get mad at the Cow cuz and he would like kick it till it woke up and by the way each time that he did that the cow jumped up and ran through the gate and he's like see I told you it knew where to go there's going to be some like Animal Rights group calling your dad now let's just hope the statute limitations after 50 you know 45 years long time ago uh so 45 years a different era but uh but yeah it's like a TV show but I am much more like my dad than my mom there's certainly parts of my personality that are my mom's but I am very much like my dad in a lot of not tough enough to punch a cow and knock it out or any of that but uh but his his personality and my personality are pretty similar I'm certainly much more into new things and technology and the shiny things which is not his style yeah I mean he likes what he knows and the same thing over and over but uh with a few exceptions like that were very similar I don't think I've ever heard the punching cow story before and uh yeah I don't think I don't think so yeah and and I can't imagine you punching anything you're a pretty peaceful guy but but St stubborn enough to want to punch a cow I could see that yeah I could see that okay so first 10 years lots of impact there how about second 10 years well I mean some of that they're they're they're going together right like going back and working with him on the farm again going to school I liked math I certainly liked physical education class I I loved Sports so I think Sports became a very big part of my life I played football I played basketball I played baseball heck one summer I remember riding my bike across town to baseball I'd have baseball in the morning and then I even played soccer and it was on the other side of town and I would ride my bike I don't know if it was a probably a few miles to the soccer field and if I could make both games I would make them sometimes I would miss the soccer game sometimes I'd get there at halftime uh but in the neighborhood just growing up we were I would get home from school and we would play football basketball hockey whatever I mean we we'd play hockey in the street and that was really what we did for entertainment yeah and I was a small kid but I had good hand eye coordination I was you know I always had good feet and I I used my brain I don't think I realized it at the time but I could figure out how to beat people bigger faster stronger than me a lot of times with my brain more than yeah probably my athletic ability at the time so Sports certainly became a big part of my life during that decade and uh eventually my mom remarried and we moved up closer to where my dad was back to Central Minnesota and finished out high school and you know school was school was easy for me but I put in as little effort as human possible and to still get good grades yeah you get the job done yeah yeah so okay so first two decades got that anything of material interest the next decade oh yeah I mean even start part of the second decade I went to college at the University of Minnesota I was a mechanical engineering major which you knowing me now is like what the hell were you doing right see it yeah can't see it but I didn't know what I wanted to do I I I remember taking a test pet maybe or something like that and I scored well the only time I ever remember meeting with my high school counselor and she's like oh you're good at a lot of things and you could be anything for I believe what she said is you could do anything from being a park ranger to being an engineer and she's like she asked me what I wanted to do I didn't have a clue y but I knew I didn't want to work on the farm I watched what my dad did my dad worked way too hard way too many hours a day for way too little money okay listeners go ahead and just Mark that for a minute way too hard way too many hours and then we'll listen to Randy talk about how hard he worked in a few minutes well yeah for for but for the no money part right right and one of the things by the way that also I think really helped me from a business standpoint is I used to watch how my dad if he was thinking about buying cattle or he was thinking about anything that he was going to do he would sit down with a piece of paper and he would write out the cattle are going to cost this much the trucking will cost this the insurance will cost this it'll cost this much to feed them this much on vet bills there's the chance that one of them dies or gets eaten by a coyote or for whatever reason dies is this much of a risk and he would run through the numbers and I remember I'm going to guess I was we'll say 12 13 years old and I remember him doing this exercise talking about buying cattle and I remember looking over his shoulder and going are you sure you want to run a ranch that seems like a really big investment and a whole lot of risk for very little money yeah and uh he kind of laughed and was like well you figured that out so don't do this but it's all I know how to do yeah right and he was happy being his own B and he he liked what he did but that exercise is something I've always done every every business I've ever done I would take a spreadsheet not a sheet of paper but take on a spreadsheet and you and I have you've seen these models that I put together and I do very detailed models figuring how it's going to work but I didn't know what I again I knew what I wanted didn't want to do like I said there wasn't a lot of wealth and prosperity where I grew up uh your dad's story turns out okay if you roll the clock forward I mean he's retired yeah successfully he figured out he did very well eventually right but also where I grew up there were people that worked as loggers I didn't want to law I didn't want to go down cutting down trees uh people worked at bars or restaurants or just people worked in construction and construction workers can make real money now but back then I don't think they made that kind of money I mean it was just there wasn't a whole lot of opportunity so I saw everything around me and I knew I didn't want to do any of that and you can make bar you can make money in bars and restaurants you make money at you make money at lots of things but I think there was a time in the economy when you were growing up where that just was hard yeah I mean that's the 70s right and the it just wasn't there was interest rates were difficult the country was in a different place e economics were difficult broadly yeah yeah uh but so my counselor she kind of pushed me into being an engineer and by the way when she talked about being an engineer what I thought was a train engineer like Choo Cho I mean I didn't again there weren't Engineers I didn't had no as a high school kid I didn't have a clue what an engineer did yeah and she kind of laughed and explained it to me and she explained there were different types of engineers and I picked mechanical engineering sure well I actually by the way loved working on computers in high school we had a computer science class that started my junior year and Mr boo one of the best teachers I ever had taught this and I really liked it I learned everything there was to learn in the language and then the senior year we begged him to have a second computer science and he's like well we've taught you everything that there is there's nothing left to teach but we as a class we begged and begged and finally he goes okay and somehow he pushed it through the principal or the school board or whoever and I used to go home I had a Commodore 64 that my my parents bought me for Christmas my mom and my stepdad one year and I used to I made games at home and did things and I like to figure things out I like the problem solving uh but I did everything you could do and it's interesting so I applied to the University of Minnesota The Institute of Technology I got and my major somehow was computer science even though I had applied for mechanical engineering yep it's one of those wh ifs I could never go back and change but it makes me wonder I went in and changed it because even though I was much more interested in computers and I think I even told my counselor I was interested in computers and I love that class but I'm almost positive the conversation was well there's no money there's no future in that computer science yes oh yeah good right I mean this would have been the the the 80s yeah yeah and there was there was no money no future so I thought well I don't want to do that I want to go make money and I want to be engineer it's so funny because I know you now and like making money does not drive you even in the slight like you make money you make good money but it's that's I've never known that to be what drives you yeah but I hadn't figured that out when I was 17 you know I graduated when I was 17 years old what would you tell your 17-year-old s self right now looking back have you thought about that great question I would tell myself to follow what you're passionate about absolutely go into computers and follow what you're passionate about follow what you're excited about too I I think I would have done very well working in a front office in the NFL I think I would have been exceptionally good at that I would have said go I think Bill Parcels was with the New York York Giants I would have told myself beg borrow steal whatever you do go to New York somehow get in Bill parcel's office and ask to I don't care clean the jock straps do whatever you need to do work for free sleep on a park bench if you have to take a horse just take a horse for the summer yeah just do whatever I had to do to get there and let them teach you and then work your way up through the organization have you always been a lifelong learner like I mean that's right now learning is one of the things you and I talk about regularly we we talk a lot about lifelong learning no not then yeah and I don't think I didn't know how to think big where I grew up nobody thought big it just wasn't it I thought big compared to everybody else but I still thought relatively small is that a function of your 20s or when did that change I think it happened in Vector which I guess we're getting to when I went to work there I think it I think that planted some of the seeds and the Embers started burning and I already had it you know for me going to to work as an engineer was thinking big where I came from right and you know I think at the time a mechanical engineer started out at $228,000 a year which was more than almost anybody I knew it's more money than they made and and that's still thinking big for lots of communities in the world in in the US right and so I don't want to poo poo that like that is thinking big and and not everyone has to think in terms of changing Ching the world I think but CH changing your station can be a hard thing to do in many societies you can't change your station very easily at all yeah that's true we're very lucky it's while I'm frustrated with a lot of the things going on in this country I am unbelievably grateful that I was born here and all of the opportunity that it's created that you know as I've traveled throughout the years and I see things it's I think it all the time I think God if I up here what what would I do like what what would success look like in this environment I was overseas and I met someone who was interacting with us and they were doing the same thing that their family had done for four generations and that was what they did and there was no choice about it there was no upward Mobility that was just the thing and it wasn't going to change and yeah I get that you know and I I will double down on what I said earlier about when I see those people though they tend to be very happy you know I I remember even going to Cuba a few years ago and just seeing people that they didn't have anything right they'd have one chair in their house and it would be you know like a plastic chair that we'd put on the back deck or something but they all just had big smiles on their face and they were happy and I've seen that it's not that they didn't have every I mean they had everything right in some ways they had everything yeah they have they have their own version of abundance they have family they have community and they You could argue they might have a better version of abundance on some days yeah yeah so it's uh that's the drawback I guess to this country is some of that drive and that that sometimes I think a focus on the wrong thing but I wouldn't trade it I'm very very grateful for the opportunity that you know for being born on this patch of dirt two sides to every coin right yeah so so most impactful in your 20s sounds like it was the work that you yeah so when I was in college I needed a job cuz I was taking out loans and then working my way through college and I probably should go back the first business I ever had my mom and stepdad bought a bar restaurant kind of a community bar restaurant when I was in high school and as soon as I graduated they moved down they moved into this little trailer house right next to the bar and I would work for them at night whether it was washing dishes cooking waiting tables tending bar whatever needed to be done that day a lot of waiting tables are really doing all four like everything that needed to be done but somehow one of the guys that came in the bar one day asked if I wanted to help him do yard work and it was this the guy that owned kushman long tractors had a Lakehouse on Gull Lake and this guy's name was shorty and he said look I just need help I take care of this guy's property they come up on the weekends so usually on Friday we go over there and we mow the lawn we get the the leaves out of the driveway the weeds off the beach Etc I said great what does it pay and it was $5 an hour and to me that was all the money in the world because previous summer I'd worked washing dishes in a restaurant for 335 an hour yeah and that was minimum wage that was that was legal back then yeah and I think he paid me cash even and so it's even better yet right and so I started doing that and then the neighbor over and asked shorty if he would work on his place he said no but he goes Randy does great work and he works hard and he the guy looks at me and goes well what about it I said sure he goes great I need you like three days a week he goes what do you charge now I was young and stupid and I thought well shorty pays me five bucks an hour I wasn't smart enough to figure that shorty was charging more than $5 an hour right uh darn it so I just said $5 an hour the guy jumped at the chance of course and he kept me busy 3 4 days a week then he referred me to another guy um that was at this kind of lived at Madden's Resort and I kept working for $5 an hour and then I was busy seven days a week taking care of people's yards one day for shorty and the other six days working for these other two guys and now I think God I was so stupid one I should have charged more but what I really should have done was charge $10 an hour and I turned down I can't even tell you how many people's Pro projects I turned down you could have been the next shorty they would keep referring me and people would keep asking me if I would come do it and I could have charged 10 hired my friends for five they would have been thrilled because most of them didn't make $5 an hour but I didn't you know I I didn't have that skill set or didn't think that way yet at that time the Empire of Randy so my first business I was self-employed and I would get up I would be at the property at 7:00 in the morning to start doing whatever needed to be done and I would work till like 4 in the afternoon I would come home I would take a 30 minute nap go over work for my parents until they would let me off whether it was a slow night I'd get off at 9: or I might work till midnight and then I would get in my car and drive as fast as I could to the party in town with my friends and I would party till 4:00 in the morning and I would drive home it was like 25 miles sleep for two three hours drive sober home of course yeah no not so much back then but unfortunately I didn't make the best decisions there but was lucky that there were no consequences and uh would get up and do it all over again pretty much seven days a week yeah and I did that until I went to college so that was my first I guess my first entrepreneurial Endeavor although I was really more of an employee I didn't I didn't have any clue what an entrepreneur actually was at the time just that one question shorty how much should I charge that one missed question yeah yeah didn't even think about it didn't think about it for years yeah that you know opportunity missed but it's also a good experience but I also put some money away like my freshman year that paid for a lot of my college so yeah anyway into College University of Minnesota I was the m i yeah I was dumb switched my major from the mistake as probably the universe God trying to tell me hey why don't you you know here here's the answer why don't you stay in computer science but I switched it to mechanical engineering and for the first couple years I just took math classes physics chemistry engineering classes I was very uninspired and I really that what hit home I took an I took a one credit class where they would have Engineers come in and once a week one hour a week Engineers would come in and talk to you about what they did and after we are in quarters so after 10 weeks I had listened to 10 different people and I remember telling my friend Jess graba who is eventually my roommate I don't want to do what any of these people are talking about yeah this sounds terrible and this is not what I want to do but I'm not really built for quitting things so I just kind of kept going but at some point and I think by then I was working for Vector Marketing a company you and I both worked for I saw an ad in the school newspaper that was probably not completely truthful it you know as I saw it it paid x amount per hour but it was per presentation and I went in had no idea what I was doing I remember walking into this office trying to figure out what they did and what they sold all I saw were Brown tables and brown folding chairs and motivational pictures on the wall turns out they sold Cutco Cutlery yeah and I had no interest in sales F frankly I was scared of sales didn't nothing could have interested me engineering interested me way more than sales interested me Y and but I needed the money they offered me the job Mitch who was my manager was also a very good recruiter and he did a good job of selling me on the position and creating scarcity right which would be one of the good sales lessons to start with right and so I was excited I started the job I had to buy my own sample kit I had to pay a training fee I think it was $25 for training for books and materials I had to buy a sample kit for $140 that I didn't have at that time or whatever and I went out and started doing presentations I had four people in my training class I went out that weekend I think it was in February of that year my sophomore year maybe and I sold one knife for $31 to my aunt and uncle probably worth mentioning that you know it's a very different program at Vector these days people don't have to do the same things and for you and for me both some of the most formative training ever receiv I would argue it's some of the best corporate training that is around in Corporate America any company in the world like I think IBM is well known for its amazing training I would I would put cut Co training up there for the people that are willing to do the work yeah with that type of training yeah it was it was fantastic and again I a lot of gratitude lot of the spark and the thinking big and some of the knowledge belief system started growing there but I remember and this will tell listeners a little bit about how I'm wired most people would so I came back to Advanced Training on Monday with which I had a exceptionally talented training class in retrospect in the company like at that time at least half the people didn't sell anything their first weekend out of training I sold $31 the next lowest guy I think had sold $450 $500 and two people had sold we we ended up I went in and I saw that these three people had all sold so much more than me and I thought huh if they can do it I can do it and just being stubborn and competitive it caused me to try and figure it out and I was not very good I didn't know how to close I was scared of money uh like asking for money was terrifying to me and a lot of it it was a $600 set of knives I grew up with where $600 was all the money in the world so asking for $600 was uh that was a big ask yeah and it was a big fear I remember that but I worked through it and uh I developed and I got a little better and I got a little better and I was just I was like a dog with a bone and I kept working on it and at some point I became an assistant manager I was at the time 19 years old looked like I was 12 and I was interviewing people and hiring people and I I was enjoying that much more than I was enjoying school I felt like I was learning more and and let's let's try and I want to try to uh capsu because you know you were with Vector for 10 is I believe I started in 89 and I left in 95 so six so I mean greatest impact for that decade take the top you know summarize the top two or three lessons in that not just for Vector but for that part of your life like what were what were the things that really formed you in that moment it was once I went and opened my own office it was running a and I was in charge of everything right it was paying the rent hiring people get you know I had to go to the bank and get a loan to finance my first branch office and leading and managing people I mean I started out as a salesperson selling 31 bucks my first weekend and wasn't good sales and I was a branch manager within a year and a half I was a district three months after that and at some point I was running a division with 14 offices each full of people and that was four or five years after I started and so going from a snot no kid that didn't know how to sell and didn't want to sell to Leading people I think I built a lot of self-confidence there and I guess I had confidence before that I had an probably an unreasonable level of confidence I didn't know what I didn't know and I didn't know that I didn't couldn't do it right and I just I always believed I could figure it out and I would land on my feet and being competitive helped because there was always somebody selling more than me and I wanted to beat them and I worked my ass off it was I remember I moved to Cedar Rapids IA where when I got my district promotion and it was I didn't know anybody and I just worked it was seven days a week and I would a lot of times get home at 2: in the morning and be back in the office at 6:00 or 7 in the morning and yeah not painting Vector in the best light right here I don't know if that's vector's issue or ry's issue but well that was the C that was the culture back then I don't you know I can't speak to today and I I know it's changed to some extent but it was also I was in Cedar Rapids Iowa with and people that were in territories with a million or two million people I was trying to beat them and I can't beat somebody in a million or two million person territory with my 150,000 unless I out workk them and sure so for me that that that competitiveness and all of that I mean it fed into that and it was look nobody forced me to work 20 hour days that was my choice yeah so you so you learned how to apply work you learned the value of money you learned about running a full profit and loss operation you know know early in that part of your career take me to the next the post Vector thing like once you get there any life lessons outside the Financial and Professional realm in that played hard I didn't have a lot of free time but when I would take a vacation I went hard um I didn't sleep much I was just I was really single-minded work and tell you've got a couple Sons now is that what you would tell them no I don't think it's I if I had to do over again well what do you tell your sons today I mean you have conversations with about things like do it different I think I'd do it the same because that's what I was focused on and that was what I enjoyed it by the way that my fun and I was growing and I learning and today and they 19 and 21 it's much more about what are you doing today it's much more short and and what are we going to do today this week this month this year yeah right and my encouragement to them is to find something that they love and just pursue it and go after it and that's you know again I don't have a lot of regrets and yeah everything I have today is because of the decisions so even things that I might do different I'm well aware the butterfly effect I would have a different life and who knows what I would have missed out on if I would have done that right sure and I kind of believe everything happens for a reason but you know Dylan is 21 and he's unbelievably talented musician I would love if he pursued music sure but being a musician or being in a band unless you're super successful most of them are struggling artists and that's not you know he plays music he does it and enjoys it he's doing other things and that's fine and he's got to find his own way right and uh well struggling financially doesn't mean struggling LifeWise right that's the thing that and you know it's easier for people who are older who have money to talk talk about that and I think at the end of the day people have to have enough to survive but but there is a point of diminishing returns yeah yeah but I was learning and growing and a lot of who I am today and you mentioned the lifelong learner that started there that's when I started reading books and night what n Andale Covenant was that their name Conan n Andale maybe n Andale Conan I can't remember something like that yeah I I used to get their tapes and listen to them in the car you remember your to top three books of that period top three books wow I used to read Success Magazine cover to cover every month when it came out uh How to Win Friends and Influence People Carnegie classic which I implemented much better then than I do now um we'll talk about that when we get off the air probably seven habits or seven habits of Effective People Steven Cy redone by his son Shawn classic I would say those are but you know Zig Ziggler oh yeah I used to like listening to Brian Tracy and uh I listen to tapes while I would drive more than I I didn't have a ton of time for reading we don't have tapes when we drive anymore Randy now we listen to it that's how old I am okay we did then all yeah uh but yeah I it's the first time I made money I started to you know I bought a seven Series BMW and I was you know slightly used had 20,000 miles on it but when I was 22 years old 23 years old whatever I was yes so we talked in the last in the episode our opening episode when we were chatting about kind of a little about your background you talked about some of your superpowers you talked about um a number of things but one of them was being able to assess a situation and apply Game Theory to it at this point in your life where you like was Game Theory a part of your life now yes but I was unaware I was always good at games I could I I just was right it didn't matter what game it was I was good at it and I was applying it but I don't even think I knew what game theory was at the time I and just like winning but I think also even when I left Vector that was Game Theory without me knowing it because I was at a point where I was running a division they were trying to promotee me to a bigger division which was going to mean more money and moving to I can't remember what's on the table Chicago Dallas Phoenix Denver somewhere else big markets right and I realized I was already getting burned out from the hours and some of the stuff I was doing I was kind of bored doing the same thing over and over again and I realized the next jump was also going to be a bigger jump in money and I could see myself getting trapped there let's talk about game theory for a second so explain to a listener who doesn't know what game theory is just two or three sentences what's Game Theory well in it's simplest terms being good at games but it's the strategy in figuring out how to win so we'll get to it some point I'm sure I played poker for a living and a lot of people approach poker and they just go oh I can do the math and they play completely by the math and by the way the average person can do very well in a low-level poker game they could probably make a living if they just really follow the math and do it that way other people come about it they're more personable and they want to apply the psychology that's rare the way I approached poker is it was different every game every table every person and the strategy of the game if I was playing with people that were wild and crazy I was able to just sit back and wait if I was playing people were super aggressive or you know or sorry the opposite were super conservative I could be more aggressive to take advantage of them and it was me adapting my strategy to what was happening in the game if I play a board game with people uh I am able to figure out the rules of the game I remember with friends that we used to get together Julie and I and they would just have all these new board games they would explain the the rules some of the people had played a given game some people hadn't and inevitably when we play the game I just tend to figure out the strategy to win quicker yeah in this case applying it to where I was in my I could see well most people I think would have jumped at the chance for the bigger opportunity the more money and frankly I was ready to get out of Iowa at the time and go to one of these other markets uh I liked Iowa I met some really great people there but it was not where I wanted to be long term and I could just I was scared that I was going to get trapped yeah and I was never you know that once I was making more money and so Game Theory you can be cooperative or non-cooperative and so you were applying all these kind of Economics Concepts you didn't even know and you're figuring out where it's zero sum where it's not Zero Sum but at the end of the day you're trying to figure out how ry's going to win not in a not in a bad way but just you're you're trying to optimize for the outcome you're looking for even subconsciously at that point yeah I could see the consequences and the second and third level effects of doing things and I've and I think most people people don't see that as easily without really having somebody spell it out for them if happens what unexpected consequences come from that that you aren't considering yeah it takes um a level of emotional maturity to be able to see consequences and not um not be reactive to those things knowing that they're statistically possible it doesn't make them a done deal and so it I talk to people a lot about like seeing the playing field for what it is is and then making deliberate choices and some people just get really hung up on not wanting to see the playing field the way that it is because it doesn't look good and and that is but but that may just be the case right yeah I the downside of that is I have over complicated things a lot of times that I even think back when I was playing poker I used to assume that like well if I'm doing this this is how people are going to react without as you said the field as it is and therefore I was reacting to their you know the The Princess Bride I know that you know that I know that you that that whole thing right I was doing that only my assumption was totally wrong the people that I was countering counter weren't countering yeah they didn't see it they couldn't figure it out and I I remember when I first moved Austin I I was playing in a really competitive flag football league and I remember playing in this league and it was a new style I'd never played before and I sat down took out a paper and started writing plays out and I would write a play and then I would think okay how does the defense stop this play and they're go okay they're going to move a safety down here and i' think okay so I'm going to run this play then when the defense does this this is the play I'm going so I'd write a second play to counter the defense's counter and then I thought okay then they're going to do this to counter that and I would literally have plays three three levels ran dozens maybe hundreds of times against the same people the same teams for years and I never had to run the second play yeah really there was only one or two teams in the whole league that we'd play it was the same teams and these were again a lot of these people played college and NFL football these were SM you know good football players and they just I had I was I made it way harder than it had to be sometimes right I could just run the same play basic play over and over that problem that you're talking about where people want certainty in the future happens all the time like the number of times that I encourage people to like not think about how many bridges you have to cross after you cross the first three like which seven might you have to cross and how do you plan for that you can think through that and and sometimes that's helpful sometimes it's helpful just to let like cross the first Bridge first and then see what opportunities are really there in front of you otherwise you spend so much time spinning in planning that it could be counterproductive we've probably had this conversation at times over the years where hey let's cross that bridge and we get there which is why that idiomatic language exists in our culture cross that bridge when we get there yeah yeah for sure um I think the other thing that came out of my Vector experience is that's where I really first realized how much more I enjoyed helping other people be successful than I did working on my own and I I remember my first branch office I remember trying to help my assistant his name was Craig get to his branch office I remember the first you know I I had this rep Jesse that just put up big numbers and then I had a rep mat that was a really top level it was an FSM and and just working with those people and you know from that three months I spent in St Cloud before I went to to Cedar Rapids there were three people that became branch managers that had their own office the next summer and that was the one thing I was really good at in Vector better than everything else is I developed other managers and got them out and a lot of them became district managers and went on with the company and I I really poured my heart and soul into developing those people which in turn made me more successful in you know at the office level and financially and everything else but but that's really I think where a lot of that started and that's you know and and I didn't think in terms of abundance at the time but that's what that was that was helping them find abundance and helping them develop and on their Journey so 96 you leave Vector you move into what next so I moved back to Minneapolis um moved back with my college roommates they had a uh duplex that they had bought at the time I moved on with them um and uh then I was God what did I do when I first went back I don't even remember what I did when I first went back let's go to impact then let's talk about the 10 years of impact like what else impacted you post Vector so I started doing stop smoking seminars I had become pretty good at public speaking in my Vector days I was doing stop smoking seminars which I actually enjoyed and I was never a smoker but my mom was a smoker um I could see it killing her it eventually you know she was a two pack a day smoker it eventually did kill her I look at my mom's family and everybody in that family that doesn't smoke has lived a unbelievably healthy long life spot long long life and everybody that smoked has had problems yeah and so that was really helping people uh I initially did NLP neural linguistic programming and anchored people to ascent and I would run these seminars I would run Billboards all over Minneapolis St Paul drive people to a seminar and sell it and that was going okay but it was very labor intensive for me it was not very scalable and I couldn't teach anybody else how to do it we've already established I get more excited about helping other people do it I end up getting a phone call from this guy Jim who wanted to sit down and talk and thought he had a better mouse trap they had a product that it wasn't as effective as using the NLP the NLP had unbelievable results and still I helped a lot of people quit that way they had a product though that was more herbal and some other stuff it's more complex than that but for Simplicity let's just say you took a and it was maybe only 70% effective but that is astronomical compared to how most people stopped smoking and we started selling that product in fact I was doing we put an ad in a Thing Called radio TV news report or something like that that got me on morning I was on morning talk shows almost every day in fact I remember I'm not really morning person I would get something it would be you know 6:00 on the East Coast or 7:00 on the East Coast which means I don't need to be on the air at 5 or six I would have the phone next to my bed the producer would call me I would literally roll over in bed answer the phone do a two to five minute Spiel put the phone back down go to sleep wait till the person in Chicago or Omaha or wherever called me and do it and we were selling this product like crazy and I had this partner Jim I ended up partnering with him and it was going great it was kind of a multi-level thing as well which was a it was mostly direct sales but we were recruiting people and I had everybody that would stop smoking would want to sell this thing and people started selling it the guy that founded it ends up dying in the middle of the night he's a guy that had found the product bought the company because he quit smoking with it and then I won't go into the whole story but one thing led to another a guy came in he stole all the money ran off to the somewhere in the Caribbean with it and the products were guaranteed it was a couple hundred bucks for the kid or whatever and it was fully guaranteed if people didn't stop smoking we gave them their money back well it was 30% of the people it didn't work for well the company quit giving guarantees they didn't pay us they owed us I don't remember tens of thousands of dollars for what we'd sold and then all of a sudden I got people calling me for a warranty and the company's not calling and Jim and I ended up refunding a whole bunch of people out of our own pocket for Stuff we'd never been paid on so that also end to you like what was the impact to you on that how did how did they impress upon you for your I think as much as anything it made me more resilient right it was we did it it almost worked but it was just something beyond our control happened um this guy ran off with the money but it didn't work we went broke we were starting over again and uh when that happened it was a disaster and I didn't have any money my neighbor worked at a local pizza place and he got me a job pizzas and fact I sold my car that I had at the time to try and live and pay rent I bought an old beat up Volkswagen him from him for $100 I probably got ripped off for $100 and uh but I started delivering pizzas which had the added benefit is I got free food which I didn't really have money for and uh it built resilience and also I think all of that gave me more confidence things didn't go the way they were supposed to go and uh it was okay yeah like it wasn't that bad so then you got into energy and poker next is that the no from there know at Vector Don and called about an internet company this would have been 98 or 99 probably 98 and it was called collegeclub.com pitch and him and Brian went on for an hour plus and it was all about all the opportunity and the intervent the internet's going to be great it's going to be this and it's going to be that and I think this would have been 98 and they went on and I they got done and they wanted me to go to San Diego for for a meeting with this company and I they got done and I realized I didn't know what the job was and I said Don what exactly is the job what is it that you want me to do and then he paused and he goes well Randy that's what we're going to San Diego to figure out and I paused and I said I'm in let's go that was actually very most people that would be a turnoff to me that was very appealing and by the way it wasn't great money the company was not in good Financial shape we were going to be paid mostly in stock in a company that they were upfront they were losing money and hinging money and but it was a appealing to me it was an opportunity and I also realized the lifestyle of delivering cabin or delivering delivering pizzas sometimes I was working till 3:4 in the morning and then you go home and I was just I was kind of trapped I could see where I could get trapped in that and I saw people that had been delivering pizzas for 10 or 20 years and I didn't want to be I made okay money it was like I was surviving and saving a little money I actually took a pay cut from delivering pizzas to go work for that company took a pretty significant pay cut actually and we went to San Diego and we had to try to figure out how to Market this website called collegeclub.com and how to Market it to college students and but isn't I mean I remember the story we've talked about this one a lot I mean the the real I mean not to jump ahead and put the fine point on it but the reality is too early yeah I mean I mean all the experiences you had there all the things good and bad that happened in that what you I think what you your real big takeaway there was great idea got there too early yeah too early we were uh you know the talk was we were going to have the biggest IPO in history and for a few years I was paid primarily in stock and I had a lot of stock and you know Sony General Motors NBC were buying stock and uh it was Fu money that I would have had if I you know I would have been beyond set for life if I could have just exited all my stock I had golden handcuffs I couldn't but if I could have sold all my stock for what to Sony or General Motors or NBC for those prices I would have been set for life but yeah it was early the CEO of that company on a vision standpoint was a 10 out of 10 or maybe an 11 out of 11 he saw the internet had the fut the vision the future he was excellent running the business as a business and being responsible making sure the the books were done right and running the business as a business he was a one out of 10 and the IPO actually got delayed because while he had the vision we were growing like crazy once our group came in and we really spiced up membership in a hurry um the books weren't good enough to go public which I found I didn't know at the time that wasn't what they told us but years later that's what we found out yeah yeah so it was um yeah it was early but it was good and again I gained more experience different um I actually loved that of all the things I've ever done I really really enjoyed that job yeah like I was I was on college campuses every day I had teams of students at the University of Texas Southwest Texas and you know pretty much every school in Central Texas and San Antonio I had teams of students and uh that I was managing and overseeing and I really really very much uh very much enjoyed that and so then you got into energy and poker well then I went broke again when that went down they went bankrupt I went broke again and uh started over I did some odd jobs don't even remember how I survived and uh then I started an Energy Efficiency business with my friend Gary that started started going very well sold an amazing product but it was very seasonal and we were running radio ads selling and then winter came and we couldn't sell anything it was very very seasonal it just sales completely it was it was a waste of money to advertise and a guy that I played football with invited me to go over to another guy's house to play craps I'd never played craps but we played these $20 craps tournaments on my friend he turned his pool table into a craps table well we've already established I was good at games there'd be 20 people there and the first night we played like five craps tournaments and I won four of them despite not knowing how to play craps I just I could do the math I could figure out the odds and I would win craps a dice game for those of you that don't play craps it's a really fun fast-paced high energy popular in Las Vegas yeah best odds in the house by the way for a guy that spent a lot of time in C easily the funnest game in my opinion in the casino people are laughing you're kind of playing together almost as a team and it was a lot of fun and we would play started playing craps multiple nights a week and then one night somebody suggested that we play poker and I was irritated because I liked craps and I was making money but that's what everybody was doing so we went to the table and we had a $20 poker tournament and I think I had played one tournament before like six months earlier and I'd taken second they reminded me of the rules and we played and then I won and then it turned into we almost stopped playing craps and we played poker and I realized this was going to be a thing so I went to Barnes & Noble I bought a couple of books and became even better and I just started really consistently winning low-level games which books did you get do you remember Doyle Brunson had a book that was considered like the Bible of Poker um super system I believe it was called and Phil helmuth had a book B that oh God it was so basic but it was a good yeah for for low-level games it was good I'm not a huge poker officio but those are two names that even I know that's kind of people that Run the World Series of Poker and kind of celebrity poker players and this was around the time where while we were playing was when Chris Money Maker was on TV at the World Series of Poker the unknown accountant came on and one I whatever it was I'm going to call it 2 and a half million I might be off on the numbers he had won off of a $3 or $10 satellite tournament on an online site and it really was the beginning of the poker boom and that winter I just started playing poker I would play poker at somebody's a home game all night long and then I would come home and I would play online and then I would sleep and I would get up and I would go play basketball or I might go play football at night and I would go back and play poker and get up let's go back to impact how did all this you this is where I really sharpened my teeth on Game Theory like I am of the opinion of any game poker I've never seen a game that's as got as many layers of complexity it's many many many levels Beyond chess because you can't see what other people are holding you don't know what's going to come um there's have you played go I have a little bit I don't know I don't I've never played GH so I couldn't tell you the difference but I was here that's like the ultimate strategy game it's got more potential moves than poker but it does not have the human psychology and the unknown in the same way so you could I could make an intelligent argument both ways but poker mixes not only the mathematics and that but it has the unknown it has the luck and the chance but it has a huge at a high level huge huge level of human psychology built in and I think you know eventually jumping way ahead in the story I was living in Vegas I mean I was primarily living at Caesar's Palace playing at the bagio every day um walking across street to the bagio and playing against some of the best poker players in the world I mean I I remember just sitting around the table and seemed like everybody I talked to was they'd went to Harvard they'd went to Stanford they went to MIT and they were going to go work at Nasa but now they're playing poker or they were going to be a lawyer and now they're playing poker yeah and it was kind of my I kind of think about it almost as my backpacking Europe phase I was making good money I got out of um but it was and I definitely worked on critical thinking it but it was also very individual it was a dog eat dog world I think it made me less patient with other people I think some of like I said my ability to the win friends and influence people that changed and you're always trying to beat everybody I mean you you're sitting around a table talking to somebody for hours and hours and hours and you're laughing and joking and you're talking about a football game that's on TV or whatever you're doing but you're trying to gut that person you are trying to take all their and it's now I get invited to poker games now with people and I just pretty much say no because I I don't know there it's not big enough Stakes for one thing that to interest me but I also don't want to go take friends money that way and the truth is if I focus they kind of don't have a chance over the long term um you know I went we haven't got to the Bitcoin part yet but I did go to a Bitcoin game like a year ago with some people and I ini said no and then I thought you know I can just go hang out and have fun and I did and I I still ended up winning a little bit and we played for Bitcoin but but I I like it just I don't know I intentionally just didn't win as much as I could have certainly right it's um but I think it was an important part of my life and it was it it sharpened me it dulled a lot of my business stuff when I went back to working I had to learn how to work even though I played poker every day and long long hours I had to learn how to actually work again um and I had to some of the skills I had better skills in my 20s than I did afterward that some of the stuff even today I haven't you know rebuilt some of those things as much as you know I've worked on other things versus yeah you know rebuilding some of those skills yeah so the the impact was lots of game theory diminished and atrophied skills in um still at this point I mean haven't met Julie yet no but also got me got me on my feet fin got me back on my feet financially I was in a bad place again when i' started um you know I've made money lost money but again another step in thinking bigger and you know I I always joke my dad used to throw on nickels like they were manhole covers when I was a kid and so I always had a scarcity mindset about money well in poker if you're sitting at a table and you're playing a hand for 10,000 or 50,000 or you know I've I've lost pots of that were worth 150,000 I mean taking a bad beat in a tournament for 350,000 plus a few times Um poker players I mean I lo I lost on a one outter in Atlantic City for $350 some thousand um you joked with me one time that was God telling you poker wasn't your path yeah I actually started thinking that when I was there I I was good I always made money I another thing I mean during an iasa experience not that long ago that God showed me like the hund biggest poker pans I ever played I was ahead in probably 98 of them and lost every single one of them this it that's a statistical impr probability that I cannot describe I mean one outers and things where I was like a 98 to2 favorite not once but literally like a hundred of them flashed through my mind I didn't win any of those biggest hands and every time somehow even when I played it right and I always felt it was God or The Universe telling me this is not where you're supposed to get really rich and it wasn't going to allow me because there were other things to do and I I really believe that I believe that I was there for a reason and it was an important part of my life but it wasn't again it wasn't to get trapped there and so that brings you forward to um the cabinet company you're in now meeting Julie um yeah you know and the kids so I kept getting job offers people I'd worked with in the past kept offering me things when I first started playing poker and a lot of people are like well that's not a career or whatever and I kept saying no I kept saying no I kept saying no and I seriously considered a things and the job offers and the opportunities started getting further and further and further apart you say no to people so much eventually they quit asking right and I kind of saw this happening but I also remember while I liked the poker experience I traveled I had fun I also realized I wasn't contributing to society sitting around a table trying to take everybody's money was not really helping anybody else and benefiting the world in the way that I wanted to having the impact so I started actively looking for a way out but I was making good money and a friend called me about the cabinet business I with a Tor nilles tendon jumped on a plane flew up to flew up to through Chicago to Cleveland didn't know anything about cabinets didn't know the first thing I'm not handy but I went up there and I thought I can do this and I can do this for the year or two while I figure out what I want to do with the rest of my life and I got into it I actually found out I really liked it I liked people I liked helping people update their kitchen I started making decent money and then I started telling friends about it and I had friends that started getting involved their friends started getting involved and pretty soon we realized we had an opportunity I was figuring out systems and that turned into I don't think we have to go through the whole story but that turned into premium cabinets which has now grown to about 35 locations across the country um it certainly had its ups and downs along the way sure but uh we're in a better spot now than we've ever been and uh that has been building an organization I met you during that time yeah and I think you have been really helpful in helping me understand some of the systems and processes of business the framework yeah and best ways of doing things uh one of definitely had over the over the time I used to think I had to figure everything out myself and one of the things you've definitely helped me with I know when we do it whenever we talk about anything you're like there's a system or there's best practices for this and if I just put it in Google or put it in chat GPT a lot of times I can save hours of work yeah yeah not my systems they're just things I found over the years are ways of yeah totally but but you're a master at that I mean you you you are really really good at knowing what is the system and what is the framework for almost anything really and so that that's that's been beneficial but running an organization and the leadership and you know different type of organization certainly than things I'd done in the past to some extent but uh it's just been another step in the journey well we'll get we'll get a lot more we're we're going to talk a lot on this podcast about economics and Bitcoin and sovereignty and those will be we'll bring guests and and people in to to dive really really deep into those uh topics and I know that you know Bitcoin being one thing where you're incredibly passionate about Bitcoin and I have a little more I certainly have you know cryptocurrency and I I believe that as a part of my a portfolio it's a smart portfolio but you you're much more bullish there than I am and we we'll get into those debates and how that works as we as we wrap up the the Randy Lorensen episode um and your go forward you know uh the impact you want to leave is about sovereignty and if you if you talked about abundance we talked a lot about you're making money this episode but but I know you well enough to know that that's not the measure yeah but a career was a lot you know look I I met Julie 10 years ago um she had two amazing kids that you know become my kids and that has been a big part of my life you know the last 10 plus years um they're both in college now but uh certainly that has changed my perspective and my Outlook um It's Made Me focus on Career a little bit less you know and and don't want to handwave over it is because it really has become a big part of me but I have been thinking a lot about and maybe we'll have an episode on this sometime I've been thinking a lot about from Yuri you and Anthony turned me on to it the guy the the Tim Ferris episode The Negotiator yeah I've been reading his book William Yuri is you're William Yuri yes so the one sentence to some things up and it's really about and I'm still working on it but I'm pretty close right now and and it's really about helping bring freedom and sovereignty to the and the way that I've been doing that more now is I am also an economics nerd and I have spent a lot of time reading about things and I've come to the conclusion that money is broken specifically Fiat we won't go deep into that now but that has consequences this is where the game theory the second and third and fourth level effects have had all kinds of negative consequences in the world and we're seeing the results of those in today's world I got into Bitcoin frankly John because I heard it on a podcast it sounded interesting I heard about it as being this Freedom money and spending it and using it and that's what I got into it but then when I went into it I put more money into it as an investor I thought it had I thought it had a high upside and it was a way to get more US Dollars and I will tell you that in the last you know many years of doing that I don't think about now I'm trying to get more dollars so I can get more Bitcoin and that thinking but it's I believe that that is the best tool we have on this planet today to bring freedom sovereignty and abundance to the world and also realize anybody listening that isn't there thinks I'm crazy right now well you you have a certain point of view that's very passionate that's very certain you feel very convicted in what you're doing and I you know I appreciate that I I have those same passions about other parts of my life yeah and so I think one of the great things about this podcast is we're going to get to arm wrestle with that with experts in different areas and give people different points of view and ways to evaluate that themselves and you know whether Bitcoins for them or not whether investing them or not whether wealth they're going to find in money or in family or in faith or wherever they find wealth you know for me my my primary wealth measure is in my faith and and in living the path that I feel called to um I don't think any of those things are right or wrong but but I love that we're going to get really educated and we're going to get deep and we're going to deconstruct all that for people throughout this podcast and I think now that people are going to hear how you think about Bitcoin how you think about sovereignty they can come back to this episode today and say oh that started back when Randy was you know breaking a horse as his payment for a summer it's going to start back from when you know he sold a bmw7 series to buy a $100 VW so he could deliver pizzas to get himself out of a situation because he didn't want to feel trapped somewhere he didn't want you know over a couple circumstances I think there's some nice threads we've pulled on today that we'll get to pull on a little later throughout this you know this path this journey that we're on and uh I think it' be great to send this episode to all the guests we're going to have so they know you know who who they're going to be talking to as we go forward so I think we're have a lot of fun with that a couple things that I want to just you know you talked about iasa you talked about Bitcoin just briefly I want to be able to get into all those topics as we move down the road um and you know things that where you're willing to take risks that I would don't take and there's risks that I'll take that you won't take and it'll be a nice um dichotomy for people to to listen through as we get through it any parting words as we uh wrap up today's episode it has led me to a place where I just want to help bring abundance to the world whatever that looks like right and I it doesn't matter if it's the 18-year-old kid trying to figure out what they want to do with her life if it's a 70-year-old person trying to figure out how they're going to give back or it's somebody in a village in you know a poor place in Africa that's just trying to figure out how they're going to get water for the day or put food on the table like it's everybody it doesn't matter what the journey is I just want to be an asset to help them yeah on that Journey when you're more committed to learning and giving today than I've ever seen you which has been great and uh I'm looking forward to keep you know staying on that path I I joke with people that in my life that I think about relationships in decades you know and so we're 15 years in we got a long way to go and I'm just excited to be on the journey with you so all right this was great Randy really great to get to know more about you for our listeners can't wait to dive into some of these more especially the controversial topics as we dive in and unpack all this stuff and uh and unpack it we will all right listeners thanks for being here Tales of abundance this was the Randy Lorensen episode so glad you could join us uh and uh look forward to uh sharing more episodes with you on these topics and more here with Tales of abundance