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Scarcity vs Abundance How Your Childhood Shapes Your Money Story

Episode 84 · 29 July 2026 · 1 hr 4 min

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Scarcity vs Abundance Mindset: How Your Childhood Shapes Your Money Story

A scarcity vs abundance mindset often gets installed long before you choose it. Randy Lorensen, Dr. John Oberg and Anthony Marino start with the Dutch Hunger Winter of 1944 and John D. Rockefeller's childhood money lessons. They then walk through the four money scripts (avoidance, vigilance, status and worship) and how to rewrite yours.

Your money story started before you chose it.

In this episode of Tales of Abundance, Randy Lorensen, Dr. John Oberg, and Anthony Marino explore how childhood, family, scarcity, status, faith, trauma, and early money lessons shape the way we think about wealth.

The conversation starts with the Dutch Hunger Winter of 1944, where famine left lasting biological effects on children born to pregnant mothers who lived through it. Then the guys contrast that scarcity wiring with John D. Rockefeller, whose mother taught him early that money could be a tool instead of a master.

That raises the core question: who installed your money operating system?

Randy, John, and Anthony unpack scarcity vs abundance, money avoidance, money vigilance, money status, and money worship. They share their own early money scripts, how those scripts affected their lives, and why even high earners can still feel broke if their emotional relationship with money never changes.

Most importantly, they discuss how to rewrite the script through self-awareness, mentorship, books, coaching, journaling, prayer, psychedelics, belief-change work, and choosing your money story on purpose.

If you care about money mindset, financial freedom, emotional wealth, scarcity vs abundance, and building a life with intention, this episode is for you.

Money Scripts, Money Avoidance, Money Worship and the Dutch Hunger Winter

What you'll discover:

  • What the Dutch Hunger Winter suggests about scarcity wired in before birth
  • The four money scripts (avoidance, vigilance, status and worship) and the hosts' own early scripts
  • Why high earners can still feel broke, and why money and happiness aren't the same thing
  • How to rewrite your money script through self-assessment, mentorship, books and deeper emotional work
  • Why not choosing is still a choice
  • In the Abundance Briefing: the AI price war, a $47,000 token bill, Grok trained on SpaceX engineering, and the Genesis Mission

Timestamps

  • [00:00] The Dutch Hunger Winter and scarcity coded before birth
  • [00:53] John D. Rockefeller’s childhood money lesson
  • [01:58] Do we all have a money script?
  • [03:23] Randy’s scarcity mindset and early money beliefs
  • [04:09] Can your money operating system be changed?
  • [04:39] Money avoidance, money vigilance, money status, and money worship
  • [05:11] “Money is the root of all evil” vs “the love of money”
  • [06:02] John’s childhood: money was not talked about
  • [07:58] When money becomes security
  • [09:06] Anthony’s early money status script
  • [11:42] Why the amount of money you have does not determine your money mindset
  • [12:17] How different people process the same childhood inputs differently
  • [13:30] Parents, family, community, and where money beliefs come from
  • [14:18] Randy on changing a scarcity mindset later in life
  • [17:37] Not making a choice is still a choice
  • [18:51] Anthony on work, money, family, and emotional development
  • [19:49] Avoiding victimhood while understanding your past
  • [20:50] Why knowing where you came from helps you choose where to go
  • [22:24] Get-rich-quick culture vs building one step at a time
  • [25:21] What if Randy had gone to Wall Street at 22?
  • [28:22] Why high earners can still feel broke
  • [30:13] Money, happiness, and why they are not the same thing
  • [31:26] Intergenerational scarcity and the Great Depression mindset
  • [33:19] How do you rewrite your money script?
  • [33:35] The Millionaire Mind and The Millionaire Next Door
  • [34:26] Self-assessment, mentorship, and emotional abundance
  • [38:22] Why knowledge alone does not always change money behavior
  • [39:20] Rewriting beliefs through deep emotional work
  • [40:49] Final takeaway: not choosing is a choice
  • [41:02] Emotional wealth and financial wealth are not the same thing
  • [42:31] The AI price war and cheaper Chinese open-source models
  • [43:23] Privacy, security, and whether you are the customer or the product
  • [44:36] Why AI competition may destroy today’s token pricing model
  • [46:54] Open-source models, local compute, and protecting your data
  • [47:36] Randy’s $47,000 token-use example
  • [51:00] Elon Musk training Grok on SpaceX engineering knowledge
  • [55:05] How SpaceX data could improve engineering and problem solving
  • [56:21] America’s $5 billion AI moonshot and the Genesis Mission
  • [57:19] Universities, basic research, and changing incentives
  • [1:02:14] Leaving a six-figure job for Yellowstone and a better life
  • [1:04:03] “You can manufacture luck in your life”

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About the hosts

This is a hosts-only episode with no guest: Randy Lorensen, Dr. John Oberg and Anthony Marino. (Host bios are on the host pages linked below.)

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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.

[00:02] winter of 1944. Nazi Germany is blockading western Holland and there's 4.5 million Dutch civilians that just don't have any food. They're surviving on 400 calories a day. They're eating things like tulip bulbs, sugar beets. 20,000 people starve to death. 40 years later, here's what researchers found. The children that were born to the mothers who were pregnant during that famine, their DNA was permanently altered. Not their habits, not their choices, their actual genetic code changed before birth. Their bodies were were hardwired for scarcity before they took their first breath. The code written before they were born ran the rest of their lives. that, a mother named Eliza gives her son, seven-year-old son, a blue china bowl. "Put your pennies in here," she told him. At the age of 12, she hands him $50 and tells him to lend it to the farmer at a 7% interest rate.

[01:14] A year later, he gets $53 back. The boy realizes it's better to be a master of the money than its servant. For the rest of his life, he kept a small notebook, recorded every single scent he spent, and he was still doing it when he became the richest man on on earth. That was John D. Rockefeller. Two childhoods, two operating systems, one wired for scarcity, one wired for abundance. Both ran for a lif lifetime unchanged. So here's the question. Who wrote your code? Is it still running? you toward the life you actually want. Let's talk about it. — John, you want to you want to talk about the money script and and if if we actually have one want to bring Dr. John in on this? — Yeah, I mean there there are a lot of different researchers who've written a lot of different mental models about how money and your money concept is developed. And there's certainly something to what happens if you're growing up in famine or if you're, you know, uh if you're in the womb during famine. Like there's certainly scientific evidence that there is something to that. There's, you know, there's models about whether you have like you see money as being something that is about status versus a tool. I think when I think about money, when I'm in coaching sessions, I really want to know how people viewed money when they were young. Like did they see their parents as spend thrifts where they were just spending everything they had? Did they see them as very thrifty? Or did they see them as someone who didn't talk about money? So it was kind of obuscated from them and hidden behind the closed doors like my grow my my upbringing. And and here's the important part for people to understand. Whatever your upbringing was, you have a relationship with money based on how you were brought up. That's true. And you can change that script if you're deliberate about it and you want to. You can change it. And so just because you saw something growing up or you're in the womb at a certain point doesn't mean that that predetermines your entire future. you you can change those things. It may take various amounts of work to do it, but it is possible. So there is something that happened. There's something you can do about it if you want to. That's been my experience broadly and I think the science would support that. Yeah. John, you and I have had conversations. Heck, you and I had conversations on this podcast about, you know, I definitely grew up closer to the Dutch people example of this with a scarcity mindset, but you know, it was later in life where I really thought about that, right? I think a lot of people go through life and they're just unaware that that stuff did shape them and where that they didn't choose their beliefs about money that their environment did. Right? So I I think just being aware of it is is a good first step. But Anthony before we started we were talking about the code and how it's hardwired and you know the Dutch story in particular and your question was so are you saying there's no choice right that these people are just born it's in their DNA and they don't have a choice. So you want to you want to talk about that for a minute?

[04:09] — Well, as John said, yeah, you know, you can change, but it I almost view this as your relationship with money as a habit. You know, a a habit of dealing with money in a particular way and habits are hard to change as we all know what no matter what the habit is. I quick question for you, Randy. When when you think about your early childhood, which one of these four types, money worship, money status, money avoidance, or money vigilance, do you think you started out — Same question for John. — Avoidance. So, in other words, money's evil is the root of all evil. Rich people are jerks. Uh, they take advantage of us. Oh, you were Bernie Sanders essentially. — I I don't think that's how you classified. So, respect with Randy with what you did. I mean, you often describe your childhood as your parents threw around nickels like they were manhole covers, right? And so there was a level of vigilance and thriftiness with your family that like every single penny counted and there was almost like this clutching of money in your family, right? Yeah. But it was more it was more the things I heard and the belief system that if somebody had money, they screwed people. They stepped on the little guy to get there. that, you know, it was the thing from the church. Money is the root of all evil came from church. I mean, there was there was multiple messages where I grew up that anybody that was really rich was a bad person. And the way this played out in my life, again, we've talked about this on previous episodes, so the Reader's Digest version is I made money and then I lost it and I made money and I lost it. And it took me years to realize that I was somehow self-sabotaging myself because I didn't want to be a bad person. And I equated having money with being a bad person. So — yeah, I I would never qu I would never question your instinct that what you what what you believed in the beginning.

[06:00] — John, what about you? — Well, hold on. I want to I want to I just want to that it's such an interesting case for you to dive into because just one thing that Randy said there that people can dive into. Like the church says that money is the root of all evil is actually not what was said, but it's often misconstrued and leads to this really unhealthy relationship with a tool, right? The church says that the love of money is the root of all evil. And it's a really important distinction and that's the way the belief systems of all kinds get generated whether it's biblical or spiritual or not. Like I think that's the that's the type of like a really and by the way I do believe that Randy was brought up believing that money was the root of evil. Like for sure lots of people have that but that's not the actual saying from that source. So anyway, for I was grow I was brought up, Anthony, where uh money was not talked about. So I walked in on into a room where my parents were doing the bills and I was politely excused from the room and the door was shut. And so I wasn't told what was happening with money. And so when I was 14 or so years old, my mom took me to the bank. We opened a bank account and then she made sure I enrolled in a class in high school that taught me how to balance my checkbook.

[07:06] And that was really the end of the conversation. And so it was it was just it was it wasn't taboo as a topic, but it wasn't to be talked about. And so I had to actually go and learn about money very deliberately. I had a mentor when I was about 19 that introduced me to the concepts of money management and a book called the wealthy barber that talked about compounding interest and I started to learn about money as a tool. Uh and it was a and then I was introduced to a group of people where it was a spend thrift environment. And so that was another set of models. And then years later, I actually ended up uh talking to some PhDs in psychology and having a whole bunch of conversations to kind of develop very deliberately my attitude toward money, which I think now is pretty healthy, seeing money as a tool. But there's still some of the roots of what I saw from my parents, some of the roots that I saw from that spend thrift environment. And yeah, so it's it's been a journey. So you you you move through through and back on on all of these four types. In other words, you know, maybe it was avoidance in the beginning because you didn't know anything about it and then you develop in time different. Did you ever get to the point where you worshiped money? Yeah, there was definitely a point in my life where I worshiped money because I thought money equated to security and and so there was this now I believe false belief that money gave me security. And and if you're ever curious about that, you can just go look at people who had a ton of money in the French Revolution and it all kind of got wiped out in the French Revolution. So sometimes there are I talked to lots of people who think that money gives them a security that it doesn't really give them. And so uh so yes, the short answer I did. And by the way, to John's point, there was definitely an anxiety, right? like the when he talks about throwing around nickels like they're manhole covers. You know, the thing I understood really well is we can't afford that. Doesn't really matter what that was. We can't afford that was the standard answer for most anything, right? And so there is that also added to the scarcity mindset.

[09:06] — Yeah. So I different — Yeah. I I grew up very different than than you guys. And you know, you know, I grew up in a in a small town and my my my father had a pretty successful construction company with his with his brothers and sister and we lived in a in a home that was single family home that was on the ocean. And in a workingclass town, we were considered, you know, part of the money class, if you will. And not notwithstanding, my father would take home $400 a week and once a year he'd get a, you know, distribution from the company that he would would would last, you know, hopefully for the balance of the year to buy all the trinkets. And at, you know, at an early age and my mental model was money is status. you know, where where we stand above, you know, with the Gastonises and the Libermans and a few other families in in our small town. It was a small town of 20,000 people. We stood above them. In my mind, my father drove a a Cadillac and then a Lincoln Continental. And then there were these kind of two classes of people. There were the construction workers, the airport baggage handlers, and then there were the professionals, the doctors, the lawyers, Falbo, and a bunch of other people. So, it started off there, but things changed, you know, later on in life where the money ran out in my, you know, early mid- teens to late teens. The money disappeared, literally. Not figuratively, literally disappeared. And the good news was while status I looked at money as status and probably my dad did the same underlying it was a vigilance hard work make get more do whatever you had to do to get more if that meant you know working 14 hours a day and so forth. So for the rest of my life once I left home it was all about vigilance cuz I was petrified to go back to the place where we didn't have money. Yeah, I could buy nice cars and live in nice houses, but I wasn't thinking that. I was thinking about vigilance the whole time. How do I make, you know, a good living? Hell, when I had to change jobs, I I one time in my career when uh Sears got bought and we all got fired, I got two years of severance. Two years of severance pay by paycheck. Within 30 days, I had a job.

[11:28] Okay. Within 30 days, I took another job. that that was that that just kind of shows that I always wanted to have something coming in. Even though something was coming in, I didn't look at it that way. So, yeah, very different the very different lifestyle. — What's interesting though is the amount of money you have doesn't have a lot of correlation to the viewpoint that you have. So, you might find people that have tons of money but have all the whole spectrum of beliefs about money. People that have no money have the spectrum of beliefs about money. So, I've not been able to find a correlation between the amount of money somebody has. Maybe it's there, but I but I think that you can certainly find all walks of life in all walks of life. And so to me, the good news about that is that if once you identify this as as a point of reference, you can choose whether or not you want to continue down that path or choose to go down a different path. Like that's that's available. I I find it really interesting that different people that grew up with the same inputs into their operating system process it completely differently, right? Like a lot of the most successful people, the super rich, the billionaires, or as Bernie would say, the billionaires and the trillionaires, they a lot of them grew up without money and they grew up with a scarcity mindset and they just desperately didn't want that future.

[12:43] Like they were they're running away from being poor and into being rich. And to your point, John, I don't think a lot of those are super happy a lot of times. Some of them are, right? and other like some people grow up in that my mindset of oh everything's expensive and it it's scarcity but they grow up in I have to get away from this and you know get out of it and it's any inputs that we get from our parents. It's really interesting how two different siblings take the same input based on I don't know belief system their wiring how old they are or you know their just their perspective and it you know transforms them in different ways sometimes positive sometimes negative in the same same input. So let's talk about who that is. Like we've been talking about parents and our family, but John, does it have to be just parents? I think I think the prevalent thought process is it's mostly parents for most people. You know, the psychology of a person gets developed a huge amount between 0 and 6, 0 and 7 years old. And parents are generally the people that are around the most for those periods.

[13:48] And so I think yeah, the short answer is your family is is really where that happens. And so now if you're you know adopted then it's the environment that you're in primarily. Although there's some interesting science about you know the DNA that impacts of you know what happens when you're in the womb impacting financial outcomes. And I don't know how much information we have on that being causal or if it's just correlated but the information would certainly indicate that there are things even before you're born that have some I think for me it was the whole community as much. I mean my parents were certainly the most dominant but it was grandparents, aunts, uncles, neighbors, friends like that was just, you know, it was it was rural Minnesota. It wasn't a rich place. And I think I think for me it was the entire culture community where I grew up that was all contributing maybe to different degrees but later in my life as I started searching for mentors and things I tried to find different money models right and different people that could come along.

[14:54] you know back to Anony's question are you stuck with this? We didn't really answer that. I mean, I think I've done a really good job turning that around in the last few years through mental models, but but I'll be honest, it was a lot of work. Like, changing belief systems is freaking hard. And we've done, you know, we've done episodes on that, too. But I think so, I think to answer your question, Anthony, you can change. I think I've mostly changed. And but it's it's a battle. Definitely. — Yeah. I I agree. I I agree. But I'm going to come at it a little different. Not that that's surprising. come at it a little differently. And I just I can only speak for myself, you know, so I'm not going to try to speak for other people and and how they arrive to where they arrive, but I have a hard time understanding the 0 to 7year-old thing. And I I'm not going to doubt science because they they do their research. So something got hardwired in me that carried me through that period of time where money was status, right? But as as I as the things changed as I said it I don't think I consciously I know I'm going to reframe that I know that I wasn't thinking about moving to something else. I just woke up and and I didn't know these terms by the way at that time. So I it was it's very easy to put these terms in place at the various points in my life but I just ended up being vigilant. Okay. It wasn't a plan. the environment, you know, the sands of time shifted things and it it, you know, almost well, it did. It forced a change, right? Cuz when you don't have anything in a literal sense, it you know, you can you can say, "I'm I'm after money for status." But when you have nothing, you have a choice. You you know, you either go you do something to get it or I don't know what you do. I guess you wallow away and get on government assistance and live the rest of your life that way. But, you know, I didn't I I wasn't a plan. Now, skip ahead 25, 30 years. You know, I started to have a lot more respect for my choices and my my my emphasis in my life. And so, yeah, I could sit back today and say, you know, I I fall into this particular category now. It's not about the status. It's not about worship. It's really none of these things. Still working hard, so I guess I'm still vigilant to an extent. But uh you just kind of it seems like you just kind of have a choice to end up somewhere if you're willing to do the work and take care of yourself. And I that perhaps that's a a theme here that if you let your environment push you around and just accept it, then you're going to end up in one of these places.

[17:34] And as John said, you're not necessarily going to be happy because you're not making choices. You end up somewhere. — I'm going to say it differently, Anthony. Not making a choice is a choice but like I think I think that's and if I had to talk about like the abundance mindset for people like you know so I grew up shouldn't talk about money I found some mentors at age 19 then money became security which was a different problem for me then in my mid30s I had some things that happened in my life that forced me to reexamine some things and I have the money beliefs that I have now that I think are much more healthy than the money beliefs I had growing up and even in my 20s but the reality is that in many parts of our life. Not making a choice is a choice. And I my my wish for people would be they could see that and then if they choose not to make a choice, at least they know they're choosing not to make a choice and then they're just letting the, you know, the current take them where the current's going. But I don't, you know, at least people get to choose that deliberately. So that that's what I would say about — And you've worked really hard, by the way, Anthony, on your stuff. Like you can say, you know, here's where I am today because of time and maturity. But the reality is if you've spent a lot of energy trying to improve yourself over the years, even since I've known you, and that's been a constant for you, is how do I get better? Is that fair?

[18:51] — Yeah. And I think, you know, I I don't know where we get this from, right? But when when you're when you have an emphasis just on working and making money because you didn't have it before, you sacrifice so much of yourself in your in your personal development, in your prof, not so much your professional, but your emotional development, your your development with your kids and your family. you know those that's where I've put the work in is doing and I'm not God knows I'm not perfect in any of this stuff but you know that that was the real shift for me was oh this stuff over here is one thing but my goodness there's a whole other life that I'm participating in not to the extent that I want to and it was it was personal it was professional it was you know bringing people in to be partners for the first time in my life which was something I had never done before yeah so it was It it was it was work. It worked out fine for me. And and you know, — the other thing that I think people do when we get into this is they start feeling like a victim. And I don't want that to come across here. Like I think people are like, well, my parents or my neighborhood or I grew up this way and they kind of get a victim mentality. And you know, I could be upset about my at my parents for teaching me a scarcity mindset, but I have to give them credit for all the great things they did. I mean on total I had really great parents and they taught me a lot of stuff about you know in my opinion about being a good person and hard work and and I just think that sometimes sometimes as humans we tend to be quick to point blame and say hey here's you know here's how they screwed me up while not simultaneously giving them credit right and some of these people that you know became super rich because their their parents were overbearing and whatever and they become super successful don't want to give them credit for the work ethic that they installed is a good is a good example too. So I think it's important to look at both sides of what we're trying It's it's worth saying that that the understanding where you are and how you got there is instructive for figuring out if you want to be somewhere else how to get there. Right? So, I tell people all the time, if you're hiking and you know where you want to go, then it's good to know where you want to go, but you can't actually be successful unless you also know where you are. You I was I was canoeing with a buddy of mine once who's an air he was a pilot for planes and great navigator and I wanted to be somewhere at the end of our canoeing trip and we got to a fork in the river and I was like, "Let's go left." He's like, "We need to go right." And I was like, "We have to go left." And he's like, "We definitely need to go right."

[21:27] And I had to be somewhere. And he's like, "Well, we can go left. We're just going to miss your event." And I was like, "But I don't want to miss my event." He's like, "Well, then we should go right." I was like, "Okay, I know we should definitely go left. You know, we should definitely go right, and we both know that you're the better navigator, so something's wrong here." So, I opened up the map. I was like, "This is where we want to go." He's like, "That's correct." I was like, "Well, this is where we came from." He's like, "That is not correct." I was like, "Well, son of a gun." I was like, "Where did we come from?" And he showed me where he came from. I was like, "Oh, we should go right." He's like, "That's correct." So, it wasn't about where we were going. It was about being honest about where we were coming from. And I think often times people know where they want to go, but they're not honest about where they're coming from for whatever reason. And so I think this part of the conversation is helpful. So you know that you want to go right at the fork in the river, not left to get to where you want to go and that's about where you came from. And so the where you're coming from isn't necessarily useful from a victim perspective, but it's super useful in terms of knowing which way to turn. — Yeah. And I think, you know, that is a great point, but it it it bears saying that as the Bob Dylan song would say, times they are are changing. You know, I grew up in a in a period, you know, I'm a boomer and get rich quick wasn't any part of the discussion, right? It was everything was, you know, one 2x4 at a time in your life to build something that you were after. and and you know I had an uncle as a mentor early that taught me about the stock market. I was living in a world where for that up to that period of time money wasn't wasn't an issue in my life and so forth. But at no at no point was I in a in a mind an abundance mindset of well after tomorrow I'm going to have a million followers and I'm going to be making you know YouTube money and so on and so forth.

[23:21] You guys also grew up at the at the end of that era, but also you came of age during a time, and I'm speaking for you and I apologize, but at a time when there was an internet boom, and there was a lot of get-richqu stuff. Randy was part of a company that he would he one time said, "I was going to be a billionaire. I was a billionaire on paper or something or a multi-millionaire on paper." And those went away. So, — Anthony, the se the 70s is the is considered the golden age of get-rich quick schemes. By the way, you may not have had exposure to it, but there were so many get-rich quicks. Every every generation has you just weren't exposed to them. Maybe. Maybe. So, certainly not in my neighborhood, okay? Certainly not in the colleges that I went to are the first jobs that I had to. I was a rag salesman in my first job, by the way. So yeah, maybe it wasn't exposed, but pales in comparison to today, John pales in comparison to 99 to 2003 in terms of, you know, the the things that slip through people's fingers during that time. Very, very different thing. And the reason I bring it up is this is all about abundance and being conscious of your environment, being conscious of what your next step is. We we talked before about problem solving and we talked about, you know, making making your way in life and it it's it's literally one step at a time. Now, I think the steps today can be quicker than the the manual steps that we took, you know, back in the 70s and 80s, things have accelerated. And I think that you should be very hopeful if you're if you're struggling or you're trying to figure out your way that doors are opening faster and faster for people. And I just think from our from the the point of this whole, you know, podcast series we're doing, the opportunity for abundance is is on your doorstep. And you just have to figure out, you know, what door to open, if you — So, let me ask you a question. Just opinions. I don't I don't know how I feel. So, let's say take somebody like me that grew up with a scarcity mindset and let's say that I would have somehow got put right in the middle of Wall Street when I was 22 years old and being around people doing multi-million dollar What do you think would have happened?

[25:44] Dr. John, let's start with you. What do you think would have happened? imagine that all types have been successful on Wall Street and all types have failed because there's more variables than that. And then there's probably, you know, some version of that where you leave Wall Street because it just blows your brain up, right? There's got to be some version of that where you are so scarce that you find opportunities nobody else found like you know Warren Buffet the kind of the last puff of the cigar mindset. So I, you know, I don't, my crystal ball is broken today, but uh, you know, I think, you know, the Randy that I know today, pretty enterprising, right? So I think that you might have been a boom and bust guy where you went and found an opportunity, made a ton, busted it all, then kind of went back and did it again. — It's a real possibility probably. Anthony, you have any thoughts? — I'd be dead. — You'd be dead. — I think Yeah, I'd be dead. I think if I grew up, if I if I was in that run and gun, you know, the get-rich quick that the John's point about get rich quick, Wall Street was the place, right? That was that was where that was happening.

[26:46] There was, you know, all kinds of pyramid schemes and all kinds of insider trading and so forth. And had I got had I got rich in that environment, the early '7s behaviors would have kicked in and probably killed me. Honestly, I honestly believe that. I think the best thing that ever happened to me is, you know, I had I wouldn't call them the best mentors in the world. The mentors that I had as I had a career were always, you know, you want to be upwardly mobile. You want to do the work necessary to get the next promotion cuz the next promotion means stock options and, you know, a little bit of status and so forth. I I'm I'm glad I had that because it was a much more paced climb, if you will. still hard, a lot of work, a lot of time away from the family. But getting rich quick, I don't think would have been good for me personally. — I I actually I really don't know the answer because I I think it would being around that kind of money and that kind of thinking has to expand your mind and get you thinking bigger faster. So, I would think there would be that. I think John, your thing that I might have like hit big and broke and hit big and is really interesting. I mean I but my real takeaway is that my mindset wouldn't have allowed me to go into that situation that it would have probably it's an irrelevant question because I wasn't yet ready for that experience or it would have just somehow protected me on my subconscious is what I thought. So — or or you might have found a real mentor who identified the problem with that thinking for Wall Street and helped you through it. Or you might have found someone who saw it and was able to manipulate it for something else. Like those things are all real. They all So, John Anthony, I mean, we all know high earners, people that make a lot of money and they still feel broke. Can we talk about that for a minute? Cuz I think that's a like that's something that I don't know. I mean, there might be people listening that that feel that way, right? They're like, I have they make a lot of money, but they feel broke. So, is that imposttor syndrome or what's going on there? You know, I can only I can speak personally to it. I I I think there is an imposttor syndrome, but depending on how you accumulated that wealth, you know, I still shop sales. I still get twinges when I see the MX bill. Um, you know, it's it I I I'm not I don't need to worry about that stuff and I still do. It's just waste. Waste is waste. I don't care if you're you got $100 in the bank or $100 million in the bank. Waste is waste. And that that's in my head. And I think I know it's going to always be there. So I don't know if that's an imposttor syndrome or just leftover mental, physical, emotional conditioning that I've developed, you know, since the beginning of time. So don't have a straight answer for you, but I know how I feel. You know, I don't want to I don't I I still check the Well, I don't have an electric car now, but driving with my wife to the airport yesterday, I was looking at the price of of gas at the two or three stations. I had a choice. I — John, what your thoughts here? What's Dr. John say?

[29:54] — What What was the I I was so deep into Anony's answer there. I was, you know, we all know people that are super successful from the outside, right? They have lots of money. They're fin they're financial winners by anybody's checkbook, but maybe not their own, right? What is that? They're not happy. They're not satisfied, even though everybody else would love to be in their — Yeah. I think that's not a money problem. That's a happiness problem. And I think what I would say to that is that, you know, I've met people who make almost nothing that have been some of the happiest people I've ever met in my life. And I think that children are a great kind of lens into that, right? Children often times don't register all the money stuff and you find just inordinate amounts of joy. And then I think there are some people that think that money is the thing that gives them happiness. And my experience is that you know happiness is is a byproduct of other things. It's not a a function of money in partic. And there's some interesting studies around that. Like you know the money's impact on happiness starts to kind of degrade after about $80,000 a year in income per person in the relatively recent past. And then, you know, even at the top ends, you know, $100 million in net worth gives you all the utility of a billionaire or a trillionaire if you're willing to rent the experience instead of buy the experience. And so, you know, people want to be a billionaire or have a half billion dollars like but at $100 million that's kind of like the cap in utility and $80,000 is it starts to degrade. And so poverty is a real thing, but I think happiness and money are too often linked as causal when they shouldn't be.

[31:26] Back to Anony's question about do you have a choice, right? And I think JD Rockefeller's mother Eliza, is that her name? Showed there was a choice like she took and she became that mentor at a young age and taught him those important lessons. I think different than what any of us were taught. But, you know, there is a lot of research that this stuff is intergenerational and it can be coded beforehand. And I always think back to, you know, my dad used to say this all the time about anybody that grew like somebody would talk about old people being tight and like my grandma in particular and he would talk about how she lived through the depression and how rough it was living through the depression, right? Very similar to the story that I opened up with with the Dutch. And my dad used to always say, he's like, "Man, those people that lived through the depression, it changed them. It really impacted them and changed them." But then I think about the impact it had on my dad. So my dad didn't live through the depression, but his parents did. And therefore, that's where that scarcity of money and there's we're going to run out and there isn't going to be enough. And that's where the throwing around nickels like their manhole covers came from. I think is a direct my parents that that great depression impacted my dad which in in turn impacted me and it really does go generation to generation.

[32:49] — We have an idiom for that, right? Our society says that you know hard times make hard people make good times make soft people make hard times. — Yeah. Yeah. It does. It really does. We've talked about the fourth turning before. I mean, it really kind of also aligns with that same pattern that just, you know, there's a lot of things that you go four generations out and watch the the pattern. Let's turn this into abundance. Let's let's end on a on a positive note. What do you do to rewrite the script? You were hardwired with this. You didn't choose it. Whether it was in your DNA, whether it was your parents or your neighbor or your coach or your community, it doesn't matter. But now you want to do something about it. So, let's let's give the people a solution. Let's go. Who's got a solution? — I think two of the two of the greatest books I've read around this are were done by Thomas Stanley called The Millionaire Mind and The Millionaire Next Door. And they really walked through how millionaires that were primarily self-made think about money. And those books helped me to understand what money concept I wanted to have. And then I could go seek out and ask questions and talk to people to develop that money mindset. And then you know it's like when you buy a purple car you recognize how many other purple cars are on the road the next day. When you start to you know look for a particular thing that you want to have you start to find people who have that. And then for me I wanted to model all the things around that you know and I and I was really careful not to model things that kind of broke other values in my life. So I had to be clear about like what other values I had too so that it wasn't to the you know one thing to the exclusion of something else that was important to me.

[34:26] — Yeah. I would um I would say this and I think you have to take a step step to the side, not a step back. Step to the side and get some help to determine why you're where you are. And most importantly, what is it that you where do you want to go personally? Where do you want to go in your in your with your family if you have one and want one? Where do you want to go in your social life? and seek out the happiness track and that may or may not lead to money abundance, but it's going to lead to personal and emotional abundance as a start. And if you have that, then you're going to have that you don't have to worry about that anymore. You can worry about your health. you can worry about your your economic outlook and you can take clear action to move the ball forward, but I think you've got to do a really deep dive and assess yourself. You know, not necessarily why I'm here, but here's where I am. And I and you know, I'm a huge proponent of counseling, whether it's psychological, whatever. find a mentor, talk to somebody and get a sense of really where you are. Because if if you're if you don't really understand that, then you really don't you you're you're you're standing on, you know, sand or you're you're trying to climb a mountain where the rocks are loose and it doesn't you're not going to get anywhere. So I love what you're saying here, but you're talking about one of these layers, right? Like don't you have to start at the bottom? Like when it comes to money, don't you kind of have to start with, hey, let's make sure that my food and water's covered and I've got — That's what I'm saying. Assess where exactly where you are. Look at your bank account. John, I can't tell you how many times I went months without looking at how much money I had in the bank because I knew it wasn't enough and it was just going to upset me if I looked at it. So, I I knew I was pay my bills were getting paid mostly. Sometimes there were periods when they weren't getting paid, but I you know, so I I I — I I shut that stuff out — and that's not that's not healthy, man.

[36:45] You know, you got to I you got to always know where you are. And so Randy asked, "How do we create abundance?" For me, my suggestion is self assess in the I mean, James Clear talks about it. M Mark Kelly talks about it. Everybody talks about really assessing who you are, what you are. Stop stop faking yourself out, you know. Assess your skills. What are you good at? What do you like to do? Put those two things together. Suffer a little bit if you have to while you're pursuing those first two things. Be a dishwasher, be a rag salesman, whatever the case might be. But keep that the first two things in mind. What do I like to do? And what am I good at? doesn't mean you can't develop new skills and get good at being a guitar player and become a rock star at the age of 65 or something. Apparently, there's no age limit on being a rock star anymore. Used to be 27. That's when you died. But apparently now you can be Who the hell is 80? Someone's 85. I can't — be Keith Richards is old. — Might be.

[37:49] — Keith Keith Richards I think looks better than I do at this point. like and eats better and — exercise one of them that travels and has an entire mobile gym, like a whole semi-trail gym of equipment that goes with him on tour and he works out like a maniac is what I'm pretty sure I've I've been told. So, all right, Anthony, what finish up your thought there? — No, no, and I mean that that's that's really it. I mean, it's self-reflection is a very powerful tool. So, — and not not not often used on a regular basis by a lot of people. — Yeah, I I agree with that. I'm going to add to what you guys said. So, I agree with John's stuff about reading books, but I have read so many books on this and you know, you mentioned the millionaire next door, the richest man in Babylon comes to mind and I forget all the book. I mean, I have read probably know more about this topic in a lot of ways than almost anything else, right? and spent a lot of time getting the information. Hell, I wrote, you know, I wrote a book on money and different things and have gone deep, the podcasts I listen to. So, I will also tell you that all of that financial information, I could pass the test. I my if you listen to me, you wouldn't hear the scarcity mindset so much in in those areas. And I could talk about these other things, but nothing changed for me until I worked on the the beliefs, the mental, the emotional, the stuff that we started with that was hardwired into me as a kid. Like, that had to change. And to Anony's point, that couldn't change until I had self-awareness that it was a problem. It took me decades to even figure out it was a problem. Right? Once I figured out it was a problem fixing it, boy, I mean, I journaled about it, you know? I went into prayer, meditation, whatever you want to call it. I did things. The two things that I think helped me the most are going to be in I don't know which order, but I think it was them stacked and everything else and talking about it and support, but it was psychedelics in particular.

[39:53] There were conversations with God about this. And then Tony Robbins ability to doing his Dickens process that he does in in one of his seminars is probably the best thing I've ever seen for changing belief systems. It's unbelievable. And and really that's where I finished it off in my opinion in one pretty painful 30 minute process. But those those are the things and those changed they rewired my brain and all of a sudden I got to choose my story about money not what was already there that I didn't choose. So final thoughts gentlemen John final thoughts here on this topic Randy I think that's the big one for me — hold on you're on you're on mute we'll cut this out — I think the big answer is people take away from this that not choosing is a choice and so if they want to choose they can if they don't want to they can but at least be deliberate Emotional wealth and financial wealth are not the same thing. Confusing them itself is a money script.

[41:14] Love that. We will uh talk to you after the break. In the meantime, download, subscribe, tell your friends, follow us on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook. Just search for Tales of Abundance. We'll talk to you after the break. at Tales of Abundance, we know that fitness is just as important as money or milestones. It's one of our fivefs, but lots of other things. Taking care of my body while I build my life is one of the more timeconuming and difficult goals to chase. That's why we're partnering with AG1. It's a daily drinkable habit. Less than a minute that's formulated with 75 plus vitamins and nutrients and designed to support energy, digestion, and immune defense. It even has a few grams of protein uh that we're all chasing these days. And if you want to try it with our affiliate link, you'll also receive a free AG1 flavor sampler plus vitamin D3 plus K2 with your welcome kit when you first subscribe. $72 value. Go to abundance briefing. Gentlemen, there's an AI price war. I mean the the whole world now is talking, you know, we we talked about whatever 5.2 that came out of China, but last week Kimmy 3 came out and they're saying this thing is on level with Fable from Claude and I've heard it's 89 times cheaper. I've heard it's 1% of the price wherever it is.

[42:47] Worst case, it's 50 times cheaper to buy tokens on this thing. This is rocking kind of the world. And by the way, I have already this weekend I took my Odinbot and some of the stuff that I was doing with Deepseek before that was on the machine and open source. I'm directing it toward Kimmy for some of the tasks and even some of the stuff that I was having Claude do is going to Kimmy to cut down on my token cost. So I I have very quickly done this. I mean, are you guys using it? Are you excited about it or scared of it because it's coming from China? What are your I can't use it in my world because I'm in a land of privacy and we have so many privacy regulations that we can't actually use those models because there's not enough like they're not going to sign up for the privacy things that we need and have. And I would say this, we already know that current token usage is being subsidized by the raises that are happening with AI which means Kimmy's being subsidized even more. And back to your point about uh you know Warren Buffett and Charlie Mer like you got to follow the money to follow the incentives. And so if you're not if you're not the customer, then you're the product. And so I think I think you just got to be really sensitive to where are you the customer and where are you the product. And if you're being subsidized by somebody else, you're the product.

[44:03] And so which is fine. I think I think if there's not any, you know, valuable information being given up, there's no intellectual property, no trade secrets, I think there's a lot of things that can be really good. And I think if you can download open source models to be used in kind of a a cold non- internet protected way, that might be good. But I just think that, you know, security is much more sophisticated than the lay person understands. And so I'm I am hopeful that it's driving cost down and will cost down over time. And I can't deploy it today in my use case. — Anthony, I know you have thoughts on — Oh, I have thoughts on this. So I want to get this on the record. You put a put a marker on this. It's uh my son's birthday, July 27th. It is 12:15 central time. This is the beginning of Amazon destroying Toys R Us. Amazon destroying Barnes & Noble. What we what we're talking about here is the hole, not the donut. The donut here is what hasn't been created yet. The ability for engineers to create new models. These models today in two years are going to be P. Now I don't know what that means economically to Open AI and Perplexity and Grock. I'm not I'm not going to try to predict that they won't be the Amazon, but you're not going to be paying $50 a token in 2 years. Models are going to be being perfected in a way that they'll be able to serve John's business. Someone will create a model that is highly secure, built for the medical profession, and will do exactly what he needs at an extremely low cost.

[45:48] It's happened over and over and over again. Toyota did it with building automobiles. Amazon did it with building out the internet. So did a bunch of other companies. But I I can't predict that all this money that these guys are spending is going to be a waste cuz I do think we need the the power generation and that's where most of it's going. But I think this is the beginning of something real. And I don't think people are looking at the the donut. I think they're looking at the hole and they're looking at the token cost. And the fact that Kimmy and whatever it is and Deepseek and open-source models are getting created every single day and you're going to be able to put it on your personal computer or your your server in your business. I think it's going to change the world and change the lives of these companies. — Yeah. I I the prices are going to go down, the competition there. There's so many things here. — Well, just the beginning of competition. Competition has just started. — Has just started literally. — You know, and the security thing we talked a couple weeks ago in the same briefing about the CEO, was it Palunteer CEO or whatever talking about how, you know, these models have your data. I'm actually less concerned about a Chinese model especially that you know the deep stink that I have downloaded on the host machine that runs my bot like I yes it's possible China has a back door and is sending data back but people this is open source nobody has been able to find this it's on my machine now Kimmy just so you know I looked at if it would go on my machine and it was a joke it needed something like 1.3 to 1.5 terabt of RAM to run their model and my machine had 64 gigs of RAM. So I was I was a little ways away from that. So I have to use that through open router. I can't download it directly. But it was interesting over the weekend a mutual friend of ours was nice enough to take and analyze my AI cuz my quad was using so many tokens.

[47:47] And so I sent him what he asked for. He sent me a report back a couple hours later. His analysis was that in the last two weeks, so I have a $200 monthly max plan or whatever Claude calls it, right? $200 monthly plan. His thing came back that in the last two weeks, I had used $47,000 worth of tokens coding and creating this project I'm working on. If I was paying per token, not the $200 plan, $47,000. It's almost $100,000 a month if I was buying it outside the plan. So, to John's point about subsidizing other people that aren't using it as much or them or investors or somebody subsidizing that, there's just man, there's I've said I've said this publicly, Randy, like I think the way the future is going to be some version of what Anthony said. I think we're going to have smaller use case models that get put onto people's local devices. Local devices are so much more powerful than they used to be. I just we just bought a computer for home that was like a maxed out MacBook Pro so that my wife can use AI in the way that she wants for some personal projects and it's like you're going to see these smaller models that are going to be job specific on machines without having to build out entire internal company data centers probably and so I think that's going to be and then you have a lot of local compute and that's going to drive different utility costs and it's going to be more decentralized processing but I think I think we're going to see more of that happening.

[49:15] over time so that companies can keep control of the cloud-based token use. And I think you're going to see less frontier processing in general. You're going to have to to keep the costs in — Well, and my next thing is I got to look into this thinking machine. I'm pretty interested in what they're doing with an open model. That's an American company. And I'm I'm I think they used one of the Chinese models to make their model. That's the great thing about the open source is once it's out there, you can do whatever you want and make it yours. So, let's move to the next topic. I do have some advice before we move on and and I I use this analogy a lot. So much is changing so fast. I wouldn't want to be on the bleeding edge of anything. I would want to return serve. I'd let I'd let these things come out, let a week or two pass, see where the see where the water settles and then return that serve and make your move. Trying to be trying to catch it, you know, catch a falling knife, I don't think is a smart thing. So, sorry to sorry to interrupt. — I'm sorry. It'll be interesting. I mean, there there's new, you know, big news quarterly report came out from Google, quarterly earnings, and they burned a ton of cash. I forget, but I mean, I think it was billions of dollars in cash, and they have just been collecting cash. And they're not the only company that they're investing in data centers and and all of this. And it'll be really interesting if these companies, they have a history of getting that money back at a unbelievable rate. I think over time Google has something like a 33 or 34% annual return on money they invest and it'll be interesting if that holds true with with this.

[50:45] — I'd bet on Google. I would bet on Google being one of the survivors of this. — We'll see. I would bet on the next guy going to the next topic and that's Elon and Grock and SpaceX. The uh I think this is fascinating. So Elon has announced that they are taking their entire engineering knowledge and all of their files and everything that they know from whatever it's been 15 or 20 years that SpaceX has existed. They're taking all of that engineering knowledge and training Grock with it. So man, I mean, everybody's counting them out. They're talking about Anthropic and they're talking about, you know, Chat GPT and these Chinese models and, you know, it's like Google with all their money is an afterthought. Grock and Elon as an afterthought, but this is big to me. I mean, what what what is your what are your I have a lot of takeways, but what are your guys takeaways when you think about this with with them building? — You know, I think of Elon I think I think about one of the best first principles thinkers of our time. And so if you're saying he's taken everything he's done and he's and it's that type of kind of rigor and thought, I'm super curious to see if the AI follows that and see if it just is a big leap forward. Not because of anything technical, but because of just the um intellectual rigor that maybe went into it. So I think that's I'm pretty excited about that.

[52:07] — I I don't know how he gets paid for it. I mean, the the the amount of of information that he's going to upload. Um, I know I guess aerospace companies would want it and so forth, but I I don't know how he gets paid for it, but I I'm sure he will. This is this is definitely over my head in the sense of what I what I use quote unquote AI for, this technology for. I I don't need to know how a rocket was the thickness of a of a motor inside of a starship. But, you know, this guy is he's the future in the present. So, I'm just going to I'm just going to as a as the book says, bet on the cowboy. So, that's really all I have to say. — Well, how he gets paid for it. One of the things about Elon I don't think is appreciated enough. Pretty much everything he does he open sources. He isn't worried about copywriting. And I think his attitude is that I don't give a I'm so going to go build and grow so much faster than everybody else that by the time you figure out how to use what this is, we're going to be on to the next thing and you're just always going to be two steps behind. So that's just that doesn't seem to be his mission. He's got, you know, very clear missions to go to Mars and do these other things. But I'm thinking about the way he's going to get paid, Anthony, is internally. Think about what this does for SpaceX. Think about if he can take that knowledge base of everything that they've learned about rocketry, about material sciences, about physics, and the way these engineers think, how much does that benefit the engineers in all of his companies moving forward, right?

[53:42] Like that that seems to me to be an indispensable tool that gives them a significant competitive advantage on top of all the competitive advantages they've built already. And it also seems to me that if I was an engineer and I was designing something, this is now the model like like anthropic and claude seem to have really dominated the Well, dominating the engineering in a world that is going to be about creating new things moving forward, I think, is seems like a pretty pretty smart move to me. And it makes me think I I have a friend I want to be careful here, but he invented something recently and the guy's an electrical engineer. He's getting it patented. He's trying to figure out how to sell it or raise money. And I mean, he showed me this whole thing. He built this. He couldn't have built it without AI. Even though he was, you know, he's a lifelong engineer. He couldn't have built it. He used AI. Well, for what he did, it has to do with drone technology and combining some things. I can only imagine that what Elon's creating with Grock would have made it much easier for him to to build what he was building right for anybody like that inventing new things which wow you want to talk about abundance seeking when inventors and engineers can make new stuff that's good for humanity — problem solving problem solving from last week too though if if it solves problems the way Elon solves problems I think that'll be a move forward too — this may be on the surface an altruistic thing where he's opening up all this information and data to engineers all over the world so that he can so that they can assist in getting the things accomplished that he wants to accomplish which is getting us back on the moon becoming interplanetary.

[55:33] And yes, these the the folks who invent these new things and new ideas and what have we also will get paid but but at you know they're going to need his rockets. They're going to need his technology. they're going to need him to uh get their payloads into space and so on and so forth. So, it could be altruistic or it could be self- serving in a lot of way that he he's basically hiring engineers all over the world to solve problems that he doesn't have to write a check to. They can solve the problems for him. They can become suppliers to SpaceX and we can get there faster. That could be what's behind all this. I don't know. But it it wouldn't surprise me because that's the type of thinker he is. I just think that it creates more abundance, right? More — Exactly. And totally and more cool stuff coming out can can only benefit us. Well, yep. — I mean, they can create bad stuff, too. But seems like we're moving in the right direction. So, let's go to the next topic. So, America is doing a $5 billion AI moonshot, and it's the Genesis mission, and they're re rewriting how we fund science. Not everybody's happy about this one, by the way. Who's not happy? The universities. There's been an 80-year partnership between the federal government and traditional universities, and they have plowed tons and tons of money into those universities. Now, a lot of this is going in a more directed toward AI, toward other things that the government wants to work on and sending it more of this money to be used outside of universities and being used, you know, with more targeted like, hey, we want to expand in these areas. So, you know, John, you're you're really familiar with the university system. I don't know if you've heard anything.

[57:10] I've heard a little hubbhub myself about people being upset cuz well, we're ch we're changing their financial model and their incentives. But, I mean, what what are your thoughts? — I think it's exactly right and I don't know a ton about this topic, but I will say this though, universities need to get back to basic research. This would help do that in a much more I think efficient way. I think applied research, my viewpoint is that we've asked universities to handle applied research, which has been not great for our country. I think we need to let you know more commercial organizations handle applied research and you'll get universities back to to basic research. And that's probably not a very popular opinion. And I think using AI to do some of those things will make it much more interesting. And you know, back to our conversation about money earlier, I think efficiency in how that money is deployed will AI will give us a chance to be much more uh rigorous about how we look at how that money is being spent. And so I think those are all good Yeah, I I'm sure I I I'd bet almost anything that the existing system is extremely inefficient with misaligned incentives where researchers, you know, more concerned with retaining the the the the money flow for an existing grant. Finishing a project, finishing a research means I've got to write another paper to get another grant. So, I'm sure it's inefficient. uh the incentives of the the universities may be more aligned with creating products or inventions that they can patent and sell and move that money into their endowment versus and what this with this speaks to and John you mentioned it earlier. What's the problem we're trying to solve with a $5 billion moonshot? What's the problem we were trying to solve with whatever the billions of dollars that are already in the system? You know, uh I don't I don't I don't know how this works. And this seems to me to need a ZAR sitting on top of it or or give the money to private private enterprise to figure out what to do with it. I'm sure inside of here's a there's a US a kind of mess going on.

[59:17] — You know, I think you're saying Anthony, I think you're saying the same thing except that I don't think universities should be figuring out how to make money with research. I think that should be the job of the commercial world and I think we should go — Totally agree. — Yeah, we should go figureally. — But that's what they do today though. They they — I mean we have funded I don't you know we'd have to do the research but the things that are in the public domain today that the government funded that the government didn't earn anything from other than get them started. I it's an old storyve heard it heard it for 20 years. though. — Well, I I think what's happened is the universities have gotten very comfortable with the gravy train and it's incremental. Like whatever is the approved science from what I understand when you want to do something if you want to just improve improve on the improved science by 5 or 10%. you can get funded if you want to do something that's completely new questioning the norms where the real breakthroughs come come right where where the 100x 500x thousandx improvements come you can't get that approved is what I is what I understand from outside the system and I think it's great like let's get individual entrepreneurs testing stuff that's science that's science is you have to you have to fly in the face of conventional norms and ask questions and challenge them and say, "What if we did this?" That's where a lot of the a lot of the breakthroughs were crazy as hell the day before they were they were breakthroughs, right? And everybody told them they're wrong. I mean, there's there's thousands and thousands of these stories throughout history. So, I think it's pretty exciting if we can if we can redirect the money and redirect the incentives in areas where it has a bigger impact. I think that's a win for everybody. And I hear, well, I have sympathy for the people that might lose jobs or departments or whatever. And I hear these guys, they're not going to have a job. Well, if you are a top researcher in a given topic, there will be a market for you out there. If you can add value, maybe one of these entrepreneurs hires you or Google or SpaceX or I whatever your discipline is, somebody will hire you if you're actually producing value. And I'm sorry, but I am not that interested in holding on to the jobs of people that aren't producing value. I'd rather What do you say, John? Make them available to — Yeah. I I think we be careful about what producing value means though because I think for entrepreneurs and business people, we often talk about that in terms of like immediate value and I think there's an intrinsic value in basic research too. So I want to be really careful like there is some like moving the forward the field of biology forward drives forward medicine, right?

[1:01:48] And I and I have some bias even though, you know, I grew up in the humanities. You know, I I don't I don't know that we need as much research around, you know, the writings of Plato um as we do around like what's happening in physics. Like I just think that there's some areas that we might find more interesting scientific discovery than others. Although I think we if we were to poo poo philosophy entirely, that would be a mistake as big as the other. All right, our final topic. Let's talk about Zoe De Laaz. She left a six-f figureure engineering job, moved to Yellowstone, and now saves more money. So, you know, it seemed like a financial step backward on paper, but now she's working full-time in the uniform department at Yellowstone National Park and saving more money. So, John, I know this this story spoke to you. What are your thoughts on this? — I think it's cool where somebody can kind of go and this is this is back to the thing we talked about the first half of the show, which is about being deliberate. like she deliberately made some changes and I think based on the quotes from the article seems pretty happy about it. And so and I think this would defy kind of traditional convention where you know more revenue is m but the reality is that you know the top line of money you bring in may not be as important as the money you're putting away or spending or whatever the case may be. And so this is a great example of someone who kind of took a snapshot of where they were. They weren't happy about it. They moved themselves and now their life in their words is better. So — yeah, I mean we talked about it. I mean she stepped back, decided who she was, what she would what she liked to do and what she was good at and you know and and then then put the five Fs at across the top and and prioritize them and she did a very basic problem-solving methodology in her own way. Good on her.

[1:03:35] I mean this is what she wants. I don't who knows what was going on in her personal life or her professional life and it doesn't really matter. At 26 she's taking a shot. If it if it turns out at 36 she wants to go back into engineering. She'll probably have to take a couple of courses. If there's still an engineering career at 10 years from now and she can always go back to doing something else. So I just think it's great. I mean it's a perfect example of taking charge of your life to make yourself happy. I love it. The story goes on to say that she calls herself lucky, but that she has a framework for it. And her quote is, "You can manufacture luck in your life." I think that's a I think that's a great quote. And by the way, she's doing this to build skills. So, she's building because she wants to work on Broadway and film film costumeuming. Remember, she said she's working in the uniform department. So, she's actually building skills so she can save money, go back to New York, and work on Broadway. I think that's pretty cool. But you can manufacture luck in your life, I think, is a good way to to wrap up this episode. So listeners, go out, spread a little abundance this week and until till next week, thank you for listening and download, subscribe, etc.