Shawn Ryan Show: SRS #267 w/ Rob Luna on Wealth Strategies for 2026 (Transcript)

And certain aspects of what you’re doing here with the show are unprecedented. And you’re actually creating markets, so don’t sell yourself short, first of all. And so I think your success is largely because of you.

But you know, like you said, I think in being an entrepreneur, like most entrepreneurs, when I started Valtrion, my introduction, “Hey, sold his business for millions of dollars,” which I did. But our focus really there was just on managing money. I had a CPA for 20 years that I was kind of complacent with, and I figured all those things were going on.

And then when I sold my business, it’s nothing like doing it for yourself. I was like, “Shit, if I would have structured this like this or had this trust, I literally lost millions and millions of dollars.”

So kind of the cool thing about what I’m doing now, Sean, is the business I’m building today, or we built Valtrion, I am the target customer. So selfishly, I’m building this for myself, not from an ivory tower.

And when I started looking at taxes, let’s just talk about taxes in particular, because I think that’s the biggest pain point. And when you talk to people about their tax situation, or CPAs, I’m sure all your listeners are thinking about this. Everyone’s disenchanted.

The CPAs are taking on 300, 400 clients. Everything’s reactive. There’s nothing proactive, and people are just losing millions and millions of dollars because of that.

So when I started this firm, I’m not a CPA, but I’m pretty smart with numbers, and my team’s pretty smart with numbers. And we said, “Look, we’re pretty good at this stuff. We understand business and real estate and strategy more than any CPA does.”

And CPAs, not to underestimate them, but there’s a code of what you can and can’t do. And what we said is, “Hey, we’re going to reverse engineer that code.” And to your point, when we find somebody, we’re going to start at the beginning of the year, tax planning, and we’re going to do every single thing that we can legally to make sure that we minimize taxes.

Because coming from California to here in the federal government, where that money was being pissed away, we didn’t want to do that. And so that’s really pretty much what it’s about, is get it back from the government, put it in your pocket, your family’s pocket, and help you use that to help your business grow. And we really focus on that.

SHAWN RYAN: Man, you guys have crushed it. I mean, in first year, hundreds of thousands of dollars saved in taxes, just because you guys are talking to each other. And that’s, I mean, we haven’t even had time to do everything. So anyways, I’m really excited for you.

ROB LUNA: Thank you.

SHAWN RYAN: And congratulations on that.

Optimism and Concern: The Year Ahead

ROB LUNA: Let’s help some other people save some money and make some money and protect them from, you know, the great thing about coming on right now, Sean, is we’re talking about it earlier. This year, I’m a really optimistic guy. But this year, looking out over the next 12 months, and I think with AI in particular, it’s kind of like even more than dog years. Like every year is 10 years in business and your personal life and things are just moving so quickly now.

And when I look at the next year, I’ve never been more optimistic about what’s going on in the country and the opportunities for entrepreneurs. But also I’m pretty frightened and pessimistic about the things. And the reason being is because all of the opportunity that maybe we’ll talk about with AI, I think there’s very few people that are prepared to take advantage of that.

And because of that, I think there’s going to be a lot of unemployment, a lot of things that are going on that are really going to put the American dream, which at the end of the day, besides God number one and my family, the thing I fight for and wake up every day for is to keep the American dream alive.

Because you know a little bit about my background. Without that, I wouldn’t have been able to accomplish anything that I have today. And I think day by day by day, the decisions that we’re making politically, whether it’s the left or the right in this country is threatening that. And I think never more so than today.

SHAWN RYAN: I wanted to start with the 50-year mortgage, but since we’re going down this road, I am…

ROB LUNA: Well, that’s part…

The American Dream: Alive or Dying?

SHAWN RYAN: I want to have this conversation because it sounds like you think that the American dream is drying up. I don’t think that. I think that the American dream is alive and well, but you have to figure out what sector you’re going to grow that in.

And so let me give you an example. We see all these illegals come in here and they take up all of the trades. They’re the plumbers, they’re the carpenters, they’re the electricians, they’re the lawn care. They’re everything. They do all of it.

And you know, you see these guys and they come in this town and I’ve hired them. I mean, there’s not really a market you have to hire.

ROB LUNA: Right, exactly.

SHAWN RYAN: You know, and I remember in my old studio, that guy came in and built that, studded that entire studio out on Easter Sunday. I couldn’t get, I could not get an American to get in there and do it. They wouldn’t even give me a price because it was too small of a project for him.

So I go, I find this guy, he’s on a site somewhere. I’m just like, “Hey, I need somebody to stud this out.” He was working right across in another building. Comes in, does the studio. Call him a year later to do something else. Now he’s got his own crew, he’s got a brand new car. He smells like he just got the most expensive cologne out of wherever the hell he was shopping.

But he’s proud, man. And I talked to him and I’m like, “Man, looks like you’re doing good.” He goes, “I got my own crew now. I got six different projects going.” That’s the American dream.

ROB LUNA: Yeah, right. Yeah, it is alive as well.

SHAWN RYAN: But we got a bunch of people that are too f*ing lazy to go out and learn the trades. They want to, it’s a, you have to be able to adapt and overcome. You can’t just go, I mean, am I wrong here?

The Mentality Problem

ROB LUNA: Well, I think you’re a thousand percent right. And I think when I talk about the American dream being threatened, I think it’s more about the things that you’re talking about. It’s the mentality.

And when you think about, I was talking to your team a little bit earlier about my disenchantment with what’s going on with New York right now. Because my grandfather came from Ellis Island through Italy and helped build that city brick by brick. Didn’t speak any English at first. Learned how to speak English, would never speak to us in anything other than English during that period of time. Worked seven days a week.

He was a bricklayer. Wound up creating his own business, bought a home. He did all these things without having any college education, without speaking English. But he understood that nothing was going to happen for him, nothing was going to be handed to him unless he did it himself.

And when you think about all these policies, well, I don’t like the 50-year mortgage. Why? I don’t like all these band-aids that we keep putting on things that is softening America and that is staying. When the American dream is people and intuition and motivation and understanding that you are responsible for yourself.

So the further you take that away from people, everybody gets a trophy, that’s going to deteriorate. And that’s why we talk about New York. Everyone says, “Oh, it’s going to come back, invest in it.” It’s not coming back. It’s not coming back because the people that built that city live in Florida now, in Texas and Tennessee. New York is in buildings.

SHAWN RYAN: They’re not living here, are they?

The Reality of Modern Immigration and Urban Decline

ROB LUNA: Yeah, but think about it. The reason it always came back is because the people made it come back. After 9/11, the people made it come back. Those people are gone, Shawn. They’re not back.

You look at the immigrants that are in New York. I’m all for a legal immigration process. We need that to be able to prosper. Otherwise you become Japan, right? You need immigration, but you need the right type of immigrants. You need the right incentive.

It’s not the immigrants that are in that city today that are absolutely destroying it, looking for handouts and have created that problem. And everyone says it was just the mayor and it’s just New York. No, that is a metaphor for what could be happening to this country unless we start changing those things.

And that’s the problem with the 50-year mortgage and all these band-aids that we’re trying to create to kick the can down the road and not take the medicine that we need to put our boots on and start getting back to what made this country great, man.

SHAWN RYAN: I mean, I can’t argue that. I mean, we’ve seen massive outfluxes out of New York, Washington, Oregon, California. And so I know, I mean, if I remember, I think it was Polymarket. I think Polymarket predicted that a million people are going to leave New York.

ROB LUNA: Yeah.

SHAWN RYAN: If he was elected.

ROB LUNA: Yeah. And he was elected.

The Migration Patterns and Real Estate Shifts

SHAWN RYAN: And from what I’ve been hearing, real estate prices in Florida of course are inflating and real estate prices in New York are deflating. But I don’t know, I’m still not there with “the American dream is dead.”

I mean, another example. Friend of mine started, American dude started a fence company this year. He was a cop, or he was a Marine, then he was a cop. Then he started a fence company like six months ago. He’s already done, I think he’s already done over a hundred thousand dollars in sales.

ROB LUNA: Yeah.

SHAWN RYAN: In six months with a new business. Just by getting his hands dirty and doing the work, answering the phone, showing up, taking the risk, doing what he says he’s going to do.

ROB LUNA: Yeah.

SHAWN RYAN: So I mean, I just, maybe the American dream is dead in certain sectors. I’m not going to, I mean, but maybe those sectors are dead all over the world because of AI, you know.

But anyways, I know we’re going to get more into this, but I do want to ask about this 50-year mortgage right now because I am not a big fan of anything that’s gone on this year.

ROB LUNA: Yeah.

The 50-Year Mortgage Debate

SHAWN RYAN: And I had really f*ing high hopes. I think a lot of us have really high hopes. I think it’s a disaster. But I will say that, you know, and like I said at the beginning, I’m no financial expert. I don’t know my ass from a hole in the ground with it.

But when I, with the 50-year mortgage stuff, like, I understand why everybody’s bitching about it, but I almost like, to me, I think it’s a good thing. I understand, yes, the bank’s going to make a shit ton more money in interest if you take a 50-year mortgage. Because if you hold that note for 50 years, then yes, you’re going to pay a shit ton more in interest.

But you know, I don’t know anybody that sold a home for 30 years that’s not in the baby boomer generation and most of them have it. That’s actually the World War II generation that was holding homes for that long, not baby boomers and under. I don’t think people, I mean people buy and sell their homes all the time.

Now it’s hard to find somebody that’s lived in a home for more than 10 years. You know, and so when I, and you hear all of the younger generations bitching about housing prices and I think they have a great f*ing point. I think housing prices are super inflated and it is hard.

But you know, then when, and it sounds like there was a battle between the Trump administration and lowering the interest rates, they didn’t get that and they came up with this 50-year mortgage. To me, I feel like the 50-year mortgage is a great thing. It cuts your payment damn near in half.

Yes, you’re going to pay more in interest. Are you going to hold your home for 50 years? Probably f*ing not. You’re probably going to hold the home, you’re going to build equity and then you’re going to sell that home, do a 1031 exchange or, you know what I mean? You’re going to sell that home and you’re going to upgrade to a bigger home as your family grows and you have kids. So how am I wrong? How am I wrong?

The Math Behind the 50-Year Mortgage

ROB LUNA: You’re not entirely wrong. And the thing is, I know you, Shawn, and we kind of share this philosophy of the value of home ownership. And so one of the things that I have to always balance is the art and the science of business planning and financial planning.

Because there’s numbers like you said, right, to say, “Hey, if you amortize this over 50 years, you’re paying X amount of interest. Stupid, horrible idea.” Then there’s the human side of being able to lay your head down on a pillow at night and know, “I own this. I could paint my walls purple if I want. I know that the landlord’s not going to say, ‘Hey, my brother-in-law wants to move in there at the end of this term. You got to get out there and find somewhere else to take your family.'”

The value of your kids being able to come to a place that they know is their home. So all that has some dollar value that might be exponentially higher than the interest that you’re paying. And I get that and I love and respect that.

But here’s the problem with it. When you think about it and we’ve done a lot of work on this, when you look at a half a million dollar home, okay, and you have a 6% interest rate somewhere we’re at right now. When you have a 30-year mortgage, that payment roughly is about $3,000 a month.

When you extend that out to 50 years, that doesn’t get cut in half. If it did, I might be more on the side. It goes to $2,650. So it winds up saying, what are the numbers again? So it takes you from about $3,000 a month to $2,650.

SHAWN RYAN: So you save about, that’s pretty f*ing bad.

ROB LUNA: $350 bucks for that. Instead of over 30 years, taking a half a million dollar home and paying a million for it, you pay 1.5 million for it. So it’s three times more.

The problem also with, like you said, upward mobility, because you have so much interest now that’s built in this and amortized over a 50-year period. The first 15 years you basically build no equity in the house. You’re paying back that interest over that period of time and then it starts to accelerate.

Building Equity Through Market Selection

SHAWN RYAN: But hold on. Yeah, wouldn’t you, I mean, let’s say you bought a house in middle Tennessee.

ROB LUNA: Yeah.

SHAWN RYAN: And you technically didn’t pay any of the principal down.

ROB LUNA: Yeah.

SHAWN RYAN: But your equity will be skyrocketing because real estate is going f*ing insane in this part of the country right now. So you would be building equity if you did, if you put the research in and you bought in the right market.

ROB LUNA: Yeah.

SHAWN RYAN: Which we, I think it’s, without even looking, I would bet if you’re buying in New York, California, Oregon or Washington, you’re probably not going to get any f*ing equity.

ROB LUNA: Right.

SHAWN RYAN: Because everybody’s leaving.

ROB LUNA: Yeah, yeah.

SHAWN RYAN: If you buy in Florida, Tennessee, Texas, Nevada, Arizona.

ROB LUNA: Yep.

SHAWN RYAN: Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, I don’t know, tax-free states, maybe you might get some equity.

ROB LUNA: Yeah, yeah.

SHAWN RYAN: I mean, it just takes a little bit of research. I mean, but you know, look, I’m not, I’m sorry, I’m going off here because I’m not mad at the younger generations. I think they just need some guidance and I think that, you know, I’ll tell you this, my son the other day was, we’re at the creek, he wants to get up the hill. He can’t get up the hill. He wants help.

And I’m like, “No, look for another way. If you can’t find another way, then I’ll help you.” And I think with a lot of these younger generations, they go, they hit a roadblock and they’re like, “See?”

ROB LUNA: F*.

SHAWN RYAN: “Tried to do it, can’t do it, we’re done, I’m f*ed.” You know what I mean? It’s like, no, dude, you’re not. Now you need to go find another way out.

ROB LUNA: Yeah.

SHAWN RYAN: You know, and that’s what I’m trying to teach my kid. Like, don’t just give up because you can’t get up the hill. Walk 50 meters that way and f*ing go up the side, you know. But dude, that’s, people don’t think like that anymore.

The Mindset of Success and Sacrifice

ROB LUNA: That’s why you’re at where you are today and that’s why your son will be in a very similar position. It’s because of that mindset, right? And so when we say, “Well, let’s just give him the 50-year mortgage.” All right, well, I already told you it’s only $350 bucks now. Can’t you go make an extra $350 a month somewhere?

I bought my first home at 19. I grew up in Southern California. I bought that in Mesa, Arizona. I f*ing hated Mesa, Arizona. But that’s where I could afford to live. That’s where I could afford to go to school. That’s where I could afford to start a business. I was 19. That home was $56,000. It was a two bedroom, one bath, 900 square feet. By the way, I went to school full time and I worked two jobs to be able to afford to pay for that. That’s what it takes.

But for that home, $56,000, I sold for $80,000. Now I’m on my like 16th home, right? But people want to live in Southern California and people want to live, they don’t want to live in Dixon, Tennessee or Alabama where you don’t have to even have a half a million dollar home. You can get a home for $300,000.

So the thing is it’s about choices and life’s about choices. So instead of trying to accommodate all these things, which puts ourselves in more and more debt, which I’m sure we’ll talk about and create bigger and bigger problems, why don’t we just say man up and get an extra $350 a month, figure out how to get that done.

And housing isn’t as unaffordable as people say because we just talked about a half a million dollar home being $2,000-something bucks. My housekeeper pays $2,000-something dollars a month for an apartment in Tennessee. You can get it done. It’s still out there. This whole narrative of everything’s unattainable and everything unaffordable. Not true.

Fighting for the Next Generation

SHAWN RYAN: Well, that’s good to hear. And that’s, you know, I sound frustrated, but I just, I really, I just want to help and I just want the best for the younger generation. And I do too.

ROB LUNA: Yeah, the younger generation. And I do too.

SHAWN RYAN: My kids are in the younger generation.

ROB LUNA: That’s the big thing, right? You’ve got young kids. I’ve got a two-year-old. It’s not really about us. It’s about what does the world look like in 20 or 30 years and are the same opportunities that we have going to be available to them? Are we going to be drowning in so much debt that they’re not going to be there? And that’s really what I’m mostly concerned about.

SHAWN RYAN: So 50-year mortgage bad.

ROB LUNA: We hate it, don’t need it. We don’t need it.

The Tariff Situation

SHAWN RYAN: Well, you know, now that you say it’s only $350 bucks off a $3,000 mortgage, I was wrong too. So, but let’s talk about the tariffs.

ROB LUNA: Yeah.

SHAWN RYAN: How did those work out? Everybody was really excited.

ROB LUNA: Yeah.

SHAWN RYAN: And then it quickly went away.

The Tariff Debate and Economic Strategy

ROB LUNA: Yeah. Well, I think it depended on what side of the aisle. Right. Was really excited about it. I think some people hated it from the beginning. Some people loved it. But I think that was on both sides, right?

You know, I voted for Trump to get into office for a lot of the same reasons that you did. But I’m not one of these dogmatic guys where it’s like, oh, everything, he’s doing great. I disagree with a lot of what’s going on right now. And a lot of people ask, I see you’re getting what you asked for. Well, no, had it all been done over again, I still would have voted for him because the alternative was a complete freaking disaster.

But when you think about tariffs, I think this is—I’m a free market capitalist, right? In general, I want to let the free. For me, less government is better. If you could just stay out of my way. I don’t need Social Security, I don’t need any handouts. Just leave me the hell alone and I’ll figure myself out. I realize not everybody can do that, but when you think about tariffs inherently, I don’t really like tariffs. I don’t like government intervention. I don’t like trying to dictate what’s going to happen in free markets.

However, because the way the game has been played, we have been put at a significant disadvantage. When you think about countries like China, when you start taking a look at national security, and I think we’ve seen this, right? One of the great things about tariffs, it exposed our weakness in supply chains. It exposed all the problems that we have to where, hey, we are really relying on China and other countries for our economy to run, and that’s not sustainable.

It’s kind of like COVID. The great thing about COVID is exposed a lot of problems, like, are you going to open a restaurant today without having some backup for outsourcing or delivery or something or not. And so I think what it’s done for businesses, and I speak from this, from working with real small businesses. One of our clients, who is one of the largest floor distributors in California, about 90% of his supply chain was coming from China. He had a lot of problems. Things were backed up. He had one of the worst quarters in his life.

But you know what? He figured it out. He went to other countries, he supplied, he broadened his supply chain, he got more negotiation, and he was able to increase prices. Now his actual net price is about the same as it was. Those prices will stay up. He’s figured out a way to get it done.

And as someone who spent time in China, a lot of people don’t—you know, there’s a lot of components to this. The Chinese have a different cultural way of doing business, and the way we’ve been kowtowing to them for years and allowing them to dictate things. I think the way that Trump is handling this with them is the way that you need to deal with the Chinese. Like you need to take a hard line or they are going to take advantage of you, steal your intellectual property. They are playing the long, long, long game. We play a very short game.

So for me, I think when you look at the major impact we haven’t had, the inflation that people talked about, I think it’s caused business owners to be to diversify supply chains and I think over a long period of time, look at Taiwan Semiconductor, they’re expanding, putting tons of money to create new jobs in Arizona now.

SHAWN RYAN: Right.

ROB LUNA: So at the end of the day, it’s working. No matter what, it’s working. I think it’s working. It’s putting us in a position where we’re not going to be relying on these countries now. It’s a long game. We still have to do a lot of things to broaden out our supply chain.

But again, do we want to be, we want to just be this services business. We don’t make or manufacture or can’t sustain our own quality of life here? I don’t think so. And I think especially when you talk about AI the time we do need those blue collar jobs to come back here to be able to sustain ourselves.

The Child Savings Plan

SHAWN RYAN: What about this child savings plan? What is that? That’s a new thing.

ROB LUNA: Yeah, so it’s kids that are born this year, basically they’re getting $1,000 of free money that you can put into a child savings account that, that money tax free. And so look, $1,000 in and of itself is not a lot of money. However, if you get invested in something like the S&P, and we did a little thing on this to where if even as a parent, you can contribute another three to $4,000 on this, by the time the kid’s 25 years of age, they could have almost a million bucks in there.

One of the secrets to investing is the earlier you start, the returns are usually the same over a long period of time. It’s a smaller amount of money that you have to put in to compound into a very large amount of money. And so the magic of compounding works for you.

So what do people want to do though? Complain it’s only a thousand bucks or it’s only this or it’s only that. Take it, put it away, invest. Because you know what? That’s $1,000 more than most parents are putting away for their kids right now. If it is going to be a challenging economy and our kids are going to need a leg up to help them buy a home or help them educate themselves or start a business, you might as well take this money now.

So I see any, any—look, and this, this is—I hate socialism, but—and so people, ah, it’s socialism. No, it’s our tax dollars that are going to this. I’d rather have my tax dollars going to something that our kids could actually get a benefit from. New parents, their kids could actually get a benefit from than paying for all this other shit that we’ve been paying for years that we get absolutely zero benefit from. So I’m a large proponent of it.

SHAWN RYAN: So is this every child that’s born?

ROB LUNA: Every child that’s born, yeah. I don’t know exactly what dates this year has to be this year that they’re born. So anyone that was kids were born in 2025 like my son. It does, it doesn’t work for. But yeah, you get a thousand dollars. It goes into a tax free account that you can invest in. Basically the equivalent of the S&P 500, which over a long period of times returned about 10%.

SHAWN RYAN: Could we open an account?

ROB LUNA: So you would open this account?

SHAWN RYAN: You know what I mean? Can you open the account and invest in it without being penalized for, for your kids?

ROB LUNA: Yeah. No, it has to be used for certain things like education. You have to hold it for a certain period of time. But yeah, I mean, it’s basically free money. Now. Is there more that people should be doing for their kids? Yeah, we can, we can talk about that. Especially if you’re a business owner. There’s a lot more things.

But as of right now, is it political far. What, whatever. Yeah, but the way I look at it is it’s a thousand bucks that we’re paying in taxes that gets put to a much better use than what we’re spending most of our money on.

SHAWN RYAN: That’s good.

ROB LUNA: That’s—

SHAWN RYAN: I mean, I feel like, I feel like that’s a good thing.

ROB LUNA: Yeah, I, I don’t see anything negative about it.

Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Work

SHAWN RYAN: All right. This is probably the biggest topic that we’re going to talk about today. Artificial intelligence in the business world, in the job place. Would what is going to happen? I mean, we talk a lot about third class being—or middle. Excuse me, middle class being wiped out.

ROB LUNA: Yeah.

SHAWN RYAN: AI is going to take a lot of jobs. AI is also going to be a force multiplier to type A players. I mean, what are we looking at? What are you seeing already?

The AI Revolution and the Future of Work

ROB LUNA: Yeah, well, that’s the thing. It’s not like what’s going to happen. It’s already happening. Right. And it’s not that AI is going to take most people’s jobs. It’s people that understand finance and strategy and scaling that are going to use AI to take the jobs for most people. So that’s really what it is.

It’s not this thing of AI, it’s how are you utilizing AI or not utilizing AI and if you’re not, you’re going to be wiped out. Right. It’s kind of like the horse and buggy. You’ve got to upgrade, you’ve got to learn new skill sets and you got to be able to do that.

And the problem is, I think there’s a lot of complacency that still doesn’t believe in what’s going to be happening with AI. And we’ve got this Baby boomer generation, where they don’t even want to learn how to use an iPad, let alone how to put AI into their world.

And the problem is with society today is you have to be more innovative, you have to be more entrepreneurial. You know, I have entrepreneurs or people ask me, everyone asked me whether they want to start their own business or not, what is the skill set I need to learn? You have to learn to be an entrepreneur.

Why? Because every entrepreneur, including you, that I know, wants to hire entrepreneurial people. People that can come in, critically think, take a division, run it themselves, understand themselves, work their ass off, do the things that they need to do, and do that.

If you can do that using AI to leverage yourself to get the power of 10 people, you are going to be very, very successful. And so what everyone needs to start learning is how can they create, first of all, a valuable skill set, how can they connect with people and how can they use AI to be able to multiply that?

I use AI on a daily basis. My productivity personally versus what I always was 12, 18 months has gone up significantly, right? And so when you talk about this, just practically most of the time what I do is spend time with businesses like yours.

Building Winning Businesses in the AI Era

Everybody, Shawn, is saying, okay, what do I need to do for my business to be able to win, succeed, pivot today, how do I build a business? And really it comes down to a couple things. It’s first of all, you need a small team of all stars, right?

And I’m talking about billion dollar businesses. When I say small team, to put that in perspective, like 8 to 10 people to find 8 to 10 really good people. Right now, no matter if you’re Apple or if you’re Shawn Ryan, it’s very, very difficult to find those people. So you got to find those people and put them in a position to succeed.

Then you need all star processes that they’re following that are scalable. And then you need all star technology to be able to develop and scale all that. And so what people are doing today is building flat organizations with really high quality people, high quality processes, and high quality technology.

And so the middle management is getting cut out, the average 9 to 5er is getting cut out. Somebody who just shows up and dots the I and cross the T is getting cut out. And those people are becoming unemployed and businesses are becoming better. They’re faster, they’re leaner, they’re more profitable.

And at the end of the day, as a capitalist, when I invest in a business, this isn’t a socialistic endeavor. It’s I want to invest in businesses that are good. They’re solving a problem faster, better, cheaper, and they’re doing it more efficiently. And that flows to the bottom line. And that’s exactly what AI is doing.

The Death of the Middle Class

So you figure out, like, well, how is that killing the middle class? Well, the middle class is not ready to adapt to that. And the biggest problem I have with that and why I worry about this country and all the debt is, you know, when you think about pensions, for example, you know, what my grandfather had, maybe our parents had, working for General Electric or all these companies, Boeing. Pensions are gone. There’s no more pensions anymore.

So when you retire, if you didn’t put money away for yourself, if you don’t have a skill set to maybe have to work longer, because with AI, people are actually living longer now, people are going to be in a lot of trouble.

And so the debt that we have, the savings that people don’t have, the lack of financial literacy, and if people are not understanding that AI is here, it’s not going to happen. It’s happening. I’m consulting. My firm’s consulting every single day. And one of the first things we look at is, what are you guys doing? Who are doing that? Who’s doing that? And we’re getting rid of people, right?

That’s, I mean, I’m just being honest, Shawn. We’re getting rid of people that don’t serve a purpose anymore. And the people that serve a purpose have high specialization. They understand that it’s not going to be a 9 to 5 anymore. They have to be critical thinkers. They have to pivot and adapt.

They have to use technology to leverage what they’re doing. They have to demand more. They have to have that entrepreneur mindset to understand and know that this person is hiring me because they want to make more money. How do I become more efficient, more specialized, and become an asset, not a liability, to the company? If you’re a liability, AI is going to wipe you out. Wow. Wow.

SHAWN RYAN: So what is going to happen? I mean, let me ask you this. Do you have a percentage of the workforce that you think will be wiped out?

The Scale of Workforce Disruption

ROB LUNA: I don’t. You know, I haven’t done that work. And I’m just not a guy that comes up with random numbers. I think it’s a lot, though. I think it’s a lot of people. Because, you know, you talked about it before and you talked about, like, this analogy of your son walking up the hill. There’s just a lot of average people.

And this goes back to, you know, everyone gets a trophy. You know, this whole woke situation, right, where that’s one thing I do love about this administration. At least we don’t hear about that shit anymore, right? It’s like it. People just don’t want to work hard anymore.

And it’s every single service that you need, whether it’s financial services, whether it’s getting your dog’s hair cut, whether it’s getting someone to come out and fix your electricity, nobody answers the phone, nobody wants to show up, nobody wants to work hard anymore.

And so I think, okay, if that’s the median, then what are those people going to do? I don’t know. Because it’s not just like retooling their skill set. It’s retooling their mindset and understanding to be able to succeed. That shit’s not going to fly anymore.

So that’s who you are. I can easily put an algorithm, a robot, a trophy. I’d rather deal. I’d rather walk into a Chase bank today and deal with a kiosk than I would talking to one of these people who doesn’t know shit, who doesn’t want to work, who doesn’t want to make a second call. They’re just there as a cutout, basically to deter me.

And nine out of ten times, I’m going to have to leave and call a customer service number anyway. That’s Southwest Airline. That’s everything these days. I’d rather just deal with a robot. That’s me at 51. My daughter’s never grown up without technology and an iPad. She’s 18, getting ready to go to college. Think about that.

With the millennial generation, which is larger than the baby boomer generation. They want to deal with robots and technology. They don’t want to deal with Joe Blow has no value and is wasting their time.

The Economic Paradox

SHAWN RYAN: I mean, what does it look like? I mean, what does that look like? With the middle class wiped out, AI is going to, if AI wipes that many jobs, I mean, obviously it means a lot of government assistance. Yeah. And that’s great. That’s great, right? No, that’s horrible. What I’m saying is that’s great. Entrepreneurs like, cool. You got a bunch of A players AI, you know, f*ing jet launch, you know, a force multiplier for you. Business is going great. Cool. Who’s going to buy your product?

ROB LUNA: Yeah, exactly. We’re still. We’re still.

SHAWN RYAN: Because everybody’s broke.

ROB LUNA: Exactly.

SHAWN RYAN: It’s a real question. It’s a question.

The Path to Socialism

ROB LUNA: No, and it’s a great question. And the answer is who’s going to be able to buy your product is the people who can afford it, which is going to be a smaller subset. And so this is why I believe that, you know, I’ve spent time, you spend time out of this country in India, you’ve got ultra wealthy.

I spent time there where I watched a, basically a castle, gates open up, Rolls Royce pull out of there. Kids out there trying to squirt it and wash it who live five feet away where they don’t even have running water or sewage. Right. That’s kind of mean, that’s maybe a little bit polarizing. But that could be close to what our country comes or how do you solve for that is through socialism.

And see, that’s why I’m really worried going. I hate to keep going back to this whole New York thing, but it’s the canary in the coal mine, right? Because this narrative. And we’ve seen the way he won, very smart. He went as far left as possible and he stood there because what his message does is it resonates with those people who don’t want to work, who aren’t going to have jobs, who are going to be flushed out.

And how are you going to solve that? Free handouts, free cells. And so that will continue to spread throughout this rest of this country. And socialism is what’s going to kill the American dream.

And you think about our deficit. How are we going to get out of that? We can’t grow our way out of that. You need to have like 8, 10% GDP. You know how we’re going to get out of it. Higher taxes. Higher taxes will kill the American dream. We’re already paying enough in taxes and, but hey, tax the 1%. We don’t care.

You can, you make $500,000 a year for some people that’s so far removed from what they’re making. Tax those people. Tax those 10 people. Tax those people. That will get passed and we’ll become uncompetitive and you won’t be able to work or live here anymore. Or you just, you know, you become Europe. And that’s where I’m, what I’m afraid of.

I mean, I hope there’s something different, but what happens to those people that, I mean, they’ve got to learn and adapt. But I don’t think it’s going to happen quick enough. It will happen eventually. New York will come back in 20, 30 years after it burns down, just like we saw in the 80s before Giuliani came down. Once it hits the bottom, it will rebuild. But how long does that take and at what cost?

SHAWN RYAN: Do you have any good news for us, Rob?

ROB LUNA: Yeah, I mean look, I think that’s what I told you at the beginning.

SHAWN RYAN: We get a thousand dollars if we got a baby.

The Reality of Modern America’s Economic Divide

ROB LUNA: Yeah, hopefully that works. But that’s what I kind of told you at the beginning, right? I’ve never been more optimistic because I know I’m going to win. I know you’re going to win. I know all my clients are going to win.

And that’s why every business, Shawn, that I’m dealing with today is they’re going up market. How do I deliver services to people who could afford those services? Because even if it’s a smaller percentage of people, it’s a higher price point.

And what you need to do is you need to look at wealthy people. What’s their most valuable asset? It’s time. So how do you find a problem that you can solve that gives them their time back? They’re willing to pay for that because that’s their most valuable asset.

So every single business I’m talking to today is going more and more towards that, more and more towards leaner, flatter organizations, more and more towards cutting middle management out, more and more being efficient. All these things for businesses are very, very highly profitable.

Investing in the businesses—if you look at CapEx spending of all these big technology companies, where is all their spending that they’re already telling the market about going? To AI, to robotics, to artificial intelligence, to increasing productivity, increasing profits at the cost of what? Their highest input cost, which is labor.

So if you can reduce that—look at your P&L, look at my P&L. I’ve never seen a P&L where labor wasn’t the highest cost. So if you can reduce that, and I believe again going back to the Chase example, not only when I consult with businesses, it’s not about how do we just get rid of people and get more profits. It’s about how do we get rid of these mediocre people and create a better solution and service for your customers so what they’re getting is actually better and faster and a better experience, and at the same time you have higher profits. That’s a win-win.

And so it’s not just like “let me put this money in my pocket.” No, it’s like how do I reinvest that into technology and solutions to make it a better outcome so that I can compete at the highest level? And that comes at the cost of these average people.

So I mean that’s the truth, Shawn. It’s just going back to—you just got to figure it out. And I’m just somebody, Shawn. You know my background. I grew up super poor, food stamp type of poor. Horrible. I had every excuse in the book to be a loser and fail and not win.

My brother and I, same situation—he’s in prison, I’m where I’m at today. It’s mindset. It’s realizing that nothing’s f*ing going to be handed to you. You got to work your ass off. The environment’s always going to be changing. You have to pivot and adapt. You have to find out what the skills are that are valuable today.

It’s never comfortable, it’s never going to be easy. You’re never going to sit back and be able to pound your chest and win. You’re always going to have to go out there and grind and add value. And that means I’m 51 years old today, I’m in my second business, I’m in pretty good position financially. When you call me, do I answer the phone? Yeah, it’s what you have to do.

I don’t care if it’s Sunday, I’m shopping, whatever it is. You know why? That’s your expectation and it should be. That’s just not America today. We need to get back to that.

SHAWN RYAN: I don’t know if that’s going to happen.

The Battle Against Mediocrity and Band-Aid Solutions

ROB LUNA: It has to. It’s not for everybody and probably not fast enough. And that’s why when I look out into the future, when I look at the laundry list of things that we need to do to save this country, I don’t think people are going to get it and do it in enough time.

When I look at the flip side of what we need to do to let New York expand and proliferate throughout the rest of the country, it’s very easy. So we have to battle against that in everything that we do—how we raise our kids, how we vote, how we hire, what our expectations are as CEOs for the rest of our employees, where we’re investing our dollars.

And unless we make those decisions—and that’s why not to beat up on the 50-year mortgage—I hate Band-Aids. I’m tired of Band-Aids. I mean, think about that last time we tried to do something for home ownership with Barney on the other side of the aisle, Barney Frank and Nancy Pelosi. “Everybody should own a home.” Liar loans. How did that work out? Collapsed.

Everyone short-sold their home and the government in their infinite wisdom, what did they do? They gave them actual debt forgiveness. So before, if you short-sold your home, that $100,000 or whatever, you had to pay taxes on it. No, let that go. You know who paid the bill? Me. You. Because my house sunk in value and I stayed there and I continued to pay the mortgage. It took me six years to get out of that.

What about PPP loans? All that s* during COVID where you know what? We just sucked it up and worked. I didn’t take any of that money. I could have taken a million dollars free from the government. They offered it to me. I didn’t take it. Why? Because I didn’t need it.

But you know how many assholes took it and bought Lamborghinis and Ferraris and Rolex watches? True story. I could point to them. Some of them are in jail, but not enough of them. This is the s* and the moral hazard that we’re creating with all these things that we need to get away from.

But you know what? Sound bites sell the way politicians run today. People want easy, fast. They don’t want to really fix the problem. I don’t think Trump or anyone else—not that they can’t fix the problem—it’s what it’s going to take to do that and be honest with the American public. They’re never going to say it because they’ll never get voted in. They’re not that stupid, Shawn. They know what it takes. I’m not smarter than them, but I can get it fixed. But you know what? No one would ever vote for me.

SHAWN RYAN: Yeah, yeah. I mean we could talk about that with the economy. We could talk about that with the energy grid.

ROB LUNA: Exactly, yeah.

SHAWN RYAN: We could talk about a lot of things. Yeah, but they just—transportation, yeah, the roads, you know, I mean.

The Decline of American Excellence

ROB LUNA: Yeah, to your point. I mean I know finance and that’s kind of the lane that I stay in, but money’s pretty important, right? But when you think about the military and all your expertise, experience, you see the same there. That whole mentality proliferates through everything.

And yeah, not just that, but again, going back to New York, the NYPD—when I grew up, when I went to New York, you know, I was born in New Jersey, so—and I didn’t move to LA till I was nine. The NYPD. Wow. That’s something you really wanted to be. You felt safe when the NYPD was there. After 9/11, NYPD, fire department.

You go there today and it’s like crap. No one wants that job anymore. You’re looking at it like, I feel like I’m going to have to go save these people if anything goes down. These aren’t the people that could protect me. And you talk to them, they can’t recruit anybody anymore. Nobody wants to do that.

So this whole mindset, this softness, this weakening of America, not wanting to take our medicine—which I think tariffs are, and I think other things that we need to do to take a step back in order to take three steps forward—it’s just very hard to get those things done.

And it frustrates me, Shawn, because I look at every single thing that happens. The PPP loans, the short-selling, all these things that we do to reward mediocrity. And then what we want to do is we want to take the 1%. And the 1% isn’t billionaires, guys. They always point to these billionaire assholes.

The 1%—the people that are making $800,000, $900,000, a million dollars a year. Trust me, guys, that’s not ultra-wealthy, that’s not private jet wealthy. Those are people like me or you that grew up, busted our ass, that lived within our means, that had sacrifices.

There’s a reason I’m on my second marriage, Shawn, because I wasn’t there. I missed birthdays, I missed everything. I sacrificed to build a business that was able to put myself in a position. Do I regret any of it? No. Because my daughter wouldn’t have gone to the schools that she’s going to. That’s just the s* it takes.

If you want things in life, you have to give other things away. And I hate to keep going back to that, but it’s every single thing. And so when I say the American dream is dead, this is what I’m talking about. We got to fix the mentality, we got to start taking our medicine. We got to understand that it’s not going to just be a magic pill that we’re going to be able to take and everything’s going to be okay.

But that’s what politicians—that’s what gets people voted in. That’s why most people vote off a 30-second news clip. No one even wants to watch more than a 60-second reel anymore, right? It’s amazing how well you’re doing with this long-form content that people actually watch the whole show.

I can’t even get people to pay attention for 60 seconds anymore. “Rob, I want to be wealthy.” “Cool, I could teach you how to do it.” “I just can’t do it in three minutes.” They don’t want to spend the time.

SHAWN RYAN: Yeah.

ROB LUNA: Man.

SHAWN RYAN: How about the national debt?

The National Debt Crisis

ROB LUNA: We’re approaching $40 trillion.

SHAWN RYAN: What is that? We keep talking about this. What are the implications? What are the actual implications? Who do we owe the money to?

ROB LUNA: Yeah, well, to bondholders, right? Some of them to China and other countries. And internally we hold that debt. So yeah, it’s a lot of debt that we have. The big problem about it also is the vast majority of it is short-term financing, which is another thing.

When we had near-zero interest rates, I don’t know why we just didn’t look to refinance all our debt at longer term and zero interest rates, because now as interest rates tick up, the debt that we’re having to pay is much higher. So now we’re paying over a trillion dollars in just the debt service, which is more than we spend on defense, just to service that debt.

We’re still with this administration running annually near a $2 trillion deficit that we’re just adding onto that. So when you start thinking—the point I was making before—how the hell do we get out of this? We can’t grow our way out of it. You have to do 8 to 10% GDP. We’re at 2% GDP and we’re already adding to that.

The only way that you get out of it is you start cutting entitlements like Social Security and all those things. You start raising taxes, you start doing all the things that we don’t want to happen. So Social Security is pretty much almost bankrupt, right? So all of this.

So the implications are that social systems will fail, taxes will have to go up, the US debt could be downgraded again, which means we would have to pay even higher interest on that. The US dollar is the reserve currency right now. Does it stay that way forever? Well, not necessarily. If people lose faith in what’s going on there, it’s just like an individual, right?

You can keep racking up debt and living beyond your means as long as you can finance that and put that—people are—credit card debt I think is an even bigger issue. We’ve got $1.3 trillion in credit card debt that the average American has right now. They’re paying 24% interest on it, not 4 or 5%, 24% interest. How are they going to get out of that?

By the way, that’s an all-time high. And by the way, we’ve had the highest delinquency rate we’ve had since the Great Recession in 2009. By the way, just in the last 24 months, that delinquency rate has doubled. There’s real problems out there, Shawn.

And these are the same people that are racking up credit cards to get by, to have their experiences or whatever they’re spending that money on right now, that are probably the same people that are not going to have jobs. And so what I’m thinking is you’re not going to hear this—the people that are not paying their credit cards are probably the people, the companies that I’m working for, that are getting fired, that don’t have jobs because they don’t have value to add to an organization.

So this gets worse. And I’m an optimist, I’m an optimistic person.

SHAWN RYAN: Sounds like it.

ROB LUNA: You know, I am, I am. I’m just—but what I’m not optimistic about is the largest part of the US, which is the middle class, adjusting and adapting and doing what it takes for them to be able to win. So it’s just a smaller subset of people that will win, but they’ll win bigger than ever before.

So you got it. As an American, you got to choose which one do you want to be, which one your kids want to be?

Navigating Economic Shifts and Consumer Markets

SHAWN RYAN: Well, I mean the thing that I don’t, the thing that just not computing for me is if we lose the consumers then, you know, then there’s nobody to buy the product.

ROB LUNA: Yeah, well look, I mean if you’re selling cheap product, if you’re Procter and Gamble and you’re selling toilet paper and people are still going to find a way to do those things. Right, but it’s kind of like the middle, those middle levels of services to the middle class are the things that are going to be wiped out.

If you’re selling, you know, Ferrari still doing good and Rolex watches are doing good and our firms like, like having mega years, like we’re doing way more in our first year of business than I did in the first 10 years of business in my performance before. Why? We’re dealing with successful like-minded people like you who are going to just make shit happen.

And so that’s who we’re selling to. If I was creating a business right now for the middle class, I wouldn’t be creating a business right now for the middle class. Not what I’m looking to do.

SHAWN RYAN: If you were creating a business, what sectors would you be looking at?

Building Businesses That Solve Real Problems

ROB LUNA: I would be looking at sectors again that are solving problems for people who don’t have a lot of time and by solving that problem for them, are willing to pay for that. And that can be just about anything from financial services to, like I talked about it before when I was saying, when I say anything, it’s from personal experience getting someone to come and groom your dog.

Like, these people are booked out 4, 5, 6 months to be able to do that. Right. We don’t groom our own dogs. Right. And we’re willing, and it’s not cheap. Like, every time they come, the dog’s like $250, $300 to get groomed. There’s clearly just, in our neighborhood, a demand for these services. There’s no supply. So there’s a problem. We don’t have the time to cut our dogs ourselves. There’s no one who wants to show up and do it. Why not do that?

Why not go out there, learn how to do it, be the person who does it yourself, then hire somebody else to get the second van out there going and the third. It’s almost anything. Pick anything, Shawn. But it goes back to, are you willing to do what an electrician, plumber like you can become? I’ve worked with multi, multi-millionaires, close to billionaires in everything. Plumbing, landscaping, pest control.

All these are services that people with money are willing to pay for. And if you understand how to build scale a company, use technology to motivate that you can really go out there and win today. So I’m not going to say like, the big thing is be an AI consultant. Yeah, maybe, whatever. But just do anything on scale and show up. That’s really what you need to do today.

Motivating Your Team: The Power of Incentive Structures

SHAWN RYAN: You know, we’re talking about all the, we’re just going back a little bit. I was just thinking about things, and, you know, we’re talking about unmotivated, average folks.

ROB LUNA: Yeah.

SHAWN RYAN: But I mean, you, that’s a choice, of course. You know, and so, I mean, for business owners, you know, how do they motivate their staff? Can you, because that’s another, that’s, I mean, we’re sitting here talking and we’re, you know, we’re attacking, you know, a large percentage of the workforce.

ROB LUNA: Yeah.

SHAWN RYAN: You know, and, but I mean, how can you incentivize them, you know, and turn them into a motivated employee, motivated team member, you know, how do you do that?

ROB LUNA: Yeah, Well, I think, first of all, you know, I’m not somebody who needs to be motivated.

SHAWN RYAN: Well, I’ll tell you what I’m getting at.

ROB LUNA: Yeah.

SHAWN RYAN: You know, is back to Valtrion. So been a bit of a crisis here, and we work together and, you know, I needed to know how to incentivize, you know, my people here.

ROB LUNA: Yeah.

SHAWN RYAN: And, and, and, and, you know, the vast majority of them, even there’s not very many of us. I mean, pretty much every parody here is a f*ing killer.

ROB LUNA: Yeah.

SHAWN RYAN: And otherwise they wouldn’t be here.

ROB LUNA: Right.

SHAWN RYAN: But, you know, when, when, when, when I hired you and your team to come in and do an assessment and do some consulting and stuff. And, and, you know, one of my biggest things was how can I incentivize these guys? And you put that structure in place. You put that incentives instead of incentive bonus structure in place.

And, you know, end of the year now approaching the beginning of the year, and we always do end of the year reviews. And, you know, when I tell them about the new bonus structure, you see their eyes light up immediately.

ROB LUNA: Yeah.

SHAWN RYAN: And they’re like, oh, shit. And it’s already working. It’s already working. I mean, one guy, phenomenal editor, f*ing phenomenal editor. And, you know, told him I need him. Hey, you know, here’s a new structure like you to get to know cameras, you need to learn how to run a camera.

ROB LUNA: A little bit better.

SHAWN RYAN: Guess what? Two fing days later, I come down here, he’s working on fing cameras immediately. And so that it works. And so, you know, I think that it, I guess what I’m trying to say is, you know, there is also ways.

ROB LUNA: Yeah.

SHAWN RYAN: For business owners to not just go, oh, you know, you’re lazy. Oh, you’re not working. You’re not doing this.

ROB LUNA: Good point.

SHAWN RYAN: You can, you can incentivize them. And you prove that to me, you know, through your company. And it’s been, I mean, I just started those this week.

ROB LUNA: Yeah, yeah. Rolling it out to them, and they’re.

SHAWN RYAN: Not even finished yet, and they’re already pumped. I can see the fire.

The Intrapreneur Advantage: Building Wealth Within Organizations

ROB LUNA: But, yeah, so let’s talk about that. Well, let’s, and let’s share with the audience what it is, because I think there’s either, there’s a lot of entrepreneurs that listen and a lot of people that want to become entrepreneurs. But I think more importantly, Shawn, most of the people that I’ve worked with over my career that have become very, very wealthy were actually intrapreneurs.

They were people who work within a larger organization, but they were really on the best. People I know that have made a lot of money inside of other organizations, small, mid and large could have themselves been entrepreneurs, but they had a better opportunity to go in somewhere else where there was a team in place that could allow them to leverage their skill set. And for most of them, that was a smart decision.

I always, I started my own firm primarily because the person I was working for before kept that carrot of, “Hey, you’re going to get this or get that.” And then it was always like, “Sorry, can’t get that. No bonus, no that.” It just finally, I was just like, I’m never going to be able to grow here. So no one ever gave me the opportunity to have my work rewarded. So I went out and started my own thing.

For most people, they don’t have to do that, right? And so when you talk about this, first of all, going back to how you build businesses today, small team of All Stars, all star processes, all star technology. Part of the All Star processes is how do you reward and compensate those individuals and a lot of entrepreneurs? It’s like, especially the first few years, like you, it’s like, head down, let me just work.

When I did your show, I was episode 42 the first time. I was so shocked when I showed up. You’re like, like, “Come over here. Take a picture, Rob.” I’m looking for the, like, where’s the camera crew? There’s no camera crew. Like, everything.

SHAWN RYAN: Yeah, it was just me and you.

The Reality of Building a Scalable Business

ROB LUNA: Just me and you, dude. And now it’s like this. Like, dude, there was nobody else, but that’s kind of what it takes, right, when you start. Same thing when I started my previous—not this firm. I’m a little further along now. The first firm I started, dude, was just me. I was the guy who traded the stocks and did the business development, mailed the applications and all those things, right?

And so here’s the thing, though. You can do a lot of things to go from zero to a million bucks. It’s just work your ass off seven days a week. But to go from a million to 5 million to 10 million to 100 million, which is what everybody wants to do, especially if it doesn’t take any more work. Especially, like, if it could be less work if it’s just done within a strategy, like this whole word scale. Everyone says scale, scale, scale, scale.

I went back and did an MBA at 38 because I didn’t know what the f* scale meant, right? And I’m not advocating that for everyone, but I needed to understand what that was. And then what I understood was it’s like, oh, it’s just processes and it’s just transparency and it’s just alignment, and it’s just actually really simple. And wow, if I do this, it’s actually easier to run my business this way. But it took me 20 years to get that knowledge and information.

And so for most entrepreneurs, they’re just head down, buried in the sand. And then what happens though, is you hit that proverbial glass ceiling and you can’t grow. And then you’re like, man, is this a business or did I just buy myself a job? Right? And that’s ultimately what it becomes.

And the problem there is you can’t increase cash flow because you can’t scale. You don’t grow any enterprise value, so your business isn’t worth anything. And then what it is, it’s like, okay, now I’ve sacrificed, missing out on my kid’s life. I’m constantly fighting with my wife, I’m in constant stress. And all these things of being an entrepreneur, it’s like, is it really worth it? It’s not unless you can get past that hurdle.

And so that’s kind of what I do, is like I just take what I learned, right? And then I come in with your team. And back to your question. How do you incentivize average people? You don’t. You don’t. You fire average people. You hire exceptional people.

Attracting, Developing, and Maintaining Top Talent

And what I found, interviewing your team, these are exceptional people. These are great people. But now the idea is, okay, if you’re a business owner, the hardest thing is to attract talent. And because a lot of your success, it’s brought the best people to you. The second hardest thing to do is to be able to develop talent. And the third hardest thing to do is be able to maintain talent. Maintain talent, right?

Because you got to get them to come in. No matter who, what business you are, you still have to develop them to understand what is your culture and how do you get there. And then once they do that, Sean, is the grass greener on the other side? Do I—and this is every business—do I go and leave? How do you get them to stay? Because now you’ve invested tons of money and time on them. Do you want to train people to go out to a competitor and be there? No.

And so I always tell entrepreneurs, when you hire, we put these all-star processes and we hire these all-star people. We have to incentivize them to be here for a long, long period of time. Because your ROI is not going to be in the first year or two years. You’re actually losing money. So you got to keep time on them, you got to spend money on them.

And the last thing you can do. The most expensive thing for an entrepreneur, the most costly mistake is hiring wrong. So it goes back to we work on your hiring process, setting job descriptions that are right, bringing the right people in. And then when they come in, though, a lot of times people are like, oh, this person sucks. No, you suck. Because you didn’t have clear expectations, you didn’t have clear processes. They didn’t know what the hell they were doing. And their compensation and their incentives weren’t in alignment with the goal that you were trying to achieve.

Aligning Compensation with Performance

So what we do with you, and this is what every entrepreneur can do, is we figure out first and foremost, where are we trying to go? So what is our revenue we’re trying to get? What are our margins? Who’s our target customer? And then we figure out that what are all the activities we need to do to make that happen? And who are the people that do the activities to make those things happen. From answering the phone, in your case, editing all those things, they are the people within your organization that play a role.

So then the question I always ask people is, okay, here’s what you want them to do. How are you compensating them? And what I find out is the compensation is almost never in line with the incentive. And then they wonder why are they not doing the activities they want? Because they’re not rewarded for doing them.

So what you have to first do is figure out the strategy, figure out what you want from that person, and then you need to structure compensation and bonuses incentives for them to be able to do that. And there’s two components I use with every business, including our own.

First of all, keep KPIs. We’ve been talking about this—key performance indicators, like what are the activities that you need this individual individuals, and they’re usually different to be able to do to get you towards that goal. Because everyone’s playing in a role to getting there. And they should know what their role is and what that ultimate goal is.

So those are, that’s one thing and that’s an individual. So your individual should be reported or rewarded based off of his or her own contribution. So if you got someone who’s crushing it, they’re doing their part. But Joe’s asleep at the wheel and sucks and has got family problems, isn’t showing up, doesn’t want to work. Like, should they be penalized because of that? No. So you might not ultimately hit your revenue goals, but Joe shouldn’t be penalized because everybody else sucked. He should be rewarded.

So that’s number one is make sure individuals are rewarded for their contribution. And number two, what I always like to do is incentivize the group as a whole for hitting those big top line goals. Because every business, your business, my business, every business I work with, it’s not altruism. We need to hit a top line and we need a bottom line to be able to pay and do things and give you raise increases and buy more products and have a better, better create better products, all those things.

So what we then do is have a bonus for everybody. Hey, if we hit these guys goals, guys, we all get more money, right? We all get more incentive. And then if we crush it like I like to reward for overachieving, right? Stretch goals. If we crush it even more, more money.

Creating an Environment Where Talent Wants to Stay

So what I always tell people is you have to remember, once you educate them, get them, they have a couple of options. They can go work for a competitor, they can do it themselves. What are you creating? What type of environment culture, which I think you do better than anybody else here, are you creating to maintain that talent? And what type of incentive compensation do they have?

And what I was always able to do in wealth management and kind of start to my own background is I was able to create a situation to where it’s like, why would I go out and start my own business at 10 or 15% margins when I know right now I’m making 20 or 30% margins, have the headache and the hassle and leave this great team that I know makes me better. Because being on my own as an individual, probably not going to be able to compete. But these guys work, playing especially.

That’s what’s so good about you right now and why you’re at where you’re at is your expectations are super high, super high. Everyone, anyone that’s ever achieved anything good that I work with, I work with some of the best athletes in the world, best entrepreneurs, best intrapreneurs in the world. You don’t need to motivate them, you don’t need to. They are harder on themselves than they will ever be on you, you will ever be on them, right?

So your team is already there. This culture is phenomenal. You’re the number one pot. Like everybody wants to be here, which creates that competition. Also. What I can say about you also and every client that I personally work with is you want them to win, you want them to buy that next house, you want them to be incentivized.

Every time I talk to you, it’s like, like I have to stop you sometimes, like how do we get them to make more? Like, okay, Sean, like, we. And this is everybody. This is like, I won’t work with them if they’re not like that. Because if you want to succeed as an entrepreneur, you have to get joy from watching your team win. And when I see you with your team, no, nobody cares more about their team winning than you do.

The AI Revolution in Hiring

So when you think about all these things, Sean, it comes back to what I said. Hire all-star people. Put all-star processes in place. Most people don’t know how to do that. Fine. Get yourself educated and find how to do that. That get to give them the all-star technology to be able to replicate themselves. Because you’re not going to be able to find a thousand of them. You don’t need a thousand of them anymore. That’s the great thing about AI.

Our firm, we’re building today. When we first started three years ago, planning for this, like, we pre—like, we’re numbers people. So year two, we’re going to hire this many people. And three, we’re going to—like, we’re at today. Like, we’re like, we’ve cut, like, 70% of the hiring that we thought.

SHAWN RYAN: 70%?

ROB LUNA: 70%. Why? Because there’s just roles that are being eliminated and these—but you know what? The type of people we’re hiring is different. Most of those people are like, mediocre, average people. We’re like, no, no. Let’s just hire the best and give them the best technology, and let’s 10x their own individual productivity versus having a bunch of mediocre people just sucking the air out of the room. I hope that answers the question. I’m sorry. Long winded. I’m sorry.

SHAWN RYAN: No, that’s perfect. That’s perfect.

ROB LUNA: Perfect.

SHAWN RYAN: But thank you. Let’s take a quick break. When we come back, I want to ask you why the hell Gold’s at $4,200 an ounce, so.

ROB LUNA: All right.

—

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Back to Business

SHAWN RYAN: All right, Rob, we’re back from the break. I forgot a couple things at the beginning. I get too fired up, too excited here. So you know, it’s probably the only reason you came back.

ROB LUNA: Only reason I came. I heard these are almost sold out.

SHAWN RYAN: They’re almost done.

ROB LUNA: I won’t put it on eBay though, I promise.

Gold and Precious Metals as a Hedge

SHAWN RYAN: I wouldn’t blame you if you did. And then, you know, we got a Patreon account. It’s a subscription account. And you know, they’re the reason that I get to sit down here with you today. So we offer them the opportunity to ask every single guest a question.

This is from Steve Lanthier: “If 50 years old, the company I work for is closing with eight months severance pay and a little over $100,000 in this 401k, how can I set myself up to retire and cover expenses till I can draw my military?”

ROB LUNA: Yeah, look. So most people know if you’ve got 100 grand, people want to know what does that mean in terms of income? It’s usually about 5 to 6%. That’s only going to provide them about $5,000 to $6,000 in income. So more than likely not going to be enough. Hopefully Social Security and military, when that kicks in, will help him get there.

But look, I mean, it’s just one of these things where he’s going to have eight months severance. I think at 50 years of age, hopefully—we talked about it before—he’s got a skill set that’s viable today. He’s just going to have to work more. I mean, that’s at 50 years old. I think no one’s going to be retiring at 50 anymore. He’s just going to have to figure a way how he’s going to work.

Because with $100,000 and eight month severance, I’d love to give him a magic pill, but it’s not. He’s just going to have to find another company to slip into or look to start his own thing if he thinks he has a skill set to be able to do that.

SHAWN RYAN: Yeah, yeah. Well, thank you. Thank you.

ROB LUNA: All right. Gold.

Why Gold Hit $4,200 an Ounce

SHAWN RYAN: Why is it at $4,200 an ounce? What’s silver at?

ROB LUNA: Is it at 60? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, I mean, I think the thing about silver and gold is silver typically follows some increment of what gold does. So silver has done just that. This year, however, it’s done even better. Why? Because of the industrial use of silver and everything AI that’s going on right now.

So you’ve got this whole concern about, “Okay, is there going to be inflation?” Because the Fed’s probably going to have to cut interest rates again because of all the things that we talked about and all the debt that is piling up. We didn’t even—you know, we talked about the national deficit, but real estate debt, over a trillion dollars that needs to be financed next year.

So there’s a lot of worry out there right now. And I think when you have that type of worry, people talk about Bitcoin being a hedge and maybe we’ll talk about that. I think it’s not. Gold over 5,000 years, especially over the last hundred years, has proven, especially during inflationary periods, to be a very good hedge.

And so I think you’ve got gold doing what it typically does during this period of time of uncertainty. It’s doing pretty well. And I think silver is just following, man.

SHAWN RYAN: I started buying gold in 2020 because, you know, I started buying a lot of different things. Yeah, 2020 today. Toilet paper.

ROB LUNA: Yeah.

SHAWN RYAN: But I mean, I think when I started buying gold, it was $1,200 an ounce.

ROB LUNA: Yeah. Yep, yep.

SHAWN RYAN: Five years later, it’s $4,200 an ounce.

ROB LUNA: Yes. No, it’s done.

SHAWN RYAN: Silver was, I think $22, $23 maybe an ounce.

ROB LUNA: Yeah.

SHAWN RYAN: Now it’s $60 something an ounce.

Building a Diversified Portfolio with Precious Metals

ROB LUNA: Yeah. Gold is one of those assets, I think, over when you’re—everyone should be putting together a diversified portfolio.

SHAWN RYAN: Right.

ROB LUNA: You don’t want all your eggs in one basket. That’s a pretty common saying, but it’s true. The question is how do you diversify those eggs? And so when you think about gold as an asset class, I think everybody should have between about 5 to 10% of their overall portfolio in gold.

So if you got $100,000 bucks total, $5,000 to $10,000 of that would be in gold. I prefer using actual gold bars, coins versus the GLD ETF that you can access. Maybe that’s second best. Or if you’ve only got a 401k and you have GLD in there, that might be the way. Same thing. SLV is an ETF. I’d rather hold the silver because it’s just more of a hedge.

The challenge is that it’s a little bit harder to get in and out of gold and silver. There’s very few places that do it. There are some good ones out there. But look, I think long term it’s a hedge. If you’re so inclined to be able to time it a little bit around inflationary periods, when you think those are going to be happening, it tends to do a little bit better versus deflationary periods.

But arguably with what we’re getting into, which I think the Fed will have to cut interest rates a lot more aggressively than they’re telegraphing, a lot more aggressively than even the market thinks. I think that is a really good backdrop for precious metals to continue to do well. So it should be part of every portfolio, in my opinion.

SHAWN RYAN: Why has it gone up? So I mean it didn’t do this before, did it?

ROB LUNA: Yeah, I mean there’s been periods. I mean it’s always held up well during uncertainty. 2008, 2009, during the dot com crash, during COVID—gold has held up exceptionally well. So that’s the thing I love about gold too. I said, it’s been around 5,000 years, but you just look at the last hundred years. There’s a track record unlike cryptocurrency.

We’ve only got 15 years of crypto. When you think about data sets and I’m very big on data, 15 years is nothing. You can’t make any determination. But gold has been very, very reliable over that period of time. And I just think with tariffs, all the uncertainty that’s going on, all the things that crypto was supposed to do and hold up well during, which it hasn’t, I think 2025, pretty much everything’s down, right?

Bitcoin’s down significantly. During that period of time, gold has done what it should be doing. And so I think of all the alternative asset classes to stocks and bonds and real estate, I do like precious metals and I don’t have enough. I wish I would have bought more.

Timing the Gold Market

SHAWN RYAN: I mean, should people be buying it now or is it going to come back down?

ROB LUNA: Look, I think it’s very hard to time any market. And so one of the things about investing in general, the shorter your time horizon is, the harder it is. The longer it is, the easier it is. Think about the S&P, the largest 500 companies over any 10 year period. It does well over a longer period of time. It’s always done 10%. But it comes like this.

If you needed to know what is the S&P going to do in the next 12 to 18 months, I have no idea. So if the money, if what you’re investing for those needs need to be liquid in 12 to 18 months, I wouldn’t touch the S&P 500. Longer period of time, 5, 10 years? Absolutely.

Same thing with gold. If you’re trying to time it over the next—if you need to take this money out of gold and buy a house in 12 months, I would say you don’t touch it, especially after a big run. It should pull back. Nothing—trees don’t grow to the sky. It should pull back. I wouldn’t be going all in on it.

Now if you have no position, maybe buy a little bit right now. I would look for a little bit of a pullback which I think could happen. But I think longer term, again, 5 to 10%. If you’ve got more than that—also the thing about gold is it doesn’t pay a dividend. The only way you make money on gold is you buy low, sell high.

So someone like yourself, if now you’ve seen that it was 10% but it’s become 30% of your portfolio, the corollary is it might be time to take a little bit off the table of that. But if you don’t have any, it might be a time to start a small position and try to look for some pullbacks.

SHAWN RYAN: Okay. Okay. What about crypto? I mean I’ve had a lot of crypto guys on here.

ROB LUNA: Yeah, yeah.

SHAWN RYAN: You will despise crypto.

The Cryptocurrency Question

ROB LUNA: Despise is a relatively strong word.

SHAWN RYAN: Okay.

ROB LUNA: You’re not a fan of. I’m not. I don’t own any. I have owned none. Zero. Now I closed the last of my cryptocurrency out, which was not a lot, about six months ago. I sold all my Bitcoin a year ago.

SHAWN RYAN: The crypto bros are—they’re not going—

The Cryptocurrency Debate

ROB LUNA: To be happy with it anytime. I told you before, if I talk about penny stocks that I don’t like or I talk about not liking crypto, the cult comes after me. They say, “You don’t know shit about crypto” or “Neither do you.”

And that’s the one thing—look, about cryptocurrency, Shawn, my view only, it is my view, what I believe—is there is no way, and I’ve asked multiple people in terms of the technology of IT in blockchain, and even if you talk about really, really smart people and some of the vulnerabilities potentially with blockchain and crypto, with supercomputing coming out, that everyone’s closing their eyes to. But just say this: the technology and all those things are solid as a substitute, which still people say it could be a substitute to the dollar. Never going to happen.

There’s not enough liquidity. It’s way too volatile for that to happen. There’s still a lot of problems with nefarious types of things being done through cryptocurrency. So governments are finding it very hard to regulate. How do you value cryptocurrency? The truth is it’s only worth what someone’s willing to pay for it.

You can say the same thing for the dollar. Kind of true. But if you look at the usage of the dollar, if you look at the reserve currency status of the dollar, if you look at trading in currencies, the dollar has actually increased over the last 10 years. So as bad as we talk about the dollar, it still continues to be the gold standard, if you will.

Cryptocurrency, again, the big problem I have with it is how do you value it? What’s the intrinsic value? I can do that with gold, easier even with silver, because there’s a use case for it. There’s no utility for cryptocurrency. So now can that change in the future? Can this be adopted by more people? Potentially.

But in terms of, again, who I work with, myself, we build multi-asset class portfolios—gold and real estate and private equity and stocks and all those things. And so what would be the reason to put cryptocurrency in there? Now, if you maybe had a small idiot bet, you’re like, “I just don’t want to be proven wrong. I want to have 2 to 3%.” And this is why I bought it before, right? 2 to 3%? Yeah, maybe.

But the truth is, the people that got in in 2008, 2009, that run, that’s done. That’s not going to happen. Right? And so everyone’s saying, “Oh, you still got to be in crypto because Bitcoin might go to $150,000.” All right, so you don’t know how to value this. There’s a tremendous amount of risk in it. I can’t touch it, I can’t feel it. It might go to $150,000.

But I’ve got multiple AI small cap stocks that are up over 300% this year while you sat in an asset class that lost 18%. So I don’t see—it’s not a great speculation, hasn’t worked out super well. I can’t really use it.

The Institutional Validation Problem

And then the one thing I just want to talk about is, I think the Crypto Bros or whatever you want to call them, they always come back. All of a sudden, the guys who are investing in this stuff because they hate the industry and they don’t want banks, they’re now using Bank of America as offering it to their clients. “Rob, are you smarter than Bank of America?”

Yeah, I am. You remember Bank of America in 2008 was essentially bankrupt because they also backed subprime mortgage, and me and you had to bail them out with our tax dollars. Now they’re all of a sudden the authority on risk management and how to allocate assets? And, “Oh yeah, but what about them?”

The biggest ETF company in the world, BlackRock, now offers Bitcoin. They would offer a turd if they could put it in an ETF and put a fee around it. And that’s what they’re doing. They’re collecting a fee and it’s very, very profitable.

And the biggest problem I have with cryptocurrency is that when these big organizations validate it and they make it available to more people to put in portfolios and other things, it then could create a systemic risk just like subprime housing did. And so people who didn’t get in in 2008 and make all this money are just sitting in it now and bought the Bitcoin ETF and are actually negative.

Now, if this gets infiltrated and over-levered inside of other organizations, does it become a systemic risk where that’s the next bailout and now we have to worry about cryptocurrency because there’s some systemic risk to it? Again, I’m not in it, but am I going to have to pay the tax bill for it at some point if it continues to spread? Probably. That’s just kind of the path that we’ve been on with all these things.

SHAWN RYAN: Jeez. Jeez. Can’t wait to see the comments.

ROB LUNA: I’m an idiot, dummy. Don’t know anything. I’m missing out.

SHAWN RYAN: Boomer. Are you tracking BRICS at all?

The BRICS Question and Dollar Dominance

ROB LUNA: Brazil, Russia, India, China, the currencies that are going on there? Yeah, I do. And it kind of, again, it goes back to, if you look at the dollar, its reserve status, how much is traded. Yes, some of those currencies have gone up. They have greater appreciation. The one that’s done the worst is the euro. Money’s just flowing out of the euro. And I think we kind of all know why there.

But why? Because of socialism, because of unrest that’s going on there. And the government’s continually—socialism destroys countries. It really does. That’s the reason, right? When you look at voters, and I’m half Cuban, and you look at Miami, right? These are immigrants that came here. Most of them vote Republican. Why? Because they know the problems with socialism, right? They know what it does to countries.

You look at Argentina, you look at going back to places like Russia, 1998, going back to systemic risk and smart people knowing what to do. Nobel Prize laureates started a hedge fund of trading currencies in 1998 called Long-Term Capital Management. They didn’t think Russia’s currency could go to zero. When it did, it collapsed. The rich people, yeah, maybe they lost some money. But then our government again had to come in, backstop banks that were doing this, and taxpayers once again had to be able to do it.

So what I would say is the dollar, as of right now, from what I could see, is still a very safe place to be. I just talked about all the deficit and the long-term sustainability and all these things. And I think it is a house of cards. The big question that you and I always have to answer, and especially because I’ve been on TV 17, 18 years, I have to go out there and make an opinion.

When I made those opinions, though, my clients are like, “Is that consistent with the things that you’re doing for us?” So there were always hundreds of millions of dollars that had to be assessed and put to work through my opinions. I don’t have the luxury of 300-year bets because my clients don’t live to 300. Right?

And so if I sit here and say, “Bitcoin is great, guys,” at the end of 2024, when I was on your show a year ago and say, “Hey, go all into Bitcoin,” and you just lost 18% this year, why? Small cap stocks skyrocketed. Nuclear stocks skyrocketed. Some of these—we talked about some of the psychedelic stocks skyrocketed. If we missed out on all of that because I was so in on this one strategy, I would have gotten fired, right?

Risk Management and Market Reality

And so what we have to do is be aware of the risks. And I started as a risk analyst. I always look at what could go wrong first, right? We have to be aware of the risk with BRICS and all these different things. But the question is, in putting our money to work, are we willing to take a bet on that collapsing and those things? And I would say as of right now, no, that’s not where I want to put my money.

I came in the market as a professional in 1998 and I was hearing the dollar is going to collapse. All this, all valid arguments, right? This guy was pretty much 100% in T-bills and he did have some gold, but very little in the stock market, very little in private equity. And what happened during that period of time? The S&P hit.

The thing about the S&P, which is—I say S&P, it’s the U.S., it’s the largest barometer of the U.S. economy. The largest 500 companies here, 100% of the time. Every time there’s been a dip, it’s been a buying opportunity. Not 99%, not 98%, for 100 years. Every time it’s been a dip, it’s been a buying opportunity. So if you just bought every time it declined, you’re going to do well.

So when you look at that, that’s consistent. Gold, consistent over time. But when I look at something and I’ve learned over 28 years of doing this, my opinion doesn’t mean shit. All that matters is what is in front of us. What are the risks, what are the opportunities, and what does the market as a whole believe?

And that was my—why am I out of crypto? Well, I understood why it went to where it was. I understand why it was there. But then what I also talked to you about last year, I said, “Okay, if you’re going to be in crypto, have a small amount.” Why? Because I believe this administration is so crypto-friendly and the narrative that they’ve been putting around crypto and the investments that they have in it. If anybody can get this to run and get enthusiasm around—and that’s what you need from an asset class is enthusiasm—it’s going to be this.

So then I looked at, if they can’t get it to go, then what’s the next? I’m always looking at what’s the catalyst. When you start running out of catalysts, then you start thinking of, am I going to just sit in something with the hope and pray strategy, or am I going to go to something that has intrinsic value, it’s discounted, and there’s going to be some catalyst where at least I’m putting myself on that side of the table? And that’s kind of why I sold my crypto.

SHAWN RYAN: Makes sense. Does make sense.

Real Estate in a Divided Nation

What about real estate? I feel like the real estate market since 2020 has been really just really weird because—yeah, I say that because before that, it seemed that the country’s doing good, the real estate goes up, the country’s doing bad, it goes down.

Now I don’t—I mean, I’m not terribly familiar with all the different markets, but I mean, we kind of mentioned it before. Polymarket predicted a million people leaving New York after that election. I mean, California, it’s been an exodus of people coming out of there. I don’t know if that slowed down at all. But Washington, Oregon, I mean, and we travel. I travel. Everywhere I go, they’re complaining about the influx.

And so I would think that there’s markets in the U.S. that are skyrocketing. I would think there’s markets in the U.S. that are plummeting. And I think that is the result of a very, very divided nation. Am I right?

You’re 100% right. And then, but essentially that’s how real estate has always been. It’s very—it’s always been market by market. Certain, like some of the same markets that you’re talking about plummeting now for a long period of time did exceptionally better, exponentially better than Tennessee, for example. Right.

What would you rather have done 20 years ago? Buy beachfront California property or Tennessee property? Well, maybe up and maybe not now, but five years ago, before COVID, you definitely would have rather had those beachfront properties. Now, I think especially after COVID, for a lot of reasons, all those things have changed.

So I think the real estate market today, going back to your, you know, you were saying this before, is it’s market by market. It’s really dependent on where you’re looking at. And just like I said, this is for any investment: what’s the catalyst for it to go up?

The Exodus from California

And so the catalyst for Tennessee or Texas or Florida real estate to go up is there is an exodus. Because the reason my wife and I left California wasn’t just because of taxes. It played a role in it. But I stayed there a long period of time, paying an exorbitant amount of taxes because the weather was nice, right. And I had the beach there. I lived one house off the bay. Like, that’s pretty nice.

But when I couldn’t wear a Rolex watch to the mall and I was worried about my daughter’s safety, there’s no climate out there that I’m willing to not feel safe in. So I moved out of there.

So the catalyst for real estate here is that. So a lot of it, yeah, maybe it’s political, but it’s also economical because when you look at all these big companies moving out of California and Tesla going to Texas and Oracle now opening their health headquarters here in Nashville. So what does that mean? People are leaving, jobs are coming here.

You don’t have to be a rocket scientist or an investment analyst to understand, well, supply, demand, that’s going to cause real estate prices to go up here. So back to your point. Follow, like Gretzky said, “Go to where the—skate to where the puck is going, not to where it’s been.”

And so that’s, you know, the funny thing, Shawn, like, my wife and I talk about this all the time, and you talked about it. So my wife came here from Kazakhstan when she was 19 years old. She spent, she’s 38 now. She spent her whole life primarily in New York City for several years and then lived with me in Los Angeles. Like, that’s all she knew of the U.S., not too much.

Unlike me, if you would have ever asked her about living in Tennessee or anywhere in the south, shooting, like, what the hell are you talking about? But now, and like, I want to—I don’t want to shout too loud about this—this is what a, this is a luxury. Yeah.

And you hear about, I was just reading about a little town in North Carolina. It was just, I forgot where I even read it a couple days ago. But small town, like 800 people. But the amount of billionaires that are moving there, it’s like, like it’s huge.

The New American Dream Locations

So people are starting, like, places like—and again, I don’t want to mention towns. I don’t want them here. But places like that are the new New York City and the new Los Angeles. It’s just retraining your mind.

And then like I told you the other day, we spent some time together and it’s like, and I’ve been out of California for two years now. And it’s just like, you know, surrounding yourself with people who have good values, right. And they’re, you know, put God first. And when they look at you, they’re not sizing you up to what do you own and what do you have? And they just want you to win. And they want to win, and they just want a good place to raise their kids.

Like, that’s a luxury. And I think that’s worth overpaying for. And I know your question was about real estate, but I think there’s certain places in this country that have become more and more desirable, and they’re not the New York Cities and they’re not the Los Angeles’s. They’re the places where real people, real Americans who care about their families, who care about the dream, and who put God first. I think those are the areas where the money’s going to flow.

SHAWN RYAN: You’re saying values are coming back?

ROB LUNA: I think so. And I think so. I know so. They are.

SHAWN RYAN: Man, that’s good to hear.

The War on Values

ROB LUNA: But there’s a war, though, and it’s divine. You go back to this division. It’s a division on values. I mean, at the end of the day, Christian values, family values, traditional American values. There’s people who are now speaking out and speaking up, like you and me and don’t really give a f*.

But at the same time, Shawn, I think, like, that’s the opportunity. We always all want more money, but when you hit a certain amount of money, it’s just like, okay, I don’t have to be in fear of losing my job right now. And like, hey, maybe, maybe I’ll make no more money. But it’s more valuable for me to say how I feel, to say what I believe, because I think at the end of the day, whatever we collect here is all our really reward comes after this life.

And I want to be able to go up there and say, hey, I did everything that I believe was right. And when you’re in places like we talked about in California, I think sometimes you can be the most ethical Christian person out there. But when you’re constantly surrounded by—

SHAWN RYAN: You turn into shit.

ROB LUNA: It’s taught you turn into shit. You do. So I try to get out of my life.

SHAWN RYAN: Damn good job. What do you think about Ohio? I mean, Vivek’s running there. I don’t know. I haven’t checked in a while, but last time I did check, he had a pretty good lead.

ROB LUNA: Yeah.

SHAWN RYAN: And he’s talking about taking the state tax free. And Duro headquarters is there now. I mean, it’s catalyst.

Ohio as an Investment Opportunity

ROB LUNA: It’s a catalyst. I think you’ve got more traditional values there. You’ve had Vivek on your show here before. I think the things he’s talked about, conceptually, right, we only, we can only vote what they talk about. Whether they go in there and they’re able to execute or want to execute on that, we don’t know.

But conceptually, like you said with Anduro, with Vivek going there, the prices are pretty low right now in terms of national standards. That’s what I’m talking about. Is it guaranteed you buy, buy real estate in Ohio and make money? Of course not. But there’s every catalyst for that to happen. So would I rather buy it there than New York or California? Of course I would.

So that’s the other thing we got to like. Everything we’re talking about is a shift in mindset. That’s what I said earlier about New York. Real estate always comes back. It’s not coming back this time. I don’t, I believe that. And people, again, just like the crypto. “Oh, you don’t know anything about.” Okay, we’ll see.

I hope I’m wrong. My son was born in New York. My, my wife there lived there for a long time. My grandfather helped build that city. I love the idea of New York, but it wasn’t the buildings in Central Park. It was the people, the culture that build that and made that great.

Now that they’re gone and it’s been replaced by a whole new immigrant that doesn’t care about this country, that doesn’t care about Christian values, that’s tearing it down, that’s out to get what they can and pilfer New York in this country. And then they’ll leave once it’s all gone. That’s not going to allow real estate New York to come back.

SHAWN RYAN: Yeah, yeah. There’s no culture there.

ROB LUNA: There’s no culture. Just, just building sky like lights on. Sat on Fifth Avenue. I don’t know. It’s not enough for me.

The Spread of Failed Policies

SHAWN RYAN: Yeah. You said something earlier, you know, and I’ve been thinking this for a long time, but, you know, there’s this, this, you know, “Well, you get what you vote for.” And, and, you know, I’ve been, I’ve been guilty of this. It’s like, “Oh, you voted for that.”

ROB LUNA: You live in that. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SHAWN RYAN: And, you know, now I do. I don’t feel like that now. I’m like, this is way too close to home. And it is spreading just like you’re saying. It’s percolating, it’s getting bigger.

ROB LUNA: I mean, you see it here in certain parts of Tennessee already. Yep. Unfortunately. Nashville. Yeah.

SHAWN RYAN: So Nashville.

ROB LUNA: Yeah.

SHAWN RYAN: But, yeah, people really got to start paying attention. And you can’t, you—

ROB LUNA: This is—

SHAWN RYAN: I mean, everybody warned me about diving into politics. Now I get it.

Politics and Economics Are Inseparable

ROB LUNA: It’s all connected, though, man. It’s not just politics. You’re right. You know, I know Maria Bartiromo, she left CNBC years ago to Fox, and they criticized her, like, for making a political move and talking about politics. And she’s like, “You don’t think politics drive the economy and the stock market? You think you can totally disassociate yourself from that?”

It’s all connected. Politics is the way you feed your kids. It’s how safe or not safe that you feel like your health care. Are those three things not important to you? But yet we make political decisions based off of 20, 30 second news clips.

And like you said, like, the thing is, as I get older, right, I realize how much I don’t know. And I start to realize that the world is a lot more gray than it is black and white. And you have to be comfortable living with uncertainty. And whenever you vote for somebody, you’re not going to get 100% of what you think you’re going to get. Right. Whether they can’t do that or they don’t want to do that. So you have to make—

SHAWN RYAN: Going back to investing might not even get 1%.

ROB LUNA: You might not even get 1% of it. Right. Yeah. So is that frustrating? Of course it is. So what do you do? You just crawl into a ball and leave? Like, I love this country and I’ve been into a lot of other places and every single time I’m really happy to come back here, no matter what.

Taking Personal Responsibility

SHAWN RYAN: I mean, I’ll tell you what you do. You fing figure it out. You figure it out. Find another way. Just like we were talking about earlier, you, you quit putting all your faith in a fing political prostitute and you make shit happen for yourself. Instead of thinking, instead of voting for a handout out or voting for somebody to come save your ass. That isn’t going to save your ass. You’re going to save your ass.

ROB LUNA: Yeah.

SHAWN RYAN: You got to find your way out. You got to find a new way. That retard isn’t going to do it for—

ROB LUNA: You on either side, Shawn.

SHAWN RYAN: That’s what I’m getting.

ROB LUNA: Yeah.

SHAWN RYAN: That’s what I’m getting.

ROB LUNA: Yeah. On either side. Right? And I think, and a lot of that even, like I said, coming to Tennessee and you’re part of that decision. I saw how you were living. I was like, like, it’s just that, right. Like I said at the beginning, I don’t need shit from the government. I don’t want shit. I don’t need, I just need them to stay the f* out of my life and let me create things for myself because I’m capable of doing that.

Now, does everybody in America have that opportunity? No. If you’re disabled, you’re mentally ill, you’re a veteran who’s come back and you’re destroyed because of the situation, I think we should help those people, but I think there’s things in place they could be better to do that.

But the vast majority of Americans are just getting soft and lazy and they don’t want to take the hard medicine. They don’t want to work. And I’ve got a problem with that.

And so when I came here, this is like the opportunity to, where like I look at things like you have of farmland and place, like, hey, let me just, let me, let me be responsible for my family. Let me surround myself with friends and family who are like minded, who put God first. And at the end of the day, we might not be big enough enough, but we’re going to put up a damn good fight if something happens.

I’m not relying on anyone to protect my family or feed my family. And I, and I never will until I take my last breath. I will work. I will work to get better at everything I’m doing. I don’t need shit. And I only surround myself with people that think that way.

SHAWN RYAN: Yeah. Yeah. You can still make it happen.

ROB LUNA: Yeah. Yeah.

Tax Policy Discussion

SHAWN RYAN: Well, Rob, did we miss anything?

ROB LUNA: Taxes, we got about taxes. It’s kind of like off another topic now that we get into it, hit it.

SHAWN RYAN: Is there anything? We got any good news? We’re getting some tax cuts.

ROB LUNA: There’s some tax stuff. Should we hit that?

SHAWN RYAN: Is it for everybody or just the top?

Tax Strategy and Real Estate Investment Opportunities

ROB LUNA: Yeah, I mean if you got money, it’s worth it. Well, here’s the thing about taxes. If you don’t make money, you don’t pay taxes anyway. So who really gives a s*?

SHAWN RYAN: That’s a good point.

ROB LUNA: Yeah, we have a progressive tax system, right. So the first 40, 50 grand you don’t pay any taxes on it anyway, right. So if you’re making money, right. And like dude, my goal in being on this show, right, which is a huge opportunity for me to be on here. Why? Because I’m fighting for the American dream. I’m fighting for Christian values.

And what you’ve created is a platform for people, whatever their message is, to get that out to a larger audience. And so we talk about how do we change things? You f*ing speak up and you give people tools that are going to allow them to be the type of American and create this country that’s going to get us the ability to compete.

And so the tax system, look, you’ve got to use it to your advantage. If you’re making money, do you want to give more to the government or less to the government? So you have to be proactive.

Bonus Depreciation and Real Estate Benefits

And so when you think about some of the tax incentives that have come back, you talked about real estate. Okay, so there’s a couple things with real estate. Number one, there’s something that’s called cost segmentation, bonus depreciation.

So when you buy a piece of real estate, there’s really three different components of what make investing in real estate good. There’s income that you can get off of real estate. There’s appreciation that you can get off of real estate over time, whether it’s raw land or a single family or a commercial building. And there’s also tax advantages of depreciation that you can get from real estate.

So all in all, when you take 5% from a piece of real estate versus 5% from a government bond, real estate is better because you don’t pay taxes on that full thing. So you’re getting actually a higher yield.

So two things now with the new administration that I will give them credit for—a lot of it may be self-serving, so they own a lot of real estate—but you get bonus depreciation now reset back to 100%. So instead of having to, let’s say, depreciate a building over 30-something years, right, there’s a big percentage of that now that could be taken in year one.

And so that’ll dollar for dollar help lower your income. So it makes investing in real estate more attractive now. So if you’re starting to make some money, you’re going to be able to lower your tax basis. So you get to buy an asset, not pay as much to the government. That’s one thing.

Opportunity Zones Explained

What I also like about in terms of how do we create and incentivize people to do more, build the economy, there’s something called Opportunity Zones, where if you go to disadvantaged areas, pretty much in any state where there’s not a lot of economic growth out there, and you invest in qualified Opportunity Zone funds, which there’s companies like Cantor Fitzgerald that are out there that put them together. I think Blackstone will probably create them next year now that this is back, because they can make some money off of it.

If you want to do it yourself, you can set up your own LLC. If you buy in those areas and you invest money into those properties, two things that are really cool: you can roll capital gains into here, meaning let’s say you bought a property 10 years ago for $100,000. Now it’s worth a million in Tennessee. That’s happened, right? You’ve got $900,000 in gain.

You could pay taxes to the IRS on that if you want. Probably don’t want to do that. Or you can roll it into this Opportunity Zone fund, kind of like a 1031 exchange. But you don’t pay taxes on that money that you made, that $900,000.

The other cool thing is when you put it into this fund, if you hold it for 10 years now, let’s say you have a million dollars that goes into this Opportunity Zone fund, that grows to $3 million. That $2 million, if you hold it for 10 years, is tax free. You never pay $1 on it.

SHAWN RYAN: You put it into a fund or you buy real estate?

ROB LUNA: So you’re buying real estate. But it has to be structured a certain way. You can do it as an individual. We do it for clients. You set up an LLC that’s structured to meet all the requirements. But for a lot of people, if it’s a smaller amount or they don’t want to deal with that, there’s companies that structure those funds out there for you so you can invest in alongside other institutions and still get that same benefit.

The difference there is you don’t have as much control over doing that. So this is something that’s come back that was gone in 2022, that you’re starting to see people now. So two things. If you’re a real estate investor, again to your question, should I invest in real estate now? It’s more attractive, especially if you do that, than it was before in terms of investing in real estate.

SHAWN RYAN: So is this, where are these zones? Is this Memphis?

ROB LUNA: You can look on maps.

SHAWN RYAN: Baltimore? St. Louis?

ROB LUNA: Memphis, maybe in Tennessee. It would be areas of Los Angeles. There’s zones you can go to in New York. Yeah, the whole Manhattan. You know, but basically you can go look it up, use ChatGPT, Google, it’ll kind of break down maps of these zones. You can go to some of these large sponsors, like, I don’t even know if they have them open right now. But now that this has just been passed, I’m sure you’ll see in 2026, like all these big companies will be coming out with new opportunity funds.

SHAWN RYAN: I mean, what do you think about that? So I think when you’re talking about New York and you’re saying this isn’t coming back.

ROB LUNA: Yeah.

SHAWN RYAN: You know, and I would, I mean, I guess I shouldn’t make assumptions, but I am assuming that, you know, the majority of these places are in areas that probably aren’t coming back. I mean, when you look at Detroit, St. Louis. Yeah, these areas, I mean, manufacturing left, Ford’s gone, McDonnell Douglas is gone, Boeing is gone. I mean, St. Louis is destroyed.

ROB LUNA: Exactly. There’s going to be some areas that—

SHAWN RYAN: No industry coming back.

ROB LUNA: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think there’s going to be some areas like even in Tennessee, and I don’t have the map in front of me where you’ve got all these values and everything that we’re talking about. There just hasn’t been a lot of economic growth there. So those could be opportunities in those areas to where it’s like, hey, Williamson County, Mount Juliet, maybe a little bit more expensive. But let me move further south into some of these areas which still have a lot of the same benefits. There just hasn’t been as much economic growth or investment in those areas.

SHAWN RYAN: Okay. So it’s not necessarily, it’s not just—

ROB LUNA: All the s*holes?

SHAWN RYAN: Okay, there’s a lot of that.

ROB LUNA: It’s not all the most dangerous, most—

SHAWN RYAN: Likely to get killed opportunities.

ROB LUNA: No, it’s not only. It’s a lot of that. Yeah. But again, back to doing your due diligence and doing the investment and hand-selecting it and making sure that there is a viable strategy and catalyst for this to work. You can look at that.

But then the bonus, for everybody, the bonus depreciation of now being able to write off a lot of that, especially if you’re having a good year, you’re selling an asset, a business or something, you’re selling some Apple stock that you bought 20 years ago. You could take some of that profit and put it into real estate and get a lot of—to use that to offset some of that.

SHAWN RYAN: Right. Interesting.

ROB LUNA: Now there’s caveats around all this stuff. So talk with your CPA and everything like that. But these are things that people need to be aware of. Another one I want to talk about.

SHAWN RYAN: I like that.

Qualified Small Business Stock (QSBS)

ROB LUNA: That’s really cool. Yeah, I like that. I’d rather invest in these areas versus just give people more social media programs. Right. The other thing that’s really, really cool that we’ve talked about is for small businesses, qualified small business stocks. I think it’s section 1202.

You can set up a C corp today. So hey, you’re going to start a new business. I talked about, hey, I think there’s huge opportunities in plumbing and HVAC and dog care and you know, all these things, right? To get in there, work your a off, scale over, under-promise, over-deliver and you can build real businesses today.

Well, the cool thing is again, this is why knowledge is power. If you set that today up in the right structure, it has to be a C corp. Right. There’s some—again, look, talk to your CPA about it. You can set up this company if you hold it for five years.

So you set it up today, you put $10,000 to get it started. In five years, you build up this great landscaping business, you build up this great pest control business or this mobile dog grooming business or fencing business, whatever it is. You get offered by somebody, and I think there’s going to be a lot of M&A, mergers and acquisitions, people buying businesses going on the next five years.

You build it up to a $15 million asset, $10 million asset, $5 million asset. Anything up to $15 million is tax free. What? Tax free. Wow. As long as it’s structured that way. The first $15 million, there’s some caveats around there, but it’s not really that difficult.

The main thing is you have some other entity set up. It has to be structured the right way from the beginning. You have to hold it for five years. Now I think after two years it’s like 50% tax free. But at five years, 100% of that is tax free.

And that’s huge for small businesses, right? Versus giving 20% of that to the government plus whatever your state is. So if you’re in California, 34% of that goes to them. If you’re in California, even you’d have to pay the California tax. But the federal on that is zero. You pay zero federal tax on that. That’s something a lot of people don’t know.

R&D Tax Credits

The other one that I just want to hit on is R&D credits have been restored back. Now R&D credit’s a little bit more complex, but every business, your business, my business, all has research and development. We’re trying to expand new products, especially with AI. We’re trying to see how can we use AI to create new processes or procedures.

And so there’s some metrics that need to be established. So if you talk to your CPA, a qualified team, we’re doing it. We have tons of work in R&D right now. Everything from the products you buy to the big thing for people we talked about is labor cost. The percentage of time that your people are spending on that, that can be associated towards this R&D credit.

There’s no limit on that. It’s as much as you need to offset your taxes. If you’re just starting up and you’re not profitable, the only thing you could really do is offset payroll taxes. And there’s a half a million dollar, I believe, exemption there.

But what you’ll see is a lot of what everyone’s doing today, their time, what they’re spending on does qualify for this. A lot of people don’t know about it, don’t talk about it. CPAs don’t know how to do the work.

What you will see is you will save—you talk about how are we going to save you some taxes. R&D credits are huge because they’re credits. And the difference between, if you don’t know, a tax deduction and a tax credit is: deductions, if you get a $100,000 deduction for buying real estate, okay, what you get to write off is your own tax bracket.

So if you’re at a 30% tax bracket, you don’t get to write $100,000 off the taxes you owe, you get to write off $30,000 off the tax you owe. $100,000 R&D tax credit, it’s $100,000 to offset income. So you get $100,000 of that.

And there’s companies we’re working with right now. When you start taking the percentage of people’s salary and the things that they spend and new locations, there’s hundreds of thousands of dollars of tax credits that are now available, that are reset back, that people should be looking to—those R&D tax credits.

SHAWN RYAN: Interesting.

Structuring Your Business for Tax-Free Exit

ROB LUNA: So again, there’s never been a better time. That’s one thing I would say with this administration too. The barrier to entry, the ability for M&A to happen, the taxes—taxes aren’t going any lower, guys. If anything, if you look at the deficit and all these things we’re talking about, taxes are going higher. So you want to structure that.

And then there’s the tax work, but there’s estate planning work that we’ve talked about that you can do. Trusts to maybe double that $15 million exemption where your trust owns some and you own some. Now it’s $30 million.

But this is the idea, like I said before, Shawn, of the people that are going to win are the all-stars. Just like they always have. The all-stars in sports, the all-stars in business. And you want to be working with the A-list.

Do you want to be working with Joe Schmo in the shop who doesn’t have any resources and just telling you “just be grateful to pay your taxes because you made money this year”? Or do you want to work with a team who kind of understands the code? Do you want to self-educate yourself to make sure that you’re taking advantage of these things?

Because the difference between people who are poor and people who are wealthy isn’t because they’re doing anything that much different—it’s because they have knowledge. Right? And that knowledge is power and it turns into dollars.

So the tax code is there for everyone to access. It’s up to you whether or not you know how to use it and if you want to use it. And again, if you’re not making any money, don’t worry about it. It’s not going to help you. Don’t listen to this. But if you’re making some money, you probably want to pay less in taxes, man.

SHAWN RYAN: Great interview.

ROB LUNA: Thanks man.

SHAWN RYAN: Lots of knowledge there.

ROB LUNA: Thank you.

SHAWN RYAN: Yeah, that’s interesting you said that because that’s what my last guy told me. “This is the price of success. Congratulations.”

ROB LUNA: Yes. Yeah, it’s funny, I talked—

SHAWN RYAN: Wrong answer, you’re fired.

ROB LUNA: Yeah, exactly.

Closing Thoughts

SHAWN RYAN: But well, Rob, seriously man, thank you for all the knowledge and yeah, what a really good discussion. I think this is a perfect way to kick off the year and, you know, as always man, I just wish you the best of success.

ROB LUNA: Good luck with Valter. Same to you. Thanks man. Cheers. Thank you.

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