https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zh0bklzwI3g

1 00:00:00.000 --\> 00:01:00.000 as you build your wealth there are
people who you will need to help you and have in your arsenal that means
lawyers accountants investment professionals uh people who you uh invest
with so those are different things people you do deals with people you
do business with people you might get mentorship from and selecting the
right people can make or break your life and the trajectory of your
business i can tell you that firsthand i would not be where i am today
if i didn't have the mentors and advisors and counsel that i've received
over the years and over time one of the hardest things is trying to
figure out who you're going to trust and what's the process that you
have to go through in order to find those people and so having done this
for a you know a while and we've you know moved a lot of money in our
businesses and for those who don't know me my name is alex for mozzie
i'm a portfolio of companies that does about 85 million a year i have
nothing to sell you and the whole goal for this channel is to document
our journey from uh 85 million

2 00:01:00.000 --\> 00:02:00.000 a year to a billion dollars a year in
revenue in our portfolio and just share the lessons that we've learned
along the way and so i've boiled this down to two things two traits uh
that you can look for so i try to make this as simple as possible and i
don't just do this review i do it for me because i think you know we're
kind of in this together and this crazy thing we call life anyway so the
two things that i look for and then i'll show you the tests that i think
through for each of them so the first is integrity and i know that might
sound silly but when you like think about it you need someone who you
can trust like if you're giving someone your money like or you're trying
to take someone's advice or counsel you need to trust their intentions
all right and so it's not just whether they have integrity it's whether
they have your best interest in mind all right so i'm going to get to
how i solve for that in a second but that is the first character trait
of you need that you need of a council of somebody of any kind of
council really whether it's investment law et cetera the second is
efficacy or their skill set right so let's think of both let's think of
just different scenarios here so let's say you might trust your mom
implicitly but she doesn't have the skill of knowing much about you know
how to structure

3 00:02:00.000 --\> 00:03:00.000 insurance policies or trusts or you
know investments in tech startups right she might not have that skill
but you might trust her intention right for you specifically on the
reverse of that you might see that there's this person who's got lots of
skill is prodigious in this but it also means that they know exactly how
to screw you if they want to right which is one of the double-sided
things of being really good at something right you know all the details
you know how to write the agreement structure the deals in order to make
sure that you you know get the best outcome right and so the idea is to
find someone who has both your best interests at heart and has the
ability to deliver on what you want right and so it's both of these
things since you're like well yeah maybe that seems obvious for me just
even boiling it down to that was very helpful for me because when i look
and i look through advisors look for people i want to get counsel from i
have to look at these two things all right so here's how i test for the
integrity piece and here's how you can kind of like you can control for
risk here right one is i always try and interview as many advisors as
humanly possible all right um and i do that because i'm gonna get

4 00:03:00.000 --\> 00:04:00.000 as much information from each of the
council during this process that will give me perspective from which to
make a judgment right one of the biggest problems with this like if you
think about julie who's trying to lose weight right she goes to the gym
and then she talks to 10 personal trainers one personal trainer says
it's all about high fat low carb another guy says hey don't worry about
that keto stuff it's all about high carb low fat and then another guy
says no you really just need a balanced thing and another guy says it's
only about calories it's only about counting your macros and so you get
this huge perspective so that hopefully you can make a judgment call
otherwise when you talk to the first guy and he says it's all about keto
then you're like well i guess this is it right i guess these guys all
have opinions when in reality there is a truth you just don't have the
perspective in which to make a judgement yet and so the first step in
this is that i interview as many as as i possibly can from reputable
sources so this is where i reach out to my network i make posts et
cetera to try and get as many referrals as i can all right so that's
step one step two for the integrity piece is that i try and have a line
incentives now a lot of times they're incentive systems that appear
aligned but not are not in reality so let me give you an example so in
the real estate market if you're a realtor for example you may think oh
this

5 00:04:00.000 --\> 00:05:00.000 realtor has my best interest at heart
right because they have an incentive to sell the house and so that is
why they're going to get compensated so they want to sell it for as much
as possible ah but they aren't incentivized to sell it for as much as
possible they're incentivized to sell as fast as possible and get the
deal closed right and so think about this for you selling a house for
five hundred thousand dollars that's worth five hundred thousand dollars
is a normal you know that like that's normal that's the market price
right but for you to make an extra let's say twenty five thousand or
fifty thousand dollars would be really material that would be a huge
extra outcome for you you would probably push a lot harder to get the
extra 25 or 50 000 now let's say that um you could probably sell it in a
day at 450 000 because it's below the market value of the house right
now here's what's crazy is that if a a selling realtor you know like
total it might be seven percent two percent goes to the buyer and five
percent goes to the seller if five percent is going to your realtor five
percent of five hundred thousand dollars right is 25 grand okay and so
for them the the 50 000 decrease to drop you from

6 00:05:00.000 --\> 00:06:00.000 500 to 450 means that they're going to
give up 2 500 so they're gonna make twenty two thousand five hundred so
let me ask you a question now the reverse if they sell for 525 they're
going to get 27 500 right and so it's a 5 000 swing off of a you know 25
000 nut for them and one of them might take them three months and one of
them might take them a day so what is their incentive their incentive is
to get is to make as much money as possible per unit of time and so
they're incentivized to sell as fast as possible and so this is one of
those things where you have to put your thinking cap on and say are our
incentives truly aligned and so when we're looking at this when i say
there's two aspects that i look for counselor or somebody who's going to
help me do something financially legally insurance wise whatever it is
so first is that integrity piece and are there incentives aligned the
incentives being aligned and you could restructure that deal and say hey
you know what you're going to get zero percent on anything below four
hundred thousand dollars i'll give you three percent on anything between
400 and 450 and then from 450 and up i'll give you 20 right or 15 or
whatever right and so now

7 00:06:00.000 --\> 00:07:00.000 they're highly incentivized to push and
now your incentives are aligned because each increment for you is worth
almost as much it is to them and that is how you would align incentives
all right now how do you test for the second thing which is their skill
set this one's hard all right especially if you don't have the
perspective from which to make a judgment which when i enter new things
when i'm trying to learn about trust and i'm trying to learn about
investment things and different vehicles i'm learning about storage
units more about multi like you're like oh man there's so much stuff
there's so much nuance that you have to have right and so the first
thing is i like to usually read two to three books on the topic all
right and i read two to three books just so i don't appear like an idiot
um and so i can at least understand what they're saying and they're
gonna respect you to they will it's kind of like defense if you bring
your if you bring at least some level of knowledge they don't feel like
they're gonna take advantage of you so this is this is the first thing i
do and this is because i don't like feeling exposed in these types of
conversations the second thing you can do is if you have someone that
you can trust you can bring them in alongside you and the third thing
that you can do which is probably the the most and highest recommended
is repeating the same action i said in the

8 00:07:00.000 --\> 00:08:00.000 first hand which is try talk as to as
many of them as possible and then you will gather the insights and
you'll see the people who demonstrate the most expertise and what you
can do is take what one person says and say well what about this and see
what they reply with right and as you gain more and more knowledge and
this is how you so in the consulting world this is qualitative research
right this is where you're literally doing interviews essentially to
gather information so that you can make an informed decision right and
so when you do these interviews and this is what this is the lazy part
this is what most people don't do is they won't do this work right they
won't take the time to interview 20 people or 10 people when in reality
these one decisions the guy who you decide to you know invest in in
their fund or if you decide to buy this building or invest in a fund
that buys x y and z right or you or you have somebody who manages your
portfolio whatever it is right that one decision can be one of the most
if not the biggest influence on your total net worth over a long period
of time and people take more time to figure out what they want to where
they want to go on vacation then where they're going to put their money
right and so my ask to you

9 00:08:00.000 --\> 00:09:00.000 is that if you if you put these put
these lenses on think about both of these lenses lens one do i think
this person's integris do i think this person has my best interest at
heart and then two do they have the skill to deliver on that promise
because i don't want my mom doing my investments i know she has my best
at heart but she has no idea what she's doing and then i don't want
somebody who absolutely knows what they're doing and does not have my
best interests at heart right which honestly unfortunately is a lot more
of the cases that that you'll come up with and candidly you know a lot
of times they're literally incentivized against you you know uh in in
the insurance industry they're they're kind of incentivized to rip you
off it's it's it's pretty terrible and there's a lot of industries like
that mortgage brokers are incentivized to rip you off and so you really
have to look at it from both lenses and these types of decisions can
make the biggest impact on your net worth in your financial future
simply based on who you decide to work with and so that is the framework
that i think through when i'm looking at looking for council looking for
trusted advisors final note that i'll leave you with i was watching a
video of warren buffett and he talked about how uh his life in

10 00:09:00.000 --\> 00:10:00.000 most people's life is more or less the
same he's like i eat at the same fast food restaurants i get the same
desserts at dairy queen i wear the same suits as you do except you know
he's like or at least they look cheap on me he said but one thing that
he he realized that was different about him is that um he defines a
successful life based on the number of people who truly love you when
you die and he gave a definition of that that i thought was really
powerful and so one of his friends i can't remember the name he said
survived auschwitz and he said that her judge of character of who was a
true friend and who truly loved her was would this person hide me if the
nazis were coming and that's been such a powerful frame for me to think
through which is it's not just you know will this person trying to help
me lots of people try and help other people but how many people help
other people when their own lives are at risk just for helping because
it's doing the right thing and so i think when when i think about that
type of frame the number of people i have in my life that meet that
characteristic are far and few between and i think that if you can if
you can trust the people that you do business with to that degree you
will be best served and if i have to choose between

11 00:10:00.000 --\> 00:11:00.000 the two i would rather have somebody
who i trust their intention and i have eight an eight out of ten on the
efficacy than somebody who whose intentions i am unsure of and they have
a 10 on 10 of the efficacy so anyways lots of love hope you enjoyed this
uh click subscribe if you did uh and i'll see you guys next video keep
being awesome bye
