Will America go to WAR with China? Learn How to Thrive in this Recession with Dan Young - Episode 6

Thanks for tuning in! My most requested links are below:

Apply to work with me at shor.by/Clickthis

Launch your own side hustle in 30 days: https://journeytowin.com 

Subscribe to JTW YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@thebrandonthornhill

Let’s connect - Follow me on social media & send me a DM on what you liked today about todays podcast. I answer ALL of my DM’s personally & would love to connect with you:

Instagram: www.instagram.com/thebrandonthornhill

Facebook: www.facebook.com/bthorn263

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brandonthornhill

____________________________________________________

In this must-watch podcast, Dan Young shares his expert insights on how to survive in two of the most challenging scenarios that we could face in the near future: a potential war with China and a recession. Drawing from his vast experience in finance and Business, Dan provides actionable tips on how to navigate these turbulent times, and even come out on top. You'll discover how to prepare yourself financially, emotionally, and mentally for any economic downturn, and learn the skills you need to thrive in a doom and gloom environment. Don't miss this opportunity to gain invaluable knowledge that could make all the difference in your life. Tune in now to hear Dan Young's essential guide to winning in times of crisis.

Dan Young is a creator, investor, mentor, and entrepreneur. Dan’s passion is to share his experiences on maximizing financial, physical and psychological well-being. Ultimately spreading peace, happiness, and joy throughout the universe. 

Born in 1971 and raised in Southern California, Young is a first-generation American. His parents emigrated from China to the United States in the late 1930s to escape repression. At age six, Young began attending a computer school, learning video game development.

His first entrepreneurial efforts selling T-shirts in Venice Beach proved fun and lucrative. Dan’s then opened a shop at a swap meet selling cutlery in his Samurai costume.

After moving to Utah, the big box electronics retailer he was working for went bankrupt. Young contacted all the customers that had bought computers from him offering to honor their warranties at no charge. This is how PC Laptops began. The first year he lost over $20,000, honoring these warranties but the following year Young’s loyal customers rewarded him with over a $1,000,000 in business. Today his online, retail, cloud, manufacturing and real estate projects generate hundreds of millions in revenue and employ hundreds of US-based employees. 

Young has founded numerous explosive growth tech companies such as PC Laptops and Xidax.com. Young has driven PC Laptops founded in 1992 and many of his companies to multiple listings among the INC 500 fastest growing companies in America and numerous awards such as Utah Best of State, 40 under 40, Microsoft Gold Partner and Intel Platinum Technology Partner. When he’s not visiting one of his stores and making friends with customers or inventing insane new things, Young is now just as likely to be in action mentoring aspiring entrepreneurs face to face and online. Recently Dan f

Transcript

Thebrandonthornhill (00:05.622)
What's up everybody. Welcome to the journey to win. I'm here with my good friend, Dan Young. I'm so excited to have him on the podcast today. You know, if you don't know Dan, you need to, you know, Dan is an entrepreneur. He's a founder of the ugly unicorn crypto hedge fund. He's a mentor. He's an all around great guy, a real estate developer. You know, he's been on the Inc 500 list multiple times as well as being on the AMD gaming advisory council and Intel board of advisors for 16 years. He's been involved in with crypto since 2014 and he literally built

the largest Bitcoin mining facility in Utah. He's done over $600 million in deals which have included PC lab talk. He's the owner of Zyadac's computers and just done many insane projects. So I'm excited to pick your brain today and welcome to the podcast. How you doing? I'm Dan.

Dan Young (00:54.168)
Hey, thanks for having me on, man. I'm excited to help. Good, man.

Thebrandonthornhill (00:56.182)
Good, good, good, man. Nice to see you again. Hey, so tell me, we start off this podcast with one question and I always like to ask this question first is what is winning to Dan Young?

Dan Young (01:09.860)
You know, that changes through the years, right? Um, when I was younger, winning had a completely different definition of that. Hey, Brandon, your video is kind of getting a little choppy. Should we keep rocking and rolling? We're good. We're going.

Thebrandonthornhill (01:22.930)
yet. Yeah, you're good. It's that's just it'll be fine on the podcast. Yeah, you're good to go.

Dan Young (01:29.340)
Oh, awesome. All right. Let's go. All right. So to answer that question, it changes through the years. You know, when you're younger, I'd say like in my teens and 20s, it was about having fun, right? It was like going on dates with, you know, great girls and having fun and hanging out with your bros and, you know, doing all those kinds of things. And then in my 30s, my definition of success changed more into like financial, you know, stuff like that, right?

In the forties, it's kind of interesting because then you had a hit midlife, you know, and you started thinking, well, maybe it's about passing things on more to my children, to friends, family, students, employees, you know, acquaintances. So because you realize your time is limited, right? And then now I'm 51. So it's more than halfway there with the average American lifespan, hopefully goes longer. But

then really you start shifting into what's important. And so now it's kind of weird just within the last year or so turning a little over 50 is like the material drive for like mansions, airplanes, sports cars, all those things that I've acquired, I really don't care about now. And there's like, no, seriously, it doesn't raise my pulse rate to get those things. But what really means a lot is to help, to really be of help.

Because I think the only way we can be immortal on this planet. I mean, obviously, I think our energy can go back and go to heaven or wherever we're going to go, hopefully, if we've done what we need to do. But in this world, we can have eternity if we teach. And that gets passed on to future generations. So we can have some eternity. So that's my big focus right now. It's kind of shifted. It's really weird.

Thebrandonthornhill (03:16.990)
I love it, you know, and I can attest. Like I remember I came out here, I met you one time at a real estate at Cody Sperber's real estate clever investor event he had out in Las Vegas. And I got your number. I came out to Salt Lake City and I said, Hey man, you want to get some lunch? And you did like you're, you're a mentor who literally just wants to give back. And you know, you've grown to levels that the majority of society is never going to get to. I mean, you know, and that's just the truth. That's the hard truth. However, you know, but you don't, you don't act like it.

you're not, you know, like you're such a humble guy. That's one thing I've really appreciated about you is like how humble you really are. But also, you stick behind it and the fact that you're willing to get out there and actually give back at a higher level. So first off, I'm thankful man. And you know, I shoot shot shot you a text message yesterday. So hey, can we do a podcast and you're like, let's do it. You did it literally the next day.

Dan Young (04:02.493)
You're welcome.

Dan Young (04:09.698)
We're gonna get it done, man. We got limited time on this planet. So procrastination is something that just you can't do.

Thebrandonthornhill (04:15.294)
That's awesome, man. So let me ask you this. So how did you get started? Because tell it let's let's go let's go backwards. Like, you know, tell me about your your childhood man and like, how did you end up growing into entrepreneurship? Was it something that you were born into? Was it something that you just found and you got excited about? Like, how did you get started on your entrepreneurship journey?

Dan Young (04:39.772)
It was kind of interesting because my grandparents were entrepreneurs in China before the communist invaded and all this stuff, right? And they actually had a business. My uncle had a Coca-Cola franchise in China, one of the first ones. They were the first three families in China to have a car made in the United States. Good relations before the invasions, right? And then suddenly there was war and everything was taken from them. They were put in prison camps. I mean, people killed in the streets.

And so my parents came to America, right? They helped some American soldiers and the soldiers helped to get them here. And so my dad got a job at General Motors being a janitor and my mom was at cleaning houses, got a job as a bank teller, you know? And so I just saw hard work. And it was kind of interesting is from a very good life they had to zero and then to restart in America, like, and not even speaking,

English that well, you know, and they learned what they could from soldiers, right. But you know, broken English. And then, you know, I saw this, we were really poor as kids who had food stamps and all this kind of stuff. It was just hard, but they were working really hard to try to get better. And then my dad put himself through art school, started doing a little better and started his own little art business, right. And he started making decent money, which was nice. Did so well, he finally got promoted to like head of marketing for Mattel.

corporation, which was kind of cool. Designed the Barbie doll campaign. The Barbie dolls back in the day. And, uh, so I was like really inspired by that. Like, wow, this guy can do that. So maybe I could do something. So I wanted to be entrepreneurial. So what I did is I sold sunglasses at the beach. Uh, you know, those, uh, Ray Ban looking type of Tom Cruise glasses. So we would sell those at the beach and we go up to people and be like, Hey, man, this is for a bride out there and eat some sunglasses.

Thebrandonthornhill (06:29.610)
Yeah.

Dan Young (06:36.476)
They were like knockoff ones, right? So good profit and I got pretty good at it. And it was so cool. You can hang out there with your friends, with your girlfriends. You could have a few drinks. You weren't supposed to be drinking back then in high school, but we would chill out at the beach, get a sun tan, sell sunglasses. And one day I was with my business partner, Dennis out there and I'm like, dude, how much we make today? And he's like, two grand, bro. Like we need two grand and one day selling sunglasses. I'm like, man, that's a hustle. Right. So.

Uh, we were just, not every day was too grand, but some days were a couple of hundred bucks, right? But at least a hundred, a couple of hundred bucks a day at, you know, being a kid, and so I realized like, there's a problem and you can solve it. You can do it the right way and do good. Okay. So then things went sideways. I started extra partying hard, you know, um, doing really dumb things to party and got in trouble, went to juvenile hall for a little bit, really dumb. Just got, let the money get to my head. So then.

Uh, then I had no money and then I got shipped to Utah to live with my sister. She was an academic advisor at the university. And then, uh, she let me stay at her place. So I was 16 years old. I lived there at her place like 30 days and then had to get out. So I got a job in the mall at Radio Shack selling electronics and then also selling out the swap meet at weekend, sunglasses and t-shirts and grass knuckles and weird stuff, and I did equally successful there. Um, but then that's.

The catalyst is I met my mentor in the mall. So this old guy comes in, he has this broken radio and he's like, hey, can you fix his ham radio? I'm like, I wanna hear the news around the world because the media is like corrupt, man. I wanna hear what it's really like. All right, so I fix his radio. He's like, dude, you're amazing, dude. Do you need a mentor? I'm like, okay. He's like, well, let's grab some Chinese food. You like Chinese food, bro? I'm like, yeah, dude. So we go grab Chinese food in the food court. I go, what'd you do? He goes, oh, I sold my company for over a billion dollars. Now I'm just messing around with my radio.

Dan Young (08:35.888)
But if you want, I'll show you what I did it and you could do it too. And so within a few years, um, I made my first million dollars. So now it's through real estate and also starting my computer company, um, stocks as well. And, uh, just a wide array of things that he was just teaching me that he did. And it wasn't that all that hard because I just did what he told me to do. And I had nothing to lose. And that's how it became to be.

Thebrandonthornhill (08:58.286)
That's pretty cool. You know, I think a principle out of that is sometimes the worst things that happen to you are actually become the best things that happen for you. You know, like you don't know it at the time. Like you're going through juvie and like you're struggling. You're like this sucks. And then all of a sudden you go to Utah and you're in California, where you're like, California is amazing and Utah is great too, but completely different weather and then and then I'm sure you could have been in your head if you didn't have a growth mindset and you had a fixed mindset. You could have been in your head playing victim, but you didn't you were a victor.

and you made the best out of it, man. You went and got a job and started making things happen and then life gave you an opportunity. You were open-minded, the mind's like a parachute when it works if it's open, and you were open-minded to a mentor and listening to them or him. So that's an awesome story, man, I love that.

Dan Young (09:48.316)
And the great thing about being broke is you really got nothing to lose, you know? So, and being young and broke, you got really, you got a lot of time, like, like take some risks, you know? Uh, and if you find the right mentors, now with social media though, and the internet, you can screen people pretty well. Back then, luckily this guy was not psychotic or something, and he was just a nice old guy, man. Um, I try to be that nice old guy nowadays, you know? So, you know, help people out.

Thebrandonthornhill (09:58.130)
Yeah.

Thebrandonthornhill (10:16.566)
That's actually one thing you told me is you said you had somebody that gave back to you and so you want to give back to other people. So that's really cool. I got to ask you though. You know, you said screen people on social media. I call it fake book. You know, you got social media, all these influencers out there who are balling. And you know, like Warren Buffett says, when the tide goes out, you see you swimming naked, the tide is going out right now.

Dan Young (10:24.144)
Yeah.

Thebrandonthornhill (10:41.438)
you know, we've been in a recession, but we're moving even deeper into recession, potential talks of literally like World War Three with China. So how do you, how do the listeners on this call find a good mentor on social media that they could trust? What are some of the screening mechanisms to kind of see through some of that BS?

Dan Young (11:03.992)
First of all, no matter how great someone looks, they're always vulnerable because they're men or women, you know? Steve Jobs was one payroll away from bankruptcy. He had to borrow like $120 million from Bill Gates so he didn't bankrupt Apple. Elon Musk was a payroll away from bankrupting Tesla. It doesn't matter. I've been in such crazy financial situations, but we're talking dealing with hundreds of millions of dollars. But if someone went sideways, I could have been living on the street.

Dan Young (11:34.244)
Uh, like things can come, things can go, just like your life can leave your body in one second. You know, it's like, you just don't know when, you know, so you got to do your best while you're here. Okay. I just wanted to define that first of all, because nobody, how great you think they are, is they're mortal. We're all equal, you know, when it comes to our value of existence, it's very important to realize that. Okay. Now to how to find a good mentor. So first thing you want to look at is it as track record.

Okay, everyone can talk the talk, but how long have they been winning? What losses have they had? How do they make it through it and where are they today? And so usually good men and women leave beautiful things in their wake, right? They created beautiful things, nothing lasts forever, but they have created wonderful things, right? And so they're like, you know, like Elon's creating like cool cars and spaceships and things like that, but when he's gone, at least

He contributed some things that maybe made them find it better. Right. And so what you want to look at is track record. If somebody, if you look at their name and you should definitely come up on LinkedIn, it's harder to fake stuff on LinkedIn and make sure they have good testimonials and stuff like that written by other people through time. And you can also look to see if they've had a mass amount of lawsuits, whether they've sued a lot of people or have a lot of people sued them as the government and tons of agencies like went after them for doing bad.

defrauding things to people or have they just been, you know, building pretty good stuff through time. Now everybody gets into sort of legal trouble or tax troubles. Sometime in their lifetime, there's a learning opportunity because they forgot to dot an I cross a T. That happens, right? People do bad things in life and they get better. So I'm all about second chances. But if someone is continuously doing havoc, scammy Ponzi scheme.

and they're hurting a lot of people and not doing what they say, then be wary. Good people leave beautiful things, bad people leave dead bodies in their wake. People usually don't change all that much through time. As they get older, they usually don't change all that much when it comes to their integrity level. The one exception I would say is when they're a young, young man or woman, maybe teens, early 20s maybe.

trying to figure out who they are and they're trying to sow their oats whenever they're doing stupid you know I get that and you know that happens with young people but as a grown adult when their neurons are pretty darn connected shouldn't be doing things that are that are bad and you know the big thing you want to look for is integrity. Wars is a Warren Buffett saying integrity, energy, intelligence. So if they've got those three things and they can consistently execute on that

Dan Young (14:28.261)
it's probably worth spending some time with them.

Thebrandonthornhill (14:30.110)
Yeah, I love that. You know, obviously, yeah, I mean, I've changed quite a bit throughout my career, even I mean, I was a young knucklehead in the military running around doing crazy stuff and got married and that was another growth level and then got into business and that was another growth level. It wasn't really till I started getting very emotionally mature on a different level on a whole new level was when I got into the entrepreneurship world because you kind of have to be right like you can't talk to people a certain way. You have to be a person of

that people want to be around, right? You have to know how to communicate effectively, just all that stuff, especially, I'm in the direct sales game, right? So I got to know how to, you know, I got to know how to be able to move people to action and people don't want to do that if you just, if you're being a boss and trying to push them to do stuff, you got to inspire them to move, you know what I mean?

Dan Young (15:18.500)
Yeah, very important.

Thebrandonthornhill (15:19.238)
Yeah, yeah. So tell me, I know that you've been through, you know, obviously some ups and downs in your business. I mean, you, you're the owner of Zydex computers. You got a hedge fund, like you've done a lot. What are some of the challenges that you've had in those businesses and, like, how did you overcome them?

Dan Young (15:38.420)
Well, you know, with computers, we've had cycles through the years and different technology breakthroughs. When we first started selling computers in the early 90s, a lot of people thought the internet was a fad. Kind of like you hear people saying that blockchain or cryptocurrency is a fad right now. Same hate I was getting about the internet back in 92. They're like, Dan, like no one's going to be in there long time. It's just a fad, bro. Okay, man, you know, but we stuck through it and the internet has become a thing, right?

And that's the same thing with a cryptocurrency. Um, you know, it was interesting. I've been doing it since 2014. We launched our hedge fund though, finally, because I was helping a lot of billionaires and millionaires, you know, with understanding crypto so they can make investments on their own. And then finally, my friend, John Pennington, he just, uh, sold out of his company and retired their old fund though is crazy. They're real estate funds, $42 billion fund.

Dan Young (16:37.512)
And he asked me about crypto and it was a lot cheaper. And I'm like, dude, you just buy some. So he bought a lot and he did really well. And I'm like, it's not that complex because really it's an emerging market. It's like the internet in the early nineties, right? It's like, it's gonna, you know, it's like, when is it gonna? So you saw though, some of my social media and I was like, this is when Bitcoin crashed down to 15 grand from 60 remember around there, 15, five.

Thebrandonthornhill (17:03.146)
Yep. Yeah.

Dan Young (17:06.604)
in Ethereum down to like 900, 875. And I was like, guys, you're sitting in the sale, just so you know, I'm not saying you should buy it, but you are sitting in the sale. So consider talking to some professionals and either deploying on yourself or with somebody once you've done your research, but do what you wanna do. And fast forward, it's been like seven months, it's up 100%, more than 100%. And it's like, and people go, what are you doing today? You're still sitting in the sale. In fact,

The recession is just starting, sitting in the sale. So you can't catch the bottoms of stocks and you can't catch the bottoms of crypto. You do know mathematical charting and lines and trends of what typically happens, but I'd say the most important thing is laying consistent fire on your target. You know, like if you are a Bitcoin enthusiast or if a real estate enthusiast.

You want to continuously try to accumulate a little bit that doesn't stress you out at a regular cadence, right? And that's simply laying fire on your target. And after a while, you're going to be hitting it and hitting it and people are going to be like, you're so lucky, man. I can't believe how lucky you are. And it's like, no, you just kept aiming and you kept pulling trigger. And once in a while, wow, you got lucky, you got a bullseye, you know, that's okay.

It's not that hard, but you got to be able to play the long game and be patient if you want to get those results With any of this stuff. So losses. Yep seen that The crypto market when since we launched the fund last June think bitcoins at a certain point drops 60 70% And we were still up in our fund like three and a half percent something like that when everyone is down 70% And now that has gone up way up. We've gone up too. So it's not like we're magical. It's just

we're methodical. So that's the secret to anything, you know?

Thebrandonthornhill (19:04.758)
Yeah, you know, I think guys, everybody listen, this is not financial advice. Dan's not giving you advice. You know, it's sad we even gotta say that, you know, in a world of, you know, victimhood, it's like, guys, you are grown women and men and you should know how to take your money and invest your money. And if you don't, don't listen to any hype, don't listen to anybody just because they have a little bit of influence or because they sound good, you need to go out and make sound judgments of what you believe in, right? Like,

Dan Young (19:14.481)
Yeah.

Thebrandonthornhill (19:33.666)
don't invest into something that's just speculative. And maybe, Dan, maybe this is a good time for you to help educate them on not what they should do, but how you invest into things. So like, you know, I know, I listened to some of your lives and you talk about why you're investing into certain stocks because you believe in the fundamentals of the company and you go into why you're investing into certain crypto currencies, right? So like maybe help educate us on that.

Dan Young (20:03.612)
Alright, so when I do research into anything, I look for functional utility. So, what does that mean? So, if I was looking into companies, again, this is not financial advice saying you should buy these companies, but let's say I was looking at companies. Let's say I was looking into Amazon, for example, right? I'm like, okay, they sell a lot of stuff on the internet. Okay, get it. Are they going to be selling more stuff on the internet? Probably. People are like, they have a habit of using Amazon. Now.

Can they be better? Yeah, they could probably have these little drones deliver stuff so they can do 15 minute delivery instead of one day or same day, right, with a truck. Okay, now they can do a lot of same day delivery even without drones, because they can just have their own fleets and local warehousing of inventory. Okay, I get it. What else does Amazon do? So you Google it and you're like, whoa, Amazon, they own more data center to store internet data than almost anybody. It's called Amazon Web Services. Well, better dig into that thing.

That's pretty amazing. They own these big real estate plots for warehousing and things, distribution. They're probably gonna put UPS and FedEx out of business for delivery. Right, they got that. Every product now that you buy at Whole Foods, they have a 365 brand product, or they have an Amazon Basics type of product of theirs. So basically, they're gonna be selling every product. And they're gonna be manufacturing every product, or at least outsourcing to get it under their brand label.

Kind of like Costco does with Kirkland, brand, right? So Amazon, hmm, will they be around in 10 years and be bigger? Well, probably maybe. Now, if you decide that with any company, then you believe that they will continue to grow and be profitable in the future, that would probably urge you to say, hey, maybe that's a company I would consider owning, or maybe not, but if the math makes sense. Now, if it's all hype, if they're losing tons of money, right?

And it's just like a widget, right? And it's losing tons of money and anybody can copy it. It's easy to replicate. You know, let's say you invented, I don't know, a pillow and it's made out of cotton and it's white pillow, right? And, but you can make a gray shiny silver pillow. Well, you're, unless it's like got miraculous properties, like making you younger aligning your shockers or something like that is probably going to be.

replicated out of China and you're not going to sell too many because there'll be really copies out there, right? So that's what you want to look at. So with real estate, it's a little bit easier because it's mathematically driven off of how much expenses you have, how much rent you're collecting, tax implications, people moving to that area, those kinds of things, finance rates, interest rates. There's things that can affect that. You can apply that same formula.

Dan Young (22:59.904)
To that so this applies to anything and cryptocurrency interesting enough crypto could go to zero by the way Bitcoin go to zero, right? America the dollar could go to zero good, right? We don't know but if you believe in America profitable American companies That are traded on the stock market have a good chance of surviving warm up It says that right like I've been on America for a while, right? in blockchain technology, I mean if you believe that that technology

is going to be in demand internationally, then it probably would have a compelling future as well. So, do you see what I'm saying? It's like supply and demand. Like, do people, are they still want it? Are they going to want it later? You know?

Thebrandonthornhill (23:39.606)
Yeah. And I'll just say a lot of people don't even know what blockchain really is. They say, you say blockchain and the majority of them don't really know what tokenization is either. You say blockchain and they'll say, was that crypto? No, crypto is on the blockchain. Blockchain is so much bigger than crypto. It's like, eventually everything is going to be on the blockchain because it, it's open, it's transparent, it reduces friction, it speeds up the process. It costs less, right? Like it's, it's a legal transaction that's open. I mean, it's, it's the future.

Dan Young (24:10.444)
It is, and all the countries will be adopting it with their own private central bank digital dollar, of course. But I think there's a lot of room in public blockchain too. So when tides rise, all ships rise typically, right? Unless there's massive government restrictions. But just like you have the American dollar right now in greenbacks, right? You have it in the bank, which is really not in the bank. It's a digital ledger.

Just a lot of people don't realize, but the bank is a digital ledger. Right. Um, but all of that's really backed by debt, right. Um, and debt in the U S dollars backed by military Navy space force nukes. Right. Um, I mean, seriously, like a lot of, I know going on the rabble, people are like, do you think like, you know, China's gonna like really screw us up by like having all the other countries adopt the wand and the.

Thebrandonthornhill (24:53.215)
Yeah.

Dan Young (25:08.260)
and the ruble of the Russians and all that. I'm like, look, America is fairly self-sustaining and we have a very, and you're in the Navy, so we have a very large fleet. And China imports about 80% of its needs and resources, right? It's not too hard to put a little blockade and stop a country from importing goods and see a country die from attrition that needs 80% of their stuff from imports, right? It's not hard to do that.

Thebrandonthornhill (25:37.598)
Yeah, but my question to you then, my question to you though would be, I don't think China's here to play the short game either. Like, you know, they're going to play the long game. I mean, looking at bricks and what they're doing, they're going around and trying to get everybody to be on their side so that they're not dictated by the US dollar so that they can't be blockaded if they don't agree with something that the US wants them to do the superpower, right? So like

Dan Young (25:38.632)
It's not hard to do that.

Thebrandonthornhill (26:02.886)
What if 10 years, 20 years down the road, do you think that could eventually be the case where the US dollar like Ray Dalio talks and his, you know, new world order, I think is what the book is called. Have you seen that the new world order? What's your opinion on all this? I'm very curious.

Dan Young (26:17.379)
Good book. Yeah, yeah, I read that book.

Dan Young (26:23.612)
Well, the dollar is only backed again by military power. The old saying, God is on the side of the army with the largest artillery and most ammunition. Right. Um, so again, whoever controls the power really is good to be hit at the end of the day. And right now, even if they convert over, it's still like the one is such a small percentage. And it can grow as far as adoption across the world, but none of those countries just trust China either. They know that they're kind of like.

two-faced and they have all tiramotus. Same thing with Russia and most these communist countries are very two-faced. They don't have an equal-based society. I mean you have the oligarchs and you got all the people eating the caviar and eating the nice sushi and all that and then you got the peasant class waiting in line to get some cheese and bread you know like and rice one bowl of rice so that's just a facade right. So you're gonna see that now.

Dan Young (27:19.220)
I have a lot of friends in China and in Taiwan as well. And I'm like, my friends in Taiwan, are you worried about China killing you guys, blowing you guys up, bathing you? They're like, not like majorly, because we have manufacturing facilities in China and here, it's kind of all tied in together. A lot of them have said that, right? And these are friends of mine that own factories. And I go, you think China is gonna blow up America? They're like, I don't know. You think Walmart would set up a bunch of snipers and shoot their customers in the parking lot? Like, you think that's a smart business move?

Dan Young (27:49.060)
So at the end of the day, they need America to be around to buy the goods. Right. We are the largest consumer of all goods manufactured in China, right. And Taiwan, right. So they need us for that. So again, I think there'll be a shift of power, obviously, and a dollar and inflation and all those things will be a factor, but just simply Google value of the U S dollar versus the one or the ruble or anything like that, or any, or the euro.

Dollar's kicking ass. Dollar power, the feds know what they're doing. A lot of people, oh, the feds are dumb. Feds are dumb. Not as dumb as you think. And people think about partisan left and the right, all that. There's a lot of collaboration, I think, I think when it comes to the actual dollar value. You know, that's something that breaks party lines, you know? I mean, look, we must keep this dollar a viable thing. That's why whenever they print more and more, it's almost like an infinite printer. As long as we have weapons to back the dollar.

It'll be the probably overall the strongest currency in the world. You know, but that's why right now, Venezuela has way more oil than Saudi Arabia. That's why we're opening it up to them. I don't know if you know, but there's five companies that are major American oil companies now that the government I read about this, you've got to verify this yourself, of course, have opened up to pull sanctions out of Venezuela to do. My, uh, oil importing.

and also drilling in Venezuela, the big five American owned companies. So now that the Saudis aren't playing, because now they're playing with the Chinese, we're not going to sell them jets anymore, F-35s or F-20 Raptor, whatever they are, the super jets, right? We're not going to sell them all these weapons now, but Venezuela will become our buddy and I would bet you we start selling them weapons. And so we have a new ally, which is actually better than Saudi Arabia. Yeah, pretty crazy, huh?

Thebrandonthornhill (29:42.431)
anything.

Thebrandonthornhill (29:45.662)
You think Venezuela now will become, it'll become, you think it'll become a thriving country now?

Dan Young (29:54.400)
As long as their leader there does what we need him to do within our control lines, but that's all price. Any leader will comply for a certain dollar amount for his people and power for himself. But then again, that's what America is great at is propping up leaders. And you remember the last couple guys who tried to trade outside of the US dollar, Saddam Hussein and Gaddafi. They magically left this planet. So

Thebrandonthornhill (30:20.994)
Dude, it's, yeah, I know, I know. Yeah, I think it was, I can't remember, 2011, I was in Germany, we were deployed out there and we were supposed to go do a PSD element for Hillary Clinton to go out and talk to Gaddafi. And last minute ended up getting canceled, but very interesting. You know, we literally got all spun up, getting ready to go out there. So funny, funny thing around that. Yeah. So, let's talk about,

Dan Young (30:23.832)
I think the feds know what they're doing.

Dan Young (30:45.328)
Weird. It's a weird one, huh?

Thebrandonthornhill (30:51.406)
Let's talk about real quick, you know, AI, cyber security, you know, the future of really a lot of the growth that's gonna be happening, data, right? Nvidia, Taiwan, semiconductors. So like, what would you be looking at if you're the everyday person who's just looking to maybe dollar cost average into some of these companies? Like, what are you looking at specifically?

Dan Young (31:21.324)
I won't tell you what to buy, but I'll tell you what makes up the infrastructure. Then you can Google, talk to a financial professional and make a decision. So, um, a couple of things. The U S has been the export of very high end AI and graphical GPU, graphic GPU processors to China. They make a very high end graphic processing ship, which is also the chip to process AI at 10 to a hundred times the velocity, sometimes a thousand times to some other chips. It's crazy, right? You can't send them to China anymore.

done. The president said, nope, Congress, nope, no more. Then Congress said, a company named Nvidia, N-V-I-A-D-A, Nvidia, you can google it, but they make those chips that are now banned to export. This company, Nvidia, happens to make chips that were used very popular, they're very popular for cryptocurrency mining, right?

Dan Young (32:17.520)
These GPUs were called the 3070, 3080, 3090, now they have the 4080, 4090, they got a series of video cards, but those are plentiful and available in the US, but they process a lot of blockchain transactions, it's kind of interesting. AI is powered, they're data centers. Nvidia is one of the companies that you, again, make all the racks that power. You should look for Nvidia CEO demonstrating, I think it's A100 or A1000 AI processor rack.

He's funny. He has one in his kitchen and his name is Jensen. And he's just having fun with it. Um, but that's what powers AI. Interesting. Um, now the data is stored somewhere for AI, right? The data is stored somewhere for all this. Well, that'd be two places that are big. Amazon web services. Let me talk about Amazon and also, uh, Microsoft Azure. A lot of people haven't heard of Azure, but Microsoft owns the other half of data center. So it's Amazon and Microsoft that own.

all the AI data processing centers, or a lot of them. Now here's something that's gonna blow your mind. The government just gave $53 billion to build out chip manufacturing facilities, US only. Intel, you know, I'm really good friends with the guys and girls at Intel, got awarded a big chunk of that. You can Google what those numbers are. So, and Intel makes chips that go in computers. Intel.

Dan Young (33:46.348)
released on the DL and ship called block scale. Block scale is what's called an ASIC, which means the ship's primary role is to process crypto transactions. They just gave $53 billion to make chips in America. 90 days ago or so, the government said, Hey, we like this idea. Let's throw another 280 billion into this American ship manufacturer. And even the president has said in a different way.

some people would interpret it differently, but a lot of people's interpretation is if China took over TSMC, Taiwan's semiconductor manufacturing China, we would simply just blow up those factories there, right? However, ships, rockets, missiles, we just blow it up in Taiwan, boom! And then there would be zero manufacture there suddenly for those, but if we just put in almost like half a trillion dollars here in fab,

We're a lot bigger than Taiwan, right? And we've got a lot of land and we can harden stuff. And the chances of like un-American soil getting those factories blown up are hard, right? A lot harder than Taiwan, right? So I think the government knows what they're doing when it comes to that. Now, if you want to find out, okay, what other chips are being made? You can Google what chips are being given for the CHIPS Act. What other chips are the government supporting? You can also Google what stocks

Dan Young (35:14.872)
in AI or blockchain are members of our government buying. There's like 10 websites that list. They have to publicly list what members of Congress and other government officials are buying. Now, if they sit on these boards to approve this money, they sit on boards to approve military action, right? Well then, if they're buying, you may wanna think about buying what they're buying because they're making the laws of what-

Is it going to happen in the future? That's why there's a joke about Nancy Pelosi. They're like, just copy her trades and you'll be rich. I don't know about that exact things, but from what I've heard, if you didn't hear her trade, you'd probably do better than a lot of other traders. But really, I believe though that, I mean, this is America. We are all capitalists. So whether someone's...

Republican or Democrat or whatever it is, at the end of the day, most of the leaders that are elected are capitalists and they're fairly smart when it comes to money, right? At least on that end of it, right? They can agree on the money. They're pretty smart, right? Making themselves money, right? You know, and passing laws to get votes so that they stay in office so they can be in the know of where the money is going, right? That's why, I mean, you look at any smart politician, when they go into government positions, usually they leave much richer, right?

Thebrandonthornhill (36:36.373)
much.

Dan Young (36:38.396)
than when they got in there. Like way, like way more than the salary, right? Like, you know, not necessarily a bad career. Brandon, have you considered a career in politics? Secretary of Defense?

Thebrandonthornhill (36:48.982)
Oh, not even close, bro. I would never survive that. Oh, dude, no way. You know, it's so it's funny is there's a guy I don't have you heard of this guy. So he created a website. It's called like quiver quant or something. It's quiver quantitative, but it's quiver quant.com. And he goes over and shows open source what all the the Congress is doing. Have you seen that?

Dan Young (36:53.988)
No. Hahaha.

Dan Young (36:59.110)
Yeah.

Dan Young (37:17.048)
Yeah, that's a great site. Yeah. I mean, don't take it for what it is. I mean, don't just go to that, but there's some good data. There's a few other sites too that, you know, give you this data. But that's why I say you got to do your own research and look. Like I would never invest any money that you're not willing to lose like in anything. So you got to be prepared for that. So if you're investing so much that you're having anxiety, then you're probably putting too much money into something, you know?

Dan Young (37:43.712)
the larger the larger the returns probably the more risk you know with that sometimes unless like you put money in some of these banks lately you know not so safe right

Thebrandonthornhill (37:53.611)
Yeah, I'll just and I'll second that guys again just because we push out a website doesn't mean you believe in everything they're saying and just saying that there's transparency I guess that he's posting some of the stuff that these congressmen and women are out there actively investing to because they have what I think it's a 45 day window that they have to show 30 or 45 days that they have to show what they're investing into. So take this for a grain of salt like he's saying do your own due diligence but let's talk about that for a second.

Thebrandonthornhill (38:22.998)
You know, different people come to me sometimes and say, hey, Brandon, what should I be investing into? And I'm like, I don't know. It depends on what your risk tolerance is. You know, if you're 70 years old, you probably should have a different risk tolerance than if you're 20 or 25 or 30. So like, you have to identify what your personal risk tolerance is. For me, I like to diversify as much as possible. I like to have cashflow coming in, like to have an actual asset that's producing cashflow consistently or multiple different assets that's...

that's cash flowing for you. I know that's real estate, multifamily. You have a lot of commercial real estate, if I'm remembering right. So talk about your risk, your risk diversification, if you don't mind.

Dan Young (39:08.312)
If I could go back in time and talk to my 18 year old self, I probably would have even gone heavier into real estate. And the reason is real estate, you can't really get as long as the math pencils out. So you're cash flowing correctly and you're buying it right. Usually if you're five years patient, even if there's a market drop, you're doing okay, you know, the math was right. And the thing about real estate is we get emotional. So let's say you're sitting on a bunch of stock, right?

You may get really emotional because you're way up and just like dump a lot of it and buy some Lambos or invest in something else, right? Because it's easy to sell in one second, right? Same thing with crypto, right? Real estate is a pain to sell. You got to list it, right? You got people to check it out, you know, millies offer, they got financing. And so it's not really that liquid to easily sell real estate. So it forces you to like not transact. But also with real estate, a lot of people don't realize there's tax deduction implications.

that you can really be taking advantage of that. Because if you're making a ton of money, let's say in your business, right? A ton of money, a lot of this real estate can offset your taxes so that you're keeping more of that. And then you can invest more of that into real estate, right? So I would say probably more heavy in real estate. And here's how the breakdown goes. Let's take like a 25 year old to 50 year old person, right? That's got good energy and you feel like it would be fun.

Dan Young (40:36.200)
Usually the breakdown goes 40% like conservative stuff, which could be real estate, some liquid cash, right? Some precious metals, some boring stuff, you know, stuff like that. 40% in the middle, which would be more speculative stuff, right? And that would be certain stocks, right? That are kind of like a little bit riskier, but not like penny stocks, some garbage, good companies, right? Some may pay dividends, some may be tech, some may be boring, just boring car companies or whatever you're buying.

And then 20% could be like a moonshot type of high risk asset. Right. And that would be certain types of cryptocurrency. Very risky, right. Um, bulls off. Um, and also some private investment, um, a forewarning on private investment. Most private investments. You'll lose your money. Like you get a couple of buddies. Hey dude, we're doing this. We give me some 20 grand, a hundred grand. You're probably going to lose it. Um,

And that's why I like, if you're going to get into hedge funds and things like that, make sure it's a real hedge fund. Make sure it's got third party audit and third party administration. And so just make sure to have an attorney look at all the docs, screen your CPA, you know, look at that because there's a lot of scams out there. Probably 90% are scams and private investment. Most people lose money with private investment. Now, as you get older, over 50, you can make that moonshot amount smaller if you want, or

Maybe you have more money once you're past 60, right? And you want to leave that moonshot 20% as a moonshot for your kids, your grandkids or something. That's great too, you know? But the one thing though is this, when I said, remember I said God is on the side of the army with large artillery, lots of ammunition. You want to have at least a six month buffer. It could be cash even, you know, I know cash sucks because it's melting, right? You can look at different ETFs and mutual funds that.

are mainly like money market boring stuff that pay like four or five percent, you know, that kind of stuff that's spread out about many banks, that kind of thing. Some people use that kind of, you know, product or some people just spread it out among a few banks or whatever, you know, it's over 250 grand, you lose your FDIC insurance typically, you know, the government only insures to a certain amount usually. But if you have six months buffer though, then you're not stressed out because

Sometimes you're forced to sell assets if you completely run out of cash, you know? And that sucks, because then you may be selling too low and prematurely exiting. So I'd say six months of living expenses is great. In a business, if you can have six months of operating costs, it's pretty good too, right? But ultimately, I think your best money, your best money, if I look at my highest returns overall on average, it's gonna be investing in my own business, right, businesses that I have.

Dan Young (43:25.284)
That's because you can control a lot of that. So your own business stocks, some cryptos, some real estate, those are all things to consider.

Thebrandonthornhill (43:33.398)
Yeah, it's funny, Dan, when I was in the military, I was almost $40,000 a credit card debt, 18% interest. You know, and I didn't know that, I didn't have a money mindset. I didn't know the money game, knew nothing about it. I was just, you know, just in the military. And so it wasn't until I got started, you know, building a business to where I started saying, okay, I need to grow me.

I'm going to be the number one investment that I can make into me. And so like all the money we were making, we were literally like going to seminars to learn, you know, to grow, to develop, to become the version of us that would be able to track level of success. We're looking to, you know, to attract in our lives. And, and it was very uncomfortable there for a little while when all of our money was going back into different seminars, going back into our business, going back into, you know, different.

coaches and mentors. And, um, but I, I can't believe the return on investment that we've had just by investing into us, you know? So, and then understanding the tax game, you know, being, being, being active duty in the military, I didn't know how much I was paying in taxes and how many, and I'm not a CPA. So you guys can't listen to me, but you guys can go Google or talk to your CPAs about this. But the average person makes four, you know, $60,000 a year. They get taxed, you know,

$14,000 so their net income is $46,000 a year. Average cost of living, which is going up, is right around 52, $53,000 a year, so they're already in the hole. But if they would start a home-based business or start some sort of business, that same person would make, on average, about four to six extra thousand dollars per year instead of giving all their money to Uncle Sam legally. That blew my mind.

So not only was I able to make more money and grow me, I was able to save money on taxes and put it back into paying down debt. And we paid off all our debt within a year because of that.

Dan Young (45:21.249)
Nice, dude.

Thebrandonthornhill (45:21.858)
That's crazy, man. So let me let me ask you this because I know we're coming up on the end of time here So you have we have all these different things that that people should be doing right like Investing themselves creating different buckets to where they can diversify their income dollar costing average into you know, each of those buckets Weekly monthly quarterly, whatever it is that they want to do, right? What is if

Thebrandonthornhill (45:48.918)
let's just say five years, 10 years from today, something was we were to go to war with China, we were to go to war with Russia, and the dollar was to lose its value. What do you think? And I know you're not a financial advisor and they can't take your opinion on this, but what would you specifically, because we can talk about what you would be doing with your money now to prep for something like that. Like, do you have a secondary location where you have land that you can go out to, you know, that you can, I mean, what are you doing with it?

Dan Young (46:18.852)
Land doesn't matter because you don't own it anyway. You don't own land. You pay property taxes, you don't pay that. Goes back to the government. You don't own land. So land is worthless. People go, buy land! Stupid, right? Doesn't do anything. Now, for real estate, buying some apartment buildings that has cash flow, smart, right? I'd say some of the basics. Definitely get yourself a nice rifle and a nice pistol. You could probably make some recommendations there.

and then buy yourself a couple cases of ammo. That's great. Buy yourself some food storage, stuff like that if crap hits the pan. But I'd say it's really important to invest in your skills. You can buy once in a while if you want some silver coins every month. Those are always cool to buy. Anyway, they're cool to give your kids and stuff. And then some gold if you want some of that. That's okay. I usually buy an ounce or two a month of just one ounce gold. It's great. But on an investment standpoint, if the dollar gets displaced,

Dan Young (47:16.864)
What happens is you're going to have accelerated inflation. So certain assets will just go up. Example, real estate will simply just go up in proportion to inflation. So real estate hasn't gone up as much as we think it has in the last few years. Just the dollar's worthless, right? So, but that's helped insulate against that. Cryptocurrencies and why it's gone up like a hundred percent bitcoins in the last bit almost is because people, it's harder for the government to control it.

to a certain degree, you know, they could end up banning it or regulating it or whatever. But I think at the end of the day, they're not going to go for a total ban, just my opinion, as long as their central bank digital dollar gets deployed. And that's the on and off ramp. You know, so let's say you bought bitcoins and it went up and then you ended up selling some bitcoins where you take it out in dollars, right? And then go buy food with it, you know, buy house, real estate. That's all they want is to know and get their tax off your gains. That's fine. So I'd say some crypto is good.

good quality companies like in like like I said with stocks your companies that are going to be producing and creating things that people consume I think is hyper critical. I wouldn't go into conspiracy theory bro mentality during Y2K I had so many friends going to conspiracy bro like sell everything buy land food storage and water and all that food right now is they're giving it away because it's rotten spoiled ammo doesn't go bad so everyone's still happy with their.

556 they bought back then their Lake City, they're happy. Cheap back then. Yeah it was so cheap. So you know the ammo is probably not a bad thing because precious metals are gonna go up and ammos are made out of metal. But I think the most important thing is also to keep your health really good and your mind as well as your finance. So if you keep all those things good because the biggest thing that's gonna be taxed when

Thebrandonthornhill (48:45.066)
Yeah.

Dan Young (49:11.884)
If it went crazy, like some of these third world countries, the toughest thing you're gonna contend with is your psychology. Are you gonna give up? Are you just gonna lay your hands up? Are you just gonna succumb and let your ribs pop out and starve to death? Or are you gonna get aggressive? You know? And I tell ya, you ever seen Mad Max, man? Mad Max with like Mel Gibson and the end of the Armageddon and guns and all that? If things went Armageddon, I believe people like me or you would thrive.

Thebrandonthornhill (49:30.295)
Yeah.

Thebrandonthornhill (49:34.477)
Yeah.

Dan Young (49:39.964)
We'd be selling all kinds of stuff people need, right? People need protection, people need resources, people need food, people need security, people need gasoline, people need safety, they need shelter, like, that's all, you just sell that, you know? So it doesn't, you can't be prepared for everything and anything, but some of those things, I think, as far as material things, they'll prepare you, but just get your head right and decide, like, if something happens,

Thebrandonthornhill (49:42.642)
100 percent.

Dan Young (50:09.444)
I've talked to some people and they're like, well, if it goes really crap like that, I'm just gonna give up. I'm like, what do you mean? They're like, well, if it happens, it happens, whatever. I'm like, you're not gonna be saying that when your kids don't have food in their bellies. You know, what are you gonna do then? You know, it's like, you better, you gotta be ready, you know? And when your kids are starving, good men and women will do very bad things. You see your kids' rips popping out, trying to get food, what are you gonna do?

Thebrandonthornhill (50:23.006)
Yeah, what a sad what a sad man.

Dan Young (50:39.096)
whatever it takes, right? I mean, that's what happens, man. So abundance usually creates harmony, but lack creates chaos, you know, when people just are trying to survive. So just prepare yourself mentally, physically, financially, spiritually, all that, have some resources and be ready for it. If it happens, embrace it. It's an opportunity, you know? So what is life like that is weird.

Thebrandonthornhill (51:00.478)
Yeah, absolutely. So, so, so work on themselves more than anything. I agree. You know, Jim Rohn used to say, work twice as hard on yourself as you do your job. And, um, and that always worked out really well for me. Last question I have for you, man, because I know we're finishing up here. Um, I love what you said. You know, you, you were talking about not just letting money sit around, lazy money gets hungry and it gets eaten. That's what Grant Cardone always talks about, right? So, but let's talk about putting money into real estate. So, you know,

If you're putting money into real estate right now, a lot of people think real estate is going to bust, it's going to crumble. But then I don't really think that it can now that the banks have failed because they're going to have to print more money in order to fix that problem. So wouldn't you have more hyper and accelerated inflation and some of the cost of real estate is only going to go up again? Is that a good theory?

Dan Young (51:54.224)
Real estate and rents will continue to go up with inflation. I mean, it's gonna go up and people need a place to live. Now, it's become less affordable for most people to buy a three bedroom house with a white picket fence on a quarter acre, right? It's getting too expensive, right? It's really hard for younger people, even grown up older people to afford that stuff, right? So where's the demand gonna be? Well, it's probably quality, smaller living compartments, right?

That's why you look at some of these multi-family units that are like, um, if you look at my window here, she's like these big apartments here. See that? So you see these apartments are not that big actually. They're usually like one, two, three bedroom type of multi-family. They even have, you can buy small quadplex, those kind of, you know, um, people just want an affordable, nice place that's safe and secure for their families to live that has some amenity. Right. Um, and

Thebrandonthornhill (52:31.423)
Yep.

Dan Young (52:51.768)
And those rents are going to continue to skyrocket through time. So how I started in, I know we're bringing a little bit of time, but one of the things I did is I bought a duplex. It was the first thing I bought. And I rent a half for the same price that about what the mortgage would be. Right. So the cool thing is, is it was there essentially rent free for me. So I was happy about that. Um, and then I sold that and bought a quadplex, you know, so forth. There's a book you want to read. It's called cash.

flow forever. I can't remember who wrote it. It's called cash flow forever. It's rated really good on like audible or Amazon books, but cash flow forever. It gives you all the math on how to process real estate deals. So it's not just pure hype. I know Grant and these guys, they go through it, but usually they go really fast on the chart and you're just like, Oh, I missed that. I hit everyone. This just gives you the printout and the sheets, the spreadsheets. So you can have it right there. And those are the same charts. A lot of guys use, I use those.

Thebrandonthornhill (53:49.298)
It makes sense. He's flying through it probably because he wants you to invest with him, right? He's got his card on capital and he's just like, Hey, learn the game multifamily. Get into it. But I have an investment over here. You need to be in here. I get it. You know, I like grant though. Um, well, man, thanks for your time. Thanks for your time, Dan. Appreciate you, man. Hey, listen, if you guys got value out of the call today, I know each and every one of you guys did. First off, go follow Dan.

Dan Young (54:05.052)
Be smart.

Thebrandonthornhill (54:13.070)
Okay, Dan, where can they find you? Do you have a website? Do you obviously have Instagram? You got hundreds of, you got a lot of followers. So, where? You got a lot of followers. So, where? You got a lot of followers. So, where? You got a lot of followers. So, where? You got a lot of followers. So, where? You got a lot of followers. So, where? You got a lot of followers. So, where? You got a lot of followers. So, where? You got a lot of followers. So, where? You got a lot of followers. So, where? You got a lot of followers. So, where? You got a lot of followers. So, where? You got a lot of followers. So

Dan Young (54:21.970)
Just go to Dan's Millionaire Code on Instagram, Dan's Millionaire Code, and then there's links to everything in my profile.

Thebrandonthornhill (54:26.826)
Okay, perfect. So go there guys, you can click on anything there and find everything Dan. You know, Dan is a great mentor and he's constantly given literally free information. He goes live like all the time and talks about stuff like this. And so go on there and listen, make sure you go up in the top right hand corner and make sure you put like, there's a dropdown that says when he goes live, you can make sure that it gives you a notification. Make sure you guys do that. And then if you guys got value, go ahead here, journey to win, comment, subscribe, leave a review.

Thebrandonthornhill (54:56.579)
and join the community. We're constantly, I have so many high level people that we're constantly bringing on here. And Dan, this will not be the last time I bring Dan on, I promise. As long as he's willing to keep coming on, I'm gonna keep bringing him on, man. So Dan, thank you for your time.

Dan Young (55:06.501)
Thanks.

Dan Young (55:11.633)
Thanks, man.