You've worked hard. You've done your education. You’ve paid back loans to build your business or practice. You are hard working, you're not apologetic, and I don't want you to apologize for it. Hard work and perseverance—that's the backbone of this country. That's how you were built, and that's how you've grown up, just like I have.

But here's a problem I’m seeing: After we came up from the bottom of the Great Recession, we had a bull run market for a solid eight years into the beginning of 2020. Then the Coronavirus pandemic hit and brought a quick recession, before the government came in and poured trillions of dollars into the economy. 

That stimulation created this K-shaped recovery, and a lot of businesses came back strong – but a lot of people didn't come back up. A lot of businesses can't come back. 

If you were able to get through the pandemic last year and your business is back up and running well, congratulations. It wasn’t easy. It wasn't the handouts from the government that did it for you; you had to be in a place to make that happen, because not everybody did. Even in industries that have been strong, not everybody came back.

You're a survivor. 

But here's a little bit of a downside to that and the experience of the last 8-9 years coming out of the 2008 recession:

If you're still grinding it out – meaning you're still pressing the metal hard, still trying to build up momentum and hit inflection points to see your wealth and your time freedom build up – if you've been at it for ten years or longer, and you're still feeling the stress of having to deal with overhead and taxes and you're just not seeing much momentum: This is a sign that you've got to make some changes.

I'm just giving you a fair warning: for a lot of businesses, the eight years before the pandemic (and even now coming out of the pandemic) have been a straight shot.

Maybe you’re making a lot of money. That’s good, but are you able to retain that money? Are you able to actually build real wealth with that money, or are you just living your life and paying for your lifestyle? That's not enough.

The last eight to nine years have been an anomaly. Going forward, I don't believe we're going to see that kind of a run up in the market. This current bull run is topping out – I think we're going to see a lot more volatility. I think we could see a deflationary correction anytime, followed by an inflationary period.

I know it sounds counterintuitive, but I believe we're going to see a big correction (possibly leading into a recession) that the government will not be able to handle, because they've really run out of gas. I mean how much more can you throw onto the fire? The debt pile up we've had is a major mess. They just don't have the bandwidth to do a lot more.

There's so much drag on the economy coming out of this pandemic, that once the government has to pull back Quantitative Easing and stimulus money (which they have to do) interest rates will start to go up, because other nations will not continue to fund our debt with the US dollar being as devalued as it is.

That's what inflation is, by the way. The massive inflation we're seeing right now is the dollar being devalued. Who wants to hold onto dollars if you’re China or Japan?

For you, you're going to be dealing with a very anemic economy, and you're going to see a very anemic stock market the rest of this decade – with nothing close to the returns that we saw in the last bull run. It's a different dynamic.

My point to you is, if you're not making changes right now in the overall strategy of your financial model, and you've been relying on what has been in the past and you feel pretty good… awesome. But going forward, if you’re not making some significant changes, that could come back to bite you.

How do you figure out what those changes should be?

You need to be with a group of people who are contrarian, who don't just follow the beat of what everyone else is doing. Freedom Founders, the way I believe, the way I've been brought up, the people I spend my time with, and the network I've created – it’s very contrarian.

We don't have all the answers, but we're not doing what everybody else is. We're making moves counter to what the markets are doing. Well, how do you know what those are?

You need to find a tribe who gets it—a tribe who has been there, done that, and seen it before; who have backgrounds in economics and the business cycles; who have access to the different asset classes and investment niches that the regular rank and file don’t have.

Playing the stock market game is going to be a big loser. You've got to make changes in your life – whatever you do, you can't keep doing what you've been doing. As much as it's gotten you where you are today, it’s not going to carry you forward. Just think about it. 

If you're wondering about what to do next, or if you're in a place in your life where you think a group like Freedom Founders could help you, just raise your hand. We'd be glad to have a call with you and see if you might be a fit for our group.

We only work with people who we believe we can make a big difference for, and that's why we have so much success in our group. We can't help everybody, but we do put out a lot of information to help as many people as we can think differently about their lives – and I hope you will at least do that.