Welcome back to Rich Dad Stockcast. I'm your host, Denny, and today we're pulling back the curtain on something that quietly separates average investors from elite ones, teams and mentors. Most people try to do investing alone.
They watch videos, they read the books, they hope, they figure it all out through trial and error. Professionals don't do that. They build teams.
They learn from mentors. And that gives them a massive and often unfair advantage. And today, rich head expert Andy Tanner is going to break down how mentors and teams shaped his investing career and why this might be one of the most overlooked wealth strategy that's out there.
And before we dive in, go to stockcastbonus. com, grab your free investing tools if you want to stop guessing, and start building real skill. That's where you begin.
Andy, welcome back. >> Thanks, Dell. Great topic.
One of my favorite topics. And uh I know that this is a highv value proposition for sure. So this will be great >> indeed.
And you know speaking of mentors and learning and education growing stockcastbonus. com you yourself have put some amazing resources in there. What do we receive when we go there?
>> Well that stuff's free stuff. We've got ebooks and downloads and we're always changing it up. So if you haven't been there in a while, check it out.
It's really for action takers. I often say uh almost in every episode that there's the listening part where you and I are going to listen to people and then there's the action part where we actually go buy something and get an asset and and you know build the wealth and and affect our our financial statement. So for those that really want uh mentorship and action since we're going to be talking about mentorship today that's one place you could go to start.
>> I love it. I love it. All right, let's let's start uh our conversation with kind of the kind of the negative side.
What most people don't do. Um why do so many investors try to go out alone and why is that such a disadvantage? >> Well, I don't know that I have all the answers for that, but I do know school encourages people to be soloists.
You know, keep your eyes on your own paper, do your own work. Um it's very much, you know, individual. There's not a lot of team grading there.
You know, you you get your own grade and do your own papers and do your own stuff and it's what do you want to be when you grow up, not to what you guys want to be together when you grow up. So, you know, other than sports and maybe, you know, choir [snorts] and band and, you know, stuff like that, very much an individual type of deal. Uh, and I think maybe some of that neuropathways, some of that wiring of being an individual works that way where people don't even think to ask for help because they're told, "Do it yourself.
Do it yourself. Their whole lives. " >> That's a a really good concept.
Yeah. You're You get in trouble for copying the guy's homework next to you, right? In in life.
>> Yeah. Keep your eyes on your own paper. That's not cheating.
That's resourcefulness. >> Exactly. Yeah.
We're supposed to be resourceful, >> I suppose. I suppose. >> Now, going back to you, Andy, how did mentors accelerate your learning curve early on?
Like, what mistakes did they help you to avoid? >> Well, you know, I I just remember growing up, my sweet parents, my father was a school teacher, my mom did the best she could with little jobs here and there. We always had food on the table and they did a good job giving us clothes on their back, but also, you know, they struggled and I didn't like that.
I would stress about it maybe more than they did. You know, I'd hear them talk and balancing checkbooks and, you know, trying to clip coupons and whatever. And so, I really wanted to know um how money worked really bad.
I I really wanted to know. I went to college, played basketball, and didn't find many answers there. And I think that's where the book Rich Dad Poor Dad really really blessed so many lives, including mine.
uh you know million I think 30 40 million copies now somewhere in that neighborhood and 90 plus languages it's been translated into and I've told this story a lot but I think it it it it's worth telling over and over again is a friend of mine recommended the book to me it barely come out he was in the network marketing industry I wasn't but he was and that book really did well among network marketers early so it found it way in my hands and I started Ed reading. I said, "This is one I want my wife to read. " So, I got another copy.
So, we got two copies and we would read as a couple. I'd read a paragraph aloud. She'd read a paragraph aloud.
We'd do a chapter night. You know, then we got through it. And when we were finished with that book, we thought and and we weren't wrong, but we thought primarily that it was a book on assets and liabilities and that the recipe was pretty simple.
All right, here's a liability. You know, a dad, don't buy that. Here's an asset that cash flows.
Yeah, buy that one. And you know, there you go. Rinse and repeat.
So, we were going to buy real estate cuz the book talked a lot about real estate. We looked at a 100 houses and bought none of them. Cuz every time we got close to pull the trigger, the fog of concern would come in.
What if their renters bake crystal meth in the basement or, you know, what if there it's summer now, but what if in the winter the roof is leaking? We don't know. And just all that type of stuff you you know, when you're you're worried about when you don't know what you're doing.
And so we failed and we failed to buy an asset and I was frustrated. My wife said, "Well, let's read it again. Maybe we missed some.
" I go, "We didn't miss some. We read it aloud. We read every word.
We didn't miss anything. " She goes, "Let's read it again. " So, "All right, we'll read it again.
" And and she we we went to the second reading and she picks it up and she goes, "I think I got it. I think I know what we missed. " I said, "What's that?
" She goes, "Rich dad, poor dad. That's the answer. " I says, "What?
" She goes, "We already have poor dads. We're halfway there. " And uh that was kind of fun joke about our wonderful fathers, but they they were great about instilling work and and morality and ethics and honesty, but they didn't know about money.
And it really reframed the book Rich Dad Poor Dad for me in a special way. rather than being primarily about assets and liabilities, it became primarily about a man who found uh the perfect mentor for him and a mentor that changed his life. It was about the influence of his rich dad and the lessons that were taught.
And that book was about wealth-b buildinging lessons, six of them to be specific, starting with the rich don't work for money and ending with the rich work to learn. And it was about that mentorship. And so we shifted uh our thinking and we said, "All right, we're not going to go out and look for deals.
" And I run into this all the time, which is why it's worth retelling that story is uh people are always asking for advice. You know, they'll call into a show, you know, the Rich Dad Radio Show, or write in, "Robert, if you have $10,000, you know, what would you invest in? " They're always thinking about the investment rather than the investor.
and uh that shift of looking for people rather than looking for deals. We said, "Well, who are the rich dads in our life? We don't have one.
So, let's start finding some rich dads in our own life. " And that shift of looking for people that could help us rather than looking for deals made all the difference in the world for us anyway. So, when you talk about mentorship, you know, you do a personal inventory and you say, you know, who's my Benjamin Graham?
because that's who Warren Buffett had, right? Who's my Fred Trump because that's who Donald had, you know? Who's my rich dad?
Because that's who Robert had. Who are the rich dads in my life? And uh I've been so lucky, so fortunate uh over the years to have some great ones.
And when I look at, you know, the mistakes I've made and the ups and downs of it all, you still wind up with some assets at the end of the day because you were working on it, right? And you got a few assets in your asset column. And you look at those and the gratitude isn't so much for the assets, it's for the people that helped you learn how to get them.
And you know, you don't stand at the podium and and you know, give a big thank you saying, "Oh, I'm grateful for all these assets. " I'm grateful to all these people who blessed my life and taught me. And that's why Warren Buffett can't give a talk at his annual conference without bringing up Benjamin Graham because Benjamin Graham shaped him for into what he became.
>> That's amazing. Now, thinking about you, Andy, uh you've had some incredible mentors through the years and and I want to say that mentors, you know, plural, right? Sometimes people think that you have to have you only have one mentor, right?
But we all have so many mentors in our lives and some people may not know that they're a mentor to us. >> Now going with your personal experience, you obviously Robert Kiyosaki has been uh very influential in your life. Um can you give us a few more mentors that you've had in your life and the lessons that you've learned?
Well, Robert Kiyosaki, Kim Kiyosaki, all of the people that were on that advisor team when we traveled for all those years together, you know, Kenny, Tom, Garrett, Josh, Lisa, Blair, you know, all those guys. Um, just life-changing. I mean, I I look through my photo album with my children and who they got to grow up with, you know, just incredible.
One thing that was, you mentioned the unfair advantage. You know, Robert wrote the book, The Unfair Advantage, and he had us come down to Phoenix when he was writing it, and he [clears throat] said, "I'm writing this book because I have an unfair advantage. " And he asked us uh to to take a just a moment and think about our own unfair advantage.
You know, what are our unfair advantages that we have that help us win uh maybe more than an average person? And for me, I wrote it down immediately. I wrote down one person.
Uh wrote down Corey Holidayiday. Um you know, Corey still works with us. Uh he teaches at the Cash Flow Academy.
He's better than I am. And he uh he was a series 4 option principle for a number of years. Managed hundreds of traders on a for Wall Street firm on the trading floor.
You know, high more risk than most people would ever even tons of risk, you know, that most people couldn't even fathom. I mean, it's his job every day. It's like nothing to him.
And understanding risk from him and having him in my corner, uh, you know, makes all the difference in the world. [cough] So, yeah. [clears throat] Um, mentors, people like Noah Davidson, uh, you and I have a mutual f friend in Than Merrill who is a not just a mentor, he's a friend and a confidant.
and you hang out with guys like like all these people were talking about, men and women. Uh it's just phenomenal, you know, just phenomenal. And and you throw in the the the non-financial mentors there, too.
You know, the basketball coaches that I had, you learn how to compete, right? You learn how to dig deep in the second half or in practice even to dig deep and want to practice hard. Um all of those mentors add up.
So, I guess the the big thing I would say is do a if you're listening, do a personal inventory. You know, who's my number one financial mentor? How often do I interact with that person?
Has that person helped me buy assets? Uh am I am I having my weekly meeting and do I know how to mimic what that mentor does? Um who's my Mr Miyagi if I want to learn karate, right?
Wax on, wax off. who's pushing me to do the things like waxing cars and and sanding floors and painting fences that make me think, well, this doesn't seem like it should be investing. But, you know, I'm going to trust the mentor who's doing that for you.
And uh yeah, that's that's mentorship. There we go. I love it.
Well, let's do this. Let's take a quick break. Listener, if you've ever felt stuck, uncertain, or second-guessing your investing decisions, chances are you're trying to do this alone.
Now, when we come back, Andy's going to break down how to build the right team, find the right mentors, and use them as a real competitive advantage. And don't forget, go to stockcastbonus. com to download your free resources.
That is where education turns into structure. Stick around. We'll be right back.
>> So far, it's been great. I needed a source where I could really enrich my education through stocks. I didn't really have an avenue for it, and it's helped me a lot.
The simplicity has really gotten me on the track to where I enjoy the learning as well as it's really solidifying in my mind. Like they're not just trying to sell you something. They really care about the people that are in the course and they really do care about you and your personal goals and what you want to do is to help you and your family and whatever your goals are in life through that.
So, it's really been great. >> Welcome back to Rich Dad Stockcast. Andy, let's get practical.
How does someone actually start building a team and finding mentors without being overwhelmed? >> Yeah. I mean, well, first of all, I mentioned when my wife and I were reading Rich Dad Poor Dad, I didn't have Robert's phone number to call him up and say, "Will you be my mentor?
" Um, that would be many years later, you know, after several years later. And yet at the same time, if you'd have told me that I'd get to to have him as the menor that that he is in my life, uh you'd have knocked me over the feather. I'm just an average guy.
I never would have imagined that back in the 90s, you know, 30 years ago or however long it's been uh since I read the book. You know, when you talk about a team, you you have mentors and they're a part of your team. If you're really if you read Rich Dad Poor Dad, one of the things Robert talks about and there's Rich Dad had accountants and attorneys and a team around him that's a great place to start.
You know, your tax advisor can be a mentor. So my tax advisor is Tom Wilright, but it wasn't always that way. I wasn't always, you know, in the I didn't always have that connection.
So you talk to people who have what you'd like to have and are the closest to what you'd like to be and you ask them, you know, who is your team? Who do you use? Who's your attorney?
Who's your tax advisor? Who's this and that? And who are your mentors?
Um, I cons, you know, I've never met Warren Buffett, never had the chance to shake his hand. Probably will never have that happen, but he's been a mentor to me. And what I what I've read, you know, I read all of those letters every year.
You know, I read all his speeches, everything he says. I I hang on every word because he is a great mentor. So, you know, people mentor you from afar.
Um there's lots of different ways to learn. The idea is to shift the focus generally from deals to people. You know, who are the people that can help me?
Who can I assemble on my team as best I can? And you'll grow. Now, one thing I will tell you is more important than who to find perhaps is who not to find.
Um and that's as just every bit as important as the discussion to find the right person is how to avoid the wrong ones. For example, when I'm building a team, uh, I don't want family involved in that at all. Never.
Because you've got to have people you can fire and you've got to have people you can upgrade from. You know, my first accountant, fabulous. You just learned so much.
But there was became a time where what we were doing was needed to be upgraded, right? We needed someone with a greater amount of skill. Same with attorneys, right?
Same with everybody. So, you always want to to be in a situation where you upgrade. I also really like to pay my mentors and and there's a reason for that.
I had a person come to me one time and he wanted to hire me uh just a little bit ago to be on his board and to help him with this business. I said, "Look, I'll go to lunch with you anytime you want. We'll talk business, but if I let you hire me now, you have my time and I have to give it to you [snorts] and I need my freedom more than that.
If I And I was just frank with him. Just frank with him that way. Uh I'd rather just have lunch once in a while and tell you what I if you think what I have is worth listening to, I'd rather just give it to you because when you hire someone now, you have their time.
They owe you. So, I love the I I don't like the idea of your cousin-in-law doing your taxes for free because you will be down that priority for him or her way down the list. It's the same as when I would, you know, remodel a house.
I'm not going to have my cousin-in-law come help me because I need a contractor that's paid that can be held accountable and be there on time. So, you want to pay your mentors. And when Marcy and I read the the book and decided, okay, it's about find a rich dad and we changed our focus.
I was at a party within it's probably within a month or two. I was at a party. I ran into a an old basketball buddy of mine from years ago, uh, from when we were like kids, like teenagers, and his name was Greg.
I says, "Oh, what are you doing, man? Good to see you, you know, and oh, what are you doing? " He says, "Well, I I invest in real estate.
" And I said, "Really? tell me about that. And I could tell he didn't want to talk about it and he'd had friends and family asking him.
He says, "No, I'm interested in what you want to do. " And he kept trying to change the subject and I kept bringing it back and and finally I said, "You know, I've always been curious what a real estate investor actually does dayto-day. Like I would love to come to your office and I would like to just I'll sit in the corner.
I just want to I just want to see what a day in the life looks like. Who are you calling? You know, I have a phone, but I don't know who to call.
you know, I know you have a phone and you're calling people. I just don't know who to call. You have a car.
You're going to meetings, I'm sure. I just want to shadow you. He's like, "Man, Andy's a stalker.
This guy's weird. " And I could tell he wanted nothing to do with it. And I And finally, I told him I was serious.
I says, "You know what? I'll pay I'll pay you five figures. I'll pay you 10 grand if you'll let me do that.
Let me follow you around for a couple days. " And then he knew I was serious. He says, "You really want to know what I do that bad?
" and his time was that valuable. He goes, "All right, Monday, you and Marcy, you know, show up in my office Monday 9:00 a. m.
" I says, "We'll be there. " So, we showed up now. We had everything, you know, stuff on the wall and systems and people and and he said, "Uh, all right.
We're going to we're going to buy your first house this Wednesday. " I was like, "What? I was just coming to watch.
" And I said, "Well, okay. I got my money. " He says, "No, we're not using your money.
" He says, "Hey, I got plenty of money. " He says, "No, that's not how the system works. We're not going to use your money.
we're going to use this other money over here. And on and sure enough, on Wednesday, we bought our first home. Now, it didn't cash flow much.
It cash flowed 500 bucks. After paying all the payments and all that stuff, we found a renter, put him in there, great guy, had a sweet little daughter that had uh cereble Pauly and it was one level. Was perfect for this little family.
It was awesome. And uh we had this great renter and and we were making 500 bucks a month off this. Now, that wasn't much money.
And you know, I had a great sales career and I was killing that and you know, 500 bucks. But I'll tell you, it was the sweetest. It was the [snorts] sweetest money that came to us because it was passive and it was what the Rich Dad Poor Dad book said was supposed to be like.
I said, "All right, there's one. Let's go get another. " So, that wasn't a story about real estate.
It was a story about a mentor and how fast and how much uh confidence you have when you start looking. So, it's not it's like stop looking for deals right now and start looking for people that can help you. And uh I think you'll be surprised.
>> Yeah. >> All right. So, Andy, um question for you and and I kind of know the answer to this, but how does being a part of a community or a coaching environment change results?
Well, if you talk about a community or really a uh a team, one of the things that that we have at the Castle Academy is and Blair Singer is a a big reason this is, you know, we have our code and I this is a combination of Blair Singer and coach Mike Shashesky from Duke. He's got a great book called the gold standard and uh standards are different than rules. You don't like I don't lie.
I didn't I never gave my kids as a father any rules. Um we had zero rules. So how do you raise kids with zero rules?
That sounds crazy. Well, no. Uh we had standards which are actually more powerful than rules and they're stronger than rules.
So we don't bow to rules, we rise to standards. And there's a book called The Influential Mind by Tally Sheret where she says that in order to understand influence, we've got to respect people's agency. When people are feel they are being that their agents be being removed with rules, they tend to resist that influence like I don't want to be bound down.
I don't want my freedom taken away. You're making all these rules. You can hear a teenager, right?
I hate your rules. Rule, but what standards are is when you come together and you decide how you want to live. Not how you have to live, but how you want to live.
And you say these are the standards that I have. You know, this is my standard of uh going to bed on time so I can be a better basketball player. This is my standard of practice.
This is my standard for my homework, you know, my grades. This is my standard for investing. And you lay down these standards which are which are, you know, they're embracing your freedom because you're choosing them.
And so my job as a father was to help my kids get crystal clear on what they wanted. crystal clear on how they wanted to live and that way they're just living how they want because they're clear on it and then certainly you're going to fall below a standard. Blair Singer says you know he has this thing called responsibility and then you fall below the line and you can blame other people or quit or justify or you know whatever you're going to do as you fall below the line and the idea isn't that you won't fall below the line.
We all do. But the idea is when that happens, are you punished like with a rule? You know, oh, you you're you're going to lose your privileges or get your phone taken away or grounded or whatever the parents do to their kids.
What we would do is if they fell below a standard, we say, well, okay, so that's not the standard that you said you wanted. Has it changed? You know, now that you have a moment of clarity, you can look back on it and see how things went.
uh is that a standard you want to abandon or did you just have a little loss of focus for a minute and you'd like to uh you'd like to you know adhere to that standard and have it part of your life and without exception once they got clear again uh they say yeah that's a uh that's a standard I want to espouse dad so things in our house we have a standard of kindness and how we speak to one another it's a very important standard you know one of our it's something we care about something we value and it's something we want uh to have as a standard. So when you look at teams and community and the mentors around you, uh you want to find people that share your standards. And as soon as people begin to veer out of those standards, you say, "Well, that's probably not a group for me because my standards are different over here.
" And it's not good or bad. It's just a choice of standards, right? There's not some universal list.
Coach Kay really does a good job in his book uh the gold standard of talking about it and he often talks about his US Olympic team. He says we had no rules but we had standards is what he says. So yeah, when you talk about community and and mentors and the team around you and the the clubs you want to be a part of um people with similar standards tend to attract one another.
I >> I I think that's phenomenal. And for me, I I feel like the from a personal standpoint, the universe has been talking a lot about standards to me. I would say and it's been such a topic I've been thinking on and also the goals part.
I've someone who said, you know, maybe switch out the goals for standards, higher standards and the goals, the results get for themselves and >> take care of themselves often they will. Yeah. and uh coach Signetti of IU who just won the national football raised everyone's standards in IU and they became such champions.
It's such a miracle story. >> Um >> my story >> my my question for you and it's it may be my my last question just because of sake of time. If someone wants to stop doing this alone and start building their unfair advantage, what what's one action someone can take this week?
Well, there's a lot of things you could do. Take an inventory who you know and [clears throat] who you know that has a life more like the one you'd like to live and turn them into a mentor. Find out who their mentors are.
If you are interested in wealth building, we have what we call the mentor club, which is a really fun thing. Every Monday we do a trading session. You know, remember how I said I wish I could go to, you know, Greg's office and just watch what a a professional real estate investor does?
Well, you can see what a stock guy does and what we do on a weekly basis. And we've had people in that mentor club for 14 years following what we do. You know, I think it's been around 14 years now.
We uh not quite as old as our company, but 14 years a long time to run a portfolio. So, there's mentorship there. You can go to stockcastbonus.
com and uh and get to know us and you know if you feel we'd be good mentors for you, well that'd be great. We'll mentor each other. But regardless what you do, I'd say that first step is is just as a reminder.
That first step is to stop looking at deals and start looking for people that could help you just change that context, change that shift, and uh you get, you know, ask and you receive, look and you shall find, right? So you'll get what you're looking for. >> Indeed.
Thank you. Well, that concludes our episode. Success leaves clues.
One of the biggest ones is this. The best investors never work alone. They build teams.
They seek mentors. And they compress decades of learning into in of learning into years. And and a big thank you to Andy Tanner for sharing the strategies behind his own unfair advantage.
Personally speaking, Andy has been my mentor through 20 years. So I appreciate you so much. You've been my unfair advantage.
uh in so many ways. And the listener, >> I can't believe we it's that long. My goodness.
20 years. >> 20 years. And when I make business decisions, I hear Andy Tanner whispering on my shoulder as the good angel.
So I I I hope other people get that as well. If if you're listener, if you're ready to stop guessing and start learning from the right people like Andy, go to stockcastbonus. com right now.
You'll find free tools, some great education designed to help you build skills, build confidence, and and and really get some momentum. If you if this episode gave you any value, make sure you like, subscribe, share it with someone who's tired of doing this alone. You are not here by accident.
You're building something that most people won't. So stay smart, stay invested, and we'll see you next time. >> This podcast is a presentation of Rich Dad Media Network.
