LISTEN HERE:
Bert Martinez:
Today on the show, we’re going to be talking about money, your mindset, your relationship to money. Johan Berlin is a financial expert, a money expert, a what I like to call a money mindset expert. And we’re going to be diving into this. Johan, welcome.
Johann Berlin :
Great to be here with you, Bert.
Bert Martinez:
All right, so give us a little bit about your background real quick. How did you go, you know, how did you get to where you’re at today?
Johann Berlin :
A lot of luck. First of all, gotta give credit where credit is due. Like living in an incredibly prosperous country where there is, you know, probabilities where you can jump based on meritocracy. I think context matters so much. We want to put so much on the individual matters a lot. I mean, America, for all its faults, as one of the few places where you could be meritocratic. I have a very German name, Johann Berlin. And I always joke like I would have probably ended up like a chimney mason or something, which nothing against chimney masons, the way they sort people in early education and all those types of things.
Johann Berlin :
So a lot of luck and a lot of the context and benefits of being here in the US and what that makes possible. And then I think of mentors is the other piece that really stands up. I was really fortunate. I wasn’t that interested in academia when I was young. I later have become much more interested in scholarship. But when I was young I wasn’t and had the chance to grow up in an incredibly affluent place, the Monterey Bay Carmel, and have exposure to really incredible business people. And I was one of those kids who would just go around and ask people, do you have any projects? Do you have any? I want to learn business and I want to learn from you. So I would be talking to people in the sauna or whatever.
Johann Berlin :
It is very gracious and ended up getting incredible mentorship both across real estate, running lean businesses at a, at a, at a pretty young age. Like in my 20s when most people are just kind of just going to college, I was sort of running around doing that. And yeah, and then I’ve had the chance now to work with, you know, advise some of the world’s top executives at some of the biggest companies we would know in the world and also work with top investors. Family offices have had a pretty broad aperture into the world of business and. But a lot of my upbringing also comes up. I grew up in a family of psychologists. So this link between our mindset, our interpersonal side, our self beliefs is something that has been sort of in the background my whole life.
Bert Martinez:
All Right. So did your parents or your family, were they helpful when it comes to the money and the mindset and saving and investing, or is that something that you discovered along the way?
Johann Berlin :
So this is, this is a killer question because what. Let’s define helpful. Sometimes our greatest teachers are, are actually our biggest, some of our biggest challenges. And so we were. When we were a kid, we lived in this really nice area. We lost our home in the savings and loans crisis. And part of that was just trying to stretch, maintain a big family. Part of that was systemic to what was happening at that time when the savings and loan crisis happened in the late 80s.
Johann Berlin :
So, yeah, they taught me a lot about what, what not to do, but they weren’t particularly interested in money, surprisingly. They were more interested in personal development, psychology. They were hippies. My dad had come out of the Midwest and it wasn’t really his thing, but they attracted to a place that was very affluent and built their practices there.
Bert Martinez:
Yeah, it’s interesting, I think that there is this, what do you call it, the saying that a lot of Americans or a lot of. Just a lot of people live by that you don’t talk about religion or politics or money.
Johann Berlin :
Yeah. And.
Bert Martinez:
And it’s just interesting to me because those three, those three things tend to be fairly influential, you know, important things. I mean, I know a lot of people maybe not consider religion that, that important, but that changes sometimes. And then you have money and politics and sometimes they go to me anyway, they go hand in hand. I mean, we see now the current administration is, is, I think, making some decisions that we see that it’s affecting money.
Johann Berlin :
Yeah.
Bert Martinez:
And, and you know, you’re paying $10 at the per gallon there in California or close to that in some cases. You know, and, and anyway, so politics and money, I think people are kind of missing the boat. Not talking about it in a safe environment, not.
Johann Berlin :
Yeah.
Bert Martinez:
Not in a rude environment where, you know, people are afraid to ask questions or express opinions. But it’s important stuff and we over it.
Johann Berlin :
Yeah. What’s so interesting, I mean, taking out the current. I think so often we anchor in the current moment and whatever that means, but. Absolutely. Like the policy, the stimulus, the quantitative easing that happens, programs that help people, but also add to budget, all of these things affect. There’s a huge amount of cause and effect happening across all of these systems. But one of the things I love about really studying scholarship and economics, which I’m not a scholar, but I’ve read, you know, maybe 100 books on economics and different philosophy of Economics is that when you actually go back, what you see is that moral philosophy is blended in or totally in the backdrop of how you think about money and economics. And.
Johann Berlin :
But this is one of the few times where it’s not actually like. And, and what happened is, and this goes back, you know, most people in the west were, were say Christian back in the day. And then Nishi actually predicted this. He was kind of against religion for personal reasons. His father was a priest. But he said if you strip away the moral fabric, then what you end up with is kind of a more materialistic sort of wasteland where like people are just pursuing for the sake of pursuing. And so this idea that politics, culture, life, they’re all intersecting and they’re all affecting us, how we think, what we do and all this stuff. But if you go back to the great moral philosophers, they were often economists too.
Johann Berlin :
They weren’t like just in a spreadsheet doing derivative algorithms at University of Chicago, which nothing against that, I admire those people. But it’s stripped of life and context. To your point.
Bert Martinez:
Well, let me ask you this. Do you think most people are broke because they’ve had, they’re bad at math or because they’re psychologically manipulated on a daily basis? What, what’s your take?
Johann Berlin :
Yes, My answer is yes, both. I think that, I think that. So one of the things we say in our upcoming book wealth and why we Seek it is money isn’t just a math problem, it’s also the emotion of money. It’s like the think of the emotional intelligence of finance. Right there, there is an aspect of that and I think so often what we either want to put all the emphasis on the individual or we want to put all the emphasis on the system. Amazon, Netflix, all these companies, really high performing, high octane, working with the top neuroscientists, psychologists, understanding how to hoover up your attention so you spend more time in their ecosystems. Because if you’re the time versus your income equals like the value of those that attention. Right.
Johann Berlin :
And so. Absolutely. And it’s not a new thing like financing schemes that go way back. Like if you look into early credit financing, how to finance machinery or get people to buy stuff that they wouldn’t normally buy or going from a just save and buy kind of culture. Those things have been really meticulously designed to try to reduce the friction into what we buy and. Absolutely. And we were talking rifting on this a bit before the call. Absolutely.
Johann Berlin :
You live up or down to your self concept, your own internal barometer of what am I aiming for in this life. And I think the thing to watch out for there is what I’ll call like just this sort of grit culture which is like just bite down and you’ll make it without. It’s all about self effort. Like no, you need some luck, you need some mentorship. You need to also learn to do things a certain way. And so mindset is critical. There’s actually one story I’m just going to rift for a second here. I remember I was wanting to learn tennis.
Johann Berlin :
I played football in high school and I was like, oh, I thought about playing that in college and I thought I don’t want to get concussions every day, you know, being 170 pound, linebacker, outside linebacker. And so I was like, let me learn tennis. And I remember I was, I was an athlete, I was strong, I was hitting the ball against the wall and one of the former state champions of Georgia tennis walked by and she’s like, hey, you know you’re pretty athletic but maybe you want a lesson. And I was like, why? I’m just. And I thought, oh, she’s trying to get money from me, trying to do something. And then, and then I kind of thought about it when I left and I was like, yeah, maybe I do need to learn how to spin the ball. Maybe I do need to learn how to like set up my feet so that I can. And so one of the investors I’ve learned a lot from says, has this phrase which, you know, he’s one of the top quartile investors in the last 25 years over in Asia Pacific region.
Johann Berlin :
And he always says, be structured to be lucky.
Bert Martinez:
I like that.
Johann Berlin :
Be structured in your life to be lucky. And so part of that is like knowing how to do that. Family offices have incredible tax advisors. You know, they get access into certain types of deals. So there’s definitely a systems part of it. There’s a preparation, self effort part of it and then there’s a belief part of it. If I was going to put like a third concentric circle there.
Bert Martinez:
Yeah, I think that, that we’re constantly teaching our kids.
Johann Berlin :
Right.
Bert Martinez:
So, so if your children have seen, you know, you to be abundant, let’s say you had the abundant mindset or a money mindset, whatever you want to call it, I think it’s going to be easier for them to understand. Oh, this is just the way things work, you know, this is how, you know, it’s normal to do X, you know, X, Y and Z to get this financial result. We see that the opposite right where You. You grew up in a family that’s constantly talking about how broke they are and how unfair it is and how the system is rigged and they pass that on to their kids as well.
Johann Berlin :
Yeah, yeah, both happen. I mean, we’re. I guess one thing I would ask the listeners. How many of your beliefs about money did you choose? Right.
Bert Martinez:
It’s a great question.
Johann Berlin :
How many did you say? Like, this is. This is aligned with me as an adult, as somebody with my own life experience, looking at society, looking at politics, looking at economics and work, that I chose this criteria of success versus social media. If you’re a young person, you’re just being assimilated into whatever or, you know, magazine and all this. This stuff, culture and the. When we were growing up. So how many of those beliefs did you choose versus did you inherit? And usually it’s very few. Like, in all the clients we work with in Truworth, like, most of them are inherited beliefs, and they didn’t define that for themselves. And so that’s where I would really start is, like, when you reject something.
Johann Berlin :
I learned this from an amazing meditation teacher named Sri Sri Ravi Shankar. When you reject something or you avert something, you become closer to it, right? Usually we want to either, like, reject it or we crave it. And neither is great, because when you’re craving something, you just fulfill that craving. And this was such a profound insight I learned through practicing meditation and doing that type of thing that you just go from desire to desire. Right. But when you avert something, it’s actually with you more than the things that. That you don’t. That you don’t think about it more because it dominates your mind.
Johann Berlin :
And. And I think that that’s so often we want to resist. Like, I don’t want to be like my parents, or I want to be better. I crave to be better than my parents or whatever it is. Like, you know.
Bert Martinez:
Well, and it’s funny you bring that up, because the whole philosophy. Philosophy, or at least one of the philosophies there in the Law of Attraction, is that sometimes saying, I don’t want something attracts it just as much as saying, I want something. Because we’re thinking about it so much, we have this chronic way of talking to ourselves.
Johann Berlin :
Exactly, exactly. So how many of those thought patterns have we just been carrying since childhood, to your point? And then where do you want to interrupt and introduce? So, Right. Like, if you don’t interrupt, then you just end up on a. Like, it may change over time, but they’re sort of like a Perpetual motion. And it just, it sort of evolves. You’re, at this point, you’re averting this, at this time, you’re craving that, so you kind of get stuck there.
Bert Martinez:
Yeah, no, that’s really true, you know, because you mentioned social media several times, and I think social media is. Is affecting us both in the good and the bad. But it seems like. And I want to get your thoughts on this. Are we living in the first economy designed specifically to hijack human behavior?
Johann Berlin :
I mean, it’s hard. Like when you read about what the effect that the printing press had on people. I love history. So, like, I love reading history, like common Sense as an example. Just it was a book about royal families and. And it just completely cracked open. It was one of the reasons that started America. So that definitely hijacked people’s attention at dinner tables and this and that.
Johann Berlin :
I think it’s the speed of it and the sophistication of it and the fact that one of these is following us everywhere we go and that we’re living so much of our life in these kind of digital channels. And how much control, like, how much control does a road sign have over you or a commercial on your tv? It used to be like whenever you were sitting and watching TV or whatever. Now it’s all the time, all the time. And you’re in the mountain of impressions. One of the startups I was part of earlier was a neuroscience company, and it looked at emotion, feeling, thought, and executive regulation. So the amount of unconscious stuff that we’re taking in before we pause for some executive regulation, before we make a decision or a purchase or anything else, absolutely. I think that that’s really important. And one of my friends, Dr.
Johann Berlin :
Seppala, who used to run the center for Compassion at Stanford, she talks a lot about social connection and belonging and the sense of our subjective sense of where we feel we belong and where we don’t feel we belong. And there’s also a lot of interesting social science around this stuff because now just going back to social media used to be we grew up, we compared ourselves to the people in our high school class, maybe our town. Right now, I’m competing against if I’m a young person again, AI. Perfect AI. Imagine you’re an acting student. A perfect AI actor out there can do any voice, any impersonation, anything. The most, all the filters. So you see this a lot with girls in social media around.
Johann Berlin :
My wife and I are very involved in mental health stuff for youth. You see that the social comparison is crazy. So we’ve Went from comparing ourselves with a small group, a small band of people, just whatever the algorithm wants to feed us. And so. Absolutely. And then I think the last thing I’ll say on this is just like. And there’s been some really interesting writing on this, like Jonathan Haidt and other people, but just around outrage culture. I remember a few years ago I hosted a concert online during COVID and like a benefit concert.
Johann Berlin :
And we got some really great artists, like a nationally recognized artist to come. And you know, we run it. We ran some ads on Facebook to try and get people to show up. And all these trolls started commenting in the page and like fighting about like stuff that had nothing to do with the concert. And then they started fighting with each other and it would just. So the incentives toward outrage and those types of things are. And you see that in the polarization that we have here. And what’s kind of sad about that, just tying this back to money is that I think a lot of people, it’s like there’s a lot of people who are actually just kind of exhausted by it.
Johann Berlin :
And there’s also what I’ll call like a certain level of nihilism with young people, which is one of the reasons we really wanted to write our book where they’re just throwing money into gambling apps. Basically. Like even if it’s like fractional shares and people are making money in the flows, you know, they’re making money in all the action that you’re doing. And it hits those parts of the brain that are what are described as multi variable, multi ratio reward systems. So sometimes you’re up, sometimes you’re down. When something the compounding or the Buffett style of just like keep compounding away, like slow and steady wins the race, that is the opposite. And so these things are interlinked. You look at the fin influencers on social media, it’s like a lot of fast talking people, who knows they sound good, but are there credentials there? Do they have any experience? And then a lot of the investment apps which are people are like, well, let me buy some meme stock, let me buy some meme coins or let me just throw some money around a robinhood.
Johann Berlin :
And I feel great when I get a win and I just ignore the losses and the fees that are piling up.
Bert Martinez:
Real quick, let’s talk about that. When you say a meme stock or a meme coin, find that for our listeners a little bit more.
Johann Berlin :
Yeah, so you could say that like not a top expert in these things. So just people should do their own Research. But a Meme stock is like, it’s a caricature of a thing. So, like, Doge is a famous. It kind of falls in both of those. No underlying value other than that people buy it and they sell it. So when lots of people are buying it, because it’s getting lots of attention on Reddit, price going up, you feel fantastic. And there are people who have made millions of dollars, you know, buying a Meme coin and then promoting it.
Johann Berlin :
And there, there’s sort of a feeding frenzy. The other famous one that happened was GameStop recently. So you have. What are the underlying fundamentals of. You would argue this is a business in decline for a long time, and then there’s a nostalgia for it. Even though people don’t buy their games at GameStop anymore, they buy them through the PlayStation app or the Xbox app. A bunch of people got on Reddit and started saying, hey, let’s. Because these Wall street people are shorting this company we love.
Johann Berlin :
Let’s buy it up, let’s drive up the price of it. And so it’s not based on, it’s not based on any economic, fundamentally sound investment thesis, except exploiting human behavior. Exactly. And people pump and dump these things. And so you see that. And there’s a lot of famous examples I won’t get into with kind of, you know, the President has a coin, but there’s not much underlying value to these things. They don’t have actually sound underlying value. There’s no real assets backing them.
Johann Berlin :
There’s no revenue, like in the way that we would think about investing in a traditional business.
Bert Martinez:
Well, I’m fascinated. You know, there’s Cathy woods, who’s fairly influential, and she’s had some success, and she made some. What do you call it? It wasn’t a press release, but she was on. She made some mention that in her belief, Bitcoin is going to reach a million dollars per share. I thought to myself, how are you an investor? Yeah, you know, because really, to your point about, I don’t care what coin you’re in, first of all, we, if anybody does just a small amount of research, you will see that just about every crypto coin out there has either you know, imploded, exploded, it’s been part of a scam. You know, the matter of fact, there is this guy that the, the President Trump just pardoned. He was the CEO of Binance, lost billions of dollars. And, and, and, but here’s Cathie woods that a lot of people respect.
Bert Martinez:
And she made this statement that she thought, hey, Bitcoin’s going to reach a million dollars a share.
Johann Berlin :
Yeah.
Bert Martinez:
It shouldn’t, should be trade. First of all, I don’t understand why these coins are trading. Because as you pointed out, they make no revenue, they have no assets. It’s completely fixed, you know, fiction. Right. And if you and I had a company that made nothing, produced no profit, lynch and say, hey, let’s take this company public, people will buy, you know, people will buy it. It’s almost like that Seinfeld episode where, where you know, the guy says to George, why is anybody watching this show? Well, because it’s on tv.
Johann Berlin :
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Bert Martinez:
Certain amount of truth to that that, you know, you got some people out there who are trading these crypto coins and, and you know, these mean stocks and, and like you said, the people who get in early enough and have enough influence can drive it up. They’ll make a bunch of money. Everybody else will lose.
Johann Berlin :
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, I’ll just steal just for the sake. I don’t. I, I agree with, with a lot of that. I’ll just steal, man. What, what they, what people would say back. So they would say, well, what is the value of gold? You know, what, what is the real value of gold? All it is is, it’s an agreed upon. It’s an agreed upon store of value.
Johann Berlin :
Right? So there is, there’s some subjective. So okay, fine, so then, but then that doesn’t really hold up because if you actually look at like big swings up in the stock market have. I haven’t looked at this recently, but I’ve seen graphs where that leads to people buying more of these things. It’s not like going the other way. So you got signals going all over the place. You also don’t have the test of time of like, is this really a store of value? And I think that probably the strongest argument for it because I know that a lot of young people really, really like it. Is that just the dilution of money? And when we’ve taken money off of the gold standard, I actually think that that’s all, that’s all fine. Like, you know, people can invest their money where they want and they may make some money like that.
Johann Berlin :
One of the things that I’ve been terrible at is I always under predict how long something can go for. That doesn’t is irrational. Like I’m terrible, I’m terrible, man. Like, I’ll be like, okay, this is like this has. This investment I made has really exploded. Like now it’s getting into like another realm of like Valuation. So I’m just going to take, take my win and you know, look for something else that’s maybe underappreciated. And man, the thing just keeps running and running and running and running.
Johann Berlin :
And like, you know, it has been an incredibly unrewarding time for value investors or people who are like really deeply steeped in fundamentals because, and this goes back to your Cathie Wood comment, and I don’t know her, I, you know, I don’t follow her.
Bert Martinez:
I just thought for some, you know, for somebody who’s influential, who makes it. Yeah, he has a couple of different funds saying that bitcoin should be valued.
Johann Berlin :
Based on what? I mean, what.
Bert Martinez:
Yeah, for everybody out there. You cannot spell crypto without cry, you know, and most people who invest in crypto, including sophisticated people like Mark Cuban, have lost it all, you know, have lost all their investment to crypto scams and, and things like that. But yeah, crypto, I’m sorry, bitcoin, any, any coin out there should have a value of zero. Because look, if you and I have a bunch of gold and let’s. Gold goes to zero. Yeah, we can melt it down. We can still make jewelry that’s got value. We can use it in electronics that has value.
Bert Martinez:
I think that you can use it for some medical stuff. I mean, it’s a hard asset that even if somebody says, I’m not in the mood to spend X amount of dollar per ounce of gold, but I’m going to melt it down and use it for something. It’s got a use to it.
Johann Berlin :
Yeah, sure.
Bert Martinez:
With crypto you got nothing.
Johann Berlin :
Yeah, yeah.
Bert Martinez:
At the end of the day, you got nothing.
Johann Berlin :
Yeah, yeah. Well, I actually think, going back to this nihilism point, I actually think that’s a big part of it. So all these things are rationales and going back, there are a lot of what, like whenever I’ve spent time with really serious family offices and investors, they, they don’t love the people who just want to get on TV and pontificate. Now look, it’s an incredible way to asymmetrically market yourself. If you’re someone like Cathie Wood, right. Like every time she says something like that, like it’s however much free publicity for her fund and people know her name. Like there are a lot of top quartile investors I’ve met who are very rigorous, very like sound, strong tight thesis where they really map their assumptions and you can see how they do against their outcomes. They’re not just kind of jumping with the current of whatever’s happening.
Johann Berlin :
And nobody knows their name. Nobody knows their name. And so I think that, I think that’s so much of. And kudos to her, like, whatever, like, she’s, she’s managed to do that, but I tend to be more like that. And like, that’s Charlie Munger, right. And Buffet, when they were asked about these things, they were just like, what are we even talking about? You know, like they said some cheeky line, basically, like, not for me.
Bert Martinez:
So, you know, again, rest in peace, Charlie Munger, Warren Buffett. First of all, these guys did not seek out publicity.
Johann Berlin :
Yeah, yeah.
Bert Martinez:
You know, the media sought them out because they had, you know, decades and decades of winnings. Right. And they weren’t boastful and stuff like that. And, and so unlike some of these other people, especially you mentioned these, these people on social media, and you and I were talking before the show that, you know, there’s a bunch of fake people on social media that have no money, have tons of debt, and they rent everything, but they look good, they smell good until you scratch the surface. But bottom line, Charlie Munger and Warren Buffett, kind of like you were talking about their value investors, they’re looking for, hey, this stock, I think should be trading at a hundred dollars, but it’s trading at $50. We’re gonna buy it.
Johann Berlin :
Yeah, yeah, yeah, no. And then, so I tend to be more drawn to that. Like, I remember one of my clients, a fund manager, he made me read like, you know, tons and tons of Buffett newsletters. Like, just, just read them, highlight them. We would talk about them on Sundays and, you know, incredible, incredible wisdom there. And so contrarian to the, to the, to the world that we live in now, which is narrative driven exploitation of, like, human psychology and a sense that housing prices, asset inflation is crazy. I might as well throw my lot into this kind of momentum volatility. I might hit big versus what looks like a pretty uphill battle otherwise.
Johann Berlin :
And so I think, yeah, it’s a dance. But one of the best talks I ever heard was a talk by Charlie Munger at Harvard talking on human psychology. He was a student of you. It’s an incredible. If people haven’t seen it, you should go on YouTube. And it’s an incredible talk by Charlie Munger, just talking about these different aspects of human psychology that affect us. And I can’t underestimate for people listening how important that is. If you don’t understand human psychology and how it relates to how you deal with money when you buy, when you sell what you buy when you buy it, then you will be hijacked by it.
Johann Berlin :
But if you do have some basic understanding, then you have some choice, then you can, then you can, you know, in moments of pause realize, hey, you know, I’m probably going to fall into greater fool theory here of just buying something. Because if everybody’s saying this is what’s crazy about people going in the media and saying stuff, if you’re sitting with a really sophisticated family officer investor, I’ll tell you exactly what they’re not doing when they haven’t bought their position. It’s going and telling everybody about this amazing asymmetric idea, right? If they’re telling you about it, they’re probably talking their own book and they probably got in at a very different valuation than whatever you’re hearing. And so I always have this thing like sometimes my dad will call me and he’ll say, hey, you know what about Nvidia? My friend just called me and told me that my dad has nothing, no interest in finance or anything like that. So I’m like, dad, if your friend is calling you and telling you, we are already into like the greater fool theory of this and that’s nothing against Nvidia, it’s a very good company, but just amounts staggering multiples that some of these companies trade for. It’s crazy that human. We underestimate that human psychology. We like to think that we’re totally rational beings, but we’re not.
Johann Berlin :
And often we’re driven. And this is a lot of what our book is about. We’re driven by different motivations. Like for some people it’s security, for some people it’s status. And if you don’t know what you’re being driven by, what those beliefs you’re carrying forward are, you are very easily exploited. You are very easily exploited. Your human psychology is absolutely.
Bert Martinez:
No, I agree with you. I think that what sets Warren Buffett and Munger apart from anybody else is that they’ll, as you mentioned, they’re contrarian. Well, if everybody else is buying, they’re selling. And if everybody else is selling, that’s when they’re buying. That in itself, if people will just write that down, they’ll probably start making money. But I want to talk about the psychology, the behavior behind it, because I think that’s, I think that’s probably the biggest issue. And I want to get your take on this because it’s not just a math problem. I mean, you always hear people saying, I don’t have enough money to invest, but that’s a self limiting Belief because you can start with anything and build up from there.
Bert Martinez:
But let’s talk about the behavioral or the psychology behind money and people’s limiting beliefs because in my opinion, that’s probably what kills most of us.
Johann Berlin :
Yeah. Yeah. Well, you live up or down to your self concept. It’s probably the first and most foundational point. If you think, you know, I, if you, if your mindset is I’m, that I don’t have enough, then you will live up to just not having enough. Like you may even come close to breaking that barrier or break it for a minute. But you will almost always revert back to wherever your self concept is. I remember reading my early twenties about the idea of the self concept.
Johann Berlin :
And so we will live up or down to it. And the second is be very intentional to choose your own marker because otherwise you will assimilate. You will spend your life pursuing something that you didn’t even choose as a criteria of success. So I think that’s the second. And then the third is do not underestimate. Do not underestimate. Small wins. Small wins make us believe that it’s possible.
Johann Berlin :
It’s easy to get like all hyped up in a real estate workshop on the weekend or something else and like we’re going to be, you know, the next mini mogul of this or that. And that’s great. That enthusiasm will taper off though, if you don’t start getting small wins. And small wins can be, you know, foundational knowledge. Small wins can be some money. It’s not just money. If you don’t have, if you have money and you don’t have foundational knowledge, then you will probably put that money in places that you should not be. And then the last thing I’ll say is that do not try to be a genius in these things.
Johann Berlin :
There are really, really smart, sophisticated people out there who cannot maintain performance over the long term. If you look at like top quartile performers, I remember reading these star, these, these studies on rising stars in investment world, almost always they revert back and even like the top, most legendary investors that we would hear of. For those people who are like enthusiasts like us, like they usually had an edge at a given point and for that edge to keep going almost never happens. Right. It’s like there’s a moment in time where you have an edge and then you don’t. And so don’t try to be that. And is it? I see one of the interviews I did, I have a. Was with the, I was interviewing the chief economist at Something called the Constellation Fund.
Johann Berlin :
And he was just talking about the studies around compound, the power of compound and the power of having a savings account, like, as a kid. So let’s just take, you know, we kind of disparage from a bit. Let’s just say one good thing he’s done. The Trump account is like a very sensible, practical thing for a kid to have. Even if you don’t like Trump and you hate the name, like, for a kid to know that they have money in an account somewhere. And this is what he was sharing with me, the psychology of that, what that does for that person, that child, is really powerful because it sets the baseline of that versus every time we have money, we go spend it on a luxury like McDonald’s or something like that. Like, because. And I don’t judge parents who do that.
Johann Berlin :
They’re trying to offer something loving toward their kids. There’s actually really interesting cultural studies around these things. They’re trying to offer a treat and like, they don’t have a lot to give. And so they’re giving what they think it’s going to be. That kid having a savings account, that 20 bucks or 30 bucks being there. It doesn’t have the same sugar rush as like drinking a Coke at McDonald’s, but credibly powerful foundational things. So this last one, small wins are super important because they create the belief. It goes from an idea to.
Johann Berlin :
This belief has momentum. This belief is actually possible. For me, I can see that if I take this step and this step and this step. And that is not appreciated because like you said, people are on social media with their rented cars and this and that. And it’s like, I want to go from here to there. And that’s never how it happens. When you talk to people who have. Who have.
Johann Berlin :
Who have kind of built their own wealth. That never is like that, you know, that’s just. You’re just seeing the end result. And the other thing, I’ll say there is just a wealthy life is not just money. And you can have a balanced good life. You can save money so you have enough for retirement and you can live a very good life. You can have family. It’s not.
Johann Berlin :
Those external status symbols are fleeting. They’re like fool’s gold. I love nice things. You can see I got nice artwork in the back here. I love nice things. Nice things will never make your life whole by themselves. You can appreciate them. I love art.
Johann Berlin :
I like old M3s. I have two old M3s. I love them. I love the engineering of Them. But if you think that status is going to define you. And we were actually recently just in Rolling Stones, and one of the things we were talking about is, like, when you’re working with an artist who’s been a number one artist on a billboard, and then suddenly they’re not for 10 years, it almost feels like they never were. Right. It’s fleeting.
Johann Berlin :
Fame is fleeting. Wealth is fleeting. These things are what really build the fabric of a wealthy life. And we define wealth in the book as our time, where we put our time where we put our attention. Right. And then the resources that we have. And that if that time and attention is also invested in human relationships, you see so many people just living online or young people who don’t have that many friends, like, really encourage you, take it me. It requires taking a risk to go out and meet people.
Johann Berlin :
And one of the foundational skills in business and finding mentors and finding people who can help you is you got to go out and take a risk, you know?
Bert Martinez:
Absolutely. You know, real quick, since you’ve mentioned finding a mentor a couple of times, there’s a great video out there. It’s an old video, but it’s Steve Jobs.
Johann Berlin :
Yeah.
Bert Martinez:
And he, first of all, he talks about, he called up the CEO of Hewlett Packard and said, hey, I need help, and they gave it to him. And. And he talks about that he has found that if you go and ask for help, 90% of the time, you’ll get it. And he said, a lot of people don’t want to ask for help because of either. They’re, you know, they’re afraid of being rejected or a pride or whatever. But it’s a great little video. You guys can find it out there. I’ll put a link here in the show notes.
Bert Martinez:
And then also, I want to comment on this. As far as small wins, what got me feeling a little bit more confident about investing. And this is. And this is a small win, I can say. Decades ago, I was being charged for my checking account, and I didn’t find that to be very pleasant. It was a small amount, 10, 20 bucks, whatever it is. And I asked the teller, how do I get to stop that? I don’t like you guys taking money out of my bank account. And she said, oh, you have to have a minimum of $1,000 in our bank, you know, and it could be a combination of checking and savings or a CD or whatever, but some combination.
Bert Martinez:
If you have $1,000 or more, then you won’t be charged that monthly fee. And so my first investment goal was to put a thousand dollars in that bank so I could stop paying whatever that monthly fee was.
Johann Berlin :
Yeah.
Bert Martinez:
So it doesn’t. Again, it’s a small win, but compounded over decades, you know, it’s hundreds of dollars, and that’s now thousands of dollars that I’ve been able to save over the decades. And that I think that that kind of decade thinking.
Johann Berlin :
Yes.
Bert Martinez:
Difference between a Warren Buffett, a Charlie Munger, and the average person out there that doesn’t understand that, because I’ve heard both Charlie and, and Warren Buffett say, we don’t know when to buy necessarily or when to sell, but we know that we’re going to buy it today and we’re going to sell it 10 years from today at a higher price.
Johann Berlin :
Yeah. Yeah.
Bert Martinez:
And to your point, most people are saying, I want to invest $500 and make a million tomorrow.
Johann Berlin :
Yeah.
Bert Martinez:
My million. I’m out of here.
Johann Berlin :
Yeah. Yeah. Know that deferred gratification, that there’s a reason that the, the, one of the, the only approved biography on Buffett that I know of is called Snowball. It’s this idea of the power of compound and, and that discipline and. Yeah, no, that’s. Those are great points. Those are great points.
Bert Martinez:
So back to, back to, again, this, the psychology, the, the way we feel about money, because there are some very smart people out there that still make terrible money decisions. I’m gonna, I’m gonna, I’m going to pick on Kathy again because I think her statement was just outrageously stupid. But, but, but that’s true, though. I mean, there are some very, very smart people out there who make horrible decisions based on how they feel.
Johann Berlin :
Yeah.
Bert Martinez:
And so how do we go about fixing this? How do, how do you help clients get over this?
Johann Berlin :
Yeah. Yeah. So it’s a combination of two things. Self awareness and then small actions. So this is, this is the thing. Like, you need to be self aware, so you know what to disrupt. And then you need the ability to pause, and then you need, you need to take some actions. It’s a lot of people know, and you and I would know a lot of people like this.
Johann Berlin :
They’ve read all the books, they know all the things, and they don’t do any of them. You know, they’ll debate you on anything over dinner. But, like, when you actually look at, like, what is the alignment? So knowing better doesn’t mean we’ll do different. Knowing better doesn’t mean we’ll do different. And I think that is a really important thing. Right. So that’s how that’s a lot of what we do. So our book is really about what are these different foundational motivations for money.
Johann Berlin :
And there’s, you know, it could be meaning, it could be, it could be status, it could be security. What are those things that are really underlying for me? And then know more about that, know more about the individual social contracts that you’ve opted into around your money, your psychology of money, your emotions of money. Right. And have some self awareness around that because self awareness equals power to choose. As I was saying earlier, the second thing is you got to do stuff, you got to do small wins, you got to do small disruptions. And I think the big thing is people. In the same way you were talking about with money, where I want to go from 500 to a million, we want to go from, oh, I have some self awareness. I can see it clearly now.
Johann Berlin :
I want to change everything, I want to change everything tomorrow. And that never holds up, that never works because you’re just like, it lasts for maybe an hour or maybe a week or maybe a month, but you don’t change everything about it. Those other patterns are deeply ingrained in how we operate and how we operate in our environment, how we operate in our relationship. You won’t do it. So finding small time bound things. So all of our like exercises in our journeys, they usually take less than like 5, 10 minutes to like do something. And so what is that doing? That’s flipping. I mean we’re talking about people who have a lot of overconfidence or maybe lunge in.
Johann Berlin :
There’s a lot of people who just. Huge percentage of people who just feel overwhelmed. Oh yeah, avoid and don’t look. So what is this doing? Why, why is that important? Well, when we have the self understanding, it means we can’t be preyed on in the same way. People can’t take advantage of my need for status or my need for feel like I’m having an impact in the world or whatever it is, or my security mindset. You know what the small wins do is they take this from maybe a feeling of overwhelm to I can actually do something here. Because you start believing you can do something about it when you start having those, those things. So we’ve created a series of journeys that people go through.
Johann Berlin :
One of them is called a seven day shift where you make seven small shifts over seven days. And then the other one is called a money story rewrite where we really dig into what are our underlying beliefs about money and what do I want them to be going forward and you start getting some wins along that, that journey. And we wanted to build something like a lot of the things that I’ve, the top psychologist and money performance coaches that I’ve seen over the years that work with the elite family offices and things like that, we really wanted to build something that would be accessible to anybody, like at a price point that was much more like feasible and people could go in on their own and do that. We obviously work with some people in more premium services, but we really wanted to say, hey, if you’re a college student or you’re somebody who’s just kind of mid career and you’re, you’re feeling overwhelmed by all this, you’re feeling pessimistic about the economy and you want to just like drop this general. The amount of financial anxiety people feel, Bert, is crazy.
Bert Martinez:
It’s just, it because it’s overwhelming. Look, right now if you and I jump onto Google and say I want to open up a cd, there’s, there’s, there’s. First of all, there’s a bunch of people offering you different CD services. Second of all, there’s a bunch of people telling you never, never open up a cd. There’s a bunch of people telling you you should always have a cd. And it’s like, who do you believe? They all sound confident. Oh, this guy knows exactly what they’re talking about.
Johann Berlin :
Exactly
Bert Martinez:
what happens as humans when we get overwhelmed, we don’t do anything, we just shut down. And again, back to your. I like your analogy of we’re going to do everything all at once and then we end up doing nothing. And we see this, you know, the month of January where we’re all going to get in shape and save all this money.
Johann Berlin :
Yeah, exactly, exactly. So that’s, I mean that’s a key. But a couple of things that would help people. So those are, those are ideas. One is have goals. Like the power of having. So goals is kind of like whatever New Year’s goals, that’s what people think of work goals. I the really the purpose of that is having a vision in your life.
Johann Berlin :
The studies that have been done on people, companies that have a vision versus don’t have a vision. And this goes back to that point. You live up or down having a vision for your life is when you hold something in your mind’s eye and it’s not a fleeting thought or like a phase and it’s like you really want that. That’s really powerful. Having a vision for your life. And it could be a vision to be of service to others. It could be a vision to accumulate resources so you can help the. Loved ones that you need.
Johann Berlin :
Or it could be a vision because your vision is really, really powerful. And without vision, you default to fear. You default to fear because your vision needs to be stronger then all the things that are coming at you about wars, about this, about that. If your vision is more tangible, more concrete, and you believe it, it’s easy to talk a. Talk you, you hear people talk about, I’m going to do this, I’m going to do that, fine. They don’t. You can tell when the words are fleeting, when people don’t actually believe it, when it’s not embodied, when it’s not clear, specific in a certain way. And to caveat that, though, I’ll say, always leave room for this or something better.
Johann Berlin :
That’s another thing I learned from my meditation teacher. Don’t be so fixated on something that you’re closed off to something better, closed off to emergent possibility. Because when you’re on a path, you may find other paths. When you’re actually moving, you may find other paths that are good and unexpected. And this is that thing of risk and rejection that you were touching on earlier. Rejection. It’s fascinating. When you look at the neuroscience, it’s connected to the pain part of the brain. This is so important.
Johann Berlin :
Because what stops us? So I have a vision. What stops us? I don’t want to get rejected.
Bert Martinez:
Right?
Johann Berlin :
Right. I don’t want to fail. Because if I fail, then it means that I wasn’t what I thought I was. So it’s safer to just say that I’m doing it and never actually take a chance. But you never get there that way. You’ll never get there that way.
Bert Martinez:
Well, and I want to, I want to explore this because right now, as you know, we have tons of financial apps. And you remember if it was in, in your TEDx talk or several of the articles that I, I read about you, because again, it might have been USA Today or, or the Rolling Stones or one of the other ones. But, but you mentioned, or you talk about that, that financial apps are not necessarily there to make us wiser. They’re designed to, you know, make you take action or I think even trip, you know, trigger your dopamine. Talk about why you think these apps are not there to make us wiser.
Johann Berlin :
If it’s free, you’re the product. This is a rule of thumb. If it’s free, you are the product. Your data, your attention.
Bert Martinez:
Oh, I see. Gotcha. Just Just like, yeah, they’re selling your, you’re saying they’re selling your stuff away.
Johann Berlin :
Yeah, absolutely. They’re, they are. And they are taking your wealth. If you define wealth as your time and your attention and your resources, they’re taking your wealth. Maybe you love what you’re getting in return, but you’re spending your wealth there. Your time is your wealth, your attention is your wealth. And then if you’re, let’s say you’re an Amazon. Why does Amazon have Prime Video, all these other things? Because you click over your.
Johann Berlin :
You’ve habituated so many times that you don’t even think about it going to Amazon. Now you’re buying stuff. Now you’re this, now you’re getting your health care from there. They’re creating a whole ecosystem where they keep your attention in there. And that is really, really powerful. And so, yeah, if you do, if, if, if you don’t understand your own money psychology, and this is what I mean by exploit, people will exploit the weaknesses in that. Instagram will show you the reels that will absolutely hit your need for security. Maybe it’s like some fear mongering of something or maybe it’s, you know, status chasing and like they will get you.
Johann Berlin :
And so, and yeah, what’s kind of sad though, Bert, is if you look at like social connection among people, we get these dope, these digital dopamine hits you were touching on, which is like basically just like the rewards part of our brain. It’s like, with some, it’s like, it’s like we’re being trained to keep going back into these things. And I’m not even putting a value judgment on them. Just don’t think they’re there for your benefit. Know that you’re the product if it’s free. If, if you know, a financial trading app is making it really easy and incentivizing you to go on there. Ask yourself why. You know, like, probably because they’re making money on the flows of your transactions and not on you as a customer, not what you’re paying to be there, if you’re paying at all.
Johann Berlin :
So yeah, no, this is, this is the key thing. And you have to know, and this is where the system is real, right, Is really there to hijack your attention. And they are good at it. And so your own vision for your life and where you want to put your wealth. One of the things that’s blown my mind since we started doing this venture is we’re working with like, we’re working with all kinds of people, but some of them. They have tons of money coming in. It actually isn’t that they have money coming in, but they have the same challenges. Actually.
Johann Berlin :
They’re not. Their self concept is somewhere else. So they feel like they have. When do they actually get to feel like they made it?
Bert Martinez:
Right?
Johann Berlin :
It doesn’t. It’s like a moving target. It’s like you get there and. Or they have just lifestyle inflation blowing up.
Bert Martinez:
Yeah, Somebody called it lifestyle creep.
Johann Berlin :
Right? Yeah.
Bert Martinez:
So you’re making 100 grand a year. You’re living 100 grand a year life or maybe 120 grand a year life. And then you, you get it to 500 grand and you’re doing the same thing. It’s your, your, your, your. What do you call it? There’s no margin there. You’re ding, ding.
Johann Berlin :
Yeah. And you’re usually living beyond wherever you are. And, and yeah, and, and a lot of financing mechanism. This has been going on for a long time. That, that particular piece has been going on for a long time. But I’m an optimist, Bert. Like, I really feel like, I think our country has a lot of challenges. If you’re listening to this from the US I think that there’s incredible opportunity here.
Johann Berlin :
This is one of the few places in the world where, you know, I open with this, where meritocracy still matters. I’m so grateful for that in my own life. I’m really genuinely so grateful for that. Because it’s not about where you start,
Bert Martinez:
you know, I mean, think about this. The reason or not the only reason, one of the reasons that we’re. That racial equality has improved as much as it has is really because of athletes who were out there and based on their, based on their own, what do you call it, actions. People said, well, you know, maybe this race isn’t what we thought it was. And you know, and things of that nature. So things have changed. They change for African Americans that way, they’ve changed for women that way. Because again, at one point I’ve always said this, look at America is a equal opportunity abuser and, or discriminator.
Bert Martinez:
At one point, every immigrant that has come to America was abused, including the Native Americans.
Johann Berlin :
Right.
Bert Martinez:
And at the same time, you can overcome those obstacles based on your own actions. And so I agree with you. America is great. One of the few places where your actions back to your vision and your actions create your reality.
Johann Berlin :
Yeah, yeah. And look, there are systemic, like I do not want to gaslight people. People have gone up against systems, systemic, structural systems. Absolutely. Should it be that hard for people. No, but the fact that people have persevered through challenges and made it through is possible here and also incredible. It is part of what it is the myth of this country that the rest of the world has fallen in love with. Now, whether or not we live into that myth is important.
Johann Berlin :
And should there be those, the structural challenges? Like, absolutely not. There should not be. But it doesn’t mean that they have to define you. And the fact that that probability even exists there should give people hope. Should give people hope. You know, like I don’t. You, you, where you start is not necessarily where you want to end up and to empathize with people. I know a lot of people feel like they’re up against it.
Johann Berlin :
They feel like they’re student loans. They feel like the system triggered against them. It could be because of like things that you’re talking about right now, or it could be other things. They just feel that way. But don’t be against yourself. Don’t I mean your own psychology be against yourself.
Bert Martinez:
Absolutely. And, and yes, gas prices are going up and they may continue to go up. We’re seeing that with food prices again because one affects the other. And food was going up before that with all the tariff wars for lack of better terms. Travel has become more expensive. And my answer to all of that is so what? Who cares? Because that’s a distraction and that builds fear. And so back to what you’re talking about with having this psychology. If you have a vision, and I love this idea that you live up or down to the personal concept in your head, who cares? Because yes, gas prices are going to go up and they’re going to.
Bert Martinez:
Whatever happens happens. But if you have a vision for yourself, a financial plan and you’re taking these consistent actions, you’ll eventually overcome all of this crap.
Johann Berlin :
Key point, Bert. And this is a really thing important to hammer on before we end the interview. Tell me someone who has achieved anything that did not have to adapt, that did not have adaptive challenges. Adaptive challenges can lead to incredible creativity or, or if you’re weak minded, they can lead to frustration because you just say, oh, this is hard, I’m frustrated. The adaptive challenges will come. Today it’s gas prices, tomorrow it’s something else. And the truth is that is that inner. And this was a lot of the.
Johann Berlin :
I ran a Leadership Institute for 10 years working with top leaders at top institutions. That ability to have that inner agility is still so important. It is so important. And so people can’t invest enough in that. Understand your own mind. You Know, like, for me, I learned to meditate. I learned to do other things, to have that pause. And really, if, you know, some people love running.
Johann Berlin :
Whatever it is, whatever it is, invest in yourself. Don’t be against yourself. Because if you’re against yourself or your beliefs are working against you and the world is challenging and. And it’s competitive anyway, not big challenges. Right.
Bert Martinez:
Absolutely. You know what? One of the great things about having this show is that again, over the decades, I’ve interviewed and become friends with some very big achievers, one of them being Schwarzenegger. So I’ve had the pleasure of hanging out with him. I’ve done some work for one of his charities. I’ve been to his home, and he’s got this ridiculous belief that he can do it. Now, that has come over time. You know, he talks about. It’s all about reps.
Bert Martinez:
And he, you know, he takes what he’s learned in the gym and he applies it to everything else. And he says, at one point in my life, I could not bench 500 pounds. I failed over and over and over again. And then eventually I did it.
Johann Berlin :
Yeah.
Bert Martinez:
So he took that and applied it to acting. And, you know, and when you listen to this guy, even today, even though he’s improved tremendously, he still has a very thick accent and things of that nature. Just about everybody has an Arnold. An Arnold accent or impression. You know, he’s become great. You know, kind of. You know, that’s part of his thing is having that thick accent. But at one point he was told, your name’s too big, your accent’s too thick, you’re too muscular.
Bert Martinez:
We can’t use you unless you want to be a bouncer or a bad guy. And he refused to take that because back to what you said, you live up or down to your personal concept. And his personal concept is, I’m not going to do the crappy parts. I’m going to wait it out. And he also had a mentor he talks about Joe Weider, the guy who brought him over here, helped him with his first real estate deal. And so he was in a great financial position to wait and wait and do it right. Yes. But I think that most of us, you know, we become impatient, we become distracted, we become fearful.
Bert Martinez:
And I want to talk about this, too, because again, from the materials that I. That I reviewed, you talk about this thing called urgency bias. Explain that. What is that when you say urgency bias?
Johann Berlin :
Well, how often do you really need to rush in to do something? Like, almost never. You know, there was this famous Quote about Napoleon, he would wait to read letters because he didn’t want to react in the moment. So he’d read them whenever there was, like, when there wasn’t, like he couldn’t react right away. And then he would make a decision. And, I mean, how often are we just rushing from one thing to the next thing? I’ve got to get here. I’ve got to get there. You don’t move with power when you’re rushing. You don’t move with clarity when you’re rushing.
Johann Berlin :
Right? No. Life may rush you. Life may speed you up. You see this with elite training, like Navy SEAL training, other things like that. Life may do that, but you don’t need to do that to yourself as a default thing.
Bert Martinez:
You.
Johann Berlin :
So that. One of the most powerful things that we can learn. We’ve talked a lot about the systems that we’re up against, how they’re trying to hijack, is the power of what we call the power of the pause. Like this ability to be able to pause and then decide. Right. The gap in between this, the stimulus, or the thing flying at us. And you can do that through building. Like, for me, that’s having a personal meditation practice.
Johann Berlin :
So I just kind of have a ritual of doing that. But also small, tiny pauses, like before we make a transaction or something like that. Very powerful. It’s very powerful because you’re disrupting, all right? And then when you disrupt, then you have choice. You’re not just in a kind of fixed pattern. So much of our lives are just fixed patterns. Patterns, yes.
Bert Martinez:
You know, I. I recently. Recently dived into. It’s a book called the hunger code by Dr. Fung. And one of the things that I found so interesting in that book is exactly what you said. It’s this habitual way of reacting to cookies. We got to have cookies.
Bert Martinez:
You’re. You’re not human if you’re saying no to cookies and cake, you know, or whatever. And so we habituate ourselves, and that’s why we are morbid, you know, why 50% of us are obese. Right. And then the. And then we have this thing back to. I love this idea of the power of the pause. But we also had this.
Bert Martinez:
What do they call it, this hustle culture in America now, where it almost. It. It’s like almost the opposite of the power of the pause there. But I think that people sometimes confuse what we mean or what was originally meant by the hustle culture. Yes. You got to get out there and hustle, and sometimes you have to grind. But I think that someone said that no amount of success can compensate for failure in the home.
Johann Berlin :
Yeah. Yeah.
Bert Martinez:
So hey, it’s great that you made a gazillion dollars, but it’s too bad that your kids don’t know you and you’re on your third family.
Johann Berlin :
Yeah, yeah. And look, life is hard. A lot of people go through hardships in their relationships and other stuff. I get it. But yeah, this idea of this unrealistic kind of grind of like, oh, I’m supposed to be just always pushing through, always doing better. It’s, it’s, I mean that’s, that will wear you out. That will wear you out and you will be left depleted if you, if you just going back to your Arnold example, if you just work your muscles and you never recover, you know, come on. Like, you will not build strength that way.
Johann Berlin :
And you’re, and you will, you will not, you won’t have that substance. You’ll just be wore out. And I think the other thing with that though is that it doesn’t sustain. So then you give up. It’s like you kind of jump in, you do all this stuff. But that’s, that’s a lot of what people are exposed to right now. Most people get most of their information from social media here in the states, like especially within like working age populations. And that is what you’re, you know, there’s a lot of fast talking people in there and that is what they are promoting.
Johann Berlin :
It’s just do this, do that. There’s very few shortcuts, there’s very few asymmetric opportunities that are just always there. And it sounds too good to be true. It usually is. It’s like, you know, I love real estate investing and, and if it a property just looks too good to be true and it’s been said, it probably is. Like, you know.
Bert Martinez:
Right. Well. And look, one of the great gifts that we’ve been given by our creator, I’m a big believer in God, is that we do have a little, call it a spider sense or what do they call it? A spider tingle or whatever. We do get a little. Wait a minute, something’s telling me that’s a little off there. That’s too good to be true. I’m getting a vibe from this person that something’s off. Yeah.
Bert Martinez:
Ignore it to your pearl apparel. Right. Because 99 of the time how you feel is more important than what you know.
Johann Berlin :
Yeah.
Bert Martinez:
You not be able to add two plus two. But you know, when somebody’s probably not being honest with you, you get that feeling and So I. I totally agree with that. If it feels or sounds or seems too good to be true, it probably is. And again, crypto, over again, crypto has shown itself to be. To. To be nothing but a money pit and a heartache. But, man, people keep coming out with crypto coins.
Bert Martinez:
This is going to be awesome. This is going to be the best, you know. Bye. Bye.
Johann Berlin :
Yeah, we’re gonna get added a lot next time crypto goes up, by the way. We’re gonna get. Yeah, no, you’re. You’re right. You’re right. So true.
Bert Martinez:
I want to talk about this real quick because we’ve kind of touched on it.
Johann Berlin :
One thing on just what you were just saying. So I’ll replace the word feeling with intuition, because I feel like a lot of people, I don’t feel like it today. Like, we can be too driven by our feelings about stuff sometimes, but what I hear you describing is like an inner tuition or like an inner knowing.
Bert Martinez:
Yeah, no, I think that’s a much better definition.
Johann Berlin :
Yeah, it’s that. It’s that inner sense, and that is powerful. Yeah, that’s. One of the programs that we really like to support is called the Intuition Process for Kids. And it’s like, really helping kids find their inner voice. My wife and I are very supportive of a foundation that does this, and it’s helping kids find that inner voice. There’s so much outside noise. It’s really, really important.
Johann Berlin :
Somewhere we lose that, you know, or we stop trusting it. And I think that that’s really unfortunate because we do have this innate intelligence, you could call it. I also believe in God and this idea of like a divine intelligence or just call it whatever, call it rhythms and intelligence in nature. If you’re. If that’s your. If that’s your cup of tea, but it is there, and somehow we get overshadowed by it. And I think this, this goes back to that idea also of like, don’t think that the material success or social comparison that you’re looking to achieve is going to make your life fulfilling and rewarding. There are these innate states of, like, inner intelligence, inner awareness that are really valuable.
Johann Berlin :
Like, you know, a lot of what we’re teaching is very foundational to human psychology and financial behavior. But underneath all that, there’s a quotient, let’s call it a spiritual quotient, that is really valuable and powerful and a wealth that is way beyond those other things that we’re talking about and that can sustain in your life. And so I really encourage people to go deeper into their face like as a mentor to young people and not to have something because it’s also a form of moral fabric, coding, values, ethics. Right. All these things are sort of embedded and materialism will not provide you that. Materialism, not inherently bad. I don’t believe that. I.
Bert Martinez:
But yeah, but when you put it before everything else or back to earlier about, you know, when you were talking about the motivation or the psychology behind that, it’s great that you want to have a 10,000 square foot house. My question is why would a 5,000 square foot house be, you know, just as appropriate? Right. But if you’re doing it because you want to show your dad or your mom that you’re bigger and better, or you want to, you’re competing with your brother or your, let me say, your siblings, then that might be the wrong reason. As opposed to, as opposed to, you know, I need a 5,000 square foot house because we have 10 kids. All right, you know, you know, that might be better. Okay, real quick, that foundation you’re talking about, that helps the kids in their intuition, what is that called?
Johann Berlin :
That’s called the intuition process. I can send you a link, you can drop it in the. But Intuition Process, Art of Living foundation does that. And it’s very, very powerful. Yeah. You know, it’s teaching them how to trust without seeing. Like what is, I mean, yeah. What is faith? Right.
Johann Berlin :
Faith is being able to habituate that. That trusting in the unknown and listening to what is not quite clear yet. And for adults or for kids, I think that is so important.
Bert Martinez:
Absolutely. I’m a big Star wars fan. One of the reasons I love Star wars so much, because I think it does, does a great job of integrating fate without saying fate. They call it the Force. Right. And the fact that he, you know, Obi Wan Kenobi teaches, Luke, put your blast shield down and you can still see the little training device. Right. And so that’s important to teach that to kids and not only to teach it, but to help them rely on it long term.
Bert Martinez:
Because to your point, we do forget that inner voice or we don’t listen to it. And I think it’s again, one of the great gifts that we’ve been given. And the more we listen to it, I think the more we’ll hear it and we’ll avoid some big mistakes. But I do want to talk about this because this is a piece that was done that, that you did for LA Weekly, and I love this piece because you, you talk about people are essentially bankrupting themselves trying to look successful. This is one of the themes that we’ve been talking about. Elaborate on that a little bit. I mean, because we are caught up in this consumerism and keeping up with the Joneses and this feeling of missing out and so maybe elaborate a little bit on. On that.
Bert Martinez:
On that, on that.
Johann Berlin :
Well, a lot of this has to do with this archetype of status, like having this desire for status. And so the first thing I would say is that it is perfectly natural and it’s. There’s a reason. It’s a part. Every kind of evolutionary feature has a feature and a flaw. Right. And so I. To.
Johann Berlin :
If you go back, like, to have more meant you could also provide more for others. Like go back to Native American tribe. I love reading about Native American tribes. Go back to other cultures. Like, to have more is not necessarily a bad thing. And to want to also feel like we’ve achieved and we’ve made it. Who knows where people have come from? But so often we’re just in this like kind of lifestyle inflation that we were talking about earlier, and it never ends. And the truth is, this is what’s crazy.
Johann Berlin :
As soon as you land in one spot, there’s always somebody better than you, right? Like, it never stops this, the social comparison, the science around social comparison. It never stops. You never get to feel like you made it. And so in the meantime, what are people doing? They’re often bankrupting themselves in pursuing that when there is no end destination. Right. If you’re a Bill, if, say you come up from nothing and you’re a billionaire now, you’re competing with, like, how do I compare to other billionaires, millionaires, Right. And so it just keeps expanding and expanding. So you know what’s exceptional, Bert? I just.
Johann Berlin :
I’m going to rift a bit on this. What’s exceptional to me is that you’re contented that you actually feel whole as a person, but you still have goals that, like big stretch goals. You have things you want to achieve in your life, you have impacts you want to have on the world on your. On your. That could be your own personal well being. That could be. That could be things you want to achieve. I think Arnold’s such a great example of that.
Johann Berlin :
There’s a great Netflix documentary on him that I really enjoyed just taking through different stages of his life and wanting to achieve, being, having feeling enough and still being motivated. Because why do most people do stuff? Because they feel a deficit, because they feel like they need that thing to be successful. And to me, exceptional is I know I’m whole and I’m still motivated, I’m still focused. I love learning, I love pursuing my goals. I love connecting with other people and challenging myself. I love reposing and resting and renewal. Right? And to me, those are the real. It’s not the people who just make it right.
Johann Berlin :
You never really just make it in that context. You never made it. It’s a never ending target. It’s not those people and it’s not the people who are like, oh, feeling bad and everything’s against me and all this and you know, just like to, they’re addicted to feeling bad. You know, I had 60 people reporting to me at one point and I remember I used to always tell them, if I can make your life better here, like, if I can help you achieve what we’re trying, the vision we’re trying to do here, you let me know. I will try to remove obstacles. But if you’re in a habit of being unhappy, like, I will stop trying. Like, I won’t, I won’t.
Johann Berlin :
So like, I need to know, like, is this just something you like to complain about because it bothers you but you can live with it, or is this something that you really need me to get behind you advocate for this? If I, if we can come up with a good enough rationale that it fits within our vision, is that what you want? Because a lot of people are just in a habit of being unhappy. So to me, that’s the exceptional thing. Like I have, I am enough and I want to do, I want to pursue. Because it’s not a deficit. A deficit. You’re bankrupt when you start and you’re bankrupt when you finish.
Bert Martinez:
Like, no matter all the materials you have, all the money you have, if you feel, if you, if you still feel less than, than, you’re screwed.
Johann Berlin :
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Bert Martinez:
And that’s why you’ll see some people who are, quote, really successful, but they get stuck with drugs or because they’re unhappy with themselves.
Johann Berlin :
Yes.
Bert Martinez:
And they haven’t taken the time, the power of the pause to sit there and say, who am I? What is it that I really want to do? What’s going to really make me happy?
Johann Berlin :
Yeah.
Bert Martinez:
Because you and I have talked about this already. Where we live in this abundant culture, we live in this abundant world. And you can have. And I don’t think there’s anything wrong with wanting more if it’s for the right reason. Because how much is too much health, too much love, too much money? Now if you just want money for the sake of, hey, I want more money or I want to manipulate People so I can feel better. Well, again, it comes back to the motivation and you’re doing it for the wrong reason and it won’t be enough. And hoard.
Johann Berlin :
There’s a reason hoarding is a sin, right? Like this, this idea of just taking. Taking. We want to be givers in life. We get way more from giving than we do taking.
Bert Martinez:
Yes.
Johann Berlin :
We get way more from feeling. And I think that so much of that is around like, you know, this idea of healthy masculinity. Just, you know, we’re both, we’re both dudes. I’m sure we both mentor a lot of guys. Like, this idea of like, yeah, have being able to provide, being emotionally, mentally, physically be there for people. Like, it’s not just financial. Financial is often the lazy thing when you’re mentoring a young person. You know, just throwing money at them doesn’t do much with the.
Johann Berlin :
Than love attention. Helping them overcome their beliefs and understand themselves how to. Helping them take risks and overcome adaptive challenges. Right. And, and I think that’s so important, this ability to have enough and also the ability to enjoy. Like how often do we have stuff and we can’t even, we don’t even enjoy it.
Bert Martinez:
Right.
Johann Berlin :
It’s like we get the immediate hit of having it and then, you know, and then we’re on to the next thing. And there’s so much depth and so much breadth in this life. Not even, you know, it’s incredible what is out there for people if you’re willing to take the risks and willing to understand yourself.
Bert Martinez:
There’s a great little interview I saw with Jimmy Carr. He’s a comedian. He’s, he’s, he can be a little dark with his humor, but he’s also just a wonderful speaker and philosopher and, and, and he talks about the same thing and, and you know, that, that we really have this incredible life and that. Just think about it. Fifty, 60 years ago, you didn’t have an option of taking a cold shower or a hot shower. It was, it was whatever the temperature was. Right. It’s a cold shower during the winter.
Bert Martinez:
You’d make them really quick or, or whatever he says, you know, you, you move forward to today and we have all of this at our fingertips and people are miserable.
Johann Berlin :
Yeah, yeah, yeah. It’s strange. And what’s interesting, I’m a bit of like a stoic. I like reading the stoics and others. I like taking cold water showers like in yo. Like the yogic philosophy. Like cold water showers increase your energy, actually. And so I, ironically, I have a really Nice shower.
Johann Berlin :
But I also think cold shower, but you’re right.
Bert Martinez:
But it’s your choice.
Johann Berlin :
My choice, yeah, yeah.
Bert Martinez:
That’s not being forced upon you like
Johann Berlin :
it used to be 100%. And the amount of things that are going right at any given point and it’s like people might think we’re coming off as America an exceptionalist. The amount of things that are going right for the day to day life in America, it’s crazy the way things work, the way flights work, the way electricity works, the way lots of things work. Like there’s a lot to be grateful for. And I don’t mean that in like a patronizing way because actually when you invoke a state of gratitude, you experience gratitude. Yes. Invoke negativity, complaining, you experience those things. And so, so I actually think like it’s not about, you should be grateful.
Johann Berlin :
That’s like a very. I grew up Catholic and you know, it’s like shoulding, like you should, you should feel guilty, you should feel bad, like whatever. Not like that. Not like that. Like more like it’s, wow, there’s a lot life, nature, so much possibility. There’s a lot to be grateful for. And we. Moving from deficit, you’ll only find more deficit like we were talking about with bankruptcy.
Johann Berlin :
But moving from gratitude, you can find so much fullness in life.
Bert Martinez:
One of my heroes is Stephen Hawking. I, I do like science. I consider myself a nerd for the most part. But what I loved about Stephen Hawking, here’s a guy who’s confined to a wheelchair. He was, he was, he was a regular on the Big Bang Theory, a hit comedy show. He was written several books and, and for you guys who don’t know Stephen Hawking’s, When I say combine a wheelchair, all he could move were his eyes. And just with that alone he wrote books, he was involved in movies, hit TV shows. He’s again one of those individual who’s been impersonated a lot.
Bert Martinez:
It just goes to show you that the power of our minds, if this guy would have had his body working at the same level as his mind, who knows what he would have really achieved. But just his mind alone, sitting like this for hours, decades at a time, he achieved an incredible amount. And most of us are lucky that our bodies function fairly normally. Yeah, and I agree with everything you said about gratitude. The attitude of gratitude sets you up for more and more success. It is a spiritual thing. I don’t care whether you’re Catholic or Mormon or Buddhist or whatever, gratitude is one of those Spiritual foundational philosophies that without gratitude not going to get a whole lot of anything else.
Johann Berlin :
Yeah, you’re not. It’s its own gift. It’s his own. I always say my dad has a practice of habituating gratitude. He’s, he’s in recovery. He, he’s a big AA guy and he, you know, he loves this, this thing of like habituating gratitude like, like as a practice and yeah, it’s something I picked up from him. And man, people, and people who are in the habit of being unhappy, I, I feel for you because it sucks like that. The inverse of that really is a, I mean it is really not fun.
Johann Berlin :
And so you know, we do, we habituate thoughts, we habituate patterns every day. And going back to your Stephen Hawkins thing, I mean some of the most interesting divergent perspectives come from people who are handicapped in some way or they’re, they’re like really, you see this a lot with really gifted artists, really gifted thinkers. Sometimes you know, they’re way over immersed in one dimension of their life and it creates an imbalance. But also they have so much like divergent perspective. And what I was saying earlier about like who are our best teachers. Like I was talking about us losing our house was a big teacher for me. You know, the amount of energy I’m in the process of buying a multi unit building right now, the amount of energy I put into due diligence into real estate, like scoping, plumbing, doing this, doing that, like I’ll spend 3, 4, 5,000 bucks just scoping out a place that I’m thinking about buying, even if it looks really good. Like, and that was a gift, that challenge was a gift.
Johann Berlin :
And if you, if you want to make it define you in a, in a way of your victim or, or you’re a culprit because you made a mistake and you lost stuff like those become self defining personalities and you’re. Don’t put yourself in a box. If you put yourself in a box, it’s very hard to expand out of it because nobody’s keeping you there but you. And you know, there are the boxes that the world, that are the constraints of the world, but that thing of putting yourself in a box. And for me like when I was a kid, Bert, I had a crippled leg whenever I was first born. So my leg was like deformed in like and they had to later like when I was a kid, they had to break it. I had to wear shoes that were backward and stuff. I was in a wheelchair when I was real little and Then I had some cognitive challenges.
Johann Berlin :
I almost died of meningitis when I was a baby. And they thought that it would lead to learning disability. I was like really close. It was like a 50, 50 shot, live or die kind of thing. But those were great teachers. Those were those, the adaptive part. I played sports, I did things, I was able to do things like. And sometimes you can overcome them, sometimes you can’t.
Johann Berlin :
But it doesn’t mean you can’t be exceptional.
Bert Martinez:
Yes, well, and look there. And I don’t know, I don’t know how this happened, but I think it starts somewhere in childhood. We have this false belief that problems are bad and it shouldn’t happen to me. I’m a good person. I go to church or synagogue, I pay tithing or I give the charity. I’m a good man or woman. This is unfair. And when you look at the wealthiest people in the world, what do they do? They solve problems.
Bert Martinez:
And they solve problems sometimes for millions of people simultaneously. Amazon solved a lot of problems in the very beginning. All they did is sell books. That was the place to buy a book. They solved the book buying problem. It’s not a, you know, a really big need, but look where they’re at today. And I always tell my kids is, look, you want bigger and better problems. Instead of having a flat on your, on your, you know, car, you want to have a flat on your private jet.
Johann Berlin :
Yeah,
Bert Martinez:
what a great problem to have. Right. But, but we are as humans, we are created to do hard things and we, and we are here to overcome problems. Yeah, and that’s it. And, and you’re talking about, you know, adaptability. Adaptability is, is again a form of problem solving.
Johann Berlin :
Yes, absolutely. It’s a state of mind, it’s an approach. And always be willing to take in new ideas and new frameworks for look, frameworks are very powerful actually. People underestimate frameworks, but what do frameworks do? Their frameworks are always never 100% right. But what they allow you to do is look at something through a particular perspective. Spirituality, religion is a framework to look at what is life and meaning. Mathematics is a framework to look at things. Engineering is a framework having a framework being able to cultivate really good investors.
Johann Berlin :
I’ve seen this like there’s a, one of the books I had to read when I was working with some top quartile hedge funds was about all the different top ever hedge fund managers and what their edge was at a certain point they all had a framework. They weren’t just willy nilly kind of going into everything. They would look, you know, like, look at Drunken Miller. Look at asymmetric upside versus downside. Like it’s very important to learn from and to take in frameworks. And you don’t have to be a polymath. You don’t have to be a genius. Actually, in some ways it’s worse.
Johann Berlin :
I know people who have built incredible real estate portfolios or done really well in investing. They have a narrow scope of what they know that they’re good at. Like I have one, one friend of mine who’s been a real estate mentor for me. He owns, I don’t know, like really great units, Aspen, Boulder, like really nice areas. And he’s built it up over time from nothing, right? And he doesn’t put any money in the stock market. And he’s like. Because he’s like, I understand depreciation, I understand cap rate return, which for those who don’t know, cap rate is just like your money into an investment. There’s some more calculation, but what does your return on your money in kind of thing noi net operating income.
Johann Berlin :
He understands those things. He’s like, I understand these things. I do. This is what I do. And he’s done incredibly well. He’s got cash flow generating stuff. I know other people who don’t put any of their money into real estate, you know, but having. It doesn’t have to be a huge, big, robust thesis on life and macro.
Johann Berlin :
People get so lost in the macroeconomic news and all this other stuff. But the most important thing, and this goes back to the heart of what we’ve been talking about, the whole conversation. The most important thing is if you don’t have wraps on your own mindset around this stuff, to use your word. If you don’t have wraps on that, you will leak money in your life and often lose it because you’re not in control of it. You don’t understand your own beliefs, what’s driving you. You will be susceptible to blowing that money or losing that money. So being able to invest in that own understanding, that belief, a vision. If you don’t have a vision, you just assimilate into whatever ideas people are handing you.
Johann Berlin :
And. And then you are a victim of social media and all these other things because. And you’re a victim by choice because you didn’t choose to have an alternative vision for your life.
Bert Martinez:
A great example are, are these people who win a massive lottery. I’m not talking about just a few million dollars, but you know, we’re talking, they won, you know, 40 50, $100 million, and within five years, they’re broke.
Johann Berlin :
Yeah. Yeah.
Bert Martinez:
Because they didn’t change that mindset or that internal dialogue. You know, and to me, beliefs. And the beliefs are kind of a framework. Right. You believe certain things and it filters everything that you do. But it’s so important to. And I like what you said in the very beginning. Where did that belief come from?
Johann Berlin :
Yes.
Bert Martinez:
And I think that everybody needs to do that exercise and say, well, this is what I believe about money. Where did that come from? And you’re going to find out that it was absorbed by, you know, from your parents or maybe your peer group. But does it serve you?
Johann Berlin :
Yeah.
Bert Martinez:
In the power of the pause. If you take some time to figure it out. Let me rephrase that. If you take some time, you can figure it out and then you can say, oh, I got to change this belief.
Johann Berlin :
Yes. And an inherited belief is not necessarily a bad thing.
Bert Martinez:
Right.
Johann Berlin :
It’s only bad if you didn’t choose it. Yes. Like,
Bert Martinez:
absolutely correct.
Johann Berlin :
Yeah, but. Or you choose what you want to move forward with. Right. If it’s not aligned with your values going forward. Way to say that. Then. Then it is a deficit. Then it is a problem.
Johann Berlin :
And it’s not even that it’s inherently bad or good. It’s just. It’s not aligned with who you want to be you. All right. And so. No, exactly. Well, I’ll have to shamelessly plug. That is our money Story rewrite.
Johann Berlin :
That is our journey. You articulated it so well. You know, as an entrepreneur, I have to at least plug that.
Bert Martinez:
But let’s talk about your book real quick, because it’s not coming. When does it do out?
Johann Berlin :
Well, we’re just in the final editing stages right now. We’re going through a review, but probably later this year, this fall would be my guess. Yeah.
Bert Martinez:
And do we have a title for it yet?
Johann Berlin :
Yeah. Wealth and why We Seek It.
Bert Martinez:
Wealth and why We Seek It. Yeah, I think that’s a great title. So let me ask you this, because again, you’ve worked with regular folks. You work for some of the top financial managers, hedge fund managers from top CEOs, super wealthy people. In your experience, what’s the single most dangerous financial habit that people think is normal?
Johann Berlin :
That’s a really good question. The single most. The single most damaging financial habit. Hubris. Because if you’re shut down, you’re probably not doing anything. I would say being shut down, like not taking any action that. I mean, that’s really bad. You don’t take any action.
Johann Berlin :
You can’t get any outcome. You can’t get a good outcome, you can’t get a bad. You’re safe in a sense, but you’re not going to get either. So you don’t find people making catastrophic. Not making choices is often not a catastrophic. Not acting. But yeah, hubris is a big one. That’s the life is humbling, right? Humility is so important.
Johann Berlin :
Having humility in life, even when we have success is such a. And a virtue. At least I really admire and have humility. When you have success is really hard because your jokes are funnier. You’re, you know, everything you do makes sense. Sounds great, boss. And you know how many people have had really great companies, really great ideas and they just, they get hubris and then you start making really big bad decision. So I would say hubris is the biggest one because past success is not a.
Johann Berlin :
Is not. There’s no guarantee, there’s no entitlement to future success from past success. And what humility allows us to do as an inverse to that is to. And I think this is really important. A really close friend of mine and investor says humility is it meek. Humility isn’t weak, right? Humility means strength, right? Just like surrender. You can’t surrender if you feel weak. We think of surrender as like, I give up.
Johann Berlin :
You know, this is something my meditation teacher taught me. No, surrender means I feel strong enough to be like, okay, I’m open. Surrender being a definition of I’m open. But the hubris man, hubris. Look at what caused what was the catalyst for the 08 crisis. Look at those, some of those big whale traders who just like did like incredibly stupid calculations. And it just like there was underlying issues, right? It was just, that was the tip of the iceberg. But I’ve seen a lot of people destroy that or, or people who have made it.
Johann Berlin :
They built really successful companies and then they just think it’s just going to happen the same way again. And they bring sort of a hubris. The world is very Darwinian. I mean, and people misunderstand Darwin. Darwin talks a lot about cooperation and other things, but there is also a survival aspect to it. And you need to be a little bit lean. You need to, you need to have that self discipline, that humility to kind of keep it reined in. And that can keep you from making really big.
Johann Berlin :
And then the second thing, the second one I would say to hubris is bad sources of information. You cannot make a good decision on bad sources of information. You may be right some of the time. I’m not saying you’ll never be right. You may be, but if you have bad sources of information regularly and you’re making big life choices, big bets on those. So I always tell people, be really, really conscious of who you let into your mind and your, you know, who you let into this brain of ours and, and who, who you let influence your ideas because you are giving them prime real estate in your head. And if it’s not good advice, then you can do some really stupid things.
Bert Martinez:
Absolutely. What’s the old adage, even a broken clock is right twice a day or something like that?
Johann Berlin :
Yes, yes. And there’s huge amounts of luck. I mean that’s the thing with humility and hubris. There’s huge amounts of luck or if you believe in God, grace, whatever you want to call it, there is huge amounts of that that are beyond whatever we see. And sometimes we’re right time, right place and then we start thinking it’s us and. But don’t think that means don’t be confident. Like when you look at somebody like a drunken Miller who I his returns consistently. There are very few top quartile investors who have consistently been top quartile over long periods of time.
Johann Berlin :
It’s not just your performance, it’s your performance over time. If you’re in that world and you know, when you read about him and it’s, he has a very narrow set of how he describes what he’s really good at. And one of the things he’s really good at is making big bets, measuring up asymmetric upside to downside on a particular given investment or bet. And he has the guts to really do that. And that is not for most people. But that is a narrow thing. That’s not necessarily hubris. That is like a lot of rigor.
Johann Berlin :
That’s the part everybody misses. A lot of rigor. A lot of sources of quality information really sounding something out to, to say and yeah, because, because you could make, you can lose money having too much investments. I mean you can also make money if you don’t have enough money in something. You can be right and be wrong because it’s materially different. Right, Right. But for most people, don’t try to be a genius, be, don’t get into hubris, needing to be the genius investor. Even really good investors are wrong a lot lot.
Johann Berlin :
Very few do well over the long term. Compound small, put money aside, maximize pre tax things, you know, really just sense, don’t live more, don’t spend more than you than you make because that is Poverty you could have, you could make, you know, 50,000amonth and still be poor if you’re spending more than you’re making and you can. So that kind of stuff, that. Those are the really important foundational stuff.
Bert Martinez:
All right, let me ask you this. As we kind of wrap it up, I want to see if we can kind of narrow things down because we’ve talked quite a bit about mindset and beliefs and things of that nature. If somebody is listening right now and feels they’re financially stuck, what’s the first thing they should stop? Immediately.
Johann Berlin :
What’s the first thing that they should stop Immediately?
Bert Martinez:
Yeah, if they’re feeling stuck, what’s the first thing they should stop doing Immediately?
Johann Berlin :
No, it’s a good question. It’s a good question. I, I tend to not like, single answer things because life is so contextual, so free, because for each person it could be a little different. I’m trying to think of something that’s kind of universal.
Bert Martinez:
Well, if not, maybe you have, you know, again, maybe it’s not a one answer reply. Maybe it’s multiple reply.
Johann Berlin :
Yeah, well, stop. Stop feeding your negative beliefs. If you want to start somewhere, stop feeding your negative beliefs and find one small thing that you can do. But anybody, we all have negative beliefs about ourself. And I don’t care how much work you’ve done on yourself, how many therapists you’ve been to, how much meditation you’ve done, how much you’ve gone to church. We all carry limited beliefs about ourselves. So that would be the first thing I’d say, is stop doing that. Because conditions may be bad.
Johann Berlin :
But if you think I’m stupid with finances, I’m not good at this. Like those types of things. Like, that’s the first thing, that’s the first thing that anybody could do. Stop feeding your negative beliefs. The second thing is find one small thing that you can do. Because it is through those, in this, what we were touching on earlier. It is through those small actions that you build belief. And it also.
Johann Berlin :
What is overwhelm? Overwhelm is feeling like the circumstance of the world are bigger than our agency, our independence to respond. It just feels like all of this stuff is like crushing me and I can’t do anything about it. So what is the inverse of that? The inverse of that is take some action, do something right? And so take, take a pause before you spend something. Take us. Take a small action. I’ll give you an example. Say you just feel like too much money’s going out every month. Let’s Give a specific concrete example.
Johann Berlin :
Okay. Next time that you don’t, you would you, instead of ordering a meal in, spend some time with your family or something like that. That’s a generic idea, right? Like cook a meal with your family, do something different, break the pattern. And that’s what so much of this is. It’s about pattern disruption, right? It’s like if you don’t like the pattern that you’re in, that also stop watching news. Like one thing, if most people are feeling overwhelmed and you touched on this by stuff that we have no control over, right? And so much of our attention is like, like who even heard of the straight of her moves before recently, right? It’s on everybody’s mind and like it’s sucking up oxygen and it’s clouding our ability to show up today. What’s in front of us, the opportunities, the limitations of our own beliefs about ourselves, all of that stuff is in your control. So if you’re going to do one thing, focus on the things in your control and stop taking in this negative contagion that is like hijacking your attention and making you feel pest.
Johann Berlin :
It’s crazy. You look at actually what’s happening in the economy right now. There are problems, there are structural, there are problems that are persistent for a long time. There are new problems. All this kind of, it’s not that bad, like, but negative pessimism is super high. And so yeah, I would say, I would say that, I would say, you know, find one small thing that you can do and stop feeding your negative beliefs about yourself.
Bert Martinez:
I think that’s great advice. If, if people wanted to find out more about you, if they wanted to reach out to you, I know you have a couple of different websites. What would be the best website for people to find you at?
Johann Berlin :
Yeah, so if you want to see like some of the upcoming stuff about our book media that we’re in. Art, you had mentioned some articles we’re in. We’re currently on kind of a book tour. And thank you for having me on the show, by the way. Really appreciate it. And so JohanBerlin.com is just all of that stuff sort of aggregates there. And then our company is trueworthshift.com and if you want to break, if you’re on social media, like almost all of us, we have a page, it’s called you’d True Worth True T R U on there. And if you want to take a break from the social comparison and see some interesting content or ideas to maybe disrupt whatever, whatever pattern you’re in.
Johann Berlin :
Or. Or to set some new vision for your life. Like, you can also check us out there.
Bert Martinez:
Excellent, man. I’ll put all those in the. In the show notes. People can click on there and find you there. And then hopefully your book will come out in a couple of months and you’ll let me know so we can talk about that as well. But, man, it’s been a great having you on the show. I’ve been thoroughly enjoyed our conversation, and, you know, I don’t. I want to get your take before I wrap up, because I’m thinking what.
Bert Martinez:
What I’ve gotten out of today’s conversation is we can immediately change our money by again, looking at our beliefs, finding out where we want to go, really understand our beliefs, and start changing that mindset. Right. Those are the kind of the two things I’m walking away with. What about you?
Johann Berlin :
Yeah, yeah, Love that. Love, love. Just kind of nerding out on the investment stuff. Rifting. We’re so afraid to talk about anything these days, like, just kind of rifting. And for me, I really get a lot of joy whenever I have so many interests. Their life is fascinating. You know, history, politics, economics, psychology.
Johann Berlin :
So, you know, spirituality. So. No, it’s just been fun. Bert, I appreciate you taking the time and, you know, letting me be on your platform. It’s. I don’t take anything for granted. So you. I thank you, and I hope people got, you know, some useful stuff out of it.
Bert Martinez:
Absolutely. Absolutely. Everybody that you know, if you’re checking us out, definitely share the episode and let’s help as many people as we can. Johan, thank you so much for stopping by.
Johann Berlin :
Appreciate it, man. Thank you, Bert.
Bert Martinez:
All right, man, we’re out. That’s good.
Johann Berlin :
Yeah, Nice.
Bert Martinez:
That was a good conversation.
Johann Berlin :
Yeah. Enjoyed it. Enjoyed it.
