Closed Captioning:
good morning good afternoon good evening
folks michael zuber one rental at a time
back with his monday guest mr greg
dickerson how you doing sir doing great
michael good to see you and i see you as
well so one thing i know about your
story right your story made it to my
second book 15 conversation with
millionaires real estate millionaires uh
you’re trucking a toolbox story hit me
hard i still go back and watch that
probably once every six to nine months
our very first video together
is that you are an entrepreneur and what
that means to me is you are willing to
identify a problem you were willing to
risk time energy and dollars to go after
it and then if it worked out uh you know
there was just desserts but what is
clear to me is you were paid last
lots of other people were paid first you
were paid and rewarded last and where
i’m going with this is
there is a growing
noise echo chamber out there that
billionaires shouldn’t exist
and you know elon musk and jeff bezos
and all of these folks and when i step
back and i you know i take your story
your experience your awesomeness look at
what they’ve done they’ve all tackled
amazing problems they took a bunch of
risk capital i mean elon musk was 48
hours away from going bankrupt when
tesla almost didn’t make payroll
and they’ve tackled big problems so i’m
not sure i agree with this whole
billionaires shouldn’t exist idea but i
wanted to ask you
yeah yeah bezos has been through it you
know he uh you know back in the dot com
bust i mean the company just got torn
down and you know people
uh
never thought he would make it with his
you know aws uh business and all of that
kind of stuff and
uh you know he’s overcome a lot of
challenges but i think
the you know so i can agree on some
points but you know at the end of the
day yeah if you’re willing to risk
everything you have get out do the work
create opportunities for other people i
mean there should be no limit to the
upside that you can generate now where i
can
you know kind of agree with what people
are talking about is if you’re using the
public’s funds you know and you’re
taking money from investors and you’re
now a ceo of a public company that you
do not own and you’re not taking any
more risk you know you’re risking
investor capital and company capital
then yeah i can see where people get a
little upset because oh for sure you
have you know people that you know get
billions to hundreds of billions or
whatever the other people along the way
aren’t sharing to that degree
you know so i can i can sort of
understand you know that to that level
because you know you’re taking public
money yeah you’re being allowed to abuse
that you know by
uh you know the things that that that
they do to increase wealth from that
standpoint but you know if you’re a
private company and you started it and
you’re taking the risk and it’s your
your money on the line and you know if
it goes down you lose everything well
then there should be no limits on what
you can do
uh you know or achieve to to accumulate
that and it’s you know it’s funny i mean
you know i’ve got a modest level of
success in the business world compared
to those things you know but um you know
the upside is unlimited if you find a
big problem to solve like amazon did i
mean yeah you know you can get on your
phone and punch a button and have
something at your house
that day or the next day or whatever you
know almost anything you want that’s a
big problem that you know obviously
what we recently went through with the
pandemic that that company solved so
yeah for sure you know should there be
limits to what jeff bezos you know
earned in that regard like i said
if if he owned it and he risked all his
capital and he did everything to you
know get that that’s one thing but you
know when you start taking other
people’s money yeah and you’re not
sharing that with the people around you
that built it i can see an argument
there sure you know for that but
at the end of the day no you don’t want
to limit opportunity because then you
limit innovation yeah i think there’s a
couple of things there i want to hit so
first and foremost i totally agree with
you
you and i experienced the great
recession which really was a financial
bubble there were people that clearly
were with cdos and all of these other
toxic dead on dead and you know these
layers of just nonsense
that that blew it up so big
that the only outcome was they had to
get bailed out
and i think like only one person went to
jail if i remember the story right
and um that’s not okay
that’s that that hopefully never happens
again yeah and you have the bernie
madoff you know that are taking people’s
money and he’s a millionaire you know
lifestyle and you know illegally
uh abusing that but there’s legal ways
to abuse that as well that’s kind of
what i’m talking about me too yeah me
too absolutely right when when uh when
you’re just leveraging public capital uh
to the benefit and basically you don’t
have a downside right kind of heads you
win tails you don’t lose totally agree
with you but on the bigger front
i think at least my opinion is is if
you’re gonna go after and solve
huge problems
right again i’m not a huge elon musk fan
at all right i don’t own tesla stock i
just never would i’m not a big musk fan
but i have to give him credit right what
did he do
he went out and basically made ev’s
electric vehicles cool
right before tesla we had these ugly
boxes and just
you know these ugly cars he made them
cool i don’t think evs are where they
are today without his
pushing leaps and bounds
um
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you know spacex the the idea that you
could use a rocket over and over again
is crazy
right he proved that now he’s going to
go to mars and all these other things
he’s tackling amazingly huge problems
and oh by the way employing hundreds of
thousands of people
i think that you’re right i don’t i
don’t know why you would have
put a cap on that yeah yeah he started
well he started what with paypal you
know solving a problem there yeah
exactly that and then you know so i mean
obviously he’s an entrepreneur he’s an
innovator he’s a creator he didn’t start
tesla um he bought that but he made it
what it is
and you know grew that and scaled it but
the other argument to what i’m talking
about too is a lot of his wealth is the
you know artificial inflation of the
markets over the last 18 months and you
know those those numbers are out the
door now we’re seeing a repricing and
rebalancing of that so yeah a lot of
that’s going to go away now starlink
that’s another you know great innovation
um yeah so i’m not you know
i don’t know elon musk so to be a fan or
not but what i’m a fan of is is you know
he’s an entrepreneur he gets after it he
solves problems he makes things happen
gets things done that’s what
entrepreneurs do yeah so you know when
you’re doing that and creating that like
i said you don’t want to limit
opportunity because then you limit
innovation correct yeah and you know um
and that’s what this country was built
on people came here because unlimited
opportunity the ability to create your
own future stake your own claim we’ve
talked about that before in other
episodes no other country on earth is
like this country in that regard people
can come here from anywhere
and educate themselves and apply
themselves and when i say educated i
don’t mean college and all that i mean
whatever you’re going to do you need to
know what you’re doing so people have
come here in textiles they’ve come here
making shoes they’ve come here all kinds
of different things and have created you
know immense wealth fantastic
generational businesses from nothing
with i mean walmart you know walmart
started with sam walton’s you know um
grandfather right or dad or whatever
whoever
saying myself i can’t remember between
him and dollar general might have been
sam that started the whole thing i mean
i don’t think he was you know had much
of an education no dollar general was
started by
um the grandfather of the people that
you know run it today or ran it recently
cal turner junior’s grandfather he had
an elementary school education wow um
you know so you go back and you read
those stories you know colonel sanders i
don’t think he was college educated you
know yeah um harlan sanders and you know
great great stories of people that just
you know applied themselves got after it
and and just made it happen and
especially like i said the people that
come here from other countries that
don’t have opportunity or limited
opportunity where they are because
opportunity is limited therefore it
stifles innovation
and
you know people rely on the government
or whatever
you come here and you can do whatever
you want so it’s it’s it’s pretty
incredible and i think that’s a
dangerous ground that you’re walking on
when you’re trying to limit somebody’s
ability but again if you’re a public
company maybe there should be some
limits yeah and the other thing i just
want to tie in here is a lot of great
innovation a lot of great companies
start in recessions
right it kind of forces uh
entrepreneurship and struggle uh for
example uber and a lot of these
companies that we take for granted today
were started in the great recession
um so i you know i look forward to uh
the innovation in new companies and new
businesses that come out of this
recession has that been your experience
as well oh yeah and opportunities you
know i was thinking about that the other
day for this i was like man we should
really talk about that because
this is a this is a wreath you talk
about the great reset you know
um this is the opportunity coming now
that you that i’ve now been through this
will be the third one in my lifetime
where you have a chance to get into the
bottom of the recovery and really build
something i mean that’s where your best
opportunities are at the bottom of the
recession
and the bottom of these market declines
where you can really exponentially scale
and generate returns that you know can
be generational you know wealth building
opportunities so you know these are the
times when i’ve made some of my biggest
moves you know the bottoms in the depths
of the recessions you know what we have
just found topic video number three uh
we will make the great reset and getting
in at the bottom the topic for number
three but before we do greg where can
people find you yeah gregdickerson.com
that is where all my information lives
go check it out awesome thanks buddy