908: How to Make Money in Countries You've Never Heard Of | Expat Money Summit 2024 PREVIEW

Speaker 1  0:20  
Instead of

Brian Nichols  0:34  
focusing on winning arguments, we're teaching the basic fundamentals of sales and marketing and how we can use them to win in the world of politics, teaching you how to meet people where they're at on the issues they care about. Welcome to the Brian Nichols show, alrighty. And with that, looking forward to today's guest, he is a good friend. He is a longtime guest, and I'm very excited to see what the heck's been going on in his life, returning to the show. Mark Claire, welcome back to the Brian Nichols show. How you doing, buddy,

Marc Clair  1:05  
Brian, it's so good to be back here. In fact, it's so good to be, I gotta be honest, it's so good to just be on a podcast again. It's been a little while. Yeah,

Brian Nichols  1:12  
you, you were the podcasting guy. I mean, Lions of

Unknown Speaker  1:16  
Liber actually invented,

Brian Nichols  1:17  
I invented podcasting originally, yeah, 100% like back in what 1994 was it nothing

Marc Clair  1:22  
like that. I did almost, I mean, I can't even claim credit for this, but I did. I wouldn't say I invented libertarian podcasting. Lou Rockwell had a podcast before me. Tom woods, I think, officially started a week before me, but I think I invented any. I'm not even saying this is a good thing, by the way, anybody can start a podcast, libertarian podcasting, I think I invented that particular genre. Whether that's a good thing or a bad thing. We can be our own judge. But here you are at your house doing a podcast and doing a fine one, if I do say so myself. And by the way,

Brian Nichols  1:50  
fast forward when you first started the show, back in when 2013 Yeah, wow, as a baby, 11 years ago. Holy hell. Now think where we are today. Mark, everybody in

Marc Clair  2:02  
there. I did not have this beard or the grays that are in it at the time. Yeah, I just shaved my

Brian Nichols  2:07  
head so no more grays either. But like, dude, yeah, ask my wife. But like, that's that seems to be everybody and their mother has a podcast nowadays. And I kind of think back to libertarian or just dude, like podcasting of yesteryear. It was we are libertarians. It was Tom woods, it was lines of liberty. It was Dave Smith, Jason Stapleton, like, those were about it. And now there's like, what, two or three podcasts, really, that have continued through. You know

Marc Clair  2:40  
how much things have changed? Uh, Dave Smith first came on my show Lions of liberty to get more exposure for his his rapidly growing, uh, part of the problem podcast. So

Brian Nichols  2:49  
I forgot about that. That's right, tables, let's

Marc Clair  2:52  
say, have been turned a bit. But I'm so happy for Dave. He's kicking ass. He's Oh, he's one of my favorite guests when I had him on, and he's been one of my favorite people that I met through podcasting in general, because he's a genuine

Brian Nichols  3:01  
guy as well. And to see his his stardom, I mean, really across not just libertarian circles, but like libertarian just noted politics news circles, Dave is one of the leading commentary voices, I would say, on that, that market and it, I think it speaks to mark where we are right now as not just a country, but also as the greater I'll just lump you in here, that the podcasting community right like that is the Dave Smith outcome is an approach I don't know. We would have sat back 11 years ago and said that would be considered success, but in retrospect, that is success to see Dave now having such a seat at the political conversations that are like literally shaping the way our country's moving. That's a

Marc Clair  3:47  
win from debating Archie flower to Chris Cuomo. I mean, that's that's a trajectory, right there, Archie, and I'm not sure how great Chris Cuomo is. To be honest, Archie was a, well, he's formidable in his own way. He sure is. He sure is. Oh, good. You could say, I even got to Dave started down the path of engaging in debates. You could say that. I'm not saying that. You could say it all

Brian Nichols  4:10  
the classic debates, though. I mean, they were pretty much all on the lines of liberty network, and you were pretty much the guy leading all of them, which, by the way, like Mark, let's just take a step back again. You doing that during the very transformative moment of the libertarian experiment. From, I would say, let's just like encapsulate from, we'll say 2017 to like, 2021 I'll just kind of put that together. You were one of the leading voices to help articulate where the libertarian movement was and where it needed to go to have success. Talk to us more about now. You get another five years in the rear view mirror to look back. Were you right? Were you wrong? Were you somewhere in between? What's kind of your post mortem? Well,

Marc Clair  4:55  
I've always, I've always been right and wrong, because aren't we all in some that was the most political. Answer possible. I have been right and wrong, and probably what I think about what I was right and wrong route about may be different in five years, and in five years I may say, say I was right and wrong today about what I was right or wrong about five years ago. So it is something where I am always changing my views based on how I see the world, based on how I see things unfolding. No one can say I didn't give it a shot. I was very enthusiastic. If you're referring to, what I think you're referring to is, is the libertarian attempt to take over the the Libertarian Party as as a political movement, I presume so, and I was wholeheartedly for it because, well, a I just at the time, I think I really looked at politics as not that. I didn't take it seriously. I think I might have phrased things in this sort of way. Some it's on some of those sort of libertarian postmortem shows that I've done, but I think it's that I just I knew libertarianism in a way, in the back of my mind, these activities weren't necessarily hugely important. Maybe I may be phrasing this in a bad way as well. I didn't really think my actions were changing the world. I didn't think that. I didn't think they necessarily. I wanted to think that. I think the part of me, especially for the Ron Paul days, I really, in that case, I really did buy into at the time, maybe, maybe that's why, by the time things rolled around, I was a little more grounded about that idea of changing hearts and minds. Because, yeah, I I woke people up. You could say to liking Ron Paul, but the actual hearts and mind changing could come or go with a lot of that. A lot of those people, they were Bernie Sanders supporters a few years later, or whatever it may be a few years later, they kind of it was a populist movement, and I love the libertarian aspects of it, but not everybody was invested in it because they read Mises or Rothbard or became an caps or anything like this. And I think that's part of why I just saw those activities as I wanted them to succeed. I wanted them succeed in the sense that I liked the idea of a libertarian like a Tom woods, a Dave Smith, someone like that, getting a larger platform to talk about these ideas. Because I just thought it was cool, to be honest. I just thought it was a cool thing. I didn't think they would become president or anything like this. And then as we got further into that movement, and I think I gave a lot of platforms to the people starting it, I was a big proponent of it. You could say I never officially joined the cause one way or another, because I still tried to maintain a little bit of, like a semi neutrality, despite what I might form some opinions on things, for most of my Lion's career, until probably the last year of it. Then I kind of threw that out the window. But I just, I just saw, ultimately, I saw that attempt, especially after 2020 2021, especially dealing with a lot of things in my own life that are, we're just on a much higher level than that. We're never going to be solved by third party politics, that we're never even going to be affected by third party politics, unless the goal, as sort of was the idea with with Dave being pushed to run, and less was the goal is to just use the idea of running for president to get more attention for someone like a Dave Smith, I think it became very clear to anybody following along, anybody paying attention, including Dave himself, that his own platforms and what he doing currently is far bigger than would do far more for the Libertarian Party, if anything, than the Libertarian Party would do for him, while still having to answer for all the frankly, weird stuff that goes on in the Libertarian Party. So I think he made the right move, and I think I just saw that look more power to you. I mean, I made a lot of good friends doing this stuff. I had a lot of great memories that I won't take back. So more power to you. If you get value out of third party politics or changing things. And on the local level, there may very well be instances that you make the right connections in that third party realm and make some good local change all for it, if that works. But in terms of devote, you know, convincing a young, a bunch of young people who don't have a lot of money to spend a lot of money going to conventions and this sort of thing, when they should be focusing on their skills or or, you know, forming a family, things that I saw a lot differently. It's certainly not how I thought 20 years ago. But as a early 40 something, you could say man with a with a wife and child. Now I did, I do see things a lot differently than I did then. So I think, and you can criticize my methods at times that can be a little gruff around the edges, but I did try to impart some of that to what I really did see as younger versions of myself who were spending a lot of time in the Mises caucus and doing this sort of thing that I could no longer really support as something I saw as being productive. Well,

Brian Nichols  9:03  
let's laser focus on that, because what you just articulated, I think, is what we've seen over the past year especially, really hit the liberty movement mark. And that is just because something isn't overtly libertarian, from a principled standpoint, doesn't mean that. And I'm just gonna say you anyone should not have an opinion on that, right? So, for example, the drag queen story conversation that's become one of those very hotly debated topics in libertarian circles. And I think you and I are on the same page, like, I don't think kids should be going to drag queen story hours. Why? Because, no, yeah, no, because, let's be real. A drag queen is overtly just a sexualized representation of who you view as yourself, right? And in that mindset, this is where I see libertarians saying, Well, who, what do you care? They should be able to do what they want. That doesn't mean I shouldn't be neglected from being able to actually voice my concerns or voice my perspective, even if my perspective isn't overtly. Libertarian like that doesn't mean you shouldn't be able to have an opinion about something because you're not following to the book. Like, I'm not using government to say this person shouldn't exist. I'm saying as a concerned citizen, just as much as they're sitting down and saying I'm a drag queen. Come read books with me. I'm saying I'm a parent. Fuck no. Like I'm allowed to say that, and it's not not libertarian to say I disagree and but

Marc Clair  10:24  
what you're describing, I think, is the problem with trying to look at everything through the lens. I think it's fine to use the lens, but trying to apply it to every situation in this sort of like logical misses. Ian way, and I say this because I'm talking to myself from maybe 10 years ago. I don't see myself making this alright. This all right. This never really came up at the time, but I could see myself making this kind of argument at the time that, well, I don't like this or agree with it, but from a libertarian perspective, the child is basically a property of you can rationalize the way block told me that they they're, I don't know, and I can rationalize my way into, well, it's it. I don't agree with it, but it's okay, so I shouldn't, so therefore I shouldn't comment on it, or I'm not being a good libertarian, which goes to what you're saying. And that is what you get a lot of once, once, or even, to use a an even more straightforward example, you know, I think Dave had some controversies last year, so when he was couple years at this point, time, time flies now, but he said something about, you know, being okay with the police kicking like, like, drug addicts a homeless guy on the park? Yes, right. And from the libertarian perspective, the sort of autistic libertarian response, anyway, is no state, state owned police, police, state bad, therefore not libertarian, therefore bad person. I mean, it's, it's crazy stuff. But, I mean, look, there was a time where I would, I would probably rationalize myself in the same thing, because I think it is, I don't think the ideology or the I certainly don't think the economics of it, which I do believe is has is correct and the correct way of looking at things economically. I think it's true, but it what's what it doesn't do is apply to direct. It's not copy and paste onto real life, just like anything, right? All right. We can use it to inform our opinions about the outcomes we'd like and what we think. You know, property is a million different directions. You can go on on how the libertarian, especially when I'm talking about Austrian economics, how that can inform your opinions of the world, how you can make different personal decisions, personal financial decisions, business decisions, this. This is, there's tons of value in it. So I don't want to say there's no value in it, but I think when we try to just cut out a page and plop it on top of some life event. It just doesn't work, because that's not how people think, and that's not how people work, and you can't really wrap every moral concept around the idea of property rights, or even around your kid being a property right. Therefore some other parent can do this thing that is clearly harmful to their child well,

Brian Nichols  12:36  
and what you've also helped. I hope the audience at least walks away from that Mark seeing is that just because you have an opinion debate, some

Marc Clair  12:45  
libertarians now you got me, got me all back in the zone. Just because

Brian Nichols  12:50  
you have an opinion that is libertarian in nature, again, does not mean that you can just autism it into reality, right? You have to have your ideas meet the real world. And by the way, you mentioned the rationalization, the logic, right? This is where libertarianism has an inherent disadvantage. I did this for at least five years. I was really focused on, how do I help teach libertarians how to get out of the autism and actually sell their ideas? And one of the things I used to teach all the time, all right? When you make a buying decision, you're making that buying decision with an emotional trigger, right? And then we justify that with logic and facts and figures and rational thought. You're trying to lead

Marc Clair  13:32  
with that. Lead with the logic and reason. That's just not how people work. But if you read the economics, you can't think of it any other way if, if you think that therefore applies to every instance in

Brian Nichols  13:41  
the world. So so when you take a book and you say, read this book, it's going to show you how great libertarianism is. The average person looks at you like, dude, I'm not going to sit down and read this book. I'm going to I'm going to maybe digest one thing from that book that matters to me based on something that's a pain point I'm seeing in my life as a libertarian salesperson, it is you to uncover that first and then present the solution through the problem solving perspective. But Mark this is where libertarians, for what 10 years, been doing this at this point, like I just, I can't seem to make any headway. Help me out.

Marc Clair  14:18  
Well, you said it right there. I mean, if you lead with the reasoning, you're just doing humans backwards. You're doing regular human behavior. This is like Dale Carnegie 101, type. There it is. Yeah, it's just not how it works. So you really need to lead with the emotion. So you know who that book works on, who? Here's this great Mises book, someone that already got that aha moment for some reason, like they made the purchase Exactly. Ron Paul woke them up to liberty, and now you want to see how you can justify it. So now, now this book comes in very handy for yourself, but you can't, therefore, not bother with the sale, and then hand them the user manual. Like, here's what you wanted. This tells you exactly how the law. Hour that you didn't want because you don't own a lawn works. It's the same thing you're trying to hand them a manual to a product they didn't even want

Brian Nichols  15:06  
to buy. And that is where I have just i I've gotten a little snarky in my old age mark or

Unknown Speaker  15:14  
otherwise, yeah, you kind

Brian Nichols  15:16  
of and I feel the folks I am snarky towards, it's the ones who just like they either don't get it or they don't want to get it. And frankly, I'm done with, with trying to convince those folks that you should care and approach it differently. Like, if you want to lose, lose, I'm gonna I'm gonna watch you lose. I'm gonna tell you the lesson

Marc Clair  15:33  
they'll get Brian, so just allow it, will they, though? And that's where I get so frustrated. Wasn't available to them. Whether is another story. It's the

Brian Nichols  15:42  
Libertarians from yesteryear that we've been having these, these discussions, these debates, however you want to frame it, like they are convinced. They are absolutely convinced that if we just, if we just lead with libertarianism, like I had, oh my God, dude, I don't need to throw the debt underneath the bus here. But like Justin Amash, right? Like I had this debate with him back in in Illinois, at the LP of Illinois, like he was leading with the idea that we should be selling democracy to your average voter. And I'm like, Justin, your average voter doesn't give a shit about democracy. Like they will, they will echo the like, do it for democracy. But when you actually put the rubber to the road and you say, what does that mean to you? It doesn't. It doesn't mean what you Justin Amash think it means. It doesn't mean that people love the Constitution, they love the Bill of Rights. They love the process. No, you love the Constitution. You love the Bill of Rights. And that is the that is the catalyst for you to bring your idea forward and say, and here's why, versus letting that catalyst of the here's why, be the thing that actually sells people and and I just, I get so frustrated because I see all this, and then I say, Okay, it's quite obvious what's happening and where we're losing why can't we adjust Now, Mark, I say all that I know I'm speaking for myself, but I'm not speaking just for myself. There's a lot of other folks out there like me who are just at their wits end. With that being said, you're also here nuts to talk about libertarianism. And look really, really awesome on the show, Mark, you're gonna talk about a really cool summit that's coming up here, actually coming up here this week. And it's with our good buddy, McKell Thor up. It's the expat money summit 2024 now, Mark, for the folks I'm talking to who they're they're pissed off, they're frustrated, they're at their wit's end. It sounds like the expat money summit could give them not just the pathway to, I don't know, up and move out of the United States, should they so choose, but it gives them a lot of other different resources, different plans of attack, to help live the life they want to live, to have some Plan B's, plan C's, and all the way to plan z. So talk to us, Mark expat money, summit 2024 what is it and what can we expect? Sure thing,

Marc Clair  17:51  
well, just to go to the expat stuff for a minute, to go back to what we were just talking about. Sorry, I'm not going to come on here and try to tell everybody to go be an expat and to go live overseas, because, for frankly, especially a lot of in your audience, it's just not something on their radar. It's not something they want. So that's that's not what I'm going to come I'm not going to come in here and hand you all the manual to being an expat, necessarily. Some some people are interested in that. I mean, I have a lot of people ask me about it, especially a lot of people think I still am an expat, because I did spend about a year living in Mexico. So I have had a, what you might call an expat experience. And now I, well, I'm still an expat away from California, so we live in Florida now, and it's where we're planning to live for the time being. We're very happy here. I'm very happy with my lack of lack of state income tax as well, if I could just get that federal tax down to zero, which is something you can do through, through expat style stuff. But now, you know, for me, I started working with Mikhail maybe four or five years ago, just on the side. You know, I first met him just like, just like I first met you through being on a podcast together and kind of hitting it off and becoming friends. And so we were friends on and off the podcast. And at some point, he just started asking me, and this started happening around the time I was getting ready to leave Los Angeles and my other job. That story's been told in many a podcast. But, you know, he knew I was looking to bring some of my income online and start looking into that sort of thing, so he just sort of reached out to me and said, you know, do you want to help me with my podcast? Because he already knew that I was, I was somewhat interested in the expat stuff myself, just because I had traveled a lot and I just saw a lot of experiences. Oh, being in another country isn't scary, it's fun. Oh, and it's a third of the cost of where I'm from. Oh, wow, there's something to this. So it was already in the back of my mind as a maybe later type thing, maybe someday, of course, in my mind, then now, someday, to me, was like when I'm old and retired. Now I now that I've moved the timeline up a little bit, but the summit itself, to answer the question here, is really, it's really for everybody, because it's for anybody who values their own freedom and values taking action to protect their freedom and their liberty. So it is the expat money Summit, because our company is expat money, but all of these steps that people take to put together what we call a Plan B, it's basically your your financial as well as your physical and economic backup plan, essentially. But. I don't have a problem talking about this stuff too, especially do people in the freedom freedom slash conservative slash libertarian sort of realm, because you guys already understand the financial problems with, say, the US, federal deficit and the debt and everything with that. You guys already understand the reasons that de dollarization is pretty much just inevitable. The only questions are the how is it? Are we just going to inflate it away? Are other countries going to move away from the dollar? The answer is yes to all of this stuff. Now I'm not going to come on here and pretend I know these like timelines and things like this, because, because I don't, because in 2007 I bought a bunch of gold, rightly so I'm glad I did. But I did it because I thought next year the dollar was dying. And this is like, that's what I thought, because Peter Schiff told me, or what have you. And Peter Schiff was right and is right about a lot of things, but he's, I'm still waiting for that, so I'm not going to say I know that this is for all I know. These guys can keep this stuff cooking for another few decades somehow. But even if they do, gold is still going to go up International. Real Estate is still going to attain value in certain, you know, certain areas of the world that are benefiting from de dollarization, that are benefiting from some of these new alliances that are taking shape in the world, like bricks. And again, this even just saying something like bricks, you know, the old libertarians would be like, ah, status, government Alliance. I don't care, all right, because I have no longer in I'm no longer just living in the realm of theory. I'm living in the realm of action. And in the realm of action, you deal with the world as it is, and you look at it, you know, I don't like any states. Great, cool, who cares? They're not going away tomorrow. So let's look at how the ways they're interacting with each other is affecting the world and affecting our lives. And there are ways that you can that anybody who doesn't matter, if you never want to step foot out of the United States, can set themselves up to protect themselves from things like de dollarization, from out of control inflation, doing so using offshore means. So there's, it's always wise to diversify. I think almost anyone can agree on that. Well, maybe not in all areas, but when we're talking about our finances and our portfolio, I don't think anybody, including my own traditional, you know, I've laid out some of the stuff I want to do to my own sort of traditional finance guys, and they can't argue with it. You're like, yes, that just makes sense. Their specialty is in US stocks, so that's what they deal in, and that's their experts on. So that's what they do. But even when I present, here's what I want to do with some of my portfolio. That's a smart idea. Is the response I get from my own, my own US stock financial people. So, but we can delve into any of the more of the specific questions, but the really, the summit itself is for everybody, because it has some awesome speakers. Even if you don't want to diversify your portfolio and don't do anything with your even if you have no money, there's cool speakers there. Anyway, we have Ron Paul speaking. We have the great Tom Luongo, his podcast become one of my favorites over the last few years at Gold goats and guns, Scott Horton is speaking there for the first time. Doug Casey, pretty much the original international man. So there's really a tons, tons of really cool headline speakers, and it's entirely free to it to attend and and you can see everything live or up to 24 hours on a free ticket. So there's really no reason not to go over to expatmoney summit.com Get yourself a free ticket and pop in and check out some presentations, even if you don't want to protect your wealth or freedom for some reason. And certainly, even if you've never given thought to actually living overseas or living in another country, to me, actually moving your family overseas and actually live in another country is is almost like a cherry on top that you can take, you know, an option you can take at some point. But it's it's never not a smart idea to have a backup plan in life. So part of that backup plan for a lot of people is just simply diversifying their finances, getting their money offshore. What a lot of people don't realize, and I mean almost, almost everybody you know, has some 401, K from some old job, just sitting around doing nothing. They forgot about it. They maybe they rolled it over from somewhere. What most people don't know is you can, you can take that money, any, any money any any money that's been rolled over, as long as you're not with your current employer, because that they control, until you leave them, any money that you've rolled over or sitting in old 401, K, you can roll that into a self directed IRA, and you can buy international real estate tomorrow. You can buy, I mean, you can buy real estate in prices you never thought were possible, because they're still in countries that are developing, but they already produce income, because the middle class of those countries are growing. Like we do projects in Brazil. You can buy condos in Brazil that are going to produce income. And I'm not a real estate salesman, I'm just explaining some of the ways you can diversify your portfolio and get into real estate. Get money that was, that was formerly only stock in stock options for a few different not stock options, but your only options would be a series of mutual funds, where you can actually take that money and put it into something else into something that can gain money for you. So an income producing asset in a country like Brazil, in a country like Paraguay, you can take that money and buy gold offshore, you can do all this stuff with money you might have forgotten about. So that's like, my main mission is to pretty much inform all the like minded people that I know that understand these kind of problems and show them what they can do with what they already have and probably don't even realize they can do it. And it's not even that hard. You just, you just get someone to do it, yeah, well, you know, the right person, and you pay a small fee, and it just happens. You know, this is really not hard stuff.

Brian Nichols  24:50  
And I'm glad that you, you mentioned this mark as, like, the the second piece of this puzzle, because I think the first piece of the puzzle everybody gets, and we see it all over, tick. Talk over Instagram reels, Facebook reels, like, here's, you know, here's a random girl who's been living in Japan for the past seven weeks, and here's a, here's what she's learned, how much it costs. And it's like, oh, you can go live your life for like, 14 cents a day. Woo hoo. And that's the first piece that people see. And I think they also will shut down the idea of an expat conversation, because in their head, they're like, oh, I can only take advantage of this if I physically am over in this other country. Right? To your point, though, there is so much more to this. And we're gonna use the word expat to we'll say, you know, put it into the bucket, the lifestyle, right? Or the processes, the thought processes of where to invest your money. And it's not, again, not just investing money. It's the plan Bs. It's like, oh, maybe you want to have a revenue stream coming in from a housing complex you've purchased in the middle of nowhere that you never knew as a country that existed, right? But like, you do that

Marc Clair  25:53  
with the same package advantages of your IRA, you can maintain those same tax advantages that you have in your 401, k or IRA. So there's really, there's no, I mean, yeah, you can lose on any investment, of course, but there's, if you already want to diversify, you can do it within, within these investments and just move some of your, you know, mutual funds, or whatever you do and that which, you know, like, I think we all know, the stock market can't go up forever. It's been going up forever. But even as it goes up forever, inflation is going to go up even faster. So there's, this is not a winning game in the end for for most of us, one way or the other, well, the numbers will go up. Number go up, yes, but value go up, no,

Brian Nichols  26:26  
no. And that's the thing, right? Is that I think a lot of there's, there's two pieces here. A lot of it is first, people are just so stuck in this mindset of like, well, this is again, status quo solution, right? This is the way we're supposed to do it, right? I was told by my father, my father in law, my teacher, my professor, like that. You invest in your 401, k, right? Isn't that what we all supposed to do? And then you buy your home like it. There's a processor, step by step, process mark, and if you're not following that, you must be doing something wrong. And then the other side of it, there's just, there's such a mindset of being risk adverse in America. Like people don't either, no, they do understand the idea of opportunity cost, I think, in certain areas, but they need time preference. That's where here, here's our autism from libertarian world coming back into play, right? Like time preference. Let's talk about it. But like, for somebody, knock on

Marc Clair  27:22  
doors and tell old ladies about time preference, and they'll love it.

Brian Nichols  27:25  
Oh, I have a little bit of time left. I prefer to study. I

Marc Clair  27:29  
have very little time left.

Brian Nichols  27:30  
Let's chat. But in all seriousness, like that, right there, I think is where we see a lot of the objections is that I don't see the immediate return. I'm afraid to take the step away from what has been presented by the experts right, which talk about the whole expert class versus the normies. Go back to covid. That's a whole separate conversation. But right there am I on the right path? Mark? Is it just the uncertainty, the the fear of not following the the easy path. And I use the word easy very loosely, but the the chosen path by the betters. I guess.

Marc Clair  28:08  
I think there is actually a little bit of because, you know, even as someone so immersed in the libertarian world, I mean, I've been reading Ron Paul columns since 2000 or 2001 so I've been immersed in this stuff for a long time. And even I have a hard time sort of like making some of these decisions sometimes, where, in the past, where it's like, I don't know, my dad tells me I should put all my money and look, there are smart reasons to you should take advantage of the tax benefits of 401, K is the matching of the company's IRAs. These are smart things to do, but most people don't realize that they can, they there's more options than just investing in the US stock market. So like the fact that's Miguel, who I've worked with for years, for years now, he's taken all of his money out of stocks. That's not what I'm recommending. I don't recommend everything. I don't recommend anything, because I'm not a tax I'm not a I'm not a financial advisor, so I'm not recommending a darn thing. I can just tell you what I think of what I do, but you know, he takes it all out. He's just, he's the same way. He'll just tell you what he's doing. He's taken all of it out of stocks, because he sees this all going down one way or the other. So he invests only in in real estate, in countries that he sees benefiting from de dollarization, in properties that are producing income already and this sort of thing. So that's and, of course, a lot of gold and offshore in various locations, as well as he has more residencies and citizenships than, literally, than fingers on my two hands. So those are all his backup plans. But I think for for most people, they're not going to necessarily be seeing that I need to have a bunch of residencies all over the world. I think it's a great idea. I think it's very smart to have a bunch of backup plans, but, but anybody listening, I don't even try to sell this stuff for stuff, really, because anybody I, you know, I'm not trying to convince anybody of the problems, of of the of the US debt, or why the dollar is going to fall anything like that. My God, what an what an uphill battle. When I say convince anybody, I mean, like, convince your, your Normie, you know, sister who loves Kamala Harris. Like, I just don't, I don't need to buy. Bother with this. This is not what I need to do, what I've done now, and it's really helped that I spent 10 years in podcasting. In this world, I'm just talking to the people that I already know, essentially about the things they already know are the problems, and presenting the solution. I'm presenting a solution. I'm not saying the solution is going to change the way they go now this. This is what the main difference is. I used to think the solution is knock on doors. Battle through libertarian politics, do whatever you got to do, convince everybody of something. So we can change the government. And finally, whatever politicians we get in here, the few good ones, they can fix these problems. And then we can just go about like, that's not no that I've given up on that, not that I've not that I've given up, because it's it's just that it's not possible. That's not how things work. That's not how you're going to actually be the most effective. Quite the opposite what I'm doing and what I'm trying to show other people is, yeah, there are solutions to protect yourself from these things. There are solutions to put yourself in the best situation possible. There are ways to make life rafts that you can hop into if you need to. And those life rafts, maybe this is not the best analogy. They're going to make you money, even if you don't need to swim in them, people will rent them, is the way to put this. So there, there's never no downside, but there, to me, there's a lot of potential downside, and not in not diversifying out of just one thing called the US stock market that that would be my not advice. It's just what I do and what I encourage people to to think about a lot more. And that's just one of the many things to learn about again at the summit, expatmoney summit.com, cost nothing. Cost Nothing to go. It's free. I'm not selling zero. Just come check it out. $0

Brian Nichols  31:28  
go be an attendee. I can't stress this enough, Mikhail has been able to get a just an amazing group of experts together here to again, not just talk about how to take the step to get out of out of the United States and move overseas, but again, all these, these, Plan B life rafts, Plan B options, all that stuff you're going to be able to learn. And again, it's free. Cannot say that enough. So with that being said, Mark, we are going to go towards the tail end of the episode. And I do have a question for you, my friend, and that is, what's next? What's next for Mark Claire, because we have Lions of liberty. Mark Claire, then we had Mark Claire. Show, Mark Claire, we have expat money show. Mark Claire, what else is going on there? Man,

Marc Clair  32:12  
what is next? Well, that's a good question, because what you know, if you asked me this three years ago, I wouldn't have said this. I was working with Michael at the time. But now I'm a lot more involved in the higher level of, higher levels of his business. I'm a director of content and marketing for exha money, so I oversee most aspects of the business at this point, which is what's part of what's enabled us to grow. Because, you know, this business started, technically, maybe seven years ago, when it was just McKell. McKell with business cards offering consultations. Now we employ up to 30 people, close to 30 people, I should say. And so this is a this is a real business now, but the only way it could be a real business is if Mikkel just does one thing and be a CEO and talk to his clients. That's pretty much what he has to do. So what all the stuff he was doing five years ago I'm essentially overseeing now. So that's that's taken up a lot of my time, and it provides a lot more value, both to my family as well as in the grand scale, because I'm actually getting to the grander skill of I've learned to scale a business. When I first got on a first call with him, there was four or five people on that call, and two, one of them was his wife, and one was my wife, you know, like, so, like, this is the really, I've been in this from the beginning. This is all a long way to say, I don't know where what I'm going to be doing. Probably I'm going to be doing a lot of work with Mike for a very, very, very long very, very, very long time, because I'm absolutely passionate about this. And it's, it's, it's just the best job for my lifestyle. Because I have full freedom. I have full trust from McKell. I don't, I don't clock in or clock out of any job. I'm at home. I can do everything I do from here. I get to talk about things I'm passionate about. I manage an international team of people. I get to work with people from Brazil, from Brazil, from Turkey, from Spain. It's really, really cool and really, really fun. So I'm just, I love what I'm doing, but I have developed these skills and the knowledge that I can see a lot of possibilities down the road I can, I mean, I could take someone with an idea and show them how to, how to scale their business up and internet, through hiring offshore talent, for example, and through internationalizing things and scaling it up 10 times faster than they ever could if they were trying to do it, you know, based just based here in the United States in the brick and mortar style. So I see a lot of ways I could take the skills that I've been gaining, all of which I gotta say, from a financial standpoint, only provide a lot more benefit to myself and my family then, knowing 300 different ways, I can tell you that libertarianism is, logically, the proper thing, and there's property, right. You know, I'm not saying it's all not correct. What I'm saying is some of this knowledge you can actually do things with and provide a better life for yourself and your family with. And learning about business, learning about communication, is going to provide more benefits to your life than learning about libertarian theory. I'm not saying you shouldn't do it. I still like reading rothbar, guys. I'm not like, I'm not like, against this stuff. So I've, I've come out harshly sometimes because, you know, because it's, well, first of all, I'm just getting older and getting snarky, just like Brian here. But, you know, I have a little bit of cranky old man syndrome, snarky Old Man Syndrome, the true. Truth is, when I talk to other, when I talk to people in your audience that are maybe 1015, years younger than me, or people in Lions liberties, old audience, and this kind of realm right now, when I talk to them, I'm really just seeing like me 20 years ago, and I'm just trying to talk to them in sort of a more of a snarky uncle type of way than anything else. So it's all, it's all very good natured ripping, is what I would say. And I so I encourage people to keep listening to the Brian Nichols Show. Check out the exec money show. Find ways to improve your own situation, your own lot in life, because everything else will flow from there, ultimately. And I can say this from experience in the last five years, the skills that I've leveled up with none of them involve a theory about property rights. You know. They do involve knowing other countries theories of property rights and how they apply them legally, and how we can work around them, that's understanding the world and utilizing as opposed to thinking you can knock on doors to change that whole world and get what you want.

Brian Nichols  35:52  
Mark Claire, there's a reason you're one of my favorite people, because these are always just great conversations and like, elephant in the room, like, I know you're right, and I know the audience knows you're right. Because when we listen to this episode, and we go back and

Marc Clair  36:07  
clip that sound, bite off and share that one around 100% Yeah,

Brian Nichols  36:10  
everywhere, please. But like, when we go back to what, what we really, I'd say 2019, we really doubled down on this. Like, what approach works to selling liberty. It's not the ISM, it's not it's the solutions to the problems. So that that's why we took a hard turn away from leading with the ISM, talking about how great liberty is. And you know how everybody else in the world heard about these ideas? They would love it like no, let's start talking about what are the main pain points that people see every single day? And yes, we know libertarians. I know they're caused by my government. But when you're trying to solve a problem for somebody, they don't give a shit about where it came from, how it got there, how long it's going to take. They want to know you can actually fix it. That's the number one thing. Can you fix my problem? Why

Marc Clair  36:54  
does how many people move to Florida in the last four or five years? It's not because the governor of Florida wrote a political manifesto about all of his beliefs and exactly the correct legal theory for things. And then they read it and said, I agree with that. Let's move. No, he just did some things that showed them, oh, this is a better place for my family. Boom, that's

Brian Nichols  37:13  
it. That was it that I'm in Indiana. I would lived in Philadelphia for seven years. Like, I am an example of this. You are an example of this and the show itself. That's why we change the show, because that is what works. People want to know that there are solutions to the very real problems they have. They don't care necessarily what the solutions inherently are from a values or principles standpoint. They want to see that it solves the problem. Now it's on us to solve the problem and have the liberty based solution in the background, but don't lead with the Liberty based solution. Lead with the fact that it actually solves the main problem. First. Mark, this has been a great conversation. I genuinely, genuinely love these chats. So the expat money Summit, we're gonna make sure we include all those links in the show notes. Audience, I know you've been watching now for the past few months, you've seen the expat money summit show ads here on the program multiple times a week. Go attend. It's free. It's free. It's free. Even

Marc Clair  38:11  
I'll even give this one disclaimer based on our conversation, if you're a theory person, and any of the things that Brian and I have discussed today have rankled you in the wrong way. Don't come to the summit. It's not for you. It's not the place for you. This is for action takers. This is for people that want to learn how to take action in their lives to improve their situation. If you are a person like that, I guarantee you're going to get value out of this. You're definitely gonna get more than $0 value, a lot more. So come check it out. Expatmoneysummit.com.

Brian Nichols  38:38  
I'll see you there. Alrighty folks, we're gonna go ahead and put a pin in today's conversation right there with a good buddy, Mark Claire, formerly of lions of liberty, formerly of the mark Claire show. Or is he? We'll see. He's currently on hiatus. He might come back. He might not. He might never. On your toes. We'll see what happens. But with that being said, whenever that decision may be. I know for sure that one of the folks that you'll be able to reach out to mark to have a conversation about it is right here on the Brian Nichols show. So as always, buddy, it's great to have a chat with you and open door policy for sure here in the show again, folks link open

Marc Clair  39:14  
door policies. I could show up in the middle of the night. I mean, things could get weird. You never know. I'll

Brian Nichols  39:19  
end with this real story. I had a customer in the contact center space, and they called me the other day. They're like, hey, we have a problem. I'm like, What's up? And they go, so our phone system, not my phone system that we sell, but just an old phone system they had was calling their members, which they're a bank, calling their members at one in the morning, just auto call. And they have, there's no reason for it to do it. It was just doing it. So they're like, um, this is what they use, brand. They use an exact word. It was like, brand not damaging, but it was like, debt, oh, brand death. They're like, this is brand death. So please help. So, yeah, don't, don't do any phone calls at 1am if you're a bank to your customers, I doubt they will like it. Or if

Marc Clair  39:58  
you're a libertarian, trying to sell it to your. A grandma, she doesn't want that.

Brian Nichols  40:02  
Call that too. That too. Mark Claire, good to talk to you, buddy with that being said. Brian Nichols, signing off here for Mark Claire, we'll see you next time.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai