Episode Transcript
[00:00:02] Speaker A: Welcome to Be the Giraffe. I'm your host and guide, Chris Jarvis. Perhaps you're wondering, why be the giraffe? The giraffe literally evolved to be more vulnerable. But the truth is that giraffe gets to see things others can't and reach heights and reach food others won't.
[00:00:18] Speaker B: If you are looking for ways to.
[00:00:20] Speaker A: Stand out and reach higher in business, with money and in life, then you are in the right place.
Welcome to Be the Giraffe.
Welcome to Be the Giraffe. I'm your host and guide, Chris Jarvis.
[00:00:33] Speaker B: This is the show where innovators share.
[00:00:35] Speaker A: How they stood tall, broke free from the herd and reached higher in business and in life. Today's guest is the enigmatic Peter Ashton. A former Division 1 and professional football player, Peter has built and invested in more than 60 ventures worldwide. After co founding ExpandX, Peter decided to take on the financial industry.
At Vera, he has created a cutting edge platform that helps leaders and investors make smarter, faster financial decisions without the costs or conflicts of interest of traditional banks and investment firms. If you want to learn the secret game of money and learn how to master better returns with lower fees, this episode is for you. Peter Ashton. Welcome to Be the Giraffe.
[00:01:17] Speaker C: Yeah, I appreciate it.
[00:01:18] Speaker A: Nice to have you here. So finance is part of my past.
Yes. You're doing super cool things. We've met before and had a chance to talk about some of the really interesting things that you're doing in finance. Super technical, disruptive stuff that people want to know about the finance industry.
Your background? High finance?
[00:01:38] Speaker C: No, not even close.
[00:01:40] Speaker B: Okay, good. So this is great because you're doing cool things.
[00:01:44] Speaker A: People want to be impactful. They want to make money.
We talked earlier about our kids and the challenges of raising kids and these kids are all trying so hard to find the path and do the right thing, get the right internship, to get the right job, to do all these things.
And you're now doing something super cool. But you didn't start there. Like where did this journey start? Because you ended up somewhere really cool.
[00:02:08] Speaker B: People need to hear that.
[00:02:09] Speaker A: The story.
[00:02:09] Speaker B: The road can be very windy.
[00:02:11] Speaker C: It's very windy, very ups and downs.
But I really started like my whole life is just being an athlete. Wanted to be a professional athlete from the time I was little and then tried as many sports as I could. I was a four sport athlete in high school and then went off, played at Oregon State Division 1 football. I was a quarterback and then started. I moved positions. That was like the first move. I've moved a Lot.
And then I spent two years there, one year at North Texas, which gives me two teams to root for for the year. So if one's not doing good and one's doing good, I can kind of go back, back and forth.
[00:02:46] Speaker A: Flexibility.
Yep.
[00:02:48] Speaker C: And then, you know, a lot of it was around, like, I wasn't really good in school. So when I transferred from Oregon State to North Texas, a lot of my credits didn't move, and so we didn't have the transfer portal when we played. And so you'd lose a year of eligibility. So I lost, like, two years over the course. So, you know, most people have four or five years to play. I only did it for three. And then I was like, I need to go train for the NFL. I. I was good enough and so decided to go do that. And I did that for two years trying to make it in the NFL. I played arena football up in Philadelphia, which was a completely different game, so that was fun. And then after that, my career was done. I didn't really know what to do. So I came back, and the only thing, I spent all my life in the gym, in training, and so I was like, I guess I could be a personal trainer.
So I came back, coached high school football for three years, and then became a personal trainer. And I was really kind of. I just did that.
[00:03:43] Speaker A: How hard was that? So you put people who've read some of the book, they know my dad played professional baseball, and everybody would get excited about the fact that he played professional baseball. And I can remember toward the end of his life, I was talking about something, and he said, everybody celebrates the fact that I made it, but I got hurt, and I wanted to be in the hall of Fame, and I was good enough, but my dream was taken away. So I saw firsthand how hard that was for somebody who put so much into something, beat the odds, because so many of us wanted to be athletes or were athletes. Like, how hard is that to put all that time in? And then all of a sudden, it's like, you get to a level and it's, okay, this is the end of the road.
[00:04:19] Speaker C: Well, I played more in high school than I did from college and in the pros. So, like, it's not what people think. It's completely the opposite.
They only see a certain. A small fraction of people playing on tv, and that's just not the reality.
And so I. You know, I never want to say it was a failed. Right, because you just got. You have to go try to do it right. But I didn't even play, it was just, you know, you get signed by a team, you get cut by a team, you go up and play up an arena and you're like, I gotta try to make it back. And you have to call your agent. And it's like it's a whole different ball game than just, you know, in high school and even in college. You know, if you're on a scholarship in college and you just, you know you're gonna be there for three, four years unless you want to transfer. So you have time, Right. And you might have one day. And if you don't perform on that one day, in that one hour, you're done. And so it just, it wasn't what I thought. And it was very hard because you spend your whole life doing it and it's like it didn't even happen.
Right. And so, you know, it sounds good when you, when you do the intro, it sounds great. Right. But in reality, when you really dive into it, it's like it's not that great.
[00:05:26] Speaker A: Well, the reality of most. I've had the chance of working with some people at the NBA and at the NFL and mlb.
And the truth is, even the ones who do make it. Yeah. The vast majority of the ones who do make it, of the 1500 or however many people are money making professional athletes in a given sport.
[00:05:43] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:05:44] Speaker A: Then even the majority of them have short careers. Average careers can range from like three to six years, depending on the sport. The ones who make it, and then even those who do make it for a long time. You hear stories of guys with hundreds of millions of dollars of earnings still end up broke.
[00:05:59] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:06:00] Speaker A: So like this dream parents have about making these kids athletes, it's the fairy tale. Isn't really a fairy tale. It's so unusual that people actually make it.
[00:06:10] Speaker C: It's like.001 for college and I think it's like.0001 or.001 for the pros. It's so small. It's, it's, you know, the fact that I was even remotely even close in that vicinity without barely playing in college is like almost a miracle. You know, I had a really good agent. Right.
[00:06:30] Speaker B: So find good people, work with good.
[00:06:32] Speaker A: People who will promote you. We'll get to that lesson for sure. All right, so the story, not everybody who's watching this obviously had a chance to play professional sports, but there's people who had dreams that didn't work. They had a dream, they thought they were going to be something. Doctor, lawyer, whatever it was, engineer. There was something they Wanted. They wanted to attend a certain school and didn't get into their dream school. They wanted to. They wanted to get into a career, a major. Didn't get it. They wanted to get the internship or get the job at the company of their dreams. I've got a 20 year old in college, like, looking for internships, wondering why she's not getting them because she's that competitive athlete type, you know. And so it was like, why can't I get it? It's like, well, you know, you can only get one job. Like, you can apply for 20 internships, you can't do them all. But kids get so caught up. People get so caught up in that chasing the thing.
But, but it doesn't work. And so I think your lesson's so interesting because you've pivoted a couple times. So you, you, you stay with sports because you know it.
[00:07:26] Speaker C: Yep.
[00:07:27] Speaker A: You go teach and coach and get involved in just. I'll help other kids.
[00:07:33] Speaker C: Yeah. And basically it, I'll just go help. I'll take the knowledge I have and train other kids. Because that's the only thing I was, quote, unquote, an expert at, Right. Because I did that for over a decade, right?
And then I was like, man, there's not much money. I was gonna go coach in college. You have to make a decision, right? Of like, you can't just do that, or you can, but that's the life you're gonna have. And so I've always wanted to innovate and strive and be the best I could. So I was like, do I go coach in college? I wanted to go be a scout. I was really good at identifying talent and like.
But then I met a scout, and he was like, yeah, you're traveling for 350 days a year, right? And my wife was like, no, you're not doing that.
So even for me, I was like, there's no way I'm gonna do that. Like, you know, I enjoy family and, you know, it's a big part of my, of my, my life. And so I was like, no. So I had to pivot. I had to. So I was like, I'm just gonna go into training and just build up a client base. And that's what I did for about three years.
[00:08:34] Speaker A: You mean physical training?
[00:08:35] Speaker C: Physical training. So, like, you know, if you want to look good, right. If you want to, you know, eat healthy if you want to, you know, I was just a personal trainer, right? So it's like nothing special. It's just doing whatever I didn't you know, for the last 10 years and applying it and building a career out of that.
[00:08:51] Speaker A: So you took what you did because you've been an athlete now you've accomplished something. So people who try to get fit.
[00:08:57] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:08:58] Speaker A: Like, you probably were very fit and look the part. And so, yeah, you know, the trainer. Nobody's hiring the trainer who's 100 pounds overweight.
[00:09:05] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:09:06] Speaker A: So, like, you look the part. You took it. People want to look like I do, so I know something about it. So I'll just go in the gym. I like being in the gym. I'm familiar with the gym. Yeah. And you made that go.
[00:09:13] Speaker C: It was. It was the comfort level. Right. It's, you know, comfort. You know, it's why I wear a hat every day. It's. I'm used to wearing a helmet and I tape on my wrists. And so it's like, it's the being, you know, comfort in.
So from that standpoint, it's like, yeah, I was very. I could sit in a gym and it'd be at home. Like, it was. It didn't feel weird or. And then I know a lot of people. That was a fear. So it was. I was able to help them. Like, hey, this is the place you want to be. Like, you know, just motivate. You're just. All you're doing is just motivating people. Right?
[00:09:43] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:09:44] Speaker A: You said something about you want to be a scout, which to me, the scout means you have this. You have this great sense of observation. You see things.
So when you weren't just the trainer going to the gym and making people work through their kettlebells and. No, everything else, like, you took this to another level.
[00:09:57] Speaker C: Yeah, Yeah.
I would look at their biomechanics and, like, how each individual person would move because you can't. One person can't do a bench press. Right. So you have to alter that movement that fits that person's movement.
[00:10:12] Speaker A: Right.
[00:10:12] Speaker C: So you can't just, hey, do this, do this, and just, check, check, check, check. That's what everybody does, right? You had to really. So, you know, it kind of stemmed from really. My dad had 20 something back operations, so. So, like, you know, it's hard. Everybody came in with back pain. So it's like, you just. I mean, everybody. There was not a single person that came in without back pain. So it's like, okay, you need to work around that. So I just really dove into how each individual person reacts. Their body, how much pain do they have? Where is the pain? And then build movements and exercises off.
[00:10:46] Speaker A: Of that you went a step further too. Cause you realize it's not just about the gym. You also went. You provide another service.
[00:10:52] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah. My, that, that's probably the, the.
I had my family, I, I roped in my family for this one. So all my. Everybody wanted better meals. And so I was like, you know, me being the entrepreneur that I am, I was like, I'll cook them for you.
So you can kind of guess. I had about 100 something clients and I was doing three meals a day, five, five days a week. And so at first it was just cooking in my house and then I would pack them up and I would deliver to all the clients houses on Sunday. So when I was training, 4 to 9pm every day, right? Five, you know, five in the morning. And then Fridays I cut short, go buy all the food at Costco.
Right.
And then Saturday I would train, I'd be done at like 3pm on Saturday, go buy all the food, store it. And then Sunday morning at like 3, 4 in the morning, I would get up and cook like 2000 meals.
[00:11:44] Speaker A: So. Doing whatever it took.
[00:11:46] Speaker C: Just doing whatever it took, Whatever it.
[00:11:47] Speaker A: Took for the clients to get a good result.
[00:11:48] Speaker C: Yeah. And so I was, I did that for like five months.
And then I did the math wrong and I broke even. I didn't make any money, so I priced, I priced it and I was sitting there and my dad, this is my dad, he's like, I'm 55 years old, I have a great job. Why am I cooking meals on. So they all left on Sunday. They just like left.
I'm like, so I shut it down after like six months. It was not worth it.
[00:12:12] Speaker A: So we are.
[00:12:14] Speaker B: If you feel like you are working.
[00:12:16] Speaker A: For nothing and you want to get to the next level, come back after the break and Peter's going to tell you how he learned that.
Money for nothing. And we will find and food for free. We will find a whole new path. Come back after the break.
[00:12:41] Speaker B: Hope is not a strategy. If you're ready to engineer your wealth differently, apply to have a complimentary financial diagnostic done on your business. Let's discover what's currently missing and more importantly, what's possible. Once you're making millions of dollars or you're worth tens of millions of dollars, you have outgrown conventional thinking. So stop buying off the rack and get something custom made for you that's going to help your family meet all of their goals.
[00:13:22] Speaker A: I'm here with Peter Ashton and if.
[00:13:24] Speaker B: You'Ve been to high school, he has.
[00:13:25] Speaker A: Been the coach the athlete, not the math teacher. And also the cafeteria, the lunch lady. He was doing all those things, which we talked about at one point. So after your career, like a lot of us, you fumble around, you do things, you take the path of least resistance. You learn in business by running a business, personal training, all these people, roping your whole family into a business, mismanaging the food prices, delivering 1500 meals a week, and realizing you're making no money, and then said, okay, this isn't working.
There's a lot of people who, you don't need to cook 1500 meals to know that your business isn't working. But if a business isn't working, if your life isn't working, you want to find something else. And so you had that, this journey of discovery. What do you do after you went through the sports and you went through the. And you went through the personal training and the crazy food business?
What happened, like, in that transition? What brought you, How'd you move forward from there?
[00:14:21] Speaker C: I knew that when you're training every 45 minutes all day long, then you have. You can't do that for like 20 years.
[00:14:29] Speaker A: It's.
[00:14:29] Speaker C: It's unsustainable.
Like, it's, it's not.
It's a lot of work. And then when you're on top of that Saturday, Sunday, like, it's, you know, seven days a week, and you're just, you know, my wife's dropping me off at, you know, 4:30 in the morning. We have our, you know, newborn in the back of the car, right? Because we have one car, right? You keep. It's just unsustainable. And so I knew that. And luckily all my clients, all my clients were millionaires. So I only worked with people who were really successful and they were across all different industries, so you name it. And I started asking them questions because I was like, hey, how did you make your money? That was like the first thing. How'd you make your money? Because I was like, I need to find a way out of this. And so at some point it's like, I'm good. I have my client base. I'll just start talking to people.
And so that was instead of just focusing on like, training, training, training, I would like, you know, break out my day. So I'd stop cooking meals for people. And I would like, you know, spend some time to like, talk to my clients.
Instead of it just be like a strict, like, they come in, boom, boom, boom, leave, next one, boom, boom, boom, next one. It was just rapid fire all day long.
So I Started asking them, how'd you make your money? How'd you make your money? And they kept telling me, and I.
[00:15:47] Speaker A: Was like, what'd they say?
[00:15:50] Speaker C: It depends on the industry. Some of them were, you know, it took me 20 years. Some, you know, a lot of words, like, it took me a long time. Some of them were, you know, I knew this guy, so I got in business with him, or I had a really good mentor.
So the mentor, like, was probably a common denominator. They always had somebody over them that pulled them up, if that makes sense.
[00:16:13] Speaker A: Yeah, right.
[00:16:14] Speaker C: And so it was very rare. Do you have, like, self made, Right, Self. You know, I think I only had, like, one or two clients that, like, he got into the construction business and just built up a massive construction company and then sold it, right? That. That's rare. That's. It's not. That's not like, when everybody's like, I worked for a company, so they go into the traditional world, right? And then they work their way up and then they start something, right? And so that was how everybody went. You know, I worked for a law firm. I went up, started my own law firm, right.
I'm an investment banker. I worked for Goldman, worked my way up. I worked in a bank, worked my way up. Everybody was the same. They would always go work for somebody, build up, and then leave. And I'm sitting here like, I can't do that, right? Like, I would have to go get these certifications. And it's like, I'm making more training than I would at, like, an entry level.
So it's like, there was no room for me to do anything.
And so I started just. I was like, oh, you need to meet this guy. So I started connecting my clients together.
I was like, well, if I. I'll help you out. And I was just, oh, I'll help you out. I'll help you out. Help you out, right? Because I was like, oh, if I can't do anything, I can't help you other than just in the gym. So you need to know this guy. So I was like, I know a lot of people, and that's really how it all started, was, you know, connected. One guy here, he invested in the company, came back and was like, dude, thank you. I was like, you mean, people make money from doing that? I was like, oh. And that was like my first really entry. And then after 2019, I left the training world and got into real estate.
[00:17:49] Speaker A: Well, before we get to that, so much to unpack there. And that's.
I try to meditate every day. And sometimes it's guided, sometimes it's unguided. But one of the guided meditations recently was the Sanskrit mantra was sat chit ananda, which translates into existence, which we all exist. Then in the last one, ananda is bliss. The middle one is consciousness. And so the key to get from existence to bliss is actually is consciousness and getting aware of who you are, where you are, what you're doing. And I think there was such a really powerful thing in you learning early. The lesson that we often have to teach 50 year old, 60 year old executives is that time is worth more than money. They know it, but they keep putting themselves in. You learn that early. That was a bit of a gift in the failed grind of the food business and the fitness. But the thing that you did that most people don't do, which again is such an important thing, is talk to your clients.
[00:18:46] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:18:46] Speaker A: You ask them what they did. Just the fact that people spend so much time trying to build their Facebook or their LinkedIn profile and it's like, oh, I got to a thousand, I got to 2000, I got to 3000.
Have you talked to any of them?
Like, you learn so much by talking to these people. And in most of those cases, what's the Abe Lincoln line of. I've learned something from every man I've met. I can honestly say I've learned how not to act or what not to say from a lot of them, but at least I learned something. And so this whole, you were asking questions and not just chasing what someone who had the nice car or the nice house or the nice watch or whatever it was, was. You're like, yeah, but that's not for me. Or oh, that's too much of a path. But you did that consciousness thing of asking those questions, like, where did you learn that, like that idea? Is that just from the observation that you.
[00:19:32] Speaker C: No, it's from sports. If you don't know something, you ask.
[00:19:34] Speaker A: Right.
[00:19:34] Speaker C: And if you.
That's how they teach you. You have to ask a lot of questions. If you don't know the direction of where you're going to run what play, you have to ask. Right? So same thing with like, if you fail next play, you can't take that, that interception you just threw into the next play. And so it is a blessing but also a curse because it looks on the outside like you have no emotion and you don't care. But it's like it's next play and you have to, you know, speed. So it's like, I'll just ask all my clients like, hey, what did you do? How'd you make your money? You know, because they would show up in these ridiculous cars and they would show me pictures of like all the places where I'm like, I'm thinking to myself, that costs a lot of money. Cost a lot of money. Right, right, right. Obviously you have to make a lot of money in order to do that.
[00:20:17] Speaker A: At least you're supposed to.
[00:20:18] Speaker C: Yeah. So I was like, I just started asking, so it's really for just from sports. So that was a blessing of, you know, if you don't know, ask.
Right.
Everybody and I had some guy who was like, he would walk in and be like, don't talk to me today.
Like, some clients would be like, I don't want to talk today. I just want to work out.
So I was like, you know, it's not for everybody, but, you know, for the most part, if you don't know, ask, worst they can say is, no, that's so good.
[00:20:43] Speaker A: When I was like my COO of the whole be the giraffe world, Shannon, who booked you for this, she and I met at the Jack Canfield thing and with the guy who wrote Chicken Soup for the Soul. And he tells people, you have to become an asshole.
Like if you want things, you have to ask. And there's something. People are so afraid of asking something and having that cringe or the embarrassment or getting a bad answer. But if you don't ask, you don't get.
And people generally want to help people.
There is something about the curiosity of like, for those of you watching it, if you've got someone you met or someone in your life who's doing something that you want to do, ask. That's such a cool.
I never at that age. Because you were in your 20s at the time. I would not have just walked up to somebody and said, I would have assumed I was supposed to know.
[00:21:31] Speaker C: Yeah, it's not for everybody, you know, but what was good is I had some guy who was a CEO of a 2000 person company and like he was a client of mine. I'm the only person in his life that would tell him what to do for an hour.
So I learned how to communicate with people that were super wealthy and like of status or, you know, whatever you want to call it.
And they can't say, this is my place, you're coming to see me. I'm not coming to see you. Right. So you do what in this environment?
You know, I'm your coach.
Yeah. I'm the Boss. So at that point, doing it over and over and over again, it just one. I don't care what people think about me because they don't know me. So it's kind of that old thing of like, I don't know what you're going through. Right. Or I don't know who you know. Right. But I need to know that person.
[00:22:24] Speaker A: Right.
[00:22:24] Speaker C: That's something that I've learned. But.
[00:22:28] Speaker A: Something you did. I've now seen you do this twice, which I think is going to be great. In the next segment.
When you were doing the physical training, you realized that workout is part of the body transformation, but food is a huge part. So you pivoted to, I'm not just going to tell you what to do. If I don't help you manage what you eat, you're not going to become fit. If you eat crap.
If you're not eating enough protein, you're not going to be able to build muscle. If you're eating too much of the other stuff, you're not going to lose weight. You figured that out. Then when you're working with these wealthy people, you ask them what they did. You also made the connection, which is a huge part of this whole show and everything else is about connection. But you asked people what they did and then you were able to put together, oh, this person needs to meet that person. And so you gave value first, which is another thing, I think, get into rooms. If you provide value and help people. The Zig Ziglar quote, you can have everything you want in life if you give everybody else what they want.
And so you brought people together with no expectation. You didn't do that for a percentage of.
For nothing. You just did it because it seemed like the right thing to do. Right.
Super cool. Right. So that's. So then what happens with that? So that's like, we're getting into how you use that in your business now. But what was the moment when all of a sudden it was different for you? Someone made money from an introduction. Like, what was that moment that sparked your.
Opened something else up to you in your mind?
[00:23:50] Speaker C: Yeah, it was one being burnt out training. So, like having somebody press it felt like I was being pressed from behind to go, like, I need to figure it out. Right. But also being patient to know which direction to go. And so I had a really wealthy client. It was. He had a business that he wanted to start.
Right. And it was around a new type of therapy that actually prevents neck, back and spine surgeries. And so.
[00:24:19] Speaker A: And your dad had had a Lot of spine surgeries. So you were interested?
[00:24:21] Speaker C: It was like, it was. I was interested and like, okay. You know, and I knew that what he was doing in the stem cell injection space, being the guy in the world on it, I knew that there was something there.
And so he wanted to build and have all these locations. Right. And so I wanted to go build kind of a, almost like a pod, Right. It's called, you know, hydrokinetic spinal decompression.
So it's really complicated, but it's underwater traction therapy. So from that standpoint, like, I knew from being in the training business that you only have a certain amount of time every day. So you're capped on how many clients you can take a day. So each location is capped on.
[00:25:04] Speaker A: Time is a big factor. And it's also a factor for us on this segment. But when we come back after the.
[00:25:08] Speaker C: Break, that was it.
[00:25:09] Speaker A: Peter is going to talk about how taking your past and connecting it to your future can bring you to a whole new path. Don't miss it.
[00:25:31] Speaker B: Let me ask you, how much of your hard earned income is getting gobbled up by taxes? 30%, 40%?
Maybe more than 50.
You're out here crushing it only to hand over a big fat check to Uncle Sam every year. And here's the kicker. You're probably overpaying big time. But it's not your fault. You've got smart accountants, savvy financial advisors, maybe an attorney or wealth strategist. They're doing all the usual stuff, right? Home office deductions, Augusta rule, opportunity zones, solar credits, blah, blah, blah. But here's the problem. They're playing defense, not offense. They're focused on the easy wins, the surface level stuff. Meanwhile, you're leaking cash through holes they didn't even know exist.
That's where I come in. And I'm not talking about some overhyped, complicated tax schemes you've heard about. This doesn't require you moving to Puerto Rico or someplace else. I'm not pitching infinite banking or some investment in solar credits that might tie up your money for a decade. Now, I'm using simple, powerful structural strategies that legally slash your tax bill by 30% or more every year.
[00:26:34] Speaker A: How?
[00:26:35] Speaker B: By helping you set up a smart company, an infrastructure that immediately and drastically helps you reduce what you owe through a proven system. No hassle, no chaos. No firing your accountant, no firing your attorneys, no restructuring your life. These are the strategies the top 1% already know. The ones they use to keep more of their money, to build more wealth and to pay for Whatever they want. A business for their kids, college for their kids, a new acquisition. Pay down debt, real estate, all of it. The money you're unnecessarily losing to taxes right now. It could be that down payment on real estate, on a business, on anything that will help you build your family's financial legacy. It could be the gas that supercharges your existing business and gets you over the hump to that next level.
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[00:28:43] Speaker A: Welcome back. I'm here with Peter Ashton, who's telling us amazing stories that are perhaps more divergent than mine. You have done a lot of interesting things. You went from sports to personal training to then entrepreneurship. It must have felt like the world was just opening up for you, where all of a sudden, you meet now one of your millionaire health care expert clients who's excited to start this new business. And it's all about. About underwater traction for people with back pain. Your dad had had 20 back surgeries. So now all of a sudden, it's helping people get fit, which is your fitness background. It's tying into the pain. You watched your dad. It must have felt like I was made for this.
[00:29:23] Speaker C: Correct. It was like. This is like a combination of both, right? And, you know, getting into it. And so when I left all my, I left all my training clients, passed them off to other trainers.
[00:29:34] Speaker A: You found the perfect thing that takes you past with your, with your why and your love. The guy gives you the job opportunity. You get, you burn the boats, you get rid of all your clients.
[00:29:43] Speaker C: Yep. And then day 59 out of my 60 day employment, I get fired.
Like, it's, that's.
[00:29:52] Speaker A: The world opens up and it seems perfect and you're Moses and you get halfway across and the sea crashes back.
[00:29:59] Speaker C: Yes.
[00:29:59] Speaker A: And then it's, oh, my God, what happens then?
[00:30:01] Speaker C: And, yeah, well, during that 50 day period, there was a guy I was working with there and it was a collective group. There were some things going on in the company that we had no idea.
And so it was a new division of that company and called him and he's like, yeah, I know this one person in the staffing industry. I was like, perfect. I can talk to people.
I don't mind calling 50 people a day or 100 people a day. So it was like, perfect. So they gave me the job, right? And on my way home, right, Because I was going to tell my family I just got a new job. Like, awesome. And it's not an entrepreneurship. And it was not. It was staffing, right.
And then buddy of mine called me, goes, hey, I'm with a guy who's in real estate. And I told him that you knew a lot of wealthy people and he wants to meet with you. So I went over there and he offered me more than what the.
So I had to call the, the staffing company. This was, this was Saturday, right? I was starting on Monday. I said, hey, I'm not going to take the job.
And you know, that was, you know, I went into this guy, he had a real estate reit and my job was to go raise money for the real estate projects. And I was like, cool, I can go back to start calling all my old clients. Raised a million bucks in the first 90 days. And like, that was kind of how it got started. But yeah, wild.
That was within like six, seven months. Yeah, no, five months. That was like a three to five month period.
[00:31:34] Speaker A: This is so interesting for people who are unsure about the journey. This journey is so crazy and twists and turns, but in that thing one, you kept your eyes open, you knew what you didn't want, which was helpful, but you made good, good relationships, the people you worked with. Again, this whole idea about the LinkedIn, you build. You spend the first half of your career building connections. The second half you're supposed to monetize those connections. But if you always do good things with people, you can always call people.
[00:31:58] Speaker C: Right?
[00:31:59] Speaker A: So you had done that, and then. So now you get into real estate. This is your beginning of the finance. You show people you learn how to make money, and then eventually you learn something about the finance industry, which kind of brings you closer to where you are today. So talk about being in finance and in the investment world and then what you saw happening and not happening.
[00:32:20] Speaker C: Yeah. So in that whole time time period, right from when I got into real estate, I was only there for three, three months. And then one of my biggest investors that I brought into, I didn't know anything about real estate. Like, I personally, you know, to this day, think, you know, I'm not a big fan of doing real estate because it takes too long, in my opinion.
But, you know, from there, I had a very wealthy guy. He just sold his company for about close to 380 million.
And he's like, I love your work ethic. Let's start a venture capital firm together.
I was like, I'll do all the work if you just want to write all the checks.
[00:33:00] Speaker A: You know, there's like 20,000 people in business school right now who would love to get a job with a venture capital capital or PE firm. And you have a guy that offers you money to launch it, which is really spectacular.
[00:33:11] Speaker C: It was wild. And that was because I raised money for a project in less than 90 days. And then from there I was like, hey, I know all the. Actually, I went to ask him and say, hey, I have a lot of my former CEO friends that are asking me to raise money now because I was in the business of raising money. So, like, hey, I'm this new business. So I was like, do you mind looking at them? Granted, I played football with his son in high school, so we knew each other, but I didn't really know. I didn't know him at all. I didn't know how wealthy he was. I had no idea I knew his son. And so I said, hey, do you mind looking at all these decks and telling me which ones I should raise money for and which ones should I not?
And he's like, sure, come over to the house and whatever's house. And you know, like, five, six hours later, my phone's blowing up. Like, my wife's like, what are you doing? I'm like, I'm sitting on a couch waiting for this guy to.
Basically, he's just reading for like four or five hours. And he stacks all these papers up, sits down, he goes where are you getting your deal flow from?
I was like my old training clients.
He goes, do you know the ratio that deals? I look at deals I invest in.
I had no idea. He goes, I want to invest in almost all these deals. And that's when he's like, I just sold my company. You know, the light bulb went off. It's like, he can just go, bring me all this deal flow.
Let's start a venture capital firm. And that's what we did. December 2019.
[00:34:30] Speaker A: So many people are so afraid to take the step. They're afraid of getting rejected.
They think they have to learn everything.
And the truth of the matter is, in this situation, you didn't know anything about finance.
[00:34:41] Speaker C: Nothing.
[00:34:42] Speaker A: Nothing at all.
You had successfully raised money for somebody whom you had successfully helped build muscle mass or something, lose weight or whatever it was the goal was. But you helped them with something, then you help with something else. You built a network.
And then all of a sudden you're in this spot and you're making money connecting people. The person with money, with the person who's trying to raise money.
It's a connectivity thing, which is a human element. It's not technical at all.
[00:35:06] Speaker C: No, not at all.
[00:35:09] Speaker B: But very successful.
[00:35:10] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:35:10] Speaker A: So that's such a valuable thing for the people to realize is that there's a human capital who, you know, the stories you've been through. Some people tell stories of things that they've been through, and that inspires people. So they tell their stories and it helps other people. In other cases, it's just connecting people. And that comes from asking people what they're doing, what they need, what they want.
[00:35:28] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:35:29] Speaker A: And not being afraid to ask. And then if you don't provide it, not shutting off the door, but going to find people who have the thing that that person needs.
[00:35:37] Speaker C: Everybody thinks that their connections are like this. You know, I'm gonna take those connections and put it in a safe and lock it until I need it. The reality is, like, they're. They're not even your connections. It's just somebody you know.
So, you know, you're being protective of your relationship, but the reality is, it's not your. You just know somebody. Like, you don't own that person. Right. So make the connection. Right. And just keep doing it over and over again. And then when you need something, right, you can call that person, he'll call this person, he'll call this person because you made that chain of connections. And so, like, even today, like, some of my team, they're like, dude, you did that in like eight seconds, like 14, 20, 30, like minutes a day, two days. I'm like, I just called this guy that I knew he knew this guy. Just. It's benefiting my businesses now from just, just make the connection. That's how I always tell people, right? So.
[00:36:31] Speaker A: Which is so fascinating because in my prior, I still do it a little bit, but in my finance career that was part of it. Because financial services, I think is probably a good transition to what I know you're doing now is in financial services, everybody has access to the same products at the same prices. Now it's not.
Most of what's out there is the same stocks, the same insurance products, the same legal tools. It's all the same stuff. And so it's a race to zero. What I mean by that is that who can do it the fastest, the cheapest, whatever it is. But the products are exactly the same. So people would ask, how do you guys raise, get so much capital from your doctor clients? How do you sell so much insurance? How do you do so how do you generate so much business for law firms? How do you do so much more than everybody else? And it wasn't because we were still selling and promoting the exact same things. We just did other things.
We'd ask the people when we're with doctors, we'd know healthcare attorneys, we'd know people they need to know. So they knew if they called us, they basically gave us their commodity stuff because they knew they'd get everything else. So very interesting that our models were, if you're in a commodity business, you have to win on service, right? Or price. But then you don't make any money. So such an interesting thing. So you've built this again, crazy financial success in the financial services world with literally no formal training, none.
[00:37:49] Speaker B: Which is great, which I love.
[00:37:51] Speaker C: I have to.
I'm reading so much about the markets and we'll be sitting down on the couch watching football and like my wife looks like, what are you doing? I'm like, I'm reading and like foreign to her, like you're reading, you know, it's so great. I love it. I'm just reading these things because I have to like self learn. I don't have anybody teaching me this industry. Right. And we're, we kind of took two industries and meshed them into one from the aerospace and finance, but two, two wild space spaces that, you know, I got to learn both sides, right?
[00:38:19] Speaker A: So tell us about, about your company now. So we've got a couple minutes in this segment and then we have the next one. So you're doing all this fundraising, you're doing all this venture capital, and you're learning something about investors and you're learning something about companies. Yep. And then what was the big observation that brought you to what you're doing now? So we'll talk about. Yeah, let's, let's use the last little bit we have here to talk about the transition there and what you observed and what happened. And then what's been the last segment going through what you guys are doing because it's so cool. And I think people are going to want to hear that story.
[00:38:46] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah. So in our venture firm, we only invest in disruptive technologies.
So, you know, there's three. There's really a couple keys that when we would look at things. Right. It was.
There's a difference from disruption and innovation.
[00:39:01] Speaker A: Okay, define that.
[00:39:02] Speaker C: Okay. People lose money on innovation. You never lose money on disruption.
[00:39:06] Speaker A: Right.
[00:39:07] Speaker C: Innovation is just the evolution of tech. It just comes. It comes and goes. Something new, something new, it just always comes around. So when you invest in something, if that's why in venture, you have to exit in like a certain amount of time, because then something else is going to come behind it and replace it. Disruption. You have all the time in the world. Nothing is going to come replace that.
[00:39:25] Speaker A: So give an example.
[00:39:27] Speaker C: An example would be there's a company in Fort Worth that my business partner invested in called Linear Labs Electric Motors. This was like 20, 20, 20, 21, 22. This is the electric race. Right.
Their model was higher torque and longer battery life.
And so when we invested in the early seed round, well, obviously a lot of these companies were coming around, but their model was not with cars but with air conditioning units. So carrier.
So you look at people are like, oh, electric motors going into cars.
There are a lot of other things in the carriers, like one of the largest. And so they, they've raised 60, $70 million since company just skyrocketed over a couple hundred million in valuation. Like, so we were in the 6 million seed round.
[00:40:17] Speaker A: So it may not be the disruption may not be in the actual product, but in the application in the industry.
[00:40:22] Speaker C: Correct.
[00:40:23] Speaker A: That's a great place to stop. So in the next segment, we're going to talk about how you took the cool aerospace.
[00:40:28] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:40:28] Speaker A: And tech, and now you apply it to finance so people can get better returns, lower price, less, less conflicts of interest. You're not going to want to miss it.
[00:40:50] Speaker B: Ever feel like you're meant for something bigger in life?
I'm Chris Jarvis and on be the giraffe. We ditch the herd, stick our necks out and find a better path in life, in business and with money. It's time to disrupt the ordinary and build an extraordinary life. Laugh, learn, leap. Join me Friday, 7pm on now MediaTV.
Welcome back.
[00:41:25] Speaker A: I am here with Peter Ashton, who is the cook, football player, cafeteria worker, physical trainer, personal trainer, venture capitalist and disruptor. So he has done a lot of interesting things.
You have to go. It's such a crazy group of things. You have to go back and watch the last three segments. But financial services, you have taken.
I've been in this space for 30 years. You took them like chocolate and peanut butter. Two things that you wouldn't think would come together. You took really fascinating what you're doing with making innovation turn into disruption in the financial space. So tell me about what you're doing with the company now.
[00:42:07] Speaker C: Yeah, so when I was looking at the financial services side, when I look at disruption, right, I have to go back and say, what are the types of companies that have disrupted the space over the last, like, 50 to 75 years?
[00:42:21] Speaker A: Right.
[00:42:21] Speaker C: And I really couldn't find many. Normally you can find a lot, right?
And with race of AI, the.
A lot of these firms are trying to use AI to make money in the markets, but they're not. They don't trust it. Right? Because AI is really good about taking a lot of data, right. And giving you a fast answer, Right. You know, it's a difference of like, hey, I'm going to make an investment, give me a million bucks, and then I'm going to use that million to determine where to place it. You're going to be like, tell me where to place it and then I'll give you the million.
Right, Right, right, right. So that's what AI is really good about that. Right? But when you're looking at where to place your money, you need to use math.
So mathematics is like, you know, you can't change math. Math is what math is. And so it's not as sexy as you saying AI, right? But when I wanted to look at the financial services side, I was like.
And I tried. I started a hedge fund, which did not go well.
Lost money, like, barely raised a million bucks. Like, it was. It was challenging two years, like, it was not fun.
But the tech, the underlying tech was there, right? And so I just had to figure out how to connect the two. So when we took aerospace mathematics, right, and applied it to artificial intelligence, algorithmic trading systems, so it's a lot. It's complicated. But I wanted to basically take a phone, click start, and it makes money in the market.
I didn't care how it worked. Right.
Trying to be as simplistic as possible. Because from 2008, 2009 to today, there's been 25, 30,000 new investment shops that have popped up.
[00:44:01] Speaker A: Right.
[00:44:02] Speaker C: Okay.
[00:44:03] Speaker A: The amount everybody has the. Everybody has the AI trading guru who has figured all this out.
[00:44:08] Speaker C: Everybody's a money manager, wealth manager, all that kind of stuff. So, you know, the likelihood of me breaking out with those. With all those people is like, slim to none. Right. So we had to have. We have to have something that not really applies to those type of people. Right. But they can use it, but applies to the general population.
So that was like the idea of like, whoa, everybody's fighting for the same dollars. Credit investors, you know, qualified clients, hedge funds, big fund. Like, they're just venture capital.
[00:44:38] Speaker A: You know, all traditional things that if you have a million dollars to invest, or 10 million.
[00:44:43] Speaker B: Correct.
[00:44:44] Speaker A: You can get access to really good stuff.
[00:44:46] Speaker C: What if you had 100 bucks, 500 bucks, 1,000, 10,000. There's really no tool that allows for you to really trust it and to continue to build wealth off of that.
And, you know, what we're trying to do is taking the institutional level products. Right. And allowing kind of bridging that gap to the general population that says, you know what? I don't have time to go understand how the markets work because it changes so rapidly.
So I don't have time to go sit and read and determine where to place my money. But I want to be. I want to know where the market's going. Right. So that's where the prediction, you know, that fascinates people of like, where things are going to go. Right. And that's like a big part of our business now is predicting markets and future trends and then applying very consistent and sophisticated computer systems that executes trades for you. Right. We don't care how much money you make, which is the complete opposite. What financial services firm do. They're like, we care about how much money you make because we want to participate in that.
[00:45:53] Speaker A: That's right.
[00:45:54] Speaker C: Right. And in order for you to get your money out, we're gonna charge your fees.
So you're in this, like, I'm being feed to death. Right. And so investors like, oh, my, you've heard it. My money is locked up.
I heard it so many times. I'm like, it's your money.
I don't understand that. So, you know, testing it and trying it, we've had a lot of invest. We've failed so many times. We've lost tons of money. Right. You know, not only my money, but investors money. Like, it's. It's a tough thing to try to figure out. But right now we feel like we are about five years ahead of everybody when it comes to market predictions. Right. And executing trades and doing it at the kind of a granular level downward.
Anybody, right, any, any one of my family members can understand what it is we're doing.
[00:46:40] Speaker A: So what I think is important for people to understand about this is people think AI is a new thing. But in financial services, there have been algorithmic trading bots, for lack of a better word, for 25 years. That part's not new. At the highest end, it's always been that way. And we used to call them hedge funds, and then we got into other names but the hedge funds.
But the point was, you made the point about fees that in a mutual fund or something else, people charge a percentage of assets.
In some of these more advanced hedge funds, it's usually 2 and 20 or 3 and 30, which means it's a 2% management fee and 20% of the gain or 3% management fee and 30% of the gain. So we'll do all this heavy lifting and take an enormous chunk of the upside. And you can only take a percentage of the upside with accredited investors, people who have, without getting into the rules, a million dollars or more to invest. We'll just say that's not the number, but that's an easy one to give people an idea. And so what you're talking about is democratizing, democratizing the technology that's been running the financial services markets and investment markets for decades. Yes. And giving people a chance to get access to these economics or this upside without having to guess. You're not watching Fox Business, you're not watching Bloomberg and trying to guess.
You can figure this out ahead of time, where you should have your money, what it looks like these things are available. They just haven't been available to people who are more average and middle class in the past.
Am I reading that right?
[00:48:13] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, exactly right. Like companies like, like Robinhood, that was like a big disruption. That's why they picked up scale so much. Right. No fees. And, you know, you. They're kind of a, you know, a benchmark. Right. But if you start really diving into, like these actual companies, they're running out of ways to be disruptive and innovative because they've been there, done it in the financial services side because of all the fees, right, you're, you're capped at a certain point.
Most of these companies are publicly traded.
A lot of them are. And so they can't make critical decisions, right. Without modifying their price per share. So they have to be very calculated. And then the employees in the company, they don't want to take on new technologies because if it doesn't work, they get fired.
Right. So it's weird dynamic, but like Robin Hood was, you know, that side. But what we're trying to do is have, I believe that the, the future of finance is all gonna be subscription based.
[00:49:13] Speaker A: Can you describe that?
[00:49:15] Speaker C: So five years ago, when you look at the subscription based model, and that was when my business partner where we had the venture capital firm, he built and sold Funimation.
So Funimation, Japanese anime Dragon Ball Z. His family created it back in Japan.
They're the creators of Dragon Ball Z.
So when you have millions of people paying you a subscription fee and you have the guy who created that as the mentor, you understand how to build subscription based systems.
So the whole model's like you can go to YouTube TV and you can pay $10 or $9.99 or whatever it is, or you could probably pay almost $1,000 because there's add ons but there's a cap.
[00:50:00] Speaker A: Right.
[00:50:01] Speaker C: They don't care how much TV you watch.
Right. So it's the same model, right, with the money. Right. If I was a financial service firm, I can charge for how much money is how much money you have in the markets. Like, you know, there's, there's a lot of ways to do it. But what we're trying to do is just all subscription base. So let's say I'm BlackRock, right? And I offer, they have a 1200 funds and each fund is now a monthly or annual subscription fee. We don't care how much money you make, but it offers, you know, a lot more people can get into it now.
[00:50:31] Speaker A: So what you're saying is though, are you saying that this is what you think will happen? Is it what you're doing?
[00:50:39] Speaker C: No, this is what's going to happen.
[00:50:40] Speaker A: Okay. So the idea is that people will pay a flat fee, not a percentage of assets. Because if you, if you give me the, if I give you the advice to invest in whatever fund it is, whether you put in 100,000 or 100 million, the fact that I gave you the advice shouldn't cost a different amount.
[00:50:53] Speaker C: Well, at that time I'm not the one executing and placing that money. Computer system are so I'm just your relationship manager. So I'm employed by the company to manage their relationship. But computer systems are actually executing and entering in the markets.
[00:51:06] Speaker A: What you're saying is the movement will be toward, you'll get a fee and then you'll get all the advice. And whether you use it a little or you use it a lot, that's where it'll go, okay?
[00:51:13] Speaker C: Correct.
[00:51:13] Speaker A: So how are you taking advantage of that?
[00:51:15] Speaker C: So what we're doing is we're saying, okay, we have pre built algorithms that operate in certain markets, right. And from a user standpoint, I can have based off a risk profile, do I want to be a little bit risky or you know, that's all based on margin or do I want to be super conservative, right. Where I just, I can't lose $100 type of thing. Our pre built models, right, apply in certain markets and the customer can pick and choose what they want. And it's based off how much money they're starting with. So if you're trading $100, we can't charge you $100 a month.
[00:51:45] Speaker A: That's right.
[00:51:45] Speaker C: You're not gonna make any money. So it's proportionate and it's capped. So let's say you're trading a million dollars, you're only paying 2,500 bucks a month and you're getting everything that you would get at Morgan Stanley, J.P. morgan. That's why it's all subscription based across every market. We don't care how much money you make, we care about having a lot of users because you're building obviously enterprise value of the company. And so we're way ahead of everybody. We have about 100 algorithms that we're optimizing and working with different markets.
And we use our predictive charting tools. Right. Which gets back to the aerospace side. This is built in the early 50s, right. Even earlier than that.
I can get into very technical terms.
[00:52:27] Speaker A: There's a lot in the technical side, it's super disruptive. If you want to get access to great investment advice at a lower cost and a fixed fee, how do people find you?
[00:52:38] Speaker C: So right now our website and LinkedIn, we just, we're wrapping up a capital raise right now for the company to kind of get more staff and people to really build. But we're already there. We're signing huge partnerships right now, but really just LinkedIn and our website. And we want to make it as simple as you download our app, you click what you want to trade your risk profile and you start super cool. That's simple.
[00:53:02] Speaker A: Peter, I love it.
Your product now is so simple and so fantastic. Simple in what it does not simple and how it does it. But your path was so crazy. So thank you for sharing all of that. It was wildly interesting and enlightening. I think there's a lot of people are going to find great joy in taking those nuggets. So make sure you rewatch this, share it with your friends for anybody who wants to make more money with less conflict of interest and lower fees so you can elevate your perspective and see a better path and ultimately become the giraffe. We'll see you next week.
