Lead-Lag Live
Welcome to the Lead-Lag Live podcast, where we bring you live unscripted conversations with thought leaders in the world of finance, economics, and investing. Hosted through X Spaces by Michael A. Gayed, CFA, Publisher of The Lead-Lag Report (@leadlagreport), each episode dives deep into the minds of industry experts to discuss current market trends, investment strategies, and the global economic landscape.
In this exciting series, you'll have the rare opportunity to join Michael A. Gayed as he connects with prominent thought leaders for captivating discussions in real-time. The Lead-Lag Live podcast aims to provide valuable insights, analysis, and actionable advice for investors and financial professionals alike.
As a dedicated listener, you can expect to hear from renowned financial experts, best-selling authors, and market strategists as they share their wealth of knowledge and experience. With a focus on topical issues and their potential impact on financial markets, these live unscripted conversations will ensure that you stay informed and ahead of the curve.
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Lead-Lag Live
Phoenix Rising: From Rock Bottom to Financial Freedom with Coach JV
The transformative power of inner change ripples through every aspect of Coach JV's extraordinary life story. From the depths of opiate addiction and a suicide attempt in 2006 to building multiple successful companies and achieving financial freedom, his journey reveals that our external reality shifts dramatically when we address our internal landscape first.
"When I changed me, the environment changed," Coach JV explains, sharing how he went from selling everything he owned to feed his addiction to completely reinventing himself through spiritual awakening and dedicated personal development. With raw vulnerability, he recounts the pivotal moment when, unable to buy Christmas presents for his three-year-old daughter, he realized he'd hit rock bottom. That crisis became the catalyst for what he describes as the death of John Vasquez and the birth of Coach JV.
What makes this conversation so powerful is Coach JV's unflinching honesty about his transformation. Starting as a banker after recovery, he climbed rapidly through the corporate ranks, acquiring the trappings of conventional success—only to discover he was still chasing external validation. A chance conversation with a contented gardener during executive banking school sparked a deeper questioning that led to his true purpose: helping others escape the "just-over-broke" system through financial education and spiritual growth.
His perspective on cryptocurrency offers particularly valuable insights. Rather than viewing crypto as a speculative gamble, Coach JV analyzes it through the lens of his banking expertise, identifying coins with genuine utility in the evolving financial infrastructure. He shares his diversification strategy that combines high-growth potential assets with more stable investments like cash-value life insurance, real estate, and dividend-producing stocks.
Ready to transform your relationship with money and discover how internal shifts create external abundance? Connect with Coach JV on social media or visit his platforms to learn how you can break free from financial limitations while building a life of genuine purpose and fulfillment.
The content in this program is for informational purposes only. You should not construe any information or other material as investment, financial, tax, or other advice. The views expressed by the participants are solely their own. A participant may have taken or recommended any investment position discussed, but may close such position or alter its recommendation at any time without notice. Nothing contained in this program constitutes a solicitation, recommendation, endorsement, or offer to buy or sell any securities or other financial instruments in any jurisdiction. Please consult your own investment or financial advisor for advice related to all investment decisions.
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When I changed me, the environment changed. So when I started, you know. Now here I am broke, getting off of opiates being evicted from my apartment. I literally didn't have money to pay for my apartment. It's completely empty because I've sold everything in my apartment except my daughter's. I don't think Trump really has a choice to not be pro-crypto with technology and advancement today. I don't think he has a choice. So it's kind of like it's a freight train going forward. You're either going to get on it and go for the ride of your life or you're going to get ran over by it, but everybody's going to be on that train. So I think he had to make a decision and they said it was through his son. The sons are like this is real, this is really happening Now. What I don't agree with is like I think what you're talking about is how inaugurated that just wrecked a bunch of people, right.
Speaker 2:My name is Michael Guy, a publisher of the Lead Lager Forward. Joining me here is Coach JV. First time I'm meeting Coach JV, but he's got quite a big following across Instagram, x and various platforms, so introduce yourself to the audience, to me as well. Who are you, what's your background, what have you done throughout your career and what do you know?
Speaker 1:Actually, absolutely man. I'm Coach JV, so it's an honor to be here and it's been an interesting year. So I'm Coach JV, so I'm best known for my expertise in macro and microeconomics and my great awakening in my spiritual journey from suicide on December 18, 2006 to financial freedom education and we teach people how to break free from the just overbroke system. And so it's been a dynamic journey. And here we are, my friend.
Speaker 2:So I don't know how deep you want to get into that part of your life. But since you mentioned, I feel like I have to ask the question somewhat what exactly happened?
Speaker 1:Yeah, so I attempted suicide. I say committed suicide because John Vasquez died and JV was born on December 18th 2006 due to a massive opiate addiction. So I did one of the most selfish acts a human being could do with a three-year-old daughter in tow. I was a father of a three-year-old daughter and I attempted suicide and I woke up 48 hours later to a phone call from my mother. I took a massive amount of opiates because I thought there was no way out and I woke up from a phone call from my mother and I'd never heard my mother speak like this, ever. She didn't know that she woke me up from an attempted suicide.
Speaker 1:I kind of came into the fog and I answered the phone and she said you need to read a book called the Secret. Your grandma read the book and she had no idea what I had just done. And I read the book the Secret, and that's how this whole journey started 18 years ago. I had no real spiritual connection. I was never taught about God, I was never taught about Jesus Christ, I was really never taught about principles, morals, ethics. I really didn't have a good leadership structure within my life for anybody to guide me. And so that's how it started Learning about. Thoughts become things manifestation, and that journey has taken me on this wild journey from completely losing everything to, um, where I'm at today.
Speaker 2:So so your mother obviously was a uh important influence on your life. If I can ask, what about your father?
Speaker 1:Yeah, my father's a great human being man. He he did everything he needed to do to provide a food, shelter Um he, definitely we don't have the greatest relationship, but I say he's a great human being cause he's been my greatest teacher. Um he, definitely we don't have the greatest relationship, but I say he's a great human being because he's been my greatest teacher. Um, he did the best he could with the resources he had. He's in my life. He's been there for us.
Speaker 1:He was a great provider, uh, but never was someone who really, um taught me anything about life in general. I mean didn't really teach me about principles, morals, ethics. He was too busy providing, and that's what he was taught to do by his father. He was never told you know, I love you by his father, so he didn't have a really loving relationship with me, and so, as a man, I really didn't have that role model to look up to, and so my mother was a big part of my life, and now I see my father as one of the greatest teachers. Because of him and because of those teachings, I have now become an even better father. Because of him and because of those teachings, I have now become an even better father. So I did the opposite of what my father did, and now having two children is I embody love into them, encouragement, teaching them principles, morals and ethics. So I think he is one of the greatest fathers ever. He's the greatest teacher.
Speaker 2:What do you think when hindsight led up to that, that desire to end it Meaning? Was it actual physical depression? Was it despair because you felt yet like you had no prospects for a better future? What got you into the prank?
Speaker 1:yeah. So I was a clean-cut guy. I went in the military right at high school and, um, I had uh, went in the military, served five years in the coast Guard, got out clean-cut guy. I was a normal dude. I would, you know, hang out, drink some beers with my buddies, wasn't a big partier, didn't do any drugs, wasn't really a. I was into fitness, mindset, working out, exercise and I got a leg injury and I was introduced to opiates.
Speaker 1:Now the problem is with introducing opiates to somebody who was very insecure, a broken little boy that didn't have a lot of leadership. Some things happened to me as a child that shouldn't happen to a child. So I had a lot of childhood trauma that was really really pushed down deep inside of me. And when I took the opiate, I'll never forget the moment when I took that opiate. I was driving. I remember the exact underpass I was driving. It gave me this like superhuman confidence If anybody's ever felt that vibration and why people get addicted to it and the injury no longer mattered anymore. And so the next day I took it again. I got the same feeling. The next day I took it again and then I kept complaining about the injury. Doctor prescribed me more went from two pills to three pills, to five pills, to seven pills, to a hundred pills and I became a full-blown functional junkie. And then I started transitioning, like a lot of opiod addicts, from a clean cut guy to buying it on the black market, experiencing with other drugs because I couldn't get high anymore. So I went from a clean cut guy running a very legit business to a complete full-blown junkie by 2026, burning through all the money within our businesses, burning through the money within my accounts, became a horrible person, a horrible father, and by the time I got to the point where everything was gone. My money was gone.
Speaker 1:I was on December 18th 2006 when I attempted the suicide. I went to Walmart to buy a Christmas presents for my daughter, swiped my first. Now, about six months earlier, I had about 60 grand in my bank account, so you can imagine how much money I spent on drugs. I swiped, my debit card declined, swiped my credit card declined. I didn't even realize I was broke. I didn't even realize the business had run into the ground and I went over to a bank of America at that time and the banker sitting across me I'd never seen an overdraft account in my life and he turned it towards me and all I saw was red, and I started to hear this ringing in my ears and I was deep in the drugs at that point. I mean, if anybody's been addicted to opiates at that level, it was a very, very, very, very dark place.
Speaker 1:I would wake up every morning and my main goal was to get more opiates, to get more drugs, and I was injecting it into my veins as well. I was using an opiate that I could inject into my veins and it was horrible. And so at that moment I knew the gig was up, my money was gone, I had ran my business into the ground, I couldn't even take care of my daughter, I was just weeks away from being evicted from my apartment, and all I could hear was this voice inside of my head that ended it's over. And it was that same voice that, when I was a little boy that had no self-confidence, that was told that he wasn't worth it, it wasn't enough. And I realized that line I'd hit, that line that had been drawn for me, and I decided to go to my office and just load up a massive amount of opiates and I didn't see a way out.
Speaker 1:I couldn't see the light. I couldn't see the way out. I had no spiritual connection. I had no connection to God or Jesus Christ and, ironically, I'd never been taught about God or Jesus Christ. Christmas was Easter, santa Claus and Easter was the Easter bunny. Right when I was a kid, growing up, and I'd never been taught how to pray. But for some reason, I knelt down in that moment and I prayed for the first time in my life and I said dear father, god, and I did this prayer to this thing or whatever it is out there, and I truly believe that that prayer is what got me through it and I woke up 48 hours later and that's how it all transmitted Now. That journey was brutal, from recovering from the opiates and to where I'm at today, but here we are.
Speaker 2:Talk about the spiritual connection. By the way, I appreciate the vulnerability. I always make it a point that to develop a relationship, any kind of relationship, whether it's a business relationship, personal relationship, somebody has to be willing to be vulnerable, right and to take the first step to have that relationship. But as far as relationships go, relationship with God, what about support system Meaning? I'm sure there were friends that were seeing what was going on, trying to intervene. I mean, talk me through that a little bit.
Speaker 1:seeing what was going on, trying to intervene? I mean, talk me through that a little bit. Yeah, I think I was pretty siloed because of the environment that I created for myself. No fault of anybody, I had broken all the positive relationships I had in my life. I had good people in my life when I started out the journey and, because of my environment that I created, the people around me were all addicted as well, and so they were doing the best they can to survive and I was doing the best I could to survive. But I had broken all the relationships that were had added any value to my life, that were somewhat high frequency, uh, people that I could lean on, right, and it wasn't that they abandoned me, I abandoned myself. And so I thought, within my paradigm, I'm sure I could have turned any of those people. And my mom, you know she admits today that she knew that something was wrong and, um, you know, she, she, she had moments where she was trying to help me with it, but I was too far gone, but it was. It was again. You're a product of your environment. Now, interesting enough, which is you brought that up is, uh, how, how? Life cycles, right.
Speaker 1:So I got on opiates because of the leg injury. Ironically, in 2023, just two years ago, I had a vicious quad tear where I ripped the quad off the base of the knee and a horrible injury, and I got prescribed opiates, which is wild to be in that type of paradigm. Here I am now succeeding, financially free, spiritually free, running all these companies, and I get presented the same situation, the same paradigm. The difference was my environment. I have amazing, amazing, amazing human beings around me that supported me through the journey.
Speaker 1:For example, when I got prescribed the opiate with that red cap, I immediately reached out to somebody very close to me and said I'm scared, like I do not want to fall back into this paradigm again. I need your support. And that person said to me they said what are? What is the opiate used for? I said for pain. And they said what are you in the most pain? I said right before I go to sleep. They said take it before you go to sleep. So I had the right environment around me, I had the right support system. I had people that would call me on my stuff. So it was all environmental.
Speaker 2:I was in the wrong environment around the wrong people and because I created the safety and community, and that's an outsider listening to this fascinating to think through, because you go through this traumatic experience two days later. Yeah, correct me if I'm wrong, but I guess the sense that people that attempt suicide, other people, start to look at them differently if they are aware of that, right, so you want to create a positive environment, you want to have the right people around you, but maybe the right people are almost afraid to be around you, given how fresh a lot of things were. So how did you after, after that, find the right crew?
Speaker 1:yeah, great question, phenomenal question. So it's all micro to the macro. I thought it was macro to the micro. I thought I had to change the environment to change me. When I changed me, the environment changed. So when I started, you know. Now here am broke, getting off of opiates, being evicted from my apartment. I literally didn't have money to pay for my apartment. It's completely empty because I've sold everything in my apartment except my daughter's, except my daughter's room. That's the only thing I didn't sell. I got rid of everything for drugs. So here I am in an empty apartment now. I have nobody around me, but all I had was myself. And I started to really embody the book the Secret. I'm like, I am powerful, I am strong, I am worthy, I am abundant. That I am. And I started to really embody this within myself and I started to feel this vibrational freak. I didn't know that's what it was back then I started to feel a change within myself and I remember this to the T is I went, walked outside about two weeks later.
Speaker 1:I mean, there was two weeks of just me puking and throwing up and working to get off the opiates and I slowly transitioned off. I remember walking outside and, for the first time ever, ever, I saw a flower. I'm like that's a pretty flower. And I'm like, well, did I just say that was a pretty flower? And I'm like I started to recognize the things around me. I had nothing left. There was nothing left, so all I could recognize was the things that were in my present reality. I couldn't pay my rent, I couldn't even go out to eat, I couldn't do anything other than walk, and so I'd walk, and there's a place called Vellista Lakes where I used to live, right by these apartments, and I would sit in that grass and I would manifest and I would look at that.
Speaker 1:And what I noticed is when I changed, when I changed, the people showed up. I stopped looking for the people. So when I changed internally, the environment would show up and then I was like, okay, there's something to this, right. Then, all of a sudden, I get a call from somebody saying, hey, we have an offer for you or I want you to apply for this job. I apply for this job, which gets me into the bank. And then I started to see that it was a direct reflection from internally, it was a mere effect. So the actual drug addict and the environment that I created was created by me and no one else. When I took full responsibility for that and I said you created every single thing you created. Being a bad father, you created becoming an opiate addict. You created this environment. Since you created that, you can create a new environment. So it wasn't that I looked for something externally. I fixed the internal and the external found me, and that's the whole journey I've been on for the 18 years. So the reality that I'm experiencing now.
Speaker 1:I just posted this today on Twitter. I said nobody's hating on you. Nobody's hating on you. It's a reflection of you. That's all it is. I'm speaking to the whole audience here. Nobody's hating on you, it's a reflection of you. If you're viscerally responding to it, that means there's truth in it. So I no longer see the haters. When I see hate, if there's a visceral response, it's the truth and what I need to work on in myself. It's coming from me.
Speaker 1:So when I started to love myself the broken little boy and I started to heal the broken little boy inside, because I had to, I now have a 20-year-old daughter. She's a beautiful, amazing human being. You know she's. She went through this whole journey with me. I have a nine year old son now that it's my responsibility for these two children to heal the broken little boy inside. There's not an outside, in effect. So through that internal journey I have now manifested the reality around me, which is positive. High frequency love, uh uh, you know building conversations high, you know all that type of stuff. So it was internal to external. It wasn't changing the external to the internal.
Speaker 2:It's a very hard thing to look inward. I mean, in general, it's very hard. You have to go deep. You have to understand the subconscious and why. We're the sum total of all the successes and failures, of not just how we grew up, but also of our parents, right, and those that are around us. A lot of people hearing this would say, well, you know why not just go for, you know, talking to a psychologist or psychiatrist and sort of outside help? Because it doesn't sound to me, unless I'm wrong, like you did, that this was you doing it yourself, right, kind of digging deep. Yeah't sound to me, unless I'm wrong, like you did, that this was you doing it yourself, right, kind of digging deep.
Speaker 1:Yeah, now, I had people in my life. Yeah, there was. There was a gentleman named Joe Italic that I give honor and grace to all the time and praise to. There was a gentleman named Joe Italic. That was a pivotal part of my life, that gave me some tools and resources that I could help externally, but what I meant by that is there's no one external like a psychologist. Counselors are all great I mean, these are all things, are all resources but for example um, I talk openly about this I go to Peru every single year and I do plant medicines and I don't encourage people do that, because what they do is they go do plant medicines and all the medicine does is expose you to who you are and what you need to work on.
Speaker 1:It doesn't heal you, right? The psychologist isn't healing you. The counselor isn't healing you. The medicine isn't healing you. You know, all it's doing is revealing you, and so once the mentor, the psychologist, the plant medicine, whatever it is reveals you, it's there for us to heal and unless we go through that healing process, our soul is just going to keep cycling. You see it in the and that's why I got so good at the crypto markets and macroeconomics, because it's all just one big micro to macro cycle. That's all we're experiencing.
Speaker 1:And so it wasn't that the outside sources are not needed. They're definitely needed. Mentors are needed, guides are needed, people are needed God for me and Jesus Christ is needed. That's where I get all my glory from, not my glory I give all the glory to, but they're only allowing us an opportunity to see what we need to heal in ourselves. And if we don't do the work, we're like the guy sitting on the mat waiting for the fountain where Jesus went up to him and said do you want to be healed? Right, and he said pick up your mat and walk. And I really feel that's what society is struggling with right now is we're waiting for a savior, waiting for Trump to. We waited for Trump to come back, and the left is going to wait for the next president to come in, and it's a constant waiting when it's all internal. So people can just reveal what you need to heal, but if you're not willing to heal, you're going to repeat the cycle.
Speaker 2:So I've been very public on my social feed about my physical health journey Lost 100 pounds in the span of a year fasting, started going to the gym two to three hours every single day and you know to psych myself up when I wake up at 4 am. I've got YouTube videos of motivational. You know speakers and people like Rick Roll, david Goggins, you know types like that, jocko right, and there's a great line, something along the lines of the boy becomes the man when the boy realizes nobody's going to save him. Right, and I think there's a lot of truth to that. Now you mentioned micro to macro.
Speaker 2:I myself very much believe this. I think micro helps you survive. I think macro helps you thrive. If the macro is against you, the best you can do is just try to survive through it, because you need that tailwind really to really kind of blow up and, I think, be super successful. I mean, maybe there's some rare cases where that's not the case, but you talk about these different businesses. So take me through what exactly happens. So you go through this journey, you're improving, you're feeling stronger, you're becoming a new person. How do you go from that to entrepreneur?
Speaker 1:Yeah, man, that was a journey, so I'll try to condense it in a Reader's Digest version as much as I can. So I ended up getting that gentleman who basically got me on track and helped me, joe Italic. He called me and said hey, we got a job for you. At this point I was willing to do anything just to get income, to be able to get my daughter in the right place, in the right paradigm, and so I ended up getting an offer to go to a bank and to interview for a position. I thought it was like a janitor or something. I mean I was going from personal trainer business type thing. It didn't make any sense. So I went to Goodwill, bought a suit for 50 cents, got the suit, went to the interview and I was sitting across from a lady named Lori Schmidt I always honor her as well and I was interviewing for a position and I really I was using all my manifestation techniques, I worked on my energy and all that stuff and I went through the interview.
Speaker 1:I can't remember what was said, but I do remember when she left she said we'll give you a call if we're interested in sharing a position with you. This is really important to the story. She called me about 15 minutes later. I was in the car and she said hey, listen, we want to offer you a job and I'm like awesome, and I'm thinking like a janitor or something. She's like we want to offer you a banker position. I was like a banker and I'm like what she's like, we can train you. We liked your energy. I thought and that didn't hit me until are very close I was like mom, I just got a job. She's like, as what I said, a banker. She goes. You can't do math and I said I know you have dyslexia. I said I know, but they hired me and they can train me.
Speaker 1:And so I started this journey as a banker. I implemented all the like you talked about Les Brown, bob Proctor. So I was following all these things. I was doing all the techniques, think and Grow Rich Secrets of the Millionaire Mind. I was doing all this stuff. I would show up before everybody, leave after everybody, and I became the most disciplined, consistent person I have ever met in my life and it was me against me. And so I moved up very quickly in the bank, from banker to branch manager, to the district manager, to VP, to running a large part of the bank and I went to CBA Executive Banking School and that's where my spiritual awakening started. I went to South Carolina. I was a banker in Arizona, ended up going to South Carolina, to Greenville Furman University, which is in Greenville, south Carolina. We didn't go to Furman, but the executives would converge on this campus every summer. We would use our campus to go to CBA executive banking school, which we learned how to scale banks and most beautiful place I've ever been in my life.
Speaker 1:Oh, there was a thing that I noticed and I was going through a spiritual awakening in them. And there's all these bankers from all over the world and they're making a quarter of a million to a million. Some are going to be CFOs CEOs and they all seemed miserable. I mean, they're all shooting for the next position, the next car. And I met this gardener. The garden is beautiful there I mean unbelievable.
Speaker 1:And there's this guy gardening and he was just so attentive to the garden and I was talking to him like man, this garden is so beautiful, and he was like we just started talking and chatting and he's like what do you do? And I'm like I want to be a regional president, president, want to do this. He's like oh, so that makes you happy? And I said I don't know, he goes. What makes you happy? And I couldn't answer the question. I said what makes you happy? He goes. I have everything I need. I got my garden. I go home, I got my wife, I got my family, I got God, I got church, I got my grandkids.
Speaker 1:And I was like what is happiness, man? And so I didn't feel right to me and I went on this crazy journey of spiritual awakening and trying to understand what this is Like. What is all of this? Because now I'm a banker, a VP, I got the BMW, I got the big house, I got the suits, and I still was miserable. I was back in the same addiction. It was like the stuff Look at me, look at me, dad, I've made it. And I finally realized that this is thing, this line that's being drawn, that that we're all chasing, that doesn't exist. And so when I left, um, I did a video very early in my career. Nothing worked out. I left. I created a podcast, I created a book, I launched my first program, where we built it for six months.
Speaker 1:I launched my first program in January 2018 and I launched it on January 1st and nobody signed up, launched it again. It completely failed. Launched it again completely failed. And until we went through this process and I did a video early in 2018 that said I want to become a warrior in a modern day society and I always say be careful what you ask for. God gave me what I asked for. He stripped me down to nothing again, took away all my money, finally got an investor, got the business back up and then in 2020, they took everything from us. They came and shut our business down. I lost everything, everything. The only thing I didn't touch was my crypto. So I packed my kids up.
Speaker 1:Now here I am for the second time going through this process. Imagine my father's face when I opened that door. I knocked on their door, I packed my kids up, moved into their thousand square foot home and I said just give me a little bit of time. And in that moment, I drew a line in the sand. I became more committed to the pain of change and staying the same, and I completely devoted my life to rewiring my brain, to understanding how money moves through the system, how energy works, how these cycles work, and I devoted my life to it.
Speaker 1:And from 2020 to 2025, where we sit currently. We've developed six companies in information technology, attention, education and financial services. What we basically did is everything I was learning and everything we were using. We decided to build and get equity in and start to build pathways for people to build financial literacy, financial education and to help them build careers and things they love to do.
Speaker 1:And so that's my passion now is I spend all my time doing things that I love and sharing that information with other people, and so what I do is I go forward, I build safety and I come back and teach, and that's my whole life, that's my whole journey, and I don't work a day in my life because I get to be with cool people. Every single day, I get to embody who I truly am. And so, you know, now we have six companies. Um, uh, you know we're financially free in the aspect of you know, we know we don't trade time for money anymore. We do what we want. I guess that's you know. People say passive income, but what we trade time for is things we'd love to do. So, therefore, we no longer work for money anymore.
Speaker 2:You mentioned crypto a few times. First of all, how did you even get turned to crypto and talk to me through sort of how you even went about analyzing what to put fiat into walked into our facility so we have a warrior academy over here and he said have you ever heard of XRP?
Speaker 1:And it's so interesting. You said Phoenix rising from the ashes on your necklace and the first thing I saw was a Phoenix rising from the ashes. Xrp is a currency that Trump just announced is going to be part of the crypto strategic reserve. So I pulled it up and it showed a Phoenix rising from the ashes. It was the essence of my story the Phoenix rising from the ashes. And then I started to go deeper into it. Having my banking knowledge, I know how to scale banks from the ground up and the first thing I asked myself is why aren't banks using this? And I went deeper into research and then I pulled up their patent Ripple Bank of America's patent. Ripple is in their patent.
Speaker 1:Then I started to connect the dots. There's something infrastructural happening here and I stopped looking at these as get rich quick and I started looking at the infrastructural change in a financial system. Financial systems change about every hundred years and I started to look at our old, antiquated, broken system, our DOS system. They have an old, archaic SWIFT system. Technology is starting to move at the speed of light, so I started to look at infrastructure. I started to look at the new thing like Bitcoin as a store of value, like gold.
Speaker 1:So I started to look at these as infrastructure, payment tokens and how the new financial system was going to change, and then we built a very fundamental portfolio in 2020. And then we started to talk about it on socials and we got ridiculed, we got mocked and then, as this Sunday, just recently, the ones we've been talking about specifically XRP, bitcoin, solana, ethereum, ada are all some of the top five in our portfolio and they are now just announced as a new part of our financial system within the crypto strategic reserve. So it was more about not getting rich quick. It was about understanding the infrastructural change and really standing on that truth, even though everybody was telling us to run from it, and so we stuck on that, based on our knowledge and also studying history. So if you study Ray Dalio, going back 500 years of rise and falls of empires, our country is going through a massive shift, and so that's how we started in it and we've stuck to it. But also we're very diversified outside of crypto to lessen the volatility.
Speaker 2:Let's talk about that diversification, because it's been a weird five years Volatility, a lot of things bonds were supposed to be not volatile been very volatile, except for junk debt, which I think are about to get super volatile, but then again I've been wrong on that. Um. So what else do you? Do you diversify crypto against?
Speaker 1:yeah, so I use the risk pyramid. So you know, if you look at a risk pyramid as you go up the left side, you got high risk, high return. Crypto is a shining star it this. It's like it's like you're in a you know, in a ocean bobbing around Right. So what I do is I pull profits from high risk, high return. When it goes up with an exit plan Bitcoin to hold a hundred percent, I pull it down the risk pyramid.
Speaker 1:I'm huge on cash value life insurance. So we have me and my partner have 11 policies combined. We bank on ourselves, so we use Bitcoin as a bank and we use insurance as a bank. So from there, from insurance, cash value, life insurance to protect, compound and grow silver real estate we have businesses in six different areas. We actually diversified in business too to get through this volatility, and so when one business is down, the other business is up, and then I use dividend ETF stocks for cashflow.
Speaker 1:But I'm always de-risking back into Bitcoin and XRP because I'm moving from US. Dollar is designed by the Federal Reserve to be an inflationary asset, so every year our dollar becomes less valuable. So what I do is I'm transmuting my cash into deflationary things like Bitcoin and XRP. So I pull it down the risk pyramid to pull out that volatility. So when it's going down, I buy, when it's going up, I pull, and so, instead of my portfolio looking like down the risk pyramid to pull out that volatility, so when it's going down I buy, when it's going up I pull and I. So, instead of my portfolio looking like this, it looks more like this so I'm not I'm definitely not an anti crypto guy.
Speaker 2:I'm just hesitant around certain narratives, right? I myself have argued that, for example, bitcoin makes sense to have in a portfolio, because the real definition of the market is all investable assets, just weighting them in different ways, right, things that don't depreciate. You're obviously a very well-spoken thought individual, a thought leader. You come across from a very positive perspective. Is a criticism which I think is somewhat justified, that the crypto community at large tends to be overtly and overly abrasive and maybe not, as you know, positive and very much sort of um chest pumping in terms of performance, uh, rather than seeing this as a technology that can better society. Am I off on that?
Speaker 1:No, you're not. That's a clear, 100%, media manipulated perception that they want. You nailed it. No, you 100% nailed it because that's what the media feeds us. It's indoctrination. They feed you that it's a bunch of chess pumping meme coin pumping, and that's actually not true. Pumping meme coin pumping, and that's actually not true. There's a huge, huge amount of real world fundamental investors, billionaires, investing in bitcoin and people are starting to see too.
Speaker 1:Sunday was a huge announcement. Trump announced that you know the five top cryptos that are going to be in the crypto strategic reserve. You know there's massive asset managers getting involved. And so that you you nailed it because that is the perception and that was on purpose. It was to get people to think it's fraudulent, to get people to think that it's just meme coin. It's casinos, and they got us to look this way. Blackrock is the number two holder in Bitcoin in the world. Microstrategies is number three. Blackrock is the top three holder in MicroStrategies. You got Grayscale in America the top four holders in Bitcoin.
Speaker 1:So the very thing that the media indoctrinated us to believe that it's this casino. Yes, there is a casino part of it and that is very, very, very, very nasty and gross and people get wrecked, but there's a whole other part of it of real world, fundamental people. The XRP community is a beautiful community. I think the Bitcoin community has a lot of great people within it as well. But I think what the media does it works to push us through a narrative, to make us think a certain thing, as the asset managers are getting heavily involved in it. So what you're going to see 2025 to 2030 is your banks. Now I guarantee you're going to see commercials say, hey, custody your crypto. Here. It's all a narrative to get people. Of course, anything that's speculative. You have to be very, very careful. That's why we have an exit plan. But no, your perception is correct, because that's what we've been fed, so that we don't get involved in the new system.
Speaker 2:I'm curious to hear your take on Trump being the in quote crypto president. Last 48, 72 hours have been kind of crazy. Hours have been kind of crazy. Um, and I myself, um, have criticized pretty loudly some of the posts that I'm seeing, um, and what seems like insider information, with some of these trades that have gone on with leverage before the summit and afterwards and all this um, you think, with hindsight, trump was going to be a positive or negative for the industry?
Speaker 1:In hindsight, when he came into presidency, we went from an anti-crypto and this isn't politics we went from anti-crypto White House to a fully pro-crypto White House, but we had to take ourselves a little bit further back. This is why we study history and stay non-emotional. So seven years ago, trump said that we're going to be on an even playing field monetarily before we know it. Right, that was when he was in his old presidency. So when he was interviewed in the past around cryptocurrency, he said he's a dollar guy. He's not really pro-crypto, right? Everybody flipped In 2023, there was a narrative that flipped.
Speaker 1:Blackrock went from Bitcoin is used for money laundering to Larry Fink said we made a mistake, it's a flight to quality. He didn't use the word make a mistake. We were wrong about this, it's a flight to quality. Then, president, the Bitcoin president, bitcoin strategic reserve he builds a whole pro-crypto cabinet and we find out they have World Liberty Financial, which is World Liberty Financial I think I'm saying that correctly which him and his sons have their own DeFi platform. It's all narrative based. Everything is narrative based, but there's a whole deeper part to this, though.
Speaker 1:Whether Trump is pro-crypto or not pro-crypto, the new system cannot operate without blockchain. It can't. It doesn't matter if Trump was pro-crypto or Biden was anti-crypto. Ai technology coming in and the faster payments and money. So messaging is moving at the speed of light. Ai is moving at the speed of light. Now money has to move at the speed of light. No-transcript.
Speaker 1:Bitcoin was created by Satoshi Nakamoto when Brazil, russia, india, china, south Africa worked to de-dollarize right after one of the most embarrassing financial collapses in America and then, all of a sudden, bitcoin which was used for money laundering it was the worst thing ever stay away from it is now going to save the American monetary system and Bitcoin. The top four holders are all American. So there's something that we're not seeing here and I don't have the answer to that. But I do know what deflationary looks like and inflationary environments look like, and I am seeing billionaires and big asset managers start to move their money. So I don't think Trump really has a choice to not be pro-crypto with technology and advancement in AI. I don't think he has a choice. So it's kind of like it's a freight train going forward. You're either going to get on it and go for the ride of your life or you're going to get ran over by it, but everybody's going to be on that train. So I think he had to make a decision and they said it was through his son. The sons are really happening Now.
Speaker 1:What I don't agree with is, like, I think what you're talking about is how they pumped a meme coin right before he was inaugurated. That just wrecked a bunch of people, right? But are these all narratives? Because what happened is the market's been sideways for five weeks and then, all of a sudden, it didn't make sense for it to be dropping like that. We're in a bull run, but then, all of a sudden, he announces on Sunday that the top those top five cryptos and it just pumps like crazy.
Speaker 1:So what we're seeing is massive market manipulation, but the system has always been that way, right? Think about that. They used to clip our coins. Right Back in the days, way back in history, they would clip the coins. There's always something happening monetarily, where the 1% and the elites are always trying to stay in power with money, and so there's just a change in the system, and I don't think either Biden or Trump had a choice, but I think Trump realized that hey, if I run on this pro-crypto, it's going to bode very well for me, and because it's the infrastructural change. Like Swift is switching to faster payments, banks are switching to Ripple XRP. Ripple Ripple, specifically, is in Bank of America's patent.
Speaker 2:The CEO says as soon as we get regulatory, regulatory clarity, we're going all in on faster payments, so I don't think he has a choice to not be pro crypto. Yeah, and it's gonna be. I mean, it's funny, right. I mean I think um harris also got on board because they realized they need to get the younger vote, and the younger vote, you know, likes to vote with their wallet, and sometimes it's the digital wallet, right. So I think that makes um sense, sense, some sense. I, I agree with you, the um, and I put a post out that went viral. I said we're at the point where the entire United States is drug pulling us. I worry about the fabric of society, though, from that standpoint. So I'm a big believer in deregulation, I'm a big believer in decentralization, but it's going to be messy to get to a place where the market, I think, no longer rewards the silliness that we're still seeing.
Speaker 1:Absolutely, absolutely. Yeah, you nailed it it's going to be an ugly process. Man, I've been telling people that's what I hope to be on our channel, you'll see. I'm always talking about taking the middle ground, being stoic, being calm, being non-emotional, and I'm not telling people you should get into crypto. I'm telling people you should ask yourself why you're investing in something, not what you're invested in, because it's going to be an ugly, nasty process.
Speaker 1:First of all, we have all this disclosure happening, right, which is going to shock people at a visceral level internally, right. Then we have this new system coming in, this new financial system, right, deregulation, right, and it's almost like unfettered. It's like let's go, everybody go after it, public and private sector coming together. But all we ever see is that we see the shift to one side and we see the shift to the other, and the best thing for people to do is to take the middle ground to really ask themselves, like what do I know about money? What I know about money is the fiat system is broken.
Speaker 1:I know that my dollar that's sitting in my bank account right now is worth about 3% purchasing power since the feds created the dollar in 1913, or sorry, not the dollar, so the feds federal reserve was created in 1913, the dollars collapsed 97%.
Speaker 1:So I know that I have this dollar that has 3% purchasing power, which is the most powerful monetary system in the world, which is crazy, right. So I'm like, okay, if it has 3% purchasing power and I'm being paid in someone else's debt because there's no money in the system, I need to transmute that money into either real estate, gold, silver, and now I found this new asset Bitcoin, xrp that are deflationary, and that's what we're going to start to see. But you're right, it's going to be an ugly process. It's going to be an absolute ugly process. I think we'll probably see some hyperinflation, because if they're going to lower interest rates and they're going to turn on quantitative easing again, what they're going to do is they're going to buy bitcoin and xrp and things like that, and that's going to deflate the dollar even more, and then we're going to have to go into some hyper hyperinflation. The system is going to have to crash for a new system to come in, in my opinion. So what?
Speaker 2:do you think people get um most wrong about crypto?
Speaker 1:uh, that it's, it's used from I mean, it's a people. The biggest thing I hear all the time is it's used for money launder, it's used for this. So is the dollar. It's a tool, right. It's like I hear that all the time like it's used for this, it's used for that. They're literally parroting what they hear. The dollar is used for all these things and I think what people get wrong is not understanding what the tool is.
Speaker 1:Right. It's a tool, right. Right, I can use this phone to trade cryptocurrency. I can use it to read the Bible. I can also use it to do very unethical things. Right, it's a tool. It's the user of the tool. It's understanding what the tool and the mechanism is.
Speaker 1:I think what people get wrong at crypto that it's this, that the whole crypto market as a whole is just this casino. Right, and it gets that bad rap because there is a lot of unethical things happening in cryptocurrency the meme coins, the pump and dumps, that no real world solver utility and I think what they get wrong is because of the public. The media expresses this is if they can understand RWA real world assets they'll start to understand the infrastructural chain. So I think the biggest thing they get wrong is what the media is feeding them is that it's all just a big Ponzi scheme and that it's, you know, this casino, and that will start to come out when things start to get revealed that it's a new financial system. So RWA real world assets is what people should be looking at.
Speaker 2:I think you also got some other things you're involved in. Talk to me about some of the other business initiatives. I saw the refined man side of things, like the message you put out on that. Talk to me about other initiatives you're doing.
Speaker 1:Yeah, thank you for letting me share. Yeah, so I have a huge. All the businesses I do are things that I use or I enjoy doing, right. So I've been going to Peru every single year for the last since 2019, twice a year, and every time I come back I have this infinity to really help men get their shit together. And I've built an infrastructure and a principal model that I live by, based on my decisions. I make, how I make my decisions for my business, my family, my ecosystem and so I created refineintegritycom to help men have.
Speaker 1:Number one a space, a safe space, to communicate. Number two is to have a framework where they can start to make better decisions, to be able to understand principles, morals and ethics. I basically created a place for men to have some sort of role model in each other so we can have those conversations, so we can break bread together, so we can rise together to become the men we need for this country. I really think men need to step up right now. I really feel that and I'm not talking in the toxic masculinity way and Lambos and all the watches and stuff. I'm talking about building a foundation For me. It's God, family, protect my ecosystem at all costs and I stay out of other men's business because I'm too busy working online. So it's creating that environment for men, not only create an environment, creating a framework. And then I go live weekly to really help them understand the principles that I use to build my businesses, to raise my kids and to build this ecosystem.
Speaker 2:On behalf of the audience, I want to say thank you for the vulnerability that you share. I always go back to. I think there's nothing more manly than to actually be like that.
Speaker 1:I feel like.
Speaker 2:I'm. I just had a period where I listed a lot of stuff from Jordan Peterson. I actually saw him live not too long ago. That message to younger men who feel lost, I think, is important. I think your story is inspiration from a lot of perspectives For those who want to get closer to the kind of things that you're doing, that are looking for a mentor and seeing you as a potential option for that. Where would you point them to?
Speaker 1:I think the best thing is CoachJV underscore Very important. There's so many imposter accounts of mine. It's CoachJV underscore. I only have one account. If you pull that. If you just type in CoachJV on social media, all my social media content will come up A link in my bio you can connect with me. Or 3TWarriorAcademycom Just Coach JV and Google and all my stuff will come up where you can connect with me at different platforms.
Speaker 2:I give you credit, man. There's a lot of people that were watching this. Among the bigger of the live stream, it looks like 11,000 plus have watched during this 42 minute period. Hopefully I'll have coach TV on again. Awesome, thank you. Appreciate it, man.
Speaker 1:Thank you, brother, appreciate you.
