By coinnews 
0:05 spk_0
Welcome to Money. The show devoted to supporting our brother and sister veterans in business. I’m Patrick Murphy and I’m Dan Kons. Today’s guest is a decorated Navy SEAL turned journalist and entrepreneur and a founder of Seaert Valor, a fintech company built for the military community and first responders. Seibert Bauer empowers veterans and active members of first responders to secure their financial future through smart investing and.Howard Financial Education. Please welcome Kash Larson. Kaz, welcome to Warrior money.
0:35 spk_1
Thank you. It’s such an honor to be here. So it’s amazing that there is a podcast dedicated to what I’ve devoted the last couple of years of my life to so happy.
0:43 spk_0
We’re so glad to have you. Yeah, it’s amazing. And, and listen, we all get along because you’re Navy and we’re army, so, so we
0:49 spk_1
totally don’t get alongat all. One team, one fight. Yeah,
0:51 spk_0
that’sright. That’s right. Hey guys, we, you know, I’ve been friends for years, um, you know, your role as aJournalists, right? And when you look at journalism and, you know, freedom of the press and speech, when you look at, it’s more dangerous than ever in, in foreign lands, but also at home when you throw up misinformation. What, how do you pick what stories you’re gonna cover and what things you’re trying to bring out into the light?
1:13 spk_1
Yeah, well, just to be clear, I describe myself as a reformed journalist these days, you know, so in the past, I, I’m actually really proud of my journalism career and the thing.That I was able to do and the stories I was able to cover, uh, especially in the military vertical, like a domain that that the three of us care so much about and I think, um, in the past what I was really, really focused on was the stories that emanated and emerged out of, out of our community and our experience that were relevant to the American public. So I was the first person to be waterboarded on national TV, you know, when the American public didn’t really understand this debate that we were having.Um, so those stories have always remained really important to me. I will say that I think this is one of the most challenging things for our country and our community right now. There is no sort of moratorium on truth. There’s no generally accepted truth, and I think the information battle space is 100%.For grabs, you see that both from the, you know, the front lines in a place like Israel and Gaza to the headlines of Der Spiegel or Yahoo News. This information battlespace, this is the contested domain, very different than the kinetic wars that we allfought,
2:27 spk_0
right? And you got to be after it. You got to get after it, and you can’t just assume that’s going to happen, right? You got to be a participant. Um, we’re going to go through the fintech company in just a second, but you know.You know, as someone who lectures at Wharton Business School, right? I, I’m very passionate that half the veterans of World War II start their own small business, creating Comcast and Nike and Walmart. But our generation of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans, the post I generation, it’s less than 5%. Why do you think that’s the case and and how do you think you could be helpful?
2:53 spk_1
Well, listen, Patrick, I, I know, I know we’re friends, right? But if you’re gonna name drop Warden, I’m gonna name drop Harvard, right? So the year, uh, you know, in 1942, the graduating class of Harvard, 100% of eligible males went into military service, right? There was obviously some people who weren’t physically capable of serving, but 100%. The entire country mobilized for war, right?Fast forward to the year that I graduated from Harvard 2007, um, the total number of assessing into military service, part of this was because of ROTC and stuff, was almost zero, right? So there’s this great book about this called AWOL, you may have read it, American Elites unexcused Absence from the Military. And I think you’ve seen a massive cultural change in war fighting from the entire country being mobilized to, uh,A small dedicated few.
3:45 spk_2
Yeah, talk to us a little bit about your transition. How did you get to military service in the first place? Like how did that transition happen? What called you to it? And how did you find your first purpose there?
3:54 spk_1
Well, I like to say that, um, my great grandfather actually served in the Tsar’s band in the Russian army. Um, my grandfather served in the Navy band in World War II, uh, but I’m tone deaf and I can’t play an instrument. So I had to beI’m a commando, my only choice. Uh, no, look, I think I, I, you know, we’re talking to ourselves up here, but at some point every man has to ask themselves, how do you want to be of service? And for me, my father being a Marine, both my grandfathers, um, uh, my serving in, in, in the service, uh, it was, there was almost no question that at some point I was gonna find a way to serve. Uh, I went to the Naval Academy at 17.Um, thought I wanted to fly because, you know, like you guys, I can recite all the lines from Top Gun, uh, and then ultimately found a community that that fit my personality and skill set better. Yeah,
4:45 spk_0
well, listen, I feel the need, the need for speed. Yeah, there you go. Um, listen, your name dropping Harbor. I thought you were gonna say UC Santa Cruz because that’s right another place where you graduate from, butHow about that military service and I now that as an entrepreneur in FinTech, right? What are some of those traits that you saw? I mean, you talk about a purpose-driven life and, and every man has to look in the mirror and ask himself, you know, what are you doing to serve? But how about, how’s that relate to business and, and the folks you’re trying to help?
5:11 spk_1
Yeah, I mean, I, I do think in some ways it goes back to what you said about like all the greatest generation coming back and building the greatest economic engine the world has ever seen, um, and then really able to harness those skills into the private sector. In fact, at at Seabert Valor I’ve actually been doing this small little YouTube, uh, social media series called Betrepreneurs where I highlight these extraordinary entrepreneurs.have military service and people you might not think about normally like John Paul DeJorio, right, who’s one of the co-founders of Paul Mitchell,
5:44 spk_0
right,
5:45 spk_1
Navy veteran Navy
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veteran, and he’s a billionaire and
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an extraordinary, extraordinary person, right? And, and he, I, you know, I, I’m friends with JP. I, I spoke to him the other day and he was actually talking about how his military service in the Navy gave him like some of the discipline in order to succeed in life and, and those.Stories are extraordinary to me, and I think we, you know, one of our, our missions now on the better side is to help tell those stories.
6:10 spk_2
When you weretransitioning from service, how did you isolate on the financial, the financial problem to solve and how did you, how did you figure that that as an area? What whatcompelled you to it?
6:19 spk_1
So I think one of the first places that that you and I met, Pat, was when I came out of the service and I helped start an organization called The Mission Continues along with myUh, my buddy, I, uh, we use some of our combat pay, you know, to start this philanthropic organization, and that went on to help incubate and seed Team Rubicon, um, and so I spent a lot of time thinking about veteran service and helping create the, the veteran service sector, um, and what I realized during that time is everything that we believe is still true that veterans need a sense of purpose.But if there’s a problem with the purse, all of the purpose in the world doesn’t matter. So like, look, we can give guys new jobs and new missions in public service. We can even give them meaning and mission in their life, but if they come home to $30,000 worth of credit card debt, like it probably all goes out the window, um, and so by, you know, sort of haphazard and, and dumb luck, I met my co-founder who was a Navy Intel veteran, and we say intel and operations go hand in hand.had a 20 year career on Wall Street, um, and I really started to believe that the best way that I could help veterans was to help close this wealth gap and this knowledge gap when it came to investing and building your wealth.
7:32 spk_0
Yeah, I mean, as Ronald Reagan said himself the best social program in the world is a JOB job. He’s gonna pay you, um, and part of that is that when you look at like in the fintech world, right, how do you help our brother and sister, you know, in the we class, you know, the veterans, the first responders, and their.Family members navigate that that set them up for successful financial success. Yeah,
7:53 spk_1
I think the very, very first gap to overcome and the hardest gap to overcome is this information asymmetry, this knowledge gap, um, when, you know, when we were first in the military, probably like me, I was a lot more focused on war fighting than I was on the public equities, um, or on investing or on trading or anything like that, you know, it was all gun slinging at that time and I think that’s not.Um, uncharacteristic for a lot of service members who have this like extraordinary passionate desire to serve, um, but so what we did is we built a technology, a self-directed investing technology, think like a Robin Hood or an E-Trade, but that was really devoted to service members and, and how.We think and part of that was just a voting like a third of the app is dedicated to financial literacy and education, right? And there are programs within the military, but they are what economists would call necessary but not sufficient. Um, there’s a lot of room for the private sector to help jump in and close that wealth gap.
8:52 spk_2
Yeah, so we talked about a lot about the wealth gap and that in my opinion, to our opinion, wealth gap can also lead to political instability, which then leads into some of the national security controversies and things that we’ve been hearing now. I’m really interested. There’s a lot of noise out in the news right now. How do you how do you parse through that noise? How do you get to some of the answers? How do you do it? And how do you suggest us getting into that misinformation, uh, cloud, I would say.
9:18 spk_1
Yeah, look, I wish, I wish I had a pat answer for you, but there isn’t a pat answer, right? I think part of it.Is that comes down to trust, and I’ve always believed that money moves at the speed of trust. So one of the reasons I started the business in the first place is that USAA, which I would like, I would roll the dice and bet money that you have a USAA card in your wallet and you have a USAA card to control it, right? OK, right. So it’s save money, right? We all, we all have utilized USAA at some point and you would think that they had the sort of market cornered on investing. Truth is, USAA.Sold off their investing products to Schwab years ago, right? And so there wasn’t a company that was really dedicated to wealth building for the military community. And again, because money, and I’ll get back to your, your, your question more directly, but ultimately what I believe is that it’s about trust. Money moves at the speed of trust and these days information also moves at the speed of trust. So part of the premise, part of why what you guys are doing so important is I think you.Close that trust gap when you have walked in similar worlds when because we’ve worn the cloth of the country, because we’ve been in uniform, I think other veterans are more predisposed to listen to us, not guaranteed, but more likely to listen to us.Than someone who hasn’t written that blank check. Um, and so, and so that was the idea behind it.
10:45 spk_2
Iwasn’t trying to make that a trap to make it so it was hard because I, but I think we are living through a world where you, it’s hard to trust what’s happening on one side. It’s hard to trust what’s happening on the other side.And this, this whole fragmentation and this whole this bridge essentially is shifting and changing right now. So it is hard tounderstand that.
11:02 spk_1
I think the meta problem, I know we could talk about this all day, but the meta problem is that we used to have a world of institutional trust and institutional trust is totally completely gone. So then we like the pendulum swung to this world of individual trust where everybody just made up their own truth and we found out like that doesn’t work either, right?So there’s got to be like a new form of trust, and my suggestion, I don’t know, I have some wild ideas, but my suggestion is that some of it is more approximate to like a scientific method where there’s like peer reviewed, and we actually built our platform based on this kind of collective intelligence or this James Surowiecki wisdom of crowds. So if you go on the Siebert Valor app, which is an investing platform, you actually see the.Crowdsourced intelligence model, which is a really innovative product and you aggregate the top, the top portfolios on the platform, you might have seen like the, the Goldman VIP index or something, but the idea, the actual original inspiration came out of Navy Intelligence school, um, where they did a crowdsourced investigation to find a lost submarine. It’s,
12:07 spk_2
it’sfunny that the most trusted thing that I ever do is my peer reviews when I was going through my organizations. If I, if I was in peer review.And my peers said something about one person and 12 people said the same thing. We kind of coalesced aroundthat.
12:19 spk_1
And, and like, look, I’ll give the army its flowers. The army has been further ahead of at least the naval special operations community in terms of using peer review, but we are quickly drafting in the army’s way and using that,
12:32 spk_0
especiallyit’s important now because when you look at the trust, as you mentioned, institutions, whether it’s the church or government, banks, corporate America.Uh, luckily for the 3 of us here and for our brothers and sisters out there, the trust level is still high for military veterans. So we’re, we’re gonna dive into that when we get back, we’re gonna take a quick break and we’ll be right back, more with Kaj Larson in just a second.Welcome back to Word Money. We’re joined by Kaj Larson, Kaj, Navy SEAL, uh, entrepreneur. Um, a lot of folks out there, we look at consumer confidence, down about a little over 22% and 70% of our economy is driven by consumer spending. Um, but folks are starting to hesitate, you know, with the tariffs and some other things, you know, what do you tell the folks that feel it’s like uncertain right now, they don’t want to invest in buying things or invest in certainInvestments.
13:21 spk_1
Yeah, well, I, what I would first say is I would draw a distinction between buying things and investing, right? Um, there’s this old adage that like I’ve turns out like all old adages, they have some wisdom in them, right? Like, what’s the difference between poor people and rich people, right? Poor people spend their money, you know, it’s, it’s funny. I like to go back to the, the old army, um, you know, the army roots, right? In, in my days seals.Went to school at Fort Benning, Georgia. I’m sure you spent some time at. I don’t even
13:53 spk_0
airborne shields, you do
13:56 spk_1
the 20 tower, yeah, yeah, for people who don’t know, airborne school is basically like learning to fall out of an airplane.
14:06 spk_0
The first week is week where you learn how to fall. Yeah, all you do is likeoff a platform,
14:10 spk_1
yeah. So, um, but I remember when I started.When I started Valor, which was originally called Guild, um, that the first thing I did was I mapped the distance from the front gate of Benning to the first used car lot where you could buy a used Mustang or a new Mustang or Camaro at a 21% APR kind of thing and it was 0.3 miles, right? Yeah, I would, I would sometimes I ask people to guess, but like you guys would know, you know, instinctively, right? And right next to that like used car lot was.Uh, payday loan. Exactly. The bill, right? Every base has a bill. There’s this bill outside and there’s this entire ecosystem designed to take service members’ money, um, but there are not a lot of people out there now outside yourselves, right, who are really, really dedicated to this task of helping increase the wealth of the military community, um, and that’s, that’s done through investing. So how does that, how does that come back to the tariffs, um.Look, the tariffs are extraordinary complicated. We have a grand economic experiment in its infancy right now, and I think the 2nd and 3rd order effects are really, really difficult to know. Um, but here’s, here’s what I do know is that the increased price of consumer goods disproportionately affects our servicemen and women, and the reason for that, um, is, is, is multiple, right? But one of the primary reasons is that, you know, our salaries are set by.The US Congress, right? So if the price of consumer goods goes up for socioeconomic peers of our veterans, say, an auto worker in Detroit, right, the UAW can renegotiate those contracts, you know, maybe not in real time, but sort of dependent on current economic conditions and like Pat, you tell me you would know better than me.What does it take to get a service member’s pay raise through Congress?
16:01 spk_0
Oh yeah, listen, that once a year, and the AA, right, the National Defense AuthorizationAct,
16:06 spk_1
right. So it just doesn’t have like the nimbleness and service members, they are stuck. We can think of sometimes tariffs or at least increased consumer prices as a regressive tax, right? We don’t make that much money, uh, in the military, um, and so when the consumer goods goes up, it doesn’t.It doesn’t hurt JP right? but it does hurt like an E3, you know, making an E3 salary and an E3’s family members, more importantly.
16:31 spk_2
Yeah, we’re, we’re living through some times right now that it’s really hard again to go back to the original trust issue like decipher from the headline versus the thing that we should move on versus the thing that we shouldn’t move on. So I do want to ask you a little bit about your perspective on this, the you you’ve lived around the world. If you follow your Instagram, you’re all over the place. You’ve been all over the place, and we created like
16:51 spk_1
a global NSFW.If you follow my Instagram, you see that I loathe shirts. Like I would only dress up for you guys, you know. So
17:01 spk_2
we’re kind of shifting from the way that we did it post World War II and to try to be a more domestic oriented economy. And I’m just really interested in your opinion about how that you think that’s going to shape how people should invest over the next period of time and what you’re seeing as it relates to that kind of movement.
17:20 spk_1
Yeah.Here’s what I’ll, I’ll say, right? And this is not, this is not financial advice, it’s philosophy, right? I am, I remain unconvinced, although there are much bigger 10,000 pound brains than me, that we can revert to a manufacturing based economy. Uh, I just don’t know if that is the future of the modern American economy. Like you look at the average wage of an hourly American worker, $35 an hour, right? You look at the average wage of, uh, of a manufacturer.Worker in Mexico, $3.84 with the lifestyle expectation of the American worker, we’re never gonna be able to compete on a labor basis, um, and maybe we shouldn’t, right? Maybe there are efficiencies and economies of scale that can be done with some exporting. You know, smarter people than me, like I said, we’ll balance those ratios appropriately.Um, but I, I think in the number number one principle that I urge all of our, our veterans and active duty military law enforcement first responders, um, is I think that this diversification portfolio in in times of uncertainty is the fundamental principle that you have to follow. Um, we wouldn’t go to, we wouldn’t go to war with one.bullet in our, in our magazine, right, with one bullet in our M4, right? And you certainly shouldn’t go to economic war with anything other than a fully diversified portfolio. On the, when we originally built the Seibertower platform, um, we gave little badges. Some people like in Silicon Valley would call it gamification, right, right, but we called it badges and the badges looked suspiciously.Like the National Defense ribbon or maybe a meritorious service medal, right? Yeah, and so like when you made your first investment, we gave you, you know, what’s the participation Medal of the military, the National Defense ribbon, right? Um, and that’s, you know, what we call a nudge in economics for good, good behavior. Uh, the second nudge though is that when you had more than 10 stocks in your portfolio, you got a 2nd ribbon on your profile.The platform, right? And so I really, and to me that underscores how important this principle of diversification is. It’s even more important during these economic times. And I’ll give you like a crazy example which I don’t know if I’m supposed to say this or not. Let’s just say like I had lunch with like the head of a large state pension fund, right? And you know, these are, you know, you’re talking like hundreds of billions of dollars in assets.And this guy had just won the portfolio had grown so much over the last two years because of the growth of the market, especially like with the Mag 7 and all of the tech centric stuff. He, he, it had grown so much that he had to rebalance this portfolio to follow this principle of diversity, and he had just bought $600 million worth of music rights.Now the reason he had bought, right, right. So the reason he had bought music rights is because there’s sort of essentially an annuity. They just keep paying out year over year on like a certain predictable rhythm. But here you have like a state pension manager of a massive cent a billion dollar fund looking for alternative asset classes. And the reason he, he did that is because he knew that the public equities market was overweighted and he was looking for likeAll kinds of alternative asset classes and I think at a very micro scale that can apply to the retail investor, the individual investor, um, and it’s an extreme example of how important, especially now in this era of volatility, this principle of diversificationis.
20:54 spk_2
I think it’s also important as you think about your just your personal asset allocation, right? Just like never mind more portfolio, but like do I have some money in real estate? Do I have money, some money in index funds? Do I have some money in individual stocks? Like you’ve got to be smart about the way you’re.Diversifying across all asset bases as you’re movingforward.
21:10 spk_0
Yeah, and we always push like our fundamental principles are things like your network is your net worth, things like leverage GI bill, leverage the the home loan and be smart about it and make sure you’re reading and because God gave us all two ears, but only one mouth for a reason. So, we’re gonna go to rapid fire
21:26 spk_2
right now. Yeah, yeah. So we end we end every segment with a warrior Q and A, and my very first question is my favorite, which is what’s some money advice that you know now that you wish you knew when you’re younger.
21:35 spk_1
Oh, pure and simple, like invest your money, right?
21:39 spk_0
Don’t.
21:40 spk_1
Hey, thank you, Mr. Buffett. I was hoping he would make an appearance on this podcast, and here he is, 8th wonder of the world. Invest early, invest often.
21:48 spk_2
What’s the biggest mistake people make on their way to success?
21:52 spk_1
Uh, I think it’s this spending versus investing. Yes, you got to save before you invest, right, um, but like all this stuff, like, you know, you and I were talking fancy watches earlier, like all that frivolous stuff can come later and you can buy more of it if you follow the compound interest law.
22:08 spk_2
Absolutely. And then what has been the most unexpected part of your journey?
22:13 spk_1
Uh, I guess, uh entering a domain that I never thought I would be in, you know, my wife has been a series of haphazard events. First I was in the military, then I was in the media, and now I’m in money, and, uh, I always thought finance was boring, right? And it’s not like shit is exciting and I, and I love it.And it’s and how awesome is it like now 3 of us veterans can reconnect on a new mission. It’s cool.
22:41 spk_0
Thanks. So that’s going to wrap up our show. So listen, subscribe and review word money on your Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcast or find us frankly at Yahoo Finance. I’m Patrick Murphy and
22:52 spk_2
I’mDan Coons. We’ll see you again next week.
22:54 spk_3
This content was not intended to be financial advice and should not be used as a substitute for professional financial services.