0:00:30 Kim: Hello Todd, Very Happy to Be Here

Filename: P4P087

0:00:18 Todd: Hey everybody, welcome to another edition of The Prosperity Podcast, this is No BS Money Guy Todd Strobel. Once again, got bestselling financial author and my personal cohost and friend Kim Butler with us, welcome Kim.

0:00:30 Kim: Hello Todd, very happy to be here.

0:00:33 Todd: And today we’re gonna be talking about this week I was asked what’s the best financial book I ever read and I thought what a great question coz I know I’m a reader and you’re a reader, we spend a lot of time reading so I have to, we’ll get to my answers later but if you had to answer that question, what would your answer be?

0:00:53 Kim: Wow! That’s an awesome question. The best financial book, you understand that I have reams of papers of books and massive numbers of Kindle financial books coz I love reading financial books but I do have to say that over the last probably 10 years, I’ve gotten pickier and pickier and pickier about what I’m reading and I really start to pay attention to who’s writing because I have no patience for financial information that comes from a writer that doesn’t have financial background. And believe me, I so appreciate writing skill more than anything, I was an English major, I wrote a ton of papers, my daughter writes a ton of papers, I appreciate good writing skill but it’s so obvious to me when somebody writes and they really don’t have the financial background. And then if you add that idea of prosperity economics which we’ve been talking about and how different that is from typical financial planning and typical financial advice that’s out there then it becomes even pickier on my side for what I’m reading because I’m not gonna read a book that is about typical financial planning coz all it does is make me mad. And in fact, that’s truly why I dropped my certified financial planner designation is that I got so tired reading the test questions on the continuing ed that I had to take every 2 years. I literally in frustration one year just said: you know what? I’m not doing this, I’m not taking this test, I’m gonna drop this designation, I’m not gonna renew because I do not believe in what they’re writing about.

0:02:37 Todd: And we’ll say this that in the financial arena, there’s an awful lot of marketing that is wrapped up as books that really is a sales brochure, it’s not a book so those tick me off probably worse than anything. So I think I’d almost rather get a hold of one of the authors trying to take a stab at a financial topic just because it’s the hot thing of the day, like what is the, was it something for dummies? What they write, like thousands of those, right?

0:03:06 Kim: Right.

0:03:07 Todd: How to write books for dummies or something. My all-time favorite financial book, it’s a big one, long time to read is Atlas Shrugged. Ayn Rand lived in the 50s and absolutely one of the most brilliant human beings that we were ever blessed with to have on this planet in my opinion.

0:03:29 Kim: I love that book also. And I love when the movies came out, I have to admit, I was little disappointed by the time they got to number 3 coz we totally ran out of money but it’s still a fabulous message and a thousand some page book I wanna say but totally worth reading. And I’m glad that you brought up a book from the past because my immediate gut reaction when you asked me the question is the one I’m gonna share but it’s from 2003 and it’s called The Mystery of Capital, it’s by Hernando De Soto. So the man’s first name is Hernando and his last name is De Soto in 2 words, D – E – S – O – T – O. Mystery of Capital and the subtitle is: Why Capitalism Triumphs in the West and Fails Everywhere Else. Now, you just asked me about a financial book, that is a financial book. It’s about capitalism, no doubt but it talks about finance and the ownership of property in a way that I was not ever aware of. It was a fabulous education, it’s been actually quite a while since I’ve read it but I’m gonna dig it back out again and read it. It was a really good read, I thoroughly enjoyed it at the time. And there are so many lessons about our own personal economy that we can learn from reading books like that that are clearly about the bigger either US or even worldwide economy but I guarantee you, if you keep your eye on the 7 principles of prosperity and look through the Mystery of Capital book that you’ll find them, they’ll come up left, right and center all over the place. And so it’s, again, a helpful book even though it may not be directly related to personal finances.

0:05:19 Todd: Okay. Give me, I got to have the 5 minute summary so why success in the west and failure in the east?

0:05:27 Kim: Well, it’s ownership of property, without a doubt and they don’t mean always just physical property so could be literal real estate but it’s also ownership of corporations, it’s ownership of ideas. Our intellectual capital laws that we have in the US are just second to none in terms of putting the ownership and the control in the hands of the creator of that information. And that’s interesting actually just as I’m saying it in light of our, and so again, this book’s out in 2003, in light of our now 2016 knowledge that at least according to Peter Diamandus and a lot of the abundance thinkers that are out there in the intellectual capital space, the idea of patents and the idea of protecting intellectual capital is starting to be hammered on by a corresponding idea that is known as open source. And so open source says put your ideas out there, put your software on the web and let other people help you improve it and use it and build on it. Don’t lock things up behind patent laws and closed doors and rules that people cannot get at, etcetera. I mean, you could even just look at Apple and Android these days and Apple is a closed environment, Android is an open environment and Android is growing and helping more people and more people are helping it critical point than Apple is because it is a closed door environment. So I liken it sometimes to Russia and the United States but sorry for the iPhone users that I don’t happen to have one and I know you do Todd so there you go.

0:07:21 Todd: Apple does still have the highest profit margins though so they’re still out there making a ton of money selling them but it’s interesting, it is two totally different concepts. I mean, Apple is using a lot of the same components as Android but yet they’re able to charge 5 and 6 times the price because of the way they’ve built and marketed the for profit system. It’s interesting, I got to agree with you there. So how about, what do you think of Pirates of Manhattan, should that be on the list?

0:07:57 Kim: I do like the Pirates of Manhattan by Berry Dyke and he has a second version of it as well as a third book out that maybe we can grab the title of here while we’re talking. And it is interesting because his books are also like Atlas Shrugged, huge tombs, you cannot get them on Kindle, you can only buy them I think maybe even off his website. And so I just wanna really give a shout out to our listeners because a lot of you have listened, you have read our material and we try to make our books as available as possible. So under this discussion that we’re having of open source versus not, it’s just kind of interesting to know that Berry is using sort of old school, if you will, methods of selling his book. This is Berry Dyke, the author of Pirates of Manhattan. So for our readers, you can get a lot of value off Berry’s website, piratesofmanhattan.com. And yet he’s chosen to sell his books in paperback format only to those people who go to his website and buy.

We’ve chosen to sell our books on Create Space which is an Amazon company and I don’t know if you as a listener knew this but when you order that book, it gets printed, there is no inventory and that allows us to upload a new file if we wanna update it which is by the way, Live Your Life Insurance has just recently been updated and I’m refraining from saying that Live Your Life Insurance is one of my favorite books but I certainly could make a case for it. But it’s been updated and we just popped a new file up in to the Create Space cloud and Amazon print it for you. So if you want an updated Live Your Life Insurance book, you can go to Amazon and you buy it. It has a brand new chapter that’s specifically designed for new people whereas the rest of the book was really designed for existing clients of ours and it will help you a lot with the whole idea of how to use life insurance as a place to store cash.

So back to Berry and his company, Capital Asset Management, I will get that title in 2 seconds here. The work that he has done in researching the ownership of life insurance throughout the banking community and how much many, many much dollars are in life insurance. Stored in life insurance, owned by banks as some of their capital and he has proof on every single one of that. Todd, talk about that for a moment while I find that title.

0:10:37 Todd: Super. Yeah, he is certainly one of our favorite people and so people that, he’s talked at some of our conferences I think. I know I’ve met him a few different times and fascinating, absolutely fascinating to guide to get to know. Kind of think of the Pirates of Manhattan, the very first one, what was the main concept in there was?

0:11:04 Kim: The tier 1 capital, the ownership of, which is a banking term, the ownership of life insurance is the bulk of that and that it is just proven page after page after page of information in both Pirates of Manhattan which is a 2007 book. Pirates of Manhattan 2 which is 2012 and then his new one is called Guaranteed Income, a risk free guide to retirement and that is the 2015 book. The first 2 are available on Amazon, the third one, again, you have to go to his website piratesofmanhattan.com to get.

But moving on, I do wanna, as we finish up here just let everybody know that we’re going to have our Busting the Interest Rate Lies book out very, very shortly. And then Todd, I don’t even think you knew this, the first draft is out of Busting the Life Insurance Lies. I’m literally going to be reading that this weekend. It will probably be available to the public in April or May I would guess and this has been a real up level in our work in providing books. We had a whole team involved in this and excited to be able to provide it for you. And I know not everybody loves to read so we always do audio versions of our books. And there’s one book that you can grab as a listener to the podcast that is not available anywhere else and that is called Financial Planning has Failed which is available both as an eBook and an audiobook on partners4prosperity.com/ebook.

0:12:42 Todd: Again, that’s for our listeners only so I encourage you to check that out. And before we finish up, I want to just give a mention and you’re gonna have to help me here coz my brain is freezing to Steve D’annuncio’s book.

0:12:57 Kim: Yes, absolutely. The Prosperity…

0:13:01 Todd: Paradigm?

0:13:02 Kim: … Paradigm I’m thinking, yeah. Oh, I’m so glad you brought that up. We’re gonna have to have a new list of books that we recommend because yes, the Prosperity Paradigm by Steve D‘annuncio. That last name is D with ‘A – N – N – U – N – C – I – O and it’s an Amazon book that is just fabulous. And he uses the word prosperity not any connection to us but we love how he uses it, very valuable to all. And I do know that on my LinkedIn record, LinkedIn whatever, whatever that thing is called, my LinkedIn profile I think is the proper word. I do have a list of books that are there so if you’re really curious about books, you could check those out. And I know we’re gonna have some forthcoming podcasts that are actual book reviews of books that Todd and I have both read that we think you’ll find interesting and helpful in your lives. Some of them are financial, some of them are not, we’ll mix those in and around our various financial topics and hope to keep you interested in them.

0:14:02 Todd: Hey, if somebody wanted to reach out to you on LinkedIn, are you using the Kim D.H Butler or what do they look for?

0:14:09 Kim: I am. Kim D.H Butler in East Texas. I think LinkedIn thinks I live in Tyler, Texas but it’s actually Mt. Enterprise but it’s a small town so you can’t blame them.

0:14:21 Todd: Super. Well, this is No BS Money Guy Todd Strobel once again for The Prosperity Podcast. Thanks so much Kim Butler and take care everybody.

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