S2E36 – Dion Pouncil – More knowledge is the true path to achieving your goals

Key Timecodes

• (01:31) – Dion Pouncil’s background story

• (03:21) – His experience in the financial market

• (04:43) – His company’s business model

• (09:10) –  Revenue expectations for his clients

• (12:48) – His trading strategies

• (10:29) – Trading model using algorithms

• (17:17) – The parallel between TYKR point of view and his strategy

• (20:51) – What are the minimum investment levels of his business?

• (23:29) – His educational platform business

• (28:04) – How long has the platform been running?

• (29:36) – The content production and philosophy

• (31:04) – The importance of education to reduce the risk of investing

• (33:01) – How to sign up to his platform

• (53:57) – His book recommendations and education insights

• (41:04) – The worst investment advice he ever received

• (42:03) – The best investment advice he ever received

• (46:53) –  Key practical skills important today

• (47:55) – Dion Pouncil’s contacts

Transcription

[00:00:03.430] – Intro

Payback Time is a podcast about building businesses wealth and financial freedom. We try to uncover the challenges our guests faced, the mistakes they made, and the steps they took to achieve their goals. The overall objective is to provide you.

[00:00:17.380] – Intro

With a roadmap that leads to your own success.

[00:00:20.810] – Intro

Sean Tepper is your host.

[00:00:22.850] – Intro

Are you ready?

[00:00:24.020] – Intro

It’s payback time.

[00:00:33.090] – Sean

This is a good one. Is there a shortcut to achieving your goals? Absolutely not. But there is a way to shorten the timeline. Hard work and discipline are important traits, but the trait that will get you there the fastest is knowledge. My next guest has two key businesses. One of which is a hedge fund, where he generates around 20% per year for his clients. The other is an educational platform that empowers people to trade on their own. Yes, I said trade, not invest. He has developed a system that helps traders reduce risk and generate positive returns, which is impressive as most traders lose money. In this episode, we talk about trading versus investing. However, we do spend a lot of time talking about mindset. The way we think and the expectations we set will define our future. And most people don’t set big enough goals. If you’re an investor entrepreneur, this episode is one you don’t want to miss. Please welcome Dion Pouncil. Dion, welcome to the show.

[00:01:32.640] – Dion Pouncil

Thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate it.

[00:01:35.140] – Sean

Good to have you here. Why don’t you take us off and tell us about your background?

[00:01:39.130] – Dion Pouncil

Yeah. So, my name is Dion Pouncil. I am the principal achievement and investment officer for Council Capital, which is a global, macro, multi asset, multi strategy, systematic hedge fund, which is a lot of words. That means that we use computer programs and computer algorithms to trade for ourselves and our clients in the market. And then I’m also the founder of Money School, which is a streaming app that help people everyday people learn how to trade and invest things. Netflix for trading and investing.

[00:02:11.730] – Sean

We can understand that a lot of our investors are retail investors, that they like to do it themselves, manage their own investments.

[00:02:19.590] – Dion Pouncil

Real quick.

[00:02:20.230] – Sean

Before we dive into your two business segments a little bit, I’d like to learn a little bit more about your background. Were you in the finance industry, like, working for a large firm before? What did you do before?

[00:02:30.920] – Dion Pouncil

Before this? Technically, yes, but this is not my traditional background. I’m originally from the south side of Chicago. I went to school in New York on a baseball scholarship and played baseball for a while, was in the independent leagues, playing professionally for a second, transition into business, into corporate, which led me into launching my own agency, which led me into technology, which took me to California. Did that for a while. And then I ended up working at a venture capital firm that also had a trading side of the house. Migrated. And fell in love with the trading side of the house. Read some books. Took some courses. Bet on myself. Had some success and then studied and became a licensed Series Three commodity pool operator and commodity trade advisor and started my own hedge fund from there.

[00:03:20.820] – Sean

Nice. So if you were to summarize all your experience, how many years of finance experience do you say you have?

[00:03:27.990] – Dion Pouncil

Close to seven.

[00:03:29.350] – Sean

Seven years. Okay. A lot there.

[00:03:32.050] – Dion Pouncil

That’s pretty good. Yeah, because I’m very data driven. And so one of the agency that I started, one of the most impactful Pivots for me was we used to go project to project based with our clients and then we switched to retainer based only. And we used to have to provide weekly and monthly metrics to the clients to prove that what we were doing for them was worth the return on investment. And that is where I got access to the power of data and using data to make data driven decisions for business. And so once I see how impactful and powerful that was for businesses and how impactful it was for technology and then I got into the head side of that firm and see how you use data to make decisions, to make money, it just all clicked and connected and we just took off from there. Nice.

[00:04:23.690] – Sean

That’s an awesome background. I too have an agency background as well. 2006 to 2010 didn’t leverage data as much as you. I was in a position where I wanted to actually get out of the business as fast as possible as a service business with very limited scalability and a lot of headaches. But anyway, for another day, let’s dive into console capital, the commodity side of the business. Tell us about what you do here and I’d be very interested, our listeners too, as what kind of returns they could potentially make with the side.

[00:04:55.850] – Dion Pouncil

Yeah. So to talk about council capital, when I gave the wordy intro global macro, multi asset, multi-strategy, systematic. Let me break that down. So global macro means that we can invest into any marketplaces around the world. So that’s global and then that’s macro. Right. Multi assets. So I technically have two funds. Fund one is primarily for public market. So in fund one we trade stocks, bonds, options, forex futures. We can do venture investments, we can do private equity. So we pretty much have a full suite multi asset we’re covered. And the reason that that’s important because what you put in your subscription documents and what you tell your investors you’re going to trade in, whether you limit it or you keep it open and you have to stick to those guidelines. Right. And then multi strategy. So although we create algos and computer programs to trade with and for us in the markets, different algos work better on different asset classes or different strategies work better on different asset classes. So you would not take a scalping approach to something you’re looking for at a long term investment, right? So you’re going to have a different strategy for the different approach or the different desired outcome or return on investment.

[00:06:16.020] – Dion Pouncil

Right? And then systematic simply means that we’re literally following a step by step rigorous process to make sure that we always put risk management first and that we always account for quality risk to reward ratios to put ourselves in high probability scenarios where the juices work to squeeze, as we like to say. Okay? And so that’s kind of a summary of what those technical terms mean in layman terms or simplified, right? So if you look at most firms are either absolute firms or they are benchmark firms, okay? Most of the public is familiar with benchmark firms and so a benchmark is something that could be considered like the S Amp P 500 or the Nasdaq or the Dow. And what they’re saying is based off of our trading style, we’re going to compare our returns to that benchmark. So for example, the S Amp P 500 traditionally returns between seven and 10% annually, right? So they will say, well, we performed at 8% this year and the current market is at 3% this year. So we outperformed our benchmark by 5%. So their investors will be happy because they outperform the market. We run an absolute return fund.

[00:07:37.220] – Dion Pouncil

And most hedge funds are leaning towards or are already absolute firms because especially the ones that trade in the commodities market like futures and forex, which we do because the returns to some people sounds astronomical, right? So their firms are doing 100, 200, 300% returns. It might not be as public and as accessible to the common man, but it doesn’t really make sense to compare that to 7% from the SDI because of course you could literally just tell somebody, hey, it’s a high probability. If you just want to park your money here in some indexes or some funds that invest in the SDI or the QQ or things like that, you can pretty much do that and not pay the fees, right? So absolute returns are a little bit more enticing, exciting, engaging, but greater the reward, always greater the risk. So you have to really know yourself, know your risk appetite and what you’re looking for. And so that is what I would say to explain what those differences are to people and kind of how we approach it at Potential capital.

[00:08:50.410] – Sean

Got it. Thank you for breaking down the differences there. I’d like to jump into this absolute return a little bit because that 100%, I can tell you right now that’s the number that’s going to jump out not only to myself but to my audience. And they’re like, okay, tell me more. So if somebody were to approach you and we’ll get into minimum requirements in a moment, but if somebody wants to invest, what kind of expectations are you setting with the customer when you sit down with them or jump on a zoom call.

[00:09:17.660] – Dion Pouncil

Yeah. So I don’t promise any returns, because nothing is guaranteed. The markets are going to do what the market is going to do. No one has control. If anyone tells you that they don’t lose trades or they’ve never lost any money, please go the other way. They are absolutely lying to you, okay? Even the best algorithms on the planet lose trades. It’s not about wins or losses per se. It’s actually about the ratios or the averages between that. Right? So for an example, the greatest quant of all time right now, his name is Jim Simons, okay? He runs a firm called Renaissance Technology, and he’s like the goat of Quant. So if you’re a basketball fan, you might think, Michael Jordan is the goat, the greatest of all time. Or you might think kobe, LeBron. Whatever. Jim Simon is like the goat of plains. Okay?

[00:10:06.670] – Sean

I just read his book.

[00:10:08.510] – Dion Pouncil

The Man Who Solves the Markets.

[00:10:10.020] – Sean

Yes.

[00:10:10.950] – Dion Pouncil

So he runs two multi billion dollar firms. A couple of people have done that. Not a lot, but he has returned over 30% for the last 30 years straight, okay? And one of my favorite quotes from him and his book is that he focuses on getting his algorithms to be at least 51.5% accurate 100% of the time, okay? And what that means is that he believes that if he can just have a 51% win rate, which is 1% better than average or 50 50, and he can get that to an exact science of 100%, he will be profitable. Okay? So I want everybody to really, truly understand that it’s about winning more than you lose, but winning more and losing less. So if you win more, you can win and lose the exact same amount of times. But if you win more money when you win versus losing less money when you lose, you must finish profitable. It’s just math. So what I like to teach our prospective investors and what I like to teach our students upfront is a very simple mathematical breakdown. If you take ten trades the exact same way with the exact same risk parameters, let’s say two to one, okay?

[00:11:36.990] – Dion Pouncil

Let’s use simple numbers. If you risk $1,000 in five trades, and if you risk $1,000 in ten trades, but in five trades, you lose, and you have a two to one risk to reward ratio, and you win five times. Now, you’ve made $10,000 because $2,000 times five wins is $10,000, but you’ve lost five times. But in that loss, you’ve only lost $1,000 each, so you lose $5,000. So now you take 10,000 minus $5,000, and you must finish. It profitable. So first and foremost, we educate. And then we say, hey, look, trading and investing is risky. You could potentially lose all your money. So we want to be upfront that no, you’re not gambling, but the markets will do what they want, and then our goal as a firm is 20% return minimum. That is our goal. Okay? And so we educate, we inform, and then we say, hey, here’s our goals, and here’s how we plan to reach that. And we will never risk more than 5% of your available cash balance in one individual trade.

[00:12:46.000] – Sean

Got you. So it sounds like you’re not doing so much long term buy and hold and then keep investing in the same stock you’re buying and selling, so you’re more trading for your customers. Is that right?

[00:12:57.220] – Dion Pouncil

Yeah, correct. We have approaches we can take short term and long term. It just depends. Multi asset, multi strategy. But typically, we don’t really hold trades longer than 4 hours and most likely less than seconds. So we have an algorithm that can generate over a million decisions per second. Our average trade, if you will, is about eight milliseconds. So our Algos can scan the market, find a high probability entry opportunity, get in the trade, manage the trade, exit the trade in eight milliseconds. So we’re not as fast as a high frequency firm, high frequency trading, but we’re faster than scalping. So scalping is typically 30 seconds to five minute holding patterns. High frequency is nanoseconds to milliseconds, and we’re between milliseconds and seconds. It’s kind of that sweet spot. But if we’re riding a trend in our forecasting, our projections tells us to hold longer and ride longer. We will ride the trend or ride the ride as long as it pays us. But typically, it falls in a range between eight milliseconds and, like, 4 hours.

[00:14:05.540] – Sean

Sure. Here’s more of a business model question for you. If you’re doing a lot of activity like this, buying and selling in such short durations, how do you do that for so many clients at once?

[00:14:18.750] – Dion Pouncil

So the algos, right? Okay. The algos are systematically programmed. They don’t get hungry. They don’t get tired. They don’t get cell phone calls or text messages. They don’t call in sick. They don’t check instagram. They’re not worried about how many followers they have. They’re just literally doing what they’re programmed to do. Right. And it allows us to scale by being able to take on multiple clients, et cetera. So it’s a very efficient approach to an efficient market, because a lot of people think that, yes, technically, trading and investing in the capital market is gambling. Right. If you really just look at it, apples to apples to a casino but the major difference is that in the capital markets, you can actually get an edge. Right. So one of my favorite books and one of my most inspirational books that actually got me into the market was a gentleman named Edward Thorpe. Okay? He wrote a book most people know, beat the Dealer. So Beat the Dealer became a best selling novel, and it also became a best selling movie. Kevin Spacey played the character of Everthorpe in a movie called 21. And this is a real life story.

[00:15:35.030] – Dion Pouncil

Everthorpe was a mathematician and physicist from MIT, and he created a system to count cards and to get an edge in blackjack. So if you know anything about the casino, they always say the house always wins. So crap. The most you can get is a 50 50 chance. Slots start at a negative 30% chance. And blackjack is the only game in the house where the player can actually get an edge between about zero, six and 1%, depending on if you count the cars correctly. Now, I read that book back in 2016. I’ve had some success playing blackjack. So fast forward, I came across Beat the Market, which was also wrote by Edward Thorpe. And I knew the success I had in blackjack. And he made so many millions of dollars and got kicked out of Vegas and stuff like that, that he applied similar strategies to the markets. And now he runs two multibillion dollar hedge firms that are systematic hedge firms. So what you want to do in these markets is you want to find a strategy. You want to find a way that you can get an edge, whether that is back in a money manager, whether that is buying a course and learning a strategy, whether that’s buying an algorithm that helps you with those things.

[00:16:49.400] – Dion Pouncil

What you want to do is you want to find a way to get you an edge. And the edge simply means an advantage. And when you can find that in the market and you can be consistent, you can have some patience, self control and discipline. You can’t have life changing results. And I’m living proof of that because literally, to this day, I still don’t have my college degree because I left to play baseball. So going from the South Side of Chicago from a single parent home to a hedge fund manager, if I could.

[00:17:14.980] – Sean

Do what you can do yeah, right. I will say this. You’ve got a strategy in play that works for you. We at Tykr, we actually do not agree with the statements that investing in the stock market is like investing or going to the casino like gambling. Because our strategy, yes, we look at the numbers, but we also look at the business, the competition, and the management of the forums. And that way, if you’re latching onto a business that’s obviously proven to produce revenue year over year and returns for their customers year over year, the probability is super high that you as an investor is going to make returns.

[00:17:54.270] – Dion Pouncil

Yeah, I think you brought up a good point. So one of the things we teach our students is you’re not traders, you’re not investors, you’re actually risk managers. So although, yes, we do look at it as an open market or a casino approach. The thing of the casino approach is you want to put yourself in a position like the house, because the house always wins, because the casino is not gambling. The humans are gambling. The casino is only based off of math and probabilities. And so if you can have high probability strategies and you can have the patient self control and discipline to stick to it, you can put yourself in consistent positions to win and be successful. One of my favorite books is called Thinking in Bets by Annie Duke. And so she was in her doctorate program at Wharton studying psychology, left and became a poker player, and she’s now the world’s best female poker player. And she wrote a book called Thinking and Bets. And the whole premise of the book is everything is probabilities, everything is choice, and everything is connected and has a direct impact on your future outcomes. And so one of the main stories in the book is, like, you want to lose weight.

[00:19:10.030] – Dion Pouncil

Everybody wants to lose weight or be in shape and be fit. And she says, well, everybody has to eat. You don’t eat, you die. So you already know what the probability of that outcome is. But for people who want to make the choice to eat, you have two choices. You can eat the banana or you can eat the twinkie. Both will fulfill your temporary wants and or need to feel that hunger. But only one has the highest probability to help you reach that goal. And so the whole book is talking about thinking and probabilities for every decision you make. And thinking and saying, hey, does it take me closer to my future desired outcome or further away? And choosing the high probability route.

[00:19:50.400] – Sean

I love it. This is a book that’s right up my alley. Yeah, real quick here. Can you say it again?

[00:19:56.390] – Dion Pouncil

Thinking in bits.

[00:19:58.330] – Sean

That is the name of the book.

[00:19:59.510] – Dion Pouncil

Okay? It’s literally the name of the book. She is the world’s most successful female poker player. I think right now she’s over six to $8 million in World Series of Poker wins.

[00:20:09.450] – Sean

I tell some of my friends, this is you want to be going through life, especially as you grow older, making strategic chess moves, like the move you make today. What is the impact it’s going to have not only tomorrow, but we’re talking weeks in advance, months in advance, years in advance. And I’ve got a few friends, they don’t think that way, and then they wonder why they’re stuck where they’ve been the last ten years. I’m like, today you need to be thinking about these chest moves. So what she’s talking about here is very much in line, like, hey, am I going to eat the banana or Twinkie? Yeah, you’ve been trying to lose weight the last ten years. You’re doing something wrong.

[00:20:49.630] – Dion Pouncil

Absolutely.

[00:20:51.690] – Sean

No, this is good. What I’d like to do is talk about how can people get involved with this business? And then we’ll transition to the educational business you have as well. So we have a hedge fund. You require credited investors, and we’ve got a podcast, we’ve talked about what the requirements there are, but what are your minimum investment levels?

[00:21:11.630] – Dion Pouncil

Yeah, so to invest in Council Capital, we have two subscription offerings. So subscription A is $100,000 minimum, and that offering has a 0% management fee, but a 50% performance fee. And then we have subscription B, which is a million dollar minimum, and that is a 2% management fee and a 20% performance fee. So you have the options. After you’ve proven that you’re in a credit investor and you kind of go through KYC AML and things of that nature, then those are your two offerings. And you can decide to be in the pool of investments with the overall fund, or you can decide to be in a separately managed account where I only manage your money in that account and you’re not a part of the pool. So we try to give options for our prospects.

[00:22:02.610] – Sean

Got you. And very cut and dry. Very in line with the hedge fund market, which is the two and 22% management, 20% commission, essentially. Awesome. Let’s take a quick commercial break. Do you feel like stock investing is too confusing, too time consuming, too risky? It doesn’t have to be. If you ever considered investing on your own but don’t know where to start, Tykr is your solution. Tykr safely guides you through your investment journey by finding great stocks and showing you why those stocks are on sale, giving you the confidence that you’re making a wise investment. I created Tykr because, number one, I wanted to remove emotions from investing. In other words, I wanted a software to make buying and selling decisions for me so I don’t have to. Number two, I wanted to save time. Analyzing stocks can take hours, if not days, and I didn’t want to spend all day looking at a computer. I have other hobbies in life I’d rather be enjoying. I’ve been using Tykr the last five years to generate average returns ranging between 15% and 50% per year. Seeing that I was generating consistent high returns multiple years in a row motivated me to turn this software into a tool to share with others.

[00:23:15.920] – Sean

If you’re interested, you can get started with a free trial. Visit Tykr.com. That’s tykr.com again, Tykr.com. All right, well, why don’t you tell us about your other model? I have the website up here, Moneyschool.com, and just the listeners here. It’s. Moneyandschool is skool.com. We’ll make sure we have the link correctly set up when we promote you. But yeah, tell us about this business.

[00:23:49.580] – Dion Pouncil

Yeah, so Money School was something that I just truly believe. So I believe that knowing about money and knowing about capitalism is a human right because we live in a capitalist society. If you don’t know about capitalism and you don’t know about money, you are behind. And you will always be in a lower tiered class because the people who have control and power and have the money will always be able to be above you because simply because you may not know. And that may be by choice or by force or however it ends up happening. I just truly believe that everybody should know and have the opportunity to have access to that information in capital, right? So that’s number one. Number two is I felt like because I didn’t come from money, and once I got exposed to how money truly operates, I wanted to focus on building generational wealth for myself and for my family. And then once we were able to accomplish that and do those things, I said, you know what, if we can make this simple and plain for everybody to understand it, then we should do that. Dealing with family sometimes is always the most difficult.

[00:24:59.420] – Dion Pouncil

So I was able to teach in my family, and I was like, well, if they can get it and be successful, then other people can. And then lastly, I almost died last year. I was in the hospital for four weeks. I was in intensive care for two weeks. And one of those nights, the doctor came in and said, hey, get your things in order. You might not make it through the night. So I’m very big on energy. I didn’t receive that. And I said, this is not my time. I’m not only going to get out of this hospital, but when I do, I’m going to make the world 1% better. So I literally Googled the amount of people in the world because I’m a data guy, even in the hospital. And it was approximately 7.5 billion people on the planet, and 1% of 7.5 billion to 75 million. So if you see anywhere on my social media stuff like that, I say that my mission is to help people change their lives to financial education and trading and investing. And my goal is to help over 75 million people do that. So I created Money School, and I said, okay, everybody can’t afford 100,000 or a million, right?

[00:25:58.640] – Dion Pouncil

And I have a $50,000 program, I have a $10,000 program, I have a $3,000 program, but I say everybody can’t afford that either. So what can I do to create a platform that will help anybody, no matter where they are in their financial journey? One, learn what money is and how it operates to get practical skills that they can begin to implement today. And then three, how can they use those to find high probability strategies to become a successful, consistent trader and change their financial future? So that is money, school. It is literally only thirty four point ninety nine cents a month. It’s a streaming network that is available on Apple iPhones, Android phones, tablets, Apple TV, Roku. It’s literally like a streaming device. You can just sit up and binge watch it and learn about financial education, learn about trading, learn about investing, and you can be a beginner. You cannot know anything about money or trading. Or investing. We literally start with the financial dictionary. We start with key topic word explainers. We have bite sized courses. We have how to tutorials that will literally show you step by step how to set up your first brokerage account, how to make your first trade, literally holding your hand through these opportunities.

[00:27:13.670] – Dion Pouncil

And it’s available anywhere. Twenty four, seven. And I felt like that was the blue ocean. That was the item that could really empower anybody no matter where they are on their financial journey. And then you can grow through our programs like Trade Club, where you can trade live with me daily, or you could take our advanced programs like Money School, Lab and stuff like that. So I really want to be able to create an overall product that no matter where you are in the world, no matter where you are in your financial journey, you can have a shot to learn and earn.

[00:27:46.250] – Sean

That’s awesome. Now it sounds like with your platform really low barrier to entry there. Love it. Really low. So you can get people in, you’ve got products. It sounds like that people can kind of scale up as they go based on their appetite to learn more. Yeah, that’s great. How long have you been running Money School?

[00:28:07.610] – Dion Pouncil

So I have about 8000 students in my various programs. I started a version of Money School in 2020, but this is the baby, and this is the one that’s around all the platforms. So I started that about approximately two years ago, actually. Two years almost to the date. August 1 was the first cohort. August 1, 2020, that we launched that. But yeah, it’s helped a lot of people, a lot of testimonies. Last year, our students made over $4 million collectively.

[00:28:39.010] – Sean

That’s amazing. Very proud in just two years to see some solid results like that. That’s fantastic.

[00:28:45.470] – Dion Pouncil

No, that was just one year. One year. Okay. Yeah. That was just 2021. So we have literally students that have never traded before, ever in their life who’ve made $250,000, $500,000. Again, I don’t promise any of this stuff, of course, but I literally have hundreds of testimonial videos of people crying and stuff like that. And so for me, it’s the impact, right? Because once you learn about money, you learn how to make money. You learn how to make money work for you. It’s relatively simple. It’s not really rocket science is really just kind of about learning the stuff and staying disciplined, but seeing those AHA moments and seeing when the lightbulb goes off for our students and it really clicks and makes sense, and they’re changing their lives when they’re exposing this to their kids at younger ages. That’s what’s really, truly impactful and exciting for me.

[00:29:34.220] – Sean

Sure. And I assume all the content is you on video, or do you have somebody else helping you?

[00:29:39.450] – Dion Pouncil

So the majority of it right now has been me. But, like now, in our scaling approach, We just brought on. So our advanced program, Money School Lab, is more lifestyle as well. So we’re going to be bringing on a business credit professional, an insurance professional trust and will professionals, real estate professionals, literally now starting to scale Money School. So basically anything in and around Money where you want to be able to learn and generate financial freedom through these avenues, you’re going to be able to learn. So the goal is learn about money and what it is, learn how to trade it and invest it to get it to work for you. Then once you start to receive those profits, learn how to invest into other assets. So now you have different and multiple vehicles working for you because one stream of revenue is too close to zero.

[00:30:33.030] – Sean

Yeah, it’s right on. And a lot of people are operating that way. It’s just their job. How do you create the multiple streams? So that’s awesome. That’s actually with Tykr, that’s one thing that I’m starting to work on right now as a series of courses, they will be different than yours because you’re more focused on your algorithm, your trading. Ours will be more focused on investing, how to look at businesses, how to find competition, how to look at management.

[00:31:01.830] – Dion Pouncil

Nice.

[00:31:02.530] – Sean

And some other fun stuff there. But yeah, it’s cool and it’ll relate to you. Of course, Tykr kind of hand in hand. You should be using both because it sounds like you might get some customers that they’ll join Money School, they’ll start building some wealth and be like, you know what, maybe I’ll give some money here to Deion and see how he can deploy it.

[00:31:21.890] – Dion Pouncil

Yeah, and that’s the plan. If you learn and you grow and you generate revenue and you get to certain levels, then all money wants their money to work for them, right? So whether it’s investing in a hedge fund or commercial real estate or startups, you also want to be diversified in your approach, right? So you are laser focused in putting your money to work for you. But then the more diversified it is, the less risk overall that you’re actually taking. So one of the main things we talk about in the program is being industry agnostic, right? Learning how to trade stocks, bonds, options, forex futures, crypto, but also learning how to invest. And then learn how to invest real estate, gold, diamonds, startups technology. These things give you exposure to give you diversification and they actually minimize your risk because if you just want to trade stocks, that’s one asset class. If you just want to invest into trade into one actual company, then you’re putting so much risk in that one asset or in that one asset class that if for whatever reason that happens to tank now you have nothing to sustain you.

[00:32:38.180] – Dion Pouncil

And you’ve pretty much been gambling, right? So we do not want to do that. We want to have certain risk parameters. We want to know that before we invest or before we trade, and then we only want to put our money to work in high probability scenarios. We’re not going to win every trade. We’re not going to win every investment. We’re not going to win every day. But over time, we should be consistent and we should be successful.

[00:33:00.440] – Sean

Sure. Well, that sounds really cool. I think the listeners may be intrigued to at least check your platform out. Again, really low barrier to entry. You can get in. Is there any kind of, like, 14 day, 30 day trial, anything like that?

[00:33:14.960] – Dion Pouncil

So we do have free content on YouTube, Money School. I do a lot of what I like to call free game videos that I give out on social media and stuff like that. But most of the platform is paid because immediately we give you access to the full platform. So you sign up today, you get access to all the 100 plus hours of videos immediately. It’s self paced, and you have access to it 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

[00:33:41.180] – Sean

Right on. Nice. Yeah. Well, before we transition to the Rapid Fire Round, is there a question that I should have asked but did not ask? I got you on that one.

[00:33:54.000] – Dion Pouncil

Yeah. I think a question that I may have asked myself was, why didn’t you get started sooner?

[00:34:03.420] – Sean

Yes.

[00:34:04.230] – Dion Pouncil

And I knew of, and I got exposed to it. I would say the earliest I got exposed to the stock market or the capital markets in real life. My junior summer in college, I played in the Hamptons Collegiate Baseball League. So I lived in the Hamptons, and I literally lived on billionaires Bro. My host dad was a legendary stock broker. He literally used to take the helicopter from the Hamptons to the city every day. That was the first time I really got exposed to it. But I was so deeply entrenched in wanting to be this hall of Fame MLB baseball player that I didn’t get started then. And now, looking back, 2020 is hindsight. I wish I would at least put some money in it or Dabbled at some point. And then I went to Hofstra University in Long Island, New York, and a lot of my counterparts left Hopsterra and went to Wall Street. So I’m 34 now. If I would have got started at 18, it would have been very different. So that would have been it. Why did not start now, this will.

[00:35:11.130] – Sean

Relate to a time machine question, which you kind of just answered, which will come up here in a second. Okay, good. Well, let’s jump into it. We get the rapid Fire around. I like to call this part of the episode where we get to find out who Dion really is. If you can, try to answer each question in about 15 seconds or less. If you go a little over that’s.

[00:35:30.150] – Dion Pouncil

Okay. Got you.

[00:35:31.020] – Sean

Ready?

[00:35:31.520] – Dion Pouncil

Ready.

[00:35:32.220] – Sean

All right. First question. What is your favorite podcast that you listen to?

[00:35:36.270] – Dion Pouncil

My favorite podcast that I listen to? I like a 16 Z. I like Andreessen Horowitz. I feel like they have a broad spectrum and give some good insights. I’m really more of a book guy, but if I would listen to a podcast, I like, Earn your leisure. I like those guys. And yeah, I would say those would be the top two.

[00:35:56.170] – Sean

Yeah, good ones. What is the recent book you read and would recommend?

[00:36:00.470] – Dion Pouncil

Recent book I literally just finished was called Becoming Your Own Banker, and it teaches about using life insurance to create a kind of family bank. Very powerful stuff. I just finished that yesterday and started a new book. When I got done playing baseball, I felt like I was behind, so I promised myself to read at least a book a week. So I read a book a week every week for the last eight and a half years.

[00:36:27.460] – Sean

Impressive. That’s impressive.

[00:36:29.480] – Dion Pouncil

So Becoming a Banker was the last book I would say the three most impactful books for me for business was Four Hour Work Week by Tim Ferriss, law of Success by Napoleon Hill, and Beat the Market by Edward Thorpe. Those are probably three life changing, business changing books that help steer the trajectory of my professional career.

[00:36:52.790] – Sean

See, this goes back to that. Making strategic chest moves. That’s the same thing as I’ll ask people, what is a recent book you read last week? They kind of look at me like, what is a recent book you read last month again? And they know where we’re going. What is a recent book you read last year? And if they’re saying nothing on all three answers, we got a problem. Right. You’re not seeing change. It’s those moves you’re making in life, or lack thereof.

[00:37:19.220] – Dion Pouncil

Yeah. I’m a firm believer that the more you learn, the more you earn, right? And if you look at reading a book, it’s literally like lifting a veil over your eyes. You were once blind to something, but now you can see it, and you don’t know what you don’t know. And it’s very hard for you to execute with consistency, stuff that you don’t know or you don’t know how to do. Literally, 97% of the money that I’ve made in my life has been from something executing or something I’ve learned in a book or a course. And so I tell people, if you have less than $10,000 of disposable income and you’re not necessarily interested in investing or trading, pay for education, pay for the learn. Pay to learn. Buy a book, buy a course, pay for a mentor, pay for something that can teach you to get above the level that you are currently at. And the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over, expecting a different result. The craziness comes in the expecting, because you’re doing the same thing here, but you’re expecting to get the answer here, and it’s just not but wait, I’m.

[00:38:25.110] – Sean

Grinding, and I know it’s just going to pay off. I know my moment is coming. Sorry.

[00:38:30.890] – Dion Pouncil

It’s not how it works.

[00:38:33.230] – Sean

A lot of entrepreneurs in that state, like, I know how to keep doing this. I’m sticking to it. I’m like, okay, time to take a step back.

[00:38:41.650] – Dion Pouncil

And becoming a millionaire is not wealthy or rich. However you want to look at it, is not necessarily even about the money. It’s who you have to become and what you have to become to be able to operate at that level, to handle. Like, if I was a millionaire in my mind way before I reached my first million, I made my first million, I was 28. And I’ve been a millionaire in my mind a long time, way before that. But it was who I had to become and what I had to go through and what I had to do, and things that I had to learn. If I would have touched millions of 25 or 18, I would have blew through it way faster. Right. And I would have not been able to handle it as a person. I was too critical, too arrogant, too much ego. It just wouldn’t have been a good situation for me. I wasn’t ready for it, which is why I didn’t get it. And I’m grateful for that now, because reading those things, I’ve learned a lot of those lessons, and everybody has advices, but you learn the thing, and it’s who you have to become to vibrate at that frequency, or vibrate at the level that you need to be to be able to sustain it.

[00:39:46.740] – Dion Pouncil

Because it’s one thing about making it, the other thing is about sustaining it.

[00:39:49.830] – Sean

Protecting it, and growing it.

[00:39:51.920] – Dion Pouncil

Yes.

[00:39:52.320] – Sean

Because a lot of people, they can hit it and they have no idea how to handle it. And next thing you know, it’s gone.

[00:39:58.030] – Dion Pouncil

Gone.

[00:40:00.050] – Sean

This is good. I know we spent a little more than 15 seconds on that, but that was a golden clip right there. And we get that clip there on YouTube. All right, so this is a really important question. Here we go. What is your favorite movie?

[00:40:14.930] – Dion Pouncil

My favorite movie is Hardball with Keanu Reeves. And I’m biased because I was in it. Sidebar story when I was twelve years old in Chicago. It was a great opportunity to be in that movie. It was wonderful. And it’s my favorite movie because I’m in it. Outside of that, I like Interstellar because I’m a math and physics guy. Oh, yeah. Nolan is a great writer and director. And then I love how close that is to the current publicly known physics technology that we have as far as intergalactic travel and things like that. And I love those things. So Interstellar would probably be my top. And then Wolf of Wall Street. Yes.

[00:40:57.590] – Sean

Enter Wolf. Wall street is a very entertaining film. Interstellar is pretty good, too. I’m a big Chris Nolan fan as well.

[00:41:04.330] – Dion Pouncil

Yeah.

[00:41:05.630] – Sean

All right, here we got two back to back that are pretty good. What is the worst business or investment advice you ever received?

[00:41:13.590] – Dion Pouncil

The worst business vice I’ve ever received? I don’t know if it’s like one, but collectively, the whole get rich quick approach, like flipping things, like a lot of people that want to flip houses or I want to flip this, I want to flip that, and it usually never works out that way, right. Anything that, I got to get this and I get it quick and I got to get a quick return. Even when people say they’re flipping houses, it usually takes months for them to get it, rehab it, and actually sell it on the market. So anything that anybody comes to you with a get rich quick scheme where you can put something in and get something right back real quick, and the margins have seen where the returns are seen crazy, nine times out of 10.9% out of ten is not going to work. So just don’t do it.

[00:42:01.720] – Sean

Great advice. Now flip the equation around. What is the best business or investment advice you ever received?

[00:42:09.470] – Dion Pouncil

Overall, I’m going to be very transparent and honest about this. I love investing and I love trading, but this becoming your own banker more and more, I’ve been hearing about it a lot, but here’s why. It’s very powerful to me. Because it’s using insurance policies, which is a 200 plus year old industry, you’re able to put the money in there and grow it tax free. If you do whole life insurance policies, you’re able to in cash value policies. You’re actually able to take a loan, cash loan from the policy and you can invest it into anything that you want. So you can take money from the policy and you can invest it into stocks and the growth of that and the returns are tax free. Powerful, powerful stuff. So I still believe that trading and investing is the number one way, even over real estate, that individuals can learn a skill, bet on themselves and produce income. Because real estate is great, but it’s also not as liquid, right? So I believe trading and investing, whichever asset class, you may fall in love when it has success, trading and investing. But the number one thing for rich and wealthy people, once they get money, is how to protect and how to grow it.

[00:43:31.210] – Dion Pouncil

And so that number one thing after you learn how to make assistant money is taxes. So you can find any opportunities or any legitimate and legal vehicles that enable you to grow your wealth tax free or at discounts. That’s the next game.

[00:43:45.740] – Sean

There have been a few previous guests that have talked about the same life insurance product. I won’t go deep dive, but one of the guests I’m friends with, his name is Mark Willis. He talks about bank on yourself, which is very much in line with what you’re talking about is this whole life policy. You set it up, you can borrow from it, it’s still growing on autopilot, and now you’re applying the cash to whatever you want.

[00:44:09.300] – Dion Pouncil

Yeah, they call it infinite banking. And you know why it’s also so interesting? Because it’s literally the business model that bankers use, right? It’s what banks use. They get your money in, and then for every dollar a bank gets in, they’re able to loan that money out nine to ten times. So you put in a dollar, they can loan your dollar out nine to ten times, they can get interest on the loan plus the payback, and they’re going to give you 0.01% or a fixed rate, and they’re going to make millions and billions of dollars off your money and trade it and invest it in the capital markets and give you pennies. So this puts you in the opportunity to where you can have a similar set up and system as the actual banking entities and then do exactly what they do. Trade, invest, and loan out the money. Powerful stuff. So if you can learn a skill to trade and invest, and you can do it with other people’s money, do it.

[00:45:03.340] – Sean

Love it. Last question. Here is a time machine question, and you did talk about a great example of something you would have done differently in the past. So without me saying the whole deal, you know how it goes, there’s something you would have done. And at what age would you do it differently?

[00:45:20.410] – Dion Pouncil

Yes, I would have had more balance between my baseball and math, science and finance focus. I got really good grades right up to high school. I won the science fair, math and third. So I had really good school. I got accepted into Dartmouth, but the Ivy League didn’t give athletic scholarships and we didn’t have any money growing up. So I went with my baseball scholarship. And Hofstra was a great school, so I’m very grateful for that. But I would have and I teach this to our students all the time. I would have focused on math and physics, I would have focused on coding earlier, I would have focused on trading earlier, and I would have got my life insurance set up earlier. So if you could do those four things, and you can do that for yourself and you can do this for your children now, I will start now. You can get life insurance on your children now, pay a premium for the next 1718 years of their newborn, and literally, by the time that they’re 18, they can live off their life insurance policies for the rest of their life and never have to work.

[00:46:27.690] – Dion Pouncil

And it’s not that they don’t have to work, but having that choice and that freedom and that flexibility is life changing. And so coding for that and then coding is so important for moving forward. Everything is technological base and knowing that language and then understanding math and physics, because everything in this physical world is physics and energy. And if you learn how to control your energy, control your emotions, if you know how to do that, you can control your world.

[00:46:53.250] – Sean

I love it. You’ve packed in a lot of profound wisdom in this episode. Really appreciate it. Seriously, this is a good one. I am a big fan of that, of a few things he said and then especially the coding part. Not just coding, but learnt. Learn to get into it. I’ve learned about so many kids these days, they’re thinking about going to college for this, that, and other things, and they’re not even passionate about it. It’s like, why would you spend four years rack up student debt to do something that doesn’t pay well? I know you’re passionate about skip college, go do a code camp. Learn it. Learn something tech, and you can literally write your own tickets. You can become an entrepreneur. You can work for somebody if you choose to. Much faster path to get from A to B.

[00:47:37.740] – Dion Pouncil

Practical skills that are literally changing the face of the world and how we live. And it’s needed because it’s going to be an abundant amount of job or growth or creative opportunities that you can literally design the life that you want to live.

[00:47:56.270] – Sean

Well, I do have one more question, and this is a good one. Where can the audience reach you?

[00:48:01.480] – Dion Pouncil

Yes. Thanks for that. So Dionpuncil on all of the social media platforms. Dionpouncil, the website for councilcapital is Councilcapital.com moneyschool is Moneyskool.com. So feel free to contact me on any of the social media platforms or Money school or palace with capital. And I love talking with everybody.

[00:48:28.000] – Sean

Awesome. Well, thank you so much for your time, Deion. This is great.

[00:48:30.910] – Dion Pouncil

My pleasure. Thank you for having me.

[00:48:37.650] – Sean

Hey, I just want to say thanks for checking out this podcast. I know your time is valuable and there’s a lot of other podcasts out there you could be listening to. So thanks for taking the time to listen to my guest story. If you did enjoy this podcast episode, could you head over to itunes and leave a five star review? That would be much appreciated. Thank you. And last but not least on this podcast, some episodes we do talk about stock. And please keep in mind, this podcast is for entertainment purposes only. So if you did hear any buy or sell recommendations, please don’t make those decisions based solely on what you hear. All right, thanks a lot. See ya. You.