The promise of passive income is simple: build enough wealth, and eventually your money works so you don’t have to. The reality is more demanding.
For Bronson Hill, the real measure of financial independence isn’t how much income an investment generates, but how dependent that income remains on your time.
That reframes wealth-building around something ultimately more scarce than money, and challenges investors to think carefully about what they’re actually trying to buy with their wealth.
Read the transcript below.
Transcript
Monetary Metals
Welcome back to the Gold Exchange Podcast. My name is Ben Nadelstein of Monetary Metals. I’m joined by the one and only Bronson Hill. He’s the CEO of Bronson Equity. Bronson, welcome to the show.
Bronson Hill
Hey, excited to be here, Ben.
Building cash flow outside Wall Street
Monetary Metals
All right, talk to our audience. They know a little bit about how private equity works, how private credit works, real estate, but let’s hear it from someone who’s kind of in the trenches right now in the wealth outside Wall Street kind of area or expertise. Talk to us what you’re seeing from the front lines.
Bronson Hill
You know, my story is I was a well-paid medical sales professional. I was making $200,000 to $300,000 a year, but I wanted to have money, you know, cash, something working for me. So Warren Buffett has this saying: “Unless you learn how to make money while you sleep, you’re working until you die.”
Monetary Metals
Right.
Bronson Hill
So the idea is like, obviously people love metals. We love alternative stuff outside of Wall Street. So it’s just getting into things that, you know, assets that produce cash flow. And so there’s things that do that today. I love things like real estate debt funds that basically, you know, provide cash flow regularly. We also do some stuff in mobile home parks. And some other alternatives. We have something actually that’s an interesting asset now. It’s called medical receivables. So it’s basically a medical practice. My background’s the medical field for 10 years. I was in medical sales, but it’s like a physician will do the work and it can take 3 to 18 months to get paid on it.
Monetary Metals
Oh.
Bronson Hill
And so they just, we pay them upfront and then we get a cash flow stream from that. And it’s pretty great for, but it’s a nice non-correlated asset. So that is, we realize is as time goes by, things are supposed to be uncorrelated, but they tend to be fairly correlated. They’re getting more correlated even between gold and stocks and crypto. And so the more truly correlated you could be, the better off you are.
Is passive income actually passive?
Monetary Metals
And part of this idea was, hey, I want cash flow for a specific reason, which is that if I have to work for the money, I’m going to be working forever. And the second that I stop, that money starts to dry up. So in terms of the cash flow, talk to me about the philosophy. A lot of people say, well, I own stocks, but if they don’t actually produce income for you, how do you live off of that?
Bronson Hill
Well, this idea of passive income, it’s kind of—there’s a lot of myths to it. People say, oh, I own a rental home, or I do an online trading strategy, or I have an online business. But the problem is like none of those are passive because You’ve got to actually do it yourself. So if you’re doing the work or if you have 3 rental houses and you’re like, the test really is, can you 10x what you’re doing? Could you have to go quickly to 30 homes if you had 3? And if the answer is no, it’s like that becomes a full-time job, then you’re not really passive.
So the question is, what really is passive? It’s, you know, there’s nothing truly passive where you’re not doing anything because no one cares about your money like you do. But if you’re finding something that you can do, find a trusted team that does the work for you, then you are really able to scale up your time. And so you’re growing wealth without a connection to your time. This is what highly wealthy people do. They’re heavily invested in private equity and real estate, and they’re not actually the ones doing the work, right?
Why uncorrelated assets matter
Monetary Metals
Yeah. So with Monetary Metals, we have gold that we help you cash flow. We provide passive income in gold. You say, hey, here are the leases that I want to do, set it and forget it, and you’re earning an income in gold. Talk to us about the uncorrelated nature and why that’s important, because gold is one of those assets that kind of has this low correlation with other asset classes. But why should that matter for investors?
Bronson Hill
Yeah, so I think the challenge is if in 2008 you were all in real estate, It kind of got hit very hard. A lot of people did single family and other types of real estate things, and it all at the same time, you saw the stock market, real estate, all these things generally go down about the same time. So what if you had an asset that didn’t, wasn’t affected by that? It actually, or maybe it was reverse correlated. It went up when something went down. So that’s why we love metals as well, because, you know, there’s a few cases for metals. Of course there’s so many, but maybe there’s no counterparty risk and you have it that you actually own the physical metals.
Monetary Metals
Mm-hmm.
Bronson Hill
It is reverse correlated where the And then the more currency that’s created, there’s the hedge against inflation. And then just having assets that really are seen as what money truly is. It’s intrinsically valuable. So I’m a big metals holder. I love precious metals, but the more uncorrelated things you have, the more it allows you to really have a lot of safety and security. A lot of people that are wealthy are like, I just don’t want to lose what I’ve got. Right. And that’s a great thing for metals or other uncorrelated things as well.
Can investors over-diversify?
Monetary Metals
And talk to me about this idea of diversification. In your opinion, too much diversification, is that a myth? Like, hey, I’ve just got like 5 different things going, but if they’re passive, does it really matter? Where do you sit in the diversification argument?
Bronson Hill
So, well, then I’m a big student of Warren Buffett, as you know, and he says diversification, why diversification is great if you don’t know what you’re doing, right? So you can diversify yourself and you’re so diversified you don’t get any exposure or anything. So he would say like if you had 6 great companies and he’s more of a stock investor, of course, company investor, then you’re well diversified. I think having different streams of different things, I think it depends. I mean, there’s a lot of people that are highly concentrated in multifamily apartments or highly concentrated in metals. And so I think you can change that. I like to have a fair amount of diversity, but I know people that invest in 75 passive deals.
Monetary Metals
Wow.
Bronson Hill
And it’s like, that’s a full-time job. So you kind of took what you wanted to do passive and you have diversification, but like, how do you even track that? So I think there’s an ability, you know, if you’re in 5 or 10 deals, I think that’s probably enough.
Time freedom vs owning another job
Monetary Metals
And I do want to talk about this because a lot of people say, oh, you know, I quit the rat race. But then if you look, they’re working even more hours, you know, in this new kind of entrepreneurial thing. And sometimes it seems like, well, you wanted to work for yourself, not get out of the rat race entirely. So where do you stand on this idea of like, there’s a difference between being entrepreneurial and not working for a boss versus, hey, I have my time back, I have time freedom versus I just work for myself?
Bronson Hill
Yeah. Well, there’s this saying, you know, a lot of people quit working 40 hours for someone else so we can work 60, 80 hours for ourselves. And that’s most entrepreneurs. Most entrepreneurs work 60, 80 hours. You’re making, I think, average like $50,000 to $60,000 a year. So you’re kind of like not making great money. So I think you have to look and say, what is my time worth? And I think you’re a young guy, you said you’re 27. As you get older, you realize you can make more money.
Money is actually more of an infinite resource where there’s so much money out there you can make, but time gets shorter and shorter. So if you’re 70 or 80, you have a lot less time than you had. So you’re a time billionaire right now, right? So it’s that idea of just seeing yourself that way. So I think that, you know, at the end of the day, there’s some great books. Do Not Howl is a good book. Buy Back Your Time is another one. So the idea of how do I actually generate wealth so that I can do the things I’m put on this earth to do?
So my book, Fire Yourself, I talk about this where it’s like, can I fire myself from a job or a business maybe that I don’t enjoy, or I just want to do other things? I want to write a book, I want to travel, I want to do things with my family. Because those things, like, those are the things you really want to do. So why are we stuck doing something that’s really not our purpose and we’re not fulfilled doing?
Analysis Paralysis and trusted investor relationships
Monetary Metals
What do you think the biggest risks are for someone who’s not currently kind of doing this passive income strategy? would say, hey, I want to get into it. What’s the number one risk you see people make when they first start?
Bronson Hill
Yeah, the first, the biggest thing people, most people get into is that they get into analysis paralysis. So they’re like, oh yeah, I want to do this. And then it’s just, they’re just overwhelmed. They don’t know what to do. They don’t know what to get into. And I’d say more than half of the people either never do anything or they’re like, yeah, it sounds interesting or it sounds crazy, whatever. But they never go to a conference. They never pick up the phone. They never start learning.
But I think what’s really helpful for that is if you say, okay, I know I should be doing—most people that are wealthy, worth more than $1 million, I should be doing real estate. I should be doing some other private equity things. So it’s just like, okay, I’m going to go to a conference and in 60 days I’m going to pull the trigger on something. Yeah. I’m going to do something. Because like, yeah, and maybe don’t put like all your money, put like $50K or put a smaller amount in and then you’ll learn, you’ll grow and you’ll kind of figure out what you like. So I think if you could say, hey, I’m going to do a deal or 2 within the next 60 days, you get started, you’re in action. And that’s the biggest thing.
Monetary Metals
Now talk to me about someone who’s kind of in this passive income strategy. What are some of the mistakes that they make? They say, listen, I’ve got a couple of deals with real estate that’s flowing. I’ve got gold that’s cash flowing. I’ve kind of got this now. What are the mistakes that they make? Is it basically saying, hey, listen, I’m taking too much on my plate? What’s that next mistake people make?
Bronson Hill
I think there’s, there’s a number of things people do. They make mistakes. I think, you know, at a conference like this, we’re at the Limitless Conference right now recording this. So there’s, you know, 80 different booths here. Everybody sounds great. Oil guys sound great. And these guys over here, everybody sounds great. Any shiny object. But the challenge is like the biggest thing you need as a passive investor is relationships with other passive investors.
Because everyone in finance, myself, we want, you know, every sponsor, we want people to do deals with us because our deals are great, right? But the problem with that is that I’m incentivized that people can come do my deals, right? Another passive investor has been doing this for 5 or 10 years. They’re just here to share information. And so those guys, they don’t kind of, you know, they’re more quiet, usually, typically. But if you can meet people, we actually started a group called the Wealth Forum that we gather high net worth investors together.
Monetary Metals
Interesting.
Bronson Hill
And we just share some of those ideas and resources. Hey, this sponsor I’d work with, I’d never work with these guys again. That’s the biggest tell you’re going to get because everything sounds great when you just see it. It’s a great salespeople out there, but getting around other investors you can bounce things off of is really, really important.
Leaving a W2 and growing his net worth
Monetary Metals
So when you transition from, hey, I’m doing this kind of high-paying job, I’m in medical sales, but I want to get out of this rat race. I want to get my wealth producing cash flow for me so I can take back my time. What was the step that got you from that transition? Was there a moment where you said, okay, today’s the day I got to quit?
Bronson Hill
Yeah, no, I was eager. I made a decision. You know, Tony Robbins, he says it’s in your moments of decision that your destiny is shaped. So I said, I’m going to leave my job in less than 3 years. I don’t know how I’m going to do it, but I’m going to do it. And it was almost like 3 years to the month I left the job. But I just was like, I don’t know, maybe something in real estate. I don’t know what it was, but I just kind of kept looking. I kept doing it. And so I think that making the decision is the first thing.
And the second thing is just start taking small actions. If you do a little bit every day, you will get to your goal. If you just make this, I’m going to do this, I’m going to get there, I’m just going to keep going after it. And you don’t rush it. It just takes whatever time it takes. But I was able to, I think within 4 years, I was able to 20x my net worth, go from a 6-figure to multiple 7 figures. And that just came from taking consistent action and going towards it, making the decision to do it.
And then just, I love side hustles. I started doing something that was like, I could build this thing on the side while I was still making my money in medical sales. And I was able to do that. And so when I left, it wasn’t like a sink or swim or burn the boats. It was like, well, I’ll slow down. And then I was kind of freaked out. Do I leave this? I’ve only known a W-2 job. It’s like, what happens if I leave? And I had this group of entrepreneurs that all my family was saying, don’t leave your job. It’s a great—you’re in golden handcuffs. Don’t ever leave it. And with this group of entrepreneurs, they looked at me and they said, you should leave your job pretty much as soon as possible.
Every single guy said that. And they said, wow, if it doesn’t work out, you can always go back to medical sales. And I was like, Oh, oh, I just like in my mind, I didn’t see that on site. So I think just being around people that can support you in that, taking consistent action.
Monetary Metals
Talk about how important the North Star is. So saying like, hey, I want more time with my family, or I’ve always wanted to travel. How important is having that North Star? Like, this is the reason that I’m doing it compared to just like, well, working is kind of annoying.
Bronson Hill
Yeah. So I’m 45 now. I continually, I did some goals retreats and goals events you can do different here with people that walk you through a process, but really getting clear On, you know, a lot of people get their goal. They say, I’m going to, I’m going to make $100 million. I’m going to make that. I’m going to go public, whatever. They get there and it’s totally empty because they had no other, there’s no why. It was only money.
So I think what’s way more powerful is if you start with, what am I here to do? What’s my purpose? What gives me life? What gives me, it gets me excited. And you start with that and then you start building things around that. I’m actually, what do you have? I’m actually doing that with a coach right now. I’m going back into what are the things that in this season give me life? And it’s around 2 things. It’s around service.
Monetary Metals
Cool.
Bronson Hill
serving people and finding solutions, help people find solutions. And so I, in our mastermind group, we’re shifting a bit to do that, like finding people that want to do an overseas service trip once a year, and then maybe build some luxury travel on the back. And then also like, how can we help each other and find solutions in that? So I think that discovery process is really, really important because you can say, I want this, you get it, and then it can be totally empty.
Monetary Metals
Talk about for the next generation, the people who are saying like me, hey, I want to get into this. There’s this kind of AI craze. There’s Private equity. Where are you telling people like, hey, if you’re interested, if you want to get started, those first couple of steps, where are you kind of telling people, maybe look into this?
Bronson Hill
Yeah, what’s interesting, AI, it’s why these crazes happen. And there’s, you know, Dario famously from Anthropic has said, you know, and one year ago he said in 1 to 5 years for new grads, we’re going to have a 50 to 60% unemployment or, you know, and it hasn’t happened. And actually all those other, besides Dario, all the other AI guys have said, no, we actually cannot find enough good people to hire. And all the people I know are saying, we just can’t find enough good people to hire. So there’s always opportunities, always going to be the naysayers.
But I think there’s 2 things that really transform your life in any area. If I want to grow my health, if I want to become a world-class athlete, if I get around people that are doing that, then it will transform me. So there’s 2 things. One is the relationships and it’s the education. So it doesn’t sound super sexy, but last year I committed, I wanted to read 100 books. So I finished 100 books. I listened to some of them and they do count.
So don’t say that doesn’t count. Somebody’s like, oh, for sure.But like having education goals each year of like, I’m learning, this is what I’m doing. And now with YouTube and books, there’s so many audio books, there’s so much available. And then it’s getting in rooms like this. Now, coming to a conference like this is thousands of dollars for the ticket, for the flight, for the hotel, all this. But to be in here, you just make connections you never would have made.
And I mean, I could tell you there’s multiple probably deal opportunities going to come out of this, multiple investors, and you just can’t predict what’s going to happen. So being in the room, being around amazing people, I mean, I literally have come to events like this, made a partnership and made $1 million off of a partnership and it kind of launched me into amazing things.
Monetary Metals
And now I also want to talk about some of the kind of threats to people’s wealth. So a lot of people think, well, I’ve got the passive income machine, it’s going, turn it off. All right, now I’m on vacation. What are some of the threats to people’s wealth where they say, whether it is inflation, if they’re not prepared for that, whether it is, hey, the sector that I’m in is actually not doing so well. Or all of a sudden this thing that I thought was passive is no longer passive. I got to get back into the game. What are some of the threats to people’s wealth that you focus on?
Bronson Hill
Yeah, I think there’s a number of them. I think, you know, no one really cares about money, your money the way you do. So there’s a saying that passive income is actually a myth because, you know, if I just say, okay, you’re my guy, I’m going to give you all my money. Like, you know, you maybe don’t care, maybe it’s a family or something, but most people don’t care about your money the way you do. So you got to pay attention. So I’ve seen people delegate things. And then they just kind of lose their shorts. They’re like, oh, I didn’t know.
And it’s like, well, no, like we need to actually be paying attention to these things. So I think the education piece never stops. I think, you know, there’s a lot of disruption happening. I think AI is also bringing a lot of disruption. So there could come a point where, you know, accountants, whoa, we just found a way to automate all that. So somebody’s been doing it for 20 years. So I think being aware of these things, I don’t think it’s necessarily that, you know, it’s going to happen overnight or if you’re an accountant, there’s nothing for you, but you have to be continually learning.
And I think there’s a choice. I know there’s a lot of people over 50 or 60, they’re like, Oh, I don’t know. I just use Google. I’m not really, but it’s, you got to kind of embrace what’s there and then realize the things that AI can do. Having a real conversation, having a human connection. Right now online, there’s this huge trend of like, you can’t even tell what’s real anymore. I mean, some of these videos, these influencers have millions of followers and they’re not even a real person. And people are commenting thinking they’re real. But like being in a room like this or—so I’ve realized one thing we’re doing in our business is just picking up the phone and calling people.
Monetary Metals
Thank you.
Bronson Hill
It’s a very, it’s a high-touch thing, but I spend 3 to 5 hours a week now just calling people on my list, people that have been to events. And because it’s really like most people are not doing that. And you could tell when it’s AI, you could tell when it’s an AI text, you could tell when it’s a—so if you can do this stuff, it’s high-touch, but kind of not replicatable as well. That kind of going back to picking up the phone like people used to do years ago.
Why passive investors analyze deals backwards
Monetary Metals
Right. Talk to me a little bit about analyzing a deal. So part of this passive income machine is like, hey, I find these deals, they’re passive, they produce income, but like, I gotta analyze ’em first. And then if I’m like, this is great, I sign up and then I go on vacation. But that first moment of like, is this a good deal? Am I getting scammed? Is this the right deal for me? What’s a way to help people kind of, if you have a rule of thumb to help analyze these deals?
Bronson Hill
Yeah. So the best way is, like I said, knowing somebody who’s invested with a group of 4.
Monetary Metals
Okay.
Bronson Hill
Everyone think we have kind of, we have a funnel in my book, Fire Yourself. It’s called our deal funnel. So at the top, I start with the market itself. I don’t start with the operator, start with the market. So it goes market, operator, and then deal. But the problem is it comes to you in reverse order. Somebody sends you a box. Here’s the deal.
Monetary Metals
Here’s the deal.
Bronson Hill
We have to go, let’s go back. Let’s see. Well, what is the market for this? You know, what’s the—if I’m in a multifamily, is that a growth? Is there population growth, job growth, income growth? If it’s a business, what’s that business market look like? Is it growing? Whatever. I understand what the market is because if you’re in like a great market and it’s just kind of an okay, but you’re going to do very well because you’re in a great sector.
Monetary Metals
You’re in AI. And even if these guys aren’t great, AI is booming.
Bronson Hill
Yeah, exactly.
Monetary Metals
Yeah.
Bronson Hill
But if you’re in like a terrible market, that’s like Right. Something that’s shrinking that people aren’t even using. It’s like, well, that’s going to be really tough to make money. So that’s the first layer. Second layer would be the sponsor. You know, do they have similar values to you? How do they talk about if they lost money? Well, what’s that experience been? Do you feel like it’s just kind of getting to know them a bit? And there’s ways to do that.
Talk about the system in the book. The final thing is the deal itself. So then once you get through those first 2, it’s like, well, what does this actually do? What are my goals? Most investors, I’ve had 2,500 one-on-one phone calls with investors and I was like, well, what do you want? Cash flow, appreciation, or tax benefits? And they’re like, Yes. Yeah. It’s like, well, you don’t really know what you want. So it’s like, okay, am I a higher earner? I’m trying to reduce taxes here.
Well, that’s my goal. Am I trying to generate cash flow because I want to retire? I want to fire myself. So it’s kind of getting there. Well, what is this? Does this deal actually help me meet my goal? Not does it sound great? It’s what is my goal? What am I trying to do in my life? And starting with that. So that’s where you kind of go down that funnel. Then if it meets all those things, it’s okay. This might be a good place to invest.
The Ponzi scheme and black-box investments
Monetary Metals
Talk to me now also about red flags in terms of like, hey, this guy’s actually not a good deal and it’s a maliciously bad deal versus like, Yeah, this guy doesn’t really know what he’s doing, but he’s trying his best. How can someone say, okay, yeah, this is a good deal where the guy’s tried his best, but maybe it’s not for me versus, wow, I think this is just a scam?
Bronson Hill
Well, so I’ll share honestly, we’ve had deals, we’ve had amazing home runs, we’ve had 100% return in less than a year. Just like multiple deals, amazing stuff. We had some real challenges too. Residential family apartment investing rates went way up. I think there are some cases there where it’s just, you know, good intentions, but either, you know, just didn’t have the right debt. It’s kind of all over the place. Seen a lot of that. So that was kind of a good intention case. We had a deal we invested in that was an ATM machine fund. We’ve talked about this, but it basically, the whole thing ended up being a Ponzi scheme.
Monetary Metals
Wow.
Bronson Hill
Hundreds of millions of dollars raised. Oh, this big thing. Really smart people did it. And the guy was very sophisticated and everything. But I think a couple of things I learned from that was if somebody ever has a black box, they like, I’ve got this system. And his whole thing was like, I can’t share the locations with you because it’s proprietary.
You could go and just go and poach all these things away from me. So if there’s any time there’s some system or like a proprietary trading thing that’s buying and selling stocks, it’s like, right, well, you can’t really see inside of it, right? So that’s a big red flag. So I think that if someone’s not willing to fully share everything and if there’s anything about it that feels a little too good to be true, you know, this guy had been going for 13 years. It wasn’t like it was a fly-by-night.
So he may have started legitimate, but at some point it became—so it’s challenging. So he can say all the things. He had all the checkouts, the background checks, the All these things, but definitely a lot of learning. And then if you do alternative asset investing, sooner or later you do a lot of deals, it’s going to happen at some point. And it’s a sucky experience for everyone involved.
Monetary Metals
Talk to me about what you’ve learned from doing this over the past years. Obviously you went from, hey, I’ve got this W-2 job to now I’m kind of in this passive income machine. What have you learned that initially you thought, oh, this is going to be easy, now it’s hard? Or wow, actually it turns out this part that I’d never thought of is where all the returns are coming from. What are some of those kind of hidden gems that you found out along the way?
Bronson Hill
Well, it’s interesting. So I wrote my first book, Fire Yourself, became a bestseller on Amazon. And then after all, I had all these interviews with high net worth or, you know, multimillionaires, I decided that like, there’s this whole thing about the mindset around wealth that most people don’t get. There’s this belief that you either come from money or you don’t. But Fidelity Investments did a study and they found 86% of millionaires are self-made, meaning they didn’t make it themselves.
So these are all learnable, teachable things. And one of the biggest things, this book is called Rich Brain, it’s getting ready to come out hopefully soon, but it’s basically the idea of worthiness around wealth. So it exists, the area of worthiness exists around relationships, it exists around different areas of our life. So if I don’t feel like I’m worthy of something, I will subconsciously sabotage or social way, whatever, and not even realize it’s happening.
Monetary Metals
Wow.
Bronson Hill
And so there’s, there’s things you can do to change that. There’s a whole visualization, there’s things called whisperings that I use, or how do you actually change so you build up your wealth worthiness so you feel like You’re worthy of these things. And there are people that have, some people are very high ego or maybe narcissistic.
Monetary Metals
Oh, I deserve it.
Bronson Hill
I have the princess syndrome or the, you know, like you feel that way, but there’s a way the rest of us can change that.
Monetary Metals
Talk to me about something that over time you’ve changed your mind on. You walked in thinking, hey, this is how it works. And actually over time said, you know what? I was totally wrong.
Bronson Hill
There’s been a number of things.
Monetary Metals
Yeah.
Bronson Hill
I think initially, well, if I did single family initially and it wasn’t getting me as quick before I wanted to go, I was doing some single family houses. Didn’t really produce much cash flow. I still agree. I think the buy and hold single family strategy is tough. We went into multifamily. This is great. We can scale with multifamily. Multifamily has been tough the last few years. There’s not a lot of cash flowing. A lot of investors are pretty soured on it. I think some okay deals are starting to kind of turn, but it’s a challenging investment.
We started going back in. So I live in LA and the fires happened in LA a year and a half ago. We actually went in, we bought some land and we’re building some prefabricated single family with ADU homes. Yeah, it’s funny. I say you never say you do it, but the numbers look really good because we’re doing stuff that’s built offsite. It’s a very high build cost area. So when you can build offsite, it’s way cheaper. It’s about half the cost to build and it’s twice as fast. Wow. So it’s just funny. They, they say never say never.
Monetary Metals
You never know.
Bronson Hill
You start doing something and it’s like, well, this sucks. Then it’s like, well, actually it’s kind of good. I’m going to do this now. So I’m of the belief as a passive investor, as an investor, you can be a free agent. You can choose what it is you want to invest in. Right. So like, I can do multifamily one season, maybe another time I can do oil and gas, or I can do single, I can do development. So you can do different things at different times for what makes sense for you at that time. It’s like finance is like a board game that every day you look at, the pieces are moving and it’s changed. So it’s just paying attention to what’s happening and what the opportunities are.
Buffett, the Fed, crypto and precious metals
Monetary Metals
And do you recommend that people kind of look at this passive portfolio that they have and say, all right, I want to tweak around the edges? Or do you actually bring in someone who says, hey, listen, I do this for a living. I know how to kind of help manage this portfolio for you. Where do you kind of draw the line in terms of getting outside expertise to help you or just trusting your gut and saying, listen, I know multifamily, I know gold, I’m going to stick with this?
Bronson Hill
Yeah, there’s people that would say only invest in your edge. Like, where do you have an edge? Invest there. And I think there’s some truth to that. I also think outside advisors are very helpful. I used to be a registered investment advisor, and now I call myself an RIA, a recovering investment advisor. But I think Tax strategists can be very helpful. I think having, like I said, other peer groups and people that can help.
But I think the challenge is no one can tell you really how you should invest your resources. You know, when you hear an investment advisor, you’re paid to put people into suitable investments, right? And the problem is who wants a suitable vacation or a suitable spouse or a suitable—I know this sounds like really terrible. So I think you, you have to get to where you understand the market, you understand things well enough that you’re excited about it. You see both sides of it. I had a, mentor one time tell me I was doing single-family. He said, well, look at 100 homes. And after you look at 100, you’ll be able to identify what a good deal is.
Monetary Metals
Wow.
Bronson Hill
So I think the idea of just being able to look at different asset classes and see, okay, like I see right now from a cash-on-cash, from a risk perspective, from a tax benefit, this looks really attractive. So mobile home parks has been that for us lately. So those are things like that out there that if you’re paying attention and you’re learning, you’re going to find opportunities.
Monetary Metals
All right. I want to do a rapid-fire round before we end.
Bronson Hill
This has been pretty rapid-fire.
Monetary Metals
Let’s go. Yeah, this is real quick. So you can answer as short or as quick as you want. I’m going to give you a couple of names and I want you to tell me what you’ve learned from them, maybe what you disagree with them about. Just kind of give me your hot take on each one. So let’s start with Warren Buffett. How do you feel about Warren Buffett? Something you’ve learned from him as an investor?
Bronson Hill
A lot. His book, The Snowball, is incredible. It’s just his whole life. You haven’t read it? It’s amazing. He, from age 14, he, well, even as a kid, he started selling candy door to door. He had a pinball machine company.
Monetary Metals
He did a Guggenheim.
Bronson Hill
I mean, he’s just incredibly innovative. Very motivated and loves sharing his wisdom. Love being a mentor. Yeah. Which I resonate with.
Monetary Metals
All right. Obviously, Warren Buffett’s kind of famous for saying gold has no yield and Monetary Metals, that’s our whole shtick. But okay, outside of that, what’s something that you actually disagree with Warren Buffett about?
Bronson Hill
Well, I would say the metals part specifically. Yeah. There’s not a whole lot honestly that I would say. I mean, I’m sure if we go through some of the quotes, I would say why not. But I think from a, I mean, I would say from what he does, I don’t buy, I have entities, I buy a lot of, I don’t buy a lot of stocks.
Monetary Metals
Right.
Bronson Hill
Because I think that, you know, I think there was a time when he was starting, it was a much more of the valuations.
Monetary Metals
It’s interesting.
Bronson Hill
My I talk about this whole chapter on relative valuations, and Mike Maloney does this too from GoldSilver. The idea of like, you know, how many ounces of gold does it take to buy a house?
Monetary Metals
Totally.
Bronson Hill
Or how many ounces of gold is it, you know, when you compare it to stock market, right? The price earnings ratio is that we’re at a price earnings ratio when the historic average is like 14. It’s like, I think it’s like 28 or 40. It’s a much higher, I gotta check what it is today, but it’s much higher than it was. So, but he would say act like an owner. I mean, there’s so many good things, but I think, you know, I don’t know.
Monetary Metals
All right. Here’s another one for you. Talk about the importance of the Fed and the Federal Reserve policy. Is this something that investors should be focusing on saying, oh, the Fed’s raising rates or lowering rates, or is this kind of just kind of a cop-out? Hey, this deal didn’t work because of the Fed.
Bronson Hill
I mean, I would—there’s both sides of that because, you know, if your multifamily deal only works and then if the rates go up by half a percent and now the deal doesn’t work, but then it probably wasn’t a good deal anyway. So on one hand, it’s like, well, the deal should be good enough and juicy enough. I heard somebody Talk about, I think it was Grad Jacobs wrote the book How to Make a Few Billion Dollars, and he said, look for companies with insane profits. And I love that quote, like insane environments. So what’s just a great business?
So I think that in general it will have a significant impact. We’ve seen it the last few years, rates are higher for longer. It does really impact. I mean, rates go lower, it just is a boom on everything. But you know, the Fed, it’s kind of a bummer because the more, you know, this whole end the Fed movement, all this stuff where it’s The more the Fed is involved, it just kind of creates more and more challenges, more booms and busts. And I just think, I mean, obviously metals, you get back sound money. It’s like, you know, if we could do something that would do that, I think I’m kind of in between on both.
Because if you have truly a hard money, like gold standard system and there’s no loans available, everybody’s got to be PACs. You can’t really finance anything, right? So there’s a balance there, but now we’re not tethered to anything and people are just printing more and more currency. So if you know that’s the strategy, right? If you know they’re going to over the next 20 years, I would I could say with 100% of certainty, things are going to cost more in 20 years. I could say I literally would bet my life on it, right? Like, if not, you could shoot me. Like, that’s—so that’s my certainty. So I’m going to buy assets. I’m going to buy—I’m going to buy real estate. I’m going to buy things that, you know, appreciate because what else is going to protect you?
Monetary Metals
You know? All right. Next rapid fire for you. What’s an asset class that everybody loves and actually might even be great, but just not for you?
Bronson Hill
Oh, oh, crypto.
Monetary Metals
Crypto.
Bronson Hill
Crypto. Yeah. I, I’ll just say I think crypto, it’s either worth millions of dollars or $0. I own a little bit, but I’m just not a huge fan.
Monetary Metals
All right. Now let’s go in the opposite direction. Something that you love, but everyone’s like, nah, not for me.
Bronson Hill
I mean, I would say metals. I would say a lot of people really don’t know a lot. I mean, in your community they do, but most people don’t. I mean, half a percent of Americans own any metals at all. So I think that’s a big one to be gold.
Monetary Metals
Talk to me about what it’s like having a relationship with your spouse moving from, hey, I’ve got this strong W-2 gig to, hey, I want to try something different. I want to get into this passive income game. What’s it like kind of managing not only the relationship with your money, but that relationship with your spouse?
Bronson Hill
Yeah, well, I’m divorced, so I don’t have a relationship. So that makes it a little bit easier. But yeah, I will say when I was married, we were married 9 years and, you know, a great woman, everything. It just— and we were not really aligned on this issue of like, she was very conservative and this was not the reason it didn’t work.
But I think it’s just important that when you have your spouse and I’ve watched it with many couples where you’ve got to have conversations around money, usually it’s like one You know, one partner’s really interested, the other’s really not. I’ve seen it both. I’ve seen men that are interested, women that are interested, and vice versa. But I think it’s important to kind of bring the other person along or say, hey, this is something that’s really going to help create our future.
And regardless, I think having support is great. But, you know, when you start doing things outside of Wall Street, you have to understand there are risks there. What kind of risks are you taking? And is your spouse okay if you do have a big loss or if something does happen? You have big gains, you have big loss. Everybody loves gains, but there’s a risk of loss. What’s that conversation going to be like? So I think that’s important to have those conversations.
Monetary Metals
All right. Now rapid fire. Our friend Robert Kiyosaki. What have you learned from this?
Bronson Hill
Robert has been, I think, like all of us. I mean, most people’s lives have been transformed by him, right? I mean, he’s amazing. I know he’s getting older, but he’s just—his book, I mean, his second book, Cashflow Quadrant, to me was really powerful about just generating cash flow in your life. What does that look like? But yeah, it definitely made a big difference.
Monetary Metals
I mean, all right, we won’t, we won’t share this with anyone. Don’t send it to Robert. But what’s something that you think, okay, maybe a little bit too much from Mr. Kiyosaki?
Bronson Hill
You hear him speak live, he can be pretty intense sometimes. He can be military Robert and just try to talk the sense into you, scare the Jesus out of you or something.
Monetary Metals
So yeah. All right, last question. What’s a question I should be asking all future guests of the Gold Exchange Podcast?
Bronson Hill
Yeah, that’s a good question. I think maybe what allocation do you have currently? What’s your net worth in precious metals?
Monetary Metals
Okay, interesting. Now I get to turn it around on you. What’s your allocation if you feel comfortable sharing?
Bronson Hill
It was higher. It was probably 10 to 15%. I just That’s probably 2 to 5% now. I just changed. I need some liquidity, so I just sold some. But yeah.
Monetary Metals
All right. Now, Bronson, if people want to find more Bronson Hill, they want to read your book, where can they find you?
Bronson Hill
The best way—I’ve got a cash flow guide of different assets and things, How do I get started in cash flowing investments? If you text the word “cashflow” to the number 33777, just text the word “cashflow”, all one word. We’ll send you this guide.
Monetary Metals
It’s my 3 favorite investments of 2026. Wow. Bronson, great interview. Thanks so much. Appreciate it. Thank you.
