Neil Dudley: The Cowboy Perspective, well, it might be hard to define, but I guarantee if you think about it, you’ve got one in mind. Whether you’re building a legacy, an empire, or a fan base, I bet when your friends look at you, they see some cowboy in your face. Y’all come along, let’s talk about this or that. Maybe when we’re done, you’ll go away with another perspective to put under your hat.
Hey, TCP nation, welcome back to the Cowboy Perspective podcast. Super, super excited about this episode. A good friend of mine named Cole Parks and I took a little drive around the country, and we just talked about a lot of different things and things that we think about, things that we want to consider in our lives. And I hope it’s something you find value in. If you do, please go to my website, check it out, leave me any comments, and tell a friend. Tell them to go to www.thecowboyperspective.com and listen to this podcast. Without further ado, here he is, the man, the myth, the legend, Cole Parks.
Hey, everybody. By the way, Cole, we’re hot. So now we’re recording. We’re putting this down. We’re driving around a little bit here, south of Stephenville, Texas. And today I get to talk to a guy that you all may have heard. If you’re avid listeners to the podcast, you would have heard his voice on the South Texas Dove Hunting episode. I can’t remember the number, but he was on there for a little bit. And I’ve got a chance now to talk to him a little more in depth about some of those topics that we kind of lightly touched on on that episode. And let’s just get some more meat off the bone. Cole, for everybody who didn’t hear some of kind of who you are and what you do, give them that little run down real quick, just for the people that didn’t catch you on the last episode.
Cole Parks: Thank you. Yes, sir. Neil, thanks for having me again. I’m looking forward to cruising around with you a little bit this afternoon. Again, my name is Cole Gilliam Parks. I’m with Southwestern.
Neil Dudley: Why do you always add the Gilliam part?
Cole Parks: Funny story.
Neil Dudley: I’ve been wondering that. I don’t even know why, but this is- like we’re buddies, we hang out. And this is the first time it’s even really came up. I’m like, he does say that a lot. What- why?
Cole Parks: Yeah, so Neil, when your mama got onto you, what’d she say?
Neil Dudley: Neil Harris, get over here.
Cole Parks: Neil Harris get over here. Well, I enjoyed getting into things I shouldn’t have gotten into. And my mother got onto me quite often growing up, and me being the creative problem solver that I am, I said you know what? If everybody calls me Cole Gilliam Parks, it won’t carry the same weight when my mother says Cole Gilliam Parks.
Neil Dudley: That’s why we’re having you on the podcast. You’ve got some deep thinking going on, even as a little kid. That never occurred to me.
Cole Parks: In junior high, I started writing Cole Gilliam Parks on everything, and it even went as far as when I went to get my license renewed now. I mean, there’s some things that it’ll say no middle name. It’ll say Cole Gilliam, first name.
Neil Dudley: Like that’s your whole first name? That’s great. Are you going to change that someday?
Cole Parks: I don’t want to waste any money legally, but yeah.
Neil Dudley: That was great. Okay, everybody, we’ve got Cole Gilliam Parks with us here. Sorry, I did interrupt you quite rudely. Go ahead and tell everybody who you are.
Cole Parks: I mean, that’s it, I’m Cole Gilliam Parks, and I’m excited to be on the Cowboy Perspective for a second time. That’s pretty, I feel pretty special.
Neil Dudley: Cool. I like talking to you. We’ve got, I think, similar- We are similar in ways, different in ways, which makes for fun conversation in my opinion. One thing we did bring up, maybe this is a good place to start, is this Kolbe personality test. You made me take one and that might lean a little bit to or give people a little deeper insight into what you do. I think that’s worth certainly addressing because I think people could use your services out there. I would like just, I’m not doing- I run some commercials on the podcast, I do some different things, but it’s not, it’s really me just trying to promote and show appreciation for quality services, quality products, anything that I feel like I would share with my best friends. So, what you do is financial services among a bunch of other things. So how does that Kolbe personality tests play into that? And maybe you’re limited a little bit on how much you can talk about some of those financial service things just due to legal reasons but tell us as much as you can.
Cole Parks: Yeah, I’ll tell you as much as I can. And like I said, we’ll get the attorneys to listen to it before we make it public. So, we’ll figure it out if we have to. But as Neil said, one of the, I guess if you want to kind of get into the background, I do own Southwestern Advisory Group. We started the firm in 2016 after I was with Ameriprise Financial Services for the 11 years prior to that. So that is kind of the, I’m very much an entrepreneurial-type spirit. I love investing with a passion. I’d rather invest money than spend money. So that kind of route comes from that scenario. And what the Kolbe analysis does is when a client hires us at Southwestern, we actually require them to go through the Kolbe. And what it does is it helps me coach them better. So Southwestern, being a registered investment advisor, we work as a fiduciary with our clients, and for me to give them the best advice, I need to understand their thought processes and the way they make decisions. And when you meet somebody new off the street and like I said, you and I have known each other for a few years before we had the engagement, if you don’t mind me saying that on the-
Neil Dudley: Yeah, no, I mean, I couldn’t figure out how to say it, but yeah, we use Cole and his team to help us make smart decisions and get organized, at least that’s where we’re at so far. I think it’s been really beneficial for Stacey and I on just a personal level.
Cole Parks: I appreciate that. Just for confidentiality reasons, I didn’t want to say that.
Neil Dudley: No, I don’t care.
Cole Parks: If you’re good with it, I’m good with it. But if you don’t know this, whoever’s hired us well, then we need to know their way of thinking. What’s cool about the Kolbe process is I started using the Kolbe when I was doing consulting work for Ameriprise Financial, and we’d go into offices, and I had to learn the people I was working with and also had to engage with their clients. And I might only see these people for 15 to 30 minutes and I’m going to be giving them advice on decisions that are going to affect the next 30 to 40 years of their life. So, Kolbe was just a great tool to go out, answer a standard generic set of questions that can, if it’s answered honestly, can really get you the deeper roots of these people and what they’re going to be doing. And so, like I said, when we, every client that we engage with, we get those, and then we actually run it through what’s called the Kolbe Financial MO, because there’s different levels of the Kolbe analysis. But the financial MO actually takes a Kolbe analysis and then helps us decide how they’re going to make a financial decision.
Neil Dudley: Cool. Well, I took it, and I don’t know my number. What’s your number? Do you know yours exactly?
Cole Parks: 7, 7, 3, 3.
Neil Dudley: Yeah. So, what does that mean? 7, 7, 3, 3, y’all, go Google it.
Cole Parks: Yeah, nobody’s the same, but you’ll learn a lot about me, and you’ll learn a lot about my thought processes and probably some of the conversations we’re going to have today are going to make more sense if you think, oh, that guy thinks this way because he’s a six, or he’s a seven, or he’s a three, or whatever it might be.
Neil Dudley: Well, I think it’s just like we had talked about on the previous episode, it is just valuable to anybody out there that might own a business, be looking to hire people, be looking to invest. I haven’t done this, but it just occurs to me, it might not be a bad idea for me to go see what that number means so I know. I’m just a real, like I know you; we’re sitting together next to each other in the car and that’s about all I need – I think you’re a good guy. I’ve watched you operate in just a lot of different- we go to Sunday school together, we hang out together just at our house or somewhere. So, to me, that’s what builds comfort, and I don’t need much deeper than that. But I can totally understand the value of it.
Cole Parks: Exactly. Yeah, I know you guys too, but I also look at it from there is a liability perspective in what I do for a living. And so, having that piece-
Neil Dudley: Sure. It makes it more important for you. I can lose my money no problem. You lose my money and we’re going to have problems.
Cole Parks: You are dealing with OPM, that’s a whole other ball game.
Neil Dudley: Other people’s money. What is it that you look around and see people like me doing wrong or that you feel like, man, I could really help them if they would give me a chance? Is there a thing or is it really different for every client you have?
Cole Parks: No, the one thing that I can tell I would probably say 75%, maybe even 80 or 90% of investors out there is you do not need a broker or an advisor, and everybody thinks they do.
Neil Dudley: There you go. Right from the advisor himself’s mouth. He said you don’t need a broker and advisor. Well, tell me more about that. I don’t necessarily, I don’t think, I hear it superficially, but I don’t know if I understand why.
Cole Parks: It’s a tongue in cheek statement, but the reason I say that is because if we just go and take investing in its simplest form and somebody says I want to invest in the stock market and I want to be successful doing it, well after 16 years of working with clients from all different firms and all over the United States of America, if somebody just wants a 10% rate of return on their money, they don’t need an advisor. They don’t need a broker. All they need to do is go use some of the custodians that you see advertising online like Charles Schwab, TD Ameritrade, Interactive Brokers. Those are the firms that we recommend our clients use because they charge $0 to buy, $0 to sell. You could go buy an S&P 500 index ETF. Again, everything I’m telling you, you can Google and find research on. I’m not telling you anything that’s not available on the world wide web today. And if you do that, you will get a 10% rate of return historically going forward. And what we find is advisors typically get in the way of people being successful investors. And so, they’ll come into our office, and they’ll take a look at- we’ll look at what they’re doing, and they might have some good investment products or something in there, but it’s so jumbled that they’re so over diversified that whatever goal that they’re working or saving or investing towards, they end up not accomplishing what they’re trying to do because the rate of return has been diminished from all these other products and fees and things that are tacked on there.
Neil Dudley: Do you think 10%, I guess it’s up to every person. I mean, 10% sounds pretty daggum good to me.
Cole Parks: 10% is the low watermark.
Neil Dudley: There you go. Alright, well, I’ll be real happy then.
Cole Parks: 10% is the low watermark that doesn’t take an advisor, that takes no effort. Anybody listening to your podcast right now, you can make-
Neil Dudley: If they’ve got some free money to go put in-
Cole Parks: Can go open an account with any of those people we just talked about, they can buy an S&P 500 ETF and just let the money run.
Neil Dudley: It’ll eventually go to 10%.
Cole Parks: As long as you believe in the U S economy, you’re fine.
Neil Dudley: Right. Which that’s a whole other topic.
Cole Parks: I don’t think we have enough road in front of us for that one.
Neil Dudley: Let’s see, what’s the other thing I kind of wanted to touch on? When do you stop giving free advice? Because I mean, I know people are constantly, I kind of fall into that same category. I’m like constantly saying, well, hey, Cole, what do you think about this? Or hey, how would you do that? And being in the business, that’s your forte, that’s your knowledge, that’s your monetizable asset. So, what about the free advice? How do you decide when you stop, or do you just not do it? I mean, if you don’t do it, I feel very special because I know I’ve got some free advice.
Cole Parks: Now typically, I don’t do free advice just because that is the business that we’re in. Where I draw the line is I look at it from the perspective of any information that you can find online with a Google search, I’m happy to give you. So right now, just like we’re talking about with just buying the S & P 500 index, you can find a hundred different people, maybe a thousand different people, that can give you that advice on how to do that kind of stuff. So, if it is a kind of a generic, broad statement, I mean, that’s part of what we have to do just to show people that we’re competent, that we know what we’re talking about. Where I draw the line between what I’m going to charge somebody for and what’s available publicly is when it’s customized and tailored specifically for them. And like I said, at our office, we just charge by the hour for that, because I don’t want our advice and our services to be a drag on a client’s rate of return. So, we’re going to charge for our time, just like other trusted professionals you work with such as CPAs and attorneys. And we’re not going to charge you a commission to buy something or sell something. We’re not going to charge ongoing fees and just constantly eat that. That ongoing fee deal, that’s always, when I was young in the business, I didn’t think anything about it. That was just the way I was taught to do it. But as I actually started accumulating some wealth and investing money on my own, I’m sure you’ve had mentors in your life, Neil, that said don’t ever invest in anything that eats while it sleeps. How many times have you heard that on the farm? Why are you investing in something that’s going to take a 1% drag on your portfolio, whether you’ve heard from the guy in a year or not? So that’s kind of our thought process as far as why we do what we do. And as far as free advice goes, there’s it in a nutshell.
Neil Dudley: I just think that’s, it’s almost like marketing or, I mean, there’s so many kind of, I don’t know if it’s necessarily a pure service industry, but that are services that are kind of knowledge-based services. People- I tend to do it. I mean, I’m not really griping about people. I think just humans are like, well, hey- I know it happens to Stacey pretty often. Well, hey, how would you, what would you do with these Facebook ads to make my little widget here sell better? And it’s hard to just say, well, no, that’s what I do for a living and give me some money and then I’ll tell you. But that’s the truth. You have to do that and certain businesses that I think just lend themselves to people abusing that.
Cole Parks: And it’s part of it. Just like what you’re talking about, Stacey’s business or what I do or any other companies that we’ve got investments in, I can’t think of the guy that said it – we’ll have to look it up – but there’s a quote on my wall at the office, and I cannot give credit to the guy that said it. So, I apologize.
Neil Dudley: Johnny can look it up. Johnny can figure out who did the quote he’s about to give us.
Cole Parks: The quote is I would not give a fig for simplicity on the near side of complexity, but I would give my life for simplicity on the far side of complexity. Have you heard that?
Neil Dudley: No.
Cole Parks: Alright. So, the basis of that is exactly kind of what we’re talking about with the free advice. As far as free advice goes, yes, all the simple status stuff, everything right here that you can get online, you can get it online. I’m not going to charge you for that. But when you want to take it a simple concept through all the complex things that are tied to that and come out with a simple solution on the other side, that’s what we can charge for. And that’s where we’re providing value. Just like when I was talking to you the other day, I said I don’t do any marketing. I think I need to, I keep hearing we need to, but fortunately referrals and word of mouth has been working pretty well for us for years, but I’m on the simple side of complexity where I can look into it, yeah, I can post a Facebook ad. Is it going to be effective? I don’t know. There’s a whole maze of complexity in there, that I would need a specialist like Root & Roam.
Neil Dudley: What you’re saying makes me also think of this story somebody told, which I don’t know if somebody needs credit or not, but it makes sense to me. It was like Picasso’s standing on the corner and this lady comes walking by him. She says, “Will you paint my likeness.” And he says, “Sure,” and he does it, hands it to her and says, “That’ll be $10,000.” And she, her mouth just drops open, “$10,000! That took you 30 seconds.” And he says, “No, it took me my whole life to learn how to do that in 30 seconds.” So that’s kind of a similar thing I think we’re talking about. It’s like, hey, I’ve put a lot of work into building this knowledge and it might, I think marketing feels that way a lot of times, like somebody says, well, I’m going to charge you this much money to do that. And I think people don’t understand or they totally misperceive – I don’t even know if that’s a word – but they perceive that advising, marketing, these kinds of things don’t take any time. I know I’m that way. Like, oh, you already knew all that. It took you five minutes to tell me, why am I paying you, right? By the way, Johnny, you got to cut out the cuss words. I got in big trouble over the cuss words. So seriously-
Cole Parks: You get your middle name used?
Neil Dudley: Actually, I lied a little bit about that earlier. They didn’t really ever call me by my middle name. My parents just didn’t use my middle name much. So, hey everybody, that’s listening now, I came clean – my parents didn’t actually use my middle name when I was in trouble. They just got close to me and let me know for sure that I was messing up. But I appreciate that so much. I look back and there is no perfect parent. I’m not going to be one. My parents weren’t. Newsflash, anybody out there that is a parent, you’re not going to be perfect. But they loved me, and they spent time bothering with me. And that was what was so valuable about them.
Cole Parks: Yup. Getting that middle name used, I knew somebody cared.
Neil Dudley: That’s right. Let’s see, what’s another topic we could explore? I had a good one a minute ago.
Cole Parks: If you didn’t have a podcast, what would you do in your spare time? I’m talking about away from the family so in Neil time.
Neil Dudley: Yeah. I just love cowboying, working with horses. I love that kind of thing. Outside, something outside, I don’t like being in the house. I do it though. I mean like that’s what’s such a blessing in my life is that, I mean, I can’t think of anything in my life that I’m so dying to trade for free time. It was like, oh man, if I could just get some free time, I would be happy. I think that is a thing that I learned from cowboys in my life, and the cowboy perspective is happiness is your job. You should do it for yourself. You should choose happiness. There went the market. Ding, ding, ding!
Cole Parks: Neil was on a really good comment there too.
Neil Dudley: Yeah. I think a lot of people understand it. But I tell my kids this a lot. It’s like, hey, are you unhappy? Yeah, I’m mad; I didn’t get what I wanted. Well, you’re choosing to stay there. You can totally do that differently if you want to.
Cole Parks: It reminds me, Neil, I was watching a Saturday Night Live skit the other day, it was an old one with Adam Sandler in it, not real old. But anyways, Adam Sandler, in this sketch was a tour agent, a travel agent, broker kind of guy. And he was making this commercial and the whole gist of the commercial was, hey, we’re going to take you on this tour of Italy, but he said, but I need to make some comments on people, people are making unhappy comments about our services on our Facebook page. I need to address this before you go on our tours. If you’re unhappy at home, you’ll be unhappy in Italy, just because-
Neil Dudley: Just because we’re going to Italy, it’s not going to change the happiness factor.
Cole Parks: If you think you’re going to enjoy the French Riviera, but you don’t like yourself in a bathing suit, you’re not going to enjoy the French Riviera.
Neil Dudley: It makes me want to tie that thought to this, which you see it, or you tell me, I have an opinion. Does money make people happy?
Cole Parks: Nope.
Neil Dudley: Hey, people, you will never get enough money to be happy. It’s impossible. It’s never worked. Money does certain things gives you some freedoms. It can provide you some leverage. It can do- And Cole, you chime in here with things that- like, I try to think about money – yeah, I want it, it’s a thing that I try to work hard for, I try to earn, I try to respect. But with it comes a lot of responsibility, expectation, and- So the idea that getting more money, it can make life easier for you, but it won’t make you happy. I don’t know if that’s a news flash to anybody, but I wanted to say it. I think it was a good thought process for anybody out there who’s not financially in a place where they would be talking to a financial advisor yet, you’re just trying to get yourself off the bottom. Just know, do the thing you love, do it the best you possibly can, and it’ll come.
Cole Parks: Neil, I’ll spin off that. So, one thing you mentioned there is a lot of people think they don’t have enough money to talk to a financial advisor. And if you find a fiduciary advisor that’s charging for your time versus trying to sell you an investment or sell you an investment product, a good fiduciary advisor will have time for you. And they can probably save you some tips and tricks. Again, those are probably some tips and tricks that if you want to go, there’s tons of great financial books, I’m a heavy reader and there’s tons of great information online and subscription services you can subscribe to. And if you want to comb through all that kind of stuff, you can find some great shortcuts that are there. But if you don’t have time for that, you can pay a guy a couple of hundred dollars an hour to tell you the shortcuts and you can get there. And it doesn’t matter how much money you have. You don’t have to have a dollar to be able to invest.
Neil Dudley: That’s a good point. So yeah, I was just right there giving the advice like you have to be to some- It’s ridiculous. I don’t even know why I did that. You don’t have to be- That’s right. It’s a perception; I carried it, but you totally corrected me. And I appreciate that. That’s the thing about the Cowboy Perspective, folks. It’s not perfect. It’s the conversations we have on here, my perspective, I’m getting smarter with every conversation, with every one of the guests that come on. I mean, there’s great value in the things that we talk about. So, I hope you guys and gals are all socking that away. I think I don’t even remember specifically things that end up being great for me. And I don’t know where I came up with it or heard it, but it’s like it plays in my head the time I need it.
Cole Parks: Well, and kind of your conversation about money, the thing I’ve always – I can’t say I’ve always known this – but as I’ve gotten older and as I have more conversations and listen to the people that have mentored me, and I hate to say it, but absorb some of the conversations that I heard years ago that I said, nah, I’m going to do it better than that. And I said, you know what? They ended up being pretty right. We all know those feelings.
Neil Dudley: Maturity, huh?
Cole Parks: I still got a long ways to go. I don’t really want to grow up anytime soon, but maybe we are, whether we know it or not. But the piece that I keep thinking in my mind is people talk about wealth and is it going to make you happy and all these things? Well, I coach people to be financially independent. I don’t talk about retirement. And financial independence is a different number, different benchmark for every person. Some people can be financially independent if they own a hundred acres free and clear and got 40 cows on it. And those cows will be enough for them to be happy. And other people, they’ve got to have all the luxury toys that you can imagine to be happy. But what I have noticed, again after being in the business as long as I have, is the Lord, and I don’t know if we can talk about religion.
Neil Dudley: Sure, I want to. You bet. I mean, we just, I mentioned a minute ago, we go to Sunday school together. I think anybody that listens to the Cowboy Perspective, I feel sad if you don’t know I’m a born-again Christian. And I believe that God has a plan in my life. I believe that this podcast is a part of that plan. So, you bet, address it.
Cole Parks: Yeah. So, the Lord will only bless you with the wealth that you can handle, and it’s one of those things when I was making bad decisions in my life, he’s not going to put me in a situation that I can’t handle. And wealth is the same way. And when you talk about financial planning, I always tie it back to there’s one grand architect. There’s one phenomenal planner out there that I’ll never be as good at as he is.
Neil Dudley: Oh, it makes life to me, that faith, that true belief that I will go to Heaven, there is a heaven. I will go there. I can’t tell you what it is, or I don’t have any of the specifics, but I truly, truly believe that all the way to my core. Then when things don’t play out the way I want them to, and this has just been the truth in my career, 99.9% of the time, if not a hundred percent of the time, when things don’t play out the way I wanted them to, expect, I’m sad, man, we missed that business, ah we, I just spent a bunch of money on an advertisement that didn’t return anything, it all actually was just what it needed to be. And it turns out on the other side of a couple of days or a couple of years, you are looking back saying, wow, so glad that didn’t happen the way I wanted it to. Like that Garth Brooks song, the Greatest Gifts Are Unanswered Prayers. By gosh, I wish I could get Garth on here. I wish he’d come on in here and ride around like this and talk to us. He’s a fun guy to even just kind of watch from afar. I don’t know him.
Cole Parks: I don’t have enough energy to keep up with Garth Brooks.
Neil Dudley: He is energetic. I’ve watched a documentary on him. Can’t even talk now. Documentary is just really, his whole career is so fascinating. It’s really-
Cole Parks: The Netflix documentary? I hadn’t seen that one yet. I’ve heard about it.
Neil Dudley: Anyways, one thing I did want to talk about is Central Texas Farm Credit. So, as I go along doing this podcast and we’re talking about different things and we kind of cut to commercial here and there about maybe Little Buster Toys or Peterson’s or just some product or company I’m involved in and I want the listeners to get to know about, Central Texas Farm Credit seems to come up quite a bit within my peer group as a really great financial institution to, I don’t know, talk to or to try to work with, to do things when you don’t have the money in your pocket. Have you dealt with them any?
Cole Parks: I have. Like we talked about the other day, yes. We’ve got a couple of business loans, all real estate, but we have a couple of business loans, and we also have my home mortgage is through Central Texas Farm Credit, which I didn’t even realize that they did construction loans or mortgages.
Neil Dudley: Yeah, that surprised me a little bit. So, folks, just from a couple of guys riding around in a car, Central Texas Farm Credit’s a really great resource and I highly recommend them. The people over there, Travis McKinney and his whole team just are great people. So, if you’re around, if you’re looking to borrow some money, I would advise you and just tell you with a clear conscience, go check them out. They’ll treat you right. They’ll be a great place to borrow some money at a good rate.
Cole Parks: They’ll be a good partner with you. Because again, it is through the farm credit system. It is a co-op. You do have to buy shares to become a member of Central Texas Farm Credit. And that’s an interesting whole duck in itself. You ought to get Travis or somebody on, maybe Matthew on here, to talk about how that process works, because I can’t explain it to you that well.
Neil Dudley: Yeah, I need to get more educated on those things too. I just think whoever’s listening, I believe that the people out there, the TCP Nation, they’re all have this same kind of mindset of, man, I want to try something. Man, I want to, man or girl or guy or cowgirl, cowboy, I want to try and do a little better for my family. I want to take a risk. And with a good partner, a good financial institution partner that makes a lot of that possible.
Cole Parks: They do. You’ve got a pretty entrepreneurial listening base.
Neil Dudley: Yeah, almost inevitably, just because that’s where I, basically, my listener base is coming from the guests I’ve had up until this point, because this is episode maybe 24, 25, something like that. And hey, folks, if you want to do a podcast, I highly encourage you to. Oh, the reason this whole podcast come alive, yeah, it’s alive, it’s a living thing, but I’m just trying to get better. I’m listening to this guy named Gary Vaynerchuk, and he’s talking about podcasts, he’s talking about social media, and one day I’m driving in the car just listening to his Gary V podcast, I can’t remember what he calls it now, and he said something like do it, just start. So, I drove straight to the computer and started buying equipment and bought all the wrong stuff. I mean, it sounded terrible. You can go back to that first episode with Ty Murray on the Cowboy Perspective and the audio is not great. My interviewing skills are not great. I still don’t think my interviewing skills are where I need to get them. But over 25 episodes, I’m getting a little better. I’m learning how to get on better guests. Ty just did it because I said will you please do this for me?
Cole Parks: I mean, your guest quality has gone way downhill this time.
Neil Dudley: Well, the other thing that I think is kind of interesting in humanity, you’re not famous. Like we just mentioned Garth Brooks.
Cole Parks: You are going from a seven-time world champion rodeo cowboy to a-
Neil Dudley: Dancing With the Stars got him more famous than anything he ever did. And that’s my opinion. But it’s quite possibly true.
Cole Parks: Ty lives, what, three miles north of my house. And I probably could recognize him. I don’t know if I’ve ever met the guy, but I know him as a rodeo cowboy. I didn’t watch Dancing With the Stars.
Neil Dudley: I’ll tell you, he’s a great guy. I love talking to him, we’re friends. He’s got a good perspective on stuff. And he’s been there. Part of kind of having fame or being a really high performer, I think gets you access to other high-performing people, other people that have just experienced a lot of life, a lot of different things. And that’s so valuable. So hopefully this podcast can maybe do that. I think we’re just people. Garth is a person. I’m a person. You’re a person. Ty’s a person. Humanity decides to put certain people on a pedestal for one thing or another, maybe they’ve got they can sing or they’re really talented at riding bucking bulls. I don’t know-
Cole Parks: I hope it’s not those two things, because I’ll never make the list.
Neil Dudley: I doubt I’m ever going to be a famous person, nor is it something to strive for. I think it’s a result of just doing what you love and doing what you love really well. And the world and humans decide that that thing is something special. I mean, I don’t know why singing is special. I mean, I enjoy music, but I don’t know why a person being able to sing should be worth so much to us, but it is. Probably because it’s hard. Not everybody can do it. So maybe getting great at financial advice, that person should probably be a little special. They should be able to do this thing that just everybody can’t do.
Cole Parks: Well, everybody’s got to have their niche. Neil, have you ever heard the thought, this is something I picked up in a book. I read a lot. So, I really probably don’t have a lot of original thoughts, but I can put a lot of really original thoughts together for people to think about. But there’s a book that I read a long time ago and it’s one of those things that just kind of sticks with you. And again, I can’t give credit where credit’s due, but the mindset that everyone is better than me, okay, and it’s a really unique way to think about this, but I know that every person I meet is better than I am at something. And I might not know what that something is, but I can meet anybody on the street and know that they are better than me at something. So, we’re all-
Neil Dudley: Why don’t we find that something and really appreciate it. Like I was saying this to somebody the other day, in just the world, humans, we put singers up there. If they’re really great at singing there, I think Garth would even say I’m not the greatest singer, but I relate to people, I love my fans, I pour my heart out to them, and I just love what I do.
Cole Parks: We got central Texas traffic right here. We’re going down the one lane stopped road.
Neil Dudley: One lane on the two lane, back roading. But what I was going to say is- I just don’t want to lose the thought; I want to say it. Wouldn’t it be cool if we all of a sudden made multimillionaires, hugely famous people out of just genuinely nice and giving and loving people? What if that was the thing that made you famous in the world?
Cole Parks: That would be cool. It’d be terrible for the valuation of the dollar from an inflationary perspective, Neil, because there’s so many good people out there.
Neil Dudley: Well, and that’s true. Maybe it is.
Cole Parks: This guy’s looking at us, wondering what we’re doing with these microphones.
Neil Dudley: I shouldn’t take a picture, but–
Cole Parks: Do you want to get him on the podcast?
Neil Dudley: We could see if he was to come tell us what he thinks. How’s the road today doing today out here on the podcast?
Cole Parks: How are you doing? We’re recording a podcast. Would you like to be on it? I’m going to let the host tell you about it.
Neil Dudley: Yes, it’s the Cowboy Perspective. You can be a guest on the Cowboy Perspective right now today. Just tell us a little bit your name, where you’re from, and what it is you’re doing.
Corey: What I’m doing? Controlling traffic.
Neil Dudley: Well, I know, but you got to say it in the microphone. We can’t hear you.
Corey: Oh, I’m controlling traffic.
Neil Dudley: How much traffic are you seeing out here?
Corey: Eehhh, roughly, probably about 50 cars today. I don’t know, this is my first day out here. So, I mean, I usually work Glen Rose area.
Neil Dudley: Cool. What’s your name?
Corey: Corey Callaway.
Neil Dudley: Corey Calloway, thanks for being on the Cowboy Perspective and be careful out here. Watch out for the crazies coming along, recording podcasts and not watching the road.
Corey: Ain’t nothing wrong with that.
Neil Dudley: Yeah. What are they doing? Are they redoing the road up here or what?
Corey: Wasting time. If you really want to know, they’re wasting time.
Cole Parks: So, they’re not using tax dollars?
Neil Dudley: Cole just said, they’re not using tax dollars? The guy Corey says, well, we’re just wasting time. And Cole says, oh, so this isn’t tax money. And then Corey shakes has said yes. Okay. Folks, here’s a little lesson in tax paying and spending tax money: Sometimes it’s wasted. Special guest Corey Callaway has now left the car. I look at Corey though, and I think about this, and there’s people doing that job all over this country right now, this very minute, and I just wouldn’t want to trade places with them. I don’t know if that’s mean, bad or other. He’s standing right here on this little spot of road watching for cars coming. He said he saw 50 of them come by today.
Cole Parks: This road is we are in between Carlton and Dublin, Texas. I think it’s probably 20 minutes, 20 miles stretch, two lanes, no shoulder, and it’s dropped down to the one lane and we found Corey Calloway halfway down it.
Neil Dudley: Just my personality, I just don’t think I could stand the monotony of it. So, Corey, I do tip my hat to you for that, sir, because you and all the people out there working the road crews all around this country, we need you. And we don’t nearly appreciate the thing you do enough. Because I wouldn’t want to trade your spot.
Cole Parks: I hope we made his day. I hope this is the one car that pulled up this afternoon with two guys holding mics. Probably the first, I’m sure we’re the first ones with microphones to pull up next to him, but he might never have somebody interview him again. Yeah, he’ll never forget December 10th, 2020.
Neil Dudley: Okay so, we were talking about Garth Brooks and just bringing people in.
Cole Parks: And I’m sorry, I get you way off subject.
Neil Dudley: No, it’s not really way off subject. And like some of my thoughts on the topic are still in their infancy I would say. I don’t know. Garth definitely, I try to, I’m kind of trying to figure out why is it that I want just genuine good loving people to be famous instead of maybe- I can’t, there’s nobody-
Cole Parks: The Kardashians.
Neil Dudley: Well, yeah, you kind of want to point at the Kardashians, but if you’ve ever, you should watch the show David Letterman’s doing now, My Next Guest Needs No Introduction on Netflix. He’s got Kim Kardashian on there, Kanye West, President Barack Obama, George Clooney. Anyways, he had a lot of really, I’ve really enjoyed all of his guests. Yeah, they need no introduction. And to my amazement and surprise, Kim Kardashians seems like a really genuine, nice loving person. So maybe-
Cole Parks: Maybe that was a bad example.
Neil Dudley: That was maybe a bad example. Maybe I’m thinking, I don’t even know if I have an example off the top of my head, but I just think wouldn’t it be cool if that was kind of the thing that we made people really popular for instead of extravagance?
Cole Parks: On the flip side of that though, Neil, those people that are very nice are very popular in their world. And I’m thinking about some of those ladies that go to church with us, the sweetest people in the world and being that woman that they are and being the strong matriarch of their family and their community, it didn’t make them a million dollars, but they are, I’m pretty confident, they are rich. Ultimately wealthy. They are happy people, happiness that was not bought with money, that cannot be taken away from them and will stay with them for eternity in this life and the next.
Neil Dudley: That was all good. I hope you folks heard something there that you find worth thinking about. What I do know is I don’t know everything. I just have a place in the world that I’m living and taking up, I might want to bother considering am I utilizing this time in a good way?
Cole Parks: Neil, this got deep.
Neil Dudley: Yeah, it did. We did kind of fizzle down into a lot of deep conversation
Cole Parks: Fortunately, the pace car’s coming here.
Neil Dudley: Start moving again. See if we can see something. Okay so, in a complete change of topic, tell us about sporting clay shooting. And how’d you get into that? Why do you do that? Is that your release? Is that how you kind of relieve stress of just running a business and doing all the things you do?
Cole Parks: It absolutely is. Sporting clays is something I got into, I would say it’s my father and I were really into bird hunting. That was kind of our deal. We didn’t get into big game hunting or anything like that. Oh, Corey’s done for the day.
Neil Dudley: Wow, they’re packing up. See, this was a God thing. We pulled up here just at the perfect time to catch Corey before he’s done for the day. Now, it’s back to two lane roads.
Cole Parks: Very cool. But no, so sporting clays, it didn’t start off as supporting plays. It started out as bird hunting with my father, and that was something that we did – dove hunting, pheasant hunting, all kinds of stuff. It was just wing shooting, birds, shotguns. That was our deal. I got that load of 410 shells I’m going to go reload, reloading shotgun shells, that was just kind of our thing. That’s what we did. And it just became ingrained in me. It became a passion for me. And that passion kind of turned into sporting clays because there’s only so many hours in the day, and sometimes you can go bird hunting and sometimes you can’t. But like I said, when I was working for Ameriprise from 2011 until 2015, I covered territory all over the US. And so, I was driving a lot, had a lot of stuff going on. And it was a financial services job so in the trunk of my car, I had my golf clubs and I had my shot gun. Well, if I had a free evening one night, I’d find a gun club somewhere. And of course, there’s an app for that, Find a Gun Club. And I pull in there and I didn’t have to have my hunting boots. I didn’t have to have all my hunting gear to go with it. I could have my shotgun, I could pick up a box of shells while I was there. And one box turns into two and then it gets dark, and you go to the hotel room. So then I guess my competitive spirit kind of kicked in and I said, hey, I like shooting clays and I’m not too bad at it. And so, I started shooting competitively and I’m still not great at it, but it is that release, Neil, to answer your question of, if I’m not with my family or within one of our businesses doing something then, yeah, I do, I want to go shoot clays because it’s what I do is a very specific planned and oriented business. I’m planning our business, I’m planning other people’s lives, and it’s a very detail-oriented business. That’s why I don’t like shooting rifles. Shotguns are scatter guns. It’s a relaxing, I’m going to see the bird, I’m going to throw my gun, and I hope I hit it, and there’s a little more detail to it than that, but it’s a very relaxing sport. And I took you that one time when we were at that school board conference down there in Austin. What’d you think of that?
Neil Dudley: I enjoyed it. You bet. I love, see, I get a little competitive about it. It’s why golf is a little hard for me, although I’ve started really enjoying it when I started taking a little bit of a different perspective to it where my goal was not to be good at golf, my goal was to be happy. Don’t get mad about the bad shots. So anyway, that was really cool. And it’s something I certainly enjoy doing with you. I know you enjoy it and do it a lot. Anybody out there that’s maybe hunted with her dad as a kid and misses that, think about doing some sporting clays. There’s a lot of ways to get into it.
Cole Parks: Oh my gosh. It’s absolutely a lot of fun. And like I said, it’s a big blessing in my life. The people I’ve met shooting sporting clays, the relationships, obviously, everywhere you go. And I took my son. They’ve been going with me, my son and daughter. Kaylee even shoots. Now, Kayla got pretty salty. She busted 50% right before she turned 30 on September 14th. And on September 13th, she shot her first 50 plus round out of 100. I was really proud of her.
Neil Dudley: You bet. And it goes to mention that Kaylee is your wife and she works in the business with you. And that’s a really awesome thing. How does that work for you guys? I just am curious, always. So, at Peterson’s Cody and Chrissy, husband and wife, they actually work out of the exact same office. Their desks are almost touching. That to me is impressive.
Cole Parks: They’re stronger than Kaylee and I. Babe, I love you, but you and I both know we couldn’t do that.
Neil Dudley: So, they’re a unique scenario. Stacey and I work together, but we’re never really just right locked at the hip in that way. She kind of has her office and I go to the plant, but we end up working together a lot, just not quite so closely. And to me, that’s a really unique thing that I like always highlighting, just like, man, that’s a pretty, kind of cool and unique deal they do.
Cole Parks: It is. I love the fact that she’s in the company, and I’ll say that I got to give Kaylee a lot of credit because we’re both pretty entrepreneurial. I know that I’m probably, she’ll tell you, I’m more entrepreneurial than she is. Sometimes she just wants to say, Cole, we’re not investing anymore. It’s time to put a little money in the bank. And like, well, an asset is just- an asset that generates income to me is better than cash. She likes a little more cash. So, we’ve got that dichotomy there that works pretty well. But Kaylee came into the business, she started out with the advisory group, but the next business that we started was actually our accounting company, so Southwestern Management Services. And Southwestern Management Services is really the third-party CFO type company. So, we work for a lot of different businesses and a lot of different small businesses, entrepreneurial startups, really doing accounting and bookkeeping services. And then third-party party leadership, coming in as that consultant, like I was at Ameriprise, and helping them get off high center, taking a company that’s stale and then helping them figure out what they’ve got to do to get to that next step. And sometimes that might be one of those entrepreneurial endeavors, or a lot of entrepreneurs are great with ideas, they’re great at execution, but they really don’t have the knowledge in place to put a business plan together and go get financing. And so that’s where they can find us. And we’ll look at it from an investment perspective. Is this something we could market to investors for you? Maybe, maybe not. If it’s not, well, maybe you just need a loan. Well, that’s where we can come in and say, hey, we’ll help you put a loan package together, we’ll help you get some in front of some lenders and actually make this something that is borrowable against and not just a concept.
Neil Dudley: Yeah. Well, that’s kind of cool. I didn’t even, I think I kind of knew y’all did that, but not probably in that much detail. So that’s cool.
Cole Parks: It’s actually, Kaylee has taken management services and we kind of, we take, because Southwestern such a long word, we take Southwestern off everything. We’ve got the advisory group, we’ve got management services, we have asset management, we have our farm capital fund, capital partners, all the different things that we’re into, and within management services, I mean, she’s actually taken that and grown it into almost 30% of our organizational revenue. She’s got two ladies that work for her full time.
Neil Dudley: Hey, hive five, Kaylee. I mean, seriously.
Cole Parks: And she did this while raising two kids, she did the stay-at-home mom deal until they got into school. And then, they went to, when our daughter, Heidi got into kindergarten, she came into the office, and like I said, I was really nervous about it. My parents worked together growing up and I always said I don’t want to do that. And I don’t know if that was me just trying to be a big man and, like I said, provide for my family kind of deal. Or if that was I really just want to have that differentiator between the two. Because you talk business at home. Everybody tells me you don’t, there’s no way, you’re going to talk business at home. When we’re on vacation by ourselves, this weekend when we go to the NFR, Kaylee and I are going to be in the car and we’re going to talk about investments on the way there, that’s what we are going to do.
Neil Dudley: That’s just the topic of life.
Cole Parks: I’m going to tell her the next thing I want to start up and invest in. And she’s going to say that’s a terrible idea. We’re going to the NFR, I’m not talking about this. She’s a phenomenal woman. Like I said, I would not be where I am without her today because the statement everybody makes behind every good man, there’s a better woman. Kaylee’s the one that gets all the I’s dotted and T’s crossed. I’ll get them to the red zone, and then the next shiny thing will come up and I’ll say, oh, I can make money doing that and I’m off, but I need her and the team there at the office to pick up those last couple pieces and push it over the finish line. And I’m thankful that she’s there to do that.
Neil Dudley: Well, it’s just a blessing really that you both enjoy the thing together, and I think it’s a blessing in a lot of ways just that your kids see you’re doing that, that you actually get to enjoy that piece of your life together. So, I thank God for Stacey and I being able to have a similar relationship. We work together in Peterson’s, building that business, any other thing we’re doing, we both enjoy it, outside of some things I like, some things she doesn’t, some things she likes, some things I don’t.
Cole Parks: The Kolbe test, both of y’all combined, y’all make a great team. Y’all literally match really well. And that’s actually, I haven’t done this for you guys, but there’s a Kolbe Compatibility test where you can actually take two different Kolbe analyses and kind of match them up together.
Neil Dudley: Quick pause just to say I hope you know who Peterson Natural Farms is. If you don’t, go check them out, www.petersonsfarms.com. If you have any questions, hit me up. I’ve been working with Peterson’s and my best friend since kindergarten and his wife and my wife and a whole bunch of other really great people for about 20 years now, building a brand and a bunch of products that we think really add value to people’s healthy lifestyles. And I like to say the Cowboy Perspective podcast is a labor of love that I kind of do in my spare time. And I hope to just bring value, tell stories about people that affect me and give me the perspective I have. And I don’t want to steal that labor of love line from Mr. Douglas Burdett, the host of the Marketing Book Podcast without giving him some credit. There’s another something I’d tell you – if you are into building a brand or an entrepreneur of any sort or salesperson of any sort, go listen to the Marketing Book Podcast. He reviews great authors’ books about sales and marketing. So, Peterson Natural Farms, go check them out. Thank you for listening to the Cowboy Perspective. Here’s some more.
Hey, TCP nation, I got to tell you about Newton’s at the Cellar. I’m sitting here eating some appetizers right in front of the man himself, Mike Newton. Hey Mike, why don’t you tell everybody a little bit about these appetizers we have in front of us, and then I’ll tell them where to go to get them themselves.
Mike: Well, we got little crawfish bites. These are going to be lightly breaded crawfish tails we deep fry. We also serve them with a little bit of a Cajun aioli sherry sauce, basically a sherry mayonnaise, a little kick to it. Then we also have our deviled eggs. They’re going to be sweet bacon crusted from Peterson Farms. Deviled egg, it is pretty, pretty good.
Yeah. I got to be honest, I’ve already ate one and I can guarantee, verified, tell you for sure, they are very good. Everything they do here is really good. Mike, where’s the address or how does somebody get-? Matter of fact, there’s a young lady walking out the front door right now to this big fire pit he parked right out in the front parking lot. She’s putting on some ribs. People, please come see Newtons at the Cellar here in Stephenville, just west of the square. What else should I tell them, Mike?
Mike: It’s at 230 West College Street. You can find it and I have a big white old Ford truck with a smoker on the front of it. Four days a week. You’ll see us Wednesday through Saturday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday lunch; Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday nights. Come in. If you want to make a reservation, go to our website at Newton’s Cellar, you can make a reservation from there. We do recommend the reservation. We will take walk-ins with no problem, but you’ll see our little open table on our website at newtonsceller.com.
And tell them the Cowboy Perspective sent you, just so I can feel good about it. Thanks for listening and really Newtons at the Cellar. It is one of a kind. Come see it.
Cole Parks: Hey real quick, we’re going through Purves, Texas here. Didn’t you have Frank Volleman on a couple weeks ago? So, his brother’s place Wildcat is, we are about the pass it. Not Wildcat, I’m sorry. Wildcat is Frank’s. Sundance.
Neil Dudley: There you go. And that’s Marcel’s place that Daniel, Frank’s youngest son, is now kind of overseeing the heifer operation over here at Sundance. But anyways, as you drive around this small little place we call home, central Texas, and it turns out the guests I have are all pretty much from around here, save a few. There’s a lot of similar- You’re dealing and talking to a lot of the same guys that might be brothers to the last. It turns out this guy’s the brother to the last guy on the podcast. And here we are driving down the road, recording another podcast. As we just drive, I’m sitting here thinking, just what is value? What adds value to somebody listening to this? Like what is a takeaway? Look, if you’re listening to me and Cole ramble on about different things all the way from, anywhere from shooting sporting clays to the depth of why just genuine good people aren’t famous, that’s not the basis for fame in our world, I hope you just take away the idea or the concept that life is a blessing. We’re both very blessed. We want you to find anything that is just part of our blessing that might help you. That’s the point of it. So, get out there. If you’re not doing something you love, don’t go quit tomorrow, but start thinking about what is a thing I love, how can I be an expert?
Cole Parks: Happiness is your choice. Some people say it’s not, but it absolutely is. And you can always find something that’ll make you happy, and it might not make it profitable, but there is that decision – do I want to be profitable or do I want to be happy? You got to find the balance between the two and it’s up to you how you want to do it.
Neil Dudley: Here you go. Here’s a deep one for you. So, in this world today of Black Lives Matter and discrimination on women, all of these things, and if we tell the fair, honest truth, we’re a couple of white males that have grown up as white males, not in poverty, definitely middle class. And we had access to a lot of things. What kind of standard do you think we’re held to? Can we empathize? Can we truly, is it even possible for us to empathize with somebody that hears us say happiness is a choice, just choose it, why can’t you just be happy? So, do you think we’re missing-? Is there a chance that it might not be as easy as we’re putting it?
Cole Parks: There’s always that chance. I can’t put myself in everybody’s shoes, but I do believe, in my heart, I do believe I’m an empathetic person. And I think that’s just part of being a good Christian. You have to attempt to put yourself in everybody’s shoes, whether you can or you can’t, try and understand their mindset, understand their background, where they’re coming from. That doesn’t mean I’m going to agree with them. And that doesn’t mean that-
Neil Dudley: Don’t you think that would help our whole country right now if we can all get a little bit more inclined to say, look, we don’t have to agree. We’re both just here on this earth at the same time and I don’t want to impose pain on you, nor do I want you to block me from- Okay so, they don’t want to be blocked. I’ll tell you, I’m not Black. I’m not, I’m a white middle-aged male, which is just the least discriminated against person out there.
Cole Parks: Hey, you might need to take this out of the podcast, but are we the least discriminated against people out there? I really don’t know if we want to cover this on your podcast.
Neil Dudley: I do. I think any topic’s really fair game.
Cole Parks: And I’m not saying that to pick on anybody, but in the world that we live in of BLM and equal opportunity and a lot of things that need to be done to be sure everyone is treated as equals, are we still on the pedestal that white middle-aged men were?
Neil Dudley: Well, I think it might feel like we’re not. It might could be argued that we’re not. But if I’m just truly blatantly, fairly honest, there’s just not much barrier for me in life to do about anything I want to do.
Cole Parks: I completely agree with you there.
Neil Dudley: So, I just can’t say I’ve ever experienced- Okay, I might could say it as being a cowboy. Like that could be the closest thing to discrimination I’ve ever experienced is the fact that when I walk into a room with a cowboy hat and boots on, I immediately get labeled a certain way. And I’ve been in situations where that label is not favorable. Oh, there’s the country hick that thinks he knows what he’s talking about. Did you hear him? Oh man, this guy’s crazy. And that comes from just being to big conferences early on in my career, which in all honesty, I probably didn’t know a lot about what I was talking about.
Cole Parks: We all started somewhere.
Neil Dudley: There was certain, just me walking in the room gets me labeled a certain way, just because of how I dress. I think, I mean, look, you can’t get mad about that. But if you’ve got a bunch of earrings and tattoos all over you, you’re going to be labeled a certain way in people’s psyche. You can’t really be mad about that. It’s just their perspective from the life they’ve lived, from the just what they know, people can’t know everything.
Cole Parks: But like you’re saying with the earrings and you use your hat, we’re going to use your hat and we’re going to use gauged ears as just two different examples. That’s a statement. That is a flag about who you are and your background. You can’t say that somebody is discriminating against you when you got the gauged earrings in, because that’s what you wanted them- You wanted them to think something different, something special, or notice something about you when you did that. So, your cowboy hat tells a story. It tells who you are, it tells a background, it tells history, probably stands for your moral fiber, your ethics, the integrity that carries with the set of ears underneath that hat. And that says something too. Everything we do says something. So, you can’t get upset if people have the wrong perception. I mean, if I had a mullet, what would you think?
Neil Dudley: It’s like, I don’t want to blame or judge people for just growing up the way they grew up. I mean, I had a great, I was raised in a great Christian family. Were we living in a world that was discriminatory and bias? Yes. So just in, just way deep down in places I don’t even know how to access, subconscious, I have biases, unconscious biases, which is what they talk about a lot. I’m willing to admit that. I feel accountable for recognizing that and doing what I can to limit its effect. I don’t feel accountable for just being able to erase it from myself. Like just erase it from- I don’t think that’s possible.
Cole Parks: No, that’s not possible for anybody to do. And it’s one of those things I don’t, I truly really do believe, I see color. I’m not going to say I don’t. But I’ve played football with all different colors of people and I’m friends with all those guys and I care for them all deeply. We fought together – and I’m not military or anything like that, please don’t- I don’t want to disrespect any military guys by making it sound like that way, because we appreciate you guys. But I played ball with these guys. We bled together. We worked out together. We sweated together. And it didn’t matter what color they were. It was that for me, I guess I look at it and just I see it and I’m aware of it, but it doesn’t affect me, and it doesn’t affect my feelings towards them.
Neil Dudley: A real trick is can you get into their-? How can you see it from their eyes? Because they’re just, I just know you can see it in too many places where some Black person, Mexican person, Asian person, female – I think females don’t get enough credit for being discriminated against. I mean, I even do it. I don’t know. I probably said this on the last podcast, I kind of have a hard time forgiving myself for this one little menial thing, but it’s exactly how you discriminate against people. We have these cornhole boards at the house and we’re playing cornhole and we have these tournaments, and whoever wins that tournament gets to put their name down. Well, one time there was a girl on the team, and I walked over there and said, oh, wait, this is the co-ed section. It’s like I had to kind of- well, but I kind of, it took me like, I don’t know, just one day I realized, that is it. That is a little way that I make her feel like a second class. Actually, the truth is you have to be in co-ed because co-ed is really not as cool as all men. That’s just how it happens. And I think everybody should just allow that. Like look, I am flawed. I am going to do stuff. I’ve got three daughters; I don’t want them to have to go through that, but I just did it myself. So, people, everybody, if you’re listening, just think you’re not always right. I’ve definitely treated people ways that I wish I hadn’t have. Some of it’s just stuff that’s come from me growing up. What I would hope you understand is if I do that to you, you’re certainly allowed, appreciated, you should feel comfortable saying, hey, look man, you’re stomping on my feet pretty bad here. And I think you just don’t know it. Can’t everybody that’s on my side, let’s say on the person that’s hurting the other person’s side, allow that, just take it say, oh yeah, you know what? I don’t want to do that.
Cole Parks: I don’t like, this is just me talking here, not trying to change the subject, but what’s frustrating is the fact that people can’t have open and honest discussions and still recognize that we can be friends afterwards. We might completely disagree on ten different things. And in today’s world, it feels like if you don’t agree on everything, then you can’t be friends. And there are people- My wife tells me all the time I’m too outspoken. I say exactly what’s on my mind. I don’t want there to be any gray area. And you might not like it, and you might like it. But at the end of the day, I still want to be your friend. I still like you as a person. Just because we disagree doesn’t mean we can’t ever get along again. And some people just get too personal, and they take things, they wear their feelings on their shoulder and that’s what, that cognizant debate is what takes people to the next level. It’s what got us through the Enlightenment. It’s what takes us to have these active conversations, get the mind working and make you think a different direction. And nowadays, if you’re worried about social justice and accidentally offending someone just by having a conversation, we as a culture could stagnate.
Neil Dudley: Well, that’s a very deep concept and conversation we got into there a little bit.
Cole Parks: And I will have to run that past the attorney.
Neil Dudley: I’m sure, you bet. We might have to cut it all out. Maybe we can- That’s what’s so sad about it. It’s like now it’s so sensitive that we can’t even talk about it, just a couple of guys trying to make ourselves better by addressing something, just having a conversation, addressing a piece of reality in today’s world that we don’t fully understand. And now we’re scared to publish it on the podcast because it might get us in a lawsuit because we said Black people. I don’t even know. It’s like, dang, did I, every time I say that, I just feel like I’m almost offending somebody. And really people are just people. Yeah, some people’s skin color is different.
Cole Parks: But they know something that I don’t is what’s really cool. Like I said, they’re better than me at something. And they’re probably better than me at a lot of things.
Neil Dudley: There is a, I mean, this is just, just such a deep- Well, there goes the Volleman milk truck. We just passed it. Hats off there, Frank and Volleman family. But anyways, we can move on beyond that. I think it’s a conversation I like to be a part of. I like to try to open myself up to the truth that I really don’t know what it’s like to be discriminated against in a really harsh, hurt feeling kind of way, like just because I’m Black, I’m a lower-class citizen. So, that is all something I totally don’t understand and totally-
Cole Parks: I’ve got one for you before we switch gears and before we, while we’re still on the part that we might have to cut out, what are your thoughts, and the co-ed corn hole board is what made me think about it, girls are playing college football with the boys.
Neil Dudley: Okay. I didn’t know that.
Cole Parks: They are. I saw it the other day on Saturday football, whatever I was watching. And I think it’s great that they have the opportunity to do so if they can play at the same level as everybody else. But I have a daughter, I would not want her playing college football because I know how that works. I’ve been there. I’ve played that. Would you want your daughters playing football with 11 or I guess 10 others, 10 other 300 pound guys?
Neil Dudley: No, but I think that’s a similar thing. Would I want her being a UFC fighter? A female- there’s a, I have a certain picture in my head of what a lady is, and to me it’s a very respectful thing. There’s a lot of things I wouldn’t want my daughters to do, or I don’t wish it on them because I don’t understand it enough, just that thing. But I also want to be the kind of parent that realizes that’s their life. I only have a small piece of it. I’ve got to build them early on, but pretty quickly, they’re living their own path, they’re having their own thing. And they’ll live with those successes, those failures, those consequences. Whatever their choices are, I want them to be able to have control of those choices. I don’t want them to feel like Dad’s going to frown on that so I can’t do that.
Cole Parks: He’s going to love me no matter what.
Neil Dudley: Totally, which this is part of my dad’s cup of love theory. My unconditional love for my kids is filling over. It’s just can’t take another drop in that cup. That cup is always full no matter what. God forbid, one of my kids ends up being a drug addict or something, that has to be just to be so sad and I’d be so disappointed, but I wouldn’t stop loving them. There would be no way to take any water out of the unconditional love cup. Now my conditional love for them is certainly up and down, and it has to do with circumstances and decisions and all those things. And I try to tell my kids, I want to make sure, there’s this piece of me that totally loves you, can never be taken away. And then, go be a UFC fighter, go play football, go do whatever it is that is your path.
Cole Parks: And that goes back to the grand architect, God’s plan. We don’t know what that is, but the littlest things in the world, that’s what I’m always so impressed with is how small something that you said to your daughter, and let’s just for whatever it might be, whatever you said to her today at dinner on December 10th could make a huge difference in her life. And if you think about this podcast as an example, and you go back and you think about all the little things that happened to get you interested in listening to a podcast. And then find, you said Gary was the guy’s name, Gary Vaynerchuk, and then finding his podcast. And again, God having you listen to that podcast on that day, and then even having an open mind to that five minutes. Cause I know when I listen to podcasts, I get distracted. I’ll hear a concept and start thinking. But at that moment, you heard exactly what he said, and it triggered a reaction in you to go start this up, and now look at how much farther it’s taken your life and the mentors that you’ve had great conversations with that have been documented.
Neil Dudley: It is just this beautiful thing. It’s gave me a chance to go find these cowboys and have conversations with my parents and put them down for my kids to hear later, or their kids to hear. It gave me a chance to just tell cowboys that did a lot for me thank you. I want to bring you on my podcast and tell your story because I appreciate you so much. You bothered with me, you spent time teaching me. That’s so selfless in their part and so valuable to me.
Cole Parks: And the way it’ll grow, using your dad Mr. Dudley’s cup of love theory, there’s somebody that’s going to hear that on this podcast that you’ll never meet. And they’re going to take that and they’re probably going to, they might teach somebody else, even if it just is something that they carry in the back of their mind that this ministry, this podcast, everything that you’re doing right now, will make their life better and it will exponentially compound across so many other lives that you will never be able to touch, but you were here because you needed to be here doing this.
Neil Dudley: That’s totally right. There’s people that affected my life, they’ve got no clue about it. I’ve got no way to tell them they did. They’ve got no clue. But I’m so appreciative of it. Wow. Well, hey, I don’t know how long we’ve been talking or driving around, but I’ve really enjoyed it. I think we’ve talked about a lot of interesting, cool things. Johnny and anybody listening knows Johnny Peterson, he’s the guy that helps me produce this. I’ve added some people to the team. I’ll just go ahead and mention them – Creed, Alexander and-
Cole Parks: Creed, that guy helped me out the other day.
Neil Dudley: I thought you might know who Creed is. Anyways, Creed and Brandon Mangan, they are a couple other guys that are on the team now helping me with this podcast and getting the word out. I’m also like, this is the entrepreneur in me. If I’m doing this, I want to try to make it the best and the biggest it can be. There has to be some value to it or it wouldn’t be happening. So why not go ahead? Let’s take it to the moon if it can get there. So those guys are helping me market the podcast, get it out. Johnny, we just brought Johnny up because he’s going to have to probably work on this episode quite a bit, just to make sure it makes sense. Johnny helps me in that way. He’ll like, this whole conversation might be in a different arrangement by the time it gets to the air or actually publishing. So, because people listening, they need, it should be easy on their ears, which Johnny’s drove this into my head. It needs to be easy to listen to, and it should flow. And sometimes the conversation doesn’t necessarily flow. And that’s where I need to get a little better at my interviewing skills and kind of just directing the conversation, so it flows a little better. But that’s the one great thing about a podcast is Johnny can take it and really just splice it, cut it, change it, make it something good. Not good but just better. It’s already good. Okay so, Johnny, you got to do all those things right, buddy? Okay, thank you. No, he’s good.
Cole Parks: Neil, I got a question for you before we wrap up, because you gave me some thoughts. You actually sent me some questions to kind of think about before. And I appreciate that. And I didn’t send you this question before, but I’m just going to throw it to you. You’ve done 25 podcasts now?
Neil Dudley: 24, 25, 23. We’re in the ballpark.
Cole Parks: We’re in the mid-twenties. What’s the one question that nobody’s asked you on a podcast that you’ve wanted to answer or give your opinion on, but you haven’t had a segue to do it yet? Because I want to ask you that question.
Neil Dudley: Oh, see, I wish I had an answer for that, but I don’t. I mean, I don’t even know what it would be, it’s going to be something totally off the cuff. That’s what I enjoy the most about- Like I just want to start in a conversation and let it just evolve. I mean, it’s just a couple of guys talking about things that come across their brains in this one hour of time we’ve spent together. Is there an off the cuff question you can ask me that would just be so perfect and would make me feel like I’ve just gave so much value to somebody? I don’t think there’s such a golden egg. I think it’s because you don’t even know what people need. We’re just talking and maybe a piece of it is something they need. What I think is that I’m great at-
Cole Parks: I hope they don’t charge us for the hour of their time we wasted.
Neil Dudley: Yeah right. Whatever it is I think is such a great nugget of good advice is probably not nearly as good as that thing that we just happened to talk about that’s really valuable to those two people that are struggling and dealing with discrimination or something. And they’re like, oh, you know what? That makes sense to me. Or financial, just what you do day in and day out, I think there’s going to be somebody that heard something you said, and next thing you know, they’re the next Donald Trump or their grandkid is because they said, ooh, I’m going to just start investing on my own. And then they figure something out. And then they pass that little bit of knowledge on to their kid who then takes it to another level. It’s just impossible to say.
Cole Parks: –A piece of that interest, start reading those books, doing those things.
Neil Dudley: I wish I could tell you what question I wish somebody would ask me, but I never even think about it. I just talk.
Cole Parks: Oh, can I ask you a question?
Neil Dudley: Sure, bring up your own question and give it to me.
Cole Parks: I just want to open this in case there was something you were missing, I want every need satisfied as we’re going through here, but the question I would ask is, obviously you’re an entrepreneurial guy like me, I can’t define why I am so entrepreneurial. I think about it. I know I am. It’s in every fiber of my being to generate wealth, create financial independence. The goal I have of helping a hundred people become decamillionaires.
Neil Dudley: How many of you got so far?
Cole Parks: I’ve got 11 so far. So, it’s going to take time, but over my career, I want to help create 100 decamillionaires. Everybody’s got their goal; that one’s mine. If I can do that, then I’ll call-
Neil Dudley: Did you adjust that over time? Did it happen to start out as millionaires, and then you realized, ooh, millionaire is not what it used to be, so let’s change that to decamillionaire?
Cole Parks: It actually started out as a millionaire and that lasted about five minutes. And I’m serious. It lasted about five minutes because once you map out inflation and where investments will naturally be without my help, and going back to just the basic concepts–
Neil Dudley: You are not doing much just getting somebody to a millionaire.
Cole Parks: Yeah, I’m not really helping people out too much. So, it was 100 decamillionaires. That’s been the goal since 2016.
Neil Dudley: I’m impressed by that, you have that goal. Like people will ask me, this question gets asked of me a lot and I don’t know an answer to it is like what’s your, why do you do the podcast? What’s your goal? And I’m just like da-ba-da-ba-de-beep-bop, I don’t know. I just do it. It’s a thing I feel called to do so I do it. I mean, I don’t have a goal, and even Creed and Brandon and Johnny, they’re like, well, we need to know what is it that you want? So, I just pull some random thing out of the air, like, well, I want 10,000 downloads of a single episode. That’s our first thing, let’s go get that. Why? I don’t have any good reason for it.
Cole Parks: What are you going to do with the 10,000 downloads once you get them?
Neil Dudley: I don’t know, it’s just, I don’t know. Truly, I don’t know. It’s just a number I pulled out of the air that says, oh, well, that’s impressive. Then I’m probably going to immediately say okay, well now a hundred thousand. I listen to this other podcast, a guy named Brad Lea, he lives in Vegas. He does this thing Dropping Bombs with Brad Lea.
Cole Parks: Yeah, we listened to it. You said Bradley. Every time you say Brad Lea, you got to pause right there because I think that Bradley, I don’t know Bradley, now I’m just putting it all together. I don’t know a guy named Bradley. I know Brad Lea.
Neil Dudley: Yup. So, Brad Lea, Brad space Lea, and his podcast is really valuable to me. And I’m just thinking, man, I don’t know, somebody might really enjoy the Cowboy Perspective. And my slant is towards just being honest about where I get my knowledge, and I just live around cowboys. They say you’re the sum of the five closest people to you. Well, that’s cowboys and cowgirls. That’s who were close to me. That’s where I grew up. That’s what I, that’s just what I know. So, there’s no way my perspective isn’t a cowboy perspective. Now, most, a lot of real cowboys are going to hear me call myself a cowboy. That’s kind of going to be frowned upon a little bit. But for the purpose of this podcast, I’m definitely living and watching the world and operating in the world from the Cowboy Perspective. So, anyways, keep going with your question about being an entrepreneur.
Cole Parks: I’ve got another question that you brought up, we’re rolling here. So, the other thing you said is, from a cowboy’s perspective, some people aren’t going to think you’re a cowboy and some people, like you said, you’re going to walk into the room and they’re going to think you’re overly cowboy. So, here’s the question I want to know: I personally, I’ve grown up around livestock. I love agriculture. I love the financial independence that comes from agriculture. I love the hard work, the ethic, the persistence, everything required to be successful in agriculture. Family’s been in agriculture, I’m sixth generation, but I personally don’t feel like I’ve ever earned a cowboy hat. So, I don’t wear one. I know too many guys that I have way too much respect for that wear a hat, but I don’t ever feel like I’ve earned one. Because I’ve never been in rodeo, don’t make a living full-time outside on horseback, around livestock. What does- I don’t know, what am I trying to ask here Neil?
Neil Dudley: You are probably just asking me what does it take to get a cowboy hat? What would I say it would take to earn a cowboy hat?
Cole Parks: Those guys that say you, Neil, you’re not a cowboy, what would make somebody a cowboy in their perspective?
Neil Dudley: The truth is it’s just kind of childish that they care. And in all honesty, if I want to call myself a cowboy, cool. There’s just, I think a lot of people, the people that might not feel cool about me being a cowboy, they just take a lot more of their self-esteem from what a cowboy stands for. So, they don’t want to ever see that be diminished in any way because then that would diminish them. So that’s why I think anybody protects anything, it’s like I’m not letting sorry cowboy call himself cowboy because I’m a cowboy. If he’s sorry and he can be a cowboy with that must mean I’m not very good. So, I think there’s cowboys in everything. Everybody’s a cowboy. And to me, it’s just a mindset. It’s just a lean forward, survive, figure it out, make it work mindset, and you can find that mindset in just the most tattooed up, earrings all over person in the inner city. I mean, here, I am stereotyping very badly.
Cole Parks: But you’re not stereotyping badly. You’re saying that person can have the cowboy ethics. And they can be a cowboy without the hat. Their hat might be gauged earrings.
Neil Dudley: That’s right. Exactly. That’s what I’m saying. So, I think put on a hat if you want one.
Cole Parks: We’ll have this conversation again in 10 years, I’ll tell you if I think I’ve earned it.
Neil Dudley: That’s right. And maybe, in your own little special way, that’s a piece of the puzzle you use to drive yourself. You’re just kind of sitting there thinking, oh, well I haven’t earned it yet. I better do something.
Cole Parks: But I’m going to earn it.
Neil Dudley: Yeah, I can appreciate that totally.
Cole Parks: I know too many guys that wore them that I have the utmost respect for. And again, you kind of look up to these guys, like I haven’t earned what that guy has, but I’m not afraid to go for it. I’m going to figure it out. I’m going to earn it.
Neil Dudley: What was my other question? We were talking about, where does entrepreneurial-?
Cole Parks: Where does your entrepreneurial drive come from? What made you recognize what an entrepreneur was and then start actively working towards that goal?
Neil Dudley: No, I mean, like here’s another one of those everybody’s listening, saying this Neil, he just never answers a question. All he does is say I don’t know. I mean, that’s true. I don’t know.
Cole Parks: I’m telling you I don’t know where it came from either.
Neil Dudley: Yeah. I think I might be one of- which even the team that’s helping me do this Cowboy Perspective thing, they say I have a little bit of an imposter syndrome, which is just I don’t give myself credit for being very good or knowing things that are valuable to other people, or I don’t give myself enough credit. I mean, I’m confident in it enough to be doing a podcast, but I think when I get really in a, just a small group and we’re talking about what we’re going to really do with this thing, I think that’s true. I appreciate them saying that to me because I do think I have a little bit of that. It’s like, man, this can’t really be for me because I’m nobody special. I don’t know anything.
Cole Parks: I don’t think there’s anything wrong with being too humble, Neil.
Neil Dudley: Well, that’s probably true. I think in business and the people I work with, the people I’m around, I want them to have three characteristics: humble, hungry, and smart. If they got those three characteristics, we can win, we can win all day long. Now, that sounds really easy, but it’s not. It’s not that easy to be all those things.
Cole Parks: No. And humble and hungry, those two things go together pretty often sometimes because how many people do you know that could be uber successful in the abundant world that we live in if they were just a little bit more comfortable stepping out, humbly confident in their ability to produce whatever they wanted to do.
Neil Dudley: So, I don’t know where my entrepreneurial spirit came from. I think it’s cowboys. I think cowboys in general-
Cole Parks: The ultimate entrepreneurs.
Neil Dudley: You bet. I mean, they go out there and just dig it up out of the ground with Mother Nature constantly frowning on them. So, I think that’s a lot of where it is. I think part of it is marrying Stacey. She drives me in a lot of ways. I tell people all the time I’m dying to do one piece of content, one piece of marketing that she doesn’t look at and have 29 critiques for, because that’s just her wheelhouse, it is totally her wheelhouse. And this little old piece of me is sad and crying every time I do it because I’m just like this is awesome, man, she is not going to be able to have any issue with this, and she will find it. She’ll be like well who’s your audience? Well, I don’t know. I can tell you right now, the audience is not going to relate to this, what you’re doing because you’re missing it. But I learn a little something there. So, I think I would encourage everybody, fail, please just go. Nobody is going to remember that. Nobody remembers that Edison failed 5 billion times before he made the light bulb. Just go fail, man. You’re going to learn so much faster. Now, you’re going to have to do it a smart enough way where you are not totally financially broke. But you got to be able to fail. You got to be able to totally forgive yourself for those failures. In my rodeo career, that was really a thing that held me back was I couldn’t forgive myself for the failures at the rodeo. It’s like baseball – when you go to the plate, you have to be able to totally forgive yourself for striking out. You’re going to do that so much. That was my biggest issue with rodeo. I had the talent. I had the access to the horses. I could have been at the NFR roping now instead of going to watch it. But my inability to forgive myself for the failures totally stymied any career I had a chance at having in rodeo.
Cole Parks: The mental game.
Neil Dudley: Sure, mental game. For whatever reason, business seems to be less problematic for me in that way.
Cole Parks: Absolutely. I can see that. The people that care if I fail professionally or personally, either way, the people that make a big deal out of a failure that I have are the people that are going to be mad when I have a success. And I really don’t care about their opinions.
Neil Dudley: You’ve got to totally quit listening to the good and the bad.
Cole Parks: It took me a long time to get there because I do, and I do wear my feelings on my sleeve sometimes. And it does hurt my feelings if somebody’s frustrated with me. But the thing is, like I said, at the end of the day, if somebody is going to harp on a failure that I had – man, Cole did a terrible job here, this didn’t work out, this was a bad idea, I know that too. You don’t have to rub it in. But if, when I do have something that takes off and when it is successful and you occasionally find that acorn, they’re the same people that are mad about it – oh, well, he didn’t deserve that, didn’t earn that.
Neil Dudley: The second you start experiencing that, you got to immediately just file that in the, man, I want to pray for that person because they obviously are just missing a lot in their own life that they’re totally want to bring somebody else down. Which is the saddest human reality. Most humans default, I tend- I could easily do that if I don’t pay attention to myself and work on it. For some reason, I think kind of deep-down humans have this default to keep them down, so I don’t have to perform to any higher standard.
Cole Parks: They do, and it’s like you said all along, the people you surround yourself with, who you surround yourself with absolutely makes a difference. Neil, you and I like to hang out, but if we hung out every Saturday night playing cornhole and drinking beer, we wouldn’t be that successful for the rest of the week. That’s why we only do that every three or four months. Who you surround yourself with though, there are people that do play cornhole every night of the week and they get up and they do the same thing. And if they’re happy, I’m happy for them. But they’re not pushing. They’re not driving for the things that you and I are looking to accomplish in life and all the lives that we know that we’re going to be able to positively affect through everything that we’re trying to do.
Neil Dudley: Yep. And I do this too, and I would advise everybody don’t do this. Like don’t compare yourself to somebody else. I mean, I’m going to be as good as I can be, but the truth is I’m probably not going to be Barack Obama. I’m probably not going to be Garth Brooks. There’s for what, you know, I’m just never going to be recognized in the same regard those people I just named are. But that’s okay. I mean, I could get really down on myself. I have the personality that if I just started saying, if I’m not that good, I’m nothing. I could get there. I have that, as a kid, I battled that a lot. I was really good at a lot of things, but I never allowed myself to own that. I was totally always looking at the guy that was better at any one thing then me. If he could beat me at checkers, then I must suck at everything. But I’m not good at anything. So, I hope to work with my kids. And so, then I’m probably swinging it the opposite way. Like this pendulum is always, since I was this way and I don’t want them to have to go through that experience, which it might be valuable to them to go through it. But I’m trying to swing them this other way and there’ll be fall out from that. That’s why there’s just no perfect parenting because you’re constantly doing it from your eyeballs. They’re just not the same.
Cole Parks: Perfectly imperfect.
Neil Dudley: Yeah. Wow. That was a cool ride. Let’s wrap this up. Listeners, thank you so much. The podcast is really worthless without you. I ask you to please go to my website, www.thecowboyperspective.com and listen to some other episodes, share with your friends this podcast, this episode, tell them about it. And the reason being, if it was good for you, it might be good for them, or it might be good for the person they tell it about.
Cole Parks: Hey, Neil, how can I share the podcast?
Neil Dudley: Well, you got it- The best way to do that is to go- I really don’t know. I don’t know the best way. I think the best way to do it is just tell people about my website, thecowboyperspective.com. You can go on there and just tell people about the website. That’s where we’re sending everybody to go learn about what we talk about. You can find it on Spotify, iTunes, all those different podcasting platforms, but I don’t know how you share those. I don’t know- the way I share podcasts that I like is I screenshot it when I’m listening to it and then I text it to my friends.
Cole Parks: How many screenshots do you have in your phone?
Neil Dudley: Oh my goodness. It’s ridiculous.
Cole Parks: I’m the worst about that.
Neil Dudley: I just screenshotted the questions I had for you, like I had them in email so I screenshotted them so I could pull them up easy and look at them. Matter of fact, I don’t even know if we followed the questions much, but we kind of talked about Kolbe. Then I was going to ask you about your perspective on gold and silver.
Cole Parks: Do you want to hear it?
Neil Dudley: Yeah. Tell me.
Cole Parks: I’m not a big fan of golden silver as an investment, but I like it better than cash. So, I do actually advise clients to invest in precious metals, gold and silver specifically, I advise silver-
Neil Dudley: And heavy? Are you talking about-?
Cole Parks: No, not heavily.
Neil Dudley: But you want them to be able to hold it in their hand or do you want them to invest in funds or something?
Cole Parks: Not funds at all. Not at all. Totally physical, put it in your safe, safety deposit box, but physical gold, physical silver, and the term I always used is tradable pieces. So, I have a first time – it wasn’t the first time – but I’ve been telling clients to invest in gold and silver for a long time. And again, it’s not an investment. It’s not an investment because it doesn’t grow in value. It does have tangible value. That’s why I like gold and silver over Bitcoin.
Neil Dudley: Bitcoin is huge right now. My gosh, that thing is rallying like crazy.
Cole Parks: It does. What impresses me about Bitcoin, Litecoin, Ethereum, all the cryptocurrencies is the blockchain technology behind them.
Neil Dudley: So who owns blockchain? How do you invest in blockchain?
Cole Parks: Through cryptos. The blockchain technology, I mean, Peterson’s, the food perspective, blockchain is the technology that, from a traceability perspective in the food industry, you’ll be able to take that beautiful sow and actually divide that up into different primals and take that all the way down to the strip of Peterson’s bacon package that that went into. That is what blockchain is able to do. Right now, everybody’s focused on cryptocurrencies.
Neil Dudley: When they figure out what all it really can do, it’s going to be, well, it’ll just be a whole market changer.
Cole Parks: It will. And not just food industries, but every industry and the traceability that’s there. I have cryptocurrencies. I’ve personally, I have invested in cryptocurrencies because I had people asking me about them.
Neil Dudley: Right, and so you got to get involved so you can understand them. I’ve totally thought that myself. I’ve not done it yet. I’ve thought I should just get some because if it turns out that’s what the world operates on in the next few years, I’m going to be totally blindsided by it with zero experience.
Cole Parks: See, and that’s where I, and this is where I can be wrong, I don’t see the world operating on cryptocurrencies. I don’t, because for two reasons, a, cryptocurrency just being digital itself, the value comes from the promotion. How many people are on social media, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, CNBC, wherever promoting cryptos? The only people that promote cryptos are people that own cryptos. And the only value a crypto has is the fact that I can convince you that it’s worth more than I paid for it. It does nothing else. It doesn’t generate wealth. Gold and Silver can actually be converted into semiconductor parts for your iPhone. We can make jewelry out of it. We can make Tesla batteries out of those metals. They actually have a tangible value outside of just a crypto alternative currency format. But cryptos, crypto, Neil, if I can’t convince you that what I paid 10 for is worth 11, it has no value whatsoever. And the example I gave somebody the other day, they said, well, I don’t want to hold a lot of cash. And I completely agree; I don’t want to hold a lot of cash either. I need enough cash to be liquid, but I’d rather own shares of Peterson Farms. I’d rather own shares of a company that’s actually generating wealth and being productive and generating revenue. If I have to choose something that’s not a tangible investment of some kind, I would rather go with gold and silver. Because it’s tangible. And if I can’t do that and I still need cash, I would rather have paper cash than cryptocurrency. Because at the end of the day, if the world went, the example I use a lot, if aids goes airborne and the world goes to hell in a hand basket, at least that dollar that’s not worth anything I could light on fire and stay warm. You can’t do that with cryptocurrency.
Neil Dudley: Right. There you go. That’s a really good way of looking at it that I wouldn’t have had. So cool. So, from the mouth of Cole Gilliam Parks himself, crypto is interesting, but it’s the only worth, that’s such a good way of thinking about it, it’s only worth what somebody can convince you it’s worth. I mean, it’s not, it has no other way of doing something for you, where gold, silver, cash all have, though it might be very minimal uses, they are still there.
Cole Parks: And a lot of crypto promoters will tell you the same thing. They’ll say cash only has value if I can convince you that the value of the US dollar is worth something.
Neil Dudley: I’ll tell you though the way you put it, it’ll start a fire. If you can light it, it’ll burn. That’s at least more than what crypto could do.
Cole Parks: If your iPhone dies and you lose your crypto wallet, bye.
Neil Dudley: Yup. What’s the, if the internet goes down-?
Cole Parks: Yep. So, like I said, it’s interesting. And like I said, I’ve made a lot of money on cryptos, just playing with it. And I still own cryptocurrencies. So, keep all that in mind. And of course, this is not financial advice. Past performance is no guarantee of future results – you know, all the disclaimers that come on everything else. This advice is worth what you paid for it.
Neil Dudley: Okay. We’re done. Thank you for listening. This is another episode of the Cowboy Perspective.
Okay, that wraps up another episode. I got to say, I’ve never done a podcast episode just riding around in the truck with a buddy, but I really enjoyed it. It’s something about being on the road, close to home with somebody you respect and like to know what they think about things just makes for a great conversation. So, you don’t have to record them, just go have them. If you enjoyed this episode of the Cowboy Perspective, please go to my website, www.thecowboyperspective.com. Leave me a note, check out the other episodes we’ve done and tell a friend. They may find some value in it, too. Until next time, I want to wish everybody an awesome day, week, month, and year. Hasta luego.
The Cowboy Perspective is produced by Neil Dudley and Straight Up Podcasts. Graphics are done by Root & Roam Creative Studio. And the music is by Byron Hill Music.