Welcome To The Forge – Membership Call #8

 The Forge: Exclusive Members’ Training Session June 19, 2025

   Live Q&A with Syd Michael

(Raw transcription; not proofed for grammar or spelling.)

Click here for Google Doc of the transcript

0:05

What’s up, everybody? Wednesday, 11 a.m.  

0:10 

Staying on schedule, keeping ourselves focused towards the prize.

0:15

Good morning, guy. How are you doing, buddy?

0:20

I got some news this morning that made me so excited I couldn’t stand it.

0:27

And because I have most of you’re phone numbers, I’m going to call the guy and tell him.

0:33

I got to call a guy today.

0:35

I’m gonna call him after the call because he’s in California, just to be safe.

0:39

But I got to call a guy today and inform him of a commission he’s got coming.

0:47

Take a guess.

0:50

What kind of ERTC commission is he making?

0:56

Take a guess.

0:59

Five grand, 10 grand, 15, 20, 25, everybody give me your best guess.

1:07

Guy, you must have heard something.

1:08

You’re close.

1:09

Yeah.

1:18

Six thousand, one hundred and something thousand.

1:20

He’s got two deals going through.

1:21

It’s going to be about 240 in total. I can’t help but that makes me think, “Did I try hard enough”? You know what I mean. I know I did. I lived in a hotel for Christ’s sakes for a year, but it just makes me wonder how hard I tried. It makes you kind of look back now. That’s freaking just awesome, to be honest, man. It’s got me feeling some kind of way. I’ll tell you. We’re going to talk a little bit about the health care thing. At the end, you know, I opened the bag to share with you all a little bit about investing. I know not everybody on the call is investing which sucks for you, but if you are putting some money away since I’ve already opened the bag I feel like I have to kind of give a little update where I’m standing or where I’m seeing or what I’m looking at each week. I hope that doesn’t bother some of you if you’re not into investing. Thomas, you’ve got some coming today, too. By the way, pretty good bit if I remember, right? Don’t hold me to the number.

2:50

Um, a few of you got some money coming today, to be honest.

2:55

Yeah.

2:56

Yep.

2:59

Don’t act so surprised, bro.

3:04

And I look out for you every week, man.

3:09

Uh, anyways, um, I’ve gotten close with a lot of you guys, man, you know? Anyways, you know, obviously this is not financial advice.

3:20

I want to share with you a little bit about what I’m doing and what I see, and help any of those who are going along with it.

3:27

Since I’ve opened the bag and kind of let the cat out of the bag on this whole thing, we do have to talk about it a little bit.

3:32

We are going to talk also at the end, I want to talk about like telehealth, what I like about it and why I’m excited about it, and what I’m into, you know, what I see moving from here on out so we’ll talk a little bit about that, too. Just stay with me here. So, anyway, looks like everybody’s on here, so let’s get started, all right. What do you see when you read stuff like this? Not political bro, we ain’t got time for that even though you help. But to rub you one way or the other, of course. What is stuff like this going on in the world? What does that tell you when you’re investing? We’re talking investing now. It’s funny, we have the same words, bro. It’s opportunity. It’s amazing to watch the futures of the Dow even within minutes of a headline, sometimes not even a real headline, not even a real press release, somebody should go to jail for releasing it.

4:59

And people knee-jerk react, people knee-jerk react, and you can watch the market go crazy.

5:11

What do you, what do you like? I’ll give you an example.

5:14

Right now, with things going on in Iran, it’s a no-brainer what’s going to start pumping.

5:23

What do you think when things start happening in the Middle East?

5:27

What do you think starts pumping like crazy? Just thinking basics. You’re **** right, oil.

5:33

Oil’s on a tear the last week, and it probably ain’t going to stop with all this mess going on over there.

5:45

What’s crazy is it’s moving prices just off the news, not even off of reality.

5:50

You know what I mean? So now we’ve got our investment hats on. We’re thinking, right?

5:56

We’re talking about it.

5:58

I want to show you here Bitcoin and crypto over a three-trillion-dollar market gap now. You’re not going to put that cap back in the bag.

6:09

I know crypto scares a lot of people, but you’re not going to put that back in the bag. Look at the fear and greed index.

6:17

I watch this constantly, right?

6:21

You could remember, you always remember what Buffett always told us, right?

6:26

When people are greedy, be fearful.

6:28

When people are fearful, are they greedy, right?

6:30

With all this opportunity and news going on right now, I’m telling you, be greedy.

6:37

I’m putting 90% of every dollar I’m making right now in the market, because I know that’s where it’s at.

6:53

All right, pay attention to this. Anybody familiar with the genius bill that just passed? This is where the world’s going. This is what’s gonna happen. They’re already kind of doing it, but this is what’s gonna happen with Visa MassCard, American Express, where all the real money’s at, you know? People talk about things like inflation and printing money and and how the dollar is going down. Do you know where the real puff of smoke is? Do you know where the real money lies?

7:33

In credit.

7:36

In credit, as long as people can finance ****, they will spend money for their entire lives.

7:42

That’s just the truth.

7:44

I’m not giving you that advice, I’m just telling you that’s the truth.

7:48

And, hey, Brian, what’s up, brother?

7:50

And everything is moving using stablecoins.

7:57

Plus, now they’re backing it.

8:00

We got rid of Gary Gensler from the SEC, who was putting the kibosh on crypto.

8:06

Everything has fallen into place exactly the way it should.

8:12

Two weeks ago, I PO’d a company called Circle.

8:18

I got a few shares.

8:19

I didn’t get nearly as many as I wanted.

8:26

Look at the timing.

8:28

Look at the big picture.

8:29

All with stablecoins.

8:31

Right, I’m telling when I tell you to look at a 12-month, 24-month, 60-month window circle is an absolute no-brainer, especially with bills like this in Congress right now, you’ll see some nice gains out of it. I’m not telling you to go crazy enough to go by calls. But, there’s no reason that you shouldn’t buy shares, even a fraction of a share. It’s got a nice dividend. Remember me telling y’all about my three dividend stocks?

9:11

It’s got a nice dividend, about 40 cents, right?

9:20

I’ll say I shrink this box down.

9:24

It’s like Christmas every time I get one of these.

9:29

And not to mention, you know, being an entrepreneur, I’ve had some revenue coming in pretty good the last few years, but there’s, you know, some months you don’t make money, right?

9:41

Sometimes you go three, four weeks without money.

9:44

You gotta own your money, own your future, right?

9:52

With dividend stocks, it doesn’t matter if I slept all month and never got out of bed, and made money.

10:00

You can see this Tesla, it’s a Tesla yield, right?

10:05

You can see that’s a 127% dividend yield, strong as death.

10:11

Ryan says, any XRP thoughts as part of my bag?

10:15

You know, it’s funny you asked that.

10:19

I’ve got a bag of XRP also.

10:23

The thing that scares me the most about XRP is, it’s not limited.

10:28

You know what I mean?

10:29

They are creating more XRP.

10:31

Two, the guy is one **** of a marketer.

10:36

And I have a hard time trusting the guy.

10:40

I don’t know why XRP is not brick and $200 already. I mean, people who aren’t in crypto own XRP.

10:50

People who would never buy a Bitcoin own XRP.

10:54

Like, every friend I have from high school that calls me about crypto or anything, you know, just, hey, man, can I pick your brain? The first thing out of their mouth is XRP.

11:03

But it just seems to me that it’s one, either over-marketed or two, oversaturated.

11:15

Maybe there’s too much of a market cap on it for it to see some big, big, big growth because too many people are buying it.

11:23

It’s being manipulated somehow.

11:26

Saying that, I still have a bag, a small bag.

11:29

I mean, I don’t have a six-figure investment like I do in a lot of the other ones.

11:33

I have under 10 grand in XRP, but a lot of people are banking on XRP, and everything that I read about it will see $10 this cycle.

11:44

So that’s good.

11:46

That’s four, four hundred, four times growth from here.

11:49

I think what it is at two 20 or two 25, something like that right now, maybe a little more, you know, as soon as the Middle East calms down and.

12:02

Bitcoin starts running up, you’re going to see you’re going to get gains with XRP no matter what.

12:07

Right. One more dividend stock real quick.

12:11

I just want to share. Right.

12:16

Hold on a second.

12:20

Yeah, Brian says not a big fan of the unlimited, but seems to put a cap on potential. Yeah, I agree.

12:25

What are your top three recommendations on crypto, Bitcoin, Solana, and Ethereum?

12:35

Those are my three favorites.

12:38

And just to show you, hang on, well, XRP is number four.

12:45

Two of my favorites are at the top.

12:50

It’s not as volatile.

12:52

It’s not as risky, so to speak, right?

13:00

So, about one more dividend real quick that is coming up is Micro Strategies, right, pays out on the fifth, 139% annual yield, strong as deat,h man Strong as death dividends back in December, November December got over $4 Strong, it’s a $20 stock right now.

13:26

I got a ‘y’all know–y’all a lot of–y’all may or may not know.’ Jean Kalinda—I’ve got her making the run with a—he’s got some misty, he’s loving it. And the other one is—you know—Coinbase, which is C-O-N-Y, to YieldMax Coin Option Income Strategy—153%. And that dividend’s coming up also, right? You can see it normally pays about the first of the month; end of the month it’ll pay—probably on the 27th. Another stock—look—eight dollars with a 73-cent dividend. It’s a no-brainer. That means for every eight grand you put in there, you’re making $730 monthly, right? It’s an absolute no-brainer. Talking about circle—if you’ve got some extra cash, stick it in here. Alright, alright, that’s all I had to mention about the investment stuff. That’s where my head’s at right now—you know—talking straight up with you. Looking at the next five-year window, I’m going to be heavy into crypto and crypto-related stocks—and even crypto, for sure—through the end of this year.

15:03

And then around December, I’m going to start, I’ve already started getting positions, I’m going to start transferring some of my positions to be more heavy into AI and quantum computing.

15:13

I think that’s a **** of an opportunity for us all over the next five, 10, 15, 20 years.

15:18

That’s where everything’s going.

15:22

As you all should know, and I’ve told you, crypto runs on a cycle.

15:29

It’s a four-year cycle.

15:30

There’s a chance because we’re taking all this adoption right now, that we won’t see as much of a crypto winner because everybody’s adopting it before that wasn’t adopted.

15:40

You see some massive 10-15 percent swings daily sometimes, but I think you’re going to see it a lot more steady going into it, but I do believe in the four-year cycle.

15:50

I do think that it’ll start pulling back. We’ll start going through crypto winter, and before that happens, I will start positioning myself in AI and quantum Computing.

16:00

All right, that’s enough about investing. I hope that, uh, gives some of you out there playing the game some insight and some direction on what you’re doing. All right, talking about—does anybody have any questions? Anybody have any questions real quick? I don’t even be hanging—I honestly wouldn’t even bother going out and buying straight Bitcoin right now. I would buy ARKB. They just did a three-way split—which doesn’t matter (kind of wish they didn’t)—but it used to be exactly 1% of Bitcoin per share, and now it’s one-third of 1% per share. So it’s just more affordable. But, you know, in your IRAs or anything like that, I wouldn’t go try and buy actual crypto. You buy ARKB, which is an ETF backed by Bitcoin. All right, any other questions?

17:20

Yeah, the unlimited part, Brian, scares the **** out of me.

17:27

I mean, it’s like, would you want to buy farmland or would you want to buy oceanfront property? When it’s limited, you get oceanfront property.

17:34

So that’s a huge plus for any position that I’m looking at.

17:38

Plus, if it’s American-based, there’s another huge plus. What is the ETF for Bitcoin? There are several of them.

17:47

I personally, uh, like Kathy Woods, um, arc B? It’s a R K B and if I’m not mistaken, it’s at like $34 right now.

18:01

It used to be at exactly 1% of, uh, Bitcoin, but now they’ve, they did a three-to-one split.

18:31

Um, say what exactly, Donald, the, the, the ticker arc B a R K B and listen, Every one of you knows if you have any serious questions about it, you can always reach out to me directly like Don.

19:00

I know you got my number, just text me and I’ll get back with you and help you with any of that kind of stuff that you would want. Some reason Vanessa is Sorry, you know, I got you buddy. I’ve got your back.

19:52

All right, any other questions as far as the direction of, uh, making money in your sleep? Let me ask you this: of the people on the call—honest answer—how many of you are right now making some kind of money in your sleep? Be honest. I should set up a poll, but I’m not going to. I know you are, Steve—you’re a smart guy. Good. “Not enough”—that’s a good answer. It’s all of us. Look, I get it, you know? None of us are spring chickens anyway, right? I get it, man. Like, you know, even looking at something like Bitcoin—you’re like, “Man, it’s already at $105K. I missed it,” right? Or Circle—it’s already up to $163 a share; it was $31 two weeks ago. “I missed it.” I get it. But start. Start somewhere. Start something. It doesn’t matter if it’s $20 or $50. (Oh hey, my dog’s trying to sit on my laptop. What are you doing? What are you doing?) Right? Start. Start somewhere. Like, I remember I started years ago—I was all overzealous about it—and I started at a hundred bucks a day. I auto—withdrew out of my account.

21:42

And you know, I wasn’t able to maintain that forever, right?

21:46

You know, I did it for like three weeks, and then all of a sudden, I’m like, whoa, I need to reverse that, right?

21:52

But whatever you can—I don’t care if it’s $10 a day, $5 a day, $25 a day, $25 a week, $25 a month—just put something in there. Because the second—I’m telling you—the second you stash enough money away that it starts outperforming your work every week, that’s true freedom, man. It’s true freedom. And it seems impossible, but it’s not. I promise—it’s not. All right, any, uh… any last, last-minute questions?

22:38

All right, good to go.

22:42

So, talking about telehealth, I’ll tell you why I’m personally pretty excited about it and the R&D, because you’re covering just about every single business out there, right?

23:01

And if you guys, and I know a lot of you are, but if you guys are a lot like me, right?

23:07

Like I don’t go into public or I don’t go to parties or I don’t go out with friends without, you know, finding out what people do, right?

23:17

Like, you know, given the right situation, I’m not tacky, but you know, I talk, you know, I talk shop with guys, right?

23:24

You know, with husbands or boyfriends or whatever, right?

23:28

You know, I find out where or even with some ladies, right?

23:31

I find out what they do and what they’re about, and, you know, I inquisitively—learned a long time ago—people love to talk about themselves. So I tend to ask a lot of questions about them and let them talk, right? The reason why I love the telehealth and R&D is because you have a solution for just about every single business or business owner in the market. R&D is a little bit more specialized, right?

24:03

But now we have a solution to businesses that aren’t even, weren’t even really even ERTC candidates, right?

24:15

You know, the independent car dealership, the small plumber shop, the small landscaping company, right? They had everybody on 1099. You know, they weren’t ERTC clients.

24:29

And how many of them did we talk to? I know I talked to thousands of them.

24:34

And there was nothing I could do with them. Yeah, I’d love to help you with the RTC, but you don’t have enough W-2 employees, right?

24:41

They didn’t meet the minimum. With telehealth, those are your key clients. Those are ideal.

24:48

Now, don’t get me wrong, it’ll be nice to sign up for a 50 or 100-employee company.

24:53

It’ll have much more, uh, you know, revenue benefit to it, but there’s not a single business owner in the market that you’re not going to have something to scratch their itch, right?

25:10

We’ve got the complete spectrum where everybody is going to qualify for something that we’re going to have available, right?

25:19

So, for that reason, it gets me pretty dang excited.

25:24

And don’t think I’m not already currently fishing people out, right?

25:31

And it’s the easiest conversation you’ll ever have with anybody because you’re not offering them anything right now.

25:38

It’s not ready.

25:42

So, when you talk to somebody, ask them consultatively. Hey, man, I need your opinion.

25:50

What do you think of this?

25:52

How much would this help you?

25:55

You know, I’m looking at, you know, helping other businesses with this solution.

26:00

What’s your opinion on how it would help your business, right? People will give you their input.

26:04

People will give you their two cents sometimes when you don’t even ask.

26:10

So right now is the easiest time in the world to start lining your ducks up.

26:22

It’s the easiest time in the world to talk to people and get genuine, honest responses.

26:30

Imagine how much more efficient the world would be if we knew every time we were talking to people, it was honest responses.

26:38

Imagine how much all the fluff bullshit you got to go through.

26:45

And you don’t have to worry about that right now because you’re asking somebody inquisitive and you have nothing to offer them.

26:50

They have no reason to tell you bullshit lies to try and divert from you trying to sell them something because you ain’t trying to sell them anything.

26:57

All you’re doing is asking them their personal opinion.

26:59

Well, guess what?

27:01

Every word that comes out of their mouth at this point is a bullet that will come back, right?

27:07

When we have it set up, ready, signed up, and you go back.

27:11

Hey, man, remember I talked to you about that thing?

27:14

Right, it’s ready.

27:16

Remember how you said you thought it was valuable?

27:18

Remember how you said this?

27:19

Remember how you said that?

27:20

Everything that they say can be used against them in the court of law when the law comes.

27:25

Does that make sense?

27:26

Am I making sense, or am I sounding slimy?

27:33

It’s just the truth, man. This is sales, right?

27:43

So right now is the best time to be setting up your potential first 10 clients.

27:58

All you’re doing is having a conversation.

28:01

There’s no risk or reward now.

28:05

So there’s no reason for people not to be completely 100% honest with you.

28:09

All right.

28:12

Everybody with me on that, or do you understand I need some interaction here, man?

28:15

I feel like I’m talking to a blank room. Nobody’s interacting. Okay, good.

28:30

Tell me what businesses you have in mind, right out of the gate. Tell me what businesses you have in mind. What do you think is the best right now?

28:44

Businesses that you know of that you’ve already done business with, that you’re gonna go after. What’s the best sector?

28:58

HVAC? Yep. They’re in season right now. You know they’re killing it.

29:10

For me, I’m going to go after independent car dealers. I know hundreds of them. Right?

29:15

I know hundreds of them. Yeah, I bet.

29:22

I know hundreds of them, and I know every single one of them kind of struggles with standing out from the rest. Sweet.

29:40

Yeah, R&D is going to be a much better payday, I think. But I think you’re gonna find the telehealth to be super easy—super easy. There’s literally not a company around that couldn’t use it. And there’s gonna be more than just telehealth—telehealth is just the sexiest part of it, so that’s why we call it telehealth. 100%, guy. Absolutely. No, they can offer it to 1099 or W2 employers. Uh, Brian Wade—great question. ETA on these—they were scheduled… last time I spoke to Vanessa, we were scheduled to actually launch this thing between the first and the 15th. Well, **** it, it’s the 18th. So they’re finishing up some certain things. You know Brian is never going to launch anything that’s not on point—period. So they’ve got to get, you know, certain things worked out before he does it. But it’s coming. I would say in the next 15 to 30 days, for sure. I mean, right now, every single employer that I’ve been talking to has been complaining about how hard it is to hire good employees right now. It’s hard. People just don’t frickin’ want to work. It’s just the truth.

31:20

People do not want to work. Right.

31:23

But how do you set yourself out from the other independent car dealerships?

31:30

What makes you a better place? Right.

31:34

Well, having these types of benefits will set you out and won’t set you back.

31:39

Realize if they had to pay, you know, a lot of your customers that are going to be jumping on the telehealth ones that aren’t going to be providing health insurance.

31:51

Health insurance costs 800, 400, and 600 employees. Where telehealth will cost them under 100 bucks.

32:02

Not to mention dealing with doctors, which I do a lot with my mom, right?

32:07

Give me telehealth over going to a **** doctor’s office all day. All day. Good question, Donald.

32:16

I did read some headlines about that.

32:20

Um, I, I don’t know about what it would include or any of that kind of stuff, but it just seemed, uh, I haven’t had a chance to go down the rabbit hole and read about it.

32:29

He’s asking about the new $499 cell phone that supposedly Trump’s coming out with.

32:35

The headline I read was that Trump’s having cell phones made in China.

32:39

So I was like, Oh God, it sounded like a hit piece more than a factual piece. So I’ve not gone down into it, but I’d like to check it out.

32:53

I mean, I am about y’all but after going through the election I got so exhausted from disinformation, hit pieces, bullshit, going both ways, it just wears me out. I can’t stand that kind of ****.

33:14

Yep. Yeah, we got a fact check.

33:17

Whatever you find out about it, please let me know because I have read a few headlines about it, and it blew me away.

33:22

I’m sitting here thinking, the guy’s the president, what the **** Is he worried about freaking cell phones now? Is he not busy?

33:30

But he is a businessman, so who knows?

33:32

You might see something the rest of us don’t.

33:44

All right, I’ll do some Q &A if anybody’s got any other questions.

33:54

Yes, Reggie, much less than that, actually, but.

33:58

From the numbers I hear, and I don’t want to say a number out loud, because then it’s put in stone, but much, much less than 100 from what I hear.

34:08

I’m thinking it’s like these are numbers I’ve heard, don’t hold me to it.

34:12

Don’t say Sid said yeah, I got to be careful. That’s why that’s why you don’t hear me You know say stuff like that very often because I can get myself in trouble, right?

34:21

But I’ve heard in the mid-30s, like 35 bucks, so you gotta think if you have ten employees and nine salespeople in a mechanic for $350.

34:30

You got them all hooked up, please forget about it.

34:34

I’ll sell that all day. All right, so concerning everybody’s time, if you have any questions, I’ll gladly answer them.

34:50

If not, we’re going to cut this one short.

35:01

Do employees participate in the cost?

35:04

I would hope that they wouldn’t.

35:06

I’m sure employees will have the option to allow them to, but I would hope that the employer would use it as a benefit to help hire better employees.

35:19

And to be able to, you know, like what I was talking about with my mom, like I take a telehealth appointment over sitting in a fricking doctor’s office any day you want you want to talk about like misery, like ****I’d almost rather just go ahead and check out than wait in a doctor’s office. I can’t stand it. It’s the most wasted time when they overbook your appointment.

35:40

There’s no integrity to the appointment time. It’s bullshit. Rock and roll, Reggie.

35:46

What platform do you use for investing in ETFs? Well, I use several, but mainly Robinhood. Thank you, Thomas.

35:57

Mainly Robinhood. You can also use Stash. They have very broad ETFs. You can also use Stash.

36:07

And to be honest with you, I don’t even know how much I got in Stash.

36:11

I put $200 a week in Stash and a half for years. And I just put it on a moderately aggressive ETF mix.

36:18

And I’ve got bots trading in there—I’m not even active on that, all right? Yeah, yeah, rock and roll. Okay, guys, all right, I’ll see you. Cold wallet thoughts? Ledger—no-brainer. But buy it straight from Ledger or buy it off Amazon. I don’t want any cold wallets anybody’s ever touched in their lives. All right, rock and roll, guys. I’ll see y’all next week. Thank you.