Clay Finck (02:47):

Eddie, this is a fantastic question, and I’ll do my best to give you a helpful answer, and just a heads up, it’s somewhat lengthy. As you all probably know, we’re big fans of Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger here at TIP.

Clay Finck (03:01):

In the question, you mentioned two different strategies. The first is Joel Greenblatt’s magic formula, which includes buying comparatively cheap stocks and rebalancing every year. The second approach is more like you mentioned Buffett, Munger, and Pabrai, which includes buying a great business at a fair price and holding it for a very long time. I believe both of these strategies can be successful, so I would personally recommend going with a strategy that makes most sense to you and fits your personality and style.

Clay Finck (03:32):

For me, I prefer the Buffett approach of buying and holding great businesses for the long-term. And this is for three reasons. I’ll go through each of these three reasons for you. First, the Buffett approach requires you to understand the business very well, whereas Greenblatt’s magic formula approach seems to be only looking at companies at a very high level.

Clay Finck (03:54):

From my understanding Greenblatt is mainly looking at the PE and the return on assets and buying the low PE businesses with high return on assets. I think that simplifies investing too much because oftentimes I think that businesses have low PE ratios for a good reason. For example, the business might be in an industry with a lot of disruption, such as retail malls being disrupted by the trend to online shopping. It makes sense that these lower PE, say retail malls, are trading at lower PE because the trend is going online. This is why I would also want to consider if the industry as a whole is growing and if the business itself is growing as well. So not just looking at that high level, but digging in a little bit deeper. If a business has a low PE ratio, a high return on assets or return on invested capital, but has declining or flat revenues, then that is likely not a business I would like to own personally, as someone with a buy and hold approach.

Clay Finck (04:54):

I wanted to give an example of a stock that looks to be pretty cheap, but isn’t a company I would personally want to own to help you understand what I’m getting at. The example I want to give is Best Buy. On the surface, Best Buy looks like a great stock. Their PE ratio’s around 10, and they’ve been steadily growing their revenues for the past few years. However, I want to own businesses that treat their customers well, and my experience with Best Buy hasn’t been super positive. For example, I’ve gone to their store to get a specific cord or adapter for my computer. That cord was priced at around 40 bucks. I thought that was kind of expensive, so I did a quick price check on Amazon and found a similar item that was priced less than $15 on the Amazon app. So even though Best Buy, probably knows that Amazon is undercutting them on essentially the same product, they still chose to price their products much higher than Amazon.

Clay Finck (05:48):

Even though my experience with Best Buy might not be representative of the overall business model that is a signal to me that they don’t want to set competitive prices across all their products like Amazon does. And that business model is probably ripe for disruption over the long run in an increasingly competitive business landscape. With that, I believe that Best Buy is an okay company trading at potentially a great price.

Clay Finck (06:13):

The Buffett approach flips that on his head, as he tries to buy great businesses trading at a fair price. One business I would happily be a long-term owner of is Google or Alphabet. In my opinion, they are a fantastic company trading at a fair price. When looking at our TIP finance tool, I see that Google is trading at roughly a market multiple as their PE ratio’s 25, but they are growing their revenues at a rate much higher than that of the market. And I expect them to grow at a rate above that of the market for the foreseeable future.

Clay Finck (06:47):

On top of that, they essentially have a monopoly on the search business, which gives them a very strong moat that in my mind is very likely to persist into the future. In short, I am much more comfortable holding a company like Google for the next 10 years over a company like Best Buy, even though Best Buy is trading at a much cheaper valuation today. That’s just one example to try and help you understand where my thought process is coming from.

Clay Finck (07:13):

So again, to summarize my first reason, I think the magic formula looks at many businesses at a high level, rather than understanding the business very well and buying it at a price that makes sense.

Clay Finck (07:25):

So my second reason I prefer the Buffett approach is because Greenblatt’s approach involves too much trading. This point reminds me of a Charlie Munger quote, the number one rule of compounding is to never interrupt it necessarily. At the end of each year, you have to continually rebalance your portfolio under this approach, which leads to capital gains taxes on the positions you are up on. So in order for Greenblatt’s approach to outperform Buffett, his portfolio value not only has to be up more, but it also has to overcome that tax hurdle as well. Greenblatt’s approach also potentially has you selling losers, which seems pretty counterintuitive if you chose a great business, because under the Buffett approach, you would continue to purchase a stock that has gone down to cheaper prices, assuming the fundamentals of the business haven’t changed significantly.

Clay Finck (08:14):

My third reason for preferring Buffett’s approach is because I think Greenblatt’s approach might not be as effective as it was in the late 1980s and 1990s. That is because of all the computers and technology that are looking at surface level items, such as the PE and return on assets that are able to arbitrage away all these surface level ways of earning outsize returns. I’m not saying that this strategy can’t work, but I think it is probably much more difficult to earn outsize returns using that strategy today than it was back then. And to be fair, the same point is probably true for Buffett’s approach in that it is probably more difficult today to buy great businesses and earn outsize returns than it was probably in the 1990s.

Clay Finck (08:57):

I think another important consideration is that although Greenblatt’s magic formula returned 23% to investors from 1988 to 2005, the formula has drastically underperformed in the market since then, which is largely due to the rise of growth companies propping up the S&P 500 index. History would tell you that this is likely to turn around, but no one can say for sure whether that will be the case or not, or how long it will be until value comes back around.

Clay Finck (09:26):

To summarize my overall thoughts, someone might be able to achieve a higher return using Greenblatt’s approach over Buffett’s, but Buffett’s approach makes more to me personally. So that’s the approach I’ve generally gone with, with my portfolio.

Clay Finck (09:40):

As far as combining the two strategies, like you mentioned in your question, I would recommend checking out the work done by Oakmark Funds. We’ve done many interviews with some of their portfolio managers on both Millennial Investing and We Study Billionaires. In my interview with Bill Nygren and Mike Nicolas, they cover their investment strategy, which looks for companies with strong management teams that are usually trading below the market multiple, but growing at a rate faster than the overall market. My conversation with Bill and Mike is episode 138, if you’re interested, and Trey Lockerbie also recently had an interview with Bill Nygren on We Study Billionaires. That is episode 430. You can also check out the companies they hold on their funds website if you need ideas or want to see the types of companies they’re finding value in. I think they do a great job of somewhat combining these two philosophies and finding cheap, high quality businesses.

Clay Finck (10:35):

Eddie, I hope that helps. Thank you so much for your fantastic question. That’s the only one I’ll be answering for this episode. If anyone else would like to ask me a question to air on the show, this could be related to investing, personal finance, or really anything, feel free to send it over to me. You can message me on Twitter at Clay_Finck, C-L-A-Y underscore F-I-N-C-K, or send me an email at clay@theinvestorspodcast.com. Feel free to shoot me a message with any questions you have.

Clay Finck (11:06):

All right, without further delay, I hope you enjoy today’s episode with Kevin McGarvey.

Intro (11:12):

You are listening to Millennial Investing by The Investor’s Podcast Network, where your hosts, Robert Leonard and Clay Finck interview successful entrepreneurs, business leaders, and investors to help educate and inspire the millennial generation.

Clay Finck (11:32):

Hey, everyone, welcome to the Millennial Investing podcast. I am your host Clay Finck, and on today’s show I am joined by Kevin McGarvey. Kevin, welcome to the show

Kevin McGarvey (11:43):

Clay, thanks so much for having me. This is really exciting and happy to be here.

Clay Finck (11:47):

Let’s dive right into today’s topic. You are a small business owner that put Bitcoin on your company’s balance sheet, and I wanted to bring you onto the show to maybe give the audience a little bit of a different perspective. A lot of people coming onto the show might be studying finance all day, every day, and use this jargon that maybe a lot of our listeners might not be really familiar with. Whereas for you, you’re a business owner, you’re living a life that’s similar to maybe many of our listeners. You want to provide for your family. You want to provide for your company, your employees, your community. So let’s start off our conversation to just maybe talk about how Bitcoin even came onto your radar in the first place.

Kevin McGarvey (12:29):

Yeah, sure. Like a lot of people, I had a different perspective prior to March of 2020, and then the pandemic hit and everything kind of went crazy from there. The economy shut down. We were kind of worried about, hey, what’s going to happen with our business?

Kevin McGarvey (12:45):

I’m a paving contractor and myself and my best friend started the business 10 years ago. So we had continued growth and the business was going really well. And then, like I said, in March, everything kind of changed. So my business partner, Marco and I were discussing, “Hey, how are we going to adapt to what’s going on with the pandemic? And what are we going to do moving forward here?”

Kevin McGarvey (13:08):

And so it was a few months after that where the government came out with the CARES Act, and in that was the Payroll Protection Program. And so what that was, was where they were giving money to small businesses to help with their payroll and some other expenses that they had. And so you didn’t need to be a genius economist to know that it’s not just good to give out free money. There’s going to be some side effects to that. So it didn’t really sit well with me the first time, but if they’re going to hand out free money, we’re going to take it. And so we battled through that year, we took a little bit of a loss, like most main street companies did. We went backwards a tiny bit, and there was that K shape recovery that happened where it was like the stock market plummeted, but then it just went right back up. But us main street companies, we were working twice as hard just to stand still.

Kevin McGarvey (14:03):

And so we made it through the year, and in January of 2021 was when they came out with the second round of the PPP, and at that point I was like, “Okay, this is just crazy. They can’t just keep printing money like this.” And I see that our dollar is getting devalued and we have a huge problem here. And so I was speaking with my accountant and he was telling me that his brother was into Bitcoin. And at that point, I had never done any research on Bitcoin. I had maybe seen it in headlines here and there, but knew absolutely nothing about it, but he was saying, “Yeah, Bitcoin’s going up in price because of all this money printing. People are putting some of that into Bitcoin, and so it’s probably something that you should look into. My brother is really into it and he’d be happy to sit down and talk about it with you.” So I said, “Okay, listen, like I said, I don’t know anything about this, but I need to find some way to pivot here, so I’ll be happy to talk to him about it.”

Kevin McGarvey (15:03):

So we sat down and he was explaining it to me about how was this block, and then there was a next block coming out, this guy, he’s this pseudonymous character, Satoshi Nakamoto created this, and it’s this ledger. My head was spinning basically as he was talking about it. And the one thing that he said that resonated with me was he mentioned the name Michael Saylor, and that he had put $400 million into this. And I see everything through the lens of entrepreneurship. That’s my passion. So when I heard of another entrepreneur putting money into this, that’s what really intrigued me.

Kevin McGarvey (15:41):

Now, I’m pretty up on the popular CEOs and entrepreneurs, right? I listen to all the podcasts, read the books, watch the TV shows, whatever it is, but I had never heard of the name Michael Saylor before. So I went home and I google him, and he’s 22 year CEO of a publicly traded company, went to MIT. So he’s a technologist and very successful guy, super brilliant. And so I just started devouring every podcast that he was on, every YouTube video, and was just listening to everything he said. And that’s when it really resonated with me that, hey, Bitcoin is a viable option and it’s a great option for us and the situation that we’re in right now. And so I just kept going down that rabbit hole. I started listening to your podcast, started listening to some Pomp and some other shows and just really educated myself on it, and that’s really how it came about.

Clay Finck (16:38):

I just love how this can be a tool of empowerment for small businesses. If a business’ cost is going up 10, 20%, and their profit margins are 10% or lower, they’re really getting squeezed and they have some tough decisions to make. Are they going to raise prices and have customers upset with them? Are they going to keep wages stagnant and try and come up with ways to maintain those profit margins? So this high inflation can put small businesses in really difficult situations.

Clay Finck (17:07):

Could you talk more about some of the education tools that you went on outside of just podcasting? Are there any other tool that you were able to utilize?

Kevin McGarvey (17:17):

Sure. So I read Why Buy Bitcoin, Bitcoin Standard. I was reading all of the books as well, and then just trying to speak to people about it too. So there’s a Bitcoin meetup near me, and I was just trying to connect with anybody and read any book, anything associated with Bitcoin I was just very intrigued about. I’d be on the computer reading different articles. My wife would be looking over at me on the couch like, “Are you Bitcoining again?” So I was pretty obsessed with it at that point in time.

Clay Finck (17:50):

You saw all this monetary easing, the money printing, the PPP loans. What did you see were your potential options outside of purchasing Bitcoin? Is it possible for a business to do anything else with their treasury? Or how was Bitcoin helping you as a business owner?

Kevin McGarvey (18:08):

Yeah, sure, we had other options, right? I mean, we could take that money. So right now we rent our shop. It’s a 10,000 square foot warehouse, an acre and a half of land. And so we could look for someplace and we could purchase some commercial real estate to be able to buy. That’s one option that we have. But with that, you have a lot of time that you have to put into that. You have to go search, you have to deal with a real estate broker. You have to deal with a lawyer. You’ll have to deal with zoning whatever municipality you are in. There’s a lot to that and there’s a lot of expense to that. You need to be able to pay all of those people and pay for permits, whatever else needed.

Kevin McGarvey (18:45):

And so that’s one option. We could put some of our treasury, which was our rainy day fund. We had a rainy day fund just in case anything were to happen. We didn’t think it was a pandemic, but that’s what ended up coming along. But it could be anything for a small business. You could lose a big customer, you could lose a key employee, different things could happen. So you always want to have that rainy day fund, and that’s what we had.

Kevin McGarvey (19:05):

So we could have had the option of putting it into commercial real estate. I mentioned the issues with that. We also could have just left it in cash. We could have just let it sit there in the bank, but that would continue to lose value with them printing… What was it? I think 30 to 40% of all dollars in circulation were printed in the last couple of years. So if you just left that money sitting in cash, you’d be losing value on that. So those were the options.

Kevin McGarvey (19:27):

And then we had our third option in Bitcoin. So with Bitcoin, we really just had to just go ahead, purchase it. It’s not super difficult to do. We went through that process. So as I was saying, I was getting my education on it. I talked to Marco about it and I waited until I think it was March. So for like a couple months, I was just getting my education so that I was able to articulate it intelligently to Marco, so that I knew what I was talking about. And so we sat down, we had the conversation and he put some thought into it, he said, “Yeah, I think this is the right move for us.”

Kevin McGarvey (20:03):

And we looked into a couple different services. We chose a Bitcoin only exchange, and we went with them. It took a little bit to get onboarded because they were kind of just ramping up their, I guess, corporate side of things. And so in that timeframe, it took until late May, and at that point, the price had dropped 50%, from like 60 down to 30, and so it ended up working out for us. We were able to buy a good bit in June there when the price was in the 30s. And so it ended up working out, but it’s not difficult. Just seeing paperwork you put in for really anything else and no hassles, like I was explaining with the commercial real estate. So it’s super easy for a small business to do it because you don’t have a board of directors and all these shareholders and everything. A lot of people own the business themselves, or maybe they have a partner or two and you just need to discuss it between yourselves, but it’s not difficult, and that’s why I think it’s a great move for small businesses.

Clay Finck (21:03):

So is it just a matter of converting that rainy day fund to Bitcoin 100%? Or how did you think about that? Did you just put a portion of it into Bitcoin? And are any short-term reserves that are probably needed for the next six to 12 months, is that all sitting in cash? Or how did you approach that subject?

Kevin McGarvey (21:23):

That is the tricky part because I want to keep putting more and more into Bitcoin, but you can’t decapitalize the company, you still need cash to run everything. So there is a balance there. You have to put in what you feel comfortable with and then leave some to be able to operate the business. Those are our two strategies. We have our operating company, our P&L strategy where we’re paving parking lots, we’re line striping, seal coating, we’re pouring concrete every day and generating cash from that. But then we’re taking portion of those cash flows and plugging them into Bitcoin to be able to continue to grow wealthier.

Clay Finck (22:02):

Yeah, I’ve listened to many of Michael Saylor’s episodes. He is such a profound thought leader in the Bitcoin space that is making some very bold moves with his company’s balance sheet. One of his points that resonated with me is that prior to the financial crisis, businesses could earn 5% in a savings account, while inflation was roughly two or 3%. Businesses were at least able to break even on their treasury when considering the effects of inflation and the interest rate they were actually able to earn in a bank account. Now compare that to today, businesses get practically nothing in their savings account, while CPI inflation is over 7%, and assets like commodities, which may be a part of their input cost for businesses are rapidly rising, such as oil for example.

Clay Finck (22:49):

With that, how having something like Bitcoin to use as a hedge against that inflation, I believe can be really powerful for small businesses. And it doesn’t have to be an all or nothing deal where you either put 100% or 0% of your treasury into Bitcoin. Companies can put something like 5% if they just wanted a little bit of exposure without taking too much risk. I’d have to imagine in that with you making this move, that a lot of people probably thought you were pretty crazy. I know you stay connected and networked with other small business owners. What was your response to these types of people that thought you were pretty crazy?

Kevin McGarvey (23:24):

Absolutely. They did think I was crazy and many still do, but you’re talking about that problem that we’re having. And like I said, Michael Saylor, he gets a great analogy where as a business, you’re in your rowboat and you’re rowing at 10, 15, maybe 20 miles an hour. Because once you get to certain point in business, there’s only so many times where you could double your business. It’s hard to grow 10, 15, 20%. And if you do, you should be rewarded for that. That should be a great thing. But that’s not happening today because you’re in your rowboat and you’re rowing as hard as you can to go 10, 15, 20 miles an hour, but you have a 25, 30 mile per hour monetary wind blowing in your face. So you’re going backwards, and that’s the issue.

Kevin McGarvey (24:09):

I think he has another great saying that the road to serfdom consists of working exponentially harder to earn a currency that is growing exponentially weaker. So how can a small business combat that? And that’s to purchase a high quality asset that’s appreciating at 150% on average year over year since inception, so that you’re buying something that’s going to beat the rate of inflation.

Kevin McGarvey (24:35):

Your alternatives are, you put a lot of money into a marketing campaign, you try to get another location. I mean, let’s just take a dentist for example, right? You have a dentist and that dental practice is doing real well. It’s got a great reputation in town and it’s making a few hundred thousand dollars a year. And the owner of that business, they have a couple options. They could keep doing what they’re doing, but they’re going to generate a couple hundred thousand dollars that’s going to keep going down in value, or they have the opportunity to maybe, I don’t know, go the next county over and try to start up another location, which is going to cost them more marketing dollars to get the word out, it’s going to cost them a lot to staff it. I mean, it’s going to be a big expense.

Kevin McGarvey (25:20):

And instead of doing that, you can go ahead and you could just purchase Bitcoin and not have to take on all of the risk of all these different employees that are going to be able to make the business work. And there’s a lot to that, and I think Bitcoin is the solution there where you have a nice business, it’s a cash cow, you’ve built it up, you’ve grown your reputation for 20 years, and right now with the current economic policy, your business is getting less valuable. And so if you go ahead and put Bitcoin on your balance sheet, you’ll make your business more valuable.

Clay Finck (25:52):

I think a big concern for a lot of people, at least I associate with is the custody piece. People ask of me, how do you store your Bitcoin? Do you keep it on an exchange? Do you use a hardware wallet? So I’m curious for you as a business owner, do you have some sort of institution custodying your Bitcoin, or how do you go about that subject?

Kevin McGarvey (26:10):

Sure. So great question, because not only is buying Bitcoin very important, but securing it is very important, right? So there are services out there that will cater towards the bigger institutions, like low custody for MicroStrategy or this hedge fund or that. And when I was doing my research, there wasn’t a lot out there for small businesses, and I wanted to make sure that our Bitcoin was safe.

Kevin McGarvey (26:37):

And so what we did was we did a bunch of research and we took self-custody of our own keys. And we have it in a multisig setup. We use a service called YetiCold.com, which is basically a guide to using Bitcoin Core. And so with that, we have three of seven multisig setups. So you would need three keys to be able to access the Bitcoin, but those keys are all offline and they’re geographically distributed. So it’s pretty much as safe as you can get. I mean, I know a lot of people use hardware wallets and things like that. There are some risks there with manufacturer’s risk and other things. But the safest thing that you can do is use Bitcoin Core and hold your own keys.

Clay Finck (27:17):

Are there any concerns for you at all from a regulatory standpoint? I couldn’t tell you the number of people that tell me the government’s just going to regulate it away or it’s going to stifle Bitcoin’s growth because of the regulation or they’re just going to outright ban it. How do you think about that?

Kevin McGarvey (27:33):

I’m not as much worried. I mean, there’s always been positive regulation from what I’ve seen so far. The IRS has designated it as property. Again, we’re not a public entity, so there’s nothing there. We’re not purchasing any alt coins, so there’s no securities or anything like that. My main concern is really just the money printing that’s going on with the government.

Kevin McGarvey (27:56):

I think it was a great podcast Preston had on Mauricio Ledn, and he was talking about everything that had happened in Venezuela. And man, it was just really connecting with me because basically what happened there years ago is happening here right now. He was explaining how they were printing a lot of money, the middle class was shrinking. There were people bragging about how they could drive their car around for four years and then sell it for even more they originally bought it for. I mean, it was kind of like check, check, check of everything that’s going on here today in America. So they had a quote saying this idea that you can make money through honest work dissipates. That really resonated with me, right? We’re doing honest work, but the central banks are making it harder for a small business to go ahead and reap the rewards of that honest work. Like I said, money’s flowing into these Wall Street companies that have these investible assets and you have the bottom 50% of Americans who don’t have that.

Kevin McGarvey (28:57):

And so really worries me. And that’s more so my concern, but I’m not really concerned with any regulation in regards to Bitcoin. In fact, I think it’s going to be good for Bitcoin because then other people are going to get in once these regulations come around, the price is going to go up, and that’s going to be better for us.

Clay Finck (29:15):

Yeah. There’s a tweet I saw yesterday that showed that the annual inflation rate in Turkey was 54% and the producer price inflation in Turkey was a 105%. So just like that alone, those countries experiencing that extreme levels of inflation, businesses in those countries are absolutely getting crushed if they don’t hold either US dollars or even some Bitcoin. Anyone with a smartphone that has access to an exchange is able to purchase Bitcoin, which is one of the brilliant things about it is it’s a global phenomena and anyone has access to it as long as they have a smartphone and access to some sort of exchange to be able to exchange with it.

Clay Finck (29:53):

I’m curious, to talk more about your company specifically, what was the reaction from your employees when made this move of buying Bitcoin for the company’s balance sheet?

Kevin McGarvey (30:04):

Sure. What we did was I was thinking of how we can integrate Bitcoin into our business, and I feel so strongly about it that I wanted everybody to have some. So what we did was implemented a $5 Bitcoin bonus for every employee in the company. So weekly, they’ll get a $5 bonus that when the Strike app came out with the Pay Me in Bitcoin feature, made it very easy for small businesses. They give you a routing number, an account number and we put that into our payroll service and it goes ahead and transfers that. It shoots it in as you US dollars and then transfers it into Bitcoin. And so yeah, every Friday morning they wake up and they get a notification from the Strike app that they were paid $5 in Bitcoin.

Kevin McGarvey (30:51):

And so I’m trying to educate everybody on it because, again, it’s going to be impossible for me to pay them 20 to 30% more year over year, right? It’s just not going to be feasible. So the best thing that I could do for my employees is to try to educate them on Bitcoin. And I hope that they’re not only putting that $5 in, that they’re putting maybe a little bit more of their paycheck in there as time goes by and they start to see the value in it. And so I’m working on that. It’s a process, right? Everybody doesn’t get it right away or understand it right away. And so we’re working on putting together education sessions for everybody so that we can continue to educate them on this. But yeah, as of right now, they’ve been getting $5 a week and we’re really excited about that.

Clay Finck (31:36):

I love that weekly Bitcoin bonus you do. I think you’ll hear from a lot of investors that the best way to start learning about an investment is to get skin in the game yourself, and with your employees, you’re just handing them Bitcoin, depositing it into their account. So they’re going to be interested in it. They’re going to start watching the price. They’re going to start listening to Michael Saylor or Preston Pysh interviews and start learning more about it.

Kevin McGarvey (31:58):

Yeah, absolutely. Like I said, there’s no drawback to it, right? It’s not anything taken out of their paycheck. It’s just a benefit that the company is offering. And so we’re looking forward to looking into some other stuff as well, like maybe a Bitcoin IRA, something along those lines, but yeah, trying to get everybody involved in it. And I’m confident that they’ll be looking back soon here, once the price really rises, and saying like, “Wow, you know what? My employer was looking out for me. They were trying to do the right thing by me. I thought this might have been crazy when they first rolled it out, but now I’m going to go ahead and keep putting more money into it because it’s going to continue to grow my wealth.” So yeah, we’re really excited about it moving forward here.

Clay Finck (32:36):

I’m curious. Has implementing the Bitcoin bonus helped with recruiting at all?

Kevin McGarvey (32:42):

You know, that’s another good feature about it. So we recently put up a post for an inside operations coordinator, and we had a woman reach out to me specifically saying like, “Wow this is amazing, this Bitcoin bonus. It really shows that you’re a forward thinking company and that’s the kind of company that I want to be with.” And then we also want to attract those types of people. Bitcoiners are great to work with. So it works for us in the recruiting realm as well.

Kevin McGarvey (33:09):

I mean, if you’re trying to differentiate right now, there’s a big war for talent as a small business where everybody’s trying to hire and everybody’s trying to get an edge. And so having that on there separates us from anybody else that’s hiring out there. I don’t know of any other company doing a weekly Bitcoin bonus like we do. So it separates us, it’s a differentiator, and we were able to pick up some good talent because of that.

Clay Finck (33:32):

I’m super curious about this one. We see companies like MicroStrategy and Tesla and Square. There’s a few names in the public company sphere that have embraced Bitcoin and adopted it, but it’s much harder for a public company to adopt Bitcoin, because like you mentioned earlier, there’s a board of directors, there’s thousands of shareholders. But with a private company, many times, it’s held by just one or two people, the ownership. So that’s 100% up to them if they want to adopt Bitcoin or not. So are you familiar with any other private businesses making a move like this? Has businesses been approaching you to ask you questions about the subject? Talk to us about that.

Kevin McGarvey (34:10):

I don’t know of any other private company yet that has done so, except for… I’m actually going to be doing a podcast with Ali from Tahini’s, the Canadian restaurant chain. So I’m really looking forward to that. He actually bought some before Michael Saylor. So that’s really impressive. I’m really interested to talk to him.

Kevin McGarvey (34:30):

And then as far as… I know a lot of people that have bought it before me in regards to personally, but not in regards to their company. So I’ve been talking to people about it. I’m in a group called Vistage. It’s a CEO group with really bright CEOs of seven, eight, nine figure companies and been telling them about it. And so there’s two guys in the group who have bought it personally and hoping that they do so for their company as well. But yeah, that’s all I know as of right now. I’m hoping to get the word out. That’s my goal, right? My passion is entrepreneurship and small business. And I just think that this is the best thing that a small business can do right now. And so that’s why I’m on this platform and just trying to get the word out here to other businesses.

Kevin McGarvey (35:15):

I did have one person reach out to me when I was on a previous podcast. They reached out to me on LinkedIn, and he was a guy who sells insurance for companies’ receivables. And he really liked what I had to say on the podcast, and he reached out to me and said he was thinking about starting a business, trying to get small business owners to put Bitcoin on the balance sheet. So he’s going to try to help them out. So hopefully that takes off and other businesses start doing it here.

Clay Finck (35:44):

You mentioned the networking group you’re a part of. Have those guys approached you to learn more about taking on this strategy? And what are some of the big hurdles that they’re running into that’s either stop them from not doing it themselves? Could you talk a little bit about some of the hurdles they’re running into?

Kevin McGarvey (36:02):

So I think it’s frame of reference. When the pandemic hit, I was real worried and we’d be talking strategy, and they were more calm about it. They were like, “Oh, we’ve been through 2008. We’ve seen downturns before. We’ve been through 2001 with the dot-com bubble and 9/11 when things took a downturn,” all those types of things. And so, to them, they’re looking at it through that frame of reference. I guess for me, I’ve never had any other economic downturn, right? We started our company in 2012, but I see this as very different. I see this as different than ’08 and the ones before. And so I don’t think they see the problem like I do. And then, like I said, it’s just different.

Kevin McGarvey (36:47):

I’m the youngest entrepreneur in that group. So the other guys are a little bit older than me. Not saying that they can’t get it, but it’s just different for them. And so I’ve presented to them and tried to educate them on it, but pretty much always have the same questions, right? Like can’t the government shut it down? Isn’t it just used for nefarious reasons like drug dealing and laundering money and things of that nature? You just see the headlines, that’s pretty much it, and haven’t done the actual work to educate themselves on it. And so that’s kind of the hold up is getting them to take that deep dive to realize, hey, this is a big problem right now and Bitcoin is the solution.

Clay Finck (37:26):

Yeah. I’ve realized that I really can’t make someone get it. I can give them the resources, but me talking to someone for, say, 30 or 60 minutes isn’t going to make them get it. I was skeptical just like everyone else was when we first started learning about it. And then as you see the price continue to go up and adoption to continue and these mainstream institutions to continue to get into it, maybe you dig a little bit deeper into some of the skeptical concerns that people had, whether it be the regulatory piece or whatever. And then even if you still might not be fully bought in, you can still put call it one or 5% of your portfolio or your balance sheet into it to account for that risk. If you put 1% into your portfolio and it ends up going to zero or getting cut in half or whatever, it doesn’t destroy your financial position, but you’re still participating in that upside.

Kevin McGarvey (38:17):

Absolutely. I’m all in on it. But that’s where I try to let them know, hey, listen, it doesn’t hurt to just put a portion in. I mean, there’s guys that have gosh, a lot of cash, a lot of cash in reserve just sitting on the balance sheet. And I keep telling them, “Hey, this is our responsibility, as a CEO, as the president of the company to make sure that cash is managed properly.” And I try to educate them on it.

Kevin McGarvey (38:39):

I mean, my process of trying to educate everybody is to break it down to digital gold. I think that’s the easiest to understand, right? I know they talk about digital real estate and digital energy, but I think starting with digital gold is probably the best way, and trying to take everybody through like, hey, what is money, right? What is money? What do we use it for? And what are the properties of money, which is durability, portability, divisibility, uniformity, and acceptance, and limited supply. So try to walk through those things, try to walk through the functions of money, a medium of exchange, unit of account and stored value. And so I’m trying to break down how we used gold, we used to use gold because of those, but now Bitcoin is that, but better. It’s more scarce and there’s a finite supply. They’re not making any more. There’s only 21 million, and that’s what we need to use as a stored value here moving forward. And so I try how to break it down in that way.

Kevin McGarvey (39:37):

And also, I guess the other hold up is right now I’m a 33 year old paving contractor. So what I tell them is, “Hey, I understand you might be skeptical to take that advice from me, but look who else is doing this.” You have publicly traded companies, you have MicroStrategy, Square, which is now Block, Tesla, all the Bitcoin mining companies. You have hedge funds doing this. You have banks offering custody services. You have politicians who have bought Bitcoin that are fighting for Bitcoin. So I try to tell them that, “Hey, it’s not just me doing this. There’s a lot of people that are doing this right now, and if you look into what they’re saying as well I think you’ll see the reasons.”

Clay Finck (40:19):

What is next for you and your business? Are you just going to continue to sweep most of your cash flows into Bitcoin? Or maybe talk a little bit about the Bitcoin Roth IRA that you mentioned earlier.

Kevin McGarvey (40:31):

We’ll keep sweeping our cash flows into Bitcoin for sure. I mean, like I said, it’s going to be an uphill battle for small businesses. So for my business, for instance, gosh, everything is going up. We get emails from our concrete suppliers every other month saying the price of concrete is going up. The price of asphalt is going up. The price of asphalt sealer has gone up, the price of paint. Everything. The price of fuel. As far as wages go, it’s a war for talent out there. So if you’re trying to bring somebody on board to your company, you’re going to have to pay more than the next guy is. So those prices are going up. And to be honest, I think Bitcoin is a necessity.

Kevin McGarvey (41:08):

If you’re a residential painting contractor, for example, it’s just going to get too expensive for people to want to paint their house. Like the painting the house is a luxury. You figure, “Oh, okay, I’m really getting tired of this brown color. Let’s switch it to blue. So I’ll call a painting contractor.” When paint gets so expensive and the labor is so expensive people just… They’re not going to want to do it anymore. They’re going to say, “Okay, I can live with this because it’s too much to paint the house. Or I’m just going to go ahead and I’m going to do it myself.”

Kevin McGarvey (41:38):

So like I was saying earlier with the comment that Mauricio from Ledn had made, it’s going to be hard to make a living doing that honest work. And so I think this is the strategy that you need to implement for your small business. Otherwise, I really think that companies are going to be in trouble here moving forward, just because the dollar’s getting devalued, inflation’s at a all-time high, and it’s going to be really tough to combat that unless you have assets that are going to appreciate faster than that. And Bitcoin is the strongest asset and has appreciated the most over the past decade. So that’s why I feel that strategy to be a necessity.

Clay Finck (42:15):

How about the Bitcoin IRA? What does that look like for your employees and your business?

Kevin McGarvey (42:20):

To be honest, I’m just starting to look into that, so I don’t have all the answers on that one right there, but we’re looking into it and looked into a couple different services, like Choice where you can still hold your own keys. So I’m looking into that right now, but that’s obviously very important to me that you’re able to still custody your Bitcoin as well.

Clay Finck (42:41):

Before we close out the episode, I wanted to ask you, what makes you most excited about the future of Bitcoin?

Kevin McGarvey (42:48):

Gosh, I think there’s just exciting things happening every day, right? I mean, look at what’s happening right now in Canada. GoFundMe shut everything down and they just took people’s money and put it elsewhere. But they were able to get the truckers some money by getting them Bitcoin. In Ukraine right now, I mean, people aren’t sending gold, they’re sending Bitcoin. There’s more politicians that are getting involved, there’s more companies that are getting involved in Bitcoin. And that’s what I try to tell everybody is please don’t focus on the price, you’ve got to look and see what’s happening and how undervalued it is right now. So every day there’s good things happening in the Bitcoin space, and so exciting to me. I’m just really bullish on the future here.

Clay Finck (43:29):

Yeah. I think if you tell people about Bitcoin and the sovereignty piece, how you’re actually able to hold your own keys, they’ll be like, “What do you mean? I have the US dollar and I have my banks. They take care of my money for me.” But you see these things happening in other countries where their accounts are getting frozen or they aren’t able to send money to their friends and family because there’s a bank run or something.

Clay Finck (43:49):

So with Bitcoin, no individual government, company can stop any transaction at all. That’s kind of the beauty of it is every single individual that’s a part of the Bitcoin network has that self sovereignty on their money. And really their energy because money is a form of storing your life, energy, and your work.

Kevin McGarvey (44:08):

Absolutely. It’s the only thing you can truly own. Even though you own your house, they’re still going to tax you on that. Right? You don’t own that land. And anything else you have. Versus Bitcoin, you can hold your own keys, you could set up a multisig setup to where somebody comes in and somebody comes into my house and tries to steal my Bitcoin, they might be able to take one key, but you need three, which are geographically distributed all over the place. So you own it. They can’t seize it from you or confiscate it or anything like that. And so that is really why it’s so valuable.

Clay Finck (44:41):

Kevin, thank you so much for coming on to the Millennial Investing podcast. I really enjoyed learning from your insights and think it’s really valuable that we bring on just an everyday, small business entrepreneur that’s just trying to provide for others and do good for his business and his family. So before we close things out, where can the audience go to connect with you?

Kevin McGarvey (45:02):

So you can reach out to me on LinkedIn, Kevin McGarvey. My company is All Out Parking Lots, and you can message me there. I’d be happy to message anybody back. Again, my mission is to help other small business owners. So please don’t hesitate to reach out. I’m here as a resource and here to help, and that is the best place to get me.

Clay Finck (45:20):

Awesome. Thank you so much for coming on, Kevin.

Kevin McGarvey (45:23):

Clay, thank you so much for having me.

Clay Finck (45:25):

All right, everybody, I hope you enjoyed today’s episode. Please go ahead and follow us on your favorite podcast app so you can get these episodes delivered automatically. And if you haven’t already done so, be sure to check out our website, theinvestorspodcast.com. There you’ll find all of our episodes, some educational resources we have, as well as some tools you can use as an investor. And with that, we’ll see you again next time.

Outro (45:48):

Thank you for listening to TIP. Make sure to subscribe to We Study Billionaires by The Investor’s Podcaster Network. Every Wednesday, we teach you about Bitcoin, and every Saturday, we study billionaires and the financial markets. To access our show notes, transcripts, or courses go to theinvestorspodcast.com.

Outro (46:09):

This show is for entertainment purposes only. Before making any decision, consult a professional. This show is copyrighted by The Investor’s Podcast Network. Written permission must be granted before syndication or rebroadcasting.