Why I Refuse to Be the Only Rich Man in the Village: A Financial Wake-Up Story

Unconscious Incompetence to Unconscious Competence: My Journey Through the Financial Paradigm Shift

In 2017, I wrote a book called ‘The Lazy Man’s Guide To Getting Rich In The Next Few Years’. It was about Bitcoin and how it was going to massively shoot up in value.

In the book, I mentioned that we weren’t yet at the end of the run of ‘currency created by governments’ (a.k.a. FIAT currencies). But in the book, I said we were heading there.

Then, in 2020, after the powers that be hit the pause button on the world, I realised that the economy and, in fact, the thing that supports it were going to be faced with an insurmountable challenge.

I had missed the financial events of August and September 2019, mainly because I had just retired and was chilling out. But then, thanks to the idiocy of the people running the planet, I was forced to look at the financial world again.

Because it had become crystal clear that it was changing, and I may need to move things around to avoid getting stepped on or blown up!

I’m very much a prevention rather than cure kind of person. I will do a huge amount of work today and for several months so that I can be lazy forever afterwards.

So from March 2020, I sat and studied as many experts as I could.

My discernment and my intuition have always been extremely good at whittling down the experts to the ones who are experts and the ones who are not, but have credentials saying they are.

Then, once I have removed the non-experts, I can further whittle down the real experts to their individual skill sets. A lot of the time, they do not know what exactly their superpowers are, but I can usually identify them.

For example, I have people I listen to for long-term thinking, different people for mid-term, and different people again for the immediate term. I use these people to help hone my skillset. I have found it is possible to continuously retain high-level competency in all of these time scales.

Over the years and to this day, I have paid and continue to pay thousands for a stack of subscriptions to the real experts, which I think can enable me to hone my skills the most.

For years, I wouldn’t do this, though.

Because in my early days, when I started working online, I used to find that I would buy some training or a course or updates, then not get actual value from it.

Now, however, I probably pay $1,500 to $2,500/mth for subscriptions, and my simple rule is I have to make more than that each month from them!

To be precise, every subscription I have has to make me money or I cancel it.

Now this may seem obvious and like, well, who wouldn’t do it that way?

But that’s not how we are psychologically made up. There is a flaw in some of us humans in this area. I clearly have it, so I had to work around it.

In both investing and business-opportunity products, the same trap looms as the one where people sign up for a gym in January and quit by February… Yet keep paying the membership because their ego convinces them that having it is the same as using it.

In the investment world, it is the same thing, it is just not so obvious.

I am looking to enhance my skillset to outperform the experts. I love beating the experts. It is one of life’s joys to me (we are all different, this is just one I particularly love).

I have achieved beating the experts in numerous sectors before, such as production, window fitting, real estate investing, mindset training and probably several more if I sit and think about it… But now I am achieving it in my current interest, stock trading.

The experts I choose to learn from will never know I am working to outperform them; it is just a game I like to play to keep me interested in the game. Because once the challenge has gone, then I lose interest in remaining in the game. This is a weakness I identified in myself, so I had to come up with a way to work around it.

Because I know that the length of time in the game, combined with a kaizen approach to the game, equals ending up one of the biggest winners in the game.

The problem most of us have in one or more areas of life is, we would like to join in on one of life’s games, but it has not yet elevated itself to the level of importance that it mentally shifts from a like to do, to a have to do.

This little, tiny, almost insignificant shift is the difference between mediocrity and greatness. If you can attain the state of having to do something, then your results are usually worlds apart from others.

If you look at the things you have become good or great at, it is because you moved to a state of having to do them. You desired to achieve something, you moved way past liking the idea and simply attained the state of having to do it.

Because I run the finances for my family and because people close to me look for my opinion on which way the financial wind is blowing, when 2020 came around, the financial world had raised its status to me. It went from something I liked to know about, liked to chat about, to something that I had to know about in great detail.

So even though I despise those who were responsible for what we are all still going through, their actions snapped me out of complacency and focused me on things of more importance.

At the time, I thought the galactic stupidity of our wondrous leaders would have dire financial consequences. But now I had to move on from that basic instinctual level to understanding the details and to building myself a map of the minefield that we were all walking through.

Most of us walk through this minefield with little to no comprehension that we are walking through a minefield… The fact that most of us don’t know it, that it hasn’t become of importance to us yet, does not alter the fact that we are all walking through the minefield…

Don’t believe me, I can prove it with a single image, but I will use two…

Now that is walking through a minefield, and not knowing you are!

ALL currencies LINKED to the US Dollar are dying. This is a minefield every one of us is walking through and 99.5% are doing NOTHING about it.

What’s worse, we are quickly approaching a point in this minefield where there isn’t just the odd mine or two around but, instead, we are all but certain to step on several mines…

Or to put it another way, we are quickly approaching FREEFALL in the value of our currencies and everything that is denominated in them… Little things like, Real Estate, Pensions, and Savings... They are all dying thanks to the unit of account they are measured in.

So I am not over stating anything, as this is serious…

As I said in previous articles, this train is leaving the station, you are either going to be on it and have a semi-comfortable ride, or you are going to get taken out by it… No one gets to sidestep this journey.

My role is not to avoid all of the mines but to avoid most of them and have mitigation strategies for any mines I actually step on.

Whereas most people are complacently walking through the minefield and feel protected by their own recency bias which has demonstrated their ability to have not trodden on any mines thus far (me in 2020).

Doesn’t change the fact that I was, and they are, walking through a minefield and have no idea that they are doing so…

This is to do with the Conscious Competence.

1. Unconscious Incompetence - You don’t know what you don’t know. You lack a skill and aren’t yet aware of it. (where most people are now - 99.5% of the population)

2. Conscious Incompetence - You realise you lack the skill. You’re aware of your deficit and that you need to learn. (approximately where 0.1% of people are)

3. Conscious Competence - You have the skill, but you have to think about it; it takes effort and conscious focus. (approximately where 0.3% of people are)

4. Unconscious Competence - The skill is now second-nature; you can do it without having to think about it in detail. (approximately where 0.1% of people are)

So, in 2020, I became not okay with not having an abundance of knowledge in this area.

I was finally conscious of my incompetence…

So I began to study…

It didn’t take too long before I saw that the national currencies of countries were all going to collapse in value against real stuff, gold and silver. This was exactly what I had theorised in my Lazy Man’s Guide from a few years before.

However, when I first realised this in 2020, it was just a theory. But it seemed a certainty to me, so it was at that point that my curiosity moved to another level. I voraciously consumed data, creating a map of details, expertise and methods for calculating people’s predictive abilities.

I had moved from Unconscious Incompetence to Conscious Incompetence to Conscious Competence.

But that wasn’t enough for me. When I can see the problem clearly, that’s when I get really interested, and the game becomes even more fun.

It probably took me about another 18 to 24 months to attain the state of Unconscious Competence. I knew that would happen with continuous practice, as that had happened in every other discipline I had ever gotten to this level of interest in.

When I first started out people taught me to become an expert and then stay in that field of study. But I thought that approach wasn’t that smart a move. Surely I would get bored? I was right of course; non-consciously, I had avoided being caught by the trap of the Zulu principle for my life.

But the Zulu principle is how I have achieved a minimum of expert status in an array of fields.

The Zulu Principle was originally written about obtaining a level of focus in Stock Trading. In a nutshell: Invest deeply in a narrow field where you can build expertise and therefore gain an edge, then apply that focus in identifying undervalued growth opportunities.

But the principle carries over to many disciplines, and I have non-consciously used this principle throughout my life, even before the principle existed.

But about the time I became Unconsciously Competent (level 4), and before the time my theories had moved to observable facts, which was somewhere towards the end of 2022 (I think)... I remember sitting on the sofa and staring out of the window.

My wife asked me what was wrong, and I said, ‘everyone is screwed and they have no idea they are screwed’ (I used a different word than screwed at the time). This is because they were at level 1; they were ALL Unconsciously Incompetent.

I understood the ramifications of what was taking place, I saw all the devastation we are all still yet to go through, and I understood that everyone didn’t even know that they didn’t know!

I had stopped thinking about myself and protecting those dear to me, and I was looking at the bigger picture. Sure, I’d looked at it before, but it was like an overpowering, insurmountable problem this time. As they weren’t even trying to fix it for themselves, because they didn’t even know it was broken.

In 2020, when I attained the state of Conscious Incompetence, I had begun shifting all of our assets into a position to take advantage of this new paradigm, even though it was just a theory then. But I had quickly seen where everything was going, so I didn’t wait to act.

But again, I was sitting on the sofa (pattern emerging here) when I realised that I should at least attempt to help people local to me. My primary motive being, I’m not safe if I am the only person with money. My secondary motive is a sense of responsibility, which I seem to have, whereby I have to attempt to highlight the problem for other people.

This feeling, this need, has gotten me into trouble numerous times under the ‘no good deed goes unpunished’ truism.

But anyway, I thought I’d attempt to help people local to me. More or less everyone thought that this was a nice idea, but that it was actually pretty dumb, as my theories hadn’t really got much signs of life. So they thought I was wasting my time.

I have a technique with ideas: when they come up, I show them to the people around me and wait and see what happens. I don’t need to judge the idea, as there is a far more effective way that the Universe has provided us all with to find out if an idea needs to come into reality.

Once I have said the idea, people say what they want and they may like, dislike, hate the idea… Whatever.

Rarely do I get an instant go with it signal, but it does happen. However, the way the Universe helps is… Ideas that die don’t come back. But the ideas that do come back are your intuition telling you to act or add more data.

Well, this idea of helping out those in the local community by educating them about Gold, Silver, how money actually works, and the state of the economy kept coming back.

Well, earlier this week I finally did it…

My son David put a post on the local Facebook page, saying anyone interested in learning about Gold & Silver, my Dad teaches it internationally, but he is happy to introduce people to the concepts of it for free.

I wasn’t looking to get anything from it. Maybe make some new local friends, but that was all I’d get. My intention was purely, go to give. If no one shows up, then that would be the Universe telling me that I didn’t need to do it.

So David and I went along, supported by my friend Nicola, her sister, and her friend. Five people showed up. We had space for seven, so I was very happy with this.

There was a successful local businessman, a couple in their 80s, a friend with them who was a fair bit younger, and a 19-year-old college student. There were a few others who couldn’t make the actual time.

I told them my motives for doing the chat, that I didn’t want to be the only rich man in the village, that I didn’t expect, want, or need them to believe me, and that I wanted to help them to learn how to go and protect themselves.

So I talked to them about inflation and how that was baked in. The importance of confidence in money and how, when that confidence is lost, money dies. How currency works and how currency is tied to gold. What the gold-silver ratio is. How much paper gold and silver there is compared to real gold and silver. How gold prices are not actually going up, but in fact, it is the value of the currency falling. Why gold and silver prices will continue to rise. And finally, all the bail-in laws that we have yet to face.

So, pretty much a standard chat in a pub…

No, we don’t chat about money, we are British after all (a big part of the problem).

So this was not an ‘avoid difficult subjects’ chat. I gave them the facts as I saw them and encouraged them to ask questions and then continue their research.

I also went through all of the different ways to buy gold and silver, and the suggested amounts needed to cover themselves as insurance and as an investment. Not that I gave any advice of course…

So what was the main point of my chat?

To introduce people to the fact that they are not okay and that they need to take action.

Complacency, recency bias, and a lack of financial education all have people not thinking about what actions they can take while time is available and before the crowd shows up.

Simply, I wanted to move them from Unconscious Incompetence to Conscious Incompetence.

I found out some interesting things from them all, but I have gone on far too long already. So I’ll save those (and a really scary question I got) for another message.

But today I’ll finish with a question. When it comes to your financial world, interacting with the real financial world, where are you on the Conscious Competence scale?

1. Unconscious Incompetence – You don’t know what you don’t know. You lack a skill and aren’t yet aware of it.

2. Conscious Incompetence – You realise you lack the skill. You’re aware of your deficit and that you need to learn.

3. Conscious Competence – You have the skill, but you have to think about it; it takes effort and conscious focus.

4. Unconscious Competence – The skill is now second-nature; you can do it without having to think about it in detail.

The cool thing about attaining level 4 is that a whole new lot of levels open up, where you go from beginner to Grand Master. I got to beginner in 2020. I am not a Grand Master yet, and I may decide I do not need to attain that level, but currently, I am having fun staying in the game so, currently I plan to become one.

Best wishes,

Andy

P.S. One of the people who attended asked me the scariest question I have had in years, I told her that if was really scary, then answered it. I’ll cover this really scary question in my next message to you.



My thesis for why I think this way:
Fiat currency is fundamentally broken. Since 1971 it has lost over 99% of its value, and that decline is accelerating. Governments are too far off‐course to reverse this trend. So they will likely resort to hyperinflation as the easy way out. While people see prices rising, they don’t always see how rapidly their purchasing power is eroding. The implication: pensions, savings, and assets accounted for with government money are at grave risk. To guard against this scenario, individuals should move at least 5% of their assets into physical gold and silver that they hold directly.