Ep36 Christine Callesen—Why She Buys Gold and Silver Instead of Going to Starbucks

Christine Callesen  0:00  
My great grandfather probably had gold and silver. My dad, he used to collect coins. Like, who collects coins, Dad? Right? Nobody collects coins. Well, I'm a coin collector now. The reason I collect the coins is because I get the intrinsic value in the metal. It's not just about the pretty piece of the coin. It's the metal itself that translates to my future and my family's.

Scott Groves  0:24  
Welcome to Henderson HQ. This is the podcast where you get all the stories behind the businesses that make our community tick. Don't forget to subscribe to our weekly newsletter. Hey, ladies and gentlemen, it's Scott Groves with the Henderson HQ podcast. Don't forget to subscribe to the newsletter, the website, the podcast, all the things. HendersonHQ.com. Thanks for being here. I'm actually here with a new friend who is a reader of our newsletter. She's a business owner of Be Real Assets, which we're going to talk about what that is because I think this is very pertinent right now for where the market is and where assets are and where valuations are and everything that's going on with oil and all the fun stuff. So Christine is here to talk to us about Be Real Assets. Which when I watched your video and I watched the promo and I looked up the app, I'm like, oh, this is like I think this is like micro purchases of gold, silver, stuff like that. So,

Christine Callesen  1:14  
so Be Real Assets. I started the company because I really was looking for something outside of the traditional, like buying gold and silver at a pawn shop, right? I was looking for something different, right? So I came across Sound Money, and Sound Money is a company that we've partnered with, and you can fractionally buy gold and silver at any price point you want, and it it literally instantaneous. You can sell it and get your funds transferred to your bank within days.

Scott Groves  1:45  
So I was just looking up this morning. You know, gold was on this crazy tear, up to almost $5,000 an ounce. It's sitting somewhere around $4,100 an ounce. Silver was on a real tear

Christine Callesen  1:54  
back in January.

Speaker 1  1:55  
Yeah,

Christine Callesen  1:56  
went up to 125.

Scott Groves  1:57  
I bought a bunch of silver just for fun when money was raining from the clouds because during COVID, when interest rates were super low, if you were in the mortgage space, you were making money. And I bought a bunch of silver that's sitting in a safe deposit box at Chase, and $25 coins were worth like $120 coins. I was like, I should sell, and I'm like, no, it's going to go to 200, and now it's back down to 60. So it's like commodities are almost worse than like the stock market. Like I can just kind of set it and forget it, but for some reason when it's a physical asset that I can go to the bank and touch, I'm like, oh, I want to look up what the price is. It doesn't matter. I'm not gonna sell it. Right, my kids are gonna inherit one day. I do. So why, like, why were you originally interested in gold and silver? Because there's a lot. There's a lot of people that that have different reasons for this. Well,

Christine Callesen  2:38  
you know, for me, it was. It really is. I just like to say it. It's God's money. It's the first money that we ever really ever used, and I felt like it was something really important for me and my family to have a tangible asset. And it's not something that I have to go to a bank and have to, you know, trade. I can do it on my own. I can go to a local pawn shop, which I don't like doing, just to let you know. But it's something that I just wanted to physically have in my house, so I do. I have both. I have both gold in my in my house, and I also have it in the Sound Money Wallet. Really, I feel like it's an asset that long term has always gone up.

Speaker 2  3:13  
Yeah,

Christine Callesen  3:13  
it's never just laid flat or gone down. So, like back in January, like you said, it was like at 125 an ounce, and I thought the same thing. I'm like, oh, I'm gonna sell. I'm gonna sell, and I was like, no, you sit on it, right? So I did my my averaging, and I thought I'm just gonna keep on stacking, and that's what I do every single week. I buy gold and silver, and it's automatic out of my bank account.

Scott Groves  3:35  
So I feel like there's kind of like three camps of buying commodities. There's the crazy speculators that are like you might as well be trading crypto if you're trading pork bellies or like gold futures and silver futures like that to me is almost like gambling. Yeah. Then there's the okay I own some stocks I own a house like I just kind of want to diversify and then there's some people maybe like me who are like the crazy libertarians who are like the government is trillions of dollars in debt. It's all going to fall apart. The only thing that's going to be worth any money is gold and silver. So, like, one, where do you sit? And two, where do you see your clients tend to sit?

Christine Callesen  4:10  
I okay. So for me, I'm a little bit like you, right? I'm I'm that way. I'm you know right.

Scott Groves  4:15  
9 trillion in debt. It's all going to it's

Christine Callesen  4:16  
all going to hell in a handbasket. Yes, and so I'm sitting high and pretty on my gold and silver. Yes, I tend to believe that as well. But I think most people are right in the middle of the road. Most people want to have a little bit here, a little bit there. For us, that's what we started doing-just a little bit here and a little bit there. And so now, most of my clients-they don't put all of their money in gold and silver. Right? They're smart. They're like the rest of us. They put a little bit in stocks, a little bit in real estate, and a little bit in gold and silver. So that's where most people, I think, are laying. But also, people are seeing the price of everything go up, right? Their dollar is not going up. Their dollar is actually losing money every single day. When you look at your savings account and you have a penny's worth of interest in a year,

Scott Groves  4:58  
right?

Christine Callesen  4:58  
Right. If you're lucky. Right, and over the year, your silver and your gold are always going to go up.

Scott Groves  5:06  
Got it. Right. We've done a pretty good job in the Henderson HQ community of like staying away from politics because it's pretty divisive and whatnot. Yeah. And this is actually not a political statement because I think both parties suck equally as much. That's just me, the crazy libertarian. But you know, when we talk about the $39 trillion in debt, it's like it's not even like a a fathomable number, right? Right. I think I just made that word up, but it is a number you cannot fathom.

Christine Callesen  5:29  
I understood it though. Okay,

Scott Groves  5:30  
perfect. And so I was actually just watching a video this morning, Coffeezilla or one of the one of these online financial guys, and they're like, there is three ways to go in the right direction when it comes to debt. We can either raise taxes; neither party is going to do that. No, we can cut spending; definitely, neither party is going to do that. Or the Federal Reserve and the government can pull these levers to make inflation go up. So, well, the $39 trillion of debt they have now feels like less in 20 years. Just like you know, 50 years ago, you could have bought a house for $10,000. Now, $10,000 will cover three or four months worth of rent. So, I believe this is my belief. I believe that the government is just going to find a way to continue inflation going up, so people feel rich because my house is worth a million dollars. And but it's like, as a taxpayer, I owe the government a half a million dollars in debt, basically, because they've taken it out. Correct. So, how does like gold and silver and commodities like protect against that?

Christine Callesen  6:27  
Well, and historically, gold and silver has protected against inflation. So, if you look back in 1966, an ounce of silver was $1, and in 1966, you could have also bought a Ford Mustang for $2,500, right? So you tell me, can you even put a down payment on a Ford Mustang today for 2500? I

Scott Groves  6:47  
actually looked at one the other day. It was $170,000 because it's like their specialty something something something. So right, yeah, no, you cannot.

Christine Callesen  6:54  
Right, exactly. So gold and silver is that hedge against inflation. So what I do, and most of my clients do, is they buy gold and they buy silver and they leave it. They let it stack, and that was over time. You start seeing how your dollar, as it's going down, so you can't buy that Mustang like you could in 1966. You now you're going to see your value. Your your assets are going up, but your dollar is going down. So now, when I started buying gold and silver, it was 25 bucks an ounce for silver, right? That was probably 2022, approximately 2020. Now it's up to about $70 an ounce. I don't know anywhere else that I've could have protected my investment the same way,

Scott Groves  7:33  
right? And and gold or silver is not going to go out of business. Like you know, every great company, GE or Sony or whatever they when they came out they were the tech companies of the day right correct and everyone's like well just invest in ChatGPT or Google or whatever every business has a life cycle so even if you're investing the stock market businesses can go to zero that's a possibility

Speaker 3  7:53  
yes

Scott Groves  7:54  
silver and gold has never gone to zero

Christine Callesen  7:55  
it never has gone to zero exactly exactly nobody's ever been like here just take all my gold it's worth and you know if you look at all the data centers too that they're building, if you look at all the the electric cars they're building, everything is using silver, right? It's that conductor that they all need. So the rush on silver is going to be even higher. When I started buying gold, it was at $2,500 an ounce. Now it's it sitting at but 444 $100 an ounce, give or take. So really, everything is going up when it comes to the commodities, right? And it's the hard assets. And the great thing about sound money is that this is this is not futures. This is not an asset that we're leveraging against 10 other people. You are actually buying an ounce of silver, an ounce of gold. You can even have it mailed to your home if you want. So there's some of my customers who like that option.

Scott Groves  8:43  
Okay, so explain this because I think most people don't understand this. And by the way, if you're into financial conversations, I'm going to blow your mind. If you have a Charles Schwab account and you own, I think this is correct, you own one stock of Apple. You don't actually own one stop of stock of Apple. You own a certificate that's against a future, against like what charge swap.

Christine Callesen  9:04  
My understanding too,

Scott Groves  9:05  
and it's like it. And the same thing happens in gold, right? Like there's some of these services you buy gold, and what you're really buying is you're buying somebody's speculative like 10 to one coupon on a few. I don't, I don't know what the correct language is. I'm probably butchering this all, but it's like you don't actually own the physical gold or silver, or you own like a mutual fund of what should be silver,

Christine Callesen  9:24  
right?

Scott Groves  9:24  
Really leveraged, but it's really

Christine Callesen  9:25  
it's electronic. It's a it's it's electronic, but it's not the physical gold and silver. What we are selling you is the physical gold and silver. You just make the choice of where you want to keep it. Do you want to keep it in the digital wallet, which is actually based in Idaho, right? It's not based in some. It's not based in some country where you're never going to see it. You can actually go see the vault if you would like. It's based in Idaho Falls. You you actually buy that ounce of silver, and you can say, hey, you know, I would rather have that in my house. They will mail it to you FedEx overnight, and I've actually done it to make sure it works. Right, I you know because you never know, right? Next day, I had a guy at my front door from FedEx. I had to sign for it, show my ID, and they handed me my my ounce of silver. So it's really it's and it's an easy way for us to buy an asset that you don't have to worry about if you're getting screwed over, right? So if you buy an asset, let's say from eBay, right? So you go buy a silver coin from eBay. How do you know it's a real silver coin? You have no clue. You're trusting that some person who's selling it to you, this is actually legit buying them from the U.S. Mint.

Scott Groves  10:32  
Yeah, I mean, even pawn shops. It's like I think there's some reputable pawn shops. There are. There is there is the extra layer of security that's a physical building. So if they sold me a bunch of fake gold, I guess I could just go burn down the building. Not not recommending violence. Not recording people. But I'm just saying there is some physical accountability. Correct. But like with a bunch of this online stuff, I have actually heard horror stories of people. Oh, I got a really great deal on this Rolex, or I got a really great deal on this, you know, gold coin, or I got a. And it's like, oh yeah, you got a really great deal because it was fake, and it turns out it was fake. A

Christine Callesen  11:02  
friend of mine actually did that. He went and spent quite a bit of money, a couple $1,000, on a box. He bought a monster box of silver, you know, which is a stack of silver coins. Got them to his house. They were all fake. What do you do? How do you how do you go after this guy? You can't. The guy's gone. So there, you're taking that risk here with sound money. You're not taking that risk; it's a verified asset.

Scott Groves  11:26  
So, there's a lot of people that buy gold, but there are very few people that decide to make that a business. So, how did you decide? Like, okay, sound money, we're going to offer this. I think you offer in like app form, like people can go on and be real assets, and they can buy fractionally online, correct. Which is kind of crazy to me, but whatever. This is the new world we live in. So, how did you decide to actually make this like your business mission? That's that's that's what I was most interested in when you emailed me.

Christine Callesen  11:50  
Okay, you know it's really interesting. So, about three years ago, friend of mine introduced me to gold and silver. I was interested, and then I met the owners of the company. And the minute I met the owners of the company, that sold me. These are real solid guys who live in Idaho Falls. They have a couple other companies. We started with gold and silver collectibles, right? So we also offer that in a different form, different part of the company. But I was really fascinated with the gold and silver piece, like the physical asset of it instead of the collectible piece, which is you know not for everybody,

Scott Groves  12:25  
right?

Christine Callesen  12:26  
For somebody, right? But then I was worried about buying and selling through a pawn shop or going to a gold and silver shop downtown, right? There, I'm going to take my silver coin in, and they're going to say, "Oh, well, it's $4,500 right now. I'm going to give you 3000,

Scott Groves  12:40  
right?

Christine Callesen  12:40  
Right? So who's winning? The pawn shop, the gold and silver shop. Here with sound money, they actually pay you at or above spot. So, whatever

Scott Groves  12:50  
play what spot is for people that are like still here but don't actually trade.

Christine Callesen  12:53  
Spot is what the current price of gold or silver is going for, or the the commodity is going for. So, if spots, let's say 75, they're going to give you 75, give or take, right? Give or take $1, right? If you and you could always see real time in the back office in your app what it's going for. So how much you're buying it for and how much you're selling it for. You're always going to buy it for a little bit more, right? So if you go to a pawn shop, they're going to charge you anywhere from 30 to 50% of what the current spot is. So if I need money today, right, I'm going to go take my silver coins down to the pawn shop, and they're going to give me 3040, bucks for a silver eagle, right? Sound money, I will get spot. And if I liquidate it, I get the money in my bank within a day or two. It's just like transferring money between your two banks, right? Right. It's the exact same thing. If that Venmo

Scott Groves  13:44  
app or something like that takes advantage to get there,

Christine Callesen  13:45  
yes.

Scott Groves  13:46  
Um, that's fascinating because you know the the probably the biggest trade site in the world is American Pressions American Precious Metals AMP A

Christine Callesen  13:55  
M A App Mex App Ex yeah yeah American Press Metal

Scott Groves  13:58  
Exchange yeah Exchange um so App Max and you know I've bought stuff from them, but the markup is still pretty considerable unless you're buying in mass. But if you just want to get four or five silver coins or one ounce of gold, first of all, you have to have the full $4,000 to buy one ounce of gold to ship it to you. So you can't buy it fractionally, correct? And the markup is big when you buy it, and then when silver did hit 120. I hit them up to see like what they would buy it back from me at, and the markdown, if that's what we would call it, you know, they're they're getting somewhere around 20% on the sale and the buy, which good for them, great business model. But in general, do you know roughly what B real assets or sound money what they what they charge as the you know the arbitrage in between? Because obviously they have to make money. They're

Christine Callesen  14:42  
I mean if if I was let me do the math. It's about 20 25% usually. I mean if I look at it like today at 75 for to buy back from me, it's usually in the 90s.

Scott Groves  14:55  
Okay, 90% Yeah. So no.

Christine Callesen  14:57  
Yeah. So 90 no 90 bucks. I'm so sorry. Okay. So. 75 bucks. It usually costs me like 9095, bucks to buy the ounce. Okay. Right. So we're looking at 20, 25% of the markup. But to me, the biggest value with Sound Money Wallet is that I can buy it fractionally. So you were talking about AppMax, and Apps is a great company, but you have to buy volume in order to get the good price. Right. So if you want to buy an ounce of silver, buying one ounce of silver is going to cost you more money.

Scott Groves  15:23  
Yeah, it's going to be 30, 40% Right

Christine Callesen  15:25  
now, if you want to buy a quarter of an ounce of silver,

Scott Groves  15:28  
not available.

Christine Callesen  15:28  
Okay, right. First of all, not available. But second of all, when it is, you're going to have to pay even more of a markup.

Scott Groves  15:33  
Right.

Christine Callesen  15:34  
Right. Here with sound money, you say I have an extra 100 bucks this week. I'm going to go buy 100 bucks worth of silver or 100 bucks worth of gold, and then that's all you buy. You buy whatever you can afford.

Scott Groves  15:45  
Hey guys, just a quick ad from our sponsors here that make this podcast and our newsletter possible. Want to give a shout out to Ethereal Med Spa, a gym for your skin. So doesn't matter whether you're doing anything proactive, all the way up to spot removal, all the way up to beautification, right, or vanity, ethereal med spa, they got you covered. Scott Wright over at Wright Auto Body, love them. So anything from a scratch and dent to a big insurance job, all the way up to a custom rebuild of a classic car, they got you covered. And shout out to my buddy Casey Halstead, owner of 10th Planet Jujitsu, which now has three locations. They just opened a new location on the west side, so they got our Henderson location, they got a Mid City location, and they've got a West Side location. So anywhere in the Valley where you're looking to train Jujitsu, check out 10th Planet Las Vegas. Now back to the show. For people not watching on YouTube, maybe listening to the podcast, you are not a 25 year old tech bro.

Christine Callesen  16:40  
No, I'm not.

Scott Groves  16:41  
Who I would guess would be the target demographic to want to build a financial app. What made you say, "Hey, I want to take on the headache and the cost of building an app that's financially secure and build this company, be real assets, so that I can plug into Sound Money, you know, leverage them? Like, why? Why an app? Well,

Christine Callesen  16:58  
I'm I'm even I'm even smarter than that, I don't even do that. I actually just partner with Sound Money Wallet, so I'm just basically an affiliate of Sound Money.

Scott Groves  17:07  
Got it.

Christine Callesen  17:08  
Okay, so I'm I spread the word for Sound Money. They're the ones who took on the headache. The story, and I've met with, like I've said, I've met with the owners, and this is the story. Long about 10 years ago, the company started, and the company said we have a niche. We want to get gold and silver in the hands of every American, every human, actually. So what they did was they started this company called 7k Metals, and they with 7k Metals they started doing the collectibles, gold and silver, and they started selling silver eagles, graded silver eagles. So for those of you who don't know, there's ungraded silver eagles, which are not in the case that are not perfect coins. Then there's graded silver eagles.

Scott Groves  17:45  
These are the collectibles. So it's it croft. It cuts much more than just buying ounces of silver crest. It's pretty. It's a it's a collectible from the U.S. Mint.

Christine Callesen  17:53  
It's in a you know hermetically sealed little case. You know it it's graded and at five times magnification, it's perfect coin. Okay, so those those are the MS 70s. Let's say mint state 70 coins. So we partnered with so we partnered with seven with Sound Money, who was partnering with 7k Metals, and that's where we started, and that's where our journey is. We work with them. They run the app. We're just the messenger for the Sound Money movement. So really, for me, sound money is the way that we all should be saving our money, right? We should be putting our money for our future, for our kids, in gold and silver. You know, like I said, diversified, of course.

Scott Groves  18:32  
So, how long you been doing this? Like

Christine Callesen  18:35  
three years,

Scott Groves  18:36  
three years, and and I mean, obviously, there must be some type of affiliate fee for you, which is awesome for getting the word out there, because that's what affiliates are. They're right. They're basically marketing messengers. Correct. But can you share any stats on like how many clients you have or how many people you've helped or anything like that? Yeah. Well,

Christine Callesen  18:51  
I have a very large team. I have I have over 100 deaf people. So by the way, by trade, I'm an interpreter for the deaf.

Scott Groves  18:58  
Oh, okay.

Christine Callesen  18:59  
So I have a team of over 100 deaf people who actually are customers of my Sound Money wallet. I have a few 100 more customers who are my non-deaf people. Right? How Sound Money works is this: you can sign up for free. You get an account for free. The first $500 you buy, you don't have to pay a membership fee. So you, Scott, could sign up today, get a Sound Money Wallet account, and at $501, they're going to charge you a membership fee. That membership fee is 199 for life. That gives you access to the Sound Money Wallet, access to be able to buy and sell your gold and silver fractionally. From there, I get $100 fee and 1% of whatever you buy.

Scott Groves  19:44  
Got it.

Christine Callesen  19:45  
So if you Scott wanted to have your own affiliate account, we could have sound dot money forward slash Henderson HQ.

Scott Groves  19:53  
Right.

Christine Callesen  19:53  
You would get

Scott Groves  19:54  
no interest, but cool.

Christine Callesen  19:55  
You would get the $100 for every and then a 1% fee.

Scott Groves  19:59  
Interesting. So it's funny because in general, I'm super skeptical and super like anti any type of multi level marketing or affiliate program or whatnot because I'm like, well, I'll just go to the source and buy it, but or I just won't do it. But I think like when it comes to helping people be more financially sound, like that makes sense to me, and it's not like you're selling some shady life insurance product that will never pay out, or you know, have some termination date long before any of us are going to die. But it's like owning the physical asset; that just feels special.

Christine Callesen  20:31  
And that's how I feel. Like I think network marketing has a place, and I think affiliate marketing has a place. And I think that I'm not a good network marketer. I'll be honest with you, I'm really bad.

Scott Groves  20:44  
You email me.

Christine Callesen  20:45  
I'm really, but I'm really bad at the net. The you know the type I'm talking about the networking piece that I'm not really great at.

Scott Groves  20:51  
Yes, I I remember Mona V Water or something like that was really big. Every one of my friends was like, "Hey, can I get you a case of water? I'm like, "No, I have a drinking fountain. They're like, but is it this and is it that? It's like, dude, you guys are going to be gone in two years, and I don't, I don't think they exist anymore. But everybody I knew was an affiliate marketer for Mona V Water or something. Like, quit trying to sell me water. We're friends.

Christine Callesen  21:12  
Exactly. Now I've tried the network marketing space,

Scott Groves  21:14  
right?

Christine Callesen  21:15  
When I was younger, right? And but when it came to this, I will. I can talk to anybody about gold and silver all day long, right? And it's just because I love the asset. I love. I love how it feels. I carry it in my purse. Let's

Scott Groves  21:32  
not tell everybody that

Christine Callesen  21:33  
little bits, everybody. Little bits,

Scott Groves  21:35  
but yeah, no need to rob somebody for a $25 silver coin,

Christine Callesen  21:38  
right? But I, but I, I believe in the asset, and I think the biggest the biggest key for me, Scott, was when I met the owners of the company, and I got to talk to them and ask them the questions that you don't always get to ask when you come to affiliates at all. Why? Why did you do this? They said because we realize that most people in the country do not have $400 in their bank account for an emergency, and when I heard that, I was shocked. I was like, "You mean most people don't? No, most people do not have an extra 20 bucks, especially nowadays. And that was a couple of years ago when I met them. Their goal was to get people to get the asset in their hands. That's it, to set up a legacy for their future. So really, the affiliate part, okay, great, right? But it's more about spreading the word about gold and silver because I used to think that gold and silver was an old man's job.

Scott Groves  22:33  
Right, right.

Christine Callesen  22:34  
Okay, my great grandfather probably had gold and silver. My dad, he used to collect coins. Like, who collects coins, Dad? Right? Nobody collects coins. I'm going

Scott Groves  22:45  
something Aunt Gertrude does

Christine Callesen  22:46  
exactly. Well, I'm a coin collector now, right? But I love the reason I collect the coins is because I get the intrinsic value in the in the metal, right? It's not just about the pretty piece of the coin; it's the metal itself that translates to my future and my family's.

Scott Groves  23:03  
What do you recommend, like when people are thinking about a savings plan, right? Because, like you said, if somebody doesn't have a lot of money for savings or they don't have $400 for an emergency, they're not thinking about long term assets and whatnot. But does the fractional piece solve this problem?

Christine Callesen  23:18  
Absolutely.

Scott Groves  23:19  
Okay.

Christine Callesen  23:19  
Right. The fractional piece. So, like we were talking about earlier with AppMex, for example, you could go and buy a quarter ounce gold coin. They're going to charge you a higher premium, right? So you don't even have the money to buy the quarter ounce, let alone the higher premium for the quarter ounce. And it's really tiny. You get it, and you're like, "This is all I got for my $1,000. The reason I love this, it's plug and play. I actually every week automatically have I buy gold and silver. So okay, I don't go to Starbucks maybe twice a week.

Scott Groves  23:48  
Right.

Christine Callesen  23:49  
Instead, I buy gold and silver.

Scott Groves  23:50  
I'm out.

Christine Callesen  23:51  
Right, right. Or I don't drink an energy drink. Right. Right.

Scott Groves  23:54  
Right. Right.

Christine Callesen  23:55  
I whatever I do, and you know what? It's it's really amazing how easy it is to put that money away, right? So you don't have to buy the full quarter ounce. You can buy $25 worth, or $10 worth, or as low as $1. So the the minimum buy amount is $1. So you could buy $1 a day if you wanted, and then in a month you have 30 bucks worth of gold that your silver that you bought.

Scott Groves  24:18  
I had a friend, and I just wouldn't want to go through this because of the accounting mess. But every time he ate out, this was funny. His mortgage company must hate him. Every time he ate out, he would go to online banking. He'd be like, "Oh, I spent 37 $42 or $37.42. I'm going to match that and pay down my mortgage. So he would make like his normal $3,500 mortgage payment, and then you would just see on his mortgage statement because I did a loan for him, and I'm like, why do you have your mortgage payment and then 13 other mortgage payment for $30, $20, $80? He's like, every time I ate out, I would just like committed to myself, I'm going to make that amount of money disappear from my bank's bank account and pay down. My mortgage, and sure enough, he accelerated his mortgage. Where you know he's probably going to pay it off in 17 or 18 years instead of 30 years, right? And that's going to save him like 100 grand in interest. Exactly, because just these little incremental things, it goes a long way.

Christine Callesen  25:13  
Little tiny things go a long way. And I started with 50 bucks a week. That's how I started. Every every so often, I would up it by 10 bucks, 20 bucks, 30 bucks. Now I'm at 250 a week. I just put away. I don't even feel it because I've already planned for it. It's part of my. It's part of my budgeting. And I

Scott Groves  25:31  
interpreting pays well.

Christine Callesen  25:32  
It interpreting does pay well. But I do love interpreting. By the way, that's my bread and butter. This is like this is my passion project. Yeah, this is my passion project. But I did want to say the thing about is that this is not a networking company. So I just want to be really clear: is that we we are just spreading the message. I'm not building teams. I'm not doing all of that. I just I just want to share this message with everybody.

Scott Groves  25:57  
Yeah, I want to switch gears.

Christine Callesen  25:59  
Yeah,

Scott Groves  25:59  
because you're local here as well. Tell us about serving the deaf community. I have a very interesting relationship with the deaf community. At some at some point when I was working at Washington Mutual, I'm dating myself. 20 years ago, we had a client walk in who was deaf, needing a mortgage, and I sat there for hours writing out by hand the answer. And then and then right after we did that, the next time he came, he brought his son who could interpret. I was like, this would have been helpful last week. Yes. So I'm talking to the son who's like 12 or 13. He's trying to interpret mortgage data for his parents. Parents are signing back to him. He's speaking to me because I took the time with them. There was like a four year period where I probably did loans for 75, 80 deaf people in um yeah in Burbank because it's like in that community. Oh, that's where

Christine Callesen  26:44  
you're from. I'm from there too.

Scott Groves  26:45  
Oh, there you go. Once the word gets out, like

Christine Callesen  26:48  
yeah, that

Scott Groves  26:48  
that you're willing to take the time with them. Yeah, awesome. So how did you get into this?

Christine Callesen  26:52  
I've been that interpreter in many bank appointments. So yeah, I've been there. In fact, it was I was going to college and I thought oh ASL would be interesting. That was it, and that next thing I knew, I was hooked, and I was interpreting. And a teacher said to me, "You should become an interpreter. I said, "What is that? I was like 20 years old, and like, do they even do? I have no idea. Next thing you know, here I am, several years later.

Scott Groves  27:15  
So, adding another layer of complexity for this same family, the husband is originally-I think he's Persian. He's from Iran.

Speaker 4  27:23  
Yeah,

Scott Groves  27:23  
and so we had to do a legal thing. So he had an interpreter that knew like Iranian sign language,

Christine Callesen  27:29  
correct?

Scott Groves  27:30  
Who was then interpreting to like English sign language? Who was then speaking to us? Who was then doing this thing to sign this notary? And because they wanted it all on the up and up,

Speaker 5  27:38  
right?

Scott Groves  27:39  
And I don't know why I never thought about that, but like different countries sign differently.

Christine Callesen  27:43  
They're all different languages. Even UK and United States are completely different, even though we speak the same language. It's a different sign language.

Scott Groves  27:50  
Different sign language.

Christine Callesen  27:51  
Yeah, completely different sign language. So I actually did that the other day with another language, another sign language. Yeah. So

Scott Groves  27:58  
how do you like find clients? Is it all local? Is it all in person? Like, I'm very fascinated by this.

Christine Callesen  28:03  
Oh, yeah, no, it's totally fine. Thank you for asking. Um, no, I actually work virtually, so I have clients all over the country. I also do local, so we have a lot of deaf people here in Vegas, Henderson, and so I do. I work for agencies. They send me out in appointments, and and then this morning I was working from home.

Scott Groves  28:19  
Do you do any court translation or anything? I

Christine Callesen  28:21  
have done court translation. I have done. I do medical. I do pretty much anything. I was at a bank last week. Yeah.

Scott Groves  28:29  
Oh, how long you been signing? Uh,

Christine Callesen  28:31  
37 years. Yeah, yeah. I started when I was 20 years old.

Scott Groves  28:37  
How rewarding is it?

Christine Callesen  28:38  
It's rewarding. It's. It can be frustrating at times too the the lack of access for deaf people

Scott Groves  28:44  
yeah

Christine Callesen  28:45  
right still fighting the fight to get interpreters to get services for deaf people but it's a day at a time

Scott Groves  28:50  
so one of those clients ended up becoming my contractor and he was great did great work it's one of the it's one of the things I miss most about living in LA yeah and there's not many of them but one of them is I had the world's best contractor, and he was deaf, and his two associates were deaf. And I remember one time they were tiling my floor, and they were both stuck in separate corners. And so my buddy Hamlet is like screaming at his friend, who obviously can't hear him. Right. Finally picks up like a giant metal trowel and just chucks at him, split his head wide open. I'm like, I'm gonna have a lawsuit here at my house, and I'm like, you know, he can read lips. So I'm like, Hamlet, you can't be throwing medals. I don't care. He he didn't pay attention. Yeah, he didn't pay attention. And I'm like, well, you guys can't hear each other. Like, of course he didn't pay attention. Yeah. Um. Yeah. My kids. Uh. My kids had a blast learning how to sign their name with Hamlet, and I'm just Hamlet. I wish he would move up here because then I'd have a good local contractor.

Christine Callesen  29:42  
Everybody, I need a local contractor.

Scott Groves  29:43  
That has been very, very hard to find out here. And somebody finally explained to me that in basically all the trades, there's so much need in new construction and casino work that basically the handymen and the contractors that are willing to work on residents. Projects, we're kind of getting the lower tier professional because most of them can find work in new construction, which made sense. But yeah, I have not had great luck finding service biters. We got um, we got some split units installed on our gym, and the guy was like, "Okay, I'm gonna be here super early tomorrow. I'm like, "Well, I wake up at 4:45, so what does super early mean to you? He's like, I'll be here like no later than eight. We're gonna install it. He showed up like 1130, like stoned out of his mind, and I'm like, right, man, I don't really care. Like, I'm not judging, but you are working with like electricity and stuff. Are you gonna be okay? And he's like, yeah, I'm fine. And then it took him like three days to do like probably a four hour install. Right. We have not had great luck with housing service providers here. So if you're watching this and you know a great handyman or contractor, email the HendersonHQ at gmail.com because I want a referral. I want I want to bring them in and talk to them and put them on the list of people I can refer out. Yeah,

Christine Callesen  30:51  
please, I need one. I was just talking to my husband about we need somebody to help us at our house.

Scott Groves  30:55  
So, does your husband think you're crazy, or is he all in on the gold and sells as well?

Christine Callesen  31:00  
He doesn't think I'm crazy. He's actually all in on the gold and silver too. Even today, he was going to come by. He's going to come with me, but I was like, "No, I got it. We're good. So

Scott Groves  31:08  
that's funny. So tell me about some things that you've learned or some success stories that you've had along the way when it comes to like, you know, you're building a business, right? And yeah, it's a a virtual business or an app business, and you theoretically can talk to people all over the country, but like, what what have you learned about building this business?

Christine Callesen  31:25  
That building a business is hard.

Scott Groves  31:26  
Yeah,

Christine Callesen  31:27  
it's not as easy as they make it sound. No, you know, or whoever they is make it sound. Right, building a business is hard, but I feel that for me, the reason I call it be real assets because I'm real. I'm just going to be me, and you're going to get what you get with me. I'm not going to lie to you. I'm not in for the sale. I'm here to just explain to you what I do, and if you like it, great. And if you don't, okay. And so that's how I've learned how to run my business, and I get more people that way. I get more people wanting to talk to me because I'm just me, and I'm who I am, and there's no pressure. I have no pressure sales. I'm all about whatever. If you want gold and silver, I'm the person for you. If you don't, okay, yeah. I mean that's pretty simple.

Scott Groves  32:12  
So is there like is there more coming to the product line? Like why be able to buy platinum and you know yeah like yes. So

Christine Callesen  32:18  
we've talked with with talking with you know the owners of the company, there's always looking at more. But right now we have four offerings: we have gold, gold eagles, silver eagles. We have gold bars and silver bars. If people want to buy copper, we have you know our the collectible coins. We do have some copper offerings there, but really, right now those are the four offerings we have.

Scott Groves  32:42  
So I haven't looked this up in forever, but if you have like just a gold bar, there's nothing on it, maybe a serial number or something, and that's $4,400 an ounce. What is a gold eagle like a printed from the U.S. government mint? You know, it looks pretty. It's a collectible. Like, how much is the the delta between just buying a piece of gold and like a beautiful gold coin.

Christine Callesen  33:02  
You know, I don't know the exact percentage, right? But there is a bit of a little bit of a markup just because of the mint,

Speaker 2  33:08  
the

Christine Callesen  33:08  
minting process, and I don't know the exact percentage.

Speaker 2  33:11  
I'm

Christine Callesen  33:11  
still sorry about $100

Scott Groves  33:12  
or like $1,000.

Christine Callesen  33:13  
Oh no, it's like $100. It's not like $1,000. No, no, no. It's it's fractional.

Scott Groves  33:17  
Because once in a while, I'll be on like the American precious metals, and I'll be like, wait a minute! Why is this weird Bolivian coin like $9,000 for a gold coin? It must be some type of like rare collectible or something,

Christine Callesen  33:27  
right? And there's also different tax implications based on what you buy, and so that's a whole other discussion for another day that I don't want to get into because I'm not a tax professional. Right, but there's also tax implications for what you buy, so some some if people really the great thing too about sound money is that we also have education, so we teach people about what is they should be buying with depending on what their goal is.

Scott Groves  33:52  
Interesting, yeah. I will get political for a moment, but they're introducing that new wealth tax in California, so it's like,

Speaker 3  34:00  
yeah.

Scott Groves  34:01  
If you're wealthy, right now it's just billionaires, but we know how this goes. Once they establish a tax, it'll be on everybody eventually at some point in their life. It's like you'll have to report like this is the gold I have, this is the silver I have, this is what my car's worth, this is what my painting's worth, and then pay a percentage on that. That's wild. That is wild. People move to Henderson where there's no state tax and everything is cheaper here. Everything, everything. Yeah, I think when we moved here from LA, it was legitimate, like a 30% pay raise just between property costs, property taxes, property insurance, no state taxes. It was like I was like, why didn't do this a decade ago?

Christine Callesen  34:35  
Right. When we moved, we actually could afford to buy a house.

Scott Groves  34:38  
Right.

Christine Callesen  34:38  
Right. Because in LA, you can't even you can't afford to buy a house. It's so expensive. Yeah,

Scott Groves  34:43  
wild. What am I forgetting to ask you about gold, silver, the app, anything else that's like a highlight with what you get?

Christine Callesen  34:49  
I think with the app, the biggest thing is that the first the first $500 you get to play around and buy gold and silver. You don't even have to commit to buying the app. You don't even have to commit to buying. Access to the app, so I really want people to know. If you really just want to look at what gold and silver is like and how to play around with it, get a free account with at Be Real Assets Sound dot money forward slash Be Real Assets. Get a free account, play around, see what you like, and then once you decide that this is something you want to put more money into, then you just spend spend the $200, and it's a lifetime membership.

Scott Groves  35:23  
Last question: How are they insured? Like, how how do I know they're not going to like disappear, or my gold's going to disappear overnight? Yeah,

Christine Callesen  35:31  
the the company is definitely insured. Yet, yes, I've actually asked the same question. Okay, one day am I going to look around and all of my gold and silver is going to be gone, and so are you. They're like, no, absolutely, they're insured. And there's really strict parameters around being insured with gold and silver space.

Scott Groves  35:46  
Oh, really?

Christine Callesen  35:47  
Yeah, the company is adheres to all of those standards with gold and silver, and so and they work directly with the U.S. Mint. So not just anybody can go and buy from the U.S. Mint. They work directly with the mint.

Scott Groves  35:58  
Oh man, I would love to see their books and just know, like, just for my own interest, like, what does the mint? What does the mint charge them? Like, can they? Can you buy gold wholesale? I don't know. I just,

Christine Callesen  36:07  
I wonder. That's a, that is a really interesting question.

Scott Groves  36:10  
Yeah. Next time you're with them, ask them. I will. Their prices.

Christine Callesen  36:13  
Actually, maybe why don't you come to the Henderson podcast? What do you call

Scott Groves  36:16  
it when people get like addicted to gold? Is it is is it gold fever or like the gold witch or something like that. Gold's beaver. I heard this before. Like, yeah,

Christine Callesen  36:23  
I think it's gold fever, but it's also you know I'm an I'm a stacker. I'm addicted to stacking gold. Like people people ask me all the time, like, what do you do? I'm like, I stack gold. I stack gold and silver. That's all I do.

Scott Groves  36:34  
I interpret. I take that money. I stack gold. Exactly. So that I do with it. And and just I just personal question. You can tell me shut up. Like, are you planning to like just buy this forever and leave it for your kids, or is this part of the retirement? Yeah, this is

Christine Callesen  36:47  
this is that's it. Like, I'm really planning on buying it forever, like until I'm in the grave, and then I already have a plan where it's going. Like, you know, my husband and I were, you know, in our late 50s, right? I don't want to work forever, right? So I'm going to retire one day, and this is going to be part of that cushion, right? I mean, I also have my other investments. I, you know, I'm not silly, right? I'm not putting all of my eggs in one basket, but I also have my other plan. But this is going to be that other that part of that plan that when I need, you know, what's really nice is if I needed cash right now, all I have to do is literally within three clicks of a button, I could get, I could sell my gold and silver, and not get screwed over at the pawn shop. Sorry, pawn shops, but not get screwed over at the pawn shops or the gold and silver shops. Yeah, right. And a lot of places, a lot of pawn shops and gold and silver shops aren't even buying it right now. You know, sometimes they're not buying it, sometimes they're not selling it. So you have to be really smart about it, and that's what we're doing. It's being able to have liquid, have it liquid when we need

Scott Groves  37:45  
it. My goal is that when I do leave this earth, they're reading the trust and they're like, "Oh, Gabriel, Lena, there's a safe deposit box to Chase. You should go check that out. And Gabriel's going to be rolling his eyes. Is he going to be like, "Oh God, Dad gets some stupid paperwork or pictures from the army or nude pictures of his wife or something. I don't want to see any of that stuff, you know. Then he's going to go there and he's going to discover some X number of gold and just be super happy. Correct. You know, not happy I died, but at least happy that we left him something. Yeah,

Christine Callesen  38:11  
exactly. And by hopefully by then we won't be looking at $4,500 an ounce.

Scott Groves  38:16  
Yeah, I mean, hopefully by the time I die, it'll be like $20,000. It will be, but inflation's going anywhere. No,

Christine Callesen  38:22  
I see, I see it going up way high, and I see it in the next couple of years as well, too.

Scott Groves  38:27  
Cool. Well, that's the way to end the podcast. Thanks for being here. Thank you

Christine Callesen  38:29  
so much for having me. All right. Thank you. Thank you.

Scott Groves  38:34  
Hey, it's Scott Groves with the Henderson HQ podcast. I hope you got something out of that episode. If you enjoyed it, please don't forget to like, comment, and subscribe to the podcast. It really helps the show grow. And by the way, if you are a business owner or you know a business owner who has an interesting product, service, or just an interesting backstory, please, please get in touch with us. Email us at thehendersonhq@gmail.com. We would love to interview you because that's what this show is all about. It's about building community, supporting local, individually owned businesses, and just making Henderson a great place to live. And don't forget, go to HendersonHQ.com and make sure you sign up for our newsletter. We send out a once a week newsletter, no spam, about the most interesting local businesses, hotspots, restaurants, community events. Thanks for watching the show. Really appreciate you.