E26 - AI Will Change the Economy — But Not the Rules of Wealth

Artificial intelligence is advancing faster than most people realize.

New tools are appearing every month. Businesses are becoming more efficient. Real estate investors can analyze deals faster than ever before. Small teams can now accomplish what once required entire departments.

But while AI is transforming how work gets done, the deeper question is this:

How should we position ourselves financially in a world that’s changing this quickly?

In this episode of Before the Returns, Jaden explores the historical pattern of technological shifts and what AI might mean for business owners, real estate investors, and long-term wealth building.

More importantly, he explains why the core principles of wealth tend to remain stable even when technology changes everything around us.

The biggest opportunities in a rapidly evolving economy often go to the people who are financially positioned to move quickly.

And that starts with financial structure and control of capital.

What You'll Learn in This Episode

• Why every major technological shift reshapes where opportunity appears
 • How AI differs from past technologies like the internet or industrial machinery
 • Why smaller teams may soon accomplish far more using AI tools
 • How AI can improve efficiency without removing investment risk
 • Why controlling capital becomes more valuable in fast-moving economies
 • The role of Family Banking and capital structure in adapting to economic change

Key Takeaways

Technology changes tools.

But it rarely changes the core principles that build wealth.

Ownership, liquidity, patience, and financial structure still matter.

In a world where opportunities appear faster than ever, the people who benefit most are often the ones who control capital and can act quickly when opportunity appears.

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📩 Questions or ideas? Email: jadenzubal.wealth@gmail.com

⚖️ Disclaimer: This podcast is for educational purposes only. It is not financial, tax, or legal advice. Always consult with a qualified professional before making financial decisions.

Transcript

Tech History Patterns

AI Does The Thinking

Competitive Edge With AI

Efficiency Not Certainty

Capital Structure And Family Banking

Control Capital For What’s Next

SPEAKER_00 0:02

Artificial intelligence is about to make some people incredibly wealthy. And it's going to make some business models disappear completely. Not overnight, but fast enough that the landscape of opportunity could look incredibly different over just the next couple of years. And the question isn't what can AI do? The real question, at least the one we're going to discuss today, is how people position themselves financially in a world that's changing this quickly. So today I want to talk about how I'm thinking about AI in relation to business, real estate, and long-term wealth. Hello, and welcome to another episode of Before the Returns. I'm your host, Jaden Zuball. And if this show is adding any value in your financial life, please consider liking, subscribing, and sharing. It greatly helps grow the channel. So with that, let's get into it. Okay, so first let's start with one of my favorite things, history. We've got to look at history because, like it or not, history continues to repeat itself. So over the last, let's call it 100 years, there has been significant changes in how we operate as a society. There's been things like the Industrial Revolution. Uh, more recently, the invention of the internet and things like smartphones, we added all these massive, massive technologies. And you'll notice that the gap in these technology time periods, meaning if we talk about the Industrial Revolution to the time when we created the internet, there's a little bit longer gap. From the internet to, let's say, smartphones, that gap is shorter. Now, from smartphones to AI, the gap is even shorter. So the advancements in technology are getting quicker and quicker. And it's it's becoming a rapid part of everything that we do in our lives. And it's really starting to apply financially as well. So technology doesn't just create new tools, it reshapes where opportunity appears. Let me phrase that just slightly different, to just set in stone this concept. Technology doesn't just change how work gets done, but it changes how value is created. So let's look at it this way. Some past technologies. Let's go back over the last hundred years just briefly. Again, I'm a big history buff. I love to pay attention to these patterns and these trends and just the way that human beings operate. So if we look back over the last hundred years, let's look at some of the technologies, some of the things that have come up. Well, a lot of what we've done is create technologies that can replace physical labor in some way, shape, or form. We've created things like cars and trucks and tractors and all these massive machines to enable us to do a better job of construction and of moving materials and things like semi-trucks, transferring things all over the nation so that we get goods and services faster and airplanes. All of these technologies have allowed for massive advancements in how quickly we can get things done. But it's it's mostly been framed on the side of physical labor. Now, as we move into more recent times, the development of the computer and then the internet and smartphones and these more recent technologies have really leaned into the idea of creating tools that do processing for us. They process that's essentially what a computer is, is it's a processing tool. And now for the first time with AI and the advancements we've seen just in the last couple of years here, we have created technology and tools that go beyond just processing, but they actually do some of the thinking for us. So again, it's more in line with thinking, analysis, research, and creative work. I'll use myself as an example here. As over the last year or so, I've really gotten into understanding AI on a much deeper level and using it personally every single day. I use it for quite a few different tasks, and it's advanced my business in a way that I never could have seen possible even three or four years ago. There are things that you can do with AI today. For example, I used an AI model to create a decision-making tool that's now listed on my website. It created some of the coding for it. It created a pathway for me to be able to develop this out and put it on there very simply and very quickly. And it actually functions correctly as well. Because I can go in now and I can test using myself. I can go through and test these models, and it actually does what I needed it to do. But it did it so much faster than I could have done the exact same thing two, three, four years ago. So, what does this mean for business owners, real estate investors, and people trying to build wealth? Realistically, what it means is smaller teams are able to accomplish more because the technology is assisting in these tasks and making us more efficient. It's not that technology is at a point where it's replacing us. In some aspects, I think it's headed that direction. There are some roles that technology is starting to fill, but it's not quite there yet. But it is absolutely creating faster execution and faster idea testing. So, what I believe is that the advantage for businesses, for real estate investors, the advantage that is going to be created will shift towards those who can combine their own personal judgment with these really powerful AI tools. When you can put those two things together, you can create a system that will absolutely create more competitive advantage. And the the simple fact of it is that if we don't get on board with these tools and we don't understand them and put energy and effort towards them now, we will fall behind. And competition is going to increase in all of these industries. And as that competition increases, if we don't, if we're not on board, if we're not up to par with the systems, we will not be able to keep up any longer and we will start to fall behind. We've seen this pattern repeat itself throughout human history. New technologies are created. Those who adapt and learn and grow into them keep up and excel and come out ahead. Those who do not and refuse to do so fall behind and slowly start to lose traction in the marketplace. So technology rewards people who are willing to learn and apply the tools that we're given. Right? It's already at a point where it's enabled us to analyze deals faster, come up with calculations and research that would have taken 10 times longer in the past. I've personally used it to do research on properties and analyze different things for me in a way that I just could not do before. And it's been very, very impressive. So what technology does is it improves efficiency. But here's the drawback. Technology does not improve certainty. Okay, it's not going to remove the uncertainty from our investments, meaning that when it comes to investing, there is still the human nature of it, especially when you're buying things like real estate, these hard assets that human beings live in. We need them to live in. And it's just a part of our survival. Technology, meaning AI, cannot eliminate the risk involved with investing. What it can do is help us to better analyze that risk and better understand that risk. And then we can make better determinations of how to solve for the risk personally. But guess what? There's still the human nature of that. We are still personally figuring out if that risk is worth it. So while technology changes the tools, the principles, the basic foundation of how to build wealth actually remains surprisingly the same throughout history. Sometimes you'll see, you know, if you're watching this on YouTube, you can see in my background here these pictures hanging on the wall. And these, I have a series of them. I have four of them. You can probably only see one or two in most of the most of the clips here. But in these series, these are from an era where there's a series on Amazon. It's called The Men Who Built America. And so some of the people I have on my wall here are John D. Rockefeller, Cornelius Vanderbilt, Andrew Carnegie, and then JP Morgan. So these titans of different industries who created some sort of incredible technology. And something that stands out about what they did and what the Titans of the world are doing today is the principles that they're following are still very, very similar. It still takes the same type of tenacity, the same type of structures and systems to build and maintain wealth. So as the world becomes faster and more dynamic, stability becomes even more valuable. Now the reality is that every financial system, personal, business, partnerships, whatever, every financial system runs on a capital structure, whether we realize it or not. So what that means is we either choose the capital structure, we put together the foundational pieces that make up our capital, or outside influences do that for us. Because if we are not making the choices, if we're not building out the structure, it's still going to be there. It just means that the structure was built by all of these outside influences that kind of molded us into what we are and how we operate things. So we have to make that choice of are we molded by all the outside influences, which to some extent I guess all of us are, but uh we can adapt that into what we actually want, which is what I've had to do over the last 10 years. I've had to take a lot of ideas and a lot of things that were just instilled upon me as I grew up, and things that I saw and you know, all the outside influences on my life. I had to take those ideas and now translate them into some of the good. I kept the good and I pushed out the bad and I created new structures and new systems that now allow me to operate in a way that is more closely aligned with the actual goals and targets that I have. Because our capital structures influence things like where our money lives, how our money moves, how quickly capital can be deployed, and how resilient finances actually are. For example, one of the ideas that I've spent over a decade now thinking quite a bit about, I use consistently in my life, and I even work with my clients on in some cases, is this concept that I call family banking. If you haven't heard the term before, what it really means in my specific instance is using whole life insurance as a tool to grow, save, and protect money. Now, the concept, the core concept of family banking, though, doesn't actually need life insurance. The core concept is not about the insurance policy. The insurance policy is just a tool that I have personally plugged in to better the concept and give me a better outcome for what I'm trying to accomplish. But at its core, the idea of family banking is simply having a private capital reserve inside of your life. Now, what is the point of this private capital reserve, though? Part of the point is to have liquidity, control, internal financing, and long-term capital storage. It is a way that we can reduce risk so that we're able to make wise choices in our investments and have a foundation to rely upon and fall back on when needed. The core concept is creating structure for yourselves that allows you to utilize money effectively within your system. So whether you choose to add insurance or not to that system is kind of a separate story. First, we need to understand the idea and the concept and be able to apply that to our lives before we even decide whether other outside influences or tools fit in that system. Tying this back to AI and technology advancements, all of the things that are happening today in a world where opportunity moves fast, controlling capital becomes incredibly valuable. Because the people who benefit most from fast-moving opportunity are the people that have access to capital when they need it and when the opportunities come up. So I don't think that anyone really fully understands what the impact of AI will be on our economy, on our personal economy, and on the world yet. But something that is clear is that the change is accelerating. So AI in its first year did not develop as much as it has even in the last month. It is just getting faster. And it is something that we need to pay attention to and be ready for in whatever way or capacity that we can. So from today's conversation, the perspective is really around preparing ourselves financially to be able to take advantage of these opportunities because I think there is a ton of opportunity that's coming up, a ton of things that are going to present themselves in ways that we, again, may not even fully understand yet. But what we can understand is that basic core financial concepts and foundations still exist, and it is still important to apply those to our lives today. So every generation experiences these technological changes in some way, shape, or format. But the challenge is not trying to predict exactly how this is all going to unfold. The challenge is controlling what we can personally control, which is your own financial system and structure, and making sure that you develop it and set it up so that you are ready to take advantage of opportunities. Because technology will continue to evolve. But the importance of financial structure and control of capital tends to remain the same. And that's really what this show is about. Understanding the systems underneath our money. If this show has helped you change your perspective financially or has added value to you, please consider liking, subscribing, and sharing. And we'll catch you on next week's episode.