The Shawn Ryan Show
#267 Rob Luna - 50-Year Mortgages, Government Band-Aids, AI Job Cuts and the Middle Class
01 Jan 2026
Chapter 1: What is discussed at the start of this section?
Rob Luna. Sean. Welcome to the show, man. Thanks for having me, man. Welcome back to the show. Third time, man.
I'm privileged, excited to be here. Third time's a charm. But this new studio, dude, I'm just looking around in amazement. It looks so badass. Congrats, man.
Oh, thank you, dude.
It looks really good.
Thank you. Well, congratulations to you, too. So new CEO, new company, Valtrion, Wealth Management. How long have you been?
That's like brand new. Well, yeah, we just launched it last year. Last year was our first full year in operation. And yeah, taxes, financial planning, and business integration, it's doing really good.
Nice. Thanks, man.
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Chapter 2: How did Rob Luna transition to Valtrion Wealth Management?
Nice. Well, we got a ton of stuff to talk about. I mean, just in the news and in the past. Look. First of the year is coming up, just like last year. I think you are the perfect way to kick off the year and trimming the financial fat. What should we be looking at? What stocks? What should we be thinking about crypto? What's with this new child savings plan? What's with the 50-year mortgage?
I mean, there's just, what's the update with all the tariffs? How did that wind up working out? I can't remember if we talked about that last year or not.
I don't think so, because I think it was right before all that stuff. And then January came around, and that was headline news pretty much.
Yeah. So we got a lot of stuff to cover. But that's kind of what I want to do. Projections, what should people be focusing on financially, business owners in 2026, and maybe a little bit of a recap in 2025. But as you know, everybody starts off with an introduction.
Yeah.
Rob Luna spent a quarter of a century as one of the top investment advisors in the country, working with professional athletes, entrepreneurs, and ultra high net worth families. Built a successful wealth management firm from your bedroom and eventually sold it for millions of dollars. Stepped away for a few years because of a non-compete and during that time started educating people,
me being one of them, on personal finance and entrepreneurship through your book, Wealth Academy, and a podcast. Then last year, you launched something completely different, and you shifted personally from being an investment advisor to a business and private wealth strategist. This is Valtrion. You're a husband, a father, and most importantly, a Christian.
And once again, congratulations on Valtryon. Thank you. So just a personal testimony. And a lot of entrepreneurs are looking for this, man. But I don't know much about wealth management, taxes, stocks. I think I know real estate. You're pretty good at real estate. But I don't know anything about that.
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Chapter 3: What are the key financial topics to consider for 2026?
And I just want to say, man, that What you've put together over at Valtrion is fucking incredible. So, you know, me as a business owner, a business owner, an entrepreneur that has zero education in business. I really don't even have any education at all. I'm a public school boy with no college education. So, and I built a pretty damn good business.
But one of the, one of, you know, one of my biggest hiccups, man, was Fucking taxes, man. Taxes and planning and just anything with numbers in general. I totally winged it all the way up to this point. And I had fired so many CPAs because I was like, hey, can you guys do the planning? I hate paying taxes. I'm tired of paying the Taliban. I'm tired of paying all these other countries.
I want to save on taxes. I know there's planning. And they all say the same shit. Yes. you know, yes, we can, we can, we'll, we'll, we'll do some tax planning. And then December 25th, 26 comes around and it's like, Hey, Christmas is done. We got about a week left. Let's come up with this plan. And nobody's talking to each other. They're not talking to anybody.
You know, they're not talking to the bookkeepers to any of this, any of these people. And then it's the same fucking story year after year. And then me and you talked and you started Valtryon and, And everything is under one roof. Everybody's talking to each other.
And this is just a key component that I think not only myself, but a ton of entrepreneurs are looking for is all the financial stuff under one roof. Everybody's talking to each other. And the fucking tax plan and the wealth strategy, all that stuff comes together. And it's really cool what you built, man. I've never seen anything like it.
Well, thanks, man. And I think, look, first of all, I think you totally underestimate yourself. I think you're probably one of the smartest business people I've ever met in my life. And certain aspects of what you're doing here with the show are unprecedented. And you're actually creating markets. So don't sell yourself short, first of all. And so I think your success is largely because of you.
But like you said, I think in being an entrepreneur, like most entrepreneurs, When I started Valtrion, like my introduction, he sold his business for millions of dollars, which I did, but you know, our focus really there was just on managing money. I had a CPA for 20 years that I was kind of complacent with and I figured all those things were going on.
And then when I sold my business, it's nothing like doing it for yourself. I was like,
shit if i would have structured this like this or had this trust i literally lost millions and millions of dollars so kind of the cool thing about what i'm doing now sean is the business i'm building today or we built a voucher on i am the target customer so selfishly i'm building this for myself not from an ivory tower and when i started looking at taxes let's just talk about taxes in particular because
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Chapter 4: How does AI impact the job market and the middle class?
And when you think about, you know, I was talking to your team a little bit earlier about my disenchantment. what's going on with New York right now because my grandfather came from Ellis Island through Italy and helped build that city brick by brick.
Didn't speak any English at first, learned how to speak English, would never speak to us in anything other than English during that period of time, worked seven days a week, He was a bricklayer, wound up creating his own business, bought a home. He did all these things without having any college education, without speaking English. But he understood that nothing was going to happen for him.
Nothing was going to be handed to him unless he did it himself. And when you think about all these policies why I don't like the 50 year mortgage, why I don't like all these band-aids that we keep putting on things, that is softening America. The American dream is people and intuition and motivation and understanding that you are responsible for yourself.
So the further you take that away from people, everybody gets a trophy. That's going to deteriorate. And that's why we talk about New York. Everyone says, oh, it's going to come back, invest in it. It's not coming back. It's not coming back because the people that built that city live in Florida now and Texas and Tennessee. New York is in buildings. They're not living here, are they?
I'm just kidding.
But think about it. The reason it always came back is because the people made it come back. After 9-11, the people made it come back. Those people are gone, Sean. They're not back. You look at the immigrants that are in New York today, and I'm all for a legal immigration process. Like, we need that to be able to prosper. Otherwise, you become Japan, right?
You need immigration, but you need the right type of immigrants. You need the right incentive. It's not the immigrants that are in that country. city today that are absolutely destroying it and looking for handouts and have created that problem. And everyone says, oh, it's just a mayor and it's just New York.
No, that is a metaphor for what could be happening to this country unless we start changing those things. And that's the problem with the 50-year mortgage and all these band-aids that we're trying to create to kick the can down the road and not take the medicine that we need to put our boots on and start getting back to what made this country great.
Man, I mean, I can't argue that. I mean, we've seen massive outfluxes out of New York, Washington, Oregon, California. And so I know – I mean, if I remember, I think it was Polymarket. I think Polymarket predicted that –
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Chapter 5: What services can lead to wealth in today's economy?
Then the third, it's almost anything, pick anything, Sean, but it goes back to, are you willing to do what an electrician plumber does? Like you can become, I've worked with multi, multi millionaires, close to billionaires in everything, plumbing, landscaping, pest control. All these are services that people with money are willing to pay for.
And if you understand how to build, scale a company, use technology to motivate that, you can really go out there and win today. So I'm not going to say like the big thing is be an AI consultant. Yeah, maybe, whatever. But just do anything on scale and show up. That's really what you need to do today.
You know, we're talking about all the – just going back a little bit, I was just thinking about things. And, you know, we're talking about unmotivated average folks. Yeah. But, I mean, that's a choice.
Chapter 6: How can business owners motivate their teams effectively?
Of course. You know, and so, I mean, for business owners, you know, how do they motivate – their staff.
Can you, cause that's another, that's, I mean, we're sitting here talking and we're, you know, we're attacking, you know, a large percentage of the workforce, you know, and, and, but I mean, how can you incentivize them, you know, and, and turn them into a motivated employee, motivated team member, you know, how do you do that?
Yeah. Well, I think first of all, um, I'm not somebody who needs to be motivated.
Well, I'll tell you what I'm getting at, is back to Valtreon. Been a bit of a crisis here and we worked together and, you know, I needed to know how to incentivize, you know, my, my people here. Yeah. And, and, and, and, you know, the vast majority of them, even there's not very many of us. I mean, pretty much everybody here is a fucking killer. Yeah. And otherwise they wouldn't be here. Right.
But, you know, when, when, when, when I hired you and your team to come in and, and, do an assessment and do some consulting and stuff. And, and, you know, one of my biggest things was how, how can I incentivize these guys?
And you put that structure in place, you put that incentives instead of incentive bonus structure in place and, you know, net end of the year now approaching the beginning of the year. And we always do end of the year reviews and,
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Chapter 7: What are the best strategies for incentivizing employees?
You know, when I tell them about the new bonus structure, you see their eyes light up immediately. Yeah. And they're like, oh, shit. And it's already fucking working. It's already working. I mean... one guy, phenomenal editor, fucking phenomenal editor. And, you know, told him I need him, hey, you know, here's a new structure. I'd like you to get to know cameras.
You need to learn how to run a camera a little bit better. Guess what? Two fucking days later, I come down here, he's working on fucking cameras immediately. And so it works. And so, you know, I think that it, I guess what I'm trying to say is, you know, there is also ways for business owners to not just go, oh, you know, You're fucking lazy. You're not working. You're not doing this. Good point.
You can incentivize them, and you proved that to me through your company, and it's been – I mean, I just started those this week. Yeah, yeah. Rolling it out to them. Yeah, and they're not even finished yet, and they're already fucking –
pumped, they can see the fire. But yeah, so let's talk about that. And let's share with the audience what it is, because I think there's either a lot of entrepreneurs that listen to you and a lot of people that want to become entrepreneurs. But I think more importantly, Sean, most of the people that I've worked with over my career that have become very, very wealthy were actually entrepreneurs.
They were people who work within a larger organization, but they were really on, the best people I know that have made a lot of money inside of other organizations, small, mid and large, could have themselves been entrepreneurs, but they had a better opportunity to go in somewhere else where there was a team in place that could allow them to leverage their skillset.
And for most of them, that was a smart decision. I always say, I started my own firm primarily because the person I was working for before kept that carrot of, hey, you're going to get this or get that. And then it was always like, sorry, can't get that.
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Chapter 8: What tax strategies should entrepreneurs consider?
No bonus, no that. And it was just finally, it was just like, I'm never going to be able to grow here. So no one ever gave me the opportunity to have my work rewarded. So I went out and started my own thing. For most people, they don't have to do that, right? And so when you talk about this,
First of all, going back to how you build businesses today, small team of all-stars, all-star processes, all-star technology. Part of the all-star processes is how do you reward and compensate those individuals? And a lot of entrepreneurs, it's like, especially the first few years like you, It's like, head down, let me just work. When I did your show, I was episode 42 the first time.
Like, I was so shocked when I showed up. You're like, come over here, take a picture, Rob. I'm looking for the, like, where's the camera crew? There's no camera crew. Like, everything. Oh, yeah, it was just me and you back there. Just me and you, dude. And now it's like this. Like, dude, there was nobody else. But that's kind of what it takes, right?
Same thing when I started my previous, not this firm, I'm a little further along now, the first firm I started, dude, it was just me. I was the guy who traded the stocks and did the business development and mailed the applications and all those things, right? And so here's the thing, though. You can do a lot of things to go from zero to a million bucks.
It's just work your ass off seven days a week. But to go from a million to five million to 10 million to 100 million, which is what everybody wants to do, especially if it doesn't take any more work, especially like if it could be less work, if it's just done within a strategy, like this whole world's word scale. Everyone says scale, scale, scale, scale.
I went back and did an MBA at 38 because I didn't know what the fuck scale meant, right? And I'm not advocating that for everyone, but I needed to understand what that was. And then what I understood was it's like, oh, it's just processes and it's just transparency and it's just alignment. And it's just actually really simple.
And wow, if I do this, it's actually easier to run my business this way. But it took me 20 years to get that knowledge and information. And so for most entrepreneurs, they're just head down, buried in the sand. And then what happens though, is you hit that proverbial glass ceiling and you can't grow. And then you're like, man, is this a business or did I just buy myself a job, right?
And that's ultimately what it becomes. And the problem there is you can't increase cashflow because you can't scale. You don't grow any enterprise value. So your business isn't worth anything. And then what it is, it's like, okay, now I've sacrificed missing out on my kid's life. I'm constantly fighting with my wife.
I'm in constant stress and all these things that being an entrepreneur, it's like, is it really worth it? It's not unless you can get past that hurdle. And so that's kind of what I do is like, I just take what I learned. Right. And then I come in with your team and to back to your question, How do you incentivize average people? You don't. You don't. You fire average people.
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