During our month-long trip through Europe and Western Asia, my daughter and I have been playing a game she made up called “Decisions, Good Decisions.”

My daughter wants to choose what we do and where we go, but I have explained to her that at 7 years old, she needs to learn how to make good decisions before she can decide things for the family, and she can do this by watching how I make decisions and trying to weight one thing over another. She needs to build up lots of life experience to become good at making decisions. Most people don’t realize this, but making good decisions is a skill you must learn and develop.

Anyways, the rules of the game she created go something like this: every time we are presented with a choice, she gets to decide, and if my wife and I both agree, we take that decision. 

We are trying to give her a wide margin to try things out and discuss the decisions and why she might want to choose one thing over another. 

There are some safety rails in place, but we are trying to get her to test things out, think through the decisions, and explain how she came to that decision. An exercise most adults don’t understand, let alone a 7-year-old. But she is doing really well.

The other day, I was so excited to share this story with my daughter. We are in Georgia, and my wife and I left the kids with my Mom and the Nanny and drove out to see my friend's walnut farm he invested in here around 6 years ago.

They were having a big party to show all the investors how far they had come and their progress. This party was crazy. They had set up a site in the middle of the walnut farm with tents, an open bar, tons of amazing Georgian food, and a live band.

Around 100 people are partying and drinking and having fun. But on the tour of the farm earlier in the day, we learned about this Belgium technology they had bought that shoots hot gas into the air 20 minutes or so before it is expected to rain to make sure it doesn’t hail, which can obviously be devastating for the walnut trees…

The band is playing, and everyone is drinking and enjoying the moment, but I hear this giant boom sound in the distance. They are only supposed to fire this thing a couple of times before the hail, but it is firing repeatedly. I can hear it booming over and over again, closer and closer together; it becomes like a drum beat in the background, and no one seems to care!

By this time, it was around 9:30pm, and I looked around and saw only 2 small buses that were supposed to shuttle people back and forth from the hotel to the party all night, clearly not large enough to take everyone at once if it started to rain.

I spoke to my friend Titus and his wife, who we were sitting with, and decided to get ahead of this and find a way home now. We found a local guy with a car and negotiated a price for him to take us back to the hotel.

On the way back, it started to rain, a little at first, then a lot…

We discovered the following day that although there were tents, it didn’t matter because all the water pooled underneath them, and everything turned to mud.

The bus drivers refused to leave because of the mud as they were afraid of getting stuck, so they all just sat there until the rain stopped. I heard they didn’t leave until past 2 am, and everyone was soaked and filthy.

Of course, I had been sleeping soundly for around 4 hours by the time they got back and had an excellent night's rest.

One other quick story, then I will tie everything together for you…

Early the following day, we had an excellent breakfast, a double expresso, and started to see the very beat-up and tired-looking attendees eventually begin to file in, and that’s when we started to hear the stories of the night before.

Eventually, we went outside to wait for the pickup to take us back to Tbilisi, but no buses were there. Everyone is standing around, and no one knows what is happening. Over the years I’ve done enough travelling to know that the buses should always be there waiting in advance for everyone, you should never have to wait for the buses to arrive.

I took one look around, turned to my wife and told her we were better off taking a taxi back. And that’s what we did. We went into the hotel, organized a taxi to take us the 90 minutes back to the city (about $45 USD), loaded up our bags and drove out before everyone else even realized what was happening. We saw them just start to drift back in from the parking lot with all their bags when we were leaving. 

We learned later that there was a miscommunication with the pickup, and it took over 2 hours for the buses to arrive. Then, because the buses are a lot slower, it took over 2 hours to drive back to the city. By then, I was already out for dinner with my kids and enjoying my trip, not stuck in a hotel lobby wondering what would happen.

Decisions, Good Decisions.

I have had so many experiences in my life and watched so many things play out that I am able to make good decisions quickly and efficiently. I also try to learn from older, wiser, and more experienced men. I have been blessed by really extraordinary people generously extending their time to me and answering my questions.

That’s why this year at the Summit, we are adding a new track called “Future Of The World.”

This track will be in addition to our tracts from last year:

• Immigration
• Wealth Protection
• International Investments
• Expat Lifestyle

This new tract is where I will have most of my keynote speakers focus, like Jim Rogers, Mark Faber, Doug Casey, Peter Schiff, and Dr. Ron Paul.

Basically, what can we expect to see from 2024? With good insights from people with amazing experience and knowledge, we can not only plan accordingly, but we can learn how to view the world and make decisions.

At the end of the day, this is what I am trying to teach my daughter.

Only 25 days until the Summit kicks off, you can get your FREE ticket below:

https://2023.expatmoneysummit.com/?ref=em411

Also, we just released the Summit schedule, which you can check out here:

https://2023.expatmoneysummit.com/schedule/?ref=em411

Speak soon,

Mikkel

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