“What Is Money?”
The Day I Met Steve Forbes

At the end of July I had the distinct privilege to meet and talk with Steve Forbes while at an industry event in Nashville. He was actually quite polite, personable, and had a great sense of humor.

Just before he arrived at our hotel, I happened to be in the lobby chatting with my peer coach between sessions. The event coordinator flagged us over to her. The next few minutes were a bit confusing, then we suddenly found ourselves in the green room chatting with Steve Forbes before he went on stage to talk to our group.

Even though he was late and the event coordinator was a bit frazzled, Steve was completely calm and congenial. Together we lined up the topics he would discuss to 200 of my closest friends (all IT business owners) in just a few minutes.

The first and most intriguing question he discussed was “What is Money?” And you’re thinking, “Duh, Leia. It’s that paper stuff we exchange for goods and services.” However, Steve’s definition was very interesting.

He stated that money measures wealth. It measures value. In the same way that clocks measure time and rulers measure length. These are standards, just as money SHOULD be.

You notice that the value of money changes all the time in today’s markets…..but could you imagine if the fed changed the value of an hour the way it flippantly changed the value of the dollar?

“Today an hour shall be 63 minutes.” And then next month, “An hour shall now be 57 minutes.”

Sounds pretty incredulous, right? Then why are we ok with the constant change in the value of our money? Did you know that  currency trading is now about $5.5 trillion EACH DAY. Currency world-wide is that volatile.

But the fact of the matter is, if you can’t trust money, we can’t trust each other. Back in the day we traded sheep and cows. The value of a cow was pretty standard. Now that we use paper/coinage whose value is so subjective, it lowers trust. Lower trust is more expensive and makes business travel slower.

Steve challenged us to name ONE time monetary policy was positive in the long term. Not that I'm well versed in monetary policy, but no one else in the room could remember a time either. Cause for pause, no?

Money is something people feel emotional about. But the thing is, to make good decisions about money, we need to keep emotion out of our decisions. Steve illustrated to us that most of the time, if it feels good, don’t do it. If it feels bad to do it, you should probably do it.” This is particularly valuable when making investments in securities.

Steve also had some great insights into our “healthcare crisis.” He said that usually when we see DEMAND in an economy, there is OPPORTUNITY. Typically, when demand for a product or service is high the market drives businesses to provide it better/faster/cheaper. However, we don’t see this in healthcare. There is a TON of demand, yet the industry is in crisis.

He explained that the reason healthcare is in crisis is because we have no free markets in healthcare. The fact of the matter is, YOU as a patient are not the customer. The REAL customer is the third party payer (the health insurance company). That’s why YOU are not seeing the customer service and low cost you expect. He strongly believes we need to get consumerism back into healthcare to drive up innovation and drive down costs.

The last thing I talked to Steve Forbes about was virtual currency. I asked what his feeling was on Bitcoin. Bitcoin is the first decentralized digital currency that you can use peer to peer with no intermediary. Being at a tech event, I was really curious what his take was on it.

Steve’s face lit up when I asked that question. (Ok, that did make me feel good). His take on virtual currency was that as they stand now, they are not poised to replace the current system of currency in our world, but the interest and adoption of virtual currency illustrates clearly our lack of trust in our current system and the world-wide feeling that we need to and can find a better system than we are using today.

Amazing times we are living in!

To Your Continued Success,