Welcome to the Money Tree Investing Podcast. Stock market, wealth, personal finance, value stocks, invest in your life.

Hello, Smart Money Tree podcast listeners. Welcome to this week's show. My name's Kirk Chisholm and I will be your host.

So today we have a returning guest, Rich Checkin. How's it going, Rich? It's going great. Thanks for having me, Kirk. Good. Well, I'm glad to have you back on again. We had such a

turnout of emails from our listeners on the Bitcoin versus Gold debates. We want to have you back here to talk a

little bit more gold. I think we had some differing of opinions from the listeners. Some people are very pro-Bitcoin.

Some are very pro-gold. I wanted to have you on the show because we had a lot of feedback on the

gold part and a lot of questions. And I thought I'd bring you back on just to kind of talk a little bit more about

gold. Just for the record, I'm pro-Bitcoin and I'm pro-gold. I just think they're different assets. That's all. Yes. Yes. I

clarify that right up front, right? We can talk a little bit more about that here in the show.

I think we're all kind of agnostic. It's just different assets have different roles, as we'll talk about.

So Rich, want to tell us a little bit about your background. Well, not the traditional background to become a precious metals dealer. I started out at West Point. I was on a pre-med track. I was going to be a doctor. And after four years there, I figured, you know, I wasn't going to lead a scalpel. I was going to lead soldiers. So I opted to go infantry as my branch and lead soldiers one-on-one from the ground.

And then I was going to get out in a couple of years after being a rifle platoon leader or what have you and go to medical school.

I liked what I was doing.

So I ditched the medical school.

I stayed in the Army about six and a half years, left as a captain, decided it was time to move on and start my next role in life.

Did a little direct marketing, or not direct marketing, but direct sales door-to-door in Macon and Atlanta, Georgia.

And about that time, so this is back in late 95, early 96, my uncle, Michael Check and his partner, Glenn Kirsch, were looking to expand asset strategies

international and wanted somebody they could trust. They reached out to me and I moved up here 26

years ago and never look back. Absolutely love what I'm doing for the past quarter century.

I believe in medals and I think that'll probably come through in the interview here today.

Let's kind of dive right in.

So you got into gold and precious metals.

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