Two Life Hacks to Make You Healthy, Wealthy and Wise 

I love life hacks. 

The reason why is because they serve as a shortcut to optimizing one’s existence. So, if you are like me, and one of your personal prime directives in life is to maximize your finite time on Earth, it behooves you to employ the strategies and techniques that can manage your time and daily activities efficiently. And when those life hacks also can make you healthier, wealthier and wiser, well, it’s only proper that I share them with you. 

Today, I am pleased to tell you about two of my favorite life hacks. The first is a fantastic way to save time while eating supremely healthy food that also tastes sublime. The second is a way to streamline your learning by simply listening to condensed, yet impressively thorough, summaries of some of the best books available today. 

Let’s start with the life hack that can make you both healthy and wealthy — gourmet meal-prep company Home Bistro (HBIS).

Home Bistro is my go-to meal prep delivery source because they supply me with the highest-quality, best-tasting and most convenient gourmet meals prepared under the direction of numerous celebrity chefs, including the incredible “Iron Chef” and Culinary Institute of America graduate Cat Cora. 

So, instead of spending a lot of time trying to cook a gourmet meal and then having to do extensive post-meal clean up, I can pull a gourmet meal out of the refrigerator, heat it up in minutes, and enjoy fine dining that also has the macronutrient profile that I’ve calibrated specifically for my nutritional needs. 

The convenience factor here is certainly a big reason why I love Home Bistro, but if the food didn’t taste great, I wouldn’t eat it. Plus, if the food weren’t made of the highest-quality ingredients, I wouldn’t eat it.

Your editor with two of his favorite things: A Home Bistro gourmet meal and his Yamaha grand piano.

At this stage in my life, I want it all! I want convenience, high quality and deliciousness — and that’s what Home Bistro delivers, direct to my door, so that I always can have a fine-dining experience in my refrigerator. 

Ok, so that’s the “healthy” (and tasty) component of Home Bistro, but because this publication is investment oriented, there’s also an extremely tasty investment opportunity in this company that fulfills the “wealthy” life hack component.

You see, Home Bistro is already a public company, trading on the Nasdaq OTC, but the company is currently seeking new capital to help expand its meal-prep capability and to help increase its market share. To accomplish this capital raise, Home Bistro is going directly to the investing public, offering an incredibly attractive way to get in on the shares at a substantial discount, and one that involves owning restricted shares and warrants. 

Here is how this offer works, an offer which you can participate in right now. 

First, the offering type is considered a “Regulation A+” or “Reg A” offering, which just means the direct public offering is permitted by federal securities law, as long as it doesn’t exceed $50 million in a one-year period. 

Second, the offer allows you, the investor, to purchase HBIS shares at $0.75 per unit (a unit includes one common share and one warrant). 

HBIS last traded for $0.90, so you are getting the common shares at a substantial discount to the current price. As for the warrants, they are priced at $1.50 each. That means you own the right to buy shares at that price, regardless of the current price. So, if HBIS shares rise to $3.00 per share the way analysts anticipate, then you could double your money on the warrants alone.

The one caveat here on this deal is that your common shares (not the warrants) are restricted for six months after you purchase them. So, whatever money you invest, you won’t be able to redeem until that six-month holding period is over. 

Think of this as a chance to get into a great company at a substantial discount to its current trading price in exchange for a little patience on your part. To me, that is well worth it — and it represents an excellent “wealth” life hack that I think all The Deep Woods readers should explore. 

To find out more about Home Bistro, both its meal prep offerings and its tremendous investment offering, all you need to do is click here. 

Now, today’s second life hack fulfills the “wise” component, and it’s a life hack that I like to call “Renaissance Man Summaries.”

As you likely know, my “side gig” is the podcast and lifestyle website, Way of the Renaissance Man. Here, I talk to fascinating people about what they do in life, how they came to do it and what they think is the key to both their successes and their failures. Along the way, my goal is to help uncover the tools we all need to live the lives we really want. 

Well, one of the key tools we need for a good life is knowledge. More specifically, we must always be actively pursuing the acquisition of new knowledge. Doing so keeps our minds fresh, and it keeps us young and vibrant. Yet the problem with acquiring new knowledge is that doing so requires a lot of time — and there are just so many hours in the day we can devote to such pursuits. 

Yet today’s second life hack streamlines the acquisition process by literally reading to you condensed, yet remarkably complete, summaries of some of the newest and best books on the market today. The service that does this is called Readitfor.me, and it’s my favorite book summary service for executives and entrepreneurs.

I use Readitfor.me to discover the biggest ideas from the world’s best leadership, sales, marketing and personal development books, and all in less than 12 minutes per book — and I can do it for free!

Here’s how this life hack works.

Each week, VIP Subscribers to the Way of the Renaissance Man Community will receive three of the best animated video summaries from Readitfor.me, free of charge. You’ll get one on Monday, one on Wednesday and one Friday. Then if you are interested in digging deeper into the service (and I know you will be) then you can sign up for their premium, full-access service.

And, the best part of this life hack is that if you do decide to level up, you can do so at a special Way of the Renaissance Man discount price. 

So, claim your place in our community and begin to receive three free book summaries each week — it’s an easy life hack that I know you will find valuable.

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ETF Talk: Invest on the Cutting Edge with This Biotech Fund

Medicine has come a long way in the last few decades, and that pace shows little sign of slowing. 

The cutting edge of medicine is leaping and bounding into the future, and there is a potential investment theme here that could be wildly profitable. So, how can individual investors like you and me profit from this trend? Well, one way is ARK Genomic Revolution ETF (ARKG).

This exchange-traded fund (ETF) invests in companies related to a range of exciting technologies in the biotech and medical areas. As the name implies, the focus is on scientific developments in the genomics field for this fund. These technologies are expected to enhance the quality of human life, such as by allowing for gene editing to prevent certain genetic diseases.

Some of the technologies involved here are: CRISPR, targeted therapeutics, bioinformatics, molecular diagnostics, stem cells and agricultural biology. Each of these developing technologies has the potential to bring revolutionary change to their respective fields. The fund can hold both domestic and foreign investments across multiple sectors so long as the companies held are relevant to these exciting themes.

This fund’s recent performance has been a bit disappointing, which may make for a strong entry point. For the last year, the fund is up 54%, still considerably better than the S&P; however, much of those gains came last year, and so ARKG’s year-to-date performance is an underwhelming -10%. The expense ratio for this fund is 0.75%, which is somewhat high, but it makes sense that an actively managed fund might charge more of a premium. There is no dividend.

Chart courtesy of www.StockCharts.com

The top holdings for ARKG include Teladoc Health Inc. (TDOC), 6.82%; Exact Sciences Corp. (EXAS), 4.94%; Regeneron Pharmaceuticals (REGN), 4.49%; Pacific Biosciences Corp. (PACB), 4.37%; and Caredx Inc. (CDNA), 4.09%. Roughly 42.32% of the fund’s net assets of just under $10 billion are invested in the top 10 holdings, which makes it relatively concentrated for an ETF. Currently, there is a total of 60 holdings, with a few of those positions being extremely small. The fund is actively managed, and so the holdings don’t necessarily correspond to a market cap weighting strategy.

If investing in cutting-edge biotech strikes you as an interesting strategy, ARK Genomic Revolution ETF (ARKG) may be one fund you could consider for your portfolio.

As always, I am happy to answer any of your questions about ETFs, so do not hesitate to send me an email. You just may see your question answered in a future ETF Talk.

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In case you missed it…

A Runner’s High is Freedom’s Low

Freedom is serious business, and whenever I see this cherished value threatened, I feel compelled to run to its rescue. And “run” here is the appropriate word because the issue at hand is that one runner’s “high” is what I consider an example of freedom’s low.

Last week, American sprinter and perhaps the fastest woman on the planet, Sha’Carri Richardson, was suspended and effectively banned from competing in the Tokyo Olympics. The reason why was she tested positive for marijuana at the Olympic trials. More specifically, and the specifics matter here, Richardson tested positive for an inactive THC metabolite during U.S. Olympic Team Trials on June 19.

Translation for those who aren’t familiar with the science: that means Richardson wasn’t “high” while she competed. It means that her blood had traces of the psychoactive ingredient, tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC, which can remain in the bloodstream for days and even weeks after use.

Still, Richardson didn’t deny her drug use. In fact, she admitted it and then apologized for what she knew was a violation of the rules. In a tweet following the positive drug test, Richardson wrote that she was sorry she couldn’t be our Olympic champ this year, but she promised to be our world champ next year. Hey, I love this woman’s confidence.

Of course, there are those who crassly criticize Richardson for violating the rules, saying that she is guilty of “smoking her opportunity away in violation of the eligibility rules.” 

Yet to me, this isn’t an example of someone defying the rules. Rather, it is an example of bogus, unfair and silly restrictions on personal freedom being imposed on individuals by inconsistent, irrational laws and overzealous governing bodies.

Consider that in Oregon, where Richardson smoked marijuana, recreational marijuana use has been legal since 2014. Moreover, there are now 18 states, plus Washington, D.C., that allow both recreational and medical marijuana use. Oh, and just in case you were wondering, those states are Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Illinois, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Montana, New Jersey, New Mexico, Nevada, Oregon, Vermont, Virginia and Washington.

So, if you are fortunate enough to live in one of these states, at least you have slightly more freedom than you otherwise would have if you lived elsewhere.

Yet apparently, that freedom doesn’t apply to Sha’Carri Richardson. 

You see, her life and her freedom are further subject to additional rules set under the 2021 World Anti-Doping Code, rules enforced by the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency (USADA), which is the official testing organization for the Olympics. Under these rules, THC is considered a “substance of abuse,” and according to the organization, it is because THC is “frequently abused in society outside of the context of sport.” 

Yet as Jacob Sullum writes at Reason.com: 

“Counterintuitively, Richardson’s infraction had nothing to do with ‘doping,’ as it is usually understood, since the USADA concedes that her marijuana use was ‘unrelated to sport performance.’ Nor does her positive test result indicate that she was under the influence of marijuana during competition, since the THC metabolite cited by the USADA can be detected in a cannabis consumer’s urine for days or weeks after the last dose.”

So, let’s get the facts correct here. 

Richardson engaged in a legal act of marijuana consumption per the laws of the state of Oregon. Moreover, her drug use was unrelated to her winning performance at the Olympic Trials, as marijuana is not considered a “performance enhancing drug” per USADA regulations. 

Now I ask you, does her suspension from competing in her sport seem at all to be fair, just or rational to you? 

Yet still, even though these arbitrary and irrational rules exist, Richardson did know she was violating the rules when she decided to smoke marijuana. So, why would she do this? Well, according to her, she used the drug after learning about her biological mother’s death.

So, a 21-year-old coping with the sadness of her mother’s death by using a legal substance is the reason for her being banned from doing what she is arguably the best in the world at doing. 

Does that seem right to you? It doesn’t to me. In fact, it seems preposterous. 

I submit that you have to be insensitive, callous and/or lack any sense of compassion if you are ready to vilify Richardson for this. Oh, and keep in mind that if she had chosen to cope with her mother’s death by drinking alcohol, her choice would have had zero impact on her athletic career.

This whole episode is a microcosm of what’s wrong with our drug laws, and with the arbitrariness of irrational rules imposed on our freedoms by governments and by organizations that appear to delight in levying control. 

The way I see it, if you care about your liberty, you should support Sha’Carri Richardson. I know I will be rooting for her future success, and the future of freedom. 

P.S. If you want to revel in a real celebration of freedom this summer, then join me, Dr. Mark Skousen, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, John Mackey, Dr. Drew Pinsky, Jo Jorgenson, Larry Elder, Heather Wagenhals, Rich Checkan and a host of other luminaries in just two weeks, live, right under the nose of Mt. Rushmore? That’s right, it’s time for the best week of the year, FreedomFest 2021. This year’s theme is “Healthy, Wealthy & Wise.” The conference takes place July 21-24, in Rapid City, South Dakota. So, if you are looking for a place to celebrate freedom and to immerse yourself in pro-human, pro-reason and pro-wealth ideas, then FreedomFest is for you! To see the full schedule, go here!

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Tapping Into the Paine

“The real man smiles in trouble, gathers strength from distress, and grows brave by reflection.”

— Thomas Paine

When you want inspiration on how to prevail in a difficult world, one good place to find it is in great minds. Here, the tremendous intellect of Thomas Paine helps us understand that to be a “real man,” one must face adversity with joy, learn from hardship and then cultivate courage from the experience. So, the next time you face any significant adversity, tap into Thomas Paine. 

Wisdom about money, investing and life can be found anywhere. If you have a good quote that you’d like me to share with your fellow readers, send it to me, along with any comments, questions and suggestions you have about my newsletters, seminars or anything else. Click here to ask Jim.