Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Welcome back, everyone, to the Tron podcast, the Randomness of Nothing. Your host, Rashad Woods. Very special guest today, all the way from the uk, originally from Mozambique, which is a. He has. He's a world traveler, venture guru, very successful entrepreneur right now in Plymouth, UK. Mr. Tony Redondo. Thank you for joining me.
[00:00:16] Speaker B: Thank you.
[00:00:18] Speaker A: You have such a fascinating background. So how does a man with Portuguese background go? Come from Mozambique, you know, get into the financial industry, have interest in martial arts, rugby and basketball, and then eventually come up with this phenomenal currency exchange, cosmos.
[00:00:35] Speaker B: It's amazing you put it like that.
[00:00:37] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, dude, it's. It's. It's stellar. It's. It's unbelievable. I was. I had to keep scrolling just to be like. It was so fascinating reading your life, you know, your life.
[00:00:45] Speaker B: One of the things that life has taught me, you know, it's important to make plans, but they. But they're loose guidelines. They're not a script, you know, And I look back over my 58 years on this planet, and most things that have happened to me have happened. I wouldn't say by accident, that's unfair, but it's happened because I've had my eyes and ears open rather than. I meant to go in that direction.
[00:01:10] Speaker A: Right.
[00:01:11] Speaker B: So I was born in Mozambique in Africa, because at the time it was a Portuguese colony. My parentage is Portuguese. And I had an absolutely amazing, idealic early childhood because we live 200 yards away from the Indian Ocean, where water temperature is 23 degrees centigrade, air temperature 26 degrees. And the local park was one of the big game reserves in South Africa next door called. Called the Kruger National Park.
[00:01:38] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:01:39] Speaker B: And, you know, and so seeing the big six around the watering hole and all the rest of it, I was just. That was just every weekend.
[00:01:46] Speaker A: Goodness, man, that's incredible. Just to live near that.
[00:01:50] Speaker B: Right, exactly, exactly. It was just, you know, a really, really interesting sort of natural, you know, upbringing. And the name Cosmos and, you know, of the business comes from those days because, of course, you know, when it gets dark, you get that real darkness with no light pollution.
[00:02:09] Speaker A: Right.
[00:02:09] Speaker B: In that part of Africa, certainly in those days. Yeah. And so it's pitch dark. And so the Milky Way is just a canopy of stars behind, you know, absolutely above you. And the thing is, because of the tilt of the Earth, the Southern hemisphere points towards the middle of the Milky Way.
[00:02:26] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:02:26] Speaker B: Northern hemisphere points away. So for every star that we see in the Northern Hemisphere, there are hundreds of stars in the south that you'll never see. Yeah. I Was always fascinated. And I was lucky enough that my godfather was really knowledgeable about astronomy. Stopped me, I was. I've always been curious by nature. So my parents tell a story that to stop me running off into the bush because I thought I heard something, they would put a couple of blankets up on top of the car bonnet.
[00:02:52] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:02:52] Speaker B: And my godfather will sit up there with me and hold my hand and point out Venus and Mars and the asteroids and all the rest of it. So I've always had a fascination with all things up there.
[00:03:04] Speaker A: Correct.
[00:03:04] Speaker B: So when I came, fast forward 50 odd years when I came to start my company, I only had one name in my head. So thank goodness he was available at Companies House.
[00:03:12] Speaker A: It was still coming. Oh, you know, that's shocking to me. That was like out of like you would think that would have been taken. Right. Because you just hear it all the time in casual talk. Like, you know, you know, whether it's a movie, whether it's, you know, a character, whether it's in a kid's cartoon. Right. Like that's crazy that.
Yeah.
[00:03:28] Speaker B: I was so surprised.
[00:03:29] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:03:30] Speaker B: I'm very grateful. Because if it hadn't been available, I'd have no idea what to call my business.
[00:03:36] Speaker A: Absolutely.
[00:03:37] Speaker B: Just chosen the first name available, you know.
[00:03:39] Speaker A: Right. For sure, for sure.
[00:03:41] Speaker B: But then things happened and there was a revolution in Portugal which overthrew a 50 year fascist dictatorship. Colonies were given away, we were evacuated out, went back to Portugal and my parents decided to emigrate to the UK in 1975. Not a word of English between the lot of us. Didn't know anybody. Different culture, different climate. It was a real counter shock. Oh, first I can't imagine, like Africa, you know, I grew. I've always lived in a, in a multicultural society. Right. You know, because of the Portuguese colonies in Mozambique. We had, you know, we had Indians from Goa, we had Chinese from Macau, we had locals, we had, you know, Portuguese. So. And then we settled in the East End of London, which again is very multicultural. So that made me feel very much at home.
[00:04:32] Speaker A: Nice.
[00:04:33] Speaker B: Which is great. Went to local school, loved sport, hated school, to be honest. I was bit of a terror away, in all honesty. But then at the age of 19, without really a clue as to what I wanted to do in my life, an opportunity arose. And the opportunity was that this is now 1985 and the financial services get completely turned on its head by the government passing a piece of legislation which is financial services. And all the international banks flooded into London. Right, right, right beforehand you had to know the Right people and go to the right schools to get into the city of London. After that we had so many banks coming in that needed staff. And luckily for me, about the only thing other than sport I was reasonably good at at school was maths. So I thought to myself, banking, maths? Yeah. Okay.
[00:05:24] Speaker A: Comparable skills, easy to transfer over.
[00:05:26] Speaker B: Exactly. So that was my career decision done and I joined the bank. I studied in the evenings, I worked my way up the career path. But again, when I look back with a wonderful benefit of hindsight, I was so lucky in that in those days bank managers were still bank managers and there was only one way of doing business and that was to provide a personal service to each client. Because of course, mid-1980s, there was no computers, there was no Internet, there was no email.
[00:05:58] Speaker A: Right, right, right.
[00:05:59] Speaker B: Business was done the only way business had been done for hundreds of years.
[00:06:02] Speaker A: So if you had a bad relationship, you would go to somebody who had good relationship with. Right, exactly.
[00:06:07] Speaker B: So that's the only thing I learned. Now fast forward into sort of the early noughties and all of a sudden the email comes in and the Internet comes in.
[00:06:18] Speaker A: Right.
[00:06:18] Speaker B: And you've now got a situation that in the last 10, 15 years of my 35 year corporate career, all of a sudden technology completely takes over. So that now you have hundreds of currency brokers out there.
[00:06:33] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:06:34] Speaker B: But 99.9% of them don't employ staff, don't have a telephone number on their website. It's a one size fits all platform.
[00:06:42] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:06:43] Speaker B: You, the client has to log in. You, the client has to self service. And that causes clients untold grief for two obvious reasons. The first one is currency exchange rates change every three seconds, night and day.
[00:06:56] Speaker A: I saw that.
[00:06:58] Speaker B: Who on earth has the time to sit there watching it? And even if you did have the time, would you actually know what you're looking for? What the signals are in amongst all the market noise?
[00:07:08] Speaker A: Well, what's crazy is, you know what the. I don't want to cut you off, but I remember I watched a documentary about the, the putting down of the transatlantic cable line once. Right. And it was like. Right. And people don't realize that even though that one in particular, like I, from my understanding, I don't want to get this wrong. Is it still working? There's thousands of these that are around, you know, hundreds of these around the globe. And that was the first fiber optic Internet to get commodity and currency prices in real time.
[00:07:33] Speaker B: Exactly.
[00:07:33] Speaker A: By the way.
[00:07:36] Speaker B: The original cable still exists.
[00:07:38] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:07:39] Speaker B: We used to live in the little village Three miles away from it really wasn't that.
[00:07:43] Speaker A: Wasn't that place down in like New Funland or something like that or Newfoundland or.
[00:07:50] Speaker B: Cornwall where I'm based.
[00:07:52] Speaker A: That is bonkers.
[00:07:53] Speaker B: Visited at the beach. That's crazy.
[00:07:56] Speaker A: Yeah, I was blown away. I don't want to derail the conversation but like when you said that, that immediately me thought, me thought of that. So please continue.
[00:08:05] Speaker B: There's a little hut about half a mile in from the beach.
[00:08:09] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:08:09] Speaker B: In Cornwall, which is a Marconi hut.
[00:08:12] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:08:12] Speaker B: And that was the original station that they put the cable underneath the beach all the way across the Atlantic.
[00:08:20] Speaker A: That is so.
[00:08:21] Speaker B: And that's why.
[00:08:22] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:08:23] Speaker B: Pound dollar exchange rate is still called cable.
[00:08:26] Speaker A: Yeah. Okay. Okay, okay.
[00:08:28] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, that makes sense.
[00:08:29] Speaker A: And so, you know, it's crazy because I saw that little hut in the documentary, but you know, that's right.
[00:08:35] Speaker B: I used to live three miles away from that.
[00:08:37] Speaker A: Oh my God. That is insane. That is insane.
[00:08:40] Speaker B: You know, that was interesting. You know, going back to sort of, you know, the brokers and trouble for clients self service is again, big change in my working lifetime is that when I first started pre computers the difficulty was in finding out information. Of course you were either on the inside or you weren't.
[00:09:01] Speaker A: That's it.
[00:09:02] Speaker B: Now there's so much information, we drown in information, but 90% of it is market noise. And what you need is a little bit of experience and a little bit of expertise to work out the difference between the market signals and. And just nice because that can. But on a platform where you log in and you have to self service, it's a totally reactive setup. You say, I want to make, I'm visiting Italy in the summer, I need to buy some euros. The brokerage gives you a quote, you accept the quotes or you don't. That's it. Which is a terrible way of doing it because who's to say that's the right time? Who's to say you have to do it straight away but because you're not talking to another human being, you don't get any options, you don't get any guidance.
[00:09:46] Speaker A: But people are getting burned because they get an immediate satisfaction from something that's placed in front of them with it.
[00:09:51] Speaker B: Correct.
[00:09:52] Speaker A: They haven't done their homework and they're taking advantage of people's lack of homework completely.
[00:09:56] Speaker B: And then the second problem is the actual mechanics of the transaction in terms of doing the banking. So you guys in the States, you've got your routing number and Swift number and account number, but if you're visiting the uk, we don't use any of that. We use source code and account number.
[00:10:12] Speaker A: Yeah, really?
[00:10:14] Speaker B: If you visit Italy, they don't use any of that. Okay. And a bitcode. So can you imagine the stress clients go through where you're on this platform, you have to do everything yourself. You're putting in the coordinates, the money goes out of your American account and it's nowhere. You get a phone call from the host in Italy saying, I thought you were going to pay me right, oh, right now.
[00:10:40] Speaker A: And you hit send and you thought everything was all good and gravy and.
[00:10:44] Speaker B: You then go back on that platform and there isn't even a telephone number to call.
[00:10:48] Speaker A: Geez. Oh, Pete, that's a nightmare. You get swindled and you can't call. Right. You have to email or try to talk to a chat box.
[00:10:55] Speaker B: Exactly. Oh, you know the funniest thing about these chat box, it's hilarious.
[00:11:02] Speaker A: I gotta hear this.
[00:11:03] Speaker B: Bearing in mind the perspective of a market, financial market, where the exchange rates change every three seconds, night and day. So with this chat box, you, you put your question in, you press return or enter and up comes this message. Your business is important to us.
[00:11:20] Speaker A: We will get back to you in the next 72 hours, which is a lifetime. I mean, I mean you wouldn't wait three days for, for anything.
[00:11:29] Speaker B: Anything, exactly.
[00:11:31] Speaker A: Let alone your money.
[00:11:33] Speaker B: Even in Cornwall, I could order something on Amazon. He'll be here tomorrow morning. And that's in the back of, that's in a little remote part of the UK. That's crazy. Waiting 72 hours is a nightmare. So for years I had this growing idea of setting up a brokerage that uses technology but provides a very personalized service that I grew up with when I started my career, right, where the client doesn't have to self service, what the client does is have a conversation with me and tells me exactly what their requirements are, right? What they're looking at doing, the time frame, their, their availability of cash flow, their availability of funds, everything that's important to you. And then my job is to work out the best solution for you, right?
[00:12:20] Speaker A: And so, you know what was interesting was some of the stories that you, that you had given up and I given up, that you actually told on your, on your platform and your website, the testimonials and they're, and they hit really home. Like here's, you know, you had Tony, the air Force colonel that was retired, that's getting his pension from overseas, right? And I'm sure, like I haven't been in the military, but there's. You always watch, like house hunters. I'm not sure what they have over there, but there's lots of people who want to buy property overseas and over in the States that they don't factor in that one huge piece of information of currency exchange, currency fluctuation and the difficulty involved. And when you're trying to deal with your pension, the absolute last thing on your mind is a chat box. Right? Can't happen. Can't happen. You know, when you, when you, when you hit that, that point, I was like, man, that make his. His service makes a lot of sense. They could talk to somebody who sets that up for him because they worked hard for where they got, and they can talk to you and your team and then you're hitting the market. You know, like, to your point, you didn't say you were clandestine, right. You said, but you have enough. Like, I'm not gonna. You're not a predictor of future. Right. Nobody predicted Covid. Right? None. And so, but the way that you frame that service, people selling their houses, you know, pensions, overseas, college, medical expenses, things like that, like, man, that makes a lot of sense with, with the gap that you filled.
[00:13:36] Speaker B: Yeah, you're absolutely right. You know, and I always say to people, anybody who tells you they can read the market, run away from. Because it's complete BS. There is no way I have 40 years experience in financial services and I can't read the market. But that doesn't mean it's a blind guess. What it is, is it goes from a blind guess on these automated platforms to an educated guess. So there are black swan events, to use market phraseology, like Covid, you know, that nobody saw coming.
[00:14:10] Speaker A: Correct.
[00:14:11] Speaker B: In norm day, you know, the certain things move the markets a certain way. So a very simple example. One of the key statistics I always look out for is the monthly inflation data from the major economies. Because simple rule of economics, all the major central banks are responsible for keeping inflation under control. Correct. Usually it's usually around 2%. If inflation comes in higher than expected, the normal response from the central bank, the Fed in your case, or the bank of England, would be to increase interest rates.
[00:14:47] Speaker A: Correct.
[00:14:47] Speaker B: That increases borrowing costs.
[00:14:50] Speaker A: Correct.
[00:14:50] Speaker B: Slows the economy down.
[00:14:52] Speaker A: Right. To decrease buying.
[00:14:54] Speaker B: But also what it does with the currency is if you're an international investor and you can see that the Fed, the inflation rate is higher than expected in the States and the Fed will be under pressure to put up interest rates. That means if you put your money in dollars, you're going to Get a better return on your money. Right, because the interest rate's going to go up.
[00:15:14] Speaker A: Exactly, exactly.
[00:15:15] Speaker B: So guess what happens to the dollar? It strengthens.
[00:15:18] Speaker A: Right?
[00:15:18] Speaker B: It happens. It's a good rule of thumb. It's not science, but it's a good rule of thumb.
[00:15:23] Speaker A: So you have good predictor models based on past, you know, based on past. How the.
[00:15:27] Speaker B: The current hundreds. Well, not hundreds, but we've got 80 years of data in terms of inflation and unemployment and retail sales and property data. GDP is very important. You know, interest rate differentials. It's where you get something called the carry trade. If you're a major player, if you're a major company and you know that, for example, interest rates in the UK are 4.5%, interest rates in Europe are 2 and a half percent. Doesn't take too much to work out though, what you ought to do. First of all, that makes the pound strong against the euro. And then secondly, what you ought to do if you've got the different currency accounts is buy the euro at a good rate and then borrow in euro because you'll be paying a smaller rate of interest than you would do borrowing in UK because of the lower interest rates in Eurozone. So there's all kinds of these situ. These rules of thumbs that you learn over the years and goodness, I've been doing this for 40 years so I can help my clients. That's why I think our business model works, because it starts with what's important to the client. What is it you need to do? What's important to you? Is it convenience? Is it speed? Is it the best rate? Do you need to save money? Do you need to make money? What's what, what are your circum. Circumstances? And then we build our answer around that.
[00:16:53] Speaker A: So this is where the ignorance of, of a guy stateside, because we have 50 states and we have all similar banks across 50 states. Right. And so I've never been to Europe. So you guys. But you still have different countries that have their own currencies. But the euro is kind of the standard based on countries that are in the European Union. But even then you could still have issues with somebody buying or selling property or getting a pension if they were from Italy and then they decided to go to France or you know, now that the UK has obviously left the, the eu, how did you, how do people deal enter in the, in the European Union or inside of Europe when currencies, when they have their own separate currency but they want to peg to the euro, you. That's where you can still step in, right?
[00:17:31] Speaker B: I can still step in. That's right. So for example, we deal with the Polish slotty for Poland, Czech krona for the Czech Republic, the Hungarian foreign for Hungary, Danish kroner for Denmark. So there's loads and loads of these currencies. And the other thing that's important also is the thing with the United States is it reminds me a lot of the banking scene when I first started back in, where a big chunk of the industry is still controlled by a handful of banks.
[00:18:03] Speaker A: Correct? Correct, Correct. That is very.
[00:18:06] Speaker B: Five banks in your case.
[00:18:07] Speaker A: That is correct.
[00:18:08] Speaker B: That is very true. So the issue with that of course give you some perspective, Rashad. So I believe over 90% market share in the United States banking scene is owned by five banks in the City of London in the UK there are 652 banks registered. And all those banks, all those banks only control 45% of the market.
[00:18:34] Speaker A: So a lot of it is really small banks as well too in local.
[00:18:38] Speaker B: So it's very competitive, the British market, which is why it's the only financial market that London is bigger than New York. So the stock market is bigger in New York, the commodity markets are bigger in New York. But London is the foreign exchange. And I have, as a licensed broker, I have a direct feed into London rates.
[00:18:57] Speaker A: That's crazy. Again, I know you also have a US one. So you said you have a US dollar collection account, right? In New York City. So for somebody who's listening for the, for the baseline, you know, hey, you know, I'm a teacher, I retired, I did everything right. And now I decide I want to live my, my, me and my husband, you know, did all the things right. We want to buy our dream house in Spain. Where do you step in? Like, right.
[00:19:21] Speaker B: So if you don't use a service like mine, what you do is you go through your bank. The bank does the conversion of the dollar to euro and sends the money, but the spread is big. And the transaction will be done when you walk into the bank and ask them to do it. That's it.
[00:19:38] Speaker A: Noticed, I noticed that on your website. Right. And so yeah, it's, it's, it's a time when you walk in the door, not when the market is being timed.
[00:19:45] Speaker B: Exactly. Exactly. Whereas what I will do. So then you've got option B, which is these automated apps. The problem with these automated apps is you have got to get your dollars into a dollar account in London or in Frankfurt in Germany. The problem with that is that you can't do it Online. Because online banking in the States only works domestically, not internationally. So you have got to go into the bank, and the bank will go. Certainly, Mr. Woods. No problem at all. Mr. Woods, that'll be $50, please, just to make the transfer.
[00:20:19] Speaker A: Right.
[00:20:20] Speaker B: So where the Cosmos solution comes in is because our bank account is not in London or Frankfurt, but it's in New York, you can jump online24.7 free of charge and move your funds by ACH bank transfer from your account to my collection account in New York, nice and convenient, free of charge. We moved the funds from New York to London, but we covered that cost and nothing happens automatically. All that will happen in this circumstance is I'll phone you up and say, Mr. Woods, good news. $50,000 for your deposit on your Spanish villa has come in. However, the dollar's taking a bit of a bashing at the moment because of the Trump trade tariffs. You know, it's quite. It's dropped about 3% this month so far against the euro. Do you need to pay this straight away or have you got a little bit of time on your hands? Okay, you need to do it straight away. But if you say to me, oh, no, the deposit's due by the end of April, I would say to you, under today's circumstances, Trump, you know, these straight tariffs are a ploy. I don't think they're the end game. So at some point, because nobody wins out of tariffs. So all Trump is doing is letting everybody know who's the boss and to come round to his way of thinking. In my opinion, okay, let's apply rather than the end game. Which means, I believe deals will be cut.
[00:21:43] Speaker A: Well, because markets have been open, you know, in various countries with various currencies for, you know, hundreds of years. Right. So, you know.
[00:21:51] Speaker B: Exactly.
[00:21:52] Speaker A: It doesn't, it doesn't get done in a vacuum. Right. So more or less you're going to tell that customer to ride the market out, like, this is the best advice for this particular situation. Unless you need to do it right now.
[00:22:02] Speaker B: Exactly. Under today's circumstances, if you're buying euros from the dollar and you can afford to wait, I would wait.
[00:22:08] Speaker A: Exactly.
[00:22:09] Speaker B: The dollar will come back. Interesting. You mentioned Spain, but actually, because of my Portuguese background, I happen to know for a fact that five years ago, can Americans emigrating to Portugal wasn't even in the top 10. It's huge now today, second place behind the British.
[00:22:25] Speaker A: It's crazy because I'll go on cnbc and you kept hearing all these people like, oh, like, what's the Best place for Americans to, you know, after they retire. And I'm like, portugal. I saw it. And then I saw it, like six months later. And then you keep seeing it repeating and you're like, man, seriously, you know, low cost.
[00:22:41] Speaker B: And I've done quite a few transactions, you know, Cosmos is a member of afpop, which is the association of Foreign Property Owners in Portugal.
And it all started. This is a typical story that sums up my life. Okay, so we're members of this AFOP association. The phone rings. It's an American lady in Portugal, originally from Arizona in Portugal, saying, is that Tony? Yes. Yeah. How can I help? We heard you on a podcast about two years ago. We're in Portugal. We've tried to buy a property three times, and three times we can't get the money out of bank of America because we have to physically be there to sign the piece of paper in front of them.
[00:23:23] Speaker A: But we're in Portugal, right?
[00:23:25] Speaker B: We've just found another property that we'd really, really love. Is there any way you can help us round this? So I said, of course, no problem at all. You register with your Arizona address. I'll give you the details of the New York account. You move the funds there. You let me know the time frame, I'll do the rest for you. It sounds far too simple. She says, well, I'll send you the information. You check it out.
[00:23:47] Speaker A: Let me know right now.
[00:23:48] Speaker B: Long story short, over a period of six weeks last summer, she registered the dollars arrived. We waited and waited until we were happy with the exchange rate. She's bought the property while she was out of the country, all compliant, no delays, all in plenty of time. She didn't even have to open. She didn't even have a Euro account in Portugal open at the time. One of the other problems with bank of America was the only way to do it was to send the monies directly to the solicitors. But because the monies were going to an account not in the client's name, bank of America wouldn't do it.
[00:24:23] Speaker A: Right, because it didn't match up.
[00:24:24] Speaker B: Yeah, because it didn't match up. But I. We talked of you. But it's going to a solicitors. It has to go to a solicitors. So as long as it's a solicitor's client's account, and as long as the solicitors are legitimate, which.
[00:24:36] Speaker A: Right.
[00:24:37] Speaker B: Check with the local Portuguese legal association, right. Then there isn't a problem here. So there wasn't a problem. So we did it. And now they're busy enjoying themselves in Their new house in Portugal.
[00:24:48] Speaker A: I'll say this in the cleanest manner possible. You discovered basically what people don't research and what the institutions aren't telling people in order to make it best facilitated for the customer.
[00:24:59] Speaker B: Absolutely.
[00:25:00] Speaker A: Because the speed and convenience of just walking in and walking, do it, be done with it. And you're like, here, you, you, you, you have a potential to put a stop to that whole process. And you know, the fact that, you know, you cornered this when I was reading about it, I'm like, there. Because you see so many people on YouTube who do. Oh, you know, like, it's not, it can come across as. I don't want to stutter here. You're the real deal. As opposed to a 20 second YouTube clip of some 20 year old millennial who swears up and down that this is something they could do. Just send me your money and I'll fix it for you. Right. You know what I mean?
[00:25:33] Speaker B: Just to make it 100% clear, okay. There's a very logical, cold business reason why we do things the way we do. Okay. It's not out of the goodness of my heart. It's not because I'm a wonderful person. Okay? Forget all that. There's a cold, logical business reason, and it's this. My competitors get virtually all their business through marketing, advertising, paper campaigns.
[00:26:02] Speaker A: Yep.
[00:26:03] Speaker B: That costs a fortune.
[00:26:04] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:26:05] Speaker B: Since day one, since we started on the 1st of July, 2020, we have not spent a penny on marketing.
[00:26:11] Speaker A: That's crazy.
[00:26:12] Speaker B: All our business comes from work referrals.
[00:26:15] Speaker A: That's amazing.
[00:26:16] Speaker B: We have to earn that. If we don't look after you, you're not going to use us. If you're not going to use us, you're sure as hell not going to refer your friends and neighbors.
[00:26:24] Speaker A: Absolutely not. Absolutely not.
[00:26:26] Speaker B: So we have to look after you to the best of our ability to, A, have a chance of you using our service. B, have a chance that you continue to use our service. C, have a chance that at some point I can say, rasheth, do you know anybody else who.
[00:26:42] Speaker A: Of course, of course. And so you know.
[00:26:44] Speaker B: Exactly.
[00:26:45] Speaker A: And that's the thing, Right? So that's what made it so fascinating. Right? So you have a Cosmo currency exchange. And I'm like, I never saw. I mean, obviously that's not my wheelhouse of life, but it's like you just don't, you just don't see this advertised as a whole, something like that. Because most people would go through bank of America, Chase, you know, Wells Fargo, and, you know, they don't get that personalized service. I do have a question for you, though. How did the UK leaving the EU affect, like, currency markets in. In that line of business? Because they're not pegged to. I mean, you guys have the pound, right? But how did that impact the business that you're in?
[00:27:19] Speaker B: It impacted heavily and is still impacting now. So initially, the pound took a real beating because of the concerns about the loss of trade. And, yeah, pretty much like what we're seeing with Trump's trade tariffs at the moment.
[00:27:32] Speaker A: Can that be undone? Can, like, the Brexit be reversed?
[00:27:35] Speaker B: It can be, but it will never be, because whoever tries to do that will be political suicide. Because it was a referendum. It was a referendum, as referendums go. I mean, I remember back again, going back into my sort of early days in the 1990s, there was a referendum in Canada about Quebec wanting to secede from Canada.
[00:27:58] Speaker A: Yeah. That's like 96, 97. Yeah.
[00:28:00] Speaker B: And he went to three recounts because the final result was 50.1 against 49.9. The Brexit referendum was 52.7.
So you're talking about millions of votes of difference.
[00:28:15] Speaker A: So there's no doubt, right?
[00:28:16] Speaker B: There's no doubt whatsoever. The problem with Brexit, from my point of view, and I am completely apolitical. I'm not sure I should say this, but I will, because I'm talking.
[00:28:26] Speaker A: Yeah. No, no, this is why, you know, like, we're. I have this. This is the no Agenda Show. But this is raw, unfiltered. I want to hear exactly what you have to say.
[00:28:34] Speaker B: My grandfather, when I was a kid, said to me, one day, I'm going to teach you a foolproof way of knowing when a politician's lying. So two hours later, he's laughing his head off of my childish ideas and what have you.
[00:28:47] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:28:48] Speaker B: And he eventually says, I stop, stop, stop, stop. My ribs are hurting from so much laughter. It's very simple, son. When a politician's lips move, they're lying.
[00:28:57] Speaker A: Oh, geez. Right? Like, everybody's waiting for, like.
[00:28:59] Speaker B: Yeah, it doesn't matter if there's red, blue, green, yellow, purple. They're all the blood. Same take in view. Always ask yourself, what's the angle?
Never mind what they're saying, but where are they going with it?
[00:29:12] Speaker A: Correct, correct.
[00:29:14] Speaker B: So that's always stuck in my head. So I'm completely apolitical. Okay. I've always voted all my life because I feel we owe a duty to those that came before us because to.
[00:29:26] Speaker A: Be involved in the process.
[00:29:27] Speaker B: Exactly. To have the democratic right. I think it's a privilege.
[00:29:31] Speaker A: Right.
[00:29:31] Speaker B: You know, we're not talking about ancient history. Until 1974, people in Portugal didn't have the vote.
[00:29:38] Speaker A: Yeah, that's nice. You know, you know, you know, it's crazy too, is obviously, you know, until, you know, its neighboring country, Francis Franco. Right. Like, people think of Spain, I haven't been to Spain, but like, that was a dictatorship less than 50 years ago. Right. You know, all of South America had dictators in it. Right. Like you're, like, you start doing your history research, you know, you're not too far away from like, hey, man, the general of that country ran the show and he didn't like you. You know, there's the field that unfortunately all the bodies are buried.
[00:30:06] Speaker B: You get a knock at the door at 3 o'clock in the morning and the neighbors don't see you again.
[00:30:10] Speaker A: That's it.
[00:30:11] Speaker B: I know people.
[00:30:12] Speaker A: Oh my God.
[00:30:13] Speaker B: Because in a Portuguese family that doesn't know someone. No, that happened to. Because the Portuguese dictator was in power for over 50 years.
[00:30:22] Speaker A: And, and this is the part too, you know, it's. And I say this very respectfully because, you know, when people do history, you hear about, you know, obviously dictators are horrible, but you'll hear about, you know, you know, your Mussolini's, your Hitlers, and then there were some other really bad people that if you don't go down the wormhole, kind of get lost in the, in the pecking order of who else was in charge. Right. Because you may only hear about one or two, like, you know what I mean?
[00:30:48] Speaker B: Yeah. You hear about the Stalins and the mouse and Hitlers and Mussolinis.
[00:30:53] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:30:53] Speaker B: But as you said quite rightly, there's Franco in Spain. There was Salazar in Portugal.
[00:30:57] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:30:58] Speaker B: There was Boxer in Albania and.
Yeah, not that long ago.
[00:31:05] Speaker A: Not that long ago.
[00:31:07] Speaker B: You know, one of the things that. Brett, to answer your question about Brexit, So the real problem with Brexit, because us human beings are very adaptable. So never mind the political rights and wrongs of Brexit. Let's put that to one side. The issue is we voted, we're out. Has that caused some friction? Yes, it has. Has that friction kind of calmed down? Yes, it has for the big companies. But here's the practical problem for Mr. And Mrs. Jo Public. Before Brexit, a British person selling a property in Spain and moving back to the uk.
They sell the property, the money will be in their Spanish bank account. To move those euros back to the UK would normally be a flat fee of about €20.
[00:31:54] Speaker A: Didn't even notice it happened right post Brexit.
[00:31:58] Speaker B: Because the UK is outside the EU single market, the Spanish banks now like to charge 1 1/2% on the volume. So if you sell a small apartment for €200,000, which doesn't get you a lot in Spain these days, okay, you're looking. Instead of a €20 fee, if you go through the bank, you're looking at €3,000 fee just to transfer the money. That doesn't include the cost of conversion. Unless you know somebody like me who will go, what are you doing? You're selling in Spain and you're bringing the money back to where? To uk Right, Right, Stop, stop. Register with Cosmos.
[00:32:36] Speaker A: Right.
[00:32:37] Speaker B: We. We have our dollar account in New York, but we also have a euro account in Dublin in Ireland.
[00:32:43] Speaker A: Right.
[00:32:43] Speaker B: Dublin in Ireland is still inside the EU single market. So moving funds from Spain to Ireland is the same as moving funds between two Spanish accounts as far as the banking system is concerned. So they can't charge you a percentage fee, so that automatically saves the client 1 1/2% on the volume, plus the benefit of the funds coming in and me picking up the phone and saying, Mr. Woods, your euros are in. However, it's not great rates at the moment.
[00:33:12] Speaker A: Correct.
[00:33:12] Speaker B: But this, and this, and this is happening in the markets. If you're prepared to wait, our opinion is that it might improve for you in the course of the next three days, seven days, 10 days, two weeks, whatever the case may be, and then it's up to you to make a decision. But at least you're not going in cold and just going, yeah, like, I'm.
[00:33:33] Speaker A: Just going to deal with whatever's in front of me. I do have one final question. What's going to keep some of the major players from saying, you know what, I'm going to open up my own little Cosmos as a subsidiary, you know, because they always do that. You know, they'll. You'll see like a small competitor and you will literally be like, where did this company come from? And then when you start looking at, you know, the articles of incorporation, you'll find out that it's really backed by Lloyds of London. Right. And you'll be like, oh, okay, absolutely. Right. So, like, are you concerned at all about this model being replicated?
[00:34:02] Speaker B: Yes and no. I'm concerned because it's almost certainly has happened, will happen again, will continue to happen. Not really, for two reasons. The first one is that the quick way of making money in my industry quite frankly, is to do the complete opposite of what I'm doing.
[00:34:20] Speaker A: That is true. That is true.
[00:34:21] Speaker B: The quick way of making money is get the latest technology. You pay for the technology. Once you open up, you've got no overheads, you don't employ staff. The problem with employing staff human beings is they want to get paid every month, not just the once.
[00:34:36] Speaker A: Right. As opposed to getting a software platform that you're just having to do upgrades and pay software for services.
[00:34:42] Speaker B: That's it.
[00:34:43] Speaker A: Exactly right, yeah.
[00:34:44] Speaker B: And, and also the management levels at my competitors tend to be people in their fees and fees, many fees. If you extrapolate backwards, the Internet really started kicking in around 2001.
[00:34:59] Speaker A: Right, right.
[00:35:00] Speaker B: Which means most of the people in my industry, that's all they know, that life existed before the Internet.
[00:35:06] Speaker A: Right.
[00:35:07] Speaker B: So they don't have the skill set, they don't understand service.
[00:35:11] Speaker A: Right. And they're going to say, why are we investing in agents and people to actually provide this personal service?
[00:35:17] Speaker B: I can't tell you how many times throughout my 35 year career I had a monthly review. And in that monthly review you will go like this. Right, Tony? Well, good news is you've hit all your KPIs and you've hit all your targets. That's good. But why do you have to spend so much time on the telephone speaking to your clients? Why do you have to know about their granddaughter and their pet dog and how the grandchild is doing and how their football team's doing? Why just do the business, just make the money and go.
[00:35:46] Speaker A: And it's like, well, that's how they keep coming back into the door. That's how they keep. That's how I. Because then when they're. So I have them, then I get, you know, them, their kid comes in when they're 18 and start working, they bring their girlfriend slash fiance in there, then they have a kid. And then so like by me having that personal relationship and here they are looking for the transaction.
[00:36:07] Speaker B: It happened throughout my career. You know, I've still got clients that I've been dealing with for 25 years through different jobs. Even before I set up Cosmos in 2020, they never had a problem coming with me because quite frankly, they don't care whose name is above the door. All they knew is they could pick up the telephone and say, tony, I need to move some money. You let me know in the next six weeks the best time to do it and just forget about it completely, get on with their lives knowing that I'm not going to play Games, like, it's coming towards month end, so now's the right time. Yeah. Which is what happens with all the big brokerages.
You know, it's coming towards month end. Now's the right time as to walk.
[00:36:49] Speaker A: So, yeah, wink, wink, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:36:53] Speaker B: Now, don't get me wrong, I have bills to pay. Of course, I also recognize you're not stupid. If I do that to you, you're gonna go, but I didn't need to do it so quickly. Why did I get bounced into doing it? This Tony's really got my interest at heart. On his own.
[00:37:09] Speaker A: Oh, yeah. People will go home and have that conversation with that significant other of theirs and say, okay, you know, and then.
[00:37:14] Speaker B: Of course they will.
[00:37:15] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:37:16] Speaker B: Whereas, you know, they know that I don't care about my friend. If you told me you need. The money's in Spain by the end of April, and I think that on the 5th of March, the rate's rubbish, but is likely to improve. I'm not going to waste your time trying to bounce you into a deal because it's not right for you. I wouldn't do it if it was. So why should I ask you to.
[00:37:35] Speaker A: Do it for sure that I love that business model. And, you know, and when you reached out to me, you know, and I'm like, full disclosure. When I saw Cosmos, I was like, where's this conversation going? Until, you know, Because I just. I know. And then I'm like, cosmos, you know, like. Because, you know, like, with all, you know, I say this, you know, I know we're wrapping this up. There's so many people that are financial gurus right now that it's crazy, like, in, like, ever since, like, Bitcoin, Dogecoin, whatever you. Whatever coin somebody does right now, right? Everybody's like the, you know, they got their Instagram video and they got their fake car and their fake jet behind the background. Let you know I can solve all your problems. They're this, you know, and you're just like, really? Like, seriously. But then I researched you, right? And then I started looking. I said, man, this guy's the model. And the examples and the people and the testimonials. Like, there was. There's meat on the bone, so to speak. And so that's what this Tron podcast is all about, you know, I would never have gotten a chance to talk to somebody from Plymouth, uk, courtesy of Mozambique and Portugal. The wormhole. I get to go down. Talking to people like you is priceless, you know, it's awesome.
[00:38:36] Speaker B: That has been great. Thank you very much for your time and for the opportunity.
[00:38:40] Speaker A: I just want to ask. Yeah, say this. I always ask everybody this. Where can they find you? They don't need me.
[00:38:45] Speaker B: The website address is very simple, www.cosmoscurrencyexchange.com. there's a contact Us page there, and that's the easiest way to do it, and I will always. It also means that I'll call the client to save their phone bill. So that's the easiest way to do it.
[00:39:03] Speaker A: Tony Redondo, thank you so much for your time, and thank you for being on the Patron podcast, brother. You're very welcome.
[00:39:07] Speaker B: Thank you for the opportunity.
[00:39:08] Speaker A: Absolutely. Take care.
[00:39:09] Speaker B: Thank you.
