Why You Should Have a Diversified Investment Portfolio

Episode of My First Million with Sam Parr and Shaan Puri.

Transcript

Note: This transcript was auto-generated from YouTube captions. It may contain errors and lacks speaker identification. A full Gemini audio transcript will replace this.

Kind: captions Language: en in our copywriting uh program we say be clear not clever clear not clever it’s really hard to be crystal clear it’s super easy to create marketees and be clever but in the grand scheme we believe clarity wins i feel like i can rule the world i know i could be what i want to i put my law in it like no days off on the road let’s travel never looking back all right so remy have you you can be honest have you ever listened to the podcast i’ve heard your clips and i love them all right good answer you know what you’re getting into yeah you know what you’re getting into and you’re also we’ll just say it you’re you’re one of the reasons you’re here is because i like you we’re friends another reason is you’re smart and good at this stuff but the third reason is you just had a podcast come out and you’d be talking about doing a podcast forever now you actually have one it’s about um are they the people are anonymous right there it’s anonymous couples having discussions about money well most of them use their real names and they’re all real voices so i always wanted to uh listen in on couples fighting about money discussing money but you can never do it you know the only place you’ve ever heard anyone fight about money is on a movie and now you actually get to listen to real couples sharing real numbers talking about what’s going on with their money how do they disagree and then what do i help them do to get over it and what’s it called it’s called i will teach you to be rich with ramit sethi and so this is a little bit like uh what’s her name esther perel is this sort of like her model where uh i forgot what her podcast is called it’s very good she’s like kind of like a relationship coach and she has a couple coming in she’s a therapist yeah esther perel is amazing you know she helps couples with therapy mine is not therapy but if you imagine for example a couple where the classic example is you know he’s an overspender we don’t have enough money for that that’s a classic one but then it becomes much more interesting for example we have a couple the guy hates hates paying too much for organic blueberries he hates it so when he orders blueberries he has two tabs open he’s comparing notes i know all your personal finance nerds listening to this are like what’s the problem that’s totally normal no it’s not normal he opens it up he’s comparing cross compartment guess his net worth what do you guys think i’m guessing it’s high based on the setup so uh i don’t know we’ll go over i would say over over 10 million sam uh a million bucks eight million dollars and he’s comparing the price of blueberries and really what this shows is money is not just about math in fact we overvalue math and we undervalue psychology which is what the podcast gets into did did launch go well how how how the the the first episodes do great i mean we’re learning right so i know all the metrics cold for email and even social stuff but for podcasts we’re like i texted some of my friends hey what’s good and they told me some numbers are like okay so we released it now so it’s getting tens of thousands of downloads per episode we’re happy about that i’m more happy that people are writing in and they go my wife and i finally talked about money for the first time we’ve been married for six years i’m like yes so the quantitative stuff seems to be good but i’m more interested for a creative project like this in the qualitative growing our podcast we’ve talked about it a bit on this podcast which people like and sometimes don’t like us talking about it too much but it’s been the hardest thing that i’ve had to grow what you’ll learn i’m sure you’ve already learned this is that so with email you can advertise somewhere or you can write a blog post and you know exactly where the new email subscriber is coming from um and you know you can guess how long they’re gonna stay with you with podcasts you don’t really know that so like it’s like itunes won’t tell you how many subscribers you have they’re not exactly going to tell you where they come from uh you don’t you don’t know a lot of information and so it’s really really challenging and so when we grow we’ll do a bunch of stuff and we’re like did it work and it takes us a week and we’re like well the numbers went up let’s just continue doing everything we just did did it not work no it didn’t work all right so let’s just change it’s been it’s been really hard uh anyway but so you uh all right so ramit you have this your main thing is i will teach you to be rich and it started as a blog uh it’s a book now and it’s this major course business and that’s actually what i wanted to talk about a little bit early on was course businesses sean just launched a course called power writing it’s called power writing all right yeah wait you don’t even know the name of your own partner’s new course what’s wrong with you well i knew it was called power writing i didn’t know if it was like power writing and then like you know dash the how to write like i don’t know what the [  ] hold on hold on i’m taking over this podcast right now sean are you offended that number one he didn’t know the name of your course and number two that he hasn’t bought it for full price not at all no uh sam basically taught me everything that i teach in the course so in a way i actually owe him some royalties really and then the second thing is uh when he asked that i just thought it’s like a setup you know like you know when you kind of give someone an assist you’re like oh you wrote a book right what’s what’s the name of that book you’re just letting them plug their thing and it’s like that’s a podcast old trick okay that didn’t go the way i wanted so oh look it did look it’s called i know what it’s called it’s called power writing but there’s a sub headline as well right sean no there’s no sub headline and also also i think i’m you guys are retiring i taught it just this time and it was like it was really good and i’m like unfortunately i’m the type that gets bored of things really quickly so just when we got it where like after the the second one from the first one the second one made double the money and it took a quarter of the time which is like exactly what you would want and it should the answer should be go do it again and instead i don’t want to do it at all i’m just like okay i want to move on to something else you written can you say you said the first time how much it did so can you say this time how much i did the second time uh just double that so for those who are following along just double the number that’s how much you made this time really okay and you’re not gonna do this again you’re done i’m gonna teach something else something else i’m interested in something that’s like totally different like which will be like kicking over the sand castle and starting over which is kind of silly from a business point of view but from uh enjoying myself and entertaining myself point of view it’s the right move but your courses are different than remedies so remy i i bought your copywriting one um again i’m sorry i don’t remember the name of it just it was just called matt it was sale up on sales pages what would which one did i buy uh we have our our biggest one is called call to action we have another one called behind the sales page where you actually watch me write a sales page that i think made millions and millions of dollars so it’s maybe one of those okay i took it i took it two years ago i’ve taken a couple of yours but your business is different than sean sean’s was the cohort one have you ever have you done one of these cohort classes yeah i’ve done several in fact i’m doing one as we speak right now uh cohort classes are definitely hot um it’s fun to watch this new model if you trace the history of courses i mean they’ve been going on for generations but let’s just say in the last 20 years um you know first off was e-books and this is they were kind of hot in the early 2000s um you had dating ebooks you had a famous ebook on how to train your parrot those were typically between 10 and about 100 bucks um then you started seeing video being added video added higher pricing um and it was technically very difficult because they didn’t youtube wasn’t even out uh when somebody started then it went on to higher value people got more sophisticated with topics you added masterminds which were hot and they’ve kind of fizzled out over the last few years now you have cohort based courses and there’s some focus on completion rates which we can talk about that’s a terrible decision to do if you choose to do that we can talk about that but yeah cohorts are hot doesn’t necessarily mean they’re lasting but they’re certainly hot right now so how many courses right now do you guys have um we have between 20 and 25 live is your business doing north of 20 million in sales i’m not going to share my sales numbers um i thought you might not i thought you might not but i respect that you just you just told me that because if i ask someone and they’re like oh you know i’m like just say you don’t want to talk about it that’s totally exciting yeah yeah we have a private business we have a great team and 20 to 25 programs and over 50 000 customs around 50 000 customers so we’re thrilled with that you’re not teaching these live then recorded generally they’re recorded the biggest ones are we do do some live ones to experiment with concepts and it’s just fun well you know like you mentioned sean you like to be able to engage and then you’re like okay do we want to double down on that or are we done with that and what do you think uh so so i think some people are interested in your course business but i think more people would be interested in what you’ve learned about the course business having done a bunch of it being kind of like near the top of the game there which is like first and foremost who’s crushing it when it comes to courses what’s a model you look at where you say just from a pure like respect of the way that that business works i respect this course business what stands out to you might be your own great great question because crushing it and who i respect are totally different let me break that down who i respect i respect um people like marie forleo who has a awesome business she’s runs it her way she launches when she wants to which is sparingly um it’s beautifully done and she she just loves the way she runs her business that’s awesome um i also respect people like like some of the the legacy people in our industry jay abraham who i just saw for coffee two days ago uh he’s one of my mentors and he’s been around since the 80s in fact even before brian dean high integrity uh matthew hussey in the dating space he’s great he’s a friend of mine um and then i think reforge is interesting although i think that that is quite different because it’s venture backed than what the typical individual wants to create so what i admire about all those folks high integrity and we can talk about why integrity is lacking in the course business because it is uh they run the business the way they want to each of those could easily double their revenue easily if they did a couple of different decisions they don’t uh and and and that’s why i respect it john do you know who jay abraham is no okay so he’s i’m gonna guess probably in his 60s and he wears a he looks like if i like told you like imagine what like a in the 60s or in the 60s what a rich british guy would dress like if he were like into hunting like in the countryside of england that’s what this guy dresses up like impeccable you know the hunter and jumanji that’s what i just that’s what i got in my head that’s a really good yes okay so google it he wears like a kind of like a scarf tucked into a tie and like you would imagine him smoking like a pipe right for me am i wrong like he like dresses like in fact let me add to that i once asked him jay because we’re close and you know he’s been a mentor for many years he tells me you know i flew to asia and you know i said jay what’d you wear while you’re on stage because he loves he’s a sartorial he’s into it he goes well you know how many suits i take for a three-day presentation right i go one he goes 40. i said what and he said they’re hiring me not just for the information i’m gonna teach they’re hiring me to be theatrical it’s a show and so at every break he changes his suit now to the typical silicon valley utilitarian they’re like not so stupid what’s the metrics there’s more to life than metrics you silicon valley nerds that’s a huge mistake that all these roi attribution positive sometimes in fact the best companies know that’s why they advertise in times square they can’t track that but they do it because it’s the right thing to do and it’s about brandon jay’s a genius at doing that that’s why he’s been at the top of the game for decades and he’s been at the time he’s been he’s been around forever and if you go and study like a bunch of copywriting books i think was that his background was he a copywriter yeah one of the best okay so he’s a copywriter and when i don’t know him i’ve i’ve seen him in person once or twice i know you know him well but this guy has got this huge cloud of mystery around him to me from the outside and and i think that’s the vibe he purposely gives so like for all i know he could be a billionaire i have no idea like what this guy’s story is he’s just this like business like guri type of guy what what is his story what’s the truth about him so the the truth is that he he was doing highly innovative marketing for the last 40 years he would go into companies like gold companies um umbrella companies all kinds of random industries dozens and dozens of industries and he would show them ways to exponentially grow their their sales icy hop was one of his and he has a fantastic story he bought remnant radio advertising he paid a hundred percent of the first fee to the radio station so it was no risk to them and then he took the long-term profits and grew that business in a massive way so i’ll tell you what i like about him i like that his ideas are extremely powerful in fact on my bookshelf i have a very highly curated bookshelf of some of the best marketing books that i’ve ever read i have two of his that are on that bookshelf um he he takes a multi-dimensional approach to business so for example he would tell me early on ramit put your customers at the center of your world i said okay what does that mean and he’s got this thing called the theory of preeminence he would say look tell them explicitly tell them you are here you might not be ready to buy today that’s fine enjoy my free material to use it for as long as you want when you are ready i will be here and i will be here for the rest of your life which is totally true and you know i do some things in my business that are very unconventional for example i don’t allow people with credit card debt to join our flagship programs the higher end ones that costs us millions of dollars every year and it’s funny people will plagiarize our sales pages they’ll plagiarize our email copy for some reason they don’t plagiarize that policy i wonder why that is because 90 of their customers would disappear overnight but when we do that even though it costs us in the short term it benefits us tremendously in the long term so jay helped us really articulate that vision clearly what does he sell what you you’re talking about course businesses that you like what what’s his course he doesn’t care he doesn’t care about that anymore he’s been doing that for general for decades he does uh rare consulting for equity arrangements you can find most of his stuff free on his website if you sign up for it but he’s not doing that anymore he’s done it he’s shared a ton of his insight now he wants to work with selective clients did he tell you any good stories about uh icy hot or one of the brands that he helped i see hot was one of one of my favorites it’s in this book and he’s told me all about it he told me about gold and how he um helped this gold business that was sort of struggling and they repositioned the way they sold gold and it exploded their business he’s got tons of great stories in his book my favorite one it has a terrible title but it’s a great book getting everything you can out of all you’ve got is really good one page in that book helped me build a multi-million dollar product i was sitting on a wednesday wednesday i have strategy days and i just read and i think and i read one of his pages and i it all clicked for me and i launched a multi-million dollar program of ours uh called ramit’s brain trust and it was all because of that book so speaking of uh speaking of terrible titles uh we have a podcast title that is both kind of catchy but also kind of cringey i would say you also have a title that is kind of catchy and kind of cringey we’ve talked about kind of our feelings on it give us your take on both your name as as well as doing names like this so give us the kind of like what’s your what’s your mindset is it all pros are there no cons are there a mix how do you think about it now there’s a lot of cons i’ll tell you i’ll tell you the the blunt truth so i created i will teach you to be rich while i was a student at stanford and i was helping my friends in the dining halls with their personal finance and i had learned and i built my own system because i took some of my scholarship money and put in the stock market uh here i am trying to help my friends and they were like oh that sounds awesome because i got an overdraft fee and they would never show up to my free classes so i was like okay i gotta name this to make it more catchy and then event and that didn’t work so eventually i started the blog looking back i want to first say i was sober when i picked the name okay so and it was catchy but i will say um it’s come with its downsides for example you know i’ve been sitting on panels there’s like the ceo of a fortune 500 company another ceo or senior vp and then there’s ramit sethi ceo of i will teach you to be rich and the first reaction at some of these places is not good okay but even though many of my really smart friends including some venture capitalists and others they were like you got to change your name you got to change your name early on i was like you might be right and then i started going well there’s some costs i’ve already invested all this time and then it just became too difficult and so i finally have really owned it um i will say that i know very well when people hear this name of this book or the site they go that sounds like a scam so the conversations are seriously it’s not what it sounds like check it out and then i kind of have come to love that i love the push pull they go it sounds like a scam they come here it’s hyper tactical it has the exact accounts to use they go oh this sounds like every other money person wait a minute this guy graduated from stanford oh wow he’s in the you know times square new york times bestseller so i love that push-pull i don’t mind a little skepticism because i trust our material is so good that if they are ready they will receive it and if you were going to rebrand had you ever come up with a backup what would you go to yeah we we’ve played around with some ideas i do think there’s room in our future business for an extension for different names but but with all that said you know what i love clear names some of our best programs are find your dream job we’ve helped people get 50 000 raises that’s like right on the money earn 1k help you earn 1k on the side and for many people turns into earn 100k on the side so i do love clear names and in our copywriting program we say be clear not clever and you’ve been doing this since what like oh nine or something when it when i started this site in four oh four and do you think that this could last another so you’re at it that’s what 10 11 12 uh 16 years 17 years can it last like what’s it gonna what what would a brand like this a course business and your brand what would it look like in 20 or 30 years and are you going to continue doing it for that long you think oh yeah i mean i love what i do so first of all it’s not a course business sorry we just happen to have courses but we also have a paul then a blog a brand so it’s it’s an education business um we have a book with over a million copies sold right you could just as well say it’s a book business because we sell more books we sell courses um i don’t love the concept of quote a course business um you will find that many of the successful course creators they go wait a minute there’s lots of different ways to reach people i’m going to do events i’m going to do a podcast so courses simply become a nice which which part of the empire so right so i’m pretty fascinated i’ve been studying this kind of what i call solopreneurs basically people who try to build like a personal monopoly around some domain whether it’s a guy who there’s a guy who’s like i’m the best dog trainer i will just teach you everything you don’t know about training your dog i’m just like i train dogs for the stars but then i’m going to give you the information for free over here i love that i think these are there is an infinite number of these like personal monopolies that you could create even within one right so let’s say your personal finance there’s personal finance for guys who want to be billionaires there’s people who want to be lean fire there’s people who want to um do it where it’s like you know you’re only gonna you’re you’re gonna maximize your time right so it’s like the kind of four hour work week style there’s there’s a number of these personal monopolies and i’ve been interested to look under the hood of these and see two things one is what’s uh what does that business really look like because you only see ramit sethi you write you don’t know like how many people you got on your team yeah we have about 20 20 to 25 at a given right so like even though it looks like an individual brand obviously there’s a there’s a full talented team of people helping out help me make it happen and then you have like many different plates that you’re spinning at once you’ve got the blog plate you’ve got the podcast plate you’ve got the books plate the courses plate there’s gonna be you know there’s probably four more that i mean job board who knows what else you got um which plate is the so i would say the usually what i found and you tell me if it’s true for you i found that there’s the audience core one which might be like the blog like the blog is our core thing for growing the audience the free audience and then there’s like and then there’s this other thing which is monetizes kind of like the one to five percent of the audience the best and this is what this is where the money comes in to pay for these 25 people that work at my company so what is it for you is it a newsletter or a blog what’s the main thing on the audience side and what’s the main thing on the business side is it courses that’s a great question i think in general your model is correct i think that there are places that are better for audiences and typically this will be things like social media it’s easier to grow that than to grow the number of customers that’s just sort of a given of the internet for us audience wise i think um social media for us for sure so we have people on twitter instagram to some extent youtube and now the podcast i think that will end up being a pretty substantial part of the business audience-wise um the program those are all about each generation that’s like the leader well uh instagram is the best it’s the best be in my twitter um because i am i love it it’s like i’ll get up and i’ll start instagramming and tweeting and stuff and now we’ve got a little iwt support in there so we’ve got you know a regular posting schedule those are great and actually we’ve learned how to monetize things like instagram um you know instagram is a nice part of our business as well you also reply to trolls on twitter which is awesome and instagram i reply to all trolls yeah i love it i’m waiting in my life for one smart troll you know i have i’ve helped over 10 million people i have uh over a million books sold 50 000 customers our team is amazing i’m still praying one day can there be an intelligent troll out there it’s so far no it’s um it’s very difficult you know i get anti-vaxxers who write me you know i tell them you know you have trouble deciphering a menu at olive garden and you’re over here giving me medical advice i don’t think so so you know these guys they they’re and they’re all guys they uh they really feel that they need some meaning in life and i’m happy to give it to them and show others how to respond to trolls why do you why why do you spend the interview there by the way isn’t that a big energy suck why because it’s fun for a while it is fun to slap down trolls for a bit but it i’ve for me it gets exhausting but you seem to thrive on it you seem like even right now i can see a little pep in your step just thinking about it well i remember listening to a navy seal who said when others do push-ups they get tired when i do push-ups i get strong and i found the same because dealing with trolls keeps me sharp um and i’ll tell you why it’s not just you know for kicks and to make fun of them it’s that in my life you know i’m hanging out with guys like you smart guys who are dissecting business models and and healthy whatever i don’t get the chance to talk to someone who comes up to me and says you know vaccines are fake or um these sort of crackpot you’re you’re only doing this so you can make money if i wanted to be rich i would create a book on being rich you know i’ve candidly never had somebody come up to me in real life and say that and in part that’s because when people come up in real life they’re actually very positive pleasant they usually have very nice things to say what typically happens with these trolls now i’ve um had conversations with thousands of them and i save and cross um catalog all these conversations so it’s fascinating right over time you can build a corpus of what’s going on remember i studied psychology at technology and psychology at stanford so i’m fascinated with human behavior so i want to know what’s going on in your life that you would reach out out of nowhere to somebody who doesn’t know you and go [  ] you so when they say that to me i go hey what’s going on man you having a bad hair day and we start talking and so now i have metrics 50 of them will never reply of those who reply 50 will go oh oh my god i didn’t know anyone would actually read this oh i’m sorry hey man big fan which kind of leads to the question if you didn’t know anyone’s going to reply why on earth would you send that that’s kind of sad and then the remaining 50 which is 25 of the original they will kind of double down and that actually is a very interesting conversation to have like what’s going on with someone that they would say that and so i don’t always get to a resolution but it hones my conversational skills and i get to understand and peek into the psyche of someone like that i love that you have the like intellectual answer when it’s probably just really fun to just clap back at people no no explanation we’ve all felt it um so uh sam i think you were gonna ask something before i jumped in on the troll thing well i i i’m still curious about the course business and and i’ll tell you why i’m curious about it i’m curious about it because like i bet you you’ve been in this since 2004. there’s i i have a bunch of friends neville noah you who are just i think you’re maybe i think you’re maybe eight years older than me who are old enough older than me and that they’ve seen like the beginning of like the web 1.0 course businesses and there are some people that just crushed it so we talked about ebbing ebb and pagan uh what was his name david d’angelo was his uh what’s his name and that stuff i love hearing stories about that it’s so fascinating about all these guys just killing it on the internet and it’s just fascinating it’s like learning about like a drug cartel or something like it’s just like intrinsically exciting to hear about like these like it’s like cowboy feeling type of business and also on here you mentioned the company agora and you’re saying that i asked you can one can some of these course businesses reach 100 million in revenue and you said you sometimes they can but it’s incredibly hard but the ones who do they’re really just uh they’re like huge newsletters that sell courses so yeah that’s what i wanted to ask you okay so let me take you back and i’m gonna share a couple stories from the history because we have um created over 30 programs and we have served you know tons and tons of people so um a few things i’ve learned first of all i remember our first major course we launched was called earn 1k and the reason we created it was that i went on book tour and i went around to 13 different cities and i was like hey what should i create this is way back in the day uh 2009 in the depths of the recession and they go love your stuff on finances and automation but i really want to know how to make more money okay that was fairly unusual back at that time so came home and we identified all these different uh areas of making money we created a program on freelancing because we know it and we could teach it we recorded that in the back of the automatic office so we got hooked up with matt he was like okay you can record it in the back we didn’t have any fancy camera equipment but the content was good and we launched it and it was 497 dollars at the time and the thing converted way better than we thought it converted too well it was around two percent if i recall correctly i told people in the last email i was like guys this is actually converting way better than i thought i’m going to raise the price and a lot of people were like haha marketing gimmick haha that’s so crazy and then at the end it made 600 000 on our first launch and we raised the price and never lowered it again ever so it was hilarious because a couple weeks later people like hey can i get in at the original price we’re like no and so that was the first thing where we realized oh my gosh packaging matters topic matters conversion rate and pricing are profoundly meaningful in your business so that taught us a lot moving along you know we had other programs we launched another business program i think it did like five million or six million in one week and we wrote about that on the tim ferriss blog um you can see kind of the entire flow of how we did that that’s a great one by the way i i’ve when we launched trends i read that and reread it a ton of times i think it’s like uh a five million dollar launch or something yeah is that yeah i figured yeah we took people behind the scenes because there’s a you have to understand it’s like think of all the movement behind launching a movie okay we’re not doing a movie but we’re doing a launch we write an entire book per launch and much of that gets discarded and we still end up with a book that’s how much we write and create so we wanted to show people what goes into it because it’s not just luck at certain levels it’s very strategic and there’s an element of luck too but then moving you know moving along you see a lot of other models that came and went for a question like can you make it to 100 million bucks you can but a couple things change one you become an acquisition machine you cannot make it to 100 million dollars without a true massive acquisition machine and that means that most of your business will be focused on acquisition and in the self-development world or money world if that’s what you choose to pursue if you want to play that game you have to become very very uh mercenary so for example you will see facebook ads they’re basically like uh make a million bucks in a week i’m being hyperbolic but you get it why it’s that that is what people respond to when you are doing a true acquisition machine if you want to build a boutique business with high integrity that is antithetical to that so it’s very important to know for example in software you’re you don’t necessarily have to build a very hyperbolic business right look at hubspot they’re not over there saying fix all your crm in 10 hours that’s not what they’re saying at all but in self-development or in the course business it becomes more and more aggressive the bigger and bigger you want to get and that’s kind of like one of the one of the downsides of the business which is it’s kind of like you know the hustle we we had a conference hustle con and a bunch of other conferences and it kind of sucked when that was our main stream of revenue because the more money it made the more people we had and the more people it had the worse it got that that sucked i hated that i hated that i hated that i hated that and that was a huge challenge for us well it didn’t end up being a challenge because we were like all right it just can’t be the main revenue driver but yeah well let’s do a quick switch i want to do um some of your uh both business ideas because this is a idea podcast and secondly i want to ask you about some money hacks but let’s start with ideas so what we like to ask everybody is cool it’s it’s always fascinating to figure out how do you do what you do how long you’ve been doing it great like that’s kind of pass facing but what i found is that anybody who’s talented enough to build their own business like you have and is out there operating in the field they see tons of other opportunities that you just you have more ideas than you have time to go do them and so or maybe you’re not the right person to go do that idea but you think somebody should somebody who loves so and so should go do that what are some ideas business ideas that you’ve seen that you you think are genuinely interesting or worth we’re chatting about and then we can toss them out to the audience okay i always focus on where’s the demand where is their insatiable demand you know as we talk about in our earnable program go where the fish are and um the first one i would create would be a business around pets okay first of all i don’t have pets and i don’t want pets my wife is constantly telling me let’s get a dog i’m like we’re never getting a dog ever and i want to tell you why because when i was a kid my sisters wanted a dog and we couldn’t because my dad was allergic sixteen years later we found out he wasn’t allergic i love it to this day i love that my dad just point blank just lied to us for almost 20 years i said god bless dad and so now i will do the same thing if my wife is listening i’m allergic as well it’s tragic it’s genetic so um but but um for the people who have pets it’s hilarious they will literally spend anything so one of my good friends she said oh yeah like you know i find it difficult to spend stuff on myself but this new puppy like i don’t care what it costs and they’re getting this imported swiss meat or something like that for the dog i’m like you could feed can’t you just feed a dog like what you know from costco or something and she’s like no i said this is a great business so there are a variety of different models i’ve seen the box business which is amazing um there’s decorative items for dogs which i love because the more unnecessary they are oftentimes the more profitable it can be right i don’t you’re not buying a luxury sweater because you need it you’re buying it because you want it and price is largely irrelevant so if i knew anything about pets and had any interest whatsoever in pets i would definitely start a pet business i have a friend who sells dog vitamins and i asked him i go does it work he’s like i don’t know yeah yeah i’m like that’s the greatest this is the greatest thing ever you have no i don’t knows i should say that that idea and the next idea i’m gonna share with you uh the other thing i would have to have would be no ethics whatsoever because half these pet businesses are complete horseshit um but you know again i don’t want to start it because i don’t know anything and i also do have some morals around this but the pet vitamins i mean come on what is the dog giving you a report card oh i really feel my uh scoliosis went away thanks to this vitamin no all right what’s next um cosmetics insatiable demand heavy rotation of using different types of face clean do you guys know you may not know as guys but do you know that there’s different lotions for your hands feet forehead are you aware of this sam no i i i know we have different uh lotions for different skin color that’s what we have at our house so i know that but i didn’t know dude i haven’t put lotion on in at least 16 years like it’s been it has been 16 years since the last promotion see this is revelatory for the audience they’re like what’s lotion yeah there’s and by the way there’s more to cosmetics and skincare than lotion wait sean you don’t wear lotion i thought that dark guys like you had to wear lotion never wear lotion don’t choke your legs right now i want to see if they have little cracks on them i’m ashy and i’m proud of it look there’s no there’s no workshop bro you gotta lotion up come on dude do you do sunscreen white guys use sunscreen i don’t use sunscreen typically uh it’ll also uh you know this whole like the whole like nighttime skincare routine like you know i’m a toothbrush and out of there it’s it’s over oh i gotta tell you okay i gotta tell you my favorite part about nighttime skin routines this is my favorite thing on all of social media so you’ll be following someone and someone will post a question to them uh oh my gosh your skin looks so good what’s your what’s your skin care routine and the person gets so excited they go oh i’m so glad you asked me well you know i like to really keep it simple i’m just i’m all into simplicity so here’s what i do and then the 14 part process yeah they go well i start with a serum then i give it a 15 minute break i put on a lotion but then i put a cream on top you know then i take a little break and let it breathe then i use the brush and then i ice it out and then and then by lunch time you know i need to reapply and then they have 13 other parts for and i’m like do you understand that none of that is simple most most of the people i know are using like one proctor and gamble product if that on their body yeah three in one baby body shampoo conditioner yeah they’re taking dove and putting it on every part of their body and they’re like wow i really nailed it today so um i would do a cosmetics or skin care so these both people thought you said pets and cosmetics those are i’m with you like pricing sensitivity but obviously competitive so how do you think about going into a space that’s like you’re not the first person to think of cosmetics or pets so would you be looking for if you were going to approach this would you be looking for some unique angle that you feel is underserved or would you just say no [  ] i go i go swim it doesn’t matter how many other people are fishing there there’s enough fish where i just want to make it i just want to get my share i want a small slice of a big pie what how would you approach it packaging pricing and celebrities packaging is a huge tremendous part of it and i think there’s some opportunities there pricing what do you mean what opportunities so i spoke to a guy who did a hair care product and and i was like how did you develop it he goes we basically went to a factory and we were like uh whatever it needs to fit this cost framework he didn’t care so this is again why i say i would not get into this business if i had any morals which i do that’s why i’m not doing it but i’m just telling you what he told me he goes yeah i don’t we don’t care what it is it needs to smell good but we spend 90 of the time on the packaging i go what let me get this straight you’re basically selling like [  ] whatever yeah and but the packaging looks lush she goes yeah that’s what the entire business is i go this is crazy then this so in terms of price well how big was that business or that entrepreneur like how big was their empire i i imagine they had a bunch of them yeah that’s a good question i would say in the that’s a good question if i had to guess in the 30 to 50 million dollar range by the last time i checked that was several years ago but you know i didn’t ask so price price is you know you see people doing boxes regular delivery upsells there’s lots of innovative opportunities that i think digital um entrepreneurs are very very smart at in the old days it was put it on the shelf at cvs and hope somebody buys it and then comes back nowadays you can do some really clever stuff so i think that’s an opportunity and then celebrity tie-ins who’s known for having amazing skin and if you think back to those acne commercials remember proactive they had top tier celebrities so i got really curious how do they get these a level celebrities i started looking into it the answer is they just write them a humongous check so there’s opportunities with celebrity tie-ins that for skin care again i am not trying to do this business myself i’ve just been fascinated with it and i would love to see how someone would come in here and disrupt what people are normally doing okay i like it and then did you have a third one kids anything on kids i mean it’s uh wow talk about price insensitivity um again i don’t want to do this business because i believe in less stuff for kids i think there’s more meaningful ways um to parent but just imagine the kind of toys learning opportunities he’s like etcetera for children could also talk he’s like that’s what a kid is [Laughter] yeah uh yeah so you know there’s some really smart stuff around these areas but the key denominator on all these is insatiable demand that’s the first place i look which is a little ironic because when i started i will teach you to be rich there’s actually not that much demand for learning about money especially when i started it i focused on young people um so i but i didn’t it wasn’t a business when i started it was just like for fun over time i found that there is demand but you have to be very clever in how you reach people and what about uh money hacks so i i put down a thing on the notes i said i want to know you have all this like corpus of content you know just tons of tons of material philosophies frameworks tactics exercises blah blah blah what would be the three sort of money hacks that you think most people just don’t do but if you could get them to do it you’d feel good about it so what are your kind of like what are your three finance related or money related um hacks that people should be doing that gets you a big app big outcome with not a huge input well i’m glad you asked because most of my founder friends don’t even invest in the market i would say over fifty percent of that what what did you understand no what does that even mean that’s so cra i that’s so crazy to me i don’t understand it well i’m about to tell you because these guys make me want to ring their neck so these are founders who have done very well in their business either they have a high profit business generating considerable amounts every year or um to some extent they’ve had an exit and now they’re doing their next thing i go hey what are you doing with your money they go oh you know i’m putting it into my business i go cool like what about investing they go no no no i can make more money in the in my own business this is where my voice starts to tighten up and i bring out my hand as if i’m about to ring their neck i go how many businesses do you know that are still around 50 years later and they go well not many i go do you think it would be good to maybe take a little off the table and put some in the market where you can get really good returns and it just boggles their mind because they’ve never thought about they see themselves as an entrepreneur not a boring mom and pop investor that is a very very costly belief that they hold so i always tell them like hey take a little bit put in the market boring vanguard funds do the stuff of course they haven’t read my book do the stuff in the book and when you do that you will be wealthier than you can possibly imagine and you your risk will be decreased dramatically um sean what do you think so i follow a lot of what you say i’ve read your book sarah my wife has read your book you’re going to talk about like talking to your partner once a month things like that i do that all but i want to ask you sean investing in the market so sean and i are almost complete opposites when it comes to money not complete opposites for everything regarding money but our risk profiles are very different sean do you invest just in normal index funds at all yeah i have some in index funds uh i basically have a basket of technology companies that a few years ago i said okay what companies do i think over a 10 to 20 year period just have they have an advantage today that’s just going to compound for 10 to 20 years and i’m happy if i’m wrong with that okay i’m wrong with that but i’m going to have this basket of basically six companies that i think that i think are positioned to do that and that was like amazon it was google it wasn’t like some i didn’t take a genius right it was just like i think these companies essentially are monopolies that uh that are riding this wave of like the internet and mobile phones they’ll do well and uh so i hold that so i’d say about 30 of my money is in that that selection of stocks i have probably one percent you can’t import a camera or the import tax on a camera that can record above 60 minutes is taxed at a video camera versus a picture camera therefore you can’t record for more than 60 minutes on a point-and-shoot camera are you kidding me this is crazy well sam much respect that was very now i just need you to tell me what to do about it but we can do that often yeah that was impressive so basically what happened to listeners so it ramit’s camera went off and this is like a weird fact but uh point and shoot cameras cannot record above 60 minutes because they would be taxed differently it went down even better he goes i know what happened uh we just hit 60 minutes didn’t we yeah and you have a uh a point shoot camera don’t you yeah it’s from asia isn’t it yeah and it’s like oh [  ] sam i’m saying what are you doing how do you do all this sam was like mike wallace right there a lot of respect for you bro yeah well all right we went through this so sean you were saying that you have 30 percent in index funds where’s the no not even index in a handful of tech stocks uh about six tech stocks and then i have about 40-ish percent in crypto i have a small amount maybe one percent two percent still left in a vanguard fund and then uh what’s left uh then i have well i’m not counting just like investments in private businesses like startups and stuff that that would be different but yeah the rest is like cash and miscellaneous random other bets is that crazy do you remember that that’s crazy to me i’m not disrespecting you sean because whatever floats your boat float your boat that’s so different from how i how i do stuff it’s like a guy going to a buffet okay and you both go to a buffet and then you go hey let’s just let’s meet up at the table so you get here you get some rice you get some chicken some vegetables and the other guy comes back with three different plates 90 of all the plates have chocolate cake on them and then he has two pieces of white fish and uh you know one piece of lobster that he cut in half and he threw the threw it on the floor you go what are you eating bro he goes that’s what i like that’s what why because it’s not vanguard it out it’s not indexed out is that why it’s not even remotely of diversification now again if if you want to be entertained that’s awesome it’s very entertaining no i i don’t uh i think diversification there’s a great great diversification is for losers uh that’s how i feel about diversification that’s how most tech uh founders feel and the cost of their belief vast it costs them typically millions and millions of dollars they don’t care though this is my point sam it’s it’s not they don’t care and i can angel invest i mean for me some of the greatest investors the greatest investors in the world do take concentrated positions not diversified positions so yeah are you one of the greatest investors in the world i know what i know in my sphere i’m an expert in my field and so i feel confident and comfortable investing in my field i’m not saying i’m one of the greatest investors in the world but i know that within the technology sector i would bet on myself and that’s what i’m choosing to do right within the technology sector i don’t i feel like i have an edge compared to uh what i can get sort of in the passively diversified index fund world yeah right now your last 10 years i’ve compounded way faster than you know the vanguard etf or s sp500 generically has your strategy for me i am the exact same as you i’m looking at my portfolio now it’s basically 90 index funds or it includes hubspot stock which is not indexed but it’s it’s 90 publicly traded stock most of which is is is is index funds but what bothers me or me not bothers me it just shocks boggles my mind about you how can you not see that there is another way to do it which are the crazy people like sean when you and i both have tons of friends that are these crazy people that have made these ridiculous bets where they only have 100 grand they put 90 grand into crypto and it turns into 100 million dollars like you and i know many of these people have done these stupid things or they appear stupid and they totally work out um well there’s definitely lots of different ways to achieve it so you know when i talk about my book there’s there’s lean fire there’s fat fire there’s buying real estate there’s passive investing and on and on so um if you are optimizing for entertainment great if you’re optimizing for concentrated risk great then that portfolio makes a lot of sense if you are optimizing for a diversified low-cost predictable return and mitigating risk then of course that allocation makes exactly zero sense so we want to know the game that we are playing and sean you you articulated it very well what i think the next question that a savvy investor would ask is what are the risks that i am incurring and this is typically where you get people especially a lot of crypto bros who go oh like what do i care i’m swinging for the fences and you go okay that’s cool what if it goes wrong now if you’re 21 uh you know your risk profile is low right worst case you know you get a job et cetera et cetera if you’re older if you have kids if you have a mortgage or if you simply do not want to go back to living on ramen noodles then suddenly you start to think about risk differently now here’s the catch most people doesn’t matter if they’re 35 or 50 they don’t truly understand risk until something bad happens and when that happens they do not take a look in the mirror and go oh [  ] my allocation that i chose 15 years ago was poor they go [  ] the government or they ripped me off i need regulation even though i called for no regulation for the last 15 unfortunately this is one of those things that cannot be taught until it is experienced and the market will go down tech will not always go up this is a predictable cycle the last 10 years have been extraordinary there’s no doubt about that even an index investor made over 15 annualized returns which is insane the music doesn’t keep playing i agree with you i i strongly disagree with people uh look like hold on hold on it’s there’s no right answer without saying what are you trying to do right what is your goal because if my goal is to make x and your goal is to make y then we’re going to have totally different strategies like a different strategy would work for a different person what is your question i say i’m comfortable with this much risk or i have it i have knowledge about this industry maybe my answer would be different or maybe my strategy would be different um do you think our goals are different yeah i think our goals are different for sure what’s your goal not just not just the absolute money goal right clearly our goals are different because you you intentionally avoid risk right like you know the appeal of a lot of these investments so you don’t want to lose right you your risk tolerance is lower and you are you are you would feel worse if you lost then you would feel good if you win and i’m the opposite i would feel worse if i didn’t follow my convictions than if i but what’s your goal like is there a point where you’ll say i’m gonna i’m gonna i don’t want to take more risk yeah of course over time it’ll shift right as the as the principal gets large enough then you don’t need to have so much concentration because you can have more you can play play it safer and you can take a smaller a lower return will still yield it will still let you live a lifestyle that you want but if the principal’s small and you’re trying to live off four percent gains or five percent gains or seven percent annual gains um you’re gonna have to sit there for 40 years and like i’m just not interested in doing that and i think another thing is like what’s your other situation is like how much income do you bring out i bring in a lot of income so i’m not really worried about okay what happens if the market goes down either temporarily or even permanently it’s like if i’m bringing in a healthy income and i’m young i don’t really have to worry too much about protecting this investment asset first i can play riskier than my dad who no longer can generate significant income and he needs to play it safer i think yeah we have different we have we have different goals yeah i think um if you if you look at bodybuilders for example who are competitive eventually all roads lead to chicken and rice all roads lead to chicken and rice why because when you look at macronutrients and when you look at where you’re getting the highest bang for your buck all professional bodybuilders essentially eat the same okay i’m being a little general here but that’s the case when you look at investing if you look at the research and yes you clarify your goals but um remember that in investing a lot of people go personal finance is personal actually most people are mostly the same let me say that again most people are mostly the same they mostly want to make good money be able to travel a little bit etc so unless you are a wild outlier then all roads lead to low-cost long-term investing again there are outliers sean it sounds like you’ve thought that through the principles of chicken and rice and low-cost investing are the same now what are those principles i talked about that in chapter six you know there’s a lot of people tossing around these things about well you know i chose this because like the market went down a little bit so i put my money in here and like over time all those timing the market things have been blown out there are the rare exceptions who win uh sam you were referring to that you know we know some people who have won yeah you know we also know a lot of people who lost a lot of money and they disappear they don’t brag about their russian fund that they picked anymore that’s called survivorship bias so it’s important that we know the entire game of play and then we choose otherwise it’s very emotionally tempting to be like i’m a genius i have an edge etc but we have to all remember we are individual investors and even the pros who do this for a living with a bunch of other smart people and expensive technology they fail to beat the market 80 plus percent of the time what are your money rules you talk about you need to have money rules what are yours uh i have 10 money rules i’ll share some of them so the easy ones are things like always have a year of emergency uh fund cash okay that’s sort of a simple one invest 20 of gross income minimum that’s an easy one if you can’t do twenty percent do start with five percent right but the the important thing is pick a number and automate it that’s critical then the lar the the different ones for me my money rules are things like um never question spending on books appetizers health or a friend’s charity fundraiser so that’s unlimited i have unlimited spend on that and why like why am i talking about appetizers it’s meaningful to me when i was a kid we couldn’t afford to eat appetizers now when i go out and eat with a friend i’m like whatever looks good just order it right we can we can get everything here and then it gets a little bigger you know business class on flights over four hours that’s a rule i don’t have to debate it or think about it it’s just boom it’s done and be able to pay in full for large expenses like a wedding a honeymoon even a house doesn’t mean i have to pay in full i could finance it if the interest is low or whatever but for the largest most important purchases in my life i don’t want cost to be a factor now if you’re listening to this some of these sound totally bewildering maybe even ridiculous okay uh that’s the point my money rules are mine they are not applicable to most people most people don’t care about appetizers and most people can’t buy a house all cash that’s okay what i want to encourage you to do is to really write down your money rules instead of having to make a thousand decisions every month about money boil it up roll it up to the things that are meaningful and you’ll notice on my money rules which you can just google ramit’s money rules that the classic mistake people make i say hey what are your money rules and they’re all restrictive never spend on premium this never do that never done enough i go okay okay it’s okay to have a couple restrictive rules you know you want to save you want to invest but let’s also make some rules that are fun money is supposed to be fun it’s not about cutting back on lattes it’s about living a rich life sam do you have those yeah i have those written down or just kind of like intuited like you know i kind of live by these or have you like actually sat down and said these are mine well so when i um was 25 i made a list maybe i was 22. i made a list i said here’s how much money i want to have by the age of 30. here’s how much i want to spend each month here’s what i want to purchase like the spending that i the budget that i made each month was based off of what i wanted to own and what i wanted to do and so i had this i had similar rules written down where it was basically anything health related i in book and books um i don’t look at the i don’t look at the price i just buy whatever i want um i did not have any rules towards charity although that’s changing i do i need to get into that um but yeah i had like i worked backwards i had like a target number based off of one i wanted to spend each month and i wanted to be able to um hit that tar i wanted to be able to make that just off of uh my gains like my my passive income from index fund investing uh and i wanted to be able to withdraw only three percent of that per year in order to pay for my monthly expenses and i and i made that all up when i was like 22 23 24. i forget the exact number but by the way when people say that oh i want to withdraw four percent do they actually withdraw do you actually like me do you actually sell down four percent of your uh whatever your your index funds are or whatever to pay for your lifestyle or do is that just a theoretical thing like i can i could fund this off just the gains you know just a portion of the of the of the annual gains well i don’t use a drawdown i’m not in the de-accumulation phase so i have an income but eventually one day yeah and in fact do people do that yeah every retiree does that de-accumulation is done by tens of millions of people they sell off a little bit every single year if they’ve got it and that’s how they fund themselves that’s why it’s called a fixed income and there’s but but there’s other there’s other ways you could do it so for example i just invested into this real estate fund um what’s the it’s a big it’s a big one called oak tree or something uh and then blackrock or what’s it blackstone what’s the big the big the big you know the big guy it’s like the it’s like the trillion dollar real estate thing everyone has access to it and anyway it pays i think a six and a half to seven percent dividend quarterly and you can live off that um if you put you know a fair bit yeah sean’s a good question there are other ways too so dividends are one another thing that really wealthy investors will do is they’ll simply take loans against their yes that’s that’s kind of what i was talking about was like talk about that for a minute because you’re not paying tax on the like you sell your [  ] or you take a dividend you’re gonna pay tax so you’re six percent is not six percent but correct if you you know if you live off your loans you keep your assets compounding that seems smarter to me the the blown thing is the craziest thing that i’ve i’ve just recently learned about this it is it’s taken me so long to grasp this because it goes against everything that i thought was true so basically it’s illegal it feels illegal so basically when you get to like i don’t know what the number is there’s some number where you can start borrowing money from big banks right now i think what’s the rate like my rate is one point one percent one percent yeah it’s crazy okay and so the the bankers was like yeah look like and i like built a widget so i could like look at it so let’s just i’m just going to use a bunch of made up numbers so let’s just say that you have uh 10 million dollars in a equity fund okay you could borrow i believe if you have index fund up to 70 of that so you can borrow seven million dollars and there’s the the way the math works and it’s different for each person based off of the stocks that you own but basically you can withdraw let’s say 30 percent in the uh 30 of your 7 million and the market would have to drop by like 68 70 percent in order for you to even have to pay back anything otherwise you could basically have that outstanding forever and it’s only extruding interest at a one percent rate and you could use that money to live off of or you can use that money to invest in other stuff it’s astounding to me am i am i remember you have a smirk on your face am i am i getting this wrong well i have a i was born with a smirk on my face so let’s just i’m smiling inside but i just look like this so you in general you are right in general you are right it is almost unbelievable the average investor does not have the ability to do this they have access to it they just don’t have enough money for it but i do want to point one thing out a lot of these seemingly too good to be true things have sprung up and become popularized in the last 10 years is there anything else that might have been going on in the financial markets for the last decade maybe that would have enabled these things to become popular such as a record-breaking bull market and historical low interest rates yes so you we need to put this in context of history yeah you can borrow at one percent rate but if go talk to your parents ask them what their mortgage rate was when they bought a house in the 80s yeah but these but these rates are based what’s it called the london what’s it called the libor i forget what libor stands for but dude i believe i went and i think the i think libor has only been around since the 50s but since the 50s i think the highest has ever been is three and a half percent i that’s interesting i have to look at that i’m not sure about that is it fixed or variable it’s variable so that’s why it’s dangerous yeah yes that’s my point sam let’s talk about the danger so again i don’t know if it has to drop by 68 the banks can call in their loan once it breaks a threshold so all of this is amazing until it’s not and so you i don’t mean to be the sort of luddite here or the the boring voice and this is unfortunately what sensible investors get thrust into when there’s an insane bull market you have guys like me coming and saying hey it’s cool you want to put 5-10 percent of your money in some alternative investment awesome but remember this doesn’t always last forever i’ve seen it myself three times in my life and i’m not even 40 years old i’ve seen in the 2000 crash 2008 and yeah you could say march 2020 that was temporary but people are real tough until things go wrong and suddenly you see people lose fortunes when i went to omaha to see warren buffett at his conference one of the things that he and charlie munger said was we set up berkshire so we can never run out of money and to me that is way more inspirational than i eked out an extra 1.5 return at a much higher risk rate so i want everybody to know the game they’re playing do you want to get uh 10 or 14 compounded annualized uh return rates you can it’s possible you’ll take on a massive amount of risk and when you you think about it it reminds me of what my trainer said right we were starting to lift heavier and heavier and i was like oh so like how heavy should we go and he goes you know at a certain point you really want to ask yourself do you need to put on that extra plate if you’re competing maybe but there’s a risk that you’re suddenly taking and we need to not just think about returns 14 we need to think about what can go wrong as well and for a lot of people they have never done what you did sam they never sat out and plotted out how much money they don’t even know what they want to do with their money and so i want people to think a little more deeply this is one of the most important things in your life and for most people you will find that if they get a nice simple eight percent annualized return rate over time and they continue contributing they actually have more money than they know what to do with it takes time yes but i i want to challenge people to really think about this sensible yeah i think one of the good things about what you do but also one of the disconnects between what we talk about your message to help a mass number of people as you have is a most people message what i call a most real message you’re trying to find the advice that you can give that if most people took it would actually help them out and they may not have an outlier in either direction negative or extreme positive and so you have most people advice our podcast our broadcast is the exact opposite our target audience is for people who are trying to escape most people results they are trying to have a sort of out how do you have a disproportionately outsized positive result whether it’s because you built a schedule i think that’s a good clarification i will say i think you earn the right to have an outlier result it is you hear stories about oh let’s do this startup and we’ll make 10 million dollars or 50 million great those are extremely rare instead my approach is layer it so as i talk about and i will teach bridge it’s not just about personal finance about a rich life start off get your diversified portfolio never worry about that again right i spend less than one hour per month on my finances then you want more start a business right make a huge profitable business or if you want to do a venture back business great but you earn the right to be an outlier it is extremely rare and very unlikely that someone’s just like oh i have this cool idea for a dog business i’m gonna make 50 million bucks that’s my personal philosophy right and i think the the bodybuilder analogy you said earlier is correct but it’s actually a different point of what you’re making which is most people don’t want to be bodybuilders bodybuilder diet is actually chicken rice and hgh right and and there’s going to be a lot of a lot of downsides to the amount of you know stuff they’re shooting into their body but they need to do it because that is that game that is a specific game same thing with venture back startups venture back startups is not just even business it’s the olympics of business right it’s basically saying billion dollars a bus that’s what you’re signing up for that’s why it’s really easy to to [  ] on it or call out fairly that hey don’t get caught up in the hype there are many other ways to win that are often like easier more pleasurable and whatnot but like that is the olympics and that’s why it gets celebrated right we celebrate michael phelps even though it took immense sacrifice for him to go earn those eight medals like you know he swam you know six hours a day and eight twenty thousand calories a day because that’s what it took to compete at that level and so i think it’s important for people to figure out what is the what is the advice they want to take like um i always say this thing i say i don’t most people don’t have good results uh which is basically you know most marriages and divorce most people are are overweight most if you just follow what most people do you will get the results that most people are getting right now which is not very not really lined up with what people want which is to be you know fit happy and successful and um and so you have to kind of figure that out and i would say we’re pretty aligned on that i think what you what you offer is a path that will work for almost anybody and what we sometimes talk about is a path that won’t work for most people but for the few people who it will work for it’ll work in a big way and so it’s like two kind of different two different ends of the same thing yeah i think that’s an interesting approach uh a different interesting distinction to make between the two approaches sam what do you think you’ve been in both worlds yeah i i kind of do this thing where i put i like to have i like to have i don’t even know what i call it but basically if everything goes to [  ] i’m okay so i i like to have this base of security this this this fortress of [  ] and uh i like to have that and then anything above that i go incredibly balls to the wall totally risky with sam we’re the same i have what i call the tripod of stability right where i where i work or sorry where i live uh these sort of basic fundamentals health relationships that’s all dialed in it’s relatively conservative but then it allows me to be risk seeking on certain things like oh let me try this random podcast with no business model whatsoever or let me try this experimental program uh et cetera et cetera so i like that but again we need to know who what game we’re playing and who we are right all things you know what does mike tyson say everybody’s got to play until they get punched in the face everyone’s an investment champ until the market goes down and in order to see evidence of this all you need to do is go to any investment forum including fat fire lean fire any fire even the boba heads for them and cycle back to what happened in 2008 cycle back to what happened in march 2020 and you will or my favorite is go to the crypto subreddits and you’ll see people all the bravado fades away and they go oh my god i just lost my kids college fund you do not want to be in that position ever on the other hand you can make a lot of money if you have a sensible investment or even a risk seeking investment so but i think i think wow i think what you and i slightly differ go different paths for me is well i don’t know if it’s entirely true but basically i see i have i’ve got so many friends that like if i told you what they do well you you’re in the world so you know but if i told my parents what they do they’d be like this is [  ] nuts and and and they would be like what are you talking about like sean is like that a lot of me and sean’s friends the guy sean used to work for michael birch was like that like you are [  ] crazy this is nutty this is not gonna work i have so many friends who they have made it work and i and i understand that in order to have outsized results you have to do some wacky ass [  ] sometimes and i accept that you have to you have to be weird i accept also that i’m not like that the other thing i’ll point out is it is not always true that to get more reward you take more risk there are moments in time a wise good investor eventually identifies these and it takes time to develop this judgment there are times where you can take low risk bets that have disproportionate rewards and they’re not often and it’s easy to talk yourself into thinking that everything is like that but uh you know sometimes there’s this myth that oh if you want rewards you have to take massive proportional risk and it’s not always proportional and uh and those are actually the best opportunities those are the those are the ones that you should be like pouncing on and maybe to others it looks like you’re doing something crazy but if you have accurately assessed it you may find that it was actually not as high risk but still high reward the way you do stuff sean i think it’s just like the way that i view it it’s like i think it’s crazy and but i accept that your returns might be massive that’s a good way to put it i mean everybody’s playing their game right but you but to assess it you need to assess it over the correct period of time and with the correct goals in mind sam you might be like ah you know let’s fast forward maybe two kids not gonna do that sean might say i don’t care or i put some money in the bank etc there’s a whole bunch of ways to evaluate it but i i appreciate that sean there definitely different perspectives and i appreciate hearing you know what game you are optimizing for i think that that makes sense yeah and what i would encourage anyone to do is i would actually start with your stuff and learn learn the fundamentals it’s like okay i yeah i sometimes do some street [  ] but like you know you can only do that once you first understand the fundamentals you do them for a while and then you start to identify okay where do i want to if i am going to stray from the pack right if i am going to not play by the book i better have a really strong reason to do so i’m going to have some like some real conviction a real knowledge a real point of view that i am willing and i’m i’m i actually understand what the heck i’m doing and i understand that the the the risks that i am taking with when i take those risks right so you want to start there not start with oh i saw this dude on reddit did this thing and uh so i’m gonna go yolo that same trade and i don’t even know what the hell i’m actually doing yeah whatever you see on reddit you should immediately close that window and never listen to any financial advice on that [  ] site listen you need to be able to answer some basic questions if you want to do all this risk seeking stuff you know um what is diversification mean what is the typical asset allocation for a 40 year old and why where does this 8 return per year come from where’s what is that what’s the rule of 72 when is my debt going to be paid off um what do i actually want to do with my money if i have 500k a million 5 million if you can’t answer these questions you are not ready to begin taking all this uh astronomical risk again none of this matters because none of these people are listening to me right now they shut this off two hours ago they’re like [  ] this old guy risk see i’m a risk seeker he’s so whole no you will time will tell but i would strongly encourage you to be able to answer some of these basic questions before you choose your own path and many times what i find is people start off they’re really gung-ho they get into this they’re like oh [  ] this is actually really easy i spend less than an hour a month my money’s growing like crazy i don’t have to worry about it ever again we’re going to be multi-millionaires let me go live my life that’s way more exciting than optimizing some [  ] 0.5 return sam you know i’ve been telling you about this too that’s why i told you stop talking about your 3 drawdowns like that’s all great when you’re 21 and it’s cool now let’s talk about where are you going on vacation that is way more interesting you told me where to go i booked my tickets i had my european trip planned it got canceled because of delta but i do what you say by the way let me share your side of the story on the engagement ring you gave sam some advice on the engagement ring okay so you know sam uh sam is a very good listener sam i have to say i appreciate you you you ask for advice which is rare and you listen so i’m always like yeah let’s talk so he comes he he’s telling you about you know he’s gonna propose and you know i i got married three years ago so i went through the whole process and i got very deep into um the whole wedding thing and all that stuff and people like oh was was your wife like a um bridezilla i was like if anyone was going to be a zilla it was going to be this groom zilla right here because i knew like all that i was loving just a couple contexts part of my philosophy is save for the big things before you need them because you know that they’re going to happen most people are going to be married so i started saving putting money away from my wedding uh and my honeymoon like in my 20s before i even met my wife why because i knew it was going to happen one day and i wanted to have an awesome wedding a awesome ring awesome honeymoon again my own philosophy for you important things in life i don’t want to have to look at the price okay so a lot of people like that’s crazy why would i start saving when i’m not even in a relationship that’s weird i go what’s weird is to get to your wedding planning and not have enough money or um you know basically just have to make all these short-term decisions some people go into debt for their wedding i don’t believe in it i want you to have an amazing extravagant wedding if that’s what you want or a beautiful honeymoon i i want you to be start planning early so sam comes to me he goes hey i’m thinking of getting this uh thing i said oh cool you know how are you thinking about it and he tells me yeah i have this like budget in mind so i said yeah thank you i was like you i was like no you’re gonna spend more than that now why did i say that to him because i know how much money he has okay and i know that there are certain benchmarks and certain numbers that if he had if he was a school teacher and he told me five grand i would say oh my god that’s amazing like she’s gonna love it and then i went a little deeper because sam got very quiet sam knew he was being cheap but he didn’t know how to articulate he had a lot of emotions running through his body i said sam let me ask you a couple questions because he started off with this utilitarian silicon valley he goes oh you know what all you guys already know the argument oh i don’t believe in diamonds it’s all made up it’s so fake well why don’t we just get this [  ] you know and i’m like okay sam let me ask you a question um does your fiance care about rings no no no no she’s not that kind of person i said oh okay okay hey out of curiosity does she have a pinterest board he goes oh yeah i go what’s on that pinterest board relating to rings oh she’s been like tracking rings for like the last 15 years and goes damn have you talked to her about this he goes well she did mention that she kind of wants like and then he breaks down like the entire thing of what kind of ring she wants you can afford it this is important to her this is not about you and your dumb vision as a 21 year old utilitarian it’s about what your future wife for the rest of your life wants this one thing and sam was awesome sam you listened you were like oh like he never thought about it like that because it’s all tech bros into someone who actually you know is like let’s talk about the softer side and it was awesome sam take it from there what happened when you went to get that ring i’ll yeah i’ll say i i i i was going to spend five grand i was like i i i can’t do this anymore and i ended up i think i spent a lot 28 29 30 000 but it’s not about the money sam it’s not about the money what why don’t you matter bro do you want the details of the story people want to know you’re right right they want the details of the story i’ve given the details of the story and looking back the money it didn’t matter at all and she was incredibly happy and i felt so proud dude my man so i’m i’m happy for you i’m happy for your wife i i actually i’m glad you mentioned the numbers and you guys are awesome on this podcast you’re always mentioning numbers which is very rare so i love it but what i want to emphasize is that at a certain point it’s actually not about the dollar value and people particularly entrepreneurs and particularly tech guys are obsessed with monetization they’re always talking about numbers yeah you should know your numbers yes but their a rich life is so much more than your numbers just think about this when you went home to visit your parents and you hugged your mom or your dad did you think about oh how much is this costing me in my hourly rate oh how much did my mom pay for that chicken because we could get it cheaper at costco no the most important thing in life are actually not quantifiable so what i want to emphasize is that we are we’re taught from day one and i started a silicon valley tech company we raised money i’ve done all this stuff so i know what i’m talking about we are taught that quantifying is the most important thing you do what are your metrics what’s your attribution what’s your conversion rate that’s all we talk about and yet in the most important things in life sitting outside on a picnic with our kids going being able to extend your lunch on a weekday with your friend from college who just happens to be in money is irrelevant the number is irrelevant being able to do it is rich and so for sam sam i [ __ ] love it you did it the money part irrelevant you had the money you could do it more important was recognizing my wife wants this it’s important to her and i’m gonna rewrite my old story from when i was 21 into a new man and a new partner and i’m going to use some of my resources to do it and that that is connective and amazing well thank you and and we’ll have to end with that beautiful uh that beautiful little monologue there you’re the man what’s the name of the podcast again i will teach you to be rich with ramit sethi and uh i’m looking it up now we’re gonna link to it um thanks dude this is awesome but you have a a link that you go to too right yeah you can go to iwt.com podcast or it’s on apple or spotify well thanks man this is awesome what do you say sean yeah thanks for coming on sam i think you and sarah should go on his pod and be one of the couples i’m down i’m down that would make me uncomfortable but i would do it [Music] let’s travel never looking back