How to Earn More with Less Risk with Bob Fraser

Um, but why don't we do this, man? Why don't you do the honors? I think you, you know pretty well this, this first speaker. Uh, tell us a little bit about him and let's, let's get him up here on stage.

Yeah, I do know him pretty well. Bob Fraser. Um, he is, uh, the CFO. He's our chief macro strategist at Aspen Funds, and he's been investing in alternatives for several decades and also co-host on the Invest Like a Billionaire podcast alongside me. And as we've done this, like I said earlier, we've just realized how much of a gap there is for a lot of retail investors coming into this alternative investment space and the need for more education. And so we can only do so much on a podcast, right? Because it's a unique way to communicate, but it's limited. It's, you know, 30, 40 minutes at a time. And we really wanted to put together a comprehensive guide. We want this to be the investing Bible for alternatives, and we really feel like it's going to be that. And we've put a lot of heart and soul into it. Bob Fraser especially, he's been the big driving force behind this book. And we've got it published through Maxwell Publishing. We're going for bestseller status. We're going to be in bookstores nationally. So we've got a lot of momentum behind it and we feel like it's going to be a monumental book for people in the investing space. And to give the framework, to give the whole ideas behind this, Bob Fraser is going to come up here and give his keynote. And very simply, how to earn more with less risk, the case for alternatives. Let's get Bob up here on the stage and let him dive right in. We got him there. All right.

Here's Bob.

You there?

I'm here.

I don't think anything about that. So, Bob, make sure you put your headphones on. Make sure you can hear Bob.

All right.

A little sound check, Bob. Yeah.

Okay. We're good.

Bob, we're going to give you the stage, man. We'll be back on here for some Q&A afterwards. So we will enter the backstage and give Bob the floor. Guys, give it up. Let me see in the chat, everybody for Bob, give him some love. Okay. Pump Bob up and we'll get going.

All right. Can y'all hear me? Alrighty. Um, well, as I've spent the last really 18 months researching, doing the research for this book, and anybody who follows me knows that I'm a real scientist and kind of a, of money. And, uh, I spent the last few years researching this book to look at how billionaires, uh, work their money and what they do differently than everybody else. And honestly, I was absolutely stunned. And doing the research has even— has changed my life. I've— I'm really on this track now to become a very disciplined, very focused investor, to follow in the footsteps of what these billionaires are doing. And, and there's just a huge gap. So what's happened over the last few decades is the billionaires have shifted 100% to this model that I'm about to unlock for you. And but the retail investors really haven't. There's been— there's— they just have not adopted this model. And it's, it's far superior. It's make way more money and take way less risk. And, um, and so I felt like the book needed to be written. It needed to be, it needed to be well done. So I've spent a lot of time putting this together. It's got about 80 charts in the book and really a lot of analysis and a lot of how-to to make it doable for the normal guy to follow in their footsteps. And so anyhow, I'm super excited to share some of the key concepts of this book with you today. So let me go ahead and jump in here and see if I can share my screen and we'll get started. There we go. So, uh, here, here's the deal. Billionaires have figured out this model. I'm going to introduce you to the guy who founded this model. His name is David Swenson, and they really have been able to crack the code where they're earning more money and taking less risk doing this. And not only that, they're paying less taxes doing it. So it's, it's, it's very, very exciting. Um, a little bit about, about me. Um, and I've, I don't really tell my story that, that much, but I'll go ahead and do it here. So I started a dot-com back in the '90s, raised $44 million in venture capital, um, became the fastest growing business in the Midwest. Um, for a number of years, I won the Ernst Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award. We had about 300 employees. So this thing absolutely blew up. And then I lost everything in the dot-com crash. Okay. So, it evaporated. Well, so, I rebooted my life and became a professional stock market investor. So, again, I just was really using the financial modeling and other things that I'd done a lot of research on. And I was averaging 20% returns in up and down markets for 5 years. So, very, very good at becoming a trader. And then what happened is the great financial crisis happened. And I lost everything again. I must have the gift of bad timing and lost everything twice in the public markets. And at that point, so this is my life at age 50. I found myself starting over, twice ruined by the public markets, and realized that I needed to do something very, very different and pretty much sick of the public markets and the volatility of the public markets. And so, several years ago, 13+ years ago, found my partner, Jim Maffuccio, who's wonderful. And we started a distressed debt fund. And I reached out to a few friends and family that I knew and started a distressed debt fund. It turned out finally got the timing right. There was a lot of bad debt coming out of the great financial crisis. And we were able to buy that debt at discounts and fix it. And we made a lot of money for our investors. So, you know, finally was able to reboot myself. And plus, I got a healthy respect for the economic challenges. I got a passion for building Bulletproof Investments and a passion for understanding economics in order to basically go with the trends, to find the trends and be able to invest with tailwinds. Behind me and invest with tides under me to give me an edge. And so, it's been a great ride since then in the private space. So, before we begin, I want to ask you a question, one question. Will more of your wealth come from your business or career or from your investments? Will more of your wealth come from your business and/or career, right, your earnings, or will it come from your investments? So go ahead and chat it in. So put business or career or investments. Go ahead and put it in the chat. Will more of your wealth come from your business or career or from your investment? And as we jump into this, I want to point out something that is— I hope this absolutely shocks you. I hope this absolutely shocks you. Let's take a theoretical doctor and let's say her career is a 40-year career. And in order to do this, so she makes $400,000 a year, just picking a number. And let's say she spent 8 years to get this degree. So, 16,000 hours. And then spends 2,000 hours a year. So, you invest a huge amount of time to make $400,000 a year. The value of her earnings over 40 years are going to be $16 million. Okay. Not bad. That's a good investment, right? So, you know, 16,000 hours, 8 years, super focused, become expert. But I want to show you something in the power of investing. So, let's look at the value of investment. So, let's say she spends an hour a week. So, this is nothing. 50 hours a year, total of 2,000 years over— 2,000 hours over 40 years. Let's say she saves 20% of her earnings, so $80,000 a year. She just puts it into savings. And let's say she's able to get a 7% return on that, which is just a 60/40 portfolio pretty much. It's really— that's about what a 60/40 portfolio is. Look at the number: $16 million. The same, the same amount that she would earn in her career for taking far less, far less skill or far less energy investment and time. And this is the power of compounding. And what I want to point out here, that really, that becoming a good investor and becoming a person who focuses on making their— not just working for their money, but making their money work for them and becoming good at that is well worth the time and energy it takes to do that. So, as Ben said, as we started, most people, they spend all their time becoming a doctor or an engineer or whatever, and they're earning, earning, earning, becoming better at their career, which is awesome. And then they throw their money over at a financial advisor and just just hope it works. And I want everyone listening here to make a decision to not do that, to make a decision to become a good investor, to learn how to do it. Just like you became a doctor, you became an engineer, you became a whatever you are, you can learn this. It's not beyond you. You can become a great investor. Now, let's go a little further and let's say she goes to the, you know, she listens to the Invest Like a Billionaire podcast and reads the new Invest Like a Billionaire book and really starts hanging out with masterminds and other investors and can earn a 10% return. Look at what happens. Just a couple more percent of return. And now, she's doubled the value of her career. And let's say she can do, she really becomes very talented at investing. And the same as David Swensen, the guy we're going to introduce you to, can earn a 13% return. Look at what happens, $81 million, over 4 times what she would make in her career. And so, is it worth your time? Is it worth your time to learn to become a fantastic investor? I think it is. And I think everyone should make the decision to, yes, focus on your career, yes, focus on your family. But the third thing you need to focus on is your finances and paying attention, learning how to become a great investor. And here, here's even something even more shocking. One last number for you, more shocking. So, let's say this doctor, after 8 years of becoming a doctor schooling, she works as a doctor for 10 years and saves 20% of her savings. And after 10 years, quits her job. She quits being a doctor, but continues her investment journey. Just with what she had already saved during those 10 years, nothing more. So, geez, she just takes that, what she'd saved in the 10 years, quits the job after 10 years to go have children or whatever she wants to do. And what does she make? She would make $58 million quitting her job. Still, what, 3 times more than her— than her— than she would have made if she had kept her 40-year career. Again, I'm making the point that it's worthwhile. In fact, it's more worthwhile than any career choice you could make, any new degree, any new certificate, any new anything you could do with your career. Learning to be an investor is critical for you. So, let's look at the traditional model. The traditional model. This is what the normal guys, are doing. And, uh, and before we, we do that, 2 more questions for you. 1, do you have a financial advisor, yes or no? And 2, how much control do you give your financial advisor over your investment strategies or choices? So this is yes, 50%, yes, 100%, yes, 0%, or no. So go ahead and type that in the chat. Do you have a financial advisor? And how much control do you give them? Now, here's the traditional model, is basically a 60/40 model. What that means is 60% stocks, 40% bonds. Now, you probably— a lot of investors say, oh, I don't have a 60/40 portfolio. And in fact, you actually do. You do have a 60/40 portfolio. So, what happens is financial advisors dress it up with, you know, let's do emerging market equities and value and growth, and we've got this fancy model, ends up it's just a 60/40 portfolio. And maybe it's slightly tweaked. Maybe it's 65/35, or maybe it's 50/50, but it's a 60/40 portfolio plus or minus. And then they tell you, don't worry about volatility, just buy and hold, right? This is what they want. I had a friend who was a very, very successful financial advisor, and he said, I build my portfolio, had over 200 clients. He said, I build my client's portfolio so that I never get a phone call. And the only time I get phone calls is when things go down. So, I make my portfolio so that nothing ever goes down and I never get any phone calls. That was his goal. And I want you to realize, I mean, I have a free webinar I'm going to offer later that says 7 Things Your Financial Advisor Will Not Tell You. And that's also a chapter in the book. But you're the financial advisory system, and there's a lot of good people in the system, but their goals, their incentives are not aligned with yours. They're not aligned. Then they're basically building pretty much cookie-cutter templates for you and saying buy and hold. It may surprise you to know that not a single of the ultra-wealthy do this. Not one. Now, you know, 40 years ago, they did. 40 years ago, the pension funds, the family offices, the endowments, all did a version of 60/40 portfolios. Today, not one does this. So your financial advisor is telling you to do something that the most advanced investors in the world are not doing. They're not doing this.

Okay.

So I just want you to realize they are not doing this. And there's some reasons they're not doing this. Yeah. Have you ever noticed when you have a red day in the stock market, everything goes red? Any stock market investors out there?

It's like.

Wait a minute, why is my REITs, my real estate going down when Apple tanked their earnings numbers? What does real estate have to do with Apple Inc.? But that's the way the markets work today. Everything is correlated. Did you know? So, the new thing, of course, is called index investing where you buy, for example, an S&P 500 index fund. Like SPY, or there's a number of mutual funds, and you get 500 stocks. So, with one stock purchase, you're buying 500 stocks and you're getting diversification, right? What they don't tell you is that 30%, a third of the S&P 500 index is 10 companies, a third of it. So, it's heavily weighted toward these big 10 companies. And that's not really diversification. And what's worse than that? So, so this is a little chart that shows the correlations. This is how much do they zig and zag together. So look at large cap and value stocks are 91% correlated, or, or large cap and growth stocks are 94% correlated. Even developing world and small cap, 53% correlated. Everything's correlated. But it's way worse than this since the, since the great financial crisis. Here's the correlation matrix. It's way worse. The darker colors indicate more correlations. If you can't see the little individual numbers, but mostly everything is between 75 and 90% correlated means they all zig and zag together, even though they're completely unrelated. And so, so huge problem. Everything is correlated, especially post-Great Financial Crisis. You have incredible drawdowns. This, this is a, this is a typical, this is a bunch of very, very popular income stocks. So these are considered very safe income stocks. And I want to look at just a, just a few of these. So on the left is the S&P 500. We have short-term bonds next. Muni bonds here. And you can look at muni bonds, you think, gosh, how safe they are. You're earning maybe, you know, 2%, 3%. This is over the last 25 years. But you have an average annual volatility of almost 10% and a max drawdown of almost 20% in bonds. So, for this little tiny bit of earnings, you're taking an enormous amount of risk. Let's look at 20-year Treasury bonds. So, again, you're earning roughly, looks like 3%-ish maybe. a year on average over the last 25 years, but you're taking a 10% annual volatility, typical. So, for earning that 3%, you're taking annually a 10% to 15% risk. And your max drawdown is 40%. Who wants to earn 30% or 3% with the risk of losing 40%, right? Emerging market bonds, high-yield bonds, EQR, this is apartment REITs. Again, it's crazy. So they have a much higher earnings, roughly 5%. But you have this good volatility, 25%, and the max drawdowns of almost 70%. You lose 70% in order to earn 5%. And here's oil pipelines that has been considered very, very safe, you know. So here you're earning maybe, it looks like maybe 8%, 7, 8%, 8%. But your average annual volatility is approaching 40%. Your max drawdown is over 90%. Again, anybody excited about doing this? I mean, this is what they want to put you in to earn income in this. And it's just, this is what frustrated me as a public market investor. The risks were just insane. And if you go to your financial advisor about looking at investing in a private altcoin, they say, "Oh, it's way too risky." I'm like, "Look at this. Tell me it's riskier than this." It's not. Here's some of the drawdowns in the S&P 500 in the last, you know, 30, 40 years. And, you know, these are drawdowns of 20+%. They're just tons of, you know, drawdowns. Anybody in the market knows that this has been happening. Okay, well, who cares about volatility? But I want to show you something about volatility that people don't realize. Everyone says that compounding is the way to produce wealth, and it is. Well, what people don't tell you is the Achilles heel or the kryptonite for compounding is volatility. It destroys compounding. So, I want to show you a person who takes a $100,000 investment here and earns 9%, boring 9% every year. At the end of 30 years, you have $1.3 million. All right? But let's say you're like I was back in my public market days. You're not going to be satisfied with a 9% boring earnings. You want to grow, you want to really swing for the fences. And the first year you earn 30%, I mean, sorry, 50%. So, you go 50% gains, have an incredible year. The next year you lose 30%, but that's still 10%, right? Plus 50, minus 30, average over 2 years is 10%. What happens at the end? Let's look at what happens if you repeat this for 30 years. $207,000 compared to $1.3 million. So compounding destroys— or volatility destroys compounding, and it explains why minimizing losses is way more important than maximizing gains in the mathematics of investing. This is, this is why, like Warren Buffett said, there's two rules of investing. Said the first rule is don't lose money. The second rule is don't forget rule number one. The most important thing you want to do is not lose money, because if you lose 50% in an investment, if you gain 50% back the next year, you're only back to 75%. You're not back to 100%. So the problem is that losses are far, far, far, far, far more impactful. I find, you know, I've been in the investment world a very long time, and most retail investors are more concerned with headline returns, what's the promised returns, than they are about the risk. And the more wealthy and more sophisticated investors are much more concerned about the risk than they are about the headline returns. You know, whether it's 1 or 2 percentage points lower, they're less concerned about that. They're very much risk-averse. And this is why it's not because, you know, they're richer. It's because the math works this way. All right. Now I want to introduce you to the guy who absolutely changed everything for the ultra-wealthy. Uh, this guy's named David, David Swensen. So he, he's, when he started the Yale, he ran the Yale Endowment, was an absolute bombshell. In the world of the ultra-wealthy. He changed absolutely everything about what they did. So, David Swensen is the founder of what is today called the Yale Model. And he took over the Yale endowment in 1985. It was pretty much a failed endowment. It had lost 45% in the previous 10, 15 years. And he said, I think I know how to make higher returns with less risk. And lower volatility. I know how to do this. And over his 35 years, he earned 13.1% returns at a time when the traditional 60/40 portfolio earned 8.8%. Okay, you think that's 4.4 or what, 4.3 percentage points of earnings? What's the difference make? No, no, no, no, no. Because of compounding, Every percentage point difference is compounded. So, it ends up being 4 times more money. So, is this, you know, so taking $100,000 at an 8.8% return, you would end up with $1.9 million. If you were able to earn 13%, you're going to end up with $7.4 million. 4 times more money. So this kind of thing really, really matters. How did he do it? What was his magic sauce? There was a couple things. There was a couple things he did, and I want to show you what they are that he did. He invested in private alternatives. So what happens? I showed you the correlations of the public markets. Okay, how everything is correlated to everything. The only way— the key to getting these returns and limiting is limiting the volatility. And the only way to limit volatility is to invest in uncorrelated assets. And the only things that are uncorrelated are privates. The only thing that are uncorrelated are private alternatives. So, you want to get things that are uncorrelated. This is what we call the alternative investment continuum. And what happens— what I want to just explain this for a minute. So as your investable assets rises, these are the things you'll typically start to invest in and you'll start to allocate to. So initially, most investors just dump their money in the stock and bond market. And hey, there's, there's worse things to do, right? But it's all right. Maybe you begin to dabble in DIY real estate, level 1.5. There's— those are not alternatives. Yet, right? They're just investments. Usually, the first step individual investors take is passive real estate. You're investing in a multifamily apartment complex or industrial real estate or something like this. So, you end up with passive real estate, which has a number of amazing superpowers, which I go through every one of these asset classes in the book and explain their superpowers, look at their correlations, look at how they work best in your portfolio and how to use them based basically to your advantage and use their strengths and avoid their weaknesses. Next level is private credit. Private credit is— its superpower is income and safety. And if you haven't dabbled in that, you know, you need to take a look at private credit. Next is natural resources and infrastructure, the most uncorrelated of all. Then you have private equity and venture capital and finally hedge funds. And so, this is how the ultra-wealthy invest. Um, and so, so Swensen also figured out the, the, the math behind this. So the key is having uncorrelated assets. When things— when something zigs, everything else zags. So they move differently, and that way you never have this idea that everything drops altogether, right? That's the issue, is protecting against these— this massive amount of volatility. And he figured out that if you diversify across asset classes, that your overall portfolio volatility is reduced. So, if you have 4 stocks, A, B, C, and D, and they each have 20% volatility, you would expect your portfolio to have 20% volatility, right? And in fact, if they're correlated, that's true. But if A, B, C, and D are uncorrelated, you have actually half the amount of volatility. And that's the key. So, what he figured out is that the stock market has around a 17% annual volatility, which means it moves roughly 20%, 25% every year up or down. But if you have 7 assets that are 40% correlated, that drops all the way down to 17 assets, 0% correlated. You have a portfolio volatility of 4%. So hugely, hugely important. Looking at private alts, this is a chart from, from the book. And so over on the right, this little black square is the S&P 500, and it, and it shows anything to the left shows it's less correlated. And you can see private alts are far less correlated. They're way to the left. They're just very uncorrelated, some more than others. And anything above this has a higher Sharpe ratio. And a Sharpe ratio is risk-adjusted returns, higher returns with less risk. And anything above is superior to the S&P 500. And all of them are except venture capital. And, you know, so every, every single of these private alts classes has superior risk-adjusted returns characteristics. You make more money with less risk doing it. This is a chart from iCapital. And it shows the drawdowns. You know, you ever been in the stock market and lose 30%, 40% in stocks? I have. And I've had some that dropped 90% in a day. Ridiculous. But, but what happens— so here are some of the recent crises, and the gold is, is the drop in the S&P 500. The blue is the drop in private alternatives. Look at this, it dropped half or less in all these various crises. So you, you have you have fewer falls. Remember what I showed you? I said that the— that the— it's more important to minimize losses than to maximize gains. Well, you have very superior loss characteristics compared to, um, compared to the public markets. And this, this chart— I absolutely love this chart from JP Morgan. And this shows a 60/40 portfolio. It's this bubble here, and it shows by adding 30% alts how you move into higher returns and less risk. And every bubble was superior by simply adding an alts mix of 30%. Um, so this, this is, this is, you know, this is what the big boys are doing. Final, final question. For you. Last question. So we wrap it up here. What percentage of your investments are in private ALTS? And here's my definition of private ALT. It's private, meaning it's not publicly, publicly traded in the public markets. It's professionally managed by a third party and it's a passive investment. You don't do anything. It's 100% passive. So someone else is doing all the work. So it's private, it's professionally managed, and it's passive. So what percentage, what percentage of your investments? Number from 0 to 100. Go ahead and chat that in. Chat that in. So here's the number. The Yale model for the ultra-wealthy pension funds, family offices, endowments. The number is 55%. 55%. Roughly 5% to 10% in bonds, roughly 20% to 30% in public markets, and 55% in private alternatives. And I want to show you, this is a chart from Prequin that shows the global growth of private alts. Now, Swensen started in 1985, 15 years ahead of this, the first bar on this chart. So, it was way out here. When no one was doing private alts. What's happened is, when people started to see what he was doing, and they did the math, and they saw how superior it was, literally, a floodgate was opened. And the ultra-wealthy just started doing this model. And this is the results. This is the global growth of private alts. It's just become the main way the ultra-wealthy invest, the main way. That they invest. And here's the sad part. Here's the sad part. The average private investor's allocation to private alts is 2%. 2%. This is why this book is so important. People think these private alts are risky. They're not. People think they're unattainable. They're not. People think they can't understand these and do the due diligence. You can, and you can understand them. You can do the due diligence. You can be successful at this. Lots and lots of people are. It does take effort, but it's very, very doable. I want to just pull a little from the book here, how to allocate. So what is an allocation? We have the Billionaire Portfolio Allocation, and one of the big scary things for investors and the big bugaboo against private alts is liquidity. Because in the public markets, right, anytime you want, you can push the button, sell everything, and boom, you can turn those investments into cash. That's very comforting. Of course, you know, generally if you do that, you might— if you don't time the market right, you can end up selling at the bottom and losing a ton of money. But it is liquid, where private alts are generally not liquid. Now, that's not even 100% true. So, we can show you how there is liquidity and how to manage it. But what we encourage investors to do, and we have a whole chapter here in the book on allocations, how to actually allocate like billionaires allocate to get all the benefits that they're getting. And the first thing we tell you to do is determine your 3 to 5 liquidity, your liquidity needs. So, don't, you know, don't— People overestimate their liquidity need, right? So, determine your liquidity need. What are you going to need in the next 3 to 5 years on the outskirts, right? The outside. What are you going to need? Then subtract your liquidity supply, including determine your cash, how much cash you want, how many bonds and lines of credit, how much credit do you have available? And then the final is allocate the rest according to the billionaire portfolio allocation model. And we have a $1 million portfolio, a $10 million portfolio, and a $100 million portfolio here. And, um, and so, so, and this is going up showing people how to go up the alternative investments continuum. So this is super, super, super important. And, um, um, very excited about, about this book, which is about a month away from being released. We just released, just recorded the audiobook. So it's going to be an audiobook version as well. And very excited about all these concepts. And I so appreciate you all listening today, but we have a very, very special offer. Again, I'm so excited. I am passionate about getting this information out to the normal investor, absolutely passionate about getting this information and helping people change the way they invest to have less volatility, which means less emotional wracking, right? Less concern and worry and make higher returns. What's the difference between ending up with $1 million, ending up with $4 million and being able to do this? So, we're very excited to get this out. And so, we have a special package that we're offering at this event. Very excited about this. A 60-minute training of what your financial advisor hasn't told you. This is a, uh, this is, this is a lot of fun. I did this 7 Things Your Financial Advisor Hasn't Told You, a very good webinar. Um, and, um, and also the 7 Rules of Billionaire Investing, which is the same webinar, uh, called the Ballers Framework, the 7 Rules of Billionaire Investing. We have a 9-part digital course. So Ben and I literally go through the book and record 9, 9 videos of going through and talking about the concepts in, in the book. Uh, you'll get the recordings, all the recordings of this summit, including Tom Wheelwright and Justin Donald and some of my favorite speakers. You'll get all this. Also, my top investments for 2025 and 10 copies of The Billionaire Book when it comes out, um, to give away to your friends and family. And finally, exclusive manuscript access. So you will get, as soon as you sign up for this package, you will get the first 6 chapters of the book in PDF. So you'll be able to start reading it before anyone else. So I think it's, I think it's pretty compelling. I really like it. And what's, what's really cool about this event is all of our speakers have agreed to add to this offer for, for, for, you know, so just, they're going to be adding their own their own things to it. So anyhow, very, very excited about this book. And so Ellis, you've read the book. What do you think about it?

We're here, Bob Fraser.

Stop sharing screen. What do you think the value is of this book?

Yes, will you stop sharing screen real quick so everybody can see you?

Yes.

And we can see one another. Guys, give it up for Bob in the chat. Thank you. Amazing. We've worked so hard to put some incredible resources for you together. So guys, real quick, just before I answer Bob's question, if you go to the bottom of your screen under the resources, there's a tab that says resources. If you click that, you can actually go straight to the link that Bob just shared. I also posted it in the chat, but that's going to be available all day long. And this is like, we have no— there's no like high-ticket mastermind upsell. Like, listen, this— we're just here to educate and give you a great chance to buy books. And so all of our speakers all throughout the day are going to add to this bonus. Um, and so we're really excited about it and would love your support. And if you want to buy these books and gift a friend, great. If you don't want to buy and just be here for free, all good. I saw somebody in the chat already complaining that we're trying to sell 10 books. Hey, you don't have to buy it. This is a free summit. So there you go. But if you'd like to support and get 10 books, then go to that link and then we're going to give you just a ton of value throughout the day. Awesome stuff.

Well, let me share a little bit too. I mean, just a little bit of pulling back the curtain here. The way that the best-selling bestseller lists work is you got to sell a ton of pre-orders and then the first week of book sales, they track all that. So we think this book is good enough to be a bestseller. You obviously saw some snippets of what Bob shared. If you liked that, you're going to love the rest of the book. It's just full of data-backed charts and stories and things that are going to be really impactful. But it helps us on the front end if you guys can buy more books and that gets notified to all the outlets. And so that's the real reason behind why we're doing this. And to Elsa's point, we're not trying to upsell to some high-ticket mastermind or whatever, like you see sometimes. It's really just to sell books. And that's why we're doing this. And we think it's a book that is needing to get out more in the world and we want to give it its best shot. So really appreciate you guys supporting us and supporting Bob and I in the book here.

Let me ask you guys a question. We got time for just a few questions. Bob, I ask you first and then I'll ask you. You talked a lot about working with financial advisors on this or not working with financial advisors. During this webinar. What do you hope as a result of this book changes in the industry? Or from an industry standpoint, if this book could have a ripple effect on the financial services industry, what would that be? What would you like to see change as a result?

Yeah. And I think it will. I think already the word's getting out and a lot of private investors or individual investors are are asking their financial advisors, hey, I want to get into alts. And the financial advisors, some are trying to figure it out. And it's nothing that they're trained for, right? It's nothing that the REA tests really test for. And the systems are not set up so. But it's changing slowly. My hope is that a lot more A lot more pressure happens and a lot more of these financial advisors say, "You know what? I'm going to figure this out, how to bring this to my investors and how to do a really good job." So, financial advisors offer a lot of valuable services and they're incredibly valuable people. Just very few understand this model. And my hope is that as they start to get educated, they educate themselves, that they realize this really is superior and I've got to figure this out and to actually be able to offer these solutions to their clients. And there's a few that do. They're extremely rare. And I think, as we've looked into RIAs and the regulations and everything, and the system is very much set up against it, they're going to have to go against the system. So, my hope is that the system starts to change, meaning the big custodians and all these, the big brokerages and others will start to become ALTS-friendly. And figure these things out.

Big question for you from an individual standpoint, what do you hope, you know, if someone grabs, reads this book, or, you know, takes the time to go through the resources, what do you, what impact do you want to make on the individual investor, the retail investor?

Yeah, I think I said at the beginning, but, you know, I really want people to gain confidence, uh, because this, you saw, you saw the why here, you saw the charts, There's a clear reason that you should be investing in alternatives. The challenge for most people that we've found is we've talked with a lot of accredited investors. We've got a lot of feedback on the podcast is, "I don't know where to start. I don't have confidence I'm going to make good decisions." And there is more opaqueness in this industry. And so, it can be a little bit scary to dip a toe in and to start to learn. And so, that's really what I hope is that people gain confidence. They get the tools they need to go and have success. Investing Like Billionaires and go and have the handbook here.

Hey, last question, Bob. This is such a good question. I really— I'd love to hear your thoughts on this. Wesley asked— I mean, this is so such an amazing question because we're seeing this potential opportunity to Blackstone working with 401s potentially. And he asked, if the big guys become alt-friendly, or let's just say something like the 401 is now, you know, Blackstone can now access or offer products to 401 products, will that just cause alts to correlate to the broader market? Does that down become— does that become in correlation? What are your thoughts on that?

Yeah, very interesting. And yeah, so whoever asked that question, it's a very astute question. And there is just an announcement that Trump made to open up 401s to crypto and private alternatives and all these kind of things. And I think that's going to be a slow train coming. Most of the custodians, the 401 custodians have to want to do this and have to agree to do this. And private alts are a lot more cumbersome to deal with for advisors with very difficult document sets and other things. But you can already— there is such a thing as self-directed 401s, at least for solo 401s, but they're very difficult to do and very there's only very few of them. So it's great that people are talking about it, but it's only a study at this point. And we'll see if the custodians really allow it. I mean, the traditional markets, the traditional system is not set up to handle alternatives, and it's going to be a very difficult transition for them. That said, back to the question, what about correlations? And will we see correlations? And I do think we'll see some correlations start to creep up. But one, if adoption is slow, which it will be, I don't think you're going to see a lot of change in correlations in the immediate term, as well as the fact that a lot of the correlations are driven by liquidity. Right. So people buying and selling in bulk everything at the same time, which happens when you buy the S&P 500 index. You buy all 500 stocks at once or sell them all at once, and you're never going to do that with altcoins. So I, I think correlations might slightly increase, but I don't think it's going to be a lot.