Top Episodes from our First Year & Coming Soon

Today we have just kind of a short little episode. We want to talk a little bit about some of our favorite episodes, some of the things that we've really enjoyed and learned. And if you're kind of newer to the podcast, we'll encourage you to go back and listen to those. And then we're really excited to share some of the things that we've, you know, got in the cooker here for the future of this podcast, where we see this going and some of the fun things that we want to continue to build community around this cool topic of alternative investments and get more education into the hands of the people to make better decisions, make better investments, and hopefully eventually become billionaires. This is the Invest Like a Billionaire podcast where we uncover the alternative investments and strategies that billionaires use to grow wealth. The tools and tactics you'll learn from this podcast will make you a better investor and help you build legacy wealth. Join us as we dive into the world of alternative investments, uncover strategies of the ultra-wealthy, discuss economics, and interview successful investors. Hello, future billionaires! Welcome back to the Invest Like a Billionaire podcast. Today we've got a unique episode, so we have all three co-hosts of the podcast, myself, Bob, and Jim. And we're talking today about— this is our anniversary episode. So we are going to be sharing just some of the things that we've learned over the past year of doing this podcast. So we've now done this podcast for a year. It's been a big undertaking, but it's been a really cool experience for us to see the reaction of our listeners and the benefit that we're bringing kind of education around these alternative investments. So Jim, what are some of the things that you've kind of taken away over the past year? And I know you've kind of, you know, shared some things earlier just on your vision of where we kind of saw originally of where this podcast could kind of help us and our listeners and our investors kind of go. Yeah.

Well, first of all, it's been kind of a selfish pursuit for me because I honestly, I mean, I guess this is a mark of a good podcast and putting out good content. I can't believe the amount that I'm learning. And how much learning, how much I don't know about some of the aspects that haven't been my particular, you know, my wheelhouse and focus has been pretty much the real estate world. And I have a pretty good depth of understanding and knowledge there, but you know, there's so much more that's involved in alternative investments. And we have really, you know, you guys have been, I, you know, hats off, you've really curated some incredible content and in a wide range of areas that all fall within, you know, accessible alternative investing. So as you mentioned, I mean, that was a vision from the very beginning. You know, even when we started the one, the investment, you know, sector that we operate and operate to this day very well, our debt funds, the vision was always to serve people, serve investors by giving access and education regarding alternative investments, helping them get some of their money out of the institutional, off of Wall Street and onto Main Street. And it's a dream. It's really kind of a dream come true. So I'm just, I'm loving it. I mean, you know, we had a sports, a guy that, a family that owns a sports league as a guest a couple weeks ago. And I mean, I, you know, I'm one of the hosts, but I'm, Frankly, I mean, I'll just be candid. I hardly knew what questions to ask. It's so outside of my realm, but it's like these things actually are accessible. And so I've just been having a blast learning myself, and I know where I can say in full confidence, we are delivering fantastic content and information to our, to our audience. And so that, that makes me really happy.

And they're even building one of the stadiums near your home, right?

It's built. It's built. I almost went to a game a couple weeks ago, soccer game. So it's very, very exciting. We're not ready to launch a fund yet on that one, but you never know.

No, you never know.

No, it's so cool. I think, you know, one of the kind of, I would say, gut instincts we had before this podcast, and even because what we've seen running Aspen Funds and, you know, we've been in this kind of alternative investment space for over 10 years now, we've been seeing the, you know, trend toward democratization and more access to these types of opportunities that historically have not been available to the average investor. But it's actually surprising to me to see how quickly the tides are moving that direction, how much interest there is from investors wanting to get out of the public markets and find a different way, find a better way. And so it's been cool to kind of have done the research, kind of this gut instinct, and as we've done it, It's, it's only, it's kind of blown my expectations away as far as, you know, what's out there, what's available. You know, are there any surprises, Jim, that you would say? I know you, you kind of obviously shared that you're surprised how much you're learning, but anything that's, are there been any surprises that have, you didn't expect when we started this?

You know, probably the surprise would be on a level of how, how, how, how perfectly synchronized doing this podcast is with our investment thesis from the beginning, which is, you know, just in a super general sense, it's like there is always something that's working, you know? I mean, we are so nimble right now that we can move into a sector and be in love with it while it's good, but the second it's not anymore, we've already got 2 or 3 other things that are anti-cyclical or on the other side of the cycle that that we're geared up and ready to jump into. And so having this top of mind refresher going on because of these podcasts continually, it's like we're always out looking for what's the next opportunity that's going to surface even while we're taking advantage of the one that's in front of us. So that to me, that it's been surprising that it's podcasts. Sometimes you can think of they can be kind of static and dusty. This is not like that at all. It's very fresh. You know, and, and it's, I love it. It kind of feeds the creativity just even for our own pursuits as I asked them. So knowing that that's helping other people out there too is just, that's, that's, I get great feedback from friends of mine that watch the podcast, people I didn't even know were watching it, you know? And right. So that's been surprising.

Yeah.

It's a lot of fun. I mean, you know, to just educate people about the opportunities that are out there. I mean, most people, they're simply, they would like to get out of the stock market. But they don't know what else to do. So it's making these things approachable, right? And how can you invest in music streaming or invest in franchises or oil and gas? And, and we make it accessible, you know, and, and yeah, we're learning about it, you know, just at the same time. But this stuff is all available and it's just such an exciting time. I don't think anybody knew in 2017 when they passed that, that regulation that basically allowed private investments to be offered to the public in a new way. New way. It's, it has literally changed the world and it's going to continue to change the world. And we're, we just see this, this thing just continuing to go where more and more alternatives are being offered to, and to investors. You still have to be accredited, unfortunately. But all right. If you are, it, it's like there's just, The world is opening up to you. And so to make that approachable, make it something understandable, something achievable and something that you can de-risk and get really outsized returns with lots of stability is, you know, it's pretty fun.

So Bob, you know, I know you love the opportunity zone investments, but you know, I owe my little mantra's always been, you know, the world is our opportunity zone, but you know, it's really kind of true. This podcast in a sense, Is an opportunity zone, right? We, because we're presenting you, you enter in and there's information and there's opportunity.

Get in the opportunity zone.

The zone.

I had to throw that in.

Well, I think it plays into like our original thesis. And I think that one of the first episodes we did is looking at the alternative investment continuum, right? How most people are investing and contrasting the average individual investor with, you know, the average institutional investor and like the number one difference by a factor of 50 or so is the alternative investment allocation in how much these institutions have been doing this for so long, investing these types of opportunities into real estate, into private equity, into hedge funds, in venture capital, and how little the average investors and how inaccessible it has been up until the JOBS Act like you were mentioning. But it's so cool to see even too, the JOBS Act totally transformed the ability to market these opportunities. Number one, but we've also seen the SEC continue to expand the definition and the definition, which, you know, at kind of a first blush you think, oh, you know, they're all about, you know, tightening up regulations, making it harder to invest in these things. And you actually think about when they, you know, kind of originally made these rules, it's, you know, inflation actually benefits investors in the sense of, you know, to hit these standards of accreditation, it gets easier and easier over time. And so some people have talked about, oh, they're going to increase the net worth requirement, increase the income requirement, but they haven't done that. And in fact, they've actually opened it up on the other way. Yeah, on the other way. So to me, it's just, it's indicative of, you know, they're even seeing, you know, at a government level and a regulatory level, the need for investors to have more access to these. And you see Reg A+, which is a whole new crowdfunding mechanism to fund different companies in different real estate outside of the public markets. It's just creating this whole new universe. I mean, I, you know, it's been 10 years since they passed the regulation, but I still believe wholeheartedly that we are in the very early innings of a massive tidal wave shift of capital to these private alternatives because they're a clear winner in a lot of ways. And so it's cool to kind of be in this position. And Jim, to your point, it's so easy to get kind of tunnel vision and, you know, we're, we're not just podcasters, surprise, surprise. We're actually operators of an investment management firm and we're in our zones of our expertise and we're doing certain deals in certain verticals. It's really easy, I think just as human nature to get tunnel vision. You just get sucked into what you're doing and then you kind of have confirmation bias of you're locked into this thing, so you want it to work, it has to work. And so you kind of get confirmation bias where you surround yourself with opinions that confirm what you already believe. But so much of investing is investing in the cycles and investing contrary a lot of times to the mainstream narrative. And so just by positioning ourselves in this podcast, it's forced us to just have constant feedback from different parts of the market, different asset classes.

Exactly right.

That's what's been the most surprising thing to me is just it expands your mindset when you can zoom out and you just see all the opportunities that are available and how different things work in different economic cycles and asset cycles. It's just, that's been the coolest surprise to me is just getting outside of the tunnel vision.

The breadth, the breadth of opportunity. It's the, there's so many ways to make money.

Yeah.

There's so many ways. And in all the things that you can think are not working, there's so many ways that are working, right? And there's always something working to figure out what people are doing, you know, and how people are making money, right? So you saw that as a banker, Ben, you know, you saw as an underwriter, you underwrote, you know, something like 150 companies, you know, you saw who's making money, how much money they're making, who's losing money, how much money they're losing. And it's just, you got an education and it's the same thing now. It's like, there's just to talk to these wonderful entrepreneurs and these investors who are, who are really have a rich vein, right? They've got this little gold mine that they figured out how to make money at. And there's so many of these and there's no right way, right? They're all right.

You know, until the real, and the real beauty of that, Bob, is, you know, and we've had this happen. I mean, I can think twice in the last, you know, 6 months, but you know, so we have these entrepreneurs and they're in their lane. And I mean, I was one of those, you know, I was a real estate developer and I was going to go up with the ship or down with the ship because I was 100% focused on my development projects. But if I were, if Aspen had come along, they'd have said, hey, this sounds really great. But then as soon as that, as soon as the wind starts shifting, we can, as Aspen, we can say, you know what, we're going to pump the brakes on that. And the poor guy that's like in that vertical, I mean, you know, that's, we're looking for experts that are committed to their field. But the, but the good news is if we see the field changing, I mean, we've already backed off on a couple different pursuits that looked really good, but You know, things have changed in the marketplace a bit and we're like, we're not, we don't have to make it work in that one vertical. In fact, it's, we're, we're better off saying, let's pump the brakes. Let's see what, let's see what happens here. Now we may discover ahead of the market opportunity where we say, let's get in now. But I love this. I mean, just having been, you know, beaten up by being the other guy in the past, it's just so refreshing and so freeing to like, hey, I don't have to do any one thing. We're going to do something always.

But emotions, emotions are not your friend as an investor. They, in fact, they're your enemy. And you know, how many times have we seen someone fall in love with the deal, right? You fall in love with the deal and you know, you got a hammer and everything looks like a nail. Well, that just, it's certain season in life that'll work for you. And then all of a sudden it doesn't work anymore. You can't fall in love with a deal or even an idea, you know, because every idea has its season. Every deal has its season and then it goes out of season and you have to know what season you're in, you know, and, you know, so it's not— you can't fall in love with deals. You have to be kind of deal agnostic. You have to be kind of market agnostic. You have to kind of be humble. You have to kind of go with what the market is telling you, not what your preconceived ideas you brought in, right?

Yeah.

Fall in love with your spouse and stay with them to the end. But don't do that with a— don't do that with a business. You don't have to do that with a business. Yeah.

Don't fall in love with your investments. You really, you gotta be careful, you know?

Yeah.

I mean, it totally plays into kind of this theme that we've created on our investment management business where our tagline is macro-driven alternative investments, right? And macro-driven being what are the big tides? What are the mega trends that are going on that are going to be the rising tides that lift all boats. Conversely, what are the tides that are, you know, pulling back out and, you know, all those boats are, you know, water levels decreasing. And who is it? I think Warren Buffett. I always misappropriate quotes, but I think it was Warren Buffett who said—

I think I said that.

We'll give it to Jim. You know, when the tide goes out, you see who's swimming naked, right? There's just nothing to hide from once the tide's gone. And it's inevitable in our, you know, the way our our financial system is set up that there are cycles and sometimes there's really big boom and bust cycles and you kind of, you have to be aware of where you're at in the cycle to understand what, you know, forces outside of your control are impacting the potential success and/or failure of that investment. And so what's really come from really both your, you're both experienced, you know, Bob and Jim with different things you've experienced over your careers in investing in businesses. Of understanding how critical and important that is. Bob, can you share a little bit, you shared this at different conferences recently, but just how kind of your experience, you know, building the tech business kind of, you know, hammered this point into your head that like nothing else. Yeah.

Yeah. You know, both of us, you know, we're in our 60s and you get creamed a few times. It changes you. It changes you and makes you smarter. You know, so I look at all you young bucks and you got, you got a lot of, lot of energy and drive, but you know, maybe not as much wisdom as the gray hairs, you know, and it's, it's not wisdom, it's perspective. It's just perspective that, you know, you've been through this, you know. So yeah, I started a tech business in the late '90s and in the late '90s, if you had a, a tech business that made dog food and was losing a billion dollars a year, it went up through the moon. You made 100x, you know, and then went up. And then, and then in 2001, it didn't matter how good your tech business was, it went down. I mean, Amazon.com was selling for 30 cents per share, 0.3 cents, right? 30 cents.

Swimming in the markets.

And here's a great company. And so my point is the markets are 100% sentiment-driven. And, and, and sent it because they're driven by human emotions. You know, everyone— they are not driven by facts, and they're not driven by numbers. They're driven by emotion. The fact that Amazon was selling for 30 cents a share is not driven by numbers, okay? That's pure emotion. It's— and it's pure sentiment-based. And that's the problem with it, you know. And then, you know, so, you know, our government believes that because you know, you register as a company, you become public company, you're now safe, you're a safe investment. So had you invested in Amazon at $300 a share and it went to $30, that's safe, you know. Then Coinbase recently dropped 75% of its value, you know, large billion-dollar company. It's like, that's a safe investment. It's not safe because it's public. It's the opposite. It's subject to, to literally whatever emotional whim or whatever whatever, you know, sentiment change happens. And so I became allergic to the public markets at this point. I just like, I don't want anything to do with public markets. As a business guy, I want a business that I can control, right? I can go turn a lever, you know, pull a lever, turn a knob, and I can turn, I can invest in my business, I can make more money, and it's completely unrelated to sentiment and what other people think of my business. Right. And so that's when we started Aspen, you know, you know, 10, 10 years ago, Jim and I was really, let's just do real estate notes and, and built a great little business. But, you know, since then, you know, it's just, and then we became passionate about this idea of macro-driven realities, right? Let's figure out what is working. Let's, let's figure out what Amazon is available at 30 cents per share. And of course, we, back when we started the note business, that was the Amazon at 30 cents, right? The, you know, the metaphor. More. And so what is working?

What, we're just, so we're just kind of flying over right now. We're just kind of flying over the beaches looking for naked swimmers wherever we can. I'm sorry, man. Should have never put that imagery out. Yeah.

I mean, I think looking back to the, you know, 10 years ago when you guys started Aspen, it really was the opportunity, right? That was, that was after the Great Recession. Distressed debt. There was unfortunately a lot of distress in the market, but that was the best time to get into it, right? And going back to the analogy of tides, the rising tide lifts all boats. So even if you mistime it a little bit or you make some mistakes along the way, it doesn't matter because those tides are such powerful forces that it covers over a lot of mishaps and other things. And I mean, you look at what's happened in the single-family market, which 10 years ago, You know, people were concerned, you know, the bubble's popped and single-family run is over and it's never going to go back. We've had consistent run-up and massive run-up in prices, especially the past few years. And we've been calling for that for many, many years saying this, there's no way it's not going to go up because of the macro forces behind the supply and demand, fundamental economics. And when you can position yourself in a way that is going to, you can see those longer-term trends. You know, it really helps everything else, right? It makes everything else that much easier. And one of the things that we've talked about before in the podcast, and you kind of hit on where like sentiment, right, can change overnight. When the tech wreck happened, sentiment on internet companies changed overnight. You know, Jim, you were developing real estate in California and when the Great Recession happened and, you know, the market for housing and speculative housing just flipped overnight, right?

We've seen it recently with crypto, crypto sentiment. It was, it could only go up. It was to the moon. It was, you know, we saw projections literally, you know, of what Bitcoin going to be worth, $360,000 in the next 3 years.

And it was just, it was just a baked-in assumption. It wasn't even like, oh yeah, exactly. Probably going to be close to a million a coin, but you know, we'll say 360 to be conservative. And now it's, you know, I don't even notice that now, but It's, yeah, it is interesting.

And no one wants it. It's like, it's like, it's, that's like, it just shows. It's like either the sentiment is this manic, you know, or it's depressive. It's like, you know, it's bipolar. It's like, uh, you know, so yeah, let's get out of that, get out of that crap and let's, yeah, it's into the private markets where it's, it's controllable, you know?

Yeah.

And so, you know, it's, I, I, I spoke at a, a conference, um, in Los Angeles in January of '20. So this is 2 months before COVID breaks out and I'm on a panel and the question is, you know, how to build a recession-proof business. And I just said, you know, guys, I don't think there's anybody up here that can tell you that we know, you know, how to build a business that can survive some unknown storm that could be coming. You know, I use kind of some terminology like that because we don't know.

We don't know.

We don't know what's coming, but I gotta tell you, you know, I mean, we had some operational changes we needed to make during COVID But the bottom line is, if you were to look at the performance of our funds and the asset, you know, the balance sheet of our funds all the way through that, you wouldn't even see a blip. But go look at what the stock market did.

Right.

I mean, it was wild and it was just, it kind of confirmed, you know, our thesis big time confirmed it. But yeah, that's, you know, I'm just, I'm sold for life. You know, my, the bulk of my investing On the personal passive side is alternatives, isn't it? And it's actually into the alternatives that we're vetting in-house because I, you know, I don't trust anybody more than I trust you guys in our team for analyzing these deals and bringing in the experts, you know, bringing in the attorneys and the analysts and the consultants that are deeply embedded in the spaces that we're investing in. So we're not just relying on our own horse sense, but I mean, it's, It's really good curated information and I feel personal, like I'm going to, why would I invest anywhere else?

You know, I don't know if our investors or our listeners realize that we are actually all investors and we are actually eating our own dog food, right? We invest pretty much entirely in the stuff that we're talking about here and we're finding and, you know, and I'll just make a little shameless pitch. You want to join in? We did. We started doing all this, finding these investments just for our own portfolios and we thought, hey, why not open this up to our friends? And so, yeah, you want to jump in, join our investor club and, you know, Ben, stick that in the show notes. But, but, you know, it's just we're, we're not, we're not salesmen. We're not doing this for someone else. We're doing it for ourselves. And, and just to be, to be good, solid investors looking for our own alternatives and off the beaten path and in stuff that no one else is thinking about and doing.

Right. So Bob, share a little bit of some of the surprises that you've kind of experienced over the, maybe expectations a year ago when we started this to now, maybe whether it was from guests you had or just expectations that were like, oh wow, this is interesting. I didn't expect this.

You know, it's been really fun. And, you know, we've had this idea of doing macro-driven, you know, kind of things for a long time. And we've really done this for a very long time. But what this is, what that's forced me to do is put on, really work harder at and spend more effort and time unearthing what are these macro trends and really vetting them out and discovering things that, you know, that you, you know, when you, when you actually make something intentional about something, you do, you get a lot further down the road. And so that's what's happened with me. It's being more intentional. You know, we had the guest on recently, Robin Winkle, about the oil and gas market. I mean, it was, it's stuff that I had been just researching on my own, but it's literally mind-numbing and, You know, the stuff that's going on with the, with oil and gas in the ESG world, it's, people are clueless about what is happening, the megatrends going on and why there is this incredible opportunity. And so for me, you know, 5, 6 years ago I was bearish on oil, right? And for the reason, you know, but I hadn't looked at it since then. And once I took another look, I'm going, holy smokes, this is a smoking hot opportunity. Right. And so it's forcing me to pay attention to things that I, that I haven't been paying attention to. And so that's been, that's been a lot of, a lot of fun and it's been super interesting to uncover some of these things, you know, it basically creates a, you know, an accountability that, hey, we actually have to put out an episode.

So, hey, can you do some research? I'm always bugging you rather than doing, hey, right. You making some research in macro trends in these areas and it's, it's not always, you know, it takes time and it's effort and it's, it's a, it's a, it's a cost to a certain extent to go do this because we're operating the business alongside of it. But it's, it's made us better. It's made us better.

And you, you know, the way I'm wired, I just, I love, I'm just a knowledge, I just love learning, right? So I love digging in and really, really learning. And it's, so it's been super enjoyable, but something I wouldn't, it's a lot of work too, something I wouldn't do, you know?

Right.

You know, so it's, so it's just kind of, it's super interesting. And I have been very surprised by some of the things I've discovered. For example, industrial real estate. I was really not familiar with that and why that's such a great opportunity, or retail real estate, why that's such a great opportunity here in the middle of the retail apocalypse, quote unquote, right? Oil and gas is another one. I was very surprised by what we've discovered as we start to really look in these things. So, you know, it's kind of fun to be in the beginning of these big trends, you know, Yeah. And be able to position ourselves and our friends ahead of the game.

Yeah.

I love, I think one of the little surprises for me, I think I've already shared some, but it's so cool to see the responses from listeners. And I think I've shared some with you guys, but just some of the people that they're newer to this space, right? I think for me, who's kind of been in this space for a while, and this is, you know, all of us, this is the, you know, the dog food we eat all day. We can talk about alternatives and the different asset classes It's kind of just secondhand to us, but there's a whole host of people that are looking to get into this that they don't have any experience to. This is their first exposure, right? This is part of the reason I love this podcast is it's trying to make these concepts, these ideas, these investments very accessible and to hear some of the responses from people that are just kind of getting into it and say, hey, you know, investing in some of the Aspen funds were some of the first ones that, alternatives I've invested in and it's, you know, it was, you guys made it sound or made it, explained it easier to, for me to understand where before was a hard thing to understand. And so to me that's been really cool to, to see that and, you know, we're still got a long ways to go in, in educating the masses on, on some of these things. But that's been really fun. Okay.

I've got a, I've got a, I've got a couple episodes.

Okay. Yeah.

Share that I want to talk about. So, so one of the, one of the really fun ones was, I'm looking back at the beginning, 1031 exchanges with Josh Wright and Brandon Buckman, you know, and understanding the dynamics of 1031 exchanges. That was so cool. Okay. And I actually learned quite a bit on that episode. Gary Stash, you remember Gary Stash?

Oh, that was a great one.

Billion-dollar real estate broker telling us really where the real estate market was going. That was brilliant. That was almost a year ago.

Yeah. Those are our worst ones.

Yeah. Okay. Here, here's another one. So good. How billionaires pay less in taxes than average Americans. That was, and this, this was, this was you and I did this, Ben, but I learned a lot from you on this one where you were talking about how billionaires are focused not on their income statement, but on their balance sheet. And so talking about that, and it literally shifted something in me to realize that, no, that's what we have to do. We have to focus on not the income statement, which is where everybody's thinking.

Yep.

The balance sheet and how they think differently and using the creative use of debt. Right.

It seems a little self-serving to me that Ben would be wanting you to minimize the amount of taxes that go out.

Sure.

No, that's, that's awesome.

Okay. I'm looking back over, uh, François Brun Bonner. Remember, remember him?

Gotta love François.

An international perspective on this, on, on US investments. And, you know, the US is just such a great place to invest. And, you know, it's so funny. We talk about the affordability crisis in America. Our real estate is way cheaper than a lot of places in the world. And so, you know, it's just interesting to have a different perspective of how you, how you, how you, how you roll. Oh, here's a, here's one of my faves. Kevin Day, asset protection. That was mind-blowing to me. That was my, the how to do asset protection and, you know, the importance of that.

So I literally, you know, started, I called the guy right after, like, hey, can we talk? Yeah.

Yeah.

I'm surprised you didn't mention any of your own economic presentations because those have been very, very well received by our listeners.

How much?

I'm my own favorite speaker.

No, I think some of those have been so cool because it plays into, again, some of the kind of themes that we are tracking on an ongoing basis. But it's really content. I mean, I always look forward to kind of, you know, sometimes you go and hide in your hole for a weekend and just, read, you know, all day long and just put together these thoughts and create these kind of common threads that, you know, for you kind of just pop up and just become obvious at a certain point. But for all of us watching it, it's so cool to see these very unique perspectives that are really rooted in very good data. And so I think there's good reason why those have been very top-performing episodes.

What have been your favorite ones there in your favorite revelations, I guess, the stuff that have impacted you the most?

Yeah, I think, you know, earlier on this year in talking about inflation, right? There was a kind of a big debate. Is this transitory? Is this going to be around for a while? You know, how do interest rates affect all that and what was causing inflation? I think that was a big one earlier on this year that was really helpful just to break it down because you see all the headlines, you hear all the kind of narrative and so much of it is just politically motivated. So you just never know what's actually true.

So hard to get the truth.

Yeah. And, and so just to break it down, it became really clear to me of like what's driving this. And you know, I think that, that was, you know, a really, really good one. And then just some of the more recent ones and like the more specific, you know, the, the latest one we did with Robin Winkler to your point, and even before that with just you and I talking about oil and gas economics. There's just, it seems to me that there's a brewing energy crisis. We actually named one of the episodes, The Brewing Energy Crisis, and really globally, I mean, it's something that is, I think, kind of being tampered down a little bit by some of the political parties because it's a way bigger problem than they want to let on. And you know, it also impacts sentiment of consumers and how they're spending. So it could, you know, caused some pretty big turmoil, but I think there's some really big trends going on that investors need to be aware of. And it was shocking to me to kind of see some of the actual data be presented. So those are the big revelations. I also really love the one, 'cause I just, I love economics, but just the one with, with John Chang that we did, who—

That was so good.

He's the—

So good. I'm looking back, remember Nick Skoulas of the Zonda?

That was another great one.

That was another good one. We gotta get him back.

We do. Yeah, that, because that was right before kind of all the interest rate increases started happening. That is, you know, cool the market a little bit. But, you know, they had some great data there. Jim, what are some of your favorite ones that you've been on? I know you mentioned the sports team one. It was just like our last one was really fun.

Yeah.

You know, I had the ones that everyone that you all have just mentioned have been great. I honestly, I know this sounds kind of, you know, ridiculous, but I actually have everyone I've watched, I've loved, I've learned. No, I mean, it really is phenomenal content. I think, I think what it was, you know, maybe the most fun one for me was the, uh, was the sports deal because it was so out in the left field. I'm like, yeah, why are you asking me to co-host this one?

It just happened.

Unintended. Just ask questions and let the guy talk. But I mean, it actually got my, uh, you know, my head spinning. I'm thinking about some of the possibilities because it's such a real estate play, you know, among so many other things.

But it's like, oh, duh.

You know, they're going into the middle of this city that wants something to bring, to congeal some energy into their city. It's really about city transformation, which touches another one of our, you know, as principles, our Aspen, you know, our passions. But it really involves that because they get, they get these stakeholders involved and they, Go find a great location to do a stadium. And the, you know, I mean, soccer is something that America is way behind the curve on, but all of these kids for now, for a couple generations have been playing soccer at a, at a, you know, an AYSO level or whatever. And now all of a sudden it's like, wow, these pro teams are springing up everywhere. And I'm thinking, you know, my opportunity bell is going off like crazy on that one. Now knowing exactly how and where to stick the fork in. Well, hey, guess what? That's why we have these podcasts. That's why we meet these people. That they're already well into the beast. So, you know, they could, they can show us where to stick the fork. So that was a fun one for me. And I really do enjoy just to double back Bob Fraser's, you know, economics ones when he, whenever he talks about this, because I know he, I know how deeply he studies stuff, but you have a really gift at, at bringing it to a, you know, communicating it in a way that is easy for a guy like me that's not into all of that to grasp. You know, I really love the macro you know, sense of it. But I know that there's a lot of beneath the level, beneath the surface research and, and, 'cause I try to poke holes sometimes in your, in your theories, you know, and, and you, you know, I'm not, I'm not surprised anymore, but you always, well, the reason that's not going to do that, Jim, is this, you know, like, okay. All right. So, I mean, you really do, you're really, you're studying it at depth, but you're presenting it in a very accessible way. And I, you know, I mean, I, I appreciated that about you before we ever formed Aspen when I used to hear you speak at conferences and do an economic summary. I remember you talking about that one deal where all it takes is making one good investment every 10 years to create wealth. And it's like, well, I've made like 3 crappy ones every year, but, you know, so anyway, I've always appreciated those episodes.

Yeah.

So one good investment per decade is all you need to make. That was the— I have some amazing data on that stuff. Yeah. We have lots of interesting studies on volatility and just really the keys of wealth production, wealth creation, you know? And the numbers, you know, just numbers don't lie. Yeah, we've got a new one. You know, Ben has seen that little presentation we're going to be doing here about some of the megatrends coming up in the, you know, this year, next year. So again, kind of going to be kind of eye-opening for folks.

Yep. Yep. Get ready. Get excited. This, I'm super pumped for, for getting this content out there.

Awesome.

I want to transition a little bit. So we've kind of looked back and all the fun things that we've done so far for this point, but we kind of want to look forward now too. So it's, it's obviously it's our anniversary episode. Been doing this for a year and we have no plans of stopping. And in fact, we want to really, you know, hope to continue to ramp up the content and over time be able to put out more content, you know, and and we want to create this community. So one of the cool things we're doing is we are actually launching a separate website for the podcast. Up to this point, it's kind of been a subpage on our Aspen Funds website. We're now launching a whole separate website. And really in doing that, we want to kind of create, kind of really launch this brand in a whole new way and create a community around this podcast and around alternative investments. And we have a lot of things that, and you know, down the road that we want to be doing and things that we hope we can get to. But in the near term, we have some cool things that we're going to be sharing with soon. But just as a little kind of teaser, the kind of first thing I wanted to mention to all our listeners, you know, we have just really grown this organically. We haven't really done really any ad spending around it and just have just been by word of mouth and just talking at conferences and sharing about our insights and just trying to put out as much content as we can. But we're really getting to the point where, you know, we're starting to hit some pretty nice growth in the numbers of the listeners. And we want to get this into more hands and more ears, I should say, of listeners. And so we're going to put together a little referral program. And so if you believe in this podcast, if you like this content, we want to get you some fun stuff and just to kind of promote this brand. So Invest Like a Billionaire, We have some pretty cool prizes and kind of not prize, I should say swag that we'll be giving for referrals. So we're going to have a whole new kind of system where you can just easily just send an email to a friend or a family member that you might think would be interested in kind of hearing the content in the podcast. And if you get them to sign up and you get it, get certain levels, you're going to get different prizes. So some of the things we've got in store are pretty fun. I'm actually, sitting in my office here, I'm going to pull out this, uh, little chocolate bar here. If you're watching, you can see it. And if you're not, you should go check it out on YouTube. But this is a chocolate bar. It's a billion dollar bill. What?

They get a picture of a chocolate bar with your face on it?

Who's that guy?

Well, as much as I know you'd want to see my face on it, we'll actually put your face on it. That's kind of one of the things. We actually do this for our podcast guests, which has been really fun. Well, you know, put their face on a billion-dollar bill, but we're going to do that for you. And as an option, we have some really cool Yetis with Invest Like a Billionaire on it. You can drink it from that. Jim's got his and we've got some other fun stuff too. So just be aware we're going to be sending out this referral program and it's just a way for you to help us, you know, spread the good news of this Alternative Investment Podcast. And then we also, you know, we, we've been doing kind of periodically this series called Top of Mind where they just kind of shorter little snippets of, of content around a particular topic. We want to do more of those. And what kind of spawned the idea was sometimes there's like something going on in the economy, there's something going on in the headlines, in the news, and it doesn't warrant maybe a full episode, but it's something that is interesting, that's kind of timely, that's relevant. And we'd love to hear from you as listeners to tell us what are things that are on your mind? What are things that you're— what are things that you would love to see more content around? Yeah. And ultimately this podcast is for you. I mean, we're doing this selfishly for our own reasons, but you know, it's, we, we want to work, we'd love to expand our, our, you know, outreach of getting ideas to all of you and, and from things you're seeing and hearing and want to hear more about. So, On this page, this website, it's thebillionairepodcast.com. It'll be in the show notes. You can go to Ask Anything and there'll be several ways that you can reach out to us and it'll get straight to me and straight to our marketing team. Ways that you can just, you know, share feedback. You can share. I'd love to hear the topics. We're going to make it really easy just to send. You can, a little button on the side, you can hit send a voicemail. You just literally talking to your phone. On mobile, on, uh, the website, and it'll send us a little voicemail recording. And so we wanna make it easy just to have you all share, uh, share with us feedback ideas. And, and if it's a good enough idea or a good enough topic, we'll probably do a show on it. So, um, just wanted to throw that out there and, and would really—

Hey Ben, can I ask, would, would that include now somebody who actually has or knows somebody who has a business model that we may not even You know, when I met Bob, I started this thing buying these defaulted second mortgages. Well, who heard of that at that point in time? And it became our company for the first several years. So, you know, we're all, this is a little bit self-serving, but if you know somebody or you're involved yourself in a niche business that you feel like might be a match and fall within one of our macro thesis, you know, I mean, put that in the notes too, right? Say 100%, ask anything, whatever.

Yeah.

Anything would definitely entail that. So we love any potential guests that you would have, any potential niches or asset classes that you want us to hit on. Anything. I mean, an article that you've read on CNBC or the Wall Street Journal or something that you think would be interesting to touch on, we'd love to see. So yeah, please, it's going to be fun. We're hoping we can kind of get more of that kind of content out. And then kind of in tandem with that, a little bit separate, is we've talked a lot about on the podcast, our investor club, right? We haven't pushed this super hard just because it's kind of a newer thing we're starting to kind of form out. But we have a link on the website, thebillionairepodcast.com, where you can sign up for our investor club. And this is, you know, it's not for everybody. And we actually have an application that you have to fill out to join the investor club. But we're going to be starting to put together kind of more in a community feel and content that's exclusive to this group. On a consistent basis that we're going to be able to share and really kind of build more community of other investors that are looking to get out of the public markets, looking to get these types of assets and want to create more community around that. So if that's of interest to you, if you're looking to deploy capital in the next few months and you've got liquidity, you've got appetite, you know, if you're an accredited investor, definitely click on that and apply to join the Investor Club. We want to make it easy. So again, this is kind of the phase 2.0 of the podcast and we're really excited about it. So again, please check out the new website, thebillionairepodcast.com for any of these new things. And leave a review if you haven't already. We've already got several new reviews recently that just kind of continue to help us get better rankings within Spotify and iTunes. And those are really awesome. I really appreciate seeing the great feedback there. And then again, reach out to us on things that you're seeing that are interesting for things to comment on, on different future episodes. And ultimately, we're so thankful to have you as listeners. We don't take that lightly. We want to continue to create, curate really good content on this podcast, and you guys can help us do that. So thanks so much for listening. And a year from now, we'll be doing this again and looking back and all the things we did do. So thanks for listening and Preciate you all.