$100M Founder: I Stopped Investing In My Business To Do This Instead | Matt Clark

Matt Clark is the creator of the most successful online business training in history.

In total, we sold like $100 million of this course.

He's the founder of multiple eight figure businesses and now he's a successful investor. What I want to do with our time today is try to save at least one entrepreneur from making the same mistake that I made and benefit from the lessons that you and I have learned.

I think a lot of stuff that we do as entrepreneurs is coaching. Complete waste of time.

So you did what everybody says you're supposed to do, which is reinvest into your business.

I was like, great, if I just multiply this thing out, we'll build a billion dollar company. And almost basically ran the business into the ground. We went from 2015, I think revenue was like 30 something million. The next year it was 9.

After incurring a whole bunch of losses, Matt and I both concluded that investing in our businesses was not necessarily the, the best financial decision.

If I had taken $8 million and then just put it in Amazon stock today, that would be worth Something like 70 to 80 million dollars.

There was a better way. And in this episode, we break apart our strategies for making, keeping and multiplying millions of dollars worth of wealth.

The biggest lesson and biggest mistake I see business owners make with their cash when investing is that they don't.

Matt Clark, good to see, man.

You too.

I was thinking, I think between you, me and Russell Brunson, we probably helped create more millionaires in this crazy Internet entrepreneurial world than maybe anybody in history. I remember 15 years ago being in Thailand together and you telling me that you were selling physical products on Amazon and that was the seed that was planted for really the next 10 years of my life. So thank you for the seed that you planted.

Yeah, you're welcome. It's been amazing to see what you've created yourself.

Thanks, man. Well, we've had a crazy journey discovering this roadmap to freedom that we all want in this entrepreneurial journey. But you and I, 15 years later, have both independently concluded that the way that we get to freedom is not necessarily the way that we thought that it was going to be. It's not necessarily just from our business, but that's what we all thought when we started this journey. How did you come to realize that?

So I spent a lot of time, like beating my head against the wall trying to build businesses. And some of it produced success and then some of it did not. And then at some point I was like, man, I was like, there's certain parts of Business that I like doing, but there's other parts that I just like hate. And I was like, who has different models? So then I started looking at, you know, Warren Buffett and Berkshire Hathaway and I was like, okay. I was like, here's this guy who's like sitting in this office in Omaha that owns something like 60 plus businesses. He doesn't leave his office in Omaha. Sometimes he'll do like a, you know, multibillion dollar check with never leaving the office. And I was like, this is a model that I need to dig into because I don't like doing meetings or managing employees or all these other sort of things. And I created some wealth for myself. I need to learn how to invest it.

How did you make your money.

Doing.

E commerce and teaching E commerce? Uh, and then it kind of depends because if we're talking about like pure cash extracted from the business e commerce and a big part of it is from, you know, the kind of course we ended up launching amazing selling machine that did very well, very cash generative. But then as far as a greater portion of net worth today from building E commerce and we have a brand called lifeboost Coffee. High revenue, high growth, very valuable, but it's not liquid yet.

With a fair summary be that you generated cash selling the course that was really probably the most successful course for Internet entrepreneurs ever, I think, I think that alone probably created 2,000 millionaires or million dollar businesses at least. But in terms of wealth and enterprise value, it's been building the E commerce businesses themselves. Is that right?

Yeah, I mean I think that's a perfect summary of those two businesses in general. There's a lot of people out there very good at marketing, charismatic. They can create and sell courses and stu. But I think at the end of the day it's not that great of a business. I think if you just want to build wealth and you know, I wanted to make an impact and stuff so something beyond that. But I think if you just want to build wealth, build an E commerce business, build a software business, I mean those are the kind of things that actually build like strong equity value versus just sort of generating cash.

It's the same thing with me. I made my cash flow as an affiliate marketer for years. In fact, selling your course, I made, I made a quite a, quite a bit of money, but I built my net worth building real long term businesses. One of which that I sold for millions of dollars and that was where I made about half, half my wealth. That was just in that one transaction. One Sale. I sold a business and made millions of dollars. You and I both, in that way, had windfall events. In a way, I sold a business for millions of dollars. You did launches where you made millions of dollars.

Right.

And both of us made some mixed decisions with that money.

Yeah.

I have a friend who calls it the bladder rule of finance. The more money there is in the system, the greater the pressure to piss it all away. And if we could go back in time, we would make different decisions. And what I want to do with our time today is try to save at least one entrepreneur from making the same mistake that I made and benefit from the. The lessons that you and I have learned as a result. So would you tell me a little bit about that time when you had done this launch and you had all this money in the bank and what you did with it and what you should have done with it?

Sure, yeah. So from around 2013 to 2015, like, we were, I think, a lot of success, I guess, right place, right time, plus some good execution, created a good course, treated people well, that kind of thing. But we're also right place at the right time. I mean, Amazon was like a wide open opportunity back then, and we had this business model we could teach people, did extremely well. And so in total, not just in those few years, but that was most of it. In those few years, in total, we sold like $100 million of this course, which is kind of unheard of. Doesn't happen very often. You know, a few of the Internet marketing guys experienced that back in the day.

And this is. This is when $100 million was still a lot of money.

Yeah, still, yeah. And so generated a lot of cash. Like, we had to pay some affiliates, we had some team members, I had a business partner, et cetera, et cetera. But still, there's a lot of money left over. And. And so we were paying ourselves out. I mean, we went from basically like, nothing to being multimillionaires, and we were paying ourselves out this money. But at some point you're kind of like, okay, I can pay myself out another million dollars, but it's just going to sit over here doing nothing. I was like, at the time, I was like, I really want to build like a billion dollar business. And everything was pointing in the direction. I'm like, okay, if you were to look at our revenue, our profit, our growth, our customers, the chart was just going up and to the right. And you kind of think that that's going to last forever. And it's like, that's Just what's going to happen? And I was like, great, if I just multiply this thing out, we'll build a billion dollar company. But I didn't really know how to reinvest that business, but I figured I would try anyways. And so basically tried to force feed that money into the business. Kind of built half a million dollar mobile app that we threw away, half a million dollar custom community that we threw away, a million dollar marketing campaign that returned $250,000 and hired something like 60 employees, mostly six figures, had a $40,000 a month office. I mean just spending money left and right. And I'm sure in the moment it felt like irrational individual decisions, but collectively it was just stupid. And so what I've kind of calculated over the time, maybe for self punishment, is that if I had taken, you know, call it like $8 million sort of cleared in the business, that we probably could have done whatever we wanted with, taken that $8 million and then just put it in Amazon stock and done literally nothing for the next 10 years. Today that would be worth something like 70 to 80 million dollars, which is much more than we ended up generating with that business. Probably actually destroyed most of that money.

So you did what everybody says you're supposed to do, which is reinvest into your business. Your business is your best asset.

Yeah.

And what you actually discovered is that if you had done literally nothing and just put it into a well chosen stock, it would have multiplied by 10x or so. So that advice of invest in your business, it's interesting because it's, it, it sounds like the right advice most of the time, but when you run the numbers, if you invest in your business, you also have risk associated with that. Like I don't know how to, how to reconcile that because it seems like a paradox to me.

Yeah, not every business is created equal, which is obvious to say, but a lot of times we don't treat it that way. Like if you're Starbucks and you're you know, say at your first 500 or a thousand stores and you're like, man, if we just every, every new store we add, I can't remember the exact numbers, but I've heard these somewhere. It was like every new store they added, say it cost them like a quarter million bucks like way back in the day. And then within two years it's basically generating positive cash flow. So you invest a quarter million dollars, it makes its money back in two years, call it a 50% per year return, which is insane. And if you're like okay, like, there's more cities that we can do this. It seems to be working out. You would reinvest every dollar you possibly can. Or in their case, like, they can't literally generate enough cash flow to serve how much they can reinvest. So they raise debt, they raise equity. Dumping all the money into this thing, that's just generating high returns on capital. Whereas most of us in smaller businesses, my business included at the time, was like, we didn't have a great way to reinvest. We would sell as many of this freaking course as possible, but we didn't have a way to sort of pour more fuel on that fire. We needed to find sort of new fires to sort of go out there and light, which we were trying to do, but tried way too big. And so instead we could have maybe spent, you know, 50 grand creating a software tool. 50 grand, maybe on a different course, you know, some sort of service business, little tests here and there, not just saying, like, hey, we've got 10 million bucks. Let's see if we can spend it all on this thing. And it's going to turn this thing into more sales. Most of our businesses, I think, are like that. And so I think it's either, like, testing small. And if that stuff's not working out, if you don't have a good track record of using cash to create more cash, then you got to do something else with that money.

What I'm kind of hearing you say is that when you look at a business like Starbucks, they have a clear model that you could evaluate, like an investor. Yeah, but in a lot of small businesses, you have things that you're testing, and those fires can build and build and light other things on fire, but they can also burn up a lot of money. And this is where entrepreneurs run into the trap of they make money appear out of thin air, but then, just like a good magician does, they make that money disappear back into thin air. And. And that cycle is something I thought I would be the exception to. I'll make my money and keep it. But I found out I'm a good magician. I make my money, and I can make it disappear, too. So I'm hearing you say that until there is a predictable model where you put this money in and you know that there's going to be a return or at least a thoughtful way to deploy that money, maybe it's not the best idea to roll your profits back into this loose idea of growth. Maybe it's a better idea to put that into better businesses that already have Those economics figured out. Is that kind of what you've concluded?

Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, as we kind of sort of transition the discussion, I guess into like thinking like an investor. I mean, you think about if you had a pile of cash today and say you didn't own a business, what are you looking for? It's like, how do I earn the highest return? And so a lot of times I think, I think a lot of small businesses, like the ones that we've been, we've built or we've taught people how to build and that sort of thing, you know, usually they're fairly like niche businesses. Like you could probably think of 20 examples. But somebody's selling some product on Amazon that has a capped market size and only like a handful of people are going to do really well in that space. Then beyond that, it doesn't matter how much money you spend there, you're not going to convince more people to win. I remember one time we talked with this older couple, I think I remember, based out of Florida or somewhere. They were like the number one pop gun sellers, like in the world. And they're pop guns? Yeah, pop guns. Like, you know, the little things you would get at like the carnival that like you pull back and the little thing shoots out the front. You know, talking about wooden guns.

Yeah.

And so they were like the number one. Like they were like they were making in themselves and on Amazon they were dominating, but the market was tiny. Like nobody wants to buy these things and doesn't matter how much money they put in that thing, it's not going to grow. And so there's an interesting, like bigger example. It's actually, I think it's like a $60 billion company, but it's called Constellation Software. So they'll buy these little niche software businesses that, that are somewhere, call it between like 2 and $10 million in revenue. So they'll buy these little software businesses for like a multi billion dollar company that's tiny, but they own like a thousand of these. And so they'll buy them, but they don't try to force them to spend more money. They tried all that at one point and they did all these studies over like 10 years and they were like all that money was kind of wasted.

Huh?

Like we're better off just optimizing these businesses, better operations, reducing costs, that sort of thing, and not trying to grow them at all. Like we're better off just taking that cash and buying more software businesses. So at some point they realize that more cash in here is not Going to generate a higher return. So us as entrepreneurs, that's really all we're trying to figure out is like, if I'm generating cash, am I going to get a higher return in my business or a higher return in another business or some other type of investment?

Alex Hormozi once told me that the headline to my program needs to be that I'll help you make so much money that you'll have an existential crisis and you'll realize that money doesn't make you happy. Like, it's the ultimate damaging admission. You should run with that.

Yeah.

And. And I think there is something to this experience of when you start making some money in your business. And we all wanted that end result of freedom or choice or to not work for somebody else. But once you taste it, the only thing that you know how to do is say, let me go bigger.

Yeah.

And for some people, that works. For most people, it seems to be a trap. What was your experience in that sort of timeline?

Yeah, so I kind of went through that whole phase of like, I want to make this thing as big as possible, and then almost basically ran the business into the ground. Like we went from 2015, I think revenue was like 30 something million. The next year it was 9. Mainly because I tried to make it go bigger and it actually went smaller.

So let me just make sure I understood. You had 30, $36 million in revenue.

Yeah.

And then you took that profit, reinvested into growth, and the next year you did nine. Right. So you dropped like 70%.

Yeah. Basically tried to change the whole model from this more expensive course thing to a subscription that killed revenue. But we were burning like half a million dollars a month in cash on operations, mainly.

So went through that whole experience and I was like, that is not what I want to keep doing. And so then at 6 some point, I was like, I got to figure out how to actually, you know, turn this money into more money, because I can't just keep dumping it into this business. I had fortunately pulled cash away for myself personally and that sort of thing. And that's kind of when I started looking at Warren Buffett and. And that sort of thing. And.

Then I got this idea in my head. Part of it was I was just burnt out. Like I. It would especially once we got Back to like 2017, 2018. Cause we went through this big dip. I went through like probably clinical depression. I think I was literally doing surveys on the line. I think I would have qualified.

I've done that.

Yeah. But then was able to Rebuild it after that. And then once we rebuilt it, I was better mentally, all that sort of stuff. But I was just exhausted.

Yeah.

And I was like, okay, it's.

It's one thing when you're hustling and it's working.

Yeah.

It's another thing when you're hustling and nothing will survive. Freaking work. And. And it just feels like, what is the point.

Yeah.

At that. So I completely understand what you're describing.

Yeah. So was able to sort of rebuild the thing, but then was just like, burnt out and exhausted. And I was like, got to find some. Some other way to kind of make money here with this. With this money. So I ended up part of it. I was just kind of, like, burnt. I didn't want to manage people, didn't want to do meetings. I was kind of. We had been sued by a couple employees, which they were kind of frivolous, kind of like, nonsense. But at some point I was just like, I'm done. Like, I want to. I want to figure something else out here.

You're done dealing with the lawsuits and the PR and the 80 employees in the $40,000 a month.

Yeah.

Office just to lose money. You're just burnt out.

And so I was like, I'm just going to learn this investing thing and then try to operate my businesses like an investor. And I find it interesting that a lot of us as entrepreneurs, especially earlier stage, like, man, if I could just build a business that runs itself. And so through a few years, I was able to kind of get to that point, and we can go into the details of how and that sort of thing. But was able to get to the point where it's basically had multiple businesses running. I had cash set aside. And then one day I kind of realized. I was like, man, I was like, these businesses don't actually need me anymore. And then you think that would be freedom. You'd be jumping up and stuff. But then you're like, you're kind of depressed. You're like. I mean, I imagine it's the same experience of somebody that spent a lot of time building a business and then they're retired and nobody's emailing them anymore and that sort of thing. But then I think at that point, it's like, you can either avoid that situation and be like, no, I'm just going to keep dumping money back in my business. Keep hustling, even if that's not the rational decision, or you figure out something else to do with your time or some other way to kind of spend your Life. Because rationally, maybe you should be taking that money and experience and investing in better businesses rather than just doing this sort of hustle mode on your own business, even though it's not really working.

I have a friend who runs a business that's about $25 million a year. And he reached out and he said, I'm, I'm. I've been wrestling with this idea of do I want to stay at 25 million, take this profit and invest it into X, Y and Z, or do I want to go build my $100 million thing? And in my head I'm like, please say take the profit. Please say take the profit. And he says, I've decided I want to build $100 million. Which there's nothing wrong with that at all. I want to build $100 million thing too. I haven't done that yet.

Yeah.

And that's that. I want to do it. But if I, I have found that I've not been able to even think about doing that until I have set up a plan and a process for me to build wealth independent of my businesses. Because if the only way that I can foresee myself building wealth is in my business, then I am going to constantly reinvest everything back into it and hope that one day it pays off and there will be years that it doesn't pay off. And those are the years that I will question myself. I will be depressed, I will wonder what's at all, what's the point of it all? And then I may not even have the energy to continue. So I made this realization because I have a habit of making a bunch of money and then just giving it to Ponzi schemes. That's been my investment strategy. I'll make a bunch of money and then I'll give it to sleazy people that should be in jail. Yours was you burnt out, got depressed, and then you realized, hey, I can run these. As an investor. Before we go into the roadmap for how we actually build long term wealth, how did your mindset change when you started viewing your businesses like an investor? What's the difference in operating a business like the entrepreneurial hustle versus the investor From a 30,000 foot view, what's the difference?

I think the biggest difference between, you know, an entrepreneur running their business and somebody that is an investor trying to think more like an investor is as an investor, you have more options, like as the entrepreneur. It's like you've only got one tool to use money to use your time and that sort of thing. Whereas with investing, you have plenty of options. And so if a business can't use cash, you put it somewhere else. And so it doesn't mean you have to force your businesses to use something that they can't use. And so I think that's. That's the biggest difference. And I think overall, if you look at, like, Berkshire Hathaway, Warren Buffett's company, they acquired Seas, I believe, See's Candies in, like, the 70s. And they tried to get that thing because it was from California, but for whatever reason, they couldn't get it to grow beyond California. They tried setting up shops and that kind of thing, but it just never really worked. But rather than being like, we gotta make this business work, we need to make it bigger than Hershey's, they're like, okay, fine, we'll take this cash from this one and we'll use it to acquire other businesses. I mean, one of the. One of the stocks that they end up acquiring was Coca Cola, which I think I looked it up last year, paid them like $776 million in dividends.

Wow.

And that business sees. Has never really grown that much in volume of chocolate sold, but it's generated billions of dollars in cash flow for them that they've redeployed to make way more money. And so I think that's the biggest difference.

Huh. So in one mindset, you're seeing, how do I manage cash to grow this business as big as possible? And in the other mindset, you're just saying, how do I manage cash to provide the best ROI possible?

Yeah, yeah. How do you generate the highest return on whatever cash you have available?

That's such an interesting shift. It's such a small shift when you talk about it. But if the only vehicle that you know how to make money in is your business, you're going to have this myopic view of, I have to put my money to work in this direction. And not looking at all of these other vehicles. I wonder how, you know, when you have maximized the dollars in the business. That's.

I think you got to keep yourself honest. I mean, I think if you've been, you know, it's easy to see. It's always easy to say, like, conceptually, like, oh, if you take this amount of money, what exact percent return do you get? And a lot of times it's not that clear for us as entrepreneurs, but we know if we've been burning cash or not. You're like, man, like, a lot of times I think people do it in Investing also, they just don't look at the results. But if you're like, we've been generating all this cash flow and We've tried these 52 different projects and none of them have helped grow the business, like, that's not a good sign. So I think you kind of know, even though most entrepreneurs just don't want to look at it, I think also because they don't know what to do with it otherwise. Like, I know a guy, I don't give too many details because I like this guy, but his business is generating a ton of cash and he's just buying all kinds of crap that's like, loosely related to his business maybe, and he doesn't really necessarily care that much about being an influencer kind of guy, but he's buying all kinds of, like, expensive toys and whatever that are somewhat related to his business. That's a case where I think. And he's got, as far as I know, he's got cash sitting in there, he's got some gold and whatever else, but he's not doing a great job on the investing side. I think long term, if you were to look 10, 20 years out, like, he would have been far, far better off learning, spending some time, you know, listening to this podcast or something like that, learning a bit about investing. Because most of what he's doing is going to end up destroying that cash and hopefully his business just keeps printing money. Otherwise, you know, he may take this kind of golden goose and have to create another one or rebuild it in a few years.

I've discovered for me that when I'm feeling really stressed or panicked, it's often that I have too many uncertain projects going on at the same time, because I play this scenario out in my mind of what if it all goes away and I have to start all over. But I've experienced that multiple times. And what happens is you are forced to strip the business down to its only essential profitable parts.

Yeah.

And then you have something to grow, you have something to feed. It's when that gets way too out of alignment. Now you've got four different projects that are not proven and not profitable and may or may not work out that that uncertainty starts to kick in because your cash flow is tied up in these uncertain projects. But when I keep things really simple and maybe have one or two projects that you're testing, I have two right now. That one I just feel a ton of conviction about. If it's a total failure, I'm still glad I did it. And another was a strategic decision for the business. And it was low downside, high upside. As of right now, hasn't turned into anything. And that's okay. That's my litmus test is do I know how to make this business grow by 5% next month, by 20 or 30% this year? If not, then I may be doing too many unprofitable, uncertain projects.

Yeah. And some people, that's their whole business model. I mean, look at like a lot of private equity funds, like depends on their stage and that sort of thing. But it's like some of them, even some of the massive ones, I mean, that's their whole business model is to go into businesses, cut out all the nonsense the owners are doing or previous owners or managers or whatever, and just focus back on the core business. And it usually ends up being a better business, at least for a period of time. But a lot of times we don't want to do that ourselves because we're so invested in all these people and these little pet projects we have going on. But usually it's probably destroying wealth because we're not looking at like, what are these actually returning?

In order to make the pivot into thinking like an investor and growing your wealth, there has to be a certain amount of space to analyze things from a 30,000 foot view. And a lot of entrepreneurs never get to that point where they even have that space because they're so active in their business.

Yeah.

You seem to have built a life where you have a lot of space.

Yeah.

How did you make that transition?

Part of it may be personality. I mean like we kind of touched on. It's like I don't like doing meetings or any of that kind of stuff. Part of it was also just, I.

Don'T either, but I still do them. I just haven't tortured myself.

What else are you going to do with your time? You got to figure something else. Yeah. Part of it is also just looking at these counter examples. I mean, I remember like a little anecdote when, you know, Warren Buffett's talking with Bill Gates and Warren Buffett was showing Bill Gates his calendar and it was basically like he opened up his calendar and it said Tuesday haircut day. And Bill Gates is like, how are you doing this? Like your business like is massive. Even at the time, Bill Gates was bigger, but it was still both huge businesses. Bill Gates, his schedules blocked out to 15 minute increments and that kind of thing. So there's not only way, one way to do these things.

Is that a real story?

It is, yeah. That's One you can actually verify? Yeah.

I can't tell you, like, what's coming up for me right now. It's like I. I can feel less guilty about having haircut day because I'm still in that mode. If I take haircut day, I'm like, oh, my employees are going to find out that I took the afternoon off. But in reality, that's probably exactly what I should be doing.

And part of it was seeking that.

And so I've seeking out that space for you.

And so I've been that extreme. I don't think I've ever quite accomplished. That was my goal to literally have a week where the only thing I had on there was a haircut. But I've had things where it's like, literally would have no, like, I would open up my next month's calendar and have zero on there. Like, nothing. Like that was my goal. But then I realized that I was, like, socially isolating myself somewhat. Like things were chugging along. It wasn't necessarily producing worse results, but I like engaging with my business partners and that kind of thing. And it's like, I need some of that. And so I think, you know, Buffett, he works in an office, and so he would just literally pick up the phone. Like Charlie Munger would say, when he was alive, he was like, yeah, I think Warren Buffett basically spends half of his day just reading stuff, the other half talking on the phone with very successful people. So it's not like he was really not talking to anybody. I think he needed that sort of social thing. That's why he's had an office this whole long, whole time. Even in his 90s, still going into the office. So he found his way to kind of fill that sort of social void. So for me, having an empty calendar I think is very useful. And sometimes I go through phases where it's more or less that direction. But I think a lot of stuff that we do as entrepreneurs is completely waste of time.

I want to go into what you're investing in, how you think about investing, and I'll share my own thoughts. But I want to tell you a quick story you'll appreciate. It was about a month ago that I hit about. I hit a wall at about 1:32 o'clock in the afternoon. And I just didn't feel like any good work was coming out of me. And at first I just beat myself up, like, whipping myself. You should work harder. You should be better at this. And finally I was like, you know, nothing else is good is going to come out of me. I'm just going to like close my laptop, go home, relax and recharge. And it was that afternoon that you and I, I don't remember who called who, but we hopped on the phone and we started talking about this very topic, which was the best part of my day. And that led to a conversation about investing, which led to more conversations. And had I not carved out that space and just let myself breathe, I would've missed out on the best part of my day. And an interesting rabbit hole that is genuinely energizing for both of us that I think is very helpful for a lot of people. And it was a reminder of just hammering it all the time is not necessarily the best roi. Right. So let's talk about the best places for roi. Tell me about how you have constructed your wealth model and how you have started building wealth now that you've experienced what it's like to make a lot of money, lose a lot of money, and think there has to be a better way. What does your investment structure look like now?

Yeah, so I consider, and I think most entrepreneurs should consider that their business is part of their total portfolio. And so I think unlike somebody that maybe has a job or is retired or something where it's like their, you know, investment portfolio is all they have as entrepreneurs, we have this other tool to make money. And so I think what could consider could be considered risky for somebody else, I think is maybe somewhat less risky for an entrepreneur that owns a business that's seven, eight figures, nine figures, you know, whatever. And so the way that I've kind of structured it, I guess in general. So I have two primary businesses. Amazing. We still create software and training and stuff related e commerce. Then I have lifeboost, which is, you know, coffee sort of E commerce, omnichannel sort of business. And so I have those two businesses which I kind of consider part of my portfolio. Then within Amazing, we have a holding company that technically owns Amazing.com which does all the operations. And within that holding company, we've pushed cash up there and I basically own 95% of the holding company. And, and so we've got some cash sitting there that I kind of followed the Buffett model. I was like, okay, we have this cash sitting there. I can pay it to myself, have to pay some sort of tax on dividend basically. It's not too bad. It's long term capital gains, but it's still something or I can invest this cash. So we literally set up a brokerage within the holding company that I invested some of that.

Very complicated. It sounds super smart and very complicated.

I mean, it's basically like as a. You have a brokerage account, right? Yeah. What provider is it with?

I use E trade.

Perfect. So you can set up an E trade for your business. Same thing. So rather than holding the cash in the bank, you're holding it in an E trade account. So then in the bank.

I didn't know you could do that.

Yeah, no problem.

Wait, wait. So I'm guessing this is a C corp.

Correct.

So your holding company is a C corp and you can open a brokerage account in there.

Yeah.

And therefore not pay the double tax and just let it grow in there?

Yeah, I mean it's. You'll still pay. Like if you said, thought I knew.

Things, turns out I knew nothing. That's genius.

If you sell an investment in whatever, I mean, it's a taxable entity, so it's going to pay taxes on whatever it earns. But the tax that you're avoiding is you're not just taking that cash and paying it out to yourself as a dividend. And because in that case you basically it's income to you and so you personally are paying some tax there.

Oh my goodness, that's awesome.

So it just sits up there and I've invested it, so that's a portion of it. And so then I have that business with its own cash. Then I have lifeboost, which is in sort of growth mode operation. So it doesn't have that whole setup.

I just need to make sure I'm understanding something. Okay, so, so the C corp tax rate is what, 21%?

Yeah.

And so you leave it in the C Corp, pay the 21% and then you can in you invest that. That's awesome. Okay, thank you. You just saved me like half a million dollars a year.

There you go. And so then otherwise the only missing piece here is I have. I mean, I have some tiny stupid 401k thing we set up for the company. I might as well have this. But that's like inconsequential. So then the other main piece is my personal investment portfolio. So that's where I do like some of the activity. But in reality it's like if I find something I like for my personal portfolio and there's cash available in the holding company portfolio, like there's no reason not to put it in both if there's cash available.

Okay, so that makes sense how you've structured things. And how do you make. How do you make your decisions? Like what is your allocation and, you know, I thought I had this figured out better than most people. And then after giving my money to Ponzi schemes, and people on the Internet realize maybe I'm not so good at this. And so after relearning the basics.

Right.

I now experience a level of financial freedom that is greater than right after I had my exit and had more money than I ever had in my life. I have more financial freedom and more peace around finances just because I have a plan. So I'm curious what your plan is.

Yep. Have you ever heard the thing when in writing, with somebody who talks about to improve your writing, just, like, cut out the first few paragraphs and it'll probably be better. Yeah. I feel like we're getting into that point. Not that what we've talked about hasn't been valuable, but it's like, I feel like if we could get to that point, like right now about, okay, what the hell do you actually do with your money? The biggest lesson and biggest mistake I see business owners make with their cash when investing is that they don't just do index funds. They all think they want to invest in individual stocks, individual assets. Could be a real estate piece, could be anything. Don't do that unless you can actually calculate the value of that thing and the value of it on any asset. This is straight out of Buffett, or literally any investor who knows what they're doing and is not trying to screw you over and sell you something is the value of an asset is the total amount of cash it'll ever, ever produce until Judgment Day, discounted back to today because, you know, dollar today is worth more than a dollar in the future. So you have to adjust for that. But beyond that, it's like, how much cash is this thing ever going to generate? And then what's that worth in today's terms? That basically gives you the total amount that that thing is possibly worth. Now, there's a lot of uncertainty here, which is why there's.

Yeah.

You know, a lot of people spend their time doing this stuff and is. Because how do I know there's actually going to be cash flow? How do I know what it's actually going to be? Do I need to adjust this interest rate thing, which is kind of important but less important for our purposes, and most people investing in stuff don't do that stuff. And so, long story short, like me, what I try to do now is I try to own a concentrated portfolio of businesses that I think are currently undervalued. And so I've done index funds. And that kind of thing, which is I think, what most people should do, because most people don't want to go to sec.gov and download 200 page 10Ks and keep up with 10Qs and read earnings call transcripts and try to value a business and all that sort of stuff, which is fine.

Yeah, we just lost 80% of.

Exactly.

Because they have no idea what any.

Of those better off with index funds.

Right.

But what I think will save you a lot of trouble is that unless you're willing to do that stuff for any investment, not even just stocks, then don't touch them. Like, otherwise, you're just gambling. Like, you have no idea what you're basing this thing off. But if you can find something, a business, for example, that if you're an entrepreneur, you have an advantage because you understand how businesses work. You've looked at your own P and L, now you're just looking at a P and L with bigger numbers. You've looked at your own balance sheet. Now you're looking at a balance sheet with an extra. But it's the same process. And so you're like, okay, like, if I was to come in as an owner and I wanted to buy this entire business, what do I think it would be worth? If you don't know, if you don't have an answer, pass, go on to the next one. But if you'll find some situations where you're like, I think conservatively, say, for example, just picking round numbers, I think this business is worth $1 billion. Like, if I had that money, I would write a check for $1 billion with this. And I think it would be a good investment. Then you're looking for something that is maybe priced at say, half a billion, half off. I think the whole. I heard somebody else sort of say this. I think it was Joel Greenblatt, who wrote the little book that Beats the Market and is like, all of investing is buying dollars for 50 cents. And so I think that's what I'm trying to do. And so my goal is really to have a portfolio of four to 10 maximum stocks that I think kind of fit that criteria, at least on initial purchase. Like, I own Amazon, for example. I bought it when it was $85 a share. I did the calculation to my best effort of what do I think their advertising business is worth? Because they kind of have separate businesses. They're not necessarily, like, they don't fit together as far as contributing revenue and that sort of thing, but they have their advertising business, which is very related to their E commerce business, but then they have aws, which is, like, completely separate.

Yeah.

And so I tried to value these individual businesses as if they were different companies. Like, what do I think they would all be worth? Based on my calculations, I thought the whole thing was worth like $2 trillion. And then at the time, the stock was 85. And so its market cap, I believe, was around 900 million or something like that.

Nine billion.

Nine hundred billion? Yes. Yeah.

You could buy it for 900 million. Back up the Big Brink truck.

Yeah. So 900 billion. So it was more than half off or so. And so then I was like, okay, I think this is a good bet. And whether it's just luck or whatever, so far it's kind of panned out. Today, I would not buy the same thing. But then the tricky thing is, and this is kind of a whole different discussion, probably outside the scope of this, but it's like, when you have something like that, how do you know when to sell it? Smart people would argue that if it's a great business that keeps getting better, even if it's overpriced, you're probably better off not selling it. But it doesn't mean I would buy more today. So that's just like a bigger example. But I try to look for a handful of those things, and that's basically how I manage my personal portfolios, including the. The money in the holding company.

The way that most people will invest is they'll predict that it's going to go up.

Yeah.

And then they buy it.

Yeah.

And if you take something like Bitcoin, which has consistently gone up, and you would have had an extraordinary return had you bought it, as a result, people plow more money into that, and it's tempting to do that, and it may be a good decision. I don't know. But it's impossible to value.

Yeah.

Because in the structure or the process that you just described, where you're looking at future cash flows discounted to today, how do you calculate that on something that does not produce cash flow? You can't. So that's a speculation, and it might be a good speculation, but we don't know. We can't predict that in the process that you're describing. You have to be much more thoughtful and much more researched about where you're deploying that capital with a reasonable understanding of what the future cash flows are worth and what the downsides are today. Which means that you can only do this a handful of times. Every few years, I might make one or two investments a year and that could be an active year if I want to produce really good returns. If we take the example of something like bitcoin, I once ran the numbers against if I put this much money in bitcoin versus Carvana stock and Carvana stock no one ever talks about, but Carvana stock has had a better ROI than bitcoin.

I was looking at that business when it was like, I don't know, like a dollar a share or something. But it's like I was like, I don't know if this business is going to go to zero. But I was like looking at it, I was like, is this a good investment? I was like, I don't know. I have no idea.

Now it's at like predict 50. Yeah, that's a, that's a good return. 150x in two years is a good return.

Yeah.

But you would have had to sit down and deeply understand that business in order to make that bet versus betting on bitcoin, which would be impossible to value.

And the crazy thing is like when people will buy something like bitcoin and they'll be like, this thing's going to 500,000. Like I've got close friends who, big proponents of all that stuff. And then bitcoin goes down from say 90,000 to 70,000. They're not buying more, they're like, oh crap. Like, you know, maybe, maybe it eventually go back up, then I'll buy more. But it's like, why? It's like if it got cheaper, then you buy more. Like say you want to go buy some apples and you think they're going to be two bucks each and they're on sale for a dollar each. Like maybe you buy more apples that week, but most people don't think of investing that way. And, but it's like you're, you're taking away your biggest advantage. Because you know, there's this thing that I think even when I was doing a business major in college, like they talked about sort of the efficient market and which seems to be maybe it's mostly true. There's a lot of people trying to figure this thing out, but it's not always efficient. And so you're, you're, you're losing your biggest advantage. Whereas like if you look at the sort of 52 week price history of any stock, it's swinging all over the places, even the best companies in the world. But if you have like a firm understanding, at least your best estimate that hopefully you're confident in of what a business is actually worth, then you have this huge advantage. You can buy more when it gets cheaper. You can sell it when it gets above that price. I'm going to give you kind of a tangible example that I've experienced, which is not what I expected. But I bought stock in this company called Bark, which basically maker of Barkbox. So if you have a pet like, you know who this company is, they had a ton of cash on the balance sheet. They basically went public with a spac. But then the company too high of a valuation. The company drops 90%.

Yeah.

But then this business is doing 500 million a year in revenue. 500 million a year in revenue. They've got the original CEO who built the whole thing back in there. He's like, all right, few goals. He's a, first off, I'm going to stop the cash burn. Then I'm going to turn this thing positive, profit positive. Then I'm going to start growing revenue again. So he's just over multiple years sort of chipping away at these things. And so I ended up buying stock because it was, I think, valued at like couple hundred million dollars market cap, whereas the business alone was doing 500 million a year in revenue and it was generating profit again. So I was like, if they can even squeeze out, you know, 10% net profit a year, they're going to be totally fine. Plus they had over $100 million in net cash on the balance sheet. And so I was looking at this thing. So I, I, in my opinion, that business even today is probably worth say like three bucks a share. And so I started buying it at two bucks a share. It goes down to a dollar. Whereas this is Bitcoin. You'd be screwed. But because I kind of think I understood the value of the business, I bought a lot more. So average purchase price went to like a dollar fifty. And then at some point the thing shoots up, I sell some shares and then it shoots back down to A$20 so that I buy some more shares. It shoots back up to 250. So I sell some more shares and it's just like almost like you're playing a video game with this stock price swinging around all over the place. And that wasn't really my goal. I thought I was like, okay, I'm going to buy this undervalued business. It's going to go to three or four bucks a share. Then I'm a sell the whole thing. But because I'm anchored in an actual price, then this whole Mr. Market thing that Warren Buffett's teacher Benjamin Graham would Talk about you're able to use it to your advantage versus otherwise, if you're just speculating, it's like you don't have that, you kind of lose that.

I had a similar thing happen just this past month where I feel very convicted about PayPal. It's my, you know, and my list of 10 stocks that I track, my number one highest conviction and their earnings came out, their earnings were great, but one number was off and the stock fell 15%. Yeah, I couldn't buy more fast enough because I'm not thinking about the next six months, I'm thinking about the next 10 years. And I've run the numbers on what I think the profits and the earnings will be over 10 years and what am I willing to pay today. Anything under that number I want to buy more of. If I believe that it's going to be a certain number over 10 years. And our mutual friend Billy Murphy likes to remind me that when you're making an educated play like that, the downside risk is not a hundred percent. Yes, theoretically any business can go bankrupt. But when you're making an educated, well researched guess like this, your downside risk is more like 50%. The stock may fall 50% and stay there for a long time if the fundamentals of the business change.

Right.

And so the, the risk reward ratio is very favorable. And this, this is where I think a little bit of research and a little bit of understanding about how this works sets entrepreneurs so free to go grow their businesses.

Yeah.

Because I spend, you know, 10, 20% of my business thinking time looking at my portfolio and researching companies and optimizing my plan. And that 10 to 20% makes me so much more focused when I go to grow my businesses. Because if I don't kill it this month, it's fine.

Yeah.

Because I still have my long term plan.

Sure.

So it sounds like your long term plan is that you want to own a portfolio of five to 10 companies that you know really well and, and be very highly concentrated in that direction. Is that, is that all that your plan entails?

It may shift over time. And I've recently started thinking there's these two guys that if you've gone, you gotta go deep down a rabbit hole in the value investing world to find these two guys. But there's these two guys, one's Nick Sleep and the other one's Zach something or other. But they ran this partnership for years and they, you have to buy this like little like ghetto looking book on Amazon that's like not designed well. Cause I Don't think they actually publish it. Somebody else did. They just wanted to get their like stockholder letters out and. But these guys, it was just kind of, they went through this whole journey. They were buying, they were two investment guys, they formed a partnership. They were investing in like these terrible companies, but they were generating cash. And then they eventually kind of settled on this idea of like, we want to own these like really good, high quality businesses, but we want to pay like a good price for them. So that's kind of what they ended up settling on. And they ended up owning basically just three stocks. Amazon, Costco and Berkshire Hathaway. They basically sold everything else. And then I don't know how long it was, but at some point they were doing no activity in their portfolio. They're like, we can't find anything better. And then I can't remember the exact details, but something weird was going on in the UK where it's like they literally couldn't have a portfolio this concentrated and like actually have investors. So they ended up shutting it down. They just took the money out. They had their own positions and they basically were done. Now they do charity stuff. Their whole thing was looking for these what they call long term compounders where they didn't have to do anything. Your activity goes to zero. Like you're generating, your activity can be zero and you generate a return equal to the market, which is totally fine. Which is probably the best decision for 95% of people. Invest in an index fund or multiple index funds and you're done. But another option that I'm kind of playing with and kind of hopefully moving in that direction is like how, like Amazon, for example, like how do I invest in these companies over time where I literally don't ever have to touch the portfolio, but I'm beating the market over long periods of time. So anyways, we'll see how that goes. But so far my portfolio is a mix of like, you know, this Amazon thing and then smaller businesses that I think are probably not that great, but I think are okay investments that eventually will have to sell. But I think there's kind of this cool idea of like a terminal portfolio where you don't have to do anything.

Terminal meaning, like it'll go on forever.

Yeah. And as. Yeah. And you're done. You don't have to make any changes, but maybe it's kind of a little idealistic.

I like how you view your businesses as part of that portfolio.

Yeah.

And their job is to produce cash and then you're putting that into better businesses. In the way that is going to compound for many years to come. I know that you at least have a basic understanding of what my plan is because we've talked about it. But I want to run it by you and get your feedback. Asterisk. This is not investment advice. We are two dudes on the Internet that you found randomly and we don't know what we're talking about on anything. Don't listen to our advice on anything ever. But here's my plan. I ran the numbers to see what I would need to invest over my lifetime in order for it to compound into $100 million. And the answer was $150,000 a year if index funds performed at their historical average of 9.7%. So I've proven that I can be an idiot and I could give my money to sleazy people. And so I require that I first put the first fruits of my earnings, the first $150,000 into long term boring S&P 500 index funds. And I'll do that forever and ever.

Each year 150,000.

I do a monthly, but I break that up. But yes, I dollar cost average into the index and I plan to do that for a very long time because that compounds into $100 million. That's like my boring safe plan and it still compounds into $100 million. I'm amazed at those numbers that just if the averages perform at their average, I'll die with $100 million. As long as I keep investing for four decades. I'll be in my 70s or 80s, but who cares? From there I give myself permission to do value investing. Yeah, which is where I'm keeping a list of 10 to 20 stocks that I am interested in. I'm researching, I'm waiting for them to go on sale and every month I give myself the permission to buy one. And I dollar cost average into whatever my highest conviction one is. Which means it may be the same one for a year or two years depending on what's going on. And then beyond that, if I want to speculate with extra profits at the end of the year and buy some Bitcoin or buy some Rivian stock because I think it's a really cool car company, or invest into the co working space in downtown Austin which I just recently invested in because I want to use it myself. Yeah, then it makes me happy to do that. Now I have permission to do that with any extra profits that I have left over at the end of the year. So I have a three tiered plan where I'M I have to invest into boring index funds. That's, you know, my idiot tax. And then I give myself permission to dollar cost average into one stock a month. That's well chosen and well researched. And then if I have profits left over at the end of the year, I can speculate a little bit with that. Yep. Could you run this through your thesis and give me feedback based on what you've seen in the plan?

How long have you invested in index funds? Not just in this whole plan, but in general.

Five years.

So all you've experienced so far, other than, I think 2022, is up, up and up as far as stock market performance, for the most part, I was.

I was buying individual stocks.

Okay.

So before I was investing in index funds.

Sure.

So I didn't really have a good plan. I was sort of throwing darts at a board. But I have experienced. I experienced Covid and I experienced 2022 as well.

Okay. Yeah. So, because now is like a very interesting time. Like if somebody had a big pile of cash right now to invest, which yours is different because this is money you're bringing in every month. You're investing every month. And so by default, you're kind of dollar cost averaging.

Correct.

If you had a big chunk of cash right now, like, say, like, Ryan, you're my best friend, you've got, you know, $10 million. You just sold a business like, should I put it all in index funds? There's little studies out there that you can read that go back over a long period of time that are specifically like lump sum investing versus dollar cost averaging. Most of them will say lump sum. You don't know when the market's going to go up, down or whatever. And it's like it could, like right now could keep going up for a long period of time.

What do you mean it says lump sum?

I mean, it's better to put it all in right now is basically what those studies say, the ones that I've read.

Really?

Yeah. What? You're laughing. I mean, it seems a little risky, but I mean, that's what the data shows, going back quite a long period of time using different time periods and whatnot. That would be my only concern right now if that was the case, because right now we're, you know, the stock market was just up, you know, the S and P was up over 20% per year from multiple, multiple years. It's been on this tear. Like the PE multiples are higher than other than only a couple other periods in time. And so if that was your situation, I'd be more concerned. But the reason I was asking about.

I'm missing something. What would be your concern? Your concern would be that I'm not throwing all the money into.

I would not. If I had all my money I'd ever made sitting in cash, I would not put it all into it. Index fund, right now, speaking index fund, I'm talking more like just general s and P500 or something because of the.

Market conditions right now.

Yeah. Which we don't know. I mean, if you look at like the appreciation in the late 90s, like, you could have said that after like two years, three years. And I want to say it was like four or five years or something where it was just ripping, which who knows, we could experience the same exact thing. But you're not so much in that situation. But the reason I was asking about, like, have you been through a market downturn? Because I think your plan is good. Especially like at the first part of the index fund part. There is a good chance, a higher chance now than at other point that there's going to be some sort of decline. Could be catastrophic, could be minor. Minor meaning like 20% could be catastrophic, meaning like 50% in the general market. And so it's like, it's easy to say, I'm going to keep putting this money in. Life is good because it's going up, it's going up. But then what happens when every month it's going down? It's like, it's like we talked about earlier. It's better because you're buying more for less. But I think it's being mentally prepared to sort of stick to the plan because that's when you're going to get higher returns. So I think that's kind of piece number one is like as long as you've kind of realized that that is possible.

Yes.

But I think also we don't know. I mean, you could invest the same exact way for the next two years and that would be the fantastic decision because it only goes up for two years. So I think as long as you're kind of prepared for that, I think it totally makes sense then as far as buying the individual businesses and stuff. It's like I heard this one guy, he was. I read this book, camera what the book was the other day. But he's like a financial planner. He had been burned in the stock market, so he's like only ever buy index funds and this and that. Everything else is terrible. But I think he just didn't kind of understand some of the stuff about valuing businesses and stuff. And it's fine. Most people should not be doing that sort of thing. But then he had a weird comment in there that was like, oh, but I reserve this certain part of the my portfolio for just playing around, which I think is, like, stupid. Like, if you want to play around and gamble, just, like, go to Vegas. Like, it's more entertaining. There's more lights on the slot machines and whatever. It's like, it's less exciting than watching some, like, boring or Yahoo Finance or whatever. So I think if you're going to invest anything in any sort of concentrated business, then either call it gambling and be honest with yourself. And this is not so much just speaking directly to you. This is anybody. Or, like, do the work. Like, you're a smart guy. You know, business, you've built businesses, you've helped people build businesses. Like, all you got to do is find businesses you can actually understand, which neither one of us can understand. A lot of these businesses, like, if you look at some biotechnology company or pharmaceutical business or some really complicated industrial business, like, it'd be so hard for me to make sense of what that thing's actually worth or even understand half of the words in the 10k.

Yeah.

So I think it's worth doing the work and being like, okay, this is what I think this company is actually valued based on my best guess. Like, if I were to buy 100% of this business, if I had the cash in my bank account, here's what I would pay for that thing. And then only buy if the price offered is 50% or less. So, like, where I think also people get in trouble is they'll find some great business. They'll maybe even do that calculation, and they'll be like, it's 20% below my calculated value. Not enough margin of safety there. There's a good chance you're wrong in your calculated value or some unforeseen circumstance happens or something like that. I think that's the other thing. The other thing, too is, like, it's nice to have a plan that you're kind of sticking with. I mean, on the index fund investing, like, perfect. But on the individual stock investing, like, when you hear a lot of experienced investors, it's very opportunistic. They don't have a certain number of businesses they're trying to invest in on a monthly basis or whatever. They're just reading as much stuff as possible. Then something weird pops up. Yeah, Like, I didn't plan on buying Amazon, but it kind of popped up. And I was like, why is this thing so cheap relative to the other technology businesses? So then I was very familiar with it. I've been looking at it for 10 years. I went and read both of Bradstone's books because I was like, I wasn't as familiar with the AWS side, even though we used it as a business. But I didn't really know as much about it from a business standpoint. So I had to sort of brush up on some of that stuff, read through the 10Ks, but it just kind of popped up. It's like I wasn't expecting, wasn't looking for that. It wasn't on like a watch list or any of that kind of stuff. So I think it is somewhat like opportunistic versus like forcing yourself to spend money every month.

How do you find the opportunities that excite you? I mean, for me, Alex and I were walking through the grocery store and I. And Ghost, the brand was on the shelf.

Sure.

And I remembered they had just sold to Keurig Dr. Pepper for a billion dollars. And that just sparked an idea. I think Ghost is a great brand. Let me look up the terms of the deal. Oh, Dr. Pepper's publicly traded. I add it to my watch list and I go research later that. That's fun for me as I go look at these stories and I'm finding what's. Where there's value. And now I've just. I kind of add it to the review later list. And as it comes up, I might dive deeper and sort of the. The best kind of start to rise to the top.

Yeah.

What's your process for finding these? Cause you know, I'm not finding bark.

I don't even know what that is.

So where. Where are you sifting for gold?

So for me, with my sort of limited experience here, like my process, which is not that different than what I hear from other people that have been at this for 40 years or something. There's a one like you said, just random chance. Like you just idea pops in your head, you see something, you're shopping or whatever another one is. I look at a cycle data roma.com and so that's a site that basically just pulls in what's called 13 Fs, which I believe it's anybody in the US that owns a fund with over like $100 million in asset, which is like pretty much all these people, they have to report what they're kind of buying and selling each quarter. And so that's a way to kind of shortlist some of these Things. And so you can look on there and find stuff. I've done that somewhat. Another one is kind of looking what's in my area of expertise. And that's how Bark popped up. And so I was like, okay, what kind of like E Commerce, Direct to consumer. I've spent so long doing this stuff. I was like, what kind of those businesses are publicly traded? And so then I went looking for those. And so that's how I ended up coming across Bark. I started reading its financials. I was like, man, I was like, if this business is doing 500 million a year in sales, had like $100 million in net cash on its balance sheet, is no longer losing money. The original CEO is back in there, still has a decent ownership stake. I was like, there's no way in hell you'd be able to buy that business privately. Like say you owned it. I wouldn't be be able to say, like, hey, Ryan, I know your business has like a hundred million dollars in cash and does 500 million years in sales and is everything's pointing up, but I'll write you a check right now for $200 million. Oh, yeah, and I also want that hundred million dollars in cash. You'll be like, screw you, like, no way. But that's what happens in the public markets. And so that's kind of how I found that company. I was looking for stuff that I was already familiar with, like in that space, but I looked at other ones, like, I can't remember. I think it's thing the stock has done well now, but it was like, you know, real, real and maybe peloton and some other stuff that at the time, like, did not look that interesting from a finance standpoint, financial standpoint. So I was looking for stuff in my space. And then I've tried using like stock screeners and stuff, but I don't know, it's like finding a needle in a haystack. Yeah, like you listen to like Warren Buffett back in the day. They'd be like, how do you find stocks to invest in? He's like, start with the A's. But I think that's like, that's what makes him. Buffet is. I think even the best investors in the world that are not him don't really take that approach. He's just a different animal. And so I've tried using stock screeners. I was like, great. He says, start with the A's. So I was like, I'll start with smaller cap businesses and then I'll start with the A's. And I make it three down the list and I'm like, man, I want to shoot myself. And so that process is not for me.

Yeah, what was the website you mentioned? Dataroma.com and this. And this is basically where funds, when they deploy a significant amount of capital they report.

They don't know they're reporting to the sec. But this site I guess probably has some API access to the SEC and just presents it in nice tables. They'll be like, oh, you know, like an investor in Austin. Actually that I follow. I think you're familiar with Monish Prabhai. They're like Monish provide. Just published.

He's in Austin.

It is now. He was in Irvine.

Do you know what his address is?

He lives in Westlake.

All right, we're popping over there later.

Yeah, he has some article popped up in the Wall Street Journal. They didn't say his address, address, but it's because he built like $185,000 library. And I don't know why, but anyways, anyways.

So this reports on those large investments.

It is like basically I think probably through API access pulls those into like a nice little table format. You can see like I want to click on each individual, individual investor or I want to click on a stock and see which investors own that. And it's got different ways of showing that it's not the best website, but it's kind of what everyone uses.

Yeah, that's, that's really interesting. I like to look at companies that I know like and use and feel like I have an eye on it that is different from everybody else. I mentioned PayPal earlier. The reason why I have conviction over that is because I know how PayPal integrates with checkouts and online transactions. And that is something that an analyst in New York who's not familiar with that business couldn't see or value. They couldn't evaluate how that's going to grow or how that's going to impact users lives. Yeah, I can. Or at least I think I can. Which makes me interested and curious to dive deeper into the story.

Yeah.

And then there's a brand like Laird.

Superfoods layered stock and then sold it before it 7x.

I'm sorry to hear that.

It's great.

So Laird Superfoods is start as an E commerce brand. Now they're in retail.

Yeah.

And they're, they're kind of like us. Yeah, but, but, but they have a, they have a big name behind it all. Laird Hamilton. Yeah, but I look at a brand like that and I Can understand it very well. It's an e commerce superfoods company. And I know that market so well. I can analyze it. But then when I look at the financials and the business plan, I pass because I understand it. I'm not. Not a business I want to. I want to invest in based on what I'm reviewing in the numbers.

Yeah. Instead you go look at a bigger business that's harder to understand and invest in it versus looking for ones. Like, imagine you sound found layered. Imagine if you were to look through 100 of those. You'll probably find one you do want to invest in. 99 you'll probably want to pass on.

Correct.

But those will be ones that you understand extremely well, which I think is a big part of the game. Like, you know, they talked about a lot about circle of competence, and they. They would say again and again and again. Some. Sometimes these quotes you hear so many times when you read all this stuff that the first hundred times you're like, yeah, yeah, whatever, I got it. But then eventually, like the 101st time, you're like, oh, now I think I really got it. And they would talk about circle of competence, and they would say that it's not so important how big the circle is. It's that you know its boundaries. And so I've invested in stuff that I thought I understood, but then I realized after the fact I really don't freaking understand this thing. But I understand bark. I don't know everything there is to ever know about it because there's stuff happening behind the scenes because they don't have to reveal everything as a public company. But that's fine. I can't control that. But I like you understand Laird, and I understand Laird, and you would understand bark if you were to look into it. Like, it's a very simple business. They've got some toys, They've got a subscription product. They run Facebook ads, and now they're selling these things in retail. Like it's not. Now they're selling on Amazon and Chewy. Like, it's very easy. Like, I literally got a friend who has sold a similar business for a couple hundred million dollars and literally the same business. And so that business is very easy to understand versus a lot of other businesses that are like, on the fringe of circle of competence. It's like, that's where we can have huge blind spots.

Yeah. And the attention that we give to stock picking is often on Nvidia and Apple and Microsoft and Amazon and these, the magnificent seven and index funds and ETFs because that's where all the market concentration is. They have, that's where all the media attention is. But there are all of these companies that have billion dollar market caps, $500 million market caps. Laird Superfoods is like an $80 million market cap. Now, to the individual, that's a lot of money.

Sure.

But in the stock market that's a very low amount of money.

Yeah.

And that means that if you're right, if you understand the business and it performs over a long period of time, that's where the greatest amount of return is.

Yeah.

This is where if that business compounds 20% a year, you can become fabulously wealthy. In fact, it's. The thing is, it's almost hard not to become fabulously wealthy if you do a good job of your research. And that's just not true when you've got nine irons in the fire in your business that are burning cash. And this is what I so wish I had understood five years ago, six years ago. But I, I finally reached the point of, well, I can start to understand it now.

Sure.

And over a long period of time.

Fabulous amounts of wealth is kind of, I won't say predictable, but it seems, it seems very reasonable. I don't have this stress anymore, like how am I going to make my money? It seems very obvious to me now.

Yeah. I think with investing, like even if you're not going down the route of individual stock investing and that sort of thing, like you'll probably do fine. Like it's, it's just being patient. Which is easier to say when the market has only gone up for X number of years so far. Thank you. A dip in 2022 for the most part. But over the long run, so you should do totally fine. Don't have to go, you know, as they would say, you don't have to jump over seven foot hurdles. It's like the 101 foot hurdle is fine and likely to generate you a better return. So people seem to get in trouble is they go throw money at stuff that's like hyper concentrated without doing the work to concentrate.

Yes.

And so like, you know, some of these Ponzi scheme investments you've talked about or should be some real estate stuff or an individual stock and whatever. It's like that stuff is only things you should be doing if you're actually willing to do the work. Otherwise diversify and life will be good over the long term.

Can you walk us through the process that you would give to a friend that ran a business and was looking at do I deploy it back into my business like everybody says I should do, or should I diversify into other areas? What's the process that you would walk somebody like that through?

Sure. So I think I would.

First try to get honest with yourself about your track record because maybe you've already tried to deploy a whole bunch of money and maybe it didn't work. So be honest with yourself about that.

In business.

In business, yeah. And so if that's not super clear, I still think investing in your business, because that's the one, you know the best. If you can do that at a high rate of return, which are big ifs, then do that first because that's the one you're going to know the best. It's likely going to generate you the highest return if you have some small business that you're just very intimate with. But if you're not sure, then I would start by running tests. I mean, like any of us would. Like even. Even if you've got a ton of money, like still run the test. I mean, that's like the biggest mistake I made with that one expense I talked about with the million dollar marketing campaign that returned $250,000. That was like way back in the day. And I think we were running podcast ads and stuff, which is not like it is today. This was a long time ago, but we didn't know anything about that channel. And like we could have found that answer out for 20 grand. We didn't have to spend a million dollars.

Did you run some billboard ads during the time?

Billboard. That was great. Another hundred grand evaporated.

I'm sorry to take you off track, but I have to ask this. Was there an ego play in there?

For sure.

Was there? Was there? When you start making some money, you're like, how, like how big can I make my name and my brand? Because. Because that ego is so damn expensive. Yeah, this is, this is really where your point of be honest with yourself, of what's your track record of deploying capital and turning it into a return. Because I've spent so much money and time just making my ego inflated and those very rarely bring a good return.

Yeah, I mean, that's a good point. It is expensive. I think that was part of it. Also. Also at that time, all I had seen was up. Everything worked great and I thought everything else that I did would work great and just didn't face the reality yet. So, yeah, I would look first and see. Try to run some tests in your business. Can you make this thing work? And Then eventually most businesses will reach a point where it's like you can't reinvest cash that well. So then at that point you're like, okay, what do I do with this money? I think a good default is index fund investing. Invest IN S&P 500 index fund is fine if you want to put some cash to work then. What I like right now is an ETF called S S gov sgov is the ticker. I can't remember. I think it's iShares 0 to 3 month US Treasury. It doesn't have the best name but basically all it's doing is an ETF which is just exchange traded fund that buys other assets. So in this case it's buying short term US Treasuries which are basically zero risk in kind of zero to three month increments. It owns a bunch of those and the annualized return on that is like four and a half percent or something. And so not a bad place to park cash. And so that's where I've basically put a lot of our cash and that sort of thing. So I think that's a good default if you're just kind of waiting. But otherwise, if you're ready to start investing, then I would start putting some of that money to work in AN S&P 500 Index Fund at first. Assuming you have nothing invested outside your business. And like I, like we were talking about earlier, if you want to know nothing, if you never want to research a stock, research the stock market. Don't want to read anything about any of that stuff. Just take that money and invest an equal chunk over like four years and I think you'll probably be fine. Even if the market crashes, it's probably not going to keep where it is today. Going at that same rate of growth for four years. At some point there's going to be some sort of downturn. So I think as long as you spread that money out over four years, like you'll be totally fine.

And so that's, I want to edify that because that I used to constantly wonder should I put my money here, should buy my money here? And I would think in these big chunks.

Yeah.

But when I thought about that chunk deployed over a long period of time now, not only am I less stressed about it, but I'm also replenishing that amount with cash flow coming from working.

Yep.

So it takes the stress out of it which allows me to actually make good decisions or thoughtful decisions about where I put that money.

Yeah. And I think, you know, part of this whole thing, which I don't know may or may or may not be interesting for people, but I think is like hard to avoid is how you manage your lifestyle and personal. I mean I'm. Other people have different opinions. I think sometimes these people are trying to sell you something or they're starting to justify their own sort of lifestyle. I'm a big fan of zero debt. Like no debt anywhere, doesn't matter business, cars, homes, anything. Like I think it allows you to live better now. Like we have a house in Colorado, for example, completely paid off where the market to crash like 50%. There's a good chance I'd be running and trying to get a mortgage on that thing and buy stuff. And so right now we don't live in that kind of market. So that would be kind of my exception. But in general I prefer no debt anywhere. And so I think if you're living by that like, you're probably doing okay. Like the friend that I was talking about that's had this very cash generative business buying a bunch of toys, personal business related. He also has the mindset of no debt. So I think he'll be fine either way. It doesn't really matter what happens. And so he's got that going for him. That's kind of my opinion. And so I think we're also. We get in trouble. You mentioned the ego is personally sort of guiding our lifestyle by ego. Got to have the best car, got to have the best house, got to have the fanciest everything that you do. I mean that also is just going to eat up your cash. Like forget investment returns. If you're burning half of your money every year because you're worried about impressing other people, that's going to really be a drag long term. And I think ultimately like those are probably not the people that are the best to be hanging out with anyways. And so I think that's an important piece. And so the reason I'm bringing that up is like if you're putting this money in index fund, it's like, yeah, great, I'm following this good investment plan. But then you've got all this wasted money in your personal lifestyle, you've got credit card debt or whatever. Like it's kind of pointless.

I love what Morgan Housel says about making a conscious decision to stop moving the goalposts. Yeah, it's hard, but it is hard. But if you can do it, there's. That's where freedom lives. Freedom does not live constantly chasing. It's not moving the goal Posts.

Yeah.

Then you've won. I recently bought a house and now I feel like I have the house I want. I have a car I want.

No expansion. I really would like to build a pickleball court. That's the dream right now. But now I'm starting to think in much more meaningful ways it would make me really happy to buy or build a co working facility. It would make me really happy to do volunteer projects because I've stopped moving the goalposts on lifestyle. Now I can think about meaningfulness. And it's one of the things that struck me about when you were walking me through your process of investing. The last part of what you said was buy happiness. Once you have a profitable business, once you're investing into index funds and you're building your watch list of things that you're waiting to go on sale and you're properly valuing those investments. After that, focus on buying happiness. What do you mean by that?

So there's a good book that I've read probably five times called Happy Money. There's other books that kind of loosely touch on this, but it's like the most direct one that basically just goes through all these research studies and whatnot about how people spend money. Like, did it contribute to happiness? Like whether it's little studies or bigger studies, One of them, for example, they would kind of survey people before and after buying the house that they were really after. Afterwards with a bigger house, fancier house, they're no happier. Their baseline didn't increase at all. So there's like pretty good evidence there about what to spend money on that actually moves a needle. And what doesn't move the needle, what does seem to move the needle? Buying experiences over things, going on vacations, doing cool things for your family. There's another guy here in Austin, I believe his name's Bill Perkins, that wrote Die with Zero. Die with zero. Yeah, he's in Austin. He is. Gosh, I'm so happy to live here. Yeah, so, so he's here. But he's got a good kind of message in that book is related to buying experiences. He's like, some things you're not going to be able to do later. Like, you know, you may think that like, oh, I'm just going to wait till I'm 60, 65. But he gives an example in there of like right now, like if you go skiing, for example, maybe you can do like 17 runs. When you're 60, maybe you could do three. And so like some things you almost have to do now physically, that you can't do later. So I think buying those kind of experiences is very important versus the better car, the better house, and that sort of thing. Also a one that people can put in place now, which is sometimes, like, some people like me, like, it's very easy to take on other people. It's like, harder to get them to do it, which is buying time. And so basic things like people cleaning your house or like, for me, sometimes I'll be frugal in certain areas. Like, I think I literally have one pair of jeans and my wife gives me about it and like, you know, if I washed them, like, there's too much information for most people, but probably like once every two weeks or a month or whatever. But so I'll don't spend money there. Part of it's a minimalism thing, but part of it's, I guess, money savings. But then I'll be more than happy to, like, roll up at the airport. I go to the most expensive, the closest parking whatsoever. To me, that's the best money ever spent. I could go park, you know, 52 miles away and pay $3 for a little bus thing or whatever. Or I can pay like a few hundred bucks for parking for a trip, like, totally worth it. And so that's, to me, kind of in that bucket of buying back time. So I think there's some of those things that, that we can do that make your life better and more meaningful that actually matter. And so as opposed to just like, sick, I'm going to buy a Lambo. Which you can do it and maybe you really like it. But a lot of times, based on what everyone has kind of shown, for most people, I think that's not going to do it for you.

What's interesting about.

Thinking like this is incrementally, it's almost like every step buys back a little bit of time and a little bit of peace of mind. When I stop trying to make my business something that it's not, and I stop trying to wonder, how am I going to grow this to this big thing? And I just bring my cash back under my control, there's a little bit of peace of mind and a little bit more time because I'm not running on the hamster wheel thinking about how big can I make this? And then when I just create a plan that involves some index funds, it's like I'm buying a little bit of time back, and then I'm. I'm starting to make more concentrated bets that have a higher upside. It's like I'm getting a little bit more peace of mind and a little bit more thoughtful. And then when I start outsourcing my laundry, I'm buying back a little bit more time.

Yeah.

And. And this feeds on itself a little bit. Starts to compound because now I have more space to think about doing really good work.

Yeah.

And I described to a friend recently that what understanding this and going in this direction has done for me is it's made me more present and peaceful at work. It's allowed me to enjoy creation at work more because I'm not constantly running on this energy of how big can I make this? It's how much can I enjoy this? How good can I make this? And the weird thing is as a result we're making more money. Yeah. And this is beautiful paradox. Whereas when I'm constantly pressing the accelerator and burning myself into the ground, I make less. And I have less time too.

I mean I've kind of experienced some of that with our E commerce business lifeboost. It's like I'd already been through this whole roller coaster and all that kind of stuff. I set aside my cash. I kind of learned how to invest it. And so this was all good timing to have this new business. Ish. That's kind of been exploding because it's allowed me to think a lot longer term about that and be more patient, more patient with. And Charles is better at this than me. But me, all the times I'm like, I can do better. I can do everything better than everyone else. Which is like stupid. And so he's much better at investing. Letting people sort of make mistakes and stumble. I mean just like you, if you built a business, you made a lot of mistakes. It's just. But then we don't want to let employees make those same mistakes and learn the hard way. And so I've done some of that. He's done a lot of that. And also just being able to take this longer term view of the brand we can any given day. Like I don't need to make money from that business. And so I'm like, if we find a way to acquire customers at a cost that is good for us and it builds this brand bigger longer term. Like it's totally worth it. Willing to invest whatever it takes. Not invest stupidly. But if there are ways to invest that we think we're going to get a good long term return, like we don't need to chase short term profits. Next month doesn't matter. Next quarter doesn't matter. This year matters less. I think it does allow you to build a much better business because rather than squeezing out like, you know, say, say you've got, you know, like us, like a $40 million business and you produce, you know, 20% net profit because you're squeezing every dollar out of it you possibly can. It's much better to have two, $300 million business built over more years that maybe you produce a lower profit margin that I think is a much better position to be in. And how most bigger businesses were built, but most of us running smaller businesses were so anxious to like squeeze every dollar out today, which just gives you the freedom not to.

You've dropped the names of a couple of books throughout our time together. If you had to make a reading list for someone who wanted to go in this direction and build up their net worth over a long period of time and get out of the grind of beating their head against the wall in business, what would be on your reading list?

I think number one would be, I mean, just I. It's the best one I read in the last many years is Richer, Wiser, happier. I've read that one. It's the only book I've ever read. Literally back to like paperback, back to back on the same trip. And then I've read it twice more since then. So I'd say richer, wiser, happier. There's one by this guy who I feel like you almost can't get enough exposure to this guy because he's like, he's been more of like a debt investor, but he's a multi billionaire. His name's Howard Marks. So he has a book called Mastering the Market Cycle. That's one that I think. And he's, he's, I say, more risk averse than a lot of these investors. And he's literally writing a book called Mastering the Market Cycle. So it's like an extremely risk averse, extremely rational guy that's sitting here. And the, basically the message of that thing is like, you can't predict where things are going. But you know, if you're not just completely blind, sometimes things are a little overheated and sometimes they're less. And so I think just that big takeaway from this very conservative guy is extremely important. Those two, very good. And there's. It's hard to pick another one because, I mean, I've read so many books about Warren Buffett and all that, and there's not necessarily one that stood out. It's just I've read as much as possible. So I feel at that point, if you literally just typed in Google and found the best reviewed book on Warren Buffett. Like, I think you can't get enough of that either.

They all kind of say the same thing. Peter Lynch's stuff. Rule one, investing Phil Town.

Yeah. Which is. Yeah.

I mean they're basically the same, the same message which is in your area of competence, find businesses that are undervalued, run the numbers and wait.

Yep.

That's basically the summary. So since you couldn't give me a third book, I want to close by throwing shade at an author that we both know.

Great.

And it's Robert Kiyosaki. This is somebody that we both know and love.

Back when his brain was working properly. And, and Robert wrote this book called Prophecy and it was why the market crash, the biggest market crash of all time is coming.

Yeah.

And he predicted that it would happen in 2016 and now he says it's going to happen in 2025. And in fact, I screenshotted the tweet where he said it's going to happen in February of 2025.

Yeah.

And I plan on posting this every time I see him make another doomsday prediction. What do you make of the people who constantly make these doomsday predictions about the market going down 50% or we're all going to. Or learn Brazilian jiu jitsu because we're all going to need knife to knife combat training when the world goes to hell.

Yeah.

And this is our peers, these are other authors, other entrepreneurs. What do you make of this mindset of there's always a disaster around the corner?

I think they're either.

Delusional, evil, or good at marketing. Because there's an asymmetry in predicting very specific bad events. First off, bad events are going to get more attention. Like if you're like, the whole world's going to be great in five years from now. Like nobody's going to pay attention, whole world's going to end. So. So that all of a sudden increases your exposure. Probably 3x or so true. And then also like you have to go back. I mean to, to look at all these predictions people make. Like you have to go out of your way to go find those things, all the ones that have been wrong, but it's the one time that they're right. Like they'll run that as their career for the next 10 to 20 years. And so it's like in their case, like if they're a good marketer, not delusional, not evil or some combination of these things, they're like, oh shoot, like maybe they know this or don't, but they're like, if I'm right, then I'm going to be a hero for a long time. All of a sudden. All of a sudden, I can predict the future and all these kind of things. If I'm wrong, people forget about it. And so in their case, there's a big asymmetry. High reward, low risk. Nobody cares if you're an idiot and you didn't predict these things.

That is so true.

Yeah.

And so. So if they're a good marketer, and I think Robert is, for example, he knows that he is going to isolate people like me and that there's going to be people who screenshot every tweet from the last 10 years and say he's wrong.

Yeah.

But the net is that he is likely going to get attention for it.

Yeah.

And he can use that attention for marketing however he wants.

And there's something weird. And even if you were to, like, take these screenshots, share them, people have probably done this still. Nobody's going to care.

Right.

It's not going to matter. There's something in the human psyche that's kind of weird that we really like predictions. I think it's because, you know.

This would really go off the deep end if we start talking about religion. But people like to have some level of control. They want to know what's going to happen in the future, even though a lot of this stuff is uncontrollable, unpredictable, and unknowable. Yeah. And so then if somebody gives them some clarity, some level of confidence that, like, oh, I know what's going to happen in the future, because I got all this experience, and usually there's something they can back it up with, even though it's complete nonsense at the end of the day. I think people like that even. Even if maybe in the back of their head, they know they're kind of lying to themselves, but they're like, oh, no, this person knows what's going to happen. So now I'm a little more comfortable about the future, even if it's bad, because I can prepare for it. I can do something. Rather than just being like, nobody knows what's going to happen next year or five years from now. Keep living. Go for it. Like, people don't like that.

Hmm.

I mean, even as you're sharing that, I'm realizing that even though I know Robert Kiyosaki is wrong about all these predictions, I still pay attention.

And we're talking about it. We're talking about it.

Right?

Yeah.

But I spent so many years afraid to invest, afraid to make these thoughtful decisions because.

I was in that Peter Schiff, Robert Kiyosaki, doomsday belief. And I know what it costs to believe those things. I know what the cost is when you see the market go down and you freak out and you panic, sell.

Yeah.

I know what that costs financially, what it costs emotionally, what it costs for how I treat myself, how I show up every day. And so there is this part of me that. That feels the need to call that out.

Yeah.

Because I know what it cost me and I know that there are millions of people who are prey to that.

I mean, I don't think it's good for people. I don't think it's a good way to use to. To leave live your life being the person who shares that kind of stuff. Regardless, I don't think you. You have to do everything that grabs the most attention. I don't think that's a good goal to shoot for. I think much better off trying to do what you can to kind of serve other people. And sometimes it's harder and sometimes your own self interest kind of gets in the way and stuff. But I don't think sort of telling everybody the world's going to end every five seconds like, does anybody any good.

I agree. Matt, what would you recommend people do as a next step? Where would you send them? What would you encourage them to read? How would you people. How would you encourage people to go down this path?

Man, I look at what you're already investing in and sort of revisit, why have you invested in this, especially now? Like, I think, I don't know. When you're released as podcast, I imagine sometime relatively soon, and if the whole stock market hasn't crashed by then, I would look at what you're invested in now and ask yourself why. I think that's probably the biggest takeaway for people. I don't know what's going to happen with some of these companies. Like, there's companies that we could pick on all day long by people that are far more successful and probably far smarter than I am. We could look at Tesla. We could look at Nvidia. We could look at people being big proponents of bitcoin, all these kind of things. I don't know what's going to happen with all these things, but I think that if you've bought into any of the lessons that we've shared here and the framework of looking at value, not just sort of stock charts, look at what you have, you may Avoid a lot of pain. I mean, if you have, for example, say you set aside a million bucks in your business, which may be outside the reach, but any, any number, any number of zeros, but it's a meaningful amount to you and you've put it in these things because of other, other people said that they're going to go up. You could avoid a lot of pain if you hopefully take a more reasonable approach and then think maybe these things aren't going to keep going up forever and then you live a better life and hopefully you're able to not be so stressed financially and you can go out there and build a better business, do better things for other people. So I think that would be the first big thing and then otherwise sort of running through those items that we covered. I mean, look at your business. Can you reinvest in it? Well, if not, what's your next best option? Unless you're doing all want to do all the work investing in individual stocks, then probably invest in index funds and yeah, I guess lastly, buy happiness.

Amen. I want to close with an ask of the audience. Matt and I have talked about talking about this stuff on a regular basis. Like what are we investing in? What are we tracking? What do we think about the state of the market? Would you enjoy hearing us flap our gums about our opinions about the things we're tracking in the state of the economy and the markets? If you would please drop a comment around this video or email me@ryan capitalism.com Matt, it was a pleasure. Great to see you.

Thank you.

It seems silly to say this, but for most of my entrepreneurial career, I thought that I could outsmart the markets. I think as entrepreneurs, we often think that we're smarter than most people and we can figure out a better way. And that mindset cost me millions of dollars. I lost so much money being a bad investor. And I consider it part of my job as the founder of capitalism.com to help entrepreneurs avoid those very costly mistakes. And if I had someone in my ear telling me about those types of costly mistakes, I would be much further ahead than I am today. I'm thankful that I learned those lessons because now I get to pass them on to the next generation of entrepreneurs. And I would like to reach as many of those entrepreneurs as possible. If you'll take two seconds to like this video and subscribe to the channel, it will help us find the most helpful entrepreneurs, capitalists and investors to bring onto the show to guide you on your journey. In case we've never met before, thank you for being here. My name is Ryan Daniel Moran and I run capitalism.com. we help entrepreneurs build seven figure businesses, have multimillion dollar exits. And I hope you got a ton of value out of today's episode. If you stick around, I'll see you on the next one. Thanks for watching. Thanks for watching.