How To Spot 100X Investment Opportunities: Advice From Multi-Millionaire Investors

So let's talk about this because both of you have been able to spot opportunities when they happen. How do you know that you've got an opportunity when you spot it? When is it time to strike?

I don't want to bet on companies that are betting on the short term.

We have so many tailwinds right now that I just can't envision another way that the market didn't doesn't keep going.

This is the loop you play in and this is the loop you see the influencers play. So you think, of course this is what I should do. All these successful people I see are doing this.

There are some conspiracy theories going around that part of this also has to do with BlackRock.

How do you spot those breakout opportunities? One of my guests today bought Ethereum at $100 and rode it all the way to 4,000. One of my guests today bought Apple 12 years ago and turned it into many millions of dollars. I started a company with $600, turn to $16 million. We only get a few of those types of bets, maybe in our lifetime. So how do you spot them? How do you prepare for them? And what do you do when the market's at all time highs, when things are popping, when things are frothy? Do you force it? Do you wait? Do you hunt for the opportunity? That's what we talk about in today's episode. We're entering into a new year, a new presidential cycle, hopefully a new chapter in the country. And, and we're looking ahead to the optimistic plays that are in front of us here@capitalism.com. so I invited Billy Murphy and Ryan Quason, who have both inspired the way that I view my investing strategy, the way that I look for opportunities. And we look at what we're tracking right now, how we find opportunities and what we see coming over the next four years. And I hope that as a result of hearing this, you'll be more bullish on the next chapter. But also you'll know how to look for and go all in and the opportunities that have the most upside for you. I hope you enjoy this conversation with myself, Billy and Ryan. And I hope it gives you more conviction to go all in on the opportunities ahead of you. Enjoy. So what I want to hear from both of you, how do you know that you've got an opportunity when you spot it? When is it time to strike? Because right now we're super frothy. Markets are euphoric, all time highs across the board. Crypto, stocks, everything is frothy. So do you Just wait. Do you hunt? How do you know you've got an opportunity when you see it?

For me, it's.

I tell people the. The math.

The. The expected value has to be so great that I don't even need to run any math. And when I run the math, the numbers seem not real. Like my real estate bet, the returns seemed fake, like they were going to be so big, but I still had a margin of safety. And that's the biggest thing, because the pendulum swings in the market based on the euphoria of the market as well as, you know, when. When everyone's selling everything, the pendulum will swing too far to one side. So the question for people like us is where are we on the pendulum? And it matters less if we understand what our own goal is, because then it doesn't matter where we are on the pendulum, depending on our. The. The length of time we're okay holding as well as our return. Which is why it's important to say because, for example, I don't care what price the market is today. If I'm planning on holding for 10 years, and I believe my expected return will be X versus the person who needs their capital in X amount of time and says, I think it's lower. I think it's high right now, therefore I'll do Y. And that's the. The biggest difference in what I'm doing is it matters less where the average person.

Hold on, hold on. You're, like. You're, like, really close to, like, kissing this girl, and I.

I'm like, just kiss her already.

Yeah, so.

So when. When you're looking at your real estate bet, you said, okay, the returns don't even seem real. How the hell did you calculate that? Because, no, nobody saw that. And what we're talking about is you had a vacant land play right, in East Texas where very few people. You. Very few people would have seen it. And somehow you saw it and ran the numbers, and they seemed fake. How the hell did you find something? How did you spot that?

That specific bet was this happened around the time Covid happened. And I tried to think about what opportunities would happen because of the uncertainties that were happening with COVID And one of my theories was that people would, you know, work from home, was already starting to take off more. I thought it would continue to explode. I thought if that happened, then people would move to states with no income tax or low income tax. People would move to more desirable areas. People could move outside of the hubs of where the offices were located, wanted to move More in nature. So essentially I found areas that were a bullseye on all those aspects. And then I calculated kind of roughly, okay, what is similar properties worth in a vicinity around the hubs.

So I think the important point to start here is this is based on your unique experience and eye in the world and where you live. You were able to have some sort of a gut feel or hunch or. Or a thesis based on your current experience that gave you a unique view into something.

Yeah, because I understood at least a little bit about land and I understood.

At least a little bit about, you know, if you looked at the average person, most people can't afford to live in certain areas or they can't comfortably afford. So therefore, if it became easier to live in more affordable areas and more desirable areas, they would do it in a heartbeat. And this was the. I thought that one of the first chances they could do it.

What about with Apple? How did you know that you were spotting that opportunity?

That was. It's funny, I went back and looked at when I was studying Buffett, Munger, lynch, all these guys, and it was the year before the bet. I was studying those books nonstop. And so when I saw the price of Apple, Apple was trading at a very low pe. They had a bunch of cash in the bank. They had money down on. On what I believe were very high plus CP bets. And those look like R and D to a company. And so, meaning they have not received any returns for those bets yet, but they were betting a significant amount of money on future bets. Therefore, if any of those bets work out, their future profits will be greater. So when most people look at a company, they say, what is this company making? Therefore, I can know, you know, roughly what the ROI will be. But if a company's betting on future bets, the profits are in the future, and those are added to current profits, assuming the fundamentals of the current bets stay the same.

So. So I heard all the words that you said, right? I have no idea what you just said. Here's. Here's what I interpreted from what you said. There's a story that you believed. You saw a story. And I've learned this from you, Ryan, like that there is. There's a story that you're betting on, and you had a unique view of the story of the land where you lived, and you bought into the story of where Apple was making its bets, and you believed that both were undervalued. And so what I'm kind of gaining from hearing you use these big words is that you start with A unique thesis. You believe the story and then you run the numbers on what's my potential risk and reward of this story. Is that a fair summary? And then I'm gonna kick it over to you, Ryan.

I mean, I think if I could say one thing, I feel like it's almost as he's betting on a path of development, right? Like, if he's thinking of, I'm gonna buy this vacant land, there's maybe gonna be development coming this way or people are gonna be coming here. But Apple, it's like you're betting on the development of the brand, on these bets that they're making in their R and D, so that, you know, five years from now, you know, we might not know too much about whatever chip they're using at the time, but you're betting technology is evolving, evolving. They're going to different phones, they're going to different laptops, all these sort of things. So you're kind of seeing that as a path to sort of this development.

Yeah, that's accurate, I would say, to turn it into like a very simple way to combine also the margin of safety with it. Imagine something is making a dollar a year and it cost $10. We can all understand like, okay, based on this, it's getting a 10% return. However, with a company like Apple, they were then taking.

$20 that they have in the bank and betting it all on future bets. And so I can look at it and say, well, if they're right about anything, this $1 is going to be a lot greater in the future. Where other companies and Orion mentioned dividend companies, they tend to focus more on the income. And, and what happens with income is a lot of times it's, you take income if you don't have the.

A better place to put it, you know. Yeah.

And so there's just different styles. So. So a company that is can't find a place to place the money, which Apple has come into some of that, where they'll start doing buybacks of the stock, they'll start giving out more dividends. And so, yeah, I'm basically betting on that.

The people running the company see bets that I may not understand, but that I believe in what they're doing. And if the fundamentals are sound, their future bets, if they're willing to bet that large of amount of money, I believe there's, there's a lot of money in future profits that aren't calculated yet.

Well, Ryan, you could have never calculated that with Ethereum when it was at $110 the way, so how do you spot opportunities?

So I think, I think similar to what he's saying, actually there's a, there's a key thesis here I think, and I don't know if you, you didn't say this specifically, so correct me if I'm wrong, but it's also like you're betting on adoption, like you're betting more and more people are going to use mobile phones, use Apple's products and like over time, I don't know exactly how many they had in production at the time, but now you think about how many people use iPhones and how often, like I remember, you know.

I can't remember his name right now, but there was an individual he was talking about, Michael Saylor, he was talking about, you know, what people don't get about Apple is that they have billions of phones out there and they're turning them over every so many months and that's so much new revenue and profit for them that's just continually built in. So when I think about something like Ethereum, the bet that I had there was, I was thinking of adoption, the same thing with other cryptocurrencies. And I'm betting that over time there's going to be more and more adoption of those tokenized assets or of that blockchain or of whatever. And as long as I am willing to wait, it's continued to work out.

Right.

And for those types of bets, I think about adoption and for other bets, and to give you some very specific kind of examples, as interest rates rose I started to think, well, what asset classes struggle with these rising rates, particularly that I can buy, you know, through the stock market. One of them that fall into the camp was utilities. Utilities are a debt heavy business, so as rates rise, their prices tend to go down.

REITs and stuff like that, similar, right. As interest rates go up, their prices tend to go down. So when I would look at some of these companies and I would see, well, they're trading for 30, 40, 50% plus discount, maybe even more to what they were at in the recent past six months, year or something like that, I can look at, well, what is their current. For me, because again, one of my buckets and primary buckets is being an income investor, I can look at, well, what is their current yield that they pay in comparison to the previous five years. That gives me a very clear idea. If their previous yield was 3%, now it's 5, we have a significantly higher yield which tells me that the asset price is at a discount to previous prices. So I can then look at that and say, well, if I want to now make a bet on utilities, how do I decide which ones I might want to bet? Well, there's sort of core utilities, which would be like essential stuff, but then there's also developmental. So I looked at this idea that, well, AI is continuing to become bigger and bigger and bigger what utility companies are getting involved in helping to help those company function from a power standpoint. And so I started making strategic bets on those types of companies as well. Where, yes, I'm trying to get that income that's at a discount for me right now and I'll get a higher yield to cost, which just means I'll make more money on my money than I would have like a year ago, pretty much. And I then also see, well, this is also a bit of an asymmetric bet because some of these companies have climbed like a growth stock. Some of them have gone up 100% in the last 12 months. You know, so you have to think how can you mitigate that risk if you don't know which ones buy? Well, you could buy etf that has both essential and maybe more of the other ones as well. And you know, those are often very weighted, so you're going to be able to take advantage of that also.

So it sounds like a big part of how you're finding opportunities. You're looking basically countercyclical, you're looking at. While everybody else is saying this thing is screaming, it's going way up and so they're jumping on the bandwagon, you're looking at what is being overlooked as a result.

Yeah, it's often, it's often overlooked, but also it's often sort of despised, right. It's sometimes if you look at how stuff sells off, right. If, you know, when we go back to Covid, right, One of some of the first stuff to sell off tech, right. People are moving, they're trying to de risk from growth and they're moving more into consumer staples or gold or whatever commodity, right. And so you have to think often contrarian to what the average person is going to be doing. And the way I just have it is I just have sort of an asset class shopping list and an individual sort of shopping list. And it's not as if I'm out there spending tons of time digging into all of these things. Similar to Billy is like I've built this up over time and I'm simply looking for those opportunities and I have no qualms waiting, right. And we've had A really great opportunity to earn over 5% on our money while we're waiting. And so when you have a high risk free rate of return, you know, even though the markets are climbing, we talk about, well, what to do. Like we have so many tailwinds right now that I just can't envision another way that the market doesn't keep going. Right. There's over $6 trillion on the sidelines and that's actually been growing since they started cutting rates. That's generally a sign that money's moving to the, to this, you know, money markets and stuff like that to then get moved into equities. Right. And I think you're going to find a lot of people, at least initially moving away from fixed income because they're missing out on so many returns. If you look at top hedge funds, they've been pulling customers like crazy big, wealthy, either family offices or individuals. And the numbers are across the board from what I've seen that people feel under invested, the wealthy people.

Right.

So they have had so much money on the sidelines and even some of our friends, some people that, you know, mutually have told me that they have missed out the last three years because they've been all fixed income.

Right.

And they were just afraid. And again, that was somebody who built a big business, made a lot of money and then didn't have the skill set to properly manage it. It was a fear based thing. Right. So I think again, if you look at these tailwinds, like I just think that over the next few years the market's going to continue to push higher. You know, you've got counter arguments to that. Goldman Sachs came out saying the next 10 years going to be 3%, 3%, you know, per year. I think that that's very low likelihood.

I mean, we moved that today, right?

Well, I mean, at the grand scheme of things, I think, you know, oftentimes you'll find stuff where we move euphorically and then there's going to be, you know, a pullback and there's going to likely be more volatility.

But either way you're, you're pointing to a very interesting theme, which is it always in my take, at least in my lifetime, it's always made sense to bet on optimism. It's always made every time that I have feared the future, I have missed out majorly. And while everybody else is freaking out, that is the time that the opportunities present themselves. So we, we can agree that we think given enough time, things are going to be bigger, things are going to be faster. Things are going to be more lucrative given enough time, eventually. So when you are frothy, screaming, euphoric, what do you do to sift through all of that and look for that? Next thing I'll tell you, what I've sort of gleaned from both of you is I have my unique view of the world and the companies that I use or follow or am excited about. And based on that, I get to know their story. And then I'm waiting for them to go on what I would perceive as a discount. And what that is might be different for me than it would be for Ryan. But the minute that I look at, oh, Billy's doing this over here, I'm going to bet on that. That's when I'm outside of my area of expertise and I can't confidently make a concentrated bet that I feel good waiting five or six years to mature.

And we've seen that with bitcoin, right? Where people will go into bitcoin because they have. It's euphoric, right? Prices are going crazy. Everybody, everyone's doing it and people feel like they're missing out. But if you don't know why you're buying it, you can't stay in it when times get tough, let alone double or triple down when those times are tough, because you don't see the opportunity. What you see is you see that, well, somebody told me this was a great investment. I got in, and now price has dropped 30%. You know, like you're, you're not used to that sort of reaction to, to an asset, right? And now, obviously that's changed a little bit. It's still a very volatile asset, but it's matured, you know, in the last 10 plus years. But I think you have to, again, always, always sort of come back to, just because somebody else is doing it doesn't mean it's right for you. You can be optimistic about a lot of different things. Like the average person who has a job and, you know, is going to work and investing in their 401k, they probably should just invest in the S&P 500. Every paycheck, maybe a little bit extra if they can and not think about it, right? They're betting on the future, being optimistic because they're betting on the US but it's very different from what we're talking about.

Yeah. My favorite comparison, when people bring up bitcoin as an example, if you look at the last year and a half or so, bitcoin's up maybe 4x which is impressive. But let's look at Carvana stock in the same time frame. It's up, it's up like 40x. And so unless you bought in the.

Peak of COVID right then you're still negative.

Yeah, right, but, but the, the people don't even think to look up Carvana stock because no one's talking about it. Everyone's talking about Bitcoin going up as this new asset class. And so people are piling in and it becomes a self fulfilling prophecy. But you have something like Carvana, which is like you wouldn't even, most people wouldn't even think to look that up as a stock. It's up 40x or in the same time frame. So when you have that bandwagon philosophy, you end up missing on some of the other opportunities and you don't have the story to stay confident and stay in the investment. Bill, you wanted to add something?

Yeah. There are variables with any investment. And so if someone sees Warren Buffett or Ryan or I or whoever making an investment, they'll say, oh, well, they're doing that, I should do that. It's like, well, you don't understand our variables. So our time frame that we're going to hold our desired rates of return, our, our comfortableness with the whatever margin of safety we have. So, and even if people look at, you know, Buffett and if he sells a stock, they don't understand his variables. You know, Ryan mentioned it could be, you know, freeing up cash to make a future bet. It could be that, you know, cashing in on a return based on potential rates of taxes going up, where the average person is looking at it and they have a very limited understanding of, of the variables to where they're making decisions that would not fit for them. But they see someone they believe is smarter than them making a decision. But again, they may be making a completely different decision, but they don't know that they are. Yeah, well, I think a lot of.

People think it's binary. Right. But you're thinking about other sort of second order consequences and all of these different things kind of down the line where people think, oh, I either buy that and own it or I don't. And there's so much more to that equation.

What do you mean by that? That say, say more about that?

I just think that when someone buys certain investments, I think a lot of average investors think that, like it's a very binary thing, like I either own this asset or I don't own it.

Right.

It either goes up or it goes down. And for me, for example, and my income portfolio, like, I don't really care if those, some of those stocks go down. In fact, for me, because of the whole ecosystem that I've developed, like, I like that because then I'm reinvesting those dividends to get more shares at a very low price. Right now it's very rare that I may completely cut a stock from my. But it has happened at and T is one of them that I cut a while back. But like, for me, there's so much more that goes into that decision than versus like this just binary thinking. Like, I'm thinking about all of these other components, right? And maybe, you know, one of the things that I did, as things were climbing really high, I started to not reinvest dividends automatically unless it was an asset class that was beaten up. And I was betting on a Trump win. And I knew that if Trump win, likely oil and gas would go down. So I was still reinvesting those dividends and some others, but the other ones, I'd been pooling and putting those into asymmetric bets, right? So it's like, for me, part of my philosophy, and again, this is where it gets more granular and away from this sort of this binary stuff is if I'm getting this cash flow from these investments and now I'm replenishing this pool every month or quarter, whatever their, whatever they pay their dividend schedule on, I have the opportunity to take that income, reinvest it to generate more income. I could live off that income or I could let it pool up and say, hey, you know what? That's a really undervalued opportunity. Or, oh, that's a big asymmetric bet I could play. Well, now I'm taking what I would classify very safe investments that have paid me passive income, and I'm placing them in something that can be very asymmetric, get a magnified return and then kind of perpetuate that.

You know, we're starting to get. You're starting to get into big words land again. So let's, let's make this super fun for a second. But what opportunities do you see right now? Is there anything that you are considering tracking? Like, I'll start about that right now. I obviously have a bias here, and Charlie Munger would say that, that this is.

This is because it's where I make my money. I'm super bullish on E Commerce right now because so many people have flooded out of it because the market has come down. I thought, guys, guys, I thought when I bought my supplement company back. I thought it would be harder this time. It's easier this time because the brands are so bad at marketing. They're just, they're so bad. So I'm super bullish on E Commerce right now because I see a lot of the, I mean, building my own brands.

I think part of that is that people got it so good during COVID Yes. Right. Like it was very easy. Like I was the last E Comm brand I was involved in. I, you know, kind of got back involved right before COVID And that little season was phenomenal.

Yep.

And I think you didn't have to be great to achieve the success.

Yeah. Idiots got rich and you had private equity coming in, buying up all these companies and now people are sort of lazy in E commerce and if you're good, you can clean up.

Yeah. I do think the landscape has changed quite a bit. And I just know from like the private equity standpoint to kind of add a counterpoint here for like the E Commerce at the moment, it's just a lot harder to sell if you have.

To exit a business.

Yeah.

If you have a very big business. Because you know, people, again, you think about what other people are doing is like people are trying to de risk from private equity because they're overexposed. Right. They went, the pendulum had swung as Billy kind of talked about. They went way too heavy into it. A lot of these companies had no idea what they're doing. Like the one that bought you and they sort of drove stuff into the ground.

Sure did.

They're trying to basically get something act and that's making it difficult for bigger companies to sell right now. Now will that come back? Of course.

Yeah, of course. I mean, right, right now is the. In E Commerce specifically, it's the time to be starting planting seeds, maybe even acquiring. It's not, it's not the time to be, to be exiting. Is the time to be acquiring. I'm also super bullish on PayPal. I've told both of you guys this is, I don't know about current price but earlier this year when they were at 55, 60, I was like, this is I think the best, the best deal in the world right now. And I'm, I'm super optimistic about their long term view. So that's, that's two things that I'm, I'm shopping right now. What are you guys shopping right now?

Well, I was going to say on your point too, this hits on what you said earlier is that the people that only understand certain Variables in E commerce would look at E commerce and say, this is clearly not the time that. But because you understand more variables, it makes more sense. And this also goes back to timeframe because if you're not concerned with I need to make as much money in E commerce in the next 12 months, it matters less. Because like, let's take acquiring a company. You could say there's a business making half a million dollars a year right now, and the multiple has gone all the way down to. We'll pretend it's three on this, mult on this company. If you're making a bet on the pendulum swinging back the other way to some degree and having the margin of safety where you can get stuff that low right now, if the multiples go back to six and you're one of the only people increasing in that market in the next couple of years, you take the 500 to a million, but you're selling at six, you're buying a one and a half and selling at six. And so people aren't thinking that the pendulum is this way right now. Therefore, you have the margin of safety and the asymmetric upside as well.

That is, that is unique to me as an individual in my experience.

Exactly where someone else would say, oh, it's, it's, it's crashing. And like, neither is wrong. But because their variables are. They don't understand the variables correctly, they miss the opportunity which gives people like you, you can collect all the bets you want.

And I think to add to that point, like, I think that part of the reason multiples have gone down and things like that is people in the E Commerce space. It used to be almost like a ghost brand. Like who, who's behind the brand? What the hell does this brand do? Like, they're just on Amazon. They're nowhere else.

Just a ghost.

You know, it's just like there's no visibility and not that like you need to have an E Commerce brand.

It's funny you use that word because Ghost literally just sold the company. Ghost sold for a billion dollars. And there's. I think they're six years old and I'm trying to remember who bought them.

But they just, they just sold. It was announced last week for a billion dollars.

That's crazy.

So, yeah, it used to be that there was a ghost behind these brands.

I mean, I think now if you have clear brands that serve very specific markets and you look at Siete just getting bought by Pepsi for 1.2 billion, like that's a brand, you know? And I feel like they're speaking to a very specific audience. And you have the opportunity now to not sell, you know, cooking gloves on Amazon, but actually build a real E commerce business. And if you have those skills to do it, that makes you very unique in the space.

Well, if they listen to capitalism.com, of course they have that skill. They've been hearing me say that for like 10 freaking years. So just for fun, I want to run one example by you guys and just get your take. I've talked to you about this, Ryan, but I'm fascinated by the Kellogg's story. Right. And.

Oh yeah, I saw. Maybe I saw you posting about that.

Part of this is that so few people know what happened, that it looks it. I think a lot of people miss the opportunity that might be there. So last year, Kellogg's split into two companies. Most people don't even know that what they call Kellogg's doesn't exist anymore. So the company Kellogg's split into two, the snack company and the cereal company. The snack company was Pringles and Cheez Its and all these big brands that got acquired by Mars. So all of that stuff is just gone. What was left is the cereals, which they IPO'd separately at $1 billion valuation. Right. Which is about 10 times forward earnings. And they're operating like a startup. It's $1 billion company. I'm looking at this going like, tony the Tiger is worth your.

Is that right?

What's that?

Is it called K View or what is it?

W.K. kellogg or W L Kellogg or whatever the guy's initials were. But it trades under KLG and, and they're valued at like $1.4 billion right now. And I'll get this. And I'm like, tony the Tiger is worth a billion dollars. This brand, that brand of Kellogg's is worth more than a billion dollars. So I look at this and I think market doesn't understand the story because they don't realize that it's not even two companies. There's protests and boycotts going on right now against a company that doesn't even exist.

There's thousands of people signing petitions for Kellogg's to remove these ingredients. And they don't even know that the company doesn't exist anymore. And so I see market being wrong, profitable company, innovation possibilities, acquisition possibilities. And that's the story that I'm just fascinated with right now. How would you guys poke holes in how I'm viewing that? Or what would you add to your analysis?

For me, it doesn't fit my criteria. The sole basis on time. Like when I'm investing specifically for like an income investment, I look at a long period of time of uninterrupted dividend payments, rising dividend. Right. Share price growth, like all these different specifics. And so when a company often splits off the new company, it's very hard for me to invest in something like that initial because there's no track record. Because there's no track record. And so I am of the mind that I could place that in more of like a, a strategic play. And, and it would be a smaller position size for me, but it would have to be something that I believed had a lot of like share price appreciation opportunity. And I, I, I'm a big believer in kind of the consumer packaged goods space and just like that niche in general. But I don't know enough about the brand in and of itself. And those specific products, I know I can't remember who they split off from, but like Mondelez, which was Oreos and all them split off from somebody. And I don't remember the exact timeline, but that's, that's a pretty common income investment holding for a lot of dividend investors now. So I could imagine that this could be the same.

Billy, what would you add to the analysis or what would you poke holes in?

Yeah, I say for me, the two reasons I probably wouldn't, for me personally would be, I think about, they are not out for good, they are out for profit. And I think long term.

When was the last time you had some mini Wheats, man? Like, tell me, tell me you don't have a bowl of frosted Mini Weeks and think a day this company's out for bad. I mean, you cannot eat those without a smile. Come on.

I think as long as you don't look at the 90 ingredients, you Austin.

Hippies eat some fiber and some wheat, it puts hair on your chest.

I feel like.

I feel like those kind of companies, it's hard to know how they'll do in the long term. And with, especially with me being a long term better. I don't want to bet on companies that are betting on the short term. They're betting, that's fair.

Okay, that makes sense that, that people.

Won'T realize how bad this is for you. And we want to optimize our profits. We want to extract the money from the consumer and hope they don't realize that you should never be eating this human. This is not made for humans. So the, the second part of that.

I'm a human, I feel great.

Well, that's like the second and third order consequences of like our bodies don't tell us right away that we shouldn't be eating this, but the, to kind of follow that up. Like the. I look at a space like that and the Jeff Bezos quote, your margin is my opportunity. If there's companies like this making a lot of money and they aren't focused on the best product possible, if I was going to start a new company, I'd look for companies that aren't focused on the consumer and are making a lot of money because that's a bullseye for a business to start.

And that makes, that makes sense. That's a really good point.

I think for the first point, just a slight counter because I'm similar and, you know, I think there's a whole other conversation that you could have about like the ethics of what you invest in and deciding, like, well, do I want to invest in Altria? You know, do I want to invest in Philip Morris? Do I want to invest in, you know, tech companies that, well, they run servers for porn sites? Do I feel okay with that? Like, you know, you have to think about that sort of stuff and everybody's, again, different. But one thing to counter that is I do think it's interesting to see legacy brands starting to acquire more companies that are on the like, more health forward side of things now. Do they always stay that way? I don't necessarily know. But I do think a lot of people make a strong assumption that C Foods we talked about, like, oh, now that Pepsi bought them, that's going to go to total shit, right? That's not necessarily going to always be the case.

Right. Heinz buys Primal Kitchen. Primal Kitchen is bigger than ever, right. People thought Primal Kitchen would go down the toilet when Heinz bought them, but Heinz just gave him a bunch of distribution and capital to be able to innovate and create new products. And now you can get Paleo food anywhere you go.

And I do think that they're smart people that run these companies. We can't discredit that. And one of the reasons I love being an income investor is I always like to think, but, you know, that company's got a thousand employees, ten thousand employees, three hundred thousand employees. However many people they're working for me, right? They're giving me cash every month or every quarter. And I like that. And there's a lot of smart people and I think that a lot of people at these companies know that there is an evolution happening, there is a strong tide coming in and they need to be Ready for it. Otherwise they risk a legacy business going completely belly up. Okay, so.

So I answer the question of what I'm shopping right now. Like I'm bullish E commerce. I'm buying a lot of PayPal right now. This is not investment advice. Don't listen to anything that I say. This I'm an idiot that you follow on the Internet and you will lose all your money if you do what I do because I have lost a bunch of money. Don't consult someone smarter than me. Anyway, those are the opportunities I'm looking at. I'm buying Disney right now. Cause I think it's undervalued and they racked up a lot of debt during COVID but they're gonna be fine. What are you guys shopping right now?

I mean, for me, I'm continuing to bet on technology. Like I think if you're not betting on technology, you know, you're missing out. Basically. I think that there's going to be more. You cannot argue with the returns that MicroStrategy has had betting on putting arguably way too much of their corporate treasury into Bitcoin. But they have outperformed Microsoft and these other companies by such a margin that I believe that you're going to start to see more and more companies do that. They're going to.

You mean keep crypto on their balance sheets?

They're going to. Yeah. There's going to be more and more companies that are going to put put Bitcoin on their corporate treasury balance sheet, whether it's a small amount or something they continually add to. Just because, I mean, take for example, it's coming up for vote with Microsoft that they are going to be deciding whether or not to put Bitcoin on their balance sheet. And the activist trader that basically kind of initiated all this was comparing the returns of Microsoft to MicroStrategy. And MicroStrategy has dramatically outperformed them. Does that continue to happen? Is that good for the market? I don't necessarily know. But I do know that the likelihood now of MicroStrategy eventually getting to the S and P seems completely inevitable.

If that's.

That's why that starts to happen.

And then you start to see other companies in the S and P with that. If Bitcoin continues to appreciate on any of the timelines that Vaneck or any of these big funds are saying, the share price of MicroStrategy is going to turn into something like.

Berkshire Hathaway, you know, it's going to be insane and it will less likely be ignored. Now there's some conspiracy theories going around.

What, in Austin.

This is. In an Austin community. This is. I haven't actually heard or talked to anybody about this in our community, but there are some conspiracy theories going around that part of this also has to do with BlackRock. And now that BlackRock has a vested interest and everybody likes to put them as the boogeyman. But this is Fairly interesting. When BlackRock was really pushing ESG, they basically used, you know, their ability to bully people to get all these companies doing ESG. And there's this now this conspiracy that BlackRock is going to be looking to bully companies that they have big investments in. And again, because they have all this money that they're managing.

Right.

It's not. And again, I think people always often think, oh, blackrock's this boogeyman that owns all of these companies. Well, yeah, they own it on behalf of people like us.

Right, right.

So that's a very different thing. But they are, you know, they own 5.2% of the shares for MicroStrategy. They, they're like the first or second largest shareholder of Microsoft, and they're saying that, well, if people start putting stuff on the, their corporate treasury in bitcoin, well, maybe BlackRock's going to be the one being the custodian.

So is all this to say that you're buying technology, meaning you're buying crypto, or does this mean that you are buying technology stocks that are thinking about.

It's a combination putting crypto on their balance sheet. So I mean, I was like, I already own Microsoft just if I own the index. Right. But there's other tech companies that I'm buying that I believe are going to be a part of that eventually. There are, you know, those like mining.

Companies, and that's separate.

I mean, they. Yes, I own pretty much all of the miners, the publicly traded miners. There's some that I have more heavy weighted positions in. But yes, those ones are starting to sell less of their crypto and eventually would likely sell 0 and hold more of those. Those assets. But I'm more talking about, like betting on technology and that AI is going to continue to advance these big companies that people are wondering like, oh, are they going to continue to grow like an Nvidia or something? Nvidia went from this, what, the sixth largest company to the number one largest company in a year. Do they continue to grow? Most likely. You know, and so I look at those types of opportunities that I think even though they've been doing very well, I look for those Opportunities for pullbacks. I mean it's mind boggling to me. The narrative change. Just a few months ago when semiconductors were selling off, everybody's like, oh, is this the end for Nvidia? Is this the end like prices are gonna, you know, just crash? No, they made new all time highs. Right. Like they, there's this ebb and flow and so I'm looking for those opportunities to add to positions. I'm looking for other companies that I might not be aware of. But I'm also continuing to just buy very simple things. I invest in the index, certain indexes every single month. I look at income investments as opportunities. There's lots of companies that are, had really strong run ups. Coca Cola was one of them. Now it's kind of been pulling back. So I'm waiting for you know, buy zone there. I mean there's, I think again when people see markets at all time highs, they, you have to realize that not everything is doing well.

Yeah, right.

It's like people say oh, the S and P, the you know, PE or whatever is 27 forward earnings or whatever it is. Well, big part of that is the tech component. Right. And then if you look at, I think the last data point I saw is a few weeks ago or something. But it was like the average, if you got rid of Those was like 16 or 17 times which is way more normal.

Right.

So if those start to actually turn on, that's again a tailwind for the S and P to continue.

Yeah, I look at consumer goods have not necessarily done well. I mean there's few that I track. I don't, I don't own these but like the Honest company or, or layered superfoods like now some, some of these you can argue have sketchy fundamentals and that's why they're not doing well. But just, or Stitch fix is an, is another one that I owned for a while and then got out of. But you look at these companies that are, have been long turnarounds, these are not necessarily doing well. And, and so just because the market's at all time highs, there are still things that are getting crushed because they're going through turnarounds or CEO turnover or selling something else, there's still opportunities or.

Even you can look at sectors right. Where like a comp, like a pharmaceutical type company, they might have patents or you know, prescription drugs. Like ending Merck is an example where Merck has been getting really beaten up. Right. But if you believe in the fundamentals of Merck and you're okay owning the Pharmaceutical company then now might be a great time for you to start investigating if you wanted to buy it.

What about you Billy? What. What are you hunting and searching for right now?

Not hunting a lot but I would say if I was to look at, look at things that I think will.

Be.

Either good bets in the future or the way the current bets are bad bets essentially almost like business bets in a sense. The legal.

Area is going to change significantly because of AI. There's almost no point to most lawyers and AI will.

Just yesterday we got a quote from a lawyer that was thousands of dollars and I said to my team I was like go put the inputs into chat GPT.

Yeah.

And he got. I was like this is 80 good enough fine.

Oh yeah, it's. Yeah. I, I had to deal with lawyers for stuff in the last couple years on some real estate stuff and you could do this stuff for 10 or less. The cost as AI keeps improving. So either investing in law firms that understand this and want again everything in business comes down to value makes me.

Think what's legal zoom trading at right now? Because you know they're going to go, they're going to crush that.

Yeah.

It's not an investment advice or legal advice reminder.

Yeah. They again with, with companies that look to extract money versus adding value. Those will always be the good long term bets. If you understand what's happening. I think, I mean we could look at the same stuff with publishing. Publishing companies desire to extract the maximum amount from people they do deals with.

Boy do I get that one value.

And so there's already companies coming out that are increasing the margins in which they give people to work with. But there's. Their goal is still not let me add the maximum amount of value. To me it's still I see an opportunity to extract value from the people we used to do business with. Let us move over here and extract less from you so that you'll come to us.

That is such a phenomenal point of a cash flow business that is trying to extract versus an innovator that is creating something new and leading into the next generation. That's such a great binary way to look at okay, is something worth is it worth a bet or is it a short term cash flow play?

And when I think about where I'm spending time, it's not on things that I think what can I go make the most money on? Because then it's even if unintentional it turns into a shorter term play where what I think about for example is for me like I want to write a lot of books. And in that space, it's a smaller opportunity in the, in the grand sense of when I'm talking about the legal world and the publishing world. But there's almost no one, like literally almost no one in the world who is writing books for the sole purpose of helping people with no thought of their own benefit. Most people are writing books, say, I'm going to create this business, I'm going to use the book as a lead magnet, and then I'm going to bring in as many people as possible, then I'm going to make money on X, Y and Z. And there's nothing wrong with doing those things. But if that's your first level of thought, it will affect all of the value you're giving. And if it's affecting the value you're giving, you're not helping people as much, even if you convince yourself or other people that you are. And so for me personally, I just think.

Especially with the taking off of AI, where right now people complain that there's hundreds or thousands of people that run the world and there's going to be half a dozen who run the world in 10 years. And they don't realize that's what's going to happen. They will all these new things that will come into play, they will think these are now their ideas. They don't realize there's six people who have programmed the ideas into them by all these forms of AI and all the ways we consume information. It'll be from six people what they want you to think. Therefore, for me personally developing to be one of the few people who people can get advice from and know it's not in an attempt to extract something from you.

So are you looking for that when you're making an investment decision as well?

Mostly investments in myself. Time. Time investments because we have two forms of capital, the time and money. And right now I'm more using time as my investment. And it's, it's kind of back to what we talked about earlier with the whole, you know, thinking optimistically first pessimistically. It's the whole abundance versus scarcity mindset. It's, you know, maybe a little esoteric to some people, but the whole, if you're operating from fear, you, you operate from, you know, you go back and forth from fear and desire. And if you're desiring from that state, you're producing things that are not the same things you would produce, not as valuable, therefore not as beneficial to the customer, then not as, not as beneficial to you. As the investor or the person who put the time into something because you're operating from fear. I desire something for myself. Let me go get it. I'm still not satisfied. Let me extract more, more from this person. And you don't realize because we are conditioned to think like this. This is the loop you play in and this is the loop you see the influencers play. So you think back to the variables. Of course this is what I should do. All these successful people I see are doing this, therefore I should do this. And again.

It'S. Who are you being conditioned from? Are these even your own thoughts or people just downloading what you should do? Because they're also extracting from you? And it's. So it's back to being. If you can function from a place where you don't operate from the fear, scarcity, selfish desire standpoint, you have the ability to produce something that no one else could produce. And this is difficult again, because there's so few examples. And I know, like, we went deep into this when we talked on the last podcast we did, but essentially there's almost no one doing this. Therefore it doesn't become a thought that is as possible. This goes. Again, not to get too off the rails on this, but manifestation is you have to have the thought first before you can have the action. There has to be the belief in between. So if you never are exposed to the thought, then you cannot, this cannot be a possible existence for you to have these thoughts where you're just producing value for other people. You remain in selfish desire and extraction from other people. And therefore, long term on your, on your personal things as well as your investments will be much smaller than possible because you're still in that state.

Not the answer I expected when I asked that question, but now I have a thousand follow up questions. But first, Ryan, I think you wanted to add something.

Yeah, I mean, a couple things. I think kind of what I'm hearing, some of what you're saying is like, it's more important than ever to like choose your lane and stay in it, but it's harder than ever to actually do that. And you're operating from like a totally separate place. And I think, you know, the idea of maybe making a shift at a different season in your life to focus on something that's more about legacy, like you're wanting to help people. You have to be in a good position to be able to make that choice. Often right where you, if you're worried about, you know, paying your mortgage next week, it's sometimes Hard or difficult to. To be there. Right. You have to kind of maybe make some slow adjustments over time and change your time horizon. But now you're at a stage where you can make very clear distinction between how you spend your time, what the value is of that time for other people.

Well, it goes to. So legacy for me isn't a thing because I think for the most part legacy will go back to ego, even if unintentional, to where we end up going. Selfish, but from a different perspective to where I desire for people to remember me. It's a selfish desire of ego. But the to the point 100%. This is what I often tell people who I work with individually is like. It's kind of like Maslow's hierarchy of needs. It's like if we can go make you some money to free up your time, free up this time to use the money will go towards greater utility, essentially a happier life. Then the next phase essentially is like, well, happiness is still the fleeting state if we can go to a more joyous selfless desires of helping the whole. Which feeds back into the point of now if you only desire to help other people because you actually want to help them. But there is the flip side of which again I went the route of make a bunch of money, realize money's not the answer, use it for more happier life. Happier life's not necessarily the answer. Use it to help other people more. But there is a flip side. And even in like all the spiritual text talks about, essentially if you seek first the kingdom, all else will be given to you. And almost no one functions from that because they see no examples of it. And we've, you know, I've spent a lot of time like Preeti and I in the last year or so meeting some of these people to see this is possible. We meet people who literally no one has ever heard of. They're like secret Gandhis out there and they have everything they need. But they function from a different state of vibration. It's you know, back to like the map of consciousness and power versus force where they are functioning almost all the time. Enjoy peace and love. And because of this, any money they need to make any things like this happen as a natural byproduct of their state versus the other people turns into selfish desire. I desire to control all, therefore I'll function from the analytical mind versus you know, using mind as a tool to function. What does your heart desire? And it flows downstream easily versus needing to control for the limited understanding of what I'll create, which Again came from the mind, which came from conditioned thoughts of others.

So that's how you spot opportunities.

And I am curious real quick because I do want to take one step back about the legacy thing because I've heard other people talk about legacy as an ego thing and I've personally never really thought of it that way. But I'm curious, don't you feel like if you were to do the write these books and make these impacts that it's not necessarily an ego thing to try and get praise and all that sort of stuff, but rather like to help people shift their mind or to use different frameworks or to kind of alter their reality or. Because I mean, if I think back, there are certain things like one single sentence or one thought or one thing just dramatically shifted my entire existence. You know, I think back to even 2003 if I never would have when, when I was trying to figure out what I wanted to do to make money as an entrepreneur, I was in high school. And if someone never would have said like, well, have you thought of options trading? Right. I didn't know anything about the stock market. But that has been something that's been in my life for so long and has dramatically changed my life. And the person I learned from, I don't. I mean, I think that they have this tremendous legacy and they're one of the least ego driven people I've known. So I'm sort of intrigued by that.

Yeah. To clarify, I think.

Operating that way will cause a legacy. But if I was aiming for legacy is where it'll change. So if I aim for more intention. Yeah. If my intention is like just desiring to do things I feel called to do and there's not a selfish component to it. Legacy is a possible byproduct. Like you mentioned was Alan Watts and people like that, they have a level of legacy because they weren't trying to get a lot of things from people. So the short term thinkers who desire to extract a lot of those people have the desire for legacy. Therefore they do a lot of things to, you know, let me go get a building with my name on it. These kind of things. The people that truly just want to help people and use their skills to do so are the people that will end up as a byproduct having a legacy.

We have gone, we take quite a left turn here. But kind of the TLDR here is we started this conversation. I at least asked questions from more of an extracting methodology, like where do you see 10x opportunities? What sectors are you betting on and we've sort of flipped it to the greatest opportunities are where you can give the most and all the companies that can give the most and the companies that can compound the most because they're giving the most.

Right.

To that point. Like if, back to the Kellogg's example, I have no desire to start a cereal company, but if theoretically, if my whole goal was like, let me help people as much as possible have the healthiest breakfast in the world.

Then it would become a thing where they would be in trouble from a competition standpoint. And then it goes back to the investment of.

They would have to change their strategy because again, their margin will be my opportunity if I desire to fix that in the world.

Yeah, it makes sense. Makes sense. So it's an interesting theme that.

Has come out of this because we started looking at your area of knowledge, your uniqueness. That is often where you have the most to give as well. It's where you can make the most direct impact and also see where other companies or other people are making the most direct impact and then having a long term view where you're not expected to get anything out of it for a very long time.

Right.

Like that theme has lessons for both investing and for life and your own career or legacy as well.

Yeah. I think to answer your question specifically and as short as possible, the place where I'm placing the biggest bet for myself right now, just using my time is on thought and in terms of like helping people think differently in a way that will help them on all the things we've been talking about.

When we did our last podcast, you were basically starting an experiment where you were looking at where you could be the most selfless. How's that experiment going?

It's been good and it's been. We spent a lot of the year meeting people who live in that state and seeing that it's possible and their lives are significantly better than people who are richer than them monetarily.

I think it is a better way to live like the way they're living. And I think we're maybe still kind of grade schoolers in terms of learning how to do it well, but everyone I've met who lives in that way is much more joyous, lives a better life. And I've put it this way. I remember at the beginning of the year when we talked about this say you can always revert back to optimizing to make a bunch more money. And there's been nothing I've seen that would make me want to do that. And it does again it doesn't. Like, back to our point, doesn't mean we can't still make money, but it's a byproduct of our actions. It's not. It's not starting at the point where that's where our desire is.

Yeah.

It almost seems like a belief and, like, identity shift a little bit.

Yeah. Yeah.

It's like, who are you trying to be versus what are you trying to do? If you're trying to be a person who's. Who's selfless, you. You get to live in those states of vibration, joy, peace, love, versus if I say, if I'm identifying, I am an entrepreneur, I am an investor who makes the highest amount of money possible. My preceding actions will be that. That gets that as a result. I don't know if that makes sense. Yeah.

So, Ryan, you are at a point in your career where your investments compound enough to. Where you kind of have the same sort of choice of what you put your attention into. Do I want to rock climb or do I want to play Frisbee golf or do I want to start another company? Billy has decided what he's going to do with his time. How do you make decisions about what opportunities to pursue?

Part of. For years, my identity was very much built on being an entrepreneur and doing very specific things. And for a while, it was like, very. A subset of entrepreneurship in E commerce and, you know, coaching and digital courses and stuff like that as well. And I think there was a period where when I sort of. I don't want to say stopped everything, but was working way, way less, and it kind of had no more team. You know, we just had a big team. And all this sort of stuff is like, I lost purpose for a while. And I think that as an entrepreneur, it's very challenging and dangerous. Dangerous for us to build our identity based solely upon that. And I had to do a lot of reflection that I had kind of put myself almost into this. Backed myself into this corner of where I was like, who am I now? You know, like, what am I going to be? And it was at a season of my life where it was like I was out of a very serious relationship. I had moved, you know, twice in a short period of time. I was trying to find the right community for me. I was trying to decide, like, do I want to pursue these same, you know, hobbies and passions that I have. I had acquired another business that I really enjoyed, and I did a tremendous amount to, like, what you were talking about, where it's like, I just constantly was providing Value did very little on the side of like, well, I should be monetizing this or marketing this way more. I focused on like the core group of, you know, people I had and just kind of for a while felt a bit lost. Right. And I think now I have come to sort of the direction of do the things day by day that make me happy, which is like reading and writing about the things that I'm excited about. I've consistently done short term trading and investing throughout that process. But I think for me it was like I thought my purpose had to be some big thing. And right now it's just like I've just made my purpose this smaller thing to create something that is why believe very valuable presents a very different perspective. And now I just want to share that message. Right. I want to really help people understand where I'm coming from based on my experience. And it probably sounds like so privileged to even be in a position like that. And I just think though that in our world, I feel so many people are disillusioned of what the future is going to be for them or they feel like they don't have a future. And I think trying now just to be an example of someone who does the things they love to do and does them exceptionally well.

So what you made this point here about people are so disillusioned with the future. I want to conclude by talking about this because we are entrepreneurs, entrepreneurship. You have to assume that the future is going to be better than the present or the past. You have to. And yet still we find ourselves so allured by this pessimism that seems to percolate into our, into, into our community.

I was just going to say, well, on that point, part of that is the fact that people selling things are selling based on fear. So they have to like, that's part of their strategy. They're like, I need you to fear something to buy from me. It's like literally most people train people in copywriting and sales.

Absolutely.

Else is like, let me put fear in you so that I can maximize the amount I can extract from you.

Billy, I once, I once overheard a conversation, I went home for Thanksgiving and my mom and my unc were talking about a video they saw about the cashless society. And I was like, guys, I know the people who wrote that video sales letter. And they can't believe that you buy it. They can't believe that you watch it. They're like, no, no, no. This came with facts and figures. That was a copywriter.

And on your point too, is like, again, you hit the nail on the head with the. One of our teachers this last weekend talked to us about, you know, don't, don't try and figure out what the world needs of you. Try and figure out what makes your heart sing. That is what the world needs from you. Because you are the only person or one of the few people who can create that to the level the world needs it from you. And as an entrepreneur, like, that's what we're trying to do. And we get distracted by all.

The other illusions out there. It's like, well, if I want to make more money, I need to do this versus actually this thing that isn't the biggest thing in the world is just what I feel called to wake up and work on. And again, it's the whole. Goes back to comparison and labels and identification. It's like, well, if Elon's doing this, then I should aspire to do this. It's like, but that's not what I'm here to do.

Yes.

And just to clarify about the disillusion things, I'm not saying I'm disillusioned about the future. Like, I'm very optimistic. But I, I have to ask myself, you know, what is the average person feel or see? And maybe they just have blind spots. And I just, I worry about a future where, okay, the average person who has a career, maybe their job gets replaced, maybe that's in the long term, probably a positive thing. Right. Still. But I just worry about the billions of people, as our world continues to evolve at a faster and faster rate, of how this change starts to dramatically impact the everyday. More the everyday person. I think as an entrepreneur, we have all. I have always focused on the benefit. The biggest benefit is I get to create my future. I get to create opportunity.

Right.

And that could be in a myriad of ways, like stuff that we've talked about, of. Oh, there's a discrepancy in valuation. Now I can go buy a business and, you know, grow it and then sell it at a higher multiple. Like that is correct. Creating an opportunity and it's easier for us to see it.

Right.

But I was talking to a friend today, and, you know, their kids just got out of college, Mary. You know, one of them's married now. They can't even afford to rent a place. You know, they have to. They're living at home. They're trying to figure out, like, the next steps and they're really feeling it.

Right.

And so my sort of concern is like, well, where do you, where does this go from here?

Right.

How does the average person, where, you know, I'm over here oftentimes saying, well, why aren't you investing every single month? And they're worried about, I can't pay my health insurance. Right. Like, or I can't do this or I can't do that. And I'm thinking from a very different point of view. Does that make sense?

It totally makes sense. I just wonder when has that not been the case?

I think it. Well, there's always parts of it. Right. But I just think it's becoming more and more exacerbated and exaggerated with how much technology is changing. And again, my hope is on the other side of that, just like in other Industrial revolution things like this, I hope that there is a massive positive impact, but in the short term, there's going to likely be some volatility and potentially chaos.

Yeah, I think. And one of the things to add to that is learning.

As entrepreneurs what new opportunities will be present. And one of them is like, he's, he's saying, what is the problem for most people, which is all the good in the world we can see as entrepreneurs, the average person can't see it because they're in a state where like, they have to survive.

Bingo.

And then as an entrepreneur, we can step back and say, okay, this is an even bigger opportunity. How do we create a world where it's easier for the average person to survive? And then we go into like, you know what bets would be focusing on creating a way of living communities where the prices are all lower, where, like, why is it that we all live.

In these, you know, boxes apart from each other?

Right. And it makes no sense. So we need, so we live in a box here, so we need another box to drive to our other boxes. And all the prices are much higher. And the, the prices are higher because of all the people who have their hands in the pie extracting versus if we just went to theoretically, what if these hundred people who can't afford life all live together, all of a sudden they can afford an abundant life. Not only that, now they've graduated to the level of, instead of surviving now, they can work on what they feel called to work on because that money is taken care of. So there's opportunities. Any problem for an entrepreneur is an opportunity to solve it. Which then if we're solving for them versus us, their life improves versus just getting us richer.

Yeah. And I hope that the people do look at those opportunities or problems as opportunities. For me, like a very tangible example to me is Like, I don't understand why there are so many food deserts in the United States.

Right?

Like, this to me is just crazy that you have all of these people kind of all over the country, right? That some people, and they have to go to Family Dollar like, or Dollar Tree. That's like where they get groceries.

They can get mini wheats there, right?

I'm sure they can get mini wheats there. You know, but to me, that is a very tangible thing where I'm just like, that is a problem that should have been solved long ago to where people could have access to healthy food and to. I mean, they might not have. And often those foods create a cycle where people are dependent maybe on in these same types of areas. Often they're dependent on social programs or government programs to help them through this. And it just perpetuates that situation versus solving the actual problem.

I was just going to say, yeah, the more big problems are solved like that. On the flip side are the people who operate from fear that don't want them solved because it costs them money. The companies, the individuals who desire to get rich for themselves actively don't want those problems solved.

Okay, so let's say this. Five years from now, are you optimistic? Are you pessimistic?

And why I'm optimistic? You know, I think again, like, I believe that I'm betting on a positive future. I think the world's going to continue to be a better and more connected place. And I think that we are trending towards positive change.

And if you could make only one bet over the next five years, what would you bet on?

Bitcoin.

Really?

It will. I guarantee bitcoin will be higher five years from now than it is. You just.

Do you just give a guarantee on a podcast? This is not advice. We're idiots.

Privileged males.

This is for me. Like, I just think that again, going back to what we talked about, I'm betting on adoption for that. And I think that the adoption is just proven itself that story and it's going to continue.

Okay, so just for funsies now, what is your bitcoin price target five years from now?

That I don't know. You know, I. Vaneck has a very interesting analogy where they were talking about in their research that they believe I think it was something around like 18 or 20% CAGR for Bitcoin over the course of the next decade.

I mean, I would be very content with that. You know, their target eventually is I think 2050, like 3 million, which seems ludicrous, it really does. But I would Say it's at least 200, maybe 250, probably much higher.

Okay. Are you bullish Ethereum at the same time?

Yeah, I'm bullish Ethereum. Solana, I think, is going to be sort of one that really takes off as well. But again, I just. This is like a very subset, asymmetric bet of my overarching strategy. Like, I'm just. I think, again, the way that I think about it, as I identify as an investor, like, I'm an income investor, and these opportunities allow me to generate more income in the long run and really magnify my returns. But I just, you know, think for. For, like, the average person, if you're thinking five years from now, like, the best thing that you can do to. To have that anticipation is to, as we've talked about, figure out, like, what is your goal? And like, what can you. What little incremental steps can you make to reach towards that goal every single day? And, you know, you say all, I say it all the time, but people dramatically underestimate what they can accomplish in the long term and dramatically overestimate what they can accomplish in the short term. Five years is a long time to dramatically be able to change somebody's life.

Bill, what about you? Five years. Optimistic or pessimistic? And why?

Very optimistic. I think even the things that are viewed through a lens of things that are negatively happening, for example, people losing jobs to AI It'll be a positive because those people will now have an opportunity to work on things they're supposed to be working on versus for money. And I think, yeah. In terms of where I'm putting my energy, just living.

The happiest and most optimal life and then helping people learn to do that.

If you can make one bet over the next five years, what would it be?

On that.

Yeah.

On just selfless service.

Yeah. And. And teaching other people.

How to function differently. And a lot of that is through a perception change.

Because essentially that's all what everyone's trying to solve for it, but they don't know that's what they're trying to solve for. Like, people only work for money because they think that's going to get in them some other. Some other place.

This is why we call you the millionaire Monk.

I'll just turn over to you guys. Do you want to fire anything at me before?

What's your opinion five years from now? Optimist. Pessimist.

Definitely optimistic. But ultimately, whatever you think you're going to find evidence for, if you want to find evidence of the world Going to hell in a handbasket, you're going to find more evidence for the next five years. If you're going to be finding evidence of it being the golden age, you're gonna find evidence for it. So I think I have found it to be helpful to bet on optimism and to align my life and decisions with things getting better.

And I think that's a very interesting point because I think I've always struggled to connect with people who are very pessimistic about the future because I don't understand how you could spend your days looking for the negative all the time. Even folks who say that, well, I'm just planning for the worst and preparing for the worst and you know, I'm going to still live in an abundance and all these sort of things, your mind share just creeps towards that. And I, you know, to your point, if you're constantly focusing on the optimism, you're going to see the optimistic. So what is the, the big bet? Besides paypal?

Besides paypal? Because I would have totally picked paypal and I can't pick Mini Wheats.

But does you know, does X take PayPal out? Does Elon come for vengeance?

I don't. I mean he might try to compete, But I think PayPal has such a moat and they're so ahead in E commerce specifically that I think they're going to have a place to create profit and growth for a long time. If I can't pick PayPal, you know, I'm, I'm just going to go out on a whim and I'll, I'll say Tiny coast stock. So Tiny Coast Canadian trade. The right.

Not technically a penny stock I think, but.

And the only reason I'm picking them is because I, you could argue that it's an asymmetric bet long term for five years and if the economy continues to expand, they're in a position to take a benefit. I mean it's so not a calculated trade. Right.

It's just some recent bias here for as read the book.

I mean I like Andrew and I'm tracking it and I, I do think that they have one or two brands in their portfolio that might be worth the entire, the entire market cap.

So for folks that don't know. Right. TinyCo primarily has cash flow based business. So does it, would it be fair to say that you're optimistic on cash flow based businesses or just tiny co portfolio?

Just their thesis overall and their timing in the market and the fact that Canadian holding companies are not the darling of the market right now and it's, this is a totally high risk play. Right. But you didn't let me pick PayPal, so I'm just going to pick a random one that most people not might not be familiar with. Guys, it's great to see you. What a interesting time for us to plan this episode. It's going to be very interesting for the next couple years to see what happens. I'm excited to be along the ride with you guys. Thanks for being here.

Thanks for having us.

Thanks for having us.

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