Why This Boring Investment Will Make Me $100M

The biggest mistake that I ever made, or at least the most expensive mistake that I ever made in my career, was not having a plan for what to do with my money ahead of time. And this entire strategy cost me about $5 million to learn. If I had run the numbers earlier and seen that I could become worth $100 million or even a billion dollars without taking a lot of risk, without betting the farm, without compromising my business, and without even having any big financial wins, that I wouldn't have worried about the short term changes in my business. Instead, I would have planned much more. Long term, I would have made better decisions. But for about 10 years, I was constantly worried that at any moment things, things could just go away. I remember sitting with a client shortly after my exit. I sold a business in 2017 for $16 million. I didn't get all of that money up front and I split it 50, 50 with a partner, but I walked away with millions of dollars. I was chatting with a client at the time and he said, wow, all of your financial concerns must have just gone away when you got all of this money. And I said yes, for about two weeks. And then I went right back to stressing about how I was going to produce cash flow, how I was going to grow this money, how was I going to make more than I spent next month. All of my fears just got magnified. Why? Because I didn't have a plan for how my wealth was going to compound without me. And so I was always in this rush state, always in this anxious mode of trying to make something happen quickly that can be very helpful as an entrepreneur. It's a terrible mindset as an investor. So today I will give you my plan in hopes that it inspires you to develop one for yourself. Today I will lay out the numbers for you. I will share with you how my investment plan works for me and why it accounts for my own stupidity. I will also share with you how even if things don't go well or if I don't have a big financial win, it will still compound into likely over $100 million. And if things go very well, then they should compound into $1 billion. This assumes that I don't have another windfall event like a sale of a business. This assumes that I don't make more money in the future than I make today. And this assumes that I don't have any grand slam home run investments. I don't find the next Bitcoin or even the next Apple stock. The thing that they do account for is a very Long time. Everyone thinks that when they become rich, they will be the smart person that keeps and grows their money. I thought that too. And if you're an entrepreneur, then you probably also think that you are smarter than most people and that you are more risk tolerant than most people. Because as entrepreneurs, our job is to see what other people don't see. It's to bet on things that other people aren't willing to bet on. And it's also being willing to take risks that most people are not willing to take. Once again, that is a great approach to take in business. For example, I started a company with $600. I grew that over 44 years to an asset that I sold for $16 million. That is because I was willing to work harder, I was willing to take a risk. And I saw something that most people did not see. I went against the grain. But that same mentality when brought over into investing got me into a lot of trouble. So when I exited my company and I had millions of dollars to work with, I didn't take traditional advice. Who would do something as boring as investing into index funds or mutual funds, or hiring a financial planner that has never built a business and has never become rich himself, except by investing the money of other people who are smarter than him. This is the mentality that I had and this is the mentality of most of my peers at the time. So given a few million dollars, what did I do with that? Well, there's this cool idea over here that I wish I had time to pursue. I'll throw a few hundred thousand dollars at that. Oh, and this person is buying up cash flowing websites and monitoring them and managing them. I'll throw a million dollars into that. And Tai Lopez is buying up bankrupt companies. That's a really cool idea. I'm gonna throw a million dollars into that. And oh, this startup that has a founder that I want to connect with, I'll few hundred thousand dollars into that. You can see where this is going. Not everything that I touched turned to pooh, but most of those speculative, risky investments went to zero. Thankfully. I'm an entrepreneur and I'm in control of how much money I make. And so I've been able to make that money back and more. But most people would not be able to recover from the decisions that I made, the very dumb decisions that I made. In fact, I lost almost $5 million just making really bad investments. If I had a crystal ball and I could have seen other things to invest in and I had put my money into Bitcoin that would be worth hundreds of millions of dollars today. If I had put that money into a well chosen stock like Tesla or Microsoft or Apple, it would be worth tens of millions of dollars today. If I had put that money into the most boring stock possible, broad based index funds like Vanguard S&P 500 index funds, it would be worth over $10 million today. But I didn't do that. Now, of course, hindsight is 20 20. I wish I could go back in time. I wish that I could change those decisions, but obviously I can't. What I can do is create a plan based on what I've learned from this. What did I learn from losing all of this money? And what can I do differently moving forward? That's the question that I wanted to answer. So now I want to give you my plan. And my plan is made for me. I wanted to develop a combination of boring and exciting investments that put me in control and made my investment plan fun for me, that would keep me doing it and still had a predictable return that could compound into hundreds of millions of dollars. So this is what my plan looks like. First, I have my boring bucket. Boring is index funds like the S&P 500 Vanguard funds, and one that I like, QQQ, which is more technology focused. It's not real exciting. It's actually really boring until you run the numbers. Over the last hundred years, The S&P 500 has returned on average 9.77%. It's actually higher over the last 50 years and way higher over the last 25 years. But if we take the most conservative average of the last hundred years, 9.7%, and we compound that over 30 or 40 years. Thanks. Really exciting. So if I want to become worth $100 million over the next 40 years, all I need to do is invest about $200,000 a year into the S&P 500 index. So I need to have a business that produces enough cash flow for me to be able to invest that consistently. Now, for most people, that would be a tall order for the average person. They may never be able to even envision them making $200,000 a year that they can invest. But entrepreneurs are in control of their own income. And I've been an entrepreneur for two decades and there's never been a year that I made less than $200,000. So if I only invest 200k per year into the S&P 500 over 40 years, that compounds into over $100 million. And that leads me to the second bucket of my investment plan. And this is value investing. I have a fairly strong track record of buying companies on sale. I do not have a good track record of predicting the next Teslas or even the next Apples. But I do have a pretty good track record at finding companies when they are on an extreme discount. So here's my process for this. I keep a running list of companies that I track and I track them regularly. Companies that I like, and I simply track them on a weekly or monthly basis and I look for the ones that are on sale. For example, one of the stocks on my watch list is Target. I'm a Target customer. I go to Target with my kids all the time. We buy toys, we love it there. We have a great time. Recently Target released news about their earnings and they got crushed and the stock cratered. That is an interesting time to consider a company that is probably going to be around for the next several decades. Another really good example would be Disney. Disney is not going anywhere, but during COVID they got crushed because their parks were closed and the stock came way down. They have not recovered from that time and as a result the stock is still fairly affordable. That is another one that I'm tracking that looks interesting to me. I simply make a list of companies that I like and I wait for them to go on sale. And if I have extra profit at the end of the quarter or at the end of the year, after I have put money into my boring plan, now I can allocate additional money into one or two of the businesses that really excite me. I'll give you a few of them just to tell you what I'm tracking right now. One of my favorites is PayPal. I have the highest conviction on PayPal stock than just about any other stock in the world. I believe in their long term vision. I think they're undervalued. And I went pretty heavy into PayPal this year. Last year on this channel I said that PayPal was my number one stock pick for 2024 and they rewarded me with about a 50% return this year. That's pretty good. It's not bitcoin, but 50% is pretty good. PayPal is still at the top of my watch list. I also really like Kellogg's. Kellogg's split into two companies last year and now the cereal line is operating like a startup. I find that a fascinating story. And I ate frosted mini wheats for breakfast this morning. Another example that I really like is Alibaba. Alibaba was at one time one of the most valuable companies in the world. They're still incredibly profitable, but they've been crushed over the last few years and as a result their stock is down more than 70%. But they're still very profitable and they're still a great company and I think China is going to be fine over the next few decades. So that's another stock that I like, that I watch, that I track, and when they're on sale I will consider making a play. I have a watch list of about 15 to 20 companies that I'm tracking at any given time and I could be tracking them for years. Once in a while it goes on sale and as a result I might make a play. One more example, two years ago I said here on the channel that my top pick for 2023 was meta stock or Facebook stock as it was known at the time. At the time they were trading at $90. Today, two years later, they trade for over $600.

I am not good at predicting the future or predicting what stocks are going to break out, but I am pretty good at identifying what great companies are on sale. So let's summarize up to this point. I know that if I only invest $200,000 a year into broad based index funds and they perform at their historical average, that I am going to be able to build up a net worth of at least $100 million over a long period of time. 40 years. That fact alone allows me to relax and focus on building my businesses because now I've got my $100 million plan. I don't need to do anything weird or crazy or bet on the next big thing in order to build up a really big net worth. The second part of my plan is buying companies that I like that are on sale. This is your traditional value investing approach. If you want to dive more into that strategy, there's a great book written by Phil Town called Rule Number One that goes over the basics of this strategy. I read that a few years ago and it was my introduction into value investing that so that's the second part of my plan. The third part of my plan is speculation. And speculation is where I have freedom to be able to make bets on things that might go to the moon or investments that might go to zero. But they make me happy. For example, there is a co working space opening here in Austin, Texas that I'm excited to work out of. I'm excited to go there and meet people and I knew the founder and I invested a small amount of money into this new business. It makes me happy to do that. It makes me Happy to know that I'm a part of a project that I'm really looking forward to. I think it's something that the city needs and it's something that I need because I really do not like working from home. So that's a speculative play. It could go to zero. I don't care if it goes up 10x, I don't need it to go 10x. It's in my speculative bucket. Now this allows me to play with things that keep me interested and keep me excited, but only out of the extra money I have to satisfy my boring bucket. Because I've proven to myself that I can do dumb things. But if I invest regularly into broad based index funds, I know that I'm going to compound into a nine figure net worth and then with extra capital I can pick the companies that I really like that are currently on sale. That makes me feel smart and it keeps me interested in my investing practice. And then with what is left over after that, I can speculate on the next big thing. Here's what the numbers look like. If things go well, I assume that my value investing practice is going to produce a return of about 15% per year. If you run the numbers on good value investing, you can expect something like that. I might get some things wrong, but I'm going to go with 15% as my expected return. If I blend my boring investments with my value investments, I get a blended return of 12 and a half percent. If I invest regularly and invest all of my profits that I make, I can expect to invest at least half a million dollars a year consistently for a very long time. If I do that for 40 years, that will compound into over a billion dollars. Now, once again, for most people, this doesn't even sound attainable or reasonable, but entrepreneurs are not like most people. Once again, we make money appear out of thin air. And there will be times that we have really good years and make millions of dollars and there will be years that we have to tighten the belt buckle a little bit. But on average, if you are investing in your skills and you are growing businesses and you're investing for the long term, you will profit hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars in a given year. So I can project investing half a million dollars into the value bucket and the boring bucket and that will compound into over $1 billion over 40 years. Once again, this assumes that there's not a big windfall event in my future, but I expect that I will sell another company. Again, this assumes that my income does not go up exponentially. But I expect that it will. This assumes that I don't have investments that 10x and there probably will be some really big winners in there. But if everything just stays sort of okay, the numbers play out incredibly well. I didn't know how good things could get or how big the numbers could get given enough time and given consistency. And once I saw that, it gave me a new sense of optimism, a new sense of bullishness, a new sense of confidence. Because now I don't worry so much about my finances or the world going to hell in a handbasket. I'm actually betting on a much brighter and bigger future. And that gives me a different energy that I am showing up and operating my companies or creating content or serving my customers. When you show up with that type of energy or focus or optimism, you tend to create better results. So this is the plan that gives me a sense of ease and confidence and I think makes me a better entrepreneur. I will be updating this strategy and sharing the investments that I'm making on a monthly, quarterly or annual basis over on my newsletter, which is called the Billionaire Next Door. This is just a fun little side project that I'm doing to hold myself accountable to following this plan and also connecting with other people who are managing their own wealth and following a consistent investment practice. I want to meet other people who are doing interesting things in this world and it also gives me an outlet to talk about this and look for investments that I want to bring to the members of my audience who are investors. So if you want to be a part of that, go over to capitalism.com investors and you can subscribe to my newsletter. Once again, this is separate from the rest of what I do in my business. This is just something that I am doing to document my own journey of building this investment plan and building my long term wealth. And in that newsletter I'll be more specific about what I'm investing in or changes that I make to this strategy. I'll be sharing the stocks that I'm tracking and the ones that I think are on sale and the ones that I am personally making bets on. So you can subscribe to that over@capitalism.com investors. I will leave you today with my favorite parable from the Bible. Jesus tells the story of the parable of the Talents. And if you're familiar with the story, you know that it's about a master who gives his servants three amounts of money. He gives 1:5 talents, 1:3 talents and 1:1 talent. And a talent was an amount of money. The one with five talents went out and made five more. The one with three talents went out and made three more. But the one who had one went and hit it in the ground and he said he was afraid to lose it and so he just saved it. The master, when he saw the results that his servants had generated, he rewarded the two who multiplied the capital and he punished the one who hid it. A lot of people scratch their head and wonder what this parable is about. I believe that it is a parable about abundance that we can compound the resources that we have, even if we don't have a lot of them. It is our job to be stewards of what has been given to us. I did not do that for most of my career. I lost millions of dollars and I paid for it. I was punished for it. I was punished in the form of anxiety, depression, worry, trying to take risks that I had no business taking, balancing way too much, working too much, being isolated, not having fun. These are things that were a direct result of me not having a plan to be a steward of the capital that I had. And as a result, a lot of it went away. I was able to rebuild that, but now I'm following a different plan that is much calmer, a lot less sexy, but I believe is a much healthier way to manage wealth. I'm new at this. I'm 37 and I feel like I'm a new student on this topic. But I'm fascinated at how different I feel having a plan today versus making a lot of money but having no plan five or ten years ago. I hope you found this valuable. I hope this gave you permission to develop a plan. Because even if you only invested $500 a month into the most boring investment in the world, The S&P 500, if you did that and waited 30 years, you have a million dollar plan. Now you can go take risks in your business. Now you can go be calm in your decision making. You've already got your million dollar plan. Now you can build something that actually matters to you. The funny thing about that is that when you do that, you probably end up making more money too. I'm Ryan Daniel Ryan with Capitalism.com. thank you for being here. If you found value today, let me know by sending me an email@ryanapitalism.com or if you're watching this on YouTube, drop a comment and let me know. I'll see you on the next episode. Take care.