Episode #602 - Rebuilding Your Personal Capital with Simon Ree, Founder of Tao of Trading

Welcome to this edition of the Million Dollar Mastermind podcast. This is where we pick the brains of high achievers from all walks of life and get their hard earned real world insights on winning. I'm your host, Larry Wydell.

When you came through those things, what did you. I know when I was in construction and we went through the global meltdown in the early 70s and mainly because of the oil crisis, and between me and you, you were gone by then, right? Early 70s. Okay, so you won't be offended by this, but I know that the oil crisis, I've always blamed the president, Jimmy Carter for screwing up the oil policy, but someone has made a passionate argument was really Goldman Sachs. Anyway, whoever was responsible, people couldn't get financing. I was in the construction business and nobody was selling houses because I couldn't get a loan. So that put me out on the street. And I said, my response to that was I will, I'm going to change industries. I will never, you know, I'm an idiot if I let myself go out and be in a position where somebody can do that to me again, you know, and I don't know what I've got to do. I don't even know what that means to say that. But I'm going to figure out how I could get a position. And for the first thing, you know, where that won't happen to me again, where something, you know, I go about my day controlling when I could, you know, make myself indispensable, like you said. But you know, the one thing I did not have an extra five minutes a day for, which is keep up with the worldwide oil production and economic policy in the Middle East. And so as a result, I got screwed. And that had nothing to do with anything that I did. Everything was excellent in our end. People just could not get funding for houses. I said, I'm going to get in a different industry. This roller coaster is not going to happen to me. What did you say to yourself when you, you went through those kinds of traumatic experiences at a, you know, pretty young age, you know, formative prime in your, the prime of your life. What did you, what were you, what was going off inside your head?

Look, I think it was really just taking it one day at a time. I mean, you think about a, a mountaineer who's climbing a mountain, they don't think about summiting when they, when they're just climbing up first few ledges. And it sort of felt like that. It's like the marathon runner, you don't think about the finish line. In your first mile. And it felt sort of like that we were kind of going through a marathon, and it was just taking it one day at a time, you know, constantly. You know, it felt like there were, you know, financial bombs going off left, right and center and fires popping up all over the place. And it was really just a case of just getting through it day by day. There was really no. There was no grand plan or grand vision. It was just showing up every day and doing what needed to be done.

What kind of skill set did it, you know, did you realize you were really good at, you know, as you were thinking about. As you're coming out the other side of this thing and thinking about other places you're going to go, what kind of skill sets had you developed that really made you unique, made you indispensable?

I mean, just resilience, grit, Just being able to grit my teeth and get it done, I think was useful in that phase. But what I found really kind of made me look successful was I had an eye for talent, and I think I just had a knack, just a natural knack for getting the best out of people.

And what about grit? Where did the grit come from?

I mean, it's probably due to my martial arts training, I would think. Martial arts have been a part of my life for most of my life, and that teaches you a certain degree of persistence. Again, martial arts, there's always someone better than you. There's always someone bigger and stronger and tougher. And that, I think, does help to build resilience and grit and persistence.

Well, you also appear, you come across as someone that is not. That is very hard, very grounded, let's say, and very. You would be very hard to get unbalanced in the ring. It would seem like that, you know, and it would seem like in a business situation, crisis comes in, you know, warheads come through the window and blow up. That you're not the kind of person that is likely to panic and lose control. And that is something you're conscious of.

It's something you're conscious of initially. Mike Tyson's got that famous quote, everybody's got a plan until they get punched in the face. And when you've done a bit of sparring, and I did a little bit of amateur boxing as well, you just realize the truth of that statement. But the more it happens to you, the more. The more you get used to responding rather than reacting. And yeah, I think it's something that can be trained. It's something that is very conscious initially, but the More you do it through repetition, it becomes somewhat more automatic.

And the first step, the thing that's disconcerting about that is you're stunned. Bam. Something you didn't think could ever happen, shouldn't have ever happened, did happen. And now you got, you know, and you, you know, your head is spinning, you know, and your assumptions that you've been operating on, all of a sudden, maybe your key person went wrong or the fundamentals of the business, like you said, Goldman Sachs, their analysts, they're giving you all the best advice, and then, boom, you know, you, you, you lose money along with everybody else. But when you're, you're hit by a thing like that and you're stuck, how do you come out of that stunned initial jolt? Because when people are running businesses, they go through these things all the time. Like, there's a good friend of mine, he says a how to book. He said it's really ridiculous to get real detailed on a how to book about business and life and everything, because it's different every day. And somebody can tell you what they did. You know what it's like in my business in terms of recruiting, training, developing organizations and things like that. People would have a lot of success. And everybody around the country want to go into their office and learn their system. And I used to laugh at him and said, his system that he's telling you is what. First of all, it's what he thinks he's doing and all his people are doing. But most of that stuff he's taught them, they've heard it, and they're really doing a whole lot of different things. But he's sitting up over here and he thinks they're doing it this way. And so that's one thing. And because people can't even copy or something, you know, you want to copy someone else's. It's really hard to just copy someone else. Even, even a script you read, you know, it's like a song. You know, I have songs that bands cover it all. It comes out different. You know, they don't sound the same. You could tell. And so people put their personality and energy and everything into it. But the, when you, you go out there, the other thing that happens is people develop somebody's really good. Having got things working well, their system is evolving. And so by the time you go and visit them and copy their system and maybe take a few weeks or months to install it, they've gone on and they're doing something completely different. So it's good to get some ideas, but you're going to have to be in charge of developing your own life and organizing your own life past a certain point. Nobody can give you that perfect formula for how to always invest in the stock market. And I know you've. You're an expert on that. But you get, you know, there's so many variables. You're going to have to. You're going to have to think for yourself. And, you know, I'm sure that that's something you emphasize over and over out there. You know, you can teach fundamentals, you can show strategies and everything, but at some point, you've got to get comfortable enough, study enough to where you can pull that trigger and trust your own decisions. And so as you got out there and you went out there in the world, why did you shift to Citigroup?

Well, it's fair to say that by the end of the global financial crisis, I'd seen some of the less pleasant aspects of the culture that I've been involved in, and I was just ready for a change. And Citigroup was offering a move to Singapore. I'd never lived or worked in Asia before, and I just thought, why not? They approached me, they made the offer look pretty attractive, and I thought the opportunity to live and work in Asia for a few years was appealing at the time.

So how has that turned out?

Well, it's turned out really well. I mean, I'm still in Singapore, I'm married to a Singaporean lady, and life's good.

And so what was a culture shock like, moving like that?

Yeah, it's tough because all of the personal capital that you've built goes back to zero. When you've been in an organization for a number of years and you've got a relatively senior role, a visible role, people know who you are. You can get things done just by the amount of personal capital you've built up. And then when you start somewhere new, even though you might be on an equivalent sort of level in terms of hierarchy, you've got to build your personal capital back from zero. And that's somewhat humbling because you can't just pick up the phone and get things done. You've got to rebuild your reputation, rebuild, relate relationships. And, yeah, it takes time.

Now, when taking over, are there entrepreneurial aspects to taking a position with an existing big global company? Citigroup was one of the biggest companies in the world around that time, and I'm sure their operation in Singapore was. They had teams of people and they were probably pretty well established. But when you went in now, it's going to be a new deal. And so is that similar to starting a new entrepreneurial operation to kind of pull the team together, get vision?

Nothing like it at all. I mean, the big banks, they talk about, this is your business, you're running your business and that. They use that term a lot, but it's nothing like it. I mean, I thought I knew a thing or two about how to run a business from my experience in the banking sector, but when I started running my own businesses, I realized completely different ballgame. When you're working within a huge bureaucracy, there is just so much admin and support behind you. And when you haven't got any of that, plus you don't have the brand or the business card, running your own business is a completely different game.

And the unlimited financing?

Yeah, all of that.

All of that. So as you. How long were you there before you decided, I'm going to get a business of my own? And how did you transition to having your own businesses and being on your own?

Yeah, look, I mean, I guess I got to my mid-40s and I call it midlife crisis or whatever you want, but I started asking myself, what am I doing with life? Or what is my marginal contribution to society? And I didn't like the answers I was coming up with because really all I'd done in my corporate career to that point was help people who were already extremely wealthy stay that way or become even wealthier. And that left me feeling pretty empty. I really didn't think. I didn't want that to be my mark or my legacy. And so talking to a few people, I realized that I've built a skill set here, and I could teach this skillset to people who could really benefit from it, people who are still trying to work their way up the first few rungs of the, you know, the wealth ladder, if you will, rather than working with people who are, you know, to all intents and purposes, have already made it. So it really just became about how do I. How do I build something? How do I build a business where I can teach people the essentials of finance and how to. How to make money, how to accelerate your wealth creation, how to create a new income stream and deliver that and at the same time let people know that I exist? These are all sort of the initial challenges you're faced with as a. As an online entrepreneur.

So what were your first steps?

Well, my first steps were, I guess, just distilling what it is people need to know that there's a lot of, you know, a lot of Smoke and mirrors in finance, Wall street has concocted its own jargon, its own vernacular, which is often intended to confuse people and give the appearance of information asymmetry. Oh, you know, we know what we're talking about. You don't. You're an outsider because you don't.

You need me as an expert.

Yeah, yeah. And, and it, it's, it's. Finance is often made out to be. I mean, finance can be extremely complex, but, but it doesn't need to be. And really my mission was to make it as simple as possible, but no simpler taking.

Right.

Taking inspiration from Einstein there and, and then work on a way to, to deliver it to people.

And so how did you see that? How did you distill that? And then how did you go forward with building a business for that?

Well, another thing that I've, I realized about myself at this time is that I've, I've always loved teaching. You know, I, I loved and appreciated working with some wonderful martial arts instructors, and I, I became a Jeet Kune do instructor myself. So I'm a certified Jeet Kune do instructor. And even, you know, I realized when I was learning to kite surf a few years ago, look, I'm a terrible kite surfer. I've got no business teaching anyone how to do it. But as I was learning, I was actually thinking to myself, how would I teach someone how to do this? How would I explain what I'm doing to somebody else? And I've always loved this imparting of knowledge. And I think one of the most rewarding things I found is when you see the light bulb go off in somebody's head when the penny drops, you see them get it. I just find that incredibly reward. Rewarding.

And for people, people who don't know, like me, Jeet kundo is J E E T K U N E D O And I assume that's a form of martial arts.

Yeah, that's, that's the martial art that Bruce Lee developed.

Oh, okay.

Yeah. So Bruce Lee, he was, he was, he was a. Well, he was an amazing martial artist, but he, he developed his own martial art that he called Jeet kune do, the Way of the Intercepting Fist, which is sort of a hybrid of kung fu fencing and western boxing.

And can you. Is that something you continue to improve on your entire life, or do you reach a level and that's pretty much it.

You always learn, you always improve, you always change. It's like trading. You never stop learning. You never get stale. There's always someone or something that can teach you a lesson. And usually the biggest lessons come just when you think you've just when you think you know it all.

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