People of the UK and Ireland, I'm coming
to you live. Imagine that, me on stage
in your city. Dublin is completely sold
out, but everywhere else has got limited
tickets left and you can get yours now
at chriswillson.live. This is a
customuilt live show. I absolutely adore
it. I've spent over a year working on
it. So, if you're a fan of everything
Modern Wisdom, come and see me on stage
this October around the UK and Ireland.
Chris Williamson.Live.
Despite being just 4% of the global
population, Americans made up nearly 50%
of the world's new millionaires in 2025.
You've written three books in this area.
Why another one on finance? What what
hadn't you said already?
>> Good question. I I never even write the
first book. Uh in fact, I hadn't written
a book for almost 15 years. I don't
enjoy writing books. I like the the
variety and the aliveness of
interaction, what happens. Um, but when
2008 happened, I was really annoyed
because I worked with Paul Tudtor Jones,
one of the greatest financial traders of
history. I've coached him for almost 30
years. So, I had some insights to what
was going on. And at the end of it, I
thought somebody's going to get
punished. Something's going to happen
because a small number of people
basically almost destroyed the world
economy. And what I saw was their reward
or their punishment was we gave them
more money. And so about 2010, 111, 12,
I started saying, "Man, something's got
to happen here." And I was mad because
it's like right now the game seems like
it's rigged and the average person
thinks that they can't win. And I want
to know could they? And so since I've
got access, I said I'm going to
interview 50 of the smartest financial
investors in history, the most
successful, the Ray Dalas, the Carl
Icons, the Warren Buffets, all of them,
Paul Tutors, and I'm going to find from
them whether the game is really winnable
still. And so I wrote this book, Money
Master the Game. I wanted to write a
book that my billionaire clients would
be blown away by but I could also
someone just starting the journey would
do it and we were successful number one
New York Times bestseller really great
but then you know people are not
prepared for what happens and while I
didn't know co was coming anyone can
anticipate the changes in the market and
so I run unshakable because I wanted
people not to lose when the markets
change and people that applied that got
tremendous value but then along the way
so many people Americans are behind like
they're so far behind in terms of their
investments ments in terms of their the
retirements. And so how do you get
there? Well, you got to get better
returns, but usually requires bigger
risks. And one of the people I became
really good friends with was Ray Dalio,
who's you know the greatest investors in
history. They call him the Da Vinci. And
um and one of the days I met him, I was
supposed to have a 30-minute interview
and four hours later we left as part of
how we became friends because I studied
everything about him. But one of the
final questions I asked him was, "What's
the single most important investment,
you know, principle that you know of? If
there's one principle to guide people,
what would it be?" Cuz I now I gathered
all these brilliant people. And I come
down to like these core four things that
everybody needs to do. Everybody needs
to protect downside risk. And that's not
what most people think about, right? The
best investors on earth are all about
don't lose money, which so
counterintuitive, but they do it by
asset allocation. They don't ever put
all their eggs in one basket. They know
how to allocate wealth. So when they
lose, they can still win. They know if
you lose 50%. You got to make 100%
return to get even. Most people don't do
the math properly in their head. But the
biggest thing I saw was asymmetrical
riskreward. Then when they went to risk
a dollar, like Paul Tudtor, his goal is
if I think I'm making an investment, I
got to believe I'm risking a dollar to
make five. Now if I'm wrong, I can risk
another dollar, still make four. He
could be wrong four out of five times
and be in good shape. Whereas the
average person doesn't think that way.
Uh I met uh you know some people that
did some investments like Kyle Bass who
you know Kyle from from Texas. Kyle's
follower of my work. He took $30 million
and turned in 2 billion in 2008.
How do you do that in a year in the
worst year of economics? He saw real
estate and saw everybody thinks it's
going to go up and it's not. And so he
risked basically 15 cents on every
dollar. He could be wrong 15 times and
still make money. and he made money. So
I asked him at the times this for Ray
Dal I said how do you teach somebody you
know this idea of you know thinking that
you're taking huge risks to get huge
rewards is not how you win it's dis
disproportionate I need asymmetric
riskreward how do you explain that to
somebody who doesn't understand he goes
well Tony it's interesting you say that
I want to explain it to my kids so he
said I was trying to figure out how to
teach it to him so one day I asked a
question what is a riskless investment
and I said riskless investment is there
really such a thing he goes no most
people don't ask that question so they
don't find the answer he said, "There is
one nickels." He said, "If you buy a
nickel, you can never lose the money.
It's always worth a nickel." But he
said, "Let me explain to you how I
taught my kids this. It cost 9 cents for
the American government to make a
nickel. That's how we run our
government." He said, "Pennies used to
be full of copper, 95% copper, and then
we turned down to 2% copper, and those
pennies from the past are worth twice as
much money, right?" He said, "It's going
to happen." And he said, "But also I can
melt it down. The meltdown value is
worth 20% more than I'm buying it for."
So or 36%, excuse me, more than I'm
buying it for. He said, "So I could
melt." I said, "Well, you can't do that
legally." He goes, "Well, that's true,
but some money goes outside the
country." He said, "But let me be clear.
I called the Federal Reserve and said,
"How many nickels do you have?" And I
bought all the nickels they would sell
me. And he said he bought like 20
million nickels, whatever the number
was. And he goes, "If I could push a
button and put all my money in nickels,
I do it tomorrow. I have a 36% return on
day one. I'll have virtually guarantee
100% return at some point in the future
cuz you can't keep making things for 9
cents that you're charging 5 cents for.
And he said, "And I have no downside."
He said, "So that's asymmetrical
riskreward." Right? So in that area,
that's something that's hard to get, but
I knew that was valuable. Then the third
thing I found they all talked about is
you got to be tax efficient, right?
Because that your net is based on taxes.
And then the fourth is the one we all
know diversification but diversifying
against different assets different asset
classes different time frames and
different countries different
currencies. But Dalio said when I asked
him this question he goes Tony I have
thought about this for the last 15 years
and I have now what I would tell you is
the holy grail of investing which is the
title of our book and he goes it's
simply this. I found out that if you
will confine 8 to 12 non-correlated
investments and they're things you
believe in, you reduce your risk by 80%
and increase your upside. Now, when I
heard this, I was like, "Wow, it's hard
to find 8 to 12 uncorrelated investments
in the world we're in today, right? Even
stocks and bonds, they're not supposed
to be correlated, but if you look at
what happened in 2008, 2020, they do.
They both go down, right? They they
correlate. And then your broker says, I
don't know what it is, right?" Um so he
explained to me more detail about that
but the simple understanding is you have
to go to private equity private credit
private real estate to have that
diversification unless you're you know a
trader has sophistication synthesis that
you can use synthesized type of
investments and so that sent me on
looking at then didn't I was invited to
go down to speak at the alternative
investment conference for JP Morgan got
to be a billionaire to get in there
right I've been there two or three times
now and who speaks right before me is
Ray Dallio and they do this full
interview with him and the last question
they ask ask him a very similar
question. What's the most important
thing you've learned in 50 years
investing? He says the holy grail.
Everyone in the room is a billionaire
plus. Nobody written notes the whole
damn day. Everybody's head goes down
writes this down because it's such a
simple principle, but it's the core. So
I started saying, how do I get to that?
How do I help the average person to get
that? Cuz you know, I've got a name, you
got a name. We have we all have access
to a certain extent. Private equity is
an extraordinary result. But here's what
I found out. In the last 39 years,
private equity has outproduced every
stock market in the world for 39
straight years. Average private equity,
now in this book, we interviewed 13 of
the best in the world. Right? Average
has averaged 15.7% returns. The S&P 500
of those 39 years is 9%. 74% better per
year compounded for 39 years. So, if you
put a million bucks in the S&P, you're
pretty happy right now. you got just
under 29 million, 28.7 million. If you
put it in basic private equity, it's
$293 million. The same money, same time,
10 times the return. So now the question
is, how the hell do you get access?
Because there's a big difference between
the big boys and the average boy, right?
So you again, if you're famous, you
might get it. I got access. I know
people, but that the slice they give me
wouldn't change my life, right? It's
nothing really huge. And I was lamenting
about this to a friend of mine who lives
used to be partners with Paul Tudtor
Jones, really great guy and I'd helped
him a lot. He said, "Tony, I'm going to
make your day. I'm going to tell you
where I put most of my money and I'm
going to change your life." He said,
"You've done so much for me. It's my
time to do for you." I said, "Really?
I'm leaning forward." This is a very
sophisticated guy. He goes, "There's a
company that can allow you to come in
and not just try to get a little piece
of these investments, but you become an
owner, a general partner in these firms,
not a limited partner. You make the two
and 20. You're on every single asset
that they have, every single investment
they have." I said, "Really?" I said,
"Where's this firm?" And I thought he
was going to say, you know, New York,
Connecticut, London, Singapore. He goes,
"They're in Houston." I said, "Houston?"
He goes, "Yeah, they're away from a
beaten path and they do this better than
anybody I've ever seen." He said, "They
have the majority of my money. You got
to go meet him." That's how I met my
co-author here, Christopher. Because I
went and sat down. It turned out
Christopher had been through my program
25 years ago, started his business based
on it. He has I got to brag on him a
moment. He has a 96% profit ratio on the
investments he's made for 25 straight
years. We joined forces about 5 years
ago. He's at about 2.7 billion. We've
grown it to 13 billion just in the last
four and a half five years. And so I got
I became an investor initially, then I
became an owner of the company, partner
in the company, and we've grown the
company to have that kind of impact. And
it's because we're able to bring people
general partnerships. It's like, do you
want to own the raceh horse? You want to
own the race track? That's what the
opportunity is. And the richest people
in the world, if you look at the Fords
400, are all people that are in private
equity. This is where the largest. It's
not real estate. It's not technology.
Look at the list and you'll see who they
are. There's a reason this is one of the
most unique opportunities. And now the
reason we wrote the book is the average
American has not had access. If you look
at the ultra high net worth people, 52%
of their money is in private equity,
private credit. This private only 29% in
the public markets.
>> There used to be 8,000 companies 30
years ago. Now there's only 4,000 in the
public markets. 87% of all companies are
private today. 100 million to three
billion, there's 200,000 of them and
that's a whole lot more to be able to
do. The old idea of private equity is
you go in, you take over the company and
you sell everything off. It's not like
that today. It's about added value. They
have to be. So, it's a new industry and
the way it's been operating and it's
producing results unlike anything else.
You can't be all your money because you
need liquidity and there even some
answers to that today. But we went all
in in figuring out how to help people to
be able to grow at a much higher rate so
they can get to their goals but with
even less risk if they manage it
effectively.
>> Do you think ordinary people are making
a mistake by putting all of their money
into the S&P then? This is kind of old
school wisdom dollar cost average in but
it sounds like there's other returns to
be made.
>> It's so funny. I had a conversation with
somebody literally a couple months ago
and they say, you know, Christopher, I
understand this diversification thing,
but I really don't need that. I own like
six out of the seven of the Magnificent
Seven. I'm like, dude, you are not
diversified. They all move together. If
one is zigging, the other is zigging as
well. So, they all get hit together.
People don't think back to where the
Magnificent 7, literally in 2002 during
the selloff that we had there, that
group of stocks dropped by almost 50% in
less than a year. So, people might want
that upside, but they have to be able to
tolerate the downside. So, do I think
it's a mistake to put money in the S&P?
No. But it can't be everything. They
need to have diversification of other
things that will zigg and zag at
different times, which is the whole
point of the holy grail of investing is
if you have certain things that are
making money when others are losing
money, and I know it's a silly example,
but for everybody who's a golfer out
there, they'll get it. Right? If you
stock a golf shop and all you sell in
there is sunscreen, well, on sunny days,
you're going to sell a lot of sunscreen.
If all you sell is umbrellas, well, then
on rainy days, you're going to sell a
lot of umbrellas. But the key is to have
both. So on rainy days and sunny days,
you're still making money. And that has
been so hard. Here's another fun
statistic. In 2005, just literally 21
years ago, if you had an average
allocation that looked like most of the
brokerage accounts, including
alternatives, your average correlation
was about 0.15, which meant they
correlated about 15% with each other.
85% they were moving different
directions. Okay. today, literally with
no change in that ass allocation, it is
82% correlation.
>> Globalization is a hell of a drug, man.
>> It is, but it's also indexation
>> because if everybody's buying the same
stocks just all in or all out every
single day, they tend to all move
together.
>> ETFs don't discriminate. Yeah.
>> No, they don't. And what happens is in
stressful environments, it actually gets
worse to where it goes all the way up to
about an 89% correlation when you have a
down market because what happens?
Everybody indiscriminately sells
everything at the same time and that
means they're getting hit from all sides
which is why 2020 in the early part of
that year was so tough for people in
21-22 everything basically got hammered.
>> And think about it right now the
Magnificent 7 are 32.
>> Can you explain the Magnificent 7 for
people that don't know what that is?
>> Absolutely. So Magnificent 7 is
basically the the the big names that
people know the Nvidia the Netflix the
Facebooks or Meta now Google Amazon etc.
Those are the M Microsoft included in
that. That's something that was in
seven. And to what Tony was about to
say, okay, right now that MAG 7 is 38%
of the S&P 500.
>> Well, it's actually under 32 today.
>> It pul it pulled back quite a bit here
lately. And so what that means is 493
stocks make up the other 68%.
>> And so seven make up 32%. And the
highest percentage in history before
this has been 17% of any group of
companies.
>> So it's twice what more than twice what
>> it's a consolidation of risk even inside
of the S&P 500 which is supposed to be
spread across 500 companies
>> completely and very volatile companies
to as well.
>> I want you to know they're
complimentary. We we have things in the
S&P as well. But you got to have you got
to spread your risk. You can't do it
all. And when you look at ultra, if you
look at pension funds, you look at, you
know, university funds, if you look at
what's happening with high net worth
people, the majority of their
investments are in private equity
because that's where they're getting the
returns. You can't they have to be able
to provide for the future and provide an
income to the future. And so that's
where they are. So you and there just
isn't more. There's not enough volume.
>> Think about it. to go from 8,000 30
years ago to 4,000 stocks roughly a
little less than that actually now in
the public markets. You've got more
dollars chasing a smaller number of
items and you know what that creates? It
creates inflation that isn't necessarily
based on value.
>> Okay, lots of stats, lots of complex
numbers to be able to understand to you.
Imagine that somebody doesn't understand
investing, doesn't know where to start.
How do you explain what diversification
should look like just from first
principles and and where should that go?
So what I always try to tell people is
exactly like the business example. No
single company really wants to sell one
thing. So you want in your portfolio,
you want things that are going to do
well in lots of different environments.
Good economies, bad economies, high
inflation, low inflation, high interest
rates, low interest rates. In order to
accomplish that, you have to diversify
across lots of different asset classes.
And most people hear private investments
and they get very intimidated by that.
You're like, I don't know what a private
investment is. Well, most people are in
the private markets. They don't really
realize it because they own a home.
Anybody who owns a home owns a private
asset. It's not priced every single day
in the newspaper. You can't look it up
online to see exactly what it's worth.
You can get a guide, but you never know
for sure what it's worth until you sell
it. Well, that's a private asset. The
same with the dry cleaner on the corner
or the Subway sandwich shop that they
might go shop in. Those are all private
businesses. And obviously anyone who
owns those is going to make money or
lose money based on the success of that
particular business, not because of the
fact that the Fed raises interest rates
or lowers interest rates or all the
other complex things that try to
intimidate people or tend to intimidate
people. So getting people to understand
it's just simply good diversification,
good business practice to not have all
your revenue streams tied up in one
single product.
>> That's true also for your investments.
Let your return streams come from lots
of different sources.
>> And here's a piece that that's different
today and it's about to change because
we're interviewing uh Secretary of Labor
Sandling right after this interview.
He's coming into the house. There are
new laws. One of the reasons we wrote
the book is it's great to know this, but
most people can never have access. So
what good is it?
>> Mhm. So what's happened though is the
Congress and the Senate actually the
passed a law initially went through the
Congress, not yet the Senate that said
that look, you should not be barred from
having these types of investments
because you're not an accredited
investor with a million dollar net worth
or you know or a $5 million net worth as
a qualified purchaser. The best
investments have been reserved for
people with the most money. It's
completely unfair. Now the idea is well
we're protecting them from things that
are unsophisticated. Well, think about
it. A lot of great business people are
not great investors or a lot of people
inherit money. They're not great
investors but they get to go there. So
what they came up with is we're going to
create a set of questions so you can
educate yourself and if you can answer
these you're qualified. You don't have
to have an economic qualification just
have to understand what you're doing
which makes so much more sense.
>> But even since then there's some new
laws that are coming out and maybe you
can address them that are happening.
They're right now being reviewed as we
speak. That's we're having the interview
with later with Secretary of Labor
Sauring.
>> So two things. Number one is last June,
a year ago June, the Securities and
Exchange Commission, the SEC, just
literally with a stroke of a pen, said
people do not have to be an accredited
investor anymore to invest in certain
types of funds which own alternative
assets. Funds that own things like the
Los Angeles Lakers that just sold or the
Golden State Warriors or, you know,
Formula 1 teams, etc. SpaceX before it
was an IPO, right? Those kinds of funds
were never available to investors unless
they were already wealthy. So now anyone
in the world literally for a $2,500
minimum can invest in those funds. That
literally changed last June. And most
people don't know that. The second thing
that Tony's referring to is the Labor
Department has put forth a rule that
would enable it to be much easier for
401k plans to allow alternative
investments to be available to every
single person who has a 401k or a 403b
or any kind of retirement account. That
is a total gamecher for the industry to
be able to allow people for the first
time to be able to invest in so much of
the economy that they've been prohibited
from before
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Can you let's get specific. What are
some of the investment opportunities,
asset classes that people don't think
about? Everybody understands and you
guys agree S&P that's probably a good
place to have some, etc., etc., right?
We can tick away with that. What are the
more uh
>> exotic?
>> Well, I'll give you one that's fun and
it's not exotic because everybody knows
about it, but they think it's probably
impossible. Sports. Is he just related?
Sports are an uncorrelated investment.
They have nothing to do whether the
market's going up or down. What's
happening with interest rates? In the
last 10 years, they've had an 18%
compounded return. But if you look at
through history, through wars, World War
I, World War II, sports have always done
well and they're non-correlated. So, you
want to find
>> sports are recession proof.
>> Yeah, they are.
>> And you know why? Today, they don't just
sell hot dogs, which by the way, they
have a unique relationship. They have a
monopoly in their cities, a legal
monopoly. No one else can go compete
with them. And and by the way, their
fans, they're called fanatics. That
that's where the fan comes from. They're
multigenerational and they come and they
when inflation goes up, they charge more
for a hot dog as we all know and
everything else you can imagine. But now
they don't just sell tickets and hot
dogs. Today these are modern media
organizations. So we own a piece. I own
a piece of self. I took me what 20 years
of my life to be able to own a sports
team and to qualify it and go through
they had a microscope to you. I helped
us start the the uh the soccer team that
we have, you know, in in Los Angeles,
the LA football club, and uh put the
whole thing, invested, went through the
whole nine yards. But then the rules
changed and they made it so certain
firms were able to make investments
directly into these firms. And now they
did it in Major League Baseball, they
did it in the NBA, they did it in Major
League Hockey, and now the NFL has just
done it. And the returns are
unbelievable. So I'll just give you an
example. We have a piece of the Dodgers.
We own a piece of the Red Sox. We went a
piece of the Lakers, excuse me, Lakers,
the the Golden State Warriors. All these
firms have grown. So, Peter Goober, my
my one of my partners in business, we
did the LAFC together. He was one of the
guys that bought the Dodgers in 2012. He
paid 2.2 billion for the Dodgers. Every
article said, "He's insane. These people
are never going to make money. This is
the most ever paid for a sports team."
Now, Peter's my partner, and I'm like,
"Peter, I know you're no dummy. Are were
we what? Are we doing the right thing
here?" He goes, "Tony, you can trust me
on this. you know me well enough, but he
said, "I'm not even going to tell you.
I'm going to make an announcement the
next week and then you come over and
we'll have a little party together." So
now, here's what you need to understand.
When you're on a sports team, if it's
like the NBA, you're 132nd of the
league. You have 32 teams or the NFL.
NFL is even better example. All the
national international advertising, you
get 132nd of. So, if you own an NFL
team, you get a $400 million check to
start the season. That's your piece. but
you also own your local TV advertising
yourself. So Peter bought them for 2.2
billion and then announced he just sold
the rights for local television rights
for $7 billion and made5 billion in a
day. Right? So he's done quite well in
this area and I've done quite well with
him in this area. Um you know today the
he he took on the Golden State Warriors.
They were the worst placed team. They
had paid only $450 million for it. Now
they're the second highest valued sports
franchise in the world behind the
Yankees to even excuse me behind the
Dallas Cowboys at this point, right? 11
billion that he's built it to. So these
are enterprises today that are not just
selling sports. They're every aspect
what you imagine and they are an
incredible return and they have nothing
to do with what happens in the stock
market.
>> Sounds great. How do I invest?
>> There's lots of different ways that
somebody can do it if they have the
right knowledge and the right
information. But because of the rule
changes, now there are funds that are
available literally that people can get
into for 2500 bucks and own a piece of
all of those funds.
>> This just got actually we just got
approved for this to give you a sense.
>> Yeah. I mean that was that so that was
June of 25 was the first time that the
rules changed to allow everyday
investors to be able to do it. But so
collectively as a firm, you know, we
have exposure over 30 different
professional sports franchises and we
have ways that every single investor in
the world can invest with us and own a
piece of all of those firms, right?
>> Diversified. So it's not just one team
up.
>> That's right. Across.
>> So you've made a index fund or an ETF of
a variety of sports teams.
>> You know, I'd love to say that it's
better than that, right? And I believe
it is because it's not just beta. It's
not just the market itself or the index
fund, but actually really really curated
specific teams and specific areas that
have specific opportunities for growth
that we believe we bought at very
attractive prices.
>> What's the category of firm that has
access to this? Someone wants to go onto
the internet right now and say this
sounds great. I love sports. I want to
get in I need to diversify. Like what
what do they put into the internet?
>> Just put in casin.com. That's that's
what they would do. That's the easiest
way. But I mean, there's very few firms
that are permitted to be able to invest
in multiple teams in the same league.
And that's what the rule changes were
from 2019 to 2024 for somebody to be
able to do that. It wasn't it didn't
exist before 2019. So, we were very
early in that in that theme. And for one
of the things I think it would be really
helpful for the audience because a lot
of people like, okay, sports teams are
trophy assets and people just rich
people want to own it because it's a
cool thing to own. It is a cool thing to
own, but it's about cord cutting. It's
about people getting their content
differently. Watching your podcast is
not something that really existed 20
years ago. So, in 2005,
14 of the top 100 watched programs that
were live in the United States were
sports. 14 out of 100. In 2025, 96 of
the top 100 watched live programs were
sports. Why? Who watches a live program
when you can go on Netflix or Amazon or
any other and not have to watch
commercials? So, you're gonna watch
>> sports teams and Love Island fans.
That's that's all that's left. I mean,
we own a, you know, along with our
partners, we own a steak in Liverpool
and we own a piece of Paris. Sorry to
hear that. Yeah. Well, you know, I
figured you might because of where
you're from, but all the and several
others that you might be more familiar
with.
>> But the opportunity to be able to own
those dominant franchises around the
world in all different types of sports
is something that most people didn't
ever think of. And that was your
question. What do people not think of?
The other thing they don't think about
is early stages of venture capital
because like well I can't get access to
it. You know Seronic got great attention
earlier this this this summer because
they rescued those two pilots that were
shot down in the straight of Hormuz the
helicopter pilots. It was an autonomous
boat
>> made by a company in Austin, right? That
literally went out there and saved these
two people with no other people being
put at risk. That didn't exist a couple
of years ago. But that is an example of
a company that actually is available to
everybody in the world now at a $2,500
minimum if they know where to go. And
obviously that's a big part of what we
wanted to write the book for to be able
to help people understand these
opportunities do exist and they've got
to do their own homework and they got to
make sure that they're comfortable with
it. But ultimately that's what something
that's something that people really just
were never able to do
>> and now the world has changed and they
have the ability to adapt with it and
get exposure that they couldn't before.
And at these final pieces that
Sonelink's working on, they they've had
their final comment period. So shortly
there'll be a final decision, but that
means people could put in their 401k as
well. So now it's tax advantage on top
of everything else that you're talking
about here.
>> But there, you know, the world has
changed. Think about what the war has
happened that in Ukraine and how that's
changed the world. We no longer can
start sending these multi-million dollar
missiles to take out these crappy little
drones. It just it's it's it's a system
that doesn't work. And so now there's
all these private companies that are
gearing up to take on this. And now, you
know, the G7 and this group has gone in,
they're having to put 5% of their money
in. They're almost doubling what they're
spending. So you're talking about
literally a level of spending that's
going into the military side, but it's
now companies that are based on
technology who can come and and do
things at scale.
>> And exactly. Those are the ones that
we've invested in, right? So we have
access to those. So those are all
against ways to diversify. So you have
different asset classes, right? Think
about space and military. These are
going to grow. Unfortunately, we're
going to need them to grow
geometrically.
>> I'm happy about space. Space good,
military, military, but we got to
protect ourselves, right? So it's a
combination of two.
>> And that's something to where literally
the the headline was got to stop
throwing Ferraris at frisbes. Okay? You
know, you can't use a tomahawk missile
to shoot down a $30,000 drone. So you
have to come up with other ways to
protect your c your people and to be
able to protect your country. And then
space is just such it truly is the no
pun intended the new frontier. And to be
able to do what we're doing in space and
what SpaceX has done to be able to open
up the commercialization of space to
such a dramatic effect to be able to
deliver things that were never able to
be done before to places that were never
able to be done before. There's another
company as an example called Armada.
They literally have a box that looks
like a rail car. They can drop that in
the middle of nowhere Africa and because
of Starlink they can have a completely
fully operational data center as long as
they have power and access to the sky.
>> I saw a video of this. It's like a
industrial shipping container thing.
Yeah, I've I've seen this before. That's
wild.
>> Very early investors in the company
because what it did it's solving a huge
need. What they refer to as being on the
edge to where you know things in the
middle of Alaska or things on a on a
ship in the middle of the ocean, right?
you're not going to be able to have a
data center there that's secure. So, we
have one of the gentlemen that works for
us. He's a former Green Beret, right? He
can't tell the exact story for obvious
reasons, but literally they were in a
jungle somewhere south of, you know, in
South America and literally they were
able to use an Armada box connected to a
local natural gas facility connected to
Starlink and saved their butts,
>> right? He got a chance to meet the CEO
and he said, "You saved my life. Thank
you." And he's like, "I didn't do that."
No, your business saved my life. That's
the kind of use case. Or Icon, another
Austin based company that you may know,
Jason Ballard and his team at Icon are
they do the 3D printed homes. Okay.
>> Yes, I have seen this as well.
>> Okay. So, they are literally able to
print homes or now bareric or any other
kind of industrial facility, two
stories, and they can do it faster and
cheaper than you could ever do it with
physical labor. And obviously, it's
concrete, so it's very durable and it's
very sustainable. Well, I mean,
businesses are crazy.
>> Coming from the UK, America is a
fantastic country, but you guys insist
on making your houses out of wood. It's
[ __ ] wood. Everything's made out of
wood. I'm like, build it out of brick.
This is ancient technology that we're
doing here. Some thatched roof that
you've got. Tell you what, I had I had
David Friedberg on the show a couple of
months ago. He's so great. And he was
explaining to me, talking about crazy
new technologies. He was explaining to
me one of the reasons that the moon is
going to be incredibly important. It
means that once you've got something
there and you can vonoyman probe, use
the materials on the moon to make stuff
that you send from the moon because the
launch velocity that you need to get off
of there is is is way lower. Right? That
was cool. But he explained to me how the
mass ejectors on the moon work. So I was
thinking you've got a small factory that
finds materials, turns it into kind of a
3D printing style thing, and then from
there you send out into the rest of the
solar system and the galaxy what it is
that you need. But he explained to me
the way that you get it off, you need
about 4 km or so of track and you use a
mag le thing to send it. But what was so
[ __ ] cool, this is my favorite thing.
Two things.
>> First off, the gravity on the moon is so
low that you don't actually need to send
something up. If you send it fast enough
flat, it reaches escape velocity just
like throwing a ball really really hard
and it just gets out of that was the
first thing. The second thing is that
you use the orbit of the moon to aim. So
you're waiting. You're waiting. Boom.
And you send it and it's like, "Oh, I'm
just going to use the way that the moon
rotates to like fire it in the
direction." I was like, "This is the
coolest [ __ ] I've ever heard." I thought
it was.
>> By the way, Icon is building Exactly.
>> out of the materials on the moon.
They're building the facilities for them
there. They've got a practice facility
that wasn't
>> built for NASA has has hired them to
effectively make this possible. And so
those are the kinds of things we were
seed investors in the company of ICON.
We've watched it grow up. That's an
example of things that people would
never think to invest in.
>> They would just observe like, "Oh,
that's cool. You need to be David
Freeberg to know that it's happening."
>> That's right. But you don't anymore.
Yeah. It's available to everybody in the
world literally at 2500 bucks.
>> What about the other side of this? What
is an investment that maybe millions of
Americans currently believe is safe or
reliable, but is actually riskier than
they think it is? It's hard because
everything has its purpose, right? Some
investments should lose money 90% of the
time, but 10% of the time they make a
lot of money and that gives you negative
correlation or things moving opposite
direction. So that doesn't mean anything
is bad. I mean, somebody could say that
Bitcoin is a bad investment. It could be
a phenomenal investment.
>> It can be higher risk though, right?
Something that's higher risk than people
anticipate. What would you put in that
category?
>> There's so much that fits into that
category. So many people don't
understand that, you know, the risk
level is what we refer to statistically
as volatility. All right, standard
deviation. What I put it is your gut.
How much does your gut have the ability
to tolerate? If you can't see it turn
into 50 cents overnight, you don't
belong in it. So, you got to make sure
that whatever it is you own is not going
to create the panic that you get out of
it and then you dramatically
underperform the investment itself
because you can't stay in the seat,
right? That's one of the reasons why
leverage is so dangerous for most people
is leverage gets them blown out with a
margin call because the fact that they
don't have staying power. Staying power
can be economic and it can be gut. And
the vast majority of investors don't
have near as tough a tough a gut as they
think.
>> Citadel comes along and eats your lunch.
>> That's correct. And that's exactly what
happens. And that's what makes a market.
>> So it's too soon.
>> No, no, it's okay. It's just the reality
of the world. And obviously good for
Citadel, not great for the other party.
But that's what most people have to do
is not overconentrate
>> and and like Bitcoin is a perfect
example. Young people go for Bitcoin
like crazy. And the idea was it was
going to protect us in, you know, in
inflationary areas. But you see what
happens when all of a sudden the tech
investors lost a lot of money. Guess
what? They all sold their Bitcoin to
cover themselves, right? So they're
correlated still. And so it's a lack of
understanding. I'll tell you what's more
scary. I just read a statistic the other
day that generation Z and millennials,
the combination of the two, 52% of them
in the last year have taken money that
they would have used investment and put
into sports betting and that 26% think
that sports betting is their way to
build their financial future.
>> As two financial experts, are you
telling me that's not the truth?
>> Definitely not. Hell no.
Bad idea.
>> Come on.
>> Now, you may be good for a while, but I
wouldn't plan on fear.
>> It's called luck, right? You're just
praying for luck in that situation.
>> Yeah, but who wants to invest in the
sports team themselves? I want to invest
in whether or not this guy's going to
touch gloves with the goalkeeper before
he finishes.
>> Let me let me invest in the horse and
not own the racetrack. That's the
opposite mindset. That's you want a
billionaire mindset, you want to own the
racetrack.
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Talking about the psychology, I think
this is this is an area I really want to
talk about. Is there a personality type
that shouldn't be an active investor? Is
there a type of person who just isn't
built to be in the market at all? Well,
how would you advise people who are
significantly more riskaverse to put up
with the bad days, to put up with that
time?
>> It's such a beautiful thing because they
don't ever have to have a bad day if
they're properly diversified.
>> Yeah. Oh boy.
>> The most people are like, "Okay, I'm
going to put, you know, the old 6040,
right? 60% stocks, 40% bonds." For
decades, that worked until it didn't.
And then all of a sudden, people
realized that they actually were more
correlated and they didn't make money on
their bonds and they got hammered on
their stocks. It doesn't mean there's
not a place for bonds and it doesn't
mean there's not a place for stocks, but
they need to build it out with the rest
of it. So, the more riskaverse somebody
is, the more diversified they should be.
If somebody's going to go out and and by
the way, this is the biggest mistake
that I see people make every single day.
And I've seen it for 35 years in my
career. People make investment decisions
based on dollars. That is crazy. No
professional investor does that. It has
to be on percentages. So, a million-doll
investment sounds like a lot of money,
and it is. Unless you're worth a hundred
million dollars, in which case it's just
1%.
>> So $10,000 or a million dollars, if it's
1%, it's 1%. And somebody says, "I'm
gonna go put 50% of my money into this,"
they'd go, "That's way too much. That's
risky."
>> Or if they're going to say, "I'm going
to go put 50 grand in it." Well, now all
of a sudden they go, "That's not that
much money." Well, if you only got 100
grand, it's a lot. So the more that they
diversify and properly diversify across
all of their assets and percentages are
properly weighted, they don't have to
worry about volatility because that's
the whole point of the holy grail of
investing is just by adding 8 to 12
different non-correlated investments.
You can reduce your risk by 80% 80%
volatility.
>> The only way to do it
>> 80% reduction in risk and you can
usually get still a the same return or
even a better rate of return. Well, I
think what is as impressive maybe as
getting uh reducing your your downside
risk is what it does to the level of
stress that you've got.
>> Yes.
>> Totally. Something's working. How many
people get stressed when something is
working?
>> And the and the loss the the upside joy
versus the all the studies on psychology
versus the ceilings of loss, they don't
compare. The loss people stay with much
longer. I think one of the most
important things is if people can get in
a position where they have this kind of
diversification and if they're in things
like private equity, the great thing
about private equity is not only is it
outproducing every market in the world
for 39 straight years, but also its
drops are shorter and they don't have to
do that. Think about it. When the market
drops, you're in you're in the general
market, the open market. You all those
prices go. If you're private equity, you
hang on to what you got. You don't sell
it, right? And you buy things during
that time. So that's how they're making
money. Think about it. They're not
making money just hoping they're going
to get the right price right now.
They're buying something at the best
price they can, a business, and they
figure out how to improve it. They're
bringing in a new CEO. They're bringing
in AI. They're bringing in a new manager
team. They're putting in new marketing.
And they build that company up and then
they sell that for a multiple either
taking it public or very often to
another private company. So, they have a
I love that type investing because it's
how I made all my money as a human in my
businesses. You I have now 121
companies. We do $22 billion in
business. Just my group together. And
all of those companies we've done well
because we found a way to add more value
in that marketplace. We figured out what
to do that no one else is doing more
better and we found that edge and then
the business grows geometrically. That's
how these guys invest. It's not like the
old days where they find something, cut
it all up and sell off its pieces. That
was the original kind of private equity.
Those days are over and now they got to
put their own money in. That's one of
the reasons that we have the
opportunities that we do to be able to
be investors as as general partners
because since 2008 when everything
dropped, Bane had to prove to everybody,
hey, it's worth doing. They said, okay,
we're going to put our money in as we've
done in ours. You might give them a
sense about that.
>> So, like Bane was the first one that
really did a very large GP commit. Okay,
that means the general partner who
manages the fund puts in a bunch of
their own money to show alignment with
the other investors in the fund. Skin.
Skin in the game. Okay, so they
literally coming out of the global
financial crisis, everybody's like, "H,
I'm not sure what I want to invest in."
So Bane said, "Okay, we're going to
among our partners, we're going to put a
billion dollars into our own fund."
Well, that got everybody's attention
like, "Oh, well, I guess you're aligned
with us." And so that gave people
comfort and confidence. That's very much
the standard. Now, typically two to 5%
of all of the money in a fund is put up
by the people managing that fund of
their own capital. So that way there is
that alignment. And so as you think
about a firm growing from a billion
dollar fund to a5 billion dollar fund to
a10 billion fund, they've got to have
very significant 200 to$500 million of
their own money to put into that fund,
but they may not have harvested their
billion and their $5 billion fund yet.
So they will sell a stake to firms like
ours where we have the ability to then
provide them with the balance sheet that
they need to go raise bigger funds, show
more alignment, and they obviously have
to sell a piece of their company to us
to be able to do that. But if they sell
12% of their company, they still own 88.
So everybody wins from that growth that
comes from that capital. Just sitting on
the on the psychology piece for for
another minute. Scarcity mindset,
abundance mindset when it comes to the
way that people see their financial
future, how does or how do you guys see
a scarcity mindset show up in someone's
investment decisions?
>> Well, I was interviewing um I
interviewed 50 of the the greatest
investors of all time, but I also
interviewed Mary Calhan Erdos from JP
Morgan who basically oversees 2.2
trillion investments. And in everybody's
case, I asked them, you know, what's the
biggest advantage? They all talked about
asset allocation. Every single investor
talked about it. And she said, "Tony,
the way I look at it is if I got
somebody that's super riskadverse, I
look at it, my my part partnership think
I'm crazy." He goes, "I'll put them in
treasuries because my goal is to make
sure they get what they want emotionally
as well as financially. If it takes them
longer, that's okay. Some people,
they're just they can't handle it." And
you got to understand that because if
you're investing so that you can
eventually feel good, that you feel
secure, that's
>> and you feel miserable during your
investment on the way to feel good.
>> Yeah. So you've destroyed your life. And
she goes, "So that's what I do. I like
she said, I'm not dumb. I still get them
some balance, but I I think of it as
like buckets. Think of it this way.
There's a security bucket, kind of a
peace of mind bucket. That's investments
that have a fixed return, right? Those
are, you know, bonds. That's going to be
a variety of things. Insurance, it might
be your home. It's a place where things
are going to go very slowly. There's
very low risk, so it's not high returns,
but low risk compounds over time. Looks
like grass growing and then boom, boom,
boom. We all know what compounding does,
right?
>> If I play you a game of golf and say,
"Let's play 10 cents a hole." And then
right before you swing, I say, "Well,
why don't we double each hole just to
make it more interesting?" You know, 10
cents first hole, 20 cents second hole,
40 cents, 80 cents. You go, "Yeah,
there's 18 holes." Yeah, okay. You know,
a few bucks, no big deal. But the last
hole is worth $13,000, right? And the
first beginning it's 20 cents 40 looks
like nothing. In the last five holes, it
goes like this. That's what compounding
is. So even in the security bucket, you
can get financially free. The risk
bucket, growth bucket, risk, growth,
most people think of as growth. That's
the places where you don't have a fixed
return, where you have unlimited upside
and unlimited downside. That could be
everything from real estate to stocks to
bonds to private equity to anything
you're talking about. Trading, you can
lose way more than what you put in. You
got to be careful obviously what puts.
So the balance between those depend on a
couple different things. Number one,
when do you need the money? If you need
it three years from now, you're not you
can't be able to take too much risk
because you don't have time to make it
up, right? If you were 30 years old, you
can make some big mistakes. You could
have a lot more in your growth bucket,
risk bucket, lose, and you got time to
make it up, right? So that's the first
thing. When do you need the money?
Second thing you got to look at is what
is your real risk tolerance versus what
you think it is. You know, we I have a
game we play in one of our wealth
programs that we do and I'll say to
people in the middle of the thing, I'll
say, "Stand up." And I I turn some
music. I'll make change with everybody.
They go, "What?" I said, "Make change."
And we play this little money song and
people walk around, start taking money
out of their pocket, and they're
exchanging money. And and then they the
song ends. I say, "Okay, sit down." And
then I go on like something else. And
always one or two people are really
fuming. And they'll they'll finally
raise their hand. I'll say, "Excuse me.
Excuse me." And I say, "What is it?"
They go, "That was not fair." I said,
"What are you talking about?" They go, I
mean, that person, I gave them a $100
bill and they gave me a five and I want
my money back. And I said, well, who
said it was your money?
And I said, who said the game was over,
right? And I said, and the real lesson
is if a $100 stress you out and you're
going to be an investor, you're going to
lose. The greatest investors on earth
are not liars. They will tell you, I'm
going to lose. What I want to do is make
sure when I lose I don't lose very much
because I've got enough diversification
in what I'm doing. So people's got to
understand what their real feelings are
about things. And then the third element
that affects it is access to cash flow.
If you are making $100,000 a year and
spending 110, you don't have a lot of
extra cash flow. But if you're making
$100,000 a year and you're make saving,
you know, $50,000 of your money, yes,
you got more cash flow. We got a
business that's putting more cash than
you need it, you can take more risks,
>> right? So, how much you put in that
security bucket, how much you put in
that growth bucket. That's really a an
important philosophy because what
everybody does is they think they can
put in the security bucket and then
somebody goes, "Oh, Bitcoin." Somebody
goes, "Oh, AI, oh, something." And they
get I don't do I'll take my security
bucket and I'll put it over here in my
growth bucket. And then when I make the
money, I'll put it back over my security
bucket. What we do tell people is when
they grow in their growth bucket for
people like that, we say, "Take a third
and put it in your security bucket." So
it keeps growing even faster. Put a
third back. You can take a third and you
can use that for other forces that we
tal about as well as one example. But
it's a it's an individual process that
people need to make based on the
criteria that we just talked about.
>> What about on the other side? Someone
who has an abundance mindset like can
that make you a better investor or just
dangerously optimistic? Are you talking?
>> I've seen I've seen I've seen both. They
both seen both. I've seen both where
people are they think they're
bulletproof and so they're just fearless
and they make investments with no fear
about the downside and it ends up
working out for them which is usually
the most expensive thing that can happen
because then they believe that's going
to happen every time just
>> oh they're lost in the source.
>> Yeah. They're totally I mean somebody
gets blackjacked the first time they sit
at the table. I mean they're to I'm a
genius. Exactly.
>> I'll give you a perfect example. I have
a friend, true story, who uh went
through my programs, my business
programs, and he uh bought a taxi top
business in San Francisco and he was one
of the first people take it digital. Pre
previous to that, the only things
advertised was tobacco and you know,
naked bars and things of that nature.
Now he was doing movies and everything
else. Well, he built it up and sold the
thing for $200 million to big
advertising firm. And so I said to him,
I said, "How much are you going to put
in your security bucket out of that? How
much are you going to put back in your
growth bucket?" He goes, "Tony, I give
you so much credit. I tell everybody, I
made $200 million based on everything
you taught how to grow a business.
That's the only thing. It's like I don't
need a security bucket." He goes, "I'm
going to make these new investments. I'm
going to Vegas." And he he started
buying advertising space in the air
above spices in advance. It was actually
a very brilliant strategy. And he goes,
"I'm going to be a billionaire." I said,
"I bet you will." I said, "You got to
take a little bit off the table cuz if
you're going to Vegas, that should be
the first lesson, but then you take a
little off the table." He goes, "Donnie,
I love you dearly. I'm not doing that."
So, sure enough, he calls me up about 3
years later. He goes, "I'm making a
killing on some of that advertising. I'm
doing so great. Now, this is 2006." He
goes, "Now I'm building buildings in
Vegas condos and I got," he told me the
names of the celebrities. I won't
mention it. So, his name stays private.
And he goes, "I got these celebrities
in." And he goes, "I so I'm going to
sell out this first building up front
using everybody else's money just like
Donald Trump, like everybody else." He
goes, "I'm going to be worth $600
million." I said, "I'm proud of you. How
much are you going to take for your
security back? I have the same
conversation with him, right? He goes,
you just don't give up. I said, you know
why? I've talked about this for 30 years
and I meet people come back 20 years
later, 10 years later and say, "Holy
[ __ ] I wish I would have listened." He
goes, "Tony, I'm doing great." End of
the story. 2008, real estate in Las
Vegas drops 70%.
70%.
Right?
I talked to him. The second tower,
everybody wants their money back. People
walk away from it. The second tower is
there. He's upside down. $400 million
trying to avoid bankruptcy. I'm not
mentioning his name because he says you
could share my story, but I don't want
any more lawsuits. He's starting all
over and all because he just didn't
understand this basic piece. So the
answer to your question is most people,
it's a mistake. The smartest people who
take risks are doing an asymmetrical
riskreward.
>> Where do I have the least amount of risk
with the greatest amount of upside?
That's what makes people wealthy. That's
the discipline that makes them wealthy.
>> Well, and the the the abundance mindset
is great because it means they're also
not living in fear and they're not, you
know, afraid of taking risk. So, we've
had a saying for 25 years of our firm,
what's the worst case scenario? If we
can live with that, the upside will take
care of itself. We have an abundance
mindset. When we invested in ICON, we
knew that it could very well go to zero.
And we were willing to take that risk
because we knew that if it worked, it
could be completely game-changing, not
only investment wise, but also for
society. That is the reason why we could
do that is because we had an abundance
mindset. But we always respect risk and
we're always afraid of not respecting
risk because we know that risk will just
whack you upside the head if you don't
respect it.
>> And when Christopher and I as a
partnership, it's really nice because I
see the opportunity, he sees the risk.
So
>> I'm the skeptic. the yin and the yang.
>> But it's but it's so perfect, right? We
bring things together to each other.
He'll look at how many will we look at
in a year now? It's more now.
>> It's over 2,000 investments a year.
>> And out of that, we'll make
>> maybe 20 or 30 in in a typical year.
>> Have 2,000 opportunities, many of which
are extraordinary. But that's why
there's a 96% profit ratio of all
investments over 25 years. So, you have
to have that kind of discipline.
>> The supplement industry is full of
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n.com/modernwisdom
and modern wisdom at checkout. How do
you think about uh taking some off the
table for you to use in your life? I'm
aware that much of this is what's your
personal tolerance for risk and how much
do you need and so on and so forth, but
there's a certain archetype of of person
and Bill Perkins wrote a book about this
die with zero which which is [ __ ]
fantastic. Uh there is a certain
archetype, the sort of more misery
person, maybe there's someone that
didn't come from money, but as opposed
to I now have it, I'll blow it, it's I
now have it and I'm terrified of losing
it. How do you think about advising
people who are investing in the market?
It's like, all right, you've done well.
It's time for you to actually take some
of this.
>> This is so personally critical. I teach
this. I kind of alluded to it. I said
two buckets. There's a third bucket. I
call it your dream bucket. And what I
have people do is the dream bucket is
all the things you call investments that
really aren't, but they make you feel
good.
>> Like a hyperbaric oxygen chamber.
>> Yes. Like hyperaric oxygen chamber. Like
that SP3 Ferrari that you know, maybe it
goes up from 3 million to 5 million.
Maybe it goes down.
that you want.
>> Yeah. It's your it's your jet. It's your
island. It's those things or it's a
little condo that you have, you know,
depending where your economics are. Um
it's $50,000 of walking around money.
It's what you do for jewelry. It's those
things. And I have people create those.
And the reason I create those is if you
don't enjoy it along the way, most
people if they own a business, they
learn how to create more when they
experience more joy from what they're
doing as well. But we keep the same
disciplines, but instead of only having
those two buckets, we'll say when you
have a big hit, put a little piece in
your dream bucket as well. Or you get a
big growth expansion on your growth
bucket, put a third in your security,
put a third back to reinvest and put a
third in your dream bucket.
>> And so what happens is I find people,
different types of people, that type of
person gets excited. Like I fortunately
was around some brilliant people. Peter
Gubber, one of my dearest friends in the
world for the last 35 years. I mean he
is a lifestyle guy and like he got me
I'll never forget I was 30 years old he
invited me to come to his place in Aspen
a thousand acre ranch in Aspen to give
you a sense of the valley
>> quite uh highly sought after real estate
>> $100 million for five acres right it to
give you an idea that's just like
>> so I go to his ranch and and I'm talking
to him and he calls me up he says you
got to come to this meeting and I'm not
a networker if I can't add value I don't
want to just go talk about stuff right
goes Tony the most influential people
I'm telling you I need to put you in
front of these people proximities power
come comes. So I lived in San Diego. So
I fly to LA, right? Cuz that's the first
leg. Then I fly to Denver. Then I fly
from Denver to Aspen. They lose my
luggage in Denver. And I get to Aspen.
By the time I'm done, it takes 9 hours
to get there. I arrive as the dinner's
ending
>> with no clothes.
>> With no clothes with clothes on my back.
And Peter said, "What the f is wrong
with me? What? What?" I said, "What are
you talking about, Peter? I've got here.
I left at 6:00 7 this morning. I went
from here to there." Then he goes, "You
flo."
And I said, "Peter, I'm not a
billionaire like you." He goes, "Are you
an idiot? You don't need to be a
billionaire. You could charter and be
here in 2 hours." He said, "You got to
buy some crappy little get a Lejet. Get
it's 2500 bucks an hour. For 5,000
bucks, you'd be here and another 5,000
buck." I $10,000. And my ticket was only
1,200. Yeah. And you weren't here. And
he goes, "You should come up with a
budget. The amount of hours you fly per
year, you should come up with a budget
and just charter. You don't need to own
a plane."
>> He said, "It will transform your life."
And so I still didn't do it. And one
night I was doing an event in Los
Angeles and two events had collided.
Somebody screwed up on the schedule. I
finished at 1:00 in the morning. I got
to be in Edmonton Edmonton, Alberta the
next morning at 8:30 for 5,000 people
and there are no flights. So I said, and
I am I need sleep. I've been going on
for four straight days, 12 hours a day.
So I called my team. I said, "You got to
find a jet. Find the cheapest, smallest
little jet, whatever you got to do." And
I said, "I got to They go, "Tony,
there's no room to sleep in one of those
things." I said, "If I was dying, if I
was dead, what would you do? You'd put
me on a gurnie. Get a gurnie in that
thing." They go, "It'll never happen."
We pulled it off. I arrive there at 2 in
the morning. First time I'm on a private
jet. I climb in this little thing. It's
such a small jet. I can touch the
captain, right? I strap into this thing.
We lift off. We turn an angle. We look
down at Santa Monica Bay. I look up at
the moon. I'm all strapped in. I fall
asleep for 4 hours. I get up. I'm on
stage in time. I do the event. I go,
"This is the way to live." So, it
changed things. It changed my ideas
like, "Okay, I'm doing all this
business. Most of that is half right off
anyway. Here's what the real dollars are
and I figured out how to earn more." So,
there's a mindset that comes if you
experience a certain lifestyle. If you
have ever had the privilege of someone
else cleaning your toilets and you don't
like that, you probably won't do that
again. You'll probably find someone
who's really good at that, enjoys that,
and provide them an income and give
yourself freedom to do something else.
Having lifestyle is critical, I believe.
But it's different for everybody. Some
people miser, but you know, it's like um
there's a there's a story about this
this couple that saved all their money
and they went on this little trip. You
know, they've saved up forever and they
didn't want to spend their money and
they go on this cruise and but they
bring cheese and crackers cuz they don't
want to spend any extra money. And so
every day they go on the trip, they meet
everybody and at the end of the day they
go have their cheese and crackers and on
the last day they finally said, "Look,
let's just splurge." Cuz you know in
these trips they have these huge amounts
of food and desserts and they whip for
everything and they got the wine
everything else and then they ask for
the check at the end and you know how
the story ends, right?
>> It's all inclusive.
>> Comes goes all inclusive. It came with a
trip
>> and they look at each other and go this
is how we've been living our lives.
That's how most people live their lives.
They're so miserly. What'll make you do
that more is if you actually get into
giving. Because one of the things that
made me grow more than anything else was
when I started to tithe. Cuz I
interviewed uh multiple people, but I
read interviewed uh umh Templeton. And
at the time, you know, he was the first
billionaire investor. He was a brilliant
man, such a good-hearted guy. I met him
multiple times, interviewed him, and he
said, "Tony," I asked him, "What's the
secret to wealth?" He said, "You teach
it." I said, 'Well, I teach a lot of
things, which is, he goes, it's
gratitude. If you're grateful about
anything, you're going to be rich. If
you have a billion dollars and you're
not grateful, you're unhappy. If you got
three beautiful kids and a wife, you're
not grateful, you don't have a life.
Gratitude is a secret. But he said, I
will tell you this. If you really want
to be wealthy, I don't know anyone who's
tithed at least 10%. Doesn't have to be
to to a religion, to something for more
than a decade that didn't become
incredibly wealthy. So, I'm proud to say
I've done 17%. I've gone way above my my
pay grade, but the rewards for me have
been unbelievable. And I I started out
feeding two families. Then I figured I
was about 12 for 2014. I said I found
out in 37 years I'd fed at that point 42
million people. It was pretty exciting.
But I was like, what if I fed that many
people in one year? What if I fed a 100
million people in a year? What if I had
100 people a million people a year for
10 straight years? A billion meals. And
I teamed up Feeding America to deliver
the food. And I did in eight years. And
when I started it seemed impossible.
Then I said, I'm going to do a hundred
billion meals around the world because I
travel around the world. You see people
starving, right? And I recruited uh
Governor Beasley who's the head of the
UN of the World Food Program. He won the
Nobel Prize. But when he started, there
were 85 million people starving. Now
there's 385 million people. I said,
"We'll put together a strike force.
We'll do this better, but we're going to
make it measurable." I said, like,
what's the number of meals we need for
the next 10 years to be able to feed
most people in the world? And then
during those 10 years, we got to find
the sustainable solution because you
can't do charity forever. He goes,
"Tony, I don't know, 40, 50, 60 billion
meals." I said, "We'll do a hundred
billion meal challenge for the 10
years." He goes, "Tony, you're never
going to get 100 billion meals." I said,
"I did a billion meals. I wasn't a
billionaire when I started. I've been
blessed. When you bless others, you get
blessed." And I said, "If there's at
least 99 poor people like me." So, we
went to the Forbes um you know,
philanthropy event. I brought him to
speak. He's amazing. I spoke, people
were in tears. I thought we're going to
get 50 out of the 100. We're going to do
half of right here. Five people signed
up. But in the last four years by
changing our approach, I started this
year at 62 billion meals. Right now, I
have commitments for 295
billion meals in four years and 63
billion have already been delivered. So
scaling that has changed things. I said,
you know, I I'm a private I have a
private jet. It burns fuel. I don't want
to be in congruent. How do I replace
more than what I put out here? I burn
5,000 trees a year. Guess what? I plant
100 million trees. I not only just plant
with them, but then showed the people
there how to build crops every single
month and built a forest farm for them
in West Africa. Programmed this there.
We my wife and I have like saw what's
happening to some friends of ours, some
trafficking that happened of children.
No one wants to talk about it. So, I set
a goal. I said, "We're going to free
30,000 children." I went on on one of
these missions myself undercover with
scars all over my face. It was most
horrific thing I've ever done.
>> I do not want to be faced by you in a
dark alley.
>> Well, you want to be faced by the people
I dealt with in that dark alley. But I
had with with a group of SEAL team six
guys that are brilliant. Was an
undercover operation.
>> Something I'll never forget as long as I
live. But when those kids were freed, it
was one of the greatest gifts of my
life. So we've now freed over a 100,000
children and uh I've got a target of a
million. When those are your goals, you
build businesses a different way. That's
why now I'm doing $22 billion miss. I
wasn't doing numbers like that before. I
didn't have all these companies. It's
like I have a higher purpose in building
them. All those businesses serve people.
They provide things that are
life-changing in terms of value for
people. They provide jobs. But in
addition to all that, I have a higher
purpose in what I'm doing. That will
make you earn more, grow more, expand
more, find answers you never found
before. It It's like you need something
compelling. If all you're trying to do
is make a living or just cover your
overhead, you're never going to find the
answers, you're never going to push
yourself to discover what's possible.
>> Or if the only reason that you're
earning money is to reinvest the money,
to never actually take it out, to never
actually inve.
>> What do you think beyond the giving
thing, which I know is probably the
high, oddly enough, being selfless is
the most selfish thing that you can do.
>> You get the most reward possible. Beyond
that, what do you think for a normal
person who's maybe not quite at we're
going to fix world hunger or or buy a
jet? What are some of the areas where
people can derive a lot of satisfaction,
joy in life from spending money?
Someone's being responsible. They're
maybe doing some of the investment.
They've got their one-/ird and 1/3 that
third third. What's a what are some of
the places that you think, hey, this is
somewhere that you really should look at
spending money to improve your quality
of life that people might not think
about from from the getgo?
>> I still think here's what I want to say.
I have I have a friend that was on an
airplane recently. I'm not even 45 44
years and someone was reading one of my
books and he said, you know, he always
lets what do you think of the book? Oh,
it was my my energy book, right, about
your body and it's unbelievable and the
stem cells and all these things and and
you know, and he said, what do you think
of the author? He goes, well, he's a
really good guy. He donated 100% of the
book. Watch by way we've done that with
Holy Grail Investing, too. We don't take
a dime. We give it all to Feeding
America. And he says, "That's really
cool." He goes, "But you know, he's
rich, so it must be easy." And my friend
Mike says to his, his name's Mike Keys.
He said, "What if I told you I've known
Tony for 45 years, and I known him when
he was 17 and he had $20 in his pocket,
and he didn't know where his next meal
is going to give, and he gave half to
the guy on the street that was begging
for it. And Tony taught me something
then. If you don't give a dime out of a
dollar, you're never going to give 10
million out of 100 million.
The first place you should start is
giving. I have a friend that started out
feeding two or three people. He's he's
had a million he's had a million people
now in the last 10 years that come on
this little trip with me just finding
little ways to help and make a
difference. So you can start small and
do things. And in terms of what are the
things that people do that go in their
dream bucket besides contribution,
>> it's usually like little things. If you
are at Starbucks and they've proven this
because they can measure what happens
now with the secretions in your mouth,
the hormone changes, nothing comes
close. The three things that give you
the most joy are number one,
experiences. Experiences are more than
any toy or asset cuz those we get used
to. But if you create experiences,
people remember them. The second thing
though is giving to someone else. If you
go and you buy the next five people or
10 people at Starbucks their coffee you
don't even know the transformation in
your biochemistry the level of internal
joy that people carry is greater than
people that spend millions of dollars on
something that are doing it for
positioning purposes like oh I gave this
money to charity type of thing. You can
see a change in that area. Then what
people do that gives them joy is all the
little things. It could be just you know
doing something special for your kids.
It can be saying we're going to do a
first class ticket to Europe this time
instead of a a coach class just for this
element. We're going to upscale
something in our life that feels like a
greater quality of life and brings us
joy. If that joy and pleasure is there,
you're going to have the desire to
invest more, grow more, expand more, be
be masterful in this area of your life.
>> It's really interesting to think about
the positive reward that people get from
investing their money that nobody ever
actually ends up withdrawing to improve
their quality of life. I'm just
continuing to put money in, continuing
to put money in and never paying it back
down. I think a few areas that people
would probably be surprised. Uh getting
a a maid or a cleaner for your house is
>> 100%
somebody to do the gardening. Some
people like the gardening, some people
think that it is hell. Uh those it is
>> one of the first places that you can do
not just what is it that I want, what is
it that I don't enjoy doing and how is
that sapping
>> and what could give me and what gives me
more time. Yes. Cuz probably the most
scarce thing for human beings to outside
of money is time.
>> Yeah.
>> Right. Because now so much of our time
we allowed to control. I mean we used to
spend 6 hours on screens then you know
people are stuck at home during co it
went to 13 hours and it has not gone
back. People walking down the street
staring at it. So it's not that we have
less time. It's just that we allow
everything else to engage us.
>> And if you can free up time with a small
amount of money it gives you a totally
different experience in the quality of
your life. The other thing that's a
beautiful thing about that is it's not
just the time that somebody gets. It's
the opportunity that it creates.
>> So being able to allow someone else to
be able to earn a living, to be able to
do what they're really good at, what
they enjoy, what's positive flow for
them, and at the same time is also
rewarding for us. That's a wonderful
thing to be able to do, to be able to
make memories for our family, to be able
to make memories for friends, to be able
to give them things that they might not
ever be able to do on their own. And it
doesn't have to be expensive, but to be
creative. So certainly for somebody
who's an investor and they've done well
to be able to harvest some of that and
go, you know what, this was well-earned,
I'm going to make sure that I pay it
back either through charitable
contribution or through making memories
for friends or family or to be able to
provide opportunity for other people to
earn a living and to be able to feed
their family. Whatever that may be, that
why, and I'll quote him, the bigger the
why, the harder we try. Ultimately that
is what delivers happiness for people
when they are looking at something that
is just a nebular number and keeping
score. It has to be for a purpose. That
purpose is what ultimately cause causes
them to not only make good decisions but
also to have staying power to go this is
worth it. It's
>> interesting right? Money is a number on
a spreadsheet or a number on your bank
balance on your phone and it's only when
you actually end up trading it in for
something in the real world that it
becomes anything. It's just a number. It
doesn't. And it could be like you could
look at it as dollars, but it could be
hyperinflation South Africa money if you
didn't know because until you end up
trading it in, the number is kind of
arbitrary.
>> Yeah. It doesn't make any difference. A
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That's drinklnt.com/modern
wisdom. Okay. You mentioned about AI
earlier on. What are the how are you
thinking about AI as a future and what
are the opportunities in AI that people
aren't seeing at the moment?
>> Well, we invested in anthropic and chat
GBT. I mean anthropic when in 2025 start
at a billion went to 10 and now by April
it was 44 billion this year. There's
been nothing like it. It's unbelievable.
But I think there it's important to
understand the thesis for investing. You
know I asked most people if I said to
you in the next 10 years do you believe
there'll be more change to humanity than
in the history of all of humanity? What
would you say?
>> Depends how RSI goes. Maybe. Maybe.
>> Yeah. Most people would say yes because
I've asked mill not millions tens of
thousands of people. Then I say to them
it's like what if I have a 10-y year
goal to feed a billion people? It
doesn't mean anything unless you pull it
to here and they say like what does that
mean this year? Oh I fed 42 million
people in 37 years. I got to do 100
million this year to get to a billion.
That calls you to action. So what I've
been doing with people is saying, "So
what if I told you in the next 36 months
there'll be as much change as probably
you've ever experienced in your lifetime
for humanity." Almost everybody agrees,
especially when you point out three
things. AGI, we'll have AGI in the next
36 months. Some people would argue we
already have it. That means one agent
has more power in one category,
chemistry, mathematics, whatever it is,
than any human being. Pretty much there.
Ray Kurszswwell predicted that this
would happen and uh and 90 you know that
we'd have this within three years of now
back in 1990 right um and he's now I
interviewed him the other day and he
said I was conservative it's going to
happen sooner in five to six years we'll
have super intelligence that means one
agent will have the power of all human
minds combined when that happens the
world changes so radically second piece
quantum I was just with a vice chairman
of IBM and we were talking about AI and
I said I'm concerned that look there's
people there's no safety because
everybody's going for the trillion
dollar target and if they don't do it
there's the stick of China taking over
right so there's not a look at this he
goes well if you're concerned about that
be more concerned about quantum he said
because quantum whoever gets quantum
first can basically make the other
military defunct we don't have to even
have the missiles we can get their codes
and fire things off with all encryption
>> he said it's and I and you we've all
been here in quantum is 15 years 70 he
said when I asked him when's it going to
happen he goes between us and and and
Google, we're the two drivers. China's a
little bit behind, but not much. He said
it's critically important. 36 months,
you know, you go over and you see uh if
you've been up to um to see Brett Adcock
and his group up there at Figure AI, you
walk in this building and it is like
you're in the future. There's nothing
but robots everywhere doing everything.
Not robots like you see in China, you
know, they're robotic and they do karate
and you know, they're running a program.
thinking robots that make things happen.
It's happening right now as we speak. So
all of this is happening now. Maybe it's
more than 36 months on the robots
probably for some of them, but at some
point there'll be more robots than
humans, right? Between him and Elon. You
can guess that for sure. Not to mention
what China's doing. So we're living in a
time where there'll be more change than
any time in history. So you have to say,
what does that do to me? I look at my
thesis and say that means if you don't
have agents as a company in the next 36
months your chances of competing are
quite small. They're not getting
implemented right now because there's a
fear level. 60% of you most CEOs think
the AI is going to be the greatest thing
in the world. But if you see what
Microsoft just talked about 94% of these
AI projects never get integrated. That's
why they're not producing them. And yet
the ones that do it disrupts it. You
heard all the frontier companies were
all talking about, hey, you know, it's
going to disrupt jobs. You got to be
prepared. And that didn't go real well.
So now they're going to create more
jobs. They are right. They will create
more jobs, but in the time period
they're going to disrupt those smaller
jobs. And that's a mass number of
people. They're going to need
reskilling. So I look and go, we want to
be in the position of helping companies
bring on agents, not to replace people,
>> to empower them.
>> The way we get it, we I'm working with
Salesforce. We've just now we had the
people out here from uh the UAE because
they want to make their entire
government agentic. And so we're working
with them. The reason they're working
with us is we have a different approach.
Our approach is we don't put some giant
AI in the sky where you put everything
there because if something breaks down,
you don't know what caused it. We create
these micro little AIs and what we do is
we look at people's workflow and you
find out that 60% of what people do is
busy work. And so they don't like busy
work, but they're caught up in it. Your
head of marketing is making a PDF. I
mean, what what the hell are you doing?
Right? So, now what we do is we give
them an agent that is their assistant.
We have a scanning device that shows all
of where they spend the work. It shows
it and you put them to work. It doesn't
replace your job. It makes you more
powerful. That's a way of integrating.
We got to reskill a mass number of
Americans. That's a whole another
element, not only America, but the rest
of the world. And then we got to get
people prepared for a world of
uncertainty. Most of us have been living
with rented certainty. The certainty,
what I mean by rented is we're certain
because we have a certain job, we have a
certain income, we have a certain
family, we have a certain way of being.
All that goes away when your house burns
down or when all of a sudden you lose
your job or when all of a sudden
somebody in the family gets injured or
hurt or there's a disease or something
of that nature. Well, we're going to see
that certainty shattered by the pace of
change. And so we have to prepare people
for that. So myself, I look at this as a
triangle of impact. So I'm in the
business of bringing companies to
Gentic. I'm doing it with Salesforce.
I'm actually doing the integration for
them at their upcoming event in
September here. I'm working on getting
people debt-free college education. We
have a company now that's we're one of
the biggest problems is how do you
reskill people rapidly? Well,
traditionally you try to teach a mass
number of people and not many people
have the skill as a teacher to do that.
So you get one sigma improvement if you
can make the class size small. There's
always been the two sigma problem that
we've known for 40 years, and that is
you take an average student and give
them one-on-one mentoring, they
outproduce 98% of the class, but it's
been too expensive. But with Aentic AI,
now we have it. So, we take people now
that just lost their jobs. We give them
a guaranteed new skills, new life, no
debt. Do you know what the largest debt
in America is? Mortgage. You know what
the number two is? Student debt. $1.8
trillion dollar of student debt. A
4-year college education takes on
average 20 years to pay off. President
Obama when he was a senator was still
paying off some of his college debt
right before he ran for president to
give you an idea. So, we're going to
create a solution in that area. And then
I'm working with the guys that built
calm, if you remember Calm, the largest
app in the world for meditation. These
guys built it and sold it for billion
and a half, I think it was. I sat down
with them and said, "Listen, we need
more therapists." And even if you're the
best therapist in the world, there
aren't enough. And people are now going
to ChatgBT and I'm sure you saw there's
all these lawsuits. 1.3 million people a
week asked Chad GBT about suicide. The
other day there's another article about
a woman who committed suicide and the
Chad GT not only explained how to do it
but it wrote her suicide note. Right?
These are made for sick fancy. They're
designed to keep you online talking.
They're not designed to actually help
you to change. So I built something with
them where we have now technology that
reads your micro expressions. So you're
on screen. It see every emotion you're
feeling. It's not just an LLM and it has
auditory elements. Was spent $30 million
spent to identify what auditory elements
mean and what emotions you're having. So
if you and I are sitting here and I say
how's it going? You go fine or you go
fine or you go fine. The LM just sees
fine. But you and I see something
completely different. So we can
interact. And if it's something that's
suicidal, moves it up to 988. So think
about this. There's 11 million veterans
in this country. We have 2,000
therapists for them. It takes four
months to see one. Most veterans don't
want to talk to a therapist. They don't
want to talk to a female therapist. They
find a lot of male guys don't. It's if
it makes them feel weak. They're not
going to go spend 4 months and 17 are
killing himself every day for 90% less
money. We can be there 24/7 365 helping
them with something that's proven and
has a track record. So I think you have
to have a thesis like what's happening
in the world and where is it going? Just
like the thesis of there's going to be
5% more spending of of the GDP of all
these countries, then that means you
probably should be looking at something
in the military side if you want to have
a growth investment. What's your thesis
for investing? That's mine for where I'm
putting my primary time in energy, but
we have a series of thesis of where you
can make a difference. And so you might
even touch on some of the other areas
like energy. Well, I mean, when you
think about the world of AI, it's
touching every aspect of it. But one of
the things that is absolutely incumbent
is you have to have energy to be able to
power it. If you don't have enough
energy, you don't have the ability to do
AI of any type, any form, any substance.
And everybody's talking about that with
data centers, but no one really wants to
admit how far behind the production of
energy we are. And to be very clear,
we're for all kinds of energy from
traditional to sustainable to
transitional, whatever you want to call
it. We're going to need all of the above
in order to be able to meet the enormous
demand growth. That's not just coming
from AI. It's coming from the fact that
billions of people are moving up in
their economic situation. When somebody
goes from lower income to middle income,
they want a lot more power and a lot
more energy. When somebody goes from
middle income to higher income, they
consume a lot more energy. So all of it
is the same growth curve as far as
demand, but what's not changed is supply
and the amount of supply that's out
there is basically flatlining or growing
very very little. Those lines are
expected to cross in 2028 where we will
literally not have as much power as we
need to be able to meet all the demand.
You're talking about the data centers
alone in this country will consume more
power than all of New York City. just
the data centers than that one city in
literally three years to five years.
That is something that we have to meet
the demand of. But again, it's not just
data centers. So we don't want to
demonize data centers. It's the
consumption of AI. And obviously if the
United States is going to compete in the
world of AI, the AI arms race, if you
will, then we have to have the power to
do it because I assure you that China
and other countries are going to be
putting all the demand uh all the supply
out there that they need to be able to
meet the AI demand.
>> There's we need 50% more energy by 2035.
50% more than we're doing right now. So
that means we got to use all forms of
energy. And energy because of the way
we've approached it recently has been a
tremendous opportunity. give a sense of
what kind of changes we've seen.
>> Well, I mean, we've seen to where there
were so many people chasing energy as an
investment asset class to where people
decided for reasons that they have the
freedom to decide that they didn't want
to invest in fossil fuels and
traditional energy. So, we have a very
simple metric that we follow called the
reserve replacement ratio. And in the
book, we talk about it. You know,
anybody who's been a teenager or had a
teenager, if they know that the milk is
full at the beginning of the day, if
they don't go buy more milk, by the end
of the day, it's going to be less full,
right? And eventually they're going to
run out of milk. Well, that's exactly
what it is with energy because this
stuff doesn't last forever. It depletes.
It goes away, just like the milk carton.
So, somebody has to go replenish the
milk. And so far in this decade, for
every one unit of energy that we're
consuming, we're only replacing 0.2 two
of that energy. So we're consuming at
five times faster the rate than what
we're creating new energy. And it's not
like you can flip a switch. It takes
years to get major energy resources
online. So we are way behind and
unfortunately that's going to cross
which creates the opportunity to where
you know as an example in some cases
because there's just not that many
people investing in it. We're able to
buy things at three times cash flow or
four times cash flow and we've seen
enormous returns because we're willing
to invest all across the energy spectrum
and that includes nuclear and other
places where there's great opportunity
but it's going to take all of it and
those that provide the capital are going
to be very well rewarded for doing so.
>> I want to mention just to catch back
also that anybody who's in a position
like I have a the brother-in-law that's
60 years old. He's a software engineer.
Uh, you know, uh, the Gary, gentleman
who's the vice chairman of IBM told me
his daughter was crunching code and used
to get a million dollars for a 9-month
project cuz she's one of the best in the
world to crunch code. Now it's done by
an agent in 4 days for free. She doesn't
have a job, but she's pregnant, so she
has a future and they have money, so
he's not worried about her. But people
are being disrupted. The biggest
challenge is how do they get
re-educated? So, we have an ability to
do this. And if they go to
unitedcolges.org,
united colleges.org, they can apply and
see what type of jobs are actually out
there in demand, what professions they
could tap into to retool themsel, and
they can do it at their own tempo with
an agent that knows everything about
you, knows you love soccer, teaches you
how to do that, adapts to your training
capacity, and gives you that skill. So,
I just want to plant that seed for
people because so many people are being
disrupted. Guy's 60 years old. He walks
in, 650 people are let go that morning.
He's one of them. Been with the company
25 years. No economic plan to back him
up. No back no severance. And guess
what? They took the whole thing of
Gentic, sold to a Swedish company. He's
got two kids in college. He's got a a
wife that's a substitute teacher, makes
$30,000 a year, and he's got a mortgage.
What's he going to do? He can't go try
and get some new education at that and
pay for that piece and go further in
debt. So, we're solving that aspect to
give you an idea. So while there's
opportunity everywhere, disruption still
means if you retool yourself, you can
take advantage. Anybody can still do
well in this world. People say, you
know, is it possible really to do well
financially? Is the game rigged? The
game is still a game you can absolutely
win. But you got to learn and you got to
take a little bit of time to understand
what's possible. and you'd at least give
yourself a short period of time where
you say, I'm going to find a
diversification of 8 to 12 uncorrelated
assets and reduce my risk 80% while I'm
working on my job or my career or
whatever it else I'm doing. So that's my
other business that's going to protect
me cuz social security at this point is
not probably going to be enough for
anybody if it's even here later on for
people to have a quality of life that
they need.
>> It seems like there's a lot of change
happening in the world and that means
that people are going to get scared.
Lots of people get stuck thinking and
overthinking a decision. They spend so
much time worrying about what decision
to make that their life sort of turns
into a relationship with the internal
drama of the decision itself. Obviously,
you've spent a lot of time thinking
about human psychology, human nature,
and behavior. Have you got a framework
inside of finance or outside of it
generally in life for becoming better at
the decision-m process? How do you think
about making decisions?
>> I have a very specific process. Um, it
takes a little time to explain, but it
here's its essence. The most important
thing in decision-m is value
clarification. When you know what's most
important to you, you can make a
decision. Most people are trying to hit
multiple targets at once. I want to do
this and if I do that, it'll work. What
if I do that, but then that works, but
what if I do? And they do it in their
head. So, the first piece is it's got to
be done on your computer on paper
outside your head. You got to start with
I call it OCMR. Real quick, O is you
start with the outcomes. What are the
outcomes? What do I what am I want from
this decision? What's the most? And then
you got to rate them in order of
importance. They're not all equal. I
want a job that's going to do this,
this, and this. Okay. Well, is it the
money the most important? Is it the
lifestyle that's most important? Is it
the quality of who you're going to be
around? You have to rate the importance
cuz you may not get them all equally. We
want to make sure what's most important
to you get. Once I do the outcomes
clearly, now I need to know what are my
options. And the delusion is one choice
is no choice. Two choices is a dilemma.
There's at least three choices always.
And if you live that principle, you'll
find it. When you usually get three,
you'll find four or five. And I get
people to come up with options they
haven't thought of before. Go, okay,
don't judge them yet. Right? So outcomes
O okay, what are my options? C, what are
the consequences? So now I look at each
option and say, okay, what's the upside
or downside of each one? And I make the
list in paper, not in my head. You know,
I have a actually computer program I
designed for this. And so now I can see
upsides, downsides. Okay, I've done half
of it. Now, EMR, now I need to evaluate.
I need to evaluate. Okay, there's this
upside and the downside, but what's the
probability of it happening? Like you
might say, oh, I could lose everything.
Okay, but what's the probability? Or,
oh, I'll make a billion, but what's the
probability? Is it 90%, 10%, 5%. That
starts for you to really evaluate what
your better options are. And now what'll
happen is some of those options will be
clear to you. They don't make sense. So,
the M is mitigate. I might end up with
two or three options here and I go,
"Okay, well, how do I get the best of
this one and this one? What could I do
to combine them? There's a new way to do
this." And I teach that process. And
then the R is resolve. O O C EMR. The
resolve. This is what I'm going to do.
Because in the end, everybody wants to
make a decision they're certain about.
This will get you about as certain as
you can get, but at the same time, there
is no absolute certainty. I mean, if
you're a leader, you're paid for making
difficult decisions. I'm I was with
General Schwarzkoff years ago when the
first you know that's how old I am the
first uh war we had in the Middle East
there and and when we're dealing with
Saddam and um he was brilliant and I
asked him because he was very decisive
guy and I asked him you know how is it
you make the tough decisions and he said
when I was a private he goes I worked
for a general and this general was a
tough guy he was a four-star general and
he said one day they found out that
there had been a decision that the
Pentagon had struggled with for 20 years
a very giant strategic decision and the
general was finally going to make the
decision what to happen. So they sent
reams of binders of information in to
have him evaluate and 4 days before
they're getting all this and there's an
army he said of like five people helping
to organize this for the general and
summarize it. The general had to fly
overseas and he didn't get back till the
night before. So he said, "General, we
got to cancel the meeting. You're not
prepared." He goes, "No, the meeting
goes forward 8:30 in the morning." shows
up at 8:30 in the morning and he's
freaked out. It's like there's no way
the general knows enough to make this
decision. General says, "Okay, give me
what you got. You have 15 minutes." They
go, they give this incredible. Tell me
your side. Give me 15 minutes. Soon as
it was done, he stood up and he said,
"That's what we're doing." Everybody
stood up, saluted the general. This is a
decision that I've been made for 10
years. Really strategic decision. So
Schwartzkoff tells me, he said, "He's
freaking out inside." So when everybody
leaves, he goes and knocks on the
general's door and says, "Permission to
speak openly." Said, "At ease?" Goes,
"General, I'm your chief of staff here.
There's no way you know enough
information to make this decision. You
You mean there's rooms more of
information for you to know?" He said,
"Yes." He said, "How could you make that
decision?" He said, "Cuz the decision
needed to be made. No one's done it for
10 years. I got enough information to
make a decision. I made one. Now, if
we're wrong, I'm going to find out
quicker because we're going to do
something. And if we're right, we're
going to move forward.
He goes, "I never forgot that." He said,
' Then I got one more lesson from him.
One time gentleman was leaving again and
he said, 'You're in charge. I'm going to
be on for 10 days. Make whatever
decisions are necessary. And he's
freaking out. He's surprised. He goes,
"Well, but but sir, but sir, like
why do I don't know what to do?" He
goes, "When you come put in command,
take charge." He said, "Rule 13." He
goes, "What's rule 13?" "Put in command,
take charge." He's leaving goes, "Sir,
but but I don't know what to do." He
said, ' Rule 14. What's rule 14? He
goes, 'd do what's right. Do what's
right. You know, you build
decision-making muscles by making more
decisions. Some people have a hard time
deciding what they're having for dinner.
You've been with somebody and everybody
else is order and they still can't
decide. You know, they have weak
decision-m
>> decide.
>> And the more you decide, the stronger
you get. But this OCMR, knowing my
outcomes, because that's what it's
about. value clarification, knowing my
options, knowing the consequences,
evaluating probability, mitigating to
come up with a better solution, and
resolving, that's the six steps that I
use and teach people.
>> And every single thing he just talked
about applies to finances and investment
management 100%. So, if somebody doesn't
know what they're trying to achieve, are
they trying to make a 30% return or a 3%
return? If they don't know why that's
important, if they're not willing to
take the volatility that it takes and
they don't look at the probability
adjusted outcome of that investment,
then they can't make a good decision.
Which is why, going back to what I said
earlier, it's all about investing based
on percentages, not on dollars. If
somebody's like, uh, it's a million
dollars. That's a lot of money. It is a
lot of money and that you don't want to
lose it. But if it's 1% of your
portfolio and it goes to zero, that's
going to suck, but it's not going to be
fatal, right? So, it's a liberating and
it's freeing for somebody to be able to
be much more analytical, less emotional.
And every single professional investor
will say the same thing. Emotion is the
enemy to investment success. Period. So
you have to be clinical and you have to
remove the emotion and the only way to
do that is have a consistent process
that is based on percentages that say
okay if this happens I can live with it
and that worst case I can live with the
upside will take care of itself and all
of that applies exactly what Tony just
described.
>> Heck yeah boys. I appreciate both of
you. Where should people go to find out
more about what's going on?
>> So he he's got a whole lot of different
places you can go to. Ours is simple,
cazinvestments.com. That's where you can
learn everything about what we're doing
as a firm and obviously he's got all the
various things he's involved.
>> Robrobins.com and you can see any of the
businesses that we're involved in. And
we've got an event coming up shortly
here. We do only a few events a year
now. Really large ones. So we have
17,000 people here in Miami for 4 days
called Unleash Power Within. So if
anybody's interested in that, they can
reach out to us as well. Well, and I can
just tell you this, having gone through
the tape series in 1991 and not going to
my first, you know, opportunity to go to
a live event until 2013, don't wait that
long. Folks that like and and follow
Tony and have learned a lot from Tony,
go to a live event. It's completely
different than anything that you could
expect to do just through the tape. It
was life-changing for me and I know many
other people the same way.
>> What date is it? It's coming up in
November. I think it's uh fourth, fifth,
and sixth. Yes.
>> Yeah. Boys, I appreciate both of you.
Until next time,
>> thank you so much for having us. We
appreciate it.
>> With you again.
>> Thank you very much for tuning in. If
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