I put 70% of my portfolio in this ONE stock - Chris Camillo

Key Takeaway

Before the market prices in change, observe it. Chris Camillo turned $20,000 into $80 million by spotting trends before Wall Street does—watching TikTok comments, checking store shelves, and talking to clerks. His "observational investing" framework: detect change in technology or consumer behavior, connect it to companies that benefit, validate through alternative data sources, then exit when the information becomes public. You don't need to be a financial analyst. You need to pay attention to what's actually happening in the world around you.

Episode Overview

Chris Camillo, who generated $80 million from an initial $20,000 portfolio over 16 years, shares his "observational investing" methodology—a social arbitrage approach that focuses on detecting cultural and technological change before the broader market. He discusses specific trades like the Sphere venue and NeeDoh toys, explains how he built and sold a massive Pokémon convention business, and reveals why he ignores fundamentals and technicals in favor of pure information asymmetry.

Full Transcript

Transcript of I put 70% of my portfolio in this ONE stock - Chris Camillo from My First Million. Auto-generated from episode audio; may contain minor errors.

The world is still unsure about how this is going to play out. I'm not unsure. I'm willing to bet it all. What's up? Chris, good to see you again. Hey Shawn, how you doing, man? I'm good. So, we should start with a little a little intro. Sam, you weren't here last time Chris was on. Chris, can't you do like the the the simplest explanation of who you are, number one, and then number two is your kind of unique philosophy and unique strategy that you've used to buy and you know, buy and sell stocks to invest.

invest. invest. Yeah, I mean, I'm a reg- I'm a regular person. For most of my career, I've had a regular job. Uh I'm not a financial analyst. I'm not a technical trader. I hate all that stuff. I hate technicals. I hate fundamentals. I'm like most regular people, right? Like a normal guy with a normal job that was trying to break out, you know, try to find a future for myself cuz I realized that my job was capped like 99.9% of people in this world and you know, I started investing something I call observational investing or social arb investing, which is really all it is is trying to detect change in the world, whether it's change in technological development or change in culture, change in consumer behavior.

But, you're trying to detect change and you're trying to connect that change uh connect the dots to companies that would either benefit or be harmed by that change. So, you're and then you're investing in those companies. It's It's that simple. One of many of ways that you personally observe is through social media comments. comments. comments. Yeah, I mean, like think about it. Like, how do you observe change in the world the quickest? What do people do before they change their life? They talk about it, right?

Before you can see the evidence of it, they talk about it. If you are a developer and and you're changing the way that you develop software and you're you're adopting AI in your company, you're probably in Reddit forums with other developers speaking about it. [snorts] [snorts] [snorts] And it's not always tech. A lot of it is just consumer behavior, right? Because I remember you had one that was around the Sphere, which most people don't even realize that's the big the big dome in Vegas, the Sphere.

It's a publicly traded stock and I think you noticed what was it that Wizard of Oz? You were like, "Dude, this Wizard of Oz show Yeah, game game game-changer. Right? They didn't quite nail product market fit at the Sphere until that Wizard of Oz came out and they're like, "Oh, take an old movie, movie, movie, use AI to make it more interesting in terms of visuals to put it on this insane projection screen and then add some 4D effects like a tornado and the wind's blowing and all this stuff and all of a sudden you created a unique human experience that would go viral on TikTok, which is exactly what happened." And now people from around the world, from Europe, are like, "We're going to Vegas to go to the Sphere place to see this the Wizard of Oz that we saw went viral on TikTok, right?" And so, man, what a game-changer.

Did you buy it? Dude, yeah. Dude, yeah. Dude, yeah. So, I I heard him talking about it. So, I started tracking it. It's up 220% in the last year. you mean from the time we got in, which is like at 20-something bucks, it's up like 6x or something. Chris, I got to give you a little credit cuz anytime somebody comes on the pod and talks about investing, the goal is first to get context on Okay, before we listen and and really drink the Kool-Aid on all the your philosophy or your strategy, we like to understand does it work?

What what are the What are the results? And so, you could talk a little bit about that, but I'll give one little point, which was last time you were on the pod, I asked you to make three sort of picks, three predictions, three three stocks to look at. You said Palantir, Bloom Energy. It was at $92, it's now at $240, so it's up 165% since the last podcast. And then Nvidia, which is up a smaller amount, but those were your three picks. So, I got to give you give you a little bit of credit.

So here's the thing like I actually aggressively disagree with that type of performance analysis because the world's changing every minute of every day. So I the day after the show, I could have found new information that would have put me on the opposite side of all three of those trades, right? And so the only way you could ever analyze any investor any investor any investor ever is through long-term audits. Over a long period of time, total portfolio. I don't care if an investor comes on, gives you five stocks, and all of them rocket.

It could have been based on beta, could have been based on the like it completely luck, right? Uh so don't give me any credit for anything from the last show. If you don't want I mean, you feel free if you want, but all that actually matters is what's like the 10, 15, 20-year total portfolio track record in and out through multiple markets. Great. So what So what is it? What are the audited What is it? 15-year results? 68% over over 16 15 or 16 years. What does that mean in terms of dollars?

What did you start with? I've generated about 80 million off of an initial $20,000 portfolio that I kicked off in 2007. Wow. And then do you reinvest new capital into that? The truth is that I took massive amounts of capital out every year, almost all of my profits. And so theoretically, if I kept it all in and maintained the same returns, which would have been harder because the account would have been larger, obviously, it'd be like at 700 million or something like that. Um but you know, the truth is it's meaningfully easier easier easier to manage an account that is seven to eight figures than an account that's nine figures for obvious reasons, right?

So you You never really compare apples to apples. You can't really compare me to a guy managing 5 billion. It's unfair to the guy that's managing 5 billion cuz he has restrictions. He's having to move large amounts of money. I'm able to be hyper flexible with the what I do, but I would say that the sizing of my account is still meaningfully larger than just about any other retail investor in the world. world. world. What's been the worst downswing? What year did you do the worst or what's what's been the biggest dip you had?

I think I have I'm It wasn't crazy. It was like 30% down, 20 or 30% down in a year. I think the biggest up years might have been like 300% in a year. So, but it's been relatively relatively consistent. relatively consistent. relatively consistent. So, Chris, I want to ask you a question. After you came on and you talked about this observational investing, and I have to say I I I obviously was I'm a bit skeptical about most financial influencers on YouTube. I would just say like that's just a general stance I have.

You should be more than skeptical. Yeah, so so uh but but you know, when you what you talked about is didn't it's not like it was some insane idea. Like you look for changes of where where you see the world going, where you think demand is going, where there might be supply constraints. And those obviously might be interesting companies. Now, the question I have for you cuz one of one example is my kids went crazy about this thing called NeeDohs. Explain what these things are. They're basically just a pile of It's just like a goop ball.

I don't even know what do you mean explain it? it? it? It's just It's just a squishy toy. It It It's a squishy toy that is slightly firmer, slightly higher quality. Squishies have been around for 15 years, but they were able to go viral this last year. year. year. It became a thing in kind of elementary and middle schools of like finding rare NeeDohs. They you couldn't find them. So, they had that sort of like that Pokémon card. This happens a lot of times with crazes, right?

But is NeeDoh a public company? Yeah, so so NeeDoh is a very tiny private company that's actually held by another private company that owns I think 27 private companies and Nido, the company that owns Nido, is one of those 27 companies. What's interesting is that this is a holding company that that generally doesn't move because they generate their earnings from interest payments and dividends paid by these small operating companies. To my knowledge, and the ticker is G A I N, to my knowledge, they've never owned a company that has had a hyper-viral product like Nido before.

Can you imagine that a Wolf of Wall Street call to Shawn like, "Listen, Shawn. Shawn. Shawn. This is a small company in Andover, Massachusetts that is sitting on breakthrough technology that is extra squishy yet firm at the same time." That's That's exactly what it is, man. That's literally exactly what it is. And by the way, whenever you invest in a tiny company like this, there's all types of unknown risk involved. Uh so, it's a really dangerous game to play, but I did make the investment. It's a bit of a novelty investment in a novelty product.

So, I the thesis is that if the if Nido if Nido if Nido can remain on trend through the holiday season, and if the parent company is able to fully scale out supply, this is actually going to be a needle mover for the parent company to the and you should see about a 30 to 40% increase in valuation at the parent company. Let's break this trade even further. There's always cool books on like you know, Warren Buffett's first like 50 deals or whatever. Let's do Chris's investment into Nido's.

Could you say how much did you put into it? When did you put into it? And like when you're saying there should be a 30 or 40% what numbers did you look at to make this estimation of what how much juice is on here or how much profit it can could be had? had? had? You're basically looking at Hey, let's take a quick break because the team at HubSpot has put together something pretty cool. You know, in this episode Chris is talking about the way he knows how to make money, identifying these trends, scouting the TikTok comments, making these big leverage bets.

bets. bets. That's great for him. It is amazing. Some people will like that. I personally don't know how to make money that way. I wouldn't do it. But I've talked before about the way that I know how to make money, about how I build a money-making skill, about how to leverage your time and energy. And the team at HubSpot actually went through the video where I explained all that and turned it into a free downloadable cheat sheet on my four rules of how to make money.

Now, this is not, you know, get rich quick advice. It's just core principles, foundational principles about building wealth. Things that I wish I knew when I was, you know, just getting started. And so if you want to download it, it's in the description below. It's totally free. You can go get it. Thanks to the folks at HubSpot for doing the research, making this document, and making it available to all you guys. All right, back to this episode. episode. episode. You're basically looking at how many Nintendos you think the company can sell through the holiday season based on demand and how many they're currently selling.

By the way, this is like a little bit of a science and a little bit of an art. And and you kind of assess what that will do to that company's bottom line, how that will increase dividends, and what that increased dividend payment to the parent company will account for relative to the total valuation of the parent company. It it's it's it's kind of a difficult exercise, and this is where AI comes in really great because AI can help you do that exercise. So, we're you know, we're not financial analysts and AI does an excellent job going deep into the financials of a company like this.

And then like, okay, if they sell this many at this much of a profit margin, it could have this big of an impact on the parent company and of earnings come the holiday season. So, again, lot lot of estimates that you're making. It was enough for me to invest. I put like somewhere between half a million and a half and a million dollars into the trade. It wasn't crazy. I did it more because I loved the product and I loved the trade and I felt the trade's going to work.

And I want to be part of it. So, like for me on an equity trade, that's not a huge trade for me, but I like it. And And by the way, if you look at the past 17 years, years, years, I've made about 80 to 85 high-conviction trades over 17 years. So, the entirety of my performance is based on those 80 trades. trades. trades. And Nido was a high-conviction? I wouldn't call Nido a high-conviction. I call it probably a medium conviction because the company's so tiny that there are a lot of variables that could impact a minuscule company like that.

like that. like that. But, um all 80 of those trades were publicly publicly publicly discussed more or less as they were happening. So, I'm really public with my ideas because I want my community to kind of provide feedback and poke holes in my thesis. You know, there aren't that many of us social arb traders, observational traders. So, I've always said that the community at large, when we work together on ideas, sometimes I surface ideas, sometimes members of my community surface ideas. We cross-research them. We We play devil's advocate with each other.

We poke holes in the thesis. And I always say as say as say as as a group, we're more powerful than the biggest hedge fund because we have you know, tens to hundreds of thousands of people now that are social arb traders. traders. traders. And we come from every walk of life. So, we have people from every industry sector, every profession, every demographic. So, we have tons of people that have kids. When we do channel checks, when we do store checks, I'll throw it out to my community and they will They will do store checks in every state.

So, we'll have people aggregating, "Hey, I went to this shop in Missouri. I went to this shop in Florida. Here's what the clerk told me, right? It It's really really fun, guys. Now, let me ask you a question about this. The specific question I have is observing the trend, especially if you're a parent with with young kids, what was actually not that hard. It's pretty easy to see holy [ __ ] every kid in the school wants it and there's none on the shelves. They can't you know, stores can't keep them in stock.

People are banging on the door. So, the buy side of that kind of makes some sense to me. But, all these things seem like fads. They seem like trends. I would never know when to exit a trade like this. I would never know when to sell cuz I don't think 20 years from now my kids are going to care about Nidos or the kids are necessarily going to care about Nidos. So, can you explain how you think about the the exit or the sell when it come when it's something like this where it's like a trend or a a wave that may not be enduring?

Well, well, let let's back up. It all It all is dependent upon the conviction level and the underlying thesis that you observed, right? So, you have a thesis that you come up with that there is some new information that is likely to positively or impact this company or this sector that the market is not aware of yet or that the market under appreciates. Now, you have to ask yourself to what extent is this a needle mover for this company, right? Is this going to meaningfully move the revenue needle, the profit needle, their cost structure, or the perception of this company?

Is it meaningful? And are there other things that are happening to this company that are more meaningful than this one piece of information that I feel is a needle mover? Okay? And then you have to ask yourself to what extent do other investors, institutional or retail, already know about this? Cuz it's not a binary thing, right? Some people might know, but does the market at large fully appreciate that piece of information or do they only partially appreciate it? So, it's additive. And you have to determine, am I highly convicted in this trade because this thing that's about to happen, or that already happened, is going to be massively impactful to this company, and there's nothing else that's going to impact this company over the course of the next few weeks or the next couple of months?

months? months? And there are virtually no other investors, institutional or retail, that understand this yet. And to answer your question, Shawn, the exit window is when other people come to terms with this information, right? When other people start to appreciate this information that you found, that you traded on. As soon as that information becomes public, like in the case of the Sphere, when other retail traders, when financial press, when the company itself and analysts started coming out with reports saying, "Hey, they're selling out the arena due to Wizard of Oz.

This is going to be a game-changer. We're starting to revise our earnings estimates based on this new template that they found with the Wizard of Oz." the way, they can replicate this model now with other old movies, and it's a highly profitable model, and we now feel that they've kind of cracked product market fit at Sphere, which is a game-changing moment. When you start to hear about that in the press, when you see other investors talking about it on X, when the company itself talks about it, that's the point of information parity, parity, parity, and that's when we exit the trade.

So, you basically initiate an observational social arb trade at the point of information imbalance. When you find some information that is impactful that the world doesn't know about yet. And you exit that investment as the world starts to appreciate that information. And that's not always a binary event, either. Sometimes you exit it over time as more and more investors start to appreciate the information. Now, you try to ignore stock price. The assumption is that if that piece of information is meaningfully positive to that company, as other people start to to to to surface that information, that it will positively impact the stock.

But that's out of your control. The bottom line is you're trading a thesis. Your thesis Your thesis Your thesis revolves around one piece of information, and when that information gets widely disseminated to other investors, then you no longer have an information advantage. Therefore, you should be exiting that trade, whether you made money in the trade or whether you lost money in the trade for some other unknown reason, maybe the market, maybe something else happened, is kind of irrelevant. So, that's the entire methodology. That's everything I've been doing for 17 years.

There's a lot more to it because like when you find this narrative, right? You then need to like check every other piece of information that you can or data source to validate it. Talking to store clerks, right? Maybe you're pulling web traffic stats. Maybe you're looking at Google search trends. Depending on the trade, there's a million different ways to validate the narrative thesis that you originated using alternative data or other information sources. information sources. information sources. It just It's a case-by-case basis, but this is everything I've been doing for 17 years, and it's very different from being a fundamental trader or being a technical trader.

technical trader. technical trader. Has there been a time over the last 15 or 18 years that you've been doing this where you've said, "I'm quitting and I'm I'm not doing this anymore. I'm going back to like just index investing or something like cuz what what was the low point? point? point? No, I love this so much guys. This is literally part of my soul. This is what I do. I do. I do. I have so much fun doing this. Like you got to realize like my methodology entails reading comments on Tik Tok videos.

I get to watch the world unfold. I get to learn about culture and consumer behavior and trends and what people are buying, what they're doing. doing. doing. It is the funnest research any investor could ever do. I'm not studying fundamentals or charts. What I do is fun as hell. as hell. as hell. I then every 5 years I have this thesis that I go all in on. So 5 years ago it was Pokémon and nerd culture and I started this company called Collect-A-Con and we became the largest Pokémon trade show in the world and we sold it to Ari Emanuel a few months ago for an insane amount of money, but we grew that from the ground up.

And I kind of take on one of those projects. The next project I'm taking on Wait, can we tell me about this? That's that's a big deal. Tell the tell the full story before you tell the new project. Oh, you want to know the story? This is actually amazing. I always tell everyone don't do things for yourself. Just go out there and do things for other people and it always comes back in your favor. Don't ask how or why. It just generally always does. So I'm really big into philanthropy.

I have a 501 foundation. I support pediatric charity, animal welfare, and elder care. And back during the pandemic, I know nothing about Pokémon, okay? But Logan Paul bought like a $350,000 Pokémon box, which is the set the world record. And I was like, man, that looks really fun and I was kind of bored. I'm going to go do the same thing, but then I'm going to break it into like the 24 packs and auction it off for charity and then just donate it all to the foundation.

And I'm going to also throw the world's biggest Pokémon party in Vegas cuz I ended up meeting all these Pokémon people and they were the coolest, nicest people in the world. I'm telling you I have never met people so fun. And so I met Steve Aoki who's a big Pokémon guy. I met this guy Gary King Pokémon who's the number one Pokémon guy collector in the world and he was the guy that I think sold Logan one of his biggest Pokémon cards. Pokémon cards. Pokémon cards.

And I said, "I want to do this party, guys." And they helped me put on this party in Vegas and we agreed that a third of the proceeds would go to Steve Aoki's brain charity charities, like whatever. A third would go to Gary King Pokémon's autism charities. A third would go to the charities I care about. So I bought this box for $375,000. We broke it up, threw the world's biggest Pokémon party, donated [sighs] hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars to charity. The party itself cost me almost $150,000 to put on.

I made zero. All this was a massive loss and donation to a bunch of charities. But what came out of it? I met all these really interesting people. And about a month later Gary King Pokémon calls me. He goes, "Hey Chris, I know you believe in Pokémon now. I know you believe that this is going to be really big and get bigger every year." every year." every year." One of the guys at the party wants to start a Pokémon convention. And he doesn't have any money.

Can I introduce you? Maybe you would invest in it. I said, "Yeah, sure. Let's do it." I had lunch with this guy. He lived in Texas. I said, "Let's just do it." This guy's been working in in like conventions for 20 years. He had perfect skill set to do it. Him and his two cousins were deeply passionate collectors and Pokémon collectors. I said, "You guys are the perfect people to run this conference. Let's do it together." I invested uh I want to say $600,000 into the company.

I took a minority but massive stake in the company. And I helped build this conference starting with one show in a small hotel convention room in Frisco, Texas. Frisco, Texas. Frisco, Texas. And 4 years later, we were throwing 20 shows, 700,000 attendees, the biggest Pokémon trade show in the world. Massive success. And by the way, we all worked all the shows. Like I would travel around the country and be the guy who was ticketing people online at 7:00 in the morning we'd have 3,000 people in line because we were trying to operate the show so efficiently cuz we didn't have much money.

money. money. too. I mean, 700,000 tickets are 400,000. It's got to be a nine-figure exit, right? exit, right? exit, right? Massive business, guys. Massive. You wouldn't believe I I'm under NDA. I can't tell you the specifics of the sale, sale, sale, but massive exit. Can you say, generally speaking, these businesses, what do they sell for? Uh not Yeah, like uh like on a EBITDA like what what's the EBITDA multiple? They don't sell for big multiples because it's a it's a physical business. It's not like a software business.

But the amount of money we were generating from these shows was enormous. enormous. enormous. It was really profitable? Very profitable because we cared deeply about the shows and we ran great shows. We actually We actually We actually doing back of the envelope math, 700,000 times let's say 60 bucks, that's you're getting close to $50 million in revenue, let alone vendors. disclose exact numbers, but I'm going to tell you the numbers were huge. And we started from nothing and we built this all up over 4 years, but it wasn't easy, guys.

Like we we were so frugal that we had our own rig cuz you know the most expensive part of throwing a convention is buying renting pipe and drape at all the conventions. the conventions. the conventions. So we bought our own pipe and drape, put it in a 18-wheeler, and the founder operator of this business, Matthew, would drive the truck himself from city to city. It was crazy, okay? And and then we would unload the truck with some local help, right? And we would set up the shows ourselves.

I mean, there were points cuz I have a bad back back back where after the first day I was almost I couldn't walk and I There were some shows I'd have to go home on day two cuz I I I hurt my back so bad from just like leaning over ticketing thousands of people at the at the show. Cuz we would hire contract workers to help us, but we needed every hand possible. possible. possible. That's pretty crazy. And so we ran it like a family business.

We were deeply passionate about the attendees. We would throw a concert every Saturday midday. We had like Vanilla Ice would perform or like It was so fun. so fun. so fun. And and meanwhile, to this day I've never bought a Pokémon card. So like I was an observer of this sector. But the long story short, like I had deep conviction conviction conviction in nerd culture and Pokémon specifically, and I think Wall Street doesn't and just business the business community generally doesn't appreciate the fact that there are millions of people that like collecting these cards and no one had provided a fun place for them to physically go to once a year to connect with other people like them and trade these cards.

Like we have sports card shows. We've had them forever, right? With baseball cards and whatnot. But no one had ever really established a big show for T you know, TCG for like these table card games, right? Like no one had ever done it before. So it just intuitively made sense to me. So some curious if this is something that others have been doing are there people you look up to? So for example, somebody who you wouldn't think is an observational trader, wouldn't call that is Warren Buffett.

But there's some great stories of where he did exactly what you're talking about. There's a a story of the salad oil crisis with American Express. I don't know if you guys know that story, but it's basically Yeah, at a given time they were lending money and they were lending money to this guy who was supposed to have salad oil dressing and then they went and they checked the barrels and the barrels were just full of water, salt water, like sea water. And there was no salad oil at all and the stock is plummeting and Buffett he figured out what the central question was, which is is this a temporary setback or is this actually going to be damaging the trust of the brand long-term?

And he believed in brands, right? That's why he has been on Coca-Cola and Geico and these other companies that he feels I have brands that have power. It's the exact opposite of what Chris is. It's like what won't change. Yeah, so he well he was but still the the the market research part of this is kind of shared, right? So he the the story is he goes into a store and he just watches the clerk and he watches customers with their credit card and he's basically trying to figure out are people going to stop taking American Express cuz they no longer have faith in the good standing of American Express or is the American Express brand going to endure this?

And really the asymmetry was was was the market believed that the that this would damage the future of American Express and the the quality of the brand. And what he observed in watching people was that the stores and the customers had no problem using American Express and that there was no issue. And he there was no issue. And he did the same thing he did this very similar thing with Apple where he had stayed away from technology companies for a long time and then he realized like oh when he talked to Apple customers he's like not only would they not trade their current device for a cheaper equivalent of device by somebody else you can't pay these people to switch off Apple Apple Apple and it was it was a more of a social psychological observation not a technical or fundamental analysis of the business that led him to to to invest in those companies so Chris it's a long-winded way of asking who else has been great at this what are the great stories that inspire you on this or do you feel like you're kind of the first one to popularize this no it's the concept of information asymmetry is not new to investing methodologies the most famous person to adopt it widely would have been Peter Lynch with the Magellan fund in the 80s the difference is being a pure observational social arb investor is this concept that it shouldn't be part of an investing methodology but it should be the only thing that you take into consideration right so Peter Lynch kind of blended this this observational investing approach he would famously walk the malls and kind of look at what stores have the longest lines at the cash register see seems pretty simple right and he would combine that with massive amounts of fundamental research you have to ask yourself though if the market is relatively efficient and we know the market's never perfectly efficient but it's if it's relatively efficient in terms of taking into account account account all the fundamentals and all the technicals and you have all these investors that are trying to price a company based on all the known things then if you're able to surface something that's unknown that's unknown that's unknown that is meaningful, you don't need to worry about all the other stuff.

You don't need to have this robust robust robust fundamental technical approach that also happens to apply information asymmetry when you come across it. You can focus all of your energy and all of your research on just finding new information that the market hasn't discovered yet and making an assumption that the [clears throat] particular company that you're trading is relatively efficient with all the known information information information and investors haven't fully priced in this new piece of information. So, all you care about is that one piece of information asymmetry.

It simplifies the way that investors can approach this game because most of us are never going to be technically proficient investors and never going to be able to compete with the absolute best, most pedigreed, Wharton graduated, like fundamental investors, right? That are doing deep deep fundamental analysis, and they've come to terms with the fact that this company should trade at a 29 PE as opposed to the 24 PE it's trading at today. I mean, I don't want to play that game. The easiest game to play, because you can invest a million different ways.

So, the question is, what is the best approach to investing that the largest chunk of ordinary people can actually apply efficiently to markets and regularly do that in a fruitful way? And I strongly believe it's pure observational social arb investing. Sean, I actually just Googled this and it's funny, I'm quoted as the source of Google Google Google for this story. So, it could be a little bit wrong, but in 1966 a young Warren Buffett visited a movie theater on 45th and Broadway in New York to watch Mary Poppins.

He went with a briefcase in the middle of the afternoon, later joking that it almost felt like he needed to rent a kid to fit in. This trip was his way of researching Disney to see if they had lasting brand appeal. And later that day, he bought 5% of the company at $4 million, and it was a 50% gain over the next year, and he says selling it, which he did after 1 year, was one of his biggest mistakes that he's ever made. And by the way, so it if he really believed that that lasting durable brand appeal was there for Disney, right?

Did he also believe that the the rest of the world came to that acknowledgement after a year? a year? a year? And if he did, then he didn't have any alpha after a year, and he was probably right to sell Disney. Um and Disney might have when he did that, by the way. So may I mean, you could also say maybe he just made a mistake. But you have to understand something. Whether a stock goes up or down after you sell you sell you sell might have nothing to do with you making a mistake, cuz that's not your thesis.

That's not why you invested. You don't have any alpha. So it could have gone up for a completely different reason. So you you got to get out of the headspace of saying because a stock continued to go up after you exited, you made the mistake. You That could be completely coincidental. It went up for something that you had no knowledge into, that you had no take on. How do you quantify that though, because like for example, Shawn and I or the average Joe might have like uh an opinion on one company, their sales we think are going up, but that doesn't necessarily mean the stock will change.

Okay, let's let's take a step back. If you were correct that a company is being impacted by something meaningfully, and their revenue is going to go up, and the rest of the investor class is not aware of that yet, if there's nothing else impacting that company during that trade window, it is highly likely Again, there are a lot of factors. There's the macro market. The market could come down, right? There But but in a vacuum, a vacuum, a vacuum, that piece of information will almost always, in a vacuum, will almost always result in the stock going up because when a company makes more money than the market anticipates, the stock will go up.

If you're able to surface something that will impact a company's sales that the rest of the market is not aware of, when the rest of the world comes to terms with that piece of information, that will positively impact the stock price. Assuming that there's nothing else going on with that company or the market at large. But I I wouldn't overthink it. Too many investors overthink this. It's not that complicated, guys. complicated, guys. complicated, guys. Can you give a sense of volume? Uh so, I think you said something like 80 80 investment decisions 17 years.

That Does that mean you're making four-ish buy, sell, trade decisions per year? Or did I hear that wrong? Cuz I My My hunch was that you're a little more active than that. Seems like In a given year, how many how many decisions are you How many investment decisions are you making? So, I'm referring to high-conviction trades. You know, trades where I have a lot of conviction and I'm generally allocating 5 to 30% of my total portfolio to buying that stock or I'm allocating, call it, 2 to 15% of my portfolio to buying options in that stock.

that stock. that stock. By the way, when you say portfolio, is this like I have my trading my fund my fund slush fund and then I have my boring safe nest egg over here or portfolio. Entire portfolio, yes. I think what Shawn was getting at was like, do you have like a safety net? No. I mean, on my my public equity portfolio is my public equity portfolio. It's just one portfolio. So, when I have high conviction in a trade, I will allocate between, you know, like I said, I don't know, up to a third of my portfolio might be in that single stock for that period of time that I'm in that trade.

And Sean, to answer a question, uh in the early years, I would average one to two high conviction trades a year. year. year. Uh now, as we have more social media today than we had back 13 years ago, and the world is more digitally connected today, and there's it's actually easier than it's ever been to read into the world's conversations as they're happening. Like, as you guys know, I spend hours a night reading comments on TikTok videos because that's where most of the world organically shares what they're doing, what they're buying, you know, where they're going like on a daily basis.

I I've increased the velocity of my high conviction trades. So, there have been years now where I've had six or seven high conviction trades in a year where it used to be one or two. Right. Right. Right. And by the way, the the more change that's happening in the world, the more opportunity to surface a high conviction trade. So, probably the biggest year I ever had was during the pandemic because the year of the pandemic, there was a tremendous amount of change happening in the world.

We all started living at home, you know, working from home, right? We we we stopped going out, we started buying things that we wouldn't ordinarily never buy. buy. buy. Uh we stopped spending money on those things and started spending money on these things because we're living inside of our house for a year straight. You know, we're buying bicycles and cameras for our computers and printers cuz the kids are doing the homeschooling and all of these things. So, we're buying Peloton cuz we're not going to to gym and we're working out at our house now.

So, you know, we're shopping more on Amazon and Spotify. So, like the more change, the more opportunity for an observational investor to surface that change and connect the dots to investable opportunities. When there's not a lot of change in the world, then there's less opportunity for us. So, what I what I've been telling people is in the age of AI, we've never experienced this type of global change before other than the pandemic because AI is radically changing the way that we think about work, that we think about intelligence.

intelligence. intelligence. Every company in the world is going to get hit positively or negatively due to the way that AI and and unlimited intelligence is going to impact their sector over the next few years. So, this is an amazing time to be an observational social urban investor because the world is changing so quickly. There's going to be so many winners and losers. So, the game here is to figure out what's changing and the degree to which that change is good or bad for any given company at any given period of time.

Does this influence you, Shawn? This is your second time talking to him. Are you has your actions changed since December? Uh not necessarily cuz the main thing I do isn't like active investing in in public equities. You know, if I did, maybe maybe maybe it would be a little more, but I don't know. I find it fascinating and like you said, we talked to on one end of the spectrum, you know, sort of the Charlie Munger Buffett disciples. We've had those value investors on. We've had, you know, Howard Marks.

He's dealing in in you know, debt and bonds and and you know, you have Ray Dalio. You have all these different people. So, I'm more of a right now in a kind of curiosity mode, not a not a not a Oh great, let me switch up my style every time I talk to a really successful, really interesting investor, which for us on this podcast is like every month. every month. every month. You but let me ask you a question. Your audience. audience. audience. What What do you think the average follower of this show looks like?

Do you think the average follower of this show this show this show is capable of being a top 1% fundamental fundamental fundamental investor competing against literally hundreds hundreds hundreds Well, I don't think that the average the average listener of this show couldn't be a top 1% in any type of investing. That's not completely untrue. That's ridiculous. That's ridiculous. That's ridiculous. I think for for our audience to say the average person can't be a That that is that is patently false. Patently false. Where do you think Where do you think I graduated in my high school class?

Just just guess. Percent wise. wise. wise. Either 1% or the worst percent. I'm not sure where I should guess. guess. guess. No no no no genuinely like genuinely I turn I generated 80 million off a $20,000 portfolio like like I I I I am who I am you can you know, look at the last 15 years of stuff and articles like genuinely like objectively like where do you think I would have graduated in my high school class at a public school? public school? public school? back up.

We The question was the average person of our show, are they a 1% investor? I don't think they are. Nor do I think they I'm sorry. I didn't mean that. I mean do they have the capacity Also no. Also no. Also no. Okay, well I'm I'm I'm asking you so like let's talk about you we talk about IQ. Like what do you think my IQ I had an IQ test. What do you think my IQ was or what do you Where do you think I graduated in my high school class?

Just just objectively just throw it out there. there. there. Middle. Middle. Middle. Sean? Sean? Sean? Well, you're asking the question which tells me it's got to be in the bottom half of your class is my guess. lower than that. It's a bottom 25% of my high school class. I barely graduated. And uh I'll just tell you this. I'm not I don't recall my exact IQ, but I will tell you this. When I was in kindergarten, kindergarten, kindergarten, okay, I was the only kid in the class that didn't know what my last name was.

And they sent me to Manhattan to get an IQ test. And I still have that piece of paper. It was slightly below average in terms of IQ. Nothing crazy. They kept me in the class. I don't know why I didn't know my last name. Well, obviously, I'm just saying I did I was the only kid that didn't know my last name. I went on to do not a lot better through my senior year of high school. Obviously, I was bottom 25% of my class. what about temperament?

Because like you Again, we've talked to all these amazing people. A huge takeaway that I've had talking to a bunch of the investors in particular is that temperament probably matters more than IQ. And I think the your temperament, the way you were born is likely just the way it is. You probably can't change it. I think Sean talked to Monish Pabrai and he said something I think it was him, Sean. He said something like, I probably can't take anyone and make them great, but we could probably improve you a little bit, you know.

I think He didn't say this, but it was like the analogy of you're born 7 ft tall. And you could be better at basketball at 6 ft tall, but like, you know, freaks are freaks. And so um temperament I actually think is probably more important than IQ when it comes to this game. Okay, I would say that being a top 1% observational investor, just a top 1% investor generally investor generally investor generally is easily doable if you're willing to aggressively adopt being an observational purist investor.

And the reason I say that is because what I actually do is so simple and so straightforward. And I've seen over the past seven or eight years since I've been public about this on YouTube and I have, you know, hundreds of thousands of followers. I have people around the world writing me near daily. They are dentist, they are janitors, they drive trucks for UPS, they work in a parking lot checking out cars, okay? cars, okay? cars, okay? And they will DM me, "Hey Chris, I've been watching you for 5 years.

I started doing this. I was early to this company or to this company based on what I observed in the world. It's that one investment has changed my entire life and and I tell people if you have one or two home runs over 20 years, meaning you find something early and you put a meaningful amount of money in it, that could put you into the one or two percent range of all investors over over that two decade period. And that's all it takes. And a perfect example of that is Tesla, okay?

I actually wasn't early into Tesla, but do you know how many terrible investors otherwise? I mean, these are people that hadn't done anything in their entire life in the investing world and probably haven't done much since, are 1% investors because they were behind the wheel of a Tesla in early days and they realized this this this is a game changer and they put some meaningful, not even that meaningful, just some reasonable amount of money into Tesla stock. And that one investment made them a top 1% global investor for like a 10 or 15 year period or 20 year period and changed the trajectory of their entire life.

They're not hyper intelligent, they're probably like any regular person, they're probably like most of the people that watch this show or any other show, and it's all about just understanding that that's all it takes. Because most people never even try this because they think, "I can't compete with pedigreed investors from Wall Street. I can't spend 6 hours a day doing technical trading." They don't realize you don't need to. You can just go on with your life, live your life, just keep your mind open to potentially early discovering the next big thing.

That's it. That's literally it. Like, that's all you have to do. What are the things you have most high conviction in right now? Um my highest conviction trade, I'm like a broken record on this. It sounds so weird because it's not a small company. It's Amazon, guys. Like, I I have near money in Amazon. This is the most concentrated position I've had in a really long time. I always say the most concentrated position I've ever taken was Nintendo when they came out with the Wii cuz I was at the E3 conference and actually saw cuz it's like a profit profit story, right?

I actually saw the line of people interacting with the Nintendo Wii for the first time. I don't know if you remember that. Game-changing platform, and nobody on Wall Street believed it. Everyone on Wall Street was so hyper-focused on the Xbox coming out and the PlayStation coming out. Nobody thought the Wii was going to be a big deal. I was there. I saw it in real life. I had 100% of my portfolio invested in a Nintendo ADR, which is a tracking stock that tracks the Japanese ticker of Nintendo.

And I had 100% of my portfolio, I think, for a full year in Nintendo until Wall Street finally realized how big of a deal that was. Uh but Amazon I I I just think it's the company that is best positioned in the world to benefit from the upcoming AI efficiency wave, which is once we actually start to see meaningful productivity jumps from the AI age. Uh there's no company in the world that's going to benefit more from that than Amazon. I also think they are the nucleus of AI infrastructure.

So so so sorry, what's the observation you made here? I I like what what I think is this not from the TikTok comments in this situation? Is this No, this is this is this is a kind of a global cultural shift and it's it's a big observation I've had for 3 years, which is based in part, I don't know if you guys ever read Nassim Taleb's book Black Swan, Black Swan, Black Swan, Mhm. Mhm. Mhm. uh but Black Swan theory essentially says that our minds are not capable of fully recognizing and appreciating anomalies in the market or the world that haven't happened before.

before. before. I had this thesis in early days AI that AI wouldn't just be the next internet, it's not just going to be the next mobile phone or smartphone, but that it would be meaningfully larger than anything we've experienced in our lifetime. lifetime. lifetime. And as a result of that, we would see the biggest trades of our lives happen lives happen lives happen as a direct result of AI and even when the information was right in front of us, the market would not believe it until it actually shows up in the numbers because there's no precedent for what we're seeing in AI.

There's nothing that has ever happened in our lifetime before AI that we can compare to AI. Now, I might regret saying this in 10 years, but I don't think so. I think the concept of intelligence becoming infinite and free to the world is going to be the biggest change we've ever seen in humanity. So, the reason why Amazon went down and has not really gone up as a company meaningfully you know, recently, right? Is because they have made such an aggressive investment in AI. $200 now it's like 200 is more than 200 billion this last year CapEx investment in AI in a sector that nobody knows if it's going to pay off for them or not.

Does that mean like like for example the did your is Siri or what's her call Alexa? Did your Alexa just change where like now she like talks to you like my Alexa just changed so now it like talks like chat GPT like I can ask real questions. questions. questions. I would say the biggest example is this is it's this simple. Amazon Amazon Amazon is betting the entire company on AI. End of story. As is some of the other big tech companies, right? They are leveraging all of their profits, they're leveraging their balance sheet, they are building out massive infrastructure unlike they ever had in the history of the company.

They are making the biggest CapEx investment of any company in the world by a big margin in AI. in AI. in AI. And the world is still unsure about how this is going to play out. I'm not unsure. I'm willing to bet it all. all. all. They they think that the infrastructure layer of AI, which is Amazon, okay? Because Amazon understand this, they are a chip company, right? They're Tranium. Their chips alone, their Tranium AI chips are generating like $50 of revenue this next year. They are the one of the largest infrastructure data center companies in the entire world and their AWS platform and everything that they've constructed in cloud computing over the past 15 plus years sits at the center of this architecture this architecture this architecture infrastructure for AI, okay?

On top of that, Amazon is the third largest digital advertising company in the world, okay? So, as AI makes advertising meaningfully more efficient and targeted and effective and personal and rich for consumers, consumers, consumers, Amazon is at the center of that wave. Additionally, Amazon has spent 20 years building out the world's largest logistical infrastructure for the delivery of physical product to humans, an investment that no other company has even come close to making. That investment, even moving the margin needle a few points, is a game-changer for Amazon.

So, as we enter this new world of intelligence and automation and robotics, okay? robotics, okay? robotics, okay? Amazon already has the infrastructure as the world's largest e-commerce company, the largest logistics company, to benefit massively from the increases in productivity and efficiencies that infinite free intelligence, and eventually what we're going to see is is embodied intelligence, right? With the robotics, right? This is going to result in productivity and efficiency gains unlike we've ever experienced as humans, humans, humans, and Amazon is the number one company to benefit from all of that.

Sound like you're giving a sermon. You're bought in. And by the way, they own like 15% of Anthropic, too. Anthropic, too. Anthropic, too. They just And that's what's so funny here. Now, if Anthropic IPOs between one and two trillion, which who knows, I think there's a reasonable chance they will next year, Amazon will make more money off that IPO than the 200 billion they spent on CapEx that everybody's so worried about, right? And so, again, we are living in an age when the market has more noise than it's ever had, the stories are changing every day.

Like it's impossible as an investor to cut through the noise. So, that's what's so difficult is is I think most new investors they just give up because they're like, I can't keep up with all this stuff. You don't have to keep up with any of it. Just find one company that kind of sits in a place where they stand to benefit meaningfully from something that you're seeing in the world. It could be AI with Amazon. It could be the fact, you know, one of my big trades recently one of my big trade thesis is recently is flip-flops are trending this summer, right?

Because last summer there were $750 flip-flops made by a company called Row and now every person in the world wants to wear flip-flops because they're they're on trend. You can go out at night to a club wearing flip-flops. And so, there's a Brazilian company uh that is one of the largest, you know, makers of flip-flops. There's so many ways um to to kind of like arb change in the world. world. world. When you say you said Amazon was your most concentrated bet in a long time, what does that mean percentage-wise for you?

you? you? Amazon Amazon Amazon right now right now right now is about 50% of my portfolio value and on top of that Did you say 5 0 or 1 5? 5 0. 5 0. 5 0. On top of that I have options in Amazon that account for, you know, another 50%. So, theoretically, I mean yeah. yeah. yeah. If you count the the the amount that those options represent, it could be like 70% of my portfolio is Amazon right now. That's how confident I am in that make a So, after you make a bet like that, you know, um Well, Ed Thorpe has this cool book, you know, the famous uh investor, one of the early hedge fund guys, where he he he kind of like a funny story is he's like, I make my trade and then I just go and hang out for like 6 months and I just see what happens.

And there there's like stories of him like playing tennis throughout the day and they're like, shouldn't you be at work? He's like, I made the trade. Let's see what's going to happen. So, are you making that bet and then kind of stepping away for a little while or are you going to be are you active every single day then? I love that concept, by the way. Uh Uh Uh I've been saying for months, this is the summer summer summer to deep research your trade, make it, and then just walk away because 99% of the noise hitting this market on a day-to-day basis, week-to-week basis, doesn't matter at all.

And there is not that much happening and changing changing changing where you need to be that concerned about the market on a day in and day out day day day out basis. Now, I'm not completely just going off and playing tennis for the rest of the summer. I I'm keeping up with what's happening in the market, but I don't think there's going to be anything that's going to happen over the course of the next few weeks to couple months that would meaningfully change my thesis on Amazon.

It Something might. Uh but my thesis on Amazon is fairly large and it's it it it's based on something that I believe is going to unravel over the next few years as opposed to unravel over the next few months. So, it it it's a massive concentration risk that I'm putting on this trade. But this this is what I do, right? Like you you can't generate outsized returns without taking outside risk. You just can't do it. By the way, guys, I don't think that most people should be doing this across their entire portfolio.

I always tell people like and I'm not a financial advisor, obviously, but you got to bucket your assets for different risk categories, right? So, I think everybody should have a big money account. I don't care if you start with $50 in that account, but everyone should have an account where they're willing to take big risk for big gains. And you don't have to take your kids, you know, college savings to put in that account or your retirement money in that account. You could just start making tradeoffs in your life.

Like, I don't know, mow your own lawn or make your own coffee, but every dollar that you save, put it in this big money account and then use it to actually take a big risk every once in a while in something that you believe in. So that So that So that you have a chance of becoming a top 1% investor. But do it with tradeoffs. Do it with other people's money, right? Like get your haircut every 5 weeks instead of every 4 weeks. I don't know.

Like delay that big purchase 6 months so the big screen TV is $200 less than it was 6 months earlier. Take the $200 you saved, put it in your big money investment account. If that's how you fund that account, then you're not a afraid to take a concentrated risk. If you're co-mingling your money all together, it could be really hard to take a big risk on something because it's psychologically difficult for you to throw that much money into a risky investment. So you have to bucket your money.

This is like one of the most important lessons for investors. I'm willing to do it, right? Like I'm if Amazon is the stock that takes me down as an investor and ruins my reputation, then let it be. Well, that's not going to take you it won't take you down. Well, I don't know how Well, I don't know how leveraged you are, but I mean it's not like it's like a it's not like it's it's not going to it ain't going away. No, it Well, well, you never know.

It it could. But here's the thing, guys. I have been so transparent about everything I've ever done in the market. I talk about everything. I talk about the good, the bad, the risk factors. Um and when I lose, I talk about how much money I lost. I I I do not advise anyone to try to mirror my trades. I just want people to see how I think. I want them to see how I think about risk, how I think about uh concentration, how I think about you know, observational investing.

I just share everything with the world. And by the way, you guys I think know this, I'm one of the only I don't know I'm I'm sure there's at least a couple others, financial content creators, I've never sold anything. I don't have courses. courses. courses. I don't sell a thing. What's Is your community free? Dude, I don't even take sponsorships. Do you know that I haven't taken one sponsorship my entire life? I won't take $1 from an advertiser. I won't take $1 from a community member.

Not what The only thing that's ever been sold is we sell some t-shirts and hoodies at cost. You know what? I take that back. You know the value I get out of my community is collaboration. I get so many great ideas from our community and they help vet my own ideas. ideas. ideas. That's probably made me more money than I could have ever have made from courses and and and selling sponsorships and all that stuff. By the way, I have a lot a lot of respect for that.

I think uh you know, A, I trust that. Uh my trust goes up. Like I said, I was very skeptical of finance and stock influencers and traders on on YouTube. But, you know, the fact that you're not selling courses, not charging for community, not taking sponsors and all that that that is I think extremely commendable and extremely rare. So, I got to give you props for that. To be I mean, here's the deal. Like we always say it. Like if you're so great at something, at something, at something, which come on.

I'm I'm in been I've been great the last 17 years. I make an insane amount of money from my portfolio. Like I don't need to do any of that. Like Like I The amount of money I make is public, right? So I don't I'm very fortunate to not have to do that. And I just don't need to do that, so I don't want to do that. But I do have an overriding goal here. My goal, my mission in life is to bring every human on Earth into the investor class.

And that's why I'm on YouTube. That's why I'm on That's why I talk. That's why I do shows like this. I And I truly believe that this style of investing investing investing is something that you could do for fun. You could do it on the side. You don't have to quit your job. You just retrain your brain to start thinking about this stuff. And you might only get one great investment the next 10 years. But that one investment, if you have a big money account, and if and when you find it, whether it's the next Tesla or the next whatever, whatever, whatever, you're willing to throw a lot of money behind it, behind it, behind it, that could be the thing that changes your entire life.

Um and my next big thesis is is is podcasters, which sounds insane because there's so many podcasters, right? Like you got to be kidding, Chris. Don't we have too many podcasters? Let me just say this. In the age of AI that we're about to enter into, enter into, enter into, we are going to deeply appreciate humans. humans. humans. I think. That's my thesis. And while we will embrace technology and AI and efficiencies and all the wonderful things it's going to bring to us, I think we will equally appreciate the most human of human voices and human personalities.

personalities. personalities. And And And we are going to need that for connectivity to remind us of what's real. real. real. So what's the bet? Like what would the product be? product be? product be? The bet is that we are just getting started with podcasting, and I believe the entirety of the future of media is new media and podcasters will continue to get bigger and bigger. I think the most human of human voices will become infinitely valuable the next 10 years. I think within the podcasting sector, I think women are slow to become podcasters because we have so many brilliant solo creators that are women on Tik Tok, but women tend to be really intimidated by friction, by bridging into podcasting when you need to have camera equipment and editors and clippers and you need to have staff, right?

It's and you need to invest money and capital. So, I believe the most talented women voices in the world are not yet podcasting. So, I'm opening up a podcast incubation studio in Austin, Texas, where we are going to attempt to develop a very boutique studio, but we're going to attempt to identify the most talented women voices in the world that are currently doing content as solo creators and help them bridge into the world of durable, repeatable durable, repeatable durable, repeatable podcasting, which we believe is just getting started.

I think if you move forward 5 to 8 years, there will be hundreds of podcasts that are worth $100 million million million or more. I'm not doing this for the money. money. money. I'm doing this because I I I just I know that this could be really big and I have so much fun working with other creative people. I love podcasters generally. I It's all I do is watch podcasts, right? And and and and sit in on podcasts, but when I look at like women's podcasting, you know, 70% of podcasters are men.

So, I think there's this huge opportunity the next few years as podcasting becomes more programmatic more programmatic more programmatic uh to help develop podcast into what they will be cuz I don't think the future of podcasting is like two people in a studio talking on mics, no offense. no offense. no offense. I mean I mean my my my show is three guys in a studio talking on mics. I I I think it will become uh I think it will be that probably for financial podcasters and and and and business podcast, but I think for like general audience podcast especially for women, it will become more programmatic.

more programmatic. more programmatic. When you when you say programmatic, what does that mean? Okay, so are you familiar with uh Financial Audit, Caleb Hammer's show? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. He's he's the third biggest podcast in the world on YouTube. Okay? His show is program- He has an actual program that expresses itself through a podcast format. Okay? So, he has guests on the show, but he has a very formal program of entertainment, right? And so that is the future of podcasting. So, we have to get more creative with podcasting.

We have to take risk. Caleb took a big risk with what he did. Have you seen Friends Keep Secrets? No. What is that? You got to check this You're going to love this. Uh so, this is Lil Dicky, the rapper, Benny Blanco, the producer. Yeah, I'm sorry. I have seen it. It's the greatest show ever. Yes. To me, that's an example of what you're talking about. When I saw that, I was like a little bit mind-blown and then you know, I'm doing podcasting twice a week for 6 years and what they came in and did, I I really feel like the real creatives have arrived into podcasting cuz now you see Conan O'Brien's got a podcast and Has Has Has Has Has got a podcast.

Like the real comedians have podcasts, the real creatives have podcasts and now what they're doing to the format because they come from a different background, is they're approaching it differently. Like they got a house and they staged the cameras and the guest shows up almost like a sitcom, you know, it at the door and then they open the door and then and then they move from the kitchen to the living room and they have these bits that they do and the the way they do their ad reads, you're like, ah, God, their ad read is more entertaining than my my actual content.

Jesus. How I need to up my game. to I need to up my game. Sean, you Sean, you you got it. You just you just nailed it. Now, fortunately, again, like the type of podcasting that we do is kind of like, you know, like education and business and finance, I think we can afford to be very slow to change because it's just different for us. Like a lot of the people that watch your show, that watch my show, they primarily are looking to get take something away from that show in terms of education and growth and learning.

I think the personality entertainment piece is like 10 to 20% of the show. If if we tried to make it 50%, we might lose our audience, right? But, um, for the future of podcasting, I think it looks very different, bro broader based. I think it's going to be exciting and like, here's the thing, guys, like I've been talking about stocks for 10 years. Like I love it, but I kind of like I'm bored by it. So, like I like diving into these different areas where I get to be a bit more creative with other with other with other you know, other creatives uh and not just talk about stock.

That's why I enjoyed the Pokémon thing. Like I didn't collect Pokémon, but it was kind of fun being around other people that were passionate about something and I like in my mind, I'm like, how do I make money off this, guys? Like, how do I make money off of Pokémon? That's how I did it. I I did it from starting the convention that the Pokémon enthusiast would come to and enjoy, right? And you got to be the uncle and not the father, right? Somebody else ran it and you got to pitch in where it was helpful and fun, but not necessarily the day-to-day.

Is that Is that right? get I didn't have to do the full day-to-day. I got to kind of do the day-to-day when we would have shows, but behind the scenes I wasn't working full-time, yeah, for sure. Um but man, was it a lucrative journey and damn was it fun. It was so fun. Thanks for doing this. You're Now I'm like I have all these notes, like all these rabbit holes I'm going to go down. This this This this This this uh the podcast thing, the the Collect-A-Con, that's crazy.

You uh you got layers. got layers. got layers. Well, you know what, guys, like the Here's the thing. I'm really fortunate that I have this insane network of people that I'm constantly meeting with. A lot of them are hyper successful, you know, billionaires in the back half of their career life. And I'm going to point like, okay, if you've had success and you can kind of do anything you want, like what would it actually be? And And I feel that's for so many people in my network, it always comes down to having a bigger number.

And I'm like, are you sure that you're making decisions driven by the right motivations? Because is that bigger number actually going to give you fulfillment in the way that you think it is? is? is? And over the last couple of years, I've come to the conclusion that a bigger number for me is going to make no difference in my level of contentment or fulfillment in life. And I like the concept of grinding and creating and building and taking risk, but but but not if it's to like get a bigger number.

So like if I'm going to do something the next 3 to 5 years, whatever my next thing is, like I want the journey to be as fun as the outcome. So, okay, my outcome that I want is to land the top 20 global podcasts by developing two or three shows over the next few years with people I believe are unbelievably talented. I want to build a great team around them. I want to like I want to It's the gamesmanship of a Can I do this? There's tens of millions of podcasts.

How can if I landed a top 20, how wild would that be? How But I want the journey in trying to figure out how to win, how to get there to be fun. And I know I love working with creative people. I kind of cuz I've been stuck in podcast world the last 7 years, I kind of get it, right? So like I and I love it. So like whether I end up winning or losing, and by the way, if I win, I'm looking at adding to I'm looking at adding to my charitable foundation.

That's like my number is not for me, it's for it's for the foundation. the foundation. the foundation. But the journey and how we get there will be fun regardless. Like cuz I'm going to be around creative people, I'm going to be in a sector that I love. I mean, when in history could you take a few million dollars and start a media company, which is exactly what I'm doing right now? Like Could you imagine like 20 years ago? You couldn't do that. You just couldn't do that, right?

Now, you can you can land the top five show globally if you if you execute in 3 years, 2 years. Like like Isn't that wild? That like you could do that out of one studio with like 10 people, 10 or 15 people. Like how exciting is that that you could play in this game and you could have a top five global global media show media show media show in a couple years if you can find the right person and the right team and the right format.

To me, that that journey of just attempting to accomplish that is maybe the funnest thing I will ever do in my life. So I'm really looking forward to this next thing that I'm doing. Hopefully we win, but even if we don't win, it damn guys, I'm at a point I'm going to have fun. I'm going to have fun trying. trying. trying. Okay? Okay? Okay? And by And by the way, like I tell this story to a guy. I had I had I had lunch with a guy, massive exit.

This I don't know how much he's worth, but it's a lot. And I And I I talked to him about this story and he said, "You know what, Chris? I'm going to buy this bonsai shop that me and my daughter go to." He goes, "Cuz this is my favorite thing in the world. Me and her go there and we just hang out there. there. there. And I'm going to buy it. And like this guy's going to end up spending more time with his daughter. He's going to have fun because he's going to take this little bonsai shop that's been around for 35 years and try to grow it with her." All right, I think which is kind of cool.

He's going to actually He He's an AI guy, right? So, like he's going to actually like apply artificial intelligence into the growth strategy for the bonsai shop. He's going to maybe get some content creators and influencers to try to like take it global through e-comm. Like there's all kinds of fun stuff you can do here starting with a little bonsai store that you and your daughter love. I'm like, "Now, that's a great way to spend the next 5 years of your life." There's a lot of people that have made it that have enough money that they could kind of can do what they want.

Like we're so set on just like bigger number, more happy. Bigger No, no, no, no, no, no. I actually believe that there is a point when the bigger number number number have the opposite effect. It definitely 100% 100% 100% makes you less fulfilled and less happy. Well, well, you you know why? Most people think that's like a more money, more problems thing, but it's it I think I think underneath that is you have no excuse left. excuse left. excuse left. You know, for basically for when you don't have a lot, you can always tell yourself, "Well, it's on the other side of this." And then once you get to the once you get there, there's nothing left to blame for any lack, any any internal holes, any internal anxieties, or um feeling of lack, um or just dissatisfaction.

And so, you can't you can't blame that anymore. You've lost the excuse. And I think that is a very like tough moment for for people when you don't you no longer can say, "Well, it's because I don't have that. That's why I feel this way." It's like, "No, no, I feel that way because that's how I am." And that I think that's a pretty brutal realization. At least that's what I felt and what I've seen. seen. seen. That part of it, I think a big part of it is that you become disconnected with other humans and you can't relate anymore and people treat you differently and it gets harder to maintain and develop authentic real relationships.

You can't do anything about this when you become excessively wealthy to the point where nothing matters anymore, you just don't relate to daily things the same way as the rest of your family and friends and colleagues do and they sense that. And then also when you meet new people and like you like Listen, you start going to certain types of vacations and certain types of dinners and you hang out maybe you have a yacht and maybe you fly private and then it's like, "Well, this is what I want to do with my time, but I just want to spend time with my friends." So, maybe your friends are now on your yacht and doing $5,000 dinners and your friends are maybe you have to bring them on your private jet and like you're paying for them and it makes things really weird cuz then it's like, "Wait a second, are these people They don't even rip on me anymore.

They don't even treat me the same anymore maybe cuz they're worried that like they're not going to be part of this lifestyle that I'm paying for only because they can't be here unless I pay for it and I don't want to I want to live the lifestyle and I want my friends to be with me." There's just so many problems that organically surface when you enter that stratosphere which used to be like this many people, but in 2026 guys, guys, guys, there are a lot of people with excessive wealth.

Let's be honest. Like the number of people that have excessive wealth in 2026 2026 2026 for a variety of reasons, okay? It It It or or enormous. The number of people that fly private, the number of people that spend $3,000, $2,000 a night on hotel rooms and resorts, the number of people that are going out to dinners at these places where they're spending wild amount of money on a regular basis, the wealth class is huge and I think that ultra high net worth wealth class is probably miserable because of all these factors.

these factors. these factors. And it's really hard to stay grounded. It's [clears throat] exceptionally difficult to like stay connected. And you guys know there's nothing more important in life than being deeply connected connected connected with other humans, nothing. And this thing makes it very hard to stay deeply connected. So it's almost like a hack not letting yourself get to that point. Like I know it sounds crazy. There is There is a sweet spot. I think there is a sweet spot for wealth and it's different for every person.

And you can kind of sense when you kind of get out of the range of that sweet spot cuz you can kind of sense these things starting to happen. And there are a lot of ways to knock yourself back down. One of them is starting a foundation and just giving money into the foundation, right? Like it's not yours anymore. It's in the It's not yours. You give the foundation, it belongs to the foundation and you get to do good things with it. Also, you can take that money and like you can invest it in other things that puts it at risk, but again, it's not yours when it's invested in illiquid and put at risk.

So now your access to like liquidity and your access to money that you know is bankable becomes more reasonable and like you you don't push yourself to into that stratosphere of overspending on a regular basis. Yeah, I agree with every word you just said. Every word you just said I I totally agree with. So, I but I think it's a topic that quite honestly not only people don't talk about, but I think most people don't even think about because like your brain doesn't My brain for some reason Well, I could if you don't do it appropriately it sounds kind of douchey if you talk about this stuff publicly.

I mean, that's like the easy like that doesn't mean it shouldn't it's not an important I mean like it's super helpful. It's just helpful to like maybe a small group of people. There was a great blog post on this by Julia thing Zhao was her name. She wrote a thing to all the folks who are about to get rich. It was right before the SpaceX IPO and she she was at Facebook right before Facebook had its IPO. She talked about what she observed and saw of the people who you know had been working really hard for a long time and suddenly the sort of shackles of liquidity were all were off them and and now they had the money and what what did you do?

And she talked about how people play that game and and Chris your your point on disconnection is one that she made a I'll read you a little part of it. She's it. She's it. She's She's like She's like She's like once money can buy you anything you become a bit bit of a character. You can eat at fancy restaurants all the time. You bring a full zoo and carnival and a chocolate train to your kids three-year-old birthday party. You know, you become so cloaked by these fancy things and shiny things that you can you can buy and that sparkling cloak can become so distracting that people can no longer see you.

You become harder to connect with. connect with. connect with. And she talks about like the it's the the disconnection can lead to is is a great source of unhappiness. You know, I saw this with a I have a friend who got very very wealthy through real estate, bought a mega mansion 18,000 square feet. He's literally not only did he move away from his friends and family because we don't afford to live in that place that that neighborhood. That neighborhood has acres in between houses. Um but then even in his own house he was disconnected from his own kids who were you know on the in the west wing and he's on the east wing 10,000 feet apart.

The money literally I watched it make him less happy um because it had created an immense amount of social disconnection on on many many levels. And I I I when I first went to San Francisco I worked for this guy who's a billionaire and we went out to lunch uh uh as a group of us, five of us and uh at the end he was like, you know, he tossed his card in but he was he basically was like, oh, should we all just put our cards in?

And I was like, man, this guy what a cheap billionaire. This guy didn't even pick up the tab and I realized like actually it wasn't because he's cheap at all. He's not a cheap guy at all. He's very generous. But he didn't want to change the social dynamic between us where it became this weird power dynamic or this weird like subservient thing. And he was actually doing us all quite a big favor by not doing that. So you start to see these little moments of possible disconnection versus connection.

versus connection. versus connection. Facts. I I always wondered like why am I seeing this and none of the other people or very few that are in the same place seem to see it. I think it's because I've like retrained my mind to be an observational investor. So I'm constantly observing life and culture and like everything. I'm just being hyper observing about and it kind of translated to this and I was hyper observing about this. The part the birthday like all the stuff, right? And I was like, damn, I cannot fall into that trap.

I do not want to be miserable like a lot of the people that I see and you know, you've seen this, right? Like they fall into the traps and then it's like it never leads to a good place. But I will say this also cuz a lot of people will see shows like this and be like, oh, it's so easy for you guys to talk about, you know, this when you have it. I will admittedly the sweet spot is pretty sweet, okay? So like So I'm just going to say the sweet spot of wealth is pretty sweet.

So do do don't mischaracterize what we're talking about. about. about. Gaining financial independence is one of the most amazing things one could ever experience in life. What that buys you is actually insane. Be Being in full control over your time, how you spend it, who you're with, where you go, and never having to work for someone else again, that is magical. That actually is as good as you think it is. It really is. It's actually better. It's It's It's better, okay? It's I remind myself I talked to my friends and like hey um hey um hey um dude, I just want like a reminder, dude.

We hadn't worked a real job in like 15 years. Like it's pretty freaking nuts. And my buddies are like, yeah, dude, we forget how good we have it. I'm like I'm like, do you know like how many of our friends and colleagues are still getting up every day and going to the job we had 15 years ago? And because we became independent investors and became part of the investor class and aggressively invested money in equity markets and now we're independently financially free, we're podcasters, and we're investing, and we're working really hard.

We're starting businesses and backing other businesses. We're probably working harder than we've ever worked in life, but it's optional. It's optional, and we're doing it because we enjoy it. And we're financially free to be at every kid's soccer game. We're financially free to be with our family and our friends whenever we want, however we want. Like I used to have the cubicle job for many, many years, guys. Many, many, many years. I had the job in the cubicle cubicle cubicle uh doing sales calls, right? And so I try to never forget how awesome it is to like not be in that position.

So yeah, I I don't mean to rip on getting wealthy cuz it's pretty damn awesome. It's just It's just It's just keep it manageable cuz there is a point of diminishing returns, and then there's a point of deeply, deeply negative returns on every dollar you spend. Not every dollar you make, but every dollar you spend after after that point. You're cool, man. Chris, this is fun. I like having uh we like having you on. We like talking to you. You got to do a part three now.

Dude, you guys are the You guys are the best. I would I'm always up for it. I I love it. love it. love it. Well, we appreciate you so much. That's it. That's the pod.