I Turned $1M into $2.3B (Then Blew It Up and Rebuilt)

Transcript from https://podmenti.com/t/00386816a25451ad

I'm a good guy to sit around a campfire with drinking because I got a lot of store. This is Mike Novogratz.
Mike grew up as a poor kid on Long Island, made its first million working as a trader at Goldman Sachs at the age of 32, and made its first billion at the age of 40. Is that life changing? Yeah. We were the only company ever where five guys became billionaires in a day.
That's wild.
Mike is a cowboy in his personal life and his professional life. This guy likes to push it.
And it's max risk all the time.
Yeah.
That's crazy, man.
Mike's made and lost a fortune about two different times.
We made a bunch of mistakes and next thing I know, not only aren't you worth two billion dollars, but you're going under the billion pretty quick. And you're like, oh shit, that sucks. And what are you doing like
What's the lesson to be learned here? The gap being really great.
in the next level, and I put myself in that next level.
Yeah.
I feel like I can rule the world, I know I can be what I want to
I put my all in it like my day's all on the road, less travel, never looking at the ball. I value people who are good operators at life.
And who live a certain way that I like. I'm dressed like a cowboy today because I'm like you're kind of like a cowboy a little bit, like in the the energy that you have. And and that's something that I really respect.
But I thought one of the coolest things was how you've made and lost a fortune, I think two or three times.
You know
I certainly have lost lots of money. Uh that that narrative exists.
And
one of my kids and a few of my friends like, dude, that's a little unfair because
Even at your lows, you still had a lot of frickin' money. So your first your first hit was in your
Mid thirties, you're at Goldman, right? Yeah. I was I was a partner at Goldman Sachs.
Goldman's an amazing firm.
It's it's
It it might
be one of the firms that everyone should study because they create a culture there.
Where
Maybe not good for your mental health, but good for the firm.
People define themselves
by what their boss thinks about them.
Lloyd Blankbein was like the big guy at Goleman in a later part of my career. In every single person what does Lloyd think about me?
You know, you gave your heart and soul to this culture of Goldman. And it's a it's a culture of
Excellence. It's a culture of world class people. You're competing and working alongside the best and the brightest. And so you feel like you're on the New York Yankees when the Yankees are winning.
And
One of the big advantages of that is they
Paid you wildly less.
Then market.
as you're on your working your way up because you had the right
the privilege of being a golden sach and one day you might become a partner.
And so I started at twenty four because I had done the
Army and flew helicopters for a while.
April first, nineteen eighty nine, I got my job.
And
You know, I moved out to Asia, which was a great move.
The Asian financial crises happened.
Uh and
What you'll learn in a financial crises
Yeah.
You're either on the right side of it or the wrong side of it.
And if you're on the right side of it, i.e. if you're
bearish when the world blows up.
You may
Far more money than you thought you would.
For the firm.
And so
Bon.
And me and the team I was with was very lucky.
That's the same.
You know, we got ourselves on the right side. Asian bone, and we killed it.
And so I became a managing director.
First and then a partner.
What age were you when you left?
I think thirty three when I became a partner, thirty four when I left. And what was your big year?
Ninety seven.
Ninety eight.
I made a ton of money for the firm.
Now, in ninety seven I got paid two million dollars, which was by far the most I'd ever been paid, which was a
It's a ton of money no matter what you look at.
I was a millionaire at thirty one. I I wanted to be a millionaire by the time I was thirty, but I didn't have a net worth of a million dollars until I was thirty one.
But the first year I really felt like I got pay, I got two million dollars.
Yeah, nineteen ninety seven.
Me and my team had made the firm like two hundred million dollars. And so
That was a one percent payout.
Right.
If you work at Citadel or any big hedge fund today
you're broadly getting paid 15% to 20% of what you make.
Goldman paid us one percent, but you're gonna be a partner one day and it's part of the And you listen, you did it make it all on your own.
There was a huge infrastructure, Goldman
You know, does deserve more than
Then let's say Cynthia might.
But
They had this.
Mythology of the place.
that allowed you to stay there. And I I one time I most w quit and the the bosses would take you out and say, Oh no, you're gonna be a partner one day. And listen, I made partner in nineteen ninety eight.
And
In nineteen ninety nine the company went public and
And listen, anyone who was a partner at at Goldman Sachs
when they went public in ninety nine was just lucky because
The company had been built over a hundred and plus years.
So all those people who had built that enterprise value.
That we're partners.
That day.
You know, we got all their hard earned effort.
We sold this enterprise that was built over a hundred plus years.

was one of the
coolest IPOs of all time. And the junior partners we all had.
Four hundred and twenty thousand shares.
Uh in the stock.
was a fifty five dollar IPO which traded to seventy
five dollars and you can do
The four hundred thousand times seventy five. And we all were roughly worth thirty million dollars overnight.
thirty million dollars is still a huge amount of money. In nineteen ninety nine it felt a lot bigger.
Did you have to vest the did that need to vest for the next four years?
If you were a partner it was automatically vested, but you weren't allowed to sell it for three, four, and five years. I think
Four, five and six years or three, four and five years. So when you left you had to keep it?
Yes. Okay, good.
Um
And listen, I
I left Goleman and not the
the nicest of ways I had a
Personal.
It kinda blew up personally.
Um
I've been there, man.
That was
horrible, it was embarrassing, it was humiliating, it was
Yeah, you're letting people down, guys had made big guts on you.
Oops. One of the great conversations that
We'll ever remember.
At that point I was working for a guy named John Thornton, who was the
One of the two co presidents of Goldman.
And he'd taken a big risk on me and
Right.
I'm I just feel so bad for you.
Yeah.
Except
Oh bad for me.
He's like, I'm the president of Goldman Sachs, I'm worth
Zillion dollars. I've got a house here and here. I got a nice wife and kids.
Like
You don't need to feel bad for me. You need to worry about yourself.
And I was like
It was such a nice thing for him to say.
And it was so true.
I was so I was so worried about what
those other guys were thinking about me and having let them down and
And instead of saying, Oh my God, like
Let your family down, you let your
Self down, like
Go.
Go fix your own shed.
I left their tail between my legs.
And spent a year
Sorting myself out. I had a shrink for the first time in my life.
Heard you tell the story that like you said it one time and it it kinda got glossed over, but it's kind of
Brilliant. I think you said your brother
was near
World trade on uh two thousand one.
And he calls you and he's like
I think there's a terrorist attack. I I think I'm I'm in the was it was he in the World Trade Center? He was in the building right next to it.
And what did you say your reply was? I was like, you should buy euro dollars or two year notes. And I was like, oh get maybe get out of the building.
Uh
And I was like, maybe I should go back to Wall Street. I literally thought that I was like
Well partly
I then decided to run down. I'd been in the army. I want to run down to help and I pick my kid up and I'm running down the block. We lived in Chelsea at the time.
Uh so I'm running to the West Side Highway so I can actually see the World Trade Center because you couldn't see it from my roof.
And
My uh kids started crying.
And I said, Well, that's not a good idea to run down there with the kids. So I ran back in and watched on TV.
But
They wouldn't really take volunteers. The police blocked it off and I was like
I felt a little impotent, like no way to no way to participate. I couldn't participate financially, I couldn't participate like
In safety or physical.
It's like when you uh you spent all your life try trying to make money, trying to be charismatic, trying to be powerful, and you're like, Fuck. Yeah.
I literally remember saying, I want to go back to work in Wall Street and there's another chapter left in me.
'Cause in between I was looking at things like outward bound or just a whole different career path. I I was like You were gonna be like a camp instructor? I was gonna try to run outward bound.
Uh
Yeah there were there was a you know you're looking at
Yeah, headhunters that
You know, what are jobs that you could qualify for? Remember, I was the president of Goldman Sachs Latin America, I was a young partner from Goldman.
And so camp instructor was was below my pay grade at that point. But
I was trying to think of other ways to contribute to to my life and to society.
That than Wall Street.
And that
That nine eleven thing was like, you know, go back to Wall Street, you got another chapter.
I I I actually to be fair didn't start Fortress. Uh
My
partner Pete Brigger.
who was a partner of mine and a good friend both from Princeton Goldman Sachs.
And in Hong Kong.
He had called me up and said, Hey
Why don't we partner up?
And uh
Pete's an amazing guy. He
He said, How about this?
You're pretty
You have a fun life and I'm a pretty good investor.
And you're a decent investor.
Decent.
Thanks Pete.
It is uh
We'll go together, we'll split it fifty fifty. Half what I make, half of what you make.
And
At that point
His stock was trading
at a premium to fair value. And my stock was trading at a huge discount to fair value. Like
And that he would make that call.
meant the world to me.
And so I say I'll do it. And so the two of us, we're gonna partner up in something.
And Pete had known Wes Eden's
who had started Fortress a few years earlier.
At that point Fortress was probably
Eighty people and about a billion dollars acid. And it was a Pirm or a hedge fund? It had been a Pirm.
And you were buying any type of businesses? What what were you Well it was a PE firm that Wes ran with a guy named Randy Nardone and Rob Kaufman.
who are still friends of mine and and and partners and some other things.
And they were doing mostly structured credit type E buying but they
You know, West was a genius. He like came up with the idea of
Let's buy all the cell towers and then
Think of cell towers as a reet.
And so he would look at
business opportunities and literally craft companies that then w then become billion dollar companies.
Um
And so we thought
Pete has a real expert in building a credit hedge fund. I was gonna build a macro hedge fund.
And the three of us sat there and said one plus one plus one.
Will equal ten.
No one had ever taken a hedge fund or private equity.
company public.
And we said, let's build a company.
Where we all build our own businesses. And to be fair.
Ninety percent, ninety five percent of the time we spent alone. We didn't like
Each day, what are we doing today?
I built a company, Pete built a company, Wes built a company that we all put in the same box.
Did you have to come up with any of your own capital to join?
I did.
I did. And uh I actually
Didn't have that much capital.
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, you.
I said Goldman had a lot of things.
Yeah, we got thirty million dollars after Goldman.
Well that's pre tax and the stock goes down and
I think Pete and I put in roughly ten or fifteen million dollars. That's all I had.
So you you are worth fifteen or ten.
And you put all of it into Fortress. All of it into Fortress. And actually borrowed some, I think. And you're what, thirty seven?
Yeah, thirty cent.
And
You know.
Started a hedge fund and
I started a macro fund and P started a big distress fund and
West continued to build his private equity business and
Part of our ethos was
If we do what we say we're gonna do, people will trust us.
I learned that at Goldman Sachs as well. Goldman Sachs Assets Management.
business didn't have the greatest returns, but they had lots of money because people trusted them.
So how do you build a
A sense of trust in investors.
It's doing what you say you're gonna do.
No one expects you to win all the time.
What was wonderful about Fortress was Mary Cool is that
Over the first
Five years.
Really two thousand two to two thousand seven.
Pete's business.
I don't think lost money in a month.
He'd buy broken comp broken debt.
He'd give loans to people like you know
I I called him a lone shark.
Like if you couldn't get a loan from Deutsche, he came to Pete. Like private credit. Now private credit's a huge business, but he was early in private credit.
Uh
And so he built this
very diversified portfolio of loans.
Uh
Wess continued to do his stuff and literally his track record just kept going up and up.
And I had a very good run as a macro trader.
And so by the time we went public.
My macro fund in those five years was a top performing macro fund.
You know, is it was in the top five percent of macro funds.
Pete had never lost money in a month, and Wes's track record looked like Warren Buffett's. And that fifteen million that you invested or ten w at its peak, what do you think it was worth?
Well when we went public.
Uh
We were the only company ever.
And I think to this day this holds where five guys became billionaires in a day.
So in in in roughly ten years you turn one million into uh a billion.
Or sitting around our office after we rang the bell at the stock exchange.
And I got my two young daughters, and all of a sudden
Bloomberg puts a picture of Wes Eden inside, Oh shit.
Wes Eidens two point three billion and then a picture of Pete Brigger. Pete Brigger, two point three billion.
Picture of Mike and I think w West owned a tiny bit more, so Way West would have been 2.4 billion and then Pete and I own the same. 2.3 and 2.3 billion.
And my two like nine and ten year old daughters.
Looked at each other.
And high five. Because we had never talked about money, right? You know, like you know nine and ten years. Is there any difference between
Making let's say thirty million dollars.
Then from two point whatever.
I think
That
Fortress frenzy of us becoming
Rock stars almost, because we were the first company to
Take a hedge we're the first guys to take a hedge fund private equity company public.
And that
We were all on such a high.
It didn't last long because the O financial crises happened.
You get treated a little differently. All of so you're getting
calls from the president of your university who wants to sit down and talk with you. You're getting invited to cool dinners and
And so it goes to your head a little bit.
And
And you're not ready ready for
the rush of excitement around it.
You don't feel that different. I think the same friends and you know but you've
There's a little bit of everyone gets a little bit full of themselves. Did your did your life stay the same, but the the people who wanted to talk to you change?
Or you're getting you're getting emails and
And calls from people you haven't seen in years and people you don't even know that say they know you. Yeah, you get this there's a especially'cause it was public.
But if it'd done it quietly, no one would have known. But we were like on.
newspapers and magazine articles and so
And it goes to your head a little bit.
And then
Yeah, the wonderful thing about behaving.
Six brothers and sisters is
They don't treat you much differently. They're like excited for you, but they Well and you have six and six or seven
You have a bunch of siblings who are also
Ballers too.
And friends and so you know, and then
The market's always
Take their pound of flesh.
You know, we we made a bunch of mistakes. Oh eight happened.
And next thing you know.
Not only aren't you worth two billion dollars, but you're going under the billion pretty quick.
Oh shit, that sucks.
Some of this goes back to
This is gonna sound crass as heck.
But
If
You were a kid in high school that played sports and the girls liked or the guys liked if you were a girl and had a decent social life.
And didn't have a chip on your shoulder.
It doesn't seem like it's success is a little easier to handle'cause you were used to it.
And it's not the same s magnitude of success, but
Like if you got lucky with the girls in high school, you usually

Like it it's
Often you see the
problems of people that really have a hard time adjusting.
was when they were
misfits their social and and that chip on their shoulder drove them to this crazy success. And you the reason I'm interested in in you is because you've won
In a bunch of different parts of life.
So you were a great wrestler, you went to Princeton, like you did a lot of amazing things.
But then you you
What's funny is because you're
personality is so loud and because you're so like funny and tell these crazy stories.
Like you talk about trading and you're like, Oh yeah, I forgot. You actually had to be skilled at something.
What the people who are around you, what do you think they would say you're good at?
I have a weird
insight into looking at what the future's gonna be.
Yeah, it's called pattern recognition.
I can look at the charts and say, this is gonna happen, or I can s synthesize information well. And so I'm a good speculator because
I see the future pretty well.
I used to. I watch a ton of TV now, but I read a lot of
like nonfiction stuff that's coming through my desk all the time, right? So I keep up on news and the world and talk to people.
Most of the great CEOs read a lot.
They're curious. I'm curious as heck.
I get a lot of my
Curiosity.
And learning.
From conversation.
From I've this amazing network of people that I've met in the world and I'm learning all the time.
I literally had lunch with
Goldman's chief
Intel uh chief uh information officer. So he's got nineteen thousand of Goldman's forty five thousand people that work for him.
And
You know.
That was a master class in AI.
And so
Then I'm like meeting some other guy in AI and so I'm
learning AI.
from reading articles, playing with it, but mostly
Finding out the the world experts and
And and learning from them. That's that's the way I've been learning as I've gotten older. So you think that people would say that you're good at
Seeing patterns. What else would they say you think they think you're good. And I'm a good storyteller.
And so
Why?
That's been important.
Is crypto
in the last ten years has been about narrative.
Right.
It has been about
The story.
of understanding the world and then telling that story.
And I think I've been unbelievably well suited for this moment of time.
To be a crypto CEO,'cause I'm a good storyteller.
Right. How do you convince someone
To buy Bitcoin.
You've got to tell them a story. What about being a good trader? Because you were actually a trader for long time. I still am a trader.
That's a hard job.
Because you have to
First of all
Develop.
A process
An internal algorithm.
That
wins more than it loses. You gotta be really honest with yourself. Am I good at this?
I it's not am I intelligent, am I smart, but am I good at this? Am I good at taking this information and making bets on it.
And even if you are
Then you need to develop a discipline.
That
Allows you

Your guesses.
are in your portfolio.
There's so many people that say, Oh my God, you gotta be short the dollar right now.
The US is on a downtrend, right? Trump is pissing everybody off.
The short dollar is the biggest, easiest trade to see.
Every single
Macro investor. Almost every s single investor right now.
believes that you should be short the dollar.
And it's a maximum conviction.
belief.
I would bet if you took all their portfolios.
Only forty percent of them have a really big position.
Well
It sh should be tautological that if you're bearish you're short and if you're bullish that you're long.
But it's not.
Because of fear.
What from wrong?
And so
So much of trading is anxiety management.
So much is how do I overcome my fear. I heard a guy the other day say uh
Anxiety is just when your brain is a lot bigger than your balls. And so we listen, anxiety is real, right? Like
There is this.
the lion that shows up and you go with the fight or flight.
In training you see you see the lion all the time.
And you get nervous when the market's going higher and you're long, well if it goes back down, I'll give back my money.
And so there are all these
Different reasons you get scared.
How do you learn to trust yourself?
That's a really hard process.
And
And I'm really good at this.
But there's a group that's better than me.
And I think about this all the time.
But does that mean you're you're good at managing anxiety?
The whole process of seeing the world and then betting on it and making money from it.
And so I don't know there are twenty five macro traders that people probably heard of Stan Druckenmiller, David Tepper, Paul Tudor Jones, Louis Bacon.
Alan Howard, Chris Rocos. There's a
bunch of people that are great at this.
The gap between the really great
And the next level.
And I put myself in that next level.
Is discipline.
And
So you have to have a set of rules that you follow. Well, do you do you consider yourself a highly disciplined person? I think I'm a really hard working person.
Who has
And I was really disciplined at parts of my life.
And I think I have
sporadic lapses of discipline.
Partly because
I have this
really diverse group of interests.
And I get excited.
Uh.
I'm a people pleaser, so I'm trying to help things out all people out all the time.
And
It's a prioritization.
Like Stan Truckemuler, for instance, who I think is
the best or you know, David Tepper's pushing on him, but the best trader of h certainly of his generation. Tepper's a little bit younger.
Uh
thirty-two years, never lost money, compounded over thirty percent.
Everyone in our seats
Look at him as like
The guy. The guy.
a ton of integrity on how he lives his life and how he lives his portfolio.
When he was managing other people's money
He never golfed.
During a work day.
And he loves golf.
But what you said you said you had this great quote, you go, uh you were quoting uh Napoleon or someone, but you you said uh
I hire lucky generals, not skilled ones.
So this was
How did I learn?
That I was
had the right to be good at this.
Right.
You're I was making money lots and I was like.
Yeah, everyone has a bit of imposter syndrome.
And
Ahud Barak, who'd been the Prime Minister of Israel, I'd hired as a consultant.
How do you hire the prime minister who's one of my investors said you need to meet Ahud Barak and Ahud Barak was looking ways to make money and he had just started this business.
And he had two clients.
Louis Bacon, who was a
Multi billionaire.
You know, one of the pantheon of the greats.
And Bruce Covner.
multi billionaire one of the pantheon of the greats.
And Mike Novats, who was a
Little
Peanut at that point.
Maybe it was two hundred thousand a year or something. So you get the uh a former prime minister for two hundred grade a year to to give you feedback and advice. That's pretty good deal.
I just remember thinking.
I've had the same consultant. He only had like three clients.
As
two of the world the like literally the great tra traders of all time, Bruce Cudder who built Caxton and and Lewis Bacon who built more capital.
And
I'm sitting with a hood for lunch and he said.
You don't know if I figured you out.
Said you know.
You're not so smart.
But you're lucky.
And I was like
That's the compliment.
He said, Don't worry about it, because you know, I was just with Lewis Bacon and I spent time with Bruce Covenner. He said, Covenner might be smarter than you, but but you know, all of you guys have an intuition.
And he gave me this quote from Napoleon. He said, Of course I didn't know French. He said I forgot you're not so smart, you don't know French.
Son of a bitch.
at least allegedly had the highest IQ of anyone in the Israeli military. And he was the most decorated soldier in the Israeli military.
He was a wonderful guy, charming.
And he said
You guys have an intuition, a pattern recognition, uh
an ability to sense where things are, like a general did.
Uh and that's your intelligence.
Instantly I was like
That's why I'm right more than I'm wrong.
I never knew why I was right more than I was wrong.
It's easy to know you're being commercial.
Right.
You and I can be commercial if we can
If we can make these things.
you know, cups of broth for fifty cents and sell'em for two dollars, we're both gonna say, How how many can we sell?
But that's not hard.
But why should I
be able to predict where dollar yen is gonna go in a year better than you. Trevor Burrus Are you able to do this in other facets of your life where like, man, my pr I met this person, I predict that they're gonna
face these problems or whatever.
Without
being conscious of it.
Like I've invested in a few independent movies. Nobody makes money in independent movies. Like almost nobody.
And I've invested in
Two of the top three.
Selling independent films of all time.
I I independent films that sold for the top.
Prices.
Right. Birth of a nation still I think is the the highest. Yeah, nineteen or what?
Ninete million it's sold for, I think. Ninete million, and then there's a movie called Assassination Nation, which
didn't do well in the box office but sold for like thirteen million. Like those are two of the top
You know.
Five.
prices for independent movies, at least they were.
And
Was that just luck or was it intuition? I mean it's not luck if it happens twice. Right. Um and so
For me, that conversation with Barack was
giving me confidence that my
decision process wasn't random, that there was something in it. So I I went back and I thought about like how do I make decisions?
And it is at the intersection of lots of and lots of data.
And a gut feeling.
And there there's that I think moment.
And so once I understood that, I was much more confident in telling investors how I made decisions. My hedge fund went from three hundred million dollars under management to two billion.
And it and and my performance went straight up over like the next six months.
but mostly because investors could feel my confidence.
And so
the the lesson for you or for listeners
Is
Spend time figuring out what you're good at.
And where that comes from.
And
Not everyone has the same skills. Where does it come from for
for you though of I mean,'cause like I remember reading about um
I'm not in the finance world at all.
But I read uh Black Fish, which is about uh Steve Cohen.
And they told stories about how in the eighties when it that there was a physical ticker and he would like he could just hear the rhythm of the ticker and make and I'm like
That is just so vague. It it's and that's and it's a pain in the ass because I'm like, I you're explaining it like an art, but I want it to be more of a science because I want to learn. But that's what you're that's how you're describing it. It's like it's more of it's it's very it's very artistic. For me
The type trading I do, it's very intuitive and it's very pattern recognition. If I went blind, I couldn't trade.
I need to see the ballet of the charts. There are other people
that do things very differently. Like the interesting thing about
training is there are a thousand different ways.
to approach it. I know Stevie pretty well, but I don't know his z his exact process.
But I would tell you he's one of the most competitive guys out there.
He used to go on vacation and
And have all his screens set up.
It wasn't in the in
feeling things right, he'd fly right back to get it to his desks.
Like he was obsessed with beating the markets.
Are you c you think you're competitive?
I'm not as competitive.
Which is interesting. When I think about like with Standrock Miller and Lewis Bacon and
Like why those guys have
I've been in that
And maybe one day I'll catch them, but they're I'm but I'm not in their category at this point.
They're more competitive than me. They just I mean, you Lewis Bacon, I remember playing croquet against them and I'm like
How's this guy killing me in croquet? Well, he had hired the world's best croquet guy to teach him. He he doesn't like to lose.
There's partly like these guys are ultra competitive.
But they also are ultra disciplined.
And those two cross factors. Creates a maniac.
Well creates an amazing performer. Yeah.
Uh.
Maybe not the easiest person to
Go to co cocktailsworth.
Sometimes they are something you know, but like
Like an amazing performer. And
I
I'm I don't want to discount. I've had an amazing run of success at trading.
Um
I just know myself uh as I compare myself to the other guys.
Now I would
probably argue I've had more fun.
I've done more different things than most people.
But I got again each person makes their own decision on what path they want to take. And I'm not
I'm not
Making a value judgment on how people live their lives.
The key is to figure out how you want to live your own life.
But figure out what you're good at.
And
Again, that that comes from mentors. It comes from
Sometimes chance.
Without that
conversation with Hubert. I was miserable.
Because I was feeling so much pressure.
And I remember telling my wife, I said, I might even just shut this hedge fund down if I can't have more fun. And I was winning.
But I was feeling so much pressure.
And I think I was feeling pressure.
Because I didn't know why it was good.
In that literal conversation over lunch.
Uh
Unlocked.


story in me that said, Hey, this is why I should
This is why I win.
And that was intuition. You're just good at uh you you you feel certain things and you should trust it. And I and I and it doesn't come just delighted.
You you don't get it from sitting in a box.
There's a tremendous amount of information I'm shoving in my brain.
Right, looking at charts, talking to people, understanding psychology, looking at
you know, who's long and who's short. There's tons of stuff that goes into the algorithm.
But it was at that intersection of the intuition.
It's all in the part of your brain that you're not tapping normally. A lot of it's historical too. Like you see things
They repeat themselves.
Yeah, I heard um one of my heroes is John Rockefeller and I was listening to Business United, and you're like when I was in fifth grade or eighth grade or something, I wrote a paper on John D. Yeah. And I thought that was cool because he's a a fun ass dude to learn about. And you also, you and your partner West did the train thing.
I was a cheerleader and an investor, but
But uh
Yeah, that was fascinating when I went down there.
And I was reading about Flagler. Yeah, he's a man.
These guys are hardcore.
Yeah.
Uh I went and talked to a bunch of friends of ours to we have mutual we you and I have some mutual friends.
And uh I wanna tell you what they said. They go up He's max risk.
All the time.
His entire life.
He takes tons of risk.
And he lives life on the edge.

And another person said, um
Uh
He's blown up a couple of times and he's won a lot more.
I'm amazed at how how good he is at managing risk.
And then I actually talked to some of the guys you work with and they also use the word risk constantly. It's hard to be in the crypto and not to be comfortable with risk.
Like
It's an asset that
You know, Bitcoin went up. It c crashed down. Yeah, I think it's bigger than Bitcoin. I think that uh you got lucky that Bitcoin exists when it does. I think that you're a guy who um
You enjoy risk. You enjoy I think you you were telling I heard a story about how you said like
you are a thirty seven out of forty in terms of like uh some type of personality test of freaking rules. And you're like, it's funny, my kid like is the exact opposite.
And then do you hear I read the New Yorker or some uh article where they're like
T.
flew a helicopter down the street like during the Princeton's graduation. Like
There's clearly like this thing of like this guy likes to push it.
And it's pretty comfortable.
Teetering.
on like big ruins. And so
Are you
For your personal finances, are you
At risk.
Often.
So part of it is
There's this balance between like yeah, I'm there's a there's an adrenaline need. Like I I like adrenaline like in sports and in trading and in
You know, it's a dopamine.
addiction if you want to think about it.

I like my life.
And I was a
Helicopter pilot.
At Fort Rucker, Alabama.
And I made
eighteen thousand a year after tax. I remember'cause I have fifteen hundred dollars per month paycheck.
uh Pat Tierney, who's a buddy of mine still was one of my buddies down there.
And
We are the time of our lives.
I when I look at
How much fun and how
much I enjoyed that in the middle of frickin' lower ugly the ugly corner of lower Alabama.
Right, the wiregrass, it was called by Dothan.
With seven hundred other guys and almost no women around because
All the women who have gone off to college and
There's seven hundred guys.
And a few women at flight school.
We still have one of the time in our lives.
So when I think was that year
Better or worse than the year I made lots of money?
I I can't tell.
Like that was a great year.
And so I think if you enjoy your life
It's easier to take risk.
If I lost my money.
It would hurt my ego for a while.
I would be embarrassed.
Uh
I'd be frustrated'cause all the money really does at one point is allow you to help other people.
Right.
A blessing. It's a huge blessing.
But it's also a lot of responsibility and sometimes it's a pain in the ass. And so
I actually don't think.
I've tied.
how I live my life on a year to year basis.
To money.
Now some of my friends say, Oh that's bullshit. Look at the parties you thought you spend lots of money. I do spend lots of money.
But
I threw tons of parties when I didn't have a lot money either, I had just a few cheaper parties.
And so I think
So much of the
being able to take risk.
Is being okay with your life.
And not being defined by just your money.
Have you uh met a guy named Brad Jacobs? No, I wish I have.
He has a book. I that's I've never met him. I've read his book. It's called How to Make a Billion Dollars.
He's

X O Logistics is one of them, if you've ever heard of that. Um like these like
Huge like ten billion dollar logistic companies and his whole shtick was he
Fragmented industries.
About all of them.
operate them well to public, whatever.
And he talks in his book about how he was like, I research like crazy. Like anytime I get into a business, I research like crazy. So I read all the books.
I use T Just or or whatever else, like the services and Alpha sites or whatever they are and like I hire experts, but then I go and talk to the employees and I just research. So it's like I'm really confident that this is gonna work because I've talked to literally
Five hundred people and have all these notes.
What I've noticed a pattern with you.
is that you don't I don't know if you call it research, but you talk to a lot of people.
And so like I just on on the way here, I was hearing a story about how like your roommate was Gloria Vanderbilt's
son or something like that. It was uh like so that's like pretty magical to like to be around and hear stories of that family. And then like your other roommate helped
Create Ethereum.
Uh and then there was like this other story, this other story. There was like
Twenty stories where I'm like
What the hell? Like it's like it's like you I'm a good guy to sit around a campfire with drinking'cause I got a lot of stories. But there's just so many times where it's like Oh, I just it's like i normal people would be like
I know a guy, you know, I sat at a bar next to a guy and he did this. You just have all these stories, except they just happen to be like these like wild crazy people.
Who what was the story about how you first heard about Bitcoin?
So Pete Brigger
Uh

He lived above me my freshman year at Princeton. He lived in the room above me. This dorm was amazing.
We had a pretty cool uh little group of people. Right? Is this wild? It's like the greatest dorm on earth. He lived above. How many billionaires are from that dorm, would you think? No, seriously.
At least three. For really.
Yeah.
But
He's of the reason I got my job at Goldman Sachs. I was literally
Wander around Bleaker Street, a little drunk.
And I ran into him and I was interviewing for jobs and he's like
Bullshit, you gotta work at Goldman Sachs.
And I was from the army and
So he got me an interview at Goldman Sachs.
And
Forty one interviews later, I they gave me a job.
And then we lived in Hong Kong together and we slowly became very good friends. I'm the godfather of his his youngest son.

Fortress.
And
He was the guys that was the distressed debt investor.
Well, because he made a promise to his wife.
that at one point they'd move back to California. He moved his entire business or the bulk of it to
Stanford area, right? Palo Alto.
And what year was that?
This probably would have been
He probably moved his business out there two thousand and ten or something.
And
But he's not a tech guy.
But his brother in law was a tech guy and the the group of friends he had were tech guys.
And they all started talking about Bitcoin.
And
Pete wanted to be part of the
P part of the gr you know, the clan.
And so he called me up, he said, I'm hearing about this thing, Bitcoin, all my smart friends are doing it. What do you think? And I never heard of it.
And I
quickly did a Google search.
And asked around and this was in ten? This was until this was been two thousand and
twelve, two thousand thirteen, maybe. Bitcoin was at like ninety six dollars. So uh
It was nothing really. I mean there's not there would have been like Bitcoin.org or like some forums. There wasn't a lot, but it was online. The Chinese had just started buying it.
And I made a thesis as we gotta buy it
And
We started buying some of it.
I'm right, my friend Jeff Lowe.
who's become a great investor, was working in my family office and he bought my first Bitcoin for me and
And
Then Pete and I kept talking about it and we like, maybe this should be bigger than just us buying a little bit of it. So we called a third friend Dan Moore, another Princeton guy.
Why I had
And that's who had.

Went to Princeton, he had worked on Wall Street, he worked at Goldman, he worked at Tiger.
I had invested in his first hedge fund.
And he was on the sidelines.
Uh in between, you know, after O eight his hedge fund didn't do well. He was trying to figure out
What to do. He did some cool stuff in Argentina.
He researched this for a while.
And came back and was like, guys, this is gonna change the whole world.
And
Dam was really confident.
And was willing to put a whole bunch of his net worth into this thing.
Pete and I were uh
Wealthier.
Because fortunately gone public the Dan at the time. We're like
He's putting that much in. We need to put at least that much in. And you know, that's the way guys think.
And so we all roughly put similar amounts in. Was it like eight figures? Uh
Or you can even say that? It was it was seven figures. Seven figures. But it was a significant amount in dollar terms.
At a hundred.
But not in our net worth terms.
Right, we were very wealthy guys at the time.
And
It's one of the reasons we were able to hold it so long.
Because
Even it went up.
If you're a young guy.
And you put ten thousand dollars into something.
And all of a sudden it's worth 100,000.
Your friend's like, dude you gotta you gotta take some Yeah, y you can buy a house, you can your girlfriend wants you to buy, you know, like
There's so many reasons you're gonna sell that thing.
And almost nobody can hold.
But if you already have a lot of money.
It's just another investment.
We get a lot of credit for
having made lots of money in crypto.
It was easier having started rich.
And it's got me thinking why this world is so off sides.
When you're wealthy, you have assets. Assets are basically chips on a table.
You know.
Bought SpaceX when it was
one twentieth was today because everyone's like some SpaceX and you looked and you're like
Elon Musk is killing. He's brilliant.
Let me get some private space X.
And so
All of a sudden you make
You know, a hundred million plus in space act. She didn't do anything other than make put a bet down.
And so
Getting money.
And and getting network.
makes making money so much easier.
Uh it's almost unfair. It's why Picketty wrote that book. He said that there's no way
the rich poor gap ever comes back into balance because
Once you're wealthy, you have such an advantage. And the advantage isn't just capital, it's capital and network.
And one of my
strengths is I like people, I like cheering people on, I like talking about people.
And it makes it easy to make
Friends and network.
And
Through that network you learn stuff.
So my I'm um for our podcast, my listeners will make fun of me. I
I own a company now that's does well and I hopefully that's gonna be a huge home run.
But my liquid net worth I just do um basically
The S P five hundred and bonds.
Got a a white guy from Missouri.
Oh yeah. Look, it's worked out. Boring w which means I've I've outperformed about ninety percent of hedge funds, so it's worked out.
Uh but like
Yeah, I've like I started making money in the greatest bull market of all time.
And um do you for your personal finances, uh do you have any
Boring stuff or are you always are you active
for the whole thing.
No, I
Listen, I have
A chunk of money in
You know, these credit funds like the one Pete Rand.
Uh which are private credit funds, which
You know.
Roughly have
have done ten percent plus a year compounded and if you can compound a piece of money at ten percent a year for a long period of time, you get rich real quick.
And so
I have some on private credit.
I have a lot of my own company.
uh then I trade currencies and stuff on my own. And then I have a bunch of private equity investments and venture investments.
I own a chunk of Bojangles, the chicken company that's a
got announced yesterday that that they're the group that owns it is putting it up for sale.
So
Hoping hoping that sells for a high price.
But I I haven't really
ever done bond stocks.
Partly'cause that's what I do.
Yeah.
And my money has often been tied up in the enterprise that I'm engaged in at Fortress. I own a lot of Fortress stock. I guess you've been illiquid like for a large
Portion of this.
I probably have run the
the the lowest liquidity to net worth ratio
Can you tell me more about that? You know, it's not necessarily what I w wanted always. I
I've always had a lot of faith that I'd make money.
And so I've always either want to live a big life and also make a lot of investments and so you spent you you just spend a lot? Spend a lot. Live large, I invest large, and I always think I'm gonna win. And so
In twenty twenty one.
We thought we were gonna be able to take Galaxy public and I was gonna get a lot of liquidity.
It turned out
We took a little too long to get into the SEC Q.
administration change, Gary Gensler shut the door.
And so for four years.
No liquidity out of galaxy.
You know, my other liquid stuff I made some good investments, some bad investments and
Didn't really change lifestyle and you s slowly start burning the furniture of liquidity, right?
And
So we just did a we just did a deal. We took some ships off the table in terms of liquidity.
Dude, you you live life on the edge. I mean, I think that I admire like your ability like I'm a adrenaline seeking too.
But I'm also
Way more risk adverse than you, I think.
And I but I admire people who
are into risk because I think it's held me back.
I think one of the things that people say you blew up twice. I listen, I
I had a personal
shit to deal with and I lost my job at Goldman Sachs. Or I actually to be fair, I resigned. But that was embarrassing because I was on a
high flyer track there and I loved Colton Sachs.
And so that that was painful.
Coming back from that.
gives you a lot of confidence that
Yeah.
You can fall down and like you can lose money. It's not the end of the world. You're gonna
You gotta learn how to get back up. And being a wrestler teaches you that.
Like no wrestler wins every match. Cale Sanderson
Did it in college, but then he lost in international.
Like you know.
No one wins every match.
And
Learning how to come and I lost a lot.

Learning how to come back from losing is one of the most important things'cause
Losing doesn't mean you're a bad guy. It doesn't mean you're a shit. It doesn't mean you're not competent. It just means you lost that game.
And
I th I think Nadal when he left tennis gave the best. He was like, you know.
I think he lost forty eight percent of the points he played. He was the greatest tennis player of all time or one of the top three.
That
process of
Stumbling and coming back.
And I think a lot about
Help.
I have
Managed to do that myself.
Because I often are asked to help people to think through it.
What, like a downfall and like a rebirth?
Part of it is
Take some time off and do some work and understand like
What the hell happened? Like how do you
Most people don't spend enough time figuring out who they are.
Like
Like literally trying to understand.
Like who they are.
And why they're that
who they are. It's always your parents. You've got a relationship with your mom and your dad.
Whatever the story was
Dad disappeared.
Processing that, right? That's the human condition, right?
And try and understand what moves you.
Some people get there.
And
The whole world.
Other people just make progress getting there.
Right. I think I've made progress. I'm not sure I've b
Never gotten to enlightenment by any by not even close, but I keep making progress and going on that journey.
And there there's lots of ways to go on that journey, right? It's through getting a shrink.
through meditating, through prayer, through ayahuasca or Silo Sidon journeys.
Like there's
There's radical ways, there's subtle ways, there's taking time by yourself.
But it's investing in yourself.
Most people don't invest in themselves.
I want to ask the
room full of eight hundred wrestling coaches.
How many in the last five years it's been one week.
With just themselves.
And not one hand ran up.
Not one.
You do that now?
I try
Once a year to spend a week by myself.
My friend Chris, um
who has a public trade company and he's like, I mean, I'm screw up all the time and
I always a try to journal what's the lesson to be learned here.
And I thought that was like a really good way, uh
of asking himself that question, what questions are you asking yourself during that during that seven day
Well solitude. When I did the silent meditation uh in Cardiff, England.

You sit there for freaking eleven days meditating.
Can't read, you can't do music, you can't
Exercise. You can't even masturbate. I mean it literally is
Eleven days.
Uh
Your back hurts.
You starve.
Do you set goals like this? Like like
To have such a full life.
Where you're running a I don't know how many people work here. Two hundred people? Yeah, a lot of people Six hundred. Six hundred. Oh my God, I didn't even realize that. And you have all the you have a a lot of shit going on, but then you're like, I do this week meditation and then
This party here.
Uh
Are you setting um
Like at the end of the year, this is what a win would look like.
We do. We do set goals. We've got
A management team that's got
agenda of things that we wanted to happen.
And I think the crypto business is in such an interesting sp
Both crypto and the data center business. We have two businesses.
Both are at the forefront right now of like
Explosive change.
And there's a ton to do on both of them. And so
When I think about my time.
For the next six months.
Galaxy's gonna get a ton of my time.
There's been times.
When we first started it was a smaller business.
My philanthropy got a ton of my time.
when I started doing criminal justice. So I've dialed back my participation in philanthropy solely because
this six hundred person baby.
needs a lot of energy.
And so I do think of it that way.
But my brain, you know, like how do I have fun?
think oh if I make this much money, what are we gonna do with it? So my son and I are brainstorming on
Like a cool project.
Uh
fantasy project that you would do.

X hundred million dollars to give away to one thing.
You know, what could you do with to to make New York City better?
Uh.
And so like
Like
on perplexity I'm trying to figure out, I'm working with people
And so
I multitask in that respect.
But I got goals.
Th there was that do what I say, don't what I do. I'm much better talking about
Like the meditating and the exercise and this is where the discipline
My wife wakes up every day.
Six thirty and meditates an hour and meditates an hour at night. And doesn't miss.
I'm just like she's like a metronome.
And I'm like, I know that would be good for me and I do I meditate once in a while when I'm stressed, I can meditate. But it doesn't seem broken.
Yeah.
I figure out how to fix myself, but no, I don't feel broken.
Yeah, but on this other podcast you did you were like
Oh, I went to a therapist the first time ever. And and the thing was like I gotta f love myself and forgive myself because and and you're like that was like a huge breakthrough and I'm like
In my head, I'm like playing armchair acts right here, but I'm like
You're doing it again.
You know what I mean? People have a hard time changing patterns. One of the things you'll learn as you get older is that
You s very few people.

actually do enough of the hard work that they they do change.
And most of the time you see those people is when they literally hit some
Horrific rock bottom.
That the only way to live is to change.
Right.
Cycle.
Uh where they just give up and say okay.
I'll do what you tell me to do because I gotta change.
Change his heart.
Even subtle change is hard.
And again.
If someone's living their fullest life
Maybe they don't want to change.
Right.
Yeah, I mean I love hearing about the ship because
I think that um
I think that
You know, this is gonna sound pompous of me, but in my head I'm like
I can be like you know.
He's
You know, I'm thirty five, so I'm like okay, he's twenty five years ahead of me.
And like
I we both can't hear.
Yeah, we're both a little bit uh deaf and I came from a blue collar like uh uh family and I I think you talked about Princeton about uh like you're like Oh my god, I thought I was the shit and then I got around people that like
kinda we're the shit. And I'm like I've like thought that like many like I hadn't been in New York City until I was like twenty six years old, hadn't been on the airplane until I was twenty one.
And so like I always felt like these um
The line of New York New York if you can make it here, you can make it anywhere. There's nothing like New York City,'cause you're never gonna be the guy.
Like I go home and I'm like, I'm the man And then I go to New York and I'm like
And I'm like looking at apartments and I'm like
I'm nothing. But it but it's it's it's both so liberating and so awesome because
Let me go to the next game.
Oh, dude, we were supposed to do a podcast.
And you cancelled
And that night I turn on the TV, I see Timothy Chalamne, I see the Jenner girl, and then I see Mike.
And I was like that motherfucker, how we were supposed to do a thing. And then I was like my my wife was like
Can you blame him? I'm like
No, I can't. Nick's in the playoffs is as much this side city erupts when the dude you're you had like
There was Timothy and then you. We got good seats. You were like the man.
How much does a play off seat cost?
To where where where he sees I imagine his are free seats are free.
And if you want to buy front row in the playoffs.
You know, they could cost as much as fifty, eighty thousand dollars. The second row the guy who sat next to me, I think, paid fifteen thousand. Wait, yours were free?
Well no, ours we have season tickets. Okay. And so you just pay the normal whatever
Knicks charge you for playoff tickets.
That's crazy, man. Do you see Ryan you know Ryan Cohn is?
Yeah. Ryan Cohen. I don't I mean I don't know him, but I know who he is. And I saw him
Sitting right in front of you during a game.
And like Jalen Brunson like fell in his lap and he didn't break eye contact from the beautiful woman he was with. He just like the conversation the whole time. Those seats are fun because
You always have the celebrity sitting in front of you.
I uh went to one game, just a regular season game and
The Vito, the
Nigerian superstar, you know, there's there are two guys in
In Afrobeats.
Right. Uh and Davito's one of them.
Uh the other guy's Burn a Boy.
Uh
was there and I didn't know who he was, but he had a great shane. I like chains and I'm like, dude.
What'd you get that change? Yeah.
And I want to get
A beer.
And I was like, You want a beer or Coke or something? And
He did it one when he came back, he turned around and he's like
You know, no one's aver offered to get me a beer in a long time. And I really appreciate that. And we started talking. I had no idea he was this
Mega Star.
And he posted a picture that his uncle
Text I mean was like
Dude, dude, that that guy knows more about crypto.
G get to know him. And so he came on he was on our podcast. No shit.
became friends with him. But it's sort of like
It's like this weird blue collar grit or like hospitality, but with like
Big number swag.
People people are scared to be nice to people.
I don't want it I don't want her.
The guy should in front of you.
Ask him where you got his chain.
Like most people like to be at And you end up doing some type of business with them. I I I made a huge mistake. He invited me to his wedding in Nigeria, which turned out to be like the coolest looking thing of all times, but
It was like a week before my daughter's wedding and I didn't think I could go and miss. But haven't you noticed the pattern of like this all these silly small interactions have been like
I think you said with the Ethereum purchase you've like bought a golf stream or something crazy. And like it like
It's just funny that serendipity
I guess serendipity might happen to everyone, but not everyone
capitalizes off of it. And I've noticed a pattern where like there's so many like
You're like, oh, I just happened to do this. And it like I've heard that like twelve times. You know what? I love
I love
other people's stories then you must as well, otherwise you wouldn't do the podcast. And so I get excited for other people.
Uh, like you need that, you're like, That's freaking so cool. And I wanted to know his story, and you know, I didn't really think about a rich kid and
And uh
Even the relationship with the dad. It all fascinates me.
And I think if you show interest in people
And you're open with yourself.
It opens up a lot of uh
you know, opportunity. And it's not it's not
A strategy.
It's not like I think about doing this. It it comes from
partly being raised with seven kids. It partly comes from
You know, feeling loved your whole life.
Uh
Mom and Dad love ya.
Your friends love you, you know, and so you feel comfortable in your own skin.
The gift you can give your kids, the gift you can give your employees is for people to feel comfortable in their own skin.
When I went to Princeton, my great insight.
Uh you know, I had this roommate who was Gloria Venerable's son, unfortunately ended up committing suicide later on in life and was so painful. But that had been Anderson Cooper's his brother. And Anderson's written about it. Yeah, well, I read Anderson's book on his mother. It's amazing. Yes.
And you know, I'm a young guy.
Yeah, meeting Gloria Vanderbilt and I'm like oh my God, I'm you know with royalty. Uh I'm with royalty and I'm a middle class guy and
My mom had grown up in Queens and so probably wore Gloria jeans. But she knew the whole story.
And
After about
Six months at Princeton. Yeah, Princeton's a unique place in that
Everyone lives in the same dorms and they're kind of crappy dorms.
Uh
There's not like a
Hierarchy of rich and non rich.
And
In terms of living space and even quite frankly social life.
And you're like
T.
They'll shit on the same toilet as we do.
You know, they're
He's just he's got his insecurities, he's got his strengths just like
And the moment you realize
Everyone's kinda the same. Everyone's a little bit insecure. Everyone's
Got an imposter syndrome.
Uh
Everyone's trying to figure out who they are. You had that realization in college? I had that realization in college, freshman year.
Man, so what I used to host these conferences called um
my old company was it w it was a newsletter company, whatever, it was like this media company and we own trade shows.
And or conferences, like a TED Talk.
And I would uh I was twenty four when I started doing it.
And we would get like the founder of like We Work or like Casper or Bonobos, like
Brands that uh or uh Zapier, which is now like a ten billion dollar company. These companies that were like at the time, obviously before we knew we work, was we were
Uh we're like these like ten billion dollar or whatever companies and I would play a little trick on them where I was like
All right, your talk is at noon, but you gotta be here for mic check at like ten.
And like there's no mic check for conferences, right? Like it like it works. The mic works. But I just wanted to be around'em in the green room.
And I would hear these billionaires complain, uh it would be m I would just be sitting listening with about four or five of them.
And I knew like how big their companies were and I would hear'em complain about stuff about like
I've had this CFO who I need a fire, but frankly, like I just hate the confrontation.
Or like, you know, this one company w had just raised four hundred million dollars and they were like
Things are going horrible. I'm like, dude, I just read about you in the New York Times. I thought you guys were the shit.
And I remember thinking that that was like the most like
Enlightening.
Lesson I'd had
Probably.
In terms of business and how to live life, probably ever
And I was like, these people
There
They have the same downside they have the same issues I have.
Yet they're still like just moving forward and doing it. And I found it very freeing to know that the people I admire were broken.
Listen, every everybody is is going through a similar journey. Like there are very few people that are enlightened.
I've met a couple. I've met uh one or two. Um we're all on this path.
And so
I think the lesson I learned at Princeton wasn't that
I was the same as everybody or uh
Is that
I was no better or no worse than anybody. Sure. I did some things better than people and I did some things worse than people, right? Wrestling is a pretty objective this guy beat your ass.
He's a better wrestler.
And
I've tried to keep that ethos my whole life. It's why
At my parties I got my friend I got I got a real weird collection of people
'Cause I just like them.
Yeah.
As opposed to a hierarchy of people.
And I think
That is what's brought me lots of joy. Um
But it's also giving when I got to Goldman Sachs, I would walk into the boss's office and be like, Dude, I got this great idea.
I thought I deserved to be there.
Now, often he'd say
That's a stupid idea.
Oh okay.
D.
And I go back to my seat.
Um
But the guys around me were like.
Dude, how'd you have the courage to walk into the office?
I was like, he ships on that same toilet as you do.
En so

So w were your parents confident?
My dad
was a all American football player from West Point, but very quiet and s
S stoic is the right word for nice.
He's become the kindest man in the world as he's gotten older, but he was tough.
But kind, but my mother
was very aspirational, the greatest storyteller, and she pushed us.
Not in a
direct way, but like in an indirect way. Like
Yeah.
We complain about some
Kid be able to do something and
Well, if she jumped off a cliff, would you do it?
Right.
And
There was almost this like
We could be the Kennedys. I tease my mom all the time. She looked like Jackie O. She named my first daughter, my first my oldest sister Jacqueline, her first daughter.
So we had Jackie.
Uh
Robert.
John John.
Do you really have a John, John? John. Yeah, John. Um Michael. Like I was like, Mom, you named us after the Kennedy sh I did not.
My mom and dad got married right when Kennedy became elected, you know. I mean it's
Kennedy Kennedy's one of my I'm a huge history buff Kennedy in the Kennedy family. I've probably read twelve books about him.
Thank God you aren't the Kennedys. Right? Like But it was very as my mother was very aspirational. She wanted the best for us and she was a big cheerleader.

You know, the Jewish mom or the Korean mom that
Pressured, pressured, pressure.
But like there was an internal sense of of course you could do this.
And I think
All of our my brothers and sisters picked up on that. Are you nervous about raising rich kids?
I think about that all the time.
I thought about this.
When I became wealthy I was like
There's nothing I can do about it. And so I had one rule.
To my children be kind.
And the only time I lost my temper, I had once
one son who was a whipper snapper a few times and was like tough on his brother that I myself Wow where does that come from?
Like I would really
Only a few times in my whole life with my kids I lost my temper.
And it was always when I thought they weren't being kind.
Um
But I didn't think you could fake
Like not being rich.
Like
I worked a ton for my
When I was a young kid.
Because I was kinda part of the labor force and if I wasn't one that
Crass.
My mom or dad had to.
I wasn't doing the dishes my mom or dad, like
We had a labor force besides my kids, and so you couldn't
Like fake. You've got to do
This it doesn't make any sense.
And so
I
Thought.
My wife.

All you can do is model good behavior. If you want your kids to work hard, work hard.
You want your kids to be kind to
People that in your in your house and the cab driver, be kind to them.
If all you do is talk about money, your kids are only gonna talk about money.
If you talk about interesting things around the dinner table, your kids are gonna talk about interesting. So
Parenting really is modeling.
And
Yeah, by no means have I been a perfect model and my kids.
Probably can give you eighty five stories on.
I haven't.
But that was my philosophy.
And
They're gonna be rich kids.
And so
So far they've turned out lovely.
Um
Fingers crossed, you know, they've all
Finding their own path and
Doing cool things and uh
I think it's much harder to be a rich kid than a poor kid.
Like for us.
our success was providing.
It's going from here to there.
We wanted to make money so we could go on a date and so we could get laid, so then we can buy a house.
So we can send our kids to school. You want to be better than your parents, and your parents want you to be better than them.
Yeah. And with my situation, I'm like, Man, I got really lucky, I didn't want young age.
Which means compounding if is like
It's like
And I feel actually sorry for my children. I'm like
The natural state is that you need to beat me.
But I don't want you to feel the pressure that you need to do that.
The book Sapiens was all about humans are
people of narrative, right? I love storytelling. The narrative um in America
Well,
The American dream is your kids are gonna have a better life than you. Yeah. So that got built into our system. Yeah. At one point that's
You want your kids to have a good life.
The European
Ethos is I just want my kids to have a good life.
And it as you get wealthier I want my kids to
Feel self actualized.
I want them to have a wonderful life.
Like at one point if you're Bill Gates' kid and he he's worth a hundred billion dollars. Impossible.
I don't have five hundred but like it it becomes idiotic.
And then you're like
Talking about, dude.
And so
I think
the moment you get even half as wealthy as you, that narrative shifts.
And it's like how do I
Help my kids.
How do I scaffold them to
Be self-actualized. Whatever that means.
I got one son, he's
quirky and smart and we have no idea what he's gonna do. My wife and I like gamble on it. We're like, what do you think?
It could go from here to there.

hopefully gonna find his niche and be successful and we will cheer him on.
Appreciate you doing this. You're the man I really admire. Um
I admire your business stuff, but I don't think that's what you're great at. I think you're great at like living a full life and I think that
There's only a handful of people who I I I know from the outside or I know personally where I'm like
I enjoy if like
Life is like five different facets. I'm like I really admire like
Up to four or even five of like the way they live life. Whereas there's a bunch of people who are like amazing at business and you're like, Yeah, he's amazing at business, but like
I don't admire.
anything else about'em. And so that's kind of cool to like be able to hang out and meet with someone who I I put on that list of people who I
Really look up to and
how they live all different parts of their life. So thanks for uh doing this and uh
This is awesome. I appreciate you. Thank you.
I feel like I can rule the world, I know I can be what I want to
I put my law in it like my day's off On the road less travel never looking back