Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
TILP #09: The practical and emotional sides of investing w/ Clay Finck
63 Plays1 year ago
In this episode Jim is joined with/by Clay Finck where they discuss the practical side of investing, while also acknowledging that people aren't spreadsheets. They talk through navigating this landscape and how to deal with emotions and biases when investing.
The investors Podcast on Twitter:
https://twitter.com/TIP_network
Clay's Twiter:
@Clay_Finck
TIP Mastermind community: https://www.theinvestorspodcast.com/mastermind-2/
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to Intentional Living Podcast
00:00:00
Speaker
Hi, I'm Jim Kreider and this is the Intentional Living Podcast where we have conversations about how to use your resources, your time, your money, your talents for what's important to you in life in an efficient and effective manner. I'm glad you're joining with us today and I look forward to this journey with you.
Meet Clay Fink: From Insurance to Podcasting
00:00:24
Speaker
In today's episode, I'm joined with Clay Fink. Clay is the host of We Study Billionaires, the flagship and wildly successful show of the Investors podcast. Now, Clay and I, we talked through a litany of topics today ranging from traditional investing to Bitcoin to economics and even the softer side of investing, the emotional part of how and why do we use our money.
00:00:49
Speaker
Now, Clay's a good friend of mine and is a wealth of information. So I'm excited to get to the show. So let's dive in. Clay Fink, thanks for joining me here today. Looking forward to talking to you. It should be a lot of fun. Well, Jim, I've hosted a ton of podcasts and you've been on a ton of podcasts. So it's interesting to turn the tables and reverse the rules for this one. The turntables have.
00:01:17
Speaker
Yeah, this would be a lot of fun. Yeah, I think you host a small show that's out there. So hopefully this will help get your name out to the crowd and maybe get some increase of viewership of your little thing. Yeah, hopefully. Yeah. Well, I'll do what I can. No, well, yeah. So Clay, if you want to just tell us a little about yourself, what you do and where you're at, what you enjoy, and we can go from there.
00:01:46
Speaker
Sure. Clay
Evolution of TIP: From Hobby to Business
00:01:48
Speaker
Fink, host of We Study Billionaires. In my prior life, I worked in insurance for four years and knew that that route wasn't what I wanted to do for the rest of my life. And thankfully, TIP had an opportunity to come up for their millennial investing show. And I talked with Jim on that show
00:02:09
Speaker
a couple of times and I recommend people check out those conversations where we talk about financial planning, Bitcoin, money, everything else. I was host of millennial investing for a year after I transitioned out of insurance and then been a host on We Study Billionaires for just over a year now. It's been the time of my life and then Jim, we've gone back and forth too on the community I helped TIP recently launch.
00:02:38
Speaker
back in April, it's called the TIP Mastermind community and we have just over 80 members there and I'm kind of just helping many of our audience members just kind of get connected with each other. Just another learning avenue outside the podcast where people can get more personalized information from others or just kind of keep in touch with others on what's happening and how others are managing their portfolios.
Investment Insights and Conversations
00:03:04
Speaker
Yeah, it's been the time of my life working with TIP for just over the past few years. Yeah, this will be fun. You've had an opportunity to talk with so many smart people and glean so many nuggets. That's why I'd like to sort of camp on that today, just hearing some of your favorite conversations and thinkers and
00:03:26
Speaker
key takeaways that you've had over the years. Yeah, let's go there. First off, for those who don't know, what is the investors podcast and we study billionaires? What are you usually talking about? What does that look like?
00:03:45
Speaker
TIP has sort of gone through these different phases. Initially, it was Preston and Stig. They started the We Study Billionaire show in 2014. For years, it was just a weekly hobby almost.
00:04:02
Speaker
All of a sudden, the podcasting space matured. It developed. More and more people started listening to podcasts. Advertisers started to get interested, and Preston and Stig realized the incredible asset that they were sitting on. So around 2019, 2020, it started to turn into a real business for them, where they could start hiring people. They could start developing a process for taking on advertisers and building a business around the podcast.
00:04:32
Speaker
That's led to TIP launching other shows. It's led to a newsletter now that has over 35,000 subscribers. So the shows outside of We Study Billionaires is obviously pressed in pitch or so.
00:04:51
Speaker
Bitcoin Fundamentals, who you just had on your show, one of the first episodes. And then we have William Green hosting our Richard Weiser Happier series, where he brings on these legendary investors, and many of them are billionaires, that he's developed relationships with for the past 10, 20 years. He had a long career as a journalist, interviewing these types of people, the Bill Millers, the Peter Lynch's of the world. And
00:05:20
Speaker
So he's been an incredible asset to TIP in addition to our team.
Traditional Investing vs. Bitcoin
00:05:26
Speaker
And then we also have a millennial investing show that Jim, you and I chatted on, that's on a different podcast feed. But yeah, on the We Study Billionaires feed, we mainly talk a lot about maybe just business in general, or we talk a lot about stock investing. So that's mainly Stig and I nowadays.
00:05:47
Speaker
Yeah. And then Preston and William show are also on that same feed too. So, you know, subscribers to that feed are, uh, kind of getting a host of different, uh, viewpoints, perspectives and such. So as you, let's go here, actually, um, where
00:06:07
Speaker
So you, like me, I live in this weird dichotomous world of Bitcoin and thinking about macroeconomics and monetary and fiscal policy. I think that makes a lot of sense and it's fun and intriguing. And I think if you do not pay attention to these things, especially if you're working in the money,
00:06:24
Speaker
industry, you are sort of bearing your head in the sand. But also, so I live in this this place, but also I'm a financial planner in a very traditional sense. I'm a certified financial planner. And most most CFPs out there tend to sort of bury their head in the sand. And they say that, hey, if you're if you're considering the macroeconomic environment, you're trying to time the market. That's an evil thing to do. And you should you should be on autopilot
00:06:49
Speaker
in totality. The moment you look you look up, you're, you're, you're foolish. So for you, it seems that you also live in a different but also in a dichotomous world of very staunch traditionalism of investing, you're talking to people who have built businesses, and, you know, these, you're talking about like, valuation of company stocks, but then also, I mean, you and I just hung out for a week and Telluride Colorado with a bunch of crazies talking about Bitcoin and
00:07:19
Speaker
macroeconomics, which is they're certainly not in contrast. It can seem that they are a lot of people who especially if you're entrenched in the traditional world, you might think that Bitcoin is the antithesis of that, which I would argue it's not. It's actually going to be a restoration of the health of that. But again, the perception is these things are are conflicting. So for you, how how have you navigated living in this traditional sense, but also living in this like I don't Bitcoin to and
00:07:49
Speaker
to put your money in this conversations? And is it when you have these conversations with traditional managers, what's going through your head when they when they talk about ways of viewing money in traditional sense versus like, you know, viewing it as a Bitcoin or press and pitch side of things? That was like eight questions at one.
00:08:08
Speaker
Yeah, I love that you went this direction because you and I are definitely in those worlds where you're talking with financial planners and they want nothing to do with Bitcoin. And I'm talking with fund managers who could care less about it.
00:08:26
Speaker
Everyone has their own perspective on it. One of the interesting things is I have this mastermind community that I'm leading for TIP and many people in the group do own Bitcoin, but the people joining, they joined because they want to talk stocks and it's just something that is intellectually stimulating for them. It's something they enjoy doing and Bitcoin may or may not be a part of that.
00:08:54
Speaker
And I mentioned to you earlier that Bitcoin, it's kind of this thing for me personally, like it's a part of my portfolio. And it's kind of just a set it and forget it type thing, you know, I don't care if it drops by 50% tomorrow, I don't care if it goes up by 50% tomorrow, although that would be nice. You know, no matter what happens really on the upside or downside, I plan on just hang on to it for the long run. And that's kind of the way I view it. And
00:09:25
Speaker
you know, many people in the group that I'm talking to kind of view it the same way in that they believe in it long term, but they don't want to have 100% of their assets in this one thing.
Navigating Macroeconomic Uncertainty
00:09:35
Speaker
And that's kind of the camp I'm in. Like, you know, I want to investment approach and investment style that allows me to sleep well at night. It allows me to, you know, not have to worry about checking my investments all the time. So for me, that's led to me
00:09:50
Speaker
having a portion of my investable assets in Bitcoin, and then a good portion is also invested in stocks. And that's the approach I feel like is most appropriate for me. It's what I'm most comfortable with. And I just honestly enjoy looking at companies and talking about companies with others. And being a host on the show, I've
00:10:16
Speaker
wanted to be very mindful of not thinking in such absolute terms and thinking that Bitcoin's going to take over the world or a certain company is going to do amazing. So diversification, I think, is something that's really important for me. And it's just an approach that I think just
00:10:40
Speaker
works well with what my goals are, what my temperament is, and where I want to be 10, 20, 30 years down the road financially. And then also on the macro point of view,
00:10:58
Speaker
I thought that this might come up today, so I jotted down some notes on some points I wanted to make related to macro. I think it's certainly important and it drives many things. But determining how the economy is going to act in the next one, two, three years or where interest rates are going to go and then how that ends up impacting markets is incredibly difficult, if not impossible.
00:11:28
Speaker
I think in 2021, if you would have told a lot of these macro forecasters that interest rates were going to be 5% in 2023, mortgage rates were going to be 8%, the Fed would have sold off a trillion dollars off their balance sheet. I mean, they would have told you, you're in crazy land, and that would just destroy the markets. Yet stocks haven't crashed like they probably thought they would. And these simple
00:11:54
Speaker
correlation causation if X then Y thinking can be very dangerous. And I wish life were that simple and the world were that easy to predict, but we live in a very complex world and that's just something I've kind of come to terms with this year.
00:12:13
Speaker
Yeah, just try and focus on things I can control and things I feel like I have an edge in. And part of that when it comes to investing in stocks is just finding a handful of really great businesses, buying them at what I think are reasonable prices and then just hanging on to them because I think we just live in a really short-term world where people are just really impatient and a lot of people aren't willing to buy these and hang on to them for a really long time.
00:12:43
Speaker
And then another point I wanted to make is that if you look at like the best investors with like credible long-term track records and say you pull 20 or 25 of them, you might find like one or two that, you know, achieve the results they did based on making macro predictions. Like Stan Druckenmiller is one that comes to mind, but like most of the other ones were all
00:13:10
Speaker
almost all of them, I would say, were stock investors. So I think that also points to how difficult it is to predict the macro. Well, I guess not only predict the macro, but also predict how that impacts the markets, because, you know, tons of people have made accurate predictions. But in terms of how that affects their portfolio, it just makes it so much harder, in my view.
Emotions and Biases in Investment Decisions
00:13:33
Speaker
So yeah, yeah, it's just my it's general thoughts on some of the things I've learned.
00:13:38
Speaker
It's not too hard to be hard to be right eventually. I could be right eventually about most things. There will be a flood in Texas. It's like, all right, you're like 15 years from now, it's like, I told you so. It's like, dude, if I've been sitting in a raft with a life jacket on for the last 15 years, I'm wasting a lot of time. And that's, I mean, Warren Buffett, a very popular saying of his is what the market can stay irrational longer than you can stay
00:14:04
Speaker
solvent. I probably just butchered that. But yeah, it's this thought of how not only how right are you, but how right are you in the timeframes you're considering? And how do you place that into what you're owning your
00:14:21
Speaker
Yes, what you're owning, but also like where your head's at. I like that you mentioned that, uh, that, you know, you wouldn't be able to sleep all night as well. And that's something I speak to regularly is like, you're not a, you're not a spreadsheet or in a math equation. We're not trying to optimize you as an Excel document, your person with emotions and convictions. And.
00:14:40
Speaker
with desires and goals, and you have to consider these things. That goes into like, how do you invest? It also goes into like, no debt. It's like, hey, Jim, I have this debt. Should I pay it off? And it's like, well, we can look at the math. We can break that down. And sometimes that's really important. Like if some people really need to, we have to optimize spreadsheet-wise. Should you pay off this debt or not? But a lot of times it's less that. It's more of like, yeah, look, mathematically, you shouldn't pay off this debt.
00:15:08
Speaker
because of X. The risk for your return right now is 5%, and your interest rate on your debt is your mortgage is 2.5%. So yeah, math would say don't pay that thing off, keep that as long as possible. But yeah, if you're sitting here, it's like, look, I just don't like debt, and I can afford to pay it off, and it really wouldn't change my life at all. It's like, cool. Well, I hope you sleep well, and let's get that thing taken care of. So we've got to sit on that with the portfolio as well. That's where people get caught up.
00:15:36
Speaker
Gosh, there's a study that was done several years ago that was comparing investment versus investor returns. And there is a pretty good gap between the two. And that gap, they've labeled the behavior gap. The behavior gap is, why is there this chasm of a few percent between these investments, but the people who invested in those underlying investments? And that can be related to behaviors.
00:16:05
Speaker
And that's where it's really important to think through. If you're going to buy something, you better have high conviction of what you're buying or at least willing to stay put. Otherwise, you're going to be like someone who goes, you can go to a, you know, you go to Six Flags or Disney World and you get on a roller coaster. You're sitting outside of line of a roller coaster. You see that, wow, those people look like they're having fun doing it. And all my friends want to do the roller coaster. I don't really like those, but I guess I'll do it myself. And you get on and you start going up.
00:16:35
Speaker
you're going up this thing and you start going on this massive dip and you realize as you're going down or over the first loop, you realize, you know, this isn't really for me. You take off your seatbelt. That's the worst time to take off your seatbelt. So you want to think through, is this something I can tolerate prior to getting on the ride? Now, obviously this equation, this analogy falls apart when we introduce like Enron. It's like, look, if you own Enron, I don't care if you're going around the loop or not, you probably should go ahead and bail. But if you're sitting on something that's relatively sound,
00:17:04
Speaker
Um, you don't, you want to consider like, should I take off my seatbelt right now and, and risk massive hurt? Um, or like, why did I buy this thing? And it would do people go long ways and just help bridge that gap or close the gap of this behavior gap. If we just thought through not just the investments, but also my. Yeah. How sweaty will my hands be while I'm sitting on this roller coaster? So yeah, you're not, you're not an equation.
Maintaining an Investment Process
00:17:31
Speaker
And, uh, I like that you're a good guy, Clay.
00:17:34
Speaker
You brought up some really great points there. One of the interviews I had is with Chris Mayer. He mentioned that even the great investors, they trail the market one third of the time. So say over a 10 year period, they might drastically outperform.
00:17:51
Speaker
But there's going to be two or three of those years where they're going to be underperforming. And that points to the behavior gap you have, where people tend to chase whatever's hot, and then they bail on whatever's not doing so hot. So they're just making their decisions based on whatever prices are doing. When in reality, the great investors, they understand a process. They're sticking to it.
00:18:15
Speaker
And then they're sticking with that process. You know, when things aren't going their way, they're sticking with it and understanding, you know, why. Essentially, they have a they have a thesis on why it is their investments are going to work over the longer term. And. Yeah, it kind of points to what I was saying earlier, where people are tend to be too impatient and they tend to make changes too often to their portfolios and just kind of
00:18:43
Speaker
fall prey to all of these biases that you're mentioning. There's a nice equilibrium of conviction and patience, but also agility. That's in the interview with Preston. I spoke to him about this gentleman who has been managing money since the early 80s.
00:19:05
Speaker
And I was talking with him a few years back and he mentioned that most of his clients are sitting in like 80% bonds, 20% equity portfolios. And I asked him about his thoughts on the risk of owning such things. And he said that, well, look, I've done really well. I've been doing this since 1982. And that's where, yes, conviction is good and all.
00:19:27
Speaker
But it better be founded in something, not just recency bias, but actual a good sound thesis. So yeah, there's this healthy marrying of agility and critical thinking. And it can't be based off critical thinking one time based off of one thought I had. But does this still make sense? And that's where investing is really interesting. You run into so much
00:19:52
Speaker
So many biases, something I hear regularly for especially like a new client will come on and they'll own, we'll be looking at their portfolio that they've owned prior to working with us. And a lot of times they'll own something that they've owned for a really long time. And this thing, maybe it's down a lot. Maybe it's a stock they bought several years back and it's down 40%. And it's like, Hey man, I really want to, I don't want to sell it yet. I just want to wait for that to get back to break even. And then we can go invested in something else. It's like,
00:20:21
Speaker
Okay, one, we can look at this from so many directions. If it's in a taxable account, okay, well, we can harvest the losses now and offset capital gains or offset some earned income. Like, why? That makes sense. Two,
00:20:35
Speaker
Do you want to own this thing versus owning something else because you think that during this timeframe, this thing that's down 40% will outperform the other asset that we would otherwise sell it into? Or is it because you are so anchored into getting back to your initial purchase price that you'll wait out whatever time it is? Because then we are back to a simple math equation, like will X outperform Y over this time? And we don't know, but we're guessing. It's like, yeah, I own this hot pile of garbage, but man, I want this thing to get back to where it was so I don't feel bad about myself.
00:21:04
Speaker
Again, there's just so many weird biases here that we succumb to. That's where you've had an opportunity to talk with so many smart people who I think a big part of this is being aware. Like I know
00:21:16
Speaker
For me, I know that I'm not that smart about most things. So I I try not to have these biases because I at least am familiar with what I can succumb to. I think it's a lot of it is just being aware of what you your downfalls can be. And I think that's that's a that's a big part of being smart is realizing what you're dumb in, in a sense. Yeah, and I think it's some of the hard lessons of life is learning these things.
00:21:43
Speaker
Yeah, is it the Dunning-Kruger effect or it feels like, you know, a lot in the early stages and then it like totally drops off and then it goes back up. You know, speaking with so many smart people, I think it has a way of really humbling you and just making you humble in what you think you know about the world and the assumptions you make because
00:22:09
Speaker
People want to feel like they know what the future holds, and they want to follow people that make these predictions on what's going to happen, when in reality, we really don't know what's going to happen to a lot of things. And it really just makes me humble. And the fund manager you mentioned that was heavily weighted towards bonds,
00:22:35
Speaker
It reminds me of kind of the inertia of people kind of find a process. They find out that process works. And then it's just like people have a really tough time sometimes to adapt when it's absolutely necessary to do so.
Education: Investing vs. Gambling
00:22:50
Speaker
And there's so much evidence that they need to rethink how they approach things.
00:22:57
Speaker
I heard, uh, yesterday I was listening to a podcast and the guy was, I don't remember how it came up, but he mentioned just this ability, like over time, what wisdom and things you can glean. And what he mentioned was when you're young, when you're young, you think that you're real strong. You know, like I have my oldest, he just turned six this week and he always talks about, no, all my, all my boys regularly, they show me their muscle all the time and how strong they are.
00:23:26
Speaker
So when you're little, you think that you're stronger than you are. And there's a point in life that you realize you're not as strong as you thought you were. And you learn some lessons that way. But then you also get to a point later on in life, you realize that being really strong isn't really that important. And I think those are different phases we all go through from muscles, but also like, these other things, we put such an emphasis on like, oh, I, you know, whatever, I'm going to be rich. It's like, man, if when I zoom out,
00:23:55
Speaker
you know, maybe I don't have as much as everyone else does. And then you go later gone, it's like, man, these things aren't even that important. Like, why did I chase this? And just really, really sobering, especially
00:24:06
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, there's there's some there's some wealthy people who are really happy. And that's awesome. There's other wealthy people who are miserable. And that's sad. But really what it comes down to is you can learn early that all that stuff at the end of the day is not going to make you happy or miserable necessarily. Like that's that's a good lesson to learn. But also recognizing other lessons like, you know, being being agile enough to recognize like, OK, I've owned this thing forever. Therefore, it keep doing what it'll keep doing. Well, like, man, you need to progress your your your frame of reference around these things.
00:24:39
Speaker
I mean, I'd love to see people and you're in an amazing position that you can glean wisdom from other people that happen to learn these lessons the hard way yourself. And I try to keep an open eye where I can glean those lessons themselves. That way I'm not having to encounter and learn everything the tough way. What are some of your favorite takeaways from conversations you've had where it's like, ooh, that was a good lesson to learn. Maybe it was a hard lesson or a fun one, but I'm gonna put that one in my back pocket.
00:25:00
Speaker
So yeah, I think there's just
00:25:08
Speaker
I don't have to navigate that myself, but I can at least take the lesson away. What are some of your favorite things you've got to glean over the years? That's a good question. A lot of them are related to what we mentioned, just being humble and being really mindful of what your biases are and just being humble in what it is you think you know.
00:25:39
Speaker
I'm reminded of a conversation I had last week with a fund manager and it kind of reminded me again, just on the true power of compounding and how it relates to investing. And I'm sure you're aware of this and with all the people you speak to and they want to do all these things today, which is like great, but also recognizing the power of that long-term compounding.
00:26:08
Speaker
marrying the two of under, you know, what do you truly value in life? And then, uh, recognizing the sort of rewards that compounding can give you later on down the road, uh, years ahead. And I'm sure that's, you know, that mixes in with a lot of the conversations you've had. And we've talked to, talked about it on the millennial investing show, but the compounding example he, uh, gave me, he, uh,
00:26:34
Speaker
He had said that compounding is convex on the upside and concave on the downside. And I asked him to sort of explain what this means. And he gave an example of, say you have two investments. They both start at $100. The first one is an incredible investment. Say you pick a stock and it compounds by 26% for 10 years. And then the second investment compounds by negative 26% for 10 years.
00:27:04
Speaker
So over that 10 year period, one investment ends up becoming a multi-bagger and then the other one essentially becomes like a zero. But since compounding is convex on the upside and concave on the downside, your upside is essentially unlimited when an investment does well and
00:27:26
Speaker
it's limited, the downside is limited to whatever you invest. So even though one investment is almost zero, you still end up getting an average return of 17%. So even though you only had a 50% hit rate, you still end up with a fantastic result because of the asymmetry that compounding offers. And that's just, when you're putting together a portfolio and just thinking about individual stocks, like,
00:27:54
Speaker
like I am, like many of the guests I have on R.
Balancing Life Priorities with Investments
00:27:57
Speaker
It's just amazing to think that you need to be humble and you don't have to be right 100% of the time. You can even be right 30% or 40% and still end up with a fantastic result if individual stock picking or picking investments is something that's in your wheelhouse and something you're interested in. Yeah, that's one lesson I found really interesting in a recent interview at least.
00:28:25
Speaker
We think back in, remember when the COVID shutdowns happened, sports were put on pause and traditional means of gambling were put on pause. And then suddenly we had this massive rise of people utilizing just investing apps and the rise of meme stocks and people speculating the market. What are your thoughts on that?
00:28:48
Speaker
you know, anyone doing some investing versus how educated should you be when you like, what's the difference between investing and gambling? And where does that where's that crossover take place? Oh, man. Yeah, I mean, most people investing during that time period, we're essentially doing gambling. But uh,
00:29:10
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, there's a reason you saw this correlation of traditional gambling go down and rise of these meme stocks hit in tandem. So yeah, keep going. Yeah, I mean, if you're buying, say, individual stocks or you're buying options or whatever else, then you need to obviously have a firm understanding of what the heck it is you're buying. So if you're buying options, you need to understand how a call and a put option works.
00:29:39
Speaker
understand that in some cases, there's 100% downside in a month or two months or however long the duration is. When it comes to stocks, for me, I've just read so many books on the subject that I can
00:29:56
Speaker
Typically just look at a company and disqualify at least 95% of them just because I know exactly what I want. I know the type of kind of risk return profile I'm sort of looking for. And just looking for, just filtering out things like highly indebted companies or maybe companies of a certain size. I don't want to buy a lot of the mega caps oftentimes and looking at
00:30:25
Speaker
you know, the managers and like, are they just being compensated, you know, ridiculous levels relative to how big the business is that's all too prevalent and then stock based compensation is something that is all too prevalent. And I mean,
00:30:41
Speaker
For someone that's just getting into this stuff, you should most likely limit some of your individual picks to a small portion of your portfolio and the tried and true methods are what should be the foundation of most people's portfolios, things like an index fund, an S&P 500 fund, things like that.
00:31:09
Speaker
It's really hard to distinguish between investing and gambling because it's just all totally subjective. And there's only so much you can know about a company. But I'll also mention that the market always has a way of humbling people. So getting that experience of losing money in the markets is
00:31:35
Speaker
so humbling and that happened to so many people in 2022, 2021 after the COVID rise. And there's so many insights that can be gained from that too. And almost all of the really good investors went through those periods of having to learn things the hard way rather than learning them from a book or a podcast. Yeah, there's some lessons you just got to learn the hard way. One of the lessons I learned several years ago
00:32:04
Speaker
I bought a company, did really well. It was nothing for the longest time, just sat flat. And one day I checked my account and suddenly this thing within a week, like 5X, did just incredible.
00:32:19
Speaker
And unfortunately, unfortunately, at that point, we were within days of it reaching a place of long-term capital gains versus short-term cap gains. It was like, all right, man, I don't love this company. I haven't loved it in a bit. I want to go ahead and sell this. But if I literally just wait a few more days, I'll be able to take advantage of long-term cap gain rates. And that'd be more fun. I'm not making this somehow. In the few days of waiting, this company went bankrupt.
00:32:46
Speaker
And that's a tough lesson. Why did you buy something in the first place? Do you still have that thesis behind it, that same conviction? Or has your conviction changed? What are you anchoring this position in? And what is driving owning this? And for me, I let the the tax tail wag the investment dog. I didn't like the investment any longer. I thought it was at that point overvalued, and it turns out it was. But again, I let one way of thinking trump a more sound way of thinking. There's lessons
00:33:15
Speaker
That's one of those lessons you learned the hard way. And man, it stuck with me. Yeah, it just worked out perfectly to be absolutely painful. Yeah, I think another lesson I've sort of seen or learned is the companies that get people's attention often tend to be like just very risky picks. Like some of my favorite investors that I follow, one of which is Chris Mayer wrote a book called Hunter Baggers, which is fantastic. One of his roles is
00:33:44
Speaker
he's not going to buy an unprofitable company. Because if a company can't make money from its operations, then it either needs to receive financing through debt or through equity. And whenever tough financial times hit, it's really hard to do those things. And it puts the business in a really, really tough position.
Stock Selection Criteria
00:34:04
Speaker
And if a business somehow has a way of marketing itself and everyone's talking about it, call it a
00:34:12
Speaker
a Zoom or whatever else, then there's probably a reason for that because the company might be issuing shares to essentially the public, issuing shares to retail investors, and then these managers are getting
00:34:26
Speaker
extravagant, extravagant compensation packages. And it's just ironic that the companies that people want to talk about oftentimes tend to be unprofitable. And, you know, it's almost like a situation where it almost is gambling where you need like everything to go right in order to make any money. And then you find so many of these unprofitable companies end up dropping 80, 90 percent during a market correction.
00:34:56
Speaker
Yeah, I always turn to, I don't know if you've heard of Chuck Ockrey. He has what he calls his three-legged stool approach of he wants to find a great business, which means a great business to him is a business that earns a high return on capital. So when a business reinvest in itself, it essentially earns a high return. Call it
00:35:17
Speaker
above average, which would be above 10%, 15%. Then he wants a great management team and a long runway for growth. And that's essentially, oftentimes, what I'm looking for when I invest in a stock is like, does this business have a track record of performance? And oftentimes, a stock continually outperforming the market is a sign of, hey, they're doing something right. Kind of the thesis that winners tend to keep on winning. And if a business
00:35:48
Speaker
Outcompetes its competitors over the past five or ten years. There's probably a good reason they're able to do that and it's gonna be really hard for business to jump in and disrupt that and then you know the management piece you want managers that have skin in the game and they
00:36:04
Speaker
essentially they're financially incentivized to have the share prices do well over the long run. If they own shares for the past 10 years and they've shown that they're effective managers and that's also a pretty good sign. And then the long runway is also important too because if a business can reinvest in itself at 20% over a really long period of time, that's where you start to see that sort of compounding magic.
00:36:31
Speaker
But this is definitely much different than a lot of the discussions you're going to have about Bitcoin and macro and all this stuff. So yeah, it's kind of the world I've been diving into. Yeah, I think a lot of people, when they think of financial advisor, they picture me behind a wall of monitors and watching the stock market. And that's like the last thing that I do. But it's still fun to think through and talk about. And yeah, I certainly pay attention. And I am more macro driven.
00:37:00
Speaker
how I work, but also, I like to come back in and look at companies. I think individual companies can get you a good pulse on how the market's doing, and also, I think there's a place of achieving alpha. I think it's possible. Obviously, people have done it. It's really difficult, and I recognize I'm not smart enough to achieve alpha regularly, especially by switching strategies all the time. It's not going to happen. You better have high conviction over a prolonged period of time in order to have a chance of doing this. Otherwise, if it happens, it's probably by luck.
00:37:31
Speaker
With investing, it's interesting. I think it's so easy to forget that when you invest in the market, you're literally buying companies, and we lose touch with that. Like, oh, I'm buying this stock, and the stock's gonna go up. And that's where value investing, these sound principles investing, it's like, does this company make money? And a lot of times, it's maybe not the sexy thing. If we put it back to a small business,
00:38:01
Speaker
You know, it's a lot of times, like there's people who are like blue collar, you know, millionaire next store. It's a plumber, it's a welder. I talked to someone recently who, it was a machining company who recently sold to a large institution and for a lot of money. You know, it's not the sexy work. It's companies that make money consistently over a prolonged period of time. When you think of small businesses, that's what you want to own versus, I mean, my grandparents, something they always talk to me about when it came to business was,
00:38:31
Speaker
Bye.
00:38:32
Speaker
not just playing business. And they would say how they were successful in owning a few different businesses. They mentioned how so many of their friends and people they would observe would just play business. And the moment they had a fun idea, they would run with that fun idea. And they would quickly think of like, ooh, what do I want my logo to look like? And ooh, those would be neat business cards. Ooh, that would be fun swag to have. That'd be cool. And we could have this event. And it's like, but does that make money? How are you going to reach a place of profitability?
00:39:02
Speaker
You observe that. I love talking with people about business owners themselves and how do you reach a place of profitability. It pains me to see when I have friends who you realize that, man, they're just playing business. I don't think this is going to survive. Not because they have a bad idea. What was it? 80% of businesses go out of business in their first year. And then of those that survive, 80% or 90% of those don't survive the next three years.
00:39:26
Speaker
And I think a lot of times that's that's not because it was a bad idea. I think a decent amount of them are. It's like, dude, you shouldn't have started that in the first place. Like no one needs whatever sweaters for dogs. Like it's bad company. But you made some great, great points there. I want to jump in on like you said. You know, stocks are real businesses like people are so detached when they're on their brokerage app.
00:39:55
Speaker
you know, clicking by on some ticker that's gone up recently. Like Jim, if you were to go out and buy
00:40:01
Speaker
another financial planning firm, which I'm sure it's something you've thought about or something you've looked into doing. I mean, you'd look at how much has this firm earned in revenues over the past few years and what are those earnings? And you probably wouldn't be interested if it was deeply unprofitable. They're constantly issuing debt, yet so many people are going out buying something just because the stock price has gone up regardless of how the actual business has performed.
00:40:31
Speaker
You know, in the short term, the stock price is essentially driven by just sentiment and hype and people jumping in and out and all these momentum traders. But over the long term, it's it's the actual business that's going to drive the performance of the stock. And that, you know, just again, like so many people thinking short term, you know, trying to chase, you know, whatever's gone up recently when, you know, when you get anchored in.
00:40:56
Speaker
these fundamental principles of what drives value creation is when you can start thinking about achieving sustainable, consistent, long-term returns. Yeah. Are you building or investing in a company that actually makes sense? Does it
00:41:18
Speaker
Is it beneficial to people? Is it profitable? Is it sustainable? Does it have a moat? If you can't check those boxes, what are you buying? You're probably buying hype. If you're building a business that's like that, you're probably just playing business. Again, if we're just looking at a small business side of things, I think a lot of the business I run into that failed, failed, again, not because it was a bad idea, not because they were making
00:41:43
Speaker
you know, whatever, like I mentioned earlier, like sweaters for dogs or something like this, probably that's like, that's a bad, that's a bad business. Don't start it. Or, you know, something like that goofy. No, that's a good business. A lot of times those fail, not because it was a bad business idea, but because they were caught up in the wrong things. They wanted to play business or because their personal financial side of things was not able to support and sustain their business. Like when I started this, my financial planning company,
00:42:10
Speaker
We committed to not taking any income for minimally one year because we had to make sure that we had revenue to put back in the business. There's a little strip mall down the street from my house that has an insane turnover of restaurants.
00:42:25
Speaker
And over probably like a four month period, there was probably five or six restaurants in it. Some of those restaurants literally were there for two weeks, which is incredible. If I go to a restaurant, Kendra and I go on a date and we love that restaurant. We say, Ooh, I want that to be our new date spot. We don't go on dates twice a week. So even if they get someone who goes to the restaurant and they love it, they're not going to get the repeat business. I don't understand. These people
00:42:49
Speaker
put up a sign and read the kitchen, all that stuff, and literally what gave themselves two weeks of operating capital? It could have been the best restaurant ever, but they didn't have the personal side of things to sustain it. They didn't think through this. So again, I think this overlaps with large businesses you can invest in. What are you actually building here? Are they playing business? Are they
00:43:15
Speaker
Um, you know, is it, is it built up on hype? That's where, I mean, yeah, there's this detachment of small business. This is a detachment of like, wow, your color scheme on your business cards looks fantastic. And that's exciting for a moment. Then you realize it's just a bad service or product. Same thing with a large business, you know, it's like, oh, wow, that ticker
Market Irrationality and Investor Resilience
00:43:33
Speaker
is doing well. You should go buy this ticker. It's like, well, what's the company? I don't know.
00:43:37
Speaker
Like I can't remember what it was, but I do. I remember a case several years back where there was two companies that very similar stock tickers and suddenly the one that was the different one just skyrocketed. No one knew why. No one knew why this company, it was such an obscure company, but they realized like, Oh my goodness. Cause it was one letter off of this other one. So everyone was buying this company. No one, no one knew what it was.
00:44:02
Speaker
Well, uh, like when the Corona virus hit, uh, sales of Corona just like skyrocketed, you know, just, uh, there's so many weird things that can happen. And yeah, like you mentioned, sometimes people go out and buy the wrong ticker when they realize that like big news hit a specific company, but they go, yeah, just crazy things. In terms of the stock market.
00:44:30
Speaker
It comes, it really enforces the people are, people are funny. And, uh, yeah, we're, we're emotional, oftentimes illogical beings and, uh, can lead to some fun stories. Not so fun if you're on the receiving end. Um, but, you know, that's where it helps also to take a step back and not to not get too wrapped up in the moment. And then also being able to, to, all right, that hurt a lot. What can I learn from this?
00:44:56
Speaker
And I think if you can get both of those, you'll survive another day to keep swinging. And unfortunately, it's really sad to think through the people who don't.
00:45:09
Speaker
clean those two things who get wrapped up. Like this is too devastating. I can't, can't keep going. You know, that's, that's one reason I, one of the biggest reasons I got into working in personal finances. I mean, money is the number one cause of divorce. Every year, the American psychologists, psychology association has done a poll. Money's been the number one cause of divorce. And it's also one of the top causes of personal stress and suicide. It's like, man, if you allow this thing to bog you down and to beat you up and pull you apart, like that's sad. It's common.
00:45:39
Speaker
Um, but you have to zoom out, like really what's going on here. And, uh, you know, like a few weeks ago, I, uh, I've been, I've been sprinting really hard for several years, about eight years. I've just been running really, really hard and it sort of hit me recently. So, uh, like two weeks ago, I realized I felt like.
00:46:00
Speaker
forced gump. You don't force gump. He just takes off running. He felt like running. He started running and he does this for a long time. And eventually one day he just stops. He's like, I'm pretty tired. I'm going to go home now. That hit me like two weeks ago. And I was like, man, I'm really tired. And I was talking to Kendra one night. And this sort of led to a I don't get stressed very often, but it led to a brief moment of stress. And I were laying in bed and I was like, hey, babe, like you've got my back, right? She's like, yeah. I was like,
00:46:31
Speaker
good or bad. She's like, did you do something wrong? I was like, no, I just sometimes I just need and I just wanted to be reassured. And yeah, zooming out, like seeing my wife, my kids, it's like, you know what, if something goes bad here, like, we'll be okay.
Aligning Financial Decisions with Life Goals
00:46:45
Speaker
And I think there was where even stepping back and it's like, yeah, get doing people, people pay me to do to take care of their money. It's really important. But I care about
00:46:54
Speaker
I care about my clients more than I care about their money. Obviously, I mean, I've, I've studied really hard and I work in this a lot to do well with their money and to care about it, but I care about people. I'm like, it's really important. You know, going back to these like anchoring and why are you doing things? I've had so many conversations. I've probably worked with about, I would, I would guess about 40,000, probably a little bit higher than that now people over the years with their money. And it's really sad how many people even more successful financially, but miss the whole mark with why they wanted to do it.
00:47:22
Speaker
And you have to go back and revisit that. Like Kendra and I, we have, Kendra's my wife. We have, we have four young kids. It's like, yeah, we want to do really, we want to, we want to do well financially. We want to be able to give generously and spend time with each other and, um, those sorts of things. It's important for us. But if I neglect, I say, Hey, I want to be able to retire early so I can go backpacking with my kids before they're old and have jobs and can't take time off work.
00:47:48
Speaker
I want to have money so I can do that, whatever. But then I sacrificed my children on the altar of having future financial success, like success. What's the point? You know, like right now it's like, Hey, dad, can you read to me? It's like, sorry, son, I got to go to work so I can spend time with you later. It's like, Oh gosh, you missed the whole point anyways. And, uh, yeah, that's where, you know,
00:48:10
Speaker
thinking through this from a, from an investing, investing perspective, like why are you buying what you're buying? Has that thesis changed? If so, like, how's that changing with you? But also from a life perspective, why are you doing the things you're doing? Has that thesis changed? Um, if so, or if not, you better, you better dig back, like dig in and not just think through the base level. Like I'm, I'm buying the same because of surface level reason. Like why, why are you buying this? Why are you making this decision? And I think that people would do a lot of good by asking why more both on investing in bigger picture.
00:48:41
Speaker
Yeah, I recently had a Shane Parrish on our show and I can't remember the exact quote he had, but it was like, it's one thing to achieve what you set out to achieve, but it's a whole another thing that people maybe sometimes don't think about where are you working to achieve something that you actually want to achieve? We feel good about achieving something, but if you want to achieve some sort of net worth goal and
00:49:11
Speaker
hey, that's cool, and not that many people can maybe achieve that level of wealth. But did it come at a sacrifice to all these other things? Because I think people think about money so often and set money goals because it's something you can point to, and it's a number that you can see. You either hit it or you don't hit it. But then there's so many other things that aren't really quantifiable, whether that be spending time with your kids, spending time with your wife,
00:49:41
Speaker
and doing those other things that are also important. You know, I asked Shane, he's very successful with his business, his finances and such. And, you know, him and Shane and then Preston Pish is the same way where you ask them what's important to them and they just say they're family. And it's like, you know, when you look at someone like them that says, you know, money is not the most important thing, obviously it is important, but there's many other things in life that
00:50:10
Speaker
are likely more important to most people? Well, money, one of my, a vague definition of money I would put on it is a means of communicating, storing and transferring value across space and time.
00:50:27
Speaker
And I think a big problem that we have with money is the communication aspect. And I think that's a big reason that you have divorce and money so highly related is because money is meant to communicate what's important to you. And suddenly if your money is being spent on one thing and your spouse thinks that money should be spent on other things, you are saying with where your checkbook's going is, this is important to me.
00:50:51
Speaker
versus this other thing. It's suddenly like, oh, well, that's, you know, you're, you're putting out these signals of value and you are tangibly voting what value is, you know, what, what you place value. And I think if you, yeah, again, show me, like, show me your, your calendar and your checkbook and I'll tell you what, what you're voting with your resources are important for you. And unfortunately, again, there's a lot of people have things that are important to them.
00:51:18
Speaker
But their resources, their time, their money, their talents are not being used in tandem with where their heart or their mind or their words would say it's important to them. That's why a lot of people don't realize that it's too late. Like, man, I really want to know how many people in their deathbed are like, I wish I had made more money. Or it's like, I wish I would have spent more time with my kids. It's like, dude, like, make that vote now. And yeah, that's...
00:51:43
Speaker
The purpose of a goal is to inform the best next step. It's not to corner you in to have to continue to pursue this one thing.
00:51:54
Speaker
Your goals will change. Clay, I bet your goals today are different than they were five years ago. Five years from today, they'll probably be different than where they are right now. That's fine. That's expected. Again, the purpose of a goal is not to say, I have to do this thing now. That would be sad. I think that's why a lot of people don't set goals, is they feel if they do, suddenly they are pigeonholed into doing this one thing that might seem obscure in a few years. If they don't, they didn't reach their goals. When setting a goal and saying, you know what?
00:52:21
Speaker
I'm taking a guess as far as what I want. But man, I think this is what I want right now. I will start pursuing this and taking action that aligns with this. And it's really important, I believe, is to make sure that you're asking the why behind the goal. I want to make X dollars. Why? Because I want to be able to have a nice house. Why?
00:52:43
Speaker
Oh, man, because I want to be able to entertain people. Why? Because it's important that my kids are around that we spend more time with them. Oh, so what you just told me and all of that is you want to make sure that you have time with your kids and your family. The house is just a means of facilitating those moments and memories. And the money is just a means of obtaining the house. But really what we're after here is moments and memories with your kids. Like how do we pursue that?
00:53:07
Speaker
And yeah, allowing money to serve those things, but not losing track of what you ultimately said is important to you. And that's, I know we're way off of talking through company valuations and stocks, but again, as we go through these conversations, like this really comes back to and like, yeah, let the resources serve these other things.
Continuous Learning for Growth
00:53:26
Speaker
Yeah. When it comes to the company stuff, like the community I'm running, like I tell people that join, like,
00:53:33
Speaker
You don't have to be analyzing individual companies. A lot of times you can hit your financial goals with just these basic investment foundational principles. But these people just absolutely love this stuff. And I enjoy chatting through it with them too. But to your point about money as a means to communicating value,
00:53:58
Speaker
My conversation, it reminds me of my conversation with Shane Parrish and how so many of the decisions that people make are like totally unconscious and it's driven by like almost like our biological hardwiring. Like people will go out and buy like this expensive car because it like shows status and it shows it like gives them the approval of others. And it's like a very external viewpoint. But if you get down to like what it is, do you truly want?
00:54:29
Speaker
And how can you use money to facilitate that relationship between what it is you're actually spending that money on versus what it is you truly value? And I think it's also important not to overanalyze it. I'm definitely not someone that has a budget and has to stick to it.
00:54:52
Speaker
you know, be very close and like what it is I budget and like what it is I actually ended up spending. It's just like being mindful of the decisions you're making I think is just so important and but not like overdoing it too. It's just like so much of a balancing act to it too. Yeah, it's allowing your, you know, like, I can't remember who it was. I heard on a podcast years ago, this lady, she said that she keeps her needs small so her wants can be outrageous.
00:55:21
Speaker
And, uh, I thought that was pretty cool. Like again, it's what, uh, everything you do in life is there's trade-offs in everything you do and you are making decisions consciously or subconsciously to choose something and there's opportunity costs with everything. And, uh, you, you really big part of this is being cognizant of where, what am I voting for right now with my time and my money and my relationships and my talents.
00:55:50
Speaker
What's the opportunity cost of this? I'm working in a job I hate. Okay, and I wish I could start a business. Okay, well, what's the opportunity cost of not trying that? You know, I'm broke and stressed.
00:56:05
Speaker
but my dollars are being spent on this other thing. That's why I'm not going to be like a cliche financial advisor who's like, you should make your own coffee. I make my own coffee with a really nice coffee machine. I have two nice coffee machines, one at my house and one in my office because I like making good coffee. It's way better than coffee. I can get the coffee shop right below. My office is on top of two coffee shops.
00:56:22
Speaker
And I bought my own espresso machine, because it's a lot better. And I save
Communication's Role in Financial Decisions
00:56:25
Speaker
a fortune. I can justify it, ultimately, with how many espresses I drink a day. But yeah, I'm not going to sit here and say, don't buy coffee. But think through what is important to you. I remember years ago, I was talking with different financial advising firms. And there's a few companies. There are two companies. I went through this long interview process and eventually went to lunch, basically got the job and went to lunch with the owners.
00:56:50
Speaker
And on a couple of occasions has happened. I pull up, I was driving sort of old beat up Nissan at the time, had a bumper that was not the prettiest sight to see. And I pulled to lunch and we'd start talking. I was like, Hey Jim, you know, when you work here, like what we're doing is we're trying to convey this sense of success, financial success and wealth. So we really would want you to drive something nicer, a Lexus or a G-Wagon that's going to portray financial success.
00:57:19
Speaker
And at that point I knew I could not work there because my job is not to portray a sense of financial success. My job is to help people use their money in the most efficient and effective manner to serve what's important to them in life. And for me, driving a fancy car is not important. Having more time to spend my kids is way more important. Why would I drain and buy this thing that's going to have me have this massive car note when I instead I can have that where I don't have this stress of having to go to work all the time or not be able to go on this vacation. It's like, man, like that's,
00:57:47
Speaker
Again, if we have to, if you can peel back and say, why am I, why do I have this habit? Why am I doing this thing? If it means that you're buying coffee or going to brunch and that's really important to you, that's awesome. If it's, I do this thing out of autopilot, it's like, well, let's just stop and let's think, let's think, think through it. And, uh,
00:58:03
Speaker
Yeah, if we can just become aware, I think it'd be really, really helpful with what we're doing. And again, just being aware for yourself, but also on a relationship side of things. I remember a few years ago, I met with a family and I found out after multiple meetings that I was actually a last ditch effort before they got a divorce. They'd been fighting about money for years and they thought, we'll talk with a financial planner.
00:58:26
Speaker
And what we realized at one of our meetings, they just broke down crying and we realized that they thought about money all the time. And the last thing that came up was they were, they're on vacation at Disney and, uh, the wife, she, she wanted to go to Disney, but like make the sandwiches to take and, uh, no souvenirs and just, just experienced Disney itself, but no, no other things. And, uh, the husband on the other hand, like while you're there, you got to get the big ears or whatever it is.
00:58:55
Speaker
the turkey leg and the funnel cakes and all of the stuff. And they were bickering the whole time. It was like, you're so cheap. Oh, well, you just you're drained all over money. What we realized, though, was taking a step back from this place of emotion driven hype, saying like, well, why why do you want this? And for for one, for the for for the wife, it was, well, gosh, like if we if we enjoy the simple thing of being here, but don't just
00:59:22
Speaker
lavishly spin on these other things, we could go on a second vacation. And then I really want to, that was really fun, but I want to do these other things with the kids as well and with you as well. I would love that. And the husband's perspective was, look, I didn't get, I didn't grow up going on trips. So if we're going to be here, I want to do it all the way. Cause I really want this to be a special time. So it's sad because they're both coming from this, this place of, I enjoy this. I enjoy being with you and our family and I want to make the most of it. They're just communicating it in different ways. And their dollars were saying,
00:59:52
Speaker
being represented different manners. And it was it was again, there was mixed signals and mixed communication by how their dollars being spent. If we could step back and say, Look, this is important. There's a book that Kendra and I read a few years ago together. It's called the the strengths based marriage. And as by it's based off of strength finders. Have you heard of strength finders, Clay? Yeah.
01:00:13
Speaker
Okay, yeah, it's it's a sort of personality test and it has like 20 ranks like your top strengths through like your weaknesses in a sense. And there's a book, the husband and wife like Kendra and I both did this strengths finders test. And there's this marriage book you go through to talk through like how your strengths and weaknesses play off each other and like the good part of the strength, each strength has its true strength and then has this like false
01:00:40
Speaker
narrative associated with it, this way it can rise up poorly. And that was a great thing because like I live in the future, like all my strengths were like planning futuristic, like long term, Kendra's are all about optimizing today. And I live in the future. And both of us came back and it's like, you know, she thinks I'm cheap. But for me, I like to look at this as like, I want to make sure we're able to do this long term.
01:01:04
Speaker
And I look at her like she loves spending money if she does. But it's like, no, I want to make the most of this now. And so having a a context to place these conversations is really helpful. Yeah. Long rant.
Career Choices and Personal Fulfillment
01:01:21
Speaker
What you mentioned there about a earlier about the job where they said, oh, you have to portray, you know, this status and this level of wealth. I think it's amazing how
01:01:34
Speaker
What that tells you about someone who acts in that manner, you could analyze a company and say, what are the managers focusing their time and energy on? You could look at manager in your own business. Where are they focusing their time and energy? And I think so many people kind of
01:01:53
Speaker
go off into entrepreneurship because they just can't find an environment that suits what their values are and how they want to spend their time, how do they want to help people, or they don't want to play these political type games.
01:02:08
Speaker
That's probably one of the reasons why you ended up going and starting your own business because just the avenues that opens up for you and how you can design your life however you want and then you can fulfill what you value even at an even higher level in terms of your family and your long-term financial goals.
01:02:30
Speaker
Yeah, I think it's just sort of amazing how there's this sort of a balancing act within our capitalistic society where, you know, these bureaucratic organizations end up growing and they create these political games as a result of it.
01:02:46
Speaker
almost unintentionally in some ways. And then it leads to someone like you to take advantage of that opportunity and fill the gap in the market where it's not being met, where you're not trying to go out and get a financial advisor that is flaunting their wealth or flaunting their car and such. So yeah, I love that you told that story. Clay, we've been everywhere today. Do you have any parting thoughts?
01:03:16
Speaker
episodes like oh man, you should go listen to this conversation or a book or yeah, any, anything on your mind that you'd want to share that and get to ask you about. Yeah, I would say just like education is just like so, so important. It doesn't even have to be my podcast or any other podcast, just like getting educated on
01:03:41
Speaker
if you're interested in learning about investing in stocks or Bitcoin or whatever else, just picking up books and picking up podcasts is so, so important. And as I mentioned towards the beginning, it's just like being humble in what it is you think you know. Beginners, when they get into anything, it feels like they make these very simple assumptions and they
01:04:04
Speaker
essentially get themselves into trouble by taking these sort of mental shortcuts on how the world works or how they think the world works. But yeah, education is just like so, so important. You know, I'm sure it's foundational sort of. It's a foundation of, you know, what's led to your success, Jim and all the things you've built and. Yeah, and then just going out and trying to
01:04:33
Speaker
you know, do it, do whatever it is you're trying to do, whether it be, you know, investing, starting a business, excelling in your career, and then just on top of that education from the books and the podcast, just learning from your own experiences is all part of the journey, and it just makes it all
Closing Thoughts: Education and Professional Advice
01:04:48
Speaker
fun. But yeah, if you want to learn about investing, check out We Study Billionaires, you might find a thing or two that's interesting. Good, good little show. Hopefully, yeah, hopefully I'll pick up a good, good audience. So eventually, we'll turn around
01:05:02
Speaker
Now I noticed when I was recording with Preston, I love he didn't flaunt it, but I saw in the background, in the corner, you saw the YouTube, whatever color it was, the big plaque of XML listeners. It's amazing what you all have done there and the amount of people you all reach and the different shows and the community you're building, it's awesome stuff. And yeah, I've listened to countless hours of you guys and of your podcast and even just getting to hang out with you.
01:05:32
Speaker
Clay and I, we roomed in Miami a couple years ago for the Bitcoin conference. We accidentally got a terrible hotel right in the party district of South Beach, Miami. So that was fun. The guy blaring was like, we will rock you at like two in the morning, here I'm a mile away. And then yeah, a little different experience platform and telluride and absolute natural bliss. So yeah, I love getting to spend time with you and
01:06:00
Speaker
keep tabs on you through your podcasts. Appreciate it. Yeah, Jim, you've been a awesome absolute blessing in my life. And right when I right when I joined TIP, I got connected with you. You know, it's almost by fate. And we've been connected ever since. So you're a great friend. And it's great to know you. Thanks for coming on clay. I appreciate it. You bet. My pleasure.
01:06:29
Speaker
Hey, thanks for listening to the Intentional Living podcast. Now today's show is simply entertainment and educational in nature. Do not take this as tax, legal, or investment advice. If you are looking for tax, legal, or investment advice, you should go talk with a tax, legal, and or investment advisor. Again, this content is simply educational and entertainment purposes.
01:06:57
Speaker
Thanks again for listening. We look forward to you joining us on the next episode.