Animal Spirits Podcast - The Michael & Ben Origin Story (EP.378)

Episode Date: September 18, 2024

On episode 378 of Animal Spirits, Michael Batnick and Ben Carlson discuss: how Ben got started in the industry and eventually arrived at Ritholtz Wealth Management, the best movies to watch on an airplane, and more! This episode was filmed in front of a live audience at the Future Proof festival in Huntington Beach, CA on 9/17/24. This episode is sponsored by YCharts and Fabric by Gerber Life. Get 20% off your initial YCharts Professional subscription when you start your free trial through Animal Spirits (new customers only). Sign up at: https://go.ycharts.com/animal-spirits Join the thousands of parents who trust Fabric to protect their family. Apply today in just minutes at https://meetfabric.com/spirits. Sign up for The Compound newsletter and never miss out: thecompoundnews.com/subscribe Find complete show notes on our blogs: Ben Carlson’s A Wealth of Common Sense Michael Batnick’s The Irrelevant Investor Check out the latest in financial blogger fashion at The Compound shop: https://www.idontshop.com Feel free to shoot us an email at [e-mail] with any feedback, questions, recommendations, or ideas for future topics of conversation.   Investing involves the risk of loss. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be or regarded as personalized investment advice or relied upon for investment decisions. Michael Batnick and Ben Carlson are employees of Ritholtz Wealth Management and may maintain positions in the securities discussed in this video. All opinions expressed by them are solely their own opinion and do not reflect the opinion of Ritholtz Wealth Management. The Compound Media, Incorporated, an affiliate of Ritholtz Wealth Management, receives payment from various entities for advertisements in affiliated podcasts, blogs and emails. Inclusion of such advertisements does not constitute or imply endorsement, sponsorship or recommendation thereof, or any affiliation therewith, by the Content Creator or by Ritholtz Wealth Management or any of its employees. For additional advertisement disclaimers see here https://ritholtzwealth.com/advertising-disclaimers. Investments in securities involve the risk of loss. Any mention of a particular security and related performance data is not a recommendation to buy or sell that security. The information provided on this website (including any information that may be accessed through this website) is not directed at any investor or category of investors and is provided solely as general information. Obviously nothing on this channel should be considered as personalized financial advice or a solicitation to buy or sell any securities. See our disclosures here: https://ritholtzwealth.com/podcast-youtube-disclosures/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Uh, okay. Wait. Cheers, Ben, and thank you for spilling that floater on my new white sneakers. Sorry. There might be some music in the background. Let's just, uh, that's just pool noise. That's what that is. Today's animal spirits is brought to you by our dear friends at Y charts.

We're coming to you live from Huntington Beach Future Proof 2024. We're at the Hyatt. Great place. Highly recommend. Ben, what do we use Y charts for? We use Y charts for charting for historical market data, economic data. We use them for scenario. analysis tools. We use them for filling in the recession bars on your charts because it's hard to do.

Here's the bottom line. I'm going to wrap this up because I've got an itchy nose and I've got to put this drinking microphone down so I can it. Here's the bottom line. I can't do my job without Y charts. I don't know how anybody in this industry does a job without Y charts. If you want to do your job better, go to Y charts. Tell them Animal Spirit sent to you. If you're a new listener or a new user, 20% off your initial subscription, that's one-fifth off just because you listen to this podcast. Go there. Enjoy. Have fun. Goodbye. Cheers. Today's show is sponsored by Fabric by Gerber Life, which is term life insurance. You can get done right here, right now. You could be covered right from your couch in under 10 minutes with no health exam.

If you're young, healthy, like us, like us. Time to lock and low rates is now. Fabric was designed by parents for parents. They partner with Gerber Life, trusted by millions of families like yours for 50 years. Join the thousands of parents who trust Fabric to help protect their family.

Apply today in just minutes at meetfabric.com. slash spirits. That's meatfabric.com slash spirits. Policies issued by Western Southern Life Assurance Company. Not available in certain states. Price is subject to underwriting and health questions. Welcome to Animal Spirits, a show about markets, life, and investing. Join Michael Batnik and Ben as they talk about what they're reading, writing, and watching. All opinions expressed by Michael and Ben are solely their own opinion and do not reflect the opinion of Redholz wealth management. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon for any investment decisions. Clients of Ridholt's wealth management may maintain positions in the securities discussed in this podcast.

Rate cut. Who's excited for the rate cut? You okay? Guys, this is Ben's flu game. I have had multiple flu game. on the podcast. This, what, what is that? This is Ben's first time playing through an injury.

He can't even get, what, what happened to you? I hurt my name, I'm okay. No, no, no, no. He's a modest man, a man, a few words. Ben was going for a 5K this morning just to, you know, get loose. He got Pierce. Tell the story. Why am I telling your story?

What happened? I jumped into an agave plant on accident. I had blood streaming down my leg. My whole leg went numb. I'm going to sue someone. So Ben went out to the intrawebs, and what did you Google? 30 people were walking by, and I'm limping, and there's blood everywhere, and I was just mad I couldn't get my workout in. It turns out, I don't know why Ben wouldn't tell you the story, the full story.

It turns out that these agave plants are poisonous, and Ben's leg has been numb all day. So he's fighting through this. Let's hear it for Ben. All right, so before we get started, you know, we've got to thank our friends at White Charts. I go over the top. This I try to every week explaining what they do for me, but it is true. It's not just words. I really do rely on Y charts for everything, everything and everything.

So, Y Charts, Sean, Caleb, Rushi, Kara, the whole team. Thank you very much for everything. They have a tent right over there. Where? Go see them. It's that way. It's that way. Okay.

All right. So, somebody reminded me that last year, Ben spilled one of these drinks on my new sneakers. Do you remember that? Duncan spilled it. It was Duncan? Yes, Duncan brought him out and spilled it all over you, all over the machines. He was fixing the mics, and he spilled it. Well, so yesterday, Ben and I were enjoying a Miami-Vice poolside, and sure enough, the floater, the brown floater all over my new white sneakers.

And then Michael threw his shoe in the pool. You guys having fun? Can we get some energy? Anybody? Anybody? All right, so we're going to do something a little bit different today for the live show. We spend a lot of time talking about markets and Equalene and Cap and this factory. Who gives a shit, right?

We're here to have fun. This is not the time of the place for Market Talk. Okay? We're in a bull market. Everything's copacetic. We don't need to go there. I got an email a couple of weeks ago. Hey, Mike, look at this.

Look at this. Look at us. The funny thing is that he would let me put my arms around him, so I had to hold a back, like an idiot. And it's not very comfortable. Oh, that's a, okay, good times. All right, so I got an email. Michael, you got kicked out of college twice,

and then you got the CFA charter hold. I heard that was like really hard. How did you do that? How did you get to Reynolds, 12th management? And I'm like, I've told this story a million times, but I think I underappreciated the fact that not everybody has been listening for five years, or when did we start the podcast, 2017,

so that's not five years, it's seven years. And our audience has grown, and I'm sure a lot of people have heard our story, our origin story. Certainly, Dave, Adam, and Clint in the front row, and I don't know your name, but I love the shirt, have heard this story before. So it might be repetitive for them,

but for a lot of you who are unfamiliar with our origin story, how Ben and I got to where we are, we're going to take you through it. So that'll take up most of the time. And then, you know what, no teasers. Let's just get into it. So, Ben, you had a much more traditional path to this industry than I did.

You were not kicked out once or twice, right? You actually graduated on time? Four and a half years. Oh, really? Oh, the truth comes out. What happened? That's on time. I wasn't ready to find a job yet.

Okay. All right. So I don't know this story. So how did you get into the industry? My only preparation, I remember talking my guidance counselor in college, and they're kind of like, what do you want to do? And I'm like, I want to work at a cool firm with cool people, and they're like, oh, great idea, dude. What do you want to do? And I'm a senior. I have no idea. I have no clue. So I went to Philadelphia and did an internship, and I worked for investment bank and an analyst,

and the guy tells me, yeah, in my first 12 months here, I had three days off. And, you know, I'm going out every night with my friends to the bars, and I said, well, that's not for me. and I worked in the markets and got to know them a little bit, but I had no idea what I wanted to do. And I was not employable at all. I did better than you in school. I was a 3-2 kind of guy. My first two semesters did not equal to 3-2.

Michael shared his transcripts on Animal Spirits a couple weeks ago, and it was like a 1.3. 1.4, and then a 1.1. And he's like, actually not that bad. And I'm like, 1.4, I don't know what you need to do. I got a D-plus, an intro to microeconomics. Yeah, you're not getting hired by the first. So, I was one of those people, I say all the, all the young people I talk to these days in college,

they're so much more informed than I was back then. And I was just so naive that I just thought, I'm just going to find a good job. And I was not employable at all. And I couldn't find a job. I tried to hire, I tried to get hired into banking. Wait, what year was this? 1990. 2005.

Okay. I graduated at school. Wait, why were you not employable? Because I didn't, I didn't know anything. I knew nothing. I didn't do anything in school. I didn't read one book. I coasted on common sense and street smarts, I guess.

Ben was an athlete. For those of you who haven't seen the clip, Ben's stats were like Christian McCaffrey in high school. It almost looked fake. You were quite a... Ben was running back. Yeah, it didn't translate into college, though. I was too focused on extracurriculars. And so I quit football after a couple years, and I really didn't know what I wanted to do.

I remember all these people telling me, I'm going to go into investment banking. I'm going to be this. And I interviewed it a few banks. and they all wanted me to be a sales in a sales role. Not a salesman. No offense. No, it's true. And so I was dating my now wife, and she went back to postgraduate school, and I moved across the state to take a job because the only I could find as an analyst. And I was working in institutional consulting for pensions and endowments,

and I couldn't have told you back then what one of those was. And I learned more in my first three years in the job than I did in all of college. And stuff that I still hold on to this day, My boss then, it was a small firm, and he taught about asset allocation and risk profile on time horizon. Were you getting paid well? No, not at all. I made, I'm like $30,000 out of school. All my friends were making way more money than me.

They had way cooler jobs. You are one pathetic loser. Yeah, you want to work 40 hours a week. So I didn't know what, but that was a great, I think for young people, it's kind of like learning versus earning. Some people could do both, I guess, but I was learning. And I lived in the opposite side of the state for my wife, and I would work, I'd get home, I would work out, and I would read for like three hours every night. And that was like my education into understanding, because I realized immediately, I know nothing that these people are talking. We were meeting with J.P. Morgan and Merrill Lynch and all these firms and these asset managers, I knew nothing.

And it was a lot harder back then. Today, you know, like I said, kids are more informed, but they have more areas to access that information. So what was your job? I was an analyst. I started out as a performance analyst. I was literally calculating performance by hand. That's why I'm such a good Excel person. When I say proficient on my resume in Excel, I was proficient.

And so I was like a performance analyst, but I learned every, and I remember the first time my boss, he would write a quarterly letter to every one of his clients. Who were the clients, foundations mostly? It was hospitals and insurance companies and some family offices. And these hospitals would all have six different accounts. It was a pension and an endowment and a foundation and liability for malpractice. And each one of them had their own investment policy statement. It had its own asset allocation. It had its own, you know, different setup.

And it was great. And a lot of these would come with all the money in one pile. And our boss would go, no, no, no, that doesn't make any sense. Each of these needs its own, it has its own goal, so it should have its own plan. And I learned all, and he would document the investment policy statement. And like the stuff that he taught me back then, I'm still, I'm still. still kind of hold on to this day. So I learned so much from this guy. And remember he would write a quarterly letter to these people and it would be, you know, a page and a half. And he told

me, he's like, Ben, you'll know you've made it when you can actually write one of these. And I knew nothing, so I couldn't have back then. And that was kind of the goal. Like, oh, I need to, you know, sure up the communication skills. So is this the company that you were at until you joined us? No. So I did that for three years. It was kind of, before I even started, it was like, I'm going to train you for three years, then I'm going to kick you out and go do something else, which is perfect, because again I learned. My wife and I got married. I wanted to find a job in Chicago or Grand Rapids, moved back to Grand Rapids because that's my wife on a job.

And then for 10 years, I worked for a billion dollar endowment fund because I was the only person in West Michigan who had any experience in that space. And learned a lot about that. It was like a brand new pile of capital. These billionaires in West Michigan had passed away within a year of each other. and left a billion dollars for this medical research institute, and they said the endowment is going to fund us. Who was the family? Can you share? Yeah, it was the Van Andel family.

They own, one of the owners of Amway. Not a pyramid scheme. No, it's a Ponzi. And so it was a really good learning experience there, too, and I got exposed to all these different areas of the markets. We were investing in private equity in venture capital and hedge funds and meeting with money managers all the time. They would come to us and pitch us,

I was constantly taking pitch meetings, and so it was a really good experience, but after 10 years or so, I realized, like, I don't want to just work for this one client. Wait, before we got to you getting sick of it, what was it like for you during the GFC? Like, what were you doing? I took the job in July 2007, which is right when some of those credit funds were blowing up. And it, you know, studying a little bit of market history, but not knowing very much, I had no idea what I was getting myself into. Luckily, our fund was sitting on a huge.

huge catch pile. And so we slowly but surely put it to work. But I got this job in July 2007 and then the next two years was just like, you know, walking through flames, basically. And that still, I think, is a, to me, like going through that experience, like shaped so many of my views today. And for some people, I think that got shaped in the wrong way. To me, I mean, I'm reading Warren Buffett books and I'm thinking, buy when there's blood in the streets and everyone else is like in a fetal position going, no, this is the end of the world. I remember getting a call from one of our hedge fund managers saying, go to the, it was September. It was a Friday.

I still remember to this day. Go to the ATM, get as much cash as you can out of the ATM right now, because on Monday the banks might not open. I mean, it was a crazy. And for me, being the young guy on the team, I thought it was amazing. Because I'm thinking, this is great. I'm never going to buy stock prices lower than I am today. Stock market was down 60% almost, right? So you did that, but for like six more years you were there.

Yeah, I worked that job for 10 years, and so... Did you, like, graduate into a higher role, or...? Yeah, so I started taking on more responsibilities, and I was beating my head against the wall, and Josh Brown, I started reading The Reform Broker. Actually, I think I started reading Doug Cass and Todd Harrison at the street, and that led me to read Barry, and that led me to read Josh. And so I think probably 2011, 2012, I started getting into financial blogs, not really knowing what it was.

And I'm seeing Josh and Barry are posting every day. And I'm reading these guys, and I'm thinking, oh, okay, I'm on the same wavelength as these guys. They're in a different place than near area, but they, the way that they're talking and speaking and their values, that resonates with me. Josh wrote a piece by hedge funds, and I wrote him this really long email out of the blue. I remember that because I was there. It was called confession, right? So I, I had, what was the title of the blog post? So I wrote Josh in an email and he said, great, he wrote me back at one, awesome.

whatever you just sent me there write it in a blog and if it's good I'll post it on my blog and so for like 10 days I worked on this thing I had to get it perfect I sent it to my brother and like proofread it and I sent it to Josh and I said you can't post my name on this because I have a job and they'll fire me and they posted this anonymous Josh posted an anonymous post for me and it kind of blew up a little bit everyone was reading it and I felt like Larry David and curb where he puts his anonymous donation on the wing like shit I So it was confessions of an institutional allocator. Is that right?

Yeah. And I had been, I read my blog for about, I don't know, six or eight months at that point, no one is reading it. And I, Josh said, this is a great piece, man. A lot of people are reading it. And so I said, oh, by the way, I write at this blog, check it out. And that was my introduction into, like, the blogging world. And Josh, you know, was reading it and sharing it a little bit on his link fest. Then Todd us picked it up at normal turns.

And that was kind of how I got discovered a little bit. How did we meet? I was thinking about this. You started blogging. I don't remember one of us sent a DM to the other one. I definitely slid into a DMs. I think you... Ben would never.

I think you slid in my DMs and you said, hey, I like your stuff. I like your stuff. I like your style. And Ben said, I like your moves. We started talking about like, you were like, what are your thoughts on like asset allocation? What?

That's not true. No, you guys were like overhauling your portfolios a little bit. And you said, I want to... That's true. And you said, I want to talk to you about this. And I would travel to New York two or three times a year, meeting with managers or conferences. And that was around the time that Phil Perlman was putting together that Yahoo Finance contributors thing. That ended well.

Yeah. But it was a great start. So I came to for a conference and Phil said, all right, I'm going to put you together. So the three of us went to dinner. Meet you and Phil? And that's how we met. Is Phil here? Where is that guy?

No? All right. Love that guy. And so then what? What year was that? 2013, 14? Probably 2013, 14. When did you join us?

I joined September 2015, so I'm working on 10 years almost, I guess. So I remember one time I told Josh, I'm like, I enjoyed the job I'm doing. I could probably stay there for the rest of my career and it would be like a safe path for me. And you guys, I remember you started the firm, you guys made all the announcements

and I said, oh, that's kind of firm I'd want to work with. There's no remote work then, really. And so one of these times I'm talking to Josh and I'm kind of complaining as I always did. I just wasn't happy in what I was doing. And Josh said, what do you want to do, man? He finally, they cut through it and stopped complaining.

What do you want to do? And I told him, I just want to work with other clients. I don't work with small institutions. I want to work with individuals. I want to, like, do something else. And he said, do that for us. And I said, really? I said, yeah.

And I remember talking to Barry. And Barry said, all right, here's the schools in Manhattan. You'll move here. And our daughter was like one years old. My wife's like, yeah, okay, buddy. We're going to move from Grand Rapids. to New York, okay. And that never got off the ground and I came out there one time and I think I said to you, we're at some bar for a wisdom tree event or something. And I said, hey man, listen,

I can't, I can't move to New York? It's not going to work. Why can't I just stay in Grand Rapids? How many clients do we even have in New York? And you were like, oh yeah, we get all of our clients from the internet. Why do you need to be here physically? And that was the start of Ridholtz as a remote work destination. Do you remember your earliest experience in working with us? it's been a long time I don't really remember I came to New York to announce like hey Ben is going to join Riddholtz I was the so it was you Josh Chris Barry Patrick and Erica so I was number seven not too far behind me remember Joey and Dan and Alex joined a few months later Bill yeah so I go to New York and Josh was Josh said I'm going to get you on

CNBC we're going to announce you're going to work for us we have a we had the whole push and I show up there and we go out to eat at the remember the favorite little mex place we used to go to? Salvation Taco. That was it. Barry gets up to give a speech, welcoming. Glad to have been here. A speech to who?

Who was there? Me and Chris? Like I said, there was like five of us. And Barry lays out at that meal, six or seven of us. Barry says, we're building the infrastructure for a billion dollar firm. We had $140 million in assets when I joined.

You're going to report directed at David Rosenberg. And Barry says, I mean, listen, we have to be a billion dollar firm because we can't even afford Ben's salary. And I'm like, what, what? So Ben's salary was a lot higher than mine that we joined him, but I forgive you. It worked out. It's okay. So when I joined, we were a startup. And I'm telling my in-laws and my parents and friends, I'm joining this new firm.

And, you know, I worked for this, like, prestigious billionaire family in West Michigan. which was seen as like, you don't leave that kind of thing. Did you show them a picture of us? Well, they were like, so you're going to work with these guys that you met on the internet? With this bald asshole? And to me, it made total sense, yes, because this firm is, is gonna, and the funny thing is

is when Barry's laid out that billion-dollar vision, none of us laughed, or just, we kind of, of course we are. And we were, again, very naive. Do you remember what our Ae-O-M was when you joined us? It was 140, I think, wasn't it? 140, 150, probably. So, we're, the market's cooperating, we're like, I don't know, we're five-something billion, so worked out okay.

Thank you. Thank you. Yeah, but, yeah, so I think surprising the amount of growth we've seen, but also we kind of laid the foundation. And I don't know, I think the greatest thing about it is that people always ask us about the content side of things, but we all started the content thing without any sort of plan. It was not a master plan. We never had it.

Josh was blogging before. Barry was blogging before I was. Then we all came together and we were like, oh, this actually works. Let's put our foot on the gas pedal and do more and do podcasts and do YouTube. But that was never like we sat down and brainstormed and laid it out. It just sort of happened organically. Yeah. So how animal spirit started.

So I shared an office with Josh. We were sub-leasing or subletting? I don't know. We were doing one or the other. We were renting space from somebody. And Josh and I were in an office that was like, eight by eight, and I was on the phone with Ben all day, talking Marks or whatever.

We would call each other like five times a day. And Barry, myself and Josh, sorry, Chris wasn't invited. Barry, myself and Josh, we're on Patrick O'Shaughnessy's podcast. And when we were done recording, Patrick said to me, why don't you and Ben start a podcast? I was like, yeah, I was self-conscious. I was newly bald. I just didn't have a lot of self-esteem.

And I said, you know, he's like, just don't worry about the world needs. If you want to start a podcast, start a podcast. So I'm eternally grateful for Patrick O'Shaughnessy for telling us to start a podcast. It's been, I don't know, we started in November 2017, so it's been a hell of a run. And we couldn't figure out a name, remember? Oh, we had a horrible name. Josh is good at naming stuff, so Josh named it. I told him Josh name, he goes, no, no, no.

Call it animal spirits. But he also Josh has a lot of force it and a lot of things He said you guys are going to run out of stuff to talk about in like two months This is a freezing cold take from Josh Josh didn't have the boss to tell me But he told Chris and Chris told me That you guys are going to run out of things to talk about

After one episode And seven years in, not bad I love you. Cheers All right So we've got eight minutes left And we've got to save some time for We're doing something different from recommendations. I can't tell my story in four minutes. But let's just say this. I was lost.

I was wandering the valley, metaphorically homeless and absolutely no direction to go. And the backstory, whatever, you could, there's places that you could hear that if you want to, if you're curious. But I was really like, really and truly fucked. I had nowhere to go. I had no where to go. I had no connections. I had like this weird inner conversation. that if somebody would just give me a chance that I had something to offer to the world, but I wasn't able to show, like, display outward confidence. I never had the chutzpah, like, open doors myself. And so I was just in a bad place, and it was 2011, the spring of 2011,

and I had my last job opportunity. And I got an email as I'm sitting down with one of my good friends at the Nix game. It was game three of the 2011 playoffs. I'm a lifelong Nix fan. We were in a long, dry spell, worse than my career prospects. And I get an email, like, this is one of those light-old moments for me. I get an email as we're sitting down. Sorry, I can't help you.

And at this point, I'm just like, all right, so I guess that's it. I guess I guess you get a job at like Starbucks or Verizon or whatever, get, you know, make minimum wage, and that's it. And whatever. So it was bad. So I get the email. I sit down. My friend's like, what's wrong?

I told him. The next year getting blown out. And Mario Chalmers, my hero, hit a three in the third quarter to put us down 20 when I said, I'm, I'm out of here. I'm out of here. My friend, where are you going? It's game three of the playoffs. I got to go home. I'm not feeling good.

I need to figure out what to say to my wife. My girlfriend at the time, I just, I was in a dark place. I got to go. So I get on the train, and I'm on my Blackberry, and Josh Brown, who, Josh was my North Star at the time, what he was saying at the Reform broker blog, That was the truth. And I saw that same thing play out of the insurance company that I was at. And so Josh is tweeting about, I can't remember if it was Kirk Obain or Marshall Mathers, or Eminem's daughter.

But he's tweeting about one of them and how old do we feel. They're turning 21. And he's doing like a tweet thread before there are tweet threads. And I put my phone in my pocket because my phone died as we're pulling it to Merrick. Josh and I both grew up in Merrick. I put my phone into my pocket, which is an important little detail. Because if my phone didn't die, as soon as we're going to, we pulled in, I would have been on my phone, whatever, on Twitter. I would have walked right

past him. So my phone's dead. It's in my pocket. I walked right past Josh Brown. Holy shit. I froze. I turned around, and I grabbed him. And I said, I don't know what I said, but I introduced myself, and we spent 20 minutes on the platform. It was a Friday night at like 11.15. Josh smelled like beer. I said, this is my guy. I love this fucking guy. And we spoke for like 20 minutes and I get downstairs and my girlfriend is waiting for me and she said, who was that? And I said, that's my Bethany Frankel.

That's Josh Brown. And a couple months later, I saw that him back were hiring and Was it just Josh and Barry at that point? No one else. No, Anna was there. There was like an assistant and she was there briefly.

But, yeah, Josh shaved my life. I am like the ultimate example of that Tim Urban graphic. If you haven't seen it, it's like a bunch of lines. And there's a vertical line that says, like, your life is here. And then there's a whole bunch of other directions and trees and branches that your life could take. And my life took a lot of twists and turns. And lucky for me, it's better to be down early than down late. And yeah, I just, I cannot be more grateful. The fact that I'm here with people I love, serving clients who love doing what I want

to do, it is beyond the blessing. And I could not have gotten any luckier, and I'm just so grateful. And that in whatever, however many minutes that was, that's my story. So, all right, clap it up, clap it up. The tree branch thing, I think about that a lot. I started my blog, and the first three months, no one's reading it. So I could have easily shuttered it and walked away and been fine, and I never would have, you know, it's one of those things. There are the sliding doors moments.

A lot of them. So, yeah, it was just started with Chris, Josh, and Barry, September of 2013. Four of us, 60 million in assets, set, whatever it was. It was not a lot, and here we are. 11 years later, our 11th anniversary was yesterday. Now we've got 64 incredible people in over $5 billion, and we're just beyond, beyond grateful. Okay, enough of that. So, we're going to do some recommendations as we always do,

but what we thought we would do to spice it up a little bit was you guys know, if you're a listener, how I feel about watching movies on airplanes. That's my happy space. One of my favorite pastimes is what, what are you doing over there? You getting ready? I'm looking at my list. All right. So what is the movie? What are the movies that you should watch in your flight home? Now, we're going to start by the process of elimination. Because, listen, if you're on an airplane, there are some things that you have to consider, like your neighbor, right? So there's some things that you can't do. There's some things you have to consider, like the fact that you're probably drinking. You might even have an edible in your system. You can't read

subtitles, right? You just can't do it. I put varsity blues in my way here. That was almost on my list. Remember, she does the whipped cream bikini? I'm an aisle guy. Well, there's a nipple, there's a nipple limit. I'm an aisle guy, and

there is, I have a four nipple limit on my airplane movies. If there's more than four nipples, you can't watch it. That's just, so, all right, so no subtitles. So although I love Denisville Nouve, Nouve, Insendis is probably the worst airplane movie of all time because there's two rules on flights

for me. There's no subtitles and there's no crying. You can't cry in an airplane. You look like an asshole. So I've cried twice in an airplane when I watched the whale and when I watched yeah, I cried interstellar. I don't cry during the whale. What do you mean? I shed a tear for watching that movie.

It's an emotional movie. All right, so nothing too dreadful. Like, you don't want to be like an afoul, bummer, mood. As much as I like the dark and the wicked, you're not watching that in an airplane. Nothing too plighted. You want Dan Ives, not Jeffrey Gunlock, on a movie. Yes. Perfectly said.

Nothing too bloody. So probably not Django or Inglorious Bastards or aliens or anything like that. Okay, I like, you can watch a comedy, but you can watch like a long came polly, okay? You can't watch something that's like too funny where you're like belly laughing. You thought very deeply about this. You have a lot of rules. They're rules. Nothing too funny where you're laughing and people are looking at you.

You can't do that. Nothing. Okay. I did that. Okay, all right, so with that, the movies that I want, it depends on where you're headed. If you're going to, if you're going to the Bahamas, which Future Proof might or might not be doing,

you're going to want to- There's more caveats in this than one of my blog posts. You're going to want to watch couples of treat. Is it a good movie? Not really, but it's a great airplane movie. All right, so here's- Travel movies get a premium. Absolutely.

Up in the air? Are you kidding me? Well, that's the greatest airplane. movie all time. Spoiler alert. We agree with that. Up in the air is, so I watched up in the, no, I didn't, I watched the descendants, another George Clooney classic, I watched the descendants on my flight home from my honeymoon. Is that on your list? Or does it make, doesn't mean, that's a good one. Does it mean the criteria? It does. It's in Hawaii. So, all right, what else do I have? Arrival, like, dramas are good. Drama, sci-fis are good. That's a

Denisville one? What do you think? That's not a bad one, yeah. Matchstick men? Show of hands. Who've seen Matchstick men? Okay. Exactly. Exactly. Like, like, 8% of you, highly underrated, Ridley Scott, Nicholas Cage. Cage, before he went completely off the real. Watch it on your flight. That's a Michael Patton, guarantee. You'll love that movie.

Here's another good one. Focus. I saw it once on the airplane. Nobody's heard of it. It's not that great, but it's with Will Smith and Margot Robbie. And it's very forgettable, but it's also a very good airplane movie.

Limitless. Yeah, that's a good one. I agree. All right. Office space. It's funny, but not too funny. You've seen it a million times. Ha, ha, ha.

You can answer email. why you watch it. What are you not too funny? It's very funny. It's very funny. I was on my list. The beekeeper, you can't go wrong there. The Meg, terrible movie, great for airplanes.

Have I left you with some good, solid recommendations? Not those movies specifically, but those are the types of movies. I'm a people person. Those are the type of movies that you want to watch on the flight home. I have a future-proof list. Oh, I love it. So I did. Wait, can we have a beer?

Duncan. John, thank you. So I did a movies with third-eye blind songs in them. Wow. Hold on. Come on. I graduated college in the year 2000. So if you think I'm not going to be singing semi-trum kind of life at the top of my lungs after five beers tonight, you don't know me.

All right. Hold on, thank. Can we do a selfie with the audience? Ben just groaned. Thank you. All right. Thank you, John. So I'm going to do a lot of 90s movies, obviously,

because that's when they were big. A lot of people don't know this. Third I blind had a song in American Pie. New Girl, it's called. I used to own the soundtrack. Wait a minute. Sing it. I don't know that one.

I can't sing it. I don't know. I used to own the soundtrack. American Pie. I'm from Grand Rapids, Michigan. Based on East Grand Rapids High School. That's where the guys wrote it were from. Did not age well.

Did to me. Did to me. Another one, Can't Harley Wait, has a song, Graduate, which I hope they play tonight. That kicks in right when the movie starts, kind of. Plus one was a wedding rom-com that someone actually recommended to us. Any else where his listener? Remember the guy? It's Dennis Quaid's son. Oh, I love the guy. He's in the boys. He's in Mr. Mrs. Smith.

They have, it's a wedding movie and they're taking a shuttle to a wedding. They sing Sammy Trump Kind of Life on there. What else is Sammy Trump Kind of Life in? I'm sure that song's in a lot of movies. That's all I could think of. Here's the movies I came up with on my Delta Flight. It's a list on a list? Okay. You know, I'm a Delta Flyer. I don't know if anybody else had this experience. The movie selection was a little underwhelming on the way here, no?

Netflix should be on the airplanes. Here's the 10 movies I've picked on the Delta Flight. Ten things I hate about you. Don't go too fast. I want to soak it in. A lot of 90s movies. 10 things I hate about you. I'm in my 40s. Nostalgia's big.

Anyone but you, that's my guy, Glenn Powell. Very good. Catch me if you can. Classic. Yeah, that is an elite airplane movie. Mr. and Mrs. Smith at Brad Pitt. Notting Hill. Oh, oh. Good rom-com.

Parasite. I'm breaking your rules, Parasite, even though it has Subtitles. Oh, okay, okay. Duncan likes that one. I had office space, I had talented Mr. Ripley,

Italian countryside. Varsity Blues, which I watch, which, yeah, very 90s movie. And then ending me of the state was Will Smith. Oh, that's a good one. All right.

Gene Hackman. All right. All right. What do we think? Was that fun? Listen, we have the best audience in the world send us an email

well one of the reasons that I think we didn't run out of content obviously we the more we did this show the more we read and talked about but our audience got the stuff that we were into and every time we talk about something more than once people would send us emails hey did you see this story hey you guys get us did you see this mudroom in all technical digest yes I did

yeah so we so we get so much feedback from our audience into our inbox that it helps us get more content and keep going And we shoved it in Josh's face. Amen, we did. All right. So, thank you, Chris.

Cheers to you. All right, we love you guys. We're going to go in the ocean after this for a dip. If anybody wants to join us, Animal Spirits at the compound news.com. Thank you so much, everybody, for attending. We love you guys. Oh, we've got shirts. Thank you, Nicole.

What do we got? Lots of shirts. We got the shirt cannon before, and it takes way too. It's like a Civil War musket, reloading it. I just can't believe Michael's on stage with those feet. He's got the longest toes I've ever seen. I got a pedicure before the conference. Thanks, everyone.

See you tonight.