Blaze Your Own Trail - The Power of Investing in Knowledge & Skills with Jake Tullis

Starting point is 00:00:00 Hello, everyone, and welcome to the Blaze Your Own Trail podcast. My name is Jordan Mendoza. I'm your host, and I've got a very special guest with me today. His name is Jake Tulles, and I'm going to have him tell you a little bit about who he is and what he does today. Awesome. Thank you for having me. As he said, my name is Jake Tulles. I also go by JT.

Starting point is 00:00:21 I am a software development expert that has taken a wild turn down to running a hedge fund that invests in software. software technology. And it's been a wild journey, which hopefully it can inspire some of my nerds out there because I got most of the stuff that I have now from the mug using tech and a keyboard. So hopefully, you know, low cost, get a lot of people interested in technology and software. It's a great field. Awesome. Awesome. Yeah. I'm looking forward to really understanding a deeper context into you, you know, your story, your journey. So my favorite part of the show is really just taking a rewind.

Starting point is 00:01:01 And so we're going to dive back and, you know, turn the tables back in time to childhood. So, you know, where were you born and raised? And what kind of kid were you, what kind of stuff did you get into? Were you into any, like, sports? Were you more into academics? I'd love some context for the audience. Yeah. So I grew up in a small town called Morrow and Mainville, Ohio.

Starting point is 00:01:26 those two places. I've never really left those areas. I'm pushing 30 now. I'm a country boy at heart. Love, you know, going to the river. Our high school had a negative connotation. We turned into a positive. We were called river rats because, you know, we didn't have much and we'd always just hang out at the river, you know, because we didn't have pools or hot tubs or whatever. But we really took that as a mark of pride, you know. And I would say, you know, like most entrepreneurs, the journey started pretty young. My family kind of has been through the whole rigmarole from poor all the way to middle class throughout my life. And when I was real little, I really wanted just to have my own money. Once I understood money equaled candy, if you

Starting point is 00:02:14 couldn't tell. I liked food. And that hasn't changed. So at nine, I knew I could get paydays if I pushed lawns and I quickly realized I hate physical labor. I, it's miserable for my physique, you know, I'm 5 foot 5 and overweight my whole life. So, you know, just not something I enjoyed. And I really wanted to play World War to Warcraft, you know, after mowing lawns for a summer. And I just, I basically invested in a bunch of components and me and my old man put together a PC. and that from that moment on I was pretty much hooked on the computer at all times taught myself out of program through free courses by the way Code Academy and YouTube and everything else yeah

Starting point is 00:03:03 you know completely free and was starting to just sell websites you know 250 bucks for a page to local businesses in my hometown and you know it's a small town so everyone knew each other and I just kind of became the smart tech guy at a young age. And so what was always? Jake? Oh, it would have been sophomore year, junior year, senior year, high school. Yeah, like basically. Let's rewind for just a second.

Starting point is 00:03:30 So you did landscaping. You realized you didn't like it. Landscaping is tough. My dad had a landscaping business for 40 years. He just retired in January, moved back to the Philippines where he's from. and so I'm just so excited for him. But at 12, I actually started doing landscaping for him every summer from 12 to about 22. So I know what it felt like for you to be out there.

Starting point is 00:03:57 I've done it in the D.C. summers and the heat. And, man, it's not easy. So what are some lessons? Because you had to have picked up a couple, you know, doing some landscaping. So what were some lessons that you picked up doing that type of work, you know, the hard work having to get up every day? I'm sure there's a couple things you have extracted from that. Very quickly, I realized that I could spend my time more valuably. Like, when I, it just kind of, it was a kind of thing that just happened, really.

Starting point is 00:04:29 I mowed all day. I probably had, it felt like all day, right? You're a kid, so I don't know if it was all day, but I had seven yards. And I made like, I think it was 80 bucks. You know, it wasn't a lot. I was the cheap kid. pushing the mower down the street, you know. And I had a buddy with me, so we'd had to split it. It was a whole thing. But it felt like a really long day. And then I made 50 from the neighbor.

Starting point is 00:04:54 And it took me like 10 minutes to fix their computer problem, you know? Like I am meeting who's like, wow, I think I could make more money, you know, per hour fixing computers for people and being the tech guy, you know? And I am the living embodiment of 15 years of that idea. You know, I, I've always thought of where to invest, where to put my time and my energy, and it has always come down to like a great return on time in tech, you know? There's no overhead. You're just arbitraging your knowledge and the time needed to do the things. You can charge more, the more you know.

Starting point is 00:05:32 And it made it a game for me just to, and that's why my handles, JT knows things, like, just leverage my knowledge to the point where I have a lot of valuable information. So I guess like as a kid, I was always obsessed, like, you asked, like, was I an academic? I mean, my parents were buying me an encyclopedias at six, and I would just read them to no weird, random facts. Like, I had an insatiable hunger for knowledge ever since I was little. So I just really went, I guess that's what happened, really. I mean, I just, I realized that I have other gifts and me pushing a lawnmower probably isn't, isn't it, you know? Well, that's self-awareness, right? It's realizing pretty quickly. And one lesson that was the biggest lesson, which shifted you to making more, right? And then turning that into even more things. So what was that journey like, right? So you go from, hey, you know, I'm pushing this lawnmower. It's very hard work. I'm having to split the earning. So it's not a lot of revenue. And then, you know, I went to someone's place, did some things and maybe.

Starting point is 00:06:41 significantly more and less time. So, I mean, it seems like the math was pretty easy, you know, pretty easy for you to do to say, all right, I'm pushing this career aside and I'm jumping into this new endeavor. So once you started to realize, you know, A, you have the ability to sell, which is important, right? You can get somebody interested in what you're offering and then having them actually say yes, you know. And then the important thing, which is you delivered on the service. That's important, right? So once you knew you could do that, what else did that spark for you?

Starting point is 00:07:15 Because you kind of alluded to it a little bit ago that, hey, there were so many other great things that sparked because of that. Yeah, I mean, it started with hardware, like fixing, you know, a family's cash register at, you know, a restaurant or the neighbor needing help with, you know, Wi-Fi and setting up a router. And, you know, and then it was maybe I could learn to code. You know, I was really infatuated with World Warcraft. And I just thought it was magic. You know, there's like this box that can create this world where I can be like the most badass druid in the world, right? Like, I just thought it was crazy. You know, I'm a kid.

Starting point is 00:07:54 So I figured that there'd be more interesting stuff to do, really. I didn't think about money. I was like, it'd just be cool to learn how to build a website. And, you know, I just started doing that. I made probably, by the time I was going to college, I probably had, I don't know, 10, 15,000 bucks in cash from all these side hustles. And then I just rolled all that into a software development company when I went to college. So fast forward to freshman year of college, I had this company called E-Losophy. And, you know, I started selling more, you know, bigger projects.

Starting point is 00:08:34 What custom web applications for small startups or medium-sized. businesses and there was a whole new skill set I had to learn like I found a partner that was much older than me he was 31 I was 19 he had a large you know development resource in Islamabad Pakistan and you know I was selling offshore development 35 40 an hour and we were getting them for probably four to six bucks an hour and had to figure out all the different languages Python, JavaScript, you know, outside of web development. I had to learn a lot. I had to develop a lot.

Starting point is 00:09:12 Yeah, you know, I was getting an undergrad as well. So I would like sell, go to school and then get every two hours throughout the night, I had alarms. I'd wake up, get on WhatsApp and make sure the work was going well. It was a long grind. I did that from 19 to 22. And I would commute from Cincinnati to Toledo. It's about, I don't know, 8,000.

Starting point is 00:09:37 miles a month maybe. I was driving a lot. Like it was 250 miles one way. I did that four times a week for two years. It was a great, you know. A lot of experience there, you know, sales, you had international business, you know, dealing with contractors and other developers, you know, languages, software, you know, so you kind of dove into learning. And the one thing that I'm noticing is that you're obviously a lifelong learner. You want to get as much. info as you can and ultimately be able to help many people with that info, right? Businesses, small startups, big companies. So you were there a couple years, it sounds like, and are doing that a couple of years. What was the next kind of step on the path? I exited that business when I

Starting point is 00:10:27 graduated, moved back home, and then I had a fitness on demand technology startup. It was a little bit different. I took a B-to-B position. So Uber was coming out. I could see like around the corner, like on-demand, you know, Instacart wasn't a thing. TaskRabbit just started. You know, we're talking 2016, right? Like a lot of things that are here now weren't here then. And I just saw this powerful idea of licensing on-demand technology to, I was going to start with fitness because there's a lot a waste in personal trainers. You know, they're wiping down the benches. They're doing like high end, you know, in terms of pay rate, they're clean in a gym, which you could have one company do every morning for an hour, but you got all these people all day just sitting there making

Starting point is 00:11:19 20, 25 an hour and not doing what they're paid to do, which is train people, which is a higher margin business service they offer. So the idea was you license on demand technology. They basically get the software, they can turn as many people, you know, as many trainers that they'd like as service delivers of, you know, of their gym to anywhere in the area. You know, yoga in the park hosted by Alex Chrissy at 1, 2, 3 fit, right? And then users just show up and they get a workout on demand, you know, but it's the gyms that we sold our technology to to allow them to build their own kind of on-demand service. That's definitely cool. And, you know, or I guess early in the cycle, right?

Starting point is 00:12:02 A lot of the other things weren't around yet. So what was that experience like and how did it ultimately go? You know, it was a great experience until COVID. Gems were not legally allowed to be opened. So for five years, I worked on Miley and this dating app called Seen and then an automotive startup. It was all like three things happening in those five years. and when COVID happened, I felt like if we were in a good spot and I just wanted to, the decision was to shelf it because it was like how long are they going to be shut down for,

Starting point is 00:12:44 we had customers that signed up through before we even launched and, you know, we were growing decently, had a lot of interest. But as soon as the gym just shut down, that went sideways. And then the dating app I had was really interesting. It was basically TikTok. It was a full-screen dating app where the dating profiles were just 30, 60 or 90-second videos that had to be replaced every 90 days. And then you basically just went through that profile on a feed, swip left or right. And then, you know, just like Tinder after that.

Starting point is 00:13:21 So all video, get seen on scene. It was a whole thing. our investor pulled out of that one. We had a great return on, he just didn't understand how users work. So, you know, we invested, I think, 50 bucks in advertising, got 3,000 downloads. And it cost us 60 bucks a month to store them. And he was immediately like, why are we investing in losing money? And it was impossible to get him over the hump of like, no, this is incredible.

Starting point is 00:13:53 Like we, 3,000 downloads on 50 bucks is crazy. We had a trademark on video dating for iPhone. That was our keyword in the Apple store. We were at first result if you were looking for that by a long shot. It was just a great situation, but he didn't understand how tech businesses worked. So it was just a string of difficult times, a lot of problems popping up for the companies. and I had basically spent most of the money I made from a loss fee trying to get these things off the ground. And I was consulting on the side just to keep the lights on.

Starting point is 00:14:34 Because I have a moral issue with raising money and then paying myself. I don't think that's right at the seed stage. Even Series A, like if you're not willing to work 100 hours a week as an entrepreneur, you don't belong here anyway. So you got to figure it out. Got to put in reps. Yeah, exactly. You know, and I found throughout that period of time while I'm growing those companies that I was really good at consulting. I am a very adaptable learner.

Starting point is 00:15:02 I'm an autodidact. Like, I played tons of instruments. I have learned, you know, plenty of languages, logic. I've taught myself everything. I don't have a degree in this stuff. I've just been, you know, an infatuated kid. And, you know, it just that really applies. well to consultings. Once you get a contract, you go in there, they can't even communicate the

Starting point is 00:15:22 issues usually. So you start discovering what the real problem is, and then you are not equipped for the solution, and you got to figure it out. And like, you just learn a lot more, too. It's very satisfying that way, you know, jumping into different situations, depending on the client, different industries. You know, I've probably worked in 10 different industries at all different levels from developing to testing to building a company to you know it's just been very diverse and that's where i really started finding successes in my consulting that you know we're we're probably to two thousand and twenty one now so like covid's over those startups fizzled out and i just decided to go all in on consulting and then i started getting pretty significant contracts and life's just been

Starting point is 00:16:10 kind of wild since then. You know, we're three and a half years into that transition. And I've just, I, I, I, I haven't made it in the sense, you know, we all have goals and things, but for a 29 year old kid, you know, I'm, I'm doing very, very well. And it really was uncomfortable for me because I didn't feel like an entrepreneur when I'm just arbitraging my time. Now, I have it for myself, you know, like I'm 1099. I'm a, I'm a basically, like, I'm a, basically, like, I'm a, I'm a,

Starting point is 00:16:39 basically like Pete's plumbing, a plumber with his own truck that gets hired by a large general contractor. But I've developed a reputation that allows me to charge a lot. And I'm in high demand. So I can pick and choose what I do. And it's a great income. So, you know, I, but I, first I thought I was like given up, really. 2021. We're like, I'm going all in on consulting. F it, you know. And it's, it's a lesson that hopefully can resonate with. some people because it's been a spiritual journey for me in that sense. I really did feel like my ego had to die for me to be willing to just not have a business that I'm like trying to become a multi-millionaire at a young age and like all this other stuff. And found that if I just slowed

Starting point is 00:17:29 down and had faith in like my true gifts and just let it work on its own, I found success in ways I never thought. So it's developed my framework a lot differently for success. It's almost like I care, I only care about the direction I'm walking and I'm incredibly flexible with the path. You know, and when I was young, ambitious, hungry, and I would say aggressive, arrogant, and ignorant, all of those things. I just want, I was hungry. I'm pushing aggressively. And now that I'm in a position of power and safety and I have everything I could want, I'm allowed to, like, not sit on my laurels, but not push, you know? I'm receiving, if anything. Like, things are just happening for me and to me, and I'm able to really adapt. And that's why I have a hedge fund. You know,

Starting point is 00:18:23 that me making that mental switch has allowed me to have a hedge fund, which I never would have ever thought that I would ever be doing ever, you know, like ever. If I was just like rigid like I used to be and I'm doing this, I'm doing this, it's incredible focus. But I probably missed out on a lot of opportunities. I probably said no to a lot of things. I shouldn't have. And it's because I was so focused on it. What I want you to do, I've got to pause here because, you know, from, you know, cutting people's lawns to, you know, replacing computer. to learning to code to hedge fund. So for everyone that's listening that doesn't know what a hedge fund is,

Starting point is 00:19:12 A, I'd like for you to explain that. And then B, what's the process it actually takes from going to, I want to start a hedge fund to now I actually have a hedge fund that's up and running. Yeah. So a hedge fund isn't as crazy as it sounds. because of the media. A hedge fund is just a structure inside of the SEC guidelines of entities and how they operate. So specifically, it's a reg D. It's a kind of limited partnership, no different than like attorneys or CPAs or dentist offices or doctor's offices. Usually you'll see a little

Starting point is 00:19:54 LPA at the end of that. So it's a specific kind of limited partnership that has, two controlling entities. So you have your limited partnership, and then you have a general partnership, and then you have an advisory LLC. And the pro rata rights of the limited partnership get subbed out to these two entities. That way, there's no control inside of the limited partnership. It gives you a lot of exemptions and allows you to avoid a lot of regulations and things, which sounds sketchy, but when you understand the regulation, it's really helpful because there's a lot of really dumb things like me not being able to buy securities or commodities on behalf of other people when that's the entire purpose of my business and specifically in the hedgement I run which is a hundred percent crypto they're not even securities or commodities yet we don't know what they are the IRS treats them as real property but there's no clear understanding of what they are so I need this structure to be safe and that takes roughly 80 to 100 grand to set up with attorneys that can get you these exemptions.

Starting point is 00:21:08 You have to file in each state that you've received monies from. And then you also need enough capital to test a strategy that is marketable and hopefully you do well. So setting it up and starting it is not cheap. I was able to get all of that done through equity. My partner, Steve, who's incredible, Wilterman, Wilterman Law out of Bluveland, Ohio. He's awesome. he was able to, basically he does real estate syndication.

Starting point is 00:21:35 It's the same thing as real estate syndicating for those who might know what that is. But instead of buying an apartment building, we're buying crypto. So that's, yeah, that's what it is. And that's specifically how it's made and built. And then I get there from only investing in crypto for a while. It's all I've really been interested in because tokens are just software. And one of the most important rules in investing is to only invest in what you know. And I've only ever, outside of a short stint in landscaping, only ever dealt with technology.

Starting point is 00:22:14 That's it. It's all I've ever done. And I, right. And, you know, very young, I'd say 2017, 2018, I was like, where's a more undervalued market? And where is the most ignorance? Because that's where you can. really make money in markets when you know more than the next guy and it is significantly undervalued because over time you know you're going to be very grateful you bought it when you did is the general idea yeah so let me ask you this jake because there's going to be a lot of people that listen to this and they're like listen i've been hearing you know the term crypto and cryptocurrency and bitcoin and all this stuff for years but i've just been afraid to pull the

Starting point is 00:23:00 trigger. You know, they've been afraid to pull the trigger to get, you know, a wallet. You know, they've been afraid to pull the trigger at, you know, investing in something. What would your advice be to them? And how could you put somebody like that, a listener like that, at ease? I, I normally just help them, I'm an educator. You know, you say I'm a good salesman because I'm an entrepreneur, but really, I've always taken the position as someone who educates. And people trust, you know, People coming, you can disarm people that way for anyone listening that's working on selling. Because genuinely, I'm agnostic to what decision you make, because I'm good either way. But I would help them understand that these currencies are not currencies.

Starting point is 00:23:53 Coinbase is not a digital Forex. Bitcoin is not competing with the US dollar or the Japanese yen, even though it's beating both by a landslide. They don't compete either way. They, these cryptocurrencies are tokens. Tokens are a kind of file, no different than a word document or a PowerPoint. .pt, dot, bOC, dot Bocx. That's relatively technical. I mean, people don't know what a file type is.

Starting point is 00:24:26 Not everyone does. And, you know, tokens are just a different kind of file. They're a programmable file, and they are a unique byproduct of a blockchain. And a blockchain is just a data management theory. It's how we can manage data differently and more securely. It's not always better. That's another thing a lot of people don't understand. It's not always better.

Starting point is 00:24:51 But there are some that are infinitely better for a lot of reasons. And when you're buying tokens, you're investing in the future of the Internet. The entire sector is the evolution of the Internet. And I try to help people understand that the Internet has evolved from 1964 to present day, and we've had multiple iterations of the Internet based on the kind of protocols that open source developers build. Just briefly, Web 1, 64 to 89, all computers could do. is read. That's it. You know, they could read what another computer was saying back and forth, but they couldn't write. They could just read what a message was posted somewhere, or it wasn't even

Starting point is 00:25:46 post yet. They could just read. 1989 to 2009, they could write now, read and write. Even what we're doing this moment, this camera is writing to a server. The person that's going to watch this is reading that file from that server and that file location at a later time whenever this goes public. So now we're reading and writing information. When you understand that from 64 to 2009, web one and two was purely just about information. That's all it was. The information has changed, you know, Twitter is written.txt files, right? This is MP4 files. They're all files and it's all just reading and writing. 2009 blockchain's inventing. with Bitcoin and it allowed us to own online now.

Starting point is 00:26:37 And that's a very confusing concept because most people believe they own like you believe or maybe you don't, but a lot of people would believe that they own this file we're generating right now when in fact you don't. Riverside owns all the hardware. They own all the server connections. They own the IP and then the server that's storing it. Whoever owns that hardware has actually got rights to it, right? You certainly don't. No matter what document, any of us have signed, it's all ultimately controlled by these large companies that have all this hardware. It could be Oracle, it could be IBM, could be Apple, like all those videos of your kids and you love, they're not yours. They're Tim Cooks. And that's what you agreed to when you

Starting point is 00:27:19 click the privacy policy and the terms of use, including using Riverside right now. So people think they own something they don't. And that's the hardest part. What blockchain and this Web 3, 2009 and on gives us, it gives the average Joe the ability to own online, safely, secure, secure and trustlessly, which is super, super important. And if you believe in the internet being here 10 years from now, and you believe that the world is getting more digital, not less digital, there is no, there's not a more undervalued market. to be investing in the digital evolution than crypto. These protocols are single-handedly changing how the Internet functions, and they're here till the ends of time.

Starting point is 00:28:13 Like, buying Ethereum in 2014 would be like buying SMTP, which wasn't an option, but buying SMTP in 1989 before AOL came around and built Messenger. You know, a lot of people don't understand where this stuff is in the stack, but, you know, AOL is all the way up here. Microsoft, Apple, all the way up here. There's probably 30 different protocols that they all looked at and have used to build all of their web servers and web services. But ultimately, it's the protocols that power these things. Gmail is powered by iPop and IMAP3, right? The messaging feature for Facebook Messenger is powered by SMTP. Those things, SMTP, iPop, IMAP3 were built by O.

Starting point is 00:29:01 open source developers that made $0, completely zero dollars, but $50 trillion has been built on top of them. And they're not going away because protocols are open. And it's an instruction manual that changes the Internet and how it works. Anyone in the world can use it for anything. So I just try to help them understand what they're buying, you know? Yeah, I think that's going to help a lot of people. For sure. Yeah, I think it's going to help a lot of people. Essentially, kind of what I'm hearing is it's almost similar to like what's happening in collegiate sports with NIL. You know, it's like, you know, people are going to actually start getting, getting what they actually should own, right? Their actual software things that they've created, they're actually going to get revenue for that. Just like in college, they're getting paid for their name, their image, and their likeness.

Starting point is 00:29:59 one before, the NCAA did not allow that. And people would sell sneakers or they'd sell their jerseys and they would start basically getting kicked out or getting fined or they'd get a YouTube video that they made money off of and then they'd get kicked out of college. And yeah, so it's kind of like that. But in the software space, right, where developers now, like you said, trillions of dollars in revenue and none went to the people that actually did the work to do it. And now they can do that through blockchain and through.

Starting point is 00:30:29 getting these tokens. Yeah. And it's all thanks to cryptography. You know, that's why it's called cryptocurrency. The reason why they couldn't do it back in 1989 is you couldn't anonymously build software and trust the other person back then because you're like, a second I give you permissions, you can rape me. Just take it.

Starting point is 00:30:51 Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Take everything. But now with cryptography, you don't have to know who I am for me to work on a COVID. with you. My bags, like let's say I have 4% of the ether supply and I was one of the founding members of Ethereum, just like the founding member or founding builder of SMTP back in the 80s and 90s, why would I code something that hurts my net worth? Why would I be a malicious actor that directly

Starting point is 00:31:21 violates my wealth? It makes no sense. But there was no way to capture wealth, to capture value, no matter how much value you created with SMTP, I mean, AOL was probably multiple billions of dollars when it first came out, you know, until it had its arc. But there was no way to capture that because you couldn't even give credit to these developers. There's no way to like, hey, I built this thing and I'm going to charge 0.001 for every email that gets sent. It's not a, no money's online. You know, you think it is, but really what's happening. is all these different databases at each bank have a debit and credit system that link up and rebalance every day. That's why banks are closed at a certain time. It's why markets open at a

Starting point is 00:32:11 certain time. It's the most inefficient system out there. It's ridiculous where like blockchain allows us to have on-demand liquidity, instant settlement times. There's just like a lot of benefits to it that did not exist back then. So they were kind of screwed, you know. The largest operating system is Linux, and it's an open-sourced OS on a billion devices. There's no CEO. Yeah. You know, like, it's just open-source developers in a community that have a lot of pride in what they're building. And blockchain, that's existed from the beginning of time.

Starting point is 00:32:48 That's my whole point of that. Like, since the Internet's been commercially available in 1989, there are guys like that. and blockchain for the first time is a way for them to get rich doing it. Yeah. So it's just, it's pouring gasoline on the fire. Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah, I know that people are going to listen to this episode.

Starting point is 00:33:09 And, you know, I know for me, I'm definitely getting educated on a lot of the terminology, a lot of how this stuff works. And now I actually find it easier to understand. So you did your job in, you know, from the educational standpoint. So where can people reach? out to you if they got a couple golden nuggets from what you've said and they they want to know next steps. They're like, hey, you know what? I may have, I may have something from my 401k that I want to dump into another potential investment opportunity and how would I go about doing that. Or they may just say,

Starting point is 00:33:48 hey, you know what? I think I'm ready to truly take this step and get my first wallet. What do I do. What would you recommend? Things like that. So where's the best place for folks to reach out? Yeah. So JT knows things on your preferred platform. That's my handle. It works anywhere. Rumble, Instagram. YouTube is the channel I'm working on growing the most. I love and appreciate a sub. But either way, just reach out to me, DM me on any of those platforms. In terms of getting started without giving financial advice away because that's not what I'm here to do. I think the best place to start is coinmarketcap.com. It's going to give you a ranking of each crypto based on how large it is, so the market cap. I would stick to the top 100 and just go through the websites,

Starting point is 00:34:42 go through all of their social media pages, try to find them on Reddit and, you know, substack, it's a, it's like a Reddit for technical people. If you're a software guy listening, substack is great. And just start learning as much as you can about this stuff. And I would Google every word that you don't know. And I mean, that's how I started five, six years ago. And then I would only invest in those if you don't know a lot. This is a space where things are changing constantly.

Starting point is 00:35:18 and you're not going to get them all. Very far from that. The few that last 10, 15 years, you could make life-changing wealth. You know, my pitch at the fund is 5% of your portfolio could outperform the other 95% with long enough time horizons. And, you know, in my fund, we have audited returns five months, 75%. We get them audited once a year. every quarter I do in NAV, we're getting anywhere from 5% a quarter up to 30%, 40%, 70%, 75% a quarter. It just depends.

Starting point is 00:35:56 If I'm getting that and you're getting 8% on 95% of what you have, it doesn't matter, 10, 12, 15 years, it's just math. I'll have more with 5%. Right? So it's like it's worth the risk. 5% is not a lot. it's worth the risk to spend time learning about this stuff. And that's, you know, that's why I'm on this podcast, why I post the content. I just, you know, I just believe that people are going to be left behind with what's to come.

Starting point is 00:36:30 And there's not many asset classes that can give you the returns you need to be able to retire. Yes, yes. And listeners, you know, what's really cool, guys, is you get to listen to this. You get to get some great knowledge and expertise, and you get to see a guy that, you know, went from, you know, starting out, cutting lawns and bringing in some revenue to now having a successful hedge fund and being an educator in a space that you don't want to be left behind in. So definitely we're going to make sure that all of Jake's info is in the show notes. Jake, I appreciate you taking the time out of your schedule to come on the Blaze Your Own Trail podcast and hope you have to be able to be. amazing day. Thank you, Jordan. It's been an absolute pleasure. Thank you.

Blaze Your Own Trail - The Power of Investing in Knowledge & Skills with Jake Tullis

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