Founder's Story - After Exiting for Billions He Gave $50 Million to His Employees | Tom Sosnoff

Episode Date: July 27, 2026

Daniel opens by asking why someone with nearly $2 billion in exits is not sitting on a beach sipping drinks. Tom Sosnoff, founder of thinkorswim, tastytrade, and LossDog’s answer is simple: building is what turns him on. From there, the conversation becomes a raw and funny look into the psychology of a builder who says he has no hobbies, no Netflix account, and has never ordered anything on Amazon. Tom shares the “no high fives” rule he and his partner Scott live by, why they never build companies to sell, how buyers found thinkorswim and tastytrade, and why he cares deeply that the companies who buy from him get an asset worth more than they paid. The episode then moves into Tom’s newest company, LossDog, which gives people a number for their professional worth, and opens a broader conversation about wage gaps, negotiation, employee equity, tokenized private shares, prediction markets, and democratizing access to financial information. Tom also reflects on building one of the first digital financial media networks, why hiring comedians to explain finance failed, and why he and his friends ended up becoming the show themselves. Key Discussion Points Tom says there is no chance he would retire to a beach after big exits because he loves working, building, and creating more than anything else. He says the question of work-life balance drives him crazy, describing himself as a “junkie” for work and still the first person in the office every day. Tom jokes that he is “hobbyless” and says three things differentiate him: he has no hobbies, no Netflix account, and has never ordered anything on Amazon. He explains the rule he and longtime partner Scott live by after exits: no high fives, no congratulations, because they do not see themselves as done. Tom says they never build companies with the intention to sell. They build things they believe people need, and buyers eventually approach them when the timing is right. When thinkorswim sold, Tom says multiple companies were bidding in cash, and when tastytrade sold, five companies emerged as potential buyers. Tom says he did not choose buyers based only on the highest offer. He cared about whether the buyer would get a great company and a deal that would prove valuable over time. He argues that his companies continue working after acquisition because the technology is strong enough that even mediocre operators can run it successfully. Tom shares the origin of the LossDog name, explaining that it came from a “Loss Cat” poster he saw in a theater green room and loved so much that he tracked down the artist. LossDog gives people a professional worth number, and Tom says his own calculated career value came out to $343,000, though he jokes that his resume and LinkedIn profile are not very strong. Tom argues that context and information are incredibly valuable in negotiation, especially because executives have public compensation comparisons while average employees often lack the same visibility. He says the wage gap in America is real and that the only way to help average employees is to give them better information, context, and education about what they are worth. Tom says he is not building LossDog simply to solve a problem, but because it interests him and fits into a larger ecosystem of companies involving digitization, tokenization, prediction markets, and financial engines. He discusses prediction markets, saying they are interesting and likely here to stay, but also believes current fee structures are too high and inefficient for the average individual. Tom talks about buying private shares in companies before IPOs and predicts that future employee equity markets may become tokenized, creating lower-cost marketplaces for private company shares. He shares that when he and Scott sold their companies, they gave $50 million in cash to employees on top of employee equity, including life-changing checks for some people. Tom says giving someone a million-dollar check is one of the coolest things someone can do, and he would rather do that than buy luxury toys like yachts or cars. He explains why he still does a daily show: he has a special relationship with the audience, he enjoys it, and he would rather do that than almost anything else. Tom tells the story of creating tastytrade as a digital financial media company after selling thinkorswim because he disliked the state of traditional financial media. The original plan was to hire comedians to make finance entertaining, but after months of testing, Tom realized they hated finance and were not funny together talking about it—so he and Tony took over the show themselves. Takeaways Tom’s version of success is not retirement. It is the ability to keep building things that interest him. Great exits often come from building something genuinely valuable, not from building a company solely to sell it. Information changes negotiation. Tom believes employees lose enormous lifetime earnings because they do not have the same compensation context executives do. Legacy is not one company or one exit. For Tom, it includes the products built, the employees rewarded, the markets democratized, and the value left behind. The future of private markets may be tokenized, giving employees and investors more transparent, lower-cost ways to trade private company equity before an IPO. Closing Thoughts Tom Sosnoff’s story is not the typical founder story about chasing an exit and disappearing. It is about obsession, repetition, and the joy of building again and again. From thinkorswim to tastytrade to LossDog, Tom has built companies that democratize access to financial tools, education, and information. This episode captures a founder who has already won by almost any financial measure, but still shows up because the work itself is the reward. Today's Sponsors:  Start with Upwork, the one-stop platform to find, hire, and pay expert freelancers across marketing, editing, branding, development, operations, and more. Visit https://www.Upwork.com today to post your job for free and get matched with top talent ready to help your business grow. Get unlimited access to human-made stock footage, music, and creative assets your team can use instantly in Premiere Pro and After Effects. For a limited time, visit storyblocks.com/founders to get 15% off any annual plan. Protect the people you love with fast, simple life insurance you can apply for 100% online with no medical exam. Get your free quote today at https://www.ethos.com/founders. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

We've had five exits, two over a billion and three, like over 100 million. I've always had only one rule we live by, which is, wow. This is Tom Sosnoff, legendary trader, serial entrepreneur, and the mind behind thinker swim and tasty trade. In this conversation, he shares the trading lessons, business strategies, and founder hacks that built companies people couldn't ignore. Within a year, we had millions of followers and the largest digital financial network in the world. What is the secret sauce? I'll tell you this story. So I don't usually tell

this story. When we sold Pinkerson, you basically had almost $2 billion in exits. I mean, who hasn't used tasty trade at least once in their life? I'm a big stock trader for a long time. I've used tasty trade, everything that you do. I've been a huge fan. But if I had almost $2 billion in exits, I'd probably be on a beach sipping a margarita or maybe a coconut. drink. Why are you not on a beach right now? Why are you even talking to me, Tom? I can tell you right now that there's zero chance that you'd be on a beach sipping a pinocalada if you had $2 billion in exits because it's a little bit like, you know, once you get a taste of certain things, like that's what motivates you. That's what turns you

on. I mean, not that I hate going to the beach and drinking a cocktail because I love it, but I'm good for about three hours. And then like, you know, I love working. I like building stuff. Building shit is my life and I don't really care about anything else. Like I don't want to, you know, that is what's fun for me. Did you ever have somebody say like balance, Tom, like you need balance? Because it sounds like you and I are the same in the sense. I haven't had the exits. But I could work all day long. I could work 20 hours in the day and I don't get burned out. I enjoy it. You know, it's funny that you say that because I do a lot of lectures at, you know, colleges, grad schools, you know, to undergrad, graduate,

students, the schools all over the country. Just because I love it. And occasionally, somebody will say, what about work-life balance? And then I go off on a freaking rant because no question, no question drives me more crazy than work-life balance. Like, it doesn't even, like, that doesn't even register with me. So no, I am, listen, I am what I am and I don't care if other people, you know, don't think that's cool. I, that's what I am.

I'm a junkie, man. I'm still the first one to work every single day here now. And you're not playing the guitar, by the way. I want to make sure people know that you don't play the guitar. No, no, I have no talent. So let's say you have to fill out a sheet online. Somebody sends you over a sheet, whatever that sheet is. And it says, name your hobbies.

What is your hobby? Oh, love the question because I actually do not have one. I have, I am hobbyless. I mean, I am, I don't know how else to say it. I don't have a single, like I mean, I play some sports and I, you know, and I like to go out to eat and stuff like that, whatever. But I have zero hobbies. And I feel like there's certain things in life I'm very proud of.

I don't, I don't have a hobby. I don't have a Netflix account, and I've never ordered anything on Amazon. Those are my three main things in life that I can, like, I think differentiate me. Wow. Do you still use MySpace? No. That would be good differentiator if you still, like if you, it was you and Tom, you, the other time, the two Tom were your only friends on MySpace. Now, let's go back to when you sold the first company.

What was that feeling like? Because I think every founder that I know is I want to do the exit. I mean, and I'm talking like, I would love to do a $10 million, $20 million, but hundreds of a billion dollar exit. What is that feeling like? So we have a rule. Scott and I, from partners a long time, we've always had one rule, only one rule we live by, which is no high fives. No high fives or just no high fives at all? Nothing.

We haven't even like congratulated each other. we've had I think five exits over you know two over a billion and three like over a hundred million and we haven't congratulated

each other once not even once and it's on purpose because it's kind of like you know what like we're not done we got more to do what's the secret sauce

to the ability of having two billion dollar exits and a couple hundred million because most people are like if they get one exit that's huge but to get multiple exits and in that range that's like the nine and ten figure exits what is the secret sauce i mean i don't i don't know because i'm not really you know i live in my own little kind of like ecosystem i'm probably i'm probably in outside of the retail people like retail investors and things like that i mean in the in the venture or private equity world

like nobody or even in the world of finance. This episode is brought to you by ethos. I started a podcast with only $50 in a cheap microphone, and back then I never thought about what happens to people who depend on me. Becoming a husband changed all of that. When you build something, you start thinking about protecting the people you're building it for. That's why I looked into life insurance with ethos. What stood out was how fast and simple it was.

It's 100% online. no medical exam. You just answer a few health questions online, and you can get a quote in seconds. Ethos helps provide financial security for the people you love. Take 10 minutes to get covered today with life insurance through ethos. Get your free quote at ethos.com slash founders. That's ethos.com slash founders. Application times may vary. Rates may vary. Like very few people know us. We don't really have, we don't do institutional things. We don't to, like, we're really, we live in our own little enclosed, like, warehouse up on the north side of Chicago. We, we don't even interact with most people. So I, I don't know. Like,

you know, I don't think about things like that. I, I feel like if you, if you build really cool stuff that, that, that people find a way to think that they have to have it. And we, we never build something with the intention to sell it. We just, at some point, we decide, okay, it's time to move on to the next project. And if somebody comes along, like we've never listed anything we've ever bought for sale. We've just been approached and said, you know,

hey, we're interested in what you guys have. And we're like, okay, we'll talk, you know, because we're ready to try the next thing. So were you building those relationships with any companies or investors or PE before the sale or just, they just saw you and wanted to gobble you up? Yeah. Yeah, they really did. That's really how it happened. When we sold Thinkerswum, we had three companies bidding cash for us. When we sold Tasty, we had five companies. They all came out at the woodwork at the same time. Because you know what? The investment banking world is a really small, incestuous world where all those investment makers, all they do is yak it up together. Like, I mean, they can't, not one of them can keep a secret. And so as soon as something is about to happen, everybody knows about it.

and, you know, we just, we just picked the one that we thought was best for us. We didn't pick the highest or anything like that. Either time, we didn't want you until someone wants you, right? Like if one person wants you, do you think there's a certain way that you've set up companies to ensure that if it gets to the point of a sale, that that sale is successful? Because I've talked to a lot of founders that were approached and it didn't work out because of a multitude of reasons of things they didn't do in their business along the way. So that's fair because I feel very, I feel that the sale is really personal.

And I couldn't care less. Like when TD Ameritrade bought us, I don't care about TD Ameritrade. I mean, they seem like a nice company. I didn't care that it was them. What I cared is that they bought an asset that I represented this as a great company. And what they bought for a little less than a billion dollars is probably worth $5 billion. 10 billion today because thinkersome is one of the biggest platforms in the world and they haven't changed the thing and now Schwab owns it. When we sold Tasty, all I cared about was, hey, you know what,

you guys are paying, you know, well over a billion dollars for this and you're going to get, they were like, you know, we think we're overpaying type of thing. And I'm like, not only you're not overpaying, this is the best company you guys are ever going to buy. And, and it turned out, now it's worth, you know, two or three billion dollars. And so that's really important to me that when people buy something from us, that they get a great deal. Because I really believe in what we build. There's no, that's not even, like we're not building stuff that's not, what we build and sell is worth more than we're probably selling it for. What do you think differentiates you?

Because a lot of people that have come on here that have told me about selling their business, I would say majority of the time, the business fails. afterwards. Some PE buys it, breaks it up into pieces, or some company buys it and changes it, and then it kind of goes to shit. We build really good stuff, period. I mean, it's just our technology. I mean, a monkey can run the stuff that we build after, you know, when we sell it. And, you know, essentially the companies that we've sold to, monkeys have run it. But it works because it's so good. I love that. And I mean, and I think that, you know, listen, I, I, I, I, I, I, I know people get nervous and skeptical about buying other companies and other people's, you know, technology and code and, you know, IP and all that kind of stuff. But we hung around to make sure it was all worth. Like, we didn't leave right away. We made sure that they got a great deal. Your new company, Lost Dog, which, by the way, how do you ideate these names? They're all from different. They're all different. Like, Think or some of them I just made up. Tasty, I made up. Lost Dog, I actually made up. from a poster that I had seen years.

I was doing a live show in Atlanta, and there was a poster in the green room before I went up on stage that said, it was a big poster of this lost cat. S-S-C-A-T, and I freaking fell in love with it. I tried to buy it from the theater and the guy who wouldn't sell it to me. Any number, he wouldn't sell it.

He's like, I love that poster. I go, I love this poster too. I got to find it. So I hunted down the artist and got like a copy of it. It's always been hanging up in our place. And I said, if we ever build another company, I can't call it Lost Cat, because that's your name. I'm going to call it Lost Dog. Names are sometimes the hardest thing to

find for a company. You create the idea, the plan, and getting that name can be so complicated. So I know Lost Dog, you give people a professional worth, a number that is their professional worth. Yeah. What is your professional worth according to Lost Dog? So I'm happy that you asked that question because I did run my professional, I did run my stuff through it. Now I have to put a little bit of a disclaimer out there. Number one is I don't really have a resume. So like one of the things about Lost Dog is you kind of need to upload a resume from LinkedIn, you know. So instead what I did was I asked, you know, like Gemini to build a resume for me.

so I could upload it so I can see. So my resume is not very, it probably wouldn't be the same resume that I would use if I had to go get a job. I've never had, I've never really worked for anybody other than people that have bought us out. So I don't really, I never had a resume. I'll leave it there. So that was my resume that, you know,

and the other thing I'll say is that because I've never really had a job, I've never I've never when you build your own business you make sure that you're grossly underpaid or you work for nothing because you want all the money to flow through to the bottom line because that all your value

is you know you sell a company for a billion dollars that you found it you make plenty of money you don't have to worry about this episode is brought to you by story blocks every video my team puts out runs through story blocks and it's been that way for years when you're producing at the volume we do you can't stop and hunt for footage or worry about whether a track is cleared.

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So I've never really had a salary of very much money. So my net worth, I'm sorry, not my net worth, my, my career value on the Lost Dog platform. And I've been working for 45 years. So I should get, say that too. 400, 343,000. I don't know if I would hire you, Tom, because I don't like your resume, nor do I like your LinkedIn profile. And I'm a little old.

I know. And I had the bad LinkedIn page. I know, I know, and I'm very stubborn. I don't. And, you know, the funny thing is I also, Lost Dog works really well for like $60 to like $300,000, $350,000 in that range because there's a lot of comps. But once you get outside of like government statistics and normal resumes, like, you know, CEO pay doesn't, nobody can, you know, I'm not, we're not going to say you're worth $17 million a year type thing. I remember a time when I got promoted. and it was horrible.

I made them so much money and they paid me crap, which is why I have a hard time working for companies. But according to you, you said that people are leaving, you know, two to four million dollars on the table. A $75,000 person is leaving millions on the table,

essentially. They're not negotiating. Yeah, and a $200,000 person's leaving $10 million on the table. I don't even remember negotiating any pay. I think it was like, they tell me the pay and I say yes, because I want the job.

job, but you're saying there's another way. I'm saying that context, information and context is incredibly valuable. Just having that in your back pocket gives you, like, you just sound better. You articulate things more. You can really explain what you're worth. And yes, it does make a huge difference. I'm not saying every single person can negotiate because we give them a number, but I'm saying that context is here.

There's nobody would argue that there's not this incredible wage gap in America. I mean, the difference between what executives make and what the average employee makes, there should never be a situation where it's 500 times or 1,000 times or, you know, even 50 times, some crazy insane number like that. Nobody would argue that CEOs are overpaid and the average employees is, is, is underpaid or paid fairly. They're not overpaid, that's for sure. CEOs are overpaid because there's so many comps out there that every CEO of an S&P 500 company knows what every other CEO makes because it's public information. So if the average CEO makes 17, 18, or 21 million, then you're

not going to take a job as a CEO of a public company for $3 million, even though you might only be worth $500,000. So you get your $17 or $18 million because that's what the comp committee has to pay you. for the average employee, none of that information is out there. You can't mandate it. You can't legislate it. You know, you can't. There's nothing you can do other than give people information, context, education about what they're worth. And all the details are out there.

Like all the statistics are available. We downloaded tens of millions of resumes. We download hundreds of millions of data points from U.S. government statistics. and you can, you know, you can build a model and figure it out. It's not like rocket science at all. Out of all the things you could have done next, why is this a problem you're solving? I don't solve problems.

I'm not a problem solver. I don't build things to solve problems. I build things because they interest me. And it's like, it's like, it's, I have other, I have other reasons. I have motives. Like we're not building just Lost Dog. We're building other companies as well. And what we're doing with Lost Dog is we're building an ecosystem from which we can

kind of grow some other companies. Like we're about to launch another company called One Lucky Dog. And One Lucky Dog is kind of an offshoot of lost dog. And we're building a variety of companies inside of an ecosystem that includes digitization, tokenization. a lot of other things around predictions, prediction markets, different kinds of financial engines. And so, like, I'm in this freaky period in my life where I feel like I got to do as much as I can in the shortest period of time. So I'm going to build a shitload of stuff. You think the next big thing. And when I say next is in like, it's happening now, but it's going to get, it's going to be the biggest thing ever is prediction markets.

I'm blown away by how big this is. I was just at the airport. I was walking around the soccer game or football game was on, depending on where you're at in the world, the World Cup, and everyone was betting on Kalshi there. I was blown away that they were betting on Kalshi, the predictive market,

not even in actual sports betting like Fanduil. I'm not blown away by it because I've been in that space. I'm mad at myself because I built an exchange before Kalshi and I just couldn't get our team. to buy into the market, you know, prediction market thing. And I didn't own the company anymore. Like, that's right after we sold it and we built our own exchange. So I ended up selling the exchange.

And I feel like we could have been there. So I'm a little mad at that. But I think prediction markets are super interesting, but I think they're going to go the way of pure exchange listed markets. And I think it's going to be very different like two years from now. because I think right now they are incredibly inefficient and way too expensive for the average individual to be profitable. So I think they're very different than listed markets in that the fee structure is just simply too high and it needs to come down dramatically. I don't know.

I think prediction markets are here to stay. I think they're going to be quite large. I don't know if it's the next big thing. I actually think it could be other things, but I'm not going to go there right now. Don't tell me yet. I don't want to know that. Don't tell me the secrets, Tom. I'm not good with secrets. I can't. I can't because I'm not, I'm not quite there yet. But I have, but I have other. Don't tell me. Because I will tell somebody. And then, then you're going to be mad at me. And I don't want you to be mad at me. No matter what. Nothing. There's nothing. My next question, though, no matter what. Okay. So talking about employee pay, we recently had a guest on, he's the founder of Equity B. And they help clients exercise. stock options. I remember I was reading OpenAI, private shares have already produced like 600 millionaires. You have all these other companies that might be giving out private shares or private

equity to their employees that are making millionaires before even the IPO. How do you feel about this whole thing since you've been in markets and you've had many companies? How do you feel about employee equity, employee shares, all this private share selling? So I'm a free market freak. And so I on paper, you know, like I bought some shares of SpaceX before. I mean, I bought some shares of Open AI, you know, a bunch of different companies read it before they went public, Andrew, Cerebrus, you know, from, from employees, I guess. I don't really know, like some, some small investment firm will put together these deals, you know, like these, they might be like a fund of funds or a hedge fund or something. They put together these deals. They keep like

20% on the back end and then they put together the whole package for you. So I've done a bunch of those deals. And so far, because it's been a hot IPO market, they've been worked out pretty well, except you kind of have to wait, you know, six months until after the IPO to sell them. So, so for me personally, I like it. If somebody wants to sell and somebody else wants to buy, that's cool. We have never had that happen to us. Like, we've never had an employee sell to a, you know, to a third party who then shopped it. Like, I've never had that happen in any of our companies. I do think that there's a new, I don't like the fact that these investment firms jump in there and take 7% fee up front for putting the deal together and then 20% on the

backend is like a carry fee. I think that's bullshit because you're giving up basically, it's got to be a 30% move for you to break even. What I do think is going to happen, and I think this is right around the corner, is firms are going to get smarter about this. And instead of using like traditional options, they're going to tokenize, they're going to tokenize the option pools and they're going to tokenize the RSPs, the restricted stock purchase stuff. And what they're going to end up doing is by tokenizing it, they can create essentially somebody can create a marketplace where there's essentially no fees in anybody can trade them. And I think that's what's going to happen in the future is there's going to be a non-listed, tokenized marketplace for, you know, for these, for these, for these, for these companies haven't going public yet. And that'll be much fair and there'll be much, and the cost will come way down.

I love it. I mean, that sounds amazing. I like the fact that you're always about democratizing. That's something I've, I've read about you. I know you've talked about it. It seems like democratization is almost a legacy in the sense. I just was listening to Oprah and she said, legacy is everything. thing, not one thing that you do. What do you think about that statement? Well, first of all, I have to tell you one thing about Oprah that is important for my relationship because my partner, Scott, was on her show once. It was voted the most eligible bachelor in Chicago in like 1988. She was right. And at the time, Scott somehow became friends with Oprah and they had, you know, a friendship for a number of years, which I always thought was kind of funny. But anyway, I agree with her. And I agree with

her, your legacy is the totality of what you do. It's more than just, you know, your financial success and things like that. It's, you know, some of it's what you take out of the system and others is what you give back to everybody else. One of the things that we're most proud of, you know, Scott and myself is that when we sold our companies for, in addition to all the employee equity that we gave away, we also gave $50 million in cash to our employees and we spread it through, we gave $20 million away when we sold, think or something $30 million away when we sold tasty. And we took it right off the top. So like, you know, private equity investors and everybody else they were like, hey, we don't do this kind of stuff. We're like, we're doing it this time or we're not

selling the company. And they all agree to it. So basically, we never talked about that even once, but we've given $50 million of our own money back to, you know, people that have been very loyal to us over the years. And we're kind of really proud of that. How was the feeling when they got the money, when you knew that basically this is going to change their life and possibly for generations? Giving somebody a million dollars, like, and that was even the most that we gave to certain people, but giving people like a check for a million dollars. is the coolest thing I'll ever do. Did you ever take a million dollars and buy a Ferrari or Lamborghini?

Or maybe a guy? I'm the worst rich person ever. I am. I mean like, you know, no, I'm the worst. I don't own anything. I don't care. It's not, that's just not important to me. Maybe you're the best rich person because you would rather give someone a million dollars

and change their life than someone. spend a million dollars on a yacht, which by the way, if you could have two, let's just say hypothetically, you could have a yacht that's like in San Drape, or you can have a private jet, which would you rather own? The chances of me owning a yacht are zero, because I don't have any interest whatsoever in ever even being on a boat. In a jet, I mean, I don't rent private jets, but I mean, I'm happy to fly anywhere in the world. I travel all the time for work and for pleasure. So, yeah, I would choose the jet of those two. What's your favorite, do you have a favorite hotel brand or even a hotel that you love to go to when you travel?

You mean like an international hotel? Yeah, it could be anywhere in the world. Could be not international. Could be in the U.S. Is there a certain like hotel brand or a certain hotel that you love? I don't think there's a certain brand. I mean, so I should be very clear about this. So I've been on the road.

I'm more of a promoter than my partner Scott, who's more of an operator. So I've been on the road for the last 26 years nonstop. So I've barely been 500 different cities every other weekend for about 25 years. So I travel a stupid amount. And so I don't have, I just like to say it like decent hotels. I don't like I don't even know how many Marriott points I have. That's, that's, you know, I think I probably have. five or 10 million. Like, I have no idea. I was going to say, you might be a trillionaire. You're like the Elon Musk of Marriott

points. You just became a trillion. But I don't have like an international hotel. Like I prefer to stay at like small like kind of funky boutique hotels. But like I'll stay at nice places. You know, if I'm traveling with like my wife or, you know, or I just somebody else or something. I'll stay somewhere nice. I love Amman Gehry. I don't know if you're if you go to Amman properties, but they're, God has told me about them, but I have never been to one. You currently have a daily show. And I've got to say, I've seen it. You're funny. You're smart. You're also informative. Most people don't have all three. You do. And you got nice hair. So you're technically have four things. Now, it's a lot of work having a daily show. Like, why would you even put yourself into this nightmare of having a daily show? Well, first of all, Tony and I were doing a daily show on Tasty Live. We started that 15 years ago. So we were doing it for 15 years. and we were doing three and a half hours a day for 15 years.

Now we're only doing an hour and a half for four days a week, so it's easy. So it doesn't bother me. I love our, we have a very large, you know, customer base around the world. It's millions of people. But on a daily basis, it might be, you know, five or 10,000 watching live or whatever through different things. And it's just like, I feel like, I feel like I have this relationship with people and it's and it's kind of special to me.

And what, well, the other side of the question is, what would I rather be doing? Not at the beach or on a yacht. I learned that. I learned. Yeah. Not those things. You are really a pioneer in the sense of the CEO personal brand, but also the show aspect. I feel like you had like TVPN, MTS.

You have all these daily shows starting now. Obviously, you always have some financial shows, but now you have all this tech daily shows or podcasts daily, whatever you want to call them. But a lot of C-Suite and our executives were not out there. They didn't put themselves out there. You were a really pioneer. What made you think that that was going to be a game changer? All right. I'll tell you this story because I don't usually tell this story. But when we sold Thinkerson, my next side, I didn't like the current state of financial media, which to me was CNBC, Bloomberg, that kind of thing. So I had this idea to build this thing called Tasty Trade, which was digital financial media. But I didn't want to do it

myself. So went out, built this company called Tasty Trade. We rented this hip-hop studio in Chicago, which was really a cool space. And I went out and I started interviewing comedians because Chicago has, you know, has improv Olympics. They have Second City, you know, and all these comedians, which I didn't know at the time. I didn't know anybody. But all these comedians are a, starving artists, and B, they all know each other. And I didn't realize how small the community was. So I brought in like 50 comedians. And my game plan was to hire all these comedians to make a really fun show about finance, but it was also going to be silly and stupid. And I put them on the stage together and in the studio and started recording them for about six months before we launched.

And I realized when I started to watch the show, oh my God. A, these guys hate finance, and B, they're not funny together when they're talking about finance. So right before we went live, we got rid of them all, and Tony and I took over the show. And at the time, there was no such thing as digital streaming financial networks. So we were the first ones. And everybody told us, even the guys at CNBC called us up and said, you know you guys are going to blow like millions of dollars and go fall flat on your face. and we're like, thank you very much for your help. Within a year, we had like millions of followers

and the largest digital financial network in the world. And we only talked about math and quantitative crap and they made fun of each other. And it worked. And then we figured, okay, well, if we could do this, I guess you could do this, I don't know. And so that was it. That's how it started.

We thought we were going to hire comedians and we ended up doing ourselves. I guess you could call that seriously fun. it really is fun because we've been friends for, you know, involving friends for 40 some odd years. So like we know everything, nothing's off limits, everything about each other, you know. We've been making fun of each other for 40 years.

Why not? And you're ahead of the game. Coming off this event recently and every executive was saying the same thing, they all need content. Everyone is in the content creator game right now. You are way ahead of the game, creating a show around the business. I mean, talk about being a pioneer,

which sounds like, I know the math now. I know you didn't give me all the secrets to your success, but I think I figured it out. I won't tell you what it is. I'm going to apply it to my company right now. And if I sell for a billion,

I'm going to take you out to dinner in Chicago. Well, I'm in L.A. a lot. So, yeah, you can, I have a bunch of restaurants I love in L.A., so yeah, yeah, yeah. You can take me out to dinner. All right. I will be happy with a burger and a beer. If I sell for even $100 million,

I'm still take you out, Tom. Two burger and a beer and we won't go for a swim. You can tell I don't go on the sun much. So I don't go to the beach either. But Tom, this has been great. I mean, I'm super inspired. I've been watching you for many years.

You were my financial education for a long time when I got into stocks, trading, everything I was doing. I was watching everything that you all are doing. So I'm super excited. So I'm going to say thank you for that. Although I'm not always positive. Like I think I'm positive over.

overall. I don't know how much percentage points, but, but I mean, I'm in it for the long game. I'm in it for the long game. But I love Lost Dog. Super fascinated. Can't wait to see my net worth or my network, net worth, or my, what I, I'm going to go back to my wife and say, I need to get a raise. I'm going to see what it tells me that I should be getting paid because I feel like she's my boss. You tell her. I'm going to tell her you set me.

But Tom, thanks for joining today.