The Wolf Of All Streets - Demystifying the World of Finance With Sahil Bloom

Episode Date: August 25, 2020

Sahil Bloom had to make a pivot. The standout pitcher on the Stanford Baseball Team had professional baseball aspirations, but his career took a turn for the worse with a shoulder injury that derailed his big league dreams. A relentless worker, he dove head on into his new professional career in finance. Starting as an analyst, working 100+ hour weeks, he proved that hard work beats talent and steadily rose above the competition in the investment world. In addition to his “day job” as an investment professional, Sahil serves as an advisor to a number of startups and businesses (including us here at the Wolf Of All Streets!). Most recently, Sahil has been on a mission to demystify the world of finance, sharing simple lessons on finance and money through his Twitter account. Sahil has a unique ability to creatively simplify and distribute these lessons to the masses in a highly-enjoyable fashion. Sahil Bloom and Scott Melker further discuss how baseball failures taught him valuable lessons, his aspirations of a Major League career, how the grind of work prepares you for life, simplifying the world of finance, how “shooting your shot” can lead to amazing outcomes, the shortcomings of public and private education, Bitcoin 101, and more. --- ROUNDLYX RoundlyX allows you to dollar-cost-average into crypto with our spare change "Roundup" investing tool, manage multiple crypto exchange accounts in one dashboard and access curated digital asset content and services. Visit RoundlyX and use promo code "WOLF" to learn more about accumulating your favorite digital assets when making everyday purchases and earn $4 in free Bitcoin. --- VOYAGER This episode is brought to you by Voyager, your new favorite crypto broker. Trade crypto fast and commission-free the easy way. Earn up to 6% interest on top coins with no lockups and no limits. Download the Voyager app and use code “SCOTT25” to get $25 in free Bitcoin when you create your account --- If you enjoyed this conversation, share it with your colleagues & friends, rate, review, and subscribe.This podcast is presented by BlockWorks Group. For exclusive content and events that provide insights into the crypto and blockchain space, visit them at: https://www.blockworksgroup.io

I'd like to thank my sponsors, Round the X and Voyager, for making today's episode possible. We'll hear much more about them later on in the episode. What is up, everybody? This is your host, Scott Melker, and you're listening to the Wolf of All Streets podcast where two times a week, we talk to your favorite personalities in Bitcoin, finance, crypto, art, music, sports, and sometimes people that do all of the above. The show is powered by Blockworks Group, a media company with over 20 podcasts in their network. You can check them out at blockworksgroup.io. Now, if you like the podcast, you follow me on Twitter.

You should check out my website at thewolfofallstreets.io. You can also sign up for my free newsletter there. So now that that's all done, let's get on to today's guest, which is my good friend, Sahil Bloom. Sahil's career began as a Stanford pitcher, although there's obviously more to him and a longer story than that, with hopes to play in the majors. Rather than stay on the field, he landed a home run in finance. He became an analyst in private equity and managed to make his way all the way up to vice president of a multi-billion dollar firm.

So he's also a strategist for a number of well-known companies, one of them being myself, the Wolf of Wall Street's team. So Sahil, man, it's a pleasure to have you here. Thank you for taking the time out. Thanks for having me on, Scott. Really excited to be here, man. So then like in the public eye, you kind of came out of nowhere like this bat out of hell, all of a sudden, you know, crazy engagement on Twitter and all these followers. But like, who are you? What's your background? Where'd you come from? Yeah, absolutely, man. It's been wild, you know, to say the least. The last couple of months have been a little bit of a whirlwind. But yeah, so to introduce myself, I guess, to the world a little

bit here. So I grew up on the East Coast, Boston area, born and bred, grew up, you know, in an academic family. My dad's a professor at Harvard, always kind of academics first. That was everything. My sister was always like the smart one. You know, I was kind of the like ne'er-do-well son that was playing sports. My mom is Indian. My dad's white. And so I have the classic Indian parent, you know, always wanted me to go to medical school, you know, thought I'd be a Rhodes Scholar or something someday. So I think I've been a disappointment in some ways. I became a DJ and went to an Ivy League school.

Yeah, no, you know the drill, man. It's like you follow a non-traditional background that, you know, sometimes parents don't quite understand it. But, you know, I was always really blessed to have my parents supporting me in whatever it was. And ultimately found my way out to Stanford, was fortunate enough to get a baseball scholarship, which was crazy because at the time, Boston area baseball, it's like freezing half the year. It's not a huge thing. It's not like California, Texas, where you have all these guys. So it was a big deal to me, you know, to have an opportunity to go play at a place that had great sports, but also obviously the academics. So I was able to make my parents happy with that side of it and kind of get both,

a little bit of both worlds. So I went to Stanford. That was back in 2009 and came out to California then and haven't left and been out here now for the last 10 plus years, which seems crazy. It's just home now. But was there for five years, did an undergrad in economics and then stayed on and did a master's in public policy. Had an awesome experience. Freaking beautiful. Anyone that's been out to California, it's hard to leave after you get out here. You know, the taxes are a nightmare, which everyone's probably in New York for 10 years. Yeah, at some point, you're like, maybe it's worth it when you get the, you know, 70 degrees and sunny year round barely get any rain. So in any case, been out here for a

while was fortunate enough to land a job coming out of school in 2014. And I guess a little bit the rest is history. But the Twitter thing is relatively new. And I'm sure we'll get into some of that as we progress here. Yeah. So, I mean, I touched on it in the intro, obviously. I mean, you were a star pitcher at Stanford and you had sort of major league aspirations. So I guess what happened there and how did you end up in finance instead of pursuing sports? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I, I like many of my teammates at Stanford had goals of going on and playing professionally going and playing in the majors, big stadiums, everything.

And, and, you know, I've been fortunate enough that a lot of my teammates and good friends are still playing and are playing in the majors. I get to kind of live vicariously through them for me. Unfortunately, I hurt my shoulder. So I was a pitcher, right-handed pitcher. And, you know, I don't think I was ever going to make a career out of it, if I'm being totally honest with myself, which it's easier to do now with the benefit of hindsight. But, you know, I was good. I wasn't exceptional, you know, on the level that guys are today. But getting hurt,

and that was my junior year, at the end of my junior year, actually at Florida state in your, uh, in your neck of the woods. Um, that is not my neck of the woods, man. I wasn't a huge fan of Tallahassee only because I ended up, I hurt my arm. I gave up a, uh, a grand slam on ESPN national television there. And so I will never have a, uh, you know, a warm place in my heart for Tallahassee because having, you know, 15,000 fans, uh, cheering while you put your head down in shame is not the best feeling in the world, but, uh, no, nonetheless ended up getting hurt. Um, and, uh, that kind of just took the, took the baseball aspirations out of the equation for me to be totally honest. I had to pivot and transition my life. What was the experience of giving up that Grand Slam like?

Do you think that that's something that's like resonated and taught you lessons moving forward? Or was it just like a really bad day? Yeah, I mean, it sucks, man. Baseball, you know, it's a little bit like life in that it's pretty solitary at times. And as a pitcher, you're on the mat, you're by yourself. It's like everything is just you. And so a moment like that happens and the entire the entire world feels like it's kind of collapsing on you. The the funny part that came out of it and I still, you know, and shortly thereafter was able to laugh about is like, you have all this outpouring of support from your friends and family. And this is true for life as well when

things go when things go bad. But the next morning, I was going to get on the plane to fly back to Stanford and got a text from my best friend in the world, childhood friend. And he just said, Hey, man, no, you're flying back to Stanford now. Tough night last night. Just make sure your plane doesn't get hit by the home run ball. You gave up. So, you know, that was like the immediate snapback to reality. Like,

man, it's not that serious. You just can't, it's a good lesson for life. Like you just can't take stuff too seriously. You also can't play sports for that long at that level without having some, you know, just some terribleically terrible moment.

Exactly. I mean, I'm sure you had it with DJing at times where you just like, God, dude, I was a, that literally reminds me, I was in Bolivia. It was a show opening for Prince Royce and Jay Balvin, who's like huge now. And I went out on stage and I like, dude, I'm like, yeah, let's go. I got everyone hyped.

And then I went to like start the equipment and all the equipment was shut down and they could not get it to go. So I just stood there awkwardly for 10 minutes, like behind the sound guys and ended up walking off stage and not playing at all. You got to just keep throwing up the like, yeah, let's go.

There was nothing like quiet background music while people laughed. It was horrible. So yeah, I mean, that, let's go. There was nothing like quiet background music while people laughed. It was horrible. So yeah, I mean, that's probably the worst. I mean, it was like 25,000 people or something. Solitary life, man. Went pretty well. So I quit and went into trading. Yeah. Not the exact story. But so you ended up in private equity. But I think, like everyone I know who ended up in private equity, they have no like everyone I know who ended up in private equity, they have no idea really what that is until they get there, right? You go, you apply for a job, and then you get there and it's a complete holy shit trial by fire kind of experience.

What was that like? Yeah, it was crazy, man. I didn't have, and don't tell my bosses this, hopefully they're not listening. I had no idea what private equity was prior to getting into it. I was going to go take a job in investment banking or in consulting just to try to get my feet wet, learn a little bit. And I had never had a job. I'd always played baseball. I didn't know what to expect in the professional world. So it was, and it still is an apprenticeship industry. I mean, you learn by doing it and it's like anything else. It's like trading and investing, whatever it is, you learn by actually doing it. You can't read a book about it. You can't take a class about it. And to get, to get good at these things, you just need to do it. And so for me, when I, you know, the biggest thing for me when I took this job was this is a great group of people. I just immediately vibed with the people at the firm and I could tell they

really cared about investing in the future of the culture of the firm. And I could tell they really cared about investing in the future of the culture of the firm and building people up. And so it just struck me that like, these are the people and this is the type of group that I want to be associated with and the type of people that I know will want to foster me and champion my career. And so if I was prioritizing something, again, starting out or giving advice to someone, I would always say just focus on that. Don't focus on what your salary is going to be at your first job or your bonus. It's like focus on people that are going to champion you and your career and be mentors for you. And so for me, that was what I did. And it worked out really well because I was learning from the get-go. They were putting

me in situations where I could learn, where I could grow, where I could get a little bit over my skis because that's how you actually end up developing is like, get a little uncomfortable. And that's how you develop. So that's interesting that you said that it was about the people, because I think that the general reputation of private equity isn't that positive, right? I mean, I think people have a pretty negative perception of the industry in general. Can you talk about that? What you guys actually do? Why it's not this devil industry? Yeah. Yeah. And look, I think I don't want to say that there aren't bad actors in the world of finance or in the world of private equity. There's a spectrum in any industry, in any world. And frankly, I think a lot of the reputation of private equity comes from the early days

of private equity. You know, the movies about it, Corporate Raiders. Pretty Woman. Yeah, exactly. Richard Gere. That's what everyone knows about. That's what I thought private equity was for 25 years, probably. Was you go in and chop a company.

Yeah, exactly. And it's totally reasonable. And look, in the early days of private equity, it was an untouched industry. There wasn't a lot of competition in it. So these guys were going and putting 95% of the purchase price when they were investing in a company was debt. 99% of the purchase price was debt. And so a lot of companies blew up. There was a lot of cost stripping. It was ugly, man. And there was an ugly side to it. And these guys got extraordinarily wealthy off of it. And so there's a lot that comes

from that. And I think a lot that kind of came out of that. Now where you sit and you look at the private equity industry, it's really a spectrum. And you've got people who continue to be what I would call financial engineers. They're more focused on putting debt on a business, real structuring and creativity around that. And they make their money off of financial engineering. The other end of the spectrum, which is where we sit and where I'm kind of proud to sit, is much more operationally focused. We try to drive returns off of earnings growth. And so the whole thing for us is about driving growth in the revenue of the business and in the profits of the business, but a lot more through

getting our hands actually dirty in value creation. And so when you go in and invest in a business, you look at it and you know, when we talk about your business, you sit and you say like, what are the growth opportunities for this thing? And how can we help support that? And when we invest in a business, that's why we're doing it. We're not doing it because we think it can go do it on its own because there are plenty of people that can do that passive. You go invest and just cross your fingers and hope it goes well. For us, it's all about what can we do? Why are we differentiated in our ability to get this from point A to where we think it should be? And that's how we do business. That's how

I've enjoyed doing business and the companies I sit on the board of. It's all about that. It's all about what strategic value add can we bring to take this business to the next level. So basically, you guys purchase a chunk, you go in, you run it better, and you improve the business. And it's not nearly as sinister as, uh, you know, I think what people think. Yeah. And there are, there are people that may be taken in a sinister direction. I mean, it's again, like anything else, like any, I mean, it's exactly, but you know, in a simple way, because I always like to simplify things as anyone on Twitter will, will attest to, you know, it's like a, it's like a house. I mean, you're like flipping a house basically.

So you, you find the house for us, you find the house that's on a house. I mean, you're like flipping a house, basically. So you find the house. For us, you find the house that's on a good street, good neighborhood, maybe, but the lawn has grown out, the shingles are falling off. There's a couple things that you can fix up to make the house a lot nicer, but it's got good bones. It's got a good foundation under it. So we go in, we buy the house, and you improve it. And a few years later, you know, it was, it had good structure and you fixed up some things on the margin. And all of a sudden, the house is a lot more valuable. It's not dissimilar. It's basically exactly what we do. So people want to make it complicated, private equity. What is it? What is it?

But that's all there is to it, man. It's just, you're investing and trying to improve the asset that you invested in. So you touched on it, obviously. You have an amazing knack for simplifying complex topics. It's kind of your thing. And it's the reason that people, I think, have been drawn to your Twitter account. You have the 101 series where you just basically create an example like this. First of all, what made you think of doing those and how shocked were you when your first one got retweeted by Chamath and others and went absolutely viral? Yeah. To be clear, first it got retweeted by Scott Melker. So credit to you for kicking

everything off. But yeah. So I guess just big picture, as I thought about the world of finance, I just have this sense and I continue to have this sense that this entire industry has foot to some extent. But overcomplicating things protects the insiders, right? It keeps outsiders out, it keeps insiders in. And that status quo has made a lot of people a lot of money. And it's good for you if you're on the inside. But most people aren't. Most people are trying to learn, trying to build wealth, trying to help their families, friends, etc. And it's really challenging. It always just struck me like, why is my mom or my dad, both very educated people, why are they struggling to understand these concepts? And the reality is because no one is trying to help you. No one is trying to give these things to you in terms that you can digest, that are accessible, that you understand, because it doesn't serve their purpose. And so when I got back onto Twitter,

I just thought, well, why don't I just be that service? Why don't I just break this stuff down in a way that literally anyone could understand from a five-year-old kid reading it in a little story to my parents, you know, trying to understand what an ETF is because someone's pitched them on it. And it all kind of got sparked by COVID. You know, there's this crazy surge of people looking for information on these things. I mean, you have the Davy Day traders of the world who I personally think is absolutely hilarious. And what he's doing in terms of growing the audience for these financial topics is incredible. But you have this brand new interest

in finance and money and investing in building wealth, a totally new generation of people that are looking to do it. And a group of people that need the basics, need the foundation and the foundation of knowledge that will allow them to build upon that and do the right things over time. And so that's kind of where I kicked off and just jumped into this world. And that was, you know, three months ago, it feels like forever ago, but I think I posted my first tweet on it May 12th or so. And a crazy ride. Yeah. And you had the idea of Federico, which was, can you talk about Federico a bit? I mean, that was, I mean, yeah. So that, that was like me retweeting you is not contrived.

I just saw this amazing thing. We didn't even know each other. And I saw this amazing thread and I retweeted it. And from there it was like just completely engaged with everything that you, uh, put out, but talk about where you got that idea and how that started it. Yeah. So the, the Mr. Federico idea, which kind of kickstarted it all, a character I like to bring back now and then too. So I was out on a walk and I kept getting texts. This is back in May. I kept getting texts from all my friends, baseball guys, family, like what the hell is going on in the market? The economy is destroyed right now. We have massive unemployment, huge issues,

total blow ups of industries, etc. All these bailouts. But the market is just going up every day. I mean, we're in May now. So all April, it had been surging. It kept going up. And everyone was like, what the hell is going on? Asking me because I work in finance, like, I'm going to understand it. And I kept trying to explain, well, you have the Fed and they're doing this and there's the Fed put and no one could get it. It's just, and I don't blame them. It's like esoteric. It doesn't make sense if you're not in finance. It doesn't even really make sense if you're in finance, to be totally honest. But I just figured like, let me put this into a story that people can understand. And so I developed this

little story of a marketplace in Renaissance Italy to just explain how a market works and how a market gets totally disrupted when you have someone that is kind of a buyer of last resort, basically. And that is what the Fed, you know, the Federal Reserve is. And so I created this kind of, you know, I think it's funny. Other people might think it's corny, Mr. Federico character to serve the function of the Fed in that situation. And it, you know, I wrote it, it's funny, I wrote it on the floor of my garage. I came back from my walk and was like, Oh, shit, I have this great idea. Like, I need to just write this down. And so I sat down on the floor of my garage and wrote it out. I didn't really know you could do threads on Twitter. I just wrote it. And I came inside and I said to my wife, I was like,

yo, this is going viral. Like, I just know this is going to go viral. This is a great, this is a great thing. Um, and you know, a day later or so you retweeted it, uh, then Chamath retweeted it and it Chamath retweeted it. And it kind of just blew up from there. But man, it was definitely one that I called my shot on. Yeah, for sure. So why do you think... I mean, you kind of touched on it, the insiders versus outsiders.

But these concepts seem so difficult, but they don't even bother to teach them in school. Financial literacy is not even a consideration. I mean, when I was a kid, they were literally teaching me like to eat complex carbs all day as a part of the food pyramid, like five hours a day. But I never even heard how to balance a checkbook, much less like these actual concepts. And I think, you know, people as a result, don't think that what's happening at the Fed affects them or they think that these are just these huge concepts and what does that have to do with me? I'm feeding my family, like you said. So, I mean, why do you think that financial literacy is not

even included in our education and how do we change that? Yeah. It's a huge issue, man. You're not wrong in it. And it hasn't changed. From when you were a kid to kids now, we're learning about... I tweeted about it and people clearly resonate with them. But we're learning about mitochondria and isosceles triangles and the Qing dynasty. And that stuff's all important. Don't get me wrong. I don't want to hate on any of it. But why didn't I learn about taxes? Why didn't I learn about basics of investing, dollar cost averaging? Why didn't I learn about balancing a checkbook or budgeting? I mean, it's really, really crazy that that's not part of your general life. Because if you think about what has impacted your life most in terms of taking care of your family and friends, that's it.

It's money. Your entire life is about money and about building wealth and taking care of your family and friends. And that's what most people care about at the end of the day. You want your kids to have a better life than yourself. And what that comes down to is being responsible about money and investing from a young age. And so to me, I just think, frankly, the system, again, is set up to feed money into the hands of people who have historically had it. The whole system is designed so that you're paying wealth advisors their fees that they're taking, that you feel like you need to outsource all of these areas of your life to someone that knows it better than you, quote unquote, because they have the jargon and they can talk to you about all the fancy terms. And at the end of the day, there are people trying to disrupt that. You know, there's Wealthfront and Betterment and

NerdWallet and, you know, all these places where they've started trying to democratize financial education and investing and wealth creation. And they're starting to make progress on it. What I've noticed is, and it's a kind of a new learning for me, is that I think the content exists, but the distribution does not. And when I say that, what I mean is, if someone that follows me on Twitter, if they wanted to learn about ETFs, they can go Google what is an ETF and there's stuff on Investopedia, there's stuff on NerdWallet, but for some reason it's not getting out to people. It's not getting to them in the way and in a format that they want it in. And so really all I feel I'm solving is the distribution. I'm

somehow getting things to people in a way and in front of them in a way that feels digestible and accessible. And so if schools can't do that right now, and if the current technology environment or the different tools that exist can't do it right now, I'm happy to be the middleman that tries to do it. But functionally, we need something bigger. And we need real systemic change to make progress on this. Because at the end of the day, it all comes down to propagating inequality. Right. But do you think that I guess what I'm asking is, do you think that's purposeful or do you think it's like, you know, it's a, it's a coincidence that it's a by-product of the way that it's always been? Or do you think that like, they don't program it into schools because

why would we want people to even know or understand these concepts? I stopped short of thinking that it's anything nefarious. You mentioned the complex carbs example. That's clearly one where like there was a food lobby, big food lobby that clearly benefit from all of those campaigns. Fat, bad, sugar, good. Yeah, exactly. And they killed millions of people, by the way. I mean, that would do a generation of people that, you know, are overweight, obese because of those learnings that you grew up around. I stopped short of thinking into that. I think the awareness of the importance of it has not been there. And I think that is changing now. I mean, what I've noticed is more and more people are reaching out to me saying, hey, I'm working on this at my school. I'm a teacher here and we're

starting to implement this. Or here's this program, this nonprofit I'm starting where we're going to be focusing on that and getting it into curriculum. So I think more and more people are doing this. I think the tools that are democratizing it are making progress and having people more aware. And I think we're at a seminal moment in history right now from COVID where you have a massive influx of people that care and they want to learn and they want to know more about investing and love or hate Robinhood and all the crap that's been going on with them. It's a ton of new people that want to learn, want to grow their money. They're not, you know, maybe it's gambling and not investing, but they're trying to do the right thing. They're trying to

make money and build wealth over time. And so to me, it's a great moment in time to actually make change and make progress on the financial literacy front where you can actually get these things out in front of people in a way they digest it. So you think that part of it is this grand awakening as a result of this global economic meltdown? Like you say, people are calling you and asking you about it, but that may not have been the case a year ago, right? Yeah. I mean, you just have, it's in your face every day. Like the disaster that is the real economy right now, no matter, I'll get into an argument with people all day about the V-shaped recovery thing. The real economy is suffering

badly. Like Larry Kudlow can say what he wants. And this isn't a political statement. The real economy is suffering. You know, I'm a, I'm a total moderate. I'm like, yeah, just fall right in the middle on anything. And I can go both ways on things. But, um, there's a lot of people that care right now because they don't have money or they lost their job or they're looking to invest or they see the market going up and they're like, I need to be in that. That's where I can make money and build wealth. Um, but there's just more people than ever before that care about this stuff, that want to learn, and that are more aware of this whole dynamic of inequality that's in the system, you know, of the market, increasing the gap between the have, you know, the have-bens and the have-nots and this entire environment of propagating

inequality that, you know, is ingrained in our system that needs to change. And you touched on Robinhood before. My fear there, I agree that it's obviously good that more people are being exposed, more people are trying. But like, you know, you can't have lived through like the Bitcoin bubble of 2017 and seeing people buying things just because they thought they'd get richer or that they'd be able to sell it for more.

And seeing the result of that and seeing the result of that on the market and how long it's taken sort of like sentiment to reset, you know, in the crypto market. So how much fear do you have that those people effectively will get destroyed because they don't know what they're doing? Which I mean, historically, this it would be like a unicorn for that not to happen at some point here. And do you think that like, you know, more damage could be done because they'll have no money left to invest? Or do you think that it's a net positive? And, you know? Yeah, it's a great point, man. And I haven't thought about it as much as you have, because I didn't experience, you know, as much of the crypto bubble in 2017. I've been in, you know, I made my first Bitcoin purchase in 2016 and just stuck it on a cold storage device and sat around. Which is a great thing.

I probably would have panicked sold in 2017, if not for the fact that it was on cold storage. But, you know, it's a great question. I think where Robinhood is dangerous is in the leverage and margin area and options trading. And that stuff is really complicated. I work in finance. I don't totally understand all of it. You're a trader. You probably don't understand some of that. And you don't mess with futures. You don't mess with some of these option strategies. And you had that 17-year-old kid or the 18-year-old kid that killed himself because of something that, frankly, he just didn't understand the numbers that were on the screen. And I was going to say, he wasn't, I mean, he didn't even lose the money that he thought he lost. I mean, it was just a function of the time they had won the trades clear.

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Bitcoin when you use the promo code SCOTT25. That's investvoyager.com, promo code SCOTT25 for $25 in free Bitcoin and start trading today. Personally, I think the onus is on platforms like Robinhood to make sure they're educating people enough so that you don't have people getting into things they don't understand. And so that you're not losing money that you can't afford to lose. At the end of the day, I kind of separate trading and investing. And for me, it's like, you need, I've seen you talk about this. I think you're great about educating people on this. Like when you're trading, it's just got to be different. You should be investing and you can be trading if you want to do that. But they're different beasts.

Investing is like, to me, I dollar cost average into the stock market. And like, I have all, I have access to every fancy instrument in the world, but I'm putting a little bit of money into the stock market every single week. And I've been doing it, you know, for years now, whether the market's up or down, it just automatically draws out of my bank account. And that's just like my long-term investing wealth creation. And I just, you set it and forget it. Then there are things where you're like, Hey, this is a neat near-term opportunity. I'm going to throw some money at this. It's not going to go to zero probably, unless I'm investing in a bankrupt stock, which I don't get me started on that. Those go up five times.

Yeah, seriously. Maybe I quadruple my money on that stuff. But to me, it's like, that's more of the gambling to me. And you can be educated about it and technical analysis or playing trends. You think gold or silver, I think are great macro plays right now. There are different things, but you need to separate what are you making actual investments in and what are you making trades or gambles in? And I think if it's three buckets or two buckets, whatever you want to say, people just need to be aware of that. The platforms need to do a better job of educating people on that and the differences and just go from there. I do worry for some of these people,

it's older people where they're gambling with their retirement money. And those are the stories you see pop up in the Wall Street Journal like, oh, I lost all my money on the JCPenney bankruptcy. Well, you either weren't educated in what you were doing, or you shouldn't have put all that money, you know, that you had saved up into a single speculative bet on something. So it's hard, you know, there's a gap in education. And then there's just a gap in the understanding, I think, on the on the part of the person. That brings up kind of an interesting topic topic because the United States is notoriously, I guess, strict with what people are allowed to invest in, you know, in your retirement account, you can only, you know, invest in certain kind of things. If you're not accredited and don't

have hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars, you can't, you know, you can't basically speculate on any new company, you can't participate in venture capital. So those systems theoretically are obviously set up to protect people from what you just said. But I mean, the argument is more often than not, I think that they eliminate opportunity for people, the rich get richer, poor don't have the opportunity. So I mean, do you think that we're truly protecting people with those kind of laws? Or do you think that everyone should have the right to sort of, you know, speculate in what they want? Yeah, I've been totally baffled by our accreditation laws. I think it's unbelievable that like, you need to have a net worth of a

million dollars to invest in your friend's startup. but I can go buy a triple X levered, you know, ETF on mortgage REITs, uh, right now on Robin hood, which one is more speculative and a crazier risk profile. I don't know. You be the judge. I just think that is baffling to me. Um, I understand the Genesis of it in trying to make sure people are quote unquote educated. Frankly, a lot of those platforms that were set up for like alternative investments over the last several years, things like realty shares or whatever they were on the real estate markets, their entire business model was going to people that were uneducated, but met the accreditation limit. So it was like dentists, doctors, etc, that they knew would be interested in getting into these classes, but would also have a million dollar net worth or the $200,000 income, whatever the number is. And so it just, I think there's a, there's a good instinct around the laws in terms of trying to make sure people are educated about what they're getting into. It is, as with many things, the government does horrible implementation and really poorly thought through.

And not like an anti-government guy all through and through, but sometimes man, there's just things where you're like, this is just poorly done and not what they did it with the unemployment, uh, extended benefits during COVID and people not wanting to go back to work because of how much they were making on unemployment. But like,

they just don't think through the implementation. And so to me, it needs to be adjusted. I don't know whether it's like a big boy letter of sorts where you have to read and sign a thing that basically says, I know what I'm getting into. I know it is highly risky. Matt Levine, one of my favorite newsletter writers, Bloomberg guy, talks about having to sign something that says, I know this is a dumb investment and I will lose my money before you do something big. And honestly, you know, he's saying it tongue in cheek. Not the worst idea.

Not the worst idea. Because if you had to sit there and say that and write it out and verbalize it, maybe you would think twice. And sometimes you make a lot of money on those things, man. I've made a lot of money on something that I would definitively call dumb and a dumb investment. Sometimes it works out. But the point is you need to acknowledge that there's a decent chance that you lose a bunch of money or all of your money before you do that. And you won't gamble 100% of your net worth on something like that if you know it. Yeah. If you want to throw 1% of your money at something speculative because it could become 5% of your money, then half at it. But if you're going to lose sleep at night over it, then it's already position sizing correctly.

And kudos to you, man. I mean, you do a great job, I think, of educating people on that, which not everyone, actually very few in the Twitter world or in the newsletter world of traders, I think do a great job of educating people on the differences between investing and trading and how to balance them in terms of your long-term goals around wealth creation. Thank you. I think a lot of people are younger and they're trading and they can take on more risk. And I think being in your 40s in this community is somewhat like, I'm the boomer as they like to joke. Hopefully, you can all learn from my mistakes, even though that never really seems like... Bitcoin is the... What did the Winklevoss say?

Bitcoin is like gold, but for young people, like for the tech people. They really... They butchered... Not that that'll make this time sensitive, but their conversation with Dave Portnoy was pretty hard to watch. They should have done the Bitcoin for dummies or the 10 second simple explanation for a five-year-old. Instead, they went into mining and tech. I know. And they started talking

about Elon Musk mining gold off of asteroids. I was like, uh-oh. This is just not great for mainstream adoption here. I might have to do like a Bitcoin 101 and send it to them to share with them. I could hear like Eminem lose yourself coming on

and the story of mom's spaghetti and how they were just blowing it. That was kind of a bad moment. So you do a lot, obviously. So I mean, private equity is a full-time job times two, right? And then you have private consulting. You obviously go to the gym and exercise. I wake up early in the morning and quite often have a telegram from you and it's like 3.45 in the morning, your time. So, I mean, how do you fit it all to your day? Do you ever sleep? I mean, what's the secret? I get this question a lot. So, I don't sleep enough. I'll throw that out there just as a starting point. I don't have kids. That's my number one secret to my schedule right now.

Secret to my success. Yeah. Everyone that asks me about this stuff, I'm like, look, I'm 29. I don't have kids yet. So I have time. My wife is incredible. She's incredibly forgiving and patient with me. She's also super busy. And so it makes for a good match in that regard because she lets me do my thing. She understands that when I get passionate about something, I'm crazy OCD and I just want to go all in, whole hog, whatever it is. But look, I've always had this psychotic side to me where when I'm going in on something, I'm just going in on it. And if that means waking up and, you know, at three in the morning and, and putting my head down on something, studying it every day,

whatever it is, I'm doing that. And I was that way with baseball. It was why I was able to achieve in baseball to a higher level than my talent. I wasn't all that talented to be totally honest. I just worked harder than people and just outworked them. And I feel that way about life. I just, I want to be known as someone that can be counted on. I want to be known as someone that just goes after their passions, bottom line. And to me, what I'm passionate about is, you know, I love building businesses. I love creating value for other people in whatever it is. And I love learning. And so if I can find ways where those three things come

together, I can be helping people, delivering value, creating value, and being a part of a team while I do it. It's like, man, I'm very, very blessed to be able to do all those things. I'm just confused as how there's enough hours in the day. Yeah. I mean, your job is probably a 60 to 80 hour a week job, I would imagine. Yeah. It's changed over time. And when I was an analyst, man, it was a hundred. I remember all my friends in investment banking. Yeah. No. You know, you've got an analyst or we're going to, he's going to be putting in a

hundred hours too. So it's, it's tough, but you know, over time you learn to kind of get better leverage on your time. And you learn to delegate where you need to and empower people below you to get opportunities. And then for me, it's just about prioritization. I need to figure out what are the things I really care about in my life. I really care about my job. So I know what I need to put in to be very good at that. I really care about this financial education stuff that I'm doing on Twitter

And so I'm spending more time on that than I otherwise would we're also sitting in an environment and in a world and I acknowledge This right now. I don't have much going on It is a great time to you know I'm on a passion project build something start a business start an online side hustle Whatever it might that you want to go after. It's a hell of a time to go do it. And, uh, you know, you're not spending as much time with your family because of distance or wherever you are COVID. Um, I need to, and I'm not the best at this. I need to be better about making sure I take time to actually unwind, um, spend time with my wife, watch a movie, things like that, that I'll just

get going on something. You're probably like this too. You get crazy about something and you realize like, man, I haven't spent time with my kids or I haven't just sat down and watched a movie or had a glass of wine with my wife. And then you sit down to watch the movie with a glass of wine with your phone open on Twitter and taking notes on the things that are in your head. And someone's talking crap to you on Twitter and you're like, what? Who said I'm wrong about inflation or whatever? Yeah. You have to really unplug every now and then and take the time to do it, I think. So speaking of the financial literacy education, which I know you're extremely passionate about, and Twitter has sort of been a launching pad for that, but I know that you have much bigger plans on expanding that and sort of getting that message out to the masses. Can you

talk about some of the other things you have going on? Yeah. Yeah. So I've been very fortunate to have some incredible mentors and people that have expanded my platform. You included, frankly, people that have been champions for me along the way that I've met in crazy circumstances that are passionate about this same stuff. And so I don't have a specific vision in mind for where it's going to go, which is an uncomfortable position for me just to say it because I'm a planner. I like to plan way out in advance. The nature of how this has gone, it's been three months and it's scaled to where it is. I can't predict three months from now because I just don't know.

And so I'm hoping to do more media stuff, start spreading the message a little bit more in terms of platforms to reach people, whether it's through TV or podcasts, or I really have a passion to write a children's book, like an illustrated version of all of this. Some of these stories, which I think would be a really neat project. I already have a lot of the stories, so it'd be fun to put them together in a way that made sense. Um, but look, I mean, I've been very fortunate. It's been incredible to me to see the, um, to see the support from the community and people sharing my stuff. It's truly baffling. Um, but I've had a lot of help along the way.

So got to give credit to you. Yeah. But like you're a shoot your shot kind of guy, right? I mean, you're very bold and you, you are, uh, I mean, you, you're just not going to take no, or you're going to at least know that you tried. Yeah. Talk about Mark Cuban. Yeah. So the shoot your shot thing has always been part of a part of my ethos, who I am, man. I, I believe in like Aaron engineered serendipity, if that makes any sense. Like I believe, I believe in the role of luck in your life. I also believe you have to put yourself in positions where luck can strike. And so, you know, it all started like when I started working, I knew I wanted to get into the office by like 6.30am every morning. I wanted to be the first one in the office working hard. And so I'd

get to the gym at five. And that was right when it opened. And there's only about five or 10 people that are crazy enough to go to the gym at that time in the morning in Palo Alto. And one of those people happened to be Tim Cook, the CEO of Apple. And I didn't know who he was, actually. Funny story. I had no idea who he was. He didn't wear glasses in the mornings, whatever. Had no idea. So, I would chat with all the people that were there every morning, six months in. Someone says like, hey, that's the CEO of Apple, Tim Cook. And I was like, God, man, I had no idea. And so I kind of, you know, I had built relationship with him. And he ended up becoming a mentor, becoming a friend, someone who's supported me, you know, to an unbelievable extent, way beyond what he's had to do.

And a lot of it just came from like this engineered serendipity idea. I just, you know, I was grinding, I was showing up at the gym super early every morning. So it was lucky that I met someone like that. But at the same time, it was, you know, it was engineered luck. It was because I was working hard. And so you mentioned Mark Cuban. That's a, you know, a recent example of, I saw that he was talking about running for president, or there was some talk of it. And I'm a big believer in people from real business backgrounds getting into office. I think that's the premise of our country and what our founding fathers actually intended. I think this whole idea of career politicians is ludicrous and I want it to end.

And so I saw it and I figured, okay, I'm going to shoot my shot here. So I guessed three email addresses and I copied and pasted the same email and shot it off the three email addresses that could be his. No intention of it working, but I was just figured why not. An hour later, he emailed me back. A really thoughtful response. I had basically just said, hey, if you're running for president, I want to get involved. Tell me how I can help. He doesn't know who you are. You're literally going to be an Andy person. No clue who his email address is. I attached kind of like my background to it. I just said, you know, studied public policy at Stanford. So, you know, I showed that I could be someone valuable here, useful in some way, or at least thoughtful. And so I fired off this note.

He responded pretty thoughtfully. You know, a month later, he shared something of mine on Twitter, followed me. We were, you know, DMing, talking about some of the financial education stuff, which he's very passionate about. And it was just another example of like, what was the worst that could have happened there? He doesn't respond. And I was totally comfortable with that outcome of him not responding because it's Mark Cuban. He's an unbelievable, you know, unbelievably successful individual. Who am I? I'm a nobody. It's fine if he doesn't respond. There's nothing I lost from that whole thing. And the upside is much greater than that. The upside is you, you know, you build, you start building a relationship and a contact with someone that

is extremely impressive and someone that you can learn a lot from. Um, and so I just think that that, that mentality, I think more people need, I like. I don't know. I had some corny poster in my, I don't know, third grade class that said, you miss 100% of the shots you don't take. It was probably in everyone's third grade classroom. But it's really true. At some point, why not? Just shoot your shot. And whether it's professionally or in your dating life or wherever it is,

I mean, just shoot your shot. And if you're working hard and you're putting yourself in positions where you can win, what's the worst that happens? Right. So, I mean, the luck is engineered because you're in situations where you can be lucky. But on the flip side, the fear is what drives people to not take their shots or try things.

You don't talk to that girl because you might get rejected. You don't send that email because you might not hear back. But I mean, what's the message there is that everybody, I mean, everybody should take their shot no matter what, or, you know, do they need to have some, uh, I think, I think it all comes down to like, you need to be respectful and you need to be able to deliver value to somebody, right? I'm a big believer in like create value, receive value. If you're

putting value out there, things come to you. And so if it's on Twitter and you want to grow your following, you can't just grow your following, right? Your following comes because you're delivering value to the community in some way. And whether that's with your ideas or whether that's with aggregating other people's ideas, there's some form you have to be creating value in order to receive value. And so shooting your shot is great, but if you have nothing to offer, anything to the table, it's a lower probability shot, which sure, maybe it doesn't mean you shouldn't shoot it, but you need to also be aware of like, you need to create value in order to receive value in any relationship, um, or in any dynamic. And so that's kind of how I think about it. I also think on the fear thing,

I'm a big believer in like, you got to get punched in the mouth once. That's all it takes for you to not be fearful anymore. Um, is to shoot yourself yeah you realize like wow i didn't i didn't die i'm fine um it happened to me in baseball you know i i came from a small town in boston i was like big fish small pond man i was great like i thought i i was throwing 88 miles an hour i might as well have been throwing 100 in massachusetts because of you know how small of a baseball community it was went out to stan Stanford and you give up a massive home run and like seven runs in your first outing and you realize you're the worst pitcher

on the whole damn team, that's pretty humbling. And you got punched in the mouth pretty good. But like, hey, I can hang, you know, I survived it. I'm fine. I got back up. And that's an empowering feeling. It's like, you know, everyone likes using boxing metaphors. Like you get up off the mat, Rocky, all that, you know, all the cliche stuff, but it really is true. Like if you go, if you put yourself out there once you get knocked down and you realize, wow, I'm not dead. Like that

girl turned me down. I'm fine. I didn't lose confidence in who I am as a human being. That's a, it's a powerful thing. Um, and it, and it kind of bleeds over into all other areas of your life too. So do you think that you have a future career as an educator of some sort? I mean, is that something you would like to pursue with really a huge amount of your time? I mean, obviously, you're not making your job anytime soon. Don't get me wrong. Yeah. So I think the whole education sphere is changing. My dad's an educator. He's a professor at Harvard. Been there a long time. And he would say the same thing, by the way, traditional education is changing. And I think it's for the better.

It's all about that. Yeah. You know, I think we're going to be in a world where you're no longer going to have to get that credential in order to have access to high paying jobs, which to me is the best thing that can happen to this world. Because at the end of the day, talent is evenly distributed. Opportunity is not right. People talk about that all the time. How do we even that opportunity spectrum? And to me, it all starts in education. And so if we start moving towards a world where people have access to education anywhere because of the internet and because of what that has afforded you, where you can get access to education anywhere because of the internet and because of what that

has afforded you, where you can get access to cheap education, really high quality from anywhere, and anyone can, where you're now competing on a more global scale, and it's a true meritocracy from a job perspective and to get high paying jobs. I just view that as a noble cause. And I think it's a great thing. And so as I think about being an educator, it's a little bit different than like, I'm not going to go be a college professor. Right. Of course. Yeah. Yeah. And I love my dad. I think he's incredible at what he does. But I don't see that as a future for me. But educator in a more general sense of, you know, whether it's a platform of some sort or participating in something? Absolutely.

I mean, I love teaching. I love when people feel like they derive value from what I'm putting out there in terms of educational content. So why not? Do you think that the last few months, obviously with COVID and people maybe not going back to school, do you think that this is going to be

the sort of tectonic plate shift in the way that people view? Certainly, I mean, education itself, I think we'll have more homeschooling and stuff, but I don't think public school is going anywhere. But let's talk higher education. I mean, paying to go to Harvard, for example, full tuition to sit at home and take classes on Zoom when you can watch probably those videos on YouTube really does sort of give the idea that you're just paying for the certificate, right? Yeah. Yeah. I think this is like a 10 to 20 year accelerating event for

the whole higher education world. To me, it bifurcates the whole market. I think you have the ultimate tier one, tier 1A schools,, the Harvard's, the Stanford, Penn, you know, some of the Ivy league schools, um, you know, that, that degree is still gonna be worth something. The piece of paper that says that you went to that school is always going to have value. Uh, I shouldn't say always, cause you never know, but it's going to have value still right now. Um, if you're a tier two, tier three school, I'm really scared right now. Because how do you justify that to a kid to pay 50, 60? I mean, some of these schools are 70, 80. To come get an education and a certificate that isn't

differentiated that I can now get online, go travel the world, go work a job while doing it, get real life experience. It's just, it's really, really hard. The value proposition is not there. And if someone can figure out how to solve for the social development side of the education experience of the college experience in a digital context, I think it's going to be like a total game changer. And no one has done it yet. There are cool programs. Minerva is this one out in San Francisco that's doing one where you kind of go like for six months at a time to different places in the world, but all the classes are digital. And that's a really cool idea because you're bringing people together in different places. So you get the social aspect, but you're learning digitally. So if people can find ways to blend the physical

and digital worlds in education, I think it's going to completely change the game for these things. And if you can deliver it in a cost effective way, you know, and deliver it at scale, you should be able to do it cost effectively because you're not constrained by space and your actual classes can be much bigger than they were. If I was an incoming freshman in an Ivy League school, there's absolutely no way I would show up. I would defer 100%. And not even just because of the money, but first of all, my experience is different. I went to college in the late 90s. There was no other place to learn. We didn't have YouTube. The internet was relatively new. You literally had to go there if you wanted to learn the

things that you needed to know in the future. But even with that said, the real value of college, especially a school like that, is your friends and your network and the people you meet. I'm first to admit that half the opportunities in my life have come because I was friends with someone who was in a position to help me. And that person most likely was someone I went to school with. So that's what you're paying for besides that piece of paper. Right. So, I mean, with, with that gone, what's the point? And that's start a company. Yeah, totally. Go start something. Think about how much you learn in six months

of trying to start a business or a building a brand, doing something like that, getting kicked on your ass. I mean, that is where you learn unbelievable lessons that allow you to grow for the rest of your life. But you talk about it with undergrad. Imagine if you're going to business school and you're supposed to start in two weeks or in a month. The entire value of business school is in being with the people and the network and the connections. And if you're telling me I got to do that over Zoom now with 30 people, there's no way I'm not deferring. And so it's going to be tough. And maybe people end up going to Harvard or Stanford Business School or Wharton. But if you're like a tier two, tier three

business school, how are you surviving right now? And how are you going to make your model work going forward? There needs to be a dramatic, dramatic rethink of how this entire higher education sphere works. And companies on the other end of it need to be willing to hire people based on a true skills meritocracy rather than based off a piece of paper. And the tech world has made a lot of progress on it. And so I give off a piece of paper. And the tech world has made a lot of progress on it. And so I give them a lot of credit because coding, coding is a universal language. Um, and so it suits, it suits this well, because if someone can code and they're good, they're good. It doesn't matter if they went to Stanford or if they didn't go anywhere and they grew up on the streets, if they can code, they can code. And it's like that in sports because if you're good, you're good. And it's getting to be like

that in tech and in coding. But it needs to be like that everywhere. If I have the skills to succeed in business or if I could be a CEO or if I could be a manager really well, why do I need that piece of paper or that degree in order to prove that to you? Yeah, I was just going to say, I mean, if you're going to become a lawyer, okay, sure. But that's really a path. I mean, you're still going to learn the same case law regardless of the school you go to. So that's actually another example of a certificate that's a path to a better job, which is a path to a better future. You want your doctor to have the best possible education and training, right? So I get it. Certainly there. But you brought up business school.

People go to business school so that they can get a job that pays twice as much two years after they started business school. You know what I mean? Yes. And the party, but like you learn more, people go, you know, people go to business school five, six years after they've been on the job most of the time. So it's, it's a career move. Totally. They don't go to learn how to do business. They already learned that for five or six years. So I mean, like business school should be the first thing that would just naturally

like... Yeah. I totally agree. One of my good buddies is just a funny example of that. One of my good buddies, he actually didn't graduate from college. He had a slight kind of reading disability. And so he wasn't able to graduate because of some of the testing requirements. But he is hands down the hardest working person I've ever met in my life.

Just unbelievable work ethic. And he had this idea to start a company making mugs out of baseball bats. Basically carving out the inside of a bat so you could make a customized bat mug is what he called it. Everyone called him stupid, said it wasn't a good idea. He said, I'm betting on myself, invested his life savings to buy an engraver so that he could make customized versions of these things. Fast forward three years from then, he was doing several million dollars of sales through direct-to-consumer sales of these bat mugs. They became this huge thing for groomsmen gifts and wedding parties and cool mementos for Father's Day and things. And he's crushing it, running his own business. He had 15

employees. He didn't go to business school to learn that. And I guarantee he knows more about it. He wouldn't have learned that in business school. No, because he learned it in the school of hard knocks, man. He learned it by doing it and banging his head into a wall and sleeping on the floor of his garage while he was trying to get orders out the door by himself. And he built a real business and that guy could go teach a business school class. I mean, this is like, that is real business. It gives me chills thinking about it because of what he's done and how impressive it is. But it's like that, that is real business because he learned by doing it. He learned by actually getting his hands dirty by the struggle of it. And a lot of these people we go invest in, in my job, that we go back,

these founder-owned businesses that we want to go partner with them to build their business. It is unbelievable the stories you hear about how they built the business, the struggle they went through, how they got it to where it is. I mean, it's their baby in a lot of ways. They built this thing from the ground up. It's really amazing. And that's the lifeblood of America, of our country is, you know, small businesses. And so to me, it's where the ground gets built from and it's the foundation of our entire economy. And so we need more of it. We need to reduce regulation so that more people want to get into business and want to do those things so that it's easier and not as much of a pain in the ass to go start a business. But man, that is it gives me chills thinking about

those things because you do not need to go to business school to figure out how to do all that stuff. I mean, it almost feels like at this point, college is moot unless you're going to become a professional. Like unless you're on a direct like I went, I went to the University of Pennsylvania and I was an anthropology major. I didn't learn anything. I helped you in your DJing career. Yeah, and massively helped me in my future DJing career. So I went for the liberal arts education, the 90s version.

You go to the best school possible. You get a well-rounded liberal arts education. You meet people and it's a great experience. But there's so much more out there now, unless you have to go to become a doctor or you have to go to become a lawyer. I mean, like you sort of said, if you can find a hack for the social part. Yeah. There are certain skills where you need to, and you want the person to have gone to the best... You want to be an engineer. Yeah. I want the pilot to have gone to the best school, like to the best flight school, right? Like there are things that I get it. The credential really matters.

And I'm also, you know, I'm cognizant of the fact that I've benefited from this system of credentialing. Me too. Of course. I got a good degree. But I was privileged. And we need to be aware of the fact that we have privileges so that we can actually make the system better for people that didn't have those same privileges. I grew up, you know, I said it in a multicultural household. My mom is Indian. My dad is white. I grew up spending every single Christmas in India. And you see the fact that opportunity is not evenly distributed. The opportunities I had as a kid versus what a kid born on the street in India has are night and day. And it's not fair. And I didn't do anything to deserve that. And so what I feel is my duty is to try to make that a little bit better. How do

you change that so that the system is not quite so stacked against people that aren't born on the right side of the tracks? So how do you change that? I think it's education. And that's why I come back to all this stuff. I think if you can evenly distribute educational opportunity, you can start to chip away at these problems. If you attack it too far down the road and you're trying to attack income and giving out money to people that are already not able to have the basic level of education, it's really challenging. But if you can give primary school, good primary school and secondary school education to every child in the world, think about the difference that makes. You know, we spend, I don't know what,

$900 billion, trillions of dollars on missiles and nuclear bombs and all this defense spending. What do we spend on making sure that every kid in America or every kid in the world has a great level of primary and secondary education? I mean, it pales in comparison. If we took a quarter of the money we spend on defense spending every year and make sure that every kid in America has a phenomenal education system and phenomenal teachers and a system and infrastructure around them that promotes all those things, think about the difference you could make in the world. And so if we can be a small part of that, and if we can help that,

and if I can donate to that or whatever it might be, support that, it's hugely beneficial to the world. I mean, you think about your own kids and your daughter and the opportunities they're going to have versus a kid that doesn't have those same privileges. You want to live in a world where everybody has those same, you know, same rights. It's a basic right to me. You should, you should have the right to, you know, to receive education and the right to have those same opportunities as anybody else. You talk about going to India for Christmas every year,

actually, like one of the, in the exact same way, most defining moments of my life is my dad went on a lecture tour around the world for a device he had invented. And usually my mom would like go on his paid business trips, but she had to stay home with my brother so he could take AP exams. So my dad took me, I was 13 years old and we went to India and, you know, we arrive, we arrive at two o'clock in the morning. There's people sleeping everywhere. At that time, you didn't know when your loved one's flights were coming in. So people would just go camp out at the airport for three days. But the experience of walking out into that heat at two o'clock in the morning and having 50 kids run up to you and start begging, it was,

I mean, I'd seen some things, but at 13, I'd never seen anything like that. Yeah. And it's overwhelming for a lot of people the first time they see it. Because you grow up in America, you grow up in Europe, and you haven't seen that degree of poverty and that degree of need and what it means and how it changes someone's life. I mean, my wife and I donate every year to this one. It's a single boy that we kind of pay for his school every year to make sure that he can get a great education. And to me, it's like, that's a tiny scale, right? I don't have the means to do it on some massive scale. I hope someday too. But the difference that it makes in his life and to get to see every year what he's learning and get to have him talk to us and teach us things that he's learning in school

and show us his Legos and the different things that he's building. It's just unbelievable. And there's no better feeling in the world than feeling like you're impacting someone positively. Everyone loves making money. But there are diminishing returns to how good it makes you feel at some point. And so you have to do something to give back. And especially when you feel like you've been given all these opportunities in life through nothing you've really earned, just because of where you were born. I just think it's so important to really pay it forward. I couldn't agree more. So I know we're up against it here.

So where can everybody follow you and see what you're up to in the future? Yeah, I'm at Sahil Bloom on Twitter. Just my first and last name. It's an uncommon name, so easy to get the Twitter handle. Does everybody think your name is Sahil? Yeah, I get Sahil a lot. That's the most common one. It's more like a saw and then a hill. Right. I've never heard someone pronounce your name correctly. Yeah. First time is usually a tough one for me. I get it. I get it. Well, thank you so much for taking the time. I think it's really enlightening and that the topics are just incredibly important. And I hope that we can get to a place where financial literacy becomes the norm and not

sort of this concept that's like learning calculus or something complex and that we can continue to simplify it in the manner that you're doing. So thank you, man. I'm totally with you. Thank you for having me, Scott. Really appreciate it, man.