Tiger Sisters - How a Self-Made Billionaire Built Wealth From Nothing | Fernando De Leon

Episode Date: June 15, 2026

Thank you to Shopify for sponsoring this video. Start now at shopify.com/tigersisters Check out our matcha brand, Sisters Matcha at www.sistersmatcha.com Sign up for our newsletter here: https://cherieluo.substack.com/subscribeWelcome back to another episode of Tiger Sisters: Director's Cuts: the series where we revisit some of our standout conversations and reflect on the lessons that have stayed with us long after the cameras stopped rolling.Today we're resurfacing one of our favorite episodes with our friend Fernando De Leon. Raised on the Texas-Mexico border, Fernando went from translating for real estate developers as a teenager to building a multi-billion-dollar business empire. Today, he is a self-made billionaire and is listed alongside Oprah (and others!) on Forbes 250: The Greatest Self-Made Living Americans.Tune in for lessons on: ✅ Asset ownership and how to build long-term wealth✅ How to create opportunities when you don't have capital or connections✅ Why value creation is the foundation of success✅ Turning adversity into an advantage✅ Leveraging fear instead of avoiding it✅ The connection between ambition, family, and purpose✅ Fernando's unexpected advice on love and relationshipsThis episode is packed with practical wisdom, entrepreneurial frameworks, hilarious moments, and a powerful reminder that some of the most successful people started with far less than you think.Timestamps:00:45: Intro to Director’s Cut format 02:20: How to watch this episode 02:44: Introducing Fernando De Leon06:09: Fernando’s upbringing in South Texas07:19: Three ingredients to generate wealth09:06: Fernando’s earliest money memory12:45: How Fernando closed his first deal 15:40: Why you’re never too young to own an asset 17:38: What’s an overlooked industry to invest in? 18:45: How Fernando got involved with Chick-fil-A 24:40: How to understand and leverage your fear for good32:55: The first real move to build wealth 42:50: How driven people can find love and support one another 50:03: Rapid fire hot takes 57:35: Post mortem reflection: new updates and news1:04:26: Reflecting on the pressure of the immigrant experience1:08:43: How to give yourself permission to seek wealth1:11:15: Building wealth by creating value1:20:15: The importance of “Information shortcuts”1:23:34: Closing thoughtsWatch this ep on Spotify! If you’re subscribed to Spotify Premium, you don’t get any Spotify ads on our videos :)🐯👯‍♀️ We’re the Tiger Sisters — your Wall Street & Silicon Valley big sisters Decoding Money • Power • Love✨ New episodes every Monday | Shorts all week ✨💌 Want to partner with us? Sponsorships: [e-mail] trust us?▫️ Cherie Brooke Luo — 100M+ views demystifying tech, finance & MBAs▫️ Jean Luo — ex-Goldman Sachs, ex-Snapchat exec, 50+ AI patents, startup investor▫️ Together: 4 Ivy League degrees • built billion-dollar products • two startups — decoded for youWhat you’ll get (and keep):▫️ 🚀 Ivy League cheat sheets — no $250K tuition▫️ Personal finance playbooks (salary, investing, negotiation)▫️ Networking scripts behind $100M+ deals & job offers▫️ Real conversations with CEOs, operators & investors▫️ Mindset resets — clarity without the pricey coach▫️ Systems for career, money, and long-term growth💛 LET’S CONNECT~ CHERIE ~Instagram — /cherie.brookeTikTok — /cherie.brookeSubstack — cherieluo.substack.comLinkedIn — /cherie-luo~ JEAN ~Instagram — /jeanluo_LinkedIn — /jeanluo👉 Hit Subscribe & tap the 🔔, then leave a ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ review on Spotify & Apple Podcasts. It takes 10 seconds and makes a massive difference in helping new people discover Tiger Sisters.🛍️ Items:🍵 Sisters Matcha — www.sistersmatcha.com🌀 Everything else — https://amzn.to/3z0dx5b

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free of charge. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with Eye Gaming, Ontario. Forbes 250, the greatest self-made, and our friend, Fernando, is on this list. Hello. It's the greatest self-made living Americans. Yes. Right. It's just like my friend Fernando and Oprah Winfrey. I love Oprah. Also, I want to say Fernando, I think he's number of 47 or something. He's like on the first page because it's one through 50, but he's above Arnold Schwarzenegger.

I don't know why you work of Arnold Schwarzenegger. I don't know. I just think it's really cool. And it is not a competition at all, but I'm just really proud of my friend. All right, Arnold, come on Tiger Sisters. Defend your title. We are your Wall Street and Silicon Valley Big Sisters. And we're a top 10 business podcast bringing late night sister talk meets boardroom strategy. Hi, Tiger fam. Welcome to a brand new episode of Tiger Sisters. So you guys have seen our mashup videos, our long form videos, but now we're bringing you a brand new series we're calling directors cuts as you can see jean and i are in a brand new studio thank you spotify for hosting us here and if you guys aren't watching video right now turn it on

because the studio is absolutely gorgeous it's moody it's fun it's serious and it's perfect for our director's cuts remixes and the lighting is very dramatic in the best way so what exactly are the director's cuts. So basically it's our favorite interviews brought to you again, and Gene and I will give you the BTS and the debrief after the interview plays. So you guys know that we invite some of the best guests onto Tiger Sisters, and these are some of the conversations where you guys have told us that you love the conversation and you wanted to know more. So this is your chance to get a little bit more BTS, a little bit more insight, a little bit more of our updated thinking ever since these episodes and also just revisiting the topics and reflecting since it's been like,

you know, five months, six months, almost a year for some of these episodes. And we have some like new updates. Yes. And the way that you should watch this episode is we will go through the original interview. And at the end, Jean and I will have a conversation about our biggest takeaways with the conversation, what we enjoyed about the conversation, things we wish we had asked and any other follow-up questions we have. So for this Director's Cut episode, we would love for you to watch it all the way through. I think chronologically, it makes a ton of sense that way. But if you've seen the Fernando episode recently, you can skip the episode and go straight to the BTS Director's Cut where Gene and I are having our conversations about the takeaways.

So you can just take your scrubber, scrub it all the way to the point where Gene and I start talking after the Fernando episode. Okay, so for our first episode, we have Fernando de Leon, who is one of our really good friends. We text with Fernando all the time. Yeah. And like we're always sending each other like random articles or just like things that are interesting. Isn't he supposed to set you up with someone? Yeah.

Wait. That needs to be a follow up. Okay, you guys will see in the episode. He said he was going to set me up with someone. Actually, he kind of. He kind of tried to set Jean up with someone. But we'll talk about that at the very end. Yeah, we'll talk about it at the end.

You'll wait to see it. But you'll see. Fernando is one of our really good friends. he has an incredible story, which he kind of goes into, but you'll hear in the director's cut. We'll give you more background on who he is. But he is a self-made billionaire. Aside from that, all of his, like, amazing professional career accomplishments, literally starting from nothing and being where he is today.

He is just an incredible person. He is so kind. And like when we were recording this original interview, like we went into the studio and he, like, introduced himself to all the, like the technician working on the recording. And like he has no ego about him. He is so hardworking. And I listened to this episode recently to prepare for this director's cut. And I was just like, I could listen to this 10,000 times and still learn something new from Fernando because he is just a really sharp, intelligent businessman who cares. Yeah. But also like playful and like fun and funny and like easy going like when he's not, you know,

in the grind. Yeah. But just like a fun person to be around too. So. And so Fernando, if you have any other friends who are also fun, hardworking, but easygoing and funny and also make a ton of money while doing something that they love. We have. And single. And single. And single. And single. Keyword single. We have a very eligible bachelorette to my left right here. All right. So let's dive in to the Fernando episode. They say generational wealth is the key to success, that you need a trust fund or a last name that people recognize. But what if you could build a billion dollar empire in one lifetime? Today's guest didn't grow up with wealth. He didn't have the elite connections. By the end of this episode, you won't just know Fernando's wild story from crossing borders to building a multi-billion

dollar empire, you'll walk away with his top three rules for building and keeping generational wealth. I'm Sherey. I'm Gene. And I'm Fernando. And we're the tiger sisters. And I'm the tiger brother. I'm intense questions.

You are on the Forbes billionaire list with a Forbes self-made score of 10 out of 10, which we looked up in Forbes. We actually looked at the footnotes. And that means you grew up poor. and overcame significant obstacles to build your fortune completely on your own. There are very, very few people who have the score of 10 out of 10.

Two of them are Oprah, George Soros, and Fernando. All right. Forbes reports that you have a net worth of $2.8 billion. And we're going, one of these. Let's talk about love. Let's talk about love. Now he wants to talk about love.

So can you please? introduce yourself to the audience in your own words? Well, I did grow up in pretty complex circumstances. I grew up along the South Texas, Northern Mexico border. So I do think that I am self-made, but I don't sort of begrudge the circumstance. I think they were, you know, sort of a real advantage. And I think early adversity is probably a huge advantage. I love that. Can you talk a little bit more about this view. It sounds like it's a view that's turned into a value that's really guided you to make the decisions that you've made in your personal life and your business. Overall, my view is that we live in a country where there are no constraints to what you can

achieve. It's a simple idea. Most of the constraints that people put on themselves are self-made. This country has a massive economy, a $30 trillion GDP economy. And so there are places, pockets everywhere where wealth can be created. And so if you want to do that, and that's a value or something that you are interested in, there are an infinite, almost infinite number of places to generate wealth. But you have to have the stomach for it. You have to believe in your ability to do that. And then you also have to have the ability to provide value for others.

So if you do something, kind of the way you two do this, you're disseminating information to young men and women about pursuing business, a career, all of these things. They're massively important to people's understanding of how to pursue their goals. And so if you provide that value, you get rewarded. If what you do doesn't provide value to others in society, then you don't get rewarded. It's sort of a very, very fair system, in my opinion. And I think that that underpins my pursuit of business creation is that if we can build businesses with people with stamina that have the ability to deal with adversity and that we can provide a value to society, then we'll be rewarded for it.

And we've done that, you know, a few times. Fernando for senator, for president. No, no, no, no, no. The opposite. It's it. We need, we, no, what we need to do is continue doing what we're doing. And the, the, the political thing is way too complicated. That's one thing that people, business people have not been able to solve. It's not a deal with, with the political chaos of the last few years. Fair. Fair. Sheree for president? Yeah, shirif for president. Or at least a governor.

Yeah. Why stop there? Fernando, I'd love to go back to the beginning, some of your early stories. Can you talk a little bit more about your earliest money memory? Money and wealth was never sort of important for material things. It was important because it provided safety to my family. And so I had early days. My father passed away when I was about 12 years old. And so the family, I was the only American citizen in the family.

I could speak English. I had these advantages. I had these things, these tools that the rest of my family didn't have. Because you were the youngest of us. Because I was the youngest of six. And then the others were, you know, 10 to 16 years older than I was. And so I had this sort of golden ticket that was given to me, right, to be an American citizen. And so I could take the skills that I had and the ability to be in the United States.

and create, you know, income. And that was important. And so I had to kind of maximize that. So, you know, when I was about 14 years old, I was a translator. So there were American real estate developers that wanted to build manufacturing plants in Mexico. And they needed, you know, help in translation services, in navigating the environment. And I was a kid, but I could help them with that. In one instance, the very first time that I made money, I just got paid, you know, fees for

translation services and I was, you know, a few hundred bucks. But then I kind of realized that what I was doing was more than translation. I was actually giving developers the ability to execute their business plan. And so I thought about it and I said, well, I really ought to get more. I did. I mean, maybe it was selfish or maybe it was just I was trying to take care of my family. You were like, my value is higher than this hourly. Yeah, my value is higher. And there was a very big moment, actually. My grandmother, who was an extraordinarily

tough and resilient woman, she had widowed with seven children at the age of 29. And she was a tough lady. In that part of the world, for her to run a farm, a ranch, as a woman with seven children, you had to be extremely tough. And she was. She was very, she was very, well known as a resilient and tough lady who happened. My grandmother happened to be friends with a union leader in our town. And the developer that was building a facility, a manufacturing plant, he needed permits, like job permits. And you had to get those job permits from the union. And so I asked my grandma, I said, Grandma, you're friends with this union leader, right? And she's She said, oh, yeah, that man has been in love with me since I was 15 years old.

And so I said, well, can you set up an appointment for me? She said, of course. So I showed up at this union leader's office, and it was like out of a Godfather movie. I mean, dark room. He was fidgeting with a gun. I mean, it was, and I was, you know, 14 or 15 years old. Their favorite quote, wait, was that you come to me. The day of my daughter's a day.

Pretty much. We love that cool. We say it all the time. Exactly. And so I walk in. He asked me, my grandmother's name was Amparo, and he says, you're Amparo's grandson, right? And I said, yes. He says, she called me.

I know what you want. I know what you need. And I'll give it to you. And I said, oh, well, thank you. And he said, yeah, I'll do it because I've been in love with your grandmother since I was 15. And so he says that. And so, you know, he writes down in a little napkin that this should be approved. And then I go to another guy, and then that person was his underling and facilitator.

And so we had an approval for jobs permits. And I went to the developer and I said, hey, you know, you've been working on getting these job permits for about a year. What would you pay to have access to these job permits? And he said, well, you know, if we could partner with this person with them or, you know, pay X amount, we would do it to get the building permits. And I said, well, you know, I actually have the permits in my position and I'll take that offer. I'll take 5% equity in the building. And he, you know, he agreed. We signed it.

And we did that, you know, five or five more times. And that was the first time I ever owned any. I was about 15 years old and these buildings were not, you know, they were pretty substantial facilities. They had leverage, they had financing and everything. So, but I learned it. And then I worked for that person for the next four or five years. And I was a project manager and I was running real estate development deals from his office.

And so I was running them, you know, effectively myself as the coordinator and orchestra conductor of engineers and architects and construction companies. And that's why I learned the craft as a kid. But I was making good money and that was important. but it was important because I could support my mom and the family. And that was sort of the seminal moment that made me want to generate wealth as a protective measure, not so much for buying things or whatever. It was really a sort of protecting the family.

That was my 100% of my goal was to protect the family. When you're a mid-sized business, you need every competitive advantage. you can get. Like an AI solution that works for you, not against you. SAP Grow is built with AI embedded at its core, working across every system. And it's ready to go from day one so you can hit the ground running. Bring it with SAP Grow, AI Cloud ERP for any size business. And Leon Capital was born.

Yeah. On a napkin. Well, technically, you know, Leon Capital wasn't signed into existence until like 2000. 2004, yeah, 2004. Germination. Yeah, you're right. The ideological germination was there. Because you're right.

What happened was I later, when I was working at Goldman Sachs, you know, I said, you know, I want to go back to Texas and do what I was doing before. Like I was good at that. I got to get back. And so, yes, you're right, that it was always pulling me to come back to Texas after being at Goldman. And I, you know, the idea was, had been built or was inside of me, and I just needed to get back to it. So you're right, that that was the origin of who I was.

I mean, and that's something you've talked about before. You said company ownership is the most hidden secret in American capitalism. What I mean by that is that I think, you know, you can own a lot of things. You can own ideas. You can own your time. but the concept of an asset, you're never too young to own an asset, right? And so I have a nephew who I told recently, he said, Uncle Fernando, like, how do I start to create wealth?

And I said, hey, you know, you're renting an apartment. Go, go find a way to buy a townhome, a duplex, and lease the second half of it, and use that to pay off the mortgage for the two sites. And start with that. Own an asset, you know, get financing. figure out how to own an asset. And so I do think that asset ownership, you know, that asset, he will pay it off over, you know, a 15-year loan amortization, and he'll own an asset 15 years from now.

But he's 21. And so he'll be 36 and he'll own an asset and he'll say, wow, like I built something, I own something. And it was painful. Maybe he's got to live, you know, within his means and save more. Maybe he can't go to the restaurants and make sacrifices. But when he's older, he'll be glad that he paid off an asset. And so I think asset ownership, company ownership is the way that you build wealth.

And I think it's a simple statement, but it's hard to do. And you just got to find the openings to figure out how to get it for yourself. Nobody's going to, you know, I can't give you like the story of what it's going to be for anybody except for me, right? But for others, they got to find their own entry point and figure out a way to get a piece by a stock, buy a bond, buy a house, by a duplex, buy something. And then over time, make it grow. So early on in your career, you invested in Chick-fil-A when the big guys thought. We've done our research. Yeah, we've done a research.

Didn't think about that one for a while, did you? No. when the big guys thought it was beneath them. What did you understand that other people didn't see? And what's an industry you're investing in now that others still overlook or possibly underestimate? Oh, interesting. Okay, so first of all, the Chick-fil-A trade was not in the company itself. That's a private company.

It's owned by a family. As much as any of us would want to invest in Chick-fil-A, you can't. It's owned a multi-generational trust, so that's not going anywhere. But what I did was I said, I think this concept is massive and people love it and they have this connection to it. You know, a large percentage of people surveyed they go to Chick-fil-A when you ask them if it's fast food will tell you it's not. So it tells you, you know, the service, everything was built with intentionality. And I wanted to participate in that business plan, but I couldn't. So the way, I couldn't invest in the company directly.

So what I decided to do was I had a piece of land, the very first building that I built for Chick-fil-A, I owned a piece of land in San Angelo, Texas, small little town. I had bought some land from a bank that had default, a borrower had defaulted on a piece of land, and I owned these sites all over the state of Texas. And Chick-fil-A really wanted that site. And I said, well, I will, I'll build it for you. I said, no, and we, you know, we traded hard for a while, and they, finally agreed and we built a building that they leased. And my philosophy of that was to say,

well, if I can't invest in the company, but let's say that Chick-fil-A was selling two million dollars of product, the chicken there, and I was renting the building for $200,000 to them per year. That means that for every 10 pieces of chicken that they sold, one of them was being sold on my behalf because I owned $200,000 of rent as a royalty on a top $2 million sales figure. So I effectively own one-tenth of their total revenue production at that site. And that was my way to be in business with Chick-fil-A. And I did that with Starbucks, and I did that with many companies around the country. 7-Eleven.

That was my philosophy about it was if I could own the real estate, whoever leased it from me was effectively my partner on some portion that came to me through rent. and that was just a philosophical view of it. So Chick-fil-A and many of those companies' early days, you know, it was a small deal. You know, giant real estate companies didn't want to go mess with it. They're like, oh, that's beneath me, but I was like, I'll do it. And I'll do whatever it takes.

So we did a lot of it. And they were fantastic partners. And many of those businesses like Raisin-Kane, 7-Eleven, Chase Bank, CBS, all of these businesses, I built buildings for them and we had great partnership with them. On things that I see that others aren't particularly paying attention to, so out of the real estate business about nine years ago, I co-founded a business called CREXE, which today is based here in Los Angeles, and today is the second largest purveyor of commercial real estate data in the country.

And so early days, nine years ago, you know, somebody said, hey, do you want to own this office building? And do you want, you know, they offered it to me to buy it. And I got to thinking, like, what is the opposite of an office building? And I didn't like the office building business. I never did any deals in it because I thought the capax is too high. I thought tenants would roll over too much. So I found the cash flows unpredictable. I didn't like it.

But I'd like, but I said, I want to find the opposite. opposite of it. So it was kind of a, you know, sort of a mental game with myself and, and myself and a co-founder and a couple other people, we thought about data as the best commodity to try to own in commercial real estate. And today we have about 5 million people on the site. We have hundreds of thousands of subscribers. And we have a listing service where commercial real estate is listed, you know, a la Zillow. And then also we harness data, we synthesize it, and then we sell it as lease comps, as sales comps, and information that is really, really important to commercial real estate professionals in order to make decisions about selling a property, buying a property,

leasing a property, things like that. So we sell, you know, information and data to appraisal districts and, you know, city governments, brokerage. real estate brokerage companies, groups like that all over the country, and it's become a huge company with about 600 employees, roughly, based here in the LA area. And it's a fantastic business,

but we saw it way earlier than many others. And it took a lot of, you know, a lot of capital to stand it up and to fight through the competitive landscape. And there were massive, semi-monopolisly competitors that were tough to engage and fight through and still takes a lot of stamina to fight through that.

So, yeah, that's one of the things that we saw and that I think we help build and it's a massive business. And I'm really proud of the work we've done there. I think that's so cool because I think it's such a good example of your business intuition because you came from the world of real estate. Like that's what you knew, like hard capital assets, all this stuff. but you're like, what is a business that I want to get into that I know enough about, that I have a competitive edge?

And so you're like, data, I want to get into that business. And you're like, how can I do it through real estate? I think that is so, there's definitely a lesson there. Because I think a lot of people are trying to transition what they do. And they're like, how can I possibly, you know, get into, or like even myself when I worked, I started off working at Goldman. And I thought I was going to work and finance my whole life. And then after two years, I was like,

I was like, I want to work in consumer tech. How do I work in consumer tech? It's like you find the entry point. But I will say that I think part of the lesson to, for me at least, was real estate was comfortable. But technology and engineering and software development was not. I was really, like I had a discomfort and a little bit of a fear. I can talk about it now. In the moment, I probably didn't internalize the fear that I really had.

And so I think that to me the lesson in many respects is everybody has fear. We all have fear about something, right? Something that we don't understand or don't know. And so what do you do with it? Do you, I think about it and I say, okay, well, let me understand my fear. let me then compartmentalize it and then leverage it so I can adapt around it. But you got to leverage it. If you are afraid to leverage that fear, then you don't go anywhere.

I think you get stuck. And so to me it was always about putting it in a box and saying, let's go, right? Let's move against that thing and lean into the whatever's causing you a discomfort. But you got to recognize it, be a little bit self-aware and fight through it. And I think a lot of people don't want to do that. But you should want to do it. That's how you adapt and evolve and progress in your life journey. Is leveraging it almost like using that fear as motivation?

Or how do you like leverage it practically? I mean, yes. I think, yeah, I think leveraging it as motivation. But I think also there's like a like almost like a resentment or an anger that you have against a certain weakness. It's like, you know what? I know it's there and screw it. I'm going to go and fight it directly, like head on. And who does that?

Like, it's tough to do. And, yeah, so, so yes, I think it's, it's leveraging it, it's modifying it, but it's also having a certain resentment that makes, that fuels you. So do you want it or not? And I think the people that succeed are willing to go right at it and fight it with a little bit of, a little bit of anger or resentment or whatever you want to call it, but it's not a, it's not a soft feeling. It is an aggressive feeling, I think. That's the difference. And I would say embrace it. Yeah. Interesting. I'm having so many associations right now. Like I feel like there needs to be like a superhero track theme song like going on in the background as you're saying this because it kind

reminds me of like Batman or like Batman begins or like the dark night or something. Yes, yes. We're like, I see Fernando. I see it in you in the way that you're talking about it. It's really powerful. As you're just saying it, I'm like, you know, absorbing everything, but also kind of just like witnessing kind of how you work and how your brain works and kind of some, I'm just, it's really admirable that I'm just like kind of seeing the power right now.

And it feels like the dark night when he's like, you know, you know. Training. Training. Yeah. It's kind of amazing. I think it is training. Yeah. You know, your mind needs to train, right?

Like, yeah, like if you've got a soft spot in your body and you physically train for it, it's no different with the brain. Yeah. The brain says, oh, no, not there. No, that's where you go. And that's not a natural state. It's not a comfortable thing. If you're comfortable, you're not doing it right.

Like, it's got to be, it's got to be you, like, suffering through it. I do believe that. And I think that's really hard to do on a self-awareness basis. It's not, it doesn't come naturally. You've got to train for it for sure. A question for you. Maybe, I don't know if this will kind of push you to think a little bit more about the opposite side of that. It's like I talk to myself with a lot of harshness in a good way, though.

Like I push myself and I'm like, you can do it, like go for it. Is there a softness? I wonder. Is there a voice in your head that also embraces like the softer, kinder side of motivation? I think so because it depends on why are you doing it? Like, why are you pursuing that? Is it all about you? It was never about me in the things I tried to accomplish.

It was about our family. And so there were, you know, five siblings. And now I have, you know, four children. These things matter in the context of our family. and this is a philosophy of survival, of pursuit, of improvement. And so I think, yeah, if you, it depends on who you're doing it for, right? If you, you know, I bet in your relationship between you two, I bet that there is a feeling of accountability of not wanting to let each other down, of wanting to pursue together in that journey.

So it's not about entirely about you. It's about both of you and about your family and, you know, a certain gratitude that you have for your parents in the effort they put to send you to, you know, good schools and to provide an environment. Like you are a function of those feelings, right? You can't move those. So I do think that having a cause for others and for yourself and for, you know, a company is massively inspiring. And I look at our companies and I bet a, I don't know how to quantify this, but a substantial part of my motivation to build a business is that the people that are there, I want them to have good lives. I want to be supportive of their professional development. Like, I don't want them. I mean, I feel like I'm obligated and I am accountable. And so we need to go row in that direction and make that company, that business, our initiative work. And so I don't know that, I think it depends on who, the softer side to your, on your question is, is about the people around you, who are you doing it for and why? If it's, I don't, I suspect that if you're entirely self-centered,

you probably don't have the leadership and the charisma to motivate others to come with you in building something. If you're just self-absorbed and you don't have this softer side to, to ask others to come with you, how do you scale? You have to be, you have to be, I mean, I'm sure there's plenty of people that control great technologies that can just be total jerks and don't care about anybody but themselves because our technology is great. But I think for the most part, for mere mortals like us, I think your ability to inspire and motivate others is what gives you operating leverage and allows you to go forward. So I do think there is definitely a softer site. In Toronto, every arrival is a statement, and nothing says it better than this.

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You should have ordered from Wayfair. With Wayfair, there's no what if. Just style you love and quality you can trust. Visit Wayfair.cair, every style, every home. Hey, guys, so it's come to my attention that many of you don't know, Gene and I have a matcha brand called Sisters Macha that we created and founded ourselves. What? No way.

A Mata brand? Yeah. We started it in October 24. Gene and I have worked and lived on this Macha farm in Japan. It's sourced from Wazuka, Japan, which is an hour and a half outside of Kyoto, and the brand means the world to us. It is a small family-owned farm, and we actually travel back to the farm and handpick the matcha ourselves. So you can find out more about SistersMacha to try it, check it out, buy it. Buy it.

At sistersmacha.com. That's sistersMacha.com. And already, back to the show. I think it's very cool. Like, listening to you speak, it makes a lot of sense. in understanding that your original motivation was to provide for your family. And now it almost sounds like you view your company as like your broader family now. And so it's just like scaling up that same, that same like desire from a young age.

And now you're just doing it on a much bigger scale. Yeah, I think so. I think there's a lot of people that have worked with me for 15 or 20 years that are extraordinarily important in my life. And those people, you know, I know their families and I know, what they've done to sacrifice time and effort and, you know, the toughness that they've exemplified to build a business and how could you not be reciprocal? So you, yeah, so I think every, every business that we've built, there are men and women that have sacrificed time and, and, and there are, you know, other things in their life in order to build those businesses. So you have to

be, I think it's a right thing to be reciprocal in having their back. Yeah. Fernando, we're going to go through some more tactics and advice. So if you were starting from zero today, what is the first real move that you'd make to build wealth? The truth is that when you don't have anything, what you really, if you don't have capital or resources, right, like you have to figure out how to get some. I know that sounds kind of basic, but it's true. Can you find maneuvers and tactics for yourself

that aren't about capital? Because if you say, well, I don't have capital. I don't know how to get it. And then, and I, so I can't do anything. Well, then you're stuck. So it's, I don't have capital, but I'm going to find a way creatively to accomplish something through an idea, a tactic, some kind of insight, persuasion, charisma, whatever, right? Like salesmanship, whatever. it takes and you're going to find a way to maneuver around the opportunity and find value and extract it. That is something that anybody can do. There are no handbooks for it. There are no manuals for it, but you've got to develop it for yourself and then it'll manifest itself as value creation that you are able to at some points extract. And so for instance, when I, you know,

when I first started my career in Dallas building subdivisions, the first ones, was a piece of land and I didn't have the ability to buy that piece of land and build a subdivision. So I had to go and talk to a landowner and say, hey, I have this idea for building this land into a subdivision. And I'm going to sell these lots to home builders. And I'm going to, you know, these are my, my, this is my, my numbers, my, my, my expectations. Would you like to be a partner in this? And they would contribute it into a partnership. Or sometimes I would have an option to buy the land and then go get entitlements or zoning changes from the city. And I could go do that through persuasion. I could convince the city to let me, you know, change it from an agricultural

use to a residential use. And then that made the value of the land more valuable. And therefore, I could get financing and limit the amount of capital that I needed. But I think that early days, my instincts were about how do I build value. Okay, so this piece of land, I'm going to option it, and if I change the zoning, it's more valuable. The option contract was a piece of paper. And then I had to convince engineers to do the work without me paying them. They're like, but you're 24. Why am I listening to you?

I'm like, come on, man, let's do this together. And then it's like, I'll take you hunting or whatever. I did. I took these guys hunting when they did some work for me, and they made good money. Ultimately, I paid them because I was able to execute on this project. but I don't know like that that isn't a economic thing it's not a capital constraint it was just like getting people to agree with you and follow you and so I think oftentimes it's about a little bit of tactical creativity and and finding people that want to advocate for you that person

by the way that put that land into a partnership with me his name is Harold Pullman and he he was like in his early 80s and he actually told me he said that piece of land can't be developed I started I he had come back from World War II and had built homes for GIs and this was a little extra piece of land that he said was unbuildable and I said what do you have to lose then if it's not buildable let me give it a shot yeah and he said you'll never be able to do it and I went and I convinced the Army Corps of Engineers and the city and we we designed around some of the problems and it took me a year and all of it came together and he was shocked he's like you know I tried doing that for 40 years and I couldn't do it but but but you did and and so kudos to

you and so there are things that you can do with work and sweat equity that don't require having you know capital day one so I would say focus on creativity persuasion salesmanship building something out of nothing is damn hard but you there are everybody who has built something out of nothing has done it. So give it your shot. It actually, listening to your story reminds me of kind of like our beginning for Tiger Sisters, because when we first conceptualized Tiger Sisters, we were like, actually, we want to build Tiger Sisters as a reality TV show.

And like we want to bring people along and like have them like learn these business lessons through this reality TV show where we would, you know, work with all these different startups or different companies. And then as we made kind of like our pitch and we started like bringing. to different people. First of all, we were like, oh, wow, Hollywood is like five different strikes going on. Not a good time. Not actually the worst time in history. Yeah, the reality TV to, yeah. Yeah, to life. And then the second thing was we were like, oh, you know what, this actually is going to create, it requires a lot of capital and also a lot of

sort of like ingrained systems and relationships are required to bring something to life in the Hollywood system. In the traditional way. In the traditional highway. To get it on a streaming. service. Yeah. And so we were like, okay, what can we do that we actually build it on our own terms and we can still achieve the goals that we want, which is bringing sort of like education to people in a fun, digestible way? And we were like, let's do a podcast because the barriers to entry are pretty much nothing, almost nothing. And we started out in our home office, actually the kitchen table. Literally in our kitchen, our dining room table, which is very small with these crappy microphones

with a camera that was $400. Like, do not watch our earlier episodes because they are not well produced the way that they are now here. The information is good. Yeah, the information is good, but, you know, it's great. We were iterating on it constantly,

but if there are obstacles, it's to your story and your points. Like, how do you go around it, over it, under it? But, like, don't let something like that stop it. We heard a lot of nose in the beginning. Yeah. We mourned our reality TV show concept

for about, like, three. three days and we're like, we need to pivot. What do we do to actually bring this to the life the way that we want to? Yeah. But it's that concept of like taking what you know and like creating some sort of value without having the capital behind it. Like you don't need to have capital in order to begin. Yeah. No, I totally agree. I mean, I think there are countless examples of of that situation. I think there is a little bit of like self-awareness too of just saying, hey, like for instance, the brand like Tiger's sisters, the concept, right? Like this was like, hey, we know who we are.

Yeah. And we think this will resonate with the public. And then you're authentic, right? And then fundamentally, that's what people are responding to. Just like Mr. Pullman was responding to my authenticity, you know, your viewers are responding to saying, hey, these two women are, you know, strong and smart. And they're building a set of ideas that we can rally behind and understand. and the content is valuable to me.

So I think, ultimately, by the way, that last part, it's valuable to me, has to be there. You can have all the dreams, but if your viewers find it valuable, then you have something that's important. Ultimately, I built homes in that subdivision that were valuable to those people that lived there, and they went and built a family there. They built home equity. They built net worth through home ownership. And that was valuable to those groups of people and to society.

So ultimately, that last part has to be there. Otherwise, you just, you can't fake it, right? That has to, that has to permeate through your work. Yeah, I really love that. It's like so fundamental, but just the idea of like build something of value. Like so many people start like startup founders, I think, like forget about that now. They're like, let me just build something. Like, I want to do something in AI.

I want to build something AI, blah, blah, blah. It's like, okay, but is it valuable to people? Are you building something of value? Or for instance, the other thing that is done a lot, not just in venture, but it's what valuation can I get? And then that is just a bunch of group think where somebody says, I think it's very valuable and they're all in the same little bubble. And then when it goes out to people that are going to consume that good or service, it turns out that people don't value it. The only people that valued it were the ones, you know, giving it a valuation of X or Y. And then the consumers of that good or service said, you know what?

I kind of, it doesn't really give me anything. And then that valuation bubble bursts. And it happens all the time too. So fundamentally, a group of people deriving value of time or anything through that good or service is the only way you get rewarded in capitalism. It's fair. It's fair. It's very, very fair. I've always thought capitalism is this, you know, interesting, this philosophy that fundamental,

has fairness at its value. And not everybody agrees with me on that, I think. But I do think that if you give people, you may not like the person that created that technology or that idea, but why do people consume it? Because they derive value from it. So it has to permeate that. Otherwise, things break down, often very quickly, too.

It's kind of a hot take. Capitalism is fair. Yeah. Should we wrap up with one last? When are we talking about love? Do you have some advice for us? You have some advice. Well, actually, do you want to talk about love?

I would like you want to talk about love. I don't know. I think Fernando wants to set us up. Really? I mean, I will try. I will work really, really hard on. I guess let me ask you guys a question about love. Okay.

How do very driven, highly intelligent, women, how do you find the way to sort of properly interact with members of the opposite sex? How do you do that when you're so driven? Does it make it difficult to date? You know, someone asked me this exact question yesterday, too. Really? Yeah, over Instagram. There's a lot of noise, and it's actually interesting. You know what? Going back to your earlier point about credentials. blinding you. I think that's where it can be tough as dating as like a very ambitious women. So women, we like, you know, going to business school, I'm like, this is it. I'm going to find,

you know, my partner for life, you know, in my class, all this stuff. But I think also dating at that level, I want to make sure the person that I'm dating is supportive of my dreams, goals, and ambitions. I think that can be tough when I have a lot of them. We have a lot of them. And someone who's not afraid of that, who will support me along the way. And also, I think there's a lot of noise because at that level, I think the people that we're dating are also very successful. And it's a balance. And so they have dreams too. And so making it all complimentary is not an easy Rubik's Cube. And making sure that, you know, there's no ego when it comes to love. That part, I think, is really hard and seeing deeply into their heart. Oh, damn. If you can.

You know what's interesting is when I first, so I sold a bunch of assets in like 2007. And then, you know, when 2008. Nicely done. Well, it was a little bit lucky. But in 2008, you know, I got back into it. And the first few deals that I did, I struggled. And I had a lot of problems. And I was really, really down.

And I almost gave up. And my wife, we were like very recently married. She said, she's like, you know, shake it off, get back up and go find your place. And I was like, no, you know, I'm just going to go. I'm going to get a job somewhere and not be an entrepreneur anymore. And she said, look, if you do that, I don't think this is going to, we're going to do, we're going to last. And I said, why? She said, well, you're going to drive me crazy because you have to be an entrepreneur.

You're never going to be like, you know, inside an organization and like be a good employee. You're going to be a pain in my ass. So please go out there and go build a piece of real estate or go do something, but go, go get back up and do it. And she was doing it a little bit to like, you know, protect her own self from me being, you know, around the house too much. but it was interesting that she knew me, you know, and was willing, like, she actually believed in me, but she also was pushing me harder than I was pushing myself, which didn't happen a lot. But in a moment of vulnerability when I was down and, like, psychologically, I was vulnerable, she was like, no, we're doing this, get back up.

And she was like, you know, in your corner in a boxing match. And you're kind of getting, you know, punched around. And she's like, no, get back in there and go fight. And so I do think that that in, in, in, in, in. in a relationship, you have to have a person that sees you, even in your most vulnerable state and compels you to keep going. She knew you deeply. And we had only been dating for a couple of years before we got married.

And so, yeah, she did kind of know my essence quickly. I think it's also, it's very funny you asked that question because I was telling you earlier I was at a bachelorette this weekend, and it was 10 HBS girls. And we actually were talking about this. We were doing a little bit of like, not accounting, but we were like, talking about. talking through all of our friends where like, actually a good number of our friends are the breadwinners within their family unit. And it's a lot of people are like, you know, I didn't think it was going to turn out this way. And it's not like my husband is not, you know, or my partner is not incredibly talented or like successful in the owner, but they're the breadwinners.

And they are receiving a lot of support from their partners. and one of my girlfriends was like, you know, I thought it was, she's like, I always thought it was so important to have a partner who was, you know, the same sort of credentials, like Ivy League undergrad, you know, MBA, like all this stuff. And she's like, I actually realized that that wasn't what was most important to me. It was like having someone who loves me and understands me deeply and we support each other. And so I think that's, I don't know. Yeah, that's massive. I mean, I think that's a big chunk of it. I think, you know, there's, in my case in particular, my wife really was able to interact with my family, too.

And that was super important for me because they were so foundational as a part of my life. And so that was an important thing. And she took it on as a, as part of her identity. And that was, you know, super important to me. So, yeah, I mean, I think, I think the supportive element has to be there. You cannot both, you know, move forward without a supportive element. Money, power, and love. Yeah, there we go.

Hit them all. The trifecta. Thank you for bringing us back to, you know, we almost forgot for a second. Thank you for bringing us back to love. Yeah. I never thought I'd be talking about love. I've never gone down this rabbit hole. But, you know, it's good.

It's a little cathartic. Yeah. And it's also mixing the hard with the soft as a holistic person is the spice of life. It is. It is. The juice of life. Hey, Sheree, remember when we first started Sisters Macha? Imagine this.

Gene and I are on a Macha farm, an hour and a half outside of Kyoto. We're in the countryside. We're picking Macha leaves, working and living on this Japanese green tea farm. Oh my God. It was like a freaking dream. But I feel like when that dream turned into a reality, when it actually became a real business in my mind, was when we set up our Shopify. And we even had a Kavanaugh.

countdown to when our Shopify storefront would actually launch. I truly think Shopify is the best place to start your business because on Shopify, you own everything. You own your storefront. You own your relationship with your customers and you own the entire community that you build. When someone discovers Sisters Macha and actually makes a purchase, that relationship feels extremely personal.

Oh, I mean, literally, Sisters Macha is a family-owned brand and business. And we trust Shopify with all of the bad. back-end stuff so that we can focus on what's important to us, which is building our community and communicating with our customers and bringing the best matcha in the world to you. So if you've ever thought of starting something on your own, build something that you love. Get started today at Shopify.com slash tiger sisters. Okay, so we have a section called Rapid Fire where we're going to hear your hottest takes if things are overrated or underrated.

And yeah, this is going to be super fast and really. fun. So those are the two answers. Overrated or underrated? Well, they kind of depend for each one, but that's the concept. But yeah, you can start, yeah, you can kind of start with that and then explain. Okay. All right. Let's give a shot. Yeah. Okay. I like this. Yeah. Okay. First one, Fernando. Okay. Mark Cuban, business genius or overrated TV billionaire. Oh, man. Okay, look, let's talk about the facts. Yeah. Broadcast.com. Com was sold to Yahoo and Yahoo wrote down the value of Broadcast.com to zero within about a year or a year and a half.

So that wasn't a good one. You know, the idea of, I don't know, I don't know what kind of investments are done on Shark Tank, but it seems to me that they're mainly consumer products and not extremely scalable businesses. And so maybe I would take the under on that. I like that. Yeah. Okay. So Harvard, you went to Harvard for undergrad. Is it responsible for success or just a nice flex? Are elite schools stepping stones or status signals? Oh, yeah, this one's going to be a little controversial, but I actually think that the idea of a flex and a name that comes with your background may often blind you to blind spots.

that are that are painful lessons later. So you have to be really careful with letting that take up too much of your identity. And so you got to manage it. I don't think, I think, you know, some harm can be done from embracing brand identities like that. Brands are information shortcuts, right? And Harvard is an information shortcut just like any other. It's like Apple and every brand out there. So do you, you know, fall into it?

Do you embrace it fully? And then what kind of implications does that have for your scrappiness and your resolve and going forward? Does it slow you down a little bit? I love that phrase. It's information shortcut. Because we actually do use it that way. We've talked about this a lot where sometimes we feel like it's very cringe that we're

always like, oh, Harvard and Stanford, like, blah, blah, blah. And sometimes we're like, oh, do we over rely on that? But it's an information shortcut. It's basically just a way for us to be like, hey, like, we're not just talking out of our asses, we're actually legitimate, and this is why you should, you know, tune into what we have to say. You know, one of the reasons. My daughter asked me, like, is it important, dad, to get into a good school?

And I said, look, it's important in so much as it shows the discipline of you trying to achieve something and getting it done. So I think that's important. And so you don't want to be passive and you want to pursue your dreams. And if some of that is a great university, then go for it. No, no judgment. But then, you know, once you're out there fighting, like, did Mr. Polman really care about my Harvard degree? Probably not.

Like, he was like, hey, can you get it done or not? And so ultimately, it's got to be, you got to execute. And so, you know, if that's a crutch, does it slow you down? That's just, it's a question. And I pose it for everybody to make. For reflection. For deepened. Yeah.

Crypto. Is it a legitimate long-term play or glorified casino? Oh, man. You got me. That's a tough fun. That's a tough one. You've been like hacking my emails or something because I've got it serious. Okay, so let's see.

Let's see. Number one is I used to see in other countries, and I grew up, you know, straddling two different countries. And so in Mexico, you would see currency devaluations every time a president left. So you would see like the treasury rated reserves. decrease and therefore the currency of the country suffer in value. Crypto is a great way to store wealth against that kind of thing. So in the United States, not so much because the dollars are reserved currency,

but if you live in Angola, if you live in certain African countries, in certain parts of Latin America where you have hyperinflation and dysfunctional governments, would you want to have crypto? And I think I would lean towards yes. I believe in crypto there is a, lot of regulatory framework that is immature and needs to be built. I think there are, for obvious reasons, elements of crypto that are shady and difficult to navigate. And so I think you've got

to be careful. I've invested in crypto and I did very well, but I would say that there was very little fundamentals around it. I think, you know, I got lucky and I took my wins and ran with it, but I don't, I don't, I wouldn't know how to invest in it at a fundamental level. I think it would, it would be difficult for me to do that. I wouldn't go as far as what, you know, Charlie Munger set, which was that it was, you know, but it, but it, but it, you know, but I think there is a use for it in certain, you know, context, but I think you have to tread very, very lightly on crypto. Okay, so crypto, better than dog shit, according to Bernad.

You heard it here first. Now, that's what Munger said. I think I wouldn't go all the way over there. We put that as a headline. But yeah, those guys were old school or old school. But I think there is a place for it in some context, I think. If you went to, I mean, if you see the devaluations that happen in some countries, there are people in Nigeria.

I think I have a friend that runs a crypto exchange company, and he says many of the customers are Latin America, Africa, Asia. So you find those people have, you know, derive value from buying those stores of wealth. And so if they're deriving value, then who are we to say that there's something wrong with it? So I wouldn't go as far as Charlie did. That's a very practical. It's a very holistic answer. Very like international. Capitalism, very international. Yeah, I could imagine it'd be really useful for like remittances too now that I think about it. Yeah, I think it has been been used in remittances, good and bad, right?

That's the catch. And so like in many topics like this, it's not black or white. And it is a whole bunch of gray in crypto. And we'll see. We'll see how it evolves for sure. It's not going anywhere. I don't think, I think if you thought crypto was dead, you know, two or three years ago, whenever we had that bubble burst, I don't think that that's the case right now.

Fernando, thank you so much for being here with us and giving us the real talk on money, money, power, and love. And we always say we want to be the internet's big sisters and career mentors and that we wish we had. And that's really what we got with you today. So thank you for being here and for being, you know, the internet big brother, like kind of family that we've built together with Tiger Sisters. I love it. I love it. I'm happy to, I'm happy to have been a guest because I think you guys are disseminating and proselytizing great ideas that people can benefit from. Okay, so that was the interview with Fernando. That was, it was spicy, it was entertaining. It was funny. And okay, so this director's cut episode is very timely because we just had

some new news about Fernando. Shari, do you want to share? Yes. So Forbes came out with a new list on April 13th, 2020, 26, and it's called Forbes 250, the greatest self-made. And our friend, Fernando, is on this list. Hello. On the list, number one. It's the greatest self-made living Americans. Yes. Right. And so Forbes 250, the greatest self-made Americans. And there's a star next to if you're a billionaire with a B. Number one is Oprah Winfrey. It's just like my friend Fernando. Our idol. And Oprah Winfrey. I love Oprah. I mean, on this list also, LeBron James to call out Dolly Parton, Bill Clinton, JD Vans. Okay. I I'm just reading as I'm scrolling, guys.

Larry Ellison, George Soros, just some of the greats. Yeah. And also a lot of business men and women that are not necessarily like as famous or like well known as some of the ones you named, but are all completely self-made. So that's the whole point of this list. Yes. It was just amazing when this list came out that our friend Fernando was on it. Also, I want to say Fernando, I think he's number of 47 or something. He's like on the first page because it's one through 50.

but he's above Arnold Schwarzenegger. I don't know why this is like, why do you bring up Arnold Schwarzenegger? Well, because it's like Fernando is 47 and then Arnold Schwarzenegger's like number 50 or something. I don't know. I just think it's really cool. Why Arnold Schwarzenegger? Because their names are like very close to one another and Fernando's above him. And it is not a competition at all.

But I'm just really proud of my friend that he's above Arnold Schwarzenegger. All right, Arnold, come on Tyro Sisters. Defend your title. Your title. Defend your name. Like we Actually, that would be cool actually. He was the governor. He was the governor of California. I would love to talk to Arnold Schwarzenegger because he's had such amazing career

pivots in his life. Yes. And reinventing. Talk about reinvention. Wait, he was literally a bodybuilder. He was like Mr. Universe or something. I will be back. And then he was the Terminator.

Yes. He was the Terminator 1, 2, and 3. Yeah. He was like a star Hollywood actor. Yes. And also, I think the co-owner or co-founder of Gold's gym, Gold's bodybuilding gym. Or like an investor or something like that. He's like financially or sorry, like business-wise involved in it.

Oh, I thought he just would go a lot. I didn't know it was because he's an investor. I'm pretty sure. Okay, that makes sense. Someone fact check that, but I know that he's very involved in Gold's gym. Okay, back to our takeaways with Fernando. My first one was just the update on he's on the Forbes 250 self-made. Americans list. And I do think actually my comment on that is that that is a cool list that

they've started. Like Forbes is making a lot of lists these days. They got a lot of lists going on. There's the 30 under 30 list is like I guess respect until someone goes to jail for fraud. I don't know what to make of that. But like this is actually a really cool one. I love that they made one that is about self-made. People who are self-made. Yeah. Because that is a very I think American trait. Yes. It's like the epitome of the American dream. People who are self-made and like there's descriptions. If you have a chance to go and like look at this list, there's maybe a few sentence

descriptions of each of the people who are who've made the list. And so many of them have faced very early adversity. That's something Fernando talked about in our episode, how he's one of six children. His father died when he was 12. Like that's really, really hard shit that I don't even. know how to kind of like comprehend how like a child grows through that and yeah become stronger and resilient to become so six conventionally successful and also like financially successful and I think it's very interesting that he was the youngest of six children and he was the

youngest by like a lot I think he said 10 years or something his older siblings were like 10 or 16 years older than him yeah 10 to 16 and then he was also I don't know if you guys caught this he was the only one out of the six children who was an American citizen yes so which he clearly said in the episode, he's just like, I had a privilege that none of my other siblings or family members had is that I was the only American citizen. And he could go across borders literally into the U.S. to go to school and have a different set of advantages that he used to then uplift his family. So a little bit of behind the scenes. Fernando didn't say this in the episode, but one thing he's told Sheree and I is that when he got into Harvard undergrad, which obviously was like,

you know, the accomplishment of his, his young life for not only him, but his entire family, uh, the first person that he told was the border crossing agent between Mexico and the United States because he was coming home from school and he found out. And like, this was someone that had watched him cross the border every single day for his entire life to go to school. Like literal chills. Like, it's so crazy. That's such a crazy story. The thing is, like that's where he needs to be told more. Like is that not the American dream? It is the American dream. But the thing is Fernando is also so humble. He's so incredibly humble. And like he kind of alludes to some of the hardship, but he like doesn't really go into it. But he's like told us, you know, off camera. And we'll be

sharing all his secrets here. But also like I, you know, there's like this kind of rhetoric now where it's just like eat the rich like all that. But I'm like, if there's a billionaire I can get behind It's the ones that are self-made. I don't know. Yeah, yeah. I don't know. So I'm really, I'm just kind of an awe of all that he's accomplished and like incredibly proud of him.

Yeah. Because you know that like he wasn't given anything. But he made the most out of the opportunities and the, you know, privilege that he was given. I also think to go back to the idea of birth order, I think there's something interesting there because he was the youngest, but he was the only one that had the benefits. of being a U.S. citizen. So in a way, he had the responsibility of being the oldest, like, that he put on himself. Like, he did say he was like, I felt like I was responsible for, to improve our Latin life,

like for not only me, but our entire family, like all six siblings. La Familia. I said that to Fernando. It's like a fast and furious thing. Oh, it is? Like La Familia. Oh, I didn't know what you were talking about. She doesn't even speak Spanish.

I don't. But yeah, so like he had very much that sort of innate pressure, which I think a lot of immigrants and first generation people feel and put upon themselves. And I would be to go back to that list of the 250, you know, top self-made Americans, I would be very interested to know of the 250, what percentage are either immigrants or first generation. Hmm. And maybe what their birth order is if they have siblings. Yeah. Because I also think Fernando being the youngest of six, like you also have a chance to be more entrepreneurial, I think, because you've seen the paths of your older siblings. So I think there's something there.

I don't know. But if there's a data scientist who is watching this episode and can scrape that data for all 250 self-made Americans, we'd love to know. I mean, yeah, just throw it in a claw. Yeah, whatever. It would be easy. Gemini. Hey Tiger fam, watch this episode on Spotify. If you're subscribed to Spotify Premium, you won't get any Spotify ads on this video.

Okay, so one thing that listening back to this interview that I thought about was that I really liked how Fernando in this episode, he was really unabashed about building wealth. He was like, building wealth was something that was very important to me, making money, money as a path. Like, he said it out loud. And obviously, it changed his life. It changed the life of his entire family. It changed the life of generations. And now he runs, you know, a massive company with

hundreds, thousands of employees who, you know, he basically told us, he was like, I see them as my family, my extended family now too. And like, it's important to me to do good by them, you know, in like continuing to grow the business so that they can change their lives. Yeah. So I just think that's something that

I'm starting to be less abashed about embracing that and being like, I think especially women who are watching, like, that's something that we should just say out loud to be like, listen, it's important to make money. Like, why are we being, you know, like shy about it? Like, we don't need to be like bashful about it. Like money is a resource that changes lives. It gives you freedom. It gives you opportunities.

It gives you the chance. to pursue your dreams. So it gives you a chance to get out of a bad situation. So you never have to feel stuck. And you have autonomy. Yeah. Over your own life. Yeah.

And so like I think that's something we've said before. Like it's very important to have financial freedom. But like saying it in the way where it's like you need to make money. Like it like the pursuit of making money is actually something that is valuable. And it's not something that. you should be embarrassed of. Yeah. I think also I love his point where he wants to make money, but he clearly says it is also as a protective measure. You know, like that is like the umbrella of basically all the things that you just named to. I would also call money a protective measure

for, you know, giving you opportunity, for living the life that you want, for not being stuck in situations. Like I love how he framed it in that way because I think there is still kind of like stink to being like societally especially for women to being like I want to be rich I want to make money I want to be financially independent I don't know if people get mad at the last one but I'm like it does sound a little but that's because but you know why because that's because financially independent it only it it sounds like there's a ceiling exactly it sounds like there's a ceiling right like financially independent is like okay like you can afford to go on a vacation yeah whatever but like him being like no I wanted to build wealth yes like that was

my goal. Yeah. And he kind of says, he like says like, well, if your goal out there is to build wealth, then you should do X, Y, Z. Right? So I thought that was kind of cool. Like it's kind of, I don't know, it's just give yourself permission to say that. Give yourself permission to pursue that. Do you think it's permission just to be like, I want to be wealthy, like saying that out loud? Or is it more like a mindset or yeah? I think. It's both. I think when you say it out loud and you like admit it to yourself, then everything sort of falls in line, right? Like I don't know why I always think back to this example, but Kim Kardashian says that from a very young age, she always knew she wanted to be famous. Like that was her explicit

goal. Like she just wanted to be famous. And so like for her, if she was saying that out loud, even though that like that's kind of like a you know like you said like people bristle at it right like kind of a little tacky like you don't want to say it out loud yeah you don't want to say it out loud but she like was very unabashed about it so I think because she was so explicit in that like everything she did aligned aligned to that goal yeah I love that I think you guys will see we're we're going to do a director's cut episode with Susie Welch and this is one of our another guest who came on our podcast who talks about your values Dr. Susan. Dr. Susie Welch. And, you know, for both Gene and me, I won't go into too much detail about it. But like our top five values, one of the shared ones is affluence. So like this is something that's really important to Gene and me because of like how we grew up and how we envision our future. How we envision our future path. Yeah.

Like I want to be rich. And just the things that we enjoy. And wealthy. Yeah. I want to be rich and wealthy. I want to be rich and wealthy. Okay, so speaking of wanting to be wealthy, I loved the story that he told about how when he was 15, he basically created an asset out of like, quote unquote, nothing, right? Like, he created value.

Yes. He got equity in some sort of business because he used the relationship that his grandma had with this, like, local real estate owner, like a local, whoever gives out the permits. The permits. So like a local government official. Yeah. Basically who had a crush on his grandma and she was 15 years old. And I just love that example because it really was like he made something out of nothing. He like created the opportunity out of thin air.

And that's why that's what he was recommending to people, right? That's what he was saying. He was like, you need to find some way to create value. I also like that he talked about that fact a lot. He was like the whole point of. of like, I think he's unabashed about making money and being wealthy because he's like, I provide something of value to this world. Yes.

Right. And so like if you do that, you will be rewarded. Yes. In many different ways, including monetarily. Yes. So I kind of thought that was like, I don't know, it was just really logical. It just made a lot of sense to me. I was like, I can get behind that.

And I really love the statement he said around this where he said capitalism is very fair. And he's just like, this is. might be a hot take, but he's just like, I believe capitalism is fair. You might not like the people who, you know, are creating products or are business leaders or business owners. But if they are creating something of value and consumers and clients purchase or pay for something, there is something of value being exchanged. And he says that like, you know, America has like a zillion pockets where you can create value for someone else. We have like a massive GDP, like, trillions of dollars. Like there is some sort of niche or pocket. You could create value for someone.

And I just thought that that just was kind of inspiring to me. Like I need that on a talk track every day. Because I was just like he was able to literally create something from nothing when he was 15. And he was rewarded for that. And I'm like, why are why am I stopping myself from doing anything? There are no limits. If Fernando could do that in like, freaking Mexico. when he was 15. Yeah. It also shows he was very scrappy. Leveraging his scrappiness.

Leveraging his salesmanship. Leveraging his personal relationships, whatever they may be. Like I just love the hunger in him to do something. And maybe it came from a place of desperation. Maybe it came from a place of need and not necessarily want. But like, he has a fire in him. And I love seeing that with people we speak with. Yeah.

I think back to that phrase. capitalism is apparently fair. I think it's interesting because I would not say, I would say capitalism is definitely not equitable for sure. I would say, is capitalism fair? It depends on what you're defining as capitalism because it is such a broad term. I think opportunity is not fair. Right.

Opportunity is not equal. I think opportunity is not equal or necessarily fair. but I do think the principle of like value exchange of capitalism is very fair. Oh, she says value exchange. And I'm not the one with an economics degree here. That'd be me. That'd be me. Yeah.

I mean, I do think at least, at the very least, capitalism is very logical. Like, is that the, or is that the right word, logical or like formulaic? It's like inputs and outputs. Well, so there's my like economic. degree, right? Like, I can't stop thinking like that. It's like inputs and outputs, like, there is an element to it that is like, you can crack the code. But is it necessarily fair person to person? I guess, like, the world is not fair, right? Everyone's born into different situations. But, like, seeing like, you know, Fernando as an example, you can make the most

of the hands that you are dealt. It's definitely, everyone has dealt different hands. So access to opportunity is very different. And maybe the ceiling to which you can climb is different for everyone given what the cards they are dealt. Yeah. But this is a good example of how he created his own opportunity out of nothing. It's cool. It's inspiring. It's amazing.

Yeah. I need to listen to this episode 10 more times. I love it. It needs to be my wake-up track. I need to hear Fernando's voice when I wake up. I'm not even kidding. I'm so inspired. Your hair looks really good.

Oh, thank you. My mermaid hair. Anyway, should we share that funny story? So, okay, so randomly Shree was like printing out photos at CVS. Oh my God. And she had some like extra photos left over. Right. And it was right after we did the interview with Fernando.

Guys, you think this is a joke? It's really not. So like I print out photos at CVS. I think it was maybe a friend's birthday or something. And like you have this package. It's like print 20 photos for like. like five dollars and like I only had like 18 photos to print I was like okay I have two extra photos I might as well print something make the most of my trip to CVS so I'm like looking through my camera

roll and then recently we did the interview with Fernando so I printed out two photos of like the three of us Gene me and Fernando like standing up like hanging out and then like I took the photos I was originally going to like mail it to him to be like thank you for being on our podcast I didn't end up doing that like I forgot but then I have one of the photos and it's like paste it up next to my like work desk at home because I it's like so random yeah it's a nice little photo but it's like anyway it's like overlooking me every single day while in that my office and it's just like kind of hilarious it's hilarious so one concept that really blew my mind was when fernando talked about his experience with chick filet and I think you and I were we were going into

the conversation thinking that he had invested in the company that's at least how like I approach the conversation. But basically he corrected us. He's like there's no way to invest in Chick-fil-A. That's not actually what happened. Yeah, it's a private company. It's a private company. I would love to invest in Chick-fil-A, but I couldn't do it in the conventional, traditional way. But he was really impressed with the company and how it runs. And so he found a really creative outlet to invest in Chick-fil-A but not actually invest. So basically he created the buildings and leased out the buildings to companies. So in effect, they would pay him rent. And he would calculate that in his mind to be like, the rent you're paying me is basically some percentage of the total profit that you're

making. So yeah, I'm kind of invested in Chick-fil-A or, you know, he talked about like CVS and all these banks and all these other companies he's built properties for. But I just thought that was a really creative way to go about it. Seeing as like Gene and I are always saying now, like if things are a binary, like how do you get things off the binary? How do you get creative so that you can get to the outcome that you want? So it's either like, yes or no, I can invest in Chick-fil-A, no, I cannot. And he's like, no, like, I'm going to do it my own way. Yeah. And I'm going to do it in the way that I know best, which is real estate. Yeah. I thought that was so cool. And it's kind of inspiring for me that, like, if I am put up against a problem or something, I'm like, and it is a binary, yes or no,

or someone says no to me flat out. And I'm like, am I going to take that as like the final answer? Like, no. No. In my head, I'll be like, it's not A or B. It's C for Sheree. Well, like, if things are a binary, how do we get them off the binary? That's at least, I don't think I've actually like done something with that yet.

But like it's in my mind. So if it does come up in the next like several weeks or months, like that is what I'm going to be thinking about. Yeah. I mean, it is kind of what you've done with your career. Same more. Well, just you wanted to do something that is helping to educate people, right? Because that's what you were doing at LinkedIn. Yeah.

She worked on LinkedIn learning, the product. Yeah, which is an ed tech platform that had all these like learning modules and different sort of classes on LinkedIn. And that was something that I think was very true to your character and like your values. and then you also are very outgoing and love to make content. And then that separately was like your sort of like content side career, right? Which you were doing for a while on the side. And then this is, you found a way to combine them.

Yeah. I wasn't like, oh, I have to do one or the other. I can do it in my own way. Yeah. And also I think the concept of like an education based influence. wasn't a thing. You were one of the very first ones. Yeah, because I think education wasn't fun or sexy. I mean, I don't know if it is now, but at least like we're trying a now education wears a one shoulder time. Now education wears, shows one shoulder. And has mermaid and mermaid hair.

Just one shoulder. But yeah, no, I think it's it the medium is reinventing itself and I leaned into that. And that's kind of voila where we are today with Tiger sisters. Wala. Okay, so the last concept that I want to bring up that Fernando talked about was we had asked him where like something about like, oh, is it important that you went to Harvard? Like, is it important for people to go to Ivy League schools? And his answer was that it is important in so far that having that brand is an information shortcut. And I love that phrase. And we've like totally latched onto it and started using it, you know, as our own. But it originally came from Fernando. And he was like, it is an information shortcut where it tells people something about you. Yeah. Right. And you don't need to prove yourself every time you

walk into the door if you have that sort of information shortcut to your name. So he was like, does everyone need it? No. Do some people need it more than others? Yes. But, but the other thing he said is that it all doesn't really matter unless you can execute. Right. So like if you are someone that has a Harvard MBA or a Stanford MBA and you're kind of like shit like you're kind of like mid or like bullshit and you like can't actually get things done then it doesn't really matter it's actually even worse your credentials can only get you so far yeah well it's even worse because then they're like here's this person who has like this Harvard MBA and they're like totally full of shit name them who who are we talking about right now

Does it seem like I'm talking about someone specific? Kind of. No, but I agree with you. I like the information shortcut part because that's how people work. I said another way, information shortcut, something that we learned in business school is borrowed credibility. Oh. That's a little. That's another way to say it.

I think it's another way to say it. It's a little bit different. It's maybe adjacent, but I think they're very similar. Where did you learn that? What class? With Glenn Cremont, my writing professor at Stanford. What was the context? The context is that when you are writing an email, a cold email to someone who you don't know and you're asking for something, you can say, Jean suggested I reach out to you.

Oh, yes. Immediately. Oh, that hits. Yes. But only if Gene has a connection to the person you're emailing. And the person you're emailing respects Gene enough to then respond to your cold email. So it is borrowed credibility and an information shortcut that like we are connected in some way and you know, you are doing this person a favorite.

You know, you guys understand. And like on that exact topic, a lot of times people write cold emails and be like from a fellow Dartmouth grad or from a fellow Harvard Business School grad that is another example. Information shortcut borrowed credibility. It's both things. Yes. Yeah. Also another example of information shortcut slash borrowed credibility.

one reason why so many startup founders are like hungry to get the top named VCs on their cap table. The second, you have an Andresen, a Sequoia, a light speed. Yeah. Like that is borrowed credibility because they've already done well as venture capital firms and it signals something to the outside world. So I would say those are kind of some examples of how it plays out. Thank you guys so much for tuning into this episode of Tiger Sisters. It is our first ever director's cut episode. Let us know what you think.

Do you like this format? I hope you do because there's more coming your way. And do you have any thoughts, questions, or other people or interviews you think we should go back to? And do you know, what other questions do you have for us? We'd love to share them with you. And very important if you made it all the way to this part. As long as you are not driving, take two seconds and subscribe to our newsletter, our substack. The link is either the link is in the description.

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