We Study Billionaires - The Investor’s Podcast Network - TIP199: Learning from Jeff Bezos - Blue Origin, Being a Founder, Profitability and more (Business Podcast)

Starting point is 00:00:00 You're listening to TIP. On today's show, we have a discussion about the wealthiest person on the entire planet, Mr. Jeff Bezos. As everyone knows, Jeff is the founder of Amazon and numerous other subsidiaries. The amazing thing about Amazon and Jeff's rise to the top is it all happened within the last 20 years. Jeff grew Amazon from the ground up, and today his personal net worth is $143 billion. So just to put that in perspective, Jeff could spend $392,000 every single day for the next thousand years before he'd run out of money. And that's also assuming that he makes no interest on that money during that thousand years.

Starting point is 00:00:45 So during the interview, we place some of his responses to various interview questions and we cover a wide array of topics to include even his thoughts on space and his company Blue Origin. Additionally, Stig was out on travel, so my good friend Brian Rutherford filled in for him. Brian is a former instructor of economics at West Point, and he's a graduate of MIT. So without further delay, here's our discussion around the ideas of Jeff Bezos. You are listening to The Investors Podcast, where we study the financial markets and read the books that influence self-made billionaires the most. We keep you informed and prepared for the unexpected. All right. So welcome to the Investors podcast. Like I said in the introduction, I'm here with my good friend, Brian Rutherford. And Brian, great to have you back on the show again, man. Hey, great to be back with you, Preston. So we're going to be talking about Jeff Bezos. Everyone, I'm sure, listening to this knows who Jeff Bezos is. So without going into all the background and slowing things down, let's just talk about the first question that we're going to play here. The question that Jeff was asked was, when did you know that Amazon is going to be way bigger than just a bookstore?

Starting point is 00:02:09 And this is his response. Well, I knew that the books, strangely, because I was very prepared for this to take a really long time. I knew that the books business was going to be successful in the first 30 days. I was shocked at how many books we sold. We were ill-prepared. You know, I had all the, we had only 10 people in the company at that time, and most of them were software engineers. And so everybody, including me and the softers, were all like packing boxes. We didn't even have packing tables.

Starting point is 00:02:39 And we were on our hands and knees on a concrete floor packing the boxes. And about, you know, one or two in the morning I said to one of my software engineering colleagues, I said, you know, Paul, this is killing my knees. We need to get knee pads. And Paul looked at me and he's like, Jeff, we need to get packing tables. and I was like, oh my God, that is such a good idea. The next day I bought packing tables and it doubled our productivity and probably saved our backs and our knees too.

Starting point is 00:03:13 So for me, I mean, there's not too much to really add to what he's saying here other than it's just crazy to think that this guy was packing books himself from the ground up from the very beginning. You know, we had Ian Siegel on the show, Brian. I don't know if you heard this interview, the guy from ZipRecruiter. And the thing that he told us, he says, if you have something that is going to be big,

Starting point is 00:03:38 he's like, you're going to know right away. It's not something that's going to just like kind of start coming into play three years later. He's like, you'll know right out of the gate if you've got something big. So I'm kind of curious if you have any piggyback comments on this one. First of all, I think entrepreneurs absolutely believe in themselves. They believe in their ability to find a, a market and exploit a niche in it. And I think that that's what Jeff was saying here, right?

Starting point is 00:04:06 But it goes back to risk. You know, I think about business plans and you and I both went through an MBA experience, and a lot of times business plans get laughed at as not worth the paper they're written on, but it's not about the plan. It's the planning that goes into it, right? So Jeff understood at that point, he had done the market analysis and understood that if you put a bunch of skews in one location and then shipped out from there, that was going to be a whole lot better position and really able to exploit this new thing called the internet in 1995 versus having distributed points of sale. And the one thing he didn't know is timing. Was it the right time for that business? And he said, yes, he knew within 30 days. Hey, I want to check out this question where he was asked,

Starting point is 00:04:54 how has your leadership style changed over the years? I think this would be kind of interesting to hear. It's changed a lot, mostly just because it's had to. You know, the company has changed so much. And I can't, you know, the company is 10 people or 100 people. I can be involved in every decision, not just, you know, not just the objectives, like what are we going to do, but even the methods, how are we going to do it? You know, the CEO or the founder, whoever it is, leading the company cannot be involved in all of those decisions. They certainly cannot be involved. in the methods of how things are going to get done. So you do have to change your leadership approach as the company scales,

Starting point is 00:05:37 but the principles of the company have not changed. In fact, I probably spend more of my time now on culture and trying to set high standards for things, like customer obsession and inventiveness and things like that. So for me, I'm kind of a teacher now, so it's changed quite a bit. And I have this great luxury. I love my job. I tap dance into work.

Starting point is 00:06:08 I just got back for an amazing vacation in Norway. I got to go dog sledding and go to a wolf preserve and all this really cool stuff. But I couldn't wait to get back to work because it's so fun. And one of the reasons is fun for me is I get to work in the future. So my job, I have very limited kind of day-to-day operational needs. I've constructed my job so that I don't have to be pulled into the present. I can stay two or three years in the future. And actually, I'm always advising my senior team,

Starting point is 00:06:48 the people who report to me that they should organize themselves in the same way. We're big enough now that they need to be able to look around corners. they can't be, if something pulls me into the present, it's because something has gone wrong. You know, and we need to, you know, kind of figure it's a firefighting exercise. And that's not how you should be running a business of this scale. So it's changed a lot. I don't know. I find that response pretty interesting because it's so much different than the Buffett style approach that we are constantly studying.

Starting point is 00:07:21 I know Buffett, he's trying to figure out the valuation of a business based off the free cash flows into the future and kind of understanding what the assets, how durable those assets are and whether they'll be impaired into the future. But it seems like Bezos is trying to invent the future. And it's where his primary focus is at almost all the time. Like he's totally hired somebody else to take care of the day-to-day operations because he doesn't even want to think about it, which I also find fascinating. The one thing in there that I really like Brian was he was talking about how much of his time is consumed into the culture. And then he made that statement, customer obsession.

Starting point is 00:08:02 He said customer obsession after he was talking about the culture that he's trying to groom there. So like for me, that that's like a slip of his like secret sauce. And anybody who's studied Bezos a little bit knows that it's like he, he basically has the chair at the conference room that's empty and supposedly the customer is sitting in there and everyone has to, you know, ask the customer, a question to the empty chair or whatever. But, I mean, really, that's his secret sauce.

Starting point is 00:08:32 He wants customers to be obsessed with his brand. And if it doesn't create that obsession, he doesn't do it. Yeah, no, you're exactly right. He focuses on the customer and not the competitor. This is what Apple did as well. Give the customer what they want before they know they want it. So, yeah, I think that strategic thing. thinking, looking around the corners, I think was key. And I also think, you know, think about

Starting point is 00:08:56 how he focuses on the important but not urgent, right? So there's this famous like quadrant of things where you have urgent on one axis and important and not important on the other, axis. And so which quadrant do you want to be in? And I think about the important but not urgent because if you don't focus there, everything will end up in the important and urgent quadrants and you'll spend all your time as he says putting out fires. That's really, really key, I think. Let's take a quick break and hear from today's sponsors. All right. I want you guys to imagine spending three days in Oslo at the height of the summer. You've got long days of daylight, incredible food, floating saunas on the Oslo Fjord, and every

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Starting point is 00:13:29 That's Shopify.com slash WSB. All right. Back to the show. So the next one that I want to talk about here is something that's a little outdated, but I think that it's an interesting conversation to listen to this. He was asked, and this was played, do you remember when this was played, Brian? It was, uh, 2014, late in 2014.

Starting point is 00:13:53 Yeah, 2014, this was played. And, uh, he's talking, he was asked, you know, your company's not profitable. Uh, does that bother you when people say your company's not profitable? And this is his response. And, and why this is a little outdated is because, you know, Amazon's obviously making some, net income at this point. But it's not, it's not a huge relative to their top line revenue.

Starting point is 00:14:18 If you're looking at it proportionally, it's not huge. He's bringing in some earnings. But even, even now it's still kind of hit or miss sometimes. Well, I think this is an interesting question, just to hear his mindset

Starting point is 00:14:30 and how he thinks about this stuff. So that's why we're going to play this one. Warren Buffett has this great quote. He says, you can hold a rock concert, and that's okay. And you can hold a ballet. And that's okay.

Starting point is 00:14:41 Just don't hold a rock. concert and advertise it as a ballet. Investors come in all shapes and sizes. They have different investment horizons, different approaches, different beliefs about what the right kind of portfolio looks like. And so it's not one, you know, people use Wall Street as a shorthand, but there isn't one type of investor. They come in all shapes and sizes. And you have to be super clear about what kind of company you're trying to build, what your approach is. We laid that out in our 1997 annual shareholder letter, we said we were going to take big bets. We said they were going to fail. We said some of them hopefully were going to work. We said we were going to invest

Starting point is 00:15:21 for the long term, that we were going to try to take advantage of market opportunities as they arose. And there's a certain kind of investor who is aligned with that approach. And so, again, you can hold the ballet or the rock concert, and both can work. Just be clear about which one you are and then people can self-select. I would say, you know, it's very difficult for a publicly chated company to switch. So if you've been holding a rock concert and then you want to have a ballet, that transition is going to be difficult. But if you've done it from the very beginning, and then I think it's not that difficult to do. We would all love all of our numbers to be smooth lines up and to the right, and that would be terrific, but that's not how it worked.

Starting point is 00:16:08 You know, those numbers are output measures. And I mean, I guess you could try to manage your quarterly earnings very precisely, but I think personally that would be a mistake. You know, most of the work that we put into any particular quarter happened years ago. So it's not, you know, there aren't that many knobs you can turn during a quarter. I mean, you can, but they're very, they're like eating your seed corn if you turn those knobs. those knobs. You don't want to do that. And so it's, it's, you know, people, I think if you focus on the controllable inputs to your business, instead of the outputs, in the long term, you get

Starting point is 00:16:52 better results. So the Benjamin Graham quote here is that in the short term, the stock market is a voting machine, and the long term, it's a weighing machine. And I think people are well advised to build a company that wants to be weighed and not voted upon. And that means having good return on invested capital and having, you know, lots of free cash flow. But if you said to me, if I said, here's a job I would reject. If somebody came up to me and said, Jeff, I want your job to be to drive up the Amazon stock price. And just manage that directly. Now, this might sound ridiculous to some of you, but many companies actually do this.

Starting point is 00:17:30 They actually go out and they try to sell the stock. That's kind of the final output. and it's much better to say, okay, let's not do that. That's not going to be sustainable. It's kind of a silly approach. What are the inputs to a higher stock price? And you say, okay, well, free cash flow and return on invested capital are inputs to a higher stock price. Okay, so let's keep working backwards.

Starting point is 00:17:56 What are the inputs to free cash flow? And you keep working backwards until you get to something that's controllable. and a controllable input for free cash, that would be something like lower cost structure. And you back up from there and you say, okay, well, you know, if we can improve our picking efficiency and our fulfillment centers and reduce defects, defects are very, very costly.

Starting point is 00:18:17 It's probably, you know, reducing defects at the root is one of the best ways to lower cost structure. And so if you, then that starts to be a job you would accept. You would say, if you're, you know, a reasonable person, you would say, I have no idea how to drive up the stock price. I can't manage that directly. It's not a controllable input. But I can make your picking algorithms more efficient.

Starting point is 00:18:39 And that will reduce cost structure and then, you know, follow that chain all along the way. That's what you do in all of these businesses. You want, you know, customer obsession, you want to invent your way out of boxes, you want to invent your way into the future, you want to be patient, and you want to have operational excellence so that you're finding defects at the root and fixing them. So that was some powerful stuff there. I love that last part where he's talking about what's your output versus what your inputs. And it's funny how much, even in business schools, and Brian, I'm curious if you saw the same thing in MIT,

Starting point is 00:19:19 but business schools focusing on the stock price and just looking at things from like the pure numbers on the financial statements opposed to, let's go and dig deeper. Well, what drives free cash flow? What drives this? And then ultimately arriving at, you have to be adding value to the customer. That's what he was really describing there at the end

Starting point is 00:19:39 is he's lowering his cost structure, which then that's being carried out to the customers. They get lower prices and they're more satisfied relative to the competition. So I love that discussion. I'm curious what some of the points you took out of it, Brian. Yeah, first, clearly he's listening to your podcast because he's talking about DeCathrow and return on invested capital as good measures of the health of the business. And he also, you know, he highlighted the lunacy kind of quarterly reports.

Starting point is 00:20:11 Nobody does their business quarterly reports. And even, you know, to some degree, annual reports. And that's what I heard at Sloan as well is, you know, when CEOs would come and talk to us, you know that it's there that they think about stock price because in a lot of ways, and let's just be honest, that's how they're compensated. Yeah, a lot of really great points about investing for the future and that sort of thing. There's just a touch of selection bias here, right? We're listening to, you know, an answer of Jeff Bezos here in 2018,

Starting point is 00:20:42 and he was saying these, you know, grandiose things in 1997. Had none of that worked, we wouldn't be talking about Jeff Bezos right now. So, you know, there's a little bit of looking backward, you know, to look forward. So, yeah, some really great stuff, though, in terms of being, you know, guided by principles of long-term investing. You know, the one thing that I think about whenever I hear that response, the first thing you think is, well, why are so many CEOs being driven by the stock price and not looking at it the same way that Jeff is describing it here? And the only thing that I can come up with is he has made his money, right? he's a major shareholder in Amazon. And so he's not looking for the bonus.

Starting point is 00:21:27 He's not looking for the what. This guy is the wealthiest person on the planet. So he's just trying to create the best business possible. And I think when you go out there and you look at other businesses that do operate the way he's describing, oftentimes you find a similar situation where the CEO slash founder owns 30% of the stock and is making decisions based on what he thinks is going to add the most customer value and what's best for the business, opposed to how can I get a $10 million bonus this year?

Starting point is 00:22:01 Sure, short versus long-term returns, absolutely. Yeah, yeah. So, I mean, it's not guaranteed you're going to see that across similar structures, but I think that you find it more common in similar situations as what we just described as far as the governance of the of the business. Yeah, you can focus on social impact and being a better citizen. And he'll talk a lot about that kind of stuff. So here's an interesting question because it's often brought up about his ownership of the Washington Post.

Starting point is 00:22:35 And I found this really fascinating to hear his comments on this because the question that was asked was, did you buy the Washington Post as a personal toy or just wanted to basically, influence or put your political spin on things? Is that why you bought it? And this was his response. You can explain things to people, but you can't understand things to people. And so I can, I can, you know, all I can do is, is say what really my thought process was. And I was not looking to buy a newspaper. I had, I had, it had never even crossed my mind. And so when the opportunity came up, because I only came up because I had known Don Graham at that point for more than 15 years. Any of you who are lucky enough to know Don knows that he is the most honorable gentleman that you will ever meet.

Starting point is 00:23:29 He's a remarkable guy. And he so loved the post that he believed, even though this was a huge personal sacrifice for him because they've been in his family for so long, that he needed to find a new home for it. I think he was, I think he didn't, there were certain purchasers he was hoping would not end up buying the post because he wanted it to remain independent. So when he approached me with this, I said, you know, I'm the wrong guy because I don't know anything about the newspaper business. And he said, that's okay, because we have a lot of people at the post who know a lot about the newspaper business. And what we really need is somebody who knows something more about the internet.

Starting point is 00:24:10 and the post was in very difficult financial position at that time. And so for me, I had to decide what, it was it hopeless? And I didn't believe it was hopeless. I thought I was optimistic that the post could be turned around. And then second, I had to decide, did I want to put my own time and energy into this? And that for me, I just had to ask the simple question, is it an important institution? And the answer to that question is, yes, it was very obvious to me. As soon as I thought about it that way, it's like, okay, I think I actually can help.

Starting point is 00:24:45 I can help in two ways. I can provide financial resources while this turnaround occurs. And I can also help with my internet knowledge. And then is it an institution worth saving? You bet. It's the most important newspaper in the most important capital city in the Western world. Crazy not to save that newspaper. I'm going to be very happy.

Starting point is 00:25:09 when I'm 80 that I made that decision. The Post is it for me. I'm not interested in buying other newspapers. But I do, I do, I watch that movie and, you know, it's helpful. I love that movie and also reading Catherine Graham's memoir, which won a Pulitzer Prize and was an amazing book. Because it gets me ready. You know, I, as the owner of the Post, I know that at times the Post,

Starting point is 00:25:39 is going to write stories, they're going to make very powerful people, very unhappy. I would be humiliated to interfere. I would be so embarrassed. I would turn bright red. And it is nothing to do with, I don't even get so far. I just don't want to. For me, it would feel icky. It would feel gross. It would be one of those things when I'm 80 years old. I would be so unhappy with myself if I interfered. Why would I? I want that paper to be independent. So it's, well, we have a fantastic editor in Marty Barron. We have a fantastic publisher in Fred Ryan. The head of our technology team, a guy named Shyash is fantastic. They don't need my help in the newsroom for sure. First of all, that's also an expert's job. It would be like

Starting point is 00:26:28 me getting on the airplane and going up to the front of the plane and saying the pilots should move aside. Let me do this. Let's take a quick break and hear from today's sponsors. No, it's not your imagination, risk and regulation are ramping up, and customers now expect proof of security just to do business. That's why VANTA is a game changer. VANTA automates your compliance process and brings compliance, risk, and customer trust together on one AI-powered platform. So whether you're prepping for a SOC 2 or running an enterprise GRC program, VANTA keeps you secure and keeps your deals moving. Instead of chasing spreadsheets and screenshots, VANTA gives you continuous automation across more than 35 security and privacy frameworks. Companies like Ramp

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Starting point is 00:29:42 investing, including objectives, risks, charges, and expenses. This and other information can be found in the income fund fund funders.com slash income. This is a paid advertisement. All right, back to the show. So it's pretty interesting discussion to hear how that really unfold. And it's just kind of like a family friend. He was friends with the owners and they wanted to offload it to the right person and he was the guy. Now, what I think is admirable in the way that he looked at this is he asked himself, is this something that society should value? Is this something that adds value to society?

Starting point is 00:30:24 And whenever he concluded, yes, that's that weighed heavily in the way that he made his decision. And I find that really important. And I think that that's something that a lot of people maybe not know about the way that Jeff makes decisions on the types of businesses and assets that he that he purchases. Now, was that just because he was, you know, giving a presentation and in a briefs, well, maybe a little bit. I don't know, but I think that that's something that, I don't know, I think that's something people should really think about whenever they're creating a new product or service. Yeah, so perfect point. I mean, he really just highlights his thinking between short and long-term value to his customers,

Starting point is 00:31:10 right? Because he modulated in his answer there from market opportunity, this opportunity came up, you know, I looked at it from, you know, guiding values, you know, point of view. and then he ended up talking about it as an institution and how he'd feel when he is 80 years old. And I think what he's talking about there is long-term value to society. Okay, so for this next question, he's asked, how do you manage disparate businesses? And this was his response. We do so many different things.

Starting point is 00:31:41 So this is a question I said, as good. How can you do so many different things? Why don't you stick to the knitting? the kind of traditional advice would be to stay focused and keep the business simple. And the way I think about this is we actually do stick to one thing. It's just not describe, the business itself. We do web services, which is big enterprises buying compute services from us, and we have our retail business, and we have Amazon Studios,

Starting point is 00:32:12 which is making original content, Amazon Go, the things you listed. But the cultural thread that runs through all these things is the same. We only have a few principles of Amazon kind of core values that we go back to over and over again. And if you looked at each of the things that we do, you would see those run straight through everything. So the first one, and by far the most important one, is customer obsession. And we talk about it as customer obsession, as opposed to, competitor obsession. And I have seen over and over again

Starting point is 00:32:50 companies talk about that they're customer-focused, but really when I pay close attention to them, I believe they are competitor-focused. And that's just a completely different mentality. By the way, competitor-focused can work, but I don't think it works

Starting point is 00:33:05 in the long run as well as customer-focused. For one thing, once you're the leader, if your whole culture is competitor-obsessed, It's kind of hard to stay energized and motivated if you're out in front. Whereas customers are always unsatisfied. They're always discontent. They always want more.

Starting point is 00:33:25 And so no matter how far you get out there in front of your competitors, you're still behind your customers. So they're always pulling you along. So customer obsession is a deep principle that underlies everything we do. Another one is eagerness to invent. So we love to pioneer. And when we have done, by the way, whenever we have tried to do something in a kind of me-to fashion, we have failed at it. We need to have something that is differentiated, unique, something that customers are going to like that we're kind of leading with.

Starting point is 00:33:59 So that's another element that works for us. And then another one is long-term thinking. We are willing to take some time and be patient with our business initiative. and that runs through everything. So a lot of our competitors might have two to three-year kind of timeframes, and we might have more of a five-to-seven-year sort of time frame. And then the last one, operational excellence. So literally, how do you have high standards around identifying defects,

Starting point is 00:34:32 fixing defects at the root, all those kinds of things that lead to what I think also can be in a simpler way, just stated as professionalism, that you want to do things right. just for the sake of doing them right. So I really like that piece. And I liked how he said the part there about every time we've tried to compete with something that basically beat us to the punch or that created something before us. And then we try to bring something to the market that competes with that. It's never really worked out too well for us.

Starting point is 00:35:04 That is a really interesting statement because, I mean, they've got so many different products and so many different things on their, you know, assets on their. balance sheet. So for him to say that with the size of their balance sheet, I think that's really telling. And this really goes to, we've never covered this book on the show, but it's called Blue Ocean Strategy. It's a pretty popular book. But that's the whole premise of the Blue Ocean Strategy is that you create your own stuff and you're not in this competition mode. You're more looking to satisfy the customer. Brian, I'm curious with some of the points you pulled out of there. Yeah, I think he, just the way he frames it is that we don't do.

Starting point is 00:35:42 lots of things. We do one thing. That one thing comes down to customer obsession, eagerness to invent, you know, having that long-term vision. I mean, at the bottom line, they leverage a platform, and that platform is logistics. And so, you know, you just look at the day that they bought Whole Foods or the day that that was announced, grocery chains were down 8 to 10 percent in their market cap. Think how much money was lost just because Amazon was going to take their platform and apply it to this new industry. I guarantee you, Jeff wasn't thinking about how can I be the bet's grocer. He was thinking about how do I use those guiding principles, that customer obsession

Starting point is 00:36:21 and really change the grocery experience. Yeah. Yeah. No, I'm really excited that he basically broke out the four big rules for people to kind of hear how he analyzes pretty much everything that comes across his desk. And really, that's the culture. He's breeding those big four points into his culture. for anybody that comes in and brief something.

Starting point is 00:36:46 I think that's a very keen insight and definitely worth writing down. If you're creating your own business, then think about that vantage point. So this next one, I don't know if your everyday entrepreneur might gain insights or whatever out of this one. But I just think it's cool. So I want to play this question. It relates to he was asked, what in the world is blue origin up to? and for people that aren't familiar with this, Blue Origin is a space company,

Starting point is 00:37:15 so he's going to talk about this in the next one. Well, Blue Origin is, the vision for Blue Origin is millions of people living and working in space. And the key thing is we have to dramatically reduce the cost of access to space. Right now, space travel is very expensive. And the reason it's expensive is not hard to understand is because we throw the hardware away after each use. And so we need reuse.

Starting point is 00:37:40 usable rocket vehicles. And that's what Blue Origin is working on. We're working on making sure that we don't have to throw the plane away every time after you fly to your vacation destination. That would definitely increase the cost of your vacation. And so that's what we need to do. And we can do it. It's totally possible. And I think it's important. My view is that it's incredibly important work that needs to be done and done as quickly. as possible. And I have my own reasons why I believe that they can be explained pretty simply. And for me, it's not the, there's a very kind of common argument that's been around for a long time, actually kind of first popularized by Arthur C. Clark, who said all civilizations

Starting point is 00:38:28 become space-faring or extinct. And this is the kind of plan B argument that, you know, when Earth is destroyed somehow, we better make sure that we don't have all of our eggs in one basket. And I hate the plan B argument. I think plan B with respect to Earth being destroyed is make sure plan A works. So we have sent robotic probes to every planet in this solar system. Believe me, this is the best one. We know that. It's not even close.

Starting point is 00:39:07 you know my friends who say they want to move to Mars or something I said like why don't you go live in Antarctica for a year first because it's a garden paradise compared to Mars and so we really this planet is so amazing it's a jewel in our solar system and we have if you take baseline energy usage on Earth

Starting point is 00:39:32 and just compound it at a few percent a year for just a few hundred years You have to cover the entire Earth's surface in solar cells. So that's not going to happen. So we have two choices. We either go out into space or we switch over to a civilization of stasis. And personally, I do not like the idea of stasis. You know, we have, our grandchildren and their grandchildren will live in a much better world if they can continue to advance.

Starting point is 00:40:07 and develop and use more energy and all of the things that we've enjoyed for hundreds of years as a civilization of growth. I don't even really believe in stasis. I think things are either growing or shrinking. I think stasis is highly unusual and real life doesn't exist. I don't even think liberty is consistent

Starting point is 00:40:27 with the idea of stasis. I mean, if you get real stasis, somebody's going to have to tell you how many kids you can have, how much energy you can use, there'll be all kinds of things that just aren't consistent with liberty and freedom.

Starting point is 00:40:39 But in space, we have, for all practical purposes, unlimited resources. We can have a trillion humans in the solar system and still wouldn't be crowded. And so then if you had a trillion humans, you'd have 1,000 Einstein's and 1,000 Mozart's and 1,000 Da Vinci's, and how cool would that be? But we have to go to space, and we have to go to space to save Earth. That's why this work is so important, and we don't have forever to do it. We've now gotten so big as a civilization on Earth that we kind of have to hurry. And so I believe that, you know, really in the kind of a long time frame, the most important work I'm doing is, is Blue Origin and pushing forward to get humanity established in the solar system.

Starting point is 00:41:26 You know, it wasn't in this interview. I heard a different interview with him. And one of the things that he kind of, he went into a little bit more depth on this narrative that he was talking there. And a lot of it revolved around the speed at which humans are consuming energy. And he started spouting off all the numbers. And he says, you know, in the last 10 years, the amount of energy that an individual human is using went up by this amount. and by whatever date, the energy consumption that we're going to need would pretty much have the whole planet covered in solar panels.

Starting point is 00:42:04 So he kind of cut that piece of the narrative out. And it was a really interesting discussion that he said in a different interview. But that's what's really driving his narrative on why he thinks humans need to really kind of push outside the planet. I also find it interesting that I think Elon Musk would tell you almost the exact same narrative with respect to, you know, we've got to become a multi-planet or outside of the Earth-type species in order to continue to exist if we're thinking anything outside of a couple hundred years from now. So, Brian, I'm curious to hear your thoughts on this one.

Starting point is 00:42:41 Yeah, really two things, right? First of all, I like how, again, reframe the question. What's the thing that's keeping us from doing this? And it's a logistics problem, right? Reusing that aircraft. And so again, can he leverage his platform to maybe solve that problem? And the other thing that I heard as I listened to him talk was, I think he could have been answering the Washington Post question again, right?

Starting point is 00:43:05 He says, important work needs to be done. I could have heard him say, hey, am I going to wish at 80 years old that I hadn't done this or that sort of thing? I really think that he is thinking about long-term impacts and what he needs to do as being a good, member of society. So do you think that he got to that point because he's just worth so much money and it's kind of like, okay, so what do I do with my life at this point?

Starting point is 00:43:31 Or do you think that Jeff Bezos was like this from day one? And I know there's no way to be able to answer that. It's Maslow's hierarchy of needs, right? He's like off the chart. He is taking care of himself and family and roof and food and everything else. And so really, you can look outside and how can he do the greatest good for the greatest number of people. And, you know, I applaud people that do that sort of thing.

Starting point is 00:43:56 And, you know, many of the world's richest people are starting to think about that, how they can create a positive impact on society. Yeah. Yeah, it's pretty interesting. I really like the discussion around this stuff. What I also find interesting, Brian, is that I believe he was the first one to land the rocket upright. And I don't think a lot of people realize that. I think most people would tell you that that was Elon Musk, but it wasn't.

Starting point is 00:44:25 In fact, I believe whenever Musk did land his rocket upright, Jeff Bezos sent him a tweet and said something to the tune of, hey, man, welcome to the club. Yeah, I think this just speaks to how those two gentlemen conduct themselves. You know, they're both doing very important things, but one chooses to do it more in the public eye than the other. and Jeff is just maybe a touch more quiet about it. Yeah, what's, you know, Elon? I mean, he's just shooting his car into space. That's it. It's some of the best marketing ever, right?

Starting point is 00:45:00 That thing worth $80,000 and he got how many millions of dollars worth of free advertisement. Oh, yeah. Hey, he's got to do something to keep that stock price propped up. Talk about earning money and going after a loss for as long as possible, right? Probably a whole other interview. we could talk about. Oh, yeah. And I'm sure that people listening to this because you get, you get people that are very polarized on that discussion. You got some diehard Tesla fans and

Starting point is 00:45:26 then you got some people saying it's going to, you know, get crushed. So we're not going to go down that path. We're just, we're just saying, you know, maybe it might be a little overvalued. We'll see. But, okay, Brian, really enjoyed talking some of these points over with you. So I want to tell the audience, Brian, do you remember what episode it was that we talked about your business? I can't remember what episode number it was. It was, gosh, it's been a few months. I think it was 174. I was researching it the other day and looking at, how long ago was that?

Starting point is 00:45:56 I think it was January or something like that. Well, check it out. You might be right. It's 174, episode 174. We had Brian on the show. And he talked about his business. He has a business called Claudine Wines. That's C-L-A-U-D-I-N-E-Wines.com.

Starting point is 00:46:14 It's the coolest business model. He does high-end wines at affordable prices where he like buys barrels from Napa Valley, sends him out. But we talk about his business model on that episode. So if you're interested about this, go back, listen to kind of, it's near the end of the episode. But he talks about his business. It's super cool. Check it out. I guarantee it it's going to be some of the best wine you drink.

Starting point is 00:46:38 And, you know, shoot me a message. I'll forward it off to Brian if you enjoyed, if you enjoyed his wine. So Brian, thank you so much for coming on the show and filling in for Stig. He's on his way to Denmark, and it's always great having you back on the show. Preston, always a pleasure to chat. Let's do it again at some time. Yep, absolutely. All right, so that's all we have for you guys on this week's episode of The Investors Podcast,

Starting point is 00:47:03 and we'll see you next week. Thanks for listening to TIP. To access the show notes, courses, or forums, go to the Investorspodcast.com. To get your questions played on the show, go to AskTheInvesters.com and win a free subscription to any of our courses on TIP Academy. This show is for entertainment purposes only. Before making investment decisions, consult a professional. This show is copyrighted by the TIP network. Written permission must be granted before syndication or rebroadcasting.

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