We Study Billionaires - The Investor’s Podcast Network - TIP261: Investing in Gold w/ Ken Lewis CEO of APMEX (Investing Podcast)

Starting point is 00:00:00 You're listening to TIP. Since 2012, gold has severely underperformed the U.S. stock market and most other equity markets around the world. Recently, many macro economists are suggesting that gold's about to have a major comeback. And since the start of 2019, gold has been up about 18% this year. So on today's show, we're going to be talking about gold with the CEO of Appmex, which is the largest precious metals retailer in North America. So if you're wanting to learn more about why gold has value, when it's appropriate to own gold in your portfolio, or you simply have an interest in something to protect potential debasement. This should be an interesting discussion with a huge influencer in

Starting point is 00:00:38 the space. So without further delay, here's our discussion with Ken Lewis. 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. Hey, everyone. Welcome to The Investors podcast. I'm your host, Preston Pish, and as always, I'm accompanied by my co-host Stig Broderson. And it's such a pleasure to have Mr. Ken Lewis with us today to talk about gold. So Ken, welcome to the show. Thanks for having me.

Starting point is 00:01:20 All right. So Ken, let's kick this thing off with a basic discussion about why people purchase gold and precious metals in the first place. Why do they have these things in their portfolio? Back in the days, it was kind of like a go-to, safe haven investment where people kind of felt like they didn't trust the system or they had concerns about the government. and where it was going. It was a nice way to kind of keep assets offline. I'd say over the last 10 or 15 years, that's actually now evolved. I think people are becoming more educated. They look at the statistics more, look at the numbers. They recognize that gold is within a portfolio can perform very well. One of the things I like to remind people is if you invested 100 bucks back

Starting point is 00:01:56 in the year 2000, gold is actually the second best performing asset class behind real estate since 2000. It has merits as a viable investment option. I think it is a little confusing for some. You already touched upon this, but could you talk to us why on the contrary, some investors holding back on gold and precious metals? They might have talked about it. They might hear that it's a good asset to hold, but few people end up pulling the trigger. Yeah, it's a great point. You know, you go out and you read the analyst out there, and they'll tell you, a five to 10 percent in gold is great for a portfolio, but many don't execute. We think part of that is due to complexity. I always joke, I have a buddy of mine. I used to work at Home Depot, back in corporate, and a buddy of mine

Starting point is 00:02:33 the minister guy really smart calls me up and says, can you walk me through gold again? Because I'm really confused how this works. There's this thing called spread and spot price and this and that. Can you educate me? And so it's not an easy thing to absorb initially. I think products like GLD, paper, ETFs have made it a little bit more easier for people to get into. And I also think, frankly, retail has done a better job of educating people on the merits of gold. Why people have it bought into gold, though, I think it deals a little bit of complexity. I think some people look at the opportunity cost when they look at taking assets out, cash out, if you will, putting into gold, what kind of return do they get outside of their investment? I think that can be sometimes a hurdle

Starting point is 00:03:09 for people, that opportunity cost, if you will. But the reality is just go off the numbers. Look at how it performs specifically when there's volatile time. I think one of the things that I think people go back and look at today is 2008, 2009. We all know what happened and how did gold perform then. And I think that kind of gave merit to gold in the long term. And frankly, the run-up we've had this year, I think kind of relates to people seeing the historical performance in times like 2008 and make them wonder, should I get on the bandway? Interesting, you would say that. You talked briefly about performance there.

Starting point is 00:03:38 So when would gold perform well? Do we have like a general rule of thumbway, I would say, in this type of maggie conditions, you know, so that's whenever gold would perform? I do a lot of reading on the different analysts. I have the opportunity to meet with a gentleman that's a lead analyst at one of the top metal banks once a year. And the analysts will tell you is they're always looking for correlations. They're always doing their R squares and they're trying to figure out what drives the price of gold. And what they'll tell you is once they think they figured it out, something changes, right?

Starting point is 00:04:04 And it's almost impossible to get to peg it perfectly. But when you start to think about certain conditions that do drive gold, a strong dollar generally is bad for gold. A weak dollar generally is going to be a better price for gold. When you have events in the marketplaces, things like international wars, things like that, that tends to be very good for gold. When you look at the equities markets and look at its valuations from a multiple standpoint, when they tend to get on the higher side of valuation, gold tends to perform fairly well. So, you know, there are indicators out there that do tend to point the direction of whether gold's going to go up or down. One of the things that I focused on a lot is kind of the upside and downside of precious middle ownership. And I think one of the things you'll find with gold tends to be a little bit less volatile than other options in the market, which, depending upon your state of mine and where you want to invest, that can be a good thing as well.

Starting point is 00:04:50 So, Ken, from a portfolio standpoint, we already covered why people might want to buy gold, but there's also an argument that it'll protect them from inflation. But for anyone that's looked at inflation over the last 10 years, it's barely registered anything, at least for the commodities that are listed on the traditional inflation gauges. But how do you respond to this idea of the relationship between gold and inflation? Yeah, you know, I think there's a couple things. And there's actually the guys pulled together a couple numbers for me. And I'll say it in simple terms and I'll give you the exact numbers. I heard a gentleman tell this story once.

Starting point is 00:05:24 I thought it was a great story. He said, you know, back in 1920, I could go out and I could buy a suit with a ounce of gold. And it was a relatively nice suit, but I could go buy a suit with an ounce of gold. In the year 2019, if I wanted to go buy a nice suit, I could still buy it with an ounce of gold. And you think about what the cost of Coke is or a gallon of gas or other things that have changed over the years. Clearly, that's not the case with the U.S. dollar. You know, one of the things I talked about, I didn't talk about really is things like debt in the U.S. economy and how we're printing money an unbelievable pace and how that can generally be a bad thing for inflation over the long run.

Starting point is 00:05:55 1913 when we came off the gold standard, the dollar has lost 96% of its purchasing power. A crazy, crazy statistic when you think about it. It's definitely one of those things where you need to think about inflation. You know, it maintains its value fairly well over the years and always has. That's such a good point. And let's continue talking about, you know, real life examples and how it is in real life because you often hear that you should buy gold or sell goal or whatever you hear in the news. And it's commonly expected that you know how to.

Starting point is 00:06:25 to do it. Whenever you hear it in the news, they're not like, you need to click this button or you need to go down to the local dealer. Let's make this a bit more practical and more hands-on. What are the different ways you can purchase, not just gold or precious metals in general? And perhaps you can talk about some of the pros and cons of the various methods. Well, first I'll hit it on at a high level. You can own paper nowadays. So things like the GLD with a significant amount of assets under management today is out there available to you. You can do that to your brokerage account. It's relatively convenient. those today who have a brokerage account investment account. It's 24-7 liquid, and you have great visibility to how it's performing. So there's a lot of good things there when it comes to paper. The negatives on paper is there's a fairly high cost. They're hitting you for 40 basis points, usually or more in some cases for paper. And that takes away from your returns, as everyone probably understands. There are other concerns about paper that I really worry about that probably

Starting point is 00:07:18 the everyday person would not worry about are things like counterparty risk, you know, are the assets really there to back the investments? What happens if this, scenario occurs or that scenario occurs. It might protect it. And there are a lot of concerned out there. The other thing finally on paper that kind of drives people crazy is it doesn't always trade exactly with the price of gold. It can trade at a premium. You can trade at a discount. You can trade at a discount. To think you're going in and just buying it because it's directly correlated to gold is not always true. You can time that incorrectly and buy it at a premium and then have it be at a discount when you go to sell and you have a bigger spread there.

Starting point is 00:07:48 Brought a lot more interest in it and it's been a good, good thing for the gold industry as a whole. Then there's physical. Physical is one of those things. It's kind of a love affair. I mean, you come in, you find the products you like best. Do I buy bars? Do I buy coins? You buy collectibles? You tend to hold those within your own premises, within a safe or another location to store it. What people tend to like about physical, it can't have a little higher cost when you compare it to spot, but they also have the assurances of knowing they can touch it, they can feel it. It's off the grid. It's not on any statement that you can pull up. It's a great way to pass on inheritance. And there's just a nice comfort zone of knowing you have some of your

Starting point is 00:08:23 assets offline. The negative is, and there is a big negative when it comes to physical, and that is when you go to liquidate it. You know, it's interesting you would mention that. You know, for every investor, there's a new investing strategy. You know, that's, that's not like we all have our own philosophies or how to do that. But could you say if there's like a general type of investor where physical is more appropriate or paper is more appropriate or digital for that matter? I just turned 49 last week. And I'm starting to get into what I'm call more the wealth preservation mode. So I'm thinking about, you know what, I want to still invest for growth, but I want to have some of my investments in a more conservative strategy.

Starting point is 00:08:57 I think those individuals tend to buy gold at a higher rate than those who are younger. They are worried about stability of their overall investments a little more so. But first and foremost, they're going to be a larger consumer amount. Then when it comes to decision decide what you should buy and what's right for your situation, what I find is you always should have a third percent in physical, just to have the protection of knowing it's off the grid, it's sitting in your safe, You don't have to worry about if there's a financial industry, you know, Matt Bell down, you're good to go. And then the digital versus ETF game, to me, and I think it's going to become a bigger debate over the years to come. Let's take a quick break and hear from today's sponsors.

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Starting point is 00:13:37 Back to the show. Can you mention DLD a few times? And just, you know, to give people's respect to that, that's the largest ETF whenever you invest directly into physical gold. But there's also a lot of criticism about that whenever we talk about physical gold because we talked about the goal is not just gold. You know, there are many different types and you buy it many different ways. Why is it that you hear a lot of people talking about, well, if it's gold, it's just DLD. And then you also have, you know, you've watched some of the concerns before. You actually have some issues or you can face some issues if you are holding the gold ETF in your portfolio. Could you elaborate a bit more in that? The pragmatic person would say the risk are minimal, but the person that, you know, really stays up at night and worries about how they might be wronged in the process, there's ways to pick a paper ETF. Things like it is a metal physically there, like I mentioned earlier, things like the counterparty risk. Look, we had to crash in eight when a lot of the banks

Starting point is 00:14:30 got to be saved by the government. What happens if that occurs again in this environment? How am I protected? So I think those are valid concerns. I think the odds of some of those concerns becoming reality, it's probably less so. I do think the fact that they charge fairly large fees is something to think about long term. Gold investors tend to invest for the long term. So, Ken, would you suggest that if you're simply speculating or you need to move your resources around pretty quickly that you use an ETF like GLD, and if you're holding for the long term that you buy physical gold, what are you suggesting? Yeah, it's a great question. I think the nature of a ETF is you can get in and out of it. I bet you,

Starting point is 00:15:09 you if they release statistics, though, I bet we'd find that those in an ETF do tend to be there more long-term than short-term because I think that's just gold as an investment in general. It doesn't matter which way you invest. You tend to be more of a long-term horizon investor. You're tending it to do it for portfolio diversification and not just trying to play the markets, if you will. The beauty of a GLD and also the beauty of digital, it allows you to go play the market for seven days, get in and get out, and take your profits or your losses. So there is a nature of trading that comes with those two platforms that a physical tends to definitely not be the case on. You know, when you talk about speculation, I think anytime you invest in anything,

Starting point is 00:15:45 it's speculation, obviously. The nature of the horizon of your investment tends to be a little shorter on paper or even digital. But in general, it's like investing in anything else. It has the conveniences that come with it depending on the platform you invest in. And it really just comes down to your time horizon. What are your prospects? How far out are you trying to invest? That might dictate sometimes what are your better options of what invest into. Can we see a lot of big name investors talk about the gold to silver ratio? Can you tell our audience a little bit about this ratio? The gold-silber ratio has been around for a long time.

Starting point is 00:16:17 It's one of those things where people like to think that gold and silver should trade within a certain range. And when they get out of that range, they're going to migrate back to meat. And history has shown that mean is going to run in that 75-ish range or somewhere like that. And where today, for example, it might be trading at a 90-to-1 ratio, meaning you can buy 90 ounces of silver for one ounce of gold. And some people go, they always go, so what does that mean? Is gold overvalued? Is silver undervalued? Are they going to migrate back to the mean? My belief, it's just my belief, is that that ratio is going to become less and less relevant in the long run. And the reason why is because the way gold is priced, it's a little bit more to supply and demand and the readily availability

Starting point is 00:16:55 of gold. And it's becoming scarcer and more scarce in the long run. Where silver is far more readily available, has more industrial uses than gold. And frankly, I would argue it's going to be more like a true commodity, unlike gold, that can become a lot more scarce over time. So I would not be surprised if you see that ratio over the next 10 years start to widen more than what historically has done. Now, I say that about a week ago, we had a big run on silver. Many argue that that was because of a tightening of the ratios. But also what people were talking about a week or two ago was it also allows certain investor type to get into silver when gold's starting to get too expensive. When gold gets too high, things like jewelry demand starts to drop. Some of the

Starting point is 00:17:33 everyday consumers or the investors start to go in to say it's just too expensive for me to get into. What other options do I have in the commodity space that performs like gold? And that's where silver starts to come into play. And then you see the tightening of the ratios, you revert back to the mean. So I could be wrong. I would expect a widening of the ratio in the long term. But in the short term, you're seeing a lot of that back and forth to the mean because people look at it as a viable option of going on investing in silver when going gets too expensive.

Starting point is 00:17:59 Can you mention before people often use the gold to silver ratio as a way of measuring? during the call it the intrinsic value. You know, they talk about whether it's overvalued or it's undervalued. Goal is different than stocks where you would discount the expected cash flows because there are no cash flows. That's the nature of gold or silver for that matter. I'm curious to hear your thought process about determining the intrinsic value if there are such thing as an intrinsic value for precious metal.

Starting point is 00:18:25 It's a tough one. There are some numbers that become relevant, like the cost of mining. You know, when you look at the cost of capital and you look at the capital investments needed for mining of these metals. You look at the demand side of things and how their metals are used. Are they 100% investment? Are they used for other purposes? Things like jewelry or semiconductors or you name it. So there is a little bit of supply and demand that you would expect it would drive the metal price up and down. You know, I think a great example of that is palladium, right? Palladium has seen a really nice run, a significant run on this price. But now what's happening in the marketplace

Starting point is 00:18:56 is manufacturers are looking for other options metal-wise for conductivity because Palladium has gotten too expensive. And I think you see the same thing happen with gold and silver. It's always kind of kept in check because eventually it becomes too expensive for some of the manufacturing purposes that you look for other options, other metals that can meet the need. I know that you can't go back to metrics like, well, what was my cash flows or what's my PE ratio versus historical performance and things of that nature of gold. But we do tend to see is it goes with the economic climate as well. Go back, we're 1800 bucks back in 2011. It's near its all time high. I believe it was all-time high back then. What was going on, I think you had the U.S. debt had just gotten

Starting point is 00:19:33 downgraded, you had quantitative easing kicking in the gear, you had no GDP growth. You had a lot of things going on in the market that saw gold hit all-time highs. I think those kind of dynamics are really how you have to evaluate gold and silver is it's not just, you know, its uses within manufacturing or its uses from a consumer demand standpoint. It's also understanding the broader worldwide landscape and how it's a safe haven't investment. So Ken, when you think about price, supplying demand is such an important consideration. So what are your thoughts on those drivers today? I've talked earlier a little bit about manufacturing requirements when it comes to certain precious metals. I've talked about

Starting point is 00:20:10 the cost of mining and all the different requirements from an environmental standpoint and how more challenging that is to do today than there has been. The cost of exploration, the cost of going on and finding the metal is still very high. And there's a lot of prospecting that goes on with that. and I think it's always going to be a challenge when it comes to being able to find more sources of metal, if you will. The other thing I think it's very relevant for your listeners and when we think about the price of metal, when I look at physical, there's fabrication cost, right? To take gold out of the ground, refine it, put it in a certain, you know, coin or bar form, ship it, get into a distribution center, send it out to customers. There's a lot of cost to come with that.

Starting point is 00:20:48 And that cost is only going to go up over time, right? We talked about inflation earlier, right? The cost of labor, the cost of the overhead. it's only going to get more expensive over time. I want to get back to digital for a second. One of the beautiful things about digital is metal can be in any form. It can be in grain. It can be in bars.

Starting point is 00:21:03 It can be in d'orei form. Consumers, I think, long term, are going to find digital as a viable option, mainly because the cost of getting the metal is dramatically less expensive. Whenever you look at these drivers and whenever you look at the news in the industry, you know, our listeners might be saying, I will listen to what Ken has to say whenever they look for information. but what do you do? Where do you find the information? I tell you, I'm a big reader of a World Gold Council. They have a thing called Gold Hub. It's free.

Starting point is 00:21:30 The World Gold Council was formed. A little history here. A lot of the miners helped form the World Gold Council and support them financially. And their objective was to get the word out on gold, you know, to educate consumers on what gold is, why is a viable option, how it's performed historically, protect consumers and making sure they're educated on where to buy. And they were actually behind. The World Gold Council was actually behind GLD in its formation. I find that their information is very valuable. I find that they provide a neutral view. They don't provide a pro view of gold at all times.

Starting point is 00:21:59 And I find that's very, very helpful. There are things like gold seek. And with the Internet today, there's so much information available to you. What I've always told consumers, first decide whether you want to be in metal. And then secondly, decide what type of middle you want to own. You know, just because you get the first two right, I want to own metal and I want own digital, for example. Who you do business with is also very, very important today's world.

Starting point is 00:22:20 I think people don't understand the risks that sometimes come with buying on the internet. And the amount of risk you take as a consumer. You want to know the company you're doing business with is sustainable. It's been around a while that you can trust. And I would ask consumers to do that last piece of research as well when they're making their overall decision. Do you own gold or not research that on places like Gold Hub? What are my options? Do your research from the internet and really read up who you're doing business with?

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Starting point is 00:26:06 This is a paid advertisement. All right. Back to the show. You know, it just seems like there's so much change from a technology standpoint happening in the financial markets these days. So Ken, I'm curious. You mentioned earlier this idea of one gold. Talk to our audience a little bit more about that and what it is.

Starting point is 00:26:24 You know, I think the first thing I mentioned earlier, we're trying to revolutionize the way you procure gold. So the main product we have on our side today, we have two products on the gold side. One is a Canadian product with the Royal Canadian Man. And what we've done there is we take ownership of metal in any number of forms within their operation. It can be d'oree, can be grain, it can be bars,

Starting point is 00:26:43 but it's within their infrastructure. When we procure metal, here's what's beautiful about digital. When we procure metal in that case, we're actually logging it onto the blockchain and the RCM acknowledging that I own that metal. I can't sell metal that the RCM doesn't say I own. I can't do it. I can't assign ownership. The blockchain won't allow me to do that. So we're using the blockchain purely as a ledger just to keep track of ownership. And so now you know I own it and then I assign my ownership to you as a consumer, which is beautiful. You have title. It's yours. You have complete protection. The RCM stands behind it.

Starting point is 00:27:16 the government of Canada stands behind the deposits. If I were to ever go insolvent, what you would do is they would literally liquidate that gold and give you your cash back. The same happens for the U.S. as well. To answer your question real quick, we buy the metal, put it on the blockchain. We have independent verification that the metal's there at all times. We built a beautiful system to where it's very intuitive, very easy it is. That's very important to us. We find gold can be complex and it's too complicated.

Starting point is 00:27:42 And we need to make it where you can hit a couple of clicks and be done. And that's what we really built with the platform. Frankly, we stole some ideas from the crypto. We thought they did a really nice job and making a user interface really uncomplicated. So I have to ask you, Ken, you talked about crypto before, and we hear a lot about cryptocurrencies these days. A lot of people are calling Bitcoin the digital gold.

Starting point is 00:28:02 You just mentioned blockchain before. I guess a lot of listeners are sitting there, they're thinking, what is the difference between one gold and Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies? What are the similarities? What are the differences? I think our merits to crypto, and I honestly believe crypto in the long term is going to have a much big role in our economy and our financial systems. Today, it's speculative.

Starting point is 00:28:23 Let's use Bitcoin as an example. What's the intrinsic value? What props up the value of the Bitcoin? What drives its price up and down while you say trading? Well, the reality is, I believe the top 20 holders of Bitcoin own over 70% of the coins. It's not a viable option. Look, the regulatory side of things would say, geez, how do we control the trading aspect? How do we control the supply in the market?

Starting point is 00:28:45 How do we know that the assets are there so consumers don't get burned? I think that's some of the concerns that crypto still needs to solve. But I do believe there's some great things there. Distributed ledgers and the blockchain. I love the concept. I love where it's going. I love the ability to verify the balances independently across multiple nodes. I think it's got fantastic potential down.

Starting point is 00:29:04 I also think with the banking systems and the way we want to transact as consumers, we want to take our phone in and we want to be done with it. I was in China on holiday with my daughter, and we were amazed at how people use WeChat to do all their transactions seamlessly right there with their phones. Nobody carried money. No one carried a credit card. That's where I do think long term cryptos can also take us and not just the financial systems to enable that.

Starting point is 00:29:29 So Ken, I'm friends with a bunch of millennials. And when you mention something like one gold where it's digitized, I think it makes perfect sense. But to suggest that they're going to go out there and buy something physical, it almost seems like a far-fetched idea or a concept to me with some folks. So talk to us about your opinion on this generational perspective and how your company and you guys see something like that. What we find is younger crowds tend to do a lot of transactions, but smaller dollars like you would expect, right? They don't have as much to invest. The older crowds tend to be much larger

Starting point is 00:30:01 transactions, but also a little bit less frequent. You know, on a digital platform, we're seeing eight to ten transactions in the first three months of people being on the platform, which is unbelievable. When you buy physically, it might be one to two transactions in the first 90 days. So the frequency of transactions are a little different when you're talking about digital. I think it's not generational. I think it's age. When I get into wealth preservation mode, I start to more seriously think about having assets that are more conservative. And more importantly, I think about having assets that maybe are a little bit off the grid. How much cash do you want to hold? How much gold do you want to hold? I would not normally have considered those when I was 22 because I'm looking to grow, grow,

Starting point is 00:30:36 grow. I'm looking for high growth stocks. I'm looking to maximize my investments. I read all the books that say over 50 years, can't go wrong if you invest for the long term. Well, remember earlier, I just stated in 2020, if you invested $100, the only asset class that outperformed gold was real estate. So do you want to miss the market and not have anything in metal? So I think you've got to make it easy for younger crowds to buy. I think as they start getting into wealth preservation, they're going to get into physical. It's just bound to happen because they're looking at ways to take assets off the grid, they're looking for ways to have a little bit more of a safety valve there at all times. And that's what comes with owning physical.

Starting point is 00:31:09 That's such a great point that you bring up. Let's go back to the very beginning of the episode where we actually talked about that we will discuss the current my conditions for gold and where you, as one of the top authorities, see the gold price going, perhaps the rest of 2019, but also moving forward. What are you seeing the market right now? You know, obviously, we're careful not to give some financial advice. And I would ask others to do their own research and don't rely on my opinion. But what I would tell you is there's been a nice run-up on silver and gold.

Starting point is 00:31:37 My personal opinion is I think gold and silver might flatten out for a little bit of time here. But I think the core considerations are still there for why gold and silver should go up over the long term. I think our economy is going to struggle in the future. I personally do. What I just read that we just crossed $1 trillion in debt, 11 months, 10 months into the fiscal year for the government, not a great sign. We're out of control and printing money.

Starting point is 00:31:59 You hear the jobs reports last week to start to slow down. interest rates are already being lowered. Can the dollar continue to be as strong as it is when you have all these other events going on? I personally don't think so. So when I think long term, I think there are a lot of dynamics out there that support a higher metal price. I don't think it's probably going to be a significant return in the initial period, maybe next six months, maybe it lists three months. But I think if you take a two to three year view, I think gold is going to be still a very nice place to have your money. And I would say this, even if a goal doesn't perform and you put five to 10 percent in your portfolio in gold, you're still going to be happy. Because if your equities go out and they kill it and your gold underperforms,

Starting point is 00:32:36 your portfolio perform very well. But what happens if you don't put any money in gold and the equities actually don't perform very well? Now you're going to regret not having good diversification strategy. That's a good point. And we would quote someone like Redallio, you know, one of the most successful investors. And he says the same thing about gold. So it's very interesting you would also bring that up.

Starting point is 00:32:55 So Ken, our final question for you is simply, where can people from our audience learn more about you in Appmex? Yeah, clearly we have websites, atmex.com and OneG-O-N-E-G-O-L-D.com. What we tried to do is educate consumers. We want you to have all the information you need to make a buying decision. We do almost a billion dollars a year in revenue.

Starting point is 00:33:17 A lot of good information to find on the physical side. On the digital side, one gold's new, man. It's been live since January. But what we're doing there is continue to refine that material and experience. For example, we're coming off an app, hopefully, in the next 30 to 60 days. We'll have an app environment, not just a website that's mobile friendly. And we're looking to bring new capabilities.

Starting point is 00:33:34 We'd ask people to just follow us. Thanks for your listeners to listen in. Thanks so much for that, Ken. And thanks so much for coming on the Investors podcast today. So at this segment of the show, I'm super excited and honored to present Sean Flynn, a host of our new show, Silicon Valley, by the Investors Podcast Network. Sean is a longtime listener of TIP, and we couldn't find a better person to interview our guests live in Silicon Valley. Sean, welcome to the show. Thank you for the kind

Starting point is 00:34:06 words. Stig, it's always great talking to you. And for everyone at home who may not know this, I actually, first time I met Stig in person was in Vegas. This guy, not only is an amazing value investor, he also knows the value of good hand in poker. So be careful playing with him. But, no, no, once again, it's an honor to be here. Thank you. Well, I have to say that Sean is not too bad himself. I remember we both had a decent poker. session, Belacho in Vegas, back in April when I flew out there to interview NetSuite founder, even Goldberg for our podcast. But one thing led to the other, not at the poker table, but back then right after our poker session, I actually asked Sean if he was interested in

Starting point is 00:34:47 hosting our new show and he luckily said yes. So after five months operation, here we are. So Sean, the name of the show is Silicon Valley. What can the listeners expect? Yeah, so the goal this show is to bridge the knowledge and the resources that are here in Silicon Valley with the rest of the world. So I have had the opportunity to travel to several countries to give talks about disruptive technology. And on these trips, I keep getting similar questions. What will we see next? What's the new technology that's going to disrupt the current market? What's going on? How much hype is it? How real is it? And the best part about Silicon Valley is some of the people that are creating this, betting on this, investing in this, they're right here.

Starting point is 00:35:28 And, Sean, you already had a soft launch last week. Which guests have you already interviewed? So, yeah, we've already launched quite a few episodes. And some of the ones that were launched included an interview with Melanie Perkins, who is the CEO and founder of Canva. Canva, the second unicorn company of Australia. We talked about what's it like to grow an international company, coming to Silicon Valley to raise funding,

Starting point is 00:35:55 and the challenges that she faced taking on the big giants out there. We also got to interview Alan Tien, who led the PayPal team when eBay went into China. Now, many of us have read those case studies, but we talked with the person that actually was there and got his side of the story. We also interviewed Jonathan Trent, who was a former NASA research scientist for the last 20 years. Guess what, guys? We're further away from Mars and people think. And another episode that everyone might really want to check out, Michael Colm. He's the head of innovation at the lab for Black and Decker, a $25 billion company. And we talk about the technology coming out right now that might make building homes 15% more effective. Now, how is that for a value

Starting point is 00:36:42 investor invested in REITs in the bottom line if implementing certain types of technology can really, really change their complete portfolio? So there's a lot of companies and people that we interview that have something that may not today really be impactful to people, but in two, three, five years could really turn the entire industry on its head. So that's the most exciting part about these interviews is seeing what's to come. What's next? How is this going to disrupt a hundred-year-old industry? We also interview that's coming up in the next few weeks, Gregory LeBlanc,

Starting point is 00:37:20 who talks about the disruptors in fintech, who the big big business. players are. What's the future for MBA programs and a lot more? So to reiterate, if you want to know what might disrupt your current investments, technology that might change industries, technologies that companies you might want to keep an eye on, startups in general, you're going to love Silicon Valley. And we'll link to Sean's show in the show notes so you can subscribe right away, but you can also just search for Silicon Valley or the Investors podcast on iTunes, Spotify, or whatever podcast app you're using. And you should see Sean. John's caricature that looks just like Preston's mind right there. I hope you really enjoy

Starting point is 00:38:00 his show as much as we do. And if you do, it would really help Preston & Me Out if you give Silicon Valley by the Investors Podcast Network and honest review on iTunes. Thank you for listening to TIP. To access our show notes, courses or forums, go to Theinvestorspodcast.com. This show is for entertainment purposes only. Before making any Decisions consult a professional. This show is copyrighted by the Investors Podcast Network. Written permissions must be granted before syndication or rebroadcasting.

We Study Billionaires - The Investor’s Podcast Network - TIP261: Investing in Gold w/ Ken Lewis CEO of APMEX (Investing Podcast)

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