We Study Billionaires - The Investor’s Podcast Network - TIP481: Our Story w/ Stig Brodersen and Clay Finck (Part 1)

Starting point is 00:00:00 You're listening to TIP. When Preston and I started the Investors podcast in 2014, we had no idea that we would be closing in on 100 million downloads eight years later. In this episode, you hear the story of how Preston and I met each other and all about the early days of our podcast. You'll also hear about the pivotal moments for our team, Preston and me along the way, including how it wasn't even our idea to start a podcast in the first place. If you have followed us for years or just curious, you don't want to miss out on this episode. In this first part, episode of two called Our Story, I'm joined by Clay Fink, who will make his debut as the host of We Study Billionaires. 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.

Starting point is 00:01:02 Welcome to The Investors Podcast. I'm your host, Dick Broterson, and I'm here with my new co-host, Clay Fink. And today's episode is a little different compared to what we're used to. We are two hosts and no guests. And then another thing is that most of our listeners do not know Clay. But later on this episode, we'll learn a lot more about you, Clay, because starting Monday, you'll be hosting this podcast on a weekly basis. This will also be the first time in eight years that we're going to detail with the business about the investors podcast network.

Starting point is 00:01:31 In the hearing, like, the first part of the episode, we agreed that Clay will be interviewing me and then we'll act your transition and turn the tables and then I'll be interviewing you at the end of this episode. But hey, Clay, why don't you take from here? And I should probably start by saying welcome to you as well, because it's your first episode here in We Study Billionaires. Thank you, Stig. I'll be honest. It's a bit surreal to have the opportunity to record this episode with you today. I've been a fan of the We Study Billionaires podcast for years. So let's get right into the episode covering the business of TIP. How about we just start from the beginning. Many of our listeners might have started tuning in over the past couple of years as

Starting point is 00:02:10 COVID shocked the markets and many people got interested in stock investing. So a lot of people might not be familiar with how TIP originally got started back in 2014, where it was just you and Preston. You two were the only hosts up to, I believe, 2020. How about you tell the audience about the founding story of TIP? And so we are back in 20, 13, and I was in something called a garden leave from my job as a commodities trader. And my wife and I moved to Sweden at the time. And so my wife was at the time doing her PhD in economics. And as a part of that, everyone is asked to go abroad for one semester.

Starting point is 00:02:50 So that was why we went there. And so I mentioned garden leave. And if you're not familiar with that term, is that it's the situation where you have a non-compete. And your employer, like to uphold that non-compete, mine was 12 months. It would have to pay your salary. or in my case it was half salary. And so you can take another job in another industry. But if you do that, your gotten leave salary will be deducted.

Starting point is 00:03:15 And so this was my first job after grad school. And I was making 160 at a time. And so they paid me 50% of that, so 80K. And so if I took another job, you know, they paid me 100K, I would only get like additional 20 to go to work. You know, this was this weird thing where it was sort of like a blubstery. blessing and a curse. It was definitely a blessing because like making 80K for doing nothing is great. But it was also terrible because I couldn't work. And I'm just not cut out for that. At the time,

Starting point is 00:03:45 my friends and I, and I guess like today, quite interested in money. And just before my wife and I relocated to Sweden, we were hanging up with some friends. And, you know, we talked about that it would be great to have more money. I know it sounds super original. But that was basically what we did. And so like me, they didn't like their jobs particularly well, my friends. One of them said that a trick that he learned, like probably read from a book or whatever, was that you should just do what other successful people are doing. You don't need to reamend the wheel. And to me, it was like, great, that sounds awesome.

Starting point is 00:04:18 And so I went home and I googled the Forbes 400 list. I remember at the time Bill Gates was at the top. And I thought to myself, well, I'm not going to go. create the next Microsoft. That's for sure. I'm at least technical person on the planet. We actually got started on this interview, Clay, like 40 minutes too late because I couldn't figure out how to use my new computer. So it's just like, it's just a big decision. So I'm not a technical person. So like number one, no, I'm not going to be the next bill gates. Number two on that list was Warren Buffett. And I remember hearing his name in school. So I have a finance background. Please don't hold against me,

Starting point is 00:04:57 but I do. And so whenever you study finance, in grad school, you taught the efficient market hypothesis, which basically means that don't think about the market, it always has the right price. Like all stocks has the right price. Don't think about it, just put your money in, and the rest would take care of the self. I read Ron Buffett's name in one of those school books, and it said that he was the luckiest investor, because, you know, you luck plays a role. He was called like the best coin flipper or something like that. So that was sort of like how I knew him. And I was like thinking, well, I definitely learned a bunch of stuff in school that wasn't true. So I was like, okay, let me just challenge that whole notion

Starting point is 00:05:36 of Warren Buffett being the luckiest person and just see if that makes sense. And so I basically just started like reading up on everything with Warren Buffett. And I guess at the time, it appealed to me because I read that he was gotten wealthy by picking stocks, which is actually not the truth. As you also know, Clay, like he built a business. That was actually how he compounded his wealth. It wasn't just like picking stocks. The more that I read about Warren Buffett, you know, reading the Snowball, like, I know that's a book you also read. I was just so impressed with everything Warren Buffett did, not just so much about investing, but also how to live a good life. I Google a bunch of stuff about Warren Buffett, and I came across

Starting point is 00:06:15 this website called Buffett's Books. The website still exists. I don't think we updated the last, I don't know, eight years or something like that, but it still exists. And it was a website that Preston, my co-founder, originally created. And on that side was a forum where we discussed stocks in accounting. And so through that forum, Preston and I got to know each other. And one day I received a message from Preston if I wanted to jump on a Skype call. And so, yes, this was back in 2013. People actually used something called Skype back then.

Starting point is 00:06:46 And so we jumped on this call. He was saying, you know, he wanted to write some books and asked if I wanted to be a part of it. And I was like, sure. Why not? So this happened back in 2013. And we started writing. Then 2014, my wife had to go to a conference in DC, Washington, D.C., and I decided to join her. And we took this opportunity to visit Preston's wonderful family, who at the time lived in Maryland.

Starting point is 00:07:12 And I remember Preston and I were editing the Warren Buffet County book at 445 in his basement. And you might be like, what? 445 a.m.? Why would you do that? Hey, that's what you do. And if there was four kids in the house and two of them are toddlers. That's whenever you have your, you can do your deep work. And so we got up pretty early and we started working on that and that book.

Starting point is 00:07:33 And then so after that, Preston and I met up in Omaha with the Buffett's Books community. And don't be too impressed whenever I say community. We're six people. It was Preston, Preston's dad, Bill, me, Anders from Sweden, Krista from Germany and Jim from the US. And the six of us had a blast. It was fun and, you know, but nothing more than it. It was just like a raid about Buffett and you're supposed to go to Omaha and like check it out. And so we did.

Starting point is 00:08:01 And that was fun. And so on the way back, whenever president was flying back to Maryland from Omaha, he was sitting next to a gentleman called Harry Ramachandra on the plane. And Harry was actually our first guest we had on the podcast. But it was actually, and some of you I should also say might know Harry from a mastermind group. So we became friends after that. But it was actually Harry's idea to start TEP and start the podcast. It wasn't president of my idea, which was kind of weird.

Starting point is 00:08:25 But they were sitting next to each other talking about Warren Buffett. And apparently, Harry said to Preston, why don't you start a podcast about Warren Buffett? And Preston was like, sure, that sounds great. Let me call my friend Stig in Denmark and be like, should we start a podcast? And so I can't remember exactly what it was. But I want to say it was the summer of 2014, you know, after the meeting and Preston gave me a call, asked me if I wanted to start a podcast with him. And I remember I was a bit worried.

Starting point is 00:08:53 First of all, I wasn't sure what it meant to make a podcast. in the first place. Honestly, I don't know if Preston knew that either, but Preston always had a great attitude and he was like, yeah, you know, we're going to figure it out. And, you know, he's a quite technical person. So I was like, okay, if you just teach me how to like set up a quip button stuff, it would be, we'll figure it out. But I also remember, I had this concern that I had to do it in another language. Like my native tongue, that's Danish. And it's similar, but it's also different than English. And the best way I can describe it would be if you're an American, you had to learn German. So it's more similar to German, I guess.

Starting point is 00:09:27 So it would be like me calling you up, Clay, and be like, how do you feel about learning German and then educate the world about stock investing? Anyways, I just remember I was really concerned about having to do it in another language. But anyway, I heard myself saying, all right, Preston, let's do it. Let's create a podcast and we call it the Deinvestor's podcast. That's why, you know, at least internally on the team, we just call it TIP. So that's for The Investors Podcast, I guess. Today, the name is the Investors Podcast Network, but I haven't seen anyone on the team

Starting point is 00:09:57 call it TIPN. We just still call it TIP. Anyways, so that's sort of like the founding story of TIP. What an incredible story. It's almost funny how you hear about some of these businesses that sound like they almost started by accident, similar to TIP. Selfishly, I'm pretty grateful that it did. ended up happening because it's just had such a huge impact on me. For some of the newer listeners,

Starting point is 00:10:22 if you haven't listened to some of the old stuff, Stig and Preston, they would do book reviews. Originally, they started out studying Warren Buffett. And originally, they figured out pretty quickly that you couldn't just talk about Warren Buffett on and on and on every single week. You had to sort of branch out to other subjects. So that's how the we study billionaires came about. And they read all these books about all the billionaires that are out there. I'm sure you didn't originally envisioned TIP to become as big as it is today. So when did you realize that this podcast, you and Preston did pretty much on the side? When did you realize that it could be, you know, a legitimate business? Today, it has, I believe, nearly 100 million downloads to date and 29

Starting point is 00:11:06 members of the team and counting. So, you know, when did you realize this could, you know, eventually become a legitimate business? Oh, it's a great question. And you're right. I mean, if you said that to me in 2014, after I said, what's a podcast? I definitely would have called you crazy. We didn't know it would be that successful. So Preston had this idea back then that the strategy was not to have a strategy, really. And let me try to see if I can make it a bit more elegant. But I actually felt it was a masterstroke from his end because he said that let's just like test it out for a year. Let's not think about at all about like business, strategies, and fancies. Let's just create a lot of value for listeners and put out really great content.

Starting point is 00:11:51 And he was very particularly about we have to do it every week. No matter what happens, we have to put something out every week because it was all about consistency. And to me, this sounded pretty perfect because I was just starting, you know, my garden leave ended in 2014. And so I was starting a new job as a college professor that summer. And so I was super busy doing the podcast without, I'm not saying we weren't taking it seriously, but it was just, it was definitely more like a side hustle more than anything else. And so after that year was up, Prest and I was like looking at each other and we were saying, well, this podcasting show has a lot of work. Let's see if we can make some money out of it, but we had no idea how to do it. We've been very influenced in the early

Starting point is 00:12:32 age of this gentleman, his name is Pat Flynn, and he has a podcast called it Smart Passive Income. I don't know if he still has, but he sure did it back then. And so he had made like a small fortune of unaffiliate marketing for online businesses. We started looking into it. We had this idea. that, oh, let's recommend different stuff we use. But then we realized we didn't really use any kind of good stock investing tools. And the ones we did were free. So we were like, no. And that was probably not the right business model. But we sort of like stumbled from one project to another. But I also say that if you look back in 2014 and if you look at the charts, we did fairly well. Whenever I say charts, it was like podcast shots about which shows performed well. You shouldn't be too impressed

Starting point is 00:13:12 whenever I say the number one stock investing podcast because podcasting was very nascent. And so if you were like the number one, it was primal because you were more or less the own a podcast in the space. And so we had this early on. We had this positive feedback loop. Not in the sense that I want to discredit hard work, but I would say that luck played a huge role in the success of the company because you're number one, which means that you get recognized and, you know, people find it, which means that you can then be number one.

Starting point is 00:13:40 and you sort of like have this positive feedback loop of staying at the top of the charts. But I want to say that there was a big change, or at least I felt there was a big change back in 2016 whenever I went full time working on TIP. And there's this saying that if you work part-time on anything, you get a quarter of that attention, which I found to be absolutely true, also with TIP, but just in general. And I went full-time in 2016. We weren't making any money at the time, but my wife got relocated to another place for their time do your job. So I couldn't continue teaching back in Denmark. And so I think business books would tell

Starting point is 00:14:16 you that you're supposed to go full time whenever you can really see something great was happening and you probably started making money. And that was definitely not the case for us. It was just more like I couldn't do my regular job. We were away for a year. Why not just give it a go and then go full time and, you know, blip off my wife's salary, which is what we did. But I think that was definitely a moment. Then there was another moment where I met our now CEO, Bianca Alcara. And I did that in the fall of 2016, but I would say we didn't have any full-time people, and there was, Bianca was the first, we didn't have any full-time people on the team before the summer of 2018. So it was a very slow start. Let me put it like that.

Starting point is 00:14:54 So you go full-time, and, you know, as I've joined the team about a year ago and learn more about the company, most of your hires were actually in 2020 and after. So I'm curious what sort of things you were up to from the time you went full-time up until 2020 before you really started to expand the team. Yeah, that's interesting because I don't know really if I can separate the years that well. And I know it's not that long ago, but you know, sort of like whenever you're keeping your head down doing the grind, it's sort of like tricky to say I did this that year and then the next. But definitely going back to what you said about hiring has mainly happened in recent years. Yes, we might have been, call it five full-timers or something.

Starting point is 00:15:37 like that going into 2020. And it was also quite important to press on me that generally we didn't want to invest any money into this if you can avoid it. The expenses for growing the team would have to be paid for revenue generated by the company. Since that was our approach and we didn't make any money, it was a fairly easy decision to wait to start hiring people. Podcast advertising, which is the bulk of the revenue we have didn't really take off before 2020, which was, again, one of the reasons why we couldn't hire that many before then. And I think that there is also this element of luck that I keep on returning back to because we started to appear just the right time. So when we were ready to scale, partly with the skill set we acquired, but also just mentally

Starting point is 00:16:17 and where we were in life and family and all that, the industry also started to make money and we could then generate the cash to grow. And, you know, it would be amazing if I could say that we had foreseen that years in advance, but it's just sort of happened. Of the top of my head, I don't remember how much money we made in 2019. We didn't really do accounting before then. But if you do put me on the spot, I probably say it was 200,000-ish. I do remember in 2020 because we started to do accounting halfway through that we did just above 600K in 2020. We did 2.3 million in 2021 already. And then we were close to 4 million advertising alone in 2022. And of course, you would need a decent size of the show before you could sell advertising on it. But it,

Starting point is 00:17:02 It was more or less like if you before 2020 had a big show, you couldn't really make a lot of money because the money just weren't there. It might be different if you're in PR or anyone like that. But like for most podcasters in space, whenever we talk about what happened back then, it was just like, you could probably sell your own products. We didn't have any, so it was relatively easy for us. But like podcast advertising really didn't exist the way it does today. But I do remember the very first auto we had that was back in 2017.

Starting point is 00:17:29 It was for $8,000 a month. we signed them for three months. And it just felt like all the money in the world. And so we went from, I don't know, $100 a month in affiliate, like Amazon affiliate something, so like $8,000 a month in advertising, which just seemed like this ridiculous amount of money. And I just remember I went out like celebrating with my wife. You were like super excited. You were like, this podcast thing is not like it It was a gold mine, but it was like, oh my God, $8,000. And then, you know, we have to split it with like Preston and then we have some costs and stuff.

Starting point is 00:18:04 But like, perhaps there would be something left. So we went out for like pizza and beer. It was just like, I just remember it was an exciting moment because, you know, it was just fantastic that someone wanted to advertise on our show. But back to original question about what we were up to until 2020. You know, we tried a ton of different projects, including TAP finance. That's our software, financial software. We actually tried setting up some courses. I'm not saying it was a big success. We tried some

Starting point is 00:18:30 newsletters, which just came out very irregularly, like once a month, even than that. We did some affiliate marketing. We published a few books. We set up the million investing feed too, but generally we failed a lot more than we succeeded. But I definitely want to take the opportunity to highlight the media investing feed that Robert Leonard set up. Robert thinks better about business than anyone on the team, and we're just really lucky to have him on. So, you know, back in 2019, I thought we would be setting up multiple shows and, you know, the whole rising tide lift all boats kind of thing. But I don't think I appreciated how lucky we were with the timing of we studied billionaires.

Starting point is 00:19:09 In many ways, with Relian investing being, let's say, 10% the size of we state billionaires. It was a lot more impressive what Robert and then turned you and Rebecca, starting a new feat these days just so difficult. Preston and I just got a lot handed to us whenever we started and we started building us in 2014. So a huge element of luck there. Very interesting. You know, to recap and just kind of look at the big picture, you guys started the podcast in 2014. You went full time in 2016. What were some of the pivotal moments along the way?

Starting point is 00:19:45 You mentioned the first check you got from your advertiser. Talk about some of the critical moments or what were some of the keys to success. to lead to today? Well, I would definitely say that hiring Bianca Alcara, which was the very first hire, that was likely the best decision I ever made. And I keep on joking, even though I'm half serious whenever I speak to Preston, I said, he shouldn't be worried about me leaving. He should be worried about Bianca leaving.

Starting point is 00:20:13 And so I would not say that this was part of a grand strategy because it really wasn't. You know, I speak Danish and I speak English, but Bianca at the time was hired because, well, she could speak English, but she could speak like five different languages. and we were relocated at the time and I didn't know the local language. And, you know, so, you know, it was just amazing to have the opportunity to be teaming up with her. It was like, you know, buying Amazon pre-IPO. It was just too good to be true. At the time, she was a student doing a graduate program and filmmaking.

Starting point is 00:20:41 So anyways, you know, she was more hired as translator for me. But I told her that we had, I was doing something called The Investors Podcast. And she was like, okay, I don't really listen to. podcast, that sounds good. But, you know, that wasn't her job at all. But I said, like, oh, you know, I had some issues with, like, some things on the website. I never learned how to program. I still don't know how to do that. And so we had some issues. And she was like, you know, I can probably program that. Because as it turned out, before she started starting filmmaking, she had a degree in computer science. He had five years of experience with her to packard.

Starting point is 00:21:13 So she was like, yeah, let me just fix it. And she fixed it. And we needed some help with some videos. She was like, yeah, you know, I'm doing a degree in filmmaking. Let me help you some videos. Then we had some issues with some, we needed some design skills and she said, you know, I have a sister you should probably speak to because she's a designer. And so we hired her sister, Camille, and she's been with our team since 2017. Like, it's just a crazy story. And then I remember we had some issues with like some publishing. And Bianca said, you know, I have a sister alone. Why don't you hire her? And so she also worked with us since 2017. So the three women are running our team in the Philippines. So I think they're 15-ish or so, most of them around

Starting point is 00:21:47 Manila, the capital in the Philippines. You know, the investors podcast network is perhaps, I don't know, 5% skilled, 95% luck. And of course, you need that 5%. But I am very humble that luck played such a huge role for us. Lugged to have met Presto, luck to have met Bianca. You know, getting that flywheel spinning is just super important. And then we met a bunch of other wonderful people, including you. And it's just, you know, about the whole right people at the right time in your life. 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 conversation you have is with people who are actually shaping the future.

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Starting point is 00:26:14 Go to Shopify.com slash WSB. That's Shopify.com slash WSB. All right. Back to the show. I'm really happy you mentioned Bianca and Camille and the Manila team. I remember when you were interviewing me and I was working through the hiring process. Both you and Robert mentioned that they're really a big key to the success of TIP. and I didn't really fully, you know, realize or understand that until I actually joined the team

Starting point is 00:26:48 and started working with them. And it's just really incredible what all they do on the back end. And most of the listeners probably aren't aware of what all it takes to run a podcast. Surprisingly enough, we're at 29, close to 30 people. Why do you need so many people to run one or two podcast feeds and talk about maybe why you expanded to be that large? Yeah, it's interesting because, and completely understandable. You know, I remember telling my parents about I was doing this thing called a podcast and like, what?

Starting point is 00:27:20 And you're kind of like, but you took an education. You're not supposed to do things like a podcast. Like, what? It wasn't like they weren't supportive. They were just a bit confused about what I did. You know, it was a bit easier when I was a teacher. It's like, okay, you teach economics. We get that.

Starting point is 00:27:35 Well, so in the Philippines, we have three teams. We have three programmers, plus Biancas, who's also a program, but also sees other things too. And we have a design team with five people. They're working on, we have a few YouTube channels, they work on the website, your podcast artwork, really anything that's design related. We have operations support team. They handle the podcast editing. And really, anything that's related to operations that's not design or programming. And I want to say we probably have five, six on there, too, sort of like depending on how you measure it. Yeah, so 15 total in Manila. And then if we look in the West, it's mainly in the US.

Starting point is 00:28:13 The team is based. We have one host for millennial investing at Rebecca Hotsko. She's up in British Columbia in Canada. Veronica, one of our YouTube hosts. She's based in Poland. We have a sales team with three people who are like selling advertising and bunch of other stuff. And then we have more hosts. If you're familiar here with the We State Billions feed, you probably already know Trey and William,

Starting point is 00:28:34 and on the other feed, our Malian Investing feed, I just already talked about Rebecca, but Robert also. He used to host Malina Investing, but now he's hosting a Real Estate 101 show. And then we also have Sean, who is a host on YouTube, a recently hired Patrick who are writing newsletters, and he will also transition into a role of hosting some real estate content too. So, yeah, I don't know if I gave you too much information there. But that's sort of like that's the way the team looks like right now. And I guess like just the last comment to that, I would say that we probably also started 2020 with a bit more ambitious mindset.

Starting point is 00:29:10 And we could just see that we had a lot of great investment opportunities. So we really invested everything we could internally and found great people like you Clay's that could really run with those opportunities. You know, there's this saying, I think it was Larry Page or Sega Brenn from Google, who are like the best companies, they die from too many opportunities. And I remember today also, but like around 2020, it was just like, there are too many things we could do. I think you're right.

Starting point is 00:29:35 Things really started to take off around 2020-ish. One thing that, you know, somewhat surprised me in joining TIP was Preston's role with the company. You know, Preston was someone I really looked up to as a listener, not only for the investing insights, but his insights on life. And you kind of alluded to this with Warren Buffett. And I think it's the same thing with TIP. A lot of podcasts today are really all about the hosts and the host just giving their opinion and acting in a way like they're on top of the world. You know, they're the most important person

Starting point is 00:30:10 in the room. But that's not what I found with TIP at all. What really stuck out to me with Preston and Eustig is, you know, your focus on providing as much value as possible to the audience. felt like just listening to you guys over the years, I was almost certain to learn something new each time. And, you know, when I look at Preston, for example, in the mastermind groups over the years, he wasn't afraid to be the one person who disagreed with everyone and just speak his mind and say what he thought was right to him. And he's also someone, I think, who's just a very gifted teacher. He just has a way of simplifying things for someone like me who's just driving in my car in college that's just interested in learning about investing. He's able to put it in a way that

Starting point is 00:31:01 is simple and understandable and actually makes sense. And nowadays, he's talking all about just the macro environment and things like that. And it's like a lot of this stuff just does not make sense to your everyday person. And he has a way of simplifying that, which I really like. And to add to that, He's just a very likable person, which is great. Hosting a podcast has over 400,000 followers on Twitter. So it's obvious that a lot of people really like him. Still to this day, I listen to a lot of the content he puts out and keep an eye on what he's doing on Twitter. And I also see pressing as someone who just really understands the big picture and can really separate the signal from the noise, which is so hard to do nowadays.

Starting point is 00:31:43 Still to this day, a lot of people that say it's impossible to be. beat the market. You mentioned earlier the efficient market hypothesis and how Buffett, you know, has defied gravity, so to speak, in the investing world. And other ideas that you can't time to market. Well, you know, I've been following Preston for the past few years. And I haven't seen his actual portfolio or anything like that, but I followed his calls and seen kind of what he's doing with his portfolio. And he mentioned on our millennial investing show, he absolutely crushed the market in 2021, obviously because he was invested in Bitcoin at the time. But if I had to guess, just over the years of the podcast, I would say he has handily beat the market over that time period. And I don't think

Starting point is 00:32:21 that's by accident. Whether you like Bitcoin or not, for example, he sold his entire position in 2017. Started off as a small position, obviously grew from there. And looking back, that was obviously a very advantageous price to sell. As in the years following, it dropped by 80% or more. And I also believe he publicly stated on Twitter in March 2020 that it was a very opportune time to buy Bitcoin at that time because he was seeing the Fed's response to the liquidity crisis and the dollar shortage. So the Fed, so to speak, kind of flooded the system with money. He said Bitcoin was the play there. And I'm not saying he's perfect or anything. And there's obviously some sort of luck that's involved. But from my perspective, I can see that he has this knack for weighing the

Starting point is 00:33:10 probabilities of being right. And he admits to the times when he's wrong, too. And I just really appreciate that how it's really all about, you know, providing that education to the listener. He's just able to speak his mind in a way and kind of communicate the probabilities that he's seeing in the markets and the actions he's actually taking. So much I've learned from Preston and you as well stay over the years. And wrapping back to what I originally said, I was surprised by Preston's role with TIP because he has these other obligations. He has his own family and his own, a different job outside of TIP. So maybe you can tell the audience about your relationship with Preston, given that you don't technically host, we study billionaires together anymore. How often do you

Starting point is 00:33:55 speak and what's your relationship look like? Clay, I'm really happy that you said all those nice things about Preston because Preston is absolutely amazing. I'm really happy with a relationship I have with him now and in the past, and I feel very lucky and grateful that we met whenever we did. I think we talked like once, twice a quarter probably. It's not like we have a fixed agenda or any fixed schedule in terms of when we will do different things. We don't have a lot of touch points. Preston's main responsibility is hosting the Bitcoin podcast in the feed, and so I'm not involved with that at all.

Starting point is 00:34:28 Just in that, we don't have a lot of touch points. But, you know, Preston also, he's not really involved in his strategy operations of TIP. So we have this strong mutual respect and we completely trust each other to make the right decisions. You know, I should say despite the countless mistakes I made over the years and it's just this wonderful relationship building this mutual respect. We do own the company 50-50, so I can only say that I feel so grateful that we never had any issues. I heard a bunch of 50-50 partners just makes it really difficult because you don't really want to join.

Starting point is 00:34:59 I mean, I'm not saying you don't want to, but it can be challenging going into a relationship and be like 51, 49. and it probably has some advantages because then someone always calls the shots, but I guess if you're also the 49% person, you're like, it just feels very different than being 49 than 50% I guess. I think we divide things up pretty well also in terms of how we want to live our lives. And as you mentioned, Preston just have other obligations that I don't have. And Preston's done a wonderful job on specifically Twitter,

Starting point is 00:35:25 but he's just generally good on engaging with the audience and hosting a great podcast. I like, you're running TAP instead. That's behind the scenes a bit more, even though I still host from time to time. I'm even, though I don't do it as often as I have in the past. But, you know, I definitely miss hosting episodes together with Preston. It's just not feasible anymore with the time zones. And we often had to then coordinate with the guests, when we started to bring guests on. If you look at my job description, I think I host like every other weekish right now.

Starting point is 00:35:54 So it's probably less than 10% of what I do. And, you know, you could even make the argument that shouldn't be hosting at all because we have all these other stuff going on. but if I can just touch on the Bitcoin show too. And I know this was a decision that surprised a bunch of people, especially because if you're raised by the church of Buffett and Munger like Preston, I am, you're not supposed to be invested in Bitcoin at all. After Preston got quite interested in Bitcoin, and I was also quite interested, but I was also doing the same old, same old,

Starting point is 00:36:28 the value investing, the conventional stuff. And so it seemed like it makes sense. for Preston to do Bitcoin. And it also makes sense for me to continue with We State Billioness. And, you know, Preston and I talk from early on the importance of being authentic in what we do. I can personally say that I'm very upfront with the stocks that I own. I only own four stocks right now and don't plan to add any more anytime soon. But, you know, we were just like, this is what we're investing. This is what we do. Take it for what it is. You don't have to do the same thing as us, but we're just telling you what we do and, you know, take it for what it is. And so whenever

Starting point is 00:37:01 Preston got really interested in Bitcoin and started to invest in Bitcoin, it seemed like the authentic and right thing to do to have a show about that where he could talk with someone on a weekly basis about it. And the listeners can just feel if you're not sincere. It would be crazy for him for business purposes to pretend that he was like this old school value investing, doing discounted caselo's every single day, not liking Bitcoin whenever he's dead. And so I believe it's very important for all type of relationship that you have, that you are authentic.

Starting point is 00:37:35 And it's a marriage, close friendship, relationship with your listener. You have to be who you are. I mean, those who don't like you, they won't listen to you anyway, and that's fine. And those who like who you are and you're also going to attract new listeners who are interested in the new topic that you're going to bring up. I think that's very important. And like you also mentioned before, Clay, we thought we'd be talking about Warren Buffett

Starting point is 00:37:59 every single week. And you realize after a few episodes, like, you can't do that. Actually, a big part of the whole thing about Warren Buffett is that things don't change that often. So how can you do a weekly show about it? And you know, I also started just doing individual stock picks. But then gradually transitioned to searching for 15 uncorrelated assets, the whole Redelio-appraisal-looking things.

Starting point is 00:38:20 And I kind of feel that's natural whenever you start investing. You figure out what's the right thing is for you. I would also like to debunk this story. I've seen it a few times on Twitter. I try only to be on Twitter once a month or so, but I have seen some comments about that Preston and I were supposed to have a falling out or anything like that because of his interest in Bitcoin. And it's a bit sad and weird that I'm supposed to say this,

Starting point is 00:38:43 but I don't choose my friends based on whether they're interested in Bitcoin or not. It's not one of my criteria. I mean, still in love with her wife after 12 years, despite that she puts pineapple on her pizza. And, you know, if there's something that's polarizing, it's Bitcoin and Pineapple on Pizza. Like, people just see that very, very differently. And so, yeah, I don't know if I can just sum it up and saying one sentence that wonderful relationship with Preston and super grateful that we started this adventure together and are still on it. I remember as a fan of the show before I joined the team that Preston had mentioned a time or two

Starting point is 00:39:20 that much of the growth of TIP was because of you, Stig. And at the time, I probably assumed that Preston's humble side was showing. You know, after joining the team, I just realized that that really was the truth. Anything that happens behind the scenes really originates back to you. And I just find that's so incredible to have the humility to step away from being a host and step away from the spotlight and, you know, just work to being focused on empowering others within the organization, which I know we're going to be diving into here soon. Well, thank you, Clay, it's very kind of you to say so. I want to say that I probably see this slightly different in the sense that I don't so much look at what I've written is back to Preston and then original is back to me,

Starting point is 00:40:07 but rather to the team, you know, we couldn't have been. build a great team in the Philippines. It had been for Bianca. And I could say the same thing about Robert who found you and other great hires in the US. Also things, some of what you also mentioned in the comment is that Preston always had very different expectations to the MS's podcast network than I had. I really wanted to, I was always more ambitious with in terms of like driving growth and then making more money. And I think later I'm going to talk about how perhaps I'm as ambitious anymore. But like, I definitely started out being a lot more ambitious. And Preston was always like, I love podcasting, you know, I love the life. I love the way that we do things. I love

Starting point is 00:40:51 how authentic we are. And if people want to listen, it's great. And if not, it's fine. And, you know, if we can make a bit of money on the side, that's even better. And so, you know, whenever we were Preston and me, and he was like, that's great. And then we were another two people who's like, great, we don't have to grow. And today he's like, great, we don't have to grow. Like, it's wonderful working with Preston. And I don't want it to sound like he doesn't have any opinion. He's definitely a very opinion and a person, a bunch of different things. But like, he's always been very good at, at not setting arbitrary goals for no apparent reason. And very big on the whole, like, why are we doing this? Like, who do we want to make more money for? Do we need

Starting point is 00:41:30 that? And, you know, so whenever I realized that TEP was the way of life for me, and Like you mentioned, Kristen has other obligations, and he was very upfront with that from early on that he didn't intend to go full time on TAP. He was doing his own thing that he was very passionate about. It was like, great. You know, let's just see where it takes us. I don't know if I really answered your question if there were a question there. But anyways, I kind of like just like my wander.

Starting point is 00:41:58 So please rope me back in, Clay. No, I think you're doing just fine, Sig. One item I was particularly interested in learning more about was, you know, the decision to put the Bitcoin show run by Preston in the We Study Billionaire's Feed. I think a lot of people kind of got turned off by that. They're like, yeah, these guys used to study Warren Buffett. Now they're talking about Bitcoin. Like, you know, you can't mix those two together. What's going on here?

Starting point is 00:42:25 So I'm curious why you made the decision to keep the Bitcoin show within the we study billionaires feed. Just, you know, from the perspective that Preston is one of the founders of the show, it makes sense that he still kind of maintains his presence on there. But I'm curious what your thoughts are behind that decision. Yeah, it's a tricky question. because partly, I want to say it's a business decision in a sense that we really wanted to get the message out with Bitcoin and the importance of Bitcoin. So we just knew that we would get

Starting point is 00:42:56 a lot more listeners if we kept in the same feed. Really, a lot of the value from podcasting is that you have people who subscribe to the show and automatically get it delivered to their phone. And like that asked about like search for a new show and then subscribe to that show or follow that show, it's just, it might seem like it's a small asking people will do it, but, you know, we're stuck in our ways and we just don't. And so, so that was a part of it. But, you know, I had this idea that podcasting would be more like a channel. And so what I mean by that is I felt that podcasting would go more into be like a sports channel or a football channel or finance channel rather than different topics with individual shows. And of course, you have some high

Starting point is 00:43:43 call fans that would listen to all the episodes, but I definitely noticed for myself being a podcast listener that I've been increasingly just picking and choosing from the episodes I'm interested in. I've listened to a bunch of football podcast and I listen to some other stuff. And I don't listen to all of it, but I listen to what I find most interesting. And so seeing the industry going into more into that direction, we were thinking, well, if people don't like Bitcoin, then skip it. If they don't like to hear someone doing the same old same old discounted caselo, whatever skip it. That's perfectly fine too. We have to be a bit more specific on YouTube, like having a specific visibility there and RitsaWise a happier channel and then a more specific channel

Starting point is 00:44:24 about more about Preston's content. But like it was just more the way we saw the industry going and because it was important to get out to a bunch of people. But it was definitely a decision we could feel was quite polarizing. We got a lot of new listeners. We lost a ton of listeners who were definitely not inclined just to skip it. They really really. didn't like it. That was so train of thought going into it. Whether or not it was the right decision, I get that's up for interpretation. That is quite interesting. And we're going to be getting into the business model for TIP as well. And just looking at the business sense, you know, it makes a lot of sense to add it to the existing feed just due to the scalability.

Starting point is 00:45:05 You know, you're able to sell so many more ads just because of you're adding those additional episodes, getting additional listeners into there. So we're going to be diving into that a bit later. But one thing that's really different about TIP is the culture you've built. You know, it almost sounds somewhat cliche. All these companies talking about culture, but it really truly means something here at TIP. And I may be a bit biased being a member of the team here. But I'd like to talk about the mission and the vision of TIP. So maybe you could talk about what those are and maybe how they're different for those

Starting point is 00:45:38 who might not be familiar. I'm going to say something that's very corporate. That's my disclaimer. A mission is the reason why you're accessed and a vision is where you want to be. And so, for example, a mission statement for we studied billionaires could be something like to empower intermediate non-professional investors through simple, actionable, and authentic education. And again, it sounds very corporate and I guess it is quite corporate.

Starting point is 00:46:05 What I wanted to highlight is that we are targeting intermediate investors or definitely not beginners. And it's tempting to focus on new investors because that's where the money is, because by definition, you have more beginners than intermediate investors. But it's more fun to talk about intermediate investing. And so in that sense, the decision was easy. And if you want material for the beginner, you know, we have our YouTube channel, wonderful with Sean Veronica creating great content for beginners. And perhaps you could also say to some extent the Milan Investing show that Rebecca's now hosting is a bit more catered to beginners. But it was really important. important to president me early on that we wanted to be authentic, which I've now started to make

Starting point is 00:46:46 a bit more of cliche because I keep on saying authentic. But like, there was a limit to how much we wanted to do beginner stuff. Like, we were definitely more beginners ourselves in the beginning. And so we talked a bit more about that. And then we sort of like grew together with the listener. And now we want to talk about other stuff. And it's, you know, great if people want to be along on that journey. It's great if they don't want to. I think that's just a normal progression. So going back to your question about vision, and, you know, this is a very difficult question for me to answer because you were sort of taught in business school that you're supposed to have this guiding style called a vision, which is where do you want to be like an ambitious goal

Starting point is 00:47:26 of where you want to take this company? And I would say that never really resonated with me. Please don't get me wrong. I can see why it works. But I also kind of felt it was a bit constraining to have. such guidance. Let me give you an example. A vision could be the biggest financial media company in the world. But here's this thing. I would hate running the biggest financial media company in the world. Just making the company a bigger for the sake of making it bigger just sounded

Starting point is 00:47:52 like a bad strategy. I kind of feel that Preston's view on life has really been rubbing off on whenever it comes to that. And what would likely happen if you want to be the biggest financial media company is that you would dilute the quality of the content because you have to reduce more. And it might be a good business decision if you optimize for dollars, but I would also not feel good about it. I mean, I just wouldn't feel it would be the right thing to do and it wouldn't serve the audience the best possible way. Let me give you another example. We had a recent job interview with a candidate here to join the team. And that person asked me that question, like, what's the vision of the company? And I was like, huh, I should probably have a good answer

Starting point is 00:48:35 for that. And what I told him that was that we wanted to create the best possible workplace for a wonderful team. And I didn't say, you know, the best possible financial content, the most money, anything like that. I really want TIP to be a great workplace where you can empower a team to create wonderful things. Work alongside Preston and me and the team to have this canvas and you can start painting and do whatever you want to do. Of course, it has to make sense in terms of why we hear, but like, what are you passionate about? What can we do together? That was just more the approach. And I guess I have this philosophy that you had to start making sure that your team loves their job.

Starting point is 00:49:22 And then as a result of that, the content will be great. I don't believe it's the other way around where it's quality first and then in turn, the team will just be happy about it. So one of the issues about having this kind of vague approach to business is that I don't have a good, what we call KPI, like a key performance indicator. I don't have a good KPI for that. What should be optimized for and how should we quantify it? I don't really know. You know, we could have something called retention. We were eight years then. We only had two full-time people leave us on their own volition. And we never had any host leave us. So is that a sign that we're a good company to work for? I don't know.

Starting point is 00:50:01 I mean, I think for the right people at the right time, it's wonderful. But at the same time, it's also like, you know, some people outgrow the company or the company outgrow someone and that's okay. And they get different interests. And the host that we have here on the team, they're very passionate about finance and perhaps they start being passionate about something else. You know, great. And you want this journey together for a given amount of time. And that's great. I would say that, and you can sort of like here, I'm almost making it up as we go.

Starting point is 00:50:31 go. If we have a vision, it will be about the culture. And, you know, I think it probably comes from whenever I was teaching at the local college. I loved it, but I was also frustrated about the students who were there who were not motivated. I've also started in the U.S., which I found really inspiring because the students were just so much more passionate about being students and learning than they were in Denmark, I guess, because we have this broken system where education is completely free and you even get subsidized scholarship for everyone. So you get paid to go to school. And so in a way it's great because it gives a lot of social mobility and you get to, I don't know, call it the American dream. Like that's the reality because like you can have,

Starting point is 00:51:20 everyone can get an education and get a good job and you don't hold anyone back because, hey, you pay them to go to school. But it also has this terrible downside that you've got a bunch of students who are like, yeah, I don't want to be here, but I get paid to sit here. So why wouldn't I sit here? And this lack of motivation is really just a pet people of mine. I just can't have it. You know, if I can make an example, like whenever I watch something in sports, like highly paid athletes and they're not motivated, I'm like,

Starting point is 00:51:49 hey, you travel thousand miles to go to play the game and you hear anyway, why not give it 110%. Like, I don't get that. I just don't. And let me give an example about the importance of this. We had an intercall where Rebecca was introduced to the team. And this was not long after she was hired as a host. And she said that she was like, I'd applied before.

Starting point is 00:52:12 I applied this time. I would apply for any other job you put up. I just want to be a part of the company. And whenever I heard that, I was like, yes, that is exactly what we want to achieve. And again, I don't know how to quantify it, but it's statements like that that just makes me more excited than, you know, another million dollars or a million downloads. And I know it sounds probably crazy because I think I just said a million dollars, but like making that difference to the team and like building that culture. And yes,

Starting point is 00:52:39 I can definitely live with the proceeds. Don't get me wrong. But like, that's really a driver. And I don't want this to come off in any kind of a way where like I don't believe in altruism, for example. Like I have very selfish reasons for wanting to work with wonderful people and making sure they're happy. Whenever you're around wonderful people like Rebecca, you just don't feel like you're working. I guess Warren Buffett will call it tap dancing to work. Like, it's just wonderful to work around motivated people. And so I guess that's the culture, that's the vision. And being a part of something that's greater than yourself and where everyone loves being. And if I might add, you know, a culture without big egos. And Clay, if you were

Starting point is 00:53:19 allowed to take a detour, even though I kind of feel I covered a lot of ground already, it's for the same reason why I asked the support team to rate our hosts. You know, it's not the other way around. And so being a host on the MSS podcast network is, and I know I'm selling this heart there here, and I'm super biased, but being a host is a great job for the right person. You know, you get paid to speak with famous people and you get to meet up with the audience. And, you know, whenever you do that, you're everyone's best friend. You might get fan letters and people want to take photos with you. And like, it can easily get to your head. And so I don't know, some people might start missing deadlines or not responding to the email from the team. And because you were a star, right? like you're a host, you're recognized, that's awesome. And so the support team are being asked to rate the hosts and, you know, the hosts are supposed to be maintaining their popularity to the support team to stay on the team. And they achieve that by being humble, responsive, accommodating. And it probably sounds like opposite world. And but, you know, I've just seen this in other companies where you have high performers that just behaves like jerks. And TEP has just

Starting point is 00:54:28 been structured in the way that's not the case. And I don't want this to come off as me being like passive aggressive towards you, anything like that. Clay, because if I might say so, last time we asked the host to be rated, you came out with the highest number of points, which was one of many, many reasons why we wanted you on the We Study Billioners feed, because we wanted your approach to working with the support team and being a host. You wanted that to carry more weight on our network. And so, yeah, you're wonderful. Clay, what can I say? Let's take a quick break and hear from today's sponsors. No, it's not your imagination.

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Starting point is 00:58:23 I should also mention that Robert was a close second in that assessment, so please do not give me all the credit. Robert and I have actually gotten the chance to become great friends over the past year or so since I've joined the team. By happenstance, he visits Lincoln quite often where I live, and it's been great getting to know him. You mentioned how he has the best business mind on the team, and that's why I really enjoy chatting with him, because he never has a shortage of new ideas and his thoughts on a particular business idea or business model. It's pretty awesome to have that feeling that the people you work with feel more like friends than like colleagues. Related to what you were saying just there, you mentioned the altruism

Starting point is 00:59:07 piece and how you don't believe in that train of thought. To some degree, I might push back on that and say that you are very selfless. And, you know, to your points about just treating others right and not having a big ego, you know, it's only right that the host treats, you know, anyone else on the team or anyone in the audience even, just with the same amount of respect that we would, anyone else. And it reminds me of something from my childhood, actually growing up. I'm from a really small community here in the Midwest in the U.S., and I attended a small private school. And when I say a private school, it's anything but your typical private school that oftentimes has more money than they know what to do with due to these, you know, massive donors from whoever.

Starting point is 00:59:55 It was really anything but that. It was a school that was really open to anyone in the community that wanted to go, whether they had the financial means or not. And if I remember right, it was one of the cheapest private schools in the country, if not the cheapest. I believe it was something like $750 per year in tuition. the cost to actually educate the student was 10 times more than that. But what I'm really getting at here is the school was built on volunteering and the giving of one's time and one's money. That sort of environment reminds me a lot of TIP. It's not what can my company or what can my school do for me. It's how can I be of service to the audience? How can I be of service to my colleagues, my community, whatever it is. So I really experienced that growing up. And,

Starting point is 01:00:43 And I've really experienced that as a fan of the show through you and Preston, the other host, just being so giving of your time and knowledge. I've also experienced that working with you guys too as a host. I'm just so grateful for what you've done for me, both as a listener and being a part of the team. And I really, really couldn't be more grateful. I've worked at a few jobs ever since I graduated college in 2017, and we're going to be diving into that later. But it's not something you find everywhere.

Starting point is 01:01:10 and when you do find it, it really is something special. I wanted to transition a bit and tap into your thought process on TIP. Warren Buffett has these brilliant shareholder letters that he writes every year, as the audience knows. And it kind of reminds me of the weekly letters you send to the team at TIP, where you share kind of what's happening at the team, your insights around business as well. And one of your recent updates I really liked, you said that you distinguished companies in three types of ways.

Starting point is 01:01:47 The first being a customer-focused company, which you gave Amazon as an example. Bezos wrote in his early shareholder letters where it's all about the customer. The customer is always right. Whatever the customer wants will give them. The second type of company you outlined was a shareholder-focused company, and that's what pretty much all company falls into. At the end of the day, you need to produce some bottom line profit so the shareholders can get their kick, and that's that. And then the third type is a team-focused company, which you said was TIP, Southwest Airlines,

Starting point is 01:02:20 and very few others. Why did you choose for TIP to be a team-focused company? It seems somewhat counterintuitive, given that we need to attract listeners to the audience. We need to have a listener praise to make money. So why focus on the team first? Let me try and see if I can go around and then answer the question. And let's focus on the customers and shareholders that you also mentioned. And just to make it even more logical, I'm going to start with the second point first.

Starting point is 01:02:49 So we don't want to have a shareholder focused company. And we do a ton of different things that makes no sense from a shareholder perspective. And we can afford to do it in the sense that we don't have any investors who would need to make money. So we don't have any pressure from that. we could, for example, set up more podcasts. And that would be, I wouldn't say easy because very few things in business is easy, but it would be a simple way to make more money. I just don't know what to say and I just don't want to force it for the sake of making more money.

Starting point is 01:03:24 So unless we have more things we want to share with the world, why would we set up more shows? And any rational shareholder would say that we should focus less on happiness and more in making money, I just don't agree with that. I just don't want to live that life. Let's go to the other point, like, customer-focused companies. You know, I never believed in the whole, the customer is always right. Many customers are just not nice. And, you know, like, some customers are really annoying. So one of the first thing I say to our people in the team is that they can fire the customers. And they're like, what? They're like, what do you mean? Like,

Starting point is 01:04:02 fire customers? Yes, because, I mean, I don't want to wake up in the moment. and have to deal with unhappy customers and who just complain. And I don't expect for anyone on the team to want to wake up on morning and deal with unhappy customers. Like, it just sounds like a terrible way of living your life if you can avoid it. Whenever we experience that and, you know, we want to be objective and be like, hey, if a customer has a good point, it's not like we want to be dismissive. And it doesn't like that.

Starting point is 01:04:29 But if we see something where we feel it's unreasonable, that advertiser or someone who bought the course, whatever it might be, or just unreasonable, give them the money back as soon as possible and block the email address because we don't want that kind of negativity on the team. I would just rather have happy team members than heavy customers. And I can see why a company like Amazon who are just obsessed with customer satisfaction, I can see why they're doing well in the mind place. I can see why that approach to customers are probably a lot better. than what we do on TAP, but just as obsessed as Amazon are with customers, you know,

Starting point is 01:05:12 just as obsessed, we are with happy people on the team. I truly believe that it ultimately reflects on the bottom line if you treat your team really well. And even if it doesn't, I just think it's the right way to run a business. If we go back to a business model, like we use advertising as part of a business model. And please don't get me wrong. I can see why you. you can make the argument that the podcast would be better if we didn't have advertising on. We have this weird thing here on our team. We really like to pay our rent and mortgage and stuff. And so we have to do that with dollars.

Starting point is 01:05:46 So yes, I can see why we're better if we didn't have advertising, but it's part of the deal of delivering a free product. But what's great about advertising is that you can create whatever content you want. And if people don't like it, they can just choose not to, you know, listen to that content. that's perfectly fine. And of course, there is like a fine line because like if you create something that's ridiculous or there's too niche, whatever it might be, you can't run the business. And of course, we also have to consider that. But the way I see this is that we attract the people who like the content we create. And you know, you can of course pay for our content if you're on Apple podcast

Starting point is 01:06:27 and buy a premium subscription with no ads or whatnot. But like same, same. If you're, if you like our content and you can live with the ads or have now learned that you have to click like six times and then skip the ads whenever you're listening on the podcast app. You know, fine. You know, we have this in a scorecard where we feel like if we publish content we're really proud of, you know, we'll attract the right people in your capital. We'll tell us if we do a poor job and people will stop listening. And so if I had to clarify our team-based approach, then I'm, of course, very biased.

Starting point is 01:07:01 whenever I say this is a wonderful place to work, you should probably be asked, probably whenever I'm not here, you know, and then someone else on the team. And you know, one of the first thing I do, and this is like a hiring Tregolin from Redalio is that you should ask someone who's already hired on the team to jump on a confidential call with a new hire before they potentially two parties decide to work together and then tell all the bad stuff about working that place. And I'm sure there are a ton of bad stuff. working here at the MSS podcast network. I don't know if you can find any workplace that doesn't have any bad stuff,

Starting point is 01:07:36 but you want for the new hire to know that unpolished version before they start. It's not good for the candidate or for the company if they don't realize it before they start. Like, they should know that before they potentially stop working. Another thing is to highlight is that with this team-based approach, it comes with a lot of responsibilities. It's true that we don't focus too much on profit or what the customer's. is like, but we set a really high standard for everyone on the team and supposed to be a good workplace. And it's just more fun if you work with talented, hardworking people. And again,

Starting point is 01:08:13 I might go back to the word fun. I don't know if this is the right word, but like, if you're going to spend eight hours and something every day, why not make the best out of it? And so, you know, we have this, a number of visible boards with the performance of everyone on the team. And, you know, if you don't perform, you will be asked to leave. And that likely, sound harsh, but I truly believe that you're doing someone a disservice if you ensure that they stay in a job where they don't do well. For example, as a host, you are, aside from the respect of the support team, you also evaluate on your downloads. And there's this book called No Rules Rules by Retasting, the co-founder of Netflix. He has this point that you shouldn't call a company a family

Starting point is 01:08:55 because you cannot fire your family. He compares Netflix to a professional sports team where you are coworkers, but you're also competitors. You are giving full autonomy, more or less, as long as you meet your goals at Netflix. And so I'm definitely not saying the TAP is a professional sports team, not at all. To me, that sounds like a terrible place to work, but it's more a sports team than it is a family if we have to put it on that scale. Wow. So much good information in that one bit. It's definitely no question you've thought a lot about business over the years. The idea I somewhat struggle with is the idea that your work should be fun. Yes, I really enjoy my work here at TIP, but oftentimes a job is a job. There's oftentimes a reason why someone's

Starting point is 01:09:45 willing to pay you to do it. So I think the team-based approach does work well for TIP, but I think it's also critical for the audience or for the listeners to understand that each business needs to take their own approach. Not everyone can, you know, use a team-based approach. Not everyone can be Amazon in that they are completely focused on the customer. Amazon probably wouldn't be who they are today if they took the team-based approach. So it really just depends on the company and even the industry as well. Since you mentioned that top performers are crucial to the success of a team-focused business, How do you go about finding the right people on the team?

Starting point is 01:10:29 You know, it's tricky. If you read management books, and I have to point out the irony of I read a ton of them and I disagree with so much of it. But anyways, if you read those books, they would tell you things like you have to lead by example. You can only set the expectation of others that you set for yourself. And, you know, I think the latter is just completely off the mark. Like, you cannot, as the owner, expect that your team is as motivated, as you are. Like, it's your baby. You're compensated differently. And, you know, if you do set a good example,

Starting point is 01:11:02 you can work to have people on the team that are hopefully almost as passionate about the company as you are. And, you know, that's likely the best thing you can hope for. And so to continue in the thread of fun, you know, perhaps it also depends on how you define fun and we have some many discussion about it. But I think it's so important that you match expectations before you hire people. even though it's very difficult before you actually start working with them, what that means for both parties. And of course, you also have different expectations for different people on the team. I mean, even on a team you cannot expect for everyone to be equally motivated.

Starting point is 01:11:39 For example, I have higher expectations about the host excitement about working with TIP than the support team. I mean, how could I not? And so the process of finding people on the Western team and on the Filipino team has been quite different. For the Filipino team, it's been very much in the United States. network of Bianca and her family, and then now more conventional job posting. But for the team in the West, it's been quite different because we had the advantages of having listeners and luckily also

Starting point is 01:12:07 a lot of passionate listeners who would like to work with TIP. And so it has been the strategy from early on to have future hosts to be fans of the show. And I felt like the best way to ensure that the new host would resonate with the listeners, especially now that Preston Nye, or in some ways taking a step back, or at least create less content or relative to the terms lower less content. So we really wanted to find hosts that were super excited about working with TEP and why we're here. So, I mean, if the host is not excited about the show, how can we expect the audience to be? For example, Clay, your position is, I think, is to date is the position we got the most

Starting point is 01:12:49 application for. I want to say it was close to 100. and Robert went through that process and he handpicked five people at the end. And I was then looped in and I was sitting in on those five interviews. And both Robert and I had you as our clear number one pick. You know, whenever you were selected among many other candidates, it comes with high expectations. Again, I'm happy to say that you exceeded those expectations, which is also why we wanted to promote you to the We Study Billionaire show.

Starting point is 01:13:15 And, you know, finding the right people really comes down to values. And again, I really dislike talking about. values because it sounds so corporate. I remember whenever I heard about corporate values in business school and I just felt it was the most useless lesson I ever had. It likely was because I was too young and too immature to understand why it was important. And, you know, I didn't have any work experience, so I really couldn't put it into perspective whenever you talk about values. But you know, Clay, for example, we provide feedback quite bluntly to each other here in the company. And it's something that you should be ready for. We have this value of radical transparency

Starting point is 01:13:57 that we bought from Redalia, and we expect everyone to live by it. For example, I remember you and I read a book together, and we had like a follow-up session. I want to say that book was good to grade. It might have been principles, but it was one of those two books. During that conversation, I said that I gave you the great five out of ten. I later typed up a message to you and Robert, you were reporting to Robert at the time and I said, here is why I'm giving you the great five out of ten based on your performance today. You know, instead of me like hinting and being passive aggressive, you didn't perform, yada, yada, yada, like, I was just straight up.

Starting point is 01:14:33 You didn't have to guess why you did well or didn't do well. Like you knew exactly what was expected of you. If I might add to this conversation, not long after you got a promotion, you got a race, I don't want people to think badly of you in any kind of way. really believe that it's important to constantly provide feedback. And so one thing, and this is another concept that we borrowed from Radalia is that I have a dot collector. It's called a dot collector. And so whenever I speak with someone from the team and they perform better or worse than what's expected, I put it in the dot collector. And so by the end of the year, whenever you review the performance,

Starting point is 01:15:09 you're not susceptible to recency bias. And so I had like one point that said, you know, reading a book together with Clay, five out of ten, it was not good. But then had a lot of other dots that said, you know, Clay did a wonderful job, XYC. And so that's just at the very core of working with TAP. It's interesting you talk about my personal experience with TIP. It honestly was a bit of a culture shock going from, you know, your regular nine to five corporate job where you're kind of just told what to do. You show up. You know what's expected of you. Oftentimes the expectation aren't super high. So for someone that has that kind of competitive aspect inside them, or maybe they're just wired a bit differently, I just feel like the corporate environment isn't fit for

Starting point is 01:15:57 everybody. So I knew that TIP would be a right fit for me. But even having that experience, wanting someone that kind of wanted something a bit different, wanted to be more in a financial and investing type role, I knew TIP was a good fit for me, but it was still a culture shot going into that. And, you know, I'm really grateful for the radical transparency that you do provide. That was taught to you essentially by Ray Dalio and his book, Principles, which is sitting right behind me right now. Clay and I hope you enjoyed the first part of the story behind the Amherst's Podcast Network. Tomorrow, October 9th, we'll publish the second and last part of this episode. We decided to call it our finances. If you're interested in the business of podcasting

Starting point is 01:16:39 or in the numbers specifically behind the Amherstas Podcast Network, you do not want to miss out on the second part of this episode. We will disclose our current free cash flow, discuss why we declined offers on our company last year, and more importantly, why the Investors Podcast Network is not about money, but about creating the best possible workplace for a wonderful team. Thank you for listening to TIP. Make sure to subscribe to millennial investing by the Investors Podcast Network and learn how to achieve financial independence. To access our show notes, transcripts or courses, go to The Investors' Podcast.com. This show is for entertainment purposes only. Before making any decision consult a

Starting point is 01:17:19 professional, this show is copyrighted by the Investors Podcast Network. Written permission must be granted before syndication or rebroadcasting.

We Study Billionaires - The Investor’s Podcast Network - TIP481: Our Story w/ Stig Brodersen and Clay Finck (Part 1)

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