He Ran PayPal With Elon. Now He Has $100M and Spends Nothing

0:00You gotta tell me what it was like to work with Peter Thiel and Elon Musk. Oh, it was, uh, between Elon, Peter, Max Levchin, myself, David Sachs, Reid Hoffman, there wasn't a single one of us whose ego would fit in a large germazium. What is the net worth that you're at now? It's probably about a hundred million at this point. Money is a means to an end. It's not an end. Yes, it's about money, but it's not about money as a scorecard or something like that. It's about how do you bring your life and your resources together? Because that's about all we've got. Money, life, and time. My guest today is Bill Harris, who has a crazy resume.

0:40He was CEO of Intuit. He was the founding CEO of PayPal, where he was in the room with people like Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, Max Levchin, and they were building PayPal at the time above a bakery near Stanford. He then founded Personal Capital in 2009, grew it to$23 billion in assets under management, and sold it to Empower for close to a billion dollars. He's done something like that 11 different times across fintech and cybersecurity. Today, his net worth is around$100 million. Half is liquid and half is in operating companies that he's still building. He's 70 years old. He's self-funding his newest venture with about$10 million in his own money.

1:17And he spends less than$100 ,000 a year. That's right, less than$100 ,000 a year. He sold houses, cars, airplanes, tons of pets, including mountain goats and an iguana, and moved to a small cottage near Miami Beach where he bikes to work every day. His name is Bill Harris, and he is one of the most interesting conversations I've had on this show. I met Bill from a mutual connection that I have within the Hampton community. Hampton is a private network for high-growth founders and CEOs doing$25 million on average. What I love about this show is that Hampton is where conversations like this happen naturally.

1:52at dinner, in a group chat. I just get to put a mic on it and share these conversations with you publicly. If you're a founder doing real revenue and you're not in Hampton yet, you have to go check it out at joinhampton.com. Here's what we cover in today's episode. First, we go deep on the numbers. What$100 million actually looks like when it's spread across public equities, private operating companies, and about$100K in annual burn. Then we get into his shedding. Why someone worth$100 million sold everything they own and what it actually feels like on the other side. And we close on something that Bill said that I've been thinking about ever since.

2:24The difference between money as a scorecard versus money as rocket fuel for the life that you actually want to live. This is Money Wise. I'm Daniel Burke. Strap in. Let's get started. Here is Bill Harris. Bill, thanks so much for joining us on Money Wise today. How are you doing? Really good. How are you, man? I'm great. I'm in Charleston. You're in Miami. So we're both dealing with some tremendous heat right now, which hopefully passes soon. Yeah, but I tell you what, I love it. I get up early, take my little bike to work and come home late. So it's always, you know, relatively cool. I'm not doing anything in the middle of the day except sitting in air conditioning.

2:59Yeah, same as me for another three months probably. I was digging into your profile and you were the CEO of Intuit. You were the CEO and co-founder of PayPal. Of course, peers at the time with Elon Musk and Peter Thiel. You've started your own business. You sold that to Empower. You now have your own firm. Walk me through the experience of what it's like in your life, Bill, and bring me up to speed today. First of all, life is luck. It's, you know, you do a little bit of, you know, hard work and being smart, but it's mostly luck. And so I was lucky enough to be, you know, born in an academic and affluent place.

3:35What my deal growing up was to be the golden boy, you know, to always be good at academics, at sports, at, you know, everything. And then, you know, good schools, good companies. and I sort of transferred the notion of doing what I thought my parents expected of me to what I thought society was expected of me. And so then all of a sudden I ended up, you know, 40 years old, running a public company with 5 ,000 employees. And based on what I had done in my life, including business school and all the rest, that was supposed to be it. And what I realized, the company was into it. What I realized, and by the way, I wasn't the only guy who realized it.

4:12A lot of people around me realized it. I wasn't very good at that. You know, I hope I'm a good leader. I am not a good manager. And I'm certainly not, you know, good at the broad administrative things. And that was just about the time of the internet, you know, sort of late 90s. And I had been gung ho on this stuff and was having real trouble, even as CEO, bringing Intuit to the internet. And, you know, there's so much going on around us that had this opportunity to go, you know, try and start PayPal along with all the other gang. And that has been the beginning. So since that time, I've started eight different financial technology and cybersecurity companies.

4:51And why? Because I think that's, first of all, that's what I love. I think it's what I'm good at. And that takes me today. But before I go to today, I'll just say one thing. And that is that, you know, it's easy to know or think, you know, what you're good at. it's really not hard to know what you're not good at. And it's more important to figure that out than the other. And so I - Or even to admit what you're not good at. Well, that's it. You got to admit it. I'm happy to admit it to other people. You know, oh, sorry, I screwed up, you know. But to admit it to yourself, something that is part of your identity.

5:22And for 40 years, my identity was around being very good at a very conventional path. And, you know, and then when I realized, I'm just not, this is not for me. That was hard. And even today, the notion is, I love starting things, but I'm really not good at a certain point. I'm not really good when you need to start to, every month, do it 3 % better. The notion is then, okay, start it myself, get a COO, ultimately become chairman or something and the COO run the place. That's so interesting. And when you think of the path, right, you've been so deep in the weeds of financial services. Think of Intuit and PayPal and Empower and your own RIA firm now and all the different startups in between.

6:09It's always money. You've dealt with money your entire career. It's what you're good at, in your own words. I'm curious, behind that, what is money to you in your normal personal life? In my experience, personal finance, it's much more personal than it is finance. And I think a lot of people try to delineate between the two. I would love to know for Bill, what does your financial life look like behind the curtain and the personal life that you have? Yeah, happy to talk about that. But let me just go back and make one point. You said, you know, what I'm what I'm good at is money or finances. No, that happens to be the field.

6:41But what I'm good at, I think and I hope is ideas. I love ideas. And so I just happen to be in the financial space. And there's a reason why I ended up there, which I could tell you at some point if you're interested. But then going to my own personal finances, and by the way, what you said is exactly right, and it's also what we preach in our financial planning, advising, all the rest of that, firms. It's all about personal. Every person's money is completely, completely unique. And the more important thing is not to optimize the money, but to optimize your life, because money is not the thing.

7:17The thing is, it is a rocket fuel. It is the precious resource, the scarce resource you need in order to build the life that you want for you and your family. So what does a typical month look like for you? Typical month? Yeah. Oh, you mean in my money? Yeah. You told me you'd do your homework before we chatted. Remember you said you'd try to figure out where your money's going month over month. I'm putting you on the spot now. Yeah. So I'll give you the headline. The headline is, I just don't have much expenses. I live alone, divorced. Kids are gone. Or not gone. They're doing a great job, but they're not in my...

7:49You can't find them. They don't want you to find them. That's right. That's right. I tried sticking an AirTag on them. That's right. And so it's pretty simple. And I've got a little cottage and it's all paid off. And so there's no mortgage. I pay property tax and I pay, you know, I eat and all that. I don't have a car. And so, you know, I would spend money on travel. I love to travel places I've never been before. Haven't had the opportunity a whole lot recently, but I would spend a chunk of money there. But otherwise, you know what my addiction is? What's that? Amazon. Okay. Walk me through what that looks like.

8:23I should have that. And then 30 seconds later, you've got it. So I think I've bought every $38 thing on Amazon. However, back to what do I spend a month? It's probably... So on an annual basis, it's well less than$100 ,000 and probably more like$70 ,000 or$80 ,000. And that's all in property taxes, all included. Everything. And that's a shift from earlier in life, right? I've seen some different things that you sort of gave up things. Is that correct? So what's the shift? Walk me through what you were like and why you changed. I mean, kind of forsaken some of these items. Four phases. I was on my family's dole for a long time, all the way through graduate school.

9:10And, you know, I worked, but, you know, thank you. And so you came from money, even your parents? You know, well off. I mean, he's a professor and a doctor, and you don't make a whole lot as a professor. But at any rate, well off for sure. Then, you know, single in New York City and not really any money and living in a studio and all that. Luckily, I had my own studio. I didn't have to share with somebody. And that was a decade or more. And then it's family and get married and two kids and all that. And I'm now in a period when I'm shedding things. That's a period when you accumulate things. And so over time, over the 25 years, by the end we ended, we had two huge houses, one Woodside in Northern California, one Newport Beach in Southern California.

9:58We had, I don't know how many cars. We had 31 pets. Oh my goodness. Hold on. Pause there. Yeah. We're talking dogs or you have like cows and horses and pigs and what's a pet? It always varied, right? because there was a lot of birthing and dying. And so actually that's the way my kids learned arithmetic, you know, because they would do additional action every day. But approximately three dogs, three to five cats, a rooster, maybe six or seven chickens, a pony, two old nags, two mountain goats, which was a real mistake because if they were regular goats, you could keep them in the pasture. Mountain goats, they just go boop, boop like this.

10:43And they were forever running all over town. And let's see, two finches, two cockatiels, and an iguana. So you must have had dozens of acres of land. We had about five acres. This was north in Woodside. And it had been a farm, not a real farm, but a gentleman's farm. And so we had a barn. We had a pasture. We had outbuildings and things like that. But the problem was, or not the problem, the opportunity, the fun part, This thing was incredible. It was built in 1906 outside of San Francisco. And, you know, nothing in California is that old. And in 1906, 1906 is when they had the earthquake. And so the only thing that I can figure is that it had already been done or mostly done by the time the earthquake came along, because otherwise everything would have, you know, gone to San Francisco.

11:32Anyway, big old place, really beautiful, great bones. But when we moved in, nothing had been done for 90 years. And so we redid it. The guys came in, they looked at it. They said, listen, we can scrape it, rebuild it, make it look exactly the same, and it'll save half the cost. And of course, like idiots, we didn't want to do that. So we spent three and a half years fixing that place up. Wow. Wow. And was that costly or was that sweat equity? Beautiful place. Loved it. but then you talk about you know sort of what life was like um yeah i don't know how many cars we had uh i don't know how many i mean you're talking 20 cars five cars no no no uh but you know four or five expensive you know sports cars or um daily drivers no uh well my wife liked uh like a range rover or something um i actually for a while i drove a smart car just because no way yeah i've always wanted to drive one i'm i'm a big guy you might not be able to tell i'm about six foot five I've always wanted to get in a smart car, never had the opportunity to, but it looks smaller than a golf cart even.

12:38Do I have the car for you? Because my smart car, it was a convertible. So it doesn't matter. So your head gets to stick out the top? Yeah. Oh, that's fun. We'll get you some goggles and you can just... That's right. Oh, that'd be fun. But you mentioned it is bigger than a golf cart. However, when I was in Mumbai at one point, no, Bengaluru, where they have, you know, all the little taxis they've got in Bengaluru, it's it's black with a yellow top. And they look so cool and they're all buzzing around. Looks like a bunch of little bees buzzing around. And so I decided I'd buy one and, you know, sort of bought it and tried to figure out through how to get it through customs and all that.

13:22Could never get through the paperwork, so we never actually did it. But I was figuring for this place in Newport Beach, they have a rule that you can drive golf carts on the street. Not on the highway, but on the street. So I was going to bring it back, shove a couple of golf clubs in the back, and claim it's a golf cart and just drive it around. I mean, you probably could have gotten away with it for a while. Oh, yeah. For what it's worth. I mean, what do they care? That's funny. Oh, man. Okay, so you had a number of cars. You had two houses. you had some land, you had a bunch of pets. You were in the life of accumulation.

13:57You were accumulating things. The swimming pool and the pool house and all this stuff. I mean, listen, it was a glorious, from a thing point of view, it was a glorious life. Yeah, as it sounds like. And then today you're shedding, as you said, but you're, I take it probably more wealthy in terms of net worth than you've ever been. Is that correct? Yeah. What is the net worth that you're at now? Well, I've probably been higher because there was the divorce, of course. But it's probably about$100 million at this point. And what's the liquid versus illiquid on that breakdown? Well, first of all, my general approach, and this is not the approach that I advise my clients, but my general approach is a barbell.

14:43Because so much of my net worth, or at least future net worth, is tied up in highly risky stuff. I mean, you know, most startups don't work. I've been a little lucky. So that I've got so much risk there that on, you know, the sort of liquid or investment assets, I tend to go pretty conservative. And so I would say, first of all, about half of that is in businesses or businesses that are in stealth or just, you know, parked, ready to go. The rest of it is probably so half of the 50 million is probably about half in diversified securities. And just like I would advise my clients, about half is in bonds of various natures.

15:22So then you're a 50 of the 100 is in like private equity then? Is that what you're saying? No, no. 50. The other 50 is I don't I do no fancy investing. Don't really believe in it. Almost all of it comes with absurd fees. And, you know, on that basis alone, but also if you look at the track records, everybody's always talking about the rocket ships. But on a on a full basis, If you look and, you know, get past survivorship bias, there's not a whole lot of evidence that the alternatives, you know, over the long haul do terribly well. But no, what I'm talking about is having money actually in operating companies.

16:03OK. Yeah, that makes sense. And you mentioned sort of do as I say, not as I do with your firm. Are you doing all this yourself through Evergreen's platform, your current RIA? Yeah. Bill's investment philosophy is something super interesting. He's conservative on the liquid side, high risk on the operating side, and almost nothing in between. That barbell approach is something I hear from a lot of founders inside of Hampton. Hampton is a private network for high-growth founders doing$25 million on average. These are the people who have already built something real. And they tend to think about money a lot less like investors and more like operators.

16:39If you've built a company doing at least$3 million in revenue and you want to be in a room where conversations like this one happen every day, check out joinhampton.com. Okay. So how do you justify that if someone asks your client, hey, I just want to copy what you're doing? Do you just say, no, no, no. You don't want to copy what I'm doing. No, I do. I do. I am doing what we advise. You are. I'm just dialing it to a much more conservative dial than one would expect for someone whose resources are that much ahead of their needs. I mean, if I came in, the only difference I would make, I mean, I'm managing the business, my money the same way with the same people, all that kind of stuff.

17:24The only difference if somebody just came in that had my profile, I would say, oh, you know, 80, 90 percent equity. Yeah. And when you think of public equities, you're just like S &P 500, you know. So I am a huge believer in diversification. When we started Personal Capital, which was, you know, one of the very first online RIAs, we started at about the same time as Wealthfront and Betterment. We were quite different. We were much more upscale, much more, you know, sort of sophisticated from a portfolio point of view, but same time, often lumped together. And I really respect Wealthfront and Betterment.

18:03I do not have respect for Robinhood because I think they're teaching an entire generation of investors exactly the wrong way to invest. See, I need to talk to you offline then because I use Robinhood as my main brokerage. There you go. Well, it depends what you're in for. Are you in for sort of long-term stability? Are you investing? And it's not about the game. It's about - I just dollar cost average, like S &P 500, a little bit of NVIDIA. That makes sense. I'm not doing anything wild. That makes sense. Absolutely. Makes sense. And a lot of people, increasing numbers of people, particularly young people, are in it for the crapshoot.

18:40And that's fine. If that's what you enjoy, get your thrills and it's a lot of fun, fine. But it's not really smart investing for the long term. It's interesting. Okay. When you think of valuing some of these different companies that you yourself have started that you're also invested in, how do you actually put a number to that? I mean, it could be worth five, it could be worth 500. Where do you calculate that? How do you justify what that net worth comes out to when it's a private equity of that type? Yeah. Well, it doesn't make a whole lot of difference if I'm just owning it, right? Because sort of who cares how much it's worth?

19:15You would use comparables and you would use things that, you know, recent transactions and things like that. And I mean, there's a world of investment bankers that will do that for you. The only time it really matters is when you're either getting funding or selling or going public. And then, okay, now the devaluation matters. At that point, comparables, all that kind of stuff. But I'll tell you what dominates it, two things, markets and story. So the markets, there's sometimes when, particularly in tech, which is such a roller coaster. There are some times where, holy Jesus, the valuations are crazy.

19:56We've got that today going as well. But I was right in the middle of the internet bubble. I'll tell you a story of that on a second. But the point is markets can be going wild and then everybody will pay for growth and nothing, they don't care about profits. Then all of a sudden, there's a, you know, we're bipolar. And now all of a sudden we care everything about profits and nothing about growth. So, and, and the multiples go up and down. All you can really do is say, okay, what's the current landscape? What do multiples look like, et cetera. That's half of it. The other half is story. Can you excite people?

20:31Should they be excited about your business? Yeah. And in my business tech, it's really all about growth. Yeah. And what's the end game for you with evergreen and, you know, let's say the next 25 years, where do you want all this to land? Yeah. So I've typically, I guess almost always, I think about these things as, what's my goal? My goal is an independent, durable company, sustainable. And it hasn't always happened. It has never happened so far because I've always, but somebody comes along and it makes more sense for them or they're willing to pay something where you owe something to your investors.

21:08But I'm not looking for an exit. I'm not planning for an exit. I'm looking to build something. And in order to do that, you have to find something that's broad enough. You know, some companies are features, some companies are products, some companies are companies. And in order to be a company, you need to have your product and your market be sufficiently broad that it has long legs. I've been lucky because in the financial services world, it is so bloody huge that even small percentage of big markets is a lot to shoot at. When you started getting rid of real estate, cars, things, what was the thinking behind that?

21:44Why did you start to shed some of the layers? Things are time. It's remarkable. Just at some point, when you get into bed, just think about, okay, how much time did I spend today managing my things? Paying bills, getting things fixed, figuring and pushing them around, cleaning things out. I mean, it's just time. And I've got enough money. I don't have enough time. And it's not only the time, it's the brain space. I feel liberated. There's real research behind what Bill just described. In a 2023 study out of UCLA, they found that a number of objects in the home is directly correlated with cortisol levels, the stress hormone.

22:26The more stuff you have, the more amount of chronic low-grade stress you'll also have, even if the stuff is nice. And separately, the researchers behind the book, The Time Bind, found that the average American spends about eight hours per week managing their physical possessions. Cleaning, repairing, organizing, finding things, returning things. It turns into a full workday every week just maintaining stuff. Bill didn't get rid of his houses and cars and airplane because he couldn't afford them. He got rid of them because he did the math on what they were actually costing him. And what it turns out they were costing him was time.

22:59And for Bill, time was the most valuable thing he had. You know, this is the third phase or fourth phase of my life. And I have very consciously, you know sold everything i've got properties um i used to have a little little airplane not like a jet or anything like that just a little plastic toy but it was a lot of fun and um uh in fact it was a really incredible were you the pilot or did you have a guy yeah that's fun no it's just a little two-seater um a single engine jet or a plane rather yeah a single engine push push prop A tiny, I say plastic, carbon fiber, brand new. And it was so cool because it was, you could take off and land in the ocean or the lake.

23:42Oh, that's very cool. As well as the land. And it just went anywhere. Wasn't fast, but very maneuverable. And it built not for transportation, just for fun. But that's gone. The houses are gone. The cars are gone. and it's just, I can breathe and I can spend my days doing whatever the heck I want. What is it that you want? What is it that you do? You know, more than anything else, I just have a hankering for new things, new people, new places, new architecture, new whatever. And so the place I really spend most of my time is building new businesses. And again, what do I think I'm good at, or at least what do I like?

24:23It's the ideation phase. Yeah. I want to ask a question that I know my listeners are probably going to ask me. Why didn't you ask him this? You got to tell me what it was like to work with Peter Thiel and Elon Musk. It was a zoo. I mean, it was really unkempt. First of all, between Elon, Peter, Max Levchin, myself, David Sachs, Reid Hoffman, there wasn't a single one of us whose ego would fit in a large germazium. I like that. That's a good analogy. And, you know, we were close to fisticuffs most days. It was never clear. I mean, for a good point, I was theoretically the CEO, but it was really not.

25:03Theoretically. What do you mean by that? You were literally the CEO, but was there a power struggle? Was there a hungry ego at play? Yeah, there were power struggles, but I wouldn't quite think of them as power struggles. It's just a whole bunch of very headstrong, motivated people. We were all working like hell. And so, you know, I've got this idea. God damn it, I'm going to do it and get out of my way. And how did that work then? Because you guys did succeed, but I know there was some complexity. And I mean, I don't know if ousted is the right word, but I know there's some, you know, some walkouts that maybe you can divulge a little bit of the details there if you'd like.

25:39But like, how did it all come together? I don't want to go into anything that would be personal for them or anything like that. But sure, there were, we went through all sorts of stuff. people being ousted, people coming back. It was, let me put it this way, it was unstable. It was incredibly creative. I mean, these were a bunch of, you know, I think I'm smart, but a lot of these guys are off the charts and very aggressive and action-oriented. I mean, Elon's the boldest person I've ever, ever met and bold in terms of just thinking, well, I'll do that. I can do that. here we go, which anybody else would have said, you know, just, hey, laws of physics.

26:19But yeah, it was unstable amongst everyone, essentially. But it only lasted a small amount of time. I mean, it was about a year. And then the minute eBay bought it, everyone gone. It's interesting. You said earlier there was a lot of luck at play in your story. What part of that story was luck versus strong will or even you putting yourself into the right place at the right time. Well, it is right place, right time. And depending upon when you're going to start, you know, I mean, hell, I was a white man born in 1956 in the United States in a academically charged community. I mean, I'm already, you know, 0.0001 % of the human race just by being born.

27:06And so it depends on your starting point. But let's just say in business, I got to say it's 80, 90 % luck and not so much luck in, oh, I flipped a coin, but luck in that, oh, I happened to be in Silicon Valley, happened to meet some people who were doing this or that. You got to say 80, 90 % luck and then it doesn't help if, it helps if you work hard. Yeah. And of course, in Silicon Valley, the definition of work hard is a little different than in most of the world. Walk me through what your approximate net worth was through some of these different seasons, because each of your stories is what I would call the peak of many people's ambition.

27:50Oh, I got to lead into it as a CEO. I got to co-found PayPal with a bunch of awesome entrepreneurs. I sold a company for shy of a billion dollars. And you kept doing it. How was your net worth growing throughout those different seasons and chapters? You know, sort of gradually and piece by piece, and then cut in half with my divorce. And I'm not bitter about that at all. But in the early days, I really, and even today, I mean, I'm lucky because I've got more than enough money to do whatever I want. But even in the early days, I really haven't been terribly motivated by money. And I think most people who are terribly successful or many people who are terribly successful are not.

28:36You know, you're in it for the fulfillment or satisfaction or proving you can. Three words are important for me. The one in this case is mastery. When I feel like I'm, you know, I know how to do this. I'm here. And, you know, boy, what I just did there, damn good. I get a sense of mastery and I get a, you know, it really powers me. I love that. And so that's probably what I run for more than anything else. So the money, when I started out, you know, I was late to Silicon Valley. I spent the first 10 years of my life in New York City in the media business. And so the whole stock option thing was brand new for me.

29:15And for instance, in the early days at Chipsoft and Intuit, the board would just give me options. And I would look at the number of options that I was getting and the number of options that most normal people in the company were getting. And I was like shocked and, oh, no, that's not right. They're working as hard as I am. There's an extra comma here. And so I pushed options down. Now, part of it, I'm not saying I'm an angel. I just didn't quite understand how the game worked. So did well with options. at Intuit. In the media business, I had a nice life and I had a nice apartment, but that's it.

29:59And then, so options at Intuit, they were pretty good. Nothing like flamboyant. PayPal was pretty flamboyant, but - Do you remember what you made personally from that acquisition? Oh, I think it might have been more than$20 million, less than$50 million. But you've got to remember, this was 25 years ago. Right. Back when a million was actually a million. Here we go. Yeah. Yeah. And so a series of the companies that I've started have been good, but not knockouts. Personal Capital was pretty much a knockout. I mean, it was only a unicorn. Today, we're talking about billion corns. But I'm sorry, we're talking about trillion corns.

30:46You must have made 100 plus from that, I would assume. Yeah. Something that doesn't get talked about enough is when a company sells for some exorbitant amount of money, like 825 million in this case, the founder does not get 825 million. Personal capital raised 290 million in VC money before it sold, which means investors owned a significant chunk of the company before the deal closed. By the time you account for VC dilution, co-founders, option pools, taxes, even at long-term capital gains rates,$825 million exit can produce very different personal outcomes depending on how early you were, how much you raised, and how your cap table was structured.

31:24Bill said he made more than$20 million, but less than$50 million from PayPal 25 years ago. For personal capital, he confirmed it was north of$100 million. Post-tax, long-term capital gains, some of it in Roths. The point isn't the exact number that you make, It's that the exit headlines that founders typically share are fairly different than what the outcomes actually look like in their bank account. Yeah. And that's post-tax? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, good for you. And of course, all long-term capital gain and some of it in Roths and things like that. So then why go bootstrap your own RIA? Well, first of all, so why bootstrap?

32:03Because I can. And the issue that I had early day and many people have with starting something is if you've got investors, even great investors, this was in the day, typically in the day when the VCs were actually doing venture capital. They weren't doing later stage stuff. Now you've got a couple of VCs on your board. And even if they're great, the early stages of a company like this, you're swirling and you really have no idea and things change. And, you know, so then you say, oh, that's not going to work. And we're going to go this way. And then even if you own the majority and even if you've got great investors, you still have to call everybody up, say, hey, remember what I told you last week?

32:53That was stupid. Now we're going to go try this. And that whole process. I've been in conversations like that. Yes. Yeah. Oh, no. That CEO, we got rid of him. But he had a new plan. Yeah, yeah. And then also just the time you spend raising money and raising relatively small amounts of money. I mean, it's counterintuitive because later on, when you're talking big numbers, it actually gets easier, you know, particularly if you have a good story. Early days, you're scraping. And so being able to fund it myself gives me flexibility, gives me more time to focus on the job, things like that. So that's why I self-fund at this point.

33:35To the extent we get to where we've got good traction, we really need to invest in the business, then I will look for external investors. But at the moment, it gives me great freedom. It's actually just like the rest of my life. What do I love about my life right now? Freedom. I can do – I have no boss. I can do whatever I want. I don't have a boss at work. I also – my things are not my boss. You're not controlled by anything. That's right. Yeah. I mean, that's nice. And so you own the RIA firm outright, 100%. Outside of options. Yeah, sure. Right. Right. I mean, that sounds like the ideal situation.

34:17Well, it's your ideal situation if you're like me. Right. That's a good point. You know, when I think of your story, so I have two young kids. I have a third kid on the way. Three boys. God help us. How old are they? Four, almost five. I have two and a newborn coming in October and November. So it's going to be a crazy zoo at the house. And where do you live? Charleston. Oh, you live in Charleston. I see. Yep. Just outside of Charleston. But yeah, 20 minutes from Charleston. Yeah. And we love it. You are in what is now and will become even more so the most intense period of your life. Yes. Because you are in the middle of, holy shit, I've got this business.

35:00I've got my skills. I've got my I'm trying to build myself, build the business, think about, you know, build my wealth. I mean, all of those things happening simultaneously with I've got a marriage. I got the kids. Survive. Your marriage is happy. Yeah. And and, you know, the newborn's up in the middle of the night and the young ones are falling over on the coffee table and you're making races, you know, racing to the hospital. And I mean, I went I had that kind of a life for a while and it was brilliant. brilliant, gorgeous, but my wife and I never, never did anything. You know, we would just, at the end of the day, we'd go, oh, Jesus Christ.

35:37Yeah. Barely keep your eyes open. Yeah. So, you know, you've got, you've got a 10 year sprint ahead of you. Yeah. Yeah. And I feel it. I'm, I feel like I'm already a few years into that sprint. And it's interesting because I, I don't, I don't at all feel like I've made it yet. And so I'm still ambitious. I'm still chasing, you know, a number or a lifestyle that I don't have quite well defined yet. It changes quite a bit. But when I hear, you know, at one point you had the houses, you had the cars, you had things, and then you started getting rid of those. I'm wondering at what point in that journey did it start to feel like a burden?

36:14Because it didn't always. I mean, even as you're talking about the plane, it sounds like you even have maybe a healthy miss of the plane. Like you loved the plane. I can tell as you're talking about it, like that was a fun thing for you to have. And you asked about sports cars. I used to have a bunch of sports cars. I mean, not multiple at once, but you know, a series of them. Now they weren't, you know, fancy or expensive sports cars. I tend to like little roadsters, European roads from the late fifties and sixties, but between, you know, Austin Heelys and little, little Mercedes and things like that.

36:48Had great fun. Loved that. Loved my little airplane. Loved all these things. And so, yeah, you know, if I was really, it's not a bad idea to go have the little airplane and just having it. No, it's, I'll tell you why it's a bad idea. I was about to say, it's not a bad idea. What the heck? You can just pay the people at the airport to keep it fixed, keep it flying, be at the, but here's why that's a bad idea. And actually here's why I sold it. If you It's muscle memory, and you've got to be flying this bloody thing, feeling the airplane at the same time. The most difficult thing is flipping the frequencies and talking because it's a different language up there.

37:26And the pre-flight and the post-flight and everything else, all of this stuff, you have to do frequently enough that you're not thinking about it. You know it. And so if you can't fly regularly, don't fly. Yeah, I mean, it sounds like a lot more risk than an average person should take on. Well, it's not. I mean, it's not terribly risky if you're, you know, doing it regularly and you're well-trained. Yeah. When you think of, I mean, you mentioned not being motivated by money, but you're still building. You're still, you know, chasing a new milestone with your current venture. What, I guess, what reason do you have for growing that wealth now if you aren't motivated by money?

38:05Well, I didn't say I was completely unmotivated. Okay. It's just not the primary drive. But I do like having money. I do like building my wealth. If nothing else, it's self-affirming. But why do I – what's the driving reason that, for instance, I work? Well, the first is I don't play golf and wouldn't want to learn. Like you just don't like golf at all? Oh, I can't think of a bigger waste of time. I don't know that many people with a net worth of your size who live in Miami who aren't golfing, at least once a week. Well, I'll tell you what, I live on Miami beach and on Miami beach, there are young people with bodies and old people with boats and I have neither.

38:48So I am on the opposite side of the spectrum. I'm terrible at golf, but I love to play. So, you know, somewhere in the middle of you and I combined, it would be a really good golfer that goes once or twice a month. Well, no, no, I'm awful at golf. I don't think I've, Okay. Yeah. No, but if I were to, I mean, really my exercise is more than anything else, my bicycle. I do some strength training, but if I were to do something like golf, it would be tennis. All right, Money Wise listeners, quick reality check. It's that time of year when you catch yourself thinking, why didn't I start earlier? We knew summer was coming.

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40:42That's dailybodycoach.com forward slash money wise. It's much more active. It doesn't take as much time. And, you know, I think it's I think it's more fun. The thing I really do, I still do and absolutely love is skiing. Yes. And where do you go? Do you have a common place or do you go? Well, the guy there's there's a guy there's a bunch of us and it was who go every year. And the guy who put the whole thing together and is our leader, he used to run Kimpton Hotels. And they had a hotel right at the base of Ajax Mountain in Aspen. And so we used to all congregate there. And it was just such a great time.

41:22Beyond that, it could be Jackson Hole or Utah or Europe. I love skiing in Europe. I've skied in New Zealand, which is wild, and all over. That's cool. I've been snowboarding my whole life. I go out to Colorado typically. I've been to Whistler a number of times. I lived in Europe for a little bit, and I wanted to go up to Austria, Switzerland. Madrid. Unfortunately, during the winter I lived there, I loved Madrid. We've been back several times, one of our favorite cities in the world. I had to get back surgery the one winter that I would have gone to Austria or Switzerland. And so haven't been back since then.

42:03Back is fine. Everything's good now. But would love to go to Europe to snowboard someday. Well, here's what you do. Sometime before your oldest is like really engaged in school, which doesn't give you a whole lot of time. Go spend the summer in Europe. I mean, we did last year. Not the full summer. We did three, three and a half weeks. We went to Madrid, North Italy, went through the Dolomites. It was amazing. I mean, in fact, we came back and we said, I guess we have to do that every year now because life is going to feel really boring if we don't. And, you know, we had to get over that fast because our normal life is actually really fun.

42:37But something about those summers in Europe, it's hard to beat. Oh, God, yes. And particularly, you know, somewhere along the Med, it's just so lovely. If I ever – but Europe has got such terrific – if I ever stopped starting or running companies, I think I would go be a student at Cambridge. and, you know, because it's a, you know, everything, anthropology, histories, computer science, you know, just the notion of exposing yourself to new things all the time would be terrific. But just in travel, so I, about a year and a half ago, I was, you know, a little bit burned out. I just said, guys, I got to go.

43:27And I took two weeks and I was thinking it was, you know, where to go? I just headed south because it was Christmas time and it was cold. So I headed south all over Latin America, had no plan, just for two weeks, spun around. And it was brilliant. Do you wish you had more weeks like that? Yeah, but I do if I want to. And so really I have to, you know, have a stern word with myself. Yeah. I have a last question here. You started the mutual fund very early. You're 60 years removed from that. You've been thinking about money at the highest level your entire career. What is something you wish you knew about money and investing when you were 30 that you know now?

44:15It's really simple. Put something away in a way that it'll grow and then forget it and, you know, come back to it every now and then. But I think we are obsessed with the here and now. OK, how can I take my thing and what can I invest in to do a little bit better? And that's fine. And that's what drives so many of us. But don't forget to hive off a piece and just put it someplace where you won't think about it and let it marinate. Right. That's a lot of people just say park your money in an index fund and just forget about it. Is that what you're suggesting? Just go into an index and just let it be gone?

44:52Yeah, that's at least for 10, 15 years. I think that's that has been a good way to do it. I think it's a little dangerous right now because the S &P is so skewed towards tech and AI based tech and everything else that unfortunately it's it's really not diversified anymore. So ironically, you're right. Yeah. Yeah. But, but yes, things where you're not trying to shoot the lights out, where you're just trying to make sure that 10 years later, you know, I've got something that I wouldn't quite call it. Fuck you money. Bill's opinion about the S &P 500 is a bit contrarian, according to some of the other conversations that I've had.

45:30He thinks that it's gotten a little bit dangerous to just park and forget it because it's no longer super diversified, at least not as much as it used to be. And he's right. As of 2025, the top 10 companies in the S &P 500 make up roughly 37 % of the entire index. Companies like Apple, NVIDIA, Microsoft, Amazon, Meta, Alphabet. You're not buying 500 companies when you're buying the S &P anymore. You're buying a handful of mega cap tech stocks and then 490 other companies that barely move the needle. That's not necessarily a reason to panic, and I personally still think the S &P 500 is a really good thing to invest in.

46:02But those companies are genuinely dominant. And it's a reason to understand what you're buying into when you do invest in the S &P 500 is it's the market of 500 companies, but really it's not as diversified now as it used to be. Bill calls this type of money freedom money. It's the thing that gives you the ability to make the decisions that are right for you when they're right for you. In the Hampton community, we have channels where people discuss what types of money making decisions they do and where they spend their money and what they spend their money on just because they have it. I think that's awesome.

46:32I think we should encourage people who have the money to spend it to spend the money. And that's exactly what Bill Harris's philosophy is on life and what a lot of the founders inside of the Hampton community can resonate with. If you want to resonate with and discuss that type of financial freedom with founders just like yourself, check out joinhampton.com. Because it's not money that you, you know, because I want to be able to say, screw you to my whatever, my job or whatever. But it is, let's call it freedom money. It allows you to be free to make the decisions that are right for you at the time.

47:07All right. And we'll end it on this note. I have to ask, top three things you've bought on Amazon for under$100 in the last three months. Well, goodness. A wireless router because I was having satellite-based, not Starlink because I was having such difficulty. And little things like that. I mean, first of all, it takes time. God damn it. But little things like that. But having just having great connectivity, how important is that? Oh, man. I just at least a co-working space. And that was the first thing I asked is, hey, is the up and down speed of the internet here capable of 20 people showing up and working in tech?

47:49It's like you can't use the space anymore if the internet's not fast. Okay, so router. Number two. Number two. And again, what's important to me? One is computing and connectivity. Another is my little bicycle. And so I've got the helmet is the most important thing. In fact, I took another dive about four weeks ago, concussion and busted up my shoulder and all that. But the most I am, the most important thing is after the helmet is my little rear view mirror. Because if you're doing city traffic, which I do, you got to know what's who's behind. So all that's good. But I just bought something I'm not used to yet.

48:27that's another rear view mirror that clips to my helmet. I've seen those. Yeah. So I have no idea whether it's going to work or not. My parents both have one. They have the e-bikes. And so they're going like 40 miles an hour without pedaling, which I'm like, well, why are you on a bike at this point? But they love it. I have fun with them sometimes. But they have that on their helmet. They seem to love it. So I think it should work, should do you well. Well, if your parents are on e-bikes, more power to them. That's great. Yes. I'm more traditional like you. I have a road bike and I, you know, fly down the trail with my road bikes.

49:00That's fine. Yeah. The only thing that I think I would advise against, I see out in the boulevards, I see these guys on scooters, electric scooters, in traffic, you know. Yeah. And you know what you call them? No. Pre-dead. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I knew a specialized heart surgeon and he said the number one person that he would transplant as a heart transplant specialized surgeon was motorcyclists. And he said, every time I see someone on the motorcycle, I just say it's a matter of time before they show up in my office. And I mean, that was 25 years ago. He was a next door neighbor. I was growing up.

49:36I'm like, I've thought of it ever since. Nothing against people on motorcycles. I know people love them. I don't have one personally, but I'm like, that has stuck with me. That statistic. So there's some danger out there for sure. Well, Bill, this has been phenomenal. You're a great guest for the Money Wise show. I appreciate you just divulging even some of the way you think about money. Is there anything you wanted to share with the Money Wise audience that you don't feel like we covered? Yeah, so I think we covered it, but I'll just say it anyway. Money is a means to an end. It's not an end.

50:06And so remember that. And in fact, I'm starting a little podcast myself. I don't know how to do it, but I'm going to give it a try. and maybe you'll come on at some point. But it's called money and life because that's the important thing is being able to put those two things together. And that's one of the things I love about this thing that you're doing because that's what you're doing. Yes, it's about money, but it's not about money as a scorecard or something like that. It's about how do you bring your life and your resources together because that's about all we've got. Money, life, and time.

50:43I agree. and time becomes more and more valuable the less of it you have. That's right. And I'm 70 years old, but that's only 21 Celsius. I'm going to use that someday. That's really good. All right. You don't look a day over. I mean, you could pass this 54. Well, thank you. Thank you. Yeah, you look great. Keep on the bike. It's doing your wonders. Okay, man. But Bill, thanks so much. Look forward to hearing from you soon. You bet. Talk soon. Bye-bye. I love this point that Bill just made. And I think it's the whole point of Money Wise. He said money, life, and time is about all that we've got.

51:17And the only goal worth having is figuring out how to put those three things together. Those are the types of conversations I get to have with incredible guests like Bill on Money Wise. And it's very similar to the types of conversations I have all the time inside of the Hampton community. How do I make more, but also what am I actually building towards? Hampton is a private network for high growth founders doing at least 3 million in revenue or who have exited for 10 million or more. If you're building something real and you want to be around people who are asking these types of questions, go to joinhampton.com.

51:47These are your people. I've been the host of Money Wise for a while now, and the guests who make the most money aren't always the ones who seem the freest. Bill Harris might be the first person I've talked to who genuinely seemed like a free guy with a ton of money. Not because he just has$100 million, but he decided what that money was going to be used for. Thank you so much for listening to Money Wise. If you've gotten something out of this episode, please go share it with someone somewhere in the accumulation phase who maybe hasn't asked themselves yet what they're actually accumulating toward.

52:15I know I'm in that phase and I know that this episode resonated a lot with me. I'm going to be asking a few hard questions to myself like, what am I building toward? And when am I going to stop building? When am I going to really be satisfied? Again, I am Daniel Burke. I'm the host of Money Wise. Thanks again for listening. Smash that subscribe button if you haven't already. And we'll see you next week.