Just found out my neighbor’s business sold for $450M

24:48I could tell you main point two. I could tell you the main point three. And in under 15 minutes, you can get the gist of what's in this book. You'll get the big ideas and you'll get them explained to you. You could either read it or we have AI that turns it into audio and you can just listen to like a 15-minute summary of this book. And we've done it for 1 ,500 of the most popular books. And people pay a simple 12, 13 bucks a month for this. and this has become an absolute juggernaut. So I did not think that these book summary apps could get this big, but damn if that's impressive. 200 million in ARR, 30 % profit, built this thing out of the Ukraine.

25:27They just raised funding at a$2.3 billion valuation. Right, right. Holy crap. So like you could have done that instead. And I think you would have been great at this. By the way, you know, here's why I said that this, like you could have done this, because when I went and looked at their ads, the way this business grows, they run ads on TikTok, on Facebook, whatever. And the hook of their ads, tell me if this sounds familiar. My boss thinks I'm a genius and thinks I read 150 books a year, but actually I just use Headway. That's their ad? It's not word for word. I just wanted to really bait you with that one, but it's basically the gist of their ads.

26:07It's the same value. I invented that ad. I invented that ad. I stole it from someone else and I invented that ad. That's my ad. That's my ad that I took. Yes, I stole that from the skim and I invented that ad. Their ad is a little bit more like, it'll be the average CEO reads 52 books a year. How many do you read? So they're basically making you feel like a shitty CEO or it'll say, everyone thinks I went to Harvard with the amount of books that I know. but actually I just use Headway. Or it'll be, meet the app that all the intellectuals are using. Stuff like that. And so those are the sort of hooks that they use to get people to do this where they're not saying, here's a book summary.

26:54They're basically saying, be a smarter person and be seen as a smart person because you seem so well-read and here's your hack to seeming so well-read. So what's interesting is thrive. By the way, we should do this for the podcast. It's like, my boss thinks I'm kind of retarded, but know a lot about business. The secret is, I just listened to my first million. But I still sound a little retarded. My boss is so impressed that I know all these numbers. But then he wonders. But then he fact checks me.

27:30My boss is wondering why I have pepperoni in my mouth.

27:35This is ridiculous. These guys, so they raise money from Thrive, which Thrive is a big VC investor in ChatGPT. Are they not worried that ChatGPT just does all this? Well, they are themselves using AI for a bunch of stuff. If you go look at a bunch of their ads, they're all AI-generated ads. I think businesses like this that are super laser-focused on one thing, even if you can use ChatGPT to generate a summary, that's not the same thing. And I think... Dude, they're not even old. They started in 2019. I know, right? Super impressive. They also have done this other app. So there's this one ad that was like so frustratingly good.

28:17It made me pissed that I didn't think of this. It's this simple looking puzzle. Tell me if you've seen this. I don't know how much you use these. It's like in a lot of games, this ad pops up or TikTok. It's like a maze. Imagine a maze. And it's like you start on this dot and you have to get across without picking up your pen. And it just shows somebody trying to do it and they're messing up. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it's like, see if you can solve this. Only 5 % of people, you know, can solve this, but 50 % of fifth graders can do it or whatever. And you're like, ah, I got to see if I can do this.

28:48You download the app. By the way, that puzzle is actually impossible. If you, there's, there is no solution to it. They just put it in. They put a thing that looks simple, but you can't figure it out. You can't figure it out because it is actually an optical illusion. It's actually impossible. But that is their game. Yeah, they have this other app called Impulse that's done like 70 million downloads. And it's a brain training app. And the framing of that is basically keep your brain sharp with these little mini mind games. And my mom likes a lot of these things because she feels like, oh, I'm getting older.

29:20I should have these little things on my phone that keep me sharp. So she plays Sudoku and Crossword and she downloads apps like this. So their skill set, they're just like crazy good internet marketers and really good at creating apps that retain. Apps that first and foremost get you to convert and become a subscriber. And then, yeah, obviously, the retention helps. And this guy talks about it. He frames it as microlearning. He's like, microlearning is this. How do you get somebody to spend five to 15 minutes a day getting smarter? What if you use your phones to get smarter instead of just to waste your time?

29:57And so he makes it sound like this grand noble mission. And at the same time, on the back end, it's just this ruthless funnel that is like run ads get the download convert convert convert convert convert and like that's the game that's what you got to be we talked about was it remember the period app or flow were they were they Ukrainian as well yeah so these guys all have like a there's like these Eastern European app makers where they have these family of apps and you go look at their website and they're like raise no funding and then they'll have like 300 employees and then their apps will do like, you know, 100 million downloads a year.

30:35And it's like based out of Kiev or whatever, right? Like this just seems to be a pattern. I think there's like a, just a very high density of talent that knows how to build this specific type of company. Yeah, they're just like all homies and they all have this like, I don't know, this idea of like, it feels fun to get one over on someone, but then they're like, all right, if we're going to have that attitude, we should also like provide value. So we stick around for a long time, which is like what every internet marketer ever has. They're like, I'm going to do something shady. And they win. And they're like, oh, but it'd be a lot cooler if the customers came back to us or if we didn't have to refund people constantly.

31:08So let's just do the shady stuff, but do it for something. If I could tell my mom what I do without shame. Which is what every internet marketer ever has done. But this is badass. How'd you find this? How did I find this? Actually, that's another good story. Have you seen this Twitter account, Arthur Rock? Well, Arthur, I know that Arthur Rock was... No, it's like a parody account. It's Arthur Rock is his account. Have you not seen this? This thing is amazing. How do you spell Arthur? Bro, you try to spell Arthur naturally and just see what happens. You'll land exactly at the right thing. It's A-R-F-U-R.

31:44Arthur Rock. Okay, so it's this guy who's this anonymous. He's like this anonymous VC. And what he did is he just created this Twitter account where he just tweets out numbers from companies that are raising money. or trying to sell. And he's just like, leaks information. And so he's just this giant leak. And so he tweeted out the numbers for Headway app. But if you just look at his feed, his feed is like pure signal because it'll literally just be like, it'll be like, post-hog, 13 million in ARR, growing 2x year over year. They're currently raising it. It's crazy. It'll be like, or like somebody will be like, you know, the founder will be like, we're pleased to announce that we raised our Series C from Excel.

32:29it's a huge milestone and we feel so validated and then he'll just tweet out he'll quote tweet it he'll just go 50 million ARR as of November up 1.8x year to date congrats or there's like another one that like they raised that 400 million dollar post they did 6 million dollars in 2024 congrats yeah exactly exactly like how amazing is this this is like the best Twitter account right this is really good and you know what's funny and we've seen this again and again and again these meme people anonymous meme jokers are like right a lot you know what I mean it's sort of like how um Esquire or what was it called uh American what was the tabloid uh that like is in the grocery store Inquirer National Inquirer yeah the National Inquirer like they say a lot of bullshit but they also like predicted like the Bill Clinton scam uh or Bill Clinton stuff before everyone or like the John Edwards uh affair and so like I do love following these Anon accounts.

33:30This guy's great. Dude, he says Holo, a Catholic prayer app doing 60 million ARR growing 3.5 X a year. Yeah. Like he did and he'll also post updates so in May he'll be like, Suno, the AI music app just closed around 15 million ARR in the first year. Light speed invest at 500 million post. Congrats. And then he'll, that was May and then in October, so like five months later, he just wrote at 40 million ARR now. This guy's just providing... I don't know. You're not as big of a basketball fan, but in basketball, there's these two guys who are famous on Twitter for just... They just have sources everywhere.

34:06So it'd be like Shams and it'd be Woj. And they would just always have Intel. And their entire Twitter feed is literally just inside info. It'd be like, sources say Jimmy Butler wants trade. His list of teams that he wants to go to are these four. Or it'd be like, during the NBA draft, 45 seconds before every pick, they just say, they're taking this guy. It would just spoil the draft. If I'm one of these Ukrainian guys, I don't have the skill set to do this. I'm not technical. But I wonder if you... Do you ever wonder, why aren't there more people just copying fast-growing companies? There are.

34:42That happens a lot. But I think your answer is actually pretty good, which is, why aren't there more? I think I answered your question wrong. I was like, no, some people do do that. and I think your question is actually correct, which is, why are more people doing this? Because I don't want to do this because I kind of have a reputation and I don't really want to do it. But if I was a little bit younger and if I had the skill set, which I don't, like if I see a company that's going at like 400x a year, which this guy does, he's like, here's some app that was only doing 5 million in revenue, but they're set to grow 4x.

35:13I'm like, yeah, just go to their website and copy that. Yeah, I mean, it's not so easy, right? Like you could copy a product that doesn't get you to the customers. And so you have to not only copy the product, you have to figure out how they grow and be as good at growth as them. But you can figure that out. You can use all this technology, like here's what their ads say, I'm just going to do that exact same ad. You can, but most people who have that ability, if you're that good, you're also able to create new things from scratch. And I think also what ends up happening is that a lot of things look similar but they're 80 % the same and they're 20 % different.

35:55But that 20 % difference is actually a huge difference. If you've ever looked at, we were talking about flavors earlier, it's like the difference between two flavors is like a 0.1 % change in a certain chemical, but it'll change from vanilla. That's the difference between vanilla and orange soda or whatever. It's not that big of a difference on the whole. You're doing 80 % the same, but it's 20 % that's different. And so, you know, I actually advise this and talk a lot about this, which is if you see something that's working, not as a company maybe, but like, let's say a trend or a business model, like, you know, let's say e-commerce or whatever, try to figure out what's working better or worse in a category.

36:36And then, you know, if you're going to go into that category, you're probably going to end up, even if you're trying to be super original, you're probably going to end up with 80 % of the things the same because that's how business is. You're not 100 % different. But the key is to figure out what is your 20 % difference going to be and how well can you execute on that 20 % innovation? And I think that's a more humble, honest way of going about things versus I think most people believe they're doing everything 100 % original and unique. And that's just not true, right? Like even this is also for content or wisdom, right?

37:06Like how many truly original wise things, you know, I love Naval, but how many of Naval's things are 100 % homegrown, not inspired by anything, not similar to anything else that was out there. It was very rare, right? That's not how anybody does things. Tony Robbins talks about this. He's like, yeah, I learned under Jim Rohn and Jim learned under Zig Ziglar or whatever. And it's the same school of thought, but me putting my twist on it is what makes all the difference. Then you have people like Rocket Internet, which are literally like pixel for pixel clones, but even they operate in different markets.

37:40So they'll be like, cool, we're building... Amazon entirely. Amazon for Brazil or Thailand or whatever. And turns out, once you try to do that, you're going to like over time, a lot of things are going to end up different.

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38:59All right. Let me tell you a story really quick about some investment thing that I about that. I would never do. You would do. But it's a thrilling story. Okay. Let me guess. It's obscure, overly complicated, doesn't really make a whole lot of sense, too much risk, and will end up netting less than the S &P 500 in the long run. No. This one, he came out on top, actually. So the story is this. First of all, I was just listening to Scott Galloway's podcast while I was driving somewhere. I think it was over Christmas break. And something happened at the very end of the podcast. And I was with Sarah, and I literally pulled over to the side of the highway.

39:38And I was like, are you listening to this? And she's like, shut up. No. But I'm like, all right, but this is actually amazing. Can we get an instant replay on YouTube of your wheel diagram you just did? How big is your wheel? Did you're like literally driving a school bus? What was that? It's like a ship. It's a ship. It's like a tractor that you're driving. It's a ship. I pulled the ship over. And I literally had to sit down because she yells at me when I use my phone. And I had to type this out. So I had this note. I remembered it. But Scott Galloway had Michael Lewis on. So Scott Galloway is an investor and podcaster.

40:10Michael Lewis is an amazing author, wrote about FTX's downfall. And he was with Sam Beckman-Fried when this all happened. And so he has a unique perspective. In the 45-minute part of this 50 or 55-minute episode, Scott Galloway just mentioned something where he's like, yeah, I bought some of the bankruptcy claims against FTX. And Michael Lewis started talking about something else. And then Michael Lewis goes, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. What? You made a good investment where you bought the FTX claims? What was that about? And Scott just casually throws this out there. But the story is actually pretty amazing.

40:46So the background is this. So in 2022, FTX goes bankrupt because SBF, Sam Bankman-Fried, he's overleveraged and he spent all the money and whatever. It didn't work out because of a bunch of different reasons. And because of that,$10 billion in customer funds are lost. They're just gone. And people are distraught. They're freaking out. But when a bankruptcy happens, one major thing happens, which is the person who had the money in FTX. So let's say I stored$1 million in FTX. I now am going to have a claim against that company for$1 million. So it's going to go to court. And we're going to figure out how do I get my money back somehow.

41:28And in a lot of cases, you get no money back. And so what happens is these vultures, I mean, I don't know what you want to call them, but they come along and they go, hey, FTX owes you a million dollars. You're probably not going to get that back. You might get that back. But I'll tell you what, you have a million dollar claim, I will buy that claim from you for 100 grand. So you get the 100 grand today, whereas the other outcomes are potentially you eventually get nothing. Or maybe you'll get a little bit more like 100 grand, 200 grand, 300 grand, but it's gonna be in like four or five years and you don't even know for sure.

42:01So just let me buy your claim. And so sure, you could do that. So it creates a market when that happens. But Scott Galloway, he's kind of a strange guy. And he had this quote on this podcast where he's like, when I see fire, I run towards it. Because I've known enough, seeing a lot of bankruptcies, that when a bankruptcy happens, there's opportunity. And so Scott Galloway, he reads the paperwork about the claim or about the bankruptcy. And what he notices is that Sam Bankman-Fried, unlike a lot of different Ponzi schemes. A lot of times with Ponzi schemes, they're spending this money on Coke, hookers, planes, like party shit.

42:41SPF maybe did a little bit of that, but you want to know what he was a real degenerate about? Venture investing. He loved investing in companies. And one of the companies, he invested in a few, and I think a lot of them didn't work, but one of the big ones that he invested in was he invested in Anthropic, which is like the number two or the number three best AI company. And Scott looks at the numbers and they don't actually say what the valuation was of what the... They don't say the valuation of Anthropic when Sam Beckman reinvests in them. But what they say is that he invested$500 million. And Scott does a little math and he's like, I think the valuation was around$5 billion, meaning SPF owns 10 % of this company.

43:28And this was happening two years ago. He's like, I think Anthropic is going to raise money at a $10 billion valuation and then eventually one day at a$60 billion valuation, which by the way, as of today, there are rumors that that's happening. And because of that, I think I can buy a claim for 20%. So a million dollar claim for$200 ,000. And if you do all the math, I think I could actually triple or quadruple my money based just off this venture return, let alone if we ever are going to claw back any of the crypto that was lost. Well, turns out, a few things happened. One, Bitcoin exploded. And because of that, well, not because of that, but they were able to recap or claw back a lot of the money and Bitcoin exploded.

44:13And so a lot of these people are going to be getting back a lot more money than they actually had in there because the money, you know, the Bitcoin was just sitting there growing. And also, Sam Bankman's Freed Investments, one of them killed it, knocked it out the park. And so I think now the people who lost money, they're getting something like 125 % of their money back, which is not bad for a Ponzi scheme that you are a victim of. Scott said the numbers. He goes, I bought$250 ,000 worth and I sold, I bought a million dollar claim for$250 ,000 and I sold it for 90 % of the million. So he tripled his money.

44:51And Scott goes through the story and he explains his reasoning on this podcast. And it was amazing, to be honest. How on earth you could find value in this way. Yeah, that's super impressive. I actually happened to hear this segment too and had the same, I wasn't driving a bus, but I had the same sort of neck snap reaction where I was like, what? But what's funny is you said a couple of things, but I don't think... You said a couple of things, but I think we have to correct a couple of things. One, it wasn't a Ponzi scheme. No, I meant like a lot... He stole customer funds. I guess I wasn't meaning that this was a Ponzi scheme, but it's in that category of schemes where a lot of people are like, how do I get my money back?

45:33Scammed. You lost your money. Yeah, exactly. The other thing is that he was saying, I valued FTX a stake in Anthropik at$4 billion, but that's not really what happened. So they sold their stake for$800 million. So they put in$400 or$500 million, and they sold it for$800 or$900 million in the liquidation. And so it wasn't the anthropic investment that really paid off. He was using the anthropic investment as a downside protection, where he was doing the math, where he was like, all right, that gets my investment up just a little bit to a safe zone. But then what else can there be? Yeah, exactly.

46:07But I think his math was wrong. So he said in the thing, he goes, I valued the Anthropic – based on the Anthropic stake, I thought it was worth$4 billion. The total claims were$9 billion. So I thought Anthropic was giving me 44 cents on the dollar for every dollar of claims that I would buy. Claims were selling for 22 cents on the dollar. So he says, to me, this is the easiest trade I ever made. But the reality is that the Anthropic stake ended up being worth less than$1 billion, right? So it would have been 10 cents. So he got it right even though his logic was wrong. And we had Shiel on the other day, and he basically said his two best investments kind of worked out the same way.

46:44He's like, I bought NVIDIA in 2017 because I thought that crypto mining was going to take off. And NVIDIA took off, but not because of crypto mining at all. It turned out it was AI. And, you know, kind of like I was wrong, but I got massively right. Same thing with Bitcoin. He's like, I bought Bitcoin early on because I thought it was going to be this fast peer-to-peer transfer thing. Turns out that was all wrong. but Bitcoin went up anyways because of this other store of value, gold, you know, digital gold use case. And so I think what ended up happening is that he made a great investment, but I think his underwriting was wrong.

47:17I think that's one of the hard things about doing this, like, what, you know, the smart money investing is that when you're right, you feel like such a goddamn genius. And when you're wrong, you chalk it up to, you know, whatever. You sort of either mentally block it out. You either say you were wrong or you think maybe one of your assumptions got a little off. But there's also this weird state where you can end up right, even though your underwriting was wrong, and you conflate kind of like luck and skill. And I guess the question is, I guess that's one of my observations I've had in this process of like, as I do my own investing and get something's right, get something wrong, I talk to other people.

47:53It's very humbling to realize how much of this, even your wins aren't yours. They're not your wins because you got so much of it wrong. Well, and there's another learning that I had, which is finding value in crap. Like this story, like this was the worst asset, the worst company. You don't want to touch this because A, it's like a scam. So there's a no-go there. And B, it's like a reputational ruiner. Like who wants to be involved in this guy? And then it's like, I have so much better things to do. Why would I waste my time with this pile of shit? and what was interesting was seeing Scott walk through his reasoning on how he can still capture value from a horrible situation and I thought that that was really intriguing because that is not how I tend to do things like what they say uh trying to trying to catch a falling knife like yeah when something's bad it's just going to get worse and just stay away but that's not always the case dude when I went to Monish Pabrai's house and we've recorded that podcast together.

49:00We did the podcast. And then at the end, he's kind of just like touring me around and I go to his desk where he works. I like seeing like literally where you sit when you work. I think the environment kind of tells a lot. And he has this placard on his desk, like the way you would have, like if you walk into a bank or whatever, it would be like the name tag of the bank manager or something like that. But instead of a name on it, it just said, trouble is opportunity. And literally he was reminding him that he wanted this on his desk because in those moments where there's panic, where there's trouble, he wanted the reminder that trouble is opportunity.

49:38And not all trouble is opportunity, right? Like one of his isms that he took from Charlie Munger and Buffett is he puts things in what he calls the too hard pile. So he's like, yeah, you know, I look at a hundred opportunities. I could probably tell you the three obviously good ones. And I could tell you the 10 obviously terrible ones. But then the other whatever, 77, I just put in the too hard pile. And I'm sure some of them are really good. But I just throw things in the too hard pile when they're too hard. And so for example, I was asked him, what's your thoughts on crypto? And he was like, well, I think there's a case for, I think there's a case against.

50:13He's like, but I just don't do anything because I put it in the too hard pile. So I don't need to win in that. It's too hard for me to figure out, so I'm not going to bother. And I think the concept of the too hard pile is so valuable because I used to be very black and white about everything. Either it's good or it's bad. And if I thought it could be good, I would smash my head against the wall trying to make it work. And if it was bad, it had to stand out as bad for me to throw it away. So you said 100 ideas. The story is this. He's at lunch with Warren Buffett and he goes, Warren, I think one of your great gifts is you're a great judge of people.

50:49And he was talking about like, you know, Warren Buffett hired that guy, Ajit, who like runs their insurance business. He's like, I just think you're a great reader of people, judge of people. How do you do it? What's your secret? And he goes, I don't think I'm a great reader of people. And he's like, but I'm not trying to be humble. He goes, I just approach it differently. He goes, it pays to be a harsh grader when it comes to people, meaning the cost of being optimistic about somebody who turns out to not be great, to let them into your circle of friends or to do business with somebody who turns out to not be great is so costly that I just rule a bunch of people out.

51:20He goes, if you put me in a cocktail party and you let me have five minutes with a hundred people in that five minutes, I could probably tell you the five people who are really outstanding. I could tell you the five people who are really lousy and I just don't want anything to do with them. They just obviously came off super bad, like in a five minute interaction. But then there's 90 people that I just can't make a judgment on in five minutes. And he goes, so I just put them all in the bad pile. They're all in the too hard to know pile. And so I just rule them out because it's not worth the brain damage to try to figure it out on a case-by-case basis just so you don't miss a good one.

51:54Because the cost of a bad thing is worth way, cost me much more than missing out on a good thing because there are more good things that I could just filter for and I'll find those good things like over time. They'll be obviously good. I'll just focus on the obviously good things. And he does this with investing. He does this with people. And it's just a very useful heuristic because I think most of us try to be, if there's a hundred, we try to be accurate at the hundred level. It's like, I want to have an accurate grade on all hundred. And I'll spend all my time on the hard to judge things and I'll get a lot of them wrong, but I'm trying to get them right.

52:27And therefore I'm taking a too much risk. Whereas his technique is don't take too much risk. Take the obviously good and act on it. Obviously bad, throw them away. And everybody else put them in the too hard pile and ignore it. Can I dumb this down? Let me explain why I'm a genius. When I go to a restaurant, there's like two columns of entrees. I start at the top and I skim down. And the first one that I see, that's a 7 out of 10. I go, oh, that's it. Menu over. I don't look at the menu for the rest of the meal. I don't second guess it. I just say, the first one, that's a 7. That's done. And I'm able to do that right away.

53:04Does this apply to everything? Is this marriage advice? What other things does this apply to? Where does this not apply? I mean, yeah, I think it could apply to marriage. The idea of settling is good. You settle for something that's pretty good and you can make it great. I don't know. Is there any data on Indian couples who have been... Yeah, arranged marriages have the same quote-unquote success rate as American marriages, which involve dating and selection and courtship and then eventually engagement and then marriage versus like the way that Indian couples do it is very much the menu. You scan the listings.

53:41That'll do. Engineer, good family, full set of teeth. Seven out of 10, let's go. Yeah. I will see you at the altar for the first time. And then you high five. No, I just think that's how I order. Like I've done that for years. It's just, I just don't want, I want less choice. And I think what Warren Buffett is actually saying similar, which is like, I know for certain that these three are fine enough. Therefore, I don't care about the rest. Yeah, you know that book, the Mark Manson book, Subtle Art of Not Giving an F? I think that book, it got so popular that it sort of got written off. You know what I mean?

54:19Like, do you ever hear a smart person being like, man, I learned so much from this book, The Subtle Art of Rocket? Like, it's not like, it's not like a cool intellectual thing to reference because it's pop. It's like pop. So popular. It's mainstream. It's like, if I'm like, oh, I really like Justin Bieber's music. It's like, okay, what? That's like a low status thing to sort of say. But he brings up one good point in the book. The book is basically around one point, which is life is not about caring about everything or not caring about everything. It's about choosing, assume you have a limited set of Fs to give in your pocket.

54:50Like you got five to give, choose wisely. Choose the things you're going to care about. So like the menu, you just don't have to care to get that right. And that's kind of like the Warren Buffett. You could just throw a bunch of things in a too hard pile and ignore them. And then there may be a few decisions where actually getting it right really, really matters. And then you have enough bandwidth to actually care about those things because you're not caring about everything. Yeah, I think that's good shit. What do you want to do now? I want to give you one other story. Have you heard this Bill Ackman story of his running into the fire when everybody else is running out story?

55:26His four-hour investment decision. Do you know this one? Oh, man, I thought it was like literally a fire. Well, kind of. It was the 08 crisis, which I think to people on Wall Street felt like, you know, the giant fire. Oh, you mean Bill Ackman, the famous Twitter influencer? He invests?

55:47Wait, he's an investor? Bill, we're joking. I hope you're still coming on later. All right, so he tells a story. It's 08. The financial crisis is happening. Banks are failing. Bear Stearns fails. and then this other bank is going to fail. People don't know what's going to happen. Widespread panic. And the bank, Wachovia, was on the brink. And basically what he did was he did a four – he's like, I had four hours. I spent four hours just looking at the business of Wachovia and came to a decision in four hours that the panic was overblown and that Wachovia would be saved and that Wells Fargo, which ended up buying Wachovia, was far healthier than the market believed in that moment of panic.

56:29And so he made a huge investment and it was like one of his most lucrative investments ever. It was a four-hour decision and it was made at a time of extreme panic when trouble was opportunity. And when everybody else was just running out, you know, screaming, he was calm and basically looked at the situation and assessed the risk return differently, which is sort of like what you're talking about with the Scott Galloway when FTX just feels taboo in every way and it feels like the worst possible situation. And he's like, cool, it's the worst possible situation at a price. And there's a price for everything.

57:05And the price for him to buy those claims at 22 cents on the dollar turned out to be the right price. Dude, Bill Ackman's also like 6.4, I think. Which is pretty cool. We should create an index for CEOs above 6.2. And I bet it'd do all right. All right. So he bought, let's see, 178 million shares at$3.15 a share. So he spent$560 million after four hours of thinking. And his estimate was that it was going to be worth more than double that. And the next week, Wachovia bought it at about$7 a share. So he basically doubled$500 million in a week. That's insane. All right. Well, that's cool. Bill Ackman's great.

57:51All right. Great story. Great story. All right. I think that's a pretty good podcast. What do you say? I think that was all right. All right. That's it. That's the pod. I feel like I can rule the world. I know I could be what I want to. I put my all in it like my days off. On the road, let's travel, never looking back.

58:18Hey, let's take a quick break because there's a quote that I love I want to read you. It's that we shape our tools and thereafter they shape us. And, you know, as an entrepreneur, if you're using a bank that was built in the 90s, you're operating like you're in the 90s. And trust me, I've been there. Clunky portals, random holds on your money,$50 wire fees, and then being told, please visit your local branch. Well, that's why I switched to a different type of banking solution, Mercury. It turns your financial chores into a smooth workflow. You can do wires, invoices, cards, reimbursements, two clicks, and I'm done.

58:48If you're already using Mercury, respect. If you're still using one of the old big banks, I got questions for you. So go visit Mercury.com and give it a test drive. Mercury is a financial technology company, not a bank. Banking services are provided through Choice Financial Group, Column 8, and Evolve Bank & Trust members FDIC.