Sam’s +$10 Million Portfolio, Shaan's Money Philosophy and The Spending vs. Saving Paradox

25:17And he had a couple slides I thought were really good. So one was this person had sold their business for over$100 million. So they had like a nine-figure exit of their business. And the next slide, so it's like, here's the picture of me the day we sold for over$100 million. Next day, it's like, I bought this bike. This bike is this$2 ,000 bike. It's an awesome bike. Most expensive purchase, most expensive item I've owned since. It's been like 10 years or something. Like, it's like, whoa. And like, until I recently bought a condo finally, like last year, this was the most expensive item I owned.

25:55Love this bike. And then I was like, okay, interesting. And then there's another slide that said, top five financial mistakes that I've learned to cope with. Love that title. And there's five interesting ones about basically like sold this too early, sold this too early, was going to buy this and talk myself out of it because there was a fee associated with it. I would have made like 20 million bucks on that. So I think that's just a great exercise to go on, which is like you can survive a bunch of bad mistakes. And if you're going to play the game, any good startup investor has an epic anti-portfolio, a bunch of businesses that they passed on that they should have invested in.

26:34And that is part of playing the game. You can't play the game. It's like being a basketball player in that Michael Jordan commercial where he's like, I've missed 3 ,000 game-winning shots or whatever. it's like yeah that's what happens when you're you play you're gonna miss shots and like you can't yeah everyone has like i literally know 15 people that have the same uber story um like that was like the that was like the famous one for years which is i passed on uber i passed on uber everyone said i passed on uber like i i know a ton of people have said that i think gary vaynerchuk like in the beginning of his book he like gives a compliment to travis kalanick the founder calls him out as like, you know, he's like, dude, I think my wife, he's like, I think my wife, my children and Travis Kalanick, meaning I was super close with them.

27:17And I still passed on that. And that cost me a hundred million dollars. Exactly. I think that's like a famous story. So yeah, everyone has that story. Um, let me give you two other slides. He says, then it's, then there's two slides called my effed up relationship with money. I think I can read this. Let me see. So it says, I work hard to make money and I got good at it, but then I hoard the money I make. I put it in bank accounts. I look at it constantly. And besides hoarding, I know money. I know that money is good for one other thing, making more money. You know, like that's, that's something I realized.

27:44And it's like, you know, I really like put a lot of my own self-value on money. Here's some things that I do that are dumb about money. Like I feel guilty spending on myself. My parents were the same way. They, they would spend on their kids or spend on like other things, but they wouldn't spend on themselves. And that's annoying that they did it. And now I'm doing it. He said, I bought a business that was a cashflow business. And I said, okay, this is my cocaine fund all the profit from this i must spend on something hedonistic i must i must spend i can't save this money didn't work still saved it because i'm comfortable losing 500k on an investment just like that but if you said five spend 500k to improve your life and i guarantee it will improve your life i can't i can't do it i can't get myself to do it i'm the exact same way i've been looking at i should be helping i've been looking at your company well i've been looking at your company shepherd i think it's like 3 000 a month for an assistant of which i desperately need but I'm like$3 ,000 a month.

28:38But well, it's not a fee, whatever the payment is to the person. If you hire somebody, you pay 30 % of their salary as a headhunter bounty once. That's it. So it'll be like three grand for the year is for most people. That's like, let's say an average. But I mean, I have to pay the person's salary. And I'm like, well, that's 36 grand a year. But if you do that over five years at the rate that we're growing right now, that's$90 ,000. Like I'm ruining the compounding. She might really be valuable. And that might be a 15-year relationship. Now I'm talking about a$500 ,000 investment, but I could also put that in VTI and it would compound 8%.

29:14And now you've talked yourself out of it. When I was buying my wife's wedding ring, I was like, oh man, this is the most expensive thing I've ever bought. That's a lot of money. But I guess if we're married for 80 years, because we might live to be like 110, that means that that's only$800 a year. And that's okay. Do you know what I mean? Like there's all these weird mental gymnastics that crazy people like me have to do. So this guy, is he an immigrant? Is this guy an immigrant you're talking about? It's 100 % most immigrants that I've been around have, or not most, but this sounds like a very much an immigrant problem, of which I'm the exact opposite of an immigrant.

29:49But that's why I like those guys. I identify with them. We had this funny experience yesterday where another friend who also mega, mega wealthy, when we met him and when we met up with this person in person they were like you know what i really want to like shift into like family mode like i'm ready to like meet somebody have a kid like you know like i want to do that part of life now and we're like that makes total sense good on you you are you did the money thing the business thing you you you you scratched that it you proved you could do it now you're in your 30s and you're saying you know what i should i'm not really i don't really have a partner i don't have kids that seems fun i'm i do see myself as a family guy.

30:25I want to do that. So that was where we left a conversation. And now my business partner, Ben, Ben Levy, he's like the man with like checking in on people, checks in on everybody. And so he's always providing me the stream of updates about like what people are up to. And it's great. And so he's like, yo, that friend, he's like, he's like doing something new. And I'm like, like not just doing one thing new. He's like, he's like four projects he's cooking up. And I was like, oh, that's interesting. Like what happened to the whole, like, I want to actually focus on like, like finding a partner, starting a family, like whatever that is like, oh yeah, he still wants to do that.

30:58It's like, we start in four companies. I mean, that doesn't seem like that's going to be very conducive to like, you know, put your focus on something. Right. And it's like, yeah, I agree. And I go, how can this keeps happening? Like we have so many smart friends. And I said, there's a big difference between smart and wise. And I think that's what we're seeing is basically we have a lot of smart friends that are not that wise about decision-making. So they're intelligent for sure. But they make decisions that don't really make sense if you zoomed out a little bit. How old is this person? I don't know, like mid-30s or something like that.

31:34I think some of that will come with age. I think that we're in a weird circle of which many of the listeners listening to this, they have a higher income than most people their age. And I think that sometimes maybe your earning power is ahead of your brain power or wisdom power. Do you know what I mean? That's what I'm saying. Like, I'm not telling you, you gotta go get married and have kids. But if you told me you wanted to get married and have kids, and then instead you're spending all your time doing these other things that are gonna completely make you busy. And if I asked you, why didn't you, why hasn't this happened already?

32:05It's like, oh, I was so heads down in my company. It's like, cool. So why are you getting heads down in four companies now? That doesn't make sense either. And I texted Ben, I go, man, we're, I'm guilty of this in other areas of my life, right? because again, if you spot it, you got it. So anytime I notice something in other people, I'm like, where in my life do I make the same stupid mistake? And I was like, oh, it'd be like, like yesterday I canceled. I do something I very rarely do. I almost never do this. I canceled my workout because I was like, had two doctor's appointments. And I was like, if I, if I do this workout in the middle of the day, then I'm just not going to get any work done today.

32:36Canceled my workout. I was like, but my number one goal right now in life is to get fit. I would get more value out of becoming more fit than making another dollar. You have 54 days left, I think, right? Yeah. I'm on day, no, I'm on 49, 49 days left. Yep. Yeah. 49 days left to get abs. I'm eight weeks away from being that guy. So, so, but I, but I guess like the point is that's an area of my life where I make a stupid decision. That's an unwise decision to say, Hey, on one day, I said, this is my main goal. And then three days later, I'm prioritizing something else above my main goal. What? That doesn't make any sense.

33:12And same way this person's doing that with their relationship. Their main goal is to get married and have kids, but they prioritize a bunch of other stuff. And I was like, that's not intelligence. That's wisdom. That's basically having good judgment. And I realized that wisdom or good judgment is the thing that's most short in supply and the most valuable because it's like a lever. You don't have to be that hardworking or that smart if you have great judgment. If you pick the right things to focus on, pick the right people to work with, pick the right place to live. You don't have to be like 9 ,000 IQ.

33:44You don't have to know everything about everything. You don't have to be the hardest worker. But if you have poor judgment, no amount of hard work or like intelligence really saves you. You kind of screw yourself. And so it just really emphasized that point to me about like, you know, smart does not equal wise and the goal is wise, not smart. I think that's a good one. I like that. And it's like when you're driving and you say everyone's such a horrible driver it's like dude that is you too it's like there's like some weird emotion and logic that don't make sense there and then my final accounts of which you can these last two you're going to have a lot of opinions on the last one or the second to last one is my non-liquid stuff of which it's roughly 3.8 million dollars in real estate of which I have a mortgage on my house.

34:32I think my house was$950 ,000 that I bought. I have a mortgage of like$550 left. I own a ranch. I own some vacant lots in Austin. And I'm a small owner in some storage deals, a Brooklyn building, and one or two small things. And the other non-liquid stuff is angel investing. Now here's what I do. And you tell me if I'm wrong. I reduced... I value it at... So the principal sum that I put in, plus I even put a large discount on that, of which that would be around$500 ,000 of startup investments. The way that I see that is I've done roughly 50, I think. 40 will probably not work. 10 will work, of which 3 might pay back everything, plus a little bit.

35:20And I've reduced the principal by a significant amount, just in assuming future net worth and anything above that, whatever, maybe it will work. What do you think about that? Yeah, I think basically startup investing is so long time horizon, right? Like you have to assume that these are going to take seven to 10 years before they pay out. So even if they are worth X, they're not really worth X to you yet. They're these little eggs that are going to be hatching. And so I'm with you. Basically, when I calculate, I never calculate net worth because I think that's kind of useless because it takes into account illiquid things that are going to either like go to zero or go way up in value.

35:59Like my own businesses are going to either go to zero or go way up in value most likely. And they're illiquid. So what does it matter? I can't do anything with them right now anyhow. So I basically only calculate liquid net worth when I calculate it. So that doesn't include any of my own businesses. And I also don't include any startup investments because it's not liquid yet. That doesn't mean it's not valuable, but it's just not liquid yet. So I don't even apply the discount because it doesn't matter. It's not in my calculation. And that's my last category, which is private companies. So those include any course I do, this podcast, speaking fees, which is called ParMedia.

36:33I assume that has zero equity value. I live off that income. And then the next big company is Hampton. As of today, I assume that is worth zero. I've taken zero salary from it. I will likely take a dividend at the end of the year. But until that business hits like 40 or 50 million in revenue, in my head, I assume it's worth zero. I do not include any of the private businesses that I operate or own as part of my net worth. So we are totally aligned on that part. Like my e-commerce, I don't include it in the calculation. Even though that business is doing great, you include that as zero still? Yeah.

37:10Well, I just I don't mark it as zero. I just I'm not calculating total net worth. I'm only calculating liquid. So if I tried to calculate total net worth, I didn't include it. I'd put some conservative number there, but I don't even really bother because what's the point? In fact, I think the whole net worth thing is like not a great thing to like I'm kind of in search of a better metric. well there's earning so and income do you measure that but then income is like only things that are you know it's going to buy us way too hard to things that are only you know generating cash flow today um so it's not going to count really any like no i mean do you measure your income on a monthly basis i measure my every month i like do like a report where i look at like all right what was my income this month and where did it come from yeah not religiously but it's it's mostly like steady i can i kind of know the one or two things that are variable i'm like oh that's what that was at this month.

38:02Plus, you know, it's, it's like in the same range roughly. So yeah, I know, I know what it's coming in every month. I know roughly what's coming out every month. I don't really keep track of spending too much. I'll kind of calculate spending every couple of months just to be like, am I, did I add anything significant here? What's your spend right now? I think I spend maybe 25 or$30 ,000 a month. Yeah. I think I'm at 30, 30 K a month of burn life, life expenses. And I feel that that's a lot. That sounds like a lot to me. That sounds insane to me. We have a friend who told us that they are currently spending$300 ,000 a month.

38:38And I was like gasping. I was like, I can't comprehend that. And then they listed it all out. And I was like, yeah, that definitely adds up. But that's just like. You do need the jet. I mean, what are you going to do without it? It was insane to me. I've got another friend that spends$80 ,000 and I'm like gasping. But I guess everything changed when you get to different levels. So anyway, that's kind of like my portfolio. I want to say that, A, this isn't advice, but also I basically do the most simple conservative stuff. I use Tiller. Have you heard of Tiller? I think the website is tillerhq.com.

39:14It's like a plugin and I track this in Google Sheets. Do you track anything like your accounts in any other place? I don't use any of these apps because I'm like, I'm not connecting my shit to these random startup apps. I don't want to put all my stuff into these apps. So because I'm not that concerned with it in general. You know, the fewer things that you're concerned about, the better in general. Yes. But like surely like occasional checks and balances. So every three months I sit down and by hand I write down, I write out where I'm at with liquid stuff, where I'm at income wise and where I'm at monthly burn wise.

39:49Every three months I do that. But there's like a there's like a logistical problem. Let's say your wife has a 401k from her job from like eight years ago. Yeah. and you have one from each job that you've had and you haven't combined them, that's like six accounts potentially or five accounts plus a checking plus a savings plus, let's say that you each have a Robinhood account or an E-Trade account plus her previous before you were married, maybe checking her savings. I mean, it kind of can accumulate whether you have money or not, that you have eight or 10 accounts. And what happens if you die and she doesn't know about all of them or vice versa?

40:22Do you know what I mean? Yeah, we do have that problem, which is if I die, I don't think she's going to be able to know or find or access a bunch of stuff, especially the crypto stuff. How is she going to get to that? I've told her three times and I'm like, you're not really paying attention enough to remember this. Like nine years from now, if something happens, it's like, I don't know what's going to happen with that. That I am a little bit concerned about. However, the rest of the stuff, again, I just do it by hand and I make a day out of it. I treat it like a spa day. It's like, I think you talked about this concept of worry time.

40:50You're like, I just schedule some worry time in the future. That's what I do with this. I don't call it worry time because I'm not trying to feel worried during it, but same thing. I just schedule a little a day every three months. I'm like, oh, today's that day. It's basically like, let's have a little financial picnic, right? Let me open up some of these baskets and see what's inside. And let me take stock of what's going on. And I think once a quarter for me is the right amount of energy I'm trying to spend on this. And I just don't really want to think about it otherwise. Do you know anyone who's crazier than you?

41:20I mean, I view you as being quite crazy. I've got one friend that made$150 million and they invested the majority of it in only two things, their next company and a house. And they're like, I basically don't own any bonds, equities. I've got very little savings. So I consider that person being crazier than you. Right. Or a similar amount of crazy, but potentially at a larger scale. Are all of your circle of friends like you or do many of them say the same thing like I'm saying, which is like, man, you're not conservative enough. When you say crazy, is this kind of like, oh, this bum on the street's a little crazy?

41:56Or is it like, wow, she's hot, but she's crazy. Like, which one am I? My hot girl crazy or my bum crazy? More like bet it all on black. Like tuition money or this game of roulette. Right. I don't view myself as that crazy. I think I have a pretty healthy view on money. I'll explain it to you in a few sentences. is. Number one, money is a tool to enable a better lifestyle. That's what it's for. That's how I use it. So that's the first thing. That includes spending on lifestyle, but it also includes learning things. My angel investments, I don't view as the absolute optimum way for me personally to make money, but I love them because I learn so much about where the world is going from startups and I like being around entrepreneurs.

42:43Those are my people. So I'm using money as my tool to like make my life more like how I want. So I use money as a tool. That's the first thing. Money is a tool to enable a better lifestyle. I think I abide by that law. The second thing is money's no fun when you're stressed about it. So there's basically like a strategy that just says, I don't need to, I don't need to be stressed about this. So what is my amount of money that I know is my like safety net? So like, you know, basically, can I have two to three years of expenses put away that's just like, it could be in nothing. It could just be literally sitting in a bank account doing absolutely nothing, but it's not doing nothing.

43:24It's enabling me to be free with the rest of the money because I know that if I lost everything, if somehow everything went to zero, I would still have three years of runway. And again, I'm me, I am my own safety net. If you give me three years of runway, I'll have it all back and more by then. Like, you know, if I needed to, to make money a focus. And so I do that. So to me, I'm like, if I have three years of life expenses put away, what am I worried about, right? So I do that. The third thing is I know if I'm in which gear. Am I in wealth creation mode or wealth preservation mode? So I view myself still as in wealth creation mode.

44:02When I sold my company, it wasn't for as much money as you sold your company for. I think if I had sold my company for as much as you did, I might do things slightly differently. but I still view like most of my investments as like more on the aggressive side, more concentrated bets in things that I believe in. And I know I'm going to make mistakes. I'm going to have some things that go to zero. I'm going to sell some things at the wrong time. I would say the only leak in my game is really just that I sell things at all. I really just shouldn't sell. Like the, the only investment mistake I've made is just selling.

44:35Okay. But are you actually going to, you've just acknowledged and we'll go, well, we can make fun of me after this, but you've acknowledged that. So are you making that? Yes, exactly. So I made that. Okay. So you're not going to sell ever or often. I'm buying things. I basically default to say, this is only, you have to break glass if you're going to sell this. So basically like you have to really have a reason, like either you need the money and you got to sell the thing or something in the world has changed that caused you to like re-underwrite this. Now I would argue, I kind of did that with the last time that I sold when basically like the post COVID kind of like what's money printing is going on, what's going on in the economy, everything, all the stocks crash.

45:15I thought, okay, we've had a 13 year bull market. We're probably not just going to have six months of bad times. And then back to the good times again, like, I still kind of believe that that's true. but I should say I wasn't in a place to re-underwrite those investments because I was now thinking about macro stuff where like if I'm spending 30 % of my time on Wikipedia that means I'm not informed enough to be making an intelligent decision about this I'm like, I'm learning about it. But where do you get the information from? Do you get it from current people? So for example, I prefer to get information I try to read books that are at least 30 or 40 years old and to figure out like I try to learn about stuff.

45:54What's it called? Like the Lindy effect where it's like I try to learn about stuff that has been repeated many, many, many times and isn't exactly new. And the counter example of that is when biology said all the crazy stuff about what was his argument? That Bitcoin's going to a million because this reason. That shit scares me. And I'm like, I don't understand that. That's so new. And it legitimately scared me. Here's what I do. I don't try to do that because what I find happens with that is I already have an opinion in my head and then I just go find evidence of it, right? I already want to hold the stock forever.

46:26So then I go find the Lindy effect that says, ah, Lindy effect says that this thing's going to stay valuable because it's been valuable. And I'll like cling to that evidence, but it's really just reinforcing some bias I already had in my head. So instead what I do, and you can't learn everything, right? Like you can't just say, I'm going to go learn the world of like finance. Like this is too broad. It's impossible to do. So here's what I do. I go through and I say, what are people that I consider to be smart saying and thinking right now? And I go try to line up contenders. It's like, here's theory A about where the world is going right now.

46:59Here's thesis A. Here's thesis B. Here's thesis C. And then I basically say, inherently, does one of them just intuitively make more sense to me? Does it resonate in my gut that one of these just feels more true than the other? Okay, that's the first test. Second test, what evidence do they have that backs up their belief? Let me now stack the evidence. Okay, now which one appears to be the strongest thesis? so instead of going and trying to learn about the topic i take people who already like have strong opinions about this topic and i go try to find what is the spectrum of opinions about this so on one end you have bology who's like do you actually talk to them or just consume information not always sometimes but like not always like you know like bology for example he's just very public about his thesis so you don't need to like talk to him right it's like he's publishing every day what he believes to be true he's like i moved out of america i got out of the dollar and And here's the sources I'm citing that I'm tracking that basically says that the banking system is insolvent, that the money printing is out of control.

48:00Inflation is higher than they're admitting. And that this is what is the result of this? It's X, right? Then you have Ray Dalio that says, look, I've been studying empires and all empires come to an end. Here's the cycles that they go through. And I think that America is at the tail end of the cycle. So you go read that book. You go watch his talks. You're like, all right, that's one, another thesis. You have some people who say, no, you know what? this is going to bounce back because even with all the problems America has, the dollar is still the best thing we got out there. And that when all the, all the countries in the world get weaker, they'll actually flee to the, whatever this relatively strongest currency is.

48:33And maybe that's the dollar and the dollars are going to drink the whole milkshake. Basically it's like, all right, cool. Um, I didn't make this some, something I forgot what it's called. Like the, the straw that drinks the shake or some shit like that. People are talking about it from there will be blood. He goes, if I had a long shrug all the way over there, I drink your milkshake. I drink it up. So you basically line up a bunch of arguments and then you kind of like, you litigate them like a lawyer. You're like, what evidence do you have that supports this? What examples do you have? And then you basically say, look, okay, even if I don't know what's totally true, can I hedge?

49:06So it's like, you know what? I don't think this guy's right, but he might be. And if he is, what hedge would I wish I had in place just in case? and like, you know, this is the most likely thing to be true. So then let me like allocate things that way. So that's generally how I try to approach things. I do like that. I would say, however, I know my Achilles heel in this is that I do get drawn to a bit of the sexy underdog opinion, the conspiracy opinion, the kind of like, this is the most contrarian opinion appeals to me inside because I'm like, oh shit, this could be a mystery that we're onto too, that nobody else really fully, like people don't believe it.

49:44That makes me want to believe it more. And I think that's led me to make too drastic of a decision in the past of like selling all of my Tesla or selling, you know, 70 % of my stocks or whatever. Like, you know, it doesn't have to be that dramatic. Like I should just put into place smaller hedges in those and track them and be like, cool. If that's true, then six months from now, I might be seeing more of this. Let me check in at that time and see if the signals have grown stronger or faded. Right now, you're in a little bit in advice giving mode because I'm asking you questions. But to swap it, who do you look up to where you're like, I need to be more like them when it comes to personal finance?

50:28i wouldn't say there's somebody on the personal finance like managing your own money but there are a lot of people that i look up to or or find i talk to to get ideas on what game are they playing to generate more money so i don't i don't really seek or i'm not that interested frankly in like well who are those people you obviously like andrew our friend andrew wilkinson tiny tiny.com he took the company public so you can actually go and see the numbers so you like andrew yeah i like andrew like xavier uh i like xavier yes saeed bulky i think had really i had really interesting things to say about what he does like i'll give you just a funny example so saeed by the way he owns this thing called wp well actually it's called awesome corp he started it as a blog called WP Beginner, which was a blog on how to use WordPress.

51:23Now he owns tons of WordPress plugins. I don't know how big it is, but I bet it's worth half a billion dollars of which I bet he owns most of it. And it probably does many, many, many tens of millions in revenue and probably tens of millions of profit. Right. Yes. And yes, as in directionally, yes. I don't know the exact numbers, but he basically has a business that's amazing. That's a monopoly. It prints cash and then he does interesting things with his cash. Like he owns like, I don't know, 40 gas stations or some shit like that. It's like, why do you own gas stations, dude? Is that a good idea?

51:53Bad idea. Does that take up a bunch of time or not? He's like, no, these are triple net leases. I just own the buildings that other people operate in and they pay for all the maintenance. So I was like, oh, okay, interesting. So I did a call with him once and he's like, my mentor taught me one thing, which was, okay, you don't spend, it's kind of like, I don't know the math, I'm going to say a math term, even though I don't know math. He's like, you don't spend like the first derivative money. He's like, basically, what most people do is the cash comes in from the business, then they spend that money on life expenses.

52:23No, no, no. You only spend the second derivative. It's like cash, let's say a million dollars comes in from your business. You don't get to spend, that million is not spendable. The million has to be invested into something. And then the income from that investment, that's what you get to spend. You do that, you'll never go broke. And I was like, oh, that's interesting. He's like, yeah. So like, I wanted to have a kid. Before we had a kid, I bought a gas station. Gas station makes six grand a month. That pays for this kid. I was like, wow, what? And that's how his brain worked. And I was like, interesting.

52:57Again, thesis, line it up. Say, does that seem like a way of life I'd like to do? Maybe, maybe not. But like, I find it interesting because he says different things than most people. He does different things than most people and how he runs his life and how he runs his businesses and what he does with the money. You know, he was the one who was like, you know what? I love buying businesses. He's like, but there's another strategy I do where I buy these like 30 to 40 % minority stakes in businesses that I can help in these two specific ways. And they're going to keep running it. So they get a little liquidity.

53:27They get to retain control. And I'm going to help them break through the plateau to get to the next level. He's like, I love doing that. I look for those deals. And so when I invested in Shepard, it was exactly that mindset. said. I was like, what's a great business that I already believe in and I'm a customer of, that I can buy a minority stake, let them keep running it, but then help them get to the next level by doing these two things. And... Has your contribution to that already... Do you think that your contribution has paid dividends in their business yet? Yeah, of course. Yeah. The last two months have been the highest two months of the business in the history of the business.

54:04So it's great. And for me, that's great too, right? I'm already paid back, I don't know, 3 % of my money or something like that on that investment. So like, you know, that thing's going to, you know, in terms of, oh, could I put my money in the stock market or try to get 8 %? Or this thing's clearly, this thing's going to do 200 % a year, basically, I don't know, unless something bad happens. So that's like, you know, a great use of, okay, yes, I, maybe I sold my whatever, Amazon stock or whatever stock, HubSpot stock, whatever it is. And I missed the kind of like a little bit of the bounce back, but I put that money to work in a place where I felt like I had a little more control and and could see a path to a much greater return with, with more risk, of course.

54:43This episode is like the personal finance episode. I'm very curious to see if you listeners actually enjoy this stuff. Next time we got to get back to like the business building stuff. Cause I think that that is interesting to more people. And it's also interesting to me and you, but I'm very curious to see if this is useful for people.

55:05Hey, let's take a quick break because there's a quote that I love. 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 nineties, you're operating like you're in the nineties. 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.

55:35If 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, Callum N.A., and Evolve Bank & Trust members, FDIC.