Tony Robbins: The Next 36 Months Will Change Everything | PBD Podcast #860

0:00I think we're going to have a crisis. There's no question about it. I'm worried about something worse than a recession. Yes. I believe we are currently on the brink. Depression is kind of what he's talking about. You created the mess we're in, and now you're saying, sorry. If I said to you there's going to be more change in the next 10 years to humanity than all of humanity's history, do you buy that or not buy that? Forget the 10 years. What's going to happen next 36 months? We're going to have AGI. There's zero question. Some say we have it now. meaning one AI has more power, more understanding in mathematics or chemistry than any human.

0:34In five to six years, we're going to have super intelligence. China gets it, they take over the world. Whoever gets quantum will control the other's military. We don't have to have the bombs. We can just get the codes and blow them up where they are. And there's robotics. Within 10 years, we'll be more robots than there probably are humans. Think about like electricity. 10 years from now, labor will be like electricity. In 2008, we lost 8 million jobs. Almost destroyed the American economy. What's going to happen in the next 36 months? There will be a point where there will be no truck drivers, no taxi drivers, no Uber drivers.

1:08You're not going to be replaced by an AI. You're going to be replaced by someone who knows how to use an AI. Now, we have politicians on both sides that take advantage of whatever's going on in the environment for more power. It has nothing to do with what serves the American people. The information age died a long time ago. We're drowning in information. We're starving for wisdom.

1:32So I'm going to ask an indirect way of helping our guys, our production team that works so hard, get a raise. Do you want to help them get a raise? This is how you can help us out. 49 % of you watch our podcast that our editors work so hard. Producers, cutters, all of them. Our production team, 32 of them that work here, they work very, very hard to deliver a good quality to you. if you enjoy our show and you want to help this thing get bigger so we can take our talent that we have in-house that support this production all the time and maybe even give them a raise then please subscribe to the channel that allows us to get more viewership and indirectly it makes bigger opportunities for our current team that we have thank you so much our goal today is to get better with investment so who we brought in today is the great tony robbins every once in a while i can introduce people with the grades and Tony qualifies.

2:25He's the greatest in his space. So we have the great Tony Robbins back and we have Christopher, not Chris, Christopher Zook here back with us. I have to qualify that because it's very important to make sure we say that. He was back here with us today. And you got a great story on how you went from having a half a billion dollars of money under management. You've been following personal power for many, many decades. And then all of a sudden, Tony invests in your company. You don't even know about it, even though you've been following them for nearly 30 years. And then you get even more involved.

2:55And then now you guys got nearly$14 billion or so of money under management, which is an amazing story. So our goal is for our audience to get smarter today. So I'd like to start with a game. If you can see what you have in front of you, you have a buy, sell, and hold sign in front of you. I'm going to go through different investments, okay? And we're going to start off with value right off the bat, and then we'll get into it. So gold, do you buy, sell, or hold gold today? What do you do? Hold. You're hold. You're buy. But I think the answer to all your questions, they're being asked in the wrong order.

3:30Okay. The dog bit Johnny, Johnny bit the dog. Same elements, different sequence, different result. You can't have an answer to this question if you don't know what your outcomes are. And you have to know what your asset allocation is. So right now, for example, if you don't have anything that's covered in that category, which I have very little, honestly, then it might be an area that you might want to consider because it's something that's changing, but based on inflation. All the answers you're going to ask for here are basically based on that individual's real needs. If you start making a generalization about it, we're going to be giving people the wrong advice.

4:03I think that's a good qualification for you. So this is for you. This is not a recommendation to others. It's just where you're at. And if on any one of them you want to unpack, and remember, guys, this is not financial advice. This is just they're telling you what their opinions are. Bitcoin, buy, sell, and hold. Sell for you. Okay, you're also sell. Okay, maybe a couple of these, if you don't mind, I'll come back to. Sure. Okay, so how about commercial real estate? Depends on where. Yeah, I was going to say that's location. So that's going to be location. So some areas are sell, some areas. Okay, that's fine.

4:35I like that. Real estate is all local, right? You don't think about it on a national scale. I think that's fair. I agree. So S &P 500. Really? Maybe. I'm a seller today. I'm going to come back to that one as well, and we'll talk about that as well. So I'm going to put C, if you don't mind. I'm going to put C next to it, and I'm going to put T here. Single-family homes. Is it still based on states? It's definitely still based. Okay, so let's just move on real estate. California. up. You guys are on the same page there. Absolutely. Texas. That would be a buy. That would be a buy. Okay. New York.

5:15Yeah. Also. All right. Florida. I'm a holder there. Really? I'm a buyer. You're a buyer. Okay. I'm going to come to you with that one. If you're saying that, how about Illinois? Illinois, I'm a holder. Really? Okay. That's a blue. I don't know about the market there. I wouldn't come. Okay. You said Chicago would be a different answer. That would be a sell, but Illinois, that would be a hold. Illinois, there's so many great parts. Naperville, some of the markets that they have. Okay, I respect that. Tennessee. Tennessee is a definite buy. Yeah, yeah. Okay, so you guys are both by there. Collectible cards.

5:46Yeah, again, that's been... A hold, if I own them, I'm going to enjoy them, but I'm not going to be a buyer today. Are you in the same place? I wouldn't be a buyer today. Okay, fair enough. Sports teams. We do that every day. We're big buyers. Then we're definitely talking about that. Nuclear stocks. Nuclear power. Depends on whose type. The newest types. You know, the call I had with you, Tony, a couple months ago, when you just broke down what you're involved in with the power and nuclear, and I don't know what state it was. Was it South Dakota? West Virginia. Maybe we'll get into that later on.

6:18It's very interesting the way you were breaking it down. Okay, defense companies. Definitely buy. Okay, are you following what Palmer Luckey is doing with some of the new drones? We were early investors with Palmer. Good call. And that thing's going to go. I think that could be a trillion-dollar valuation depending on how much he scales at college degrees. I'm actually – I'm in the place of showing people how to get those without spending any money. I've got a new portion called United Colleges of America where we guarantee anybody with less than$100 ,000 a college degree where they get new skills, a new life, but no debt.

6:54The number one debt in America is mortgages. Number two is education. and imagine this, 1.8 trillion, people spend four years worth of education to pay it off over 20 years. Obama was still paying off as a senator and he had a bunch of scholarships his. It is out of control, it is out of balance, but there are good solutions. And especially if you're getting skills that are actually in the marketplace. Borrowing money that you don't have to get skills that are outdated for a job that doesn't exist is not a good formula. And that's why I think a lot of kids are so upset coming out of college right now.

7:25Would you mind if we come back and revisit this? That's something I definitely want to talk about. Okay. NVIDIA. Right now, I'm a seller. You're a seller. You're hold. Okay. Fair. Palantir. I'm a holder right now and an owner for full disclosure. Okay. Fair. Tesla. Tesla. Hold. Hold. And last but not least, SpaceX. SpaceX. We're a holder. We're an owner as well. You're a holder. We hold together. Okay. Fantastic. Again, before we go into the story, walk me through why you're on sell on Bitcoin. The last, I think, Kramer three weeks ago said he sold all his Bitcoin. Three weeks later, it goes from$62 ,000 to$78 ,000.

8:02You saw that whole story. Maybe you're following it. Why sell on Bitcoin? So I only use Bitcoin as a trading vehicle. So therefore, when it's up higher, I'm typically a seller. When it's down low, I'm typically a buyer. So this is more of a trading recommendation, not a long-term investment recommendation. I think there's a place for it in a portfolio as a trading instrument. It's got lots of volatility. You can make a lot of money or lose a lot of money quickly. After this move, I'm a seller. I think you have to look at where are you putting your money and where are your returns. I think most people get into Bitcoin initially under the idea that's going to protect you against inflation.

8:35But as you know, the same people invest in Bitcoin are the same people investing in tech. So right now you have 32 % of the S &P that's in seven companies, the magnificent seven. The most we've ever seen as a percentage, that means 32 % of the entire volume of 500 companies is coming from seven. That is an imbalance. The most we've ever had before is 17%. That is a challenge waiting to happen. When technology goes down, all the guys that have Bitcoin, they have to go sell because they're leveraged usually, and you see another price change. So for me, it's just not the best use of my capital right now.

9:05Respect. And neither one of you are holding any Bitcoin right now. No, I have some Bitcoin. You have some? Yeah. Okay, so you're on the hold side, whatever you have. Okay, fair enough. So for the audience that doesn't know, I know the story of how you guys met. Tony, if you don't mind kind of sharing how the two of you guys became friends and partners. Sure. Well, I'd start out because, you know, in 2000, well, after 2008, I've been working with Paul Tudor Jones, one of the top traders in the history of the world. I've worked with him for more than 30 years. So I've learned a lot, at least being around him.

9:32And after 2008, I was so frustrated with the fact that the people that almost destroyed the world economy, the punishment they got was more money. That was the reward. So about four years later, I said to myself, I don't have everything, but I have access. So I want to interview 50 of the smartest financial investors in the history of the world that are alive today. I've got access. And I want to see if the game is still winnable. And I wrote Money Master the Game. And I want to write a book that my billionaire clients would love and someone just starting the game would love. I made the number one bestseller and took off like crazy.

10:02I thought that was it. I'm not going to write another book. But then I saw people making dumb mistakes. And, you know, every market changes. And so you have to know how to deal with the downside. side. So I didn't know COVID was coming, but fortunately I wrote unshakable. I wasn't going to write another book, but then I started seeing all these individuals, young people, especially you're seeing it today, whether it's see young men, especially are taking a bunch of money. They think they're going to affirm investments and they're using it on sports betting right now. 24 % of them say that's their best long-term investment.

10:30That is a recipe for disaster. So what people are trying to do is make up for time. So I started looking around and saying, okay, how do I help people? Well, you and I both know that where the smart money goes, if we look at high network people, where are their assets? 52 % of it's in private equity and private assets, only 29 % in the public. And if you look at this stat, this is one everybody needs to hear. For the last 39 straight years, private equity, basic private equity, not the people we wrote about in this book, that's the masters of the universe that we work with. Just basic private equity is outstripped, outproduced every stock market in the world every year for 39 straight years, right?

11:07That's a pretty amazing track record. And let's take the S &P 500. Over those 39 years, it's averaged 9%. It's pretty nice compounding, okay? But if you had basic private equity, it's 15.7. That's 74 % more per year compounded. So if you put a million dollars 39 years ago and frog out about it in the S &P, you'd be a happy camper. You got just less than 29 million, 28.6 to be exact. If you took that same money and had private equity, it's worth 293 million, tenfold, or smaller number, you put 100 ,000 in, 2.9 million versus 29 million, right? So the problem is, how do you get access, right? And the problem has been up until very recently, some brand new rules that we knew were coming, that's where I wrote the book.

11:49If you, you had to be an accredited investor or many times a qualified purchaser, and you qualified purchaser, you get a$5 million net worth to make some of these investments. The richest people in the world get access. But even me, you know, I've done pretty well. And I've a name like yourself, you have a name, you can usually get access. But the slice I get will be so small, that it's not going to change my life. And I was lamenting about this to a friend of mine. And he was a former partner of Paul Tudor Jones. Till when did you feel that way that even a guy like you? Yeah, 10 years ago. Okay, 10 years ago.

12:18Eight years ago. What were you worth 10 years ago? My net worth then, probably 400 million bucks. So even at 400 million, you're not getting the type of access that the big guys are getting. I was getting access, but it's like I want to buy an SP3 Ferrari, right? They come out, they're$3 million, but they're all pre-sold to everybody who already has them. You're paying 5.8 or 5.5. Well, actually a little more now. I see the numbers. So one of them sold for$25 million? I don't know what it is. I think it was 12 or 14. Did you see that, whatever charity event? I know, I was like, oh, my God. Crazy.

12:45But the point is, so getting access. So I would get access, but a small slice. So I mentioned this to my friend, and my friend said, look, you've changed my life so much, I'm going to change your life today. and there's a really sophisticated investor, right? And he said, I want to tell you where I put most of my money. A guy like this has put most of your money. I'm leaning forward. And he goes, there is a firm. And I'm waiting for him to say it's going to be in Singapore or London or, you know, obviously New York, Connecticut. And he goes, in Houston, Texas. I said, Houston, Texas, there is a firm where you don't have to fight to get in anymore.

13:17You don't have to be a limited partner. You can own a piece of the firm and own all that they own. He said, Tony, you can own the, pace on the racehorse or on the racetrack. He said, you own the firm. That means the 2 % they charge, no matter how well they do or don't do, and the 20 % upside you get. I said, how is that possible? He said, this firm is the best in it. They've been doing it for years. They're leaders in the area. You got to meet him. So I flew to meet Christopher Zook. Want to meet this guy. And I found out, first of all, I got to brag on him for a second. Over 25 years, he has a 96 % profitability ratio on his investments.

13:53I mean, how many people on earth have done that? And so I was totally impressed. I saw what he was doing. I was like, why would you ever be a limited partner again? This is insane. You get to have all the investments they made in the past, the present, the future. You get this massive diversity. When the firm sells, you get the multiple on the firm on top of it. That to me was the greatest thing I could imagine. So I got involved with Christopher and then I started finding all the other investments that were part of it and christopher um five years about four and a half years ago we got together they were doing he had been to well why don't you share with him he'd been to my my seminar years before and started his business out of it which i had no idea he apparently listened to the tapes was it personal power which one was a personal power back in 1991 one or two uh the first the first one so you know cassette tapes yes you know at that time i was working my tail off but came home late one night and uh saw tony doing an infomercial loved what i heard ordered the tapes my wife and i did the series, one of those days you do a goal setting workshop.

14:50And so from that workshop, I set a goal to start a firm named Kaz Investments within 10 years. And nine years, nine months later, I started the firm. That obviously was not a coincidence. I worked every step of the way to make that goal a reality. But I'd never went to a live event until 2013. In 2013, I went to Day with Destiny, which totally changed my life. Then I went to Business Mastery and I completely redesigned the firm. I'd already been around for 12 years at that point, was successful, but was not anywhere near what it was capable of being. So totally redesigned everything, did not have anything to do with Tony and his family becoming an investor with us until I literally found out from one of our team that it had happened, which was a pretty cool moment, because all I do is talking basically sports analogies and Tony-isms.

15:34That's basically everything I do when I'm coaching our team. So from there, I've learned more and more about what he was interested in, what we were focused on as a business, and how we potentially could come together, that obviously led to them becoming a partner in 2021. So from there, you guys have been working. So we've grown from 2.7 billion to over 13 billion in assets. But what I'm most excited about is the people, what we're making available to the average person. The average person has never had access to this. You have$100 ,000,$250 ,000, try to get access, try to get a piece. We have 100 firms now, some of the best on earth, average firms,$30 billion to give you an idea.

16:10And the types of returns and the type to have that level of intelligence working for you And now we have a fund share what's happened because it's pretty amazing. One of the things we talked about in the book is how we expected that Congress was going to pass a rule to where people could take a test to become an accredited investor and start being able to invest in things that only historically very wealthy people could do or institutions could do. But in June of 25, actually the SEC changed the rules. So literally just over a year ago, they made it to where there's no accreditation required to invest in certain funds that own assets that are very unique and very different for everybody in the world at a$2 ,500 minimum.

16:48No accreditation. So now somebody can own a piece of a private equity firm or private asset management firm, a piece of a professional sports team, a piece of, you know, Anderil, using that example we talked about earlier, the things that we are able to do in the private markets that were never available. They can do that literally for$2 ,500 in a structure that's now available to literally everybody in the world. So a person can become a minority owner of a team with$2 ,500. That's exactly right. I wanted to own a sports team. The Dodgers, when I was growing up, we were totally poor. I worked my ass off to save a little bit of money so I could go in right field and get a seat maybe twice in a year.

17:24Now I'm a piece of the team, right? But when I first started out, the first sports team I was the LAFC. I had to start that with Peter Gruber and our group. And I had to go through a year's width of a microscope to be approved. Tom Penn. Yes, Tom Penn is one of my partners as well, yes. And we had to go through that. And it was fun. We designed everything, came up the colors, the stadium. It was a blast doing the thing. Then I moved to Florida and I wasn't there for most of the games. But I went through all of that. And then the rules changed to now where certain firms can actually buy a portion of these different sports teams.

17:54So, you know, I've got a piece of the Dodgers now. We've got a piece of the Red Sox. We've got a piece of Golden State Warriors. And he goes on and on. Different sports teams, different elements. Now, why is that important? Let's go back a step. The holy grail of investing. I wrote this not only to talk about private equity, because it's more than that. It's to understand the formula that ensures you have the least amount of a risk with the most amount of upside. And I didn't come up with that. I interviewed 50 of the smartest people in the world. Ray Dalio is one of the greatest investors in the history of the world.

18:23He and I became good friends. I went in for a 30-minute interview, left four hours later and became good friends. And at the end of my first interview with him, I asked him, I said, look, of everything we've talked about, if there's one principle that investors need to understand that's been the most important principle to your success, what would it be? And he said, Tony, I used to have to think about that a lot. I thought about it for 15 years and I can now tell you, I even call it the holy grail of investing. And he said, here's what it is. If you can find eight to 12 uncorrelated investments that you believe in, you reduce your risk by 80 % and you increase your upside.

18:58Uncorrelated. Yes. So, for example. So, gas, oil, technology, finance. Well, no, it depends on where you are. If they're all in the public markets, they're going to be correlated, right? So, think about the easy ones. Stocks and bonds. They're supposed to zig and zag, going opposite directions. You're protected. I totally got it. One day, one's doing well. If the other, the other one's doing well. However, that's not quite true anymore. Most things are correlated in the public markets. in 2008 and 2020, they both went down. And your broker will say, I don't know, this is what happens. It happens always in that nature.

19:28That's why you need private equity, private credit, private assets, private real estate. You need to have those other types of tools, and that's where you'll be able to come up with it. So I looked at that and went, by the way, in case I wasn't convinced that was important, which I was, two weeks later I was here in Miami, and they did the J.P. Morgan Conference, the Alternative Assets Conference. And you've got to be a billionaire to go. I've been there three times. invited me to speak. Ray Dalio's speaking right before me. You got to be worth more than at least a billion. Most people are worth 10 or more in that room.

19:58He gets up and speaks. The last question guy asked him was similar to my own. Like, what's the most important thing you've learned? He gives the exact same piece. Every head in the room looks down and writes this down. And it's so simple. But all you have to do is have that diversification. But most people think diversification like, oh, I'll have Apple. I'll have, you know, nine different stocks. That's not what we're talking about. We're talking about diversification where they're going to move in opposite directions. You've got a great metaphor you always use in terms of golf. So I mean, I love the way that it's simple to explain a very complex concept.

20:28And that is that, you know, if you have a golf shop and all you sell in your golf shop is sunscreen, well, then on sunny days, you sell a lot of sunscreen on rainy days. You don't sell any, you only sell umbrellas on rainy days. You're going to sell a lot on sunny days. You're going to sell very little, but if you have both in your golf shop every day, you're going to be a winner. You're going to have something that is selling. That is something zigging and something zagging. You can do the exact same thing with your investments, but most people never can get access to that because the public markets are so correlated.

20:54You look at what's happened because of indexation, just more and more index funds and people just putting their money into the S &P 500, et cetera. They move together as a group, so they all go up and down together. Well, you don't want that as an investor because you want to get off the roller coaster. You want to get onto an escalator where you can have a much smoother ride. Right, makes sense. So, Christopher, can you give me the example of 8 to 12 uncorrelated investments? So, very easy. Sports being right at the top of the list because we were talking about it. It has a, and I'll give the technical definition of correlation.

21:24Something is one correlated to the S &P of 100 if it moves together with it basically 100 % of the time. Could do different magnitude, but basically the same direction. One to one. Okay, one to one. Zero means no correlation at all. A negative number means it moves in the opposite direction. Okay? Okay, sports has a negative correlation, less than zero correlation of the S &P 500. The business model of sports teams is not what drives the S &P 500 every day. You have inflation protection, you have real estate, you have all these media rights, which are enormously valuable. Here's a fun statistic for you.

21:58Your audience will really appreciate this. In 2005, 14 of the top 100 watched live programs were sports. Okay, 14 out of 100. In 2025, 96 of the top 100 are sports because who wants to watch a commercial if you don't have to? But you're going to watch that if it's a live event, like a sporting event. But it doesn't move at the same time. So there's one easy example. Owning a GP stake, owning a private asset management firm, that's basically a 0.1 correlation. So 90 % of the time, it's not moving in the same direction. Energy, negative correlation. It moves usually in the opposite direction. You look at something like space and defense or venture capital.

22:38There's definitely some correlation, but it's called 30 % or 40 % correlation as opposed to public assets in the technology world. That might be 80 % or 90 % or 95 % in the case of something like NVIDIA because it's effectively the market. So you want to have all these assets that are not zigging and zagging at the same time. that's what gives you a smoother ride and gives you the ability to have a steadier return with less volatility, less risk by the definition. But in most cases, you actually have the ability to make more return. By the way, just to take sports for example, just for a second, okay?

23:12There's been an 18 % compounded return the last 10 years alone in sports teams, right? And you couldn't even participate in this a few years ago. Now you can. But I'll give you an example. My dear friend and partner, Peter Gruber, he bought the Dodgers,$2.2 billion. I don't know if you remember, 2012. I do. And every article was, they're insane. They're going to lose money. It's the most anybody's ever paid for a franchise. And I said to Peter, my friend and partner, I was like, Peter, I was like, are you sure about this? He goes, you know me. I know what I'm doing. He goes, I'm not going to tell you.

23:41I'm going to make an announcement. And then you come over. We'll have a little celebration. He announces. Now, if you're on an NBA team, you're one of 30-second teams. NFL, one of 30-second teams. You get one 30-second of all the revenue that comes for selling national and international. but you keep your local advertising rights. He sold advertising rights the next week for$7 billion and added$5 billion in a week. Okay? Now, these are also monopolies. See, what you got is you have a legal monopoly. How did a guy previous to him not know that? Because I know he was going through the divorce, but how did he not know that to sell the rights?

24:14I know Peter's in the media business. But Peter's just a better negotiator also. Is that really all it is? It all comes down to, yes, it all comes down to who do you know? Five billion dollars? Five billion dollars. That is just some. But also he held out for it. He's a smart negotiator. He knows what he's doing, right? But to give you an idea, he took Golden State Warriors, paid$450 million for them. They were the worst team. Built the stadium, built the team. A piece of that team is pretty amazing. I've got world championship rings from coaching and working with the team members. One of the most fun experiences of my life.

24:42But at the same time, it's worth$11 billion. Only the Dallas Cowboys are worth more. So the amount of value that can be added, because they're not just selling hot dogs, and their fans are called fanatics. That's where the word fan comes from. And they're multi-generational. So it's like you've got a monopoly that's legal. You've got customers that are built in. And now, wait, inflation? They just raise the price of the hot dog. It doesn't matter. But now these are media firms. These are real estate firms. And so we're involved in that business as another giant chunk opportunity. Look at what's happened since the war in Ukraine and Iran.

25:18We've completely seen war change. You can't send multimillion-dollar missiles to take out a swarm of$30 ,000 worth of swarms that are there being knocked out. So now you have Andrel and all these people saying, we're going to build the next area of warfare. Now, you can predict what's going to be spent there because every government around the world now that's aligned with the United States, NATO has asked to spend 5%. So they're going to go from$3.6 billion to$6.6 trillion they're going to have to spend. And there are certain places that's going to have to go. And the leaders in this area, those are the ones that we want to own.

25:54And we own them early on. And those are part of what our fund is about as well. Yeah, I remember a tweet. I'm sure you'll remember this. Where Chamath tweeted saying he bought a 10 % estate, I don't know what it was, in Golden State. He put$25 million into it. By the time he sold, he made 25x return on his money. And he sold early. He sold early. He could have made 50x on it. Bryce, so here's another question for you within sports. Do you sit there and categorize which one within the space of sports is better right now? Like, is it NHL, NBA, MLB, NFL, MLS? Do you look at it that way as well? You have to.

26:31I mean, you have to value everything based on what the revenue is going to be. Well, the NFL is the 800-pound gorilla. It is the dominant player by a very large margin. I mean, it's like three or four times the revenue production as the next top. And only 16 games. That's exactly right. That is insane. Eight homes. If you own a team, your share of the revenue, not your local revenue, advertising matter, is around$450 million on day one. Before you play a game, before you sell a season ticket, before you do anything. Half a billion. It's$450 million. The CFO of Dalvin's is a frenemite. No, no. And it's just a fantastic business.

27:03But what happened was, and candidly, I was the skeptic, right? It took me two years to make a decision to invest in sports. Two years. Because I wasn't convinced it wasn't just a trophy asset. and that everybody wasn't going to be just doing it to say they owned a piece of a sports team. What I realized is that cord cutting was real, the example I just gave, and that is what's driving the valuation. When the NBA renegotiated their media rights, it was a 3x step up in the value of their media rights. Right now, the NFL, and obviously this is very well known, the NFL media rights that are currently in place through 2032, they're at a 37 % discount to the NBA rights today, when you look at it on a per viewer basis.

27:44So in 2029, the NFL has the ability to renegotiate that. Here's a fun statistic for your audience as well. People know Amazon has obviously got Thursday night football, but everybody thinks about it. Okay, they just want to be able to host those games. The number one sign-up for Prime is every Thursday night in the fall. Because if you want to watch your team, and that's the only way you can do it, and you are a fanatic, you're going to pay for Prime. Now, some people will cancel, right? But a lot of people go, hey, this is a pretty good deal. And they will keep it all the way through the year.

28:16It's a huge revenue driver for Apple, Amazon, Google, YouTube, et cetera. That's why it's such an immense business opportunity going forward. Tony, I believe in the book, you guys talk about seven things, right, if I'm not mistaken. Seven different ways of looking at investment, sports teams being one of them. What are the other six? Well, another one you should touch on is energy. When we first wrote the book less than two years ago, this is the paperback coming out, We had to update it because there was nothing in there even about data centers then. So I have a place in West Virginia. I bought a power plant myself there at 1.3 gigawatts, did it with some partners.

28:51It's 8 % of electricity there. Well, that's before data centers came along. Now the demand for electricity is so large. It's been growing anyway based on population and technology. But with AI, it is the defense of whether China wins or not. So we're in a position right now where for years, because of the approach towards fossil fuels, we weren't making investments in those areas. Tell them the types of deals we're able to make right now. So as an example, in the private markets, we're able to look into investments and make investments at three to four times cash flow. All right. Now, that's incredibly inexpensive because of the contrast.

29:25So the contrast, so like as an example, many of the Magnificent Seven that we were looking at earlier, they're trading at 200 times cash flow. All right. Or 100 times cash. We're paying three to four. The reason why is there's not as many people that are willing to invest in fossil fuels. And I respect the right to do that. But I also respect the right to invest my capital and our capital in that and make a lot of money because we're providing what the country needs and what the world needs. And we're doing the other sources of energy as well. Absolutely. Nuclear is something we talked about earlier as well.

29:53So nuclear. Why are you along on that? Why are you? Is it because what? Because did you know that the data centers were going to go on the boom of, you know, right now I think we have like 1 ,500 pending that have to build. It's a very big political discussion right now. That's going to be one of the topics they're going to talk about during midterms as well as 2028. China is the one putting out information about it to try to make us weak and make our population push against them. Because if they win that war, they win the war of AI. What do you say to people in America that are like, Tony, I'm against this.

30:21I love you, Tony, but I'm not for AI data centers being built everywhere, the sound, the noise. What's your position with that? Well, you need to go and actually find out the data because the other people say it's using up all the water, and they don't understand what's actually being done. They're hearing the story it's being told, and most of it's by bots. coming in. It's been documented over and over again by China. If they win on energy, they will control the world through AI. That's how important this is. This is not just, oh, I like AI, I don't like AI. And I don't tell people to agree with me about everything.

30:49You can decide to invest in anything, do anything, not do anything. But you ought to educate yourself because otherwise the problem with social media is most people's news comes from social media. We know most of it is not even real. Listen, even the top media, their job is not to inform you. Their job is to startle you. The information age died a long time ago. There's too much information. We're drowning in information. We're starving for wisdom. So they have one job. They're not doing bad things. They're doing what they're supposed to. They're supposed to make money for their investors. The way you make money for your investors is to get your attention.

31:20That way that headline, if it inflames you or excites you and you click on it, I'm paid. It doesn't even matter. How does the individual you'll know the difference between BS and real. How do I? That's tough, but there are some companies out there now that have filters, just like they do with what's AI and what's not, that can actually let you see, okay, this is being published by a bot. This is being published by someone far left, far right. A couple of these filters, I like to do them so I can read what's real. And I like to see a left and a right point of view when it's accurate, right? Meaning it's their perception is still based on the facts.

31:53But otherwise, you're just being fed stuff all day. Where are most people getting their stuff? They're getting it from TikTok. So they don't have a clue what's really going on. And they're making decisions that affect their lives or affect the country. Let's look at communism right now. When I was 23, I went to the Soviet Union. I was brought over there because of doing the firewalk. I was brought with a group of scientists. They were interested in paranormal things. I thought, I wasn't a capitalist. I didn't know what a capitalist was. I thought, well, this is cool. And everything's going to be equal and fair.

32:23Like everybody, like we're all going to come by on. Everything's going to be free. And guess what I discovered by spending two and a half weeks there? I traveled on a train from literally from one end of the air to Siberia and all the way back to Moscow. Two and a half weeks. Everyone I traveled with, they had on the train. They were all comrades. They're all equal. We had caviar. We had champagne. We had everything you could possibly imagine. Every single town we pulled into is the same ugly gray area. Giant building and people wrapped around in the freezing cold every single day when we landed in the next city.

32:55Stopped in the next city. and what it was is people standing in line to get a quarter of milk and half a loaf of bread when you see what communism and socialism brings you understand like down in cuba listen castro said he wasn't a communist he said he wasn't a socialist he said he was for free elections he said there's free everything we have a society of people that we have failed to show them how important free enterprise is in our country the reason kids are suffering is we have not taught them any history and they're all consumers listen if if you have an apple phone which most people have an iphone a large number of people do so how many did you buy i showed some kids the other day here's what if you bought every iphone it came to like it was like 22 000 if you would have taken the same amount of money you spent on the iphone and you became an owner instead of a consumer you bought the stock of apple the same price as that phone at that time i showed them exactly what it is, you'd have$331 ,000 right now.

33:49It's not an economic problem. It's that you're a consumer, not an owner. And we need to teach people to be owners. And so we show people how to do that, though, in a way that has a huge advantage. Like, yes, we've got massive inflation right now that's been stimulated by multiple generations, but certainly during COVID. We spent three and a half to four trillion dollars more than we needed to spend during that time. And everybody thought it wouldn't create inflation, and it has. So we have to deal with that inflation right now. We have something being fought, a war being fought to try and keep, you know, nuclear weapons from being, you know, in the Middle East, you know, being used.

34:21All that plays a certain role. But I did an analysis with a group of people and looked at all the things that we buy today and the generation that thinks they can't afford anything. There's only three things that are more expensive than any other generation. Everything else is cheaper. You're old enough to remember that if you wanted, I'll give you a simple, that's a funny example, music. Did you ever go to a music store and buy music in your age cds warehouse yes that's right we all went someplace and you how much did it cost you to get 12 songs i don't know but i know one i would buy singles for 99 cents so 14.99 whatever it was yeah well you very few people got singles in those days right you got them on cds i didn't have that kind of money i was buying single easy hip-hop is what i was fantastic most people were buying an album because that's what they bought in those days and it was like 14 15 bucks for it right now eight dollars and you have a hundred million songs in there in your pocket crazy right if i want to go on a date with a girl i had to be able to pay eight bucks each and pay for the dinner i couldn't netflix and chill and have every movie 8 000 movies available the moment i wanted to so i'm being humorous but it's true the three things are more expensive housing that's a local problem that's a political problem right because there are people are not being allowed to build like LA here's a perfect example of how bad that can be New York very very similar example but the other two is education which is out of control in its costs and that's why kids are so upset they've paid all this money they've gone to massive debt but that can be changed and this the last one for us is health care those three are higher two of those three I'm personally working on to help people with solutions on I can't do the housing one by myself that one people people have to do but everything else is cheaper and by the way even in housing The average size home for this generation is twice the size of the last generation.

36:05Average square footage. People don't compare apples to apples. But here's what we do today. We look at social media and you compare it to a billionaire. Well, there's 3 ,200 billionaires in the world of 8.5 billion people. We used to compare it to our neighbor. So now people are dissatisfied. They also compare it to somebody who's a phony, who's making themselves look better than they are, act better than they are, behave better than they do than they are, and then people feel inferior and get angry. So our solution is, look, you need to take advantage of the system that's here. The game is still winnable.

36:35But you've got to educate yourself. You've got to get the skills. You're not going to be replaced by an AI. You're going to be replaced by somebody who knows how to use an AI. So let's get you the skills. Let's get you the investment skills so you can secure your financial future. Let's get you the personal skills so you can do well in your personal life. Let's get you the business skills so you can do well there as well in your career. I want to get into that. And so, but on this, by the way, real quick, before 23, were you into like what's communism, capitalism? Were you into none of that stuff?

37:01No. So it inspired you afterwards when you left. Because I thought it was going to be all equal, like what these kids are being sold. Just like what Castro sold. Go down to Cuba, see what it's like up in there. You don't want to go. Anybody here in South Florida will tell you there's no way they're going to allow us to have socialism here. But it's a delusion that things are free. So this gets me to think about something, Tony. Your mind is very creative. So I'm curious what you would say or Chris, what you would say. So, you know, when you, when you look at Mormons, the church, I'm not, you're going to see what direction I'm going.

37:29I'm going to come back to a good place. I work with a lot of Mormons for a long time. I know you have as well. You know, you go to a lot of the sales organization, Utah, it's filled with a lot of Mormons. They get their kids when they turn 18, 19, they go on two years. They go on a mission and then they come back and they're able to learn a language within six weeks. So the FBI is trying to learn how Mormon uses. So how do you teach these people this language so quick? They go like Nick Shirley was doing great, great work. he's Mormon, so he doesn't have a problem going to these countries. You see sometimes Israel, when somebody wants to go back and see the country, they will bring people back to show them how special it is, and you see how much Jews have a lot of pride in what they have.

38:05What can we do as Americans to take our youth, to send them somewhere, fund it, to realize how great America is, so we minimize the amount of socialism that's starting to spread amongst the youth? If you were the Secretary of Treasury, Tony Robbins, What would you do to get some of these young kids to realize how amazing America is? Well, I think...

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38:59You know, most people, we own, a belief is a poor substitute for an experience. You can believe what America's like when you haven't compared. You saw all the people coming here, you know, during the World Cup time, and they're raving about America. And their view of America has been done by the media, the same media that's convinced Americans that this is a terrible place. So it's nice to see how the rest of the world actually sees us when they're actually here. They were excited about the size of our burgers and whether you could have ranch dressing. But everything that people take for granted in this country, they take for granted not because they're not good people.

39:31They just don't have an experience. So anything that gives them the experience would do it. If I was president of the United States, though, the thing I would do if I had the right and you can't is I would definitely have a national service. In Israel, as you know, once you turn 18, everybody joins the service. And by the way, if you're 120 or 130 above an IQ, they put you in Mossad, they put you in AI. And that's why I have partners there because there's a concentration of intelligence there that like no other place on earth for the size of the population. But when you serve, it helps you see other worlds.

40:01That's what these Mormons do too. They get to see how good it is here. They get to serve also and feel their life is about something more than themselves. When we think it's only about us, we get angry. Because we're not made to just get. or made to give. Anybody who has really experienced something where they care about something more than themselves, whether it's your children or whether it's something in your community or it's your company or it's your county, whatever it is, there's an energy that human beings have that's what makes us human when there's something we're here to serve. Life is calling to us.

40:31It's like, you know, we don't really have a vision in this country anymore that's strong enough for people to be called. John F. Kennedy used to have the famous phrase, don't ask what your country can do for you, what can you do for your country? Our whole thing is, what are you doing for me? And you're not giving me enough now, and I'm a victim. So I think we have to give that example by showing people that have succeeded from nothing. It's the same thing with rich people. I had someone the other day saying, well, we should take all the money that Elon has and we can pay for all these things.

40:58Elon doesn't have all this money. Call him a trillionaire. It's all in businesses. It's all buildings. It's creating things. Have you ever seen communists? Did they create a cell phone? Did they create AI? No, that's not done by governments. That's done by individuals who take risks with their capital. And so if we divide all that up, I did a video years ago where I showed if you took all the richest people in the United States, you took all the sports teams, and you killed them all and took all their money, you can't cover the U.S. government for a year, right? And you lose who's going to produce the value going forward.

41:32So our mindset has to shift if we're going to succeed. And I'll tell you when it starts to shift, when you start to become an owner instead of just an operator or consumer. If you're a consumer, you're always stressed. And you don't have to have a lot of money. Even a tiny amount of money where you start to put that aside as a discipline and you start to see it grow, then all of a sudden you say this is different. This is why the Trump accounts are so valuable. You know, Michael Milken and these guys helped push this out. You can take your kid if they're born from 25 to 28 during this administration.

42:01$1 ,000 is given to them. You can now, even your employer can donate$2 ,500 a year to them. We were just with the Secretary of Labor yesterday, Sonderling, and he was talking about how this is creating a new generation where at 18, these kids can have$300 ,000. Now, the next case is not to spend$400 ,000, in my opinion, on an education where skills don't matter. And now you're in debt. That'll make anybody angry. So I understand why these kids are angry. I'd be angry, too. They've been sold a bill of goods. But it's still better than anywhere else and you've still got to do something with it. We've all had things that are unfair and unjust to us.

42:34Anybody who hasn't had that is going to have it sometime in the future. You think the government can play a role on affordability? I know you said some of the things is local. I'm doing something with health, and I'm doing something with education. Well, let me give you education. It's a simple example. Okay, right? So let's look at what's happening right now. If I said to you there's going to be more change in the next 10 years to humanity than all of humanity's history, do you buy that or not buy that? I do. Yeah, me too. But, you know, when it's 10 years out, that's a way out. So when I said I'm going to feed probably about a billion meals 10 years from now, it makes you feel good.

43:02but you're not called to do anything today but when i go okay that means this year i gotta provide 100 million meals and it took me 37 years i had no money myself to get fed to feed others finally i fed 42 million people in 37 years now i gotta do 100 million in one year i gotta find a new way to do this so with technology i take people and say forget the 10 years what's gonna happen next 36 months, I'll give you three things. Three technologies. A, we're going to have AGI. There's zero question. Some say we have it now. Meaning one AI has more power, more understanding in mathematics or chemistry than any human.

43:40In five to six years, we're going to have super intelligence. We're one AI who have the power of all human brains combined. Now I'm talking, I was talking to the vice chairman of IBM, Gary Coney, who's 10 years he ran Goldman Sachs, had dinner with him and i said are we winning i'm concerned you're like there's no safety on ai there's you know everybody going for a trillion dollars that's the target that's the carrot and the stick is we don't do it china gets it they take over the world and he goes tony we're slightly ahead but here's what matters more he said if you're concerned about that you should understand what's happening you know with quantum because he said whoever gets quantum will control the other's military we don't have to have the bombs we can just get the codes and blow them up where they are and he said if your friends are worried about their cryptocurrency be worried about the banks he said because we have some anti-quantum right now it's us and then he said google we're the leaders right now and he said but uh you know jp morgan has it the bank of america doesn't citibank doesn't he said so the president's going to do an executive order saying if you're doing business the government you have to have this but he said it could happen very quick i said when when's it going to happen he said less than 36 months i was like and then the next day i called my friends in israel there's six people that have quantum companies talk to them all everything they're doing is less than 36 months and there could be a spark at any time and there's robotics have you met brett adcock yet figure ai if you go to if you go to california sometime i'll set you up go go there you walk in his place and it's not like those robots you see then from china where they're doing automated automated stuff karate all that stuff right these are thinking off and they're everywhere it's like you're in another universe they're doing everything you can imagine They're running everything, making things happen.

45:19That's happening as we speak. And that, within 10 years, will be more robots than there probably are humans. Think about like electricity. You don't think about electricity when you go someplace. You don't think about what's going to cost. You know the power will be there. 10 years from now, labor will be like electricity. So we have to think differently. So if that's true, what's that going to disrupt? Number one, business. If you don't have agents in your business, they're not getting implemented right now because people are afraid. So I have a company that does implementation where instead of replacing you, we do an analysis for you of everything you do and have you see 40 to 60 percent of what you're doing is boring work to you.

45:55You're supposed to be head of strategic marketing and you're making a PDF, right? So we give you an assistant that does all that for you, a digital robotic assistant. You get to just work on strategic elements. Now you're 10 times more valuable to the company. You don't need to replace you. So there's that part. And so I'm working with the UAE, because they want to make their government agentic. And we're working with Mark Benioff here at Salesforce. I'm going to be doing a big presentation to all the companies there that are coming up at Dreamforce. Then the next part, reskilling America. I remember being with Obama 10 years ago and saying, Mr.

46:27President, I said, you inherited 2008. It wasn't your fault. And you've done as good a job as anybody trying to manage through it. But I said, you can prevent the next 2008 if you have some vision. And he said, what are you talking about? I said, well, in 2008, we lost 8 million jobs, right? Almost destroyed the American economy. I said, there's some technology right in front of us. And we didn't know AI like we do now then. I said, just look at self-driving cars as one example. I'll give you agriculture. I'll give you 10 examples. Let's look at self-driving cars. Sometime in the next 8 to 12 years, there aren't going to be any truck drivers.

46:58Who's going to pay a truck driver to drive eight hours a day when I have a truck and do it 24 hours a day, not make mistakes the insurance is cheaper and no health insurance and i depreciate the asset there will be a point where there'll be no truck drivers no taxi drivers no uber drivers and there's eight million that was then there's more now eight million in the economy that's one category and he said to me at the time he said well tony we think that's going to take 20 25 years i said well mr president with all due respect what if you're wrong and he said well there'll be new jobs i said there will be new jobs 150 years ago 90 85 percent of us were farmers now it's three percent of america we feed the whole world with technology but we had 150 years come up new jobs i said there's an early disruption that we have to deal with and he goes well we got basically too many fish to fry and i respect that he was going through hell at that time but today everybody knows it so i look at this and say how are we going to retool the country i got a 60 year old brother-in-law who just got laid off two months ago software engineer they also had to become a software engineer and now of course vibe comes along now you don't even vibe Now, all of a sudden, your AI does it.

48:03Your agenting AI does it in a heartbeat. Gary Cohn's daughter, he told me, used to get a million dollars to crush code. I don't know, 100 ,000 pieces down to whatever the number, so it's more efficient. Now, she doesn't have that job anymore as of this year because an agent can do it in a few days. Now, she's pregnant. They have a lot of money. She has a new mission. He's not worried about her. But my 60-year-old brother-in-law walks in, no severance, 650 people are let go of on the spot. They sold the company to a Swedish company, made it agentic. And guess what? He's got two kids in college.

48:35He's got a wife that works substitute teacher at$30 ,000 a year. And he's got a mortgage to pay. So here's what I have. United Colleges of America. You can go to unitedcolleges.org. We offer everybody debt-free education. And it's based on jobs that are actually available today. So we look at it this way. Head, hands, and heart. Head is you're a technology person. Guess what? software not working so well well we can turn you into software engineer at a different level on ai where now you make two to five hundred thousand dollars and the jobs are dying and waiting for you and by the way you're taught by an ai that knows everything about you at a pace you could not learn normally and it's tied to a normal true college university where you get your degree as well so you get it all and if you make less than a hundred thousand dollars we pay for it all you would put no money out of your pocket now if you lost your job making 180 you make less than a thousand dollars you're already in it immediately to give you an idea we do the same thing with hands these truck drivers tell them they're not gonna have a truck driving job they now need to reskill now we need 500 000 electricians right now you start at 85 000 you make 250 000 as top electrician it's not going away heart we need 500 000 nurses right now 95 000 were turned away last year we need them desperately they make a hundred thousand dollars a year it's the whole head hands heart Yeah, and so I'm now making all that agentic, though, because here's what education has learned.

49:56Can I ask you this question? So what's your brother-in-law going to do? He's your brother-in-law. He just got a scholarship. He's studying now to do AI engineering. Like Phoenix University. But how soon is he going to replace his job? How soon will he be able to replace it? He'll have it in 18 months. So for the next 18 months, what's he going to be doing? He's got a certain amount of money that he's doing. He's still applying for other jobs and so forth. He's finding the balance. He needs a long-term solution. It's lasting. Let's stay on this because what you just described is what a lot of people are concerned about, and it's very personal to you, brother-in-law.

50:27So for a guy that's watching this right now saying, Tony, that's my concern. If these software engineers are being replaced and these guys were making$250 ,000, $150 ,000,$300 ,000. Some of them are making$800 ,000 depending on how good they are. What do I do now? My worry is I'm going to lose my job now. How do I replace it in 18 months? What I would be doing right now is then go to United Colleges and we have an AI. that walks you through what are the opportunities, what are your skill sets, what's the direction, what are you trying to accomplish? It's better than most counselors. We had live counselors.

50:56They would complain. People tell me, tell me some information. They talk forever. Our AI has endless appreciation and respect for you and guide you through it to help you figure out where it is. And then you apply for the scholarship. And then when you apply for it, we then govern where we go. Right now, we have over 100 ,000 people that have already signed up and are getting scholarships as we speak. And we've done that in four months. we're going to have a million people in the next 36 months. Our biggest piece now is locking down the right university. So we're right now in negotiations with several universities who are now, maybe they have 3 ,500 people in a 13 ,000 person university that are online.

51:30And it's an online. Online is not a great experience for the most part. But an agentic AI that individually meets your needs, this is what they, it's called the two sigma component. If you, we start out with education for a mass audience. I'm pretty good at that. I can do that pretty well. Not everybody can. Smaller class size got you one sigma. Better result. The only thing that blows everything away is you can take an average student. If you give them one-on-one mentoring, they outproduced 98 % of the class. But it's been too expensive. But now with Agentec AI, it's not. So we have the systems in place.

52:03We're doing it as we speak. So that's one solution. I'm not saying I have a whole solution, but it's a solution for people to start to re-skill. So they don't wait until there's a problem. Or if they are in a problem, they can take action now. At 17 years old, you had a dream of being a president one day, right? Absolutely. And you've now advised billionaires, athletes, celebrities, actors, presidents, prime ministers. You name them. You've sat with everybody. 2028, I'm calling the free agency year of presidency. And at 2028, I think you're going to be 68 years old. I'm doing the math for you because you're a young 68-year-old.

52:38Yes. If I'm a betting man, should I consider putting some money on Calci of Tony Robbins running in 20? Because I know RFK wanted you as a VP. He spoke to you about it, right? No, it was his first choice. We spent a month going back and forth about whatever it would be his vice presidential candidate. Are you entertaining it? No, I'm not. Zero. I spent a month looking at it and made the decision. The main reason is that if the minute I do that, half the country can't talk to, unfortunately, where we are right now. I want to serve people. I'm an independent. I've served Republicans. and Democrats.

53:09I have certain people on both sides and work with Clinton all the way back to Reagan I got to do some work with. So it's like, I want to be able to help everyone I possibly can. So I'm not here to divide that. And I think I can do more from the outside than the inside. You still believe that? I really do. When I was younger, I thought that would be the position. So let me ask you, is there any chance anybody can change your mind? Maybe my wife, but I doubt seriously. She'd rather have it not happen. She probably would rather you not do it. It's a better life. I also, you know, COVID was good to me.

53:37I have five kids and five grandkids. I have a 52-year-old daughter, and I have a five-year-old daughter thanks to COVID. COVID was good to me. So I don't know that I want to disrupt that stage. I'm 66, so I want the next 20 years or so to be able to contribute as many ways as I possibly can to humanity, make the biggest difference. I mean, I said I was going to feed a billion people. We did that in eight years. I then said we're going to do 100 billion people. I think you know. And again, there's 100 billion challenges to do in 10 years. I can't announce it here because I'm announcing it at the UN in September, but I can tell you we've outstripped the 100 billion by a long number, right?

54:12These were numbers that seem impossible. I didn't have food for myself. So I'm into the scaling of solutions. That's what I love. And we've got to come back to this. The number one challenge for people, though, most people, besides their emotion and psychology, is just that they don't know how to take advantage of the system that's here. And you don't have to make it so complex. Can we do this? This is a professional communicator. I mean, he'll do laps around any one of us. Can you do me a favor? Go on Twitter, handle, I think, what's Tony's handle on Twitter? What is your handle on Twitter? Is it at Tony Robbins or Anthony Robbins?

54:47Tony Robbins. Can you look it up, Tony Robbins? Okay, Tony Robbins. Go on Twitter, at Tony Robbins, tweet, and make an argument why he ought to consider 2028 running. And by the way, I'd love to see some of the ideas. FYI, for some of you that but I actually want to communicate with them directly. You can manek them as well. So we're going to put the manek QR code below. But if you would like to see that, let's see some of the arguments. And tag me as well. Put PBD Podcast. I'll go look at all the tweets. And maybe we'll get some of his attention collectively. Maybe we can make some changes. You don't have to be in office to come up with solutions.

55:20In some ways, you have more freedom outside of office to do that. But I think there's certain times in life that responsibility comes on where some people are gifted with certain things that's not duplicatable, that we ought to consider it. And I'm just encouraging as a friend. Take that as a compliment. Let's talk investments. Question. So, you know, you said something. You said$2 ,500 earlier, right? Nowadays, when they change it, it can go all the way down to$25 ,000. I remember when it used to be a$2 ,500. $2 ,500. I'm sorry,$2 ,500. $2 ,500 was a number where 10, 15 years ago we were talking about, my God, I talked to, who was the former comptroller general of the U.S.?

55:55David Walker, I think was his name. and he was working with this one man who was running a portfolio that he can put$30 ,000, and that was a big deal. So$2 ,500. Walk me through levels, okay? I only have$10 ,000. I'm making$80 ,000 a year. I only have$10 ,000. Go to$100 ,000. Go to$1 million. Go to$10 million. Does it change at all on what you would consider me doing and the age I will choose for the$10 ,000, put me at$30 ,000. For the$100 ,000, put me at$40 ,000. For the million dollars, put me at$50 ,000. For$10 million, put me at$60 ,000. What do you do with your investment? The answer is it absolutely should change over time if somebody gets closer to retirement.

56:38It should be based on the amount of time they have to be invested in something. You don't invest in a professional sports team or Andrel or something like that for a couple of weeks. You just don't do that. That's trading. You can trade Bitcoin if you want to, but you don't invest long-term for that. So what I tell everybody all the time is don't think dollars, right? Don't think dollars at all because it's all not relevant. Only thing that matters is percentages. So for the$10 ,000 portfolio, investing 5%, you are going to invest 500 bucks. Obviously at 100 million, you're going to be doing$5 million.

57:13The key is to not get tripped up by the dollar amount being what's driving somebody. Because what happens to that same person, like I remember when I only had 10 grand. So 10 grand is a whole lot of money to me. Well, if you got$100 million,$10 ,000 is not going to move your portfolio one iota. So you need to make sure that you think in percentages. And that also removes the emotion from the equation. What happens to so many investors is they get stuck with the emotion. Like, oh, I bought NVIDIA. It went up a little bit. I got to sell it. Or it went down a little bit. I got to get out. Whatever it may be, that's a bad decision to make.

57:46They need to understand why they own something, size it correctly, and that allows them to stay with it over time. So that$10 ,000 investor, you absolutely have room in your portfolio for a lot of things. I wouldn't probably suggest$2 ,500 of the 10 to go into something that's not totally liquid, simply because you might need it. Once you get to$100 ,000, absolutely you should have alternative investments in your portfolio. Again, assuming the age that you gave of 40. And then as you get more and more wealth, you should have a larger and larger percentage because you don't need as much liquidity.

58:19I'll tell you a story. I had a gentleman that literally started with me in 1992 as an investor. He's now worth well over$500 million. When I started working with him, he was worth like 500 grand. What a great testimony. Obviously, I didn't make all that from him. I understand, but was he holding paper? How did he make his 500 to 500 million? From business and obviously compounding wealth over time. And we have done a very good job. Can I stop you right now? So can you do me a favor? Because he said something. He said 10 years ago he was worth 400 million, and he had access, but not as much as he's got access today.

58:48hey, sometimes when you're a good earner, you're not a good investor. And I had to shift that mindset and realize, look, I know how to make money. I know how to make money. No, this can really grow. Of the half a billion net worth that he has today, how much of it came from his exit? How much of it came from the investment compounding? Probably about 400 of it came from his business, either through earnings or his exit that he had. And over 100 million of it came from earnings on his investments over time. because obviously a lot of it happened later with his exit. But the point is that he always, always invested the same dollar amount every single time, whether he was worth$5 million,$10 million,$25 million.

59:31Percentage-wise, yeah. Just as dollars, dollars, not the same percentage. How? He was like, in his mind, as he got older, as he got more wealth, he was like, I put$1 million in everything. I'm like, dude, you're worth$100 million. Putting$1 million now is not a lot of money. gets to$250 million. I'm putting a million dollars in. Well, that's crazy. It's not even relevant. The psychology, going back to what Tony said, is that he remembers how hard it was to make his first million. And so he was literally stuck with, I can't do more than a million because if I lose it, I'm just going to just beat myself up all day long because I know how much a million dollars is.

1:00:07He needs this guy if he's got a limiting belief. He had me, fortunately, because I learned a lot from this guy. That makes sense. And so I was able to tell him, look, do this. Just put 20 basis points of your net worth into this investment. Now put 40 basis points. That's a better strategy. Absolutely. The percentage. So if that 30 basis points does have a bad outcome, you know, it's going to stink, but it's not going to be fatal. So that is the psychology that somebody has to have. So somebody can do that when they look at the overall percentage of their portfolio. Maybe it's 10 % to begin with.

1:00:36We talked about with Secretary Sonderling yesterday about 401ks. There's$14 trillion in 401ks that cannot invest in alternative investments today. That's about to change. That's totally changing. So now you're talking about for these people that are making investments in their 401k, do the right percentage, allow it to grow, get all the tax benefits, et cetera. But you have to have the psychology of what's the right percentage. And I know Tony gave earlier, but I just want to remind the audience. When you look at the results of the family offices, large family offices, endowments, foundations, they have anywhere between 35 % and 60 % of their net worth in alternative assets, in private assets.

1:01:17They don't need as much liquidity, so they have a larger percentage giving them the opportunity to make a higher rate of return. That's what I would advise anybody along their path to remember. By the way, just something. Go ahead. I just want to mention, most people's biggest reason for losing money has nothing to do with the capacity of the investment. It's their emotions. So the average year in the last 100 years, the market has had a 14 % correction at some point. 14%. In some areas, it's bigger. But most of those never turned to a 20 or a 30. They didn't turn into bear markets, right? The vast majority did not.

1:01:50But people get panicked. Since they can push a button, since they have liquidity, they do. And that's how they get in pain. Most people make money on their own private real estate, their own home that they own. Why? Because they can't push a button and get rid of it. So a portion of your investments, you should be thinking in terms of long term. And as a result of that, you're going to have a higher rate of return if that money is tied up potentially with a place where they're producing greater results. But you don't have as much liquidity. So that's the balance that has to be found for anybody.

1:02:17That does make sense. By the way, he's talking about robots. Ten years, more robots. Elon talked about it. There's going to be more robots. I think we're going to sell 10 to 30 million robots. And he's like, wait, what? Yeah, I think Tesla's going to sell 10 to 30. And the way he answered it was like, that's not a big deal, right? He talked about this last year. We all saw that clip. How do you feel about what's happening with companies like Autopilot that they're able to go get the 13F filing of what Jim Simons was doing with Renaissance Technology, who has been doing 49 % and I can match their 13F filings and I just put it in there?

1:02:47You know, the whole Nancy Pelosi trader, the upside down Kramer. What do you think that's going to do to the market? it. Do you believe in that concept? What do you think that's going to do? Most of that is more marketing than substance because even on the 13F filings, there's a huge delay between now and the time. You don't know when they sell, right? You don't know if they've sold it, so it's totally gone. The Nancy Pelosi or the Jim Cramer things, those are great marketing. They may work, they may not. It really doesn't drive things near as much as the just reality of indexing because the amount of indexing that has happened in our country and around the world, that is what's created this concentration.

1:03:21That's what's created all this correlation to where when things move, they move in the same direction. A very simple portfolio that was well diversified in 2005 had an average correlation, cross-correlation as it's called, of 0.16. Remember, one is fully correlated, zero is not, 0.16. Today, that exact same portfolio and the exact same weights is 0.65. Nothing's changed with those assets other than the concentration and indexing that has happened that when people are sellers, everybody's a seller. When people are a buyer, everybody's a buyer. Because when you buy the ETF, you buy that index fund, they have to literally be a seller or they have to be a buyer.

1:04:00There is no in-between. So in stress environments, when the market gets stressed, correlation goes up. That exact same portfolio in stress environments, average correlation is over 85%. Everything gets hammered at the same time except for a few assets. That's why the holy grail of investing is so important. That's why it has to be things that truly are less correlated or not correlated at all in somebody's portfolio to get them off the roller coaster, get them on the escalator. You're a big fan of Ray Dalio. Ray Dalio, I spent some time with him at his Bridgewater. He's right across in Armonk, right by IBM, I think, where his headquarters is at.

1:04:36He has been talking about many signs. We just crossed$40 trillion of debt, right? And he's been talking a lot about, hey, all the signs of the Great Depression, all the signs. And I think he's got a video on YouTube that he did that's like 45 minutes. If you can go YouTube, type in Ray Dalio, software filter, go to views on his channel. Maybe just go to his channel. This video's got... He's 50 million views, and it's not like it's a short video. Go to his channel right there, Principles by Ray Dalio, if you can. Go to videos, and then go to popular, please. Where is that at? Holy shit. What does it say?

1:05:13409 million views. Second one, 202 million views, right? These are not small numbers. These are ridiculous numbers to get. He believes a possible depression-type moment is around the corner. Do you agree with him? well i agree with him that that's not exactly what he believes what he believes is there is a pattern that has happened throughout human history and he studied more than 500 years of history to see what has that pattern been and the pattern is how countries grow just like a kid grows we have different stages look if you're a toddler you're going to get in more trouble than if you're just an infant right because you can do different things teenager goes like crazy you mature you get a little older you get a little older you make different types of things you age you behave differently in each stage.

1:05:55Well, so do countries. And so there is a pattern that happens that when a country gets too much debt, when a country gets where people expect too much without working very hard, and you can look all the way back to Roman times, you can look at what's happened to the British Empire, there is a period of time in which someone else becomes the challenger. And right now, China is that challenger for us by far. When that occurs, you have some conflict. And the conflict will often happen even more so if there's conflict within the country as well. So we not only have debt, we have several of these elements.

1:06:26We have internal conflict in our country where really we've used social media to a great extent and other actors outside of us have actually augmented this to create more conflict internally. That makes you weaker, right? We're out spending money all around the world on different wars. China is keeping everything central and playing Go. We're playing chess. If you don't understand the difference, Go is a million times more complex, but Go is much slower. You're gradually, before somebody knows it, taking over their territory. You're not going straight into a war. It's kind of like the art of war.

1:06:56So we're in a place right now where we have to cut back on our expenses, but no one's doing it. Neither party's doing it. And so he's raised the flag saying we can't have more. We're going to have a trillion dollars worth of debt that the interest we're paying this year. Well, I mean, I'll answer the question is that nobody wants to address that issue because it's certainly not popular. and politicians forever have not wanted to do it because it doesn't get them elected to do it. But we're right now in August where they were projecting we were going to be at the end of the year. $40 trillion. So he said on the brink, his words.

1:07:28I believe we are currently on the brink. I'm worried about something worse than a recession. If this isn't handled well, worse than a recession, depression is kind of what he's talking about. He's also worried about civil strife. He's worried about all those elements together. So they're all legitimate. I bring him out to talk. He's a dear friend. He sent me a note the other day. He said, you know, he said, there's a Chinese proverb that says, a rabbit has many holes. He said, how many other holes do you have in the world? And make sure you're in great shape. So yes, I think it's a very serious issue, but I think what the only way to have solved it is by individuals actually pressing on their politicians.

1:08:05But right now we have politicians on both sides that take advantage of whatever's going on in the environment for more power. It has nothing to do with what serves the american people right and so it doesn't look good for us to solve it but here's what i know about human history usually it takes a crisis for us to wake up you look at a business even in my own business careers i can say you you look at blockbuster blockbuster well they weren't dumb people how did they go out of business they could have bought netflix for 50 million dollars they are you know we need them they were everything was going so well for so long that all of a sudden and it didn't do well.

1:08:38They did not recover. Other companies have found a way to recover. They saw what was happening, the crisis happened, and it made them come up with a new way to do things. So I think crisis creates breakthroughs. Some of those breakthroughs are painful. Some of those breakthroughs are going to be very, very, they're going to make a better life for all of us. We do have some capacity to deal with that debt by becoming more productive, and he talks about that. AI is one of that possibilities, but we're not getting the AI to produce the level of result yet that gives us that massive jump in productivity because you got to look at your assets and your liabilities.

1:09:09If you talk to people that look at this country and say, what are all our resources? That includes all of our resources below the ground, everything that we have, the ratio of debt compared to our real full resources is something that's completely manageable in the minds of those people. But are we coming to a place where this is going to, people are going to have to have a reckoning? I believe the answer is absolutely yes. I wonder who's going to take the lead on this because you're right. You can't win an election by, hey, we're going to cut the debt during my term. I'm going to make sure we're going to cut some entitlement programs, less spending on military, less spending on this.

1:09:40I don't want this guy to be elected. It's going to be such easy fear porn coming against this guy. So it's almost as if Supreme Court. I don't even know how you put it through Supreme. Someone needs to say, hey, we're the Board of America. You can't be doing this. It's going to be a crisis that does it. So, I mean, people will say this. It's a crisis for people to be jerking. Like, when people overuse a drug, and that's what we've been doing with capital to a certain extent, right? And they overuse a drug. We've been spending. That's been our drug. We are bloated. What happens to a point? There's a point when you keep trying to get more in and you get less of a high.

1:10:09And then there's a point where you finally hit a crisis. And you either die of that crisis or you transform. I think we're going to have a crisis. There's no question about it. And the way I love what you guys said, which is very important, is the 8 to 12 uncorrelated investments to make sure even if it happens, you know, there's going to be certain things that are going to perform well during that season. But if you're 100 % just in one area, like when you put hold on S &P 500 or sell, which one did you? I put sell. You put sell. So if you're only in S &P 500, you know, back in the days they used to say, well, just put your money in investment company, Active America, with American funds or go to T.

1:10:45Rowe Price or all this other stuff. Those days are behind us. So shit. Okay, so maybe let me. But you're not trying to time the market. No, I'm not trying to time the market. I can't do that. Nobody does that. Nobody does that. Okay, so give me the hedge. would your hedge against a massive crisis that could be a 40 % type of a correction that happens? Ray's hedge is in Money Master the Game, and it basically is what we're doing, which is he calls it the all-weather portfolio. And he's figured out, for example, and this is somewhat complex, I'll make it simple, when people think about stocks and bonds, and they go, I'm 50-50, I'm split the difference.

1:11:18You're not 50-50, because stocks are three times more volatile than bonds. Okay? So the idea of a 60-40, 50-50 is based on an illusion. Based on the level of risk, it's not that. That's why people get a result that they're really unhappy with. So he has laid out, and I've laid out in my book, the exact balance of how to put yourself in. So if one thing goes up, the other one's down, vice versa. So that you end up with a balanced portfolio. That isn't the most aggressive thing that will give you the highest returns, but it will protect you in all weather, any season, any environment you're in. He's the master of that.

1:11:51And what we did is we took that exact same concept, which for all of those that are in the financial industry know that Markowitz won the Nobel Prize for modern portfolio theory. What Ray did, such a great service, is he made that actually understandable for a whole lot of people. And what we did is we took the all-weather concept and we applied it to the true less correlated assets that are the private markets. So when you have private market assets that definitely have less correlation and you combine them with the overall philosophy of the all-weather portfolio, That's how you get to what we refer to as the holy grail of investing.

1:12:23That is what ultimately allows people to ride through that. I do want to come back to one thing you said. There is actually a solution that doesn't require a crisis. It's not very popular, but it is a reality that the American people do have the power to actually fix the debt problem themselves without worrying about politicians. And that is a constitutional convention where they say we're going to pass a balanced budget amendment. Now, there's a lot of pain that comes with that, and there's a lot of hurdles to do that. But that actually is within the Constitution. The rights of the American people, if they stand up or unified, then they absolutely can make a difference.

1:12:58But I don't know if that's going to happen in my lifetime or not. And we have to prepare the investments in case it doesn't. And we want to have that all-weather portfolio using the best of the public markets and the best of the private markets. And every investor can do that. And by the way, if you're watching this right now and you're part of the camp that's like, oh, my God, that's why I'm so scared. and that's why I'm just not going to get into the market because what if it does happen? Well, if you don't and it does happen and the next 5, 10 years the market goes, you missed out on so much.

1:13:25The whole thing of if you go back 20 years and you miss the six best days, the difference between the amount of money you would lose, it's in the, depending on how much money, you lose so much money in return for it to be fear-based. And by the way, the best days are usually within two weeks of the worst days if you take a look at history. and people are panicked and they stay out of it. That's also why having assets in something that aren't quite as liquid where you've got people. Why has private equity done so well when the stock market, they don't drop as much and they return faster. How is that?

1:13:57Because they don't have to sell. When everybody's going crazy, they just like as if you own real estate. They own a business. You don't even have a choice. You've got to stay locked in. We've got cashflow. We don't have to do anything. We keep running the business. Now, maybe we buy during that time, but we sell when the market goes higher again. And that's why they're able to produce these magnitudes of wealth. Look, if you look at the Fortune 400 and say, who are the people who are the wealthiest in the country? What is the industry they're in? Most people say tech, completely wrong. Real estate, completely wrong.

1:14:25Medical, wrong. And by the way, it is not hedge funds because they come and go. It's private equity. Because these guys are not trying to time something. They're buying an asset. Same thing you and I do in a business, right? You and I have done this many times. Get a business and what do we do? Add massive value. Transform the team, bring a new CEO, bring in the AI, change the marketing, grow that business and sell it for a multiple to another business or take it public. That's what they do. It's a very different form. It's not like the old days where they took something, divided it up and sold off all the pieces and put it all in debt.

1:14:57Those days are over for the most part today. And in fact, one of the biggest differences today since 2008, and Bain was the one that started this, is the alignment. Maybe you should mention that. So, you know, what changed for most people in the investment world is trying to get more aligned with their investors. And Bain was the first one to really do this after 2008 to convince people to go into their fund. They put a billion dollars of their own money into the fund. Okay? That's a lot of money. That obviously gives people confidence that they're aligned. We have a saying as a firm that we're freakish about alignment.

1:15:26So everything is about alignment. We have the, we're the largest investor in everything that we do. We've got$750 million of our own money, investor in our own vehicles. So we always lead with our own money. That's alignment. Doesn't mean it's going to work, but it means we're aligned. If we're not willing to bet our money, why should you bet your money? Exactly. But so what happened is the industry has continued to grow. The ability to raise funds is highly dependent on how much of your own capital you're going to put in, which is typically 2 % to 5 % of whatever it is. So just use 5 % because it makes the math easy.

1:15:53You raise a billion-dollar fund, you've got to put up$50 million in your own money. That's great. You have a good track record. You want to raise a$2 billion fund, now it's$100 million. You want to raise a$5 billion fund, that's$250 million, and you haven't gotten your 50 back. So where are you going to get the money? That's why people will sell a stake to firms like ours, because of the fact that they need growth capital to be able to reinvest in their business, be able to grow. And oh, by the way, when they raise that$5 billion fund, they're going to get 2 % management fee on average, some higher, some lower.

1:16:19And they're going to get literally that billion dollars. Okay. Over a course of five years, just from managing that portfolio, five years, I'll use$10 billion,$10 billion. 10 billion is five years, five billion is 10 years. So$200 million on a$10 billion fund. Do that for five years because it's locked up. It's contractual obligated. You're talking about a billion dollars. And oh, by the way, you take that$10 billion, you turn it into$20 billion, you get paid 20 % of the profits. You make an extra$2 billion. That's what the opportunity is to own a private asset management firm, whether it be a$500 million firm, a$5 billion firm, or a$10 billion firm.

1:16:54That's why people will sell a stake. And if we buy, let's say, 13 % of somebody's position, they still got 87%. We're very aligned. And that economic outcome is what makes owning a private asset management firm such an attractive business model. I mean, imagine this. You've got a lot of different businesses. Imagine if you had customers who are not allowed to fire you and they have to give you a five-year contract. It's pretty easy to budget if you know your revenue for the next five years. And, oh, by the way, if you have a billion-dollar fund, it takes you 20 people. If you raise a$2 billion fund, it doesn't take you 40 people.

1:17:26It might take you another five or six. So you have this huge operating leverage. The average operating margin for private asset management firms just for management fees is 60 % profit margins. Then on top of that, they get the carry. Then on top of that, they get the return on their money they put in their own fund. And they get the growth of the enterprise value because if they grow from$3 billion to$30 billion, obviously they're worth a lot more money. We now have over 100 different firms that we own stakes in that manage collectively$2.9 trillion in assets. and have$12 billion of contractually obligated management fees over the next 10 years.

1:18:03They don't even ever have to raise another dollar, and they're going to make$12 billion of revenue. That's the sustainability, which is not correlated. How hard is it to get into the business? Oh, it's very, very hard. It's extremely difficult. What does it take to create a PE firm and succeed? You've got to have a great track record. You've got to have people that believe in you, and then you've got to deliver performance. Okay, so if I talk about putting a winning team, I'm talking to Tom Penn. I asked him this question because he used to do the, remember he used to do the collective bargaining agreements on ESPN.

1:18:30He was so good at it. I love when he does it. But if I want to put a winning team and I ask Shaq or the late Kobe or Magic, I said, what matters the most? The owner, the coach, the player, superstar, you know, GM, what are the men? And then they would all give their philosophy on what's the most important hire. On a P, if somebody wants to start a PE firm, what are the sequence? Five steps on what matters the most? Private equity firm, I would answer very different than private credit or private real estate. but I'll answer your question with PE. You've got to have somebody who is the superstar investor who can convince people that they are the right person to back.

1:19:02They obviously need strong partners that are going to be able to bring skill sets that are complementary to theirs. You have to have somebody who has the relationship. So one is somebody like you. That certainly is one way to do that. There's other firms that have, and to be clear, there are firms that have different formulas, but I'm going to give you what I see the most common to where you have somebody who's a dominant personality, a dominant investor who's got a great track record, is builds a team around them that allows them to have enormous credibility to where people know that what they do, they have an edge.

1:19:31And that's the key. That's the formula that most people don't have. Oh, I'm going to go buy stuff and it's going to be great. No, it can't be financial engineering. They've got to be able to add value. They've got to be able to add alpha, as we call it in the industry. So what is it that they do that's totally different? As an example, there's a firm literally right down the road from here called Trivest, one of our favorite firms or one of our largest positions. Trivest is an amazing firm, 30 years old, all they do is invest in founder and family-owned businesses. They're the first institutional capital in, and they go in and they make those companies better.

1:20:03They buy it at, let's just say, seven times cash flow. They put a little bit of leverage on it. They grow the business dramatically. They make it more profitable, better profit margins, professionalize everything they're doing, and then they're able to sell it at 10 to 12 times. It's not a complicated strategy, But literally in their history, they have what they call the path to 3X. They have done that on every fund they've ever done. In 45 years? In 35 years or so. So they are a systematic alpha creator across generations of leadership too. They've actually had generational change over that period of time.

1:20:38So I'm tracking. So far, you need a Christopher. What's the two? I need the four stuff. You definitely need at least two or three other really solid investment people that know how to break down opportunities to be able to build those businesses once you've acquired your stake or acquired the firm as a whole. They're primarily control, as an example, using them. And I could give you 50 other examples. But in that case, you also need to have somebody who's good at relationship management. Somebody's got to have the relationships with either the institutions, the family offices, or other large pools of capital that are going to give you money to manage.

1:21:11You have to have a great operations, compliance, regulatory person, because this is a very regulated business. Are you a Series 7, 66? What security is it? So we are not a broker-dealer, so all we are are 65. RIA, we're a registered investment advisor. That's all of our people are 65. So the reason why I'm asking this question, say you have, you run a consult. This is a selfish question here. This is purely for me, so if you don't want to listen, you want to listen, it's up to you. So say you have a consulting firm that you get deals that always come through to you. Companies ranging from$5 million all the way up to$385 million in EBITDA, and we consult for them.

1:21:43It could be multimillion-dollar engagement, but we have constant deal flow coming in. What do you do with the access to these deals that are coming to you of founders? They own the majority of the company, and they would like to team up with our firm. What do you do with the access to these types of deals that are coming your way? It depends. It really is if you want to be the investor in that opportunity that you're helping to improve. I mean, the vast majority of firms, actually, that's what they really are to the firms that they acquire. They're a consultant. They come in as an advisor to be in the boardroom to say, look, we've got to make some tough decisions.

1:22:15We've got to set really good goals. We've got to make sure that we get there. So you can absolutely translate that into a role of the investor in that company. There are a lot of consulting firms that take, instead of a hard dollar fee, they will actually take a percentage of the company. And we do that as well. Right? That's a way to monetize that. We'll do cash and equity. That's right. Somebody could certainly do a fund once they have a proven track record. The key is for anybody, you've got to be able to show the good, the bad, and the ugly in how you've done. You can't cherry pick just the winners and say, look how great I am.

1:22:44So when you have to, you know, we look at 2 ,000 investments a year. We might make 20 or 30 a year. So somebody's got to literally convince me, and I'm not easy to convince, that they can actually do this over and over and over and over again, at good markets, bad markets, and that they're not just, you know, somebody that's really, really good. So that follows up with another question for you. So when you look at a deal coming in, we scored a eight-point system that we look at to see if this is something for us to entertain or not. And we've made, God knows, a lot of mistakes. I mean, we've made these mistakes where it's like, oh, my God, I like the guy's percentage.

1:23:17This is not the way to do it. What used to matter to you 20 years ago when you were a little bit more green? Not unless you've been around for 30 years, but what used to matter to you 20 years ago where it no longer impresses you? And what matters today when you say, I think this is something we should invest in? The track record itself impresses me very little. It really does. And that's something that will surprise a lot of people. The track record, obviously, I want to know it's there. But more importantly, I want to know the why behind it. Right. As an example, there was a great firm. I mean, a well-known firm.

1:23:45I'm not going to use their name. They came into the office a couple of months ago. They have a fantastic track record. But if you actually dig into it, in every single fund, they've had one investment that has made basically the entire track record real, and everything else is very mediocre. and they've just been able to do that every single fund. Well, I don't want to be in the one where they don't have that happen and that everything is mediocre or that everything is just average. But also what matters to me, and I think to most great allocators, is persistency, not performance, the persistency of the performance.

1:24:19How do you measure that? So do they have every fund? I mean, a perfect example would be if every fund is between 14 % and 16 % internal rate of return, that's a lot of persistency. That's highly unusual. but there's a reason why they created that consistency off of five, six, seven, eight, 10 funds. If you have one fund that's two and one fund that's 30 and one funds at three and one funds at 40. Okay. That's not persistency. That's inconsistency. I don't know which one I'm going to get the bad one or the good one. So what matters to me the most is persistency. And the other thing that really, I didn't care about much then, but I cared more is pedigree.

1:24:52Okay. Yes. I want to know that they went to a good school. They have a good education. But generally speaking, I don't care that much. Did that matter to you more than 20 years ago? It mattered too much when I was 20 years ago. Now it doesn't. Tell me why. Because of the fact that there's some of the best schools that put out some of the worst investors. Okay? And some great investors, too. But you cannot just say it because they went to X, Y, or Z that they're a great investor. Certainly, I respect their intellect to be able to go through a great school. But that doesn't mean they're a great investor.

1:25:21I love what you're saying here. There's some of the smartest people I know in this industry that could not make an investment to save their life. What's an eliminator? What is it like? If I see these, and your team knows, guys, if I see these three things, don't even bring the opportunity to me. What are those things? First thing is if they don't have an auditor, run. Don't walk. Auditor, meaning like audited financials, like QOV, like quality of earnings type of thing? It doesn't have to be a QOE, but they better have an audited financials, okay? If there's no audit financials, I'm out, period.

1:25:46That's how we avoided Madoff. That entire story I could tell you, that's how we avoided Madoff. Let me ask you, let's say a person doesn't have it. Will you say, go do your audit of financials, come back to us? Absolutely. Okay, kind of like if I'm a realtor and I'm showing a million-dollar property, but you don't even have pre-approval lender, you know, bank that's giving it to you. It's kind of like that. Absolutely. And it's got to be an auditor we know, and it's got to be one that we trust. Top 50, like BKD. I mean, there's some specialties in certain industries and sectors, technology in particular.

1:26:11They don't have to be that big, but we have to know they've been around and that they're not obviously conflicted. What are the other two? The other two would be basically where they have been lucky, right? There's so many people that have made a great track record because they started at the right time. There's some people we looked at the other day. They started in 2009 in real estate. You had to pretty be stupid to not make money in 2009 buying real estate. Okay? There was 2006. Different story. That's a different story. And that's the third thing. You got destroyed. I don't want them learning on my nickel.

1:26:40Okay? I don't want somebody figuring it out with my money. All right? They need to have proven themselves through different cycles. I'm tracking. What's your third? So that's the third is they can't learn on my nickel. So the second is it can't be that they just got lucky with their record. I mean, there's so many times that I see people that they literally got involved in something, you know, in health care or in technology or in consumer, and they just happened to hit a lucky trend. Right. But that doesn't mean they could do it again. Great feedback. You see the distinction of being willing to focus on what's the worst case scenario and can you survive that, can you succeed from that, the level of discipline that he has.

1:27:14The reason he's got a 96 % profitability rating over 25 years is the level of discipline. It's 90 % of what we see, whatever you can consider. We'll look at it and go deep, but not even consider because he has that level of focus and discipline. And that level of discipline disappears when you get excited about something based on the track record, based on the pedigree, based on whatever elements push your buttons. Oh, it's another AI company. People then stop evaluating with depth. And this is Christopher's greatest strength. I love it. So different question, complete different direction we're going.

1:27:43Tony, you're 25, 30 years old today. You're not Tony Robbins. because you're one of one. You're a regular 25, 30-year-old today. You've got a regular job that you're doing. You're a worker. You're doing your part. You want to get married. You want to have kids. You want to buy a house. What decisions would you make before choosing a wife? This is a very different question. 25, 26, 28 years old. I want to get married. Tony, what advice would you give me before choosing my wife? About who you choose as your wife? Who I choose as my wife. Well, I think the most important thing there is not just chemistry because chemistry can go away for the time being and chemistry can be reignited also.

1:28:22You can be somebody for years and have that be reignited because chemistry is really based upon opposite energies, masculine and feminine energies. If both people are feminine in their energies, I'm not meaning gay or both men or both women. Totally get it, yeah. Just opposite energies, right? If that opposite energy there, there's polarity and polarity creates excitement and energy, just like opposite poles of North and South Pole or you go to plug something electricity, those two plugs. We have to have that. If we both become the same, a relationship loses polarity. And when it loses polarity, you start to become judgmental in a relationship.

1:28:54Things that you thought were cute, now you begin to go, why do they always do that? Why does these always tell that story? Why does she always, why does she take that long? And you get annoyed by things because the attraction is not there. So chemistry is not the place. Here's what you need to understand in a relationship. What makes a relationship work is things in common. What makes it passionate is differences. Things in common is common values. Maybe some common dreams. If you come together, I'll give you an example. I was with a, I bumped into a friend in Fiji one time. This is years ago.

1:29:22We're still flying commercially. We got there and I had my resort there. And my wife and I just got married ourselves. We've only been together a short time. And we were crazy, both of us. And so there's a line to go through immigration. And I go, let's go line. She goes, no, let's go that line. I said, this is a better line. No, that's better. Fine. You go in your line and go in my line. And so we do this stupid little race. We were playful back and forth. All of a sudden, a guy behind me goes, Tony? And I turn around. Very famous guy. I haven't mentioned his name. You know who it is. And he goes, I haven't seen you in years.

1:29:48How are you doing? So we started talking. I said, what are you doing here? He goes, well, I just got married. I'm going to my honeymoon. I said, it's his third marriage. I said, wow. I said, well, where's your spouse? Where's your wife? You know, he goes, she's over there. And they're doing the same thing. She's in the line over there and she's right next to my wife. Right. So we're laughing about it for a minute. So I asked him, yeah, how's it going? I haven't seen you in all this time, maybe seven, eight years. And, and, you know, he's very successful, really brilliant guy. and I ask him how they met and he was involved with professional volleyball just put it that way and so she got involved and so I'm talking and I said so how long you known each other and he says gosh I think Tony I met her right around the time I met you probably eight years I said wow you're just getting married now how come he goes she wore me down and I thought ooh so I thought well what do you say so I said well you're going to have kids he goes hell no he goes you know I've been through two other marriages I've already got kids.

1:30:42I'm not doing this. And I look across and she's 28 years old and he's mid-40s, let's say, maybe a little more than that. And I said to him, have you guys talked about this? And he said, oh, yeah. He goes, that was the deal. If we get married, no kids. So I'm thinking in my head, he doesn't understand. They're not aligned. And he's convincing himself they're aligned, right, on something really important like kids. That doesn't mean you have to be identical in your goals and dreams. But on this, you've got to have some alignment in nature. So sure enough, we're going through immigration. We introduce each other to other spouses.

1:31:11And I look at my wife and she looks at me. And after they left, I said, what'd you learn? She goes, what'd you learn? And I said, they're screwed. And I told him, I said, he said, not gonna have kids. She goes, I talked to her. She said, he says we're not having them. We'll have them within two years. And they did. And they are divorced. It's their divorce. And he lost half of everything he had again because he just didn't understand alignment. Just like alignment in a business, right? People say like, how can you trust somebody? Well, you can't just trust them based on their past behavior. You trust them by having interests aligned.

1:31:40You could trust an enemy. If I lose and you lose, I win, you win. You could trust an enemy. I don't believe in enemies, but you know what I mean? So you have to have alignment. And so in a relationship, what makes it work is, do you have values and alignment? Do you have some things that are, it doesn't have to be identical. What makes it alive though, is differences. Mask and feminine energies, different energies. And sometimes it starts that way. And then you go through the stress of life and both people get really pleasing, well, feminine energy, or both people get really tough. And when they're both the same, there's no opposite energy.

1:32:09and you lose that. And then the relationship starts to break down because people go through a cycle of then judging each other, then feeling like they're not enough or feeling I'm not loved enough or respected enough. And then they get their interest somewhere else in work or with their kids and they drift away. So the number one question you need to ask yourself about being in a relationship is 80 % of success in a relationship is selection. People say, thank you very much. Why don't you tell me before I married this idiot? No, no, you don't understand who you select to be in that relationship.

1:32:40See, in the beginning of a relationship, a part of you select to show up. Not the who you select to be married to. That's right. I got it. Because in the beginning of a relationship, everybody selects their best person. You know, I'm going to do everything for you, love whatever it takes. Take out the trash, I'll take out the trash, whatever it takes, right? Now after seven days, seven weeks, seven months, seven years, 70 years, like take out the trash, take it out yourself, whatever looks like your janitor, right? So I always tell people, If you do what you did in the beginning of the relationship, there won't be an end of the relationship, right?

1:33:10But you've got to select. People oftentimes, they change the rules once they get married or once they start living with someone different than they were pursuing. And that will cost you no matter what you do. So it's oftentimes making sure you're aligned on values, finding an alignment on the most important goals. They have to all be the same so that you're not in conflict at a deep level. And then it's who are you showing up as because your state is what you bring to that relationship. Okay, so now let's go a little bit deeper. I'm your son. I'm 18 years old. I'm 22 years old. I'm 25 years old.

1:33:42What are you telling me to look out for? You know how Charlie Munger would always, at dinner, his kids say he would always talk about the mistakes his friends made. What are you warning me against in life? Making a choice too soon before you know what's really, who you really are. This could be general. This could be general. General to start with. But also, getting my kids, and all of them, I've had these conversations with them, getting them to really see that they have their own sense of identity and they're not running to something else to heal them or to solve them. It's like, you got to solve what's in yourself.

1:34:10So you bring something to a relationship. If you're going to relationship to get something, it's already upside down. If you're going to relationship to give something, you feel alive. What makes you feel alive is being loving. People say, I want love. Well be loving, you know, but today so much of our society has been focused on ourselves. So much of the anxiety we have in our society and so many young people is because we've been so protected that everything's about getting what we want. Not getting what you want is one of the most important things in life. Remember the old days when they were talking about the secret?

1:34:39I remember, you know, think positive. Michael Beckwith was in it. I remember all the guys that were in it. They invited me to participate. I said, I will not participate in this. I said, it's not that there isn't an attraction principle. Of course there is. Thoughts are attractive. But that's not the only principle that affects human beings. Are you telling me? Like, the guy that cut my hair is kind of a rocker guy. He said to me the day, I was here in L.A., and he comes to me, or he was in L.A. at the time, and he goes, I've been doing that secret thing, I got all green lights. I said, what are you gonna do when you get all red lights?

1:35:05Are you gonna say, something wrong with me? Are you gonna tell me the people that went to Auschwitz were negative thinkers? Sometimes not getting what you want is the universe's way so that you grow and become someone who can now bring something to the world. So it isn't all about get what I want. And by the way, when you get all you want easily, you're never happy, right? You and I both know the stuff, the people who sit around the table at this stage of my life, who are my friends, who've achieved incredible things in their life. We usually talk about the early tough times the most part, right?

1:35:33Like I had a dinner with a bunch of people. They called it the goat's dinner. Everybody there is considered the greatest of all time in what they do. Some athletes, some people in fashion, some people in entertainment, people in sports, myself, movies. And the whole conversation was mostly about all the things that we went through and the joy of where we are today because you can't have a foreground without a background. It's that contrast that makes life feel alive. So if you just get everything, you take everything for granted. When you start giving things, that's when you become more. Then you're like, it's like you can take away everything I have, all the toys or trinkets or economics or whatever you want to call it, acknowledgement of other people.

1:36:11You can't take away who I've become as a man in the process. Who you become, that's what makes you really happy or really sad. What you get is not going to do that. 20s, advice for career. Tony, what do I do in my career? What do I do? Where do I go? Do I go into real estate? Do I become an influencer? or do I go create a podcast? Do I go into PE? What do I do? What do you tell them? It depends on what your passions are, right? You want to find passions and skill together, passions and competence together. You might have a passion for singing. I have a passion for singing, but listen to this voice.

1:36:38It's not going anywhere, right? I can speak, but I'm not going to be disagreeing, right? You've got a great voice, though. So it's like you need to have a passion, but you also see what am I aligned with. Right. And the way you do that to find your passion, first of all, stop trying to think there's one purpose in your life. This whole thing of I don't know my young people. I don't know my purpose. I've got to find my purpose. Who said you had one purpose? I have a different purpose when I'm hanging out with my brother than when I'm with my daughter than I'm sitting down with you versus if we're going to a business meeting together.

1:37:05There's different purposes in life. Stop thinking there's one purpose. Secondly, take a look and let something hit you. Get around where it's better. Get around people that are happier. Get around people that love what they do. If you think you're interested in private equity or you think you're interested in playing a musician, go shadow somebody. Go see what their life is really like, what you think it's like. and live with that for a few days. And then you start to understand. Then also find out what it really takes. You look at someone like Steph Curry and go, wow, it's amazing. He makes that shot.

1:37:33He does it for half court. He doesn't even look turns. But, you know, he makes 500 shots a day in practice, 3 ,500 shots, 168 ,000 shots a year, 15 years, 2.5 million shots in practice to make 3 ,600 shots in his career and be the best in the world. 99 % of what he did was behind the scenes. That's what will make you successful. So you do got to see what it takes because otherwise you have a delusion that if I just do that, I'm going to be happy. It's not how it works. Can we finish up with another game? Is that okay with you? Sure, go for it. Let's do another game. All right. So buy, sell, hold, watches.

1:38:05Okay, I don't know if you're into watches. I know he is. You are? So you are. I can see you are as well. All right. So here we go. Patek. I'm a hold on that myself. Okay, you're a hold. That's all I buy. Okay, good. I respect it. All right. Rolex? It's a buy. It depends on the one that you're going to do. I'd hold it if I had it, but I just do. You don't have any Rolex. I just do Patek. Forgive us. Forgive us that we're not. No, it's totally right. I get that. I like Patek as well. Okay, RM. That's pretty much all I wear. The exception is today. Don't know it. I know of it, but certainly wouldn't buy it, but I would hold it if I had it.

1:38:46You ever seen this giant on stage with his RM that he walks around? I would have seen that before. I was given one by Shake to Noon. I said, I'm not going to spend half a million dollars on a watch. It's absurd. And he gave me one. And it was so light. And you know what I mean? Clapping and moving and all that stuff. And all these other watches I destroy. I'll go over this day because I'm not going to be clapping and moving. Otherwise, this watch is going to go out the door. It's going to be destroyed. I love those watches. I think they're phenomenal. How many do you have now? How many RMs do you have now?

1:39:14Eight. Oh, okay. So that gift led to you buying a few. I bought them. Actually, my wife has bought them for me. Okay, all right. They're more like an investment, and they've gone up in value. They have. Dress watches don't. And you buy directly from them, so you're probably getting it 50%. I know how that works. So AP, where are you at with AP? I'm wearing one. So you like AP? I like AP. They don't hold up with my demands. So if I'm wearing a dress watch, it's a nice watch. Okay. Best way to build influence. You've done this. Podcast today. Books, live events. Today. Podcast is the largest reach today because people are doing that by far.

1:39:47But the only way you build a brand is by adding value. So you do that here in a podcast. If you did an event, you better add massive value. Whatever you're going to do, it's not the vehicle, it's the value. If you over-deliver for people consistently, you build a brand and people will seek you out. Folks, we got smarter today. I got smarter. I hope you did as well. This was phenomenal. Hey, get them to get this book. I want everybody to get this book. I'm going to do that. I'm going to put the link below. By the way, we're giving 100 % of the money of this to Feeding America to feed people. Beautiful.

1:40:13So do we drive it to this website or do you want to go to Amazon? What would you like them to do? Or does it matter? It doesn't matter. It's whatever they want. So go order the book, The Holy Grail of Investing, as well as a couple of the other things that we talked about. The link to what you guys do, where do they go for the investments? CAZinvestments.com, Kazinvestments.com. Can you go to Kazinvestments.com? If I go there, I want to learn about the$2 ,500 investment. What do I do here to participate? So individual investors would select on the left. Investment professionals, obviously, on the right.

1:40:43But left, somebody would be able to do that. Can you do me a favor? Go back and click on individual investors on the right. Click on the right, there you go, individual investors. And then? So we've got videos that help educate people about everything that we do. And then obviously if they want to learn specifically about any of our funds, they click on the Our Funds, and that will take them to a full list. They log in. They'll then get credentials to be able to access that. We're an SEC registered investment advisor. We have to have protection for the investors, for all the SEC rules we have to comply with.

1:41:13But from there, they can get access instantaneously to learn about all of the funds we have. There you go. So order the book and go visit the fund and learn more about it. Tony, as usual, Christopher, pleasure. Great having you on. Take care, everybody. God bless. Bye-bye, bye-bye. Handmade in Portugal, where craftsmanship is a way of life. For those who move through life differently, from sunlit decks to nights that never need an occasion, every detail is considered, every step effortless. Crafted from fine suede and built with builder technology Designed to move with you Because true luxury isn't about being noticed It's about how you feel when you arrive The FLB Icon Loafer Made for the life you've earned