The Investing Expert: How ANYONE Can Start Investing TODAY To Unlock Financial Freedom

0:00If you've ever struggled with money, if you've ever felt like money's been tight, hard to make, or you're just not sure how to invest your money. or it's just been a confusing mess ever since as long as you can remember, this episode is for you. We have the investing expert on how to create financial peace and abundance during any economic time on the show, Chris Camillo. Chris has an extraordinary ability to spot consumer trends before Wall Street does. He's turned$20 ,000 into$2 million in three years and later transformed$4.5 million into$35 million during the pandemic When everyone was freaking out and stressed out, he found opportunities to create financial freedom.

0:40And in this episode, Chris reveals his social arbitrage investing strategy that focuses on observing cultural shifts and consumer behavior changes through social media. Chris's approach doesn't require financial expertise. It's about paying attention to the world around you and connecting observations to investment opportunities. He also dives in deep on why women are uniquely positioned to excel at observational investing, but often don't capitalize on their insights. And literally, when we stopped recording, and I walked back into the office from our brand new School of Greatness studios here in the Valley of Los Angeles, the women on my team said, I am signing up and I'm investing right now.

1:23Like, this seems so easy to do. And it makes so much sense to me now the way he's explaining it. So if you've ever thought about investing or wanted to make more money, but you felt like it's stressful, Chris makes it more effortless and he makes it easier to get started. So I think you're really going to love this. And if you're enjoying this episode, make sure to share it with a couple of friends who maybe are trying to break free financially or get to the next level. Make sure to follow the show if this is your first time. Say hi to me on social media at Lewis Howes and leave us a review of what you enjoyed most about this episode over on Apple or Spotify.

1:54Again, I'm so excited about this. I hope you enjoyed this episode with Chris Camillo. Welcome back, everyone, to the School of Greatness. Very excited about our guest. We have Chris Camilla in the house. Good to see you, man. Appreciate you being here. Let me out. You just searched something right before we got on here where you said it's your mission to get every human in the world to be an investor. Yeah, investor class. Investor class. Every human. I just saw this stat on CNBC that said just this week the Dow Jones experienced its 11th 1 ,000-point drop in the Dow's history, and four of them happening in just the last month.

2:27and also I saw on Twitter this week that the Great Depression has been trending. And for that, should people with all of the fear or the anxiety or the stress around the stock market, tariffs, the economy, another depression, whatever might be happening, should people be investing now or should they be waiting until later when it feels more safe? Well, that's all noise. It's always all noise, okay? until it's not. And when it becomes something other than noise, we have way bigger problems. That's the way to think of it. Should you be investing now? You should be investing always. I would say especially now.

3:11So... Even when it's scary or uncertain or it's fluctuating so much. Yeah. When it gets scary and it starts to fluctuate and you start to see people Googling the Great Depression, this is when you make all your money, right? So this is a gift. I've been around a long time. I still feel like a kid investing, yet I can talk about the 87 crash and how I felt during the 87 crash. I was young then, but I remember it vividly. I'll never forget how quickly we came back from it. And, you know, same thing with I was like deep, deep in the dot-com bubble crash. Like that was when I was coming out of college, in the workforce, investing for myself aggressively.

4:07And it was like my entire world. And that really was scary. That was like super scary. Because you probably didn't have a lot of money then. So the things you're investing in, if you're losing it, you're like, what am I doing? I can't afford to lose this. Well, most of us that were young and investing during that time, we lost like 70 % of our portfolio. Okay. Like 70, 80 % some of us, a lot of the companies we were invested in just went to zero. Okay. So that was unbelievably scary. Yet those of us that stuck around and kept doing it, I mean, it didn't take long for the market to come whipping back.

4:52And you look back and you go, gosh, I wish I would have went an even heavier at the time. Same thing in 2008. That was scary. Remember? Well, you remember that. Came back quicker than anyone would have imagined. Nothing phases me anymore. People, you think about the stock market. Well, what is the stock market? The stock market is nothing more than a reflection of all of our work globally. That's it. Our human endeavors. It's the product of our human work. So as long as humanity continues to get smarter and more productive and more efficient, whether it's us or the robots or artificial intelligence that we're creating, doesn't matter how we do it.

5:43As long as we continue to create more and create better, the product of that will become more valuable. And our way to participate in that is called the stock market. Like it's not this crazy, complex thing. Everyone overthinks it. Wall Street has spent, you know, 70, 80 years trying to convince us that it's this big, mysterious thing that only they can understand. That we have to go through them. That we need to be talking to them through these periods, right? It's all complete BS. I don't think there's anything more important in life other than maybe taking care of your family than learning how to invest.

6:29Like, it's actually so insane to me. I think it's the most important thing we should be starting with from kindergarten every year for your entire life. A good chunk of it should be focused on reminding you and teaching you how important it is for you to be part of this investor class. And it's just disgusting that it's not. If you were to simplify for someone in their 20s or 30s who's never invested before on how to invest and what to invest in, what would you share with them? As if you were teaching someone that had no understanding of what investing or the stock market or trading meant, and you could simplify that, what would that look like?

7:08Well, so I think a better way to think about it is that something that we all can relate to is the idea of starting a company, right? We all want to be entrepreneurs. Most of us, in the back of our head, it would be cool to own your own company, whatever that company is, right? It never used to be like that. But over the last 20 years, now we all kind of think like that. I don't care if you're a celebrity, if you're a homemaker, there's a company out there that you would like to start and own or the idea of being an entrepreneur. Well, that's half of my life, right? I'm an entrepreneur. I've been in startups my entire career.

7:57I've started a multitude of companies, have sold them. I've had a few big successes in that world, and I've had an insane number of failures in that world. both as an operator and as an investor in private companies. That is exceptionally hard. That is exceptionally risky. You could try to do that, and chances are you will go your entire life and do nothing but fail. Okay? How many companies have you invested in? I'm invested in about 150. Private companies. Private companies. 150 right now. Private, yes. Meaning each of those companies, I probably have met the founder, have done a massive amount of due diligence on the space and the sector.

8:43It's been a huge part of my life, quite honestly. And how many of those will fail or have failed? Almost all of them. That's crazy. Probably like 75 % maybe. Wow. So you do a lot of the research, the analytics. You've got a data company that analyzes all these things in the industries and helps predict certain things. And even with all that work, 75 % of your investments are probably going to fail. Yeah, because you're investing in an early stage company that has a tremendous amount of work. You're investing in an idea and the person. And I hope that in five to 10 years, it'll make money. Yeah.

9:23So that's where it gets risky. That's where you could make a case that maybe you should do that and maybe you should just never do that. Right. I would say for most people, it's insane to go out and start your own company ever. And I've done it. I've done it multiple times. Why is it insane to start your own company? Because you're almost definitely going to fail. Like when I said 75%, that's 75 % of my portfolio that were deeply vetted and I'm pretty good at doing what I do. almost all companies will just fail if you go to start a company it's almost definitely you're going to fail even the ones that succeed maybe aren't making a lot of money it's just getting by it's breaking even it's like five percent you know it's not making a ton where you're getting rich there are a near infinite number of ways for a founder to fail okay now put that aside okay uh being an investor like just generally being an investor right investing in stocks investing in the market this is what's so wild you could actually go out and invest in the smartest people in the world like you could just be like by the way complete psychopaths people that will be like They don't, they're going to like destroy their family and, or not have a family.

10:48They will have basically no friends. They will work 80 hours a week. They're a genius. They're a psychopath. They are going to, they're going to do whatever it takes. They'll steamroll relationships to make their company a success. You can invest in Steve Jobs back in the day, right? You can invest in Jeff Bezos. You can invest. You might hate Zuckerberg, but you can invest in Mark Zuckerberg if you want. Right. Sam Altman, Elon Musk. Right. Like whoever it is. Like you don't have to try to be them. You could just literally just throw some money and just ride their life. Right. Just like anything they create, any value that they create in this world.

11:31You could just get paid for all the stuff that they're doing. like we don't ever think like that but you could do that like we already know who these people are and there are a lot of them out there right and do you think that you are that ambitious do you think that you're that smart are you willing to throw your whole life away just just to achieve what they achieve for almost everyone that's probably not a smart or a healthy decision honestly but you don't have to they're doing it yeah they're doing it for you so like i would this is like the one thing that i wish someone would have sat me aside 30 years ago and said chris you're gonna spend most of your life torturing yourself as a founder which is what happened to me okay starting companies growing companies you're gonna have a you're gonna have success this much of the time and almost all the rest you're gonna fail because I've started so many companies almost all of them have failed and it's exhausting it's exhausting you learn a lot you're a smart guy and you're talented you've got the skills and the resources and you know managing people and understanding the markets and what should work I have had so many privileges and so many advantages and it's still so many like I like my parents were so amazing to have like moved us into a neighborhood with the most successful people in the country and like I would start businesses in middle school and high school car detailing this that just deeply engaging with these people all the time right and so yeah I've had access to some of the smartest most ambitious people in the world that have helped me all along the way.

13:23And still it's almost impossible. It's almost impossible. And like now looking back, I joke around that I'm like, I'm like, you know, yes, I'm invested in 150 private companies. And I probably have tried to start that many over the course of my lifetime myself. And if I would have just not done any of that and just focused on investing in other great people. And not that there aren't great people starting companies, but it's really difficult to kind of decipher who is, like what their weaknesses are when they're just starting off in life. And everyone looks great at the beginning of pitching an idea, and we've got this amazing idea, and it's revolutionary, and it's the newest this, and it's going to compete against all these other people, and here's our projections in the next three to seven years.

14:12it's only going to go up. It's like everything looks good, but it's really hard to make money over five, seven, 10 years in a business and to take on the adversities, the challenges, whether it's tariffs or whatever it is, like just people problems. It's hard to navigate every adversity every day that comes your way running a business and sustain it over years. Correct. It's really challenging. Meanwhile, you can just pick from the best companies in the world And let them do the work. Let them do the work. And as soon as they do something that's sus, you can sell it and get into a different company.

14:48Right? There's a fully liquid market. Yeah. These days, stocks trade pretty much 24 hours a day. Right? They're Robin Hood and stuff. So it's like, it is such a magical time to be an investor. Like, this is the best time in my life to be an investor. And especially, quite honestly, to be investing in public markets. Like, I used to say it was really difficult. to identify information asymmetry, which is like my style of investing, like to identify information that other people don't see or don't appreciate. It's never been easier as a retail investor to do that and to beat Wall Street. Wall Street is weaker than they've ever been.

15:31They've had so many layoffs over the past decade. They're operating off of just a small amount of resources compared to what they used to have. The advantage has swung back to us retail investors. There's just never been a better time. Plus, there's just a lot more publicly traded companies now. They can't keep up with all the information flow. We live in a digital world. We live in a social world. What does that mean? It means that

16:03we're able to detect change when i say we i mean like normal people like that are just surfing instagram and tiktok all day which is what i basically do for my investment research we're able just seeing trends we're able to see the world evolve and change in real time as it's happening without all the noise of wall street um and by the way we live all around the world We live in the real world, right? We don't all live in kind of the same place in the Northeast where we're kind of like all working together in the same buildings around the same type of noise with the same media, CNBC, Wall Street Journal, like just an echo chamber of thoughts.

16:47We're actually seeing the world change in real time. And that change ultimately is what impacts all of the companies in the world, positively and negatively. So my entire style of investing, which I call social arbitrage, it's like information asymmetry. But what it really is, is just observational investing. It's just literally observing the world, seeing a change, connecting the dots to the companies and sectors that are going to benefit from that change or be harmed by that change. because you can invest in, you know, in shorting companies if you want to go down that road, right? Placing your bets and beating Wall Street.

17:32Like, that's all that it is. And the people that are positioned best to do really well with that type of investing are just normal people that are not, like, financially minded, that are not mathematicians. Why does it seem so scary, though, for people to invest, especially when they hear stories like early in your career you invested a lot of money and 70 % of it you lost you know pretty quickly with a crash happening yeah and it all came back pretty quickly yeah but most people would stop after that and say oh this is so painful I just lost all of this money which is time all those hours that I spent to make that money and put it in here now it's gone yeah but that's just a mind trick right like that's how do you overcome that it's not, it's just not rational.

18:20So like, how do you overcome that though? You spend five years making, you know, saving all your money, you invest it, and then it's gone essentially overnight. How do you get over that mental and emotional loss and stick it out and kind of keep going? You know, it's a great question. And here, and here's what I tell people, you know, any money that you have invested in risk assets, the stock market is a risk asset. asset. You have to mentally, every time you check your account, reduce it by 70%. Really? Yeah. Because that's your downside, realistically. Just realistically, that's your downside.

18:57So from the first dollar you put in, you think your account's a$100 account? It's a$30 account. You have to be willing to live with that risk account being 70 % less. Okay? Realistically, that's probably the lowest it's ever going to go in the worst of all worst case scenarios. Now, before you start that, theoretically go lower. Anything is possible in this world. We can disappear tomorrow. Okay. So anything is possible. Um, but for the most part, your absolute like great depression style, worst of all worst case scenarios, I like to think of it as down 70%. So, uh, bucketing money is one of the most important things for an investor to do.

19:42So I always talk about the fact that investors only really have two decisions to make. How much of their money they want to have bucketed in risk assets and how much they want to have bucketed in safety, being treasury bills, right? Or just a treasury backed cash account that's paying you three, four, five percent a year, whatever. You make that decision and that decision changes over the course of your life. So when you're young, you might have 5 % or 10 % or maybe even 0 % in the safe bucket. Maybe you have 20%. And when you're old, you might have 80 % or 90 % in that bucket. Right? Right. Everyone tries to overcomplicate wealth management.

20:23Everyone thinks, oh, it's really sophisticated. You go to a wealth manager, they'll hand you like an 80 page report. That's your like personal financial plan. You're like, dude, this is so sophisticated. It's all BS. The whole thing is BS. Like it's just a printed out load of crap to make it seem like it's sophisticated and you need all that assistance and help. Like for me, I have money that's safe and I have money in risk assets. That's it. And honestly, for most people, if you don't want to play the game of trying to beat the market, the money in risk assets could just be in an S &P 500 ETF exchange traded fund that is basically free to buy and cost you like one tenth of one percent internal management fee every year.

21:13It's the world's like cheapest way to invest. And you just put money in there every week or every month and you don't think about it. And then you open it up in 40 years and you're super wealthy. Right. Like super wealthy. Right. Right. And just keep it simple. Keep it simple. I always tell everyone, if you are just willing to start investing, there will be a moment in your life, more than likely, when you wake up one day and you realize that you're making more money from your investment portfolio than you are from your job. I'll never forget the day that happened to me. And I was like. What was that like?

21:50How old were you? So amazing. I was it was probably 2008 2009 ish because it was right around the time I wrote my book laughing at Wall Street and I had turned twenty thousand dollars into two million and three years in my brokerage account. and I was making a lot of money from my job at the time. I was making like over$200 ,000 a year, which back then was a lot of money. I was a sales guy, right? And it just wasn't enough money for the life I wanted to live with my family and the things that I wanted to achieve in my life for other people. I'm like a very, like I have a foundation. Like I had like massive dreams of doing some really big things for in the philanthropic world.

22:46And I was like, I can't live the life I want to live in the neighborhood. I want to live it in, do this for my family and achieve that for other people on$200 ,000 a year. Even if I grow it to 300 ,000, I didn't really see a way to grow it to like meaningfully higher than that. And I think almost every ordinary person like substitute those numbers for other numbers. but every ordinary person is likely in the same boat where they're like making this much money and they know that if they really kill it they can probably get to here but almost impossible to get above that ceiling and that's the problem the problem is what happens is they start thinking i need to start a business okay that's that's the worst thing to do yes yes so so so you get in that zone and you think I got it I got to start a business I got to start flipping houses I got to start doing this doing that and it's like oh I hate it that that is the roadmap for almost every single person uh or interesting about that sorry to cut you off there it's interesting and I understand it because that's what I did early on I was like I need to first I was like trying to get a job because I was broke on my sister's couch and I was like I just need to make some money.

24:02I need to get a job. But I had no money and I really didn't have any expenses living on my sister's couch for a year and a half also that I was like, let me go try to figure out how to make money on my own. And I launched my own thing on the side because I didn't have anything. I didn't have any responsibilities, no bills, no kids, no relationship, nothing. And I learned how to make money on my own without working in a, I guess, a career or a job. And then I've just been writing that and figuring out how to make more money. But I don't think it is so time consuming. It's so challenging. There's so many ups and downs that, and it's rare to make a lot of money in the first couple of years of running a business.

24:42There's so many costs that you don't think about that happened that it's just like, it is hard. It's almost impossible. I own businesses. I own restaurants. It is so hard. It's almost impossible. And it's interesting you say that because that's what a lot of people think about. Let me go launch a business or a side hustle or something else when all we could do is just let me put some of my money into investments and let it make money for me without having to work harder. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Yes. But it seems so scary of a thing to do for people that have never done it because it's like, I don't know where this is going.

25:24Can I get my money out? What if it goes down? Then I've lost my money. And then people retract, right? They're like, I don't want to do that. I'm just going to keep it safe. And so I understand both sides. This is the biggest life hack. Nothing comes close. Literally nothing comes remotely close to this life hack. Forget about everything else in life and just start investing. Period. You're done. And guess what? You don't have to spend any time if you don't want to. You can go do all your hobbies, do all of your stuff. Just start aggressively investing. And you do not have to sweat the next 30, 40 years trying to restart yourself, your career over and over and over again, doing side hustles and lots of starts and stops and a lot of depression.

26:15And then what I think I see a lot of, because my entire life is analyzing social media now for trends, right? That's what I do for my investing. And it's just a crap load of complaining from this generation, which I get it. I get it. If you don't know this life hack, I totally understand the frustration. You can't make enough money to live the life you want to live and you see absolutely no light at the end of the tunnel in terms of how you can make it happen. That is a really depressing place to be and it's going to cause you to get out and start complaining. And you see other people living this rich life or posting like they have a rich life, whether they have it or not, seeming like they're happy with this lifestyle, you know, taking trips and ventures and flying private or whatever it is.

27:09And see, that's the issue because everyone keeps talking about the income gap. Like we've heard so much about the income gap the last decade, decade and a half. How are we going to solve the income gap? You're not going to solve the income gap. It's not happening. You can make really small dents in the income gap if you want to, but it's a lost cause. So just stop. Okay? Just stock. Now, the wealth gap, that's a solvable problem. That is 100 % a solvable problem. How do we solve it? Getting the entire world to invest. Every single person that you're trying to solve the income gap for, just stop and just focus on the wealth gap.

27:58Instead of trying to figure out how to make that person earn three times more than they're earning, it's not going to happen. Make small change, you know, try to help them still to maximize their career. That should all still happen. But teach them how to invest. It's not even teaching. Just convince them. You see, like I even hate that I just had to say the word teaching. You don't have to learn. You just have to be convinced. You just have to be convinced. And every single person has money to invest, period. Now, I know people are going to hear me say that and it's going to like result in a stream of angry comments because they're like, this guy is just completely out of touch.

28:46And no, I don't have money to invest. Yes, you do. Um, you don't have money to invest because you're thinking about every dollar as a dollar, but like, this is a big part of what I wrote about, uh, in my book, uh, a long time ago, when I turned 20 ,000 into 2 million in three years, and I'm not saying that people can do that. That was rare. Um, but absolutely you could turn every dollar to a hundred dollars over a much longer period of time as an investor, just with compounding. And when you realize that, once you believe that, you'll start to think of every dollar is a hundred dollars, right?

29:26And so when you start to think of every dollar in your life is a hundred dollars, it changes everything. So I don't care who you are. There is a point to which you are not making trade-offs. You're not clipping coupons. You might clip$2 coupons, but you're not going to clip a 10 cent coupon. Well, all of a sudden, when everything's 100x, you're clipping 10 cent coupons. You're clipping 50 cent coupons. You are, you know, I don't know, you're just doing all kinds of things differently in your life. You know, maybe you're mowing your yard now. Maybe you're making your coffee at home instead of going to Starbucks.

30:00All the things that weren't quite worth trading off are all of a sudden worth making a trade-off for. Here's the difference. that money that you save by doing all of those things, right, all goes into your investment account for risk assets, right? And so believe me, when you start thinking of every dollar is $100, and it will be$100 at some point, you start finding money in your life. I don't care what it is. I don't care. There are people on YouTube, they're actually insane with how to find money, right? Doing all these crazy things. And you're like, that is just way too much of a hassle to make an extra$3 or$4.

30:44But for$300, I'm doing it. And it is$300. Once you understand that by taking that money and investing it in risk assets over the course of a long period of time, that$3 is 300, boom, you're making 300 bucks in the morning. You're making 300 bucks at night doing this like you're clipping like you're doing all the stuff it's like a game that in your mind oh how can i turn this one dollar into a hundred dollars how many one dollars can i find and put away into investments today it's just it's a mindset change how long does it take in a risk asset to turn one dollar into a hundred dollars listen it's different it's different for everyone it's different for every period of time i can't predict how the next 30 years is going to go.