TIP570: Back Together w/ Stig Brodersen and Preston Pysh

You're listening to TIP. I can't remember when I was as excited to publish an episode as I am today. For the first time since 2019, Preston and I are co-hosting an episode together. We stopped the story in 2013, the year before TIP was founded, and we'll talk about how Preston and I met on an online forum about Warren Buffett. Later, but still in the early days, Preston and I were sitting in his basement, editing our first book together at 4.45 in the morning. It was a very humble beginning and for years, we paid to go to work. We then discussed how our investment philosophy has evolved over the years, including whether Preston is investing in equities or only Bitcoin. We also touched on my portfolio allocation and investment thesis around the cryptocurrency. Join Preston and me on this trip down memory lane and what better way to start than the old jingle. Here we go. Broadcasting from Bel Air, Maryland. This is the Investors Podcast. They'll read the books and summarize the lessons. They'll test the waters, tell you what it's called. They'll give you actionable investing strategies. Your host, Preston Pish, and Stig Broderson. Hi, TIP listener. This is Stig. I am hosting a networking event for the listeners of the Investors Podcast in August Denmark, October 7th, and I hope you'll join me. The event is completely free and we'll have tapas and wine for everyone. The intention is to keep the event small and we only have 15 spots open. It's invitation only and to apply, just need to send me an email at Stig and theinvestorspodcast.com with your LinkedIn profile and the title of the last book you've read. Please also include just a few lines about why you liked the book. You can find more information about the event on theinvestorspodcast.com's less than mark. That is theinvestorspodcast.com's less than mark. There's no set agenda for the meeting and we have no speakers. As is often the case with a free TIP events, we discuss investing, wonderful books we read and everything else in between. I hope to see you soon. Welcome to the Investors Podcast. I'm your host, Stig Broderson and today I'm here with my co-host, Preston Pish. What's going on? A few out there might be thinking, what did he say that he was there with Preston? What's going on? I don't know 2019 or whatever. Not really. Preston, what's going on? Why are we sitting here together today? It's funny. We have these conversations still, but they're private conversations and they're not recorded. The last time we were talking, I told Stig, I was at a conference and it was a Bitcoin conference. I just want to hear you and Stig talk again and I was like, yeah, I know, we should probably do that. We just have it. We talk all the time, but not in a recorded kind of way. We should probably just do it for old time's sake because it's fun and we enjoy these chats. Here we are. You're doing one of the big conferences and we always get like, yeah, at least I can say whenever I go to Berkshire or whatnot, I typically get the same five, ten questions and stuff like that and I thought it would be fun to talk about some of those questions. One of the questions is that why don't we record episodes together anymore? Why don't we do that anymore like we used to back in the day? It's easier. Be so focused on Bitcoin that if we're recording a conversation about equity markets and all I'm doing is talking about Bitcoin, it doesn't really fit. I know what your note is here and I'm going to steal it because it's just so. It's so pertinent. The time zone was always like, I mean, we can do it, but right now it's 730 for me, which I can do, but the time zone if you're up to U.S. is we dealt it for so long stick. I want to say it was actually a lot easier in the beginning in some ways because in the beginning it was just you and me and then we started into your guests and then it became a bit tricky because you're doing your day job and you used to be Eastern and now you're central. So if you had someone in California, but even if they were Eastern, you're like, people don't want to get out, but like 630 in the morning, whatever to do interviews and then or it would be like super late for me and then we have someone in California, which is all a big mess like the line schedule. Yeah. The time zones back then were just, but I mean, hey, it's great now. We're having a ball and there's plenty of the talk about whether you're talking about Bitcoin or regular markets or whatever. It don't matter. There's always something crazy happening. So, yeah. Yeah. And I should also just say for the record, it's not like we plan to do a lot of co-hosts episode again. I think once in a while it could be a lot of fun to do. Honestly, I don't know the last time we did that. What is it? Is it like four years ago, five years? I don't really remember to be honest. It seems like that. It seems like it's been about that long. Yeah. It's been a while. The plan is not that we're going to start co-host again. It was just like an idea you, like someone told you and you were like, yeah, let's just jump on behind the mic and talk about the good old day. And I wanted to sort of like use that to transition into one of the questions that I often get, which is the founding story of TAP, how we met like this. Yeah. I don't even remember. I don't know if you do. So we met about like 2013 stuff like that. So what was the deal back then, Preston? Yeah, I guess it was a decade ago. Well, we met on the website, on the Buffett's Books website, on the forum and Stig showed up. I built this forum, this Buffett's Books site, which was just some videos of me talking people through like value investing. And I mean, this is really early. I think the site had only been up for a year, maybe two years at most. And Stig shows up and he's just blasting out these like 10 page, like summaries and investing analysis on random company XYZ. And I think I went to Berkshire. You didn't go on this one, Stig. I went to Berkshire. I met Hari. Were you there for that? I don't think you were there for that. Yeah, I was there because we, oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So we hung out. There was what? Five of us. Five of us from the four, six, five, and then your dad, so we were six in total. Bill was there, right? Yeah, the three of us there. So yeah, there was six of us. Wow, this is bringing you back some memories. There was six of us from the forum that showed up to Berkshire. And we're, we still talked to, I think everybody that was there that, that, that time. And I was flying out and I met Hari. And you were, you were on a different flight, different gator, whatever. And so I met Hari. He had the LinkedIn jacket and I would just start it up a conversation with him. And he was like, hey, have you ever listened to podcasts? So I was like, no, I've heard of it, but I've never listened to one. Right. And he says, oh, you got to listen to this guy because we were talking about the website and how we had like, you know, and it wasn't hard. He didn't know what it was on the Buffett's Books website. And so he was like, you need to listen to this guy. His name's Pat Flynn. He does like passive investing as this podcast. It might be able to help you out with the website that you got that you guys are having fun with. And I was like, okay, I'll check that out. So literally on the flight, I downloaded the, the show, this Pat Flynn show. And as soon as the flight took off from there, I listened into this podcast and was like, oh, my God, this would be incredible to do something like, like I wasn't even like listening to what he was saying. I was just like, we could do a podcast about investing and it would be so much fun. And what I was really thinking, because I just built like this whole video course, Stig, where the editing, the video editing is just painful, right? Like, yeah, I mean, you know the deal. It's, it's, it's not just your audio. It's now you have to create these graphics that make it all make sense. And like, it's just, it's a lot of work. And I'm listening to the audio on this podcast. I'm thinking the whole, the whole time all I was thinking was, this would be so easy to create this content versus making videos like I did for this Buffett's book course. Like, this would be awesome. Just to sit down and have a conversation and not have to do all the editing afterwards. And I don't think it was more than a day or two after that trip that I shot you a note. And I was like, Hey, man, like, would you be interested in just recording conversations about our financial picks or the, the investments that we're looking at? Instead of like writing up these big long posts on these forums, like, Hey, let's just record our conversations. And like, I don't even know if anybody will listen to it. But, you know, like, what the heck? And I don't know if you remember your response back to me, but I remember your response back. Do you remember it? I think it was something like I was bit, you definitely didn't over promise. I remember it because you said more than once, like, I don't know if it was to listen to it. But what was the response like, I think I was pretty worried about, I have to do it in another language, first of all, but also like the whole technical aspect. Like I am and what's terrified of all the, you know, equipment that you needed to have a podcast. And this was, and this was, I don't know, I'm going to sound like really, really old. But this wasn't like today where you could get like everything's just in a box, then you just plug it in. Like it was like, it was very different back then and it required different equipment. And to your point before pressed them with like the whole editing and that stuff, it wasn't like today when you had like, can then that anyone could do X, Y, C. It was like, you had to like learn really painful stuff to get started with. Whatever you want to get started with. Oh my God, it sounds like, you know, if you kids were listening to this, there would be like, they'd even have telephones back then or whatever. I was like, what's an RSS feed? Like what the hell's that? Like there was so many things we just, we had no idea. We had no idea what we were doing. That's for sure. But yeah, you responded back and you're like, you know, pressing like, I have a foreign accent. Like I don't even speak English for like my first language. I just don't think anybody would want to listen to me. And I was just like, I need somebody to do this with because I just can't talk to myself. And like, like I've read your posts on the forum. And like you can jive on this stuff. You actually understand it really well. And I just didn't care. I was just like, I think my reply back to you trying to sell you on the idea is like, well, I mean, like half the world or plus more doesn't, you know, English isn't their first language. So maybe it would be the perfect fit that you know, the English is your first language. But yeah, you see, I got you to say yes. And geez, man, what was our first, I think our first set of downloads was like on a show was like 150 downloads or three. Oh, really? Yeah, I don't remember. I, it's certainly, it certainly wasn't a lot. I remember like back in the day with the forum, it was like exciting. If it was just one of us not posting, you know, but someone else did. You know, I remember like I was really excited about that. And I remember you shooting me a message about jumping on a Skype call. Yes, there was something called Skype. So if you're not, I don't know, older than 30, you might be like, so what, what, what is that? But yeah, that was early. Yeah, it was early, yeah, because we, we were, we were writing a book together. Oh, yeah, yeah. Yeah, the Warren Buffett accounting book. And I actually, so we did a, we did a few, you know, it was way more you than me with the intelligent investor and security analysis, because you already wrote, you don't already self-published, I think it was called Warren Buffett's three favorite books or something. We'll start like it was built together with, with Buffett's books at the time. And you already started working on the summary books of the intelligent investor and, and think, because I think you gave one of the books to me whenever we arrived at this somewhere in council blocks outside of, oh, yeah, I remember that. And just to jump, it's really true down memory link, because I remember one of the things we did was, it was in, because you were based in Maryland at the time, because my wife and I, we flew in, we were living in Sweden at the time. Sophie was doing it out of her degree there. And so I think we were living in Sweden and then we flew, I don't know, but we arrived in Maryland and then we sort of like did the final editing of the book in your basement. Yeah, I remember that now, like 430 in the morning, you always been like a morning person, but I probably had jet lags, I was probably up anyway, but it was like 430 and like, hey, let's go. There have been many shows that I recorded at 4 or 430 with you over when you were, yeah, early days. Yes. Oh my God. Yes. God, I don't have to say that one, no. Oh, good Lord. But it was just, I just remembered like thinking it was just a different world. Like you were talking about self-publishing. I didn't know, I didn't know anything about it. I didn't even know you could sell published books. Yeah, you know what? It was the whole self-publishing thing was crazy. So, so this is a funny story. I've never told anybody this story. So I wrote this book about going to West Point and I'm thinking, oh, you know, I'll just, you know, write the book and then I'll go to a publisher and, you know, I think I can just get it published. Like I'm sure somebody out there would want to publish this. Well, I find out and this is probably, oh man. 2008 timeframe. I want to guess 2007, maybe. And this is like totally out of order. I didn't know this because I didn't really do any research on like how to publish a book before writing the entire manuscript. I just was so naive. I had no clue, right? And so I went and started shopping around this to try to find a publisher. And I realized like this is really hard to get a book published. And nobody wants to publish you if you don't already have some type of marketing engine behind who you are or any of that stuff, which I had none of that. And so I floated it out to a couple publishers. It was a swift no. So then I was like, ah, I don't want to go through an agent because they like take so much, right? And people don't understand the numbers on books are just a trucious from like a profitability stamp. Like you go just to give people kind of an idea. Like if you publish a book for $20 is the retail price. If you go through like a publishing house, what are the numbers that it's like a couple percent, like two or three percent off of retail that you'll, it's like your take home. Yeah, I think I think you probably get it. So it's different. I at least the book contract we see today is like six, six, seven percent on the physical book and then probably 25 on the ebook. Yeah. So it's pretty brutal. And so you might be thinking, yeah, rolling or I don't know as Stephen King, like, yeah, I'm sure they make a killing, but if you're not them, yeah, the book sales people don't realize this to the book sales are very, ah, they're not linear at all. So like if you're in the top 100 or I'd say the top 1000 on Amazon, like those books are pretty profitable. If you're in the top 100 on Amazon, these are very profitable. But after 1000 to like 10,000 and this is based off the Amazon ranking, the profitability goes down drastically. If you're above 10,000, it's like the thing practically makes no money at all. I mean, it makes some but nothing that's that's going to feed the family. So obviously I didn't know any of that stuff whatsoever, right? I just wrote this book. I know I was, I didn't really write that book for profit. It was more for me just to like capture these funny stories that happen to me when I went through the service academy. So anyway, I go, I try to get this thing published and it gets out there and nothing backs. And then I have to go through the agent, the agents like, oh, yeah, I think I can get this through. And so he goes and he's shopping it around. And after like, I don't know, three or four months, he came back to me. He's like, we're just going to rip up our contract because I can't get this thing published. And I was like, this is crazy. This is, I've never seen anything so difficult to like pull off. That was a big tangent, but it's interesting. It's business. Yeah, it was just, it was just such a different time. It was, and it's fun to do the whole room and this is a, you know, everything that that happened back then. I remember whenever I met you and you introduced me to this new universe because I, I didn't know anything about Warren Buffett before I coming on the forum and very, very little. So I come from, I get a traditional business degree and like went through the whole academic route and, and whenever you do that, you were taught that the mags are, are efficient. And I remember we actually talked briefly about Warren Buffett in one of our books and it was just about how he was the luckiest coin flavor because, you know, if you continue to flip coin, someone has to win. And that's why some people, you know, have better track records than others. And there was sort of like seeing as, oh, that's probably just how it is. And so whenever I stumbled into Buffett and there was just a really quick story to that. It was actually because I was sitting there with some friends back home in Denmark and we're talking about replicating what successful people did. And I didn't know, I didn't know Preston at the time at all. It was just like me and I was hanging out with some friends, having a few beer or whatnot. And so one of my friends had this idea that, you know, if we just do what other successful people do, we probably would be as successful like it was like, oh, that sounds reasonable. And so the number one on that list at the time was Bill Gates and you know, I was, you remember what I said before I was terrified of just like setting up a microphone by myself. So I was definitely not going to be the next Bill Gates. But number two on that list, that was Warren Buffett. And I remember hearing about Warren Buffett and I was like, oh, picking stocks, it's like sitting at home, reading stuff and I could sort of like, I could jack with that. It was like, I had to come up with an operating system and learn how to code or anything like that. And so I was just starting Warren Buffett, it was just super interesting. And that was whenever I saw the videos that you had on YouTube. And then through that, I went into the website and we sort of like connected and we talked about, you know, the whole Buffett thing. So yeah, that was, for me at least, that was how it all started and yeah, how we, how we met. Want to say probably back in 2013, something like that? Yeah. I, you know, stick looking back at the past decade. I think the reason that we have just been able to harmonize so well, even though like our communication with each other is so efficient. I'll call it efficient. The reason I think that it works so well, honestly, is because we read so many books together though. Yeah. Right. Like we both conditioned our brains on like all these top tier business books for years. Like we read them at the same time. We then talked about what we learned. I mean, it's all documented in the feed here. Heck, all the executive summaries that are out there of these books. And I think it just, it's so funny because we'll have a conversation and about whatever topic that might be a really, it could go really deep, but we're both just like, yep, nope. This is, this is how I see it. This is because I think we're approaching it and we're like seeing it from this like same lens. And I guess, so like what's the takeaway for people listening to that? I would tell you, I think it's really important for partnerships of business, marriages, whatever it is. Like if you're going to have like this lasting long term relationship with somebody, it's really, really important to like ground yourself in principles or like these books for us. It was books that just allow us, it's not that we're thinking the same, but we're, but we are thinking about things from somebody else's past experiences that we've kind of harnessed and like taken in. And I think it's been just a massive advantage for us to grow the business and to just operate and to trust each other. And I don't know, I, I, I really look back at that the, the first, what was it? The first five years, maybe more that we were reading a book once a month, twice a month, something like that. I remember what our tempo was, but it was, it was pretty aggressive. Yeah. And I think you absolutely right that it meant a, it meant a lot. And especially if you're into the whole Warren Buffett ecosystem, like there's so much of that where it's just so much easier to work with people who have the same values. I want to say that whenever you go to different type of conferences and the more needs they are, the less you need to explain. And that is just such a huge, huge advantage. So for example, one of the things that, that also do here on TIP is that we have our own library. And one of the reasons, like there are many, many reasons why we have our own library. First of all, it's because of the gift of, of reading. I think that's the most important thing. But based on what you said before, because I remember you, you were talking to me about that before, Preston, about the whole idea about reading the same books and how it fits. It is, you know, I, I experienced that the, the same way we, we thought we have our own library here at the TIP where, you know, everyone who worked on TIP can just like, there are a number of books and they can just like, invoice that and all of that stuff. And it makes everything so much easier because you could say things like, yeah, we're doing this because of this good to great principle about using tech as accelerating. And that person would be like, yeah, I know exactly what you mean. That's that chapter. Let's go. And I think that that's so true in all of your relationships that, yes, we learned that obviously it's a track and they probably do that to some extent, but life is generally so much easier if you do it to someone who have an equal perspective life, not because one is better than the other because there's just so much friction that you avoid if you do that. And I remember one of the things you said to me as we were starting out, we probably have known each other for a year or two at the time and you're talking about how it was like a marriage. And I remember thinking that was a weird metaphor. Hey, what's going on? But I, you know, I see what you mean, like, sort of like whenever you go into an investment, the perspective should be you're doing this forever. And with relationships, it's a reason a season in a lifetime. But if you go into a relationship thinking, this is a relationship I really want to have forever. Yes, it's probably not always going to happen that way. But that's had that as a perspective. You also start to think differently about what type of relationship you want to build on. And if you read the same 100 books or the same just 10 books and you, you agree on these fundamental principles to life, I mean, oh, my God, so many things just become so much easier down the line that it's, it's just incredible. Yeah. Totally agree. Let's take a quick break and hear from today's sponsors. The traditional 6040 retirement portfolio is failing giving recent events. So why leave your retirement stuck in the past, even adding just a dash of Bitcoin as part of your retirement portfolio could dramatically change the long term performance. But only if you can keep the Bitcoin secure for years. Our friends at Unchained have designed the simplest and most secure Bitcoin IRA that puts you in control of the keys. But with Unchained available as a guide to set things up or assist if you hit any roadblocks. 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It's NetSuite.com slash study to get your own KPI checklist. NetSuite.com slash study. All right. Back to the show. Yeah. So, Preston, I think we went through the first two FAQs so far. Very interestingly. So I want to go to the third one that I just get asked a gazillion times. One is, is staying investing in Bitcoin. I don't think that's too interesting. No, I'll get to that later. I'll get that asked to be all the time. The other one is, whenever I go to different meetups or just like emails, I get so many asking about, so is Preston not investing in equities anymore? Is 100% Bitcoin what's going on with Preston? So let's start there. What's going on with Preston? Yeah. Yeah. I think the answer will surprise people. The answer is yes. I'll give you an example. I've, my thesis has been so polarized by Bitcoin, and I think everybody knows that. If you don't agree with Bitcoin, then you can just ignore everything I'm about to say because it might torque you or upset you. My investment thesis has come down to the central planners have so aggressively manipulated markets at this point that it's difficult for me to look at anything through a lens other than using Bitcoin as my unit of account. And so it's really a war between the US dollar and Bitcoin that's taking place. And depending on what central bankers are doing, you're going to want to own one or the other. 2022, I was pretty vocal that I felt like the dollar was going to outperform everything. Although I continue to talk about Bitcoin the whole year, my, and I have this all publicly posted and time stamped on my Twitter feed and I've done numerous interviews that talk to this thesis where I thought 2022, the dollar was going to outperform and do well. But any free cash flow that I was making was being retained in dollars. My entire Bitcoin position up to that point was continued to be retained. I didn't sell it. I just kept it. But any new free cash flows that I was making in dollars were retained as dollars. And then whenever I felt like the dollars bull run was, was over, then I was just going to convert it into Bitcoin, which I did in November of 2022 and continue to just buy Bitcoin now with the free cash flows that that I have coming in each month. So what's driving this and there's no better representation of this thesis for me that people like if you're hearing this and you're like, that just sounds nuts, going from like a Warren Buffett investing, like valuing equities and doing a list of that person who's hearing me say that is like, this guy's off his rock or he's lost his mind. What I would encourage that person to do is go to this website, Michael Sailor built this incredible one over the world view that I would tell you completely captures how I view the investing from a global standpoint landscape. And it's strategy dot com. And if you go to strategy dot com, he has everything denominated in Bitcoin for the performance of the S&P 500, all the major currencies, bonds, you can literally go to, he has all 500 companies for the S&P 500 listed all on this one page that you can go to at strategy dot com. And like, so I can look at the top 10 companies on the S&P 500 and I can hover my mouse over each one of these companies and I can look at it. And what he's doing is he's showing the return of that company in dollar terms and then he's showing it in Bitcoin terms and he's showing it for the last year, the last one month, the last three months and then the last five years. And he's also showing the sharp ratio and the volatility as a comparison as well, because people want to know how volatile and violent the moves are going to be and when a person goes and looks there and they look on anything that's a long tail five years, what you're going to find is there's literally nothing on any of these investments that are outperforming Bitcoin. And so I get it. It has tons of volatility. I think the volatility scares the bejesus out of people. But for me, it's a very long play and it's a long play based on central banks continuing to get more and more aggressive with their debatement and that's the thesis, right? And you know, there was a point and I think I might have talked about this. I don't know if I talked about this or not stigma in 2020 when I kind of like really broke off and just started covering Bitcoin completely. There was a point where I went and it was a real aha moment for me. I think I took Apple and I looked at their revenue and I looked at their net income over like the past five years. And it was just, you know, it's just going straight up in dollar terms. And I was like, what if I went back and re-denominated the top line revenue and the bottom line net income for the price of Bitcoin at each one of those discrete points in time and I looked at the revenue and in Bitcoin terms instead of dollar terms and I did this and I plotted it and like the revenue was just going down for like over a five year, ten year trend like the revenue was just going down the net income was just going down and I'm thinking to myself, so this is like my new hurdle rate. This is the rate that I'm trying to outperform and it was just this really like aha moment for me is like, if I do this for any company and so I'll tell you looking at strategy dot com right now, I'm looking at it Tesla, for example, unbelievable. Like if you've owned Tesla for the last five years, you've crushed it. It's been really bad for the last year. But if you owned it over the last five, it's, it's really performed, right? So when I'm looking at that in Bitcoin terms, it's down 5% over the last five years. Sharp ratio is a negative 0.49 in dollar terms, but in Bitcoin terms, it's a 1.12, right? Bitcoin's performance relative to Tesla. So not only did it outperform it slightly over the last five years, but it's also outperformed it in a sharp ratio kind of way as well where the volatility that was associated with that absurd return that you got on Tesla over the last five years is worse in risk adjusted return, return kind of way. And that was the best. So like Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, Alphabet, Facebook, Visa, Walmart, Johnson and Johnson, Proctor and Gamble, every single one of them have underperformed Bitcoin, which are the top 10 holdings in the S&P and people should know, those are the companies that are driving the S&P index, like you can, you can just erase everything else. And if you own those top 10 companies, you crushed it, you outperformed everything, right? Except for Bitcoin. So. And here we are. So we are. Now, I have to emphasize, I'm sorry, stick, I have to emphasize because a person hearing all that is saying, hey, press then, past results aren't a predictor of what's going to happen in the future. And you're exactly right. And I'm not saying that it is, but what I am saying is you can ignore something that has outperformed in such an aggressive way without going, going into the fundamental thesis of why is that happening? What's causing that? And whatever caused it over the last five years, is it going to cause it to continue to occur in the coming five years? My opinion is yes. And I could get into, well, heck, I got over a hundred episodes on why I think that's the case, right? I don't have to get into it here. But yeah, that. So to answer the question, is the person invested in stocks now? Did it here correctly? It's more or less just Bitcoin right now. Yeah. I know that sounds crazy, but that's, I have to be truthful with you. That's it. You know, and a lot that you say that, not that you're crazy, but a lot that you say that you have to be truthful because one of the things that we talked about all through, you know, ever since we started TIP together was, we have to be authentic in everything we do, which was also why, and I don't know exactly whenever this occurred, because like the years sort of like start to blend together at some point in time, I want to say it was around 2020. I could be completely wrong. But around that time, we started talking about it setting up a Bitcoin feed or Bitcoin episodes running in the wasted ability and as feed. And we weren't really sure about how to best go about it. But it seemed timely that I just, I remember I think we had, like, you know, we're doing the Mass My Meeting, which is would Toby and Hari, which is very timely because we wouldn't have, you know, TIP without Hari in the first place, which is wonderful to think of. And so he's part of the Mass My Meeting. And so we were having those, I don't know, once a quarter. And I remember we probably had like three times consecutive times where we were talking about Bitcoin. And we were both thinking like, huh, how the next 10 Mass My Meeting is going to be like. And you know, it's just very important because I think people can, can smell that. You know, one thing that I took away from, from the book, Power vs. Force, which, which is one book that's highly praised in the value of Western community, I personally don't like it. But I do like the main point about people can sort of like smell if you're not authentic. They can't. Oh, no, no. Yeah. They can't, this is only tell why you were not being authentic, but there's just something there. There's like, ah, this just doesn't sit right. You know, those people where you just want to, just want to run away from them, you do not really show why. And so we have to be authentic to what we do. And we were in a situation where, you know, I was, I was talking my ways, ah, still looking at equities and you're looking at Bitcoin. And it just made so much sense that we would split up the feet and, and have a Bitcoin show. Yeah. And just because, you know, I have this enormous amount of conviction behind it, like absurd amounts of conviction behind it, I get that doesn't mean that that's what I'm recommending to other people. Right? Like, I don't think that, for most people that that's appropriate at all, because I don't think that they have, I don't think that they can match the conviction behind the position size. And I think that if there's one thing we've talked about through the years, it's like, if you're going to own something, like, A, you have to actually understand it. And B, you got to make sure that you, that the position size doesn't exceed your understanding or what you think your understanding of it is. And for people that hear me say that, they would, they would look at my Bitcoin position and be like, well, you're not doing what you're saying. There's no way you can have that much conviction behind it. Yeah, but you don't also understand the other things that I own beyond Bitcoin, private equity and things like that, that scope the position size. Like we're talking about the free cash flows that I generate and what I do with them, which is completely different than if you actually cracked open, like, my net worth and looked at what it is I own, right? There's a big difference there and people don't understand. People only hear me talking about it and talking about what I'm doing with my free cash flows that come in each month. It's something that's very different. Yeah, you're not saying if you're 30 years old and you're a dentist and you want to retire at age 67, you're going to put all your money into into Bitcoin. That's not what you're saying at all. That's right. That's right. I think it's important for people because here's the thing. People will listen to the show and be like, I love this. This all makes sense. Then they take 10% of their net worth and they drop it in the Bitcoin. They never really understood it. They heard a couple talking points. It has 70% annual volatility and it goes down by half in three months and they're like, I do putting 10% of my net worth into this thing and then they sell it and then it probably rips 100% up from there or more. Just as an example, November of this past year, it was like at 16,000. Now it's at 30, right? It's not even a year later. It's up 80% on the year right now, right? Which in traditional markets, those moves are mind-blowing, insane moves. If you're doing 20% in your portfolio on an annualized basis, you're murdering it in traditional markets. These moves are insanely volatile. You don't need a big position for it to work in your portfolio and you don't have to even have a position. That's totally up to you if you even buy into the thesis to begin with. I'm not promoting people to... People need to do their own research. People need to come up with their own investment thesis. They need to make sure that they're not taking positions that exceed their competence or their understanding of the position, because that's a surefire way to lose money. I'm very passionate about it, but I like to think I'm very realistic about how other people should be employing it if it all based on their understanding and their competence of it. Preston, whenever people ask you, so is stake investing in Bitcoin, what are you then saying? Yeah, he's owned it since 2017, and hasn't sold a single... Yeah. No. I never sold a single or even send a single set my entire life. I got forced into Bitcoin by my good friend Preston Pish. No. It was a lot of fun. We read the book. I don't even know what it's called. The age of cryptocurrency. Yeah. Right. I think early 2015, maybe even late 2014, was when we... It was pretty early, and I'll look it up. And you send it to me or sent me a link and I was like, I don't know what to say, but let's... It's sort of like... Neither did I. No. You always thought the world was flat, and then someone tells you, no, it's round, and you're like, huh, I really need to think about that. So anyways, it took me some time to buy into it. I think I tried buying it, because I bought it in 2017, I want to say I tried buying it before. I just... I have no technical skills, so I don't think I've managed to do it. I think I was actually one of the reasons why today I obviously would have lost a significant game for not being able to do that. But I would say that I own a decent amount of Bitcoin. It's 16% of my portfolio, not including... Generally, not including private equity, some private equity, but not all of it. So I want to say it's around 16. That's not my cost price. I was lucky enough to have my good friend. The classic Bitcoin problem. Yeah. Yeah. And I remember having a conversation with a friend of mine, because he was really... It wasn't you, Preston, but he was like, this is so volatile. What do you do? And I said, you know, my thesis is pretty simple. I can see why it would replace gold as a store of value, perhaps even more. And at the time, it would be equivalent to half a million dollars at coin. It's more now, because gold has a price that increased, but... So I said to him, and I still hold to that that I'm not going to sell anything, not even considered before it hits half a million dollars at coin, and perhaps not even then. And so I sleep really, really well owning Bitcoin, as I'm sure you do. But, you know, people go into Bitcoin for a number of different reasons, and we're not... I just want to say for the record, because we talked about this for quite some time. That was actually not so much the intention of this episode, but now we're talking about it always seems like to be a rabbit hole to fall into, and then we probably got to talk about something else afterwards. I don't hold Bitcoin because I think it's going to change the world. I don't own it because I think it's going to be the new reserve currency. Not any of that. I'm not Bitcoin, and I'm holding on to Bitcoin, because to me, it's a highly asymmetric bet. So I put a part of it for falling into it, I feel I have a very limited downside. Part of that just comes from Bitcoin itself, part of that also comes from my sizing. I don't know if some people would probably say that 16% is a crazy, but to me, I don't feel it's such a lot to let your winners run, let the winners run. And it's just a very asymmetric bet to me. It makes a lot of sense why I'm holding on. There are different tax reasons for it too. I don't have to pay taxes on it before I potentially would sell it. And another reason why, and you also influenced me here, Preston, because you introduced me to Redalio. I remember some time ago, and I think probably Redalio would find that a running that I would say that he's one of the reasons why I own Bitcoin, but he's also one of the reasons why I don't own more Bitcoin, because he's such a, he've read so much about financial history. The irony is that whenever you read enough, let's say 100 plus books, if that, if not more, you become really humble about your ability to be able to predict things, at least at least I do. And you just see how everything is just ever changing. And there's this wonderful quote from Milton Friedman, I just wanted to mention, nothing is as permanent as a temporary government policy. So a lot of that quote, because it reminds me of the current monetary system that we have. We have this system since August 15, 1971, when Nixon took the world off the gold standard temporarily, I should mention. And I think it would be crazy to think that we're going to stay on the current system forever. Why would we, you know, we had to make yourself in 1944 with Red and Woods. And, you know, you can just see if you're a student of history, you know, in the 20th century, how countries went on and off the gold standard, also at different, at different pack prices, you have the world wars, everything that happened there. And so to me, that makes it, makes it very, makes me very humble about that. I don't really know what's going to happen. But I can see why in this monetary system, why it makes sense to hold Bitcoin. And I'm quite sure that in the next monetary system, and I don't know, I have no idea of the next monetary system is tomorrow or 10 years or 50 years. But there's going to be a new monetary system. And if you don't believe that, you haven't studied history well enough, I think Bitcoin would do really well too. Not because there were a short currency would be Bitcoin, but it would do well in the new system. Give me a call whenever Bitcoin hits 500,000 and then we can have a discussion again. That's my, that's just going to be my teaser here. But the press time goes for it, for it to go to you. Two things I would argue when Bitcoin hits 500,000, that's the time to definitely not sell it. Like, and I think that that's going to be the ultimate, that's the thing that's going to mess with people's heads the most is when it gets to those levels 500,000 or a million. That is going to be the moment in time when you, that is the last thing you want to sell. Because it's demonstrating a total takeover of settlement and unit of account status on a global scale, which potentially comes next is that it really takes off, right? Because everything's going to be denominated in that instead of the old currency system that people are accustomed to. But that's a whole, that's a whole another conversation, right? The other point that I wanted to talk about, Stig, was your comment, I'm not investing in it for this. I'm investing at it as a, as a hedge or as an asymmetric position that has demonstrated tremendous value by holding it over the last decade. And I think that's exactly the thing that Wall Street is just on the tip of the iceberg of adopting as their own way of thinking with this BlackRock ETF that's going through the process right now. A lot of people are suggesting that they're going to have the approval by the end of the year. And I think if something like that happens, you're going to have all these bond investors. You're going to have people that are holding 1% or whatever to offset. I mean, just look at the selling that's happened and fixed income over the last year and a half. Like it has been the bloodbath of bloodbaths. There needs to be something that offsets those losses for these people that are holding these types of positions. And if you have a SEC approved BlackRock eye shares Bitcoin type vehicle, that's a spot. It's not, this is not a futures. This is a spot ETF. I think it just, I think it changes the dynamic massively for people to hold this on their balance sheet in a way that is an asymmetric position to just guard against. Just moves that people have not seen in traditional markets in their lifetime, right? There's this move that we're seeing and fixed income over the last year and a half is a move that nobody has ever seen in their lifetime that are participating in markets right now. Let's say the Bitcoin would hit 500,000 acquiring. That's the time when not to sell. And because I would argue that could be potentially time for me to sell. And I think the important thing to understand there, and this is a quite an arbitrary number. I'm sort of like saying it for a number of other reasons, but it's one of the things I want to say that we learned having TIP for what was said in 2014 has been achieving your financial goals. And how should we achieve, like how should we define that? And I've come up with some kind of vague do whatever you want to do for how long you want to do with whoever you want to do that with, you know, freedom. That's one of the reasons why we do TIP that's one of the things we learned from TIP and from speaking with guests from reading books. So whenever I relate back to say the price of Bitcoin going to 500,000, I think you absolutely write that at that point in time that has, that really has proved the thesis right about Bitcoin. And then I'm still going to say, but then I would consider selling it. And you might be saying, that's super counterintuitive. Why are you saying that's the, well, it really goes back to what I said before about financial goals. I don't need to be financial independent 10 times over or 100 times over. I need to be financial independent once and make sure that I stay financial independent. Because whenever Bitcoin hits the kind of of a price level, there's going to be huge pushbacks from a lot of authorities around the world who want this, in my humble opinion, wants to constrain that and I think that's going to be a real issue. And so I'm just going to take some of the tips off the table because no matter then that case, what happens, I'm still all set. And I can understand if you're optimizing for dollars, if you're optimizing for expected value that you would say, that's not the right way to do it. But I would also say that whenever you're talking about financial goals, to some extent they are correlated with dollar value, but or Bitcoin value if you want, but they're not symmetric. Over a given threshold, what you get extra is not as important as what you could potentially lose considering the obligations that you might have. So that's where it's coming from. I think the battle you're talking about is actually taking place this past year. The question that I would have for you stick at 500,000, what do you buy after you sell it? Because you're not going to hold it in fiat. That's for dang sure, which only leaves equities, right? And then you have to ask yourself, because this is one of my favorite things to actually talk about is at what point, if we're moving to a Bitcoin standard, at what point do the multiples make sense in equities? Because I can tell you, for me, a multiple of 30 on equity in Bitcoin terms, especially if the company's not denominating their retained earnings in Bitcoin type savings or some type of other equity that's growing at a breakneck pace, like if it's not giving me like a 20% yield, I'm not giving up my Bitcoin for it. So that means that the PE needs to be like around a five in Bitcoin terms, right? For me to start buying equity. So if 500,000 have equity premiums being compressed, that they're throwing off PEs of five or 10 in Bitcoin terms, because if they're not, I have nowhere to go to even at that price other than continuing to hold it. Let's take a quick break here from today's sponsors. You want to speak a new language, but haven't quite got the hang of it. Meet your language learning match, Babel. You get a whole kit of effective learning methods that have been developed by real teachers in over 200 language experts. You're taught useful everyday phrases for everyday conversation, and you can test your pronunciation too. Beyond the comprehensive lessons on the app, you can listen to podcasts or join live online classes with professional teachers to get the best speaking practice. 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True classic even hooked our listeners up with an exclusive deal to help you look good and feel good. For a limited time, get 25% off with the code WSB at trueclassic.com. Upgrade your wardrobe for summer with 25% off with code WSB at trueclassic.com today. All right, back to the show. Yeah, so to your question, some of that probably would go into equities, but not public equities necessarily. Okay, so that makes sense, yeah, like real assets. So my question to you, I got asked this a few times in Omaha here not too long ago. So Preston, is he here in Omaha? The answer to that was no, he was not. And then the follow-up question would Preston go to the, to the UCL hold his meeting in Omaha again? So I have to be quite on it, like Buffett and Munger's comments on Bitcoin in particular have like totally turned me off, like big time turned me off. Because here I, here I have guys that have quotes that if you can't make the argument, the counter argument better than the person who's making the argument, well then you don't understand it. And you shouldn't be voicing an opinion, but yet Charlie Munger's out there saying it's rat poison and all these other things. So like for me, it's a huge turn off. There are all of their China comments with respect to some of the things that are happening in China should be happening here in the U.S. and this should be banned. And like it's just been, you know, the saying like Kill your heroes is pretty, pretty real for me with respect to those two. I am deeply indebted for what I have learned from both of them. I really am, but it's also hard for me to sit down and listen to them pontificate on something that in my humble humble opinion, they are clueless on. If I go to a Bitcoin meetup, it's going to be because of the people that are there and to interact with fellow members of the TIP community and just good friends that I know from that community, guy, spear, just plenty, plenty of people that I am, that I just love deeply, they're great people. And that's why I would go. I wouldn't be to go listen to, I've heard Warren talk about C's candy enough times that like I get it. I know how that all, I feel like I have a pretty good understanding of like what their approach is and how they don't go outside their circle of competence and all that, the whole bit, right? It's interesting that you say that, Preston, and you mentioned guy, had a conversation with a guy off the record and oh, it's about to come on the record. Sorry, no, no, no, no, no, no, yeah, I made it sound like it was some sort of the investigation or something. I think that was probably me me using what that meant, but it was so, so, yeah, before we typically talk with a guest or before we hit recall, we typically just like small talk. And with some of the guests that we have on multiple times, sometimes those conversation can be pretty long. And one of the time, I don't remember when, it was probably last year or the year before, I had a conversation with guy and we, you know, so it was just like, yeah, what's going on? Yada, yada, yada. And he asked about you, Preston, I don't know if I even mentioned this to you, but he asked about you and how everything was and because he was, he was very excited to hear about, we had a discussion about Bitcoin and how coming from a traditional value investing community and how they've been in together because he's doing, you know, the value, value X and what he's having clusters Switzerland once a year and he talked about how there were quite a few of the old school value investors who went into crypto, not just become but different areas of crypto and how they didn't see it at all as mutually exclusive to be into crypto, but at the same time being an old school value investor. And he asked about you and like, how their experience has had been for you. And so I kind of feel that's interesting and I, you know, there's almost something about it where, you know, I kind of feel that if Buffett and Munger has said something nice about Bitcoin, there would be so many people in the value investing community would just buy Bitcoin because of that, but because they're taking the very opposite stance instead of perhaps just saying, I just don't understand it, so don't invest it. But they really have taken the, like, very opposite. I think it would be very, because it's almost like, you know, it seemed like people are almost ashamed if they're like, if they value investors, they're investing Bitcoin. But then there was also I can, it can just sense there a movement of people in the space were like, to them, it's not an issue. And I think some of it is probably, I think there are some front runners there who just been in the space for a long time and just very independent thinkers and some of them have, I don't really care about the crowd and therefore have turned to to Bitcoin because if they think it's an asymmetric bet, you know, people like Bill Miller, perfect example, by the way. Yes. But then I think there's an age gap too, whereas if you're 28 today and you're building your portfolio, you're not really into the whole Buffett Munger ecosystem and you're like, yeah, you know, I learned from them about picking stocks, but then I also learned from other people, the Michael Sadler of the world about why I should invest in Bitcoin. So I'm going to take some in stock or some at Bitcoin and some in real, whatever, right? So to them, it's completely natural. There's nothing weird about it. My transition into asking you, so I come from this value investing background and sort of like see what happens to people who invest in Bitcoin coming into that. Now I want to ask you the other question, how has it been with someone who made a name for himself in value investing, writing books about Buffett, having a podcast about Buffett, then coming into the Bitcoin community, how has that been pressed in? Well, they've been very accepting and open to me being there. I don't think a lot of them really, I think a lot of them look at the whole Buffett thing as like worshipping and like way like like over the top obsessive compulsive of talking about Warren Buffett and his picks and things like that. The people in the Bitcoin space, they just don't really get the whole obsession with Buffett. You know, having been a little bit like away from the community more because I'm talking about Bitcoin all the time, I have to say when I look at the Buffett munger approach, if you're going to call it that, I think it's just really quite simple. I mean, it's just figuring out the value of a company through an internal rate of return calculation and IRR calculation and making sure that you're buying. I think Buffett's big thing beyond Graham because that's really Graham, right? It's just calculate the value of the business based off the free cash flows, which you could argue there's people way before Graham, Graham just maybe popularize that more by talking about intrinsic value and Buffett also talking about intrinsic value. But Buffett's thing and munger's thing was that they find quality businesses. They're not sucking off the cigar butt, right? Like, that's it. Like you can buy any business book, any type of, you know, MBA student is going to go do IRR calculations. They teach that in every single MBA class. They talk about finding businesses that have a competitive advantage. They talk about business like you're going to learn all of that in an MBA program where I think Buffett and munger are distinctly different than what you learn in an MBA program is they don't believe in the efficient market hypothesis, right? Which I totally agree with. And what's the calculation that they use to, oh my gosh, I'm having a, you know what I'm talking about? Where you're looking at the beta, the, yeah, they don't believe in cap M models, right? And so like you're going to learn about cap M models in business school and Buffett and munger would tell you, those are the most useless calculations a person could ever do. I completely agree. And that's the difference that that's, that's all there is to their approach. So really, they're saying cap M's worthless. You should do IRRs and you should actually calculate what a business is worth. You should look at the asset should make sure that they have a competitive mode should be buying quality. I don't want to understate what they've done because they've, what they've done is tremendous, right? But it's not like there's this really like obscure like thing that isn't accessible to anybody that goes out and buys a business book, right? Like you can, a lot of the stuff is, is pretty basic for the most part. So in going to answer your question, I just want to put that out there like I think that all that stuff's important. I think it's great information, but I think that there is a little bit of over the top worshipping of these, of these guys with respect to what makes them so different. And there's plenty of people, plenty of brilliant investors that do these same things. And they probably would have done these same things whether Buffett and Munger talked about them or not. Bill Miller's, in my opinion, is a fantastic investor. I mean, just look at his Amazon call, which was so opposite of the Buffett Munger approach for years. And Bill was beyond right, like probably one of the best positions he's ever held because he didn't do what they were saying, which is we don't understand technology. Therefore we stay away from it. Like that whole mantra, which I like calling it a mantra, because if you tell yourself something long enough, you're going to realize it. If you tell yourself you're terrible at tech and you're in your terrible at understanding these things, well, congratulations, you just realized it, right? That's why you were out of Amazon. That's why in my opinion, you were out of Bitcoin for the last 10 years is because you told yourself you didn't understand tech. So you know, I really admire people like Bill Miller because they do the Buffett things, but they also have the courage to not just buy into this mantra and repeat things like I don't understand technology, therefore I'm going to continue to buy candy companies. And I think that that's really important for an investor. For somebody that's listening to this is like, hey, Buffett's right about a whole lot in Munger's right about a whole lot, but they're not right about everything. And you have to have the courage to maybe go against the grain a little bit, think for yourself. Like that's one of their things they talk about to think for yourself, right? You know what to do? Just because I'm doing it doesn't mean that it's right, it goes back to the Geico thing, right? Like Buffett went in there sat down with the CEO of Geico and was like, I want to buy this this dog guy was like, well, why? And he's like, I don't know how old he's like 18 in this story, right, or really young. And Buffett's response was, well, because you're buying it. And the guy looked at him and said, that's the worst reason that you could ever give for buying something is because somebody else is doing it. And I'll never forget the story, it's a very profound story. And I would highly encourage value investors to dust that story off and think about it, because it applies to Buffett and Munger too. They don't know everything. Yeah, I was, I think the story was that Benjamin Graham at the time had invested in Geico, which meant that Buffett also invested in Geico and yeah, that's right, that's right. And so and he got asked about that and he said, well, you know, Graham also invested in it. It was like, so this was, I don't know how old Buffett was at the time. He wasn't that old. He was probably still a student right after graduation. But that was probably not one of his proudest moments. I think you're, I think you're right that, you know, with success comes a, comes a certain obsession. I'm not necessarily talking about Buffett and Munger. I think you can go into the Forbes top 10 list or top 20 or whatever. Pick one and say, say that because they've been materialistic successful, you have an tendency to see, to say that what they say is probably correct and they're probably correct on, on some things and they're probably others where they're less. So I want to say that I've learned a lot from, from Buffett and Munger, also about life. And I also think that to, to your point before about some of the things are very basic. I think that there's an element of, we tend to get accustomed to things. So what do I mean by that? Back in 2013, I didn't know anything about Buffett and I, or close to very little and I watched your videos. And I think, I think someone who's a value investor today might go back to your videos and be like, why, why are Preston's video having like a million views each? It's so basic. It's like a stock as a company. You have to discount Kesslos, but you know, for me at the time and keep in mind, I come with a worse background, I come with a traditional finance background from a university. So like, I'm like, I'm trained to think one way and all of a sudden I'm watching Preston's videos about what you could argue are like the simplest things in the world. But it was still like, oh, but you know what? The earth is round. It's not flat. Oh, you can think about it like that. So I think you're right that some of the concepts are like very, very basic, but I also think that if you're not used to think like that, it's just a brand like something new just opens up. I was speaking with that with a candidate for a position the other day. And he talked to me how he started doing long-term investing. No, he started. He talked to me about how he wanted to do long-term investing, which he hasn't done in the past. Now he wanted to hold on to stocks for perhaps two quarters, perhaps even three. And I know you might be laughing like, but that's not long-term investing. But if you're used to like go on Robin Hood and do like, do calls on your end of day, it's long-term. Like so it's just like seeing the world through a different lens, you know? And I remember the first time I heard about Buffett among some of that clique, but also some of that was like, but that's not the efficient magnet hypothesis. Like that doesn't make any sense. The first time someone said to me, well, instead of using CPI, why don't you just use M2? You know, and discount with M2, and I was like, huh, I remember M2 because you're trained that in business. But you use M2 very differently in business like so, but that's also like, if you want to talk about, you could also say that concept is pretty simple, like use the money supply and discount with that. But if you never heard it before, it is actually quite, quite profound. And there was this tendency, sort of like, let me see if I can tie a bow around this long rant here. But like if someone who's like really, really successful tells you about one thing, all of a sudden you might lose some of your own criticism to whether or not that's correct, whether you then listen to this and you're like, yeah, but it's deep referring to Buffett talking about Bitcoin or is it sailor talking, Michael sailor talking about using M2 to discount like, pick a poison. But there is more my way of thinking about different problems and how ironically, after interviewing hundreds of really, really smart people for the podcast, really books written by the smartest people in the world, it makes me more and more humble about not knowing what's going on, which is quite a running, I guess. Yeah, I would agree with all of that, Stig. The other thing that I think is important to kind of highlight too, I think we read this book together. He was the individual, he had a 40% annual return, he was a mathematician, and his like average holding time was like one day or two days, oh my God, I can't remember that. Was it the Simmons? Yes. Yes. That for me, even though like none of it was applicable, like I couldn't take what I learned from that book and apply any of it, but what I did take away from that book is here's a guy, what was his network, like $40 billion or something absurd, it was absurdly high. And his annual return was 40%, are you looking up to the number Stig? It was so high, it was double buffets, double buffets return, and it wasn't like he did it for a couple years, he did this for decades. And my takeaway from that is there are so many different ways that people can outperform markets that to just try to replicate one of them. I think it's really important to like focus like, hey this is my wheelhouse, this is my technical competence, this is what I'm good at, and I'm going to marry that up with this style of investor. It took me a while years to really have an appreciation for hey Preston, like you're not completely geared the same way as this type of investor, you're geared more in these areas. So to pick and choose the types of investors that I feel work with my personal style, that's something that you just have to be in the markets for a while, you have to stay alive in the markets for a while, you have to be open to not one person or one specific investor that you're just modeling everything after. I think that that's kind of, I think it's possible, but I think everyone is just slightly different and they need to be open to learning about other ways to go about things, right? I'm not of this genius mathematical mind like Simmons was. I would argue I don't know anybody could maybe do what he had pulled off ever again, right? So like you have to really kind of, you have to be open to learn from multiple different types of investing styles. And that was also why I thought it was so good that you mentioned Gamilla before who came from the old school value investing, you know, I was watching the, you know, I'm still starting my way. So I still watch the Q&A with Munger with the daily journal, which is always a lot of fun. He's a bit more unbuttoned there than I guess he isn't almost happy, he lived or not. He talked about how, I want to say, so this was the time where Becky Quake, she was just reading the question. So it wasn't like traditional Q&A was probably because of COVID, whatever. But she talked about, she asked him about what had surprised him the most being in the markets for so long. He said it was how everything goes to die, just not actually not just the market, but just the general, how everything just dies. And she said that he had a conversation with Bill Gates about how Gates found it ironic that the disruptors become disrupted because it's so difficult mentally to keep on learning and keep on doing new things whenever you found a framework that really works for you. And the listener out there can read into that what they want with the different personalities that we talked about here today. But I want to highlight that for someone like Bill Miller who continues to learn and how he's continuing to keep up with his time. And how a lot of this also is not just tied to what any duke would call resulting, so not necessarily actual result, but also what is your thought process of going into something. And let me, let me try to paint a bit more color around it. I remember we read this book outliers, I hope that will, wrote. And I absolutely love that book and he's such a brilliant writer. One of the key takeaways, because he actually tells the story about Bill Gates and how he was, of course, a very, very skilled, but he was also very lucky with that timing. And Malcolm Gladwell highlights that there were a number of people like Steve Jobs and what I say is Steve Case and a few others like or quite a few others who were born around the same few years and who all made a ton of money with the rise of personal computers because they were just, they had the right skill set at the right time. And I'm not, please don't listen to this and be like, oh, well, stick to your saying that Bill Gates isn't a smart dude, he's just been, no, he's a smart dude. That's not what I'm saying. My point of saying this is that you need to have the process right. There are so many things you cannot control. Your process, the way you learn, the way you've been critical, the way you perhaps kill your heroes or don't kill your heroes, but like your process have to be right. And then, you know, the universe will reward you in terms of good results. But also depending on the timing, it might be 10X or 50X or whatever that skill set will be rewarded. But in any case, you will be more than financial independent. If you acquire that skill set and you get the process right. Yeah. And we're just talking about the statistics, right? Like one in six billion for somebody to be of, you know, Bill Gates net worth. So yeah, you have to have multiple things that line up to provide that four standard deviation event beyond just skill and intense competence. Like there's luck that also aligns with such a rare number. Yeah. We actually had an outline. But I kind of feel that it's really hadn't gotten to and I kind of feel that we probably touched on a few of the things and we also went for a long time. Do you have anything you want to talk about? I'll be honest with you, Stig. I've obviously taken some slack from people, especially early on when I started covering Bitcoin. But for the most part, people have just been really nice, respectful. Like they know that a person's over there doing his Bitcoin thing and that's all he ever talks about anymore. I wish he would talk about value investing or whatever. But it's really actually been a testament to the community and the space that even though they might not really see it or want to understand it or whatever, they've been very respectful of me and nice and just, you know, there's onesies and twosies. But for the most part, like, it's been really fun to cover it and to do something so different, especially the tech. So like the engineering person in me, like my undergrad was in aerospace engineering. So like for me, it's really fun to dig into the tech behind Bitcoin and all the encryption and the hardware infrastructure and things like that that I've been able to go very deep on that when I'm covering traditional financial markets, you really don't have enough time to because there's so many companies that cover an opportunity cost, the cover that this is really allowed me to go deep into something. And I guess I just want to thank everybody for just being so respectful of this adventure that I don't know what to really call it, but while I'm covering Bitcoin. So and I'm very bullet, by the way, I'm extremely bullish in the coming year. I've been bullish since the beginning, but I'm like, after 2022 and what we're seeing, like it's up, like I said earlier, it's up 80% on the year to date and like I am very bullish on where this is going to go through the end of this of 2023. I think it's going to be gangbusters. What do you think though the future holds for TIP and you can read into that, whatever you want to is if it's for you, for the company, for whatever, like, what do you think the future holds? You know, Stig, we have never been trying to grow for the sake of growing, right? And I think that that's really important. Like if we think that we have a host that can actually bring a lot of value to this media of talking about finance, well, then we bring a month board and if that person's not there, well, then we just continue to do the show that we've been doing. There's always going to be a ton of things to talk about no matter what happens financially in business and whatnot. So maybe our lack of ambition has been a asset. I don't know how to say it other than that is just like you and I have been hyper focused on quality. Whether the listener believes that they're getting quality from the two of us or not, that's yet to be seen. But we just, you know, I think as long as we continue to focus on quality and think about the listener instead of ourselves and try to deliver on top quality interviews and cut out all the garbage, like side chats and things like that, like I think that's just really important and that's what that's what the mission has always been is just to deliver real conversations that are really kind of getting to the heart of things and not some like 10 second CNBC segment. So like as long as we continue to focus on that, I just, I don't know where it's going to lead us, but I suspect that it'll continue to benefit not only us, but also the community at large, like it's always been about the community with us. And I think we just need to continue to be hyper focused on that. So wherever that leads us, I don't know, but I know that's your point of view as well is focus on the community and the listener and everything else should fall into place, I guess. One of the things that I remember we talked about in the beginning was how important it was to have fun. I actually think it's set there at the very top of the website and I'm pretty sure that you wrote it because everything was programmed in HTML and I have no clue how to program it. And I still don't. Neither did I. Neither did I. I'm pretty sure that you wrote it. And I think that's that's very important. You know, whenever you have a platform like TIP, it's very easy to be caught up on new shine items for sure. And there've been, there've been quite a few. And I often think back at the early days and thinking back at not, not in the sense that, oh, everything was like better in the good old days. I mean, Preston had to get up at like four or three in the morning. So I don't know if Preston think kind of like things that there was a good old days. A true test of love. If that doesn't show you that I love this stuff, then I don't know what it does. But I mean, we short did a lot of silly things in the very beginning and we continue to do a lot of silly things. And one of the books that really made a big impact on me was the book Delivering Happiness. Which I want to say was a book that you recommended. Because I remember thinking, so is something but this shoes or something. And I was like, what was going on? But I also felt it was really interesting with the books you read. And we read that book and I absolutely loved that book and so many and so many ways. And I ask so many members of the team to read that book because they talk about optimizing for happiness. And it's such a such a weird concept to talk about in corporate life. You mean you optimize for happiness? Like how do you do that? It does make sense. And so in the appendix, the author, the late Tony Shay, he got asked about, or anyways, I don't know if you got asked, but he said that if you keep on saying why to people, first of all, they're probably going to be offended because people tend to be feel like they need to justify things if you ask them a why question. But he said, if you ask them why five times at some point in time, even perhaps before the fifth, why they would say because it makes me happy. And perhaps that happiness is misguided. Perhaps he won't make them happy. But no one's crazy. People tend to do what they think makes them happy. And I know that probably sounds like a terrible business strategy. And it probably is a terrible business strategy. But whenever I think about what the future holds for TAP, I got asked quite a few times. So what's the five year plan for TAP? And I'm like, I don't know. I have a pretty good idea of the next five days. I don't know about the next five years. But I do know that we want to optimize for happiness. And I would remember, and this is probably going to come across as like super spoiled, but it comes from a good place. And probably also people are probably going to shake their head and say, it's the worst capitalist in the world and it probably would be right. And I was speaking to someone who asked about whether or not the company could acquire TAP. And it wasn't because I was like super excited about selling TAP, but I was really curious. And I remember I was giving you a call and you're like, uh, I don't know. And so anyways, so I jumped on this call and I spoke to him. And so he talked about like different, he generally wanted to have founders on board and like order that, how it would work. And I was like, just asking him just because I was genuinely curious. Like, so how would that work if I were to report to a board and said, well, you have to do that like once a week, like four an hour. And I always remember things things like I'm out. Yeah, I just don't want to do it. And then he started talking about like it was only an hour and he talked about, you know, the amount of money, I don't want to talk with someone for an hour unless I'm 100% sure. I know I like that person, even if I like that person, aside from a wife, I don't think I speak with anyone consistently for an hour like every week. And I kind of feel like that whole notion about optimizing for happiness. That's like the main strength, but also the main weakness of TAP. That's probably why we made it thus far, probably also why we would never be a huge company, because you can't run a company like that. You can't run a company saying, let's just optimize for happiness and make sale of financial decisions, but make sure everyone is okay. But as soon as you also want to make sure that all your stakeholders, so your listeners, your team, everyone you work with are happy. Wonderful things just are happening. Because I remember we were talking, I think this was probably like in 2017 or 2018. And we made like close to no money. You could even make the argument that we paid to go to work, which isn't like a great, great feeling if anyone has tried that many years, many years we paid to go to work. And I remember because I was at definitely a time to be frustrated, because I think I just at that time started going full time, not going full time as in we were making money, but going full time as I wasn't making any money on my regular job. Because my wife and I were relocated at that part of time and I was falling in her and what she was doing with her career. And so I went full time because I couldn't do my teaching job because well, I was, you know, I wasn't there. And so I remember you were telling me that we just need to do good things in the world and then the universe would come back and help us. And I, I don't know if you remember that conversation. I really loved it. In a way, it's also frustrating whenever you're paid to go to work. But I also think it's a very healthy attitude to have to live within reason. I don't, I don't think you can do that after like 50 years. That's not what I'm saying. But I think you can make, I think that there's an element of having faith in universe that if you help enough people, if you're kind, you don't optimize for short-term profits and perhaps not even long-term profits. Wonderful things will happen to you. So I just wanted to, I think it has to be, so yeah, we did have this conversation. I kind of remember where it was at. And I believe this to my core, but I would caveat it with you have to be adding value to other participants to other people in order for the universe to find a way to, to bring it back to you. Right? Like you can go out and dig a ditch in the middle of nowhere and it doesn't benefit anybody. Like the universe isn't going to find a way to like return, return that value or that work or energy that you expended back to you because the energy you put into the system was worthless energy. But you know, if you're out there and you are providing your energy to the system, and you're doing it in a way that's actually making other people more efficient or more productive or more happy through entertainment, entertainment is a source of business, right? That is going to be returned to you in some form or some way. It might be monetary. It might be some other way that you need in the future. But I believe that to my core. And so really it comes down to is like, how can you provide that efficiency to other people in the most replicable, abundant way with your time? Like I tell people all the time is like, you know, I use this example and I'm not using this example to diminish the efforts and the work of a professor or like a teacher, but like you can go into a classroom and you could teach a class for 30 years. And let's say you have, if you're at the university, you might have a hundred students and you might have two or three classes a semester. And if you added all those, all those students up through the 30 years, like I'm pretty sure we could, you know, I don't know that the quality of the contents is good. That's for the listener to decide. But I think we could knock that out and a couple minutes with this platform, right? A couple minutes. And that's not any testament to you or me. That's just a testament to the abundance that technology brings by harnessing technology. And so if you're adding value through that technology to other people's lives to make them more efficient and productive, I just think that I think the universe has to find a way to bring that back. But you know, that's the get into a lot of theory. I'm sure there's people listening that just like roll their eyes. But like, I don't know, I believe it. I guess I feel like I've seen it in my own life and I'm going to continue to believe it until I have reasons to not believe it, I guess. Well, just before whenever we started to pee, I was a teacher at the local college and having like 30 students or whatever at the time. So on that note, I can say I completely agree with you. There's only so much value you can bring whenever that you have those constraints. I remember that conversation because it was a very fancy hotel. And I want to say who picked it. I'm not completely sure. But I remember thinking Preston still has a full-time job. And I had the lasagna and it was like 20 bucks or 25 bucks. And I remember thinking, you must be nice to have a full-time job. So, hey, what can I say? There's been a lot of these moments that we've never talked about. I we need to we need to record them and capture them. This is great. This is hilarious. Preston, this has been absolutely wonderful to have a chance to take a trip down memory lane. Any any concluent remarks here before we round out the episode. Watch oil. Watch oil into the end of the end of the year. It's the one thing that I haven't quite figured out. And I've got a sneaking suspicion. It may bid. And if it does, it things are going to get spicy into the close of the year. So yeah, that's what I know we talked all this other stuff and we didn't even talk about finance, but that'd be the one finance thing. And if I'm wrong, I don't know what's going to happen. But when Luke Romans telling me I have a couple other people that are saying, watch the energy markets because it's very counterintuitive to where I think people are looking at in the energy space, I think they're expecting the traditional recession and the traditional wipe out and energy because of the loss of demand and all of that. Then I have a couple of smart people, you know, suggesting to me that it's going to move in a direction that a lot aren't expecting. And if it does, there's treasury ramifications that would pop out of that because you'd have higher inflation prints if it would run and all these other things that are dependent on that really critical variable. So the thing I'm watching very closely into the rest of this year is the oil market and the energy prices. You know, that's why I missed these conversations, Preston. I can say Lasagna and then your transition into what's the price of oil? You really have to pay attention to that. Anyway, so perhaps we should let that be the final words of this episode here. Preston, thanks for jumping on the traditional we studied building this episode here. It was a lot of fun. And let's do it again here. Let's, I was about to say soon. That's in any case, not wait four years, five years, whatever we do like this again, that's too long. All right, it's been a blast thing. It's been a blast. All right, I'm going to end the episode here. Okay, everyone, take care. Before we end this podcast, I want to tell you about a new position at the Investors podcast network. We're looking for a new host for a show millennial investing with over 10 million downloads and counting. Melina investing is one of the world's top 1% podcast shows. You will host a stock investing focus podcast and mens or social media assets. More importantly, you will join the rest of the TIP team on a journey to provide authentic and actionable investing content for the TIP community. Go to the investors podcast dot com slash careers for more information about compensation, job description and how to apply. That is the investors podcast dot com slash careers. Thanks for listening to TIP to access the show notes. Courses or forums go to the investors podcast dot com to get your questions played on the show go to ask the investors dot com and win a free subscription to any of our courses on TIP Academy. This show is for entertainment purposes only before making investment decisions consult a professional. This show is copyrighted by the TIP network written permission must be granted before syndication or rebroadcasting.