FOMO, Fortitude & Financial Flow

Welcome to Wabi Sabi. This is the art of imperfection. Jim and I always talk about the imperfection and wow, what a weak Jim of talking about imperfection. My goodness. Now we don't like to talk about, you know, being evergreen and we always try to top it with as general, but man, it's been a wrecking ball to the markets this past week.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Like to be able to live through experiences that were so defining, like the one we had this week. Astounding. Like every major currency, every major, uh basically financial boss through the world took a hit all because of one change in policy in one country through the world. And that's had the massive ripple effect. So I guess the imperfect part of this conversation we could make really relevant if Imagine you were planning on retiring and cashing out some of your shareholdings, you know, in a week or so, and suddenly within a day or a series of days, you got like 20 % less than you thought you did. That's pretty significant. And that would significantly impact your retirement.

Hmm. Oh, for sure. Like I remember, you know, my dad, you know, obviously doesn't live in Australia anymore. He's well beyond retirement and you know, he was just in Australia and I'm like, dad, you should just take your super out now. Just get rid of it and just, you know, put it back to in Canada. It's like, oh, and it just, and it got complicated because of the way the system worked. It's so stupid. was something like you can only take so much mouth or they needed more. They needed like more proof for him, you know, cause he was taking X amount. therefore they needed like four pieces of information or proof. and he just didn't have it at the time. And so now he's like, oh, it was just too hard basket. So he just left it there. And this is only like two months ago. And I'm like, dad, like honestly, why didn't you just follow through? I try to make it as easy as possible. Now, you know, like you said, 20 % less. ah And you know, it is what it is, but that's what I saw. It's a policy that I think it reminds us how interconnected we all are, no matter what part in the world we are living. This role reminds me of sort of what happened during COVID and how connected we all are, you know, when it affects all of us. And this does uh feel like it affects all of us, but maybe it doesn't. I don't know. It's kind of interesting, right? Like it affects the people who have money in the market, but does it affect like immediately to the people who don't actually have any money in the market? I don't even know. I remember when I didn't have any money in the market. I see the stock market go down. like, Oh, that You know, I'm like, ah, that's interesting, but it doesn't affect me immediately. So I just kind of like have it in my back of my mind.

Yeah. Yeah. It's amazing. Like uh my son who's in the finance industry is where he runs a hedge fund in uh the U S as well as the company sent me this post, a sort of a Instagram post, which is hilarious. It was like, here's a little video of Warren Buffett just sitting there with like $300 million in cash. Just gone. I'm going shopping. You know, cause everything just suddenly got 20 % more cheap and really good value companies. I can now buy for 20%. So there are winners and there are people going to be challenged and that's another point. And I actually haven't spoken about, mentioned this to you a lot. So at the time of May we've dated it's April, a time of recording. My son said to me today, said, hey, listen dad, would you want to come to the Warren Buffett shareholder meeting in...

Hmm. In May, in May 2nd. oh

in may and he goes look I've got pastors you want to come and I'm gonna conference in Malaga at the same time so no and he said oh I guess he goes I'm not not meaning to be uh what's the word negative but I don't know how many more shareholder meetings are gonna be there you might have missed so yeah it's a it's a clash

That is true. Actually, that's exactly what one of my Tiger members said to, cause the Berkshire, the reason I know the Dave is because it's actually open to all our members in the Tiger. And one of the Tiger members who did go several years ago, he said exactly the same thing. He only, he went because he wasn't sure how long, you know, Buffett's going to be around and he wanted to be there at least once to be able to just watch. and see and learn. But yeah, it's so true. It is so true. ah

And the contrast and the contrast for my son, like I was just going off script here for a little bit. Not that we had a script, but I've just gone off one. Yeah, we had a talk. Yeah. Yeah. had a topic, right? Yeah, very much. But, but he, um, last week he was in Silicon Valley. Uh, he's doing a, um, a fundraise for capital raise for what he's doing. And now he's actually going to.

We never have a script. We have a topic three seconds before we record and then we go for it.

Uh, Omaha, Nebraska for the, for the, um, annual general meeting of Berkshire Hathaway and the contrast and the, irony of both of those is pretty phenomenal. Cause he went there and all the AI technology and the startups and everything coming up. then you go to Mr. Anti AI who's basically pretty much, to $300 billion worth of cat. Like it's just, the contrasts are just astounding, you know? So there are winners and there are people who are challenged.

Hmm. buying chocolate bars.

But yeah, I just thought I'd share that little bit of tidbit in terms of someone who's on the sidelines just been waiting for this.

Yeah. Oh man, we were just talking about this in our podcast a couple of weeks ago, or wasn't it? Like, and we talked about how much money he actually had in cash. You're like, man, in hindsight, everything in hindsight, you look, man, he knew something and we should have, you know, you should have actually thought of like, oh, well, what should, I did think about it. I'm like, oh, maybe he does know something that we should be paying attention to. Maybe I should sell off a little bit here just to kind of see where this goes. But yeah, anyway, so I mean, the whole point of this discussion is really about the contrast of the markets and.

Oh yeah.

and the blood in the water is everything turning red, it's gonna happen one time or another, right? And it does happen in cycles and this happens to be one of those bloody days. Now, we're really early still at the time of this recording. So we really don't know how this is gonna transpire. could bounce right back. Have sort of V-shaped recovery within a week or two, who knows, right? Or it could just get even further eroded. We don't really know the answer to that because it really depends on a lot of factors and how. countries are reacting to Trump's terrorists here at the moment. So, and right now, even within two days, like I can already see, I mean, EU's flip-flopped, like one day they're saying, you know, this is wrong and everything else, you know, fight against it. And then literally 24 hours later, the EU's goes, okay, we'll offer zero for zero percent terrorists. like, what are you doing?

It's a standoff though. It's a standoff though. That's really what it comes down to. And there are going to be people caught out on this standoff for that because of just who's going to blink first.

Yeah. And this is, it's, it's crazy. And this is why the market, so let's, I don't know too much about markets, but I imagine this why the market is red is because there's no clarity. There's no clarity of what anybody's doing. And so therefore we really don't know what's happening. And it's sort of like the, it's got to find its feet. It's got to find its bottom to figure out where people are going to be happy with. And then, uh, this is an opportunity for a lot of people to, if you have a lot of cash, it's an opportunity to buy in now, uh, to be able to. to allow that to grow over the next few years to kind of get that growth. But the reason I brought this up was because I wrote a post on this, really linking it back to how we are in our lives, in our businesses or in our personal lives. There are gonna be moments when everything's panic, everything around you or surrounding you is not going very well. And that could be in business, whether it be looking at your... uh your revenue, you know, maybe looking at the wrong hires you've had, or maybe, you know, you're not getting enough prospects or, you know, new clients coming in, or not retaining your clients or leaving. There's a whole bunch of reasons that could be all usually happen, or at least it feels like it's all happening at the same time. And it creates this cumulative effect on you. And it could really create some poor decision-making that I found and happened to me many times, where it's just high stress points where you don't know what to do. and you're kind of swimming in that emotional pool in your minds with all that emotions going on, all that stress, all the core zone level inside your brain. And usually when you're heightened at that emotional level, you're not really thinking straight and you make poor judgments. You pull out of the market, you know, too quickly, or you make a drastic move and you regret it later. But because you're in panic stage, you, kind of feed into the fear and panic and you, you kind of act accordingly. And I think that a lot of us do that and from an emotional level. And this is why, you when Buffett said, you know, be, be greedy when people are fearful and be, uh what is it? Cautious when people are, are, are greedy. And I mean, it's so true, but yet it's so, so hard to, really act upon. So I'd for you to comment on that.

greedy. Yeah. Totally and the two factors that fundamentally drive markets are fear and greed. They're human emotions. What it's basically saying, what I interpreted is your emotions govern what's happening and playing out in the market. So the people who have the most, uh the greatest capacity to able to manage themselves are people who have a high level of emotional regulation. Warren Buffett has the highest, the guy's a gunslinger. You know, the guy can actually, You know, while everybody else is panicking, he's calm. He's pressure. He's like, I've been waiting for this. He's been preparing for these opportunities. So to me, it speaks to the importance of being able to understand yourself first and always get to the point, no matter what decision you make that you're not reactive and you're actually making decisions from a point of power. Because if you, if there's a lot changing on, there's a lot of uncertainty generally in life and you I'm mirroring that feeling internally. You're going to be taken up in the slipstream of that uncertainty. And that's going to massive massively make things worse. But I think I've studied a lot of generals in war time, you know, and how they went about rallying the troops and how they went about finding certainty in incredibly uncertain times. And most times that's what they talk about. They don't talk about. the circumstances as such, they basically look at this and go, I need to get myself grounded here. need to find a way of quietening down the noise externally and find one or two key bits of information and data that will help me make the best decision in this situation. And I might, and I don't know what that is. And when it comes to the stock market, they quite often say, listen, I have no, I don't have a crystal ball. I don't know what will happen at any one moment. These are the metrics. These are the fundamentals upon which I make any decision. If it was a right decision, was a right decision. What just happened is that because of emotions, sentiment around investing has changed. That's it. But if it's still a company, if it's a good company, still a good company, here's an opportunity because people are worried and concerned that I have an opportunity to buy more.

So I wanna talk about two things that as you were talking that kinda came popped up in my mind. That's why I know where I write it down, which was uh long runways, runway and FOMO. So let's talk about FOMO first, because I think this is important based on what you said about Warren Buffett. I don't know him too well, but you know, it's just something forward you kinda see. FOMO was being a fear of missing out. It's interesting, right? Like you think about Buffett and you look at his ability to be able to have all that cash. I know I think we talked about this in the previous podcast. I wish I had a graph here and You know to show like how much cash he? Berkshire Hathaway actually has kind of comparison to everything else. It's not even close I think he's got 326 billion dollars or something and the next closest one is like, you know, that's like a small at Google whatever I'm small isn't comparatively right not small as an uh for relative to us, but the the main thing is there is not having the fear of missing out, of buying into something, that's a skill, man. Like, it's not, I don't know if it's a skill or it's some sort of patience that he has to be able to not get caught up in that slipstream, as you talked about. That takes a lot of, not nerves, but steadiness and calmness to not fall into the trap that I have to buy into the mania and to be able to hold the line. And this is the classic line of gladiator and hold that line and, and not to, not to let the biases of the environment and then the narratives dictate your decision-making, but really sort of hold the line of what your fundamental beliefs are and sticking with your belief. Because I mean, if you sitting on that much cash and you seeing everything growing around you, he's like, there's that all of us would have this feeling like, Oh, maybe I should just put some of this or at least 10 % of this somewhere. But no, he held that line held all that in cash, not buying. And, uh, you know, and he, missed out on going back, like he missed out on Apple, right? He missed out on, you know, Tesla's or whatever. think, but later on he bought into Apple and I sold Apple again. But I mean, during those years where everybody's like, Hey, why are you not buying Apple? And he just didn't see the fundamentals and he got later got in and he's okay with that. He's okay with the losses. Like the paper losses that he would have had or whatever, but be able to know that, uh, you know, he's going to go in when he goes in. I think. One of the virtues here we're talking about is not, is not being caught up in FOMO, right? Being able to be able to hold that, um, that FOMO in check and be able to kind of stick with whatever your kind of calculations are or whatever you or your theory, your thesis is, and stay with that within that thesis, which is more long-term thinking.

Yeah. Yeah. You know, and Warren Buffett has been schooled by Benjamin Graham, right? So what fundamental to his philosophy is he's always looking for intrinsic value. He's always looking for a discount to intrinsic value. So meaning that if something is worth X and I can get it for, if I can, you know, basically get a penny and sorry, but get something really, really cheap and, but it's overvalued based on its intrinsic value. He won't do it. Right. He has that level of discipline and it's not just about saying, have the discipline of, yeah, I'll dabble. So he's, he's using really strong metrics to guide his decision making. he basically says, is something worth a dollar? I can get it for 70 cents. I'm buying it. But if it's, if it's a dollar, but because of sentiment, it's gone up to 130. It's too overvalued based on what the fundamentals of this business are. So I'm going to let it go. And he got, like you said, he missed out on some, some, uh, uh, investments earlier on and he got a lot of criticism for that. But the reason why he went back in is because the share market, sorry, the share price had recalibrated back to what he felt like, okay, now there's intrinsic value. And that was his metric for it. And I remember just in answer to that question, years ago I did this program called Wealth Magic, by a girl called Peter Span in Australia. And he had this saying that's always stayed with me that helped me deal with FOMO and that is, The investment, when you know what you're looking for, the investment of a lifetime comes around every two weeks. And that was so profound because up until that point, I always felt like, okay, right now it's the share market in three months. It could be property market in four months. It could be a crypto center. And if you know, and if you've got a reproducible and solid means of determining value, and I mean value that is genuine value, um, as opposed to speculative.

Hmm.

You're not worried about it to the same degree. uh, yeah, there's times and yesterday I'll give you, I was there ready to go, uh, to buy in yesterday. And, because I've been living, um, overseas for awhile and for awhile, I've gone, okay, some of these markets are overvalued. Uh, my, some of my accounts have been locked because I'm living from overseas. So I couldn't action it. So there's one level of frustration, but I just go, man, it is what it is. So.

Right.

That's that was that part of me that went, okay, now I've been watching certain stocks. had indicators to write with a drop below this, then I'll get in those indicators came up, but I couldn't action it yesterday because of, oh of that. So, but they've driven fundamentally for me that they're the criteria. So that's where I've tried to coordinate it, but it helps me to know that I'm not stressed about missing out this one because it'll happen again in two weeks.

Yeah. And I think that's, that's why I got a lot of advice, a lot of my clients. So, you know, when they're looking at maybe potentially selling a property or selling a business or buying a business or buying a property, you know, the, to, them to, if they're considering it, you should just look at it, you know, look at the deal, no matter whether you're to go through with it or not, because by going through the deal, you learn so much, you learn so much about that particular business, whether it's worth it or not, you do some self-evaluation. And then you also recognize like what, what is worth, what what it is worth to you and what it's worth to the market. And also at the same time, you also got to get an understanding of what the market is bearing at the moment. And what that teaches you, like I remember doing this for real estate is like, know, just because, you know, we're interested in one particular area, one particular suburb. And my wife was really good at this. Like she would look at every house. I guess when we did in Portugal, was the same thing. Every house that we ever bought, she's always been looking for a long time. And when she looks at hundreds and hundreds of homes and you start to see like, picture versus value, picture versus value, without you actually having to go and see it, you kind of get a sense like what is the market bearing? What is cheap, affordable? What is overpriced? And you're not going to get that just by deciding like today, like, Oh, I think I'm going to buy a house next week. That doesn't happen. Like you're going to get screwed because you don't know what the market is bearing. Whereas over time you start to create a baseline. And then when a deal of a lifetime does come, you're like, this is a steal. uh There's nothing and our house we live in now was that it was not overpriced, but you're like, wow, this is actually priced reasonably for what it's worth, for what we've seen. And this is when we kind of jumped on the market at that time. the last two or three homes we've ever bought was exactly that. It was because we did our due diligence in terms of homework. And she actually looked through the marketplace. And I think that's the same thing with stocks. Like whether you decided to buy stocks today or tomorrow, or if you're thinking about ever thinking about it in the future, you should just look at it. You just look at it once in a while, you just study it and just see what's what, what it's doing, how it's doing, what the cycles are doing. And that will teach you some lessons and basic fundamentals that allows you to, kind of guide you through that process. And you'll know when an opportunity does.

Yeah. And the other factor to bear in mind too, is the opportunity cost and what it costs you to either get into something or what it costs to delay making a decision. know in the two most, I mean the two exits that we've had in practice and business sales, one of ours was in country, New South Wales and Australia. And we sold a chain of practices all in one go. And the decision to sell was one day I came home and went, that's it, I'm done. I don't want to do this anymore here. And within 30 minutes, I contacted our chief associate at the time and went looking to go, are you interested? Yes. We, we basically came up with a, a basic price based on some fundamentals and it literally got sold within 30 minutes. That was it. Lock, stock and barrel. The rest of it was just details and

Hmm.

But when we left for Australia, we were in a different scenario. We had, and so we got top dollar for that first time. The second time when we left from Australia, we were needing to go and wanting to go. We had an option of delaying aspects of it longer and getting more. And we went, you know what? The opportunity cost is there. So we were prepared to meet the market and meet the offers that we had because to us, was the delaying was going to cost us more. they're important considerations as well as you've got. Fear of missing out and also opportunity costs that come with both.

Yeah. Which is huge. Which most people would never calculate because sometimes you just, you know, the opportunity costs for you pushing something. remember one time at an end of a deal, a business deal that, know, they, they, they were, you know, screwing me over for, I don't know, let's just call it 5,000 or $10,000. Right. Uh, and it was almost like, do I really want to fight this or not? Right. Like, do I want to take this to court? I wouldn't take it to court because of principle, but from a financial point of view, it's like,

Hmm.

honestly, is it worth my time and headache and energy? And those are sometimes we've got to factor those in. I've seen cases where we all know colleagues who are fighting against each other, the cost, forget about the opportunity cost, the cost itself and dragging it out into the core systems uh to fight against each other. And the toll it takes on your family, the impact on your age and just the stress levels, you got to think, is it worth it to you? But those things we can't factor in. Sometimes you dug your heels so deeply that you can't back down. And it's really hard.

Yeah. Yeah. And there are people that I know who, who, you know, we're talking about a business put their practice on the market way before we did. um, they were adamant that this is what I believe this was, uh, this is valued that, know, intrinsic value and market market capitalizations. And did he take that wasn't the case, but because they're so hung up on that, um, they haven't moved. And they were burnt out and exhausted and whatever. And that's three and a half years down the track and they're still stuck. And so that's the opportunity cost. That oh doesn't mean that you're not going to get the right price. You might have to wait, but as they basically say, even a, even a broken clock's right twice, twice every 24 hours. But, but you just got to look at it go, what's it going to cost me? So, you know, what's it going to cost me to just stick around? And as you said, like, you know, no one wants to leave. Um,

Yes.

feeling like they've been exploited, sometimes you leave money on the table because it allows you to move. And for me, velocity and speed is sometimes more important than that last little bit because what it allows you to do once you're out of that situation.

Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And talk about like talking about, um, you know, chasing, you know, FOMOs and stuff. remember, uh, I get, this is perfect in the crypto world and the crypto world, you know, you got Bitcoin who's like the, the one and only, and then you have all the other coins are, which are considered all coins. Right. So you got strong old coins like Ethereum, Solana, whatever. And then you got your meme coins. But I remember when I was, you know, starting to get heavily involved in it, you know, I was buying Bitcoin. I was just told what to do. And then. you start to see all the other people getting like all the gains and all the other, you know, coins, the other coins, you started like, oh, maybe, and this is where the FOMO kicks in. So I've totally, I'm just sharing my personal story of exactly what happened, you know, back in 2020, when I won, when it like, there was hype mania. When, you know, when you start to see your portfolio just go up so rapidly, it's almost like you can't fail. You know, there's no way you're going to be able to fail. I just kept on going. And therefore, when I kept on going, I just basically said, you know what? I'm just gonna go all in on that. I start going into these altcoins. And when you start going on to all these altcoins, you start realizing is that it's not working. It's failing you. And that could be a devastating thing because you start to realize that that's why FOMO, um it can be disastrous.

Hey you're back. Yeah, someone's pedaling slow. So the bit that you... Really? Ah. So you started the... You said... Yeah, yeah. Start again. Five, four, three, two, one. Oh. Hmm. Yeah, yep. Yeah, you explained a really good example of it in the investing world. It can just happen easily in other areas where all your friends are doing this. They're all doing this. They're buying the car, the boat, the holidays, and you feel left out. So consequently you go, rather than doing it real order and go, is it something that is practical for me? Am I able to do it? We then take other steps or decisions, make decisions that aren't logical because of that perceived feeling like If I don't do this now, I'm going to miss out forever or there's something wrong with me. All those kinds of emotions that to me that's it's the ability to be comfortable in your own skin and your own path. is not, not be because there's a difference because some people are just so pigheaded that they won't. They're still the same people that are, you know, thinking that the internet's a fad. You know, they're just so resistant that they like, no, I won't take that. There's difference there. It's basically, there's a variation of going, okay, this is what the data is showing me. I'm making a decision based on that, but I'm still listening to what's going on. I'm just deciding that that's not for me. That's, that's totally different. That's there's definitely been discerning and just pigheaded. Yeah, it's it fundamentally gives you a choice, right? It gives you an ability not to have to react. And I get it. we, you know, I imagine most people I've certainly been in scenarios where it's like, man, I am so under pressure here. It's not funny. And it affects multiple areas of your life and world, you know, it affects your sleep, like sure how you relate to everybody else. You, you basically analyze things, not from an abundant point of view, but from a lack of being there. It's not great. And part of the reason why I guess one of the reasons why I wanted to support people to get a level of financial freedom is that they're making decisions from an empowered place. And I get it with when things are tight and tough and we have to narrow the field and have to uh narrow the scope and we're really only thinking about the next one or two steps forward. And I get that. I totally understand that. And those situations is about going, okay, how does this How does this step help me move forward? If I've only got a dollar, okay, what's the best use of that dollar? If I've got $2, I can make the best use of that as $2. And the principles that we've talked about are equally applicable whether you've got two bucks or 200,000 or 2 million or 20 billion. know, there's still, you're using it on logic, that will allow it to grow. I mean, there's plenty of cases I've seen them documented where you hear of a cleaner at school who never had a kid, he never had any children, lived by himself, basic wage, put money aside and when he's retired, when he died, they realize he was 70 million bucks and you wouldn't have known. So they were principles that they followed through consistently, irrespective of how much they had any one time. uh I do study that. It's boring. Like, let's be honest, when I read the Million NX Door, I went to you, that's great, but this just bores me senseless, but it works, you know? And I think that's the part, you know, that a really good bit of information that I heard years ago was, um, live an exciting life, live, make boring money. And if you're trying to find excitement in your money, um, you're going to be separated from that pretty quick. And, and, know, there's, there's truth to that. There's truth to that. Does it matter that you become, I don't know that. That's what I have to keep asking is, do I have to be excited about the industry that I'm in? Or am I just happy to get a return? And even if it's a boring industry and especially in the U S right now, there's a lot of baby boomers who are retiring, who are running high cashflow generating businesses that are conventional businesses that are probably not going to be taken over by AI totally. And there's a lot of people who have got MBAs who are going, I'm not following down this conventional path. I'm just going to run this business, service-based business that's spitting off heaps of cashflow and I can optimize it for the 21st century. And I'm good to go. It's it, it is, it is, it is. And sometimes it's a distraction because, know, not so much from a, from a, um, from an investment perspective, but if you're trying to, you know, I remember when we were studying, right? don't know if it's the same thing happened to you Lawrence, but my, our house was never as clean, um, as when we were studying exams, because I would do everything and anything then do what was right in front of me. Right. And even the guy next door, I remember. This guy's sandpapering his picket fence and I'm going, wow, I'd really love to do that. I'm like, no, I don't, but I just don't want to do what I'm doing right now. So sometimes if we're sitting in boredom, fear, doubt, everything outside of us looks more enticing, more easy, faster. And I think that that's in nature, either we're trying to escape uncomfortable feelings and we're looking for an alternative or we doubt ourselves and they think there's something faster or a hack. that'll get us to that outcome quicker and somehow that'll mean just we're a lot smarter than we are. I don't know. is a problem. Yep. Yeah. Yeah. Play, play this black, play this back. But, Laura's it is, is, you know, like, like we've said from the outset, this is really just you and me having a chat and then we record it and maybe someone will listen. and, uh, but fundamentally you're hundred percent correct. You know, a lot of the things in front of us, we're, we're seduced by the idea of the multiple businesses, the multiple entities and whatever. sometimes We focus on multiplication before we focus on optimization. And if we really set back, you know, I've done this many times. go, Hey, listen, I'm looking at this other venture. Okay, great. At best, how much will it generate? Maybe 50,000 bucks. Awesome. Great. And you've got all the time and distraction. would happen if you deep dive and went all in in what you're currently doing? Could you generate an extra $50,000 with no more risk and just immersing yourself in further? And it's like, yeah, I could. Great. Awesome. Why don't you? It's because we're trying to avoid either, you know, we think that there's something better outside and that's, that to me, that's become a principle that I've really sat with a lot where I've let go of things and focused more on the one or two or three things that I, I do better. And that's yielding better results rather than trying to chase everything. old saying of the hunter who chases too many rabbits doesn't end up with any. And sometimes just letting go of things are going well, there's a great opportunity. It really is no doubt. But if I let go of what I'm doing right now, that may mean that I my dilute my results and I'm working harder than I was anyway. So I don't know. Maybe there's a maturity that comes with it over time. Yeah, look. Yeah, it's a great, great scenario. And what I was going to say was irrespective, know, like without divulging what you're working on, right? There's one of, there's two strategies that are used, particularly in the VC world, because in the venture capital world, what they do is they accept that they're going to have to make many bets and some of those won't pay off. And so what they do in, in VC world is they put a little bit of an investment in any one of those. sometimes one will out. shine all of them, right? So when you've got five or six opportunities, there's two strategies that are used. Either you do one and you wait and you review it and see if there's feasibility to do that. That's one thing. The other part is what's called a mevo, um, which is the minimal economically viable, um, offering or opportunity where you just test it. So you, you basically create a frame for what's going on, invest a little bit and just put it out there as a bite and see what gets most traction. And then the ones that You know, out of the six that you've mentioned too, they might surprise you. think, really love this idea, but two of the others are the ones that get real traction, but you've put enough of it out there where you just test the market. It's basically market assessment and analysis. And then what comes back, you go, okay, I'm going to follow through with these two right now. I'll put these other ones on hold until, and that's how a lot of companies do that. You know, whenever you've got a new product offering, they'll test, you know, a supermarket, for example, always test some out of town place. to just test a new concept and based on that, then I'll introduce it and go all in. So that would be my answer to that is if you've got six on it, all six in a small way, in a way, put it out there, market test it, review feedback and the ones that you're getting really positive traction for, they're the ones that you would start off with. That'd be, that's what's generally done in VC world. Yeah. Move fast, break things. Yeah. Yeah. Yep. Yeah. There's two things I was going to say. Number one was Jim Collins in the book, good to great talked about this concept of first bullets, then cannonballs. And so effectively go, yeah. So if you're, if you imagine you're a battleship and you trying to get a target, you don't go with the cannonball straight away. You actually put the bullet, okay, we need to move. We missed the target, move five degrees to the right, three degrees to the left. And then she hit your target. Once you opt them, once you lock on, that's when you go to concept. So that's a really good. concept and that's where the, the, the Mivo comes in really handy, but it was really interesting when Sebastian went, my son went to a, he went to Google and he went to this whole trade convention where all these guys were pitching their, um, their ideas. And what stunned him was the level of acceptance of funding. you know, like, you know, he's kept raising for our venture. Um, and he's got a product that's already workable and what he was stunned at is the number of people who went, Hey, we're raising $30 million for a concept that, um, is probably, we might make some money in 2027 or 2028 and the willingness of people to handle that and to actually go, right, for three years, you're to plow through 30 million bucks with no guarantee that you'll have a product at the end of that, but we'll accept that risk. Uh, and so yeah, like he, he was there going, this is the first time I'm going to, uh, to cap raise this level and It's already product sorry tested. We've got a market already to go. We can show you the product ah But it just it really stunned me. So these guys are they're making like huge bets on some things and asking for a lot of money and I guess the difference for us was that we actually adopted that principle of uh First bullets and cannonballs before we actually raised ah That so that that's been our journey. That's been our learning as well Yeah. Yeah, yeah the dot-com boom. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah I think we are, I think we are. Yeah, I think we are.

Alright, I don't know what's going on with my internet. Yeah, it's my internet. It's just, um... It's happened to me three days in a row. Anyways, I'm going to talk. was, uh, yeah, I'll start talking about, uh, uh, the crypto thing. I'll start again from there. Oh wait, yeah, it's recording. So yeah, so when I got into crypto, this reminds me of that whole streaming and FOMO, right? So strip them. So here's my experience, right? Around 2020, 2021, when I started getting into crypto for the first time, I started buying Bitcoin. And as you started buying Bitcoin, you started to see your portfolio just rise and rise and rise. You're like, oh, I am God. You know, like I am, I just know what to do, right? Forgetting that everything else was going up at the same time. But anyways, what you saw though, This is where the FOMO kicks in really, really strongly. And this is why it's so hard to resist. When you start seeing your friends, you start seeing the other crypto, right? The altcoins, the Solana, the Ethereum, the meme coins, the Doge coins, or whatever. They're growing up like, we'll call it like 30, 40%, where Bitcoin's growing up 10 % or whatever. And you're thinking like, because you earn so much in your own thing, you're like, well, if only I just had some of it.

The great question um is crisis is when luck meets preparation. And, and to me, I think I've got to look at this and I've been disciplined to learn that once I can get a handle of my emotions, look at this and go, where's the opportunity here. And it doesn't have to be immediate, but with every scenario, there's usually an opportunity. If you're prepared for it, could be.

So you start going like, I'll just put some of this in here. Cause I already got enough here. I'm to put, putting it in. And this is where the FOMO really captures people, right? Because you're chasing, you know, bigger returns. You're chasing outside your comfort zone. You're chasing things that you really don't fully understand. And you're just chasing, basically you're just gambling. Like I realized that I look back, I'm like, I was just pure gambling, right? I lost tens and tens of thousands of dollars. So I just gambling on things.

Okay. I need to retreat to come back better, stronger, leaner moving forward. But with every scenario, there's, there's, um, blood in the streets. There are people hurting, there are people benefiting and your chances of benefiting are if you can orient yourself and get yourself grounded first, and then ask yourself that question, how can I benefit from this? So where's the opportunity to me? That's that it feels counterintuitive because you just want to panic like everybody else.

But because you're earning so much at that time, you don't really stress about it because like, well, sure, I'm happy to lose 20K here because I'm gaining this here anyways, right? So you kind of rationalize in your brain, but if you're just smarter about it, like if you were just going like, hey, this is my conviction, I should stay with that conviction rather than trying to chase is what Warren does really well. uh That's when you really start to realize because you don't see it in the moment. And this is why there's a human nature of the thrill of winning.

But if you can find your way of just keeping your head while everybody's losing theirs, ah you'll find an opportunity.

the thrill of just seeing your portfolio grow or winning a game or, you know, watching your team win, like all of those things come and there's the crates is endorphin in your body and that that feeds into this loop. And therefore you want more and more high. It's like a drug, right? You could, you know, I've never taken a drug in my life. So like you take a drug, I'm sure you get high and you're like, Oh, but I want, but that drug though gives me a higher high or a faster high. So therefore it's like you chase after that. And I think that's the thing that's built into our, our, our brain and also human psychology. And that's the danger of the side of it. You could get easily wrecked because you're choosing the wrong things because you're always trying to chase the higher highs and the bigger returns. I would say just there's caution, cautionary thing here when we're moving forward and that FOMO piece can be very, very devastating in the long term if you're not done right.

Yep. Yep.

Well, it's a lot to do with, um, I think your assumptions that you're making, um, you know, dictated a lot by the, people that are surrounding you or the things that you're listening to. And so this echo chamber kind of creates that, um, the thought process sometimes that would kind of misguides, you know, our thinking properly. Um, and I think you had the luxury to think when actually this is what I wanted to make a point, which is about the runway. was the analogy I wanted to kind of bring about because, you know, It's so important, like now that, you know, as we're a bit older now and I think we've built enough experience and we also have built enough financial, I guess, wealth that creates that runway to allow you to adapt, right? So like, if I think about Warren Buffett as we use that as an example, when he's got that much cash, like he's okay to, you created enough along runway, meaning the runway of how much cash he actually has, he created. lots of time for him to make a wrong move and to actually change his direction. um Whereas if you're kind of tight living cash, you know, week to week, you don't actually have that much. Every dollar you put in somewhere needs to be the right call. And so I think about that runway. It's such an important analogy for us to, if you're depending on obviously where you're starting from, it's my kids, for example, who, know, they're teenagers and as they get into adulthood, like that's a, they don't have a runway, right? You know, if you take us away from this, they don't have much of a runway. So, which means that they have to make the right calls and decisions. Now they could fail. I have a thing about it. It's like, they're like climbing a wall, but if you fall from the beginning, like it's not that high. So you're not going to get injured, right? But as you climb higher and higher and higher, like, you know, when you're thirties or 35, you got, know, a family, you're married, you got a mortgage, you got, you know, that fall. If make the wrong move, that fall becomes, could be devastating. And so I think what the analogy I want to look at when, when, what the first part of call, if I'm talking to a young person or someone who's listening to this, it's like the first thing that I would teach myself would tell myself if I had to go back, is to really. Built a long runway. If you can't like build the foundation you necessarily have. So in the climbing law example, it's almost like built, um, like platforms along the way so that when you do fall, you only fall to the platform. and you give yourself some opportunity to try again from that area. You don't have to start all the way from the beginning again. And I think that's the runway I'm talking about. If you built enough wealth at the beginning and to save and build those habits really correctly, you built enough time to, know, if something devastating does happen to your job, you get fired or you know, your business fails. Like if you got enough buffer, then you're able to have, you bought yourself enough time to think, to maneuver and change. accordingly. But if you don't have that buffer, like if you don't have much savings at all and you lost your job, like you're have to get out there as quick as possible. So you're most likely going to take the first thing that's available, even though if it's right or wrong, because and that that could be something that you could have avoided if you just spent the time to build that runway in beginning or that buffer. Yeah. Hmm. Yeah. So many people chase like, it, what do you think is like, why are we, why do we all chase like the next shiny object? We'll always chase the fast money, the fast clicks, the fast videos, the, know, whatever, like whatever's the easiest thing is just, human nature for us to kind of chase those things, right? Yeah, definitely. The avoidance things for sure. think we, tend to avoid the thing, the true work I've been looking at, you know, really looking at businesses and, and, and in terms of the, the, practices that, know, the people that I serve in are really kind of assessing, you know, what, what's really not working and what's working. And oftentimes I realize that, you know, the, the, practitioners that I kind of coached a lot is that they're, they're chasing the next thing, you know, and what they don't want to do is actually for you to tell them that No, you what you really need to do is go back to some of the fundamentals things that you're not even looking at because you've been and it's it's it's amazing how many of us avoid like the fundamental things. I mean, look at my own business too. Lately, I just went back. I'm like, you're wow, like, I haven't been doing this x part. And it's like, that's really dumb. I've known this for years. It's like it's in my brain. Logically, I know exactly. That's the thing I'm supposed to be doing. But I just never do it because it's not that sexy. And yet that's the thing that I've been missing. And, know, I'm trying to go back now to go, all right, this is what I'm to focus on for the next quarter. This is what I'm going to do. This is going to just, you know, build that channel before I start working on other things. And it's because we don't tend to want to work on those things. And this is, that's one, I think that's just tying this all up to, to around to, you know, having read in the markets. That's what you should be doing is that when things are bloody out there in the streets, you know, one of the most important things is to get really dialed in and focus on the next action step and being. focus on the things that you actually have full control over and doing what's right and doing what what is available to you to work on the things that you don't want to work on. And you know, they talk about Brian, Tracy talked about eat that eat the biggest frog first, right? And it's the same type of thing. It's like, when you don't want to do it is probably in a good indication that you that's the thing you're supposed to be doing, you know, the thing that you're trying to avoid the thing you're you're you've been pushing off into the calendar or to do this every single time you just haven't got it done. That's the thing that you should be doing. And I'm As I'm saying this out loud, it's like, you know, the thoughts are coming through. My, my alter ego is telling you, yes, Lawrence, listen to your own advice. And like, have about three things in my head and I'm like, okay, yes, I got it. I, I'm to put that, yeah, play exactly, put this on repeat until you actually get those three items done to check out. You know, I'm in that position now, you know, like right now I got probably five, six things on my, on my, on my plate, on my mind and that I've dabbled into. especially when you got this day and age of the creation of what AI can do, you know, there's like, basically I have a lot. Yeah. I would say I have six projects that I could kind of dive into that I really excited about for each and every single one. So the excitement is not the problem. It's like, but it's choosing the right vehicle for me. to go with and placing bets, really, I'm placing bets on going, of these winners, which one of these are gonna be the winners into the future? And I don't know that answer. So I'm in that dilemma phase at the moment is going, okay, I know like what you just said, right? I know I need to focus on one or maybe two of these things. I can't do all of them, but it's a hard, it's the difficulty. I'm sharing this because I wanna be vulnerable with this. It's like the difficult part is like the sacrifice to go in on all in on one or two. is the removal of the other four. And it's a challenge because like I see so much potential, but again, knowing that if I continue this path, so it's just a, just full transparency, what I'm to have to do is that in the next quarter, I'm to have to make a decision one way the other, or probably sooner than the end of the quarter. Because what I know if I continue on this path, I'll still be the indecision mode six months from now, or still be, I actually haven't progressed any further on any of these six because I actually haven't put in the time and effort to each one because I'm scattering my brain into each of these parts. versus like focusing on one, two and seeing if that actually works. If it doesn't, I can always come back and start from the other two or the other one or whatever it is. But that's the challenge I'm dealing with. And I think that I'm not the only person who's ever feeling that way. When you got your own business to run, you got several things that you could be doing that will help you get there. You just can't choose. And what would you say to that? Like, what would you advise someone to make a decision on and how you evaluate that situation? Yeah, interesting. Yeah, that's great. Yeah, for sure. I mean, that's a, that makes total sense in regards to putting everything out there and then testing. But testing is, mean, that's the thing about the Silicon Valley, which we mentioned about your son going there. Uh, the, one of the biggest, uh, things that just reminded me of when you were just saying this, which is how Facebook, when I, when I went to visit Facebook, um, you know, in the campus there, there, they talked about, um, was it, uh, move fast break. Uh, yeah. move fast and break things, break things. That's right. And that was their model. And it was, it was interesting because I was talking to one of the employees there, um, who was the sister of one of my friends and they were just saying how that's how they, they, Facebook got so successful was because they're literally testing every single hour. You know, like you, you might somewhere around the world, you'll get a certain feature on your Facebook account. They will select a certain area. might be a very small target area. We'll say like maybe. you know Hawthorne in Victoria, like only those people would get this feature and they'll test uh a theory. And if it doesn't, if it goes well, they might expand that theory to, you know, another suburb and maybe the rest of Melbourne. And then from there, they might test the state of Victoria and so on and so forth. And, but if it doesn't work, they just go, okay, done, move on. Let's go to the next thing. And they just continually test these things. And it just reminds us like, you know, the world that we kind of live in, we just don't move faster. we don't move fast enough. get deliberate, we think for hours, we kind of, not hours, weeks, months before we even action on an item. It's like, it's just, we're not, we're not from that world. And so we're not, we haven't been trained or we haven't seen the people around us to do those things. And I've always admired that in the Silicon Valley, because I think that's how they got to, you know, the unicorns that have been created out of Silicon Valley is because they live in this environment of constantly moving fast, breaking things, always testing and not being too attached to any particular outcome or idea there. You know, any company it's like most, you know, I've talked to so many founders who whatever successful company ended up with was never the thing they started off with. You know, it was always an evolution and, but most of us think the opposite way. Most of human nature is like, we have to hit this, uh, a home run on the first go. And it's a, it serves as a good reminder of what you just sort of said around the minimal viable. Uh, offering or the product, um, is that it needs to be put tested in the market. It needs to be put it out there. It needs for, to kind of see if there's any traction, if there's no traction, kill it, move on. It's called sack. go next, next idea. Um, if there's some traction, put some more money into it or more energy behind it and see where it goes. Yes, that's true. I remember that. Yeah, that's a concept, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's so interesting though, isn't it? Like, because the reality is that when you look at, know, can you imagine if that's happening still now, which I thought it would have been tightened up a bit. Can you imagine what it was like 15, 20 years ago when like the height of this, oh my goodness, like the amount of money that's being poured into this stuff. And maybe we are in that generation for the AI stuff, especially, you know, my people just taking guests. Yeah, they're just being making bets and they don't know they don't care because we don't haven't really found that company that is going to take off and everybody's fighting and bidding to see we don't know what's going to go. And I find that very interesting. It was sort of back into that stage again, like people are just betting. And again, like you said, you know, venture capital capitalists, like what they're doing is they just putting bets on and they know that one in 10 is going to hit, but they don't care. Right. They so, but, and those nine out of 10 will never make money, but that one in 10 though, will make up more than enough for that nine. nine losses in that 10. And so if you hit one unicorn, it's going to be a massive success. it's just the way that game is being played, which is very different for people not from Silicon Valley. The normal world that we kind of all live in is like, no, we kind of bet one and we've got to make sure that one works. And that's how we tend to kind of do things. And so it's just a different viewpoint and a different culture that's around. All right, so let's kind of end this there. you know, if you, last question, I guess, to maybe just summarize this, if you saw blood in the waters, in the markets or in your life, what's the go-to advice you give to yourself or to people? Yeah, so I have three things. uh I think one, I learned this wintering COVID is like learn what number one protect yourself, right? Like I think you got to when the markets are like, when things are happening really bad, you guys do some self evaluation, like, okay, am I okay? Right? Are you okay? Personally, as sort of similar to what you said, you got to regulate that motion right off the bat and recognizing the world may seem like it's ending, but it's really not ending. You know, your world is fine. You're safe. You're alive. You have a house. or you have a roof over live, have us where you can live, you have food, shelter, you got the basics and you're good. Obviously then you factor in that you're close enough families, is your family protected and everything else. That's number one. Number two, think zoom out. think oftentimes when you're in the red, all you see is blood is because you're zoomed in to that moment, but you actually zoom out to the charts. I love looking at like sometimes like, you see this like red line going down, but then we actually zoom out. like a five-year hands are like, oh, it's just like a little blip off the top of the hill. So just recognizing that too, zoom out to gain perspective is what I say. And the third is take action. I think oftentimes what we tend to do is do the first two, but then we don't actually take the third because you kind of still like you're just frozen. And I think if you start to take any sort of action towards something, doing something that's actually within your control, I think that makes a hell of a lot of difference because now you're focused on the thing you're focused on of doing rather than seeing what the external environments is dictating. Those are my three things. So guys, I hope that you enjoyed this. I hope that you are regulating your emotions well through this. By the time you uh actually listen to this or see this, you've most likely seen the outcome of how the markets are doing. But I hope that it's been all good for you and I hope it turns out the way it's supposed to. uh guys, I hope you enjoyed this particular podcast and share this with others. This is Wabi Sabi, the art of imperfection. Talk to you soon, see ya.