The Investing Expert: Why Investing Is the BIGGEST Life Hack & Everyone Should Start Today!

Speaker 0:00 This is the biggest life hack. Nothing comes close. Literally nothing comes remotely close to this life hack. Forget about everything else in life and just start investing, period. Chris Camillo made millions spotting trends before Wall Street even noticed them. Author of Laughing at Wall Street.

Lewis Howes 0:17 Famous investor who's made tens of millions of dollars by investing in things that he discovers in his everyday life, Chris Camillo.

Speaker 0:23 The wealth gap, that's a solvable problem. That is 100% a solvable problem.

Lewis Howes 0:30 How do we solve it?

Speaker 0:31 Getting the entire world to invest. You should be investing always. I would say especially now.

Lewis Howes 0:36 Even when it's scary or uncertain, or it's fluctuating so much?

Speaker 0:40 Yeah. When it gets scary and it starts to fluctuate, this is when you make all your money, right [laughs] ?

Lewis Howes 0:47 Why does it seem so scary, though, for people to invest, especially when they hear stories like early in your career you invested a lot of money, and 70% of it you lost, you know, pretty quickly with a crash happening? How do you get over that mental and emotional loss?

Speaker 1:02 That's a great question, and here's what I tell people.

Lewis Howes 1:09 Welcome back everyone to the School of Greatness. Very excited about our guest. We have Chris Camillo in the house. Good to see you, man.

Speaker 1:14 You too.

Lewis Howes 1:15 Appreciate you being here.

Speaker 1:15 Thanks for having me on.

Lewis Howes 1:16 You just shared something right before we got on here where you said it's your mission to get every human in the world to be an investor.

Speaker 1:24 Yeah, investor class.

Lewis Howes 1:25 Investor class.

Speaker 1:25 E- every human. Every human.

Lewis Howes 1:26 And I just saw this stat on CNBC that said just this week the Dow Jones experienced its 11th 1,000 point drop in the Dow's history, and four of them happening in just the last month. And also I saw on Twitter this week that the Great Depression has been trending. Um, and for that-

Speaker 1:45 [laughs]

Lewis Howes 1:47 ... w- should people, with all of the fear or the anxiety or the stress around the stock market, tariffs, the economy, another depression, whatever might be happening, should people be investing now or should they be waiting until later when it feels more safe?

Speaker 2:02 Well, that's all noise.

Lewis Howes 2:04 Uh-huh.

Speaker 2:04 It's always all noise, okay? Until it's not. And when it becomes something other than noise, we have way bigger problems.

Lewis Howes 2:14 Mm.

Speaker 2:14 Right? That- that's the way to think of it. Uh, should you be investing now? You should

Speaker 2:18 be investing always. Um, I would say especially now. So-

Lewis Howes 2:23 Even when it's scary or uncertain, or it's s- fluctuating so much?

Speaker 2:27 Yeah. I- uh, it... When it gets scary and it starts to fluctuate and you start to hear, see people Googling the Great Depression, th- these, this is when you make all your money, right [laughs] ? So th- this is a gift. I've been, I've been around a long time. Like, I c- I still feel like a kid investing, yet I can talk about the '87 crash and how I felt during the '87 crash [laughs] . I was young then, but I remember it vividly, and I re- I'll, I'll never forget how quickly we came back from it.

Lewis Howes 3:04 Mm.

Speaker 3:04 And, you know, same thing with, I was like deep, deep in the dot com bubble crash. Like, that was when I was coming out of college, in the workforce, investing for myself aggressively, and I was... It was, like, my entire world, and that really was scary.

Lewis Howes 3:25 Really?

Speaker 3:25 That was, like, super scary.

Lewis Howes 3:27 'Cause you probably didn't have a lot of money then, so the things you were investing in, if you're losing it, you're like, "What am I doing? I can't afford to lose this."

Speaker 3:33 Well, we... Most of us that were young and investing during that time, we lost, like, 70% of our portfolio, okay [laughs] ? Like 70, 80%, some of us. A lot of the companies we were invested in just went to zero, okay? Um, so that was unbelievably scary, yet those of us that stuck around and kept doing it, I mean [laughs] it didn't take long for the market to come whipping back.

Lewis Howes 4:03 Really?

Speaker 4:03 Right? And, and you look back and you go, "Gosh, I wish I would've went in even heavier at the time." Same thing in 2008. That was scary, remember?

Lewis Howes 4:10 Mm, I do.

Speaker 4:10 Well, you remember that.

Lewis Howes 4:11 Yeah.

Speaker 4:12 Uh, came back quicker than anyone would've imagined. And w- this and... Dude, nothing phases me anymore. Like, people, y- you think

Speaker 4:21 about the stock market. Well, what is the stock market? The stock market is nothing more than a reflection of all of our work globally. That's it. Our human, our human endeavors. It, it, it, it's, it's the product of our human work. So as long as humanity continues to get smarter and more productive and more efficient, whether it's us or the robots or artificial intelligence that we're creating, doesn't matter how we do it, a- a- a- as long as we continue to, um, create more and create better, uh, the product of that will become more valuable. That's... An- and- and our way to participate in that is called the stock market.

Lewis Howes 5:08 Mm.

Speaker 5:08 Like, it's not this crazy complex thing. Everyone overthinks it. Wall Street has spent, you know, 70, 80 years trying to convince us that it's this big, mysterious thing that only they c- can understand.

Lewis Howes 5:22 Mm.

Speaker 5:22 That we have to go through them. Um, that we need to be talking to them through these periods, right? It's all complete BS. There's... I don't think there's anything more important in life, other than maybe taking care of your family, uh, than learning how to invest. Like, it's actually so insane to me. I think it's the most important thing we should be starting with from kindergarten, uh, every year for your entire life. A, a, a good chunk of it should be focused on reminding you and teaching you how important it is for you to be part of this investor class, and it's just disgusting that it's not.

Lewis Howes 6:00 If you were to simplify it for someone in their 20s or 30s who's never invested before- ... on how to invest and what to invest in, what would you share with them? As if you were teaching someone that had no understanding of what investing or the stock market or trading meant, and you could simplify that, what would that look like?

Speaker 6:19 Well, so I think a better way to think about it is that something that we all can relate to is the idea of starting a company, right? We all wanna be entrepreneurs. Not all, most of us in the back of our head, it would be

Speaker 6:38 cool to, you know, own your own company, whatever that company is, right? Uh, it never used to be like that, but over the last 20 years, now we all kind of think like that.

Lewis Howes 6:47 Mm-hmm.

Speaker 6:48 Uh, I don't care if you're a celebrity, if you're a homemaker, there's a company out there that you would like to start and own, or the idea of being an entrepreneur. Well, that's, that's half of my life, right? I'm an entrepreneur. I've been in startups my entire career. I've started a multitude of companies, have sold them. I've had a few big success, successes in that world, and I've had insane number of failures in that world, both as an operator and as an investor in private companies. That is exceptionally hard. That is exceptionally risky. You could try to do that, and chances are you will go your entire life and do nothing but fail.

Lewis Howes 7:34 Mm.

Speaker 7:34 Okay? That-

Lewis Howes 7:35 How many companies have you invested in?

Speaker 7:37 I'm invested in about 150-

Lewis Howes 7:41 Private companies, not public

Speaker 7:42 ... private companies.

Lewis Howes 7:43 150 right now.

Speaker 7:44 Private, yes. Meaning each of those companies, I probably have met the founder, have done a massive amount of due diligence, uh, on the space and the sector. It just, it's been a huge part of my life, quite honestly.

Lewis Howes 7:58 And how many of those will fail or have failed?

Speaker 8:02 Almost all of them.

Lewis Howes 8:03 That's crazy, isn't it?

Speaker 8:04 Like, probably, like, 75% maybe.

Lewis Howes 8:06 Wow.

Speaker 8:07 Uh-

Lewis Howes 8:07 So you do a lot of the research, the analytics.

Speaker 8:09 [laughs]

Lewis Howes 8:09 You've got a data company that analyzes all these things in the industries and pred- and helps predict certain things, and even with all that work, 75% of your investments are probably gonna fail.

Speaker 8:21 Yeah. It's, it... Because, because you're investing in an early stage company-

Lewis Howes 8:26 Yeah

Speaker 8:26 ... that has a tremendous amount of... You're investing in a, an idea and the person, okay? [laughs]

Lewis Howes 8:31 And the hope that in five to 10 years it'll make money.

Speaker 8:34 Yeah. So that's where it gets risky.

Lewis Howes 8:37 Oh.

Speaker 8:37 That's where you could make a case that maybe you should do that, and maybe you should just never do that, right? Um, I would say for most people, it's insane to go out and start your own company ever.

Speaker 8:50 And I've done it. I've done it multiple times.

Lewis Howes 8:52 Why is it insane to start your own company?

Speaker 8:54 'Cause you're almost definitely going to fail. Like, when I said 75%, that's 75% of my portfolio that were deeply vetted, and I'm pretty good at doing what I do. Um, mo- almost all companies will just fail. If you go to start a company, it's just almost definitely you're going to fail.

Lewis Howes 9:13 Even the ones that succeed maybe aren't making a lot of money. It's just getting by. It's breaking even. It's, like, 5%, you know. It's not making a ton where you're getting rich.

Speaker 9:23 There are a near infinite number of ways for a founder to fail, okay? Now, put that aside, okay? [laughs] Uh, being an investor, like, just generally being an investor, right, investing in stocks, investing in the market, this is what's so wild. You could actually go out and invest in the smartest people in the world. Like, you could just be like... By the way, complete psychopaths, people that w- will be like, they don't... They're gonna, like, destroy their family and, or not have a family. They will have basically no friends. They will work 80 hours a week. They're a genius. They're a psychopath. They are gonna, they, they're gonna do whatever it takes. They'll steamroll relationships to make their company a success. You can invest in Steve Jobs back in the day, right? You can invest in Jeff Bezos. You can invest... You might hate Zuckerberg, but you can invest in Mark Zuckerberg if you want, right? Um, Sam Altman, Elon Musk, right? Like, whoever it is. Like, you don't have to try to be them. You could just literally just throw some money and just ride their life, right?

Lewis Howes 10:38 [laughs]

Speaker 10:38 Just, like, anything they create, any value that they create in this world, you could just get paid for all the stuff that they're doing. Like, we don't ever think like that, but you could do that. Like, we already know who these people are, and there are, are a lot of them out there, right? And do you think that you are that ambitious? Do you think that you're

Speaker 11:01 that smart? Are you willing to throw your whole life away just, just to achieve what they achieve? For almost everyone, that's probably not a smart or a healthy decision, honestly. But you don't have to.

Lewis Howes 11:16 [laughs] They're doing it. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 11:17 They're doing it for you. So, like, I would... This is, like, the one thing that I wish someone would've sat me aside 30 years ago and said, "Chris, you're gonna spend most of your life torturing yourself as a founder," which is what happened to me, okay?

Lewis Howes 11:33 [laughs]

Speaker 11:34 Starting companies, growing companies. You're gonna have a, you're gonna have success this much of the time, and almost all the rest, it, you're gonna fail. 'Cause I've started so many companies. Almost all of them have failed.

Lewis Howes 11:47 And it's exhausting, right?

Speaker 11:48 It's exhausting. [laughs] You learn a lot.

Lewis Howes 11:51 And you're a smart guy, and you're talented, and you've got the skills and the resources, and you know managing people and understanding the markets and what should work.

Speaker 11:58 I have had so many privileges and so many advantages.

Lewis Howes 12:04 And it's still hard.

Speaker 12:05 So many. Like, I, like- My parents were so amazing to have, like, moved us into a neighborhood with the most successful people in the country.

Lewis Howes 12:15 Wow.

Speaker 12:16 And, like, I would start businesses in middle school and high school.

Lewis Howes 12:19 Mm-hmm.

Speaker 12:20 Car detailing, this, that. Just deeply engaging with these people all the time, right? And so yeah, I've had access to some of the smartest, most ambitious people in the world that have helped me all along the way, and still it's almost impossible.

Lewis Howes 12:37 Right.

Speaker 12:37 It's almost impossible. [laughs] And, like, now looking back, I, I joke around and I'm like, I'm like, "You know, yes, I'm invested in 150 private companies," and I probably have tried to start that many over the course of my lifetime myself. And if I would've just not done any of that and just focused on investing in other great people... And n- not that there aren't great people starting companies, but it's really difficult to kinda decipher who, who is-

Lewis Howes 13:08 Who's gonna win

Speaker 13:09 ... who is... Like, what their weaknesses are when they're just starting off in life.

Lewis Howes 13:12 Yeah, and everyone looks great in the beginning of pitching an idea.

Speaker 13:14 Yep.

Lewis Howes 13:14 And we've got this amazing idea, and it's revolutionary, and it's the newest this, and it's gonna compete against all these other people. And, and here's our projections for the next three to seven years.

Speaker 13:24 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 13:24 It's only gonna go up. It's like, everything looks good.

Speaker 13:27 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 13:27 But it's really hard to make money over five, seven, 10 years in a business. And to take on the adversities, the challenges, whether it's tariffs or what- whatever it is, like, just people problems, it's hard to navigate every adversity every day that comes your way running a business and sustain it over years.

Speaker 13:47 Cor- correct.

Lewis Howes 13:48 It's really challenging.

Speaker 13:49 Meanwhile, you can just pick from the best companies in the world-

Lewis Howes 13:52 And let them do the work

Speaker 13:53 ... l- let them do the work, and as soon as they do something that's sus, you just, you can sell it and get into a different company, right? There's fully liquid market.

Lewis Howes 14:01 Yeah.

Speaker 14:01 Uh, these days, stocks trade pretty much 24 hours a day, right? The Robinhood and stuff. So it's like, it is such a magical time to be an investor. Like, it i- this is the best time in my life to be an investor, um, and especially, quite honestly, to be investing in public markets. Like I used to say it was really difficult, uh, to identify information asymmetry, which is, like, my style of investing, like, to identify information that other people don't see or don't appreciate. It's never been easier as a retail investor to, to do that and to beat Wall Street. Wall Street is, uh, weaker than they've ever been. Uh, they've had so many layoffs over the past decade. They're, they, they're operating off of just a small amount of resources-

Lewis Howes 14:48 Mm

Speaker 14:48 ... compared to what they used to have, right? Um, the advantage has swung back to us retail investors. There's just never been a better time. Plus, there's just a lot more publicly traded companies now. They can't keep up with all the information flow. Uh, we live in a digital world. We live in a social world. What does that

Speaker 15:09 mean? It means that we're able to detect change. When I say we, I mean, like, normal people, like, that are just surfing Instagram and TikTok all day, which is what I basically do for my investment research. We're able-

Lewis Howes 15:24 Just seeing trends

Speaker 15:24 ... we're able to see the world evolve and change in real time as it's happening without all the noise of Wall Street. Um, and by the way, we live all around the world. We, like, live in the real world, right? We don't all live in kinda the same s- place, the Northeast, where we're kind of, like, all working together in the same buildings, around the same type of noise with the same media, CNBC, Wall Street Journal. Like, just an echo chamber of thoughts. We're actually seeing the world change in real time, and that change ultimately is what impacts all the companies in the world-

Lewis Howes 16:03 Wow

Speaker 16:03 ... positively and negatively. So my entire style of investing, uh, which I call social arbitrage, it's like information asymmetry. Um, but what it really is is just observational investing, okay? It's just literally observing the world, seeing a change, connecting the dots to the companies and sectors that are gonna benefit from that change or be harmed by that change, 'cause you can invest in, you know, in, in, in shorting companies if you wanna go down that road, right?

Lewis Howes 16:36 Sure, sure.

Speaker 16:36 Uh, placing your bets and beating Wall Street. Like, that's all that it is. And the people that are, are positioned best to do really well with that type of investing are just normal people that are not, like, financially minded, that are not mathematicians.

Lewis Howes 16:56 Why does it seem so scary, though, for people to invest, especially when they hear stories like early in your career you invested a lot of money, and 70% of it you lost, you know, pretty quickly with a crash happening?

Speaker 17:09 Yeah, and it all came back pretty quickly.

Lewis Howes 17:10 Yeah, but most people would stop after that and say, "Oh, this is so painful. I just lost all of this money, which is time, all those hours that I spent to make that money and put it in here. Now it's gone."

Speaker 17:23 Yeah, but that's just

Speaker 17:24 a mind trick, right? Like, th- that's-

Lewis Howes 17:26 H- how do you overcome that, though?

Speaker 17:27 It's just not, it's just not rational. So, like-

Lewis Howes 17:29 How do you overcome that, though? You spend five years making... You know, saving all your money, you invest it, and then it's gone essentially overnight. How do you get over that mental and emotional loss and stick it out and kinda keep going, you know?

Speaker 17:43 It's a great question, and here, and here's what I tell people. You know, any money that you have invested in risk assets, the stock market is a risk as- asset, you have to mentally every time you check your account reduce it by 70%.

Lewis Howes 18:00 Really?

Speaker 18:01 Yeah, because that's your downside realistically. Just realistically, that's your downside. So from the first dollar you put in- You think your account's a $100 account and it's a $30 account.

Lewis Howes 18:12 Yeah.

Speaker 18:12 You have to be willing to live with that risk account being 70% less, okay? Realistically, that's probably the lowest it's ever gonna go, in the worst of all worst case scenarios. Now-

Lewis Howes 18:24 Before you sell that-

Speaker 18:25 Could it theoretically go lower? Anything is possible in this world. We can disappear tomorrow, okay?

Lewis Howes 18:31 [laughs]

Speaker 18:31 So, like anything is possible. Um, but for the most part, your absolute, like, Great Depression style, worst of all worst case scenarios, I like to think of it as down 70%. So, uh, bucketing money is one of the most important things for an investor to do. So I always talk about the fact that investors only really have two decisions to make. How much of their money they want to have bucketed in risk assets, and how much they want to have bucketed in safety, uh, being treasury bills, right? Or just a treasury-backed cash account-

Lewis Howes 19:09 Mm-hmm

Speaker 19:09 ... that's paying you 3, 4, 5% a year. Whatever. You make that decision, and that decision changes over the course of your life. So when you're young, you might have 5 or 10%, or maybe even 0% in the safe bucket. Maybe you have 20%. And when you're old, you might have 80 or 90% in that bucket, right?

Lewis Howes 19:28 Right.

Speaker 19:28 Everyone

Speaker 19:29 tries to overcomplicate wealth management. Everyone thinks, "Oh, it's really sophisticated." You go to a wealth manager and they'll hand you, like, an 80-page report that's your, like, personal financial plan. You're like, "Dude, this is so sophisticated." It's all BS. The whole thing is BS. Like, it's just a printed out load of crap to make it seem like it's sophisticated and you need all that assistance and help. Like, for me, I have money that's safe and I have money in risk assets. That's it. And, and, and honestly, for most people, if you don't wanna play the game of trying to beat the market, the money in risk assets could just be in an S&P 500 ETF, exchange traded fund, that is basically free to buy and cost you, like, one-tenth of 1% internal management fee every year. It's, it's, it's the world's, like, cheapest way to invest, and you just put money in there every week or every month, and you don't think about it. And then you open it up in 40 years and you're super wealthy.

Lewis Howes 20:33 Right. [laughs]

Speaker 20:33 Right? Like, super wealthy.

Lewis Howes 20:35 Right, right. And just keep it simple.

Speaker 20:36 Keep it simple. Like, I always tell everyone, like, if you are just willing to start investing, there will be a moment in your life, more than likely, when you wake up one day and you realize that you're making more money from your investment portfolio than you are from your job. I'll never forget the day that happened to me. Uh, and I was like-

Lewis Howes 20:58 What was that like? How old were you?

Speaker 21:00 So amazing. I, I, I [laughs] was... It was probably 2008, 2009-ish, 'cause it was right around the time I wrote my book, Laughing at Wall Street. And I had turned $20,000 into two million in three years-

Lewis Howes 21:20 Wow

Speaker 21:20 ... in, in my brokerage account. And I was making a lot of money from my job at the time. I was making, like, over $200,000 a year, which back then was-

Lewis Howes 21:31 Whoa

Speaker 21:31 ... a lot of money. I was a sales guy, right? And that, for... It just wasn't enough money for the life I wanted to live with my family, and the things that I wanted

Speaker 21:43 to achieve in my life for other people. I'm, like, a very, like, I have a foundation. Like, I have, like, massive dreams of doing some really big things for f- in, in the philanthropic world. And I was like, "I can't live the life I wanna live in the neighborhood I wanna live it in-

Lewis Howes 21:58 Right

Speaker 21:59 ... do this for my family, and achieve that for other people on $200,000 a year, or even if I grow it to 300,000." And I didn't really see a way to grow it to, like, meaningfully higher than that. And I think almost every ordinary person, like, substitute those numbers for other numbers, but every ordinary person is likely in the same boat, where they're, like, making this much money and they know that if they really kill it, they can probably get to here, but almost impossible to get above that ceiling. And that's the problem. The problem is, what happens is they start thinking, "I need to start a business." Okay?

Lewis Howes 22:36 That's-

Speaker 22:37 That-

Lewis Howes 22:37 That's the worst thing to do, right? [laughs]

Speaker 22:38 Y- yes, yes. So, so, so you get in that zone and you think-

Lewis Howes 22:42 Yeah

Speaker 22:42 ... "I gotta, I, I gotta start a business. I gotta start flipping houses. I gotta start doing this, doing that." And it's like, ugh, I hate it that that is the roadmap for almost every single person. Uh, or-

Lewis Howes 22:58 You know what's interesting about that? Sorry to cut you off there.

Speaker 23:00 No.

Lewis Howes 23:00 It's interesting... And I, and I understand it, 'cause that's what I did early on. I was like, "I need to f-" At first, I was, like, trying to get a job 'cause I was broke on my sister's couch, and I was like, "I just need to make some money. I need to get a job." But I had no money, and I really didn't have any expenses living on my sister's couch for a year and a half also, that I was like, "Let me go try to figure out how to make money on my own." And I launched my own thing on the side w- 'cause I didn't have anything. I didn't have any responsibilities, no bills, no kids, no relationship, nothing. And I learned how to make money on my own without working in a, I guess, a career or job, and then I've just been riding that and figuring out how to make more money. But I don't

Lewis Howes 23:39 think... It is so time-consuming. It's so challenging. There's so many ups and downs-

Speaker 23:44 Mm

Lewis Howes 23:44 ... that it, and it's rare to make a lot of money in the first couple years of running a business. There's so many costs that you don't think about that happen, that it's just like, it is hard. And-

Speaker 23:58 It's almost impossible.

Lewis Howes 23:59 [laughs] It's so-

Speaker 24:00 I, listen, I, I own businesses, I own restaurants. Uh, I, I, like, it is so hard. It's almost impossible.

Lewis Howes 24:09 It, and it's interesting you say that because that's what a lot of people think about. "Let me go launch a business or a side hustle or something else," when all we could do is just, "Let me put some of my money into investments and let it make money for me without having to work harder."

Speaker 24:23 Yeah. Yeah

Lewis Howes 24:25 Right?

Speaker 24:25 Yes.

Lewis Howes 24:26 But it's, it seems so scary of a thing to do for people that have never done it because it's like, "I don't know where this is going. Can I get my money out? What if it goes down? Then I've lost my money." And then it, people retract, right? They're like, "I don't wanna do that. I'm just gonna keep it safe." And so I understand both sides.

Speaker 24:45 This is the biggest life hack. Nothing comes close. Literally nothing comes remotely close to this life hack. Forget about everything else in life and just start investing. Period. You're done. And guess what? Y- you don't have to spend any time if you don't want to. You can go do all your hobbies, do all of your stuff. Just start aggressively investing, and you do not have to sweat the next 30, 40 years trying to restart yourself, your career over and over and over again doing side hustles and, you know, lots of starts and stops and a lot of depression. And then a lo- what, what I think I see a lot of, 'cause, you know, my entire life is, i- i- is analyzing social media now for trends, right? That's what I do for my investing. And it's just a crap load of complaining, uh, from this generation. Which I get it. I get it. If, if you don't know this life hack, I totally understand the frustration. You can't make enough money to live the life you wanna live,

Speaker 25:50 and you see absolutely no, like, light at the end of the tunnel in terms of how you can make it happen. That is a really depressing place to be, and it's gonna cause you to get out and start complaining.

Lewis Howes 26:04 And you see other people living this rich life or posting like they have a rich life, whether they have it or not, seeming like they're happy with this lifestyle.

Speaker 26:14 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 26:14 You know, taking trips and ventures and flying private or whatever it is.

Speaker 26:18 And that, and, and, and see, see that's the issue because everyone keeps talking about the income gap. Like, we've heard so much about the income gap the last decade, decade and a half. How are we gonna solve the income gap? You're not gonna solve the income gap. It's not happening. You can make really small dents in the income gap if you want to, but it's a lost cause. So just stop. Okay?

Lewis Howes 26:45 [laughs]

Speaker 26:45 Just stop. Now, the wealth gap, that's a solvable problem. That is 100% a solvable problem.

Lewis Howes 26:55 How do we solve it?

Speaker 26:56 Getting the entire world to invest. Every single person that you're trying to solve the income gap for, just stop and just focus on the wealth gap. Instead of trying to figure out how to make that person earn three times more than they're earning, it's not gonna happen. Make small cha- you know, try to help them still, uh, to maximize their career. That should all still happen. But teach them how to invest.

Lewis Howes 27:27 Mm.

Speaker 27:27 It's not even teaching. Just convince them. You see, w- like, I even hate that I just had to say the word teaching. You don't have to learn. You just have to be convinced. You just have to be convinced. And, and, and every single person has money to invest, period. Now, I know people are gonna hear me say that, and it's gonna, like, result in a stream of angry comments 'cause they're like, "This guy is just completely out of touch," and, "No, I don't have money to invest." Yes, you do. Um, you don't have money to invest because you're thinking about every dollar as a dollar. But,

Speaker 28:05 like, this is a big part of what I wrote about, uh, in my book, uh, a long time ago. When I turned $20,000 into two million in three years, and I'm not saying that people can do that. It- that was rare. Um, but absolutely you could turn every dollar to $100 over a much longer period of time as an investor just with compounding. And when you realize that, once you believe that, you'll start to think of every dollar as $100, right?

Lewis Howes 28:34 Mm.

Speaker 28:34 And so when you start to think of every dollar in your life as $100, it changes everything. So I don't care who you are, there is a point to which you are not making trade-offs. You're not clipping coupons. You might clip $2 coupons, but you're not gonna clip a 10 cent coupon. Well, all of a sudden, when everything's 100X, you're clipping 10 cent coupons. You're clipping 50 cent coupons. You are, you know... I don't know. You're just doing all kinds of things differently in your life. You know, maybe you're mowing your yard now. Maybe you're making your coffee at home instead of going to Starbucks. All the things that weren't quite worth trade- trading off are all of a sudden worth making a trade-off for. Here's the difference. That money that you save by doing all of those things, right, all goes into your investment account for risk assets, right? And so believe me, when you start thinking of every dollar as $100, and it will be $100 at some point, you start finding money in your life. I don't care what it is.

Lewis Howes 29:37 Mm.

Speaker 29:37 I don't care. [laughs] There's literally a bil- you know, there are people on YouTube, they're actually insane with how to find money, right?

Lewis Howes 29:44 Mm.

Speaker 29:44 Doing all these crazy things. And you're like, "That is just way too much of a hassle to make an extra $3 or $4. But for $300, I'm doing it." And it is $300. Once you understand that by taking that money and investing it in risk assets over the course of a long period of time, that $3 is 300, boom, you're making 300 bucks in the morning. You're making 300 bucks at night doing this. Like, you're

Speaker 30:12 clip- like, you're doing all the stuff, right?

Lewis Howes 30:14 It's like a game then in your mind. Oh, how can I turn this $1 into $100? How many $1 can I find and put away into investments today?

Speaker 30:21 It's just, it's a mindset change.

Lewis Howes 30:24 How long does it take in a risk asset to turn $1 into $100?

Speaker 30:28 Listen, it's different. It's different for everyone. It's different for every period of time. I can't predict how the next 30 years is going to go. Um, but I do believe that this is- ... one of the most interesting times to be an investor because of the age of AI that's quickly coming for us. So one way to think about this is, is our human labor to some extent is a little, will, for some period of time, might get devalued, right? If, if we're creating a new industry and that industry is the industry of intelligence, historically, that's come from us.

Lewis Howes 31:09 Mm.

Speaker 31:09 Right? So now there's an industry of intelligence, and if that industry of intelligence is going to devalue human intelligence, then what do we do as humans? We want to invest in the industry of intelligence, and we want to invest in the way that that is going to impact the world positively. So this new industry of intelligence-

Lewis Howes 31:36 Mm

Speaker 31:36 ... that we call AI and automation and robotics and all the stuff that I'm really into right now, that is gonna make our entire world incredibly more productive, right? It's gonna bring us efficiencies that we just didn't think were possible in our lifetime, meaning that enterprise industry is going to become way bigger and way more profitable than it ever has. And we can make money off that by simply owning a piece of it.

Lewis Howes 32:06 Mm.

Speaker 32:07 So you just... Well, you, you asked me earlier, you said, "What does investing mean?" It just means owning a piece of the world. That's all that it means. Y- y- you wanna own something more than yourself? You need to invest, okay? So once we start investing, we start owning a piece of that thing that we hate and we like to b- about.

Lewis Howes 32:27 Mm.

Speaker 32:27 Okay? So [laughs] it's like all of a sudden... You know why guys like

Speaker 32:31 me don't complain that much? 'Cause I own all that stuff, so it's benefiting me. But I actually want everybody to own it. I hate that I'm making all this money off of industry, I'm making all this money off of technology advancements, and all of these other people are not just because nobody, like, taught them or convinced them that that was something that they needed to do.

Lewis Howes 32:56 Interesting.

Speaker 32:57 And, and why did I know it? Because, again, I was privileged to grow up in a neighborhood of really wealthy people that were investors and they were smart, and, like, I had access to all of this. I was really fortunate. Most people were not as fortunate as me. So now I gotta spend my entire life on YouTube trying to spread that word to every person that's not growing up-

Lewis Howes 33:21 Wow

Speaker 33:21 ... in a neighborhood with multi-million dollar houses, right? That is growing up in a neighborhood where the culture is not telling you that every single day. Like-

Lewis Howes 33:31 It's more-

Speaker 33:31 ... hey, kid, you gotta invest

Lewis Howes 33:32 ... it's more on spending versus investing.

Speaker 33:35 Exactly. Mm-hmm. And, and-

Lewis Howes 33:36 It's more on how do I look good or how do I get the next thing that's gonna make me feel happy-

Speaker 33:41 Yes

Lewis Howes 33:41 ... and be socially accepted with my peers instead of how can I hopefully live below my means for a while, use that money to invest, and then once I start making more on my investments, the profit's there, and then I can buy certain things if I want to or just keep reinvesting it.

Speaker 33:59 One thing you just said was wrong. You don't need to live below your means to do it.

Lewis Howes 34:02 Okay.

Speaker 34:02 That's the thing. Like, y- a lot of the things that I was referencing to, like, make... to find money in your life to start investing with, I don't care if it's $5, you can open up account right now with, like, five bucks.

Lewis Howes 34:15 Mm-hmm.

Speaker 34:15 Uh, a lot of these things were not living below your means. It's just kind of doing things. Like, clipping coupons is not living below your means. You know? Like, like, it's just doing things a little bit differently to find money in your life, uh, that you didn't really care about.

Lewis Howes 34:32 Sure.

Speaker 34:32 But now with the mindset change of accumulating these dollars that are actually going to eventually be worth hopefully $100 each, hey, you fall short and they're only worth 40 or 50.

Lewis Howes 34:44 Right.

Speaker 34:44 Does it even matter?

Lewis Howes 34:45 [laughs]

Speaker 34:46 Does it even matter? The bottom line is these very tiny dollars are gonna become very big, and you don't have to do anything but literally just do it and throw it in an account-

Lewis Howes 34:54 Yeah

Speaker 34:55 ... and just let it compound.

Lewis Howes 34:57 Chris, I know a lot of your audience that you mentioned before we started is men, you know, that are kind of in your system, in your community, on YouTube and Twitter, who are listening to you. Uh, there's a lot of women that watch and listen to The School of Greatness. And if there's man or a woman in their 20s and 30s, let's say, who hasn't gotten into investing yet, who hasn't taken it seriously, um, what would be the strategy if someone had an extra 100 to $1,000 a month

Lewis Howes 35:24 and they said, "I'm gonna start going all in, in this strategy"? And whether it's $100 a month, a thousand, eventually more if they have more, what should they start doing today to set themselves up for their future success?

Speaker 35:36 Yeah, I, I've been aggressively trying to bring women into the investment world for 20 years, and I'm almost at a point of giving up. Uh, I've tried so hard. Uh, I told them, like, when I wrote my book, I exclusively market through mommy bloggers, right? Because my entire investing methodology is observational investing. And the ironic thing is that women are better positioned, way better positioned than men to excel at this strategy. Like, women are so... Th- th- women are way deeper into these sectors. Fashion, make- ... Like, okay, like I, I was just telling you the world has become digital and social, right? The best investments come from change. The bigger the change, the bigger the opportunity, right? How do you detect that change in the world? You detect that change, uh, through- You know,

Speaker 36:40 reading conversations. What are people thinking? What are they doing? What do they want? What are they buying? Where are they going? Where are they shopping? Where are they eating? Who talks about this stuff more than anyone else? Like, who expresses themself? Who expresses their feelings about their interest and their, and what they want to own and what they want to do? Women, way more than men. Who's listening? Women, way more than men. Women actually have all of the insight. Women have all of the alpha. They have it. They are just not convinced that they can monetize it.

Lewis Howes 37:20 Mm.

Speaker 37:20 Right? I've literally, like, almost, like, most of my biggest trades over the past 20 years have come from female and youth trends.

Lewis Howes 37:30 Really?

Speaker 37:30 Right. [laughs] Yes, most. Why? Because those are the trades where there is the maximum amount of information asymmetry, where the mostly older, whiter, wealthier men who control most of capital markets on Wall Street, they are slow to pick up on that change that's happening to... Like, like, I always tell the story about Jeffree Star wh- when he did a YouTube video of the Elf Primer Putty makeup. This was, like, I don't know, 10 years ago. Elf was a drugstore brand.

Lewis Howes 38:10 Mm.

Speaker 38:11 It was like the cheapest, junkiest brand of makeup and he's like, "This is just as good as the $60 version." And I went to Walgreens and I just stood there all day and watched moms and kids coming in and they emptied the shelf of Elf Cosmetics because of this one product. And that video got like 11 million views on YouTube, and I called the Wall Street analyst who covered cosmetics for one of the big three sell side banks, and I asked the person if they had seen the video. I was like, "Did you see the Jeffree Star video?" Uh, and they're like, "Who's Jeffree Star?" They don't even watch YouTube. They don't even, they don't even know who these people are. They are so out of touch. Um, and that ended up being a monster... This, this is when Elf was at $7 a share, right? It went up to, like, 160 eventually.

Lewis Howes 38:59 Wow.

Speaker 38:59 And now it's back down to, like, 50, 60, 70, whatever. Um, most of my biggest trades, I think probably females knew about that information long before any men generally knew about it.

Lewis Howes 39:13 Why aren't women in general taking action on the information they see socially, digitally, and culturally? When they see a trend happening, why do you think there's a fear or hesitation behind not investing in that trend?

Speaker 39:28 W- I think just the, the field of finance which is associated with the field of investing, uh, historically there, uh, is a misconception that you need to be a finance head or a math head to do this stuff. Historically, the men in society have always been over that. So it's just a massive misconception and it's just... I thought we would've come out of it 20 years ago when I first started talking about this [laughs] but, like, it takes a long time for people to break out of it. Like, look at what's happened in the workforce w- with women, right? Like-

Lewis Howes 40:12 Mm

Speaker 40:12 ... that happened. Like, we have now, like, massively changed, like, who is in these jobs. Like, that's happened, but it hasn't happened yet in the investor class.

Lewis Howes 40:25 Mm.

Speaker 40:25 The investor class is still, at least the active investor class, people that are thinking and aggressively pursuing investment accounts, is still majority of men, right? That are talking about this, thinking about it, connecting dots. And it's crazy to me, man. It's just, it's absolutely crazy to me because when I... Like, most of my insights come from TikTok comments. So for-

Lewis Howes 40:52 It's TikTok

Speaker 40:52 ... I don't know, eight years I've been spending three to four hours a night ingesting TikTok comments. That, that-

Lewis Howes 40:58 [laughs]

Speaker 40:58 ... that is most, where I get-

Lewis Howes 40:59 Wow

Speaker 40:59 ... most of my information from. Uh, before TikTok it was Twitter and Instagram and Facebook, right? Going b- Facebook going back to the late-

Lewis Howes 41:10 Oh, wow

Speaker 41:10 ... 2000s.

Lewis Howes 41:11 What's the best trade you made in the last four years on TikTok comments that has paid dividends for you?

Speaker 41:18 I mean,

Speaker 41:19 almost all of my trades these da- I mean, h- honestly, like, most of them come off of TikTok. Like, uh, one of them was, like, the, the big Crocs trade when Crocs started coming back in a really-

Lewis Howes 41:33 Massive now, right?

Speaker 41:34 ... big way. Yeah, massive. That was mostly based on TikTok comments. Wall Street just thought that Crocs was a fad that would come and quickly go away. They've always thought that about Crocs. And during the pandemic especially, uh, during the pandemic there was a huge trend, uh, for Crocs and it was because of two things. One, they did, they killed it with the nursing community and the healthcare community, but then also they were doing all these big celebrity colla-

Lewis Howes 42:04 Mm

Speaker 42:05 ... collaborations, right? So they did these celebrity collaborations, and all of a sudden it kinda, like, made Crocs cool. And it really made Crocs cool with, like, the middle school-

Lewis Howes 42:17 Oh

Speaker 42:17 ... crowd.

Lewis Howes 42:18 All of them.

Speaker 42:18 It's going, uh, yeah.

Lewis Howes 42:19 Elementary school and-

Speaker 42:20 And so I was, like, reading these comments and I was like, "Dude, like, this is crazy. Like, Crocs are on fire." Uh, and-

Lewis Howes 42:26 How much was it that, uh, the stock at that point?

Speaker 42:29 I don't even... I, I don't remember exact numbers.

Lewis Howes 42:31 Got it. Got it.

Speaker 42:31 Uh, but the, there were so many things that happened during the pandemic-

Lewis Howes 42:35 Right

Speaker 42:35 ... honestly, because the pandemic was one of the biggest changes that we've ever experienced in cul- in, in, like, consumer behavior of our lifetime. Like, all of a sudden the entire world- Just spent a year in their house, right? [laughs] So, like, think about all the change that happened when we all just went home for a year. We started- we cared a lot more about cameras on our computers. Logitech, right, that makes all the cameras.

Lewis Howes 43:05 Mm-hmm.

Speaker 43:05 Uh, guess what we bought a lot more of. Printers.

Lewis Howes 43:09 Interesting.

Speaker 43:09 Weird, right? 'Cause all of a sudden we're doing our schoolwork at home now, we're having to print out stuff.

Lewis Howes 43:13 Mm.

Speaker 43:13 All kinds of stuff. There were so many things. We started buying camping equipment. Uh, one of my biggest trades was Schwinn Bicycle-

Lewis Howes 43:20 Yeah

Speaker 43:20 ... which was part of a small Canadian publicly traded company. There were lines around every bicycle shop. Remember that?

Lewis Howes 43:26 Interesting,

Lewis Howes 43:27 yeah.

Speaker 43:27 Remember that, the lines around bikes?

Lewis Howes 43:28 You gotta get outside, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 43:29 We bought more bicycles during that six-month period than, like, ever. Uh, we bought more campers, camper vans. People were going camping, remember? Uh, more ATVs, more boats. Uh, I was just basically, all I was doing was I was on, just reading comments on the internet, just seeing what people were buying, what they were talking about, right? Uh, there was more change than what we've ever experienced in our lifetime. And, like, people were obviously buying Pelotons, right? Uh, shopping at home. Amazon killed it. Shopify killed it. I mean, looking back, it's all obvious stuff, but in the moment, Wall Street was really slow, like really slow to pick up on that stuff. I can't even tell you how many phone calls I did with like, literally, like, like, people that sold ATVs or, like, jet skis, and, and they were like, "We've never experienced anything like this." And I'm like, "Why is Sea-Doo not going up?" Like the company. It's like Sea-Doo, right? [laughs] Like that was one of my big trades.

Lewis Howes 44:27 Really?

Speaker 44:27 Just s- like there were 100 of them. So during the year of the pandemic, uh, I don't know, maybe your audience doesn't know this, but during the year of the pandemic, I turned a $4.5 million brokerage account into 35 million.

Lewis Howes 44:43 Holy-

Speaker 44:44 At its peak. Yeah. So [laughs] yeah.

Lewis Howes 44:46 What a-

Speaker 44:46 Just doing that. Just literally doing that. Not doing anything sophisticated, just like, "Oh my gosh, people are all buying bicycles." That company 7ed X. It, it went up seven, 7X from where it was. Seven or 8X. Uh, so this is not like trading derivatives or options, like the actual company itself went up 700% in a very-

Lewis Howes 45:08 [laughs]

Speaker 45:08 ... short period of time.

Lewis Howes 45:09 Crazy.

Speaker 45:09 As did Peloton.

Lewis Howes 45:10 Uh-huh.

Speaker 45:11 As did so many of these companies that had never experienced that type of growth.

Lewis Howes 45:17 When do you know when to sell?

Speaker 45:19 Um, so-

Lewis Howes 45:19 When to get in, when to sell, and if, what if people are like, "It just seems like a lot of time to be watching the market every day, making sure I'm getting the maximum out of my trades."

Speaker 45:27 So I'll summarize for you what I do.

Lewis Howes 45:30 Yes.

Speaker 45:30 But if you wanna go in really deep, my

Speaker 45:33 book is very personal. It's very old.

Lewis Howes 45:34 Yeah.

Speaker 45:34 It's like 15 years old now. Uh, Jack Schwager wrote a book called Unknown Market Wizards, where he spent, I think, a decade researching the top retail traders in the world, and I was really fortunate to be one of the five, uh, equity traders that trade stocks-

Lewis Howes 45:50 Mm

Speaker 45:50 ... to be included in the book. He wrote a 35-page chapter on my methodology, and he really goes in deep to my process.

Lewis Howes 45:58 Okay.

Speaker 45:58 But at a very high lev- but it's called Unknown Market Wizards. And I don't make any money when he sells books, but, but it's, he, he spent two days interviewing me. It was nuts. Uh, and he has interviewed every hedge fund manager in the world pretty much for the last 40 years.

Lewis Howes 46:12 Wow.

Speaker 46:12 And he's seen it all. But if, basically what I do is I surface some big change that's happening in the world. It could be a change to consumer behavior, to culture, uh, to technology, politics. It could be a change in the weather. Like one of my big trades back in the day was a company called Beacon Roofing because I would monitor every spring the number of people that were searching the word roof repair on Google.

Lewis Howes 46:44 [laughs]

Speaker 46:45 And I literally would go, I'd had 10 years of history, and every year it would spike, roof repair, right? And one year, the hailstorms hit populated areas at such a high degree that the word roof repair was triple anything I'd ever seen before. Well, it takes the insurance industry, I think, like a full month to print the report of insurance claims-

Lewis Howes 47:09 Ah

Speaker 47:10 ... that Wall Street uses to trade-

Lewis Howes 47:12 Ah

Speaker 47:12 ... companies like Beacon Roofing that are, they're, like the largest roofing supply company in the country. But I had access to that information within 24, 48 hours of the big hail storms.

Lewis Howes 47:23 Interesting.

Speaker 47:23 And, and, and the reason why it's hard to assess hail damage is because you could have really big hail storms, but if they don't hit highly populated areas, they don't matter, right? If they hit a highly populated area and destroy a bunch of roofs, that does a bunch of roof damage. That increases sales for the company

Speaker 47:41 that makes most of the roofing materials in the United States-

Lewis Howes 47:43 Sure

Speaker 47:43 ... Beacon Roofing.

Lewis Howes 47:44 Wow.

Speaker 47:44 And so, like that's just one random example of a trade. Um-

Lewis Howes 47:48 It sounds like legal insider trading by getting-

Speaker 47:51 It l-

Lewis Howes 47:52 ... public information-

Speaker 47:53 Yes, that's exactly what it is

Lewis Howes 47:54 ... and saying, "Oh, this looks like it might happen in the next couple weeks or month. Let me get in now."

Speaker 47:59 And there's never been an easier time to do it, 'cause now I can just do it from my, from my iPhone on my recliner at 11:00 PM at night-

Lewis Howes 48:07 [laughs]

Speaker 48:07 ... searching comments on TikTok or, you know, that's how I get my alpha now. Back in the day, I used to do what Peter Lynch used to do in the '80s, which was like literally s- stroll the mall and look for what stores people were shopping at and talk to people and talk to people that worked at stores and try to assess what was hot, what was not. Like, that was very time-consuming. And I still do that a little bit.

Lewis Howes 50:16 Yeah.

Speaker 50:16 Like, like-

Lewis Howes 50:17 You see comments-

Speaker 50:18 ... [laughs]

Lewis Howes 50:18 ... out here to catch it. So when I feel as that, from my spiritual perspective, when God is pouring into me, it's overflowing into my kids, it's over-