I made $80M. Now I’m putting 70% of my portfolio in ONE stock - Chris Camillo

1. 0:00 – 6:29

   Social Arbitrage

   1. CCChris Camillo0:00

      The world is still unsure about how this is gonna play out. I'm not unsure. I'm willing to bet it all. [upbeat music]

   2. SPShaan Puri0:14

      What's up? Chris, good to see you again.

   3. CCChris Camillo0:16

      Hey, Shaan. How you doing, man?

   4. SPShaan Puri0:17

      I'm good. So we should start with a little, a little intro. Sam, you weren't here last time Chris was on. Chris, can you do, like, the, the, the simplest explanation of who you are, number one, and then number two is your kind of unique philosophy and unique strategy that you've used to buy, you know, buy and sell stocks to invest?

   5. CCChris Camillo0:38

      Yeah, I mean, I'm a reg- I'm a regular person. For most of my career, I've had a regular job. Uh, I'm not a financial analyst. I'm not a technical trader. I hate all that stuff. I hate technicals. I hate fundamentals.

   6. SPShaan Puri0:49

      [chuckles]

   7. CCChris Camillo0:50

      I'm like most regular people, right? Like a normal guy with a normal job that was trying to break out, you know, try to find a future for myself because I realized that my job was capped, like ninety-nine point nine percent of people in this world. And, you know, I started investing something I call observational investing or social arb investing, which is really all it is, is trying to detect change in the world, whether it's change in technological development or change in culture, change in consumer behavior. But you're trying to detect change, and you're trying to connect that change, uh, connect the dots to companies that would either benefit or be harmed by that change. So you're-- and then you're investing in those companies. It's, it's that simple.

   8. SPShaan Puri1:34

      One of many of ways that you personally observe is through social media comments.

   9. CCChris Camillo1:39

      Yeah, I mean, like, think about it. Like, how do you observe change in the world the quickest? What do people do before they change their life? They talk about it, right? Before you can see the evidence of it, they talk about it. If you're a developer a-and, and you're changing the way that you develop software and you're, you're adopting AI in your company, you're probably in Reddit forums with other developers speaking about it.

   10. SPShaan Puri2:03

       And it's not always tech. A lot of it is just consumer behavior, right? Because, uh, I remember you had one that was around the Sphere, which most people don't even realize. That's the, the big, the big dome in Vegas.

   11. CCChris Camillo2:13

       Yeah.

   12. SPShaan Puri2:13

       The Sphere.

   13. CCChris Camillo2:14

       Yeah.

   14. SPShaan Puri2:14

       It's a publicly traded stock, and I think you noticed, what was it? The Wizard of Oz. You, you were like, "Dude, this Wizard of Oz show."

   15. CCChris Camillo2:22

       Yeah. Game, game, game-changer, right? They didn't quite nail product-market fit at the Sphere until that Wizard of Oz came out, and they were like, "Oh, take an old movie, use AI to make it more interesting in terms of visuals, to put it on this insane projection screen, and then add some 4D effects like a tornado and the wind's blowing and all this stuff." And all of a sudden, you created a unique human experience that would go viral on TikTok, which is exactly what happened. And now people from around the world, from Europe, are like, "We're going to Vegas to go to the Sphere place to see this Wizard of Oz that we saw went viral on TikTok," right? And so, man, what a game-changer.

   16. SPShaan Puri3:04

       Did you buy it?

   17. CCChris Camillo3:05

       Dude, yeah.

   18. SPShaan Puri3:05

       So I, I heard him talking about it, so I started tracking it. It's up two hundred and twenty percent [chuckles] in the last year.

   19. CCChris Camillo3:10

       Well, so you-- I mean-

   20. SPShaan Puri3:11

       By the way-

   21. CCChris Camillo3:11

       From the time we got in, which is like at twenty-something bucks, it's up like six X or something.

   22. SPShaan Puri3:16

       Chris, y- I gotta give you a little credit 'cause anytime somebody comes on the pod and talks about investing, the goal is first to get context on, okay, before we listen and, and really drink the Kool-Aid on all the, your philosophy or your strategy, we like to understand, does it work? [chuckles] What, what are the s- what are the results? And so you can talk a little bit about that, but I'll give one little point, which was last time you were on the pod, I asked you to make three sort of picks, three predictions, three, three stocks to look at. You said Palantir, Bloom Energy, it was at ninety-two dollars, it's now at two hundred and forty, so it's up a hundred and sixty-five percent since the last podcast, and then Nvidia, which is up a, a smaller amount. But those were your three picks. So I gotta give you, give you a little bit of credit.

   23. CCChris Camillo3:54

       So here's the thing. Like, I actually aggressively disagree with that type of performance analyses because the world's changing every minute of every day. So I-- the day after the show, I could have found new information that would have put me on the opposite side of all three of those trades, right? And so the only way you could ever analyze any investor ever is through long-term audits over a long period of time, total portfolio. I don't care if an investor comes on and gives you five stocks and all of them rocket. It could have been based on beta, could have been based on the m- like, completely luck, right? Uh, so don't give me any credit for anything from the last show if you don't want. I mean, feel free if you want.

   24. SPShaan Puri4:39

       [chuckles]

   25. CCChris Camillo4:40

       But all that actually matters is what's, like, the ten, fifteen, twenty-year total portfolio track record in and out through multiple markets.

   26. SPShaan Puri4:50

       Great. So what, so what is it? What are the audited, what is it, fifteen-year results?

   27. CCChris Camillo4:53

       It's like sixty-eight percent over s- over sixteen, fifteen or sixteen years.

   28. SPShaan Puri4:59

       What does that mean in terms of dollars? What'd you start with?

   29. CCChris Camillo5:01

       I've generated about eighty million off of an initial twenty thousand dollar portfolio that I kicked off in two thousand and seven.

   30. SPShaan Puri5:10

       Wow. And then do you reinvest new capital into that?
2. 6:29 – 20:16

   Needohs

   1. SPShaan Puri6:29

      So Chris, I wanna ask you a question. After you came on and you talked about this observational investing, and I have to say, I, I've obviously was, I'm a bit skeptical about most financial influencers on YouTube. I would just say like that's just a general stance I have.

   2. CCChris Camillo6:42

      You should be more than skeptical. [laughs]

   3. SPShaan Puri6:44

      [laughs] Yeah. So, so, uh, but, but you know, when you, what you talked about is didn't... It's not like it was some, uh, insane idea. Like, you look for changes of where, where you see the world going, where you think demand is going, where there might be supply constraints, and those obviously might be interesting companies. Now, the question I have for you, 'cause one, one example is, uh, my kids went crazy about this thing called Needohs. Explain what these things are. They're basically just a pile of... It's just like a goop ball. I don't even know.

   4. CCChris Camillo7:08

      Yeah.

   5. SPShaan Puri7:08

      What do you even explain it? [laughs]

   6. CCChris Camillo7:09

      It's just, it's just a squishy toy. It, it, it's a squishy toy that is slightly firmer, slightly higher quality. Um, squishies have been around for 15 years, uh, but they were able to go viral this last year.

   7. SPShaan Puri7:23

      It became a thing in kind of elementary and middle schools of like finding rare Needohs that you couldn't find them. So they had that sort of like that Pokemon card. This happens as, a lot of times with crazes, right?

   8. SPSam Parr7:33

      But is Needoh a public company?

   9. CCChris Camillo7:35

      Yeah, so, so Needoh is a very tiny private company that's actually held by another private company that owns, I think, 27 private companies, and Needoh, the company that owns Needoh is one of those 27 companies. What's interesting is that this is a holding company that j- that generally doesn't move because they generate their earnings from interest payments and dividends paid by these small operating companies. To my knowledge, and the ticker is G-A-I-N. To my knowledge, they've never owned a company that has had a hyperviral product like Needoh before.

   10. SPSam Parr8:14

       Can you imagine that, uh, Wolf of Wall Street call to Shaan like, "Listen, Shaan. This is a small company in Andover, Massachusetts that is sitting on breakthrough technology that is extra squishy yet firm at the same time" [laughs]

   11. CCChris Camillo8:27

       [laughs]

   12. SPSam Parr8:27

       I'm in.

   13. CCChris Camillo8:28

       That, that's exactly what it is, man. That's literally exactly what it is. And by the way, whenever you invest in a tiny company like this, there's all types of unknown risk involved. Uh, so it's a really dangerous game to play, but I did make the investment. It's a bit of a novelty investment and a novelty product. So I, m- the thesis is that if the c- if Needoh can remain on trend through the holiday season and if the parent company is able to fully scale out supply, this is actually going to be a needle mover for the parent company to, and, and you should see about a 30 to 40% increase in valuation at the parent company.

   14. SPSam Parr9:10

       Let's break this trade even further. There's all these cool books on like, uh, you know, Warren Buffett's first like 50 deals or whatever. Let's do, uh, Chris's, uh, investment into Needohs. Could you say, how much did you put into it? When did you put into it? And like when you're saying there should be a 30 or 40%, what numbers did you look at to make this estimation of what, how much juice is on here, how m- how much profit it can, could be had?

   15. CCChris Camillo9:33

       Y- you're basically looking at-

   16. SPShaan Puri9:35

       Hey, let's take a quick break because the team at HubSpot has put together something pretty cool. You know, in this episode, Chris is talking about the way he knows how to make money, identifying these trends, scouting the TikTok comments, making these big leveraged bets. That's great for him. It is amazing. Some people will like that. I personally don't know how to make money that way. I wouldn't do it. But I've talked before about the way that I know how to make money, about h- how build a money-making skill, about how to leverage your time and energy, and the team at HubSpot actually went through the video where I explained all that and turned it into a free downloadable cheat sheet on my four rules of how to make money. Now, this is not, you know, get rich quick advice. It's just core principles, foundational principles about building wealth, things that I wish I knew when I was, you know, just getting started. And so if you wanna download it, it's in the description below. It's totally free. You can go get it. Thanks to the folks at HubSpot for doing the research, making this document, and making it available to all you guys. All right, back to this episode.

   17. CCChris Camillo10:24

       You're basically looking at how many Needohs you think the company can sell through the holiday season based on demand and how many they're currently selling. By the way, this is like a little bit of a science and a little bit of an art and, and you kind of assess what that will do to that company's bottom line, how that will increase dividends, and what that increased dividend payment to the parent company will account for relative to the total valuation of the parent company. It, it, it's, it's, it's kind of a difficult exercise, and this is where AI comes in really great because AI can help you do that exercise. So we're, you know, we're not financial analysts, and AI does an excellent job going deep into the financials of a company like this and then like, okay, if they sell this many at this much of a profit margin, it could have this big of an impact on the parent company and of earnings come the holiday season. So again, lot, lot of estimates that you're making. It was enough for me to invest. I put like somewhere between half a million and a half and a million dollars into the trade. It wasn't crazy. I did it more because I loved the product and I loved the trade and I felt the trade's going to work, and I wanted to be part of it. So like for me, on an equity trade, that's not a huge trade for me, but I like it. And, and by the way, if you look at the past 17 years, I've made about 80 to 85 high-conviction trades over 17 years. So the entirety of my performance is based on those 80 trades.

   18. SPSam Parr12:04

       And Needoh was a high conviction?

   19. CCChris Camillo12:06

       I wouldn't call Needoh a high conviction. I'd call it probably a medium conviction because the company's so tiny that, that there are a lot of variables That could impact a, a minuscule company like that. But, um, all 80 of those trades were publicly discussed more or less as they were happening. So I'm really public with my ideas because I, I want my community to kind of provide feedback and poke holes in my thesis. You know, there aren't that many of us social arb traders, observational traders, so I've always said that the community at large, when we work together on ideas, sometimes I surface ideas, sometimes members of my community surface ideas. We cross-research them. We, we, we play devil's advocate with each other. We poke holes in the thesis, and I always say as, as, as a group, we're more powerful than the biggest hedge fund because we have, you know, tens to hundreds of thousands of people now that are social arb traders, and we come from every walk of life. So we have people from every industry sector, every profession, every demographic. So we have tons of people that have kids. When we do channel checks, when we do store checks, I'll throw it out in my community, and they will p- they will do store checks in every state. So we'll have people aggregating, "Hey, I went to this shop in Missouri," "I went to this shop in Florida. Here's what the clerk told me," right? It, it's really, really fun, guys.

   20. SPShaan Puri13:33

       Now, let me ask you a question about this. The specific question I have is observing the trend, es- especially if you're a parent with, with young kids, w-was actually not that hard. It was pretty easy to see, holy shit, every kid in the school wants it and there's none on the shelves. Uh, they can't f- you know, stores can't keep them in stock. People are banging on the doors. So the buy side of that kind of makes some sense to me. But all these things seem like fads. They seem like trends. I would never know when to exit a trade like this. I would ne- I'd never know when to sell, 'cause I, I don't think twenty years from now my kids are gonna care about Needohs or the kids are necessarily gonna care about Needohs. So can you explain how you think about the, the exit or the sell when it's come-- when it's something like this where it's like a trend or a, a wave that may not be enduring?

   21. CCChris Camillo14:13

       Well, well, let, let's back up. It all, it all is dependent upon the conviction level and the underlying thesis that you observed, right? So you, you have a thesis that you come up with that there is some new information that is likely to positively impact this company or this sector that the market is not aware of yet or that the market underappreciates. Now, you have to ask yourself, to what extent is this a needle mover for this company, right? Is this going to meaningfully move the revenue needle, the profit needle, their cost structure, or the perception of this company? Is it meaningful? And are there other things that are happening to this company that are more meaningful than this one piece of information that I feel is a needle mover, okay? And then you have to ask yourself, to what extent do other investors, institutional or retail, already know about this? 'Cause it's not a binary thing, right? Some people might know, but does the market at large fully appreciate that piece of information, or do they only partially appreciate it? So it's additive, and you have to determine, am I highly convicted in this trade because this thing that's about to happen or that already happened is going to be massively impactful to this company, and there's nothing else that's going to impact this company over the course of the next few weeks or the next couple of months, and there are virtually no other investors, insti-institutional or retail, that understand this yet? And to answer your question, Shaan, the exit window is when other people come to terms with this information, right? When other people start to appreciate this information that you found, that you traded on. As soon as that information becomes public, like in the case of the Sphere, when other retail traders, when financial press, when the company itself and analysts started coming out with reports saying, "Hey, they're selling out the arena due to Wizard of Oz. This is gonna be a game changer. We're starting to revise our earnings estimates based on this new template that they found with the Wizard of Oz. And by the way, they can replicate this model now with other old movies, and it's a highly profitable model, and we now feel that they've kind of cracked product market fit at Sphere," which is a game-changing moment. When you start to hear about that in the press, when you see other investors talking about it on X, when the company itself talks about it, that's the point of information parity, and that's when we exit the trade. So you basically initiate an observational social arb trade at the point of information imbalance. When you find some information that is impactful that the world doesn't know about yet, and you exit that investment as the world starts to appreciate that information. And that's not always a binary event either. Sometimes you exit it over time as more and more investors start to appreciate the information. Now, you try to ignore stock price. The assumption is that if that piece of information is meaningfully positive to that company, as other people start to, to, to, to surface that information, that it will positively impact the stock. But that's out of your control. The bottom line is you're trading a thesis. Your thesis revolves around one piece of information, and when that information gets widely disseminated to other investors, then you no longer have an information advantage. Therefore, you should be exiting that trade. Whether you made money in the trade or whether you lost money in the trade for some other unknown reason, maybe the market, maybe something else happened, is kind of irrelevant. So that's the entire methodology. That's everything I've been doing for seventeen years. There's a lot more to it because, like, when you find this narrative, right, you then need to, like, check every other piece of information that you can or data source to validate it. Talking to store clerks, right? Maybe you're pulling web traffic stats. Maybe you're looking at Google search trends. Depending on the trade, there's a million different ways to validate the narrative thesis that you originated using alternative data or other information sources. It- it just-- it's a case by case basis, but this is everything I've been doing for seventeen years, and it's very different from being a fundamental trader or being a technical trader.

   22. SPSam Parr19:04

       Has there been a time over the last fifteen or eighteen years that you've been doing this where you've said, "I'm quitting, and I'm, uh, I'm not doing this anymore. I'm going back to, like, just index investing or something"? Like, has-- What, what was a low point?

   23. CCChris Camillo19:16

       No. I love this so much, guys. This is literally part of my soul. This is what I do. I, I have so much fun doing this. Like, you gotta realize, like, my methodology entails reading comments on TikTok videos. I get to watch the world unfold. I get to learn about culture and consumer behavior and trends and what people are buying, what they're doing. It is the funnest research any investor could ever do. I'm not studying fundamentals or charts. What I do is fun as hell. I, I-- Then every five years I have this thesis that I go all in on. So five years ago it was Pokemon and Nerd culture, and I started this company called Collect-a-Con, and we became the largest Pokemon trade show in the world, and we sold it to Ari Emanuel a few months ago for an insane amount of money. But, uh, we grew that from the ground up, and I kinda take on one of those projects. The next project I'm taking

3. 20:16 – 27:06

   Nerd culture

   1. CCChris Camillo20:16

      on-

   2. SPSam Parr20:16

      Wait, can we-- T-tell me about this. Th-that's, that's a big deal.

   3. SPShaan Puri20:19

      Yeah, tell the, tell the full story before you tell the new, new project.

   4. CCChris Camillo20:22

      Oh, you wanna know the story? It, it-- This is actually amazing. I always tell everyone, "Don't do things for yourself. Just go out there and do things for other people, and it always comes back in your favor." Don't ask how or why. It just generally always does. So I'm really big into philanthropy. I have a f- five oh one foundation. I support pediatric charity, animal welfare, and elder care. And back during the pandemic, I know nothing about Pokemon, okay? But Logan Paul bought, like, a three hundred and fifty thousand dollar Pokemon box, which is the, set the world record, and I was like, "Man, that looks really fun," and I was kinda bored. I'm gonna go do the same thing, but then I'm gonna break it into, like, the twenty-four packs and auction it off for charity and then just donate it all to the foundation. And I'm gonna also throw the world's biggest Pokemon party in Vegas, 'cause I ended up meeting all these Pokemon people, and they were the coolest, nicest people in the world. I'm telling you, I have never met people so fun.

   5. SPSam Parr21:25

      [chuckles]

   6. CCChris Camillo21:26

      And so I met Steve Aoki, who's a big Pokemon guy. I met this guy Gary King Pokemon, who's the number one Pokemon guy collector in the world, and he was the guy that I think sold Logan one of his biggest Pokemon cards. And I said, "I wanna do this party, guys," and they helped me put on this party in Vegas. And we agreed that a third of the proceeds would go to S-Steve Aoki's brain charity, charities, like whatever. A third would go to Gary King Pokemon's autism charities, and a third would go to the charities I care about. So I bought this box for three hundred and seventy-five thousand dollars. We broke it up, threw the world's biggest Pokemon party, donated hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars to charity. The party itself cost me almost a hundred and fifty thousand dollars to put on. I made zero. All of this was a massive loss and donation to a bunch of charities. But what came out of it? I met all these really interesting people, and about a month later, Gary King Pokemon calls me. He goes, "Hey, Chris, I know you believe in Pokemon now. I know you believe that this is gonna be really big and get bigger every year. One of the guys at the party wants to start a Pokemon convention, and he doesn't have any money. Can I introduce you? Maybe you would invest in it." I said, "Yeah, sure, let's do it." I had lunch with this guy. He lived in Texas. I said, "Let's just do it." This guy's been working in, in, like, conventions for twenty years. He had the perfect skill set to do it. Him and his two cousins were deeply passionate collectors and Pokemon collectors. I said, "You guys are the perfect people to run this conference. Let's do it together." I invested, uh, I wanna say six hundred thousand dollars into the company. I took a minority but massive stake in the company, and I helped build this conference starting with one show in a small hotel convention room in Frisco, Texas. And four years later, we were throwing twenty shows, seven hundred thousand attendees, the biggest Pokemon trade show in the world, massive success. And by the way, we all worked all the shows. Like, I would travel around the country and be the guy who was ticketing people online at seven in the morning where we'd have three thousand people in line because we were trying to operate the show so efficiently because we didn't have much money.

   7. SPSam Parr24:03

      This was a huge business too. I mean, seven hundred thousand tickets are four hun-

   8. SPShaan Puri24:05

      It's, it's gotta be a nine-figure exit, right?

   9. CCChris Camillo24:07

      Massive business, guys. Massive. You wouldn't believe. I, I'm under NDA. I can't tell you the specifics of the sale, but massive exit.

   10. SPSam Parr24:15

       Can, can, can you say, generally speaking, these businesses, what do they sell for? Uh, not... Yeah, like, uh, like on a EBITDA. Like, what, what's the EBITDA multiple?

   11. CCChris Camillo24:24

       They don't sell for big multiples because it's a, it's a physical business. It's not like a software business. But the amount of money we were generating from these shows was enormous.

   12. SPSam Parr24:39

       It was really profitable?

   13. CCChris Camillo24:40

       Very profitable because we cared deeply about the shows, and we ran great shows. We actually like-

   14. SPSam Parr24:47

       I mean, just doing back of the envelope math, seven hundred thousand times, let's say sixty bucks, that's-- you're getting close to fifty million dollars in revenue, let alone vendors.

   15. CCChris Camillo24:54

       I, I can't disclose exact numbers, but I'm gonna tell you the numbers were huge. And we started from nothing.

   16. SPSam Parr25:00

       That's crazy.

   17. CCChris Camillo25:00

       And we built this all up over four years, but it wasn't easy, guys. Like, we, we were so frugal that we had our own rig. 'Cause you know the most expensive part of throwing a convention is buy- renting pipe and drape at all the conventions? So we bought our own pipe and drape, put it in a eighteen-wheeler, and the founder operator of this business, Matthew, would drive the truck himself from city to city.

   18. SPSam Parr25:27

       [laughs]

   19. CCChris Camillo25:27

       It was crazy, okay? And, and then we would unload the truck with some local help, right? And we would set up the shows ourse- I mean, there were points, 'cause I have a bad back, where after the first day, I was almost-- I couldn't walk, and I-- So there were some shows I'd have to go home on day two 'cause I, I, I hurt my back so bad from just, like, leaning over ticketing thousands of people at the, at the show. 'Cause we would hire contract workers to help us, but we needed every hand possible.

   20. SPSam Parr25:58

       That's pretty crazy.

   21. CCChris Camillo25:58

       And so we ran it like a family business. We were deeply passionate about the attendees. We would throw a concert every Saturday midday. We had like Vanilla Ice would perform or like-

   22. SPSam Parr26:10

       [laughs]

   23. CCChris Camillo26:10

       It was so fun. And, and meanwhile, to this day, I've never bought a Pokemon card. So like I was an observer of this sector.

   24. SPSam Parr26:18

       Yeah.

   25. CCChris Camillo26:18

       But the long story short, like I had deep conviction in nerd culture and Pokemon specifically, and I think Wall Street doesn't, a-and just business, the business community generally doesn't appreciate the fact that there are millions of people that like collecting these cards, and n-no one had provided a fun place for them to physically go to once a year to connect with other people like them and trade these cards. Like, we have sports card shows. We've had them forever, right? With baseball cards and whatnot. But no one had ever really established a big show for T, you know, TCG, for like these table card games, right? Like, no one had ever done it before, so it just intuitively made sense to me.

4. 27:06 – 46:30

   Information asymmetry

   1. SPShaan Puri27:06

      So, so I'm curious if this is something that others have been doing or there's people you look up to. So for example, somebody who you wouldn't think is an observational trader, wouldn't call that, is Warren Buffett. But there's some great stories of where he did exactly what you're talking about. There's a, a story of the salad oil crisis with A-American Express. I don't know if you guys know that story, but it's basically, you know, at a, at a given time, they were lending money, and they were lending money to this guy who was supposed to have salad oil dressing, and then they went and they checked the barrels, and the barrels were just full of water, salt water, like seawater. And there was no salad oil at all, and the stock is plummeting. And Buffett, he figured out what the central question was, which is, is this a temporary setback, or is this actually gonna be damaging to the trust of the brand long term? And he, uh, believed in brands, right? That's why he has bet on Coca-Cola and Geico and these other companies that he feels like have, uh, brands that have power.

   2. SPSam Parr28:00

      It's the exact opposite of what Chris is. It's like, what won't change?

   3. SPShaan Puri28:04

      Yeah. So he-- Well, he was-- But still the, the, the market research part of this is kind of shared, right? So he, the, the story is he goes into a store and he just watches the clerk, and he watches customers with their credit card, and he's basically trying to figure out, are people gonna stop taking American Express 'cause they no longer have faith in the good standing of American Express, or is the American Express brand gonna withdo- endure this? And really, the asymmetry was the market believed that the, that this would damage the future of American Express, uh, and the, the quality of the brand. And what he observed in watching people was that the stores and the customers had no problem using American Express and that there was no, there was no issue. And he did the same thing, he did a very similar thing with Apple, where he had stayed away from technology companies for a long time, and then he realized, like, oh, when he talked to Apple customers, he's like, not only would they not trade their current device for a cheaper equivalent de-device by somebody else, you can't pay these people to switch off Apple. And it, it was the, it was a more of a social, psychological observation, not a technical or fundamental analysis of the business that led him to, to, to invest in those companies. So Chris, it's a long-winded way of asking, who else has been great at this? What are the great stories that inspire you on this? Or do you feel like you're kind of the first one to popularize this?

   4. CCChris Camillo29:22

      No. The concept of information asymmetry is not new to investing methodologies. The most famous person to adopt it widely would've been Peter Lynch with the Magellan Fund in the '80s. The difference is being a pure observational social arb investor is this concept that it shouldn't be part of an investing methodology, but it should be the only thing that you take into consideration, right? So Peter Lynch kind of blended this, this observational investing approach. He would famously walk the malls and kind of look at what stores had the longest lines at the cash register. Seem, seems pretty simple, right? And he would combine that with massive amounts of fundamental research. You have to ask yourself, though, if the market is relatively efficient, and we know the market's never perfectly efficient, but it's, if it's relatively efficient in terms of taking into account all the fundamentals and all the technicals, and you have all these investors that are trying to price a company based on all the known things, then if you're able to surface something that's unknown That is meaningful. You don't need to worry about all the other stuff. You don't need to have this robust, fundamental technical approach that also happens to apply information asymmetry when you come across it. You can focus all of your energy and all of your research on just finding new information that the market hasn't discovered yet and making an assumption that the particular company that you're trading is relatively efficient with all the known information, and investors haven't fully priced in this new piece of information. So all you care about is that one piece of information asymmetry. It simplifies the way that investors can approach this game, because most of us are never going to be technically proficient investors and never going to be able to compete with the absolute best, most pedigreed, Wharton graduated, like, fundamental investors, right, that are doing t- deep, deep fundamental analysis, and they've come to terms with the fact that this company should trade at a twenty-nine PE as opposed to the twenty-four PE it's trading at today. I mean, I don't wanna play that game. The easiest game to play, because you can invest a million different ways, so the question is: What is the best approach to investing? That the largest chunk of ordinary people can actually apply efficiently to markets and regularly do that in a fruitful way, and I strongly believe it's pure observational social arb investing.

   5. SPSam Parr32:25

      Shaan, I actually just Googled this, and it's funny. I'm quoted as the source of Google, uh, for this story, so it could be a little bit off. But in 1966, a young Warren Buffett visited a movie theater on 45th and Broadway in New York to watch Mary Poppins. He went with a briefcase in the middle of the afternoon, later joking that it almost felt like he needed to rent a kid to fit in. This trip was his way of researching Disney to see if they had lasting brand appeal. And later that day, he bought five percent of the company at four million dollars, and it was a fifty percent gain over the next year. And he says selling it, which he did after one year, was one of his biggest mistakes that he's ever made.

   6. CCChris Camillo32:59

      And by the way, so i- if he really believed that that lasting, durable brand appeal was there for Disney, right, did he also believe that the, the rest of the world came to that acknowledgment after a year? And if he did, then he didn't have any alpha after a year, and he was probably right to sell Disney. Um, and Disney might have-

   7. SPSam Parr33:22

      He's only thirty-five when he did that, by the way, so may- I mean, you could also say maybe he just made a mistake.

   8. CCChris Camillo33:27

      But you have to understand something. Whether a stock goes up or down after you sell might have nothing to do with you making a mistake because that's not your thesis. That's not why you invested. You don't have any alpha. So it could've gone up for a completely different reason. So y- y- you gotta get out of the head space of saying because a stock continued to go up after you exited, you made the mistake. You-- That could be co- completely coincidental. It went up for something that you had no knowledge into, that you had no take on.

   9. SPSam Parr33:58

      How do you quantify that, though? Because, like, for example, Shaan and I or, or the average Joe might have, like, uh, an opinion on one company, their sales we think are going up, but that doesn't necessarily mean the stock will change.

   10. CCChris Camillo34:11

       Okay. Let, let's take a step back. If you are correct that a company is being impacted by something meaningfully and their revenue is going to go up and the rest of the investor class is not aware of that yet, if there's nothing else impacting that company during that trade window, it is highly likely... Again, there are a lot of factors. There's the macro market. The market could come down, right? There... But, but i- in a vacuum, that piece of information will almost always, in a vacuum, will almost always result in the stock going up because when a company makes more money than the market anticipates, the stock will go up. If you're able to surface something that will impact a company's sales that the rest of the market is not aware of, when the rest of the world comes to terms w- with that piece of information, that will positively impact the stock price, assuming that there's nothing else going on with that company or the market at large. But I, I wouldn't overthink it. Too many investors overthink this. It's not that complicated, guys.

   11. SPShaan Puri35:21

       Can you give a sense of volume? Uh, so I think you said something like eighty, eighty investment decisions, seventeen years. That-- Does that mean you're making four-ish buy/sell trade decisions per year, or did I hear that wrong? 'Cause I-- my, my hu- my hunch was that you're a little more active than that, seems like. In a given year, how mu- how many decisions are you-- how many investment decisions are you making?

   12. CCChris Camillo35:40

       So, so I, I'm referring to high-conviction trades-

   13. SPShaan Puri35:43

       Okay

   14. CCChris Camillo35:43

       ... you know, trades where I have a lot of conviction, and I'm generally allocating five to f- thirty percent of my total portfolio to buying that stock, or I'm allocating, call it, two to fifteen percent of my portfolio to buying options in that stock.

   15. SPShaan Puri36:04

       B- by the way, when you say portfolio, is this like I have my trading f- my fun, my fun slush fund, and then I have my boring, safe nest egg over here?

   16. CCChris Camillo36:12

       No.

   17. SPShaan Puri36:12

       Or are they all-

   18. CCChris Camillo36:13

       Entire portfolio. Entire portfolio.

   19. SPShaan Puri36:15

       Entire.

   20. CCChris Camillo36:15

       Yes.

   21. SPShaan Puri36:15

       [laughs]

   22. SPSam Parr36:16

       I think what Shaan was getting at was, like, do you have, like, a safety net?

   23. CCChris Camillo36:20

       No. I mean, on my pu-

   24. SPSam Parr36:21

       Okay

   25. CCChris Camillo36:21

       ... my public equity portfolio is my public equity portfolio.

   26. SPSam Parr36:25

       Right.

   27. CCChris Camillo36:25

       It's just one portfolio. So when I have high conviction in a trade, I will allocate between, you know, like I said, I don't know, up to a third of my portfolio might be in that single stock for that period of time that I'm in that trade. And Shaan, to answer your question, uh, in the early years, I would average one to two high-conviction trades a year. Uh Now, as we have more social media today than we had back thirteen years ago, and the world is more digitally connected today, and there's-- it's actually easier than it's ever been to read into the world's conversations as they're happening. Like, as you guys know, I spend hours a night reading comments on TikTok videos because that's where most of the world organically shares what they're doing, what they're buying, you know, where they're going, like, on a daily basis. I- I've increased the velocity of my high-conviction trades. So there have been years now where I've had six or seven high-conviction trades in a year, where it used to be one or two.

   28. SPSam Parr37:34

       Right.

   29. CCChris Camillo37:35

       And by the way, the, the more change that's happening in the world, the more opportunity to surface a high-conviction trade. So probably the biggest year I ever had was during the pandemic because the year of the pandemic, there was a tremendous amount of change happening in the world. We all started living at home, you know, working from home, right? We, we, we stopped going out. We started buying things that we wouldn't ordinarily never buy. Uh, we stopped spending money on those things and started spending money on these things because we're living inside of our house for a year straight. You know, we're buying bicycles and cameras for our computers and printers because the kids are doing homeschooling and all of these things. So we're buying Peloton because we're not going to the gym, and we're working out at our house now. So, you know, we're shopping more on Amazon and Spotify. So, like, the more change, the more opportunity for an observational investor to surface that change and connect the dots to investable opportunities. When there's not a lot of change in the world, then there's less opportunity for us. So what, what I've been telling people is, in the age of AI, we've never experienced this type of global change before other than the pandemic, because AI is radically changing the way that we think about work, that we think about intelligence. Every company in the world is going to get hit positively or negatively due to the way that AI and, and unlimited intelligence is going to impact their sector over the next few years. So this is an amazing time to be an observational social arb investor because the world is changing so quickly. There's going to be so many winners and losers. So the game here is to figure out what's changing and the degree to which that change is good or bad for any given company at any given period of time.

   30. SPSam Parr39:38

       Does this influence you, Shaan? Uh, this is your second time talking to him. Are you, uh-- Has your actions changed since December?
5. 46:30 – 1:02:21

   Amazon

   1. CCChris Camillo46:30

      to do.

   2. SPSam Parr46:31

      W-what are the things you have most high conviction in right now?

   3. CCChris Camillo46:34

      Um, my highest conviction trade, I'm like a broken record on this. It sounds so weird because it's not a small company. It's Amazon, guys. Like, I, I have more money in Amazon, this, the most concentrated position I've had in a really long time. I always say the most concentrated position I've ever taken was Nintendo when they came out with the Wii, 'cause I was at the E3 conference and actually saw... This is like a Buffett story, right? I actually saw the line of people interacting with the Nintendo Wii for the first time. I don't know if you remember that.

   4. SPSam Parr47:07

      Mm-hmm.

   5. CCChris Camillo47:08

      Game-changing platform, and nobody on Wall Street believed it. Everyone on Wall Street was so hyper-focused on the Xbox coming out and the PlayStation coming out, nobody thought the Wii was gonna be a big deal. I was there. I saw it in real life. I had 100% of my portfolio invested in a Nintendo ADR, which is a tracking stock that tracks the Japanese ticker of Nintendo, and I had 100% of my portfolio, I think, for a full year in Nintendo [chuckles] until Wall Street finally realized how big of a deal that was. Uh, but Amazon, I, I, I just think it's the company that is best positioned in the world to benefit from the upcoming AI efficiency wave, which is once we actually start to see meaningful productivity jumps from the AI age, uh, there's no company in the world that's gonna benefit more from that than Amazon. I also think they are the nucleus of AI infrastructure.

   6. SPSam Parr48:08

      S-s-so sorry, what's the observation you made here? I, I like what, what, the, I think... Is this not from the TikTok comments in this situation? Is this from-

   7. CCChris Camillo48:16

      No. Th-th-this is-

   8. SPSam Parr48:17

      Different-

   9. CCChris Camillo48:17

      This is, this is a kind of a global cultural shift, and it's, it's a big observation I've had for three years, which is based in part... I don't know if you guys ever read Nassim Taleb's book, Black Swan.

   10. SPSam Parr48:32

       Mm-hmm.

   11. CCChris Camillo48:33

       Uh, but Black Swan theory essentially says that our minds are not capable of fully recognizing and appreciating anomalies in the market or the world that haven't happened before. I had this thesis in early days AI, that AI wouldn't just be the next internet. It's not just gonna be the next mobile phone or smartphone, but that it would be meaningfully larger than anything we've experienced in our lifetime. And as a result of that, we would see the biggest trades of our life happen, uh, as a direct result of AI. And even when the information was right in front of us, the market would not believe it until it actually shows up in the numbers because there's no precedent for what we're seeing in AI. There's nothing that has ever happened in our lifetime before AI that we can compare to AI. Now, I might regret saying this in 10 years, but I don't think so. I think the concept of intelligence becoming infinite and free to the world is going to be the biggest change we've ever seen in humanity. So the reason why Amazon went down and has not really gone up as a company meaningfully o- o- you know, recently, right, is because they have made such an aggressive investment in AI, two hundred billion dollar. Now it's like two hundred and-- it's more than two hundred billion this last year, uh, CapEx investment in AI in a sector that nobody knows if it's going to pay off for them or not.

   12. SPSam Parr50:20

       Does that mean like, um, like for example, does S- did yours is Siri or what's it called, uh, Alexa, did your Alexa just change where like now she like talks to you? Like my Alexa just changed, so now it like talks like ChatGPT, like I can ask real questions.

   13. CCChris Camillo50:32

       I would say the biggest example is this. It's, it's this simple. Amazon is betting the entire company on AI, end of story, as is some of the other big tech companies, right? They are leveraging all of their profits. They're leveraging their balance sheet. They are building out massive instr- infrastructure unlike they ever had in the history of the company. They are making the biggest CapEx investment of any company in the world by a big margin in AI, and the world is still unsure about how this is gonna play out. I'm not unsure. I'm willing to bet it all. They, they think that the infrastructure layer of AI, which is Amazon, okay, because Amazon, understand this, they are a chip company, right? They're Trainium. Their chips alone, their Trainium AI chips are generating, I think, fifty billion dollars of revenue this next year. They are the, one of the largest infrastructure data center companies in the entire world, and their AWS platform and everything that they've constructed in cloud computing over the past fifteen plus years sits at the center of this architecture, uh, infrastructure for AI, okay? On top of that, Amazon is the third largest digital advertising company in the world, okay? So as AI makes advertising meaningfully more efficient and targeted and effective and personal and rich for consumers, Amazon is at the center of that wave. Additionally, Amazon has spent twenty years building out the world's largest logistical infrastructure for the delivery of physical product to humans, uh, an investment that no other company has even come close to making. That investment, even moving the margin needle a few points, is a game changer for Amazon. So as we enter this new world of intelligence and automation and robotics, okay, Amazon already has the infrastructure as the world's largest e-commerce company, the largest logistics company, to benefit massively from the increases in productivity and efficiencies that infinite free intelligence. And eventually, what we're gonna see i-i- is embodied intelligence, right, with robotics, right? This is going to result in productivity and efficiency gains unlike we've ever experienced as humans. And Amazon is the number one company to benefit from all of that.

   14. SPSam Parr53:15

       You sound like you're giving a sermon. You're bought in.

   15. SPShaan Puri53:18

       And by the way, they own like fifteen percent of Anthropic too.

   16. CCChris Camillo53:21

       They just-- A- and that's what's so funny here. Now, if Anthropic IPOs between one and two trillion, which who knows, I think there's a reasonable chance they will next year, Amazon will make more money off that IPO than the two hundred billion they spent on CapEx that everybody's so worried about, right? And so again, we are living in an age when the market has more noise than it's ever had. The stories are changing every day. Like it, it's impossible as an investor to cut through the noise [chuckles] . So that's what's so difficult is, is I think most new investors, they just give up because they're like, "I can't keep up with all this stuff." You don't have to keep up with any of it. Just find one company that kind of sits in a place where they stand to benefit meaningfully from something that you're seeing in the world. It could be AI with Amazon. It could be the fact, you know, one of my big trades recent- you know, one of my big trade theses recently is flip-flops are trending this summer, right? Because last summer there were seven hundred and fifty dollar flip-flops made by a company called Roe, and now every person in the world wants to wear flip-flops because they're, they're on trend. You can go out at night to a club wearing flip-flops. And so there's a Brazilian company, uh, that is one of the largest, you know, makers of flip-flops. There's so many ways, um, to, to kind of like arb change in the world.

   17. SPShaan Puri54:50

       When you s- you said Amazon was your most concentrated bet in a long time, what does that mean percentage-wise for you?

   18. CCChris Camillo54:56

       Amazon right now is about fifty percent of my portfolio value. And on top of that-

   19. SPSam Parr55:09

       Did you say five zero or one five?

   20. CCChris Camillo55:11

       Five zero On top of that, I have options in Amazon that account for, you know, another 50%. So theoretically, I mean, yeah, if you count the, the, the amount that those options represent, it could be like 70% of my portfolio is Amazon right now. That's how confident I am in that trade.

   21. SPSam Parr55:36

       So after you make a bet like that, you know, um, well, Ed Thorpe has this cool book, you know, the famous, uh, investor, one of the early hedge fund guys, where he kind of like a funny story is he's like, "I make my trade, and then I just go and hang out for like six months, and I just see what happens." And there, he, there's like stories of him like playing tennis throughout the day, and they're like, "Shouldn't you be at work?" He's like, "I made the trade. Let's see what's gonna happen." So are you making that bet and then kind of stepping away for a little while, or are you gonna be, are you active every single day then?

   22. CCChris Camillo56:05

       I love that concept, by the way. I've been saying for months, this is the summer to deep research your trade, make it, and then just walk away because 99% of the noise hitting this market on a day-to-day basis, week-to-week basis doesn't matter at all, and there is not that much happening and changing where you need to be that concerned about the market on a day-in and day-out, day-day out basis. Now, I'm not completely just going off and playing tennis for the rest of the summer. I, I'm keeping up with what's happening in the market, but I don't think there's going to be anything that's going to happen over the course of the next few weeks to couple months that would meaningfully change my thesis on Amazon. Something might, uh, but my thesis on Amazon is fairly large, and it's, it, it, it's based on something that I believe is going to unravel over the next few years as opposed to unravel over the next few months. So it, it's a massive concentration risk that I'm putting on this trade. But this, this is what I do, right? Like you, you can't generate outsized returns without taking outside risk. You just can't do it. By the way, guys, I don't think that most people should be doing this across their entire portfolio. I always tell people like, and I'm not a financial advisor obviously, but you gotta bucket y- y- your assets for different risk categories, right? So I think everybody should have a big money account. I don't care if you start with $50 in that account, but everyone should have an account where they're willing to take big risk for big gains. And you don't have to take your kids', you know, college savings to put in that account or your retirement money in that account. You could just start making trade-offs in your life. Like, I don't know, mow your own lawn or make your own coffee, but every dollar that you save, put it in this big money account, and then use it to actually take a big risk every once in a while in something that you believe in so that you have a chance of becoming a top 1% investor. But do it with trade-offs. Do it with other people's money, right? Like get your hair cut every five weeks instead of every four weeks. I don't know. Like delay that big purchase six months so the big screen TV is $200 less than it was six months earlier. Take the $200 you saved, put it in your big money investment account. If that's how you fund that account, then you're not a tr- afraid to take a concentrated risk. If you're co-mingling your money all together, it could be really hard to take a big risk on something because it's psychologically difficult for you to throw that much money into a risky investment, so you have to bucket your money. This is like one of the most important lessons for investors. I'm willing to do it, right? Like I'm, i- if Amazon is the stock that takes me down as an investor and ruins my reputation, then let it be.

   23. SPSam Parr59:13

       Well, it's definitely not gonna take you d- it won't take you down. Uh, well, I don't know. Well, I don't know how leveraged you are, but I mean, it's not like it's like a, it's not like it's, it's not gonna, it ain't going away.

   24. CCChris Camillo59:22

       No, it, well, well, you, you never know. It, it could, but here's the thing, guys. I have been so transparent about everything I've ever done in the market. I talk about everything. I talk about the good, the bad, the risk factors, um, and when I lose, I talk about how much money I lost. I, I, I do not advise anyone to try to mirror my trades. I just want people to see how I think. I want them to see how I think about risk, how I think about, uh, concentration, how I think about y- you know, observational investing. I just share everything with the world, and by the way, you guys I think know this. I'm one of the only, I don't, I'm, I'm sure there's a least a couple others, financial content creators. I've never sold anything. I don't have courses. I don't sell a thing.

   25. SPSam Parr1:00:10

       What's, is your community free?

   26. CCChris Camillo1:00:13

       Ev- dude, I don't even take sponsorships. Do you know that I haven't taken one sponsorship my entire life? I won't take $1 from an advertiser. I won't take $1 from a community member. Not one. The only thing that's ever been sold is we sell some T-shirts and hoodies at cost. You know what? I take that back. You know the value I get out of my community is collaboration. I, I get so many great ideas from our community, and they help vet my own ideas. That's probably made me more money than I could have ever have made from courses and selling sponsorships and all that stuff.

   27. SPShaan Puri1:00:53

       By the way, I have a lot, a lot of respect for that. I think, uh, you know, A, I trust that. Uh, my trust goes up. Like I said, I was very skeptical of finance and stock i- influencers and traders on, on YouTube. But, you know, the fact that you're not selling courses, not charging for community, not taking sponsors and all that, that, that is, I think, extremely commendable and extremely rare. So I, I gotta give you props for that.

   28. CCChris Camillo1:01:13

       To be, to be hon- I mean, here's the deal. Like we always say if like, if you're so great at something Which, come on, I mean, been, I've been great the last 17 years. I make an insane amount of money from my portfolio. Like, I don't need to do any of that. Like, like, I... The amount of money I make is public, right? So I don't... I'm very fortunate to not have to do that, and I just don't need to do that, so I don't want to do that, but I do have an overriding goal here. My goal, my mission in life is to bring every human on Earth into the investor class, and that's why I'm on YouTube, that's why I'm on X, that's why I talk, that's why I do shows like this. I, a- and I truly believe that this style of investing, it's something that you could do for fun. You could do it on the side. You don't have to quit your job. You just retrain your brain to start thinking about this stuff. And you might only get one great investment the next 10 years, but that one investment, if you have a big money account, and if and when you find it, whether it's the next Tesla or the next whatever, you're willing to throw a lot of money behind it, that could be the thing that changes your entire

6. 1:02:21 – 1:24:49

   Podcasting

   1. CCChris Camillo1:02:21

      life. Um, and my next big thesis is podcasters, which sounds insane because there's so many podcasters, right? Like, you gotta be kidding, Chris. Don't we have too many podcasters? L- let me just say this. In the age of AI that we're about to enter into, we are going to deeply appreciate humans, I think. That's my thesis. And while we will embrace technology and AI and efficiencies and all the wonderful things it's gonna bring to us, I think we will equally appreciate the most human of human voices and human personalities, and we are going to need that for connectivity to remind us of what's real.

   2. SPShaan Puri1:03:07

      So what's the bet? Like, what would the product be?

   3. CCChris Camillo1:03:10

      The bet is that we are just getting started with podcasting, and I believe the entirety of the future of media is new media, and podcasters will continue to get bigger and bigger. I think the most human of human voices will become infinitely valuable the next 10 years. I think within the podcasting sector, I think women are slow to become podcasters because we have so many brilliant solo creators that are women on TikTok, but women tend to be really intimidated by friction, by bridging into podcasting when you need to have camera equipment and editors and clippers, and you need to have staff, right? It's... And you need to invest money and capital. So I believe the most talented women voices in the world are not yet podcasting. So I'm opening up a podcast incubation studio in Austin, Texas, where we are going to attempt to develop a very boutique studio, but we're going to attempt to identify the most talented women voices in the world that are currently doing content as solo creators and help them bridge into the world of durable, repeatable podcasting, which we believe is just getting started. I think if you move forward five to eight years, there will be hundreds of podcasts that are worth $100 million or more. I'm not doing this for the money. I'm doing this because I, I just, I know that this could be really big, and I have so much fun working with other creative people. I love podcasters generally. I- it's all I do is watch podcasts, right, and, and, and sit in on podcasts. But when I look at, like, women's podcasting, you know, 70% of podcasters are men. So I think there's this huge opportunity the next few years as podcasting becomes more programmatic, uh, to help develop podcasts into what they will be, 'cause I don't think the future of podcasting is, like, two people in a studio talking on mics. No offense. [laughs] I mean, I mean, my, my show is three guys in a studio talking on mics. I, I, I think it will become, uh, I think it will be that probably for financial podcasters and, a- a- and business podcasts, but I think for, like, general audience podcasts, especially for women, it will become more programmatic.

   4. SPShaan Puri1:05:44

      When you, when you say programmatic, what does that mean?

   5. CCChris Camillo1:05:47

      Okay, so are you familiar with, uh, Financial Audit, Caleb Hammer's show-

   6. SPShaan Puri1:05:52

      Yeah, yes

   7. CCChris Camillo1:05:52

      ... out of Austin? He's, he's the third biggest podcast in the world on YouTube. Okay? His show is programmat- He has an actual program that expresses itself through a podcast format, okay? So he has guests on the show, but he has a very formal program of entertainment, right? And so that is the future of podcasting. So we have to get more creative with podcasting. We have to take risk. Caleb took a big risk with what he did.

   8. SPShaan Puri1:06:28

      Have you seen Friends Keep Secrets?

   9. CCChris Camillo1:06:31

      No. What is that?

   10. SPShaan Puri1:06:32

       Oh, you, you gotta check this out. You're gonna love this. Uh, so this is Lil Dicky, the rapper, Benny Blanco, the producer.

   11. CCChris Camillo1:06:38

       Yeah, I'm sorry, I have seen it.

   12. SPShaan Puri1:06:39

       You didn't know the name.

   13. CCChris Camillo1:06:40

       It's the greatest show ever, yes.

   14. SPShaan Puri1:06:41

       To me, that's an example of what you're talking about.

   15. CCChris Camillo1:06:44

       Yes.

   16. SPShaan Puri1:06:44

       When I saw that, I was, like, a little bit mind blown and the, you know... I'm doing podcasting twice a week for six years, and what they came in and did, it, I r- I really feel like the real creatives have arrived into podcasting, 'cause now you see Conan O'Brien's got a podcast and Has- Hasan Minhaj's got a podcast. Like, the real comedians have podcasts, the real creatives have podcasts, and now what they're doing to the format, because they come from a different background, is they're approaching it differently. Like, they got a house, and they stage the cameras, and the guest shows up almost like a sitcom, you know, a- at the door, and then they open the door, and then-

   17. CCChris Camillo1:07:17

       Yes

   18. SPShaan Puri1:07:17

       ... and then they move from the kitchen to the living room, and they have these bits that they do. And the, the way they do their ad reads, you're like, "Oh, God, their ad read is more entertaining than my, my actual content. Jesus. How do I... I need to, I need to up my game."

   19. CCChris Camillo1:07:29

       Shaan, you, Shaan, you, you got it. You just, you just nailed it. Now, fortunately, again, like the type of podcasting that we do is kind of like, you know, like education and business and finance. I think we can afford to be very slow to change because it's just different for us. Like a lot of the people that watch your show, that watch my show, they primarily are looking to get, take something away from that show in terms of education-

   20. SPShaan Puri1:07:58

       Right

   21. CCChris Camillo1:07:58

       ... and growth and learning. I think the personality entertainment piece is like 10 to 20% of the show. If, if, if we tried to make it 50%, we might lose our [laughs] audience, right? But, um, for the future of podcasting, I think it looks very different, bro- broader based. I think it's gonna be exciting. And like, here's the thing, guys, like I've been talking about stocks for 10 years. Like I love it, but I kind of like I'm bored by it, so like-

   22. SPShaan Puri1:08:24

       Yeah

   23. CCChris Camillo1:08:24

       ... I like diving into these different areas where I get to be a bit more creative with other, you know, other creatives, uh, and not just talk about stock. That's why I enjoyed the Pokemon thing. Like I didn't collect Pokemon, but it was kind of fun being around other people-

   24. SPShaan Puri1:08:38

       Right

   25. CCChris Camillo1:08:38

       ... that were passionate about something and like in my mind I'm like, how do I make money off this, guys? Like, how do I make money off of Pokemon? That's how I did it. I, I did it from starting the convention that the Pokemon enthusiasts would come to and enjoy, right?

   26. SPShaan Puri1:08:54

       And you got to be the uncle and not the father, right? Somebody else ran it, and you got to pitch in where it was helpful and fun, but not necessarily the day-to-day. Is that, is that right? Is that-

   27. CCChris Camillo1:09:03

       I didn't get, I didn't have to do the full day-to-day. I got to kind of do the day-to-day when we would have shows, but behind the scenes I wasn't working full-time.

   28. SPShaan Puri1:09:10

       Yeah.

   29. CCChris Camillo1:09:11

       For sure. Um, but man, was it a lucrative journey, and damn, was it fun. It was so fun.

   30. SPShaan Puri1:09:18

       Thanks for doing this. You're, uh-- Now I'm like, I have all these notes, like all these rabbit holes I'm gonna go down. This, this, uh, the podcast thing, the, the Collect-a-Con, that's crazy. You, uh, you got layers.

Episode duration: 1:24:49