The Market Is Crashing. Here’s What We’re Doing About It…
All right. Can we talk about the stock market going down? Because I had to yell at a bunch of people.
I feel like I can rule the world. I know I could be what I want to. I put my all in it like no days off.
So basically, the markets dropped, what, 5% this week? And in our little circle jerk world, it felt like the world was ending.
So I guess the Dow had its worst day in 2 years. SP 500 is down about 5% so far this week as of time of recording. And I think the tech stocks did a bit worse. So Nvidia's down 12%, Google, you know, whatever, a couple of the tech stocks, which is more maybe where we are at in the bubble, did worse. They gave back a lot of the gains that they've been having so far this year. And so it was a bad day for the markets. And by the way, I wake up, I wake up and I think some people on the East Coast, you're on the East Coast, a couple people in the group chat are on the East Coast, and it either says one of two things. It says, The world is ending with 4 or 5 likes on it in our group chat. Or it says we're going to Valhalla, boys. It has 4 or 5 likes on it every morning. And I really, I don't even check the market. I just look at that text and I know directionally, is the arrow up or down? But it kind of gets to you that way of thinking.
It bothers me. I had to yell at my partner Joe because he just calls me, are you freaking out about this? I'm like, freaking out about what? He's like, the markets are just going down like crazy. Like, should we sell everything? Like, what do we do? Like, my reaction was just like, this is expected. Like if you just buy index funds like I do, like there are ups and downs, but in general, over 5, 10, 20-year periods, you're expected to go up and down. And he just like freaked. And it made me angry. Like it made me angry because I was like, I wasn't stressing, but now I am, and this is not healthy. And that's what happened.
Okay. So I had a similar experience. Ben calls me, I'm on vacation. So Ben calls me and he's like, dude, what are your thoughts on like, you know, the market? First of all, are we only going to do calls when the market crashes about the market? It's not a topic we normally discuss.
Okay.
So first of all, I have no thoughts. It reminds me of that skit back in the Dave Chappelle skit where he was like, what does Ja Rule think? What's Ja have to say about this event?
We gotta get John on the line.
What's, yeah, let's get John on the line. Let's talk about the market. Second thing he was like, he goes, yeah, we should probably do that thing. But, you know, I did think like maybe we should do XYZ and he like laid out some like new plan. And the funny thing is I have been in a mode where I've just been trying to, I've understood that one of the most powerful things you could do is take a simple idea very seriously. I'm actually going to do a whole episode on this, taking a simple idea seriously, but in general, picking a few things that matter and then just simply doing them as well as possible and reinforcing it. So I actually do a thing, which is I wrote out for the year. I said, here's the 3 big things, big shifts. I always call it like 3 shifts I'm making this year. I'm making this shift, this shift, and this shift. Those are the 3 things that need to change in my life. The rest of the things are going great. I don't need to talk about the things that are going great. And every single week I write down that shift again in our Slack. I retype the exact sentence and then I say what I'm doing today and how that ties to that shift. And if I am going to do something today that doesn't tie to that shift, I just simply don't do it. Or with very rare exceptions to it. So I've been doing this for a while now. And I told Ben, I was like, Ben, so remember that thing we've been saying over and over again, but like what we're doing this year, why we're doing it, why it's the right plan. Did we need to add a disclaimer, which was unless the stock market crashes, and then we're just going to throw all this shit out the window and suddenly change our decision-making about all the things that we're doing. And it sounds ludicrous to say it like that, but that's where his mind went in the moment. And I don't blame him because my mind used to go there too. And I've developed a set of rules for myself through making horrible, expensive mistakes, which is fundamentally When markets crash, just, I have to assess like, A, is the wolf at the door? Like, do I actually have an existential crisis? If so, okay, I'll make a, I'll shift my attention to this and change. But like, if that's the case, it's because I somehow overlevered or like really stretched myself too thin or like I've made a huge bet that I should have never made in the first place. So is the wolf at the door? No.
Okay.
If the wolf is not at the door, simply do not react. Just do nothing for 30 to 90 days and then see where you land.
How would you have reacted 5 years ago?
Well, I can tell you how I did react 5 years ago, making mistakes. So when COVID— actually, even before COVID I remember at the end of maybe 2019, 2020, we had just sold our company. And my cousin, who's a hedge fund guy, and really all I know is like, this is my cousin, he's a hedge fund guy, and our whole family thinks he's the smart stock market guy. You know, people like, in your family when you don't really understand what people do, you just boil them down. You just categorize them into, oh, he's the doctor. So no matter what my issue is, let's call the doctor. Even if he's a heart doctor, I got a foot issue, doesn't matter. That's the doctor. Yeah, I'm the tech guy. It's like whether your router doesn't work or you need a, you're making a startup investment, just call Sean. Well, this is the stock guy. And he was like, uh, you know, it's been a long bull market. I'm moving this, this, and this. And so I went to cash and, you know, I was like, yeah, yeah, you know, longest bull market in history. I'm going to shift some of my allocation around. Because I got this one hot tip from my cousin, the stock market guy.
Isn't that funny how, uh, when you phrase it as wonderfully as, we're in the longest bull market ever, you're like, I don't know any of the evidence, but that was a great line, I'm in.
Exactly, exactly. He told me something about a dead cat bounce. Damn, that sounds fancy.
What is that?
I'm Googling. It's like, if I'm making decisions off a Wikipedia article I just read, like, bad things are happening in my life. Um, When COVID happened, I'm, you know, it's like, I don't know, it was a global pandemic. The world is ending and people are talking about L-shaped recoveries or W-shaped recoveries or whatever the hell, like V-shaped recoveries. I don't know what's going on. I'm drawing on my notepad trying to figure out, oh, that means stock market goes up or just stays down. And by the way, you know what it ended up being? A K-shaped recovery. The letter they didn't even talk about at the time. I was listening to all the smart money and it turned out a K-shaped recovery where You know, mainstream, Main Street went down.
It just got bogged down by inflation and assets soared and people were like, okay, like, doesn't— there's multiple lines on that chart, I guess, up and down. Or when they talk about, um, like flattening the curve, I'm like, I literally have to draw like an axis. I'm like, wait, so what does flatten— like, what does that mean?
By the way, you know what I mean? Something isn't drawing it out and trying to understand it. That actually is the smart thing to do. It's taking, you know, poorly informed action was the mistake. And so I ended up doing a bunch of things that I really never should have done. I sold a bunch of things thinking that that was being safe and conservative, but it was actually a poor decision. In general, the number of poor decisions I've made simply from reacting versus responding, and I define a reaction as making a decision in the moment based on an emotion that I'm feeling, usually fear or greed. Responding being, I have let the emotion cool off. I have let that settle and I am now choosing a decision that I'm going to make based off of some sort of logical rationale that I can write down and I could write down the counterargument for it. And when I look at my argument for and my argument against, one of them wins. And so anyways, now that's the short version of my current process, which I do not claim to be foolproof, but it is just an improvement over, over dumb mistakes I made in the past.
I found this great chart. I think it, um, was like starting in 1990 or '94. This chart breaks it down to if you missed the top gaining days of a market, what would your portfolio be like versus what would your portfolio be like if you just set it and forget it? And it was something like, what was this, uh, I think the starting number was $10,000. And so it was like if you missed the the 30 best days, you would have only $30,000 if you missed the, which is roughly 83% less than if you just set it. So if you just set it and forget it, you would have $181,000. If you missed the 30 best days, you would have $30,000. And then if you missed the 10 best days, you would have $83,000. You know what I mean? Like you would like, I see this chart of like, if you missed it. Now I posted that chart and people are like, yeah, well now do that chart with missing the worst days. And I'm like, well, you'd have way more money. But like, if you have some magic balls that could tell me, like, you know, we'll get that pole vaulter guy with the huge balls. Maybe he could tell me like, where is the worst day that I could time it? And we're good. You know what I mean?
But like, like tell me where I'm going to die and I'll know not to go there.
Yeah. Like that type of situation. And so I'm team like set it and forget it. I also think that you have to look at VTI, the Vanguard Total Index Fund. We're still up like 8 or 10% year to date, even with this little crash. So like, I still feel good.
Okay, great. Good segment. Anytime I talk about the stock market or it reminds me of like anytime a tech VC suddenly is like a foreign policy expert or is like a pandemic expert or whatever, you know, I'm a novice when it comes to investing outside of my realm, which is basically My realm is starting businesses or investing in private startups. Those are the two things I actually, you know, have spent enough time in to feel like I know what I'm talking about. Anything beyond that, I'm better off sticking to a, you know, an 80/20 type of strategy where I just do, just avoid huge mistakes and don't try to beat everybody.
All right, dude, I got to ask you about the Olympics. So you're my Olympics guy and I am famously not an Olympics guy. I like watching them, to be honest with you. I just think the Olympics are an insane, an insane sport. But I emailed you as part of my Friday newsletter thing and I was like, dude, what should I be watching for? And you gave me a couple of tips, a couple of storylines that made the Olympics, I don't know, 10 times more interesting for me. And I want to talk to you about a couple of the things that you, you brought up, starting with this 1500-meter race.
How good was that?
A race I did not even know I cared about. I didn't even honestly know this event existed. But can you set this up? Because you gave me storyline I needed., to, to really care about this. And it was incredible.
All right. So going into the 1500 meters. So the 1500 meter is, uh, 109 meters short of a mile. So roughly 15 seconds of a mile. So a really fast mile, let's say, is 4 minutes. Uh, a good 1500 is 3 minutes, 44 seconds. Going into the race, there was 2 clear favorites. This guy named Jakob Ingebrigtsen. So basically this guy, I call him the Justin Bieber of track and field. So he was raised by his father and like, I think he has 7 siblings of which 2 or 3 others are also elite runners, not as good as him, but elite runners. And so he's raised in this family with his dad who's very disciplinarian and he's also his coach and he's like, they're raised to be great runners. And in Norway where he's from, they have a TV show. So they're almost like reality TV stars also in Norway because these 3 brothers are wonderful at running. So this guy is the best. He's been the best since he was like 18. He has, I think, the second fastest or third fastest mile time of all time. He has the world record in the 2-mile. The problem with him, he's kind of a pretty boy. He's got these like cute tattoos all over his body and all the runners are a little bit arrogant and cocky. You have to be like that in order to be one of the best athletes in the world. But his cockiness comes off as more arrogance. And it also kind of sucks because he's like this guy who's kind of been the best since he, since he was young. And so he's not easy to root for. You know, he's like the guy who's had it all and he is the man, but he kind of acts like the man. Now the other guy he was going to race against, this guy named Josh Kerr. I've been lucky enough to meet Josh in Austin one time because I was friends with his manager.
Was this the guy you asked to see his calves or to touch his calves or something?
Yeah. Yes. Yes. So Josh, I think he's from Wales. I forget. Or no, Scotland. Sorry. Is it Scotland? Whatever it is, it's part of the UK. And so they run under a British flag. And so he is more of a silly, quirky, like he's got like the British, like shithead kind of attitude that's very likable. And interestingly, if you, the reason I talk about his calves, unlike a lot of the runners, he's still a really skinny guy. He's not as skinny as the other runners. And so he kind of sticks out, but he's like the man. And leading up to this race, they'd been talking trash to each other constantly. And track and field is usually a gentleman's sport. No one talks trash. And that kind of is one of the reasons why it's boring. They talk trash going into this race. And so it was like framed as Josh and Jakob versus each other. Josh is typically slower, but he all, he usually wins races because when in championship racing, it's not always the fastest person who wins. It's the person who shows up that day and has the best tactics and comes through in the end because oftentimes they go sort of slow and then the second half of the race is really fast. So it's typically not who's fastest. It's just who performs that day. So we go into this race. And it's just those two. We think that's what's going to happen. It comes down to the last, uh, 200 meters, which is a half a lap. So the last half a lap, it's setting up exactly like we thought, where Jakob is in front winning the race because he's the faster runner and Josh Kerr behind him waiting to kick and beat him. And Josh takes off and he's about to get Jakob and out of nowhere, this American Cole Hocker, who's got the slowest time of most all of the other 8 runners in the field. Comes out of nowhere and he wins. And not only does he win, with 100 meters left, that's the last straightaway, he's boxed in between Josh and Jakob. And you see him try to take off and Jakob is kind of blocking him a little bit. So he kind of pushes him a little bit, but he loses his momentum. And that's really hard in running because accelerating is the hard part. So when you lose the momentum, typically that's your one and only chance to do it. Somehow Jakob goes just to the right a little bit. So Cole Hocker can slip right through him on the inside rail. And he beats him. And not only does he beat him, Jakob fades to 4th, which is like insane. Josh Kerr gets 2nd. And this guy Cole, he doesn't just win, he runs the world, uh, the Olympic record. So the fastest time ever in the 1500 meter, and he runs something like the 7th fastest time in the 1500 meter ever. And he crushes his PR. And it was one of the best races I've ever seen.
That was a great summary. Uh, a couple of the things that I thought were fascinating about this. So when he was doing the trials and the, like the semis, like basically leading in, that guy Jakob had this strategy where he was so cocky, he would basically just start at the very back. So the race starts, he doesn't really care. He lets every single runner get ahead of him and he would just hang back at the back. And then like kind of the second lap, third lap, he would pass everybody and he would win the qualifiers. And it was just a cocky thing to do. But it was also effective because he, like, he knew he could push the pace and he just didn't want to burn too much energy right at the very start.
The goal of the semis and leading up, it's to win and qualify using the least amount of effort.
Right, exactly. And in the semis, him and Josh were going, and it looked like at the end they both kind of were feeling each other out. It looked— it was the first time running felt like boxing, where you could see, oh, they're, they're kind of measuring each other's distance, their power, and they're getting a feel for each other. You could tell even In the semis, there was almost a moment where Jakob won, but Josh kind of realized like, if I had pushed this last 50 meters, I think I could have taken him, but I don't want to show him the full bag right now.
They did something that was very controversial, not controversial, but it's very, it's part of the story in running, which is when you are winning a race or you're at the end of the race, if you look around to see who's around you, that's like a cocky move. And what you do is you see Jakob turn his head as if he's looking behind him. It's like, I see you behind me. And that's like, uh, that adds to the story, which is always fun.
Yeah.
Yeah.
The runner's insult. And so we, uh, and so, but in the final, what you were saying was amazing because he did the exact opposite. He starts the race immediately in first place. This guy Jakob goes faster than anybody has planned in the first two laps, faster than even afterwards. I was reading some interviews like, why did he fade so hard? He's like, dude, I, I went way too hard at the start accidentally. Like I didn't pace myself properly. I just got out, you know, kind of like lost myself in the moment, lost some composure. He just went too fast at the beginning, pushed a pace. And it was, it was basically that part you talked about where the American dude tried to pass him, got kind of pushed back. It looked like it was a complete wrap for him at that point. It looked like there was no way you can get bumped back and then pass him again. But it ended up working out, which I thought was amazing. If you haven't seen that one, go to YouTube. YouTube and just type men's 1500 meter, watch the 6-minute clip on the NBC Sports channel. It is like straight out of a sports movie type of thing. You know, like if you're an American, you watch that, it is super inspiring to see this guy who was a complete underdog. Nobody was even talking about him. It was just a question of which of these two other guys, and then this little, the little engine that could basically passes them all at the very end, runs the race of his life. I thought that was amazing.
And the best part, dude, Paris has killed it with this Olympics. The best part is they have this bell right at the finish line of all the events. And when you win an event, you walk over to the bell and you ring it. And he goes over and he rings this bell and it was just like a really cool moment. So like I was all about it. I was, I was screaming so loud. I woke my kid up from a nap. I was so pumped from this. So yeah, I'm happy. I've been a distance running fan for years. It's not the most popular sport because it's not that exciting. I'm happy this existed. It's good for the sport.
Okay, so I have a couple other winners and losers I want to go through with you. So winner for sure, Cole Hocker and the 1500-meter race. I'm going to do another winner here. Mixed relay. Another race I didn't even know existed. Did you, did you watch this?
So historically, America's greatest event is the 4x4 relay, which is a quarter of a mile, one lap, four people each running one lap. We've, we've almost always been the best. The mixed relay, I think it's a weird event. It's, I think it's only lasted for 2 Olympics. This might be the only second Olympics that we've done it. Uh, and America, we got our ass kicked by, uh, was it Belgium?
No, the Netherlands.
So the Netherlands, sorry.
This was a hilarious race because the way that the mixed relay works, say, is 2 guys, 2 girls, and they alternate. So it's a baton, you're, you know, you're handing off the baton. The American guy gets off to a good start. The woman for the, for the American team is standing in the wrong spot. Did you see this? She was standing 30 meters forward and at the last second the official was like, yo, what are you doing? Wait, you see all the other people like in her leg of the relay, they're all standing literally like 20 meters back. And she just spaced. She just spaced during the Olympics and didn't pay attention to where she was supposed to stand. It's like if you. Lined up for a kickoff at an NFL game, and one dude was just at the 30-yard line, and everyone else is standing somewhere else completely. It made no sense. The last second, she gets into the, to the zone where she's allowed to be, so she didn't get DQ'd, which would have been horrible. But then the crazy part was this woman at the end, the Femke Bol.
Femke Bol is awesome.
Femke Bol shoes. I am, I am thrilled by this athlete that I didn't even know existed. 24 hours ago. Femke Bol, if you haven't watched her, you got to go watch this woman run. She just dominated the US in the last leg. She's this Dutch runner who looks like she's not even expending any effort whatsoever. She's like, she's like AI, dude. She looked like fucking ChatGPT grew legs and ran effortlessly, ran the rest of this race when the rest of the humans were like sweating and trying. Femke Bol, dude, I feel like In another life, that would be your dream girl, Femke Bol.
I love her. I love her. She is my dream girl. She's going to be—
so she's not her life this life.
Yeah. Hey, Fem, if you're listening, she's a 400-meter hurdle specialist and she's going to race this woman named Sydney McLaughlin and Sydney's going to kick her ass. But Fem's going to get second and it's still going to be a fun race. That's my prediction.
Wow. Okay. Fighting words. I am officially, I'm like a half citizen of the Netherlands after watching that race. So I'm in on that one. That's another big winner for me. That race and specifically Femke Bol was a huge winner. Can I do some losers, losers of the Olympics?
Let me do one more winner. So this is a relatively new thing. So starting in 2016, I think in Rio, something like that, the Olympics did something cool. They got, so there's a bunch of refugee athletes. So like people who fled Iran, like there's a wrestler who fled Iran because he was protesting and And he fled. And so he can't compete for Iran anymore. There's a bunch of Syrian athletes, things like that. And so what the Olympics do is they put these guys into this team. I forget what they call it, but it's basically the refugee team. And they come into the stadium with the Olympic flag. And I always cry. I get really emotional when I see these guys come in because this is like the definition of the Olympics for me. And so they like pick athletes who are refugees and who have a shot at doing doing good and hitting the standards. So anyway, they have this one boxer who is from Cameroon and she had to flee Cameroon. And it's the first time that one of these refugee folks has ever medaled. And so she's guaranteed to get third place at least, maybe second place, uh, in boxing. And so her match I think is tomorrow. And so that's amazing. So like a lot of these kids, uh, well, they're young men and women now, but they like, for example, fled Cameroon or South Sudan because they were being recruited to be children soldiers, things like this. So they like walk across, you know, a country to flee and now they're in the Olympics. And I, and that's my favorite part of the, of the Olympics.
Do they have like a, so they, they walk in with the Olympic flag. What do they wear when they're at the Olympics? I haven't seen this. What are the, what's that uniform?
Historically they wear like blue Olympic jerseys. And so they, when, and, and when they come in, uh, to the stadium, they all look different, you know, cuz there's Syrians and then there's Africans and like, uh, they all look different. And it's really cool to see this group of people who are all from all over the world. Have similar, like, troubled backgrounds, and they all, like, come together wearing this jersey, and it's really cool to see that jersey kind of unite them.
Yeah, I love that. There, by the way, there's a surprising number— or maybe they just stand out when you hear the story— but there's a, there is a surprising number of Olympic athletes who were either, like, foster kids or, you know, adopt— this is basically the Blind Side story, right? It's like, oh, there's their parents, and you're like, oh, that doesn't look like their parents. Interesting, what's the story here? And it's like, well, they They had this incredibly tough upbringing, but then it makes sense at the same time. It's like if you're looking for the people who are extremely gritty and the people who are going to overcome the incredible number of obstacles that it takes to become the best in the world at something, it kind of makes sense that maybe you were forged in the fire that way.
I remember I was a track athlete and I remember being really nervous before races, but you'd be a lot less nervous if you came from a really hard life because you'd be like, This is easy, dude. This is like, you know, like this is nothing compared to what I experienced. Like today's a day off of my normal life.
I'm running for a time, not running away from dictators, right? It's different stakes.
Yeah. And so that's why I love sports. And so who are the losers?
So we got another one. So the winner, another winner we're marking here is the team refugee team. And my honorable winners are the parents who adopted several of these foster Olympians. That may be my my future, future, uh, career. All right, so some of my losers here, and of course I say this playfully because they're Olympians, they're not actually losers. I'll give you the most controversial one first: Simone Biles and in general gymnastics. Can I give you my case? Can I zag here? Can I give you my case on why? There's something about gymnastics that just creeps me out, dude. There's something strange and joyless. There's not only the controversy that happened where A lot of like sexual assault stuff was going on with gymnastics, but gymnastics seems so high stress, dude. Like when she fell on the beam and like, whoop, there goes, you know, 4 years. There's something just, they have to do this fake smile while they're doing their routine, but it's like the, they look like the Joker, dude. That's not a real smile. I've seen real smiles. That is not a real smile. It just seems incredibly stressed. It seems like a joyless sport. And she is so dominant, which is amazing. But there's something uncanny about it. It's like watching an AI video where you're like, this looks beautiful, but there's something inhuman about what I'm watching here. There's something joyless about gymnastics.
Dude, isn't it weird that you're, you're judged in a sport on like your appearance and your smile? Like, I think that's weird. I think that's weird. Like, if one of these women didn't smile and just had like a plain face, I think she would get hurt.
It's just weird that it's like sports.
I'm going to get ripped for everything I'm saying and mostly the way I look.
I think it's weird. I also dislike sports that are mostly judged. You know what I'm saying? That always makes me mad.
Yeah. It's just, it's a gymnastics was a rough watch for me. Also can't tell the level of difficulty.
It all seems hard.
They all look incredible. They all look absolutely incredible. And it's like, well, no, this one was clearly 4 tenths of a point worse than that one. And so it is kind of an unwatchable sport also because everything that all the athletes are doing looks superhuman to me. Whereas a race, there's something just so pure and primal about a race. It's like that person ran and won. I could tell who won and lost. In gymnastics, I really can't tell who wins and loses at all.
So in skateboarding, that's now an Olympic sport and I like to skate and you get points if you do. So there's like your regular stance, the way you skate all the time. And then you get more points if you do a which is you put your non-dominant foot in front, you know, you switch around. It's freaking weird. Like, who cares which footed you are? Like, why do you get— well, like, what if you're like, you know what I mean? I always thought that's weird. And it's similar with gymnastics. Like, if you use like, like, who's to determine what's more challenging if you use like your less dominant hand to lead? I think it's weird.
That's why I'm not a fan. If I take the SATs with my left hand, do I get an extra 100 points? That doesn't even make any sense.
Right. Or like with an eye patch. So I think that's strange.
Okay. Other losers that I have, this pole vault guy going viral. Cause he got a big schlong.
Yeah.
He picked the wrong contest. Yeah, exactly. Dude, if I see another meme about this guy, everybody had the same joke. It's actually not even him. It's everybody who made the same exact joke of like, he actually won.
Dude, come on. Basically. A guy went up on a pole vault, he cleared the bar, but on his way down, his dick hit the bar and it fell over. Uh, it sucks.
That sucks. No, he won, dude. All right. Um, last one is a winner. Noah Lyles. Uh, what do you have to say about this? The guy wins what seemed like the closest 100-meter race. Did nobody even realize that he won until it was finally like the camera in like a 9D analysis realized that his chest hair crossed the line first.
Noah has a little bit of a problem. He's an amazing athlete. I think he's a great guy. He's real cringe. So you'll have to, if you pay attention, he's going to be running the 200 meter, which is his better event. And he's probably going to win because he's great. He's got a cringe problem, which is, uh, he's the, you know, what do we, what do they call in UFC? The Triple C. He's a 3-time champion. The 3rd medal is for cringe.
Cringe.
Yeah. Yeah. So he's the cringe champion. Noah Lyles has a little bit of an issue with that.
Were you surprised, impressed by the finish?
I thought that he was going to get 2nd. Yeah, I was surprised that he won. I was surprised that he won. And here's another thing. I was surprised that the Jamaican guy who got 2nd— you should look up how big that guy is. People don't realize this. These 100-meter runners and these 200-meter runners, they look jacked and ripped and they look jacked and ripped because they're like mostly naked and they're like flexing, right? They just, you always look better when you're like working out. But if you look at their body weight and their height, they're pretty lean, small guys. They're actually, it's like Usain Bolt was 6'4 or 6'5, but he only weighed like 190 pounds. He, it's actually not that, not that huge of a guy. The guy who, from Jamaica, just beast, just beast of a guy. I was shocked that he did that as good as he did.
He's like Usain Bolt's protégé, right? He's like training with him or something.
Well, Jamaica is a small-ass country. They all train with similar coaches. So no, he's not good enough to be called his protégé, but he's good.
Okay. Fair enough. Fair enough. Okay. Two questions for you. Number one, do you believe that any of these guys are clean?
Yes. I tend to be optimistic. I also thought Lance Armstrong was clean though. So, but I tend to be optimistic. I think beating drug tests is fairly challenging, but I think they're clean. Yeah.
Right. Before you ask me for my investment advice, I advise you to look at my portfolio.
Yeah. Like I was like, I thought Lance was clean.
So you don't. Right. Okay. Second question. What's left to look forward to rest of the Olympics for me? Because the Olympics are also a complete— the other loser is the Olympics programming, how impossible this is to follow and watch. If you didn't tell me, hey, here's 3, 4 storylines that you should pay attention to, that I could get emotionally invested in it and understand what I'm looking at when I look at it, and which, which event to pay attention to, this would have been impossible to even enjoy. So what's left to enjoy for me?
So the men's 200 will be fun. So here's a sleeper, uh, of an event. There's a kid named Quincy. There's a grown man named Quincy, Quincy Hall, who's in the 400-meter dash. He potentially is going to win. But then there's younger Quincy, who's a 16-year-old kid who looks like a 16-year-old kid. You know, a lot of like 16-year-old prodigy athletes, they don't look like children. He looks like a child. He got 4th at the 400-meter trials in America. You have to get top 3 in order to go to the Olympics, but he got 4th, which means he's put on a relay. He's probably not good enough to be in the final 4x4, but if you watch the prelims for, uh, when America is in the 4x4, watch this young kid Quincy. He's 16 years old. He's like darling. Like he's got like, uh, the perfect type of charisma where he's like composed, but he still like talks like a child. That's going to be really exciting. I think he'll be the youngest, uh, American track and field athlete ever, uh, to go to the Olympics.
My mind only has room for Femke Bol. So, uh, I really look at my notes here. I've just put boxes around the name Femke Bol, like, you know, 16 times as you've been talking, because I'm not really paying attention to anything except for her.
I mean, she's good, but she's going to get her ass beat in the 400-meter hurdles, but she'll be, she's a wonderful second-place winner. So watch Quincy in the 4x4 relay prelims. He'll be a runner and that will be really exciting.
Okay. One last question for you. You're a runner. These, one of the things that they were talking about was like, yeah, I had to recover from that 100-meter thing to be ready for the 200 or whatever. They're like, Noah Lyles is talking about this. I understand that in theory, but also this is a 10-second race. They run it, it takes 9 seconds. You really need 2, like you have 2 days. Is that really hard to recover from a 9-second race?
No. So yeah, it is because you get sore from that. They do the, so to, to run a race, uh, at a big championship, you have to run 3 races. So one, one sprint race is actually 3. So the quarter, semi race, the semi and the final are usually always on the same day. So that final happened, I don't know how many hours, but the same day as the semifinal. So he had ran that morning as well. And when you run sprints, it taxes your central nervous system, which is different. So you basically, it's sort of like, uh, if I were to say like, hey, you have to do this box jump squat 20 times in a row and you gotta go for max height, you're gonna be this type of sore where your insides, like you, you feel like your nerves hurt, not necessarily like your aerobic system. Do you know what I mean?
This is like how when I get done with this podcast and I go hang out with my wife and I'm just like, I need to just not talk for a while. And she doesn't understand. She's like, you talk for a living. What are you talking? You're tired from talking. I need to tell, I need to go with this sympathetic nervous system explanation just to confuse her to make it acceptable.
So, and that's how it feels like if you go and do like an explosive workout, it's like you're, it's like your insides just feel depleted. It's kind of a weird feeling.
I guess I'll take your word for it. Never going to do it. All right. Um, that's the Olympic segment. Uh, thank you, Sam, for making that interesting for me.
All right. So let me tell you about a story and I want to hear something. Uh, I have a question for you on how the story ends. So in 1929, there's this guy and he starts this company where it's very odd. He basically is cleaning the rags and uniforms for circus performers. Very Strange start, but that's how this company starts. And he turns that into a business and he calls it ACME Industrial Laundry. And he kind of scales that up, but not a lot. It's a very small business, but he scales it up to where he starts doing laundry for other uniform businesses. Now he started that in 1929. By 1960, his son, who's like 21 years old, comes into the business and he is like, hey dad, I would love to work for you and maybe take this over one day. And the dad's like, yeah, sure, let's do it. And it does okay, but inevitably there's a little, little argument between the father and the son. And so the father calls the son into the office and he is like, hey, look, man, this isn't working. And the son's totally expecting him to be like, uh, you know, you're fired, you're out. And the dad goes, look, this isn't working. Here's the keys, man. You run it. Let's see what you can do. I'll step out your way. Let's see if you could pull this off. And so this son, he's at the time 21, 22, 23 years old. His name's Richard. He takes control of this business and he is like, let's grow this sucker. And so in 1960, when he takes it over, it's doing $180,000 in revenue, which is something like $2 million today. It has 12 employees. And he is like, look, we're going to like focus on doing laundry for companies who need cleaning supplies. So like extra rags, they're basically just washing rags and he grows it and it works out well. And he grows it to the point where after, I think, 8 years, the business grows from $200,000 a year up to $1.6 million a year, which is the equivalent of like $15 million a year. He's growing this business and it's a, he's now expanded into laundering company uniforms, which is a very strange thing to get into. I didn't even know that existed, but he grows this sucker for the next 50 years. And now they've renamed the company to Cintas. Have you heard of Cintas?
Yeah, I see their trucks.
I see their trucks all the time too. And I'd have no idea. Okay. So do me a favor. Go to Cintas market cap. Just Google that and look at what it says.
$75 billion.
It's a $75 billion company. And their main business is still, uh, now they, they launder uniforms, but they also supply the uniforms. So they make uniforms for all types of businesses. You know, like you'll see, like if you see like a typical janitor outfit, that's a very easy one, but it could be restaurants. It could be anything. And then they, uh, rent you your uniform and they'll launder it for you. But then they've expanded. So like if there's a fire extinguisher in the bathroom of a restaurant, it probably has come from them. If there's cleaning supplies, it probably comes from them because once they made inroads into a business, they're like, hey, along with your uniform, we're going to sell you all these other things. And so I think they do something like $8 or $9 billion a year in revenue and it's subscription revenue. So it's like a huge company.
Why is it? Subscription revenue.
It's Uniform Rental.
Oh, nice.
Yeah, they got you. Uh, it's called, uh, RAS, uh, uh, you know, like Rental as a Service. I don't know, it's just, that's just what they do. Uh, they, they sell uniforms or they rent uniforms, and so they're able to get like these subscription businesses. And then it's also like real recurring revenue because, uh, they'll sell you all this other stuff and they've got inroads. But as the business was taking off, Richard Farmer, uh, his name, He starts getting old and he's like, I need to figure out a way how to like keep this within my family. And so to this day, the family, the Farmer family still owns something like 20%, I think maybe 18% of the business. And like, he was like, I made it my mission to create this like generational thing. And I've trained my children to help take this over and to make decisions as, as it comes to giving away our money, but also governing the company. I don't, a family member isn't the CEO, but they're still like involved. And so the reason why I looked this guy up is I'm very fascinated with how you could pull this off where you could keep your family in the business. I think that it's very hard and it's high risk, high reward. And so I've been like studying all these families who have pulled it off and these guys have, and from the outside, there's a dozen other examples of people who have crashed and burned and this has not worked. My question to you, is this a thing that you, aspire to have, you know, your one of your 3 kids, uh, kind of take things over, or you pass the baton to them? Or do you not care about this? Because I've talked to a lot of people and it seems 50/50 of people who are like adamantly in favor and other people who are just like, I don't give a shit.
My answer is really split. I don't aspire to do this, meaning it's not something I'm planning to do. Or really want to push on anybody. Do I think it would be awesome? Yeah, totally. In the same way where like if my son plays basketball as his favorite sport, that's going to be awesome for me because I love basketball and I could coach him and I could help him in a way that I couldn't if it was tennis or not, not sports at all. So it's, to me, it's a bonus. It's not a plan. I do think about this stuff because on two ends of the spectrum, on one end, I've met way too many rich guys who talk themselves into working too long, working too much with this, like, I'm just doing it all for my kids. It's like, dude, kids just kind of want you at home, actually. They just want to spend some time with you right now. They don't really care, you know, whether you leave them, you know, $12 million or $22 million or $42 million. It's not like your kid right now doesn't care. And also doing that, giving them more might actually be a disservice to them. Back to the kind of, you know, uh, our conversation earlier about the Olympics and how, like, you know, what does, uh, where does character come from? Um, so I think that it's really dangerous to talk yourself into, I'm doing this for my kids. So I refuse to let myself do that. I think anybody who says that honestly is lying. I think you're doing it for yourself, um, and you use your kids as a justification to, uh, why you're, why you're doing that. As my, my general opinion. And so I just took safeguard myself from ever lying to myself in that way because it's such a sexy lie, right? Who's going to say anything bad to you? You can never get checked, right? There's no checks and balances if you just say, I'm just doing it for my family. I'm doing it for my kids. And so, um, so I think it's really important for myself to not, not lie to myself that way. If my kids happen to want to be interested, happen to have an interest or appeal to it, awesome. I will be super excited and can't wait to, to do that. I do hope that that happens, but hope is You know, not a plan, not a strategy. On the other hand, I'm on vacation and one of the best moments of my day yesterday was I went to a water park. Dude, have you been to a water park like in the last 20 years?
Dude, Nick Gray rented a water park for his 40th birthday, but in order to save money, he rented it from 7 AM to 9 AM. And so me and a bunch of 40-year-olds went to his birthday party where we had a whole water park for ourselves. Besides that, have you been?
Have you been to a water park?
No, it's just too full of pee, man. It grosses me out.
I know. I was absolutely disgusted by being in that pool with so many people.
Dude, so many like Tweety Bird shirts. Oh no, not for me.
Yeah, they did this thing where they, 'cause I'm in the kids section and they take a break at the top of the hour for 5 minutes as a potty break of like, hey, this is the time to like take your kid to go and pee.
That just brings more attention to it.
Nobody left the pool. And I was like, nobody's leaving right now. There can only be one explanation for this. It's filthy. Besides that, there was one beautiful thing amongst the disgust, which was while we were walking in, there's this dad, he's pulling like a wagon, like, because when you have kids, just bring so much shit everywhere. And his kid was walking next to him. His kid's probably like 7 years old. And he's walking in front of us and he stops like 10 feet ahead and it's like a really narrow path. And normally like my like flaw as a parent is I'm very impatient. It's like, get like, I get like really like fussy and like annoyed easily when I'm like beyond like a 4-hour stretch with my kids. I just become like cranky. And so this guy stops, I'm ready to be cranky. He does something really, really awesome. I realized why he stopped is because this kid asked him something. And the dad who was— the kid was like kind of like looked kind of athletic. The dad didn't really look super athletic, looked like, you know, typical water park American, let's say. And he— but he was showing him, he goes, oh, when you're doing that in soccer, um, he's like, when they come at you this way, what you want to do. And he was showing him how to use his feet to like not have the ball get stolen. And the kid was not like making eye contact, but he's processing it. He was watching the the dad and he was processing. He wasn't saying a whole lot back and the dad was trying to just show him something. And in the moment, the base was just like a dad teaching his son something. And I don't know, I've gotten pretty soft, but like that, like kind of like touched me for a moment. I was like, this is so amazing. Just this, uh, this dad just teaching his kid this little thing, like just being able to pass down one little bit of information and the kid so earnestly processing it. Because there's so many things you tell your kids that they're not listening and they don't care. They don't want to know. And They don't want to listen. They don't want to take their vegetables, basically. But the kid genuinely cared and it meant something to him. And you could tell the kid had had like a bad experience and was trying to figure out how to overcome the bad experience. And I fucking loved it, dude. And it just made me, for the rest of the day, I just found like all these little pockets, little moments to like have a different conversation with my kid. And so like, you know, later that day we were like parking the car and I was like, told my son, I was like, come, come back to me. He's only 3 years old. I did the thing, like illegal thing you're not supposed to do. I like put him on my lap and like had him like drive in the parking lot to like park the car. But like, he had to sit in my lap while I was driving it. Like, this is like 50 feet, but like, whatever. And I told him, I said, my son does this really cute thing where he goes, he'll do something. And then like an hour later, he'll go, you know why I might do that? Like, you know why I said I wasn't going to eat that? And he just keeps on. He's always like, you know why I might punch her? And it's like, then he's got some explanation that never even makes sense, but it's so cute. And so like me and my wife, whenever we fight, we do that. And I was like, you know why I was an asshole earlier? Is because I, whatever. And so I told him, I go, you know why I let you drive just now? And he goes, why? And I go, because I'm teaching you how to be a man. And he goes, okay. And I'm like, go tell your sister when you go back, say, you know why I got to go do that? Because dad is teaching me how to be a big man. He goes in the room and he goes, hey, bless you, you know why dad let me drive? Because he's teaching me to be a big human. And my wife's like, what?
Dude, that's awesome. I'm, uh, I'm excited for my, when my kids are old enough that I could try to do that. And I'm totally going to do a ton of them. And yeah, I'm thinking about the same thing too, about children and like what it means to like bring them in if, if it's all at all possible. But I do believe that what you said was true of it is mostly a lie that we tell ourselves of why we are grinding. It ain't for them. It's so we could feel fucking dope and powerful.
Yeah, exactly. By the way, I didn't answer your question fully, which is if they're interested, you know, a lot of people don't want to do it because they're like, oh, working with family is messy. Working with friends is messy. I learned one thing on this podcast episode, some, I don't know, one of the first 20 episodes with Mike Brown. He said, I asked him about, he brought his brothers into his business and I was like, was that a good idea to bring your brothers in? And he looked at me like I was, like I was asking him like, are you sure you'd want to drink water? It's pretty wet. And he goes, my view of life is you find the people you love and you do life with them. And then that became like fucking central to my core over like in that split second, I like changed as a human being. I was like, oh, okay. That made total sense to me. And that's the answer, right? Like find the people you love and then do life with them. And I will hit up people and I'll like try to find an excuse to just do a project with them or do a trip with them or do something with them. That has been so fruitful in one of my businesses. We brought in, you know, I do business with my wife. We brought in my sister into a business. I've done so many different, I've done a business with my two best friends. Like that has become just an operating philosophy that, that has served me very well. And like, yeah, there are times where it doesn't work out well. So what? That's like everything. There's no foolproof strategy, but the upside of finding people you love and doing life with them is so much higher than the downsides of when it doesn't work out, in my opinion. But, right. And that's how I feel about this podcast, by the way. Like, you know, when we met, I always loved hanging out with you. It's like, Sam's this crazy combination of really smart, but smart about things that nobody else I know is smart about those things. Like he knows about this fucking family apron rental business. You know, like you just have a trillion of these things and you're also, really fun and funny, which is super like, which I learned to appreciate was very rare in people. Like the more kind of successful you get, the more serious people get. Whereas you were one of these people or the more successful you got, the sillier you got. And I was like, dude, I just want to have this guy in my life somehow. Right? Like how, I don't know what the excuse, hey, you moved away, but I'm glad this podcast became like an excuse to do that.
Well, I'm glad too. And by the way, to the people listening, that shit takes work. Like I particularly like, like you and I, like, like we give and take to make each other happy. But I would imagine it's the same thing with children in business where it's like, I know this is the wrong thing that we should be doing, but I gotta let the kid like fuck up. You know what I mean? And I think that's really hard to do.
Dude, there was a great quote. I don't know if I'm allowed to quote this. I think I am. When I went to that event for the Tiny Event in Canada. Chris, Andrew Wilkinson and his partner Chris, they own Tiny, the holdco. The holdco has like 40 companies inside. They're doing a session about holdcos and somebody asked them, they were like, hey, I'm setting up my holdco. I'm in year 1 and I just want to know like how much support do you guys have from the back office? Like do you centralize finances? Because I think that could be really good, like cost savings plus easy way to have oversight. And do you centralize legal? Like what do you guys centralize to get the most synergy?? And their answer is, Chris was like, basically up till now, we've done nothing. We centralized almost nothing. And he goes, for two reasons. Number one, so he had a smart reason and then he had a great quote. His smart reason was, he goes, whenever we owned the financials, it felt good because we felt in control. The problem was we were in control. The CEO looked at the numbers and was like, those are your numbers. Those aren't my numbers. I don't own that. I don't know what that target is. I don't know what those numbers are. I'm on the receiving end. Of these numbers. And that's a good point. The second thing that Cody said, he goes, we wanted all of our companies to be able to run without us. And the only way to do that was to just completely, you know, not completely neglect, but like to neglect them, to not offer support and services. And he goes, the children of deadbeat dads grow up tough and independent. It was like a groan in the audience, but I was like, I like that. I like that a lot. He's like, it's true. Like, you know, like it's the kids that grow up in a like a harder environment that are tough and independent.
The refugee, the refugee team of the Olympics.
Exactly. And I thought that was such a good quote and a great answer. And he said, he goes, by the way, now that might not be the answer. Now we might end up centralizing more as we're now a public company and all this other stuff. There's other reasons to do it now. What got us here and what worked for us was that.
All right, that's the pod.
I feel like I could rule the world. I know I could be what I want to. I put my all in it like no days off. On the road, let's travel, never looking back.