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Hi, I'm Jim O'Shaughnessy and welcome to Infinite Loops.
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Sometimes we get caught up in what feel like infinite loops when trying to figure things out.
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Markets go up and down, research is presented and then refuted, and we find ourselves right back where we started.
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The goal of this podcast is to learn how we can reset our thinking on issues that hopefully leaves us with a better understanding as to why we think the way we think and how we might be able to change that to avoid going in infinite loops of thought.
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We hope to offer our listeners a fresh perspective on a variety of issues and look at them through a multifaceted lens — including history, philosophy, art, science, linguistics, and yes, also through quantitative analysis.
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And through these discussions help you not only become a better investor, but also become a more nuanced thinker.
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With each episode we hope to bring you along with us as we learn together.
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Thanks for joining us, now please enjoy this episode of Infinite Loops.
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Disclaimer: Jim O'Shaughnessy is chairman and Co-Chief Investment Officer of O'Shaughnessy Asset Management, where Jamie Catherwood is an associate.
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All opinions expressed by Jim, Jamie and podcast guests are solely their own opinions and do not reflect the opinions of O'Shaughnessy Asset Management.
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This podcast is for informational purposes only, and should not be relied upon as a basis for investment decisions.
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Clients of O'Shaughnessy Asset Management may maintain positions in the securities discussed in this podcast.
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Jim O'Shaughnessy: Well, hello, everybody.
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It's Jim O'Shaughnessy, with yet another Infinite Loops.
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And today, I got to tell you, I'm going to ask Peter what he does when he is not filming the Dos Equis commercials.
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Because I got to tell you, I think I'm going to be interviewing the world's most interesting man.
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Just some stats, startup founder, angel investor, author.
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Now here's where it gets really good, racecar driver, certified scrum trainer.
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Only reason I know that was I had a friend at rugby, you've started four startups.
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You have a $10 million venture fund. My god.
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You have three degrees in education, counseling and divinity.
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Lay it on me, Peter, welcome.
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Peter Saddington: Really appreciate, Jim, being on the show.
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You missed a couple things there, but I won't hold it against you.
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I am a perennial learner.
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And so I have found very quickly in life that ...
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And hopefully, this is encouragement for everyone that's listening already, is that you can learn anything.
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And you can actually do anything with time, intentionality, and effort.
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And so I love learning, I love getting my hands dirty.
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And if there's anything that I want to do, that I want to received or have some mastery on and be able to do it with some proficiency, I generally don't hire a contractor consultant.
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I just start learning myself.
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And so, for me, education is very much part of my bloodline.
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Jim O'Shaughnessy: We're very simpatico.
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I could have just said what you just said.
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I think that the thing that people often confused is they think that, oh, I went to college, I'm educated. Wrong.
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You've got to essentially unlearn all the stuff they taught you that was false, and then you've got to go out and find out things for yourself.
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And infectious curiosity, plus the willingness to put the time and work in, it is a short prescription for success.
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The first thing that I want to talk about with you is I read some of your ...
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Well, I read all your stuff.
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And I want to ask you about three of the things you say.
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Because again, they really resonate with me.
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And I was telling my wife before I came on, "I say all these things too, but he says them more eloquently."
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I'm going to read them to you and then I'd like you to go through each one. Peter Saddington: Sure.
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Jim O'Shaughnessy: The other thing I love about your advice, it is simple, straightforward, and can be understood.
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You don't use jargon, you don't try to pile on the bullshit, so let's get going.
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Be exceptionally useful is number one. I mean, I love that.
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And it bothers me that it has to be advice, but we'll go on.
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Number two, I love number two, go hard, go big, go epic.
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I call that burn all the ships.
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Peter Saddington: I love it.
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Jim O'Shaughnessy: Number three is master your internal self first.
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Reminds me of Carl Jung, who I love and have studied much of.
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If you look outside your dream, if you look inside, you awaken.
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Peter Saddington: Oh, brother, man, you're speaking to my heart there, Jim. Come on, let's go. Let's go.
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You want me to hit the first one, be exceptionally useful.
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Man, this is one of the most powerful work ethic ideologies that I have ever come across.
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And the reason why this is so powerful is when you are so exceptionally useful to people, then you become what Seth Godin would call, a linchpin.
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And you probably know Seth Godin and his book, Linchpin.
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And the whole idea behind being a linchpin in an organization is you are so DogGone bloody useful, that they could never imagine living or working or succeeding without you.
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And so, I always tell young bloods, especially guys who are asking for money, because I'm a VC and guys who are trying to figure out how to build their first startups or their first company or their first hustle or first project, I always tell them, you, obviously, are going to be doing 19 different things as an operator.
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It's just part of the game.
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As you scale, don't forget to be exceptionally useful in all of those areas as well.
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Not only do you have empirical experience of building the ship yourself or doing the work yourself or the manual work yourself that is now automated, but you were part and parcel of the building of those processes.
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And so you can give context, insight, and powerful advice to the individuals who come behind you.
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And so the whole core idea of being exceptionally useful is being available to help with your arms out saying, I got some free time, I got some capacity.
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Baby, I want to make this thing fly, how can I be of service?
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And so as you can probably imagine, it pulls a lot from the servant leadership ideology and the servant leadership philosophy, which touches my heart and it's very close to the way that I tried to build cultures and companies.
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Jim O'Shaughnessy: Yeah, and that's also the same for me.
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It also is almost Daoist in that.
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If you read the Tao Te Ching, there's a verse in there about something along the lines of the powerful leaders are feared, venture leaders are ...
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People cower before them.
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But the actual true leader leaves the people saying, we did it ourselves.
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Peter Saddington: Can I share a small anecdote here, Jim? Jim O'Shaughnessy: Sure.
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Peter Saddington: I want to help all the consultants out there.
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One of the reasons that I've been so successful as a consultant is because I'm exceptionally helpful.
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And what that means is that even if we were having our initial discovery call about the project, about the issues, about the constraints, about the organizational system at play, even then, my job is to give them as much of me as possible.
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First and foremost, be powerfully listening to everything that they're saying.
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Because as a consultant, you should listen twice as much as you speak.
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But when they're asking for advice or counsel, you give them bloody everything.
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And some people would say, well, man, shouldn't I keep stuff close to the vest, Jim?
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Shouldn't I keep stuff close to the vest, Peter?
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I mean, it's my secret sauce. No.
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Give it away, that no one will ever remember what you actually said.
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They will only remember how they felt because you were willing to give them the extra juju, you're willing to give them the extra juice.
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And that's why they're going to call you back.
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That's why they're going to want you to be part of that narrative and you to be the solution in that problem.
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And so, I say, hold nothing close to the vest, give it all the way, give it your best.
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And so that's my best tip for consultants out there.
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Jim O'Shaughnessy: That's very cool.
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And again, I think we're going to end up agreeing on almost everything.
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I published a book called What works on Wall Street, which became very well known in asset management.
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And prior to that, one of the large banks on Wall Street had seen the manuscript and they tried to buy my then company, O'Shaughnessy Capital Management.
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But there was one proviso, you can't publish the book.
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And I looked, when I was in '90s, you can maybe give them a little wiggle room for not being enlightened.
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But I looked at them and I said, "You guys don't get it, man.
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You got to put it all out there, you got to leave it all on the field, that's the way that people are going to know that you really mean it."
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You've got to give, give, give, and then give some more.
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Because honestly, people are generally lazy.
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And you can distinguish yourself, remarkably, by not being.
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And again, underlining your point, giving it all.
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Because ultimately, they're going to hire you for that other things, et cetera.
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Now, for example, that company, I said no, because I said the book has to be published.
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But they hired me anyway for something else.
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Peter Saddington: Probably because you were exceptionally useful to them.
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Jim O'Shaughnessy: Well, yeah.
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My wife, if she heard me in here saying that I was exceptionally useful, would probably come in and ice me. She tries to ... She's got the spray can.
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She sprays me whenever I say any self-congratulatory.
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Peter Saddington: It's a contextually relative statement.
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Jim O'Shaughnessy: I agree. I agree.
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Here's another one that I love, look for something that really nags at you.
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And it reminds me a bit of the author, Howard Blum, who says, "Basically, what you ought to do is look at things right under your nose as if you've never seen them before, and then proceed from there."
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Peter Saddington: Absolutely.
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As I have gotten to 40 years old, I will tell you, I have learned, Jim, to trust my gut.
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And I bet you and I could probably tell story.
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We could probably trade stories forever about situations in which we haven't trusted our gut and haven't listened to our second brain.
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The Egyptians call our gut our second brain because it knows things.
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You know how the story ends, you've been here before.
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And I'll tell you when it comes to this quote about, look for the things that really nag you, that's a gut level thing for me.
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If I just noticed this thing and it nags me and it's like, oof, that needs to be fixed, those are going to be the things often, at least in my experience in business, that end up becoming major hurdles for you later down the road.
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And so you could say here that a little ounce of medicine right now, I guess, is worth a pound of cure or something like that. Fix the issues today.
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It's always going to be more costly down the road as it crops up.
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Look at those things that nag you and make sure to address them. Jim O'Shaughnessy: Yeah.
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Again, I'm going to highly recommend the Tao Te Ching to you because you are a natural Daoist, because ...
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Peter Saddington: I've spend a lot of time in the stoic literature.
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There's similarities there.
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Jim O'Shaughnessy: Yeah, there are.
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I've written a long piece about it.
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I haven't published it yet.
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But the similarities between Daoism, stoicism, and then throw in a little Viktor Frankl, and man, man, do you become virtually impossible to insult.
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Because you realize how small you are and you focus only on the things you can actually take direct action and change.
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Peter Saddington: Brother, I mean, you're preaching to me.
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And I love hearing this, Jim.
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I mean, this is something that I think is worth remembering all the time.
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For anyone that's out there that's listening or watching, we can always remember to be self-reflective.
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And remember, actually, I'm going to go right to a quote you talked about earlier, mastering your internal self. One of the things ...
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I have two kids, I have a 10-year-old daughter and a 9-year-old son.
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Jim O'Shaughnessy: Great ages.
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Peter Saddington: And one of the things we talk about a lot is that you never have to react to the situation. You never have to react.
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And so, this mastering your emotions, mastering your inner self allows you to work and live and operate with peace. I don't know.
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I could probably spend an hour talking about this with you.
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But peace has been a big part of something that I've been trying to spend, ensure that I have more time focusing on this year, is how can I make decisions in peace?
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How can I make sure that I've taken the decision and all the analysis that I can to its nth degree and then just say, you know what, this is all I'm going to know up to this particular point.
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Let me just make the bet.
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Let me be at peace with it.
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And mastering my emotions, so I'm not making an emotional decision.
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Because we all know that we make our best decisions when we're highly emotional, right, Jim?
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So mastering your emotion is absolutely essential.
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It requires some self-reflection.
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And man, I'll tell you, for those who are willing to sit in silence, it will avail you much.
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Jim O'Shaughnessy: No question about it.
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And let's not soft sell it, though. It's hard. It's really hard.
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And you've got to work at it.
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I advocate people journal.
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And if you're on social media and something pisses you off, instead of doing ... Yeah, exactly.
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For those listening, he held up a journal, and I will do the same for those watching.
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He who angers you or she who angers you controls you.
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And my grandfather was very successful as an oil wildcatter.
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I had the good fortune of being the kid that when he came over for dinner after they lost my grandmother, twice a week, I got to soak it all in. And he was very funny.
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But one of his things ...
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He taught me two really great things.
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First is what he called premeditation, which essentially is a Monte Carlo simulation, but in your brain and with pen and paper.
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Because you can learn quite quickly, oh, maybe I don't want to do this.
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Sometimes we don't know that, right?
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Peter Saddington: Until we write it down.
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Jim O'Shaughnessy: Exactly.
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And again, you really don't know what you think until you write it down.
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And if you think you understand something, try to write it. Because guess what? You probably don't.
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But the other thing he's used to say was, I always knew that we had won when the other side started to shout. Peter Saddington: Oof.
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Jim O'Shaughnessy: And so I was a very lucky kid to be around him and learn all of those things.
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And what I find interesting is the fact that you're young, you're 40, did you come to all this yourself?
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Or did you have an elder like I had my grandfather teaching me this stuff.
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Peter Saddington: I came from a relatively benign beginnings. I was an orphan.
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I started out as an orphan.
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I was adopted by pretty much Middle America, low income family that lives in Austin, Texas.
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And so, for me, really was born into me this survival model.
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And so I don't have to explain to you or any of your listeners out there that the early childhood formation years are absolutely essential for the formation of the worldviews you hold, the mental models you have, the philosophies of life that are ingrained to your world.
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And so starting my life off as an orphan, as you could probably imagine, created some really powerful models of how I assumed I needed to live.
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And so what that created in me, essentially, is a monster, Jim, a monster who is absolutely gung-ho about knowledge, in growing, in surviving.
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I think that's how I've matured the survival instinct to say, I don't need to be in survival flight or fight mode any more.
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I can pick and choose what I want to do.
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And I've honed in that focus for just a hunger for knowledge and a hunger for things that I think are interesting.
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Interestingly enough, and you will know this, Jim, is that if you find something interesting and then you pour a lot of intentional effort in them, and then over a period of a couple of years or maybe more, you actually end up growing some mastery. Amazing.
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And then sometimes after you've grown that mastery, you can make money, you can monetize that skill.
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And so that's essentially if you track my career from 20 years ago till now, if you look at my career, it's always been I was interested in that.
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I started grabbing books at the library, looking online, going down the rabbit hole, and then loving the work, and then finally, receiving some mastery.
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And because of how I'm built, it's like, shoot, if I'm good at this, I think I can sell it.
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That's how I started all of my businesses.
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I'll give you a great example, spinning a yarn.
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In 2007, I saw an Ars Technica article.
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It's an internet magazine, Ars Technica.
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Jim O'Shaughnessy: Yeah, I know, I read it. Peter Saddington: Yup.
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And in this Ars Technica article in 2011, October, they talked about this technology stack like Java, C#, C++, Ruby, or . NET, or whatever.
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And they said that this technology stack had lost 90% of its value.
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For me, as an engineer, that didn't make any sense.
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I was like, well, wait, Java and C# and PHP, they can't lose value.
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It's just a coding language.
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And then I realized it was Bitcoin.
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I went down the rabbit hole on Bitcoin.
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For 30 days, I lost 15 pounds. Jim O'Shaughnessy: Wow.
19:07
Peter Saddington: And I realized that this is going to be the future of money.
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And let me give you the hook, Jim.
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As an engineer developer, I realized for the first time in forever, that as an engineer, I could create programmable money.
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And that in 2011, when I realized I could create programmable money, from 2011 till today, I'm working in the crypto space, because this is the world of ...
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This is the financial future of our world.
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And I love being able to program money. How cool is that?
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Jim O'Shaughnessy: Very cool.
19:38
I would have two questions for those who worry.
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Number one is, isn't there an extinction event that's sitting out there if the US government suddenly waves a wand and says, oh, yeah, by the ...
19:55
They did this, by the way, with gold in the '30s.
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And they actually went into people's house and actually arrested them if they had gold.
20:06
Clearly, they've got the firepower. What would happen then?
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Peter Saddington: I think we're already seeing small examples of this around the world, where big governments are going into people's accounts and shutting them off.
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I mean, there's stuff on the news right now about let's just say, Canada, we don't need to get into the politics behind it.
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But in Canada, they're shutting off bank accounts right now.
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And so what we are seeing is a slippery slope in terms of the financial world, in that certain countries are beginning to impeach, encroach in on people's finances and their bank accounts.
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And so we've seen this decades past.
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And so this is always going to be a problem.
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What is powerful, and where the opportunity lies for Bitcoin, is because of the decentralization, number one, the immutability, number two, the anti-fragility that has been proven over a decade now, and the thermodynamic nature of the system in that it can never be actually stopped.
21:09
I think there can be major speed bumps, and let's just say constraints that can be put on Bitcoin.
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You need to look at Bitcoin from a technological standpoint. Bitcoin is a protocol.
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You might say, well, what does that mean?
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The internet is a protocol.
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And so, in 1993, Tim Berners-Lee created the internet, and it was a protocol, and this protocol cannot be turned off.
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It can be turned off in certain areas, but cannot be turned off in mass.
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And the internet is continuing to expand as a technological protocol to every corner of the globe.
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What makes Bitcoin so powerful and profound is that Bitcoin is a protocol, likewise.
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And so, Bitcoin will continue to expand, ad infinitum to every corner of the globe.
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I don't know when, but it's going to happen because the internet is expanding and Bitcoin will continue to expand likewise.
21:57
And so, I think to answer your question succinctly, yeah, there's going to be countries that are going to ban Bitcoin.
22:01
There are going to be countries that are going to close down bank accounts, but the anti-fragility and the monetization incentive for people to mine this and to continue to support the network is just way too large.
22:15
Jim O'Shaughnessy: That's interesting.
22:18
What do you think about the idea, and here's where I am a little worried, what do you think about the idea that the US Treasury and the Fed have been floating about creating the digital dollar?
22:33
Peter Saddington: We're already there.
22:36
We're actually already there.
22:36
When people bring up this type of argumentation, Jim, I usually tell them, "When was the last time you spent cash?"
22:43
And they'll look at me and say, "Well, actually, all week, I used my credit card."
22:48
You're already in digital cash, baby.
22:52
They tracking that, ain't they? I mean ...
22:52
Jim O'Shaughnessy: I just have to interject.
22:54
As an old, I spend cash all the time.
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And what I tell people, my younger friends, as a joke, obviously, I'll hold up a bill and I'll look at them because I do a lot of work with younger people, and I'll hold up a US dollar bill or $20 bill and I look at them and say, "Original Bitcoin, baby."
23:13
Peter Saddington: Yeah, that's right.
23:16
Jim O'Shaughnessy: Because you can't track cash, right?
23:17
Peter Saddington: Exactly, exactly.
23:19
I think we're going to be moving into a continually progressive world where there's going to be shut downs and there's going to be things that are going to make it hard for Bitcoin to proliferate.
23:30
But at the end of the day, we're already dealing with digital cash that is fully tracked.
23:34
For example, there was a study done a couple years ago that showed that when you buy a cup of coffee at Starbucks with your Amex card, between that transaction is anywhere between 7 to 12 entities that know that you just bought that cup of coffee.
23:49
And so, Bitcoin and cryptocurrency removes that layer in terms of surveillance systems of sorts, and so that people don't need to know what you're purchasing.
23:58
They don't need to know what's going on.
24:01
There's some financial sovereignty opportunity there.
24:04
Jim O'Shaughnessy: Interesting. And I am always like ...
24:04
Luckily, I'm voraciously curious.
24:09
And so, I always want to try to figure things out.
24:09
Bitcoin has been a longer process for me.
24:15
And one of the other questions that springs to mind as I listened to you is, what about right now the Pareto distribution of Bitcoin holding?
24:24
I have a worry that there are a lot of younger, inexperienced people, not like you, who don't dive into things and really get them to the point of understanding them to mastery.
24:41
But more mimetically just say, oh, all my buddies are doing this, I'm going to pour this whatever.
24:48
I'm going to pour my money into this, and they lose their entire investment.
24:56
Now maybe this is just the fact that I've been a fiduciary since I was 24 years old.
25:04
Peter Saddington: Fair enough.
25:07
Jim O'Shaughnessy: But is there an answer for that or no?
25:08
Peter Saddington: Well, I think there's multiple avenues that had emerged over the last decade of Bitcoin's existence.
25:15
And certainly, for me, as an operator and venture capitalist, as well as VC funded, building venture funded companies in this space since 2016, I think I have a pretty robust perspective on this.
25:26
And I'll look at it from three particular vantage points.
25:31
I think the first vantage point is exactly what you say, is that people are going to ignorantly and naively move into the world of crypto and get their ass handed to them. Guess what?
25:41
Life's full of those lessons, Jim. Come on, baby.
25:41
I almost no sympathy for those guys.
25:46
But you haven't done your diligence, you put $5,000 on a shit coin and you lost all your money.
25:53
It's like, bro, not a whole lot of sympathy.
25:53
I've been there, which is why I don't have sympathy.
25:59
And so, that's going to always happen.
25:59
And what's great about that is that in many cases, those people hopefully will persevere.
26:04
They'll get educated, they'll get leveled up, and they'll say, okay, maybe I can do this better the next time.
26:13
The second way, I think, is the better way.
26:13
This is always how I counsel people to help their friends, their colleagues, their families to get into Bitcoin, is you give them some.
26:21
There is nothing like receiving a digital token in a new wallet that your friend or your family member helped you set up and you look at it and you say, you just sent me this DogGone token and it's telling me it's worth $270.
26:32
It's like, yeah, amazing, right?
26:38
Jim O'Shaughnessy: Yeah, got it.
26:39
Peter Saddington: Okay, so what can ... And this is ...
26:42
You already know this, Jim, because you understand sales.
26:42
The best sales narratives is your experience.
26:48
What was my experience with crypto?
26:48
Let me tell you, show you how to get this online.
26:53
The third, I'll give you the third real quick. The third is mining.
26:59
A great way to get into cryptocurrency at relatively low cost is to mine cryptocurrency with one of the many different types of retail miners out there.
27:05
Now, I got an ASIC sitting here because I spent a lot of time mining on big ASIC machines, but I also have a retail miner here as well.
27:15
And so, there's a lot of different ways to get into cryptocurrency that are relatively safe and low expense.
27:20
And so, pick one of those.
27:20
Go balls in and throw your money to Shiba shit coin Inu, or you can work with family or friends or YouTube.
27:28
Or you can look and see if you can get yourself a miner in the mine cryptocurrency and learn that way.
27:33
It's a very non-aggressive way too, because it's just passive income, just really cool.
27:37
There's lots of different ways to get into it.
27:41
Jim O'Shaughnessy: I was on the podcast with Peter McCormick, who you might know.
27:45
Peter Saddington: Oh yeah.
27:47
Jim O'Shaughnessy: And what he did ...
27:47
This is when we were still doing them in-person, pre COVID.
27:53
Anyway, so what he did, at the end of it, was he gave me some Bitcoin.
28:00
And I found that to be a very, very effective way because it got my attention.
28:00
And where you put your attention is what you get good at, what you learn about, et cetera, et cetera.
28:11
And we are now in a world where essentially your attention is the new gold or Bitcoin, if you prefer.
28:27
I'm not nearly smart enough to offer any ...
28:27
Peter Saddington: Here's what I'm going to do, Jim.
28:30
Here's what I'm going to do, Jim.
28:30
After this call, you and I are going to connect and you're going to send me your address so that I can ship you one of my hardware miners for free so you can start mining in alternative coin or altcoin, alt token. And it'll be free.
28:49
Your wallet will start filling up and maybe, just maybe, you'll donate some of that to your followers and your viewers and subscribers that are watching stuff like this and be like, ey. I don't know. I don't know.
28:59
I'm making stuff up as we go here, Jim.
28:59
But I want to do you solid.
28:59
I want to get you into the game of mining, brother.
29:03
Jim O'Shaughnessy: That's very cool.
29:06
I might, just to tamper expectations, because we're not going to take this out.
29:10
I, as an asset manager, am subject to a variety of massive regulations. I might ...
29:21
Peter Saddington: Understood. Jim O'Shaughnessy: ...
29:22
through no fault of yours, not be able to do that. But I ...
29:24
Peter Saddington: Understood. Jim O'Shaughnessy: ... love the gesture.
29:28
Actually, that leads me to NFTs.
29:28
Because I know you're passionate about those, I want to tell you about our experience at Infinite Loops, mining our first NFT.
29:35
And then I want to talk to you about what you've said about the projects for NFTs in gaming seemed really similar to the 2017 ICO bubble.
29:50
And I want to you to educate me on that because I don't know ...
29:57
Peter Saddington: For sure. Jim O'Shaughnessy: ... too much about that.
29:57
But let me tell you about our NFT excursion because I wanted to learn about it.
29:59
I was talking to my guys, by the way, time, space, geography, all gone.
30:06
Everyone who's a colleague of mine at Infinite Loops, two are in India and one is in Romania.
30:12
And proof of work, I watched them in social media for months and months and months before I hired them.
30:20
They're amazingly brilliant.
30:20
I can only loth that, and I think that's a massive thing coming along.
30:29
But so anyway, I get interested in NFTs.
30:36
And I said, well, the only way I can figure this out is to actually do one.
30:42
One of my colleagues, the gentleman in Romania had a girlfriend who's an artist, I gave them the idea I wanted to play with. She did a great job.
30:48
And so we put it up with a seven day clock, I think.
30:55
But we included something that I felt was vital.
30:55
And I want your opinion on this.
31:02
We included that NFT unlocked something.
31:02
And what it unlocked was a guest spot on Infinite Loops.
31:13
What happened was really cool, and talk about a virtuous flywheel. We put it out there.
31:22
My guys are watching it, starts at one Ethereum, then it's going really slow.
31:22
And so I'm talking to Vatsal, who's my main colleague who does most of the work, and I'm like, "Well, how much more time do we have?"
31:35
And he goes, "It ends at 6:30 your time tomorrow."
31:35
He goes, "I'll be up at ...
31:40
" Because he's living in India, "I'll be up and watching it, and I'll let you know."
31:45
Well, of course, I wake up the next day and I have all these texts from Vatsal, he goes, "Oh my god, go look at what happened."
31:50
Well, what happened was in the last 30 minutes, there was a massive bidding war.
31:56
It ended up selling for nine Ethereum, which was like $38,000 at that time.
32:01
And then it just kept getting better because the guy who bought it is a super successful software entrepreneur.
32:10
He didn't want to be on the show.
32:16
He wanted to pay it forward.
32:16
What he wanted to do was pick somebody who he thinks is way under the radar, who he thinks should be way above the radar. He did that.
32:23
And I don't want to give too much of that away because it's going to be a great podcast.
32:28
I mean, he came from a similar background to yours and he ended up graduating Annapolis. He's a surgeon now.
32:34
He's briefed President Obama and President Bush.
32:43
And he's just getting his feet wet in finance.
32:43
And then the final great thing was, I said to the guys, "Let's give the money away."
32:50
And so, I said, "You guys should pick, you did all the work."
32:56
So, Vizi, who's my Romanian colleague, pick the first charity, which was a group that was rebuilding all of the structures that the communist regime either let's go to pot or tried to destroy.
33:10
I just thought, I don't know that it could have happened any better than this.
33:21
My questions are, number one, what do you think about that idea of unlocking something?
33:21
Number two, I would love your thoughts on where you see the NFT market going.
33:29
Because one of the things when I talk to people, I collect art, as you might see here, and I have for 20 years.
33:35
I'm very bullish on NFTs.
33:42
I think that they are going to end up being really legitimate art forms. Now ...
33:50
Peter Saddington: For sure. Jim O'Shaughnessy: ...
33:52
the naysayers who I've talked to, and I have a lot of them, are like, "Whoa, whoa, whoa, 80%, 90% of them are going to be worthless." I said, "Yeah.
34:01
At the turn of the century, there were more than 200 automobile manufacturers in the United States. How many were left?"
34:06
Peter Saddington: You got it. Same thing ...
34:07
Jim O'Shaughnessy: So, please. Peter Saddington: ... with the . com.
34:08
Jim O'Shaughnessy: Sorry to do such a long one, but ... Peter Saddington: No. Jim O'Shaughnessy: ...
34:14
where do you see them going, and then this whole idea of unlocking?
34:18
Peter Saddington: Well, first and foremost, Jim, I think you did it absolutely right.
34:21
Instead of speculating and being an armchair theorist, you actually went and had your guys build an NFT.
34:29
And then through the luck of a draw, it went up and it was worth, you said, nine Ethereum. I mean, come on, man.
34:35
You have to be a believer now, obviously.
34:35
And so, let's talk about your use case, which ...
34:42
And if I can, I'll add a little bit of a backdrop here for context.
34:48
Jim O'Shaughnessy: Please do.
34:49
Peter Saddington: In 2016, 2017, we saw the rise of Ethereum as a platform, as a layer one solution with a layer two application layer that allowed people to suddenly start creating amazing dapps.
34:57
These dapps are then becoming the ICO boom, where now not just accredited investors and institutional investors could get in the game of startups, but now even people like you and I, plebes like us.
35:09
Well, you're not a plebe, I'm a plebe.
35:15
You're a legitimate financial vendor. I'm just a operator.
35:19
But regular people, regular Joe's can now invest in these new cryptographic projects.
35:26
As we all see in hindsight, with it being 2020, there was, let's just say, 5000 out of 5200 were pretty much scammy ICO's vaporware and basically just pumping dapps and rug pulls.
35:40
Now, let's fast forward to the NFT days.
35:40
We are seeing the exact same thing.
35:40
And the reason is because there is no quality control, there's no standardization, there's no regulatory oversight. There's none of this.
35:51
It really is the wild, wild west with a bunch of cowboy coders who said dadgummit, man, if I just make some JPEGs, I could sell them for 100 grand each. Booyah!
36:01
And so that's what we're seeing.
36:01
We're seeing this leveraging of the technology and this wild party atmosphere of, man, everybody is getting rich off these JPEGs.
36:08
Well, what we're going to end up seeing, just like with the ICO boom, we're going to see a maturity that is going to be required for scalability, sustainability, and actual usability.
36:18
And what is interesting is that ties perfectly into, Jim, your use case.
36:25
Your use case, in my opinion, is one of the most mature use cases that you can have for an NFT today.
36:31
And what that use case is simply is, is access.
36:38
If you purchase this NFT, i. e.
36:38
a digital ticket, essentially, for access, you hold the rights to that access behind the scenes or a conference or whatever type of things you're doing with your community.
36:50
And that is actually valuable.
36:50
Not only you're buying a digital ticket to the show, but that digital ticket has resale value for future events.
36:55
And so this is something that I've been storing up on my side.
37:02
Having a large community and a large network all around the world, is I want to do something like that.
37:06
I want to create NFTs where if you buy this NFT for, let's just say, 20 bucks, then you have access to behind the scenes access to me, you have behind the scenes access to our community, there's only going to be a limited run, and we can start creating events.
37:20
If you can't make the Dallas event that we're going to be doing, sell your NFT to someone else who can.
37:25
You might make a little bit of profit.
37:25
But trust me, it's worth it.
37:30
Because I'm going to be out in Dallas and you're going to be able to hang out with me.
37:33
And so I think NFT for access, NFT for tickets, wonderful idea.
37:40
Because that ticket is now worth something after the event. Amazing.
37:40
Now let's go on to your next question, where are NFTs going?
37:45
I believe NFTs are going to go deep into security.
37:45
And I've actually talked about that on a couple of my YouTube videos, is I think I see the maturation of NFTs moving to passwords.
37:57
It's moving to personalized access, especially around identity.
37:57
For example, if you had an NFT that was a, let's just say, universal entry or key to all of your emails, no one could ever hack your email.
38:10
They don't have your NFT.
38:10
You're the only one that has it.
38:16
And so, I see the maturity NFTs moving into digital access, digital rights, digital identity, digital data control mechanisms where you say, hey, I don't want you, you can't see my data, only I control my data.
38:29
And so there's going to be many, let's just say, abstractions of the original use case of NFTs that are going to be very pragmatic and enterprise use, especially around security and accessibility and identity, in my opinion.
38:45
Jim O'Shaughnessy: Interesting.
38:46
And was it Peter Thiel winner of his don't go to college, be an entrepreneur who came up with Ethereum?
38:55
I think it was Peter Saddington: Vitalik Buterin, yeah.
38:58
Jim O'Shaughnessy: Yeah, yeah.
38:59
I'm going to put my fiduciary hat on here and say, guys, gals listening, it's all very exciting, but you got to do homework.
39:08
You can't just listen to this and say, oh, I think that's great. I'm going to do that. Don't do that. Don't do that.
39:19
Because you'll probably fuck things up pretty badly.
39:19
And you don't want that to happen.
39:25
I really don't want that to happen.
39:25
I'm passionate about young people learning about investing and figuring out the right way. And guess what?
39:30
That requires diligence, that requires homework, that requires you know what you're doing before you do it.
39:36
It's very exciting, but you got to do your homework.
39:42
Okay, so end of my fiduciary spiel.
39:42
Let me ask you about YouTube. Why did they censor you?
39:52
Why are you censored on YouTube?
39:52
Peter Saddington: Tag on, brother.
39:54
So long story short, I started YouTubing about cryptocurrency in late 2016, and that was really during a time when the regulators, the mainstream media, Mockingbird media started picking it up.
40:09
And it was a lot of lambasting.
40:09
It was a lot of Jamie Dimon stuff of Bitcoin is a fraud.
40:14
And so since these large banks and large, let's just say, technology companies are close to the social and political realms, they have a little bit of sway.
40:21
And so the things that I was talking about were really avant-garde, apparently, back in '16, '17, and '18.
40:32
And I had built up a YouTube channel with about 3200, 3300 videos, over 3000 videos, and they deleted all of them.
40:37
And so I had to start all over and I built a new news YouTube channel.
40:43
I built that up to about 86,000 subscribers, and then they deleted about 5,000 videos from there.
40:49
And so now I have my personal YouTube channel, round number three, and I think I have like 30,000 subscribers.
40:55
I'm building it back up again.
40:55
But I mean, YouTube has made it exceptionally hard for me since 2016.
41:00
Jim O'Shaughnessy: One of my little other themes is that these guys are making a huge mistake.
41:05
And the mistake that they're making is what just happened to you, right?
41:14
If you think controlling the platform is going to give you the Imperator to act as judge jury and executioner, there's going to be something better and people ...
41:32
For example, right now, I'm looking into buying jimo'shaughnessy. com, because who knows?
41:40
I mean, who knows I'll say something stupid, the probabilities of that are very, very high.
41:46
And I'll piss somebody off, again, probabilities very, very high.
41:53
And then for whatever reason, some capricious bureaucrat in the middle of nowhere who I've known nothing about decides that they're going to wipe off my Twitter presence or wipe off my presence on platforms.
42:04
And so what it seems to me as just thinking strategically, what the fuck are you guys doing?
42:12
You're trying to go out of business?
42:12
Because people don't just sit still and say, oh gosh, YouTube took my platform away. Oh, woe is me.
42:17
They're like, no, I think I better find out another route around that.
42:26
It sounds like you have found what?
42:30
Peter Saddington: Exactly.
42:31
And what you're going to find is that the hustlers out there.
42:31
The resourceful individuals that have grit and perseverance, as well as the ability and resilience, they're going to be like ...
42:43
I mean, they're going to be like me.
42:43
They're going to be like, okay, delete it, ah, just keep going.
42:47
And eventually, now I've moved off of ... I still use YouTube.
42:52
But now I use multiple platforms to ensure that I don't lose my source.
42:52
And I also have my own domain that allows me to have control over it.
42:58
I think many content creators will end up hitting those walls as they start to see that, frankly, you can't make money creating content on these platforms because most of the money now is going to the big media conglomerates.
43:16
If you go to YouTube homepage, what are they pushing?
43:16
Fox, MSNBC, CNN, all the content ...
43:23
YouTube is becoming the traditional old TV world and they're just porting it over.
43:29
And so, certainly, certainly, Jim, in the next, next years, next decade, we are going to see a replacement for YouTube that's going to be for the disenfranchised.
43:40
It's probably going to be built around decentralized technology, blockchain technology.
43:45
There's going to be probably a dowel at some level so that there can be autonomous management of the system so it's fair.
43:50
The technology is continuing to mature.
43:50
People are starting to wake up and realize that these centralized systems are not our friends.
43:56
They're just bleeding us for our data and all of our information and giving us nothing in return.
44:01
And frankly, for people like you and I, who sometimes can offend people, we're just going to have enough.
44:12
We want the ability to speak freely about who we are, what we care about, and who cares if I'm dropping some F bombs here and there or someone gets pissed off.
44:17
It's like, bro, at least I was raised in the early '80s.
44:22
For me, sticks and stones may break your bones, but what was it? Words are ...
44:31
Jim O'Shaughnessy: Words can never hurt people.
44:34
Peter Saddington: Oh, I thought it was words can get you canceled, is what it was. I don't know because ...
44:40
Jim O'Shaughnessy: Well, that's what it's become.
44:42
I think that you would like very much ...
44:42
I don't know if you're familiar with his work, but Brian Roemmele, who's a buddy of mine, this is his thesis.
44:49
His thesis is that we're going to turn the models of today on their head, and that people are going to control their data and they're going to be able to sell it to the aggregators.
45:02
And he's really an interesting guy and he's got a Substack.
45:07
And if you haven't heard of him, I definitely think you should check him out.
45:12
The other thing that we're seeing in real-time and I squawk and squawk about this, and people don't seem to grasp it in what my opinion is a really important thing happening right now, and that is we are watching all of the old models crumbling.
45:24
And we are watching like, say, for example, mainstream media having the biggest hissy fit in the history of hissy fits, because we were the fourth estate, we were important.
45:38
We had status, we matter.
45:45
And now everyone's just like, yeah, go away. And so I've ...
45:49
Peter Saddington: But isn't that grand watching them implode, though? I mean, you think ...
45:52
Jim O'Shaughnessy: Well, I think it's great. I think it's great.
45:53
Because it's like for me, and I ...
45:53
Listen, let me be clear, because people are going to say, O’Shaughnessy, what an asshole.
46:04
I owe a good deal of my success to traditional media in the late '90s, early 2000s.
46:13
And back then, for example, I used to do Squawk Box.
46:13
I was the co-host there quite a bit, because I got along really well with Mark Haines who, unfortunately, died, and he was the host. But here's the deal.
46:24
Squawk Box was a three-hour program back then.
46:32
When we would have someone like, say, for example, if you were ... What were you in 2000? You'd have been ...
46:38
Peter Saddington: 20, 20.
46:39
Jim O'Shaughnessy: Yeah, 20, okay.
46:39
As the hot young kid, we might have had you on.
46:39
But, Peter, here's the difference.
46:44
We would have given you 20 minutes on TV ...
46:49
Peter Saddington: Amazing. Jim O'Shaughnessy: ...
46:50
to have a conversation with me and Mark and the other people who want to chime in.
46:53
We would have given you time to outline your thesis and why you thought it was right.
46:59
We would ask the hard questions, no question about it.
46:59
But let me stipulate, I owe a great deal of success to the way the mainstream media used to be run.
47:18
Now, everything's a blippo second, and it's just like, well, you see this meltdown and finally and then you can jump in.
47:26
I mean, but you see the meltdown and what also you're seeing?
47:30
You're seeing the best writers saying, fuck you guys, doing a Substack and doing a lot better.
47:36
Peter Saddington: I'm going to give you a nice quip here, Jim.
47:38
I have a longtime high school friend who was in the mainstream media news for years.
47:43
Every time he would show up on the local channel and I would see him, I would immediately take a picture and I text him and I'm like, you're a loser, nobody cares about those trees falling down in Buckhead, brother.
47:54
Do something with your life.
47:54
Anyway, here's the point, I offended him so greatly at the end of his tenure.
48:00
Now he's built his own business, he's moved away from the mainstream media.
48:04
For everyone that's listening, he found his way, he woke up.
48:09
But I offended him at the tail end of his tenure there by telling him, I said, "You're not actually a reporter, you're not actually a journalist."
48:14
And he looked at me and he was like, "What?"
48:19
I was like, "I studied for that."
48:19
And I said, "Because of today's mainstream media model, you're just a content creator like me." And he was like, "Aw."
48:29
Jim O'Shaughnessy: But you know that the fact is, that that's what happen.
48:32
Again, I want to underline this so people don't think I'm being flip or anything.
48:38
There are a huge number of super intelligent, high quality people, and they chose to be in media, be in journalism, and they're the ones abandoning ship.
48:55
The best and brightest are saying, I'm just not going to ... I think of Matt Taibbi.
49:02
He used to be the lead ...
49:02
Peter Saddington: Yeah, I know. Jim O'Shaughnessy: ...
49:05
writer for the Rolling Stone magazine until he was just like, "Wait, you're telling me I can't publish something? It's all correct. It's all true." He's a lefty.
49:11
I've just basically an anti-authoritarian and I don't like authoritarians of any stripe, but I always read him.
49:20
I subscribed to his Substack when he went because he's honest.
49:26
And so there is this litmus test.
49:26
But the point is, there's a ton more smart people.
49:33
I was chatting with a woman I know who recruits business writers for Substack.
49:41
And I'm like, "You correct me if I'm wrong, but I think that you're looking at an exponential growth curve."
49:48
Peter Saddington: Understood, yeah. Jim O'Shaughnessy: Yeah.
49:52
I think that's our newspaper 10 years from now.
49:56
Peter Saddington: It's because the effective and good writers and journalists out there do their diligence for months to make the story right.
50:04
They are not appreciated in the new model of news, which is just like you said, a 15-second clip, it's got to be clickbaity.
50:11
It's got to be outlandish. It's got to be crazy.
50:18
And it's unfortunate, but most of the guys and gals who are coming out of journalism school, they're just content creators like me.
50:23
They might as well just make a YouTube channel.
50:27
They'll probably get more views.
50:27
Jim O'Shaughnessy: Yeah, they probably would.
50:29
And so, my thesis is the ...
50:29
And I steal the term from Matt Clifford, but the internet, the protocol, is the biggest variance amplifier that humanity has ever seen.
50:43
And so it is going to serve as a platform where previously, people who were blocked out by the gatekeepers, people who were blocked out by going into the wrong school, who were blocked out because they were the wrong color or sex or sexuality, they don't have to be blocked out anymore.
51:03
And they get to use that leverage.
51:03
And I personally just think it's amazing and really incredible.
51:08
Peter Saddington: I'm curious, because you brought this up and this is just rising up in my gut here, Jim, with this ...
51:17
And I wrote it down because I just loved it.
51:17
The internet is the variable amplifier. Wow.
51:25
Jim O'Shaughnessy: Yeah, the largest ...
51:27
Peter Saddington: Largest. Jim O'Shaughnessy: ...
51:27
variable amplifier, stealing it from Matt Clifford, just so you know.
51:30
Peter Saddington: I love it. Here's my question.
51:33
What are you using this largest variable amplifier for now in your business? I'm just curious.
51:41
Jim O'Shaughnessy: So, everything.
51:42
I have a reworked business models entirely.
51:42
I'm starting two companies this year within our family office.
51:53
One of them is called Grey Swan, and it's going to be a search using non-structured data for the ability to confirm a so-called black swan has occurred.
52:10
You can't predict them, but you might be able to confirm them, and you might be able to confirm them way ahead of everyone else.
52:14
But one thing I got to say, Peter, is every time I do something like this, I start with the thesis.
52:21
I'm going to get the null set here.
52:27
I'm going to find, no, Jim, you're wrong. This is great.
52:27
But also, the way that that company is ...
52:35
We're tentatively calling it Grey Swan.
52:35
That company is going to be structured very differently.
52:41
I won't have any employees.
52:41
Everyone will be invited to work on the project.
52:49
I don't care where they are, I don't care how many other jobs they're doing. I just don't care.
52:58
What I will do is they're going to have to make it true.
52:58
I am very lucky to have some really elite programmers as friends.
53:04
And so they're going to have to make it through a really gnarly puzzle to even make their application.
53:09
But the fact is, and they're also going to get an allocation, if we find something, each one of them is going to get an allocation to the profits we generate through trace. Peter Saddington: Oy.
53:24
Jim O'Shaughnessy: And so, essentially, if we do find something and they are done working, it's like a royalty check every time we trade on something.
53:32
And that's the future as far as I'm concerned.
53:38
The other company is going to be a micro budget production company. Same rules, though.
53:45
There is a gaping chasm between the amount of content, I hate the term, but content desired and the amount available.
53:57
And let me class that up a little bit.
53:57
There is an even wider thing you could drive a truck through from people who want quality content and can't find it.
54:11
And so I have the good fortune of knowing some folks in the entertainment industry as it exists today.
54:16
I've gotten some counsel on them.
54:16
They've established what they can do.
54:16
At the end of the day, you don't hire Brad Pitt just because he's good looking.
54:22
You hire him because like, my god, look at what he did in Fight Club. Look at what he ... Everywhere in tank. He's got his bona fides.
54:40
There's a whole group of really young people who would kill to get their bona fides.
54:40
I'm going to provide a platform that is going to allow them to do that.
54:45
There too, they're going to get a piece of if I manage to sell it, they're going to see their percentage of that.
54:51
Completely, Infinite Loop, same deal.
54:59
I don't care where you live, I don't care where you went to school, I don't care what color you are, I don't care what religion you are, I don't care what your sexuality is, I just don't care.
55:11
All I care about is your competence.
55:11
And I get to watch that, and I will invite you in as a colleague. And it's been amazing.
55:18
This new world, you just have to ... It's so cool.
55:25
I have an eight-year-old grandson and it's like, the world he's going to be in is so much cooler than the world I was in, but I'm okay with that. I'm happy about that.
55:37
Peter Saddington: But you have the opportunity to help build that world that he's going to be a part of, which I think is absolutely exciting.
55:38
I'm just going to jump in right here with your micro budget production company.
55:44
If you could help me get on Crazy Rich Asians 2 or Parasite 2, that would be cool, Jim. Come on, brother. Come on, man.
55:55
Jim O'Shaughnessy: I will write that down as a request because ...
55:58
Peter Saddington: Get me on the TV ...
56:01
Jim O'Shaughnessy: I love it. Peter Saddington: ... show.
56:02
I'm just messing with you. I just ...
56:03
Jim O'Shaughnessy: I know you are. I know you are.
56:04
Peter Saddington: But that's awesome.
56:04
And this Grey Swan thing, brother, I get it.
56:08
I think what you're moving to is a model that absolutely is going to eat the lunch of traditional models and businesses today where you are paid based on delivery and decentralization rather than eating the cost for FTE, hoping that you're going to bleed out the value of him out of 365.
56:26
I think we're moving to a contract economy because ...
56:26
And I think it's been exacerbated and accelerated because of COVID, since everyone's working from home now, that I think now is the time.
56:37
And I think this is something that's really close to my heart, is now is the time for people to level up.
56:42
You're sitting at home, dadgummit, read, learn, level yourself up because the world is changing.
56:47
And if you're not on, if you don't have good video presence, you don't have good telecommunication skills ...
57:02
Jim O'Shaughnessy: There we go. Peter Saddington: ...
57:04
if you don't have the skills and the aptitudes and all of this for the new world that we live in, it's going to be a rough time.
57:07
I love this Grey Swan idea.
57:15
I think it's great because it creates volunteerism.
57:15
If you're good at it, you want to put time into it and there's a reward, there's a incentivization.
57:20
At the end, it's like a bug bounty for a software.
57:24
Jim O'Shaughnessy: Well, but ...
57:27
Peter Saddington: I love this idea.
57:28
I think it makes a lot of sense.
57:28
It's democratizing access and accessibility, which is huge.
57:32
And your filters are I don't care about if you're green man for Martian, from Mars.
57:39
I just care about aptitude and delivery.
57:39
If you're good at that, bro, I don't care if you're upside down.
57:43
Jim O'Shaughnessy: Exactly.
57:45
One of the things that you and I also share, and one of your quotes went something along the lines of, listen, man, there are no good or bad outcomes. They just are.
57:51
I call that amor fati, which means adore your fate.
57:56
Expand on that a little bit, if you wouldn't mind.
58:04
Peter Saddington: Absolutely.
58:04
And I would have to harken back and say that that quote, that tweet of mine was probably inspired by some stoic reading, some Marcus Aurelius probably, is probably the culprit for that.
58:14
And I'll just give you my context.
58:22
As an operator in a cryptocurrency, IoT, and DeFi market, we are dealing with complexity and nuances in emergent technology, in emergent unknown unknowns that I have never faced before, especially considering the supply chain constraints, multinational inbound, outbound chip manufacturers in China, shipment builders in India, go into our warehouse in New York.
58:51
It's been such a stretch.
58:51
And I've learned so much through this.
58:51
And I've realized at the end of it, and you come to these realizations and you are reminded of these realizations, and that was just a moment where I was like, look, there is no good and bad, it just is.
59:01
And so the question that I hope that would promote in the reader's mind is, how can I prepare?
59:06
How can I be the man that's ready or the woman that's ready for this moment?
59:14
So that when it comes, I can take the best advantage of it.
59:19
It is what it is, what it is. But, man, dadgummit.
59:19
If you're prepared and ready, you can make that moment, awesome.
59:25
Go big, go hard, go epic. There you go.
59:32
Jim O'Shaughnessy: I love it.
59:32
And the other thing is that we have a big group of people who are ought people and that is people.
59:37
They think that the world ought to be the way that they think it should be and they really dislike the way the world is.
59:43
And I try, and I try to do it kindly to get them to say, wait.
59:51
And they'll quote Bobby Kennedy to me.
59:57
I look at the world and see what it is and ask why.
59:57
I would prefer to say why not this new thing.
1:00:07
Okay, so rhetorical flourishes aside.
1:00:07
Listen, human OS's doesn't have an operating manual, and you got to study it.
1:00:14
Peter Saddington: I love it.
1:00:16
Jim O'Shaughnessy: And not only you have to study it, you have to learn how to rewrite the program.
1:00:17
Because Robert Wilson was a favorite of mine.
1:00:24
He said, we all are indoctrinated with these correct answer machines in our minds.
1:00:31
And most of those in quotes correct answers are wrong.
1:00:40
It's what gives prejudice its foothold.
1:00:40
It's what gives snobbery.
1:00:40
It's what gives all the bad things that people develop, is this wrong answer, and usually comes from a heuristic that is not based on saturated intuition.
1:00:57
It's not based on seeing a pattern time and time and time again.
1:01:03
That means you get saturated intuition.
1:01:03
You always got to check.
1:01:03
But it just does very, very bad thing.
1:01:12
I think that having that as one in your toolkit is really an excellent thing to have.
1:01:21
But then on the other side, you have another belief, which is the physical connection, something I believe, by the way too.
1:01:28
The physical connection is now an unfair advantage.
1:01:28
What do you got for me there?
1:01:34
Peter Saddington: Absolutely.
1:01:35
And all of my tweets come from situations that are happening in that moment that I think are important for me to remember.
1:01:42
You might have read a tweet from me that says, someone asked me, they said, hey, why do you tweet these?
1:01:47
These seem to be random, a lot of these things.
1:01:50
It's such like Twitter is a public place for me to remind myself of good principles, good values, and good ideas.
1:01:57
And so, you guys are purview to the inside of my insanity of my brain.
1:02:04
But the reason I wrote that tweet, that in-person activity, in the flesh activity is an unfair advantage, is because that physical connection speaks volumes beyond a screen. I am willing.
1:02:12
And, Jim, if you had said, Peter, hey, we've been rescheduling this call for a while.
1:02:20
And the only way that I could do it with you, Peter, is you got to fly out here, brother. I've been on a flight.
1:02:31
Because I know that not only would we have a great conversation like the one we're having now, but the energy in the room, the ability to read each other's nonverbal behavior patterns, the ability to catch those small inflections and those intonations, the thing that only the entire experience, can you see all of that?
1:02:44
That is when I believe not only real life change can happen, but powerful ideas happen.
1:02:52
Let me sit on this for just a second, I'll let you respond.
1:02:58
I believe, and what I love to quote, and I hope I can own this because I say it all the time, but I love smashing atoms together.
1:03:04
For me, smashing atoms means I'm in a room, you're in a room, we got a common problem, let's smash atoms.
1:03:10
And the only way to do that is when you're physically together, when you're walking through it on a whiteboard, and you're testing each other, you're asking each other tough questions, you're able to immediately move to the drawing board and say, hey, let me draw this out for you.
1:03:23
Bro, that was not what I thought it was supposed to be.
1:03:26
I thought it was supposed to be like this.
1:03:26
You can find real powerful alignment in physicality and locality by working together.
1:03:31
And so in this post pandemic world in 2021, last year, I actually flew more than 2020 because I knew that if I'm willing to go out to Miami, out to Tampa, out to San Francisco, out to New York, out to Austin, out to Dallas, out to Colorado, if I'm willing to do that when everyone else is scared, then my business will flourish. And guess what?
1:03:58
2021 was our best year yet.
1:03:58
Jim O'Shaughnessy: There you go.
1:04:01
And I have a similar belief for somewhat slightly different reasons.
1:04:11
My reasoning is we are losing a ton of nuance through screens.
1:04:11
And evolution made us particularly sensitive to our fellow hominids in the room.
1:04:20
And so, micro expressions, body language, all that stuff teaches you so much.
1:04:29
And I studied that forever and ever.
1:04:35
And even things, the way you talk, there's a thing called neuro-linguistic programming, which all of the ...
1:04:40
Peter Saddington: Yeah, NLP.
1:04:41
Jim O'Shaughnessy: Yeah, all of the mainline folks is a pseudoscience, and yet it has produced the most effective therapist ever, the most effective hypnotist ever.
1:04:51
I don't claim to be an interest in it or an expert in it.
1:04:51
But what it taught me was really valuable, which is people don't communicate the way you do.
1:04:58
It's a huge mistake to think that. Some people are visual. Can you see what I mean?
1:05:07
Do you get the big picture?
1:05:07
Some people are auditory. Does that ring a bell? Can you hear that? Some are kinesthetic.
1:05:12
Do you understand how I feel?
1:05:19
And literally, if you listen for those things, people who would just think of you as a knob would automatically say, oh, man, he really gets me.
1:05:27
But it's incumbent upon you to listen to the person because I think the worst thing is I've gotten older, man.
1:05:40
It's like you should just listen because the vast majority of people listen to respond.
1:05:50
And what you should listen for is all that great stuff that you can learn.
1:05:50
And the only way that you can understand that is to understand that you've got to delete bad learning. That's hard.
1:06:05
But you've also got to suck in new learning.
1:06:05
And it could come from anywhere. It's like this podcast.
1:06:12
My son was like, "Why are you doing a podcast?"
1:06:12
I'm like, "Because I have this amazing opportunity to talk to really smart people who I'm interested in and I can learn a ton." And he's like, "Okay. I get it.
1:06:21
Peter Saddington: Absolutely.
1:06:24
Jim O'Shaughnessy: I get it. I love it."
1:06:24
Peter Saddington: Absolutely.
1:06:25
I'm a big believer that ...
1:06:25
And I forget who I heard this, so you might have heard this before, and I'm sure some of the internet sleuths out there can probably find the real quote, but the quote essentially goes like this, is that words are meant to confuse.
1:06:39
Humans communicate with their whole body. And I think that's true.
1:06:39
I know, at least from my own heuristics and my own empirical experiences in life 40 years now, is that when I'm in the room with someone and they are giving me their life, their story, their heart, their passions, their cares, their worries, their anxieties, and I'm thinking, you might say, well, who's giving you all that?
1:07:03
This 22-year-old who's asking me for a check for 250 grand for this idea that he thinks is going to change the world.
1:07:08
He's given me everything, and I can see it because it's physical.
1:07:13
And I'm like, bro, I can see the sweat stains, calm down.
1:07:18
I'm like, we're good here, brother. Give me all of it.
1:07:18
And what I love about doing those pitches in-person, is I can speak to the human behind it.
1:07:25
It's the screen creates this wall of words that I just can't get in there, into the heart as much.
1:07:34
And for me, I'm an investor of the heart, not the mind.
1:07:40
Jim O'Shaughnessy: I'm a quant, so I'm mostly mind. But ...
1:07:44
Peter Saddington: I got you. Jim O'Shaughnessy: ...
1:07:49
that's for public securities.
1:07:49
They behave very differently than private securities.
1:07:49
We're doing a lot of new investing in privates.
1:07:53
And you got to relearn the script because it's a different kind of assessment entirely.
1:08:00
One of the things, though, that I just wanted to speak in, in support of, is this idea that there ...
1:08:08
As I mentioned, I counsel a lot of younger people, mostly in finance, but not exclusively.
1:08:17
Some in tech, some other professions.
1:08:17
And what I hear constantly, especially my youngest people that I'm working with, is I got to develop my brand.
1:08:25
And I'm like, "No, fuck your brand.
1:08:30
You have to develop you and be distinctive, be authentic. And that's your brand.
1:08:40
You don't even think about it as a brand.
1:08:40
Think about it as you, you are going to be this." And like ...
1:08:47
Peter Saddington: I love it.
1:08:48
Everything you're saying, Jim, is so important.
1:08:48
Let me tell you a small story.
1:08:53
My daughter is 10 years old.
1:08:53
And you might be able to remember back then, when you were 10 years old and a twin of sorts.
1:08:59
And the whole girls and guys and dating and all that.
1:09:09
And we had this great conversation.
1:09:09
This was just a couple of months ago when she said, "Appa, I'm building a list of all the characteristics that I'm looking for in a namja, a guy."
1:09:22
And I looked at her, I said, "Well, read them out, let me hear them."
1:09:25
And so she read out, he's got to be loving, he's got to be fun. He's got all that stuff.
1:09:25
And I looked at it and I said, "Sweetie, if you're creating a list for what you're looking for, do you think your future husband is making a list for what he's looking for?"
1:09:40
And she looked at me and said, "Yeah, probably."
1:09:40
And I said, "Do you think you're the type of person that he's looking for?
1:09:47
Do you think you need to focus on being the right person for him, working on yourself, focusing on your patience?"
1:09:54
And it was a powerful moment for this 10-year-old. She realized that ... I think this is ...
1:10:00
You can extrapolate this to the world now, is that everyone out there is looking for how the world ought to be.
1:10:06
Here's my list of what you should do, what you need to do, why you can't do that. Slap your wrist.
1:10:11
When in reality, look inward, fix your house.
1:10:16
I know you want to fix the world.
1:10:16
But, man, you can't fix the world if your house is a wreck.
1:10:22
I'm a complete agreement with everything you've said around personal introspection, retrospection, personal and self-improvement, and focusing on what you have in front of you, and not worrying so much about what's out there, which is outside of your control anyway.
1:10:33
I hope that was encouraging and insightful.
1:10:37
Jim O'Shaughnessy: No, it's fantastic.
1:10:40
And I don't want to steal more of your time than I need.
1:10:45
But I think the cool thing that I'm hearing you say is like everything you've just said.
1:10:51
The only provisos I might add is I'm still going to urge younger people, especially to be cautious with new investment things because they have dangers inherently that are different than stocks.
1:11:06
Stocks have been around for like 500 years, and not even I know.
1:11:11
There's going to be some new thing with stocks that I hadn't considered, almost guarantee it.
1:11:19
The probabilities are high.
1:11:19
But with the newest stuff, it's really cool.
1:11:25
It's really enticing, but you got to do your homework. I mean, that's that.
1:11:30
And I even hate that term. Do your research.
1:11:30
Don't think of it as homework.
1:11:35
Think of it as reaching yourself to understand the world you're going to living in as a young person.
1:11:41
Man, I mean, if you want every advantage in the world, it's be prepared for that world that's coming.
1:11:47
Because there's nothing you can do to stop it.
1:11:47
I always love the Ricky Gervais little bit that he did, which I think just encapsulates internet culture better than anything.
1:12:00
And it's like, he does this routine and he goes, "Would it be weird if the world was like people behave on the internet?
1:12:07
You're in the village square.
1:12:07
You see the thing on the bulletin board, says guitar lessons, you take one off, you find the places can be given, you go and rap on their door.
1:12:17
And when they open, you say I don't want bloody guitar lessons."
1:12:28
Peter Saddington: Everyone's looking for a fight these days, man. I'll tell you, brother.
1:12:30
Jim O'Shaughnessy: Exactly. It's insane. It's absolutely insane.
1:12:32
You're not going to learn anything.
1:12:32
Hey, I know, I'd be all for something where I could learn something.
1:12:40
Yeah, then I'm in, I'm in.
1:12:40
But if I'm not going to learn anything and I'm going to just shout at somebody, that's a total waste of my time.
1:12:50
It's a misspending of my cognitive, metabolic budget. Why would I do that? It's silly.
1:12:58
Peter Saddington: Exactly. You got it, brother.
1:12:59
Jim O'Shaughnessy: All right, my friend.
1:12:59
This has been absolutely fantastic.
1:13:02
One more question, and then I'm going to ask you the final question that we ask everyone. Peter Saddington: Sure. Okay.
1:13:09
Jim O'Shaughnessy: What do you think you've seen really simpatico with the way I look at the world in terms of these skills are the ones you really got to have, these skills are nice to have, but not as important.
1:13:22
Let's say, I'm a 20 something entrepreneur and tech and I'm coming to you as an angel investor.
1:13:30
What five skills are the most important for me as that young person to have for you to say, "You know what, Jim, I like it, I'm going to invest"?
1:13:38
Peter Saddington: Well, I don't know if I can conjure up five, but I can certainly conjure up three.
1:13:47
Jim O'Shaughnessy: Perfect.
1:13:47
Peter Saddington: And the reason is, is because I had a conversation just last week with a young blood who's asking for money. And I gave him the ...
1:13:52
He asked me a question very similarly, he said, "What is it going to take for me to get this from point A to point B success?"
1:13:56
And I looked at him, I said, "Number one, perseverance.
1:14:02
Perseverance is absolutely essential.
1:14:02
And part of part and parcel with perseverance is resilience.
1:14:07
Look, I don't want to make it a trope.
1:14:07
And I don't want to walk cheaply and lightly here, you are going to suffer. That's the point.
1:14:15
Life is actually, if you look at the stoics perspective, it's life is marked as a hallmark of suffering.
1:14:20
And so the question is, is what are you willing to suffer?
1:14:25
What suffering do you want to choose?
1:14:25
What's within your capability and capacity to be able to handle and manage?
1:14:32
And so, perseverance is key.
1:14:32
You need to persevere through the ups and downs, the unknown.
1:14:37
You have to have the resilience for it.
1:14:40
Number three, I think, is the most important.
1:14:40
You have to be resourceful."
1:14:43
I always, always tell these young guys, "You're never had a lack of resources.
1:14:50
You're just lacking resourcefulness."
1:14:50
Because everything that you want is already in existence.
1:14:55
Actually, frankly speaking, there are people who are less educated than you, less smart than you, have less money than you, who are actually doing exactly what you want to do right now.
1:15:00
And so, the reality is manifest it, manifest your reality.
1:15:06
You know that there are people doing on that stage that you want to do, there are people that have built that product or permutation of the product that you want to build, they have built that service that you want to do, they already exist.
1:15:20
And so are you willing to persevere?
1:15:20
Are you willing to be resilient when the knocks come knocking?
1:15:25
And are you going to be absolutely resourceful in every sense of the word? Golly.
1:15:32
It kills me, this younger generation who has been spoon fed Wikipedia and Google, in which literally, what kills me about interns is when they will look at you and they'll ask you a question that they simply could have Googled.
1:15:43
These younger generations, unfortunately, are not being taught resourcefulness.
1:15:50
They're being taught how to regurgitate information and data for a four-year degree that is literally worth less than the application paper that they made four years prior.
1:16:00
I know that might be a social anecdote or a social critique of sorts, don't blame me for that.
1:16:07
Sometimes I go off on a limb and funding people like Jim here, so you guys should all be ready for that anyway.
1:16:13
But I think the best is don't give up, don't quit.
1:16:20
If you have a goal, manifest it, make it real, talk about it, find people that can support you. It's being resourceful.
1:16:25
When you're resourceful, you can do anything.
1:16:32
Jim O'Shaughnessy: I love it. So, two things.
1:16:34
Babe Ruth said, "The only guy you can never beat is the guy who won't give up." Persistence.
1:16:43
Guys listening, watching, this is nothing new.
1:16:43
This is how we, human beings, have been making our way in the world for a long, long time.
1:16:53
And now you have all of these tools, which make you ridiculously powerful.
1:17:01
You got to learn how to use them.
1:17:01
You got to be resourceful, and as far as the manifesting thing goes.
1:17:08
I tease people, especially Ramp Capital on Twitter, he and I are buddies.
1:17:16
I know who he is and everything.
1:17:16
Peter Saddington: I know exactly where you're going with this.
1:17:18
Jim O'Shaughnessy: And he's always making fun of me about, you're a billionaire.
1:17:19
And I'm like, "Sadly, I've talked to my account several times and they're telling me you're really, really wrong, Ramp. Manifest it for me."
1:17:30
We've had this thing go back and forth. But here's the deal.
1:17:30
There is a kernel of truth in this idea of manifestation that they borrowed, by the way, from a text that's, I think, 5000 years old.
1:17:45
And it is, I think, Buddhist.
1:17:45
Peter Saddington: Yes, yes, yes.
1:17:51
Jim O'Shaughnessy: You become what you think you are.
1:17:52
But here's the thing that I want to add, because I'm pro that line, I am really anti-books like The Secret or stuff like that, where they have really ...
1:18:08
You don't drive me crazy, but you do make me just shake my head.
1:18:08
You take a great concept and then you pile so much bullshit on top of it because you think that's what you need to sell. No.
1:18:22
You want to know how to manifest things, folks, listening in or watching?
1:18:22
Think about it, do a pre meditation of it, decide if you really want it.
1:18:28
And here is the critical part, take action about what you want to achieve.
1:18:38
If you don't take action, if you don't take action, you guys is going to be sitting on the couch dreaming.
1:18:48
And, okay, it might be pleasant, but you're not going to get anything done.
1:18:53
Peter Saddington: Absolutely. You got it.
1:18:55
Jim O'Shaughnessy: You got to add that action part.
1:18:58
Well, listen, this has been awesome.
1:18:58
I do have a final question for you ... Peter Saddington: Sure. Jim O'Shaughnessy: ...
1:19:03
that we ask everyone on the show.
1:19:03
I'm going to wave a wand and I am going to make you the emperor of the world.
1:19:10
You will be Peter first of his name.
1:19:10
And what you cannot do is you can't kill anyone and you can't lock anyone up or put them in a reeducation camp.
1:19:25
But what you can do is you can have a universal doom-like voice that allows you to whisper into the entire population of the world, two things, and they're going to wake up the next day thinking it was their idea and get busy acting on it.
1:19:38
What two things you're going to whisper?
1:19:45
Peter Saddington: All right, I know immediately because this is what I would have loved people to whisper in my ear when I was a younger man.
1:19:51
The first thing that I would whisper in their ears is, number one, you are loved.
1:19:56
Jim O'Shaughnessy: That's great.
1:19:58
Peter Saddington: And number two, you can do it. Jim O'Shaughnessy: Boom! There you go. Think of the world, man.
1:20:02
I'll put up one of those world of the future gifts when I'm talking about it.
1:20:09
Peter Saddington: Perfect.
1:20:10
Jim O'Shaughnessy: Listen, man, this has been fantastic, so much fun.
1:20:11
Tell our listeners and watchers where they can find you.
1:20:16
Peter Saddington: The easiest way you can find me is on Twitter.
1:20:18
You can find me at @agilepeter.
1:20:22
Or you can go to my home page, peter.
1:20:22
show, very simple, P-E-T-E-R. show, S-H-O-W.
1:20:30
Jim O'Shaughnessy: Love it.
1:20:30
Peter, keep on keeping on. This has been fun.
1:20:33
I hope to bump into you in real life at some point, because I think we'd have a guest.
1:20:38
Peter Saddington: Let's do it. Thanks so much, Jim.