Money drives the world. The infrastructure of that money
matters more now than ever. If you think AI is about a chat
prompt that gets you something scheduled for vacation, maybe
the bigger impact, though, is going to be in the world of
financial services, in the world of insurance, in the world of
this and that. The world is changing and it's
going to change. Before we know it, it's changing
in front of our eyes. If you're curious, if you're
scared of AI, if you're scared of any of these things, if
you're excited about these things, jump in.
Give it a listen. Before we dive back into today's
conversation, I want to share something important.
This episode includes a pay partnership with Better Health,
a platform designed to make starting therapy easier.
I know for my own journey as a leader and entrepreneur that
life can sometimes feel overwhelming.
There are seasons, severe stress, uncertainty, and
pressure build up, and you need a safe space to process it all
that severe therapy comes in. Therapy isn't only for people
facing clinical challenges. It's the space to reflect, grow,
and find better ways to suit my stress relationships and has no
goals. It takes courage to seek help,
but it's also one of the smartest investments you can
make in your mental and emotional wealth.
That's why I'm proud to highlight Better Health.
With Better Health, you see out a short questionnaire and get
matched to the credential therapist in just a couple of
days. If the first match doesn't feel
like the right field, you can easily switch therapies at no
extra cost until you find someone who should connect with
you. Inside the platform, you'll also
find tools like journaling and group sessions on different
topics that can support your growth.
And with over 7000 reviews and a 4.5 Trust validation, Better
Help is a platform you can rely on.
So if you feel like you'd benefit from talking to a
therapist, visit betterhelp.com/contained.
That's betterhelp.com/contained to get 10% off your first mother
therapy. Once again, this is a big
partnership with Better Help, and I encourage you to take that
first step if you've been thinking about it.
Sometimes the best investment you can make these games
yourself. Welcome to the King Dems
podcast, where we share the stories of extraordinary people
and dissect hot, relevant topics that shape our world.
From visionary leaders to trailblazing creatives, we
uncover the mindset, strategy, and grit behind greatness.
Whether it's business, culture, or personal growth, we ask the
real questions. This isn't just conversation,
it's transformation. The Kingdom's podcast, Your Next
Breakthrough, starts here. Music licensing reimagined.
Your life, ladies and gentlemen, once again, welcome to the King
James Podcast in Diary of the CFO and today I've got with me
fighting out of the United States of America, Mcwalkum.
Zachary. The Morning 2020 hero pattern.
I'm in the ring, I'm ready for it.
Let's do this. I'm in the ring, baby, let's go.
For the For those just catching up, we've been talking for half
an hour and had to force ourselves to start recording
finally. Yeah, we've been having too much
fun. Exactly the audience.
We start on Part 1 of the forecast.
And that means we have to do a Part 2.
But it's going to be really confusing when we go from Part 1
about fintech to Part 2 about MMAUFC and the rest of the
world. Wow.
OK, so I did. I did do my homework.
I prepare a nice little introduction to you.
So let's see back in it. First, let me give you flowers.
OK, let me get come get comfortable and prepared to
accept some flowers. I like this.
OK, let's go. So today on the Kingdom's
broadcast and diary of the CFO, I'm Shield still welcome the
true fintech visionary, Zach Pettit, VP of Global Fintech
Strategy at Money 2020 and host of the Fintech Family Hour.
Zach has been instrumental in shaping the conversations that
define the future of financial innovation, from embedded
banking and digital inclusion to the evolving relationship
between technology, money and trust.
He's worked with some of the most influential in tech brands
and continues to build breaches between founders, investors and
vacated in the global in tech ecosystem.
SAC. He wants to be welcome to the
show. It's a privilege to have you on
here today. Thank you, my friend, Thank you.
I don't know if I deserve all that.
I mean, I'm trying, trying to connect the dots, trying to make
the world a better place. But I will take it.
And it's good to be here with you, man.
Good to be here with you. It's actually not good to be
here with you on my side. It's actually great to be here
with you. You're oh, you're a one
operator. OK, This is this is going to get
competitive. I can already tell.
All right, all right. Whoa, you actually we are so
many hearts right. We were talking about anything
and everything just before we keep the record button, but
let's talk about fintech. Right, take it, take it whatever
direction you want, man. Like I think you know, fintech
is probably fintech, financial services, AI, blockchain, all
that's probably where I know the most.
But you know, we can explore. It's just a subset of of the
man, the myth and the legend. But it is just a sub sect at
first. You're passionate about
something. I'm passionate about AI.
I am AI. My parents knew something
everybody did not know, like they just had to code it.
They knew that I'm actually an endangered species.
So said, OK, let let's protect this one.
Let's not call him artificial intelligence.
Let's call him Ademola ACMA. Yeah, Ademola comes Adamola is a
little more approachable than artificial.
If I if I had to like jump on and be like hello artificial.
It's a little different than Hello Ademola.
You know, it's like. You see, they they will know
there's troubles over there. But this is a little little
different. Little different you're I guess.
I see a real human on the other side of the screen here.
Absolutely, absolutely. You know you, you said something
about me earlier. You said you noticed, You know
the real recognizing, real notice that I have a knack for
growth hacking. Yeah.
What? What is growth hacking without
AI? Boring.
That's my best answer. I mean, I think growth hacking
is taking on so many different. Like I think there was a time in
Silicon Valley, like Paul Graham, you know, kind of
writing the thesis on the idea and especially in like the
earlier days of it, that really was was very hacky and not not
hacky in terms of like bad comedy or something like that,
right? But in terms of like, how can I
fit, you know, how can I write A blog post that has 5000 words,
as in 999 of them are the word fintech and or, you know,
whatever it might be. And I think the exciting part
about AI is the ability to gain that algorithm is actually going
to, if not, if it hasn't already disappeared, it's disappearing.
And my hope from that is the the best, like the, the cream will
rise to the top, right? So what is it?
What is growth hacking without AI?
My, my, I don't know. My bigger question is what is
growth hacking with AI like? There's so many opportunities,
so many different things that I think people haven't even
considered yet in terms of that, right?
Like a death of the search engine, all these sorts of
things that like to me, I think the to me, I think it's good
content, right? Like if you're putting out good
content that's getting the eyeballs, that's getting that
kind of algorithmic boost as a result of just the sheer
eyeballs, then you know, when you ask GPTA question or when
you ask, you know, cloud a question, you're going to pop up
and like, I think it's just one of my favorite Steve Martin
quotes is be so good. They can't ignore you.
I think that's what it is. I love that.
I love that, you know, there being about, I think two or
three guests on this forecast that have actually confessed
that before they reached out and paid for their episode, they
checked me up on the client, they checked me up on the TTPT
and they checked me up on Brock. And then they were like, the
AI's have really great things to say about me and about they're
interested enough. That's where they're like, well,
he's a handsome man and he's that could get interesting man,
the future that could get really interesting when it starts to
get a little too personal, you know, like starting to run
background checks and AI and things like.
That like. Could you?
I, I don't blame them, you know, like how would somebody from
another country pay money to a guy who's in the United Kingdom
to be on the podcast and not do some due diligence?
I think it's all the stupid person if we do that.
But it's interesting that that's where the due diligence happens,
right? Because I mean, people have been
doing due diligence on podcasts since podcasting, but the idea
of going to cloud or going to whatever to do that is
especially when I mean hallucinate, like AI
hallucination still exists, right?
That that might be how we got here is you were like looking
for guests and you were like somebody in fintech and then is
hallucinated and it was like, oh, Zach Anderson Pettit, he's
great at fintech. I'm hallucinating, right?
I don't know. You know, we get here
interesting ways, but it's it's going to be interesting to see
how it progresses definitely in terms of like actually helping
companies grow. But I think it's going to kill
some companies real fast too, because a lot of folks spend a
lot of money on Adsense and I don't know if that's going to
last that long. I also talked to somebody
yesterday. I'm like, well, I wish companies
out there knew how much they needed me.
I I. Think a lot of people have said
that sentence I I just. Wish they'd know because we like
when it comes to AI. Any company that refuses to
leverage an AI for their growth, it's actually going to be left
behind. Do you?
Think any company actually refuses though?
Or do you think most companies just don't know what to do?
That's my theory. Like I don't, I don't.
I don't think any company is out there like rejecting technology
outright. I think a lot of companies are
really confused about what to do with these technologies.
And that's not just true with AI, it's true with blockchain,
that's true with stablecoin. You know, it's more true in
financial services I think than a lot of other places because of
the regulations. Like there's this really, really
cool thing I want to put it in, but I also really don't want to
get a consent order in $100 million fine.
So I'm very, very nervous to put this here because if I do, I
might have this, you know, 20% spike in, you know, revenue or
20% decrease in touches, whatever it might be.
But I might have to have a really hard conversation with my
regulator after kind of thing. So that's, I think that's the to
me that that's what I see is people is fear.
It's it's not even about avoidance or anything like that.
It's just pure fear of what it could be.
I fear fear of the unknown, but you know, there are actually
ways around this thing. There are ways around this
thing. And of course, if you carry the
the regulators along, I have a background in audits, right Peak
for accounts and fans. So basically you need to
document. They only say if it wasn't
documented, it was not done. Of course you need to do your
due diligence. You need to do your RMD right?
If you do your RMD proper issue, you'll be in a good place,
right? I think when the, when the use
of something is unknown, abuse is inevitable.
So, so that's why I like your perspective.
Like do they even know what they need to do?
They don't. I mean, there's like 2024, I
think was the year of it was the I should have actually probably
written something about this or I'm sure someone did.
But 2024 I think was the year of like the board remit, right?
It was the every board of every Fortune 500 all the way down to,
you know, series B startup saying AI, we must go AI.
What are we doing on AIAI? It's time for AI.
Like every board meeting. It was just a banging AI hammer
over and over again. But then they were just waiting.
They were just waiting for you and they were just waiting for
you. But then that turns around when
you have that on high remit, right?
Like that has to especially if you're talking about let's say
300,000 person company. They say we need to do something
with AI. Everybody looks around the room.
OK. Well, we all, we all own
different portions of of the business.
We're all incentivized differently probably for the
most part because how often are business, how often are
businesses that size actually incentivized to run the same
direction, right? Very rarely.
So then you have these little like fiefdoms that develop,
right? And then you got like we're
building an AI inside of this that's just going to solve this.
But we haven't really thought about like it's like, let's say
it's on the deposit side, right? And it's going to do something
for know your customer or like identification, but they haven't
thought about how that connects to the underwriting side, which
I'm hoping they have, but a lot haven't, right?
Because those are two different parts of the bank or two
different parts of the company. So I think that that age of the
board remit of 2024 where it was like, do the thing, whatever it
is, do the thing we need a press release is turning into 2025,
which is where we're actually seeing products, we're actually
seeing use cases, we're actually seeing like, you know, Klarna
and and open AI doing stuff. We're actually seeing, you know,
a lot of different things happening in that space that are
providing real value. And it's all and also it's not
just the clouds. And I mean, we're talking a lot
about cloud and open AI, but people are, believe it or not, I
should give Copilot and Microsoft their do as well.
But people are actually seem to be building really valuable
internal AI first engines themselves.
And it seems like maybe that's the next or one of the next kind
of competitive moats to develop in financial services.
I mean, if you can build something like that, that
actually connects the dots, right, and solves that data silo
issue that I was kind of referring to before.
So you're getting into some interesting territory.
Interesting territory. And of course, Speaking of
interesting, you know when you get the Sintech landscape?
The. World's number one ranked
podcaster globally in fintech spaces.
Breaking Bad by breaking. Yeah.
Wow. Yeah, good for you.
Brett, I didn't realize that. Congrats.
So apparently it's not even my podcast that's the guy.
Brett's king. He he was an economic advice or
to Barack Obama and of course I think he did some work with the
Chinese government as well. Yeah, which?
Is 2 very ironic things to put together in a sentence.
And he, he started moving. I mean, he's, he's, he's an OG,
you know, he, he deserves Speaking of flowers, he, he
deserves some flowers for I mean, moving, I think had a
really hard time getting moving because he was, he was early,
right? Like he chose to start a neo
bank before anybody was probably ready for a neo bank and ran
into some, some tough times as a result.
But anyways, I think you were going somewhere with the actual
Brett King piece. So you know.
Brett King has been on this podcast.
Oh, well, I would expect so. I would expect so.
That's the talker he gets out there, you know?
So you, you are good company, brother.
Well, you as soon as I knew that Francis and Ghana's coach has
been on here, I'm I officially feel, you know, I feel in in the
company of greatness. You know, I feel like I got, I
got, I've been elevated shout. Out to you shout out to prices
and guidance coach Dewey Cooper very great guy he he was on
episode 50 so PT of this broadcast for Brett King has
actually touched on all of these things that he he was talking
about and it's crazy to think about how we actually predicted
a lot of these things that we've seen today That's why he's
rightly top 10 futurists right agree.
Completely, I think, I think Brett's biggest problem is he's
too early on everything. Like that's the that's the thing
with futurists in general is like there's futurists and then
there's entrepreneurs, right? Like or, and then there's
futurists and entrepreneurs and you, you put those two things
together and I guess you kind of get Elon, which is a whole other
thing. But like it's really hard.
I think it's really hard to maintain this kind of like
trying to put together that, you know, the the idea of like the
Internet of Things with self driving cars, with the
blockchain, with AI and put that all together in your head and
turn that into one company, right?
It's just, it's too much, right? Especially thinking about like
the way that startups are built, like you start with a thing,
right? Like the Corona just IP owed,
excuse me, buy now, pay later, Pretty simple concept at the end
of the day, right? You, you buy it, you buy it now,
you pay it later. It sounds like a credit card,
except just a different structure.
And now they're, you know, on the New York Stock Exchange.
They're the kind of sexiest company on the block.
But that's made because they started with that niche, right?
Like they were maybe a little early.
I think they started in 2005, but think about that Klarna
started in 2005 before the actual financial crisis like
that that and they stuck with it all in here we are in 2025.
That's a 20 year success story. That too.
I think a lot of people feel like a three-year success story,
right? Then just that persistence and
that growth. And like now they're talking
about being, you know, the bank to a generation, right?
And like out of at a very interesting level as well.
I had the pleasure of interviewing their CMO and
getting to talk about some of their future and how they even
think about what they are, I think is really interesting
because they, they do not see themselves as a buy now, pay
later company, right? They see themselves as the Bank
of the future. And but you can't, you can't
start there, right? Like you can't.
We could, could raise $150 million and start there, but
that presents a whole other set of challenges.
Absolutely. And you know, Brett King said
something on the sportscaster said the bounce of today are
going to the limited in terms of their capacity to grow based off
their what I say these are the complexity of their size.
So the size is going to be a disadvantage.
So you said something about having organizations that have
like multiple divisions, right? It's difficult to make that
unified decision and say, OK, let's go for AI, but you have
different pockets of interest. So how do you see that limiting
the growth of the banks of today?
You know, According to him, he says they would experience, you
know, this gradual phasing out and you'll see the start of the
future like the clients and, you know, the the digital and agile
banks take over. One, Brett, love you, but I
think I disagree. I think that there's I think
there's a a shift that we're seeing right.
So this idea of product market fit is the thing that's mattered
forever. And that's in 2005, what Clarina
like really started to have, right.
They had that we have customers that want this very specific
thing that don't want to use a credit card, right.
That very, very specific coming to 2025.
My question is, does product market fit or distribution
market fit matter more, right? Because if you think about the
impact of, so the combination of traditional finance and
decentralized finance, Connexus from JPM is a good example,
moving billions, trillions of dollars on the blockchain.
They couldn't do that if they weren't JPM and they couldn't do
that if they hadn't spent billion.
Well, they maybe could have done it without spending billions and
billions and billions on R&D. But also they're the biggest
bank in the world and they can spend billions on R&D.
So if the if they're able to build something and have the
power of the partnership right where JPM, but also we can pull
in City, we can pull in the regional banks, we can pull in
Standard Chartered, we can, you know, we can create a consortium
of banks that are on the same page and able to move money
around. In a cohesive and safe fashion,
all of a sudden you have one of the biggest, highest producing,
highest volume products or platforms I guess is maybe a
better term out there. So I think it's, I think we're
getting really close to a point of partner or die or something
along those lines. But distribution from my
perspective matters so much more than product at this point,
assuming you have a good product.
Absolutely. I think he he actually does
agree what you said because he set us some things along those
lines, right. So basically he was talking
about if you don't adopt AI, if you don't start to involve
yourself in these strategic partnerships, you will
experience a slow death. Yeah, that.
That I agree with and I mean, you know, I, I do what I can to
when I'm in podcast, not make it money 2020 plugs.
But like that is the conversation that we are that we
had last year and that I think it's a conversation we had last
year and this year. It's the thing that we're
seeing, right? It's, it's actually what people
are doing with the technology that's actually making a
difference. And the, the geographical piece
of this matters as well, right? You're sitting in London, I'm
sitting in Kansas City. Very similar cities, obviously,
but because in the in the US, here's a fun little quiz.
If you had to guess, how many banks do you think we have in
the United States? Whoa, how many banks?
That's let me just put in. Perspective like in England or
in the UKI think you have what, less than 50?
Something along those lines. I think you should have over 100
in the US we have. About 4500.
Yeah. So over 4000 and it was, it was
more than that a few years ago. And they are, they're either
getting bought or dying or whatever it is.
And it's a lot of it comes from this kind of community bank
thing that we have here where, you know, you can drive down the
street and you got your local banker and you know, it's, it's,
it's similar to having a personal banker in London.
It's just a lot more. It's less posh, right?
Like you don't need to have a certain amount of money to have
a personal banker if you're working with the community bank.
I used to work at a community bank.
That's where I learned banking. But how do you how do you scale
that right? Like you can be a billion dollar
bank in perpetuity with a decent UX on a mobile app and whatever
and whatever. But what happens when the you
like, when the form factor changes?
Like when we go from this right to whatever Johnny I've is doing
over at Open AI and we're going to have like our next thing is
just going to be something around whatever that thing is
they're working on. Like it's a scary thing to think
for some of those banks that aren't the absolute biggest of
the biggest. What does happen because just
the form factor change of mobile almost killed so many companies.
What happens with the form factor change of going away from
a phone completely right? That's I don't have the answer,
but it's an interesting conversation.
Technology keeps changing, keeps evolving, you know, and in
person with us be the millennials, we've actually seen
that evolution over time. You know, it's, it's quite
interesting. Think about when, Yeah, we use
cassettes, you know, the videotapes, the CDs.
Did you? Have typing class.
Definitely Marvis Beacon. Marvis Beacon, brother.
The way you. Position your hands.
It's yeah, it's, you know, it's, I don't think, I mean.
I think that's, it's this, it's just so funny to think about
some of the things that whether we were taught in school that
now are just like kids just do when they're, you know, 6
because they're handing an iPad. Like it's just the world's going
to be a very different place in 20-30 years and an even crazier
place in 50. So I don't have the answers to a
lot of it, but it's going to be fun to watch, man.
You know, it's, it's just. Fun, you know just watching the
transition, you know Blackberries, Nokia, Android,
iPhones. Let's see.
Let's see what the future holds. We will that's.
We'll we'll make that part of the follow up.
I I, by the time we do the follow up, maybe, you know,
maybe that whatever it is, the Johnny Ivan team we're working
on is out in the world and we can actually we can talk about
that. Who knows you?
Just never do. I was telling somebody yesterday
that technology is the best and the worst thing that happened to
mankind. Oh agree completely.
Agree completely. I think we may absolutely be
ending ourselves very slowly whilst improving the quality of
life dramatically for most of the world, right.
I mean, that's that's the other part of the conversation is are
we actually bridging the digital divide?
Are we getting people what they need to be able to keep up?
Or is this going to, you know, create even larger divides?
And that's an unanswered question you.
Just never know. But, you know, you spoke about
something about the fear of AI, and I really don't like that
because why would people be afraid of me, you know?
Oh, you're so. Friendly.
Why would it Come on? Good of me, but there are a lot
of profits of doom when it comes to AI.
But I think a lot of these people have seen too many sci-fi
movies. I think that's probably the
problem, right? But for me, my perspective is I
think AI is an assistant, not meant to be the controller,
right? So AI is as good as the human
who is using it. So I have an, I have a podcast
episode, Mark Andrews, he's also in the US.
He's a tech guru. And I think that that episode is
titled Humans first, AI Next, right?
So when you look at what you're able to do with AI, let's take
ChatGPT for example. Sure, some people want to do a
project or do an assignment or have a query ChatGPT.
I look at them, I say, do you know how much I have trained my
own ChatGPT? ChatGPT is on steroids, bro.
And you know, I think a. Lot of people, people don't know
they can do that though. That's the thing you know,
Don't. Know it's education, No, it's
education like Trump engineering is a theme is a theme on its
own, right And of course, you know, train training your AI to
you know, do work for you at an accelerator speed and of course
in line with your reporting preference, right.
A lot of people don't know and I tell them they're like some
people like to shame you for using AI.
I'm like, I don't really care about what you have to say,
right? Ask your ChatGPT the same
question. Go.
Go and I'm. Not asked by all the same
question. Are you going to see the
difference? And why would?
You not like I, I. I, I, I didn't know somebody.
Do you know what they said? They said wow how come my
ChatGPT is so dumb? That's an it.
That's a very interesting perspective.
I don't know I mean, my perspective on the whole thing
is that I don't think AI is going to so my favorite AI movie
is Ex Machina. I don't know if you've ever seen
it, but if you haven't, go watch it one.
It's beautiful. I'll.
Try. I only see movies based on
recommendations. Actually I'm not a movie person,
I'm a music person. It.
Is it is one of the best how AI will impact the world.
It's kind of like a it's a movie, but it feels like an
episode of Black Mirror. And the idea is kind of like,
it's like it if it's loosely based on kind of one of the
Google founders, probably like a Sergey Brin or somebody like
that goes to this private island they're developing.
You know, they're developing human like a is around them.
Like the whole island is just actually human like a is.
And spoiler alert at the end, one of them escapes.
It's it's, it's just go watch it.
It's it's, it's great. But it it is, it is scary.
It is really scary to think about.
And I think when people watch movies like that or they watch
her or they even see some of the news about, you know, people's
best friends being ChatGPT, like, I think it either makes
you scared or sad. But from a business perspective,
I, I, I worry less about this idea that AI is going to, you
know, get rid of the workforce or something like that.
One of my favorite quotes that I don't know if it should
generate. I don't I think it's by now it's
kind of just a truism, but I heard it first from Jenny
Goldberg who is at open AI. Shouts to Jenny, one of the
true, true fintech Ogs. She's been through fintechs and
then ended up at open AI and just amazing human.
But she actually open. It was like one of the worst,
like one of the worst, not worst.
One of the first words spoken at at Money 2020 last year.
It was your job is not going to be taken by AI.
Your job is going to be taken by somebody who knows how to use
AI, right, like whoever can actually copilot.
And like I was talking about, you know, my best friend earlier
before we started talking and that man, I mean, I think he
does the, the work of three people at least in a single day
based on his work with AI. And he's the one that's taught
me everything I know, right? Like I, I have to output because
of a lot of the work we do, I have to output a lot of scripts.
I do a lot of kind of creative writing type of stuff.
And if I didn't have the tools that I used to do 1 script, I
think to do 1 script well would take me.
At. Least 2-3 hours and I've gotten
to a point now where I can turn out 12 scripts or not.
Let's let's say like 6 scripts in six hours.
That that's the thing with. AI and you know, that's even, of
course you have a very high tasting quality and that's why,
yeah. That's the thing.
You're not just like turning them out, I guess.
Yeah, because. You need to be engineer.
And exactly, it's the prompt. You know, it's crazy.
Somebody saw me with a prompt for a particular project and I
had that prompt in Microsoft Word and I think the prompt was
well over 15 pages. And you're like, is this just a
prompt? Like, yeah, it is a prompt
there. They're like, there.
What is the? The MID report.
Itself, don't worry, prompts can actually get that long if you
know what you're doing in terms of you're prompt engineer.
Yeah, yeah, prompt means. Especially I mean speaking, you
know, to the to the diary of a CFO side.
I mean, the, the, the impact on the CF OS life should be nothing
but positive as a result of this, right?
Taking the data resulting outside like insides, like if
you're not getting real positive, I'm not going to say
positive output because if you're not making any money,
it's not a positive output. But if you're not getting real
productivity as a CFO out of using AI, there's a disconnect.
You're missing something. You're not using something,
you're something needs to change, I guess is what I would
say. And in my experience, it's just
trying it. I think, you know, we were
talking earlier about fear. I think, you know, a lot of
people that maybe like went to accounting school or whatever it
is, is, you know, I like, maybe not like I like my Abacus, but
like, I like my Excel. And there's there's a lot more
to be done in the world with a lot less time now that we have
some of these tools. And you know, we, we shout out
to you people like data reels, you know, that's external
starts, you know, so basically it has come for everybody.
You cannot run. You can.
Can run, you can hide.
But hey, I was coming, baby. He's gonna find you.
He's gonna find.
You right, you know, talking about fintech like you've
actually like won like so many hearts from founder to
strategist to fintech thought leader.
So what's the personal mission? What's the why that drives your
journey in Fintech? Yeah, well, when I started in
fintech, AI was still a thing that, you know, we were not
talking about. So for me, the origin story of
why I really care, and I'll leave a lot of the companies
nameless, was I was doing an internship in college.
It was for a large investment bank and it was specifically for
wealth management going to the office every day, putting on
that, you know, suit that didn't quite fit because I couldn't
afford a fund that actually did, you know, just kind of looking a
little scrubby. But, you know, sitting in
meetings and selling index funds and, you know, like balance
portfolios to to folks and doing generally what would be
considered, you know, the term fiduciary would be yeah, of
course you'd based on your background, of course you do
would be considered fiduciary level advice, right.
But what I didn't realize is that you can as a fiduciary also
be a registered broker dealer, right.
So we have that. How about conflict?
Of interest? How about conflict of interest?
It's. Conflict.
You hit the nail on the head. We were talking about this hat
earlier, so I'll use it now. So show me the.
Money. So the hat says, lucky me, I see
money and I almost wore it just because, but it was a little bit
too on the nose, but we'll use it for this example.
So we were selling these, you know, responsible portfolios and
then suddenly we go to lunch with a, a salesperson that will
remain nameless from a company that will remain, remain
nameless. But they were selling annuities
specifically. And what we could make selling,
you know, index funds and, you know, fiduciary products was 25
basis points, you know, 30 basis points, something like that on
assets. But as soon as you take off that
fiduciary hat and you toss on this bad boy and you're a broker
dealer, you can start doing a lot of creative things.
And I look like an idiot with this on the top of my head, but
you can, you can become without telling the client you could go
from, hey, here's the thing you should buy.
Here's the thing we should put in your portfolio, I guess is
what I should say. And then you can take off that
fiduciary hat and say, oh, and just, you know, really to cover
you because it's a insurance product, you should have an
annuity as well. Oh, by the way, I'm going to
kind of not share this with you, but instead of making 25 basis
points, I'm going to make 300 basis points.
I'm going to make 3% on this product.
And from that lunch we went back to to the office and that
afternoon we started selling annuities basically in every
single meeting. I mean, there were sometimes
that where they were like, you know, literally 22 where it
would almost be illegal to sell somebody an annuity.
But if it was even close to the idea that you could sell them an
annuity, the attempt would be made because you're making it,
you know, if it's, if you have 100K to invest, wouldn't you
rather, you know, make 3000 instead of like, come on, right.
That's incentives. But that's a very broken
incentive system. So from that moment, I just like
struck me like this bolt of like wildly unethical lightning.
And I just decided I wanted to spend the rest of my life in
finance and hopefully die, leaving it 1% better than I
found it. So started joining startups,
started entrepreneurship in school, realized that meant
absolutely nothing. So I talked to my teachers into
basically like letting me go join startups instead of coming
to class. And I think I graduated with one
of the lowest Gpas you possibly could, but I talked him into it.
And yeah, I've been working in startups ever since, I think
since junior year and what you would call uni.
So the answer is anger. Basically just anger at the
system. You picked business acumen.
You knew that business acumen was the real deal.
You know, during my time at PwC, they had this 5 criteria
framework for evaluating professionals, whole leadership,
business acumen, technical, competent building relationships
and global acumen. So me, I've always like taken
beautiful relationships and Jesus acumen very, very
seriously because of course, your whole leadership, how do
you need yourself? How do you need your team?
I love that framework a lot because I told my colleagues
like these guys have bleached me giving us the cheat code to
succeed in life. Yeah, 100%.
I mean, I think, I think if you can, if you can find a way to
act ethically and make money at the same time, you're living the
dream. And that's what I think people
missed out a lot about finance where especially that's the
beauty of fintech, right. Like the biggest impact of
fintech to this point over the last 10 years probably isn't
actually the fintech companies like Robin Hood's big, Chimes
big, Klarna's big and 26 is in Germany big.
You know, like there's a lot of these companies that are that
are big Plaid. But if you think about the
impact of Chime as an example, or a Revolute, where did all the
overdraft fees go? Right at the big banks, all the
overdraft fees went away because all of a sudden these fintechs
were offering no overdraft fees. And then, you know, in America,
there's the two day early pay. I don't know if you guys have
that, but the two day early pay thing that Chime had.
So that was like Chime's entry. They were, you know, sign up for
Chime, get your your pay two days early.
It was so simple and you're not really taking any risk.
Yeah, we have. That we have that here as well,
revenue each month. So yeah.
So I mean, that's think about the risk you're taking, you're
taking payroll risk, which is pretty much like the only risk
you have is like if that person gets fired somehow between
payroll getting run and they actually there isn't any because
even then the payroll's still going to run.
So why would you not just kind of bank on the fact that the
payroll's going to run, get that money in there and acquire an
unbelievable amount of users just in a small amount of time
because of a very, very basic feature.
And now you see the likes of, you know, some of the larger
banks saying, get your money two days early, right?
And. And from Robin.
Hood, you see, like when was the last time you you logged on to
anything and saw a trading fee? Their trading fees are gone.
So the impacts of Fintech at this point, I mean, it's been
big, but I would argue that the like societal impact mostly has
been in that Fintech has pushed these huge organizations to be
more ethical. They've given them a run for
their money. Exactly.
And of course, you know, it links back to the speed of a
perfect competitive market. You know, I have a first degree
in economics, but a lot of people don't even know that
because of like the fact that my career has actually been mostly
in accounting. You know, economics teaches you
a lot of themes at the micro and looking at and I think economics
is mostly mostly about optimization.
So how do you optimize the benefits to the consumers and of
course create a perfect competition market.
So in a perfect competition market, you would have 0 or no
charges, right? And of course there's no barrier
to the entry in the market. So it forces people to bring
down the prices to that, you know, equilibrium point, the
lack of competition, you know, make those guys raise the bar in
prices. And that was not beneficial to
the consumers. You're going to see yourself
then, yeah. I mean, if, if you have a
monopoly or an oligopoly, you can charge whatever the hell you
want to charge, right? But the more competition that's
going to drive prices down. It's I mean, the, the beauty of
fintech is exactly what you're talking about.
It's exactly. And of course, she's.
Innovation. Yep.
It pushes innovation that that's a thing.
I think competition basically drives innovation.
But I stand to be corrected. But that's what I think.
Our competition is the fuel for innovation, I think.
So I think, I think competition drives innovation and I think,
and I think innovation drives competition.
I mean both, right at the end of the day, like if you think about
AI, it's a noob with AI as an example.
Like it's kind of just like, here's the technology that we
just like threw into the fray and now everybody's like, well,
we got to do something with it. Whoever does the best thing with
it is probably going to win. So Sprint, right?
I mean it's it can go both ways for sure.
Yeah, I, I think it's kind of like a loop, but you know,
coming back to your own personal experience like you worked at
MBKC Visa, like how did that shape your perspective and what
fintech innovation is truly impactful?
Yeah, so V sum was a I'll separate the two a little bit.
So MBKC was working in a community bank.
It was 1000, sorry, not 1000. It was a billion dollar bank,
which in the US in terms of assets is pretty candidly tiny
really. But say again, I said it's.
Immaterial. Basically.
Yeah, yeah, I mean it.
You got to be but, but if you structure the bank correctly and
you think about building that business correctly, it can
produce the revenues of a bank much larger with much lower
risk, right. So and and with a much lower
employee account. So that bank was fascinating in
that. It.
Was and is one of the top. I don't want to get it wrong, so
I'll use a larger number. Top 2025 mortgage lenders in the
US, right? It's a billion dollar bank in
Kansas City. But because of the ability to do
business online and you know, rate tables like nerd wallet,
things like that, people were finding that the, you know,
customer service was unbelievable.
The speed was unbelievable. And this little bank that's NBK,
this is 4 like 4 letters. Why, what, what is this?
But oh, that rate looks good. Whoever just called me after I
applied for the loan doesn't doesn't they, they seem nice.
They seem trustworthy. And the Midwest does have kind
of a, you know, we're known for being a little more trustworthy
than maybe if a New York bankers calling you.
No offense to my New York friends, but we figured out this
thing or they shouldn't take any credit for it because it
happened before I got there. They figured out this machine,
but that machine needed to be funded, right?
And a billion dollar bank is not sitting on enough, enough
deposits to be able to lend out the amount that was necessary to
be able to to satisfy those loans.
So we would always go to, we would every single night, every
single day, go to the go to what was called the Federal Home Loan
Bank, which the idea is basically it's this big pool of
money where we could go pull from fund the loan and then
securitize the loan and sell it off.
So we, we can stay, we can stay this small, we can stay, you
know, NBKC, this community bank where I'd still bank, where I
still walk in and talk to Robin, my, you know, my friend Robin
and she, she hooks me up with my checking deposits and you know,
all that stuff. But we, we can function on this,
on this national level. So my job there was actually
growing deposits. It was how do we go out,
especially in this world of fintech as the chimes And you
know, all of these groups are starting to grow and be the bank
behind that fintech, right? Because if you think about it,
the biggest expense of growing these businesses is just
customer acquisition. And if we can just be on the
back end of that, then we can let the chimes of the world,
which Chime was not actually a partner, but I'm just using as
an example, we can let them go acquire those customers.
All of a sudden our balance sheet is growing like crazy as
far as the deposits go, right? So our ability to lend becomes a
lot more profitable. So if from the federal and
trying to kind of keep it simple from the Federal Home Loan Bank,
let's say we would have to, we would have to lend for three.
We would borrow for 3% and then we would put out the loan at 4%
just to keep math simple, 1% spread.
If we partner with the fintech, that's not free, but it's
inherently a free deposit. It's like me walking in the bank
and saying here's 10 bucks lending out that 10 bucks.
All they need to do is make sure that they're actually compliant
and can give me that 10 bucks back eventually.
Now we have a four point spread on that loan, right, which the
impact of that is gigantic. So really that was exactly
exactly. So that was my job was find
creative ways to build the deposit side of the business.
And that led to working with start-ups that led to we built
an internal accelerator where we would actually fly companies to
Kansas City for a 75 day like intense process where there we
go from no partnership to full partnership.
Keeping in context that like the average time it took to build
one of these a year, six months, something like that we're doing
in 75 days. That was like that was the thing
because like all the only advantage that a Midwestern tiny
bank has is speed. So that was the thing that we
figured out there. We did some investing that
worked out pretty well. And basically what that was for
me was learning banking. Like if I had not spent that
time there, I would not understand banking balance
sheets. I wouldn't be able to talk about
the Federal Home Loan Bank. You know, I wouldn't understand
reading between the lines on regulation.
Like there's so many things that I think a lot of folks in
fintech miss out on by not getting that experience inside
of a true bank. So I could talk about that
experience for forever, but that's basically what that was.
And then V some was started with one of my favorite people on
earth, a guy named Ben Milne. He's what has he done?
Now? He's on his second company.
His first one was called Dwalla and it was a very Web 2 payments
company. You can always think of it as a
stripe esque sort of situation, but out of Des Moines, IA so
little harder to raise money, little harder to, you know, kind
of take scale things a little bit, but it's a billion dollar
company. He's now moved on to his second,
you know, he's doing something completely new now and he's
actually building a stable coin company.
So he's gone from web one or web web 2 to web three, I suppose.
But during COVID, we just got bored and we wanted to find a
way to, you know, kind of continue the community and the
ecosystem and, and learn this entirely new technology set of
technologies that was coming out, right?
Like at that point, I would, I didn't know how to set up a
digital wallet, right? I didn't know what a digital
wallet was. And I'm not talking about Apple
Pay, right? Like I'm talking about cold
storage. I'm talking about all of these
intricacies of the blockchain and of Bitcoin and buying
Ethereum. And you know, how do you mention
NFT, all of these things, that's all it's.
Coins. Exactly, all of it.
And So what V7 was, was really an online virtual community
where we would get to meet companies like Paxos and Tether
and etcetera, etcetera. Companies that you see today is
like the companies, right? Like we, I think we even had
circle percent back in the day, which is crazy.
But from that, I mean, I learned the underlying infrastructure of
Defy. So the I separate the two
because they're very different experiences and one was a job
and one was a hobby. But if you think about like how
the world's coming together today, I very accidentally
stumbled into the exact intersection of what's
happening, right? It's this coming together of
tratify and defy and what that actually means for the world.
I definitely not would not give myself the credit to say that I
knew that that's what this all was going to be.
But you know, in if you line it up in reverse, it kind of the
the story comes together into what is happening today.
Interesting stuff, you know, like sometimes great scenes
happen out of, would I say lucky mistakes or.
Oh, yeah, yeah, I would say I say lucky mistakes.
Just I was reading something. I was in the edible.
I heard that the person who invented silk invented it by way
of a lucky mistake. And I'm like, wow, interesting.
And I remember when I was interviewing with KPMG in the UK
and the lady asked me why did you get into order?
I'm like I did not choose order or they chose me.
That's deep. Yeah, that.
You know, that's the thing, you know, sometimes you don't choose
upon a line of work people. It just happens that maybe one
door closed. And at first, you know, people,
they say, oh, you'll be good at this thing, try it out.
Somebody just told me, try it out, try Peter and Lychee and
yeah, that's all you go. Yeah, that's actually.
I was actually, I was supposed to have an internship with the
Kansas City Chiefs before and I, I found out it was going to be a
50 hour a week unpaid internship while I was still in school.
And I do not, I do not come from money, my friend.
So I'd like basically I was like, how in the world can I
possibly do this? And I was, and there's like a
high end car wash here in town where I was selling car washes.
And that's actually How I Met the general manager of the
Chiefs and just annoyed him for I think 2 years before finally
they gave me that offer and I was like, OK, I'm in, I'm doing
this. I'm taking six months off school
like going all in. And then I found out it was
unpaid and it was like, I just took six months off school.
Like, I don't know, what do I do?
I like, I did pass, but I had no backup.
I, I didn't know what to do next.
So one of my other regulars from the the car wash was the, was
the wealth manager that ended up at that got me to that
internship I told you about that got me into finance.
So yeah, I mean, it's, it's wild how these things happen,
happens. Then happens, then, you know,
these things happen sometimes and then people be like, oh, so
you had it all planned out. No, sorry.
Sorry, no, I learned I did not have it all planned out.
You just work out together. And of course, you know, for me,
I'm a person of faith, believe strongly, you know, in the peace
and faith in the Bible, this is verses all things work together
according to his purpose. So like I see that happening,
you know, in my life a lot like things just happen.
Sometimes the door closes and of course another one opens and of
course, you know, opportunities come up.
I remember like my very, very first, or would I say contract,
right I ever had in my life. What happened?
I used to lecture professional students and what happened was I
was left in one of my students private lessons and there was
this corporate training. They needed.
To do and this guy kicks up the phone and like, oh, we needed to
do training. And then he was like, oh, what's
the date for the training? And he was like, oh, I'm not
available for that date. I'm out of the country.
And he says, OK, I'll try to find you an alternative.
He called the first guy. The first guy said, oh, I'm not
available for that date. He called the second guy and the
second day I was like, oh, I'm not available for that date.
And then he looked around, he saw me.
He was like, bro, what's up? Can you handle this training and
guess what my best Bible verses Philippians chapter 4 verse 13.
I can do all things because the strength is me.
Like, yeah, I can do all things, but I have to crisis.
Strengthens me. Yeah, he was.
Like OK, check out the topics and how you develop material for
this. I can do all things and say yes.
Right. Like at the end, put, put, put
good stuff into the world and you'll get good stuff back.
And I think the other thing is just say yes to everything I'm
telling. You like preparation meets
opportunity called a success. But I think about that situation
a lot like I wasn't the first choice, I wasn't the second
choice, I was not even the third choice.
I was the 4th for. A reason probably, you know, I
mean, we'll never know that reason that that reason is some
of the it's ethereal. It's up in, you know, somewhere,
but it ended up that way for a reason, man.
Yeah, and of course. I I was also at the right place
at the right time, right. But, you know, it's, it's all
about when you develop sets and skill sets.
If the opportunity comes, yeah, you can, you can get it for a
lot of people don't even develop themselves to the extent that
you can even be frantic an opportunity.
And that's very sad. Agreed.
Yeah, I mean, I think again, a lot, so much of this comes back
to education. You know, at the end of the day,
like I, I hope to spend a large portion of my life in finance.
But from there, I really, really hope that I'm able to spend
from, I don't know, hopefully I'm able to make enough money
that by 45, but let's say 5055 that I spend the rest of my life
in education and not just teaching, but like what is what
is the next version of schooling?
And if anything, I should be focusing on this right now
probably as AI is coming around, because this is this is the
moment that education is going to change completely.
That education already is changing completely, right?
Like we're able to educate ourselves in a way that we never
could before. So, yeah, I mean, all of these
things are about about a mix of things.
But I also think the one thing that you kind of said there that
like brings it all together is showing up, right?
Like if you just, if you just continuously show up, you're
going to end, you're going to end up in the right conversation
with the right person and it's just going to kind of happen.
Show up and show out. Well.
Yeah, you, you got a little more show.
Out than I do, but you know when, when given the
opportunity, I shall show out indeed.
OK. You know, there's something that
I, I say, there's a theory I came up with and I, I like to
pity to you because you brought up the, the concept of
education. I think the capacity of a human
being is dependent on poor ease. OK, Poor education,
enlightenment, experience and exposure.
Education, enlightenment, experience, exposure.
I don't think I could disagree. I think there's AI mean, I think
there's a lot of levels inside of that, right?
I think to me the one is exposure that goes beyond all of
those. I mean, I think there's like, I
think we were talking about is like the table stakes of a
potentially successful human, right?
Like everything you just said is like what you got to do to get
to a certain place, right? But I never thought I would work
in events just to be totally candid, right?
Like I I studied entrepreneurship.
Like I thought I was going to spend my entire life just
building companies, either founding them or being, you
know, early employee in that, whatever it might be.
But the exposure of, I mean, I've been in Money 2020 for four
years. I never thought I was going to
work in events. I've been here four years.
And one of the big reasons is not exposure from the
perspective of I stand in on stage in front of 5000 people
and they know who I am, but I get to stand backstage with the
CFO of Open AI for 10 minutes before she goes on stage, right?
Like the Vice, the vice chairman of IBM, Gary Cone, who was
actually in the first Trump administration and spoke last
year at Money 2020. You know, whatever your opinion
on the Trump administration might be.
I'm not American, so yeah, I'm neutral.
If you're not American and your opinion is neutral, then you're
just lying. But we can pass it.
We can go past that. Whoa.
You know the interesting thing? You know the interesting thing,
right? Yeah.
Personally, like I love being neutral.
Like people that know me know that I love neutrality.
Why? Because think about it, I am
trying to be a global top rated podcaster.
I'm trying to be one of the top journalists in the world.
And but you've got. Opinions.
Yeah. Yeah, yeah, I have my personal
opinions I'm not going to like, right.
So, for example, I don't support any football team.
That is what you guys call soccer.
And one thing I've noticed about neutrality is the fact that when
you're neutral, it helps you to be able to form the best
informed opinions. Of course you're.
Not taking sides and I think I learned that from my work in
audit like you cannot, you have to be independent of your client
in order to be able to do the best job and of course make what
I see a well informed opinion about their financial
statements. So you cannot maybe have shares
in them or know somebody on the board or have friends in top
management grid to make a good decision.
You will never make that good decision.
So as much as possible, I try to, you know, throw myself out
of, you know, yeah, taking sides.
So basically it's like, would I say a conscious decision?
So about whenever I take sides, honestly, I am taking this side
and This is why. So yeah, I get that.
From from an ethical perspective, I completely agree.
And also in the world that you live in, if you say you're a
Liverpool fan, you're just going to lose listeners, right?
Like if you say you're a Tottenham fan, you're just going
to lose listeners. So I completely understand that
from that perspective. But at the end of the day, we
all, you know, we have our opinions.
And I'll be honest as to what my opinion was before I met Gary
Cohn, the man, he, he's a, you know, you say I'm the man in the
myth legend. And I say that to a lot of my
guests as well. But I mean, he was, he was at
Goldman for over 20 years. I will leave it to tax Goldman
Sachs. Yeah, I will leave it to others
to look at what his separation package was.
But let's just say it was enough to, if I remember correctly, it
was over a couple 100 million. So the man did all right just
leaving Goldman Sachs and I should double check that.
But it was, it was big. So you think of this guy, I
mean, just you just kind of assume Wall Street fella part of
the Trump administration, like first, especially the first
Trump administration, like you just kind of assume a certain
something, right. And then I get backstage, it's
that big. Monday morning, he's the big,
you know, first opening keynote. He's over in the corner.
He's got his, you know, his, he's his GC, you know, is
everything's monogrammed, looking too fresh.
I can't even handle it. Like I'm literally nervous to go
say hi to this guy. Exactly.
And I walk over to him and he was in the middle of something.
I'm nobody to him, right? Like I'm just some guy that
like, I'm, I'm dressed up as if I'm about to get on stage.
I have a microphone like in my hand.
So I think he assumed something of substance was maybe going to
come out of my mouth. But I'm nobody to him.
He set everything down, like just completely took everything
he was doing, set it down, gave me his undivided attention,
shook my hand. We talked for like 10 minutes
and I fell in love with this man.
Like if I like truly I, I was, I was taken in by his personality.
I was taken in by his candor. And I fully expected him to get
on stage and kind of just be a banker, be, you know, get, get
on stage and be a banker government guy.
But he got on stage and he just started going.
He was just like, I disagree with this.
This is the stupidest thing I've ever heard over here.
We should be doing this. Not this like it's you, you get
surprised by people and that that exposure is addictive,
right? Like getting to actually know
that side of a human and actually getting to meet some of
these people. It, I mean, what, what that will
ever lead to? No idea.
But I mean, you know, maybe sometime in the future, I'm
working with Gary Khan. I, I hope, I kind of doubt it,
but I hope. But more so, it gives you that
exposure to realize maybe you shouldn't judge so fast.
Maybe you should have, maybe you should have a little more
empathy. You know, and I think a lot of
what you were talking about before is, is really about
empathy. Yes, because really, I don't
know, like in my life, that's something I like to say.
Never say never, right? I have realized that so many
times I have been wronged by taking a side so many times I
have been wrong by judging a people or institutions or
anything at all before observing the facts.
And of course, being a being a science guy, you know, and three
season is is the order of the day.
So if you judge by the facts, if you follow the data points, you
follow the numbers, you follow what you can observe, right.
So if I cannot observe it, you know, with my own eyes, I don't
think it it makes sense to, to, to form an opinion about it.
Speaking of about what you experienced with a guy, one
thing I've experienced with success with people is they're
oftentimes humble. Yeah, much more than you expect.
They have nothing. They have nothing to prove,
Yeah. But.
People that are, you know, wannabes.
Try too. Hard and it it, it's crazy.
So for me, like I, I've decided to to embrace that culture, that
attitude of having nothing to prove to anybody.
Yourself what? When you take, when you take
$100 bill, right And you put it on the ground, you step on it,
you know, you put it in mud and you say, oh, you are $50, take
it to the shop. Is it going to be repairs of
$100? Yeah.
So that's the way I see myself. It's not on you to tell me who I
am. Like my value is in treats seek.
My value is set by God. So it's, it's not on you.
So whatever you say, it's your business, right?
I know who I am and of course I know who my God says I am.
So basically like over time, I think in a person's life or with
you achieving success over time, just cover that.
You have nothing to prove to anybody.
You just need to be yourself, so.
Like make yourself proud. Like if you can lay that, if you
can lay your head on the, you know, on the, on, how can I not
think of the pillow on the pillow at the end of the night
and feel good about what you did?
Like, I mean, what else is there, man?
It's, it's, you know, life, life's only so long and there's
only so many hours in a day and might as well spend them trying
to do something good. Absolutely.
You know, some people feel like, oh, I want, I want revenge.
I want my OK. Like there's this crazy talk
that somebody was telling me recently, like they want their
ex to see them as a richer person.
I'm like what? What the hell?
Like you leave it for your ex, bro.
Like leave for yourself. Be successful for yourself, not
because of your ex. And you know The funny thing?
She likely doesn't even leave. She's not paying attention
about. About you.
So what are you talking about? I don't like people who leave
for other people's validation. I don't like it at all, no.
No, I mean, at the end of the day, what's it's the emptiest
way you can live like if you're just be happy with yourself, be
happy with what you're doing, try to do something good for the
I mean, that's like that's I know that I am not going to, you
know, change this industry dramatically, right?
Like no one person can change finance in 75 years that much
technologies can, you know, but there's a very few number of
people that really can change this industry dramatically in
one lifetime, right? So I just want to change it by
1%, all right, Like that's if I can just do that, then I'm
pretty damn happy with what I've done with my life.
And as long as I take some tiny step towards that each day, if
it's a podcast, a conversation, if it's a, you know, an
introduction from an entrepreneur to another, like
whatever it might be, like it's just it all builds, right?
It all builds that momentum and that flywheel into goodness.
Interesting stuff. Well, you, you know, The funny
thing, right? A lot of people who actually
viewed, you know, things that are highly impactful did not
really think it was going to blow up that much.
We just set out to solve a problem.
Yeah, Stripe. And that's.
Literally Stripe. That has a thing.
Just try to solve problems and that's what I do, try to solve
problems. A lot of times like he breaks
that I've had personally, like I did not go chasing them, it just
happened and I go chasing certain things and never get it.
So what's the point but the? Chase still matters, right?
Like at the end of the day, like if you're not getting up every
day doing that work, chasing after whatever that thing is,
like, you're not going to get the opportunity you didn't
expect. So you still got to, you still
got to do the work, you still got to chase it.
Exactly. Just like the example I gave you
know previously, because for me it's all about solving problems.
When you are busy, you wake up every morning and you're out
there to solve problems. Don't worry, something's going
to happen. Exactly man.
Exactly. Get up and work.
Get up and work, I'm telling you.
You know the interesting. Thing.
You know the interesting thing, I don't know if I still have
that alarm. I do have an alarm with the same
exact words like I just said, get up at work.
I have an alarm right on my phone with that same exact words
that you said. Get up at work.
Oh, I love that. I need that.
It's motivation. It feels you like I have
different alarms, you know, for different times of the day.
This I love is a motivation for this.
This allow is a motivation for that.
You know, I think it is good for people to visualize things.
I don't know, different strokes or different folks.
But for me, like when I see it, if I can read it, then yeah, we,
we can make it happen. Yeah.
I agree completely. I agree completely.
Wow. Money 2020.
It's it's at the heart of global fintech conversations.
So like what are the top trends currently with shaping how
fintechs approach innovation and growth?
Man, talk about a big question. I mean, we've talked about a lot
of it already, right? Like the world of traditional
finance having permission from a regulatory perspective to now
start working in the decentralized finance world.
Like you can't really get into a conversation about fintech right
now without talking about stable coins.
Like it's just it's impossible. Stable coin this stable coin
that Exactly, Exactly. Exactly.
So that's one side of it. But at the same side or not the
same side, The other side of the same coin is AI on the flip
side. Yeah.
And I think, I think what excites me the most is not is
not Defy and Triadfy coming together.
It's not AI moving into financial services.
It's the sum of all these things being greater than the parts,
right? Like when you start thinking
about the impact of a smart contract on Etherium,
hypothetically, whatever being applied with an AI agent from
Visa, MasterCard, what you know, pick it alongside a power of an
attorney that you're giving to this AI that is able to make
financial decisions on your behalf, right.
You're getting really close to this idea of self driving money.
And it's a scary idea because this in this is Angela Strange's
theory or thesis from God. I don't know.
She wrote this almost 7-8 years ago, something like that, but
she wrote it before a lot of this technology existed.
But now when you really think about it like AI agents for
commerce, AI agents for all these different things are
starting to come about. Are they all great?
Maybe not. But if you Fast forward five
years and you think about what, what could happen if you combine
the idea of, you know, just your your current account, just the
basics, right? And wealth management, just the
basics. But you're adding on the idea of
block chain technology, the security there in validation of
identity, all of these portability of identity.
And you throw in the idea that an artificial intelligence that
to our earlier point in the conversation, has been trained
by us, right, to make these sorts of decisions to manage the
budget or to make a purchase here, not there.
That that's world changing, right?
When you start thinking about the combination of all these
things together, the world changes dramatically.
So there's a lot of like real time payments.
There's, there's so many cool things happening in fintech
right now and all of them will be discussed at Money 2020.
But I think the biggest thing that's hardest to talk about
because it's such a big thought is what happens when you combine
all these things. Food for thought indeed.
Yeah, yeah.
It's, it's something that is convoluted enough with enough
layers of nascent technology that I mean, it's just the
ability to speak to depth on it. There's probably 5 people in the
world, you know, they could really have an educated
conversation about what that would look like.
I'm not one of them. I'm just excited about it, you
know, and that's, that's kind of the beauty of my job and your
job. We get to ask the questions,
right? Like at the end of the day, is
asking the right question matters so much tell?
You Well, bro, I I think you should have conversations with
Brett King because Brett King told me something.
Is that talking about me? To tell people that you are the
kind of person with the right curiosity.
To ask the right question. It's, I mean it, yeah, it's,
it's, it's candidly it's, it's weird to be a guest on podcast
sometimes, as you can probably tell, like I have a hard time
not asking questions back to you because yes.
You know, right, it's hard. Man.
Guess what? And here today I, I published an
episode with a guy in the UK called Kevin Appleby.
He's the host of in the host of Grow CFO.
So Grow CFO, they're really doing a great job in, in the UK.
They are like a community of helping CFO grow.
Basically. The mentor CFOs and provide
trainings, you know, and all whatnot.
So we did a collaboration. So I was on this podcast and he
was on my podcast, you know, like, you know, the persons
podcast is it's really hard. You you're holding yourself back
from asking. But why do we do that though?
For me, the beauty of podcast is the conversation, right?
Like as if I hold like I, I, I'm sure I have some opinions or
some knowledge because of time in banking or fintech or
whatever that you don't have. But you spend time in audit, you
spend time in all these different portions that I don't
have. So why would we spend the whole
time with you asking me quite like it should be a
conversation. Like the listener is going to
get so much more out of the idea of us just talking about our
mutually shared or not shared experiences and how they do or
don't fit together than just me saying Federal Home Loan Bank,
you know, like it's just, it's just different.
Then you should go, you should go watch the the episode with
Kevin Appleby, especially the testimonial.
But he was saying that what he really enjoyed about the episode
was that it was a conversation was in.
According to him. He said he's been on podcast
where in the post is so I I've forgotten the exact words he
said or he said something along the lines of the host mountain
pressure on the guest as though they are like a journalist that
is getting a politician to to make a mistake.
Yeah, yeah. I mean, unless you're a Kara
Swisher, why in the world would you do that?
I just do not understand the idea of like, put like, if it's
not about politics. And I mean, here's a hilarious
example, kind of hilarious, kind of really sad.
Do you remember when Benjamin Netanyahu went on the Nelk Boys
podcast? The.
The Israeli Prime Minister? Yeah.
Do you know? Yeah, those are skinny guys.
Yeah, the the ones that do the Happy Dad beer and just kind of
sit there and like fart into microphones and whatever.
I like not the highest brow podcasters in the world, but
they they do numbers, numbers, right.
So they have Benjamin Netanyahu on and they just kind of talk
and like the most that they disagreed on anything with him
was the fact that he liked Burger King more than
McDonald's, right. And that like those are the
month. Like though, in those moments,
good God Almighty, do your preparation.
Have, you know, be ready for a real conversation.
Don't just sit down with someone who is one of the most important
political figures at the center of one of the most intense
moments in history and have a debate about, you know,
McDonald's versus Burger King. That's not the time.
But for the most when you're when you're not doing that,
like, why not just have a conversation?
You're going to get a lot more out of it.
Yeah, exactly. You like free flowing.
And I think I really, really am grateful to that training from
the peak for, you know, you tell us, ask open-ended questions,
ask probing questions, you know, ask questions driven with
curiosity, Learn. And of course, you know, you
need to learn before you can earn.
Yeah. And give up, I would even say
give up some earning to get some learning, you know, especially
early in your career, Like, yeah, a lot of.
Times you have to do that, yeah. Work I've I've the numbers I was
making when I was first starting in startups were not not
significant, but the amount that I learned from that was worth
1000 times what I was making. And I would give that advice to,
especially to younger folks over and over and over again, is give
up some learning to get some learning.
Pick your. Out my mind it's just that you
need to switch that microphone for a megaphone.
Yeah, help the. Eagle folks that. 100 percent,
100%. Like, I see, it's crazy how, you
know, I have conversations with a lot of younger people,
especially, you know, the Gen. ZS, and it beats my imagination
how many of them, once increased returns, increase results with
minimal input. And like how?
In what world does that work? It doesn't, I mean, I, I think
we live in this world of Andrew Huberman and, you know, all in
optimization and, you know, I'm waking up at 4:00 AM and I'm
getting my 15 minutes a red light and then I'm pouring
Saratoga water into this thing and I'm dipping my face.
I mean, we're, we're getting into this world where it's
almost like this discrepancy of like there, there's this like
kind of over glorification of incredibly hard work, right?
Or at least it looks like incredibly hard work on
Instagram. But is it really like, is that
actually what's happening at the end of the day?
I don't know. Because a lot of the
technologies, I mean, I think it was Jamie Dimon.
I can't, I can't remember which CE OS it was, but it was like 3
of the more significant CE OS. It actually, I don't think it
was Jamie Dimon because this is not a thing he would say, but a
number of CE OS are talking about the yeah, yeah, a number
of CE OS are talking about the impact of AI potentially being
that we go to a three day work week.
No, no, Jamie would never hear, Exactly.
That's what I'm saying. I don't think, I don't think he
wanted the workers. Back.
He wanted the workers. Yeah, yeah.
And maybe the answer is three days a week in the office and,
you know, the other two days you're not working.
The point being, I think there's this really interesting
discrepancy between kind of this hustle culture on one side of
it. But at the same time, we're
being armed with tools now that give us an ability to either
produce at such a higher rate or produce at our same rate and
then live a life. And, you know, that's a, that's
a personal choice around happiness and impact at the end
of the day, more than it is anything about, you know,
corporate structure or anything like that.
I and, you know, for me, I'm OK here.
I have an opinion, right? So for me, I believe in hybrid
culture, right? Yeah.
I believe that organizations that do not adopt the hybrid
culture, I think they are going to be counterproductive,
intuitive person. Yeah, It's here to stay.
It's just here to stay. Yeah.
If I had to go into the office five days a week, I couldn't
work for money 2020, you know? Yeah, I.
Mean that's just the, the fact of, of where we're at.
Like, and I, I would be happy to move to New York, but that would
cost them more money, right? And so as a result, I'm sitting
here in Kansas City, you're in London.
There's definitely more value that could come out of this if
we were sitting together in person, for sure, right?
Like, but a lot of that, a lot of that value would not come
from the actual conversation on camera.
It would come from the time we spend together before and after,
right? Which we got a little bit of
anyway. So I think it's just a matter
of, you know, is the juice worth the squeeze on some of this
stuff like ban A? Pizza novice.
Exactly. And I'm, I mean, it's, it's
lonely too, right? Like sitting in Kansas, Speaking
of mental health, we were talking before it gets lonely
sitting in a city that is not necessarily New York, trying to
build in a New York esque, kind of, you know, global fashion.
And that's why every single time I get to get on a plane and go
see my team in New York or London or even get to go to
Singapore and see my team, they're like the energy that
comes with that is so significant.
But if I had to do that every day or if that was just my
normal, I don't know if I would know if I'd have that same
energy. So I agree completely.
I think the hybrid is 1. What's necessary to attract the
best talent and maintain it. Two, it actually creates more
energy and creates space for creativity and thought.
That kind of wouldn't exist if you were just, you know, banging
in an office 9 to 5 five days a week.
Yeah, exactly. You know, people don't realize
that entrepreneurship is, is both an art, honest science.
So art, creativity drives on what I say balance and yeah,
balance and also being able to reflect, you know, be on your
own, especially interact with nature and you should do really,
really, really well. And of course, you know you're
talking about hiring and retaining the best talent.
Yesterday I was a keynote speaker and a webinar for HR
professionals. So what?
What's? What a.
Coincidence, you know, actually to webinars with them.
One was a he's just accident for HR professionals and of course I
think the other on an international standards on HR.
So basically we've seen that the world is shifting in terms of
the way we manage him capital. Yep.
But a lot of organizations are not, you know, moving at this
heat or would I say at the average industry speed, and that
that would actually hurt them if they don't do something about
it. But you know I come.
From Africa and. Financial inclusion is a very,
very big issue in Africa. So how do you see AI region on
top of financial institution? See, this is 1 good question
too. This is where I kind of get on
my high horse a little bit think, I think sometimes we get
too attached to these new technologies, right?
If you think about M PESA, if you think about a lot of what
has already been deployed across I won't just take Africa
emerging markets, right. The problems to be solved are
are ones that for the most part have been solved in developed
markets. Are there better ways to solve
them with AI or with blockchain or whatever that might be?
Like if I if I implement an underwriting system for the gig
economy that has better tracking as a result of?
Actually. I mean, how does AI improve
something like, you know, Google Maps, making sure that you're
actually stopping the places you're stopping or things that
we like. One of the big underwriting
pieces for some of these is even just, you know, how how charged
you keep your phone, right? Like there's we don't need
groundbreaking technologies to solve a lot of the problems in
emerging markets. We need entrepreneurs, we need
the people we we need, we need to give a shit about something
besides the United States and the EU is my opinion.
And we need to get out there. We need to start building like
that. That's what matters more than
any of it. And like if part of that is, you
know, an open AI enterprise subscription, great.
But for the most part, in my opinion, that's a nice to have.
Like I think that we need to find creative ways to solve
problems that have already been solved.
And in some cases, we don't even need to like we don't even need
creative ways. We just need to put attention on
it, right? Because there's a perception
that, you know, this group of people doesn't have any money,
therefore we're not going to build products for them.
But as the cost of technology decreases and, you know,
technologies that existed 20 years ago, you know, an API call
for this was was a terrible example, but like an API call
for this was, you know, 10 bucks and now it's a cent.
Like, why can't we apply that to this specific thing happening in
this specific area of Africa, right?
And to me, it's a, it's a lot less about AI, it's a lot less
about blockchain. It's actually about solving
Triadfi problems more than anything else.
And it's about entrepreneurs caring and realizing that
emerging markets are actually a lot more interesting.
Like I would, I would, I would if I'm thinking about like
measuring a life right, going and starting a company, an
emerging market that has an impact on a million people and
helps them get from, you know, here to here economically.
I would much rather do that then start a unnamed trading company
that you know, doesn't have fees but sells all of its order flow
into certain organizations that then front run their customers
and sell that off and make literally all of their money off
of, you know, money off of like selling order flow, right?
Like what good does that do for the world?
Not really like you actually you're if, if the if it is free,
probably you're paying for it in some way and it's probably not a
way that you actually want to be paying for it.
So if you know you're, you're going to trade yourself to 0 or
do you, you know, go to an emerging market, build something
of use that people actually benefit from everyday and helps
the world like that, That would be that would be my answer.
I don't think that it's as much about these groundbreaking
technologies. I think it's about attention and
about diverting entrepreneurial resources and capital to the
right places. And just like doing the damn
thing I love. What you see about attention,
it's actually very important to you to bring attention to these
issues. And at first I've actually done
my own. You need to part.
So there is this economy, what I say students competition that I
sponsored in Nigeria. So I finished, I went to the
habit of Nigeria, by the way, it's called our low university.
So they have this annual conference wherein they're close
to about 10 universities. All economics are students,
right? So the Kingdom's podcast earlier
this year we had the inaugural that I say competition request,
you know, even price money and oppressor the winner, the
mentorship, right? So what do they do?
They watch the podcast and take any of the favorite episodes and
use the lessons to learn from that episode to create an
innovative solution to an existing economic program in
Nigeria and make a 5 minute presentation on it.
Yeah, it's sometimes I think we overthink.
I mean, especially in the US and the EUI think we over engineer,
we overthink we over a lot of things, but especially when
you're talking about emerging markets.
I mean, I, I, I'm oversimplifying it very much,
but these are solvable problems, right?
It's just that, absolutely. Absolutely.
I think you'd love to see the presentations of I would.
I would, yeah. I mean this.
This across the board, these are solvable problems and the
technologies exist to solve them.
And for the most part, the technologies are not, in my
opinion, the groundbreaking ones that require you know, someone
to know Solidity or something like that to solve.
Like a lot of these problems can probably be probably be solved
by putting together, you know, a set of the right open source
protocols, right? Like you would be surprised.
At the simple technology that the winner suggested for
providing a solution to the problem she was trying to solve.
I don't want to let the cat out of the bag, so I'll let you go
watch it. I'll go.
I'll go, I'll go watch it. But but yeah, I, I mean, I think
I, I also think that a lot of people get paid a lot of money
to overcomplicate things, right? Like as soon as you start going
and working for an unnamed consulting firm, it benefits you
a lot to make things really complicated, right?
But as a founder, like, that's not going to serve you,
especially in the early days. Absolute absolutely.
You know, like simplicity, toss it.
Like why? Why should you overcomplicate
things? Like it gets on my nerves, but
it is what it is. Yeah, yeah, you know, different
strokes are different folks. But really, as an entrepreneur,
you you discover that the Steam fact needs the better it needs.
Yeah, yeah. And less tech debt less, I mean,
it's just more scalable, more ability to adjust as new things
come in. I mean, across the board, like
the simpler you keep it, probably the better it's going
to be. I mean, think chlorine as an
example again, right? Buy now, pay later.
It is in and of itself like regulatorily compliance wise.
It's this whole new thing that they had to work through the,
you know, is this legal level of but when you think about it,
it's very simple. It's not it's not the craziest
thing in the world, right. And from that one kind of
groundbreaking innovation that is absolutely groundbreaking,
but also not the craziest thing in the world, we see a multi
multi multi billion dollar company come out of it because
they've been able to listen to their customers and learn and
build on top of and you know. I to rate and innovate exactly.
I think. That that's as a secret to
growth. But of course, you know,
Speaking of the Planner IPO and of course our market signals.
So the IPO actually sparked fresh conversations about
fintech valuations and that's the confidence.
So from your own vantage point, like what does this moment tell
us about the state of fintech markets in 2025?
This is the hard part where I think, I think anybody that
tells you that they know everything about finance or
anybody that gives you a really, really convicted answer on
something along these lines that like it means this for the
future of fintech or it means this for the future of public
markets. I'd be willing to place a bet
that they're wrong. Like the more confident they are
about whatever their answer is, I would be willing to bet
against them even stronger. So what that IPO tells me is
that Klarna was ready to IPO. I know it's the worst answer in
the world, but it's yeah, so. Sometimes the the tourist
answers are the simplest ones. Yeah, and.
It, I mean, does it signal an opening of IPO markets?
Does it, does it signal good things for Finta?
It's, it's not, it's positive signals across the board, but
it's, but, but an IPO is a moment in time, right?
It's, it's about, it's about, it's about continuing that,
right. It's about the, the quarterly
earnings after that, it's about the quarterly earnings after
that. It's about, you know, half year.
It's about all of all of this. And if you start to see, you
know, a decline in some of this, it could also mean terrible
things. Excuse me?
You know, speaking about the earnings, right, you're talking
about at the end. And so I'm just going to
cooperate your point and you know, give you a lead up.
So growth versus profitability. So how can pounders actually
balance that growth, ambition, value, profitability in this
area where investors are prioritizing the fundamentals
again? See, I, this is another, another
area that I'm not quite sure about because I think I think in
traditional fintech, AKA I'm going to build a neobank 1.
I kind of think people are done building neobanks in, in
developed nations. Like I think that to our earlier
conversation, in emerging markets, there's a ton of
neobanks things left to be built, but in a merge like here,
they've kind of been built. So we're talking about.
Balancing growth and profits. Growth, yes, yes, yes.
So while we do, there is this narrative around unit economics,
there's this narrative around all that.
But when you look at where most of the VC dollars are going,
they're going to AI, right? They're going to these companies
that unit economically are selling a dollar for $0.50 in a
lot of cases, right? And they're being subsidized by
VC dollars. So this idea that unit economics
is mattering is very true for the Clarinus, is very true for
the companies that are prepping to IPO.
But is it true across the whole tech industry?
I don't know. And I actually think that
there's a shift happening back towards the let's take
absolutely gigantic swings because especially in the age of
AI, like it's not going to be a 0 sum game, but there's, there's
going to be a number, there's going to be a Fang, right?
There's, there's probably going to be a set of 10 or less
absolutely gigantic winners that come out of this.
So, you know, if they're making 20% margins versus 30% margins,
I think a lot of VCs at this point, they just want to see
growth, right? Like if, if open AI can end up
with 5 billion users, even if they aren't profitable, they can
turn on that profits bigot pretty fast because by that
point they've got everybody addicted to the product, right?
And addicted in a good way, because it's the copilot to
their life, right? And if I'm paying $20.00 a month
for it now and they change it to 30 price elasticity, whatever.
Like I'm paying 30, it's just going to, I'm paying, I'm going
to do, I'm not, I'm not losing my, my copilot, right?
Like that's not an option. So I, I guess I, I challenge the
premise of it a little bit. With that being said, I think if
you're starting more of a traditional finance company,
it's just hard and I would maybe stay away from doing it unless
it's, unless it's more on the infrastructure side or unless
it's something that's able to scale across the world without
having to depend on consumers, right?
Like I think, I think the age of consumer fintech is not over,
but it's, it's starting over. And as a result of that, I, I'm
skeptical about how much unit economics really is the focus
versus the story of the eventual unit economics, right.
Like as long as you can tell the story about the eventual
profitability, then you can get people there.
But I, I don't, I don't, I don't know how true it is that they
care as much as they say they care in Forbes and Wired and
TechCrunch and whatever. Marginal profit versus total
profit, right? We'll, we'll see we'll see what
happens in the end. But you just touch the nerve
with the pricing of Open AI and think about it.
What will happen like, OK, confession time.
I think there was this time I I I was trying to leave open AI to
trial and some other module. I just discovered that whoa.
So I need to start training this new.
Yeah, exactly right. This new thing from the scratch,
I'm like no, no, no, no, no, I'm going back.
There's there's, I mean, I don't know if it's sunk cost is not
really the right way to think about it.
But like you are, you're developing especially because of
ChatGPT having memory and you know, some of those things like
yeah. You.
Develop relation. Not relationships.
Hopefully not relationships, but you.
You develop loyalty as a result of just the product itself.
So. People don't understand that you
know what goes into training your AI and just tell you.
But this, this is an alternative.
You can just easily speak to this one.
It's even cheaper. And like, don't worry, you can,
you cannot understand. Yeah.
And imagine that in an enterprise level, right?
Like think about like, so one of the biggest companies in the US
doing really cool stuff with AI is Rocket, the Rocket Mortgage
actually. So they basically like an
underwriting and actually trying to like get somebody through a
loan, right? There's a whole bunch of steps
in that process. And if you just like apply AI
horizontally through that, that's not going to go well for
regulation regulators or a lot though there's a lot of things
that could fall apart. But if you take a step back like
Rocket did and you say, OK, piece by piece, like we're going
to, we're going to turn this into basically micro services,
if you will. And within some of those micro
services, we're going to apply AI and explainable AI, not AI
that we just, I don't know, it said this.
So we did it, you know, because that doesn't work in financial
services. So if you can apply AI in
specific places in that stack, the outcomes are crazy.
Don't remember the numbers off the top of my head.
This was a little while back, but Rocket announced something
along the lines of like a 20% decrease in touches and a 20%
increase in throughput of actual volume, right?
And that was just as a matter of that kind of micro service AI
attachment, which I'm keeping very broad because I barely
understand it, but that, you know, it's, it's things like
that where I think we're really going to see fascinating things
happen. I, I think we're still very,
very far away from this AI that we're just going to plug into a
bank and it's going to somehow make things better, right?
Like stable coins will do that to some degree.
But even then, you're not just plugging that in.
That's, that requires engineering there.
There's, there's building that goes into all this.
Yeah. A.
Lot of engineering, prompt engineering ease, I don't know,
it's a difficult thing. And you, you get better as you
as you as you do it more. It's more like driving.
You become a better driver by driving more.
And I think I like that, that perspective that our rockets are
adopted. So it's, that's a project
management perspective. Basically you pull, you pull it
in. Yeah.
Exactly, it's of. Processes, right?
And of course you optimize, you know, the chains within other
processes. So if you optimize those pockets
within the processes, definitely you'd have an overall
optimization and that's pretty smart.
And that's why we go to school to learn this thing.
Exactly. Yeah, exactly.
It's not as sexy to talk about as some other stuff, but I mean,
it's the stuff that's gonna really make a difference in the
future financial services, especially in in regulated
industries. I mean, the same is true in
insurance. The same is true across a lot of
different spaces, I think even. Even in start.
Tops, right? If you should adopt that
approach, right? Just adopt A project management
approach and of course optimize your processes.
If you optimize your processes, just T stems will be optimized,
right? There's automation now, right?
I love automation. I don't need to the performance
setting repetitive tasks right So you are you automate the
financial side to the operations and if you're happy you don't
need to do more smart work beats hard work all day long but you.
Still need that audit, yeah. Yeah, but you see, you still
need the hard work. They pass it.
Getting the hard work in is even what is going to make you
smarter, you know? Yep.
A. 100%. Really, you need to, you need to
know what to do. Like right, You said earlier if
you do not work hard enough, you would not even know what to do,
Yeah. Yeah, And so, and I think it's
another one of those things where, I mean, you know, Sam
Altman, who it's so weird to me who Sam Altman has turned into.
But back when he was, you know, the startup guy, what he would
say over and over and over again is solve the smallest problem
that you can as well as you can, right?
Like take the smallest pain points and just solve it within
an inch of its life. Stays close to your customers.
You can and iterate, iterate, iterate, iterate.
And it's possible that whatever that thing is has nothing to do
with AI, has nothing to do with blockchain, has nothing to do
with any of these things. And if anything, I mean, I hope
we don't become over obsessed with some of these new
technologies because there's a, it's not great that some of our
bank systems are still running on COBOL and like really old
mainframes. But there's a reason that they
are, you know, there's, there's reasons for all these things.
And I think that sometimes startups that haven't studied
the history or had the chance to work inside of some of these
organizations just have this assumption that it's stupidity
or something, or this assumption that it's it's they're just
Luddites. Very very often it's not that.
Very, very often there's a very real reason that that specific
server is on Prem at that very specific place, be IT security,
be it whatever it might be, so. You read my mighty gay.
You know it's this security regulate your concerns.
Yep, we got to be careful. About getting too far over our
skis with a lot of this stuff, I mean, it is wildly exciting and
it's going to change the world. But you know, watch Ex Machina
and. You see how it could go bad?
We need to put a link to that movie, you know, in the in the
in the distribution section. So Speaking of strategy, like
what lessons can in tech entrepreneurs learn from planner
with how they have to detect from pandemic darling, it's a
long term sustainability. I really.
Think that the biggest lesson from Klarna, The thing that
impresses me the most about them is the business model
innovation, right? It's the fact that they're
serving multiple sides of a marketplace sitting in the
middle. They're they're facilitating
connections in a way that no other company does right?
They're a payments company, but it's also a discoverability of
that new pair of shoes. It's also right like it's, it's
a place where people spend time like you're wait, hold on
rewind. I'm opening a financial app to
spend time doing something other than just a pure fight.
Like I'm not I'm not transferring money.
I'm not investing in anything necessarily.
I'm just getting on there to check out maybe some shoes,
check out, you know what's going on.
But the payments app and in the US especially that like you
know, in Asia, super apps, things along those lines, that's
very much more a thing. But I think with what Klarna has
been able to do is to build that multi sided marketplace and to
build a brand that people want to be a part of.
I think that's the other thing about a lot of what fintech has
done is like the pride of a Corona card.
I think it says something about you, right?
In the same way actually. So this is a conversation we had
with their CMO and I was asking like, do you think the Corona is
in some way a luxury brand? And his basic answer, he said
no. But as we got in the weeds of
it, like there, there's overlaps, right?
Like there, there's pride in the idea that I have a client of
card. Like back in the day, I mean, if
you think about the Monzo card, having that orange Monzo card
walking on the card, that meant something, right?
It was a conversation starter, so.
I I traded my orange one for for the white one.
See, there you go. Even even that is like that's
what I'm saying is like all of these different I.
Don't have that route. I don't like that orange one.
It annoys me like everybody. Every top Deacon hire.
Just has the orange one to. Our to our earlier question
about growth hacking, that was a piece of growth hacking for
them, right. So to the client point, I think,
I think building a brand that people trust, you know, and
building a building a friendly brand inside of financial
services is something that's not easy to do that they've been
able to pull off. And I think that the like the
branding experiment in the branding execution they've done
there is more exciting than, you know, buy now, pay later itself,
like what they've done is so much bigger than what it started
with. And to me, to me, that is the
most exciting piece. I don't know if that's even
really a good answer, but to me that's what's so unique about it
that gets me excited about it. And, you know, Brandon actually
does. Would I say, I don't want to say
Manifili or like has a yeah, influencing people.
Yeah, yeah. Think yeah, Brandon is very,
very big. Yeah.
Like, I have a, you know, I fly a lot, so I have a Delta Amex
Reserve card, right? If I didn't fly so much, I
definitely wouldn't have that. It has nothing to do with my
actual standing in society, but it's metal.
It's heavy. When I drop it on the table, I
feel a certain way. Right?
Like there's. Yeah, it's all about like,
there's only so many touch points in finance where you can
separate yourself. And it's those little moments
that I think companies like Klarna have really been able to
figure out. Interesting stuff.
You know those metal cards just like the the Monzo or white card
as well. It's metal.
And when I'm at the airport and, you know, you swipe it and you
get VIP access discounted, you feel good about yourself.
Yeah, you kind of let. You grow in edge, you know,
you're like, yeah, excuse me, VIP coming through.
Yeah. It's, I mean, all it's a card,
you know, but but it gives you this it's it's emotion, right?
It brings you back to the emotion of it.
Yep. Yeah, and I, I like what they're
doing with this. You know partnerships, you see,
it's not just about the fintech, but of course, you know the
partnerships they're able to build.
Sometimes they just come up with a new partner and tell you, oh,
partner did this cinema. You can go grab, you know, the
cinema tickets, popcorns. I'm like wow, back.
If you think, yeah, I mean. A lot of things I don't.
I don't know if they would want me saying this, and luckily I
don't work there, so it doesn't matter.
But I think a lot of what they've done is, if you squint a
little bit, similar to a lot of what Amex did back with the
black card, right? Not that it's at that same level
of like only Jerry Seinfeld has one or whatever.
But if you think about kind of the you, you mentally associate
yourself with this brand in a way that makes you feel good
about yourself, right? And if you can achieve that in
financial services, you've unlocked something absolutely
gigantic. You know, entrepreneurship is
basically about unlocking markets, and these guys have
been able to unlock multiple markets and yeah, it's a really
good thing for them. But you know, you are at the
heart of curated content or, you know, conversations that one
needs 20 to 20. So what kind of leadership
mindset stand out to you in this space?
Just before you answered that I have a philosophy.
And by the way, Morgan Anderson, one of the top tax debt
resolution experts in America, describes me as a modern day
defense philosopher. OK, I I have taken that title
around with it. Right.
So part of my philosophies is that when you're hiring or when.
Yeah, when you're hiring to your team, when you or having
partnerships and visas, you need to consider three very important
things, Mindset, skill set and tool set, in that order.
The mindset, the skill set and the tool set.
Yeah, a lot of people, a lot of organizations disregard the
mindset and it costs you heavily.
It has cost me heavily as an entrepreneur like let's call it
speed of speed, right? The question you go for the
skill set and you know, you can learn very quickly that it's not
just about the skill set because the skill set kind of taught the
tool sets kind of provided AIS here, you know, different
softwares or the mindset. It's difficult to teach more a
success mindset of both mindset, especially if people are not
willing to adopt it. So.
Like in terms of the mindset of what has like been impressed you
in the space this. Isn't really, I mean, we have,
you know, 300, three, 150 speakers, some of the most
impressive humans in the world. Like we're going to have
Jennifer Bailey who runs Apple Pay at the show and I actually
get the get the privilege of getting to interview her.
We have Max Levchin at the show. I mean, part of the PayPal
mafia. Speaking of, you know, buy, buy
now, pay later. Just unbelievable people that we
have coming. But the thing the thing that
comes to mind at most is, is another company that will be
there and be there and with some strength.
They'll have a good number of folks there is Microsoft and if
you think about I. Love Microsoft?
Yeah, well, but what a weird. Take a step back.
Think about what a weird sense that is.
You just said. Would you have said that five
years ago? I I'm speaking to you using a
Microsoft laptop. Let's start.
From there have. You always been like a Microsoft
person. Yes, I'll.
I'll say so. Yeah, I'll say so.
I've never owned a Mac in my life.
Oh, my. I you're OK.
So you and I are different in that way.
I'm very like I'm Apple since the beginning, but yeah.
For phones, yeah, there you go. Yeah, but the.
Laptops. Nothing.
I don't think. I'm sorry.
I'm sorry, Apple. Only if you sponsor my podcast.
But I want. Here you go.
Yeah. I want Microsoft to sponsor my
podcast guys. But if if you look at kind of
where Microsoft was, I mean, Satya Nadella, I'm getting CE OS
mixed up. Satya Nadella is their CEO,
right? Yeah.
When you think about what he's done since taking over, it's
been cultural and it's been mindset related, right?
Because the amount of infighting inside of Microsoft of well, we
have this resource, we have this resource, we have this resource.
And like, we're not, we're not skipping levels, We're not
talking amongst teams. Like he disbanded all of that.
Like he actually, like he's incentivizing skip level
meetings. He's incentivizing just going
and talking to the person. Things that we would think of as
you know, inside of a startup is very obvious.
But if you're trying to go from VP to SVP at Microsoft in 2012
was not in your best interest. Your best interest was to do the
thing that made you look good, right?
And he's, I think been able to in a pretty small amount of time
shift this culture and with AI that everything on top of it
that they're building into one Team 1 dream, you know, for the
most part heading One Direction. So if there's one company I had
to pick that like really has done something unbelievable in
terms of, you know, size of company and, you know, size of
customer base and all that. Like what Microsoft has been
able to do in shifting their culture is unbelievable.
And I think so much of that comes back to the simplicity of
allowing humans to talk to humans and send.
I mean, humans are incentives. We are beings of incentives,
right? So if he shifts some incentives
internally, that changes behavior.
And those incentives that he has changed has changed the behavior
significantly. And as a result, Microsoft isn't
this. Ten years ago you might have
thought of it as I'm trying to be as nice about this as I can.
They have taken thousand XA step forward in terms of their brand
perception, in terms of their technology, in terms of
everything, and they've done it in a pretty small amount of
time. And I mean, it's not like, you
know, it's not like Steve Ballmer and Bill Gates were
slouches. It's just it was just a
different time, right? And the CE OS in between all
very, very impressive people, but really understanding the
incentive driving the broader company and being able to
reorganize that to run One Direction like that's, that's
impressive. And then?
How, how about the acquisitions that they've made, for example,
they are LinkedIn, which is very strategic.
Yeah, I mean. Across, I mean their
acquisition, their acquisition strategy, the fact that they've
invested what they have in Open AI at the point that they did,
the fact that they're still also doing Copilot themselves.
I mean the list goes on as to the things that they're doing.
That makes so much sense. But to me, the biggest thing is
like, I don't think a lot of those things would have been
able to happen without the mindset and the culture shift.
Yeah, mindset, skill set, tool set, very, very pertinent, very
important. And of course.
While. Speaking about innovators, the
younger generation of innovators, so especially the
ones that are getting into fintech, right, you, you are the
pro, they are the Jews, so. I don't know.
About that, but here we go. So.
So what do you or what would your advice be to them right in
terms of helping them not feeling overwhelmed by
regulations or technology prevails First it comes to
finance. For Fentech entrepreneurs
specifically, I apologize in advance for this advice folks,
but my advice is go work in traditional financial services.
It's that sound like it's work. Go work at a regulator is what?
That's one thing I wish I would have done.
Like I wish that I at some point would have spent some time at
the FDIC or the OCC or something like that.
If I had not gone and spent time in banking, I would not know 90%
of what I know because just that time allowed me to learn even
the right questions to ask going forward to allow me to know
more, right? So my advice would be go work.
Go work somewhere long enough in a portion of the company that
you're interested in or that you or that frustrates you.
Maybe find the problem that you feel is fixable or the OR
candidly find the dumbest thing you can and build that thing.
You know, as small as it might be, it might be as simple as you
know right now, inside of this mortgage department, there's
literally a person responsible for picking up a piece of paper
or a stack of papers and carrying it up one flight of
stairs to this. That should probably be a piece
of software by now, unless it's legally required that that's a
human. And in the US and sometimes it
is legally required that's a human.
But I would say go work in the regulated industry, understand
it, and then build the solution that you think actually makes
sense whilst staying close to the regulators, right?
That's the other thing that's changed a lot is I think in the
early days of Fintech, regulators, policy makers, those
doors were open, but scary, right?
Founders didn't really want to kind of preempt anything like
they wanted to stay quiet. And I think the, the opposite is
true now or well, the opposite should be true now where you
know you're going, you're having that conversation, you're making
sure that whatever you're building actually isn't.
They're never, regulators are never going to tell you that
what you're doing is right. That's not how they function.
But they will give you, you know, broad strokes as to things
that you can do differently and read between the lines on and
you know, things along those lines.
But it's, it's unfortunately the best advice I can give is go
work inside of a incumbent, go work inside of a large financial
industry company, insurance company, whatever it might be
and solve that problem. On the other side of the coin, I
work for AD 5 company. Like if you are a good learner
and you can understand the specificities of tokenization
and also understand the basics of deposit accounts and
settlement, then you should probably be working in a
stablecoin company or starting one, right?
It just it kind of depends on who you are as a person and how
much of A self kind of self learner you are.
But I really don't think anything can replace the
experience of being inside of an organization, doing something
that you see could be done better and then going 100%. 100%
I do agree with you. There's no substitute for
experience, right? Yeah, but a lot of people in
this ageing time try to create shortcuts.
Good luck. Yeah, good luck.
You remind. Me of my experience in audit and
that's why I very, very much cherish my experience in audit,
right audit puts you in a very unique position I I'd pretty
much say auditors are accountants on steroids.
They are the accountants, the accountant.
So because in audits, you are doing a regulatory compliance
work and of course, you'll also doing financial reporting work.
You're reviewing the financial reporting of management, right?
So you are just in between and you're doing auditing as well.
So you grant like 3 different hearts at least in one person.
So it's like a cheat code for you to get your business acumen,
for you to get your technical competence, for you to build
relationships as well. And of course for you to learn
leadership. And of course, that global
argument of working with cross functional teams, because it is
very important to be able to work with cross functional
teams, right? So it's, it's difficult getting
all of that in just one single experience.
And that's why I totally agree with you with that point of view
of working in the traditional financial industry because that
that's the only way you can get it right.
You need to get the fundamentals right.
Get the ABC before you get to XYZ.
Exactly. Yeah.
And, and ask all the questions you can along the way.
People, people want to help. People want, you know, I, I had
a very lucky experience at MBKC where I got to work with the
executive team for the most part because of just the way my job
was structured. And I mean, I drove luckily
their friends now and feel like I didn't actually drive them
crazy. But the number of just dumb
questions that I would ask at the end of meetings, like we, we
would have, you know, 30 minute calls, they'd end up wrapping at
20. But I didn't let people out of
that room. Like I had 10 minutes of
questions of what just happened because I didn't understand, you
know, three different acronyms that were named.
So I forced them to stay in the room and define those acronyms
for me. So next time I was on the phone
without them, I could actually know what I was talking about,
right. And people generally want to
help. So ask ask those questions.
Yeah, but but a lot of people just assume.
So you don't like, I guess something I love to say you
don't get the question or ask. Yes, Mark is a close destiny.
Exactly. You gotta ask, baby, you gotta
ask. The worst they can say is no.
It has the worst and more like I've been taking nose since how
long the? More nose the better.
The more nose means more yeses. Yes, absolutely.
The people who wait to take my nose definitely get to get the
most yeses actually. So, but in terms of
misconceptions like what are the common misconceptions about, you
know, the fintech industry that people have even till today?
I think I think that at this point, I think the biggest
misconception is that fintech is so dramatically different than
financial industries. The idea that like if you think
about some of these fintech companies, unless you're working
in a true startup, they're at a point now where they're being
regulated similarly to some of the biggest banks.
They're like we, I don't really know how to say it other than
like we made it yellow like we did it like financial, like
fintech is big enough now that it is almost time for a new term
like fintech is financial services.
So this idea that like I, I am attached to the word fintech
because it's, you know, something I've attached myself
to through my whole career. But we've been doing this long
enough now we've gained the trust and we've grown up, we've
matured. So I, I don't think that fintech
is fintech anymore. I think fintech is financial
services. Yes, Fintech is financial
services or I guess a lot of voice has still suffering from
the trauma of yeah, that that wannabe perception of fintech
had you know what I say in the last decade, but it has come to
stay where it's the bosses, even the traditional banks of one
book and many it smell meetings like these.
And I think Fintech just needs more respect to the name.
Yeah, yeah. And I think it's getting there.
I mean, if you look at I mean, just I think Plaid is a great
like kind of the penultimate example of a fintech company
that has grown up into a true, you know, financial services
infrastructure provider, right? Like Zach and Will and team
built something that might have seemed a little nuts at certain
points and you know, had UPS had downs almost got acquired to
their benefit actually didn't has what seemed to have worked
out better that way, but they're.
That's a that's a financial services infrastructure company
now and they treat it that way like there's not a this idea of
move fast and break things does not exist in fintech at all
anymore because it can't we, we can't afford anything close to
that anymore. I mean, we and true the same is
true a million X in the crypto world like another FTX would set
set that back another 10 years, you know, in terms of pricing,
in terms of trust from regulators, everything.
So I think, I think now we have a new responsibility on our
shoulders to carry forward with responsibility with regulation,
with you know, compliant infrastructure that you know is
time to put on the adult pants basically.
Absolutely. We more success comes on more
responsibilities. Yeah, basically, you know, at
first Fintech is that term that is very close to your heart.
But the truth is it is not what it used to be in the last decade
any longer. It is or would I say the proper
industry right now and of course it is that I say that that adult
industry subset of financial services, it is proper financial
services. It's not just that baby industry
any longer. Yeah, I'll put you that way.
That's one thing that's really beautiful about fintech is the
innovation and of course the the rate of rapid growth that we
have experienced over time. It's I think.
People don't give fintech the credit that you deserve.
With that rapid growth, you already see industries come up
and just low and low up India fields the way fintech has has
done globally and it's on a global scale.
So I think they just have more respect.
But you know, speaking about these innovations, right, Like
what do you think, you know, from a personnel standpoint is?
But I'll say the most exciting, you know, on a global scale.
And of course, you know, for me, the financial inclusion is very,
very close in my heart, maybe because of the bias of, you
know, my origin as a person, right, coming from the country
in an emerging market. So I would always, you know, put
the work out there. And of course, you know, it's my
responsibility. I think it's my responsibility.
I took it off. I don't know who gave it to me.
I always try to ensure that I use my platform to ensure
development in, you know, the country that I came from.
So we should be shout out to my country.
By the way, I'm always having my flag here, so.
I bet that comes out during the UFCA lot.
Yeah. So I guess to answer your
question, I think the one thing that I haven't mentioned that
maybe is like nearest dearest, closest to my heart and what I'm
most hopeful and excited about of all of this.
When you take all the technologies we're talking
about, right? And you think about how all this
data has been siloed in very extreme ways, that leads to
money laundering. Money laundering leads to human
trafficking leads. I mean, I think a lot of the
time when people think about money laundering, they think
about narcos, right? Which in and of itself not
great, but a lot worse things than drug trafficking are
happening as a result of money laundering, right?
Human trafficking speaking. Of human trafficking.
Yes. Speaking of human trafficking,
I've had, I don't know if you know about the Meccan Club,
right. So they're one of the world's
top anti human trafficking organizations.
I've had the CEO on this forecast, yeah.
Yeah. So I mean, this, this is, this
is the thing, right, is if you think about the ability to break
down those data silos, right? And the ability for these bank
consortiums, in the same way that they're working to move
money together. If we're able to track and
understand more of the how those illicit funds move, if we're
able to, to gather more of those illicit funds, take them out of
the market, if we're able to find more of the bad guys,
basically the world becomes a much better place.
Like when I got into fintech, the stat was that we catch less
than 1% of money laundering across the world every year.
That stat has not changed. And it's a massive industry,
massive industry. And if you think about the
technologies we're talking about, if applied correctly and
government in like in public and private entities are able to
work together in good ways, like we could solve a lot more than
1% of money laundering folks, you know, And to me that that is
actually the thing that I'm not going to say it's the thing that
gets me out of bed in the morning because there's so many
pieces to 2020. But like, if there was one thing
in fintech that I would want to go build, like if I had to, you
know, go start something tomorrow, it would be around
that. It would be trying to find a way
to decrease money laundering in the world, to increase the
quality of the know your customer rules, and to basically
just try and do away with a lot of that evil.
Very, very important, you know, but at least, you know, we just
need to would I say, contribute the leader that we can
contribute into that fight against money laundering and, of
course, human trafficking. On my end, I've had Matt
Friedman. Yeah.
Matt Friedman is the CEO of Meccan Blog.
Anybody who knows about the fight against the doing
trafficking would know that guy. He he's based in Hong Kong, but
he's done a lot of work I think for the past 25 years or so on.
Yeah. You know the fight at first.
We have Team Nelson coming to the spot pass later in the year.
Team Nelson is the CEO of our Justice for Hope.
Yeah, that's another big, you know, our charity that fights
money. I'm sorry, human trafficking.
Yeah, I've had Paul Moore as well.
Paul Moore, he's an entrepreneur.
He's a real estate billionaire in the US and he contributes
really, really deep to other fighters against money.
Why do I keep stealing money laundry?
Because he's doing trafficking. Well, because.
You're probably. Saying it because money
laundering is, it's not just about human trafficking, right?
Like, I mean, I, I use that as something very visceral because
we can all agree that it's absolutely terrible, right?
But there's a, there's a show on National Geographic called
Trafficked. It's run by a woman named
Marianna Van Zeller. It's I've had the pleasure of
interviewing her a couple times at money 2020.
And basically what she does is she goes into a new dark market
every week. She'll go and literally follow
from how fentanyl gets created where like the initial, you
know, like the, the chemicals all the way into the lab all the
way into the actual final consumer.
She does the same with ghost guns.
She does the same with like there's so human organs, right?
I mean, there's so many things that money laundering is driving
that we we don't think about South in terms of like
humanizing it. One, go watch traffic on
National Geographic because Marianna's the shit.
But two, take a step back and think about the world of that
dark money. It's it's not good.
It's not good at all. And it's actually really, really
scary. And if we were able to solve
even 2%, the world would look a lot better.
So yeah, because. You know, it's very little money
fighting against a lot of money. So like how it's it's.
Systems I don't. Know, yeah.
And I think we finally have a knife.
To a gunfight. Yeah, yeah, it really is.
It really is. But I think now we, I think we
got our guns. The question is how do we put
them together? How do we build them and how do
we deploy them correctly? And that's an exciting question,
exciting metaphor that I hope doesn't get mixed, but you know
what I mean. Precision beats power, How many
beats beat? Indeed, I think.
It's just a matter of strategy and of course we we're able to
win that war against our human trafficking because it is very,
very, very inhumane. It's unacceptable.
All of it is man. I mean, it's, you know, I mean,
when you think about just fentanyl coming and across the
border from the top, from the bottom in the US, I mean,
there's, there's, there's so many, so many things that money
laundering powers that are the evils of the world.
And if we could make a real dent on that, then we're doing
something really, really good for the world.
So anyways, that's that's my public service announcement is
if you're thinking about going and starting something, think
about money laundering, think about anti money laundering
specifically. Interesting stuff.
I hope they get to hear you on that.
Wow. We've actually been on this spot
for more than two hours. You said it, you said it our did
it that we're going to have. A lot of fun today so.
We we will have our Part 3, the course.
You know this is Part 2 big fire round.
Are you ready to? I'm always ready to rumble,
baby. Quick, fire me.
Let's go, OK. Good, good, good.
I love that. You know, a friend of mine asked
me Are you ready? And I said I was born ready.
I don't know if I was born ready, but I'm ready right now.
OK, let's go So. The one machine.
Tech startup everyone should keep an eye on right now.
One second. That's a tough one.
Now I see why you say you are no born ready.
Now I just want to make sure. So there's a lot of companies
inside of fintech that have very, very similar names.
And I want to make sure that I'm saying the right name because
there's two companies. Braille.
Braille, Braille dot XYZ. It was this just because my
brain's tired, I couldn't think of it.
But it's that when I was talking earlier about the guy that
started the company in Des Moines and is now doing the
stablecoin stuff, I keep an eye out for Braille.
Ben Melon is one of the most impressive and good humans out
there building in fintech. So I don't know if that was like
lightning speed that I got you that answer because I wanted to
make sure I said the right thing, but Braille dot XYZ would
definitely be my answer. I say it's better to be right
down to the past, yeah. OK.
So what's the biggest leadership lesson you've learned in the
past year? Empower your team to an
irrational level. Make your team believe that they
can do more than maybe they even can.
I there's a really quick story with this.
So I used to coach for American soccer, for everyone else,
football. I used to go to goalkeepers when
I was in college or when I was in university.
I used to coach goalkeepers for my high school and there was
this really impressive kid that just played baseball and we've
at my old school, we never had good goalkeepers.
Like I ended up playing in college, but I had never touched
the ball until my first year in high school.
Just kind of ended up that way. And I always just told him that
he was the best goalkeeper in the state of Kansas, like
athletically everything, like just he's competing against kids
that have been playing since they were three.
Who cares? He's faster, he's stronger.
He's going to go harder, he's going to yell louder.
He's going to come at you harder.
He's going to communicate more like he is the 1.
And I would like, I would pull him to the side before every
time getting a little emotional. I'll pull him to the side before
every game. And I'd be like, you are the
one. It's you.
It's you, ain't nobody else. It's you.
So I think like second guessing your team, you gotta validate,
you gotta make sure that people are doing the things they're
doing. But when it comes to true
leadership, I mean, I think it's empower your team and make them
believe they can do more than maybe they can even do.
So I think that's very important.
By the way, he ended up playing for two years, was Allstate, got
college offers and like became one of one of the best
goalkeepers in Kansas. Actually he got he got more
accolades by the end of his time at the school than I did and I
was very proud of that. Yeah, like you definitely will
be part of that. Like I remember being a teacher,
being a lecturer, and I had some of my students like win a
national prizes. I never won a national prize
myself. And you know, seeing my own
students win prizes. And I've seen a number of my
students go on to do like really great things.
Some of our students have gone to Oxford for their masters and,
you know, gone to Harvard. And I'm like, wow.
Like I'm thinking proud of myself.
Let's keep making, let's keep making the impact, you know,
Hey, if you could host any 3 guests leaving or dead, you
know, on Syntech Family Hour, who, who they think what any.
Guests or any 3 guests and a three, Any three man.
Charlie Munger definitely 100% Patrick Allison I feel sexist
that they're just all going to be men, but Jamie Dimon.
I just feel like the conversation between those three
would be absolutely fascinating. Wow.
Why Charlie Munger? Why not?
Warren bothered. I know I had to guess.
Because so Warren Buffett is, I mean, obviously one of the most
impressive and amazing investors in the history of the world, but
Warren Buffett would not be Warren Buffett without Charlie
Munger. Like that, that relationship,
you know, they weren't, they weren't as close in later years,
things like that. But if you've never heard
Charlie Munger speak, go go to YouTube, listen to Charlie
Munger like his. He's done hours at Michigan
where he just gets interviewed. There is there are a few brains
in the world like his that are simultaneously.
His. His ability to simplify the
complex and to do it in a fun way.
I mean, the man's, the man's funny is another thing, you
know, And I think that something that we forget a lot is like to
learn, you need to be entertained.
And he's, you know, I mean, I think entertainment.
Exactly. Yeah, so I mean, I wouldn't pick
him because of the entertainment, but he's just one
of the most prolific thinkers and one of the most prolific
doers in the history of the world, I think.
And he didn't optimize for wealth, right?
Like he warns many X tend to 10s of thousands of XS more wealthy
than him. I mean, I don't even, I think
Charlie died a billionaire, but maybe not.
I mean, he's definitely in the hundreds of millions.
The one thing he ever bought that was like really, really big
for him was a boat. It was just a really big dumb
boat. It just it, I think it was like
basically a yacht, but it would break down all the time.
He didn't use it that much, but he wanted a boat.
He's just a unique man that has created some really interesting
mental models in terms of how to live life.
And I think when you take a person like that together with
my who I believe to be the philosopher king of fintech,
Patrick Carlson, and I just find Jamie Dimon to be fascinating in
general, like those three. I mean, that would be maybe one
of the few times I'd actually shut up.
Like, you know, I would just let them talk.
Interesting stuff. Jamie Dimon, I think that he's
got some, would I say, very strong opinions or on
controversial issues. Ed, he just makes him a figure
for you to see back and leak around.
I was. My maybe my replacement like if
I had like maybe Elon instead of Jamie maybe.
Last Yeah, I. Don't know.
That's a tough one. That's a, that's a, that's
definitely like a, you know, it's a strong, strong debate
between those two. But I would not replace Elon
Musk for Jamie, or for Charlie Munger or for Patrick Olson.
Let's have you turn it to Mount Rushmore, then.
Exactly. Basically, yeah, yeah, and.
Then. That's not about.
Rushmore So OK, so what's one book or podcast that completely
changed your mindset? Podcast.
To change my mindset, man, it's been so many.
I'll go with a book. So there's a The Almanac of
Nawal Ravikant and this was happens to be written by one of
my best friends. But naval is kind of a legend of
this of Silicon Valley, one of the founders of Angel List and
similarly A philosopher king of his time, a philosopher king of
not just start-ups, though of health, wealth and happiness,
right. So he's about building the best
life you can and not just work, work, work, work, work.
So the Almanac of Naval Rafikant I think would be with the one
that had that has had the biggest impact on my life.
And it's the kind of book that you can pick up and just open to
any page and there's value. You don't need the context of
the previous, you know, 20 pages or whatever it is.
And I do on a regular basis, just open it, take a quote and
think about that quote for the day that.
Is Eric jogging soon? Yeah.
Proud, proud new father as well. It would I definitely have to
keep that being and I I see it's it's quite it's quite cheap,
yeah. Yeah, I think it's, I don't, I
have no idea what it cost to be honest, but it's the audible he
just redid. He just redid the audio version
with actual some excerpts with an interview with Naval that he
did. I mean it's just Naval I think
is probably the most prolific tweeter ever.
I mean, hundreds of thousands of tweets.
He said so much publicly. And to write that book, Eric
literally read every word the man has ever said, written every
piece. And he got it down into the
succinct. Like I don't know how many pages
it is, but it's pretty succinct and it is.
I hope they. Have it on being kissed.
There you go. Yeah, I'm I would imagine.
I would imagine they do. Yes, they do.
Yeah. Yeah, it's, it's worth, it's
worth a read. And and it's one of those books
that, you know, you don't, you don't have the need to pick up
and read from beginning to end because I, I don't think I could
read it from beginnings. I mean, it's just you need time
to digest. You need like, it's one of those
things where you can just pick it up, open to a specific page
and think on one sentence for three days.
Just that kind of book. I love that I don't know what
you think about apps type blinkers, but I love blinkers.
You know, in this age of time, it's difficult kind of book
around or you know how busy we can but like it just helps you
to compress and to digest it I'm.
Yeah, I like, I like them. For me, I'm a I'm a podcast
addict, so most of my ears are taken up if unless I'm at the
gym, it's pretty much podcast time.
So I don't listen to as many books or read as many books as I
used to just because it feels like, especially right now in
finance, like if if you read a book, you're probably like a
year or two behind if you're talking about the the actual
industry. But in terms of like, mental
models about how to live life, you know, yeah.
Yeah, those last. A while.
I love I love those. I love those, you know, feel
like but I see Evergreen everything principles.
I. Remember the the.
Very first book my father ever kissed me.
Was thinking we'll reach by an apple and you know.
Yep. Yep, I've read that one too.
I couldn't get through more than like 3 pages I don't think
because I was like OK I'm pretty sure I need to think and grow
rich. Got it.
And you know the? Very first book I OK, I bought 2
books, you know, for myself with my money, the various press 2
books I got where Bill Kanecki possibly and friends and friends
people aren't the art of public speaking.
Yeah, how do I Yeah, actually how to win friends and influence
people. I feel like is one that of Gen.
Z and John Alpha skip could be a scary thing.
Like I think maybe it even needs to be like rewritten in a more
modern fashion because yes, it's I would agree on that one as
well. Yeah, very, very important.
Well, kind of course, the very last question for you is the
future of money is Dash. What do you think?
Being built right now, baby. OK, I love that and of course,
with that, it's love and respect to you.
I always my man podcast the SI unit for measuring life this
time and when a person shares their time with you to share
their life with you. It's been a pleasure.
It's truly been a pleasure, man. This has been this has been fun.
It's rare that I actually get to like, you know, explore and, you
know, conversate on these sadly, you know, because we're trying
to talk talking points. So it's been a pleasure man and
I really do want to do it again. And let's let's talk offline
about some of the partnership stuff because I think we could
do some I'm. So new to Lee, you know.
Whoa, man. Now, now.
I mean, tell you what. We got to go to AUS, we got to
find the right time, we got to find the right country and we
need to go to a UFC together. You.
Coming to London again, Good. Morning.
Like any dude, I'm in. Do you actually tell Uncle Dana,
by the way, I have manifested this, right, that I would have
been a wipe on this podcast? It's not a matter of Eve.
It's a matter of when I like it. I have manifested this.
You know about the PKFC, right? About the PKFC.
Yeah, the PKFC Ben Uncle Python Championship.
Oh yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
DV Feldman. We've had detail bound in this
podcast. Dude, you.
Have so many second degree connections to Dana you yeah
yeah I think I think we should do is just walk around Vegas and
just try and find Dana at the right point with the right
number of drinks in and then I bet he'll do he'll say yes all
good Dana all the looking for you we'll track him down we'll
get him let us. Let us track him down.
Well, it's just his stuff,
right? Yeah.
Gratitude is good attitude, right?
And 1st, I am very, very grateful to you.
And I always say this to the audience, always with the
company in life, right? Conceive beliefs, try to thrive
and achieve. For me, it's a goodbye.
And of course, Zack, do you want to leave a shout out to anybody?
And 1st, do you want to give any last words before you say
goodbye? Well, I mean, I wouldn't be
doing my job if I didn't say money. 2020 USA happening in
Vegas in October. Oh God, it's so many dates.
In my head. I want to say 26th through 29th.
Go to us.money2020.com. Depending on what part of the
world you're in, what you're interested in.
We also have shows in Europe. Amsterdam is going to be our
show in Amsterdam happens next year.
We also just two years ago launched a show in Asia and
Bangkok. So depending where you're at in
the world, what you're trying to learn about, come to Money 2020
reach out if you're interested and just want to have a chat,
I'm on LinkedIn. Happy to, you know, occasionally
busy, especially close to show, but always happy to help and
mutual. Thank you for your time.
This has been an absolute pleasure and really glad we
actually got to meet spend the time on and I'm excited to do
this in person. Absolutely.
Where you wonder where we're going to the studio and 1st have
to end this recording. That's important.
All right, let's do it. Let's do it.