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- [00:01]
Michael Batnik
Welcome to Animal Spirits. We are live from Huntington Beach Year 4 at Future Proof, and we are excited to do the show in front of the best audience of fans in the world.
- [00:10]
Ben Carlson
Today's show from the beach is brought to you by Sprott ETFs. Looking to add some shine to your portfolio? An investment in the Sprott Silver Miners and Physical Silver ETF SLVR may help you do just that. Silver is not only a precious metal with value as a currency, but.
- [00:24]
Michael Batnik
That's right, Ben. It's not just a valuable currency. It's also a critical material for energy, electronics, healthcare, automotive technology and more. Visit sprotetfs.com or call 1-888-622-1813 for disclosure and prospectus information containing investment objectives, risks, charges and expenses, which should be read carefully. Alps Distributors, Inc. Is the distributor for the Sprott ETFs.
- [00:48]
Podcast Narrator
Welcome to Animal Spirits, a show about markets, life and investing. Join Michael Batnik and Ben Carlson as they talk about what they're reading, writing and watching. All opinions expressed by Michael and Ben are solely their own opinion and do not reflect the opinion of Ritholtz Wealth Management. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon for any investment decisions. Clients of Ritholtz Wealth Management may maintain positions in the securities discussed in this podcast.
- [01:33]
Michael Batnik
This is. This is not our music. That is that our music. That is. That is.
- [01:41]
Ben Carlson
All right.
- [01:41]
Michael Batnik
I listen to the podcast. Doesn't sound like our music. How we doing, everybody? Having fun? Is California the best? Yes, yes, yes, it is the best. I was told. I didn't occur to me, but yeah, there's no bugs. There's no bugs. A downside of California. Maybe I'm nitpicking here, but I don't know about you guys. So we have beaches on the East Coast. I go to one. But there's something about the California sand. The sand sticks in my ear and I don't know what. It buries itself in my brain. I'm cleaning my ear out for three weeks, but other than that, I can't complain. Banioka.
- [02:23]
Ben Carlson
I'm good.
- [02:24]
Michael Batnik
All right, before we get started, I want to mention we've got these snazzy hats. We've had a lot of people ask you, Adam Patman say, What's up, man? Ituneshop.com if you want them.
- [02:35]
Ben Carlson
There was a really handsome guy at Reynolds Wells who said, we need some trucker hats. I'm not naming any names and these have been hot and everyone wants one. Itonshop.com?.
- [02:43]
Michael Batnik
Okay, so I feel like a lot of pressure to redeem ourselves. Most of you weren't in Miami last year, but who.
- [02:49]
Ben Carlson
Whoo.
- [02:50]
Michael Batnik
We bombed. We bombed.
- [02:53]
Ben Carlson
Well, it was. They put us on the stage at 8am the night after Michael's 40th birthday.
- [02:59]
Michael Batnik
So hungover adjusted. It wasn't that bad, but it wasn't great. So. All right, we're gonna turn it up this year. Last year in California, we did our origin stories and no offense, but we had 30 minutes and you took like 23 of them.
- [03:18]
Ben Carlson
Oh, really? I did.
- [03:19]
Michael Batnik
You did.
- [03:19]
Ben Carlson
Okay.
- [03:20]
Michael Batnik
That's okay. Listen, I like you still holding onto.
- [03:22]
Ben Carlson
That one all this time later.
- [03:24]
Michael Batnik
No, no, not at all. Geez, I love letting you cook. And we're gonna. This is very high. We're gonna. Thank you. We're gonna do it again. This is Ben's show. It is 10 years of Ben Carlson at Ritholtz Wealth Management.
- [03:39]
Ben Carlson
Well, and I thought we could give some lessons learned that we've. Cause we've been reminis because we're middle aged now and that's what we do when you're middle aged.
- [03:49]
Michael Batnik
Remember that time?
- [03:50]
Ben Carlson
Yeah. And I thought it'd be interesting to kind of do a look back at us building Ritholtz Wealth Management from what was a startup. When I joined, we were squarely a startup firm to now what is a much more mature firm. And I think we've moved on from being startup people to more mature people.
- [04:07]
Michael Batnik
In some ways I feel very mature, very grown up. When Ben started with us in 2015, Bitcoin was at 228 bucks. God, what an idiot I was. Oh my God. Yeah, it's a lot higher right now than $228. Nvidia was split adjusted $0.54. It's higher than that right now. The S And P was 1900. It's now 6500. And the Dow was at 16,000. That's 45,000. Hand up. I didn't see that coming. Did not envision that we were about to embark on one of the best bull markets of all time, did you?
- [04:54]
Ben Carlson
Of course. I knew it. That's why I joined the firm.
- [04:57]
Michael Batnik
Nailed it. All right, so Ben, I'm gonna tee you up. So here's what we're gonna do. Okay. I don't know if you guys listen to the podcast, but I've been getting very into audiobooks lately. So I'm going to read the entire post and you are all going to listen like an audiobook. Just kidding. Okay. All right, but we'll start here. So when Ben joined Rith Wealth Management, we were managing $140 million. This was in the fall of 2015. You were the seventh employee. And you wrote, we were a startup at that point. No one really took us seriously, but we took ourselves seriously, and that's all that mattered. That brought a tear to my eye.
- [05:41]
Ben Carlson
Well, so I remember we. What was the name of the taco place we used to go to right by our firm?
- [05:45]
Michael Batnik
Salvation Taco Rest in Peace and Peace.
- [05:46]
Ben Carlson
So we would. That was the taco place we'd go to. And I came to New York the first week I joined the firm. We go out to lunch. Barry and Josh stand up to say a few words and wait to say.
- [05:56]
Michael Batnik
A few words to who?
- [05:57]
Ben Carlson
Like, welcoming me to the firm.
- [05:58]
Michael Batnik
Okay. Yeah, it was me, you, Chris, Barry, Josh. Patrick.
- [06:03]
Ben Carlson
Patrick. And Erica.
- [06:04]
Michael Batnik
And Erica.
- [06:05]
Ben Carlson
And Barry said, hey, we're building the infrastructure for a billion dollar firm, even though we're not close to 50.
- [06:11]
Michael Batnik
50.
- [06:12]
Ben Carlson
Yeah. And the funny thing is, is I say it's some combination of confidence and, like, being naive, that we all believed it at the time, even though we were so far away from that. But then Barry aside says, yeah, we can't even afford Ben's salary at this point. Hopefully we can grow into that. And where is Barry?
- [06:30]
Michael Batnik
Is he here?
- [06:31]
Ben Carlson
No, but I think I wrote in.
- [06:33]
Michael Batnik
The post, very inspiring. Right? You're like, wow, that's a great decision.
- [06:37]
Ben Carlson
Well, and, you know, you've talked. We had like, we were bootstrapped at the time. There was no outside investors. It was all us and trying to, like, make it work. And there was times when, like, meeting payroll was difficult. There was. Remember we were leasing computers from the Apple Store, which I still don't really quit.
- [06:55]
Michael Batnik
I do remember that you were making 40% more than I was when you started. That was an ego hit, a little gut punch.
- [07:03]
Ben Carlson
Hey, listen, no one told me, but yeah, we were squarely a startup. You guys had the crappy little office. I had my own little office. And I would come to New York once every other month or something, and we got slack the very first day. And it's funny to think back now, it seems so easy. But someone asked us last night, like, how were the early years? And it was, you know, it was a slow stair step. And they said, well, when did the growth really hit? And I was thinking about this, like, sometimes luck is a huge part of success. We were a remote firm, kind of by accident. I remember we were at a bar one night. Wisdom Tree was throwing a party. Maybe you don't remember this.
- [07:40]
Michael Batnik
I don't remember this.
- [07:41]
Ben Carlson
And Barry and Josh wanted me to move to New York. I live in West Michigan. We just had our first daughter. My wife was like, are you out of your mind? We're not moving to Manhattan. I'm like, all right, I guess this isn't gonna work. And I said to you, how many clients do we have in New York? And you were like, I don't know. A handful. Most of our clients find us from the Internet all over the country. And I said, so why do I need to move to New York and uproot my family? And you go, oh, yeah, just stay in Grand Rapids. It's fine. We'll figure it out. And we literally created a remote firm on the fly. So then Covid hits. We're totally paperless. We have way more people who live and work all over the country. And not that we would have kept our fingers crossed for a pandemic, but that was one of the best things that ever happened to our firm in terms of growth, because everyone else in the entire country, in the world, was brought into this zoom world in this paperless, go anywhere, trust people on the Internet. And that was a boon for us. Right? And not like we expected that to happen. We were. We thought we were pretty forward thinking in these terms, but it was a stroke of luck. And that was, to that point, by far the biggest year we'd ever had in 2020.
- [08:46]
Michael Batnik
Yeah, that was definitely an inflection point for us. What do you think is all right? You know, you wrote the blog post. I have to ask what you think is the biggest lesson? Let's talk about. You wrote about client fit being one of the most important things that we've stuck to it over the years.
- [09:01]
Ben Carlson
So you. When I joined the firm, you guys said, listen, client fit is huge. And Chris Venn, who is our kind of wealth management architect, I hate to give him props, because he's just gonna love it.
- [09:10]
Michael Batnik
There he is. Look at him smiling.
- [09:12]
Ben Carlson
But he said, from day one, client fit is huge. And that means the client obviously has to like what we do, like what we put out, like our process and how we handle client relationships. But we have to have a fit with a client too. There can't be all these red flags that the client wants you to do, these things that you either can't or won't do. And I think, to be honest, at first I felt like, okay, that's like good lip service, but we'll bend over backwards to get any client we can because we're not that big and we need to grow. So my very first week, every person who reached out and said, hey, I heard Ben is joining the firm, I want to talk to you guys about managing my money. Chris and I hop on the phone and this guy says. He starts bragging immediately, listen, I got $25 million. If we include my brother and my father, we're talking 100 million. Basically, like, what are you going to do for me? Goldman says they're going to do this. Morgan Stanley's going to do this. Merrill lynch will do this. And this guy, you know, is kind of sitting back going, all right, come on, feed me grapes while I'm laying on a hammock or whatever. And Chris goes, all right, I'm gonna have to stop you right there. And the guy, he said, listen, someone.
- [10:14]
Michael Batnik
Sir.
- [10:16]
Ben Carlson
Dude, the Wealth Feed. Some guy just nailed it podcast going on, you want a teddy bear? But Chris says to the guy, listen, some firm or advisor is going to tell you that they're gonna be able to give you what you want. They're not going to be able to, but they're gonna tell you they are. That's just not us. We can't. This is. It would not be a good fit. There's too many red flags. Just what you're asking us to do is not something that we're willing or able to do. And I thought, Chris, you're insane. This guy's got $100 million. Let's do whatever we can. So it's easy to say that when you're a bigger firm. Yeah. Client fit matters, because that's easy. But we were doing it from day one.
- [10:52]
Michael Batnik
That's not entirely true.
- [10:53]
Ben Carlson
Well, of course, but that was. Yes.
- [10:57]
Michael Batnik
You know what I think was the final, like, oh, shit. Like we actually. Chris is not completely moronic. He might be onto something. Remember when we were. Oh, remember when I'm doing it, I'm doing. Remember when the old guy think, damn it. There was a time we were at Dana Point and oh, geez. Yeah, that was it.
- [11:18]
Ben Carlson
Yeah. One of our original conferences.
- [11:20]
Michael Batnik
Right. So we met these two South African brothers. I don't even know where whatever they had, they had a lot of money. I don't know how much. But we have this trend following model that we have been using since 2014 to mitigate the large drawdowns that don't exist anymore. I wish we never did that. And they were asking us a million different questions about what if this and what if that and literally we Spent the entire conference in a room doing different sort of back tests for these assholes who didn't give us any money. And it didn't even end there. It kept going. You remember that?
- [12:01]
Ben Carlson
Yeah, they had a lot of zero hedge ish questions that we probably should have been, yes, ding, ding, ding. This isn't gonna work. But yeah, you're right, we did try to do stuff and I think we've learned to slowly but surely. And yeah, you can't. No one's ever perfect at these things. Sometimes a client comes on and you realize after the fact this isn't going to work. But it's gotta be a two way street, obviously.
- [12:21]
Michael Batnik
So a lot of advisors will take a bad client for obvious reasons. Right. We all gotta put bread on the table. But if you are with a firm that is a team, which most of us are, it's not just about you. It's about your traders that have to unwind this nonsense. It's about your ops, people that have to deal with the annoying emails. It's about the cash management. It's everything. And it's really selfish to, yeah, they'll fire us in two years, but whatever, I'll take it in the meantime. No, we don't do that. We used to do that. Not anymore. All right, moving on. Overnight success is overrated. When I joined the firm, I assumed all these wealthy families and big institutions would throw us their money. It didn't happen right away, and that was for the best.
- [13:02]
Ben Carlson
So I came from the institutional world and foundations and endowments and the big lesson for me there was how much I learned all about career risk and how many of these people were working for committees and organizations and having to do things that they didn't really necessarily agree with or want to do. But it's like, listen, this is the job. This is what they're telling me to do. I have to do it. So I thought, great, this is not the way that I want to manage money. I don't think it's the right way to do things. I think there's a better way to do things. And I thought, well, when I joined Ritholtz, all these huge institutions are just going to throw us money. And it didn't happen right away. And it was a little bit of an ego hit. I thought, wait a minute, why isn't this working? And we didn't have the institutional knowledge back then. And when I say institutional, I don't mean those types of investors. I mean, we didn't have like that level of expertise. It Took. You have to take like a stair step function almost to get to that point where you've had some reps and you have to put it in. We always like to say that, like, expertise or experience is not the same thing as expertise. But for some things, you just have to put in the time to figure out how to do it better. And then once you have a few of those situations and circumstances, then you can better deal with clients that come in at that leveled and stuff. So I got something for you.
- [14:16]
Michael Batnik
Okay.
- [14:17]
Ben Carlson
Okay.
- [14:18]
Michael Batnik
Little twist.
- [14:19]
Ben Carlson
Yeah. No, I think that I did a panel earlier today on content, and I think that that's obviously been the big thing. And a lot of advisors ask us about the content piece and how they can do it. And I think the biggest surprise to me is just the flywheel effect of the content. I assumed, hey, when I join the firm, all the people who read my blog, who want us to like me or the firm and like our process, they'll give us their money and then eventually that well will run dry. And then we'll have our business will be built on referrals because in the people like Barry and the people like Josh and you, and that will just. That will eventually go dead. I never considered the fact that the longer and more and consistently we produce content, eventually those people come to us because they have stuff going on in their life, not because, oh, I like these guys, I'm gonna throw them money. And I think the flywheel effect is something that I think we all probably underestimated. And it's like compounding. It's back end, it's backloaded.
- [15:20]
Michael Batnik
Is there a question?
- [15:21]
Ben Carlson
No, I'm being nostalgic here. I'm just thinking back. Don't you think that that's something that obviously we put our foot on the gas when we realized how important content was and it wasn't. We. We've all talked about, we all started our own sort of blog stuff separate from each other. We never said, let's start blogs. And then we'll all come together like Voltron as one, and then we'll create a firm like it never was that thing. We all just did it because we enjoyed it. But I think once we realized, like, oh, this is a very powerful tool for client retention and for prospecting and marketing and all these things, then we put our foot on the gas and really figured it out. But it wasn't like on day one, we had these grand ideas that this is gonna correct be a machine for us.
- [16:05]
Michael Batnik
So I am a goldfish. Like, I see I don't see outside the fishbowl. I got kicked out of college twice, as most listeners know. So I am very much like, one day at a time. I don't think about the future. I don't plan for the future. But you're right, I guess I assume that when we started. It's Barry's name. Barry was the person that people were familiar with. And I think I figured that once that, well ran dry, then, I don't know, we would figure something else out.
- [16:34]
Ben Carlson
Or we'd be like a lot of other firms that you. Yeah. Now it's time to get on, get off the horse and find your clients.
- [16:40]
Michael Batnik
Yeah. It didn't really occur to me that Josh was going to have the career that he had. I think he's overrated, but I guess people sort of like him. I definitely didn't anticipate the podcast and the YouTube and that we would have people coming to us. So I think the biggest thing that I got wrong about our business, and I said this to our team last night. So me, Josh, Barry, and Chris meet twice a year to talk about the business. And we never spoke about asset milestones, like, ever. It just didn't really come up. Maybe, like, we were excited about the first billion. I'm sure.
- [17:16]
Ben Carlson
I don't think we. As a firm, we've never really had goal posts or benchmarks that, like, you have to hit this. Yeah.
- [17:22]
Michael Batnik
No, we never spoke like that. It was always about, like, what are we doing? What's working, what's not working? Where do we want to spend money? And it was that sort of stuff. And I remember it was 2018, I believe, maybe 2017. I can't remember. Whatever. We were in Barry's backyard, and I had this really great idea to just get to $3 billion. This was the time that I threw out a number. Let's get to $3 billion, and, like, let's just all really enjoy ourselves.
- [17:49]
Ben Carlson
Yeah. Then we're going to coast. We'll be fine.
- [17:51]
Michael Batnik
Yeah. And in hindsight, it was so misguided, because what I never could have envisioned was that getting to $3 billion was going to require an army of highly motivated people. And I didn't think about these people because they didn't exist. Right. It was like, whatever 10 of us are. And so when we got to $3 billion, I don't know how many employees we were, but it was so far gone. Like, the train left the station, and at that point in time, you can't obviously tell people, like, all right, this is it. For us, nobody's gonna get any more money. Nobody's gonna.
- [18:30]
Ben Carlson
There's the ladder behind you.
- [18:31]
Michael Batnik
Yeah. Like, sorry, this is it. And so now my primary motivation is making sure that I deliver on the promise that I made to everybody that I hired that, like, we're never gonna stop. We are highly, highly competitive people. And I want everybody who's here to feel like outside of finding their spouse, this was the single best decision that they've made in their entire career. And if you feel that Ritholts people, make some noise. All right, thank you.
- [19:04]
Ben Carlson
Like your work spouse, too, right?
- [19:05]
Michael Batnik
My work spouse. I love you, man, but no, but I think.
- [19:09]
Ben Carlson
I don't mean to get, like, philosophical, but I think that mindset. Patrick o' Shaughnessy says, like, the growth of her goals. Mindset. I do think there's something to that. Not having, like, these benchmarks for our advisors and saying, hey, now you have to manage 10 million, and then it's gotta be 20 by the end of the year, and it's gotta be 30. There's none of those internal benchmarks in terms of looking over your shoulder. And I think one of the. Not trying to say we got everything right, but one of the things we did get right is that we wanted to grow in the right way. Way. And not saying we always did that, but I think that was. That was.
- [19:39]
Michael Batnik
No, this is it. Like, somebody. Somebody asked me, what are. What am I most proud of at riddles? Wealth management. And immediately there's no. There's no. Number two, it's the people. And this is why we were able to build the way that we've done it. And one thing that I got very right, even though I've got a lot wrong, is that if it's not an obvious yes, it's a no. Like, that's our mantra, and it's not lip service. And the proof is in the pudding. We've hired 27 advisors, and one and a half didn't work out. And listen, nobody's perfect, but we take that really seriously. And when you onboard somebody, everything has to go right. Philosophy in terms of how they want to handle their clients, obviously, like, how they think about managing money, how they think about ambition and balancing the act of lifestyle and career ambitions. Like, for us, there is no balance, and we. We go hard. I don't know what else to say. And it's just. It served us well. And that is how we're going to continue to grow with the right people only. That's it.
- [20:38]
Ben Carlson
Well, that. The one question that we always get. And we. We talk about this every couple years, but people will say, how do you guys have so much time to. You're running a firm, but you're also producing all this content. How do you have time to do both? One of.
- [20:49]
Michael Batnik
So I wake up at 3:34 on.
- [20:52]
Ben Carlson
The weekends, listen to three audiobooks. But I think part of it is not only hiring the right people, but for whatever reason, in our sick brains, this is the stuff that really interests us. You and I don't golf. Do you do fantasy football?
- [21:06]
Michael Batnik
I do, but my partner does the heavy lifting.
- [21:09]
Ben Carlson
Okay. But we don't have a lot of, honestly, hobbies. And that sounds kind of loserish, but this is the stuff that we enjoy doing, too. I think that's part of it, especially on the content side of things.
- [21:21]
Michael Batnik
Do you think about the next 10 years?
- [21:26]
Ben Carlson
I don't think that way.
- [21:27]
Michael Batnik
But do you ever go there? Sometimes, yeah. Come on, be honest.
- [21:32]
Ben Carlson
No. Sure.
- [21:33]
Michael Batnik
Nobody's listening.
- [21:34]
Ben Carlson
And I think if I tried to map it out, I'd be completely wrong. Whatever I tried to say. But I think one of the things that we've realized is. And you know, I don't want this to come back to bite me, is. But we like being an independent firm, and I think just because we're kind of.
- [21:48]
Michael Batnik
We will never take outside money, so stop asking. But there is a price for everything.
- [21:52]
Ben Carlson
So, yeah, just Nvidia.
- [21:55]
Michael Batnik
You can't put a price on freedom. But I don't know if a bill.
- [21:58]
Ben Carlson
Yeah, I think that's. We're kind of a band of misfits in a lot of ways. And I don't think we would do well inside of, like, a big corporate structure. I know I wouldn't, because I think we're just too used to doing things are our own way. But we've had to become, I don't know, a little more corporate as we've grown, too, so. Because we have a lot of people in our Firm now, almost 80.
- [22:24]
Michael Batnik
All right, what else? What else is going on?
- [22:27]
Ben Carlson
What else we got?
- [22:29]
Michael Batnik
All right, all right. Time for some stand up. We done?
- [22:33]
Ben Carlson
No, no, no. I think there's also a lot of unintended consequences along the way. You and I kind of started this podcast as a lark in 2017, and we already. We at the time thought, oh, God, everyone's doing a podcast. Do we need to do one?
- [22:45]
Michael Batnik
I told this story before, but whatever. It's a new audience. New people are here. I was mortified the week that we were starting a podcast. Now talking into a Microphone is difficult. It requires practice. And there's something that happens when the camera goes on and you see a red light. Your brain gets twisted. I can't describe it, but it's hard. And I got butterflies for the first time. Three years.
- [23:09]
Ben Carlson
Remember, we have five or six podcasts. We did a practice podcast.
- [23:13]
Michael Batnik
Yeah, those are great.
- [23:13]
Ben Carlson
That never saw the light of day.
- [23:15]
Michael Batnik
We should resurface those. But anyway, the week that we started, the New Yorker ran a headline like a cartoon. I'm thinking of stopping a podcast. And I was just like, ugh.
- [23:26]
Ben Carlson
But so I'm thinking through the unintended consequences of it. Think about how many people we've hired because we put it out on the podcast. Hey, we're hiring for this advisor position or this CSA position.
- [23:36]
Michael Batnik
Almost all of them.
- [23:38]
Ben Carlson
So that not like we ever could have envisioned, like, this is going to be a way that we bring in other people, too, because they follow us and they. So it is interesting just to think about all the offshoots that you asked me about the next 10 years. How many other things are we not considering now that could go different paths? We think about how many times we tinkered with the conference business. We started out in a stuffy. What was it, like a Yale something in New York. Right.
- [24:04]
Michael Batnik
What was it, Chris? The Union League Club?
- [24:08]
Ben Carlson
Yeah. So it was this stuffy old. You know, they had, you know, mahogany and wood panels. And we just quickly realized that kind of thing is not us. So. Especially when the future Proof people came to us and Matt Middleton said, we're thinking of doing this, we immediately said yes. I don't know if it's gonna work, but that sounds exactly like something that we would want to be part of.
- [24:30]
Michael Batnik
All right, Ben. Talk about the different type of pool, guys.
- [24:36]
Ben Carlson
I didn't know I was coming. I had to come up with bits. No, I was making the point earlier. I snuck away for some pool time earlier. I just needed to decompress a little bit. And I ordered some fish tacos and maybe another Miami Vice at the pool. I don't know. You're only supposed to have one per day. But you know what the worst thing about the pool is? Eating at the pool is horrible. No one can ever look comfortable or cool eating at the pool because you're bending over a table and you're doing this thing and it doesn't work.
- [25:05]
Michael Batnik
That's it. All right. No, you're right. Definitely doesn't work. All right. This is a conference of. I'm very proud. This is a very diverse conference. This Is a very male dominated industry. And there are a lot of different types of people here, which is wonderful, but still, there are a lot of guys. And one thing that guy says, and I really thought about this until two weeks ago. I was at Bowie bar on Long island with my partner Chris, and there was a group of guys. And one guy walks over and he goes. I hear the guy go, there he is. And I said, you know what? I'm a big there he is guy. And who isn't? Like, I got that here at this conference a dozen times, maybe more. And then I was thinking about the different types of ways that guys say there he is. And there are some nuances and some subtleties to the naked observer, which is a phrase I used last week. Eric called me out on that. That's a phrase.
- [26:04]
Ben Carlson
Naked observer.
- [26:04]
Michael Batnik
Now the naked observer. You all know what I'm talking about. So to the naked observer, there he is. Might be indistinguishable from this guy, but in reality, very, very different things.
- [26:20]
Ben Carlson
But I thought the reason you say there he is is cause you don't remember someone's name. Isn't that the whole point?
- [26:26]
Michael Batnik
So there he is. It's very malleable. You could use it in all different sorts of settings. There he is. Works when you don't know the person's name. But also, like, if that's like your friend that you haven't seen in a long time, there he is. Bro hug. Right?
- [26:40]
Ben Carlson
There he is. It's a slippery slope until you're saying, take it easy.
- [26:45]
Michael Batnik
No, no, no, no. What you're going for is living the dream. Look what the cat dragged in. They let anybody in. That's a different thing I'm talking about. There he is. There he is. It's uplifting. So anyway, back to the original point. Back to the point. Cause this is what matters, all right? This guy. That's condescending. So if you ever. Right, Adam, if you ever get to this guy, maybe that guy's not your friend. Thoughts, anybody? All right.
- [27:19]
Ben Carlson
I didn't know where we were going with this one.
- [27:21]
Michael Batnik
I don't know. Well, we still got time.
- [27:23]
Ben Carlson
All right.
- [27:25]
Michael Batnik
Been listening to a lot of audiobooks as I get into my mid-40s. I was looking at my phone today. Lot of steps, right? A lot of steps. So I was just walking back and forth. By the way, future proof. Are you kidding me? It's like a mile long. Let's give it up for future proof. So I opened my health app just to see how many steps I took. And I took several not to brag. And on top of my health app summary, 7 day limit exceeded on my headphone audio exposure. Do I have to tell Apple? No, no, no. I'm listening to audiobooks. It's fine. You have to recalibrate my ear settings. I'm not over the limit. Anybody? Okay. All right. Bet. Are we done?
- [28:13]
Ben Carlson
You're turning into Mike Myers as the old Jewish woman. I'm verklempt. That's you.
- [28:18]
Michael Batnik
I am all verklempt.
- [28:19]
Ben Carlson
You're going there and.
- [28:20]
Michael Batnik
All right, any questions? Anybody want to say hi? Anything?
- [28:23]
Ben Carlson
We have three minutes left. We could do a question before we announce our.
- [28:27]
Michael Batnik
Oh, we're doing a happy hour.
- [28:28]
Ben Carlson
Yeah. So at 5:15. This has been my one dream since we started Future Proof. I think that Miami Vice is. We've talked about this on the show. It's the best beachside poolside drink that there is this guy.
- [28:43]
Michael Batnik
Am I right?
- [28:46]
Ben Carlson
Now I got it. Living the dream. But we get pictures from people when they go on vacations. They send us and they tag us on social media. They DM us with their Miami Vice wherever they go. And so my dream has been to get a frozen drink machine. I've been asking for it every single year. So this year we finally came through. We have two frozen drink machines over in the Ritholtz Wealth Management compound booth over there. At 5:15, we're going to be doing an animal spirits happy hour.
- [29:11]
Michael Batnik
And I feel like we got 90% of the way there because unfortunately, there's no brown rum. We don't have floaters. But I promise next year we'll do better. Okay? So this year you got to bear with us. There's no floaters.
- [29:23]
Ben Carlson
We have an hour and a half for someone to come up with a couple bottles of Jamaican rum. I think it can be. I think it can be done.
- [29:28]
Michael Batnik
Rob shaking his head. All right, more importantly, we've got Blues Traveler, Jack Popper. Is it Jack or John?
- [29:36]
Ben Carlson
John Popper.
- [29:37]
Michael Batnik
John. Who's Jack Popper? I think I went to high school with the Jackpopper.
- [29:40]
Ben Carlson
To the naked observer, Jack actually sounds Jack John.
- [29:43]
Michael Batnik
Whatever. So he had. He had a case of COVID like the other day, but I think he's fine. And he's going on at 7:15. And then after that, we've got Bush. Let's go. Very excited.
- [30:01]
Ben Carlson
1990S nostalgia is just gonna be kicking in for us.
- [30:04]
Michael Batnik
Absolutely.
- [30:05]
Ben Carlson
Is there a way to invest in millennial nostalgia? Because that is the next big wave. That's the next big bull market.
- [30:10]
Michael Batnik
Nicole we just mentioned the happy hour. Where were you? You weren't listening. Nah, we did it.
- [30:15]
Ben Carlson
And one more time, the ituneshop.com if you want one of the compound hats, because we didn't bring enough and we didn't have enough printed.
- [30:21]
Michael Batnik
All right, I got one more thing. No, I don't. All right, thank you, everybody.
- [30:26]
Ben Carlson
Thanks, everyone.