← Tom Bilyeu's Impact Theory
Tom Bilyeu's Impact Theory
Kevin O’Leary: Why Trump Might Save Us, China Can’t Compete, and the Middle Class Is Screwed | PT 2
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When you manage procurement for multiple facilities, every order matters. But when it's for a hospital system, they matter even more. Grainger gets it and knows there's no time for managing multiple suppliers and no room for shipping delays. That's why Grainger offers millions of products in fast, dependable delivery so you can keep your facility stocked, safe and running smoothly. Call 1-800-GRAINGER Click grainger.com or just stop by Grainger for the ones who get it done. When you manage procurement for multiple facilities, every order matters. But when it's for a hospital system, they matter even more. Grainger gets it and knows there's no time for managing multiple suppliers and no room for shipping delays. That's why Grainger offers millions of products in fast, dependable delivery so you can keep your facility stocked, safe and running smoothly. Call 1-800-GRAINGER Click grainger.com or just stop by Granger for the ones who get it done.
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B
I'm Tom Bilyeu, and this is Impact Theory. Welcome back to part two of my conversation with Kevin o'.
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C
Leary.
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B
If you haven't heard part one yet, hit pause and go check it out. Because what we're diving into today builds on top of that, and you're going to want to know what came before. All right, let's get into it. Well, so the question that remains unanswered, though, is are these going to be inflationary? Because the thing that's going to break people's confidence in the bond market is very simple, that the US Continues to deficit spend. More money is coming into the world. As more money comes into the world, prices are going to go up. You're going to further exacerbate that dynamic that I was talking about earlier where you've got all the resentment. Because what ends up happening to nations for people keeping score is they tear themselves apart from the inside. So the economy doesn't necessarily collapse because there's some external pressure. It collapses because people start killing each other inside the country. And so what what I would need to understand to know, because I agree with you, I think that the genius act is phenomenal. I couldn't be more excited about it. I think that it really is going to make what I'm talking about less likely. However, if it becomes an inflationary thing where we just, anybody that wants it will make more, make more, make more, make more, then you are going to run into, call it the same thing that we see in Houston. So Houston has solved the housing crisis by saying we're just going to make as many houses as we want now, that's great. But people don't exactly r to that market. And so you end up getting weakness in that market because people go, it's not a good investment. It's great. If I want to live in it, it's not a good investment. So if you run into that same thing where it's like, okay, the US debt is a great place to park my money if I'm living in a rogue nation or whatever, but I'm not going to be using it as the risk free rate of return. It was just, it's just getting bigger and bigger and bigger by the day. So I presume that they'll have to cap that at some point. So it's not just like anybody that wants to buy, we're going to sell. I think that would be.
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C
Well, I think what you're saying and I think we should make it very simple. Do you believe we'll never have another balanced budget again? That's what you're telling me? If I believe that is what I'm telling you, yes. And so if I believe that, I would agree. You're right. I don't believe that. I do not believe that every administration going forward will never attempt to balance the budget. There is a growing concern on a bipartisan basis of exactly what you're talking about. And so I have, you know, I understand, you know, when people think of a politicians, they're below single cell amoeba. You know, that's. I get it, I get it. But if you actually start to talk to, you know, various members of both the Senate and whether they're governors or whatever, I would argue now that about 25% of them on its way to probably 33% of them going to be tested in the midterms are starting to become the kind of Eli Crane kind of guy. A guy I know who's just made it his mission to keep calling this topic up when he's in Washington. Exactly what you're talking about. So I think there is a way to balance the budget. Ron Johnson has pointed this out with some very simple charts of late he's found a way to find that 2.3 trillion which would get you there and then even more. Elon has pointed some ways out. Very difficult to stomach, but there's a path there. Then you have growth on your side. Then you have other forms of income like tariffs. I'm kind of in the camp that doesn't see the world. You do. And that is fair for you to take that position because if you really were going to be right, I would be increasing my holdings in hard assets. I would buy more bitcoin, more gold bullion, probably. Collectibles have proven, even watches. I mean, you think about hard assets that have appreciated better than the S and P. Part of it's because of the concern of where can I put my money where it's protected against that inflated scenario. And you're right. People are taking bets like that. Certainly bitcoin's been an extraordinary asset, and it's not yet even determined whether it's a commodity or security. We'll get that in the Infrastructure Act. But I think the answer to your question is you may be right. If I thought you were 30% right or 20% right, why wouldn't I just hold those assets at a 20% allocation? And I do. So in a way, I'm hedging my bets. I'm not as pessimistic as you, but I have over 20% in hard assets. They're not liquid, but it's gold. It's bitcoin, it's collectibles, it's watches, it's certain types of real estate, you know, oceanfront. It's. It's data centers that I invest in, which are an energy play. These are hard assets. And. And otherwise, you know, I put it all into 4.2% T bills, which I don't. So it's. It's kind of, in a way, I'm admitting there is a possibility for your scenario, but it's to me, no more than 20%.
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B
Yeah, no, I. I think that's smart. And like you, I see paths out of it. I just don't think it's going to happen by accident. So in the same way that you are, and thank you, by the way, going to Washington D.C. and fighting for small and medium companies, which I think is huge, huge, huge. And I cannot celebrate you enough for that. I'm doing my part as a media economic commentator to just try to get people focused on how money actually works so that they can start understanding how to move if we start going down that path. Speaking of how move, I was in Dubai and lo and behold, I bump into Ray Dalio. And I was like, ray, what are you doing here? And his whole pitch was, oh, Tom, I come here in Abu Dhabi a lot. And he was like, what matters is how people are with each other. And you have talked about Abu Dhabi being the capital of capital. What's going on? What are they getting right? How are they hoovering up so much capital?
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C
It's the Leadership, it's the confidence that you get understanding their policy. They figured out within three generations policy is the only thing that matters. Why is Abu Dhabi the safest city on Earth? Policy. Why can a woman walk around there at 2 in the morning? Why can I leave a Rolex on a bench and have it returned to me, to my hotel or a purse?
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B
Did that actually happen?
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C
It happens all the time. Yo. I mean it's, it's, it's an incredible. Not to me. I don't leave my watches on, but I was going to say people have told me, but I actually wear incredibly rare pieces when I go out for dinner in, in, in Abu Dhabi. I don't have, I have no concern of being robbed there and other people feel the same way. I don't do that in New York. I can't do that in San Francisco or Los Angeles. You know, I, I have mock copies of my, my rare one. You know, I've, I have unique pieces like one of a kind piece uniques that are priceless. I wear them in Abu Dhabi. I don't wear them anywhere else. But so the point, the point is I'm. That confidence, as Ray was saying, is understood by people and they have the most advanced medicine in the world there. When I go for, when I go to, I go to a clinic in Dubai called Longevity where I get an EBOO treatment that I can't get in the United States, although all the doctors are American and Swiss and French and German with the most advanced American equipment on Earth. And you know, I'm a big believer in ibu, which is a form of dialysis, but also injects in 50 billion exosomes which reduces inflation. I mean, not inflammation.
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B
I wish it could do inflation as well.
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C
Inflation. So much inflammation and so 14 days later you feel like you're 20 years old again. So it's really quite something. And all the advancements they have, but they've also invested wisely. Companies like IHC and One Development. You know, I'm involved in real estate there in a company called One Development. They have the most advanced technology going into their developments. Digital walls that we don't even have here yet and complete AI technology that's integrated into the building. So it's not like 15 different apps. One for your music, one for your temperature, one for your security cameras. It's completely ubiquitous. You say to your phone, oh, I'm going to be home, please open the garage door and set the temperature at 69 degrees. Boom. I mean that kind of stuff we're Years away from they've got it because they're building a. I can't say enough good stuff about that place. It's just the only way you're going to find that out is you have like, like Ray figured I'm on the same boat raising. I went there, I've been going there for years. I realized there's no place like it on Earth. They are becoming the capital of capital. And so if you want to build a data center here in North America, you need turbines to convert natural gas into electricity. That's the path of least resistance right now. Well, you got to go there because they were smart enough to invest in a lot of the turbine manufacturing capacity on Earth. So you make them your partner and you build out a facility somewhere in West Virginia or in Alberta, wherever you're going for your nat gas. I would tell people to study the policy of that country because what they basically done is they were students of every other policy on Earth and chose wisely from each economy and each geography. What do the Canadians do right in their parliamentary system or the British or the Australians? What do the French do do in developing the arts, what do the Germans do in engineering and all of that? They took that policy and moved it to Abu Dhabi. And that's what you get. You get the world's most successful economy in 50 years like that. I mean everybody should be studying what they're doing. I mean it's just unbelievable. And the beneficiaries are the people of that country. But you know, you and I could go on on this for a very long time. I recommend for everybody. The resorts are spectacular, it's a beautiful place. The food is off the charts. Every restaurant brand, you know, is there. So it's just every, every luxury, you know, designer is there. The malls are unbelievable, the museums are incredible. I mean, it's just the whole thing. They're building a sphere there like Las Vegas has, except bigger and better. So the acts are going to go there to perform the whole thing is like. And what they've done on corporate taxes, they've made it so attractive that guys like Ray and I go there and set up our companies and we invest out of there. Of course we do because it's the path of least resistance. Money has no nationality. Now with the USDC thing, you know, Stablecoin act, this makes it even better because the adgm, the regulator there is endorsing the SEC policy and works in sync with the sec. So now I.
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B
That's interesting.
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C
So I don't have to worry about being rogue when I'm doing business over there because I'm regulated with a compliant regulator that understands they're in sync with the sec. The Canadians are doing the same thing with the osc. So these countries are all syncing up with the policy in the United States. Policy, right. Not politics. Policy. So if we pass policy in the US and the ADGM in Abu Dhabi agrees, and the OSC in Ontario, Canada, Greece, those are two geographies I can do business in and stay compliant. Bingo. Policy.
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B
We're hitting pause for a moment, but there's plenty more ahead, so don't go anywhere.
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If you work in university maintenance, Grainger considers you an MVP because your playbook ensures your arena is always ready for tip off. And Grainger is your trusted partner, offering the products you need all in one place, from H VAC and plumbing supplies to lighting and more. And all delivered with plenty of time left on the clock. So your team always gets the win. Call 1-800-GRAINGER visit grainger.com or just stop by Grainger for the ones who get it done.
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A
When you manage procurement for multiple facilities, every order matters. But when it's for a hospital system, they matter even more. Grainger gets it and knows there's no time for managing multiple suppliers and no room for shipping delays. That's why Grainger offers millions of products in fast, dependable delivery so you can keep your facility stocked, safe and running smoothly. Call 1-800-GRAINGER Click grainger.com or just stop by Grainger for the ones who get it done.
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B
Thanks for sticking around. Let's get right back into the action. All right, talk to me about tax policy. So right now, there is this just burning desire in young people to tax the rich, make billionaires pay their fair share. Yet when as a business owner I think about taxes, I'm like, hey, this makes growing harder. This makes things more difficult. So you're talking about it there in the uae. What do you wish people understood about tax policy in terms of how it will make their lives better?
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C
The best way to look at tax policy is consider you're in a competition globally, because money has no nationality. As I just said, it flows to the path of least resistance. You do not need to have the lowest tax rates to win. You simply need to be competitive. So if I'm going to spend, as I am, $5 billion building a data center, I need to know the place I put it in and the state I put it in or the province I put it in or wherever it's going has competitive Tax rates so I can raise the debt and the equity that I have to raise to build the facility. And so if there's a competition, what the great thing about North America at least is for hundreds of years we've understood the competition of both states, countries and policy. So if you have competitive taxes, you're no different than the Netherlands or Finland or Canada. And you're your North Dakota or your West Virginia. Check the box on that. I don't have to worry about the taxes. I'm good there. There's no crazy tax policy. Then do I have a stable policy around providing building permits and access to power and employment regulation and fiber, you know, to get access to the Internet and water policy, because I need water if I'm going to cool my, my, my compute. And so it's all a competition. And so the reason Trump fought so hard to get this bill through is it kept him competitive against Ireland. For example, do you remember the period when all the pharmaceutical companies reset up their headquarters in Ireland? That's when the tax policy was out of balance. And there's a good example of what happens. Everybody just moves their headquarters. You don't have to do that anymore. You can be concerned about what you've been discussing on spending, I get that, but not on tax policy anymore. We're in a good place now. And then you have the competition of states. I don't live in New York because I think it's a poorly managed, over taxed city with a 5 to 10% risk of having a very unusual person who wants to do money for nothing chicks for free. I don't want anything to do with that. And so I quietly, like everybody else, moved to Miami. All of my neighbors are from New York and Boston and my whole building is New Jersey, Boston, New York City, and they go back home for six months less a day. That's the competition of states. So if you want to have stupid tax policy, you simply lose the money. People don't have to talk about it, they just do it. And 12,000, whatever it is, license cards a week being transferred to Florida. I'm telling everybody, stop coming to Collins Avenue. We can't handle the traffic. Please go somewhere else. We're tapped out. No more license plates from New Jersey. We just don't have room for you. Go to Texas, go somewhere else.
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B
That's hilarious. Now what is it that people are misunderstanding? If we could capital control and stop people from leaving, would we be able to tax our way to prosperity?
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Never. That's not, that's not the American Dream. The number one export of America is not technology and it's not energy. It's the American Dream. The job, the only job, the most important mandate the President have has is to maintain the American dream so that every 60 cents of every dollar worldwide comes to pursue the American Dream the minute you come.
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B
How do you define it?
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C
Well, the American dream is very simple. It's I have nothing but an idea and I need to go to a place that respects my idea, lets me maybe own my idea through IP law, and then lets me work like a dog to make it come to a reality. As many millions of people have done and continue to do through all of this rhetoric, we're still generating more millionaires per year than any other jurisdiction on earth and continue to. There are more and more and more and more millionaires in America than anywhere else on earth. Through all of the bad stuff and all the rhetoric and all the unfairness, you can still do exactly what I said, have a great idea, move from an oppressed nation like Iran, move to America, take your abilities to turn this idea into a business and bloom. Everybody still believes that. The minute they don't believe that is the end of America. And that's not going to happen anytime soon because it's still a reality. So when people start to tell me, oh, the next generation doesn't care about the American dream, I call bullshit. That's simply not true because the rest of the world all wants to move here still. And so I'm sorry, when I hear that, that really gets my ire up. It's not true. Now if you want to compete, you have to set up in any country an environment that draws in capital and a good example, and I think it's a fair example and it's very current, as they like to say, au courant. Look at the last 10 years up in Canada where I invest and I have lots to say about the Canadian policy under Trudeau, the Idiot King Capital left Canada over a 10 year period. The GDP dropped every year until it stopped growing completely. Even the Canadian pension plans couldn't invest in Canada anymore and started investing in jurisdictions, primarily the United States, but others as well, where the policy attracted capital. So the Idiot King put in place a bill called C69, which was called the pipeline bill, which basically stopped all development of everything. Mines, natural resources, natural gas, oil, everything shut down. And the idiot King took his people from a 10% at the poverty line to 25%. He impoverished his people because he was the idiot King. And at the end of the Day, his people threw the Idiot King out and replaced him with a guy named Mark Carney. Now Carney owns the Idiot King. He's got to fix the Idiot King's policy. How fast can he do it? And what he's doing right now is running around the world and it's probably the right thing to do, saying, I'm opening up Canada for business. I'm going to compete with the US and other countries by getting the right tax rate, getting the right policy, getting the right ability to bring in permits so quickly that you can actually not be a risk at a sovereign wealth level. Because the sovereign wealth left Canada during the Idiot King reign because they were promised policies they never got, so they couldn't do any development. So they spent all the soft money on engineering designs and everything else. And the Idiot King screwed them. And so Carney has to reverse all that. But that goes to show you, this is the competition of nations. And I think Carney will be successful, which is why I am saying, wait a second, the Idiot King is gone. Why don't we allocate what we used to allocate, 2.53% of a fund which is the GDP that Canada used to have of the world GDP, and put it up there. We're getting in at all time lows. The Canadian dollar has been trashed by the Idiot King. And so I really think that these, these go in cycles. And I like to see competition. And I think that's a. And I've been. When I was over in Abu Dhabi, I was pointing that out too. I brought some of the leadership from Canada quietly over to the, you know, the palace and introduced them to the leadership, saying, listen, I think we can get in back into Canada. I think we can, we can do some things there, particularly in Alberta, where they've got unlimited power at the lowest cost in North America. Why do we put a data center in there? Why not? And that's what we're doing. We're saying, okay, they're competitive. Let's go put a data center there. And there's only, you know, the tenants for data centers are Microsoft, Xai, Tesla. You know, there's 15 to 18 tenants. They go to where the power is the lowest cost. And right now that's under Daniel Smith's leadership in Alberta, Canada, and she's open for business. So, okay, I guess Canada's waking up from an economic coma that was put in place by the Idiot King.
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B
All right, I've heard you talk about a flat tax. Why would we want to do that?
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C
Well, I believe in making policy simple to understand. You know what I've said about this? The tax policy is incredibly complicated and it's not right that, you know, I can afford to hire. I bet you I spend millions every year just preparing for my global taxes with professionals, Jesus, accounting firms and lawyers. Millions and millions of dollars. Millions of dollars. And it used to frustrate the hell out of me. And I'm saying, why, why, why is there so much friction in the system? It's because the tax codes are too complicated. If we just said, look, you know that your tax rate's going to be whatever it has to be, I don't know, 20% and everybody has to pay 20%, no ifs, ands or buts, no deductions, no BS, nothing. I think the world would work a lot easier and I just write my check or make it 15 or whatever you have to do. Whatever you tell me it's going to be great. Instead I got to go through all this crap of trying to figure out this deduction versus this amortization schedule, versus this, versus that, versus this. I don't know, I mean, I'm just a pragmatic guy saying to myself, look, I can't boil the ocean, but I can point it out. And I think, you know, your platform and platforms like this and certainly, you know, it's important that you, you, you present both sides of every argument because that's why you have value. And I think you do a good job doing that. And so, you know, I look at, I look at the tariff wars right now between countries and I think if you told me today that you know, let's take the Canada US One because it's so current. We mentioned it earlier, if you, if they just said, okay, it's going to be 10% both directions, boom. Everything else gone, including the inter provincial supports or interstate, whatever the crap it is, no tariffs except 10% equal. Boy, with the market like that, I would understand it, I could deal with it. I adjust my investment accordingly and move on. It's the instability and the complexity of all of this crap that hurts growth. And that's what we have to figure out.
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B
Is that going to disadvantage people that are stuck in a loop of poverty even more?
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C
No, I think it creates a more stable economy, that there's two ways to get out of the loop of poverty, education and stable policy that gets economic growth. We want jobs for everybody. Everybody. And the way to create jobs is not government jobs. It's, it's 70% of jobs are created by companies with 5 to 500 people, they are the ones we need to get out of the cycle of poverty in every community, wherever you are, some entrepreneur is starting some business that's going to hire five people. I don't care whether it's a hardware store or a car dealership or, you know, whatever it is, a consulting firm that helps you get AI in your small business. Whatever it is, that's how you get out of the site. So you need policy, stable policy, you need competitive tax rates and you need education. And so, you know, we, we need to do all three of those, right? And I think there's, you know, we could talk. I came up in education. I was my first company, the Learning Company. Advanced reading and math scores. That's all we did. And I always said, why aren't we advancing financial literacy? And thank goodness in some states like Florida today they are. But, you know, everybody, even, you know, when people say, oh, you have dyslexia, I have dyslexia too. There's always an opportunity if you can find the magic of somehow getting educated. Even with hard streets, like, go work as an apprentice somewhere, even if you don't graduate college, who cares if you, if you learn in an industry you're passionate about and then you have a great idea. And this is for a third of America. It's a lot of people. You know, I look at a cohort of maybe 900 students that I teach at Harvard as an executive fellow. I just teach entrepreneurship and my job. When I open these classes up, I look up at all of them. I say, I only have one job here. To convince one third of you not to become a consultant and strike out on your own and form a business and create jobs. Your job is to create jobs. That's why you're here, not to become a consultant where you never make a decision of consequence and you float of a sea of mediocrity for the rest of your life. And so even Harvard's figured that out. They don't want to be just a machine that grinds out consultants. What value to the economy is that? None.
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B
I was just going to ask you. So what is it about the consultancy angle on life that traps them in mediocrity?
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C
Because after two years of being a consultant and I'm just, you know, I look at that resume and I put it in the garbage because they, they're, they now are infected. They've never learned what it like, what it's like to make an incorrect decision or a decision of consequence. They've never Felt the panic and what it takes to make decisions of consequence where it's a live or die, where your business is going to live or die or people that work for you expect you to lead them. And out of the mess that you're in, that's a certain talent that you have to learn how to do. You need to be able to learn how to distinguish the signal from the noise in everyday advancement of a business. A consultant doesn't do that. They just make recommendations and there's no consequence to bad recommendations. They just get farmed out to the next job they bill. That's all they do. So, so I think, listen, I have, I have nothing against. If you make that horrible decision in your life, it's on you. You did that. You just become a single cell amoeba in the ocean of mediocrity and I'm never going to hire you. And other, many other people agree. They just consultants make really shitty CEOs because they've never done it. And so why curse yourself that way now? Look, this is not popular with the big consulting firms. They're not loving me.
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B
I'm shocked, Kevin. How could that be?
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C
Yeah, but I'm pointing out reality to these people and I'm very successful I think and luckily because of the new leadership at Harvard which is dealing with a lot of issues obviously, but they understand, and I'm just one voice in this, how important it is to breed this economic entrepreneurship into these young people, the smartest people in the world, to understand the difference between the signal and the noise and to go create jobs, not create consultants.
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B
Taking a short break, but there's more impact theory after Stay tuned.
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C
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A
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- [30:41]
C
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- [30:49]
B
Thanks for staying tuned. Now let's get back to it. All right, let's assume that somebody just heard your pitch. They're now not going to be a consultant. They're in the real world. They're making consequential decisions. They're making mistakes. Fine. They're early, but they need you to help them understand how to begin to parse signals. Signal from noise. Like, I get it, they need to fail. They need those consequential decisions. But I've seen people do the thing, but they just take the wrong lesson. Do you have methodologies? I'm not sure what the word would be for them to parse out. Okay, this is what you need to learn from that mistake.
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C
I do, actually. It's very simple. In every day of your decision making, there are three to five tasks you have to get done. And your job is to define what they are the day before to advance your business mandate. Whatever it is, I don't care what the business is. There's three to five things. Not in the next month, the next 18 hours after you sleep. And let's say you're going to work. Most people work 18 hours, believe it or not. It's insane, but that's what entrepreneurs do. You need to get these three to five things done. Everything else that stops you. So those three to five things are the signal and everything else is the noise. And your job is very simple. In the 18 hours of this day, that for me starts at 5:45 in the morning.
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B
Let's go.
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C
Can I get my three things done? And I've learned this years ago. I always make sure I get my three things done before anything else happens. And I'm very, very, very productive. And so I learned this from Steve Jobs, by the way. I worked for him. He was an absolute nasty guy, a very unpleasant, but he definitely was. 80, 20 ratio, 80% signal, 20% noise. I believe I've achieved that. I think there's only one other guy on Earth that passed Steve Jobs, and that was elon Musk. He's 100 signal. It's very awkward for him. He doesn't wait, he doesn't waste any time. But Jobs point was because I made all his educational software on the OS for him and schools, all 110,000 school buildings. And he and Woz had a pretty interesting relationship. He understood that he needed to get programmers, companies like mine, to buy into their chip, their version of the hardware, which we did, but he used was no text back then. It was, you know, it was in the early 90s. And he taught me, get your three things done. And damn, was he right. I mean, that guy, look at what he achieved. Until Nvidia, he was the most valuable company on earth. And most of that legacy was on him. He just focused on things that had to happen and he would not Let anybody get in the way. And his style of doing that was very, very, very difficult. I mean, that guy was just a brute, but I respect him because he didn't want you to like him. He wanted you respect him. And I do. And he was very successful. So that's my message to entrepreneurs. Understand that your job is to parse. And you have to understand what is it that I have to get done? Just today. Just today. Just today. Because you will find many, many things that will take you away from getting it done. You'll push it till tomorrow, then you're losing, then you're going to fail. And you may, your first venture may not make it, but that doesn't matter. Entrepreneurs fail multiple times before. I had my first liquidity eventually. Today I am laser focused on the three things I'm getting done today. And you know, and to be fair to you, Nancy, who books my 30 minutes every day, she has to parse. She knows what my three things are. And for me to go and spend an hour with you or whatever we're spending together somehow, and this is a credit to you, she has done her diligence on you and you're worth my time. I know that sounds arrogant as hell, but it's very important that I wanted to do this because I respect what you're doing and I want to be part of your narrative. But you have been vetted by one of the toughest women on earth, I can tell you that. And she would not waste my time. And so I consider it an honor to work with you now.
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B
Appreciate that. How do you figure out what the three things you should be focused on are?
- [35:14]
C
I have many investment opportunities in front of me every day. Every day. Some of them are very, very big and some of them are, are important to me as a person and to just. And I'll give you an example. I mean, this may sound crazy, but we meant. I talked about the data center with you, that I'm, I have many data center projects, but I have a great team. Some of them are in Dubai, Abu Dhabi, some of the engineering firms and a huge team of guys and women working on this and governments. And so it's such a big project. It's multi billions that, that's always on the top of my list every day because I've been working on it now for three years. And every day there's something I have to work on with somebody somewhere in the world. So that's number one. But number two today was I'm working with Sudiki, which is one of the world's largest watch dealers on earth to build a piece unique watch out of Tantalum to celebrate watch week in November. And watches for me are very important. It's just part of who I am and smart time and you know, I'm a world known collector and I, I'm a member of the Horological Society of New York and I work with all the brands and I, you know I, I just respect the whole. When someone gives up their life at 14 years old to become a watchmaker, I have a lot of respect for that. They're an artist so I support that kind of thing. And so I, we, we, we want to make the, the, the watch have a red ST&FP journe years ago created such a watch out of a stone, a ruby, basically a rough ruby. And so I'm, I've started to work with some of the world's top stone dealers to, to find such a stone that we can cut the dial from. And I mean this, this is crazy stuff. I mean it's there the community that deals in these certain ruby stones is so small. It's just a few people on earth. And so I'm very, very fortunate and I guess I should thank Shark Tank for it. You know, I'm known all around the world as the mean shark and all that stuff. But I get all my calls returned from everybody as the Shark Tank guy. And so I started making calls and now I'm negotiating to get that stone so that we can continue our mission to make this watch, this piece unique that I'm going to own. It's going to come into my collection and I'm honored that a watchmaker would even consider doing that for an individual. But I'm very fortunate now because many brands do that for me. We make piece uniques but my whole shtick is red. Like it's red, it's got to work with red. And so this, this is a Moser watch that is, is very, very rare. The only one in the world with a red band on it made by Moser for me and I'm proud because I love this piece. And the watch that I'm designing with Sadiki is very much like this except the dial is going to be, instead of being an onyx, it's going to be a red ruby. And so I mean that may sound nuts to people but that keeps me balanced because I'm pursuing the chaos of art with business. And then lastly I'm considering a new business I'm very intrigued in. I've been looking at asset classes, moving in the markets. And I think many of your viewers are watching this too. One of the most successful assets over the last 36 months have been collectibles, and they're liquid sports watches.
- [39:21]
B
Yeah, I was going to say, what are you looking at besides watches, sports cards?
- [39:26]
C
You know, I don't want to own one sports card. I want to own an indices. And so I'm talking to some of the largest collectors. Again, very fortunate to be able to get my call return from all these people saying, look, how can I index if I want to put a million bucks into an index of cards? Let's say 50, 60, 70, 80 cards. I use ETFs. That's how I invest. So my mindset is diversification. So I'm discussing this with some of the world's largest collectors. I'm not that interested in bidding on one card and having the volatility of one card. What I'm interested in is where can I put my money into 50 cards? And so that's how I'm going to solve for it. And I think in the new digitized, tokenized world, I can find a way to do that because I would like to allocate. You know, you were talking earlier about, I was thinking I'd put a 5% weighting into collectibles like I have right now in other hard assets. 5% feels good to me. And I'm sitting on a lot of cash and T bills. We talked about that. And so I wouldn't mind taking some of it out of there into an index that's it's an alternative asset class. Yes, there'll be volatility, but generally speaking, if you have an ETF kind of structure, you don't go to zero. And I don't like leverage. So it's sort of do it unlevered, that kind of thing.
- [40:56]
B
Yeah. So one last question for you. Looking at somebody like Michael Saylor, who does lever himself to the hilt, how do you think about that? You've got Bitcoin as this insane asset class that is just returned, returned, returned. How do you keep yourself sober? Do you make exceptions or. Yeah, do you just say, this is how I invest and I'm going to stick to it?
- [41:16]
C
Yeah. No, I know Michael. I respect him a lot. And he has created something of a unique situation that not every investor agrees on. My take on Bitcoin, including in the ETF market, I don't use ETFs to own Bitcoin. I don't understand why I pay the fees to anybody to own bitcoin. And that's part of the challenge I have with, with Michael. Structure. I don't need that, I don't need leverage. I just own bitcoin, period. And so that's worked. I bought it, you know, back at $16,000 or whatever it is.
- [41:46]
B
Congratulations, my friend.
- [41:48]
C
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I, I, I, the only challenge I have is to keep it at a 5% weighting. So, you know, and I do, I, I, I'm, you know, when it dips, I buy. When it goes up, I sell down to the 5%. I just have that discipline, but I don't use leverage. And that's, listen, it's, what he's done is fantastic. It's worked for him, his investors. I don't invest that way. So my philosophy is simply, okay, what's the allocation? Used to be 3%, now it's 5%. Part of that's through capital appreciation. But the other aspect of bitcoin that I is, my philosophy is if you're going to own the asset, also own the infrastructure that supports the asset. And so because if you think about the philosophy of this, go back hundreds of years, would you have rather been the gold miner who hit gold one in 10,000 times or sold the picks and shovels to everybody that was trying to find the gold? Turns out on a risk adjusted basis, you did better off selling picks and shovels. So on a risk adjusted basis, why don't I own a bitcoin miner, which I do in Norway and Finland and it's a private company now. It's again a power play. It's called Bitzero. And, and you know, I got involved in that years ago. We were going to put it up in upstate New York behind the Niagara Falls, which had very attractive power. But there's, you can't really do business in New York. You can't get permits or the policy is unstable. So we moved that asset to Norway where we got a similarly attractive power deal off hydropower. And then we're building now in Finland with nuclear power. So we mine bitcoin. I now own the infrastructure. And I feel that between the two of them, that's the right way to own that asset class. And the other thing is, I own the exchanges. I owned up in Canada, an exchange called Wonderfi, just got acquired by Vlad at Robinhood. So now I own some Robinhood. But the point is, he's the infrastructure that I can hold my bitcoin on. And I own Coinbase as well. And so that to me is how you own Bitcoin. You have, you know, that's it. And so, and then we wait and see what happens with the policy that's going to come right after they sign. Hopefully they sign the, the Genius act, then we do the Market Infrastructure act, and then we're keep moving down the policy platform.
- [44:19]
B
Fingers crossed. Kevin, this has been extraordinary. I can't thank you enough for the time. How should people engage with you if they want to follow along?
- [44:26]
C
Well, Kevin O' Leary.com or they can follow me at Kevin O' Leary TV, which is my name on most of the platforms. I love the narrative. You know, I have a great social media team. I love to be part of the narrative on policy. You don't see me shilling for any politicians because I don't do that. But when there's a policy issue and I'm enjoying the narrative we're having on New York City, Merrill Race right now, you can see me posting all day long on that. And it's been an extraordinary interaction. And I love my followers. They're fantastic. And they really let me have it. You know, they really let me have it. I think, I think what's occurring in the world, this ability to have this narrative with millions of people is extraordinary and it's very, very healthy for democracy.
- [45:10]
B
Agreed, man. Again, thank you so much for taking the time. Really appreciate it. I will certainly be one of the people engaging with you. Everybody at home, if you have not already subscribed, be sure to do so. And until next time, my friends, be legendary. Take care. PE.