Investing Insights with Jordan Belfort and Brian Rose #168

Speaker A: It. Jordan Belfort here, the real Wolf of Wall street in the wolf's den for another episode of my podcast. I know I've been scarce with podcasts. There's a reason for that. You all know I've been working on a new book, right, which just came out, the Wolf of Investing. I'm sure most of you have already bought it. If you haven't, you definitely should. This is a turnkey solution for getting rich in the stock market the right way and I urge you to buy this book. It's, it's the information here is literally life changing. Uh, it's number one already on Amazon for all books on stock, stocks and investing in business. So book is doing amazingly well. If you haven't bought it, you should definitely buy it. It really gives you like this sort of five step system for building a portfolio that will allow you to retire wealthy whether you're wealthy now or not. So I strongly, uh, urge you to buy. It will probably be the best investment you ever made because books are not that expensive and the information in here is priceless. It really is. That being said, now the book is out, I'm back to doing my podcast again. I really want to focus more on investing in the podcast and also some world events, but I want to focus a bit more on investing. And one of the things I talk about in the book is while the bulk of your money should be going into a few very specific types of investments, they're safer long term investments that compound that can make you very wealthy over time. You should take some percentage of your money off, 5%, 10% at most, and still have fun and speculate. What is speculation? Speculation means engaging in riskier investments where you are going to lose sometimes, probably more often than not. But also that when you do, when you can win very, very big and if you get good at speculating, you could actually make a lot of money like that. But it needs to be balanced with the long term, more pragmatic approach to investing. So in the book I'm very clear about, you know, what is investing and what is speculating. So the question that is, you know, what should you speculate with? Right. Well, the guest I have on today, a good friend of mine, an amazing guy, he's a force of nature. He has a huge network television network called London real London, real TV. Right.

Speaker B: Controversial guy.

Speaker A: He's been deplatformed by YouTube for some of the things he was talking about about the pandemic and whatnot. But he's also a brilliant investor that engages in Venture capital with crypto, other things as well. And I thought it'd be the perfect first guest to have on in this sort of new version of the Wolf's Den, which I'm launching. Now that I have time again. Now that the book is out, I, I have time. So again I'm gonna, uh, have. His name is Brian Rose. We're gonna have Brian. Come on. I want you to listen to every word he says. And remember we go through this on the podcast, right? That what he explains is about wise, careful, prudent speculation. The bulk of your money should be in different types of investments. He says this as well, right? And again, that's what this book is about. So buy it. You wanna buy this book? Okay. But I want you to listen very closely because the advice he's going to give you and the information that he really is going to lay out here will allow you to also have fun and make money speculating. And you should again set aside some amount for that because if you don't, you'll probably get talked into it and end up blowing a lot more money. So you want to have a certain amount that you set aside, preset and speculate with. So that's what this is about. So I want to welcome a very good friend of mine and just truly a force of nature, Brian Rose. Brian, thanks for coming on again. I'm really looking forward to this. So let me get right into it. I want to talk about investing. I know you have, uh, a fund that you do venture capital with. You're involved in crypto, right? So you know, this book just came out, right. And I know we both agree that, you know, the strategies in the book, you know, like, of like long term investing are the right ones. But in the book, and I think most of my people who are listening to this have probably read the book right now, if you haven't, you should order it. Right? But one of the things I talk about is that you need to set aside some amount of money. You should the healthy speculation, right? Meaning that while you're the bulk of your portfolio should be in safe long term investments that compound over time. And so you can assure your retirement that you have money. You're not going to rely on Social Security or whatever in your country they give you, right. Um, there's this certain amount of money that you want to speculate with, meaning that shorter term investing or investing in startup companies. So explain what you do exactly. I know you have a fund. How does the fund that you have work and what type of returns have you gotten so far for the people who invested in your fund? Give us the full, the full scoop.

Speaker B: Yeah. So, you know, we jumped into crypto. I guess it was kind of mid 21 after I ran to be mayor of London and I lost that race. And I just wanted to do something different. I had been talking about crypto for about 10 years. I had Max Kaiser on my show back in 2013 when I bought my first bitcoin. And then I had this guy, Andreas Antonopoulos, the kind of bitcoin Jesus coming on. But in 21, I went all the way in. We created a crypto and defi academy. I pretty much had the top 100 crypto people on the show, except for Bank Sam, uh, Bankman Fried, he wouldn't come on. But I had most of the big players on the show because I was learning the Michael Saylors of the world and all those big players. And then we started investing early stage. And you know, Jordan, my first presale token investment, I'll be honest, it scared the bejesus out of me. And I had spent 15 years on Wall Street, I studied finance at the MIT Sloan School of Management. But these pre sale token deals were like, whoo, they move fast. You don't know who you're talking to. The docs get signed, the stable coins get moved, and the token generation event is in the future. And I thought to myself, man, if this is hard for a finance guy, how could the average person ever understand this? And so I created something called an investment club. And we started getting a small group of people to invest through London Real Ventures. And what that is, it's the world's first media powered investment firm. So I take a massive media company, 12 years of London Real, a billion views, 5 million subscribers, and I put it with basically a venture capital firm, which is a group of 100 people who write checks. And you put those together, it's never been done before. We just get crazy access to deals, we feature the CEOs on the company and it does what you just alluded to, Jordan, which is it gives people the chance to put a small percentage of your portfolio. Just like you talk about in your book. We're talking 5%, maybe 10% if you're feeling really, you know, risk, risk prone, into, you know, more speculative investments, venture. You do it in a smart way. You take a small percentage of your portfolio. But that's what we've been doing in blockchain. And so we've done about 15 deals, uh, throughout the bear market, which is the perfect time to invest.

Speaker A: Best time to invest for sure. Yeah.

Speaker B: I mean, all the smart people on Wall street say you don't make money when you sell, you make money when you buy. And so we've been buying at really low valuations, only on deals with the best partners, usually once they're closed. And it's been fantastic. I really enjoyed it. I love the ride. We're learning a lot and we're buying really at the lows of this market. And as the market starts to go up and these tokens get generated, we did a lot of equity plays as well, I think over the next 10 years. And that's always been my horizon here. Ten years now, maybe even 20 years, we think we're going to create this generational wealth for everybody involved. So, yeah, it's been fun. You know, Jordan, I never thought I'd get back into investing. I ran away from Wall street because I didn't like the vibe. But just like in Godfather 3 when Pacino says every time I thought that was out, they dragged me, drag me back in. So, um, that's what we've been doing. It's been a lot of fun. And you know, you inspired me too, because a couple of years ago we were looking at deals together and it was great to see you active in the space too.

Speaker A: So now let's go back for a second. You said something important, this idea that you merging like a media company with venture capital. So I think what you're saying is that by having the media company, that's a value add to entrepreneurs, these crypto entrepreneurs with actual builders of these, of these blockchains, these new protocols. Right. So essentially by giving them access to all of your followers and just raising the profile, that actually on some level makes it a self fulfilling prophecy for some of these companies. Assuming the technology is good. Right. So is that what you're doing? You're using the value of essentially London Real, the tv, the whole media company, to attract the best players. So rather than having to, you know, come with your hat in your hand saying let me let my investors and let my investors in, you have something very valuable to offer these companies so you're able to get access to the best deals. Is that, is that the strategy, so to speak?

Speaker B: Yeah, because if you look at these companies out there, I mean, capital, you know, it's not that unique and sometimes it's not that valuable. A lot of times a lot of people have capital and at the end of the day, what does a company want? I mean, I know you Invest in all sorts of different companies. Jordan. But a company doesn't really want capital. It wants future cash flows. That's what it wants. And so what I can do is introduce them to potentially 5 million customers through all of my viewers and I can help them craft a piece of media because I've gotten kind of good at having conversations with people. Jordan. I think the single biggest failing of a founder is they can't articulate their vision to investors for future employees and customers. And if I can get them to articulate it over the course of a two hour interview and stick it in a Hollywood sizzle trailer, that asset can really get the attention of, like I said, future investors, key hires and customers. And so when we give them that asset, that's an organic, um, piece of video that can work for the next five years. And so what I found is with that value add, I can get into deals that are literally closed. I mean the article come out in TechCrunch, my guys call them up and say, hey, do you have any left? We'd like a half a million of that allocation. And they'll be like, no, it's closed. We'd like, but we can get your CEO in the chair of London Real next week and we'll get this out. And most people are like, yeah, I want that. So that's how we're using the media company. One is the fact that I can, I can have a conversation with the CEO. And the second is that we can distribute it to eyeballs all around the world that you know, a variety of different types of people. And I didn't know if this was really going to work, but it's starting to work really well. Our latest deal, I mean it's a top, top tier venture capital firm that we're getting in after the deal has closed and it's just because of the media value add.

Speaker A: So yeah, so basically, so like what you're in Wall street terms, you've turned yourself into a strategic investor. You don't just bring capital, you bring added value to the deal and the not just raising its profile, but also customers for whatever they're actually selling, right?

Speaker B: Yeah. And the biggest complaint, Jordan, I've heard from some of these founders is even if you've got a big Silicon Valley VC name, you know, with it's on Sand Hill Road, a lot of times they give you their logo to put on your website and, and sometimes you don't hear from them for a year because they got 500 other portfolio companies and some of those are in AI and some of those are in nuclear fusion. And your defi platform just got boring. And so a lot of times you don't get the value you think you're going to get from venture with us. It's pretty clear. It's like you get a real media ad and I got one guy coming on Friday who we invested in two years ago. So we constantly support the companies and uh, it's been a lot of fun doing this a lot.

Speaker A: So you mentioned something that was 100% correct. You said it casually. But it's, I think the secret to investing wisely with this type of speculative investments is that you want to be buying when things look terrible. Like the time to make the best investments is during a bear market. Right. So we all saw the crypto market basically unravel punctuated with the bankruptcy of, of, of FTX and Sam Bankman Fried, who by the way just got, was about to get sentenced. He got convicted. Right. First of all, what are your thoughts on Sam? I'm interested to hear your, your thoughts on Sam Bankman Fried. And you know, I want you to elaborate more on the why is it important to not like be investing? Not you can't invest in a bull mall, but why is it beneficial to be investing when things are looking bad versus when things are looking good? What's the, the advantage of that? Start with Sam Bankman Frieda. I just want to hear real quickly your thoughts.

Speaker B: So you know, when I started in 21, I wanted to have the who's who on my show and I ended up getting most of them. I mean I think for a six week period, Jordan, I only interviewed crypto billionaires. Like every single one on my show was a billionaire. So I was talking to all the big players and look, I went to MIT and so did Sam Bankman Fried. And so for me this felt like a no brainer to get this kid on the show. But I could never get him on. He was always really resistant. He was always really cagey. Even at his own.

Speaker A: What do you think?

Speaker B: Yeah, even at his own conferences. He used to show up via tele thing and you know, it's funny, Elon called it out. Elon spent a few minutes talking to him and he's like, there's nothing here. Um, and so I didn't know what was going on. But he had such an aura around him that people didn't push it. Now one of the funds we've invested in is, it's called 10T Holdings. A guy named Dan Tapiero who's An old school macro guy and he passed on ftx and he said, why? He's like, look, there was no board except for his dad. We asked for financials and they acted like they were doing us a favor. And so he ultimately passed on it, but a lot of people didn't, including some really smart VC money. So it's been wild to watch. A year ago, I remember being in London, it was the token 2049 conference, when they crashed the market, and I remember a feeling of embarrassment. That's what I felt, Jordan, because we all really believed in the blockchain. And now you had this kid in there that just had this big nasty black hole and it made all of us look stupid, even though there was so many people that wanted to do the right thing. And that was really frustrating. Um, and so look, again, like you said, it has nothing to do with crypto. This is just old fashioned human greed. It's happened in many markets over the time, it's going to happen many times in the future, you know, um, and unfortunately it got associated with crypto. So I'm glad that chapter is over and we're moving on. I love this market of blockchain. I see so many positive signs of what's happening going forward. And look, we decided, like I said, we were here for 10 years. I said that in 21. I really fundamentally believe in the blockchain. I fundamentally believe in this technology. And so we just stayed in it. We kept teaching and we kept investing. And what I found, Jordan, like you said, is that you want to buy when other people are fearful is there was no capital in the marketplace last year.

Speaker A: None, by the way, last year. None. It was not.

Speaker B: Um, and so I had companies that literally wouldn't call us back in 21. They were like, London Real Ventures. What the hell is that? Right? Uh, you know, your guys are a podcast, like, please. And then what happened in Q1? They started calling us back, they started showing interest. We started writing like quarter million dollar checks. Got up to $500,000 checks, million dollar checks. And again we were now in the driver's seat. So now we got to talk to everybody, which meant we got to see the good deals and the bad deals and the ugly deals. And pretty soon we got to be really choosy with the money to where now we literally say we only want deals that are closed, which means we're the last dollar in, not the first dollar in, which is what you always want to do. It doesn't mean there's no risk because somebody, some People put the last dollar in on FTX as well. But it means that ah, a lot of times there's millions of dollars ahead of you by vetted investors and it just gives you a few more options. And so we believe you make money when you buy these things. We're buying valuations at 30 million, 40 million of companies that could easily become multibillion dollar protocols over the next few years. And I'm not in a rush. I never shilled tokens, I never created NFTs. And probably that was a lot of the. I uh, followed your video on ah,

Speaker A: that, yeah, I bought some, I bought some for like, I was like you know, a doc, a scientist experimenting on myself, like injecting myself with a potential vaccine. I bought like, I got sucked in but I did it for like experimental purposes and I lost most of that money. But that was okay. I did it with my eyes open and I learned about the industry. And that by the way, um, like you, I was offered, you could have made a fortune on London real NFTs. Right? I could have released 10,000 moves and made myself 20, 30 million dollars. And I didn't do it because I knew, I knew where this was going. I knew where the NFT market was going to end up because it was just too obvious to me. Um, and I said I don't want that money. I rather make the money by giving value to people, which is what you do by the way. You give massive value on your show. Um, by. I think this fund is a great thing. It makes so much sense to me because I, you know that the problem with a fund is like, you know, everyone's. A fund is a handout for allocation but you have something to offer people that sets you aside and the ability to get into a deal that's just been closed so you know, that has the marquee investors attached. And you vetted it yourself. And while again it's still risky because it's venture capital and a lot of them are going to go bankrupt because that's vc. You're going to hit some of those home runs as well. So it makes sense to me, going back to something you said very casually, you said, um, I really believe in blockchain. I really believe in this in the future, this. Why? What is it? Explain to me why.

Speaker B: I think what really uh, triggered me, Jordan, was what happened to us in 2020. You know, I had been broadcasting London Real for nine years. I'd obviously quit my job on Wall street, the city of London here, because I was, I just didn't want to be in that kind of toxic industry anymore. And I had been having conversations with people and uploading them to the YouTubes and Facebooks and Instagrams. And in 2020, we started getting censored. And it really bothered me. You know, I mean, I grew up in the United States, and this whole concept of freedom of speech, it's like, it's, uh, in our DNA. And it really triggered me that someone could stop two people from having a conversation. So literally, I was putting out content, I had 2 million subscribers that wanted to listen to my content. And there was someone in the middle saying that you're not allowed to talk to each other because these ideas are dangerous, which kind of implies that you're not an adult, you need to be treated as a child, and you don't have sovereignty over your own brain. And it really bothered me. And so I started to get a distaste for Centralized Institutions and Web2, and when I saw Web3, where you could literally, you know, own your digital property, which, whether that's a digital asset, like a crypto, or maybe something like an NFT or, you know, even maybe a piece of video on the blockchain, I was really enamored with the whole spirit of kind of Bitcoin. And if you talk to the Maxis, they're all about freedom of speech. And so I think that was a lot of it, Jordan. And, um, as we got continually censored even more, I became more of a fan of some of these kind of Web three platforms and this concept of digital property rights. And that all relates back to even Marxism and Wokeness. If you don't own your property, you will soon no longer own your freedom. And I think a lot of these kids these days at these universities don't understand. They've been told, oh, you're not going to have to own anything in the future. Everything's going to be provided for you by the state, and we're going to give you a check. When AI, uh, takes your job, well, guess what? They're going to tell you how to think as well. And so when I saw crypto, I thought, wow, there's a parallel there. If we can own something like a bitcoin, or own your digital property, or own your social graph, like my subscribers on YouTube, you'll have freedom. And if you don't, then you won't. Um, so that's what I think it is. And one thing I will say, I was in Singapore a couple of months ago, when I was in Dubai two weeks ago. When I walk around a crypto blockchain conference, man, I mean, I get stopped by everybody there because everyone there, I think, thinks along the same way. Jordan. I think they were all really suspicious of the lockdowns. Like you were really suspicious of the authoritarian control. I feel like the people in blockchain are suspicious of governments and institutions. So that's how I got here.

Speaker A: What's the typical investor in your fund? What's the profile? What's the average age, what's the average income? How much do they put in? So what type people are investing in your fund?

Speaker B: Yeah, so first of all, they're London Realers. So these are people that, that believe in what we do, that have followed me sometimes for years, um, that saw what we did in 2020 and 2021 and know a lot about our ethos. You know, if you're here in the studio and you've been to our studio in London, there's a mission statement on our wall and it says we're here to create a mass scale transformation of humanity into a fully empowered, conscious and cooperative species. And I always remind the blockchain people I wrote that before crypto got hot. So fully empowered, conscious and cooperative, whereas the rest of the world is trying to take away your power, make you less conscious. And I mean cooperation. I mean, forget about it. They're trying to get us to all fight with each other. And so this has always been my values. And so London Realers think along the same lines. The people that have joined my firm, and I call it a firm because it's a group of people that put money in as opposed to a fund. I'm not going out to raise money because that's just got all sorts of legal implications. They're typically, I've got people in 20 countries around the world. Uh, they're typically probably over 40, uh, probably a 30, 35% women. The rest are men, mostly from G7 countries, but others in different places. Um, they've usually made money as through their businesses. Some are successful Wall Streeters. We got a successful litigation attorney. We've got big entrepreneurs, real estate players, and they're really curious about blockchain, but they know they'll never get access to a deal that's just been invested in by Andreessen Horowitz, which is our latest deal by the way. And they know they could never put a small amount of money in there because I allow my people to put in as little as $5,000 into a deal, as much as say $100,000 and so we allow people to put in small amount or to opt out entirely. That's the other thing. We give people the option, which by the way, you'll never get at any fund out there. If you give people, if you want access to this deal flow in any of the fund, first of all, they probably won't take your money. If they do, they'll want a quarter million minimum. And once they take it, they're not going to ask you what you want to invest in. They'll write checks to whoever they want. In mine. You opt in. So what's really interesting is as I teach them about investing, the CEOs come on a zoom call and pitch the whole group. So every single week we got a top level CEO pitching their company. So they learn. It's like a shark tank in there. I grill the CEO, they get to learn and watch and then they get to invest and understand all the structures. And then we had a token generated today, actually. Um, it was up 400% on the day and it was interesting just to see that cycle. So they're learning, they're getting to get access to deal flow that they know is pretty incredible. And we're doing that because of London Real and the media company. And honestly, I feel really fortunate to be a part of this. It all just kind of came together at once and so we're just kind of riding this out. I think we've got a 18 month head, uh, start on anybody out there. You know, you see people like Andreessen starting their own podcast. But like, our show has been around for 12 years and so we're kind of huge following. Yeah. Now. But I think someone else will be trying to do the same thing in the next year or two because it's just a no brainer. But right now I feel like we're at the forefront. And look, Jordan, I'm sure I alienate certain companies that don't agree with my politics or my ethos and that's fine. And so I'm sure we've missed some companies that say, oh, London Real, those are the weirdos that talk to this person. But most, Most of the CEOs are like, I know who you are, I've watched your shows and I'd love to come to London next week. I got a guy from San Francisco flying out next week just to be on the show. Um, and he's a company we just invested in. So they literally fly in to be on the show. And yeah, we create these great assets. So that's what we're Doing. It's a lot of fun.

Speaker A: Let me ask you one question, important. What's the last question? We're running out of time. 30 minutes. I'm keeping these podcasts to now. Are you the best dressed guy at every crypto conference?

Speaker B: You know, honestly, yes, I am.

Speaker A: You're fucking. You dress well. I'm looking at you. Honestly, I just feel like I don't dress well enough just looking at. You look so well put together. I'm fucking jealous. Are you the best dressed guy there? Always.

Speaker B: So, you know, when I go to Singapore or dubai, Jordan, it's 36 degrees outside and humid. And by the way, in American terms, that's probably 90, 95 degrees out and humid. And yet I commit, I'm wearing not a two piece suit, a three piece suit every day. And it's because, I don't know, a couple years ago, it's a fucking commitment.

Speaker A: By now it is.

Speaker B: I go all in. It just became part of my brand. I don't know. I started dressing up after I went to, you know, Dan Pena's castle. I know you've had dinner with him

Speaker A: unless Dan Pena was there, then you, then you'd have. You have a challenge there with the best dress. Dan's a chelmish off dresser too.

Speaker B: I always joke that, you know, Daniel, Dan uses my tailor now is what I joke. But, um, you know, Dan has good suit game. He might, uh, have introduced me to his tailor who does the royal family as well. And, uh, it just became a thing and now it's part of my uniform and I wear it every single day. And it also, it gets me ready, Jordan. So when I put this on in the morning, I walk outside the house like I'm ready to rock. And everyone looks at me and they're like, he's ready to go. And I show my team I'm ready to go. And at a moment, you look ready to go.

Speaker A: Yeah, you look ready to go. Yeah.

Speaker B: On a moment's notice, if I have to do some press or got to go on tv, I'm ready every single day. And so it's turned into, like, my uniform. It's very British. This is a classic British three piece suit made by a Savile Row tailor who did, you know, the late Prince Philip and things like that. And so I wear this to Dubai and I'm, um, the only guy in a three piece suit. And everybody comes up to me. So now I'm committed. I'm all in. I can't really go back.

Speaker A: I love it and I love it, by the way. No, I think it's great. I didn't mean that. I mean that in a pot. I'm serious. I think you look great. Uh, you look healthy as hell. And uh, so where, in closing, would people follow you right now? Is it London Real slash? What is it? How do they find you?

Speaker B: Yeah, so LondonReal TV is our website. Uh, YouTube completely deplatformed us nine weeks ago and took all of our content down. So that's 12 years of work, 14,000 videos, half a billion views, 2.3 million subscribers. Uh, and our latest movie, we will Not Be Silenced talks about that. People can follow me on Twitter, LondonRealTV, Instagram, thereal, Brian Rose and Rumble. We're having a lot of success over there as well. So I'd say follow us there and the website. But we will not be silenced and we will not be censored and we will not be stopped. And I don't care what Google wants to do. It's just a challenge. We're going to rise to the challenge, we're going to get stronger and we're not going to stop doing this. So that's us. We're moving forward.

Speaker A: And uh, you know, I could say honestly, to every single person that watches this, you will be better off for subscribing to your stuff. Your stuff is awesome. And I love the fact that, you know, it's speculative, but you say it the right way. Like, listen, this is speculative. It's healthy speculation. In the book I talk about, it's important you want to take some portion of your money, whether it's 5%, if you're really into, you know, into risk, up to 10% if you can afford the loss. Right. But this is what I would term is really, that's the right way to speculate, is with people that know what they're doing, that aren't going to rob you blind. And, and you're gonna have fun, you're gonna learn and you probably will do really well with it. You'll probably do really well, especially with the formula that you have, which I think is a great formula. So I wanna thank you for coming on the show. Um, and next time I'm in London, I'm gonna stop by for sure. And I'll even wear a suit. Maybe you'll introduce me to your tailor. I'll get a suit from your tailor, you know, Cause I'm jealous at this moment, you know, you look so good.

Speaker B: I will, I'll take you over there and we'll get you sorted and thanks for the book. It's amazing. It really it's in line with everything that I teach and uh, everything I learned on Wall Street. It's perfect and like you said, yeah I think people need a small amount to speculate with but it's a small amount of your portfolio. The rest follow Jordan's rules in here and do that and you'll thank yourself when you retire.

Speaker A: And by the way just to add to that because if you don't set aside a small amount of money you'll probably get baited in and put a large amount of money in. So it's better to have a disciplined amount of money to speculate with and then do it wisely. So again everyone Brian Rose London real you're the best buddy. I uh, never honestly you fight the fight with more elegance, more plume than anybody I know and it's great to see you on top as always.

Speaker B: Thanks Jordan. I appreciate you take care.