This podcast was originally recorded on Monday 7 November 2022 with the audio only version being released on Thursday 10 November 2022.
We talk property, investing and life! It’s a truly epic 2 hour discussion, pretty punchy in places and well worth the investment.
I invited Andrew Craig on the podcast because his first book ‘How to Own The World’ is the best personal finance book I have read and the one I have most recommended, and indeed gifted, to people at the Property & Investor Breakfasts. Highly recommended.
Show Notes:
Andrew studied Economics and International Politics at the University of Birmingham, Congressman on Capitol Hill. Here he was lucky enough to research various topical policy graduating in 1997. His first job took him to Washington DC to work as an intern for a US issues and write a number of speeches for the Congressman.
On returning to the UK, he began his career in finance on the Eurobond desk of SBC Warburg (now UBS) but moved to equitie two years later to join the UBS smaller companies team at the end of 1999. Andrew subsequently headed smaller company sales On returning to the UK, he began his career in finance on the Eurobond desk of SBC Warburg (now UBS) but moved to equities and sales trading at Williams de Broë and then held senior equity sales positions with Credit Agricole Cheuvreux and SEB in London and New York from 2007. In addition to his responsibilities at Plain English Finance, he has also been a partner at boutique life sciences investment bank, WG Partners, since January 2015.
During his career in finance, he has met with the senior management teams of well over one thousand companies and with several hundred professional investors. Andrew has regularly been involved in high profile stock market transactions. These have included the Kingdom of Sweden’s sales of Nordea Bank AB in 2013 (totalling $7.6 billion) and the stock market flotation of several dozen companies including the likes of: easyJet, HMV, Burberry, Campari, Carluccio’s, the Carbon Trust, lastminute.com.
Since founding Plain English Finance in 2011, Andrew has appeared in numerous national and specialist financial publications Michael Winterbottom’s 2015 film “The Emperor’s New Clothes” and interviewed by Eamonn Holmes for theChannel 5 including: The Mail on Sunday, The Mirror, CityAM, The Spectator, Shares and MoneyWeek magazines, YourMoney, This Is programme “How the other half live”.
The third edition of Andrew’s book has been No. 1 rated on Amazon in categories such as Pensions, Investments and Personal Finance for a good proportion of the last few years. It was the best-selling new finance book in the UK for much of 2019. The book currently enjoys more than 2,000 reviews across Amazon (https://pef.io/buy-htotw-3), Audible (https:// www.audible.co.uk/pd/How-to-Own-the-World-Audiobook/1473695333) and Goodreads (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/43844355-how-to-own- the-world), the significant majority of which at five-stars.
Contact Details:
Twitter – @pef_uk
Facebook – Plain English Finance UK
Website – www.plainenglishfinance.co.uk
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A warm welcome to the Property & Investor Podcast. The podcast where we speak to some of the most interesting, inspiring and resilient people in property, investing and beyond. With your host Paul Lanfear.
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Hello and welcome everybody to the property and investor podcast this is the podcast where we speak some of the most interesting inspiring and resilient people in property investing and Beyond I of course I’m your host Paul lanphier now listeners familiar with the podcast will know that my inner lawyer requires
Me to remind you that nothing on this podcast can be considered Financial advice legal advice or indeed Health advice and you should always seek your own professional advice which of course you know now today’s guest so today’s guess is uh one of my favorite authors full disclosure
Let’s get that out of what out of the way immediately or talk more about the books as we get into it but um today’s guest is Andrew Craig now Andrew studied economics and uh International politics at the University of Birmingham he then took up a job in Washington DC and
Worked on Capitol Hill which is I’m Keen to learn more of then he returned to the UK and he has worked in the the finance sector and um developed his own business the plain English Finance business which we’re going to talk about in due course and has a particular interest in Boutique
Life Sciences now during his you know Finance career he has worked in senior management positions and he’s brought all kinds of interesting businesses to the market and he’s appeared on numerous uh media platforms now the reason for the meditation to the platform is that he is in fact the author of this book
This book how to own the world he’s also produced the second book we will talk about the second book full disclosure this book is the my most recommended book to everybody I meet on uh on on finance and it is therefore with absolute Delight that I introduce Andrew
Craig to the podcast welcome Andrew well I mean I’m immensely flattered it’s a pretty tough act to follow when you make a statement like that I hope I hope that the next half an hour or whatever is an enormously disappointing for everyone but no I mean we’re obviously talking
Just before you click record and and it it it’s it and I wrote that about 10 years ago and it never gets old that people actually like it and enjoy it and I’m not going to pretend that it’s not really lovely when people say stuff like that so thank you very much well
Genuinely it’s a it’s an absolutely fantastic book I mean I say that it’s the most highly recommended book it’s also the most the book that I have given out the most I have literally chatted we’ll talk about this in due course but literally been chatting to somebody I’ve
Had it in my bag I’ve been chatting to somebody about the book they haven’t quite been with me on on the book and I said well look why don’t you just take the book and read it and uh and then I’m gonna get a nice message a couple of
Months later saying I actually enjoyed it so there you go Andrew um thank you very much well I I was saying something the other day whenever I see our publisher I’m always I mean people like you are immensely kind and driving unit sales of our book which we’re always immensely um grateful for
But goodness me whenever you look at the the if you sell a lot of books as a finance publisher it’s a very different number to if you sell a lot of books as a food publisher like Nigella North yeah which is quite depressing and probably
Something you can come on to in terms of you know Finance financial literacy is so the poor relation of so many other things that people are more interested in well I think I think we will come on to that because I think that’s a crucial
Point and not to be missed the levels of financial literacy which we Face ourselves with them and why therefore we’re having the challenges that we currently have um so traditionally in the podcast I um I I get people to kind of talk in this series of the podcast particularly
Focused on telling a little bit about their origin stories um and um I I let’s follow the same format I’m Keen to do that I think um one of the things I think it’s worth just kind of planting the seed with the podcast listeners at this stage is that
You’re going to you are an exceptionally busy man at this stage um and you you’re taking a company through an initial public offering which we’re going to go into later or at least uh touch across so another point of gratitude is that you’ve been able to
Spare us an extra 60 minutes or so in a very busy and probably quite stressful period of time to record the podcast so again thank you for that now let’s do the orange I’m more than delighted to do that and you know I really enjoy doing this stuff and It ultimately it’s kind
Of my job as well right to talk about what we do cool so um give us the origin story then so um and I think maybe start a little bit earlier than you would normally anticipate so like let’s take us really back to the Basics like you
Know where are you at like were you born what did your parents do you know were they in finance is that where it all came from and then talk us through the education process coming into the workplace and then bring us into the current day so I I tend to joke about
The fact that Brits hate that question like tell us about yourself and then I always say that and then I end up talking about about myself for about 20 minutes I try not to do that to you by the way I mean no I was really lucky my
My father worked for Shell as it happens uh actually on the agricultural side of the agricultural products and chemical side of the business not not the oil company um but I guess that is he’s originally from Ireland my mother was half kiwi in half English
Um and they met in London I guess the early 70s um and I was very lucky because my dad in work Michelle he was posted abroad quite a lot so I was an expat kid and so I actually spent my very young years in Australia which and I had an amazing a
Very strong Australian accent in 1981 when we came back to the UK my brother was born out there and then in over the years um he was posted to Kenya and Jordan in the Middle East during the first Gulf War and I think that is important
Because it meant that I I did go to a very you know nice boarding school as did my brother and sister because shell in those days used to pay for that you know I think as a sort of middle manager at Shell my dad could never have
Afforded to send us to the schools that we went to but because he was an expat that was just the way the world worked but then you know airline pilots and government people who worked for the foreign office their kids all got to go to to boarding schools and that in
Itself I guess is quite an interesting upbringing because you know your parents are thousands of miles away it crucially in the days before email and telephones so you literally I mean you’d see your parents or you get you send a letter and get one back a month later and that’s
Kind of the only interaction you have with your parents was kind of weird when you think about how amazing communication technology is now but um but yeah I mean my mum my mum had various jobs um she actually worked for an ENT surgeon for some time but it was
Predominantly like a homemaker and you know very focused on us until we went to boarding school obviously um gave her leeway to have a little bit more time and rather than three annoying children um but yeah and I went on so I went to a boarding school and then did my a level
Standard thing and went went to birming community to do economics and international Politics as you said and I think the key Genesis moment or the the most important reflection worked for me was when you mentioned Washington because I was very lucky at Uni studying economics politics I had a couple of
Really inspiring professors lecturers and one of them was an american guy called Dr Jeff Pigman who had worked in Washington DC and was aware of this internship program that had been running for I think it had been running since 1919 so after the first world war Woodrow Wilson the then president of the
States and Winston Churchill got together and sort of tried to figure out why America had entered the war so late and you know could they do anything to improve relations between Britain and America and they founded a thing called the English-speaking Union and the ESU
For years sent sort of 10 or 12 British students to Washington to have an internship on the hill so I didn’t have a paid job but I had an internship in the summer of 97 which was just the most eye-opening amazing experience you know to get out there you have to raise your
Own money so I sent it out of nearly enough 100 letters to everyone and anyone who might give me 50 Quid and you know that’s how you kind of pay for yourself which in itself was a good exercise it was you know my first crowdfunding efforts um in the mid 90s
But but that the reason I mentioned that is because doing that you know first it was amazing to be in Washington and see Congressman talk congressman who marched with Martin Luther King talk about the civil rights movement and watch NASA land probes on Mars and all these
Incredible things you’ve got to do on the hill and it was what was it three and a half four months I can’t quite remember most of the summer of 97 but what it meant was that when I came back to London to get a job my if you like my
Resume so I had a 2-1 from a good red brick British University but I didn’t have like a first from Cambridge and economics or whatever that was a sort of journeyman you know a 2-1 from birming was a good thing to have and I was proud
Of my degree but but it meant that I was able to to Aspire to get jobs and at least be interviewed at the very very best kind of you know employers whether that was the foreign office or investment Banks or whatever in a way that maybe if I hadn’t had done
Washington I wouldn’t have been able to so I think the lesson from that for me personally has always been if I’ve because and I’ve been very lucky to sort of talk to lots of younger people in my career in the city you know coming in 15
20 years my junior over the years and it’s the it’s this idea of baby steps it’s like if there’s a if you’re at a and you want to go to B and B is something you know light years above where you are at right now you can’t
Just do that in a wanna you have to take baby steps and so that that being an intern in Washington was relevant to being able to then get up if you like on the lowest rung of a bit be a very small fish in a very big pond that perhaps I
Would have been able to do I’d have not done that and I joined what was then Swiss bank um SBC Warburg in 98. uh again which was a real baptism of fire and I I basically started in the bond market and then after a couple years I didn’t really enjoy bonds and
Not to disparage anybody who works in the bond market but it’s quite a mathematical Technical and you know I can just just about do a percentage change if I’m honest um I wasn’t a big fan of algebra or whatever else and I much preferred the equity story and you know wider
Companies succeed and fail and the importance of management the importance of products the importance of global growth and everything else and so I was very lucky in um I think the end of 99 I moved on to the what so UBS and Swiss bank merged so I was then at UBS a big
Swiss Investment Bank and I ended up doing small and mid caps with a mouthful small and mid caps pan-european Equity sales which basically been my job is to call up people with big pots of money institutional investors in London Edinburgh and then all over Europe and kind of say you know we’re floating
EasyJet and we need to raise X to buy a load of 737s um there’s this guy called Stelios and isn’t it a great investment and you know we did we did EasyJet Campari last minute.com Burberry I mean it was it was incredible like running around airports with 12 bottles of Campari over my
Shoulder in my suitcase struggling to keep up with the Italian management team um but you know it was amazing and UBS covered nearly a thousand companies um with I can’t remember how many analysts probably more than 100 Equity analysts no it would have significantly more than that in every major capital
City in Europe and so every morning you just have this phenomenal access and I I I’ve met over a thousand companies in my career you know the CEO and the CFO and sometimes the chairman chairperson of of those companies and that’s I think that’s a wonderful learning experience
That you get in smaller companies because you you know shell or Tesco or glax or whatever you probably don’t get the same access to management to actually go to meetings with them and sit in a room with the management and learn all about and because it was General it was every
Sector and so you know with a tobacco company one day with a retail company the next day with an airline the next day and so you get this amazing jack of all trades master of none insight into a lot of stuff so that was great and then
Yeah so I basically did that for most of my career and then 10 years ago um I took a career break and I was just kind of an Angry Young Man thinking but you know basically my insight was that financial literacy is really really poor and and you know I
Know your audience will be for all walks of life but financial literacy amongst City professionals can be really poor because the derivatives expert who’s a super mathematical or a Quant or whatever actually might not really understand the nuts and bolts of Pensions and Isis and often don’t and
You know they’re really good at their day job but beyond that they’re kind of a bit lost when it comes to actually really sort of Prozac boring stuff and and that Insight led me to write uh how to own the world um I guess in 2011 I think that was
About when I started running it and I was originally writing for this website plainenglishfinance.com which is what we have now for the URL lots of my mates mocked me and said you know three long words.com that’s not very Snappy name um and uh yeah and I produced about 100
000 words of kind of Angry Young Man essays about what is inflation why you need to know about the stock market and my cousin my delightful cousin Mary said to me um you know nobody wants to read all this stuff on a website like why don’t you make an e-book and it’s like
You know the light went on um and my brother’s best man is a lovely guy called Tim peacock who’s now the CEO of plainness Finance who’s a really really good at type setting and protecting you know he’s a tech guy he’s head of digital technology at a footsie
100 company now and so he got up at night on Amazon and we self-published and reasonably soon we had lots of five-star reviews and was selling a surprising number of copies and it wasn’t all I always say this if people have heard me say this before it wasn’t
Just my mum and my sister writing the five star reviews um so which was great and then I guess since then we’ve been on a yeah 10-year Journey it’s now in its Third Edition it’s now published by a big publisher hodran Stoughton and um that gets us up to today other than the
Last eight years having done smaller company equities for you know 23 years whatever it is the last eight years I’ve had a particular Focus because I moved jobs I was offered a partnership at a little Investment Bank that specializes in biotech Life Sciences medical technology which for me is the most
Exciting area of the economy and where the future will be and we can perhaps talk about that a bit more it was really really grateful and honored to make that move at the end of 2014 um and so until a year ago when I quit
That job to go full time on what I’m doing and part of the reason I did that is because I got a book sorry there’s a very long answer this is good this is good part of the reason I did that was because I got a book deal from our publisher
Actually two book deal one is that we’re writing a teenager and young adult focused version of how to own the world which people have asked for like teachers and University lecturers and grandparents and uncles and mothers and you know aunts whatever have all said
I’d love to be able to give a book to my 16 year old that isn’t quite as complicated so we’ve wanted to do that for years um so we’ve got a deal to do that and then I got a deal to write this book called our future is biotech and what
I’m trying to do you know our whole stick if you like is playing English Finance I’m trying to explain an incredibly exciting sector that’s I think going to be completely world changing in plain English you know so I’ve spent the last three pretty dark and uh tricky last 15 months at my desk
Early every morning um blasting through well there’s all the source material on the floor yeah yeah as well but um and I’m a hundred and fifteen thousand words and have just submitted them the manuscript to Hodder the publisher and really excited about that I mean like it’s a first draft right so probably
About a lot of it’s rubbish right now but there’s a big edit between now and when we publish it hopefully in the first half of next year but I’m really excited to get that book out and I hope that you know if people enjoyed how to
Own the world which is the big picture you know what’s why investment is important why Financial is important this is basically the last century has been all about physics you know Automotive Aviation shipping transistors internet smartphones The Next Century is going to be about biology and biotech and the
Reason for that is because real economic value is created by solving human problems right whether that’s an iPhone or a shipping container or a building or whatever and most of our remaining problems as a species most of our really intractable problems are problems of biological systems so most
Obviously that’s curing cancer or any diabetes or whatever else but actually it’s all about environmental degradation agricultural productivity clean power generation limits to processing power and I and I think and biotechs where the really exponential science is now and I think that biotech’s going to take the
Torch if you like pick up the torch and hand it on by Apple and Google and and all those firms for the next Century so go yeah sorry those were very what was that 15 minutes of pure nonsense that’s absolutely perfect and that is exactly what we’re looking for is that
Kind of chronologic chronological download of how a person gets to a place and I actually think it’s really useful maybe it’s just how my mind works but I find that really helped helpful to get that kind of context because if you understand where someone’s coming from
Then you what they’re you know then what their current position makes a lot more sense uh and if I mean I think the other thing to say about the journey slightly cheesy word but is it’s so iterative and you know it’s through luck rather than judgment and it’s and it’s that baby
Step Point again it’s like and if you’d said to me five years ago that I’d be trying to float a company to invest in biotech companies I would have thought this you know there’s no way like that’s just Madness or maybe 10 years ago but but um it’s
Everything creeps up on you and it’s just like every day just trying to there’s that great idea of trying to get one percent better every week or at least every month um and or develop things one percent and um you know I’m incredibly fortunate to
Be where I am and it’s just the outcome of I don’t know how many hundred phone calls how many thousand emails over the last 20 years um that have got me here rather than there’s some grand plan that I hatched you know 30 years ago that one day I’ll be
An author and I’ll be doing this it’s just that’s what’s happened and what’s interesting and you do reference this in the in the book in a different context that this is almost an illustration of compounding so obviously you’ve you’ve used the the word luck which I you know
I’m not I’m not naive as this to say there’s no luck on the face of the planet or anything like that and there isn’t you know we you know there aren’t you know many benefits that we receive in that respect but I think what your origin story also demonstrates is
Compounding you know it’s it so I I did a presentation I was very honored to be invited back to Birmingham uni a few months ago to go and present to the student or a group of students and I’ve also done a few presentations for secondary schools
Um like big second you know sick form assemblies and stuff and the presentation I give in those situations is called the compounding in finance and in life yeah and it’s exactly right because it’s like it you know this gets quite right-wing and libertarian and I don’t want to get it towards politics
But ultimately you know if you if you get one percent better a month with your final answers obviously but also with your life and I mean I’m sitting with all these books so much sometimes a 22 year old will ask me what’s the what’s the single best thing I can do to get
One percent better a month and the answer is basically read books like I mean that’s why if you don’t do if you do it if you do nothing else read books they have to be Finance books they can be any inspiring books about business or you know frankly literature fiction will
Inspire you and lift you up and but but if you get one percent better in life the imperative the mathematical reality of compound is that is the difference between over over 10 you know if you’re TW if two friends leave uni at 20 and they’re the same in terms of their
Habits and their reading habits and their work ethic and their health and their exercise habits and and one gets one percent better a month and the other just stays the same by the time they’re 30 you can sort of notice the difference one’s got a slightly better grip by the
Time they’re 61 is a multi-millionaire and the other is probably not in a very good place and actually what happens is a lot of people get one percent worse every year right yeah yeah yeah drink a bit too much and watch a bit too much TV
And I mean again I don’t want to sound like ass and they’re right-wing libertarian but the front and center that one of the key reasons for and look if you if you look at financial markets you understand this intuitively more than most because once you understand compounding and financial markets and
Compounding its effect on wealth yeah you can see why two people who are almost exactly the same in terms of education and talent and everything else one is just a little bit better it works just a little bit harder and saves just a little bit money and 30 you can’t
Notice much difference at 40 you can notice quite a difference but at 60 you know one of them is set for life multi-millionaire gonna hand down loads of money to their kids and the other is struggling and you know worrying about how bad the British pension system is
Right and that’s a very real thing which I think is people don’t notice it because it takes three or four decades to unpack right but that’s a key part of our message and I suppose I’m unashamed about that being a key part of our message and I think rightly unashamed I think combat
Compounding is one of the great miracles of the world you know and I think you know for um for the benefit of people listening to to the podcast is to put this thing in context behind Andrew is a enormous bookshelf and the books are not restricted just to the Shelf they’re
They’re now littering his carpet as well which is is all the investor zooms that I’m probably gonna be doing the next six weeks I think it it probably shouldn’t look quite as messy there probably shouldn’t be as many pictures that my five-year-old or four-year-old daughter nearly five I would I would not be
Worried about that at all and I think also if you’re I’m so I’m quite visual so I think for the listening of the podcast one thing that you is really worth looking out looking at is um compounding leads to exponential growth and it’s really fascinating to go
And look at an exponential chart so a nice easy one to seek out that’s easily available Google is easily digestible is um like birth rates if there’s a if it compounds at one percent extra uh and you look at the you look at the chart it
Looks like a hockey stick and that and that is how compounding Works what’s interesting about compounding is it’s quite stealthy at the beginning so and that’s true for all of us isn’t it like if you start you know doing a bit more exercise and you’re a bit more
Healthy and you do some meditation you spend some good time with your family you don’t like necessarily wake up the next day and feel like a great human being but if you do that for 15 years you know you you get a certain set of results however the opposite of Death By
A Thousand Cuts is right because I literally I’ve just written a section on compounding in our future as biotech and it’s you know it um there’s a wonderful guy called Peter diamandos who’s published some fantastic books um runs Singularity University in the states I think he may have been on the
Board of Tesla he’s kind of late for the Elon Musk but he’s one of those West Coast entrepreneurs and he has a whole section of any of his book about how the human brain is just not programmed to understand compounding and a couple of examples you know 30 steps 30 linear
Steps will take you 30 feet or 30 yards or whatever a step is you know depending on how big your stride is yeah 30 exponential steps whereas one yard two yards four yards we’ll take 26 times around the world and people can’t consider I think it’s 26 is that kind of
All yeah yeah and the other one there’s a there’s a famous um example of that from the sort of annals of management consultancy which is they’re called The Lily Pond example and it’s this is really relevant to environmental degradation for example because one of the big things that I
Unpack in our future is biotech is that exponential problems have exponential Solutions and we can’t see the exponential Solutions here because of this very fact that our brains can’t handle exponentials because so to take so take take um solar power or Renewables right if Renewables are one percent of power generation in the
Year 2000 you think about the progression of renewable growth as a percentage of our energy generation as linear one two three four five and you look out in the future you think we’re never going to do it in time when the world’s screwed and you know all that
Regretta tunberg kind of thesis about the world but but it’s not it’s exponential so if it goes one two four eight sixteen thirty two sixty four then actually after seven or eight years a hundred percent of energy generation is from clean power and that is pretty much
The dynamic that we’ve been doing but the Lily Pond example that management science uses so if you have a Lily Pond with one Lily on it a big pond you know in Richmond Park or insert Park wherever you are and you have one Lily if and you and you mathematically the Lily doubles
Every month and the mathematics it will cover the whole Pond the big pond in 36 months if you ask the average person how much will the pond be covered in the 35th month linear things will say well it will be nearly covered right like you’ll think
But no it won’t it will only be half covered because in the last month it will double again from a half to the whole Pond but even more sort of if you after after only a few months basically nothing has happened so you where you could be three or four years sorry you
Could be two years into that progression and there’s still only a tiny bit of the pond that’s covered in sorry that sounds a bit spurious but it’s illustrative of how exponentials can impact all the problems we face and that’s a big part of what I think the Biotech Industry can
Do we’re going to have just astonishing science that is exponential in nature and therefore so things like Jim Mellon as a British billionaire has written some really great books and what it’s called Moose law which is a riff on Moore’s Law and he’s talking about basically Agri biotech applied to
Agricultural productivity we at the moment India wastes 50 of its crop every year because of bad storage bad and bad transporting structure bad shipping lack of refrigeration if we solve that with exponential technology with biotech Technologies if we all the things that biotech could do in the agricultural sector you could
Actually roll back deforestation globally by about 90 plus percent so and you could solve India’s crop waste problem and all and and that nobody believes that those things could deliver a result by I don’t know 2035 let’s say because these progressions are exponential so they’re sneaking up on us
So nobody can really understand what will happen but but you know this is a part of the reason I wanted to write that book is it’s a very positive way of looking at the world when you know a lot of the mainstream media want to be very shrill about how disastrous everything
Is you know we the idea that we’ve gone past and through a Tipping Point unimpeachably and that everything’s screwed it’s just unlikely to be correct it’s definitely spent a year researching it and I I think what the um just and this is a footnote and aside and then
Perhaps when we move on but you know I often find when there’s a very contentious topic but what I try and do is I find two books which are diametrically yeah and then I read them back back and I kind of go through the pain so I have read the extension
Rebellion handbook and I have a I feel a good understanding of what the ideology May lie behind that and I’ve also read a really contrasting book which was something like apocalypse never or something like that that’s Michael Schellenberg and then there’s um yeah there’s uh oh
Um I will come back to me but a guy called Michael lombborg um but yeah that um false alarm which is right you know it’s like the front cover of Time Magazine says that 20 million people in the in the Vietnamese um Delta are underwater because of climate change and
And actually they’ve been underwater for decades because in the same way that Holland is underwater but it makes on-page news and it’s completely misrepresented about the reality and anyway I don’t want to go down the road it’s not like category not a climate change denier I just think that
Exponential problems that we confront quite possibly have exponential Solutions and I think one of the biggest problems is this is a part of the thesis of our future is biotech sorry we’re going a bit down a rabbit hole we can move back to key stuff but the exponential Solutions get very very
Little press coverage like the the amazing it’s over you know everybody knows who Greta tunberg is right yeah very very few people know um who boyan slat is and boy and slat is uh another a young European in from Holland as it happens who started a business called the oceancleanup.org and
It’s doing amazing work tweaking tens of thousands of tons of plastic waste out of the oceans and out of rivers all over the world gets hardly any press coverage greater Sunbury gets tons of press coverage because the Press you know they say if it bleeds it leads yeah no so the
Press is 99 of what the Press is about is the worst 0.1 percent of things that happened in the world yesterday which is really stupid it gives us all a completely full sense of reality um particularly at the moment if only we could find somebody on the planet who
Was writing a newsletter that had a positive that highlighted some of the more positive things that happened in the world maybe we’ll return to that subject later well we can yeah exactly or it’s just you know seven days a week for the last 15 months sitting in his
Pajamas grappling with 115 000 words and I hope I hope it’s vaguely good we’ll see yeah so um so one of the things that um just I suppose to put put a pin in but because you’ve mentioned him I think he needs some acknowledgment obviously Jim
Mellon um Isle of Man invest you know investor quite be a prolific investor perfect speaker as well um I remember like having a bit of an audience with him and it was absolutely fascinating evening and really genuinely fascinating and he was the first person who ever said
Um basically and I paraphrase just so you know there are some of you in this room that are gonna live to 120 I hope you’re planning accordingly uh and you know it was a flippant kind of off-the-park humorous humorous comment but kind of when you’re driving home
You’re thinking now if that happens to be true we’re structurally as a society in some difficulty we really need to be thinking about this very very differently if life expectancy is gonna go um in that kind of Direction it doesn’t even go it doesn’t need to go all the
Way does it but if it even moves partially in that direction structurally Society you’ve got a few challenges we’re going to put a pin and that and perhaps come back later but interestingly um you know he not that he needs any acknowledgment but um he was also absolutely clear that he thought the
Fang stocks were gonna get a tank and he spent I think the last last two years um not having egg on his face not at all but he spent the last sort of two years probably um watching his positions go into pretty uncomfortable the market can remain irrational longer than you can remain
Solventors exactly but like for now now at this moment recording this in Q3 uh Q4 of uh 2022 every day must be like Christmas to him but anyway let’s move up let’s move on from that so I want to get into um a couple of things I just wanted to draw out
From the book so I came across your book sitting in a uh that’s not heavily involved in the property industry and continued to be to this day and would spend a lot of time in you know very comfortable kind of conference rooms and boardrooms with property people talking
About all things property and then uh yeah good good friend and fellow property guy guy called Kevin Edge shout out to Kevin Edge uh recommended your book and he kind of literally just you know said to me look Paul I think you might be interested quite interested in
This book you know some of the things you’re beginning to think about uh and I I took the book away I I prefer audio some dyslexic so I find it a bit of a challenge to kind of read for long periods of time but you’re so fascinated
By your first book how to end the world that I did something I’d never done before I listened to it on audio but I had it delivered the same day and I was you know kind of skimming through it um and it was genuinely eye-opening like
Genuine well I have to say thank you very much for enduring 10 hours of listening to me not least given that I had the flu for the two of the weekends where I was recording it so well I tell you what that doesn’t normally come across at all and there were some really
Huge kind of Revelations um to me in many ways it brought together a series of threads I was always already kind of picking away at but not having um I think a holistic approach let’s use that word so there was I think the book has takes her holistic approach I think
Is really helpful um there’s a couple of points in the book The First book that I just wanted to pick out we won’t spend long on this but I think that’s so important right now um that you could almost be accused of having like predictive qualities uh in
The book but the first of which is inflation so we’ve touched upon compounding let’s look at where it is but you mentioned inflation I remember reading this book like many many years ago and um I was reading the the the the set the sections on inflation and I was thinking um
I get this it doesn’t feel like it’s a problem today but the the thing that really struck me and this isn’t intended as any kind of social commentary and I don’t want to go down any rabbit holes but I I reflected upon my own family’s um experience which was that you know I
Was born in the 70s and um um there was a period of time when me and my brother was at home and my mum didn’t work and it was like wonderful like full disclosure was like brilliant let’s be honest same same right I was we’re very fortunate we didn’t have to
Have you know my mum worked a bit but not the whole time and and um my dad kind of had come into the workplace through um industry industry engineering that kind of thing and uh was on that kind of that side side of the world but he had
Before we were bored he’d taken a teaching job so like he was like he was a teacher you know he was a teacher in a secondary school basically but yeah he was in a position to cash flow a small family with very modest lifestyle expenses so they they
Didn’t have a big they didn’t have a car for a long time they didn’t go on holidays um but they were able to kind of sustain a family and I was reading your book and that really struck me it was like I know some really um successful what would be described as
Affluent people uh in the UK and both of them are working flat out like all of the time and asking that question reading your book and thinking so what’s happened between the 1970s and the 2000s that has led to this circumstance where um and I know we’ve had a lot of social
Change and this I’m not going to talk I’m not like bringing up the social change or anything like that it’s just like how can a family go from like one person in the family unit May basically sustaining a a two-child household to now in through all of this technology
Through all of the development through all the Fantastic progress we’ve seen in the world and there’s been loads of you look at death rates you look at people killed in combat like everything isn’t everything we’re seeing loads of progress and perfectly better yeah exactly yeah and that can’t be disputed
In a way like just look at the numbers but yet the experience of families is that you’ve got um both members of a a loving partnership working full-time jobs yeah to have if anything not to have not as good a quality of life so even all the
Toys like you know Sky TV and iPhones and laptops and whatever else it look it’s a huge question and you’re I mean I’ve tried to treat it in some detail in the book and it and it’s ongoing and it’s it’s um you know we’re in the
Middle of it and who knows where it’s going but I think the simplest answer and I always have this argument with my father it’s very simple it’s it’s excess demand and when I say that so when my dad bought a house in Southwest London in 1984 there were four billion people
In the world and there were no Russian or Chinese buyers in the London property Market at all because they’re both full communist countries with the only buyers of London property that were Chinese or Russian back then would have been the embassy right which is a few dozen properties in the middle of
Knightsbridge or Mayfair or whatever but there were no you know there weren’t people hoovering up houses in every suburban area of London and the home counties from China and Russia which by the way there’s been tons of in the last 20 years today there are eight billion people well we’re certainly we’re very
Either very near to or through eight billion people so the world population’s doubles in Britain and in most of you know in countries that however negative we want to be about Britain and rail against Britain many people from many other countries want to come and live in
Britain because of the rule of law is actually very civilized it’s safe you know it’s got I mean I was going to say it’s got great weather what I mean by that is we don’t have hurricanes and earthquakes and you know it’s a it’s a wonderful wonderful polity that’s
Existed for hundreds of years has a hell of a lot to recommend it you know whilst you know moaning moaning Mr and Mrs whatever from from wherever might constantly moan about the state of the country people from 100 plus other countries in the world see Britain as a
Wonder beautiful place to live and and America and Germany and Switzerland and Scandinavia and you know anywhere that’s kind of civilized and peaceful and has a decent economy right and so if you’ve gone from four billion people in the world to eight billion people in the world and X however many million of
Those eight additional four billion people are millionaires multi-millionaires or even billionaires so they have real economic power and they’re very very mobile then you’ll now so I mean my dad and I argue about this all the time he’s like well your generational theft doesn’t go to Pizza
Express all the time and spend too much on you know clothes and holidays and you know I never went to Buenos Aires on holiday with my mates when I was your age and you know that’s a separate debate but but that is as to nothing
Compared to the fact that he could buy a decent five-bedroom family home in Southwest London exactly to your point on a middle manager’s salary with a big multinational company whereas today you know a partner at a law firm would just about afford that same house
Um you know it like prior private I know private education is not relevant to more than about 10 of the population if that but the cost of private education just as an Exemplar of the point I’m making because of all the all that Global money just a tidal wave of
Billions and billions and billions of dollars pounds Swiss Francs Yen whatever coming into this I mean it’s almost Britain specifically now is excess demand there is far more money competing for for the same or let you know a fairly Limited stock of housing a limited stock of places at private
Schools and a limited stock of everything else agricultural land cars you name it right so that’s that’s the problem and we have you know whilst places like China or Singapore or whatever else have been on this fabulous upward trajectory of real wealth creation and real wealth generation I mean China’s not perfect
Let’s be clear we can perhaps go to that our relative position in Britain has been very poor over the last 50 or 60 years mainly because of the terrible actions of our politicians and by the way I I taught labor and Tory politicians the same rush I think
They’re all as hopeless as each other and I hope any of my friends who work in politics they listen to this but um you know but I mean the level of economic illiteracy exhibited by people like Liz truss and indeed by Gordon Brown you know what labor answer is just and John
Maynard Kane said that not one man in a million understands inflation that’s probably a little bit Punchy there’s probably more than 66 people in the country who understand inflation but maybe not by much they can really genuinely understand how inflation works and the the the taught the torturing of
The numbers that the officials on both sides of the Atlantic do to make it look lower than it actually really is in people’s real world experience and so you know that’s the answer why is it tougher today because it’s far more competitive and they’re four billion
More people in the world and a lot of them have a lot of economic power and they want to come common wield that economic power in the UK and compete with us for services now that that does not turn me into a jingy jingoistic you
Know what’s it called a ham no a Gammon oh yeah who was like you know foreigners out you know that’s not Arya our actions should not be there at all because I believe that you know we should I’m a Libertarian basically I think free free flow of people everywhere would be great
Because if you’ve fallen in love with a developed world country and you want to retire there because it’s inexpensive you should have you should freely be able to go there and live your life in Paradise in Sri Lanka or Kerala or wherever or wherever it might well
Uruguay or wherever and if you’re a hard-working Dynamic person I’m I’m All About Merit you should be welcome to come and join our society and contribute as long as you contribute um and and I think um the solution for us is to just be better at education and
Is to focus more on wealth creation and focus more on you know real skills and technical skills and for our for have a generation of kids who read and learn and you know I think Britain’s relative place in the world and the reason why everything’s more expensive is a
Function of the fact that we had a I mean I now we are revering very political here but you know we had an Empire dividend for 200 plus years we went out in the world and and used guns um to make ourselves disproportionately wealthy the Americans have been doing
The same since the 1940s in a subtly different way but basically in the same way that’s what hegemonic Imperial powers do and so on a per capita basis we were we are we were wealthier than we probably should have been and for the last 60 plus years the rest of the
World’s been catching up and in and actually you know probably based on Merit you know if you look at how hard kids that you know Singaporean or Malaysian kids are expensive by the government to come and study in British or American universities how hard they were how
Seriously they take it now I I’d like a living Level Playing Field where we don’t all have to work as hard as as that because it’s pretty unpalatable and I don’t think it’s great for their society in some ways but but there’s got to be a pendulum needs to swing a bit
More back in the direction of folks on wealth creation and I think you know I don’t know what to do about our politicians my view on on politics in Britain is I just try not to think about as much as possible they take more than half of our money every year and
They spend it incredibly badly in my considered opinion whether they’re left ring or right-wing or laboratory or whatever and but the good news is we’ve never been more empowered with the 50 or so that’s left over to to do a good job for ourselves particularly if you understand financial markets you know I
Think that’s the key Vector if you understand financial markets and you sort that out from a young age then whatever happens in the world cost of living crisis whatever should affect you a great deal less than it affects people who never understand across the living never understand
Financial models and as a quick example of that by the way there’s a brilliant book called The Millionaire Next Door which basically empirically shows that the majority of millionaires in America are just normal people who do what I’m talking about and you know with tons of
Evidence and at the other end of the spectrum are Boris Becker Karen Millen you know Sarah Ferguson the the the 80 of NFL football players are bankrupt within a few years of leaving the NFL even though on average they earn 750 000 US dollars a year it’s about financial literacy and and you
Know that’s why we’re on a mission because I see financial literacy as a sort of Silver Bullet it’s a vector by which if people acquire financial literacy it’s really good for them as individuals and for their kids and their dependents and everyone else but actually far more than that far more
Important than that it’s really good for society because there’s more Capital to invest in Innovative businesses and create you know everybody who sorts stuff out and learns about this if we had a million more financial literary literate people properly financially different people in this country a lot
Of our problems would go away truly and and so yeah sorry I’m yeah I’m properly on my soapbox now but I actually you know I believe my nonsense I genuinely think that’s it I find it utterly tragic that you know even sort of middle class people with great degrees who are
Inverted commas intelligent working fresher jobs that literally they hear the word equities or bonds when they just put their fingers in there and go la la la la and then they wake up in their late 40s and realize what a difficult situation they’re in for the rest of their lives with pensions to
Your point about living to 120 particularly right and so then so there’s a there’s a particular point I want to kind of draw out there not seeking to ask this in a particularly provocative way but um my my when I was in legal practice I would I would come
Across things you know in cases I’d get really excited I’d run into my boss’s office and I’d be like I found the Smoking Gun and yeah it kind of like 10 20s a young lawyer you know and and he would just kind of sit me down he would
Calm me down he would say look Paul most the things that happen in life are up not conspiracy um yeah a hundred percent and and it’s like what you’re you know that what you think is a smoking that again has probably been more evidence that the the other side are incompetent
Than they are involved in the conspiracy but I do want to hover over this in terms of the inflation piece because you know reading your book all those years ago I I understood it conceptually from my own experience but like let’s be completely honest here we are and final
The final kind of stretch of 2022 and we are seeing inflation doing its absolute work well no it’s absolute worse yeah it’s come home to roost the actions of the last 50 years for sure yeah so I suppose my question in that in that is a question around government then
You know is it is it is that is it the the government is incompetent and doesn’t understand the way that money works and and is simply naive and and wishes to do its best for the People by providing them with whatever they wish you know in exchange for votes for
Example or is it the fact that uh it is a more considered strategic decision to have inflation running at a certain percentage so as to diminish um their responsibility for their debt yeah and effectively transfer it onto onto the people so what are your thoughts on that well yeah I mean it’s
One of the one of the hot potatoes I love engaging with is this idea of them and they they are making us they have their foot on on the back of our net and that you know there’s some bunch of Rich tourists who all shoot partridges and
Pheasants at the weekend and then get together in their you know old Buffet Buffington clubs and James there’s some scheme and plot about how to ruin everybody’s lives and be very rich I just think that’s the most fallacious ignorant nonsense because it like could you if you’ve ever watched a board of
Directors of one company try to reach consensus on the direction of travel and how divisive that could be and how many arguments and how much you know which is why that we have a legal system which structures those relationships in law right because you can’t get five or six
Or seven directors of one company where even even a small company let alone a ftse 100 company that’s super complicated to agree on a directional travel so the idea is like you know the Davos lot um I forget the name of the Swiss guy that everyone’s convinced is
Basically puppet stringing the world who runs um Davos or the Bilderberg Group or but you know there’s a great book that the creature of Jekyll Island about the founding of you know the central banking system and the fact that it was like the astors and the Rothschilds and blood you
Know and I suppose just as a quick aside I’d love to con I’d love to get what whilst that is conspiracy theorists love that like so they’ve been controlling the world the roster has been controlling with them you know lizard people or whatever since since the 20s
And the Titanic was sunk because they wanted to get rid of the you know there’s all that lovely conspiracy stuff but first thing to say about those I’d love to congratulate the people who founded the current central banking system because in the time since they’ve done that life expectancy is up by four
Decades the world is the most peaceful it’s ever been air Travelers that you know people can travel people can have holidays there are beach bars there are sports teams there’s you know the world is immeasurably better today than it was 100 years ago when the Central Banking
Systems were founded and that is in large part to do with capital markets Central Banking fractional Reserve banking it’s because of that that we have Airlines and you know big ships and big buildings and sports teams and all this lovely stuff we had that somebody in 1900 didn’t have you know life
Expectancy in 1909 in Britain when we first introduced the pension system was 47. now that number was skewed by infant mortality but still it was pretty rare to live until 50s right because most people were in drudge horrible jobs down mines or working in you know Downton
Abbey style like for you know sparrowing and screen talking to the aristocracy who had the most ridiculously disproportionate amount on the money compared to today and where the money was not based on Merit it was based on the fact that somebody ten Generations ago had sufficiently sucked up to
Whichever King and being given a peerage whereas today you know in 1987 when the first Sunday Times rich list was published 60 plus percent of that rich list had inherited their money or were landowning aristocracy and last year it’s about 90 was self-made now you can argue about what self-made means because
Obviously Stelios got given a few quid by his parents to start easy chance um you know and and the same is true you know people from wealthy backgrounds have a much higher chance of being wealthy because you know they have Capital behind them and they also but
Also they have all those habits around reading and learning and understanding and financial markets right which is why the vector to make to democratize that is to spread all this information much more wide across the population but but no I I think think to your point the gov
There’s no big Global conspiracy theory of that you know imagine the idea of the Chinese regime the Japanese regime the Americans every European regime all collaborating together to kind of rig and control and create inflation it’s not that it’s just that it’s what you know Winston Churchill said that the
Democracy is the worst form of government ever invented apart from all the other ones right and you know democracy we now we have a short electoral cycle where politicians have learned in the last 50 years since um Nixon took America off the gold standard that they can invent money out of thin
Air and they’re only around for five years and they only care about being around for five years which is utterly Insidious so they do all this stuff that’s terrible and it’s been compounding now for 50 years bad decision after bad decision after bad decision printing money like it’s going
Out of fashion you know socializing um the profits and privatizing privatizing profits and so you know socializing failure and debts like in the Global financial crisis and you couple that to a population where to go to the John Mayer Keynes crate in quote you know not one man and a million
Understands inflation financially I always argue that so Thomas picketty wrote Capital in the 21st century and talks about how divisive it is and everything else but I think the bit he misses is kind of Merit it’s like if you actually argue that one percent of riches the richest one percent of people
In the world are not scheming you know they’re not they’re not all collaborating in their lizard skins to work out how to do down the rest of the other 99 they just haven’t learned about financial markets and wealth creation and creating companies right so the richest one percent of people in the
World there are still people who’ve inherited money but broadly the richest pharmaceutical people in the world are simply the most financially literate one percent of people in the world because of what we said earlier about compounding if if you if you are one percent better than the next person for
The whole of your life you will end up with a hell of a lot more money because the power of compounding and you know if you work one percent Holland the next person isn’t isn’t there you know shouldn’t that end up in the case it’s not the fault of the person who’s done
That that they end up disproportionately wealthy because of the mathematical imperative of compounding you know that so Merit is a really important thing in this discussion and and you know yeah I’m sounding horribly right-wing in libertarian but I but I think the empowering thing is there is a solution
Which is just that more people are financially literate and you know unfortunately the problem we’ve got ourselves in is because successive generations of politicians Democrats and Republicans in the states Tory and labor in the UK and the same all over the world are fundamentally financially illiterate and
Have printed money and you know then you have people like Stefan I think it’s Stephanie Kelton wrote that book about modern monetary Theory and it’s like it’s just astonishing that anybody can credit those thoughts that you can just print money with impunity and just invent money out of thin air because and
We always do this when I do speaking events if the if the amount of stuff in the world is one just if all the stuff in the world the agricultural crops oil you know is gold buildings whatever is what just call it one and the amount of
Money in the world is one the price is one right if the amount of the money in the world is two and the amount of stuff in the world hasn’t grown and now the price is two and broadly that is what has happened in the last 50 years right
And and the rest right you know I mean why was a house 500 quid in the early 70s and certainly to London and now it’s 500 000 pounds it’s you know there has been a real increase in the value of property for sure but there’s a huge
Role played by inflation because if a pint of beer was 10p and a pint of beer is now four quid you know then has your house really gone off in real wealth I mean that’s a separate discussion which you know I unpacking the book but but it’s that
It’s that real inflation and it’s this this you know there are serious there are people in Congress and in Parliament who are listening to economists to tell them what they want to hear like mmt like just print you can print money won’t have any and that’s coming home to
Roots because it’s just nonsense and I said to somebody in that long ago I’ll see your economic theory and raise you my economic history right or Brazil or Weimar Germany or you know if you’ve looked at 200 years of economic history you know that you cannot invent money out of thin air
Without what is happening now happening and it’s a tragedy that you know a very significant percentage of our politicians haven’t studied that economic history from where I’m sitting go this sorry this is this has become a very political book no but this is good stuff
I I think you say it’s political I’m not ah I pushed back on that and say actually I don’t think this is a political political point in itself because I think um your political orientation it can be one thing but you’re kind of understanding of the pure mechanics of
The way that money Works can be completely neutral and what I always go back to is like my J I’m a benthamite utilitarian right so I Jeremy Bentham philosopher British philosopher basically said that that you know if you’re trying to think about the best outcome of society you should think
Of the greatest good for the greatest number of people right and I’m a big believer in that and so you know when I have these positions to hold these opinions what I want is the best outcome for the largest percentage of the population and you and actually it’s
Like you know that great vignette about if you can you know in North Korea if there are a hundred people in North Korea 99 of them have won and one of them has a hundred right that’s North Korea that’s like North Korean communistic society and in
The west if you have 100 people you know 85 of them have 20 and then three or four have 500 and then one or two have 10 million so we’re you know Elon Musk or Bill Gates or Jeff Bezos but because of that 19 you know 85 people have 20 instead of
One and I think we missed that a lot you know when we sort of juxtapose you know how you might run a society so and if you if you total up North Korea’s 100 people and some the 99 ones and the the 100. that’s a tiny tiny tiny fraction of
What happens if you total up the what I just said about Western democracy that’s right and so in terms of aggregate meant for my good for the largest percentage of society it’s clearly better to run it the way we run it but the missing and if
I made it so I often talk about being in a race between Mad Max and Star Trek okay so so in the next few years we’re either going to go to a dystopian you know the world is cracked and screwed and climate change and global warming or actually there’s a really good chance
We’re gonna have a Star Trek situation where everybody’s good looking and wealthy and lives in a lovely sort of you know modern Tower block and floats around and skimmers and you know all that good stuff and and I think there’s a very good chance we’re on a trajectory
To start Ultra and the solution to our inflation predicament is actually very simply real wealth creation because we’ve created my one and two example earlier so okay we’ve created like five currency units for one unit of stuff the solution is if we can create five units
Of stuff then it all comes out in the wash and you know the government aren’t going to do that that but the people who are going to do it are Innovative are entrepreneurs working in artificial intelligence you know agricultural revolutionizing agricultural productivity curing cancer robotics for
Elderly care I mean that there is there is so much extraordinary technological innovation coming down the pipe very little of it gets the oxygen of proper press attention because we’re too busy worrying about Ukraine and the cost of living crisis and you know it’s if you
Read new scientists or wide or it’s in or it’s in you know on page 35 of a newspaper not on pages one two three four or five yeah and and and then my hope and belief is and we’re trying to be part of this in a small way
Technology is going to ride into the rescue and it will create real wealth and it will you know because ultimately technology and the economy is about refashioning the periodic table for our benefit as a species without destroying the planet and the smarter we get doing that like we build buildings more
Effectively they can heat themselves and air condition themselves with solar panels you know we we start being able to planes can be twice as efficient in terms of fuel consumption Farms India stops wasting 50 of its agricultural crop every year to rubbish infrastructure these are all problems
That are people are on the case trying to solve and I think we will solve them and I think that will solve problem but for the time being there’s going to be a really unpleasant period of dislocation just like what happens every century and let’s just hope it’s not like a 1914
1918 or 1939 1945 period of this location but but I I don’t think it will be simply because I have Japanese mates and German mates right I don’t you know World War One posters propaganda posters told people up and down the land that Germans eat babies now let’s go and Fight The Trenches
Against the evil hun because they eat babies you know yeah and I mean no in this incredibly networked world I hope that conflict will only ever be Regional I mean Yemen is awful Ukraine is awful no question but too many of us are too webbed into friends from all
Over the world yeah um to actually ever I mean if Government comes to me and says you need to pick up a rifle and go and kill people in Japan or Germany or frankly anywhere I’m gonna say bugger off I’m just going to do that and I
Think most people are like that in stark contrast to what they were like in the 30s or that so sorry God that was another no no this is good I think also to like speak up for I think a a a camp which is not being given the best press
At the moment if you look at so uh I suspect we’re both Gen X uh I think Millennials and those that follow which are gen z i I think I’ve been giving a I’ve been given a very very unfair run in the media at the moment they are being painted
Uh in a really pejorative negative way whereas you know when you look at your I think in life often you have to look at your first-hand experience you know I know uh young people who are going into the stem subjects you know science technology engineering maths like these
Young people are literally Gonna Save the Panna they’re so clever their their calm they’re rational they treat less they drink less they think good drugs than oh you know yeah that’s healthier they’re upset I mean maybe we laugh at the fact they all want to have tattoos
And be in the gym and take selfies in themselves all the time but at least they’re much healthier and less decrepit than our generation or they they were but I think I think that’s right I think the trouble is it goes back to my point earlier the Press post is 99 attention
On the one percent of bad news stories yeah so it’s it’s not newsworthy to say here’s a really hard-working well-educated Millennial who’s you know doing a great job it’s much better to say here’s a lazy feckless Millennial who’s you know and that that gets much more attention because that’s how we
Program those human beings you know I I think that’s I think that’s valid but I do think one of the more Insidious things I see quite a lot on social media is this idea that they’ve never had it so bad like house prices are really high inflation’s really high it’s really
Rubbish it’s so hard being a 28 year old it’s it’s actually in every generation there’s been challenges for that generation you know if you want to start a business today you’ve never had it so good you’ve got Untold you know free email platforms or inexpensive ones you can you can research I’ve just
Researched a book for the last year and if I if I’d done that 10 years ago I couldn’t have done it the way I did it sitting in front of my computer getting any piece of information any data point I could possibly think of like almost instantaneously like it’s actually never
Been easier in history to assemble maslov’s hierarchy of needs like warm shelter whatever it’s just that we’re telling ourselves a really really negative story and you know and this idea that you need to become a crypto investor because everything’s rubbish and house prices are you know no you
Need to you need to own the world you need to learn about equities you need to learn about all asset classes and actually this isn’t that different to the early 70s you know and there’s elements of that I kind of want to transition us to now but but but almost
Sticking with this theme then and this is a specific example but I think it’s one that I think is worth just kind of focusing in on and I suppose I’m actually also genuinely asking for your uh input into this because I didn’t have a very elegant response so I as as I
Think I’ve mentioned to you like your book how to earn the world which now in its Third Edition I have uh recommended to all you know in so many different contexts obviously I mean a lot of property people they come to my the property breakfast which I host and I you know
It’s kind of it’s a great short hat it makes my life easy basically because you’ve written the book so I’m pointing the call to the book it saves me it Bridges time for me um but I kind of I so I come across a couple of a couple of challenges uh I’ll
Just mention one in passing which we won’t need to dwell on which is when I talk to kind of property people about it and I talk about the book and I say look maybe we should open our eyes and maybe we should think about owning a wider variety of assets particularly because
The world is never changing Place nothing is certain and all the rest of it and very often you know I get I’ve got specific feedback you know it’s it’s Paul you know investing in equities is just gambling you know you you need to you need to just stop that now and you
Need to just focus on your property um and they want to you know talked about you know other elements of what I put in the speculation pile of investment which I think there’s a place for any portfolio once you’ve got the broader base and you’re managing your
Risk and you know I’m told well look you know that’s that all sounds very risky to me Paul like um um and I I’ve never had the answer I don’t think to that that well it’s okay well so let me answer you’ve already said is and the lesson of history I mean that
It’s so wrong to say equities are incredibly risky and property is incredibly reliable that’s just the lesson of history is that’s just not true you know British property went sideways from 1900 to 1965. sideways for 65 years right and and a large part of the the nominal increase in value in the
Last 50 years is because of America with the gold standard in 71 and the nominal increase in value not the real increase in value the the real increase in value is is my point about eight billion people right versus four billion people and the impact that’s had on Britain
Which has tidal waves of billions and billions and billions of global cash because I missed this actually before but if you think about you know x hundred billion pounds pouring into Central London Prime Property it’s tempting to say well that doesn’t affect that it affects like night storage Mayfair Notting Hill whatever doesn’t
Affect the rest of the country of course it does because you know the elderly couple who bought a house for 700 Grand in in South Kensington in 1992 have just sold it for 18 million quid to a Russian oligarch and their three kids are just going to get wedged with five million
Quid each and they go out to Clapham or whatever and I’m talking about very london-centric now and we can buy a three and a half million pound house for cash and still have one and a half million left over and then the you know the teacher or the black cab driver who
Lived in that house then goes down to Kent or down to and so that this huge Cascade of capital out of London but you know that is it’s hard to know how long and how durable that that thing is but the simple fact is it could unwind it
Could change who knows what situation we’re in now and the idea that equities has just fundamentally risky is completely fallacious right and and the the the the way you mitigate so from 1872 from the 1st of January 1872 to the 31st of December 2021 the s p has
Delivered 9.23 annualized okay from 1872 to 2021. now the problem with emphasis is they’re volatile so every now and then there’s a big sell-off we all know it’s you know 99 2000 no 70809 possibly now the early 70s the late 70s whatever but the way you mitigate that risk which
Was we’re all about and obviously you know I’ve written about a living let’s invest the rest and my second book um in terms of that nuts and bolts is very simply with the weather around your age for risk appropriateness and volatility is to just invest from the moment you
Can afford to start investing something every month until the moment you have enough money to live on which comes around a lot more quickly than most people realize if they start doing this right because of the power of compounding and if you invest in equities every year from the time you’re
25 or 30 until the time you’re 55 or 60 you have an extremely high chance of getting quite close to those nine percent returns possibly even doing better than those nine percent returns smaller companies have averaged more than 15 per annum since 1955 in the UK biotech has averaged about 14 per annum
For the last 20 years right in the in the states um notwithstanding the big correction this year so equities are a fundamental part of your toolkit but you just have to do it right you have to do it with structure you have to do it knowingly
You have to do it regularly and you and to my point earlier so we talk about this idea of 100 minus your age if you’re I mean an apology is certain of your audience who’ve heard me say this on how many does another podcast
I’ve said it um but you know I’ll say it again if you’re 30 and you’ve been investing the way we suggest all assets all major regions and definitely including equities not just property um and you’ve got 10 grand in your Equity bit you know your your sort of
Icer investing bit that’s largely in the market whatever that is footsie s p whatever and there is a 070809 99 2000 kind of big correction of 50. so the s p fell 56 between March 07 and March let’s call it it halves right so your 10 grand your 30
Years old you’ve worked you haven’t ever a particularly large amount of money but you’ve managed to save a bit 25 quid a month 50 Quid a month for a few years and you’ve had nice compounding Equity returns and you’ve got 10 grand in your ice account great job well done and
There’s a 50 correction now you’ve got five grand it’s pretty annoying um but anybody who’s fully got their eyes wide open and knows what they’re doing shouldn’t be put off by that because that’s just Equity volatility and they’re 30 and they’ve got another 25 or 30 years before retirement to
Benefit from the returns and they should remain largely in equities because you know that’s that’s the you can have a lot more risk because if you’re 60 and you’ve got a million quid in your sip or your SAS and your ISO accounts and you’ve spent a lifetime of doing you
Know doing what we Advocate people do investing holding equities having a good balanced portfolio but now you’re 60. if you’ve if you’ve got all of your money in equities at 60 and there’s the same 50 pull down you’ve gone from a million to half a million those are two very very different
Scenarios right with two very different impacts but it’s the same Market correction of 50 but because of your it’s all about your life cycle on your agent stage and there’s a very easy and elegant way of thinking about that which is we call 100 minus your age
Which is that you just subtract your age from 100 and it tell it gives you the percentage you could have in relatively aggressive stuff and the percentage you can have in relatively defensive stuff so if you’re 30 you can have 70 of your you know all the things be cool for the
Investing bit for your journey up to hopefully having a million quid by the time you’re 50 or whatever if you have you can have 70 in the market and 30 in defensive stuff whether that’s gold or a multi-asset fund or a bond or whatever or cash and if you’re
70 you better have 70 in defensive stuff and 30 in aggressive stuff and those are not fixed in stone but it’s just a really elegant broad brush way of thinking about how to do this and if you do that then you shouldn’t be scared of equities you should be excited about the
Fact that they can do certain areas actually 12 14 16 returns you know and that’s really helpful if you’re doing a little bit of your Isa or your pension every month for years as long as you have a weather on that volatility but if you are just probably
I mean property’s real returns or something like a quarter of of small cap equities real returns for the last 60 70 years and over a lifetime if you’re making Forex the returns compounded it’s quite a big gap you know it’s why there are quite a lot of wealthy people who
Invest in equities as well as wealthy people now of course property you can borrow which is a really important consideration as long as you get it right as long as you don’t need negative equity and you know and you know gear yourself up to the hill when interest
Rates two percent and then find that not long there after they’re at five percent which is what may be unfolding right now and obviously for people listening to podcasts they can delve into this first book character in the world and it’s really laid out for you in the in those
Terms and you know you’re also generous enough to kind of give ideas about portfolio allocation as well which I think people often find quite challenging but you explain it in a very elegant Way the final question just on this book and I do want to touch on the
The uh live on less and invest the rest because there’s some really there’s a couple of points I want to draw out of that as well but um so let me so I I recommended this to a really um the your first book to uh an
Old really old school friend of whom I am very fond so you know Keen like you know really really like them at school and Keen to like help um and she said uh I recommended the book and then she she came back to me entirely in good faith right entirely in
Good faith and she said look Paul what is the point in me reading an investment book I don’t I don’t have anything to invest and these are not her circumstances but I’m going to make them up because I want to respect her privacy you know she she works in a she’s a
Manager of a coffee shop she’s on like 25k a year uh she’s renting and um you know she doesn’t have a surplus at the end of the month and you know her kind of old school friend telling her to read an investment book is fully on deaf
Ears because it’s like look Paul you’re you know you’re a nice guy and everything I get it but like why why are you gonna send me the book why am I going to bother reading this book and I didn’t have a response to that I kind of
Like left a little bit with my tail between my legs thinking I don’t know really what to say now the response is necessarily really harsh right because like what there are a couple of things to say it you know when I was a teenager
I did a paper round and when I was at Uni I worked in a bar right and there’s a you know if you when if you were in a life phase because investment’s all about life life cycle and life the phases of your life right if you’re in a
Life phase where you really are struggling to make ends meet and you’re earning bugger all then yeah of course that’s right but the job of you know the the journey I think of life is to try and get a little bit better to the one percent a month Point as you get older
And whatever it is you do now they’re obviously there are plenty of jobs if you’re still doing them in your 40s and 50s and 60s and they’re not very well paid you know that’s tricky although a lot of those jobs are public sector you know for example teachers get much
Better pensions than anybody in the private evening to get a teacher’s pension or a NHS pension in the private sector is is is a huge amount of investment which I think a lot of people who work in the public sector don’t quite appreciate just how much somebody
In the private sector has to do to keep up with them in terms of the pensions they’ll get um but but it’s you know I always go back to so the the sort of archetypal Buddhist monk with an orange robe and a wooden Bowl right they have nothing they have literally nothing economically
Right their whole shtick is that they go and beg for rice in a village every day and they literally have no position as nothing but they’re still able to live a good life and I think part of the problem we have in the west is we’ve calibrated our expectations of what the
Base level requirements are really high because ultimately all you need is warmth food shelter you know and the love of your loved ones right and this is where it sounds really harsh but you know anybody in that situation if they really take a good long look at firstly
Their trajectory in life and can they because can they earn more in the future and eventually get to a point that might be true of her today but 15 years from now can she save 100 quid a month hopefully and if you think that way it’s more
Likely that you’re going to get there right and and we always say you know if you do it from 40 to 60 or 30 preferably for 30 till 60 but it it takes everyone a few years to sort themselves out but and the other thing to say is a small
Amount of money makes a massive amount of difference so you know we always say if you’re 25 and you’re working in a bar still just try and put 25 quid a month away because you can and you’ll be amazed what a difference that makes by the time you’re 36 37 you’ll be really
Surprised if it’s in the market um so there’s that and then and then um the other thing is you know it’s yeah I mean it it it’s about being really really ruthless about your costs right because I think we all think we all think that we have to have a sky
TV subscription and a Spotify subscription and a mobile phone that’s actually quite a nice mobile phone and you know that things have I mean I know that sounds really harsh but I think that people people who really what’s that amazing book called um I think it’s called your money or your life
Um which is um really all about this it’s about very people talk about having nothing left at the end of each month but most people who say that look if you’re 22 that’s probably valid right and maybe if you’re 25 27 but as you get a bit older you may not have
Really really interrogated insufficient detail where your money’s going and the other thing we you know as you know I say in the book is move like most people especially with the property Market where it’s you know when I was at birming mini I my rent was like I lived
In a pardon my French with a yeah yeah yeah you know and then I and I when I started my career in the city with a pretty well paid job at Swiss bank I lived in Borough I didn’t live in Notting Hill yeah right you know and all
My Posh mates lived in Notting Hill and Chelsea and Kensington and I lived in Borough and they all thought I was like what are you doing living in Barrow you know and it’s like gunshots on a Saturday night outside the Ministry of Sound but it but that made a huge
Difference to my life and to my free cash flows my ability to invest right and so you know look I know things have got that was in the late 90s and things have got so much harder now but again so if you go to London if if you’re a
Millennial and you’ve graduated and you go and have a job in London and rents are just powerfully ridiculous and don’t go to London but you know because Life’s a marathon not a Sprint I guess all of those concerns are catered to but a long a long run multi-decade vision of your
Life you know you can sort out you might not be able to sort out today but there are steps you can take that mean that over 40 years is you can sort it out and that’s just that’s just my view and I just think we are we’re really bad at
Teaching people like you know if you said there’s a really good chance you can become a millionaire if you invest 100 quid a month into the market for 40 years get on with it and turn out like the trouble is like psychologically there’s a caramel which but this is from
Us psychologically if you contemplate your future self that’s 30 years old on you so I’m 47 so if I think of me age 77 and I try and really viscerally picture that comedy old lanky old man that would be me at 77 years old um that person is as much a stranger to
You psychologically and emotionally as a 77 year old man walking past me on the street later today right and so part of the reason psychologically and emotionally we’re really bad at delayed gratification it’s like why should I go with that today to give that stranger a
Better life 30 years from now but you have to so you have to get through those because the the consequences of not doing that are really bad like it’s a retirement and this is another part of why we’re on such a mission because you know to your point about people living to 120
The government the UK government came up with the pension system in 1909 when life expectancy was 47. so there are very few workers there to fund the few people over the age of 70 and so it worked it doesn’t work anymore and the and the way they get around it not
Working is by printing money and saying oh you know we’re doing a program of quantitative easing which is basically code for you’re going to be impoverished in retirement unless you sort out yourself and it doesn’t matter whether laborer in power or the Tories are in power this is just a mathematical
Inevitability and the only solution to it is to get the knowledge invest every month know about all major you know financial markets and and that’s I talk about that’s the bad news is the pile of state of government finances and I always talk about the good news
Creation and the fact that you know if you invested in in the S P 500 20 years ago you’re probably all right and I think that’s if you invest in something today 20 years from now you’ll probably be all right and and God forbid you might actually enjoy it as well you
Might find it interesting you might find it really stimulating and you might learn new things I want to segue if I can now and she said guys one of the big points that like we go back to and I like to think we achieve with how to win
The world is this approach to investing all major assets all major drug reviews something every month investing not trading yeah is also a really sleep at night way of investing yeah yeah you don’t need that much I always say that learning how to do this is no harder
Than learning how to drive a car and it’s a tragedy everybody learns how to drive a car and thinks that’s normal but everyone goes oh learning about the stock market that’s for rich people and then they get correlation and causality the wrong way around right because the
Reason that it’s not the stock market is not for rich people it’s just that people who’ve learned about the stock market are much more likely to be rich and that’s I think also where the second book becomes it again useful because it is pretty much a kind of very practical
Road map I would say into how to implement the ideas from the first book um it’s very hard to do that because from a regulatory perspective you have to be incredibly careful about giving advice yeah so you know I’d love it if it the you know we are regular by the FCA I’d
Love to be able to say you should do this yes so if you’re 30 you should do this if you’re 50 you should do this if you’re 70 you should do this you actually to be fair to the regulatory position you shouldn’t be able to do that because everybody’s life is
Different somebody’s inherited about money somebody hasn’t somebody’s got four kids somebody’s got no kids like that you know your financial situation is definitely very personal to you but there are a load of kind of universal truths like the power of compounding like Global Diversified investment that basically have a two-century track
Record of working over time and you know I always say it’s like 90 admin and 10 asset selection as long as you do something as long as you get the admin sorted in your late 20s or early 30s and just do something sensible for 20 years
You will be much much much better often people don’t do that something so it’s all about the admin so sorry sorry I was interrupting you no no no one’s a really beautiful one thing I think that that was one of the threads I just wanted to pull a little little bit
On is so for example in the property space you will sometimes see on social media what is really a social a social media engagement question so really somebody’s trying to build their audience yeah so they they will post a a a a a a question like oh I’ve got
And then obviously they get like a million comments and no doubt they get a million private messages saying I’ve got the best thing to invest in the world come and invest it with me um but what you do I think really helpfully in the book is to say
And I’m paraphrasing and I’m obviously going to butcher this it is um but I can’t tell you what to invest in because there are all of these regulatory Frameworks I need to comply with I’d have to sit down with you for two hours and after I asked you a million
Questions some of which are very very personal you know around your health uh you know about your psychological welfare about you know how many dependents you have like I can’t give you the one fits all and I obviously have personal experience of this when you know I um you know
Covert like a lot of people in the in the property in the trades if you like the guys with the Vans the the women’s with the bands you know fit boilers and all the rest of it you know they were reaching out to me post covert saying
I’ve worked all through covered not had a single day off I worked compliantly but I now got a hundred thousand pounds in the bank yeah what should I do and my response is always the same because I’m that is not a question I’m even willing
To go through with you but like look at these two books and try and you know come to the breakfast and we can talk through it very generically but I think that’s the the challenge which I think you deal with really well in the book that you you you’re pretty clear about
That it’s like you know it’s really kind of you think it’s one of the biggest I think biggest challenges there’s this cognitive dissonance there’s people who don’t know anything about the regulation of financial advice in the UK this happens several times a month every month and has done for years somebody
Will get in touch say something incredibly kind about the book oh your book changed my life you know my wife wanted me to send you an email to thank you you know which is heartwarming and fabulous and then they’ll give me chapter and verse on who they are where
They’re from how much they earn the what their kids are doing how much their kids have cost them and say right now should I invest in should I invest in to do it but and then when I reply saying I’m not permitted in law to give you personal financial advice to do that
I’d have to we’d have to have a formal contractual relationship I’d have to sit down with you I have to go through that long questionnaire your attitude to risk your earnings your debt levels your mortgage your everything people get really shirty people are like oh well
You know you’re just one of those City wankers you know so if I’m allowed to swear I’ll click the box that says explicit sorry about that is that experience I think Americans don’t know what that word means so it’s not that explicit anyway but um you know the people people don’t
You know people don’t understand just the limitations and and exactly the point you just made it is is really important to have a to have a weather on your personal circumstances and your own personal attitudes the risk is you know somebody who’s incredibly talented programmer who could just make money
From a laptop sitting on a beach whenever they want should have a completely different attitude to their Investments than somebody who’s a bit at risk in their job and doesn’t really like it and doesn’t know what else they’re going to do and doesn’t earn very much money those two think
Completely you know this person could be all in you know into crypto and this person probably shouldn’t be you know sadly a lot of these people are into crypto right and then the final point I wanted to touch on in the second book which I again highly recommend people to read I
Would I personally I would say do read them in order I actually think it makes more sense to read them in order thank you and this is the second one we describe as a workbook because it is it’s not you know it is attempting to just give
As much as we can get with the weather on the regulatory position not being able to give personal information just to give people the nuts and bolts way of actually taking action and this isn’t intended to be a provocative question it is asked in good faith is that you know somebody who
Maybe had read your book a few years ago might have said do you know what I’m going to just uh having considered their own individual circumstances and all the rest of it decided Well actually you know what I’m just going to buy uh an S P 500 tracker in Index Fund very low
Cost from obviously one of the you know well-known providers and I understood a dollar cost average in for the rest of my life and happy days and then you know all seems well in the world and then maybe they they stumble across for example Ray dalio’s work and they go all
Right okay so so the world seems to be changing there is anything yeah exactly and it’s like is it still a smart decision for me to be dollar cost averaging into the S P 500 you know when I’m reading you know Andrew Craig’s books and he’s actually saying I need to
Really need to own the whole world I need to find a diver as a minimum find a diversified fund and you know buy every every month so what’s your kind of take on that now you know in this terms of you know we are in a the world has
Changed like let’s not be naive um you know is it is it time for people to kind of um pause the S P 500 tracker so there are a couple of things to say about that which I say in live unless invest the rest is as you probably know I mean so
The third the first thing is so the S P 500 yes it’s 500 companies by a very very large percentage of their earnings and revenues come from outside of the United States it’s obviously you know whether it’s Microsoft or apple or whoever a ton of their revenues come
From outside the state so the S P 500 is an American index but it’s also a property on a hell of a lot of global growth that’s outside of America and then the second thing says you know and I explicitly treat this in live unless investor threats is that could be right
Because we’ve had six or let’s say basically from the end of the second world war we’ve had how many decades that is eight Decades of American exceptionalism right America being the hegemonic power having assumed the mantle from Britain in that in the first half of the 20th century and American
Exceptionism has driven American basically the s p is outperformed the ftse by a couple of percent a year for the last century or so and and Europe as well right now is the is the next Century going to be characterized by American exceptionalism will the next raft of
Apples and Microsoft and whatever and Google’s come from Brazil or you know or hopefully maybe Switzerland or Sweden or or China or whatever and then there’s a simple way around that is which is what we say is if you feel that way the easiest thing to do is instead of buying
The S P 500 every month inexpensively with a Tracker you just buy the msci world the msci world has the 1600 largest companies in the world from all major developed geographies um and then the there’s a thing called the msci all World which is a bit harder
To buy which has often I had something like 3 000 companies in it which includes you know Brazil and India and and China and everything else so you know these are these are options and they’re they’re as readily available and and simple to implement as the S P 500
And I yeah and I think probably so at the moment candidly I’m not eating my own cooking at the moment I have for the whole of my life but all of my money is now kind of on black for my own you know to fund my life while I’m not
Paying myself and launching doing these crazy things I’m doing and putting loads of money at risk neural so I’m actually not buying the s p or the MSI at the moment each month which I have have done in the past and other things um but if I you know assuming you know
Everything works out and I’m back to doing the investing as I have done since my early 20s the way I advocate which I assure you I will um I probably will go for the msci world for that bit of what I’m doing rather than the S P 500 for those for those
Reasons and that makes complete sense and this is one of the conversation pieces that off that often comes up in kind of my breakfast meeting is like you know it’s all I’m interested in what you say Paul in terms of diversification but you know I’ve got a business Which is
Less than five years old and my response is nearly always the same if your business is less than five years old five years old you are gonna have to double down every day on your cash flow Enterprise and just you need to get to that place where there is a easier said
Than done you know you’re not anxious at the at the end of the month like as far as possible you need to get to that place where cash flow cash flow is working and then you know the whole world kind of begins to come your your oyster so transitioning now to the what
The current so bring us up to and I appreciate there’s some regulatory sensitivity about this Con the next piece in this conversation so I’m going to kind of hand it over to you but to extend your able you’re in the middle of a really really exciting exciting project you’re nothing that’s crazy yeah
So tell us a little bit about that so um this must be about 16 months now um we’ve been working towards floating a company on the London Stock Exchange like a full you know it’ll be one of whatever it is 1300 companies listed on London like shell or Tesco or whatever else
Um which is an investment company um I’m not even sure I think oh I can say so it’s called the conviction Life Sciences company yeah but we we’re hoping to be able to publish the prospectus which is basically where you get the regulatory sign off from the stock exchange and and the FCA
Um hopefully in the next few days we’re targeting later this week possibly it’ll slip into early next week and until that is published which is the full you know 100 and whatever page legal document with all the risk factors you know these are all the risks and
Um and and all the details of why we believe in it I I have to be very careful about what I say so a category can’t be seen to be selling it yeah but basically it’s um yeah I mean it’s a it’s an incredible honor we’ve worked
Really hard on it um well I think I can say is it was kind of um you know again through luck rather than judgmental demand pull rather than Supply push my original plan when I quit my job over a year ago is to write this book our
Features biotech and I was going to publish a great big kind of PDF saying look I this is my belief about you know um the Biotech Industry and how much value it could create and then basically give that away to for free to our our audience you know many many thousands of
People having our email orders and say look here’s the model portfolio if you’re interested in this if you like it it will cost x a month to get my monthly update that says so which is a standard Equity newsletter and you know but so that if company a announces they’ve had a positive
Clinical trial that will be in the newsletter each month if we were wrong on Company B we’re going to sell it we’re going to tell everyone and you know that that had its own regulatory Pro problems around it but that was the plan because you know if you get like 3
000 people paying you a 10 or a month or whatever that might be that’s you know that’s to your point earlier about getting your business to a point where you can sustain yourself you know that would have been there or thereabouts and so I was super excited about that and
Then I went in to see a bunch of my old clients from my last job and they said well you know what how come you’ve quit your job what are you doing and I said well I’m writing this book and because you know they think they’re sort of
They’re basic um default position would be you’re mad you know how can you possibly be leaving this job and and you know loads of lovely relationships with people I really liked um in that job and my particularly my clients and um a couple of them who are
You know reason dare I say reasonably serious people who are living after quite large pots of money listens to me and you know they’re quite a lot older than me as well right so sort of Pat on the head young man but and so when you
Know well why why why don’t you actually try and launch you know try and Float a company to have an investment company to do to do that properly rather than your newsletter go and get money and invest in those companies so you know 16 months how many thousand emails and 100
Meetings and you know phone calls whatever later it’s been it it’s like it’s one of those things um where if somebody had told me what was going to be involved like 16 months ago I definitely wouldn’t have done this but if I’m honest this is like you will
Have to deal with these 49 legal documents and you will have to you know build all of these Financial models to make sure that you don’t destroy your cat you know yeah it’s a very complicated time-consuming difficult expensive thing to do right but it’s like like so many things you know Death
By A Thousand Cuts Like you know every day you just get up and we’re now um there was a really lovely article in the financial times about it earlier this week um and um we’re teaching on the brink of launching it and I’m you know it will literally be a dream come true
Um time of assuming that we succeed we have to raise between 50 and 100 million pounds between now and the middle and December um and we’ve obviously been warming up a lot of um pretty sensible people um and it will be available hopefully on Hargreaves and interactive investor and
AJ Bell and everything but you know let’s be clear I have to say Capital At Risk yeah it’s notionally a high risk product people have to look at all the particulars and really and you know make sure that it’s not to the point about it’s all about your own personal
Circumstances anything like this um but yeah so I think I must leave it there but super excited you know of course we’re going to hopefully launch that and then publish my book about biotech next year which is a 115 000 word long-form articulation of the big picture about why you know all the
Life-changing stuff about you know Lily ponds and exponentials and yeah yeah yeah Mad Max versus Star Treks and all that stuff I mean what’s going on in a lot I don’t know if you’ve heard of crispr which yeah yeah of course yeah right so Jennifer doodler won the Nobel Prize in 2020
Um for this technology crispr which basically gives us I mean there are a lot of concerns about it giving us the ability to play God we can basically edit genes we can edit you know we could make plants glow in the dark by putting in jellyfish DNA we can make ourselves
Glow in the dark I mean I mean science science fact is increasingly looking like what science fiction was only if literally three or four years ago it’s absolutely crazy the rate of change and and it you know my belief I mean that’s you know listeners can’t see this but
Anybody’s seeing this on video can see there’s like 60 books on the floor over there which have all been the source material for the last 15 months I’ve been writing this book um but you know everything I read it’s just so exciting that we are on the cold
Face of doing a lot a bunch of really really magnificent things for Humanity I think because this technology and one of the challenges because of that negative press bias that I talked about earlier is that notwithstanding that far too little there is far too little focus of the mainstream press on this potential
On what’s Happening you know it just doesn’t make it’s not front page news it’s happening you know in labs in Oxford and Cambridge and bath and you know Boston and San Francisco and wherever but but clean power generation AI Quantum Computing um you know new Biotherapeutics Gene editing Cell Therapy liquid
Um biopsy surgical robotics it’s just unbelievable what’s happening out there and how much it will change our lives um and so yeah that’s sorry another rambling answer so we um you know it’s funny somebody I I really appreciate the fact that we’re running very long here I hope probably
Nobody will be listening to this because there is genuinely huge value in there so this is by far my longest podcast but I have to say there is huge value in it and I still and there is further value yet to come so stick sticks we should do
Another one rather than subject to your audience to three hours or whatever but um what was it I was going to say that you know somebody um I think I was into one of Tim ferris’s podcast so a massive fan of Tim Ferriss I’m sure you know I
Think I’m such a geek I’ve listened to all of his podcasts I tend to wake up at four in the morning and doze through and out so I probably haven’t listened to them I’ve yeah they’ve gone in subconsciously but somebody was making the point that if you’re trying to
Interrogate whether you’re doing the right thing with your life like if you’re very stressed you’ve got loads of work on and you know are you on the right track do you need to make a big change there’s there are two kind of questions to ask yourself I really
Really love this smugly because it gives the right answers for me right go on then give us these two questions brother two questions are if so if you remember what you really really wanted to do when you grew up when you were like 10 or 11 or 12 years
Old like not six or seven because you want to be an astronaut or a fireman right but but you know 10 11 12 when you’re starting to get sort of vaguely sentient and um thoughtful and my answer to that question is categorically I wanted to be a writer right I would I
Remember being 10 and writing these terrible science fiction fantasy books you know on my mum’s typewriter my dad’s rubbish IBM computer but um and I really really I dreamed of being a writer and so I’m kind of that’s kind of what I’m doing I can’t claim to
Be making a living out of it but at least I’m doing it and then the other one is if somebody gave you a billion dollars with no strips just literally tomorrow there is a billion dollars what would you do like after you’ve bought all the toys and yeah yeah
Which you know if I’m honest I probably wouldn’t buy I’d buy a few toys but I wouldn’t be like hair around the world you know that’s that 70 of lottery winners are bankrupt within five they go back to zero basically because they don’t have any of these the edifice of
Knowledge about financial markets right if I but if I had a billion dollars tomorrow that somebody just gave me to go and change the world I would want to revolutionize the funding of innovative Life Sciences companies if outside of the United States and so I sort of take
A pause take a step back and go well that’s actually what I’m doing well you know I was sadly not with a billion dollars um but um but you know even in a small way and that’s just I thought that was a really nice instructive way of looking
At the world in the dark dark moments I think they are two very very powerful questions right so let’s try to send this into just two more quick fire questions for you yeah so um the first of which is and we ask everybody on a podcast this which is
That give us a life lesson so if you if you think back over your life to date and you think about you know both the good and bad events that have happened pick one out by it does not need to be the worst in the world or anything like that and then
Um share with us the LA the lesson from it now just for a bit of clarity on that obviously when a life event happens to any of us there’s the story around the event and then there’s the lesson and like normally it’s important that we hear the details of the story but just
For the purpose of the podcast give it to us like is there like a real like thumbnail sketch yeah and but what we really want to focus on is like what can I and people listen to this podcast take away from this life lesson so give us a
Life lesson okay so that’s a huge question goodness me um you know there’s so much we could delve into um but if there was one lesson that’s consistently been durable and I and I I hope um because I’m not there yet right I need to get the business of being
Robustly profitable so I can pay myself rather than living off my savings which my investment at the moment but like robustly profitable um well you know we’re there’s a good chance I’ll do that but um it’s is uh Having the courage to quit a well-paid job
So so twice over the year so you have this we are all brought up I call it the middle class curse if you’re particularly from a certain background your parents were you know reasonably successful business people or whatever you come from a nice Molly called a middle class thing and that’s great and
You had a good education and you know loving family and all the benefits that you are lucky enough to have but what it means is you know the number of people who become lawyers who absolutely want to die inside because they’re a lawyer right or whatever or a recruitment
Consultant where they’re now making 100 Grand a year being accrual they hate every single minute of it right and you know there are a lot of people in this in financial services like that and they’re but but there’s this sort of Nefarious or there’s this is sort of
Listening to the West Coast VC Community like you should just do what you love man like there are a lot of things wrong with that because it’s really really hard to work out what it is you love particularly when you’re 22 let alone 32
Or even 42 but I think the cup there are now is three times now in my I’m 47 years old three times since I started work when I was 22. I’ve walked into an office in a job that was really a bloody good job you know that I was incredibly
Lucky to be doing and actually quite satisfying as well as quite highly paid and handed in my notice and said I gotta follow the madness inside between my ears and go and try and do this thing and every time I’ve done that you know loads of my peers and family members it
Would be like what the hell are you doing you know and it’s very very hard and it’s scary and you know you have to have saved if the crucial thing you know I was able to do that because I’d invested and saved and I had ballast to
Tie me out for a couple of years if I didn’t earn any money um and each time you have this fallacious idea that if you step off the gravy train if you step off the magic roundabout you will never get back in and everybody in the city or in law or
Wants you to think that way like you forget you know because every everybody would love to do that right every you know everyone I’ll take a career break and go and try and do be a house DJ or you know or write screenplays or you
Know whatever it is but what in my own personal experience the two the first two times I did that I had a crack for a couple of years didn’t quite get there and had to you know slightly tell between my legs go back to
A job I came in at a much more senior level with a much better basic salary both times which is so counterintuitive it’s so odd and it was and I think a big part of that and I never if you said when I first did it when I was like 27 you know
I was really really scared I was like dark you know sleep is nice or what have I done I went crazy as you know and my idea my entrepreneur I was writing a screenplay back then and you know I I got some interest but I never got it
Made and I was doing other things but but and then I got a job interview with a Headhunter which was significantly better than the job I’d left before yeah and on higher paid and I think and because what happens what happened to me at least is that the the person the
Other side of the desk is interviewing you is fascinated yeah wait you left the city two years ago to go and write a screenplay and you’ve been traveling and yeah they love it they want to talk to you and then if you can do the job you’re okay
Um so that that’s I think that’s quite important although you know hold that thought because let’s see what happens this time I’m I’m not you know you have everything I’m doing right now fails I don’t realize the idea of being 50 and going back having hands to try and get a
Job when there’s loads very very optimistic for your entry so I think there’s that I mean there’s a there’s a point a Nuance in there would just absolutely cannot be missed I’m sure it wouldn’t be missed but obviously you had prior to these big life-changing decisions you’ve had
Um you know but you know eating your own dinner in the sense that you’ve saved and saved and saved and saved and saved and that’s I think a compute a component part of it I’ve had that very shared experience as well so you know I’ve had
The experience of sat in you know a number of officers at least three three or four um and I’ve had to sit down with like you know the boss and say look you know I just want to go and do this other thing and you know I’ve had like a real
Contrast I’ve had uh I say I’ve had like three solid different responses the first is Paul what are you doing you’re about to throw away the greatest career you’re doing really well we need you here you know you know I know it’s hard but you know there’s a
Way forwards for for you in the business and all the rest of it I’ve equally had you know a slightly bullying response which I make no complaint of you know is it is what it is whereas you know basically you’ve got to ruin your life
You can’t do this um don’t you know like really being put under quite a bit of psychological pressure not to do it absolutely but my favorite one um was getting the call from the actual chief chief exec saying um so he resigned this morning and I thought yeah
And he goes well look what on Earth are you doing and I told him what I was gonna do and obviously property related and he was actually just really sweet about it he said do you know what Paul I get it you want to go on your own
Adventure you know you’re young you know you want to kind of just see what you can do in the world I love her and he said if it doesn’t work out give me a call I want to give you and I’ll give you well his words I’ll give you a
Proper job back so that is so funny sir because it’s always the most senior and the most successful in my experience it’s always the multi-millionaires the people who built businesses who are the most generous the most supportive uh the most willing we’re willing you to
Succeed right and and I find that I find that all the way through my I have I have um friends and family members whose view is that anybody you know the Andre Balzac quote that behind any great Fortune is lies a great crime because I
Think it was true 200 years ago or 300 years ago right Aristocrats basically got to where they got to by killing people literally and I think the world’s changed and now I find it might and look having met a thousand CEOs in my career it’s actually
A lot more than a thousand years now I’ve met I’ve met several billionaires and a lot of sensor Millionaires and a lot of multi-millionaires worth tens of millions over the years and my experience is that almost universally those people are not what the public would crack them up to be they are
Generous with their time they are you know that it’s like this argument about you know tax to Rich tax to Rich Elon Musk is rich people don’t lie around like smorg the dragon on just you know ingots and and you know gemstones and gold piles of gold right doing nothing
Once they become rich what they do is use their wealth as a vector to do the things that they’re passionate about you know in an Elon Musk case also whether you like or not it’s electric cars and you know going to Mars and whatever else and another there are much more prosaic
Things that entrepreneurs are doing but I I you know I think it’s really important because I think too few people have exposure to people like that and my personal experience is that they’re very very generous individuals they very rarely pull up the drawbridge after them they do the opposite they want to Mentor
They want to bring on they want to help they want to fund they want to invest in people coming along behind so yeah sorry I’m that’s my rambling point about your experience with the CEO but that that’s absolutely been my experience and and I
And I think um you know we we want to be a little bit less Eat the Rich once you’ve had that experience at least anyway absolutely now obviously you want to think of it right now so this question I don’t know how confident you feel to answer this final final question
Which is obviously health is wealth I know it sounds like a bit of a cliche but it is actually it is actually true if we want to get anywhere we need to kind of take care of the machine that allows us to do that obviously you’re
Right right in the thick of it no doubt having to put the hard hours in under a degree of uh you know sufficient degree of stress to make it you know impactful but you know tell us between one and three things that are kind of currently keeping you
Sane keeping you in reasonable shape the we as the listeners to the podcast can kind of incorporate into their own lives just so that we’re looking after the thing that’s going to get us where we want to go so I’m a complete personal development geek this is a very easy
Question apart from the one to three things I mean if you want 30 to 50 things so I mean if at least it goes back to my point about compounding about financial Market it’s like you know I genuinely believe that if you want the life you want learn about financial markets because
That’s the vector that one but even if you’re on a relatively moderate income that can make a massive difference certainly over many years as we’ve discussed but the other thing is British people are terribly terribly negative and sniffy about personal development or self-help which is the
Rude thing we call it when actually in my experience it’s utterly life-changing like it’s the it is the key Vector that’s enabled me to do all the things I’ve done and I’m I’m actually immensely proud of you know my wife would laugh at me right now she’d be like don’t tell
Them about your whiteboards and you you know you you um your affirmations and stuff so boldly yeah that’s exactly right for I have been adding various habits into the mix for probably 20 years right and I’m now at a point where they’re about as good as they’ve ever been I’m not quite over
That I’ve still got to drink a little bit less wine the fact the fact that I’m on blood thinner medication right now because I broke my foot the other Saturday right I’m therefore not drinking any wine at all is probably quite helpful for the the I’m trying to
Do this IPA but but apart from that like so I have a regime of um you know probiotics um vitamins every morning I have an incredibly you you your audience probably knows how elrond’s Miracle morning book it’s just it’s just it’s like the when the day between like 5 a.m
And you know 8 A.M and the rest almost doesn’t matter it’s not quite like that but basically yeah you know I I do meditate I think you know Tim ferriss’s um empirically established that 80 of his podcast guests have a meditation or mindfulness habit I think that’s really
Like these are people who are billionaires top politicians top film actors top musicians it was top sport you know gold medalist Olympians 80 of them meditate just use calm or use a meditation it really works it just takes you out yourself it stops the you know
Voice in your head have a really good regime so part of what I’m writing about in the book is about um so probiotics for example dysbiosis which is your gut Flora your microbiome is compromised so without wanting to go on too much so in the last century we’ve basically vanquished infectious disease
Right smallpox and rabies where you have vaccinations for 26 different things and we don’t we don’t lose like thousands of children before their fifth birthday anymore and you know being born isn’t isn’t a is a very low risk of the mother and the child dying I mean we amazing stuff has happened
Medically right but at the same time but there’s a massive rise of what some people call plagues of modernity or disease of modernity so obesity autism um depression alcoholism you know the levels of diabetes and autism today are a multiple of what they were for the
Whole of the rest of human history and the reason for that is because what we’ve done to the microbiome and there’s some brilliant books about this 10 Human by Alana Collen it’s a fantastic book on the subject and so a lot of uh people’s health problems today including obesity and allow us
Besides have to do with the fact that their gut Flora is compromised and I’ve written a lot about this in the new book it’s this is The Cutting Edge this is a new frontier of Medical Science that we’re just beginning to understand because we have the tools to understand
It and so I take a probiotic every day because I was diagnosed with crohn’s disease in 2008 and it was awful for many years I had a really bad chronic health condition and I haven’t had a symptom for five or six years now because of that so you know I I
Basically I have an edifice of habit around supplementation food but it’s not it’s I’m not like a terrible I eat whatever I want basically I just you know it’s like the old thing if I say to you don’t think of a pink tap dancing elephant you know it’s snowed as I think of
Think of it’s healthy I don’t think if I’m not going to eat donuts and I’m not going to eat chocolate I’m not gonna eat you know I think anyway this all sounds a bit trite but basically meditation journaling I use an app called the five minute journal every morning which is amazing
Um and it just means because we there’s some brilliant thing we have 60 000 thought today on average and 80 of them negative and 80 of them the same thoughts you had yesterday that’s just a human condition that’s the way we’re built and hardwired psychologically you have to overturn that
Like and so you have to be proactive about overturning that so if you have a gratitude practice and meditation practice every morning you wake up going oh God that and I haven’t done that and that person I haven’t in a massive Panic or you can do a lot of people do and The
Simple Solution to that to come out of that initial natural position to being positive and confident and happy you’re on is is just to proactively have a daily habit which overturns that negative thinking as Californian and ridiculous as that sounds but it works for me I couldn’t do what I’m doing now
Without all that stuff yeah not at all Californian or anything like that that this all makes perfectly good sense so bring us to a conclusion then say Obviously people uh can tap into the resources of your your two current books and they’re available on audio and Amazon and probably from all good book
Sellers so how to earn the world is the first place to go and then live on less and invest the rest you’ve got a third book in the pipeline just tell us again the name of that book and where it will be found our future is biotech cool and
The other one is called owning the world for teens ah and they’re both going to be out at some point next year but I mean the simplest thing to do is so if you go to plainenglishfinance.com yeah thanks finest.co.uk you can put your name and your email address in it’s completely free
Um to be on our real distribution list and that you know there’s quite a few people on there now as in you know well I won’t say the number it’s delicate but you know it’s been building over 10 years by whatever but the most important
Thing to say about is it’s not a daily spam like I only email every few weeks when I’ve got something to say it’s not one of those oh god I’ve subscribed to New Zealand enough to delete it every day and treat everyday entry it’s just when we have something meaningful to say
And people can see all the past articles in the opinions section of our website so if you click on the opinion section of the website you like the look of what’s on there then please sign up to the email and that’s the we’re on Twitter we’re on I’m on LinkedIn all
That good stuff but um I think the email is the main Vector because I write a lot of long form stuff and it we send out for free and people have to say they like it so I’m going to put that into the show notes and I would
Say with absolutely you know I mean I’ve waxed Lyrica already I’m going to say it but they for about the hundredth time I mean I really really would urge anyone to seek out these books because I think they can genuinely uh that it’s just you
Know it is what it says it said on the tin you know it’s playing English but it’s it’s really good common sense it’s really accessible to everybody I would also say I would highly uh endorse going to the website and uh subscribing to the email address if the email service if
Nothing else that it is a real Rarity in this day and age to receive in your inbox a really positive email an email which you click on it and you read it and you go do you know what maybe maybe the world is not coming not terrible
Yeah yeah maybe it’s not coming today with evidence as well though you know so you know that’s where I spent the last year pouring through I mean I think I’m at 600 references in the book in our future is biotechnic now like academic papers and yeah and then all the books
As well and it’s like I’ve been looking you have to proactively look for it and it sits in the Realms of Science and at The Cutting Edge of human endeavor not on the front cover of any of the broadsheets or on webs or on Facebook or everybody’s just moaning and talking
About Ukraine and but it’s out there you know it’s it is truly the biggest tragedy of our time that you know it’s so weird if you have to think about it we come home in the evening we sit down we turn on the television and we watch
Really serious people in suits tell us the only the terrible things that happened in the world today like why do we do that it gives us such a false sense of the world but we do and so I’m we because it’s nonsense you you think the world is 99.9 bad because 99.9 news
Stories about well actually 99.9 of human experience every day in the world is neutral to good absolutely and um let me just check is there anything I want to no so that’s it so so let’s so if you’re interested in learning more please go and head over to the website
The website will be in the show notes do seek out the books and obviously uh as Andrew has shared already uh you know there’s been a nice ft article actually on it uh you know do look out for um what’s going to develop in in Andrew’s ecosystem over the next weeks and months
As things progress Andrew it has been this is by far the longest podcast I’ve ever recorded and and for great reason uh it’s been an absolute pleasure to have you on I really appreciate like now’s a busy time for you and you spell this time thanks thanks so much for
Coming on the podcast uh Paul thanks so much genuinely it’s always a massive honesty on these things and I hope I hope people find it vaguely valuable and don’t just think I’m some sort of awful right-wing libertarian I’m not I promise I’m sure they won’t and so there you go
Ladies and gentlemen thanks very much for listening to the podcast to discuss property investing resilience all the things we’ve touched up on this podcast feel free to join me at the next property ad investor breakfast the link is in the show notes if you’ve enjoyed what you’ve heard today and I really
Hope you have please do subscribe and follow it give it a five star review if you really enjoyed it and review the podcast if you can it really helps people find the podcast which is great great please connect with me on social media my links are below keep well speak
Soon and thanks very much indeed for listening to the podcast foreign