Scott Becker
Appearances
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
The Great Divide in America 4-23-25
This is Scott Becker with the Becker Private Equity and Business Podcast. Today's discussion is the great divide in America. And so here's the discussion. And this isn't a social justice podcast. This isn't an equity podcast. This is just a reality podcast of where we are as a nation. So when the market goes up and down.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
The Great Divide in America 4-23-25
One person on Twitter writes, when we ask about index funds versus stock funds versus other things, quote, Most people don't have the extra dollars a month to invest in anything at all. My husband and I barely have a savings account for emergencies. And again, God bless this person.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
The Great Divide in America 4-23-25
This is the reality that we live in, that there is this great divide where 38%, 40% have literally nothing in equity stock, anything. 60% do. And even though that's 60%, a huge amount, you have a relatively small amount. But even those people are probably worried about the market when it goes up or down.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
The Great Divide in America 4-23-25
But there is a lot of the capital class that gyrates up and down, wealth spending, wealth effect, how they feel. They don't feel psychologically with the markets. And I think it's a great understanding for all of us that if you're part of that capital class where you've got equities and stocks, I'm not saying give it away. I'm not saying anything.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
The Great Divide in America 4-23-25
I'm just saying you ought to be damn grateful that you're in that class. You can worry about these things because there's 40% of us that have nothing in the markets, nothing in equities, nothing in index funds, none of those things, let alone private equity funds and those kinds of things. Thank you for listening to the Becker Private Equity and Business Podcast. We hope you enjoy this.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
The Great Divide in America 4-23-25
We hope you find it interesting. Thank you for listening.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
The Great Divide in America 4-23-25
There is one class of people that gets very concerned about it and then sometimes can't understand why everybody's not concerned about it. And so this discussion is really about why that is. And here's the concept. About 38% of adults, 42% of households have absolutely zero money in equities, the stock market, the index funds, anything.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
The Great Divide in America 4-23-25
They essentially have, for all practical purposes, zero real investments besides maybe a checking account or a savings account, if that. And so if you're part of the capital class versus the class that doesn't have capital, You've got a whole different perspective on this than others do.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
The Great Divide in America 4-23-25
So if you're actually in this situation where you have equities and you freak out or get anxious when the market goes up or down and can't understand why on Twitter there's so many people saying who cares? The reason so many people don't care is so many people either literally about 40% or so, 43% of households, 38% of adults or something like that have literally no exposure to equities.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
The Great Divide in America 4-23-25
And you might say, well, they should think deeper than that, because if they don't have equities, their job is still at risk if the economy is going poorly. And that may be true, but so many people live paycheck to paycheck. And this is not a negative on them. It's not a negative on society. It's not a negative on anything. It's just an understanding of the great divide we have.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
Building Tenacity: How to Cultivate Grit and Confidence with Liz Hutson of EGH, LLC 4-23-25
Fantastisch. Und wie kultivierst du diese Konzentration, diese Führung, diesen Wunsch, das Einnehmen von etwas und das Nicht-Lassen? Wie kultivierst du das?
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
Building Tenacity: How to Cultivate Grit and Confidence with Liz Hutson of EGH, LLC 4-23-25
That if you're prepared, it's much easier to find it because you're not sort of dawdling all over the place. It's easier to find it if you're prepared and ready to go.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
Building Tenacity: How to Cultivate Grit and Confidence with Liz Hutson of EGH, LLC 4-23-25
So love that. Tell us what else you could do.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
Building Tenacity: How to Cultivate Grit and Confidence with Liz Hutson of EGH, LLC 4-23-25
This is Scott Becker with the Becker Private Equity and Business Podcast. We're thrilled today to visit with one of our most listened to guests, Liz Hudson. Liz is brilliant. She's by nature and background an engineer, then built her own business, now does that and also is a public speaker. And she's got great insights on so many subjects. Today we're going to talk about tenacity.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
Building Tenacity: How to Cultivate Grit and Confidence with Liz Hutson of EGH, LLC 4-23-25
Danke. Und ich liebe es, wenn du mit jemandem bist, du diskutierst, du arbeitest mit ihnen, was auch immer du tust, und du bist so zentriert, dass du den Spot finden kannst, um weiter zu gehen und weiter zu gehen. Und du musst zentriert und engagiert genug sein, dass du das kannst, dass du nicht einfach überall bist. Ich liebe das Konzept auch.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
Building Tenacity: How to Cultivate Grit and Confidence with Liz Hutson of EGH, LLC 4-23-25
I think that's right on. And I think this reality of people are people is Ja, genau. Auch die, die am Anfang am stärksten betrieben sind, müssen diese Aufmerksamkeit periodisch wiederherstellen, wenn sie sich effektiv und nach dem Stopp halten wollen. Ich denke, viele kleine Gewinne sind eine der wichtigsten Wege, um das zu tun, wie du es erwähnt hast, die Selbstvertrauen zu bauen.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
Building Tenacity: How to Cultivate Grit and Confidence with Liz Hutson of EGH, LLC 4-23-25
and growing interested and getting more excited and so forth. But I just absolutely love the topic, Liz. Again, Liz Hudson with the Stand, the Becker Private Equity and Business Podcast, one of the most listened to guests we have and just as good as they get. Thank you very, very much.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
Building Tenacity: How to Cultivate Grit and Confidence with Liz Hutson of EGH, LLC 4-23-25
Sort of drive, grit, etc. Are you born with it? Are you not? If you're not necessarily driven and compelled by stuff to begin with, can you develop it? Liz, let me tee it up and tell us your thoughts here.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
Twitter Poll: Where Should You Allocate Most of Your Equity Side Investments? 4-23-25
This is Scott Becker with the Becker Private Equity and Business Podcast. Today's discussion is based on a poll we did on Twitter, which is increasingly one of my favorite things to do. Where should you allocate most of your equity side investments? And again, this doesn't talk about your allocation of equities to bonds. This simply deals with the equity side. So bear with me here.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
Twitter Poll: Where Should You Allocate Most of Your Equity Side Investments? 4-23-25
with a more direct response, but I love that response too, because it's telling about where the world's at. Individual stock picking is too risky and requires a lot of time and effort. Better risk reward is to own the whole market, which means essentially to go ahead and own the index funds versus individual stocks. Another person says, the vast majority of people should focus on index funds.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
Twitter Poll: Where Should You Allocate Most of Your Equity Side Investments? 4-23-25
If you have a particular insight into a particular industry, individual stocks may be fine, either public or private. And then he also says private equity funds generally tend to be better for the managers than for the actual investors. You know, there are exceptions. Another person says cash and buy ammunition. I don't know if that's a real response. Another person says buy only Bitcoin.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
Twitter Poll: Where Should You Allocate Most of Your Equity Side Investments? 4-23-25
I have outpoured everything else the last eight and a half years. I'll continue to outperform book market. That's somebody who says they're the Bitcoin person. Then finally, a last person, and I don't think this is a serious answer, but maybe a person who is an anti-capitalist says, quote, up my ass, quote.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
Twitter Poll: Where Should You Allocate Most of Your Equity Side Investments? 4-23-25
I don't think that is a serious survey response, but it articulates where some people think about what's going on in the world. In any event, I love these polls to give me a sense of what people think. Unfortunately, sometimes they're probably my bias might show by how I ordered the survey responses.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
Twitter Poll: Where Should You Allocate Most of Your Equity Side Investments? 4-23-25
But I still think it's fascinating to see how many people have bought into the concept that index funds are the way to go. I don't even put mutual funds in there because so few mutual fund managers outperform index. index funds and you pay a high percentage to own mutual funds that I've really gone the index fund route.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
Twitter Poll: Where Should You Allocate Most of Your Equity Side Investments? 4-23-25
In any event, thank you for listening to the Becker Private Equity and Business Podcast. Thank you very, very much.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
Twitter Poll: Where Should You Allocate Most of Your Equity Side Investments? 4-23-25
We gave people four options and one was the overwhelming favorite. And this might also be a bias towards how I ordered the survey as well. Index funds, 57%. Individual stocks, 21%. I'm glad people are getting that message. Private equity funds, 13%. And again, Very complicated because a lot of people don't have access to private equity funds.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
Twitter Poll: Where Should You Allocate Most of Your Equity Side Investments? 4-23-25
And finally, private companies investing in individual companies, 9%. Now, this mirrors my experience. Index funds, I think, is the safest, smartest way to go. The PE funds I've invested have done fine. The private companies, other than the one I founded, have been sort of all over the board.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
Twitter Poll: Where Should You Allocate Most of Your Equity Side Investments? 4-23-25
Some good, some bad, where I particularly knew the business and knew it well, and the managers better than others. Other ones, just a disaster. And individual stocks, I view as gambling a crapshoot. So I think more interesting than that is some of the answers you get from people about this question. And I'll just give you three or four of the responses we got.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
Twitter Poll: Where Should You Allocate Most of Your Equity Side Investments? 4-23-25
And I love this because they're illuminating about where people see things. So a couple of these are sort of negative, of course. The first one says, I don't understand the investment you speak of between my car, my rent, and insurance. My salary is basically 100% taken up every month. Another person says,
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
Cybersecurity, M&A, and the Evolving Cyber Battlefield with Aniket Bhardwaj of Charles River Associates 4-22-25
This is Scott Becker with the Becker Private Equity and Business Podcast. We're thrilled today to be joined by a brilliant leader. We're joined today by Aniket Barjwaj. And Aniket is Vice President and Global Incident Response and Services Leader at Charles River Associates. Charles River Associates is one of the most elite incredibly bright, gifted consulting firms out there.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
Cybersecurity, M&A, and the Evolving Cyber Battlefield with Aniket Bhardwaj of Charles River Associates 4-22-25
Exactly, and that makes sense. So you have to – the incident response, if you are going to pay ransomware, that doesn't do you any good. It might stop the beating for the moment, but you better fix the problem or you're going to be right back at it, maybe with that same threat actor.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
Cybersecurity, M&A, and the Evolving Cyber Battlefield with Aniket Bhardwaj of Charles River Associates 4-22-25
And I take it these extortionists, these ransomware people, it's not like the mafia where you could trust them, that you could trust their word. I take it that's the last thing you could do with criminal activity. And criminal gangs is to trust that they're not going to come at you again, because quite frankly, once you pay, they're going to do so again.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
Cybersecurity, M&A, and the Evolving Cyber Battlefield with Aniket Bhardwaj of Charles River Associates 4-22-25
There's not a code that says, OK, you've paid us. We're not coming after you again. I take it. It doesn't. That's not the world we live in. Let me ask you another question. You know, etiquette. How do you work with clients? How does a maybe give us a couple examples of what you look so you don't have to mention specific names. But how does Charles River in your group?
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
Cybersecurity, M&A, and the Evolving Cyber Battlefield with Aniket Bhardwaj of Charles River Associates 4-22-25
Amazing, fascinating work with clients and maybe some examples.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
Cybersecurity, M&A, and the Evolving Cyber Battlefield with Aniket Bhardwaj of Charles River Associates 4-22-25
Thank you. Fascinating. What a fascinating set of examples. What a crisis situation that you live in that must be stressful. And thank God you take care of your physical and mental health. So it's got to be stressful when a client has this emergency and calls you folks to be ready to respond in a calm, thoughtful way and not have your stress go through the roof.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
Cybersecurity, M&A, and the Evolving Cyber Battlefield with Aniket Bhardwaj of Charles River Associates 4-22-25
Talk for a second about what are you most focused on and excited about this year? When you look at this year and in the next several months, what are you most focused on and excited about?
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
Cybersecurity, M&A, and the Evolving Cyber Battlefield with Aniket Bhardwaj of Charles River Associates 4-22-25
And that's got to be just critical for clients to be one step ahead. I'm going to ask you about a couple other things. You did a master's at Hopkins, Johns Hopkins. Talk about Johns Hopkins a little bit. One of the greatest institutions in the world, your thoughts on that.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
Cybersecurity, M&A, and the Evolving Cyber Battlefield with Aniket Bhardwaj of Charles River Associates 4-22-25
And then second, you were also honored recently and for several years in a row as one of the top cybersecurity professionals in the world. Talk a little bit about that. Is that meaningful to you? How does that feel to be recognized like that? And talk about the Johns Hopkins experience, if you don't mind.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
Cybersecurity, M&A, and the Evolving Cyber Battlefield with Aniket Bhardwaj of Charles River Associates 4-22-25
No, and I love that. The focus particularly on physical and mental health, and you need to take care of those things if you want to take care of everything else. I couldn't agree with that more. Before we get into the heart of the discussion, Let's talk about nation state actors.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
Cybersecurity, M&A, and the Evolving Cyber Battlefield with Aniket Bhardwaj of Charles River Associates 4-22-25
Thank you very much. Again, we're visiting today with Aniket Barjwaj, who helps head up global security, cybersecurity, and incident response at Charles River Associates. He's ranked constantly as one of the top cybersecurity professionals in the world. Tremendous career. And I've got a daughter going to Johns Hopkins. I'm a huge fan of Johns Hopkins.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
Cybersecurity, M&A, and the Evolving Cyber Battlefield with Aniket Bhardwaj of Charles River Associates 4-22-25
Aniket, I can't thank you enough for joining us today on the Becker Private Equity and Business Podcast. We're honored to have you on. Thank you very much for joining us.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
Cybersecurity, M&A, and the Evolving Cyber Battlefield with Aniket Bhardwaj of Charles River Associates 4-22-25
You know, we talk so much in World War II about the Maginot Line, about the need now to be able to build planes and ships and industrial manufacturing. And that all I think is still going to remain important. But how much is cybersecurity and cyber warfare, the future of everything, and how much both from a commercial perspective and a national perspective is
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
Cybersecurity, M&A, and the Evolving Cyber Battlefield with Aniket Bhardwaj of Charles River Associates 4-22-25
We have to be so ready to to protect ourselves and be redundant as well. What's the sense of is this the next battlefield that the cybersecurity nation state actors acting in that regard?
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
Cybersecurity, M&A, and the Evolving Cyber Battlefield with Aniket Bhardwaj of Charles River Associates 4-22-25
No, and the ability to take care of business, because if you're down, you can't take care of business. You can't take care of whatever your business is as well. So it's not just about protecting data. It's about just the core ability to operate, isn't it?
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
Cybersecurity, M&A, and the Evolving Cyber Battlefield with Aniket Bhardwaj of Charles River Associates 4-22-25
We are so thrilled to have Aniket with us today. We're going to talk some today about cybersecurity in the context of M&A and a lot more. Aniket, can you take a moment and introduce yourself and tell the audience a little bit about what you do and about Charles River Associates?
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
Cybersecurity, M&A, and the Evolving Cyber Battlefield with Aniket Bhardwaj of Charles River Associates 4-22-25
Thank you. And you do a ton of work in sort of the mergers and acquisitions ecosystem, a lot with various private equity firms and funds. What are some of the key trends you're watching as people look at cybersecurity in the context of mergers and acquisitions? Absolutely. Great question.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
Cybersecurity, M&A, and the Evolving Cyber Battlefield with Aniket Bhardwaj of Charles River Associates 4-22-25
And take a moment. You mentioned a moment ago insurance. I think there's this perspective in business that the cyber insurance, you need to have it for various different reasons. But if you actually have a real serious cyber attack, it may or may not pay. What's your sense of the cyber insurance world?
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
Cybersecurity, M&A, and the Evolving Cyber Battlefield with Aniket Bhardwaj of Charles River Associates 4-22-25
And do you help people navigate through that, companies navigate through the cyber insurance world?
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
Cybersecurity, M&A, and the Evolving Cyber Battlefield with Aniket Bhardwaj of Charles River Associates 4-22-25
Thank you very, very much. And talk about trends in incident response. I mean, I know prior to an incident, people do tabletop exercises, all kinds of things to figure out how they're going to deal with things when an incident happens. But talk about trends that you're watching in incident response. What are you seeing there?
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
Cybersecurity, M&A, and the Evolving Cyber Battlefield with Aniket Bhardwaj of Charles River Associates 4-22-25
I bet that's right. I mean, clients have spent a lot of time in this up front, probably also have better defenses and they know you well and they're in a better spot when something happens. Talk for a moment about this. When somebody pays for extortion or pays for ransomware, they pay these amounts to stop the extortion or live with the extortion or stop the ransomware.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
Cybersecurity, M&A, and the Evolving Cyber Battlefield with Aniket Bhardwaj of Charles River Associates 4-22-25
How often does the same actor come back against that customer or that client or company and How do you stop when you've paid ransomware or paid extortion payment, having them not come right back at you and doing it again? What do you see there? How does that happen?
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
Following Your Gut Instincts 4-22-25
This is Scott Becker with the Becker Private Equity and Business Podcast. So today's discussion is called Following Your Gut Instincts. So this is at least inspired in part by a tweet we saw yesterday by someone named Du, D-U. So you never know on Twitter who's actually a real person who's not. But I love the tweet, and I thought it's right on so many things.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
Following Your Gut Instincts 4-22-25
My worst choices, when I get excited by an extraneous pull and sort of go down a direction I shouldn't go down or just not a worthwhile direction and a time-wasting direction. Another example is, situations where you could put this into almost anything you want, but the impulsive decision to do a certain thing versus what I know feels right in my gut.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
Following Your Gut Instincts 4-22-25
In any event, I love this concept of following your gut, listen to your gut, and I think it's a perfect metaphor for the stock market. There's economic analysis, optimal analysis, and there's behavioral analysis. You have to hit it somewhere down the middle if you want to be able to live with the ups and downs of the market over time.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
Following Your Gut Instincts 4-22-25
In any event, today's podcast, Follow Your Gut, some of this resonates with some people. It certainly resonates with me and some members of our family and a lot more. Thank you for listening to the Becker Private Equity and Business Podcast.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
Following Your Gut Instincts 4-22-25
Let me tell you what the tweet says, and text me if you want the full tweet in writing, but it's also in the newsletter and LinkedIn today. The right decision is always the one you can't explain. Too much analysis, too much justification, you're forcing it. Live in the city, marry the right person, pursue the idea that allows you to think less.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
Following Your Gut Instincts 4-22-25
Make life easier on yourself by prioritizing emotional pulls over mental pushes. And I think this is so applicable in so many ways. Sometimes you know you're getting into a project or a concept or going down a line that you know doesn't feel right, and you probably should follow your gut instinct.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
Following Your Gut Instincts 4-22-25
So much of investing is this mix of your gut and your caution versus what your broker or advisor says in terms of asset allocation and so forth. And you got to hit this somewhere in between between your gut tells you to do unless your gut is insane and what your broker tells you to do, which is often too aggressive for a lot of us.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
Following Your Gut Instincts 4-22-25
So this concept of trying to hit it down the middle and follow your gut is so important. I know my best decisions in joining my second law firm that I'm still at 30 years later was following my gut to that law firm and feeling comfortable like it would be a good choice. So many of my best decisions are incremental ones, doubling down, doubling down on things that are working.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
7 Stories We Are Following Today 4-22-25
This is Scott Becker with the Becker Private Equity and Business Podcast. These are seven of the stories that we're following today and thank you for listening to the podcast. First, the markets got crushed yesterday but appear set to partially rebound today. The S&P finished down about 2.36% yesterday. It's right now and it's early today up about 1.66% so it
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
7 Stories We Are Following Today 4-22-25
Can't wait for that. In any event, a lot going on in the business world, the trade world, the tariff world, and a lot more. Thank you for listening to the Becker Private Equity and Business Podcast.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
7 Stories We Are Following Today 4-22-25
Two hospital chain stocks also got crushed yesterday, Universal Health Services and Tennant Healthcare. The Universal Health Services downfall was based on concerns about government reimbursement. They do a lot of Medicaid work. We'll see about the Tennant Healthcare one as well.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
7 Stories We Are Following Today 4-22-25
Third, RH, Restoration Hardware, a stock which we follow regularly, dropped about 3.3% yesterday, and it's now down 60% year-to-date. Fourth, Tesla dropped again almost 6% yesterday. It's down 44% year to date. The company reports earnings later today. We'll see how that goes. Fifth, Humana dropped 7% yesterday.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
7 Stories We Are Following Today 4-22-25
This is based on CMS rejecting Humana's appeal to improve its star ratings for Medicare Advantage. That's costing Humana a lot of money. We'll see how this goes. They're going to keep on fighting. Humana is, but they dropped 7% yesterday on the news. Sixth, Carvana, a stock nobody never knows exactly how to judge. A lot of cynicism about it. Dropped 7% yesterday.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
7 Stories We Are Following Today 4-22-25
Finally, seventh, thrilled to see the Becker Private Equity and Business Podcast rank first this month in the Apple Business News category. A lot of people to thank there. I'll start with Jeremy Corr and Chanel Bunger, two of our great producers on the production team. A couple other PSs. Excited to interview Coach Nick Saban at the Becker's Healthcare Conference next up. next week.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
25 Mantras, Concepts, and Business Thoughts 4-22-25
This is Scott Becker with the Becker Private Equity and Business Podcast. Today's discussion, and it's in preparation for a webinar we have coming up, 25 mantras, concepts, and business thoughts. Some of these are personal. Some of these are business. And bear with me as we walk through the 25 of these. I would love somebody to give me feedback on this discussion.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
25 Mantras, Concepts, and Business Thoughts 4-22-25
You also have to save and put enough money away that you're safe regardless of what the long run brings. The third and fourth concepts are more along the lines of personal concepts versus particularly business concepts. One comes from Jerry Seinfeld, which is sort of this concept of Some meditation, some weights and moderate coffee that those three things get them through life.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
25 Mantras, Concepts, and Business Thoughts 4-22-25
More meditation, more weights and more coffee. I can only do so much espresso without driving everybody around me crazy and making myself insane. But the concept of working on some meditation practice, very hard for me. But the concept of staying in shape, very important to me. And I think that's right on. The fourth concept that goes with those concepts is a different concept.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
25 Mantras, Concepts, and Business Thoughts 4-22-25
And as you age, you'll understand this better. But the concept is don't let the old man in. You've got to be very careful in life about slowing down too much. Because as you slow down, it's harder and harder to get your mojo going, to get moving in the right direction. And I don't want to overuse this to cause people stress, to push themselves too hard. But there is this fine line.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
25 Mantras, Concepts, and Business Thoughts 4-22-25
And if you slow down too much mentally or physically... It's very hard to recoup and get back at that speed you want to live at and work at. The fifth concept is really for all professionals or people building a business or doing whatever job they do, is when you first get into whatever you're doing, you have to get great at whatever you're doing.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
25 Mantras, Concepts, and Business Thoughts 4-22-25
So if you're a doctor, you've got to become a great doctor. If you're a lawyer, you've got to become a great lawyer. Same thing with accountants. Same thing with any kind of professional. Then at some point, you move from being great at that profession to to practicing leadership and practicing management and growth in that profession.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
25 Mantras, Concepts, and Business Thoughts 4-22-25
But the starting point is really understanding and being great at your profession or job. So those are the first five points. Now I'll move to six to 10. The sixth point is, really understand your business and the landscape that it's in, and then you're trying to always apply things in that context.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
25 Mantras, Concepts, and Business Thoughts 4-22-25
So if you're a lawyer and you're in a sector, you really want to understand the business sector you're in, then apply law in that context. And I think this goes for very many things, is really trying to understand the landscape that you work in and that you live in. The seventh concept is
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
25 Mantras, Concepts, and Business Thoughts 4-22-25
that is the economy weakens, it's important that you prioritize your spending as to what you think is really critical, that you really keep your debt under control, that you understand your asset allocation and maintain your emergency funds. The eighth concept is a different one, again, a wife concept, a personal concept, that injuries are better than illness.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
25 Mantras, Concepts, and Business Thoughts 4-22-25
If you're the first one or two people to text me with feedback in this and suggestions for changes or edits, it's 773-766-5322. I will send you a 100-hour Amazon gift certificate. Thank you for listening. So the first concept, we talk about a business often.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
25 Mantras, Concepts, and Business Thoughts 4-22-25
If you have an injury, you're gonna know somebody else who has a horrible illness So do your best not to whine or complain too much about the injury. I've had over the last year, a couple of eye surgeries, a couple of knee surgeries. And by God, I am fortunate that those are injuries versus horrible life threatening illnesses and be thankful for the injuries, not the illnesses.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
25 Mantras, Concepts, and Business Thoughts 4-22-25
I know it's a hard way to look at it. Ninth concept is whether you're hiring a lawyer, a painter, anybody you're working with, Always ask for an estimate before you start a project. Again, a life lesson learned over and over and over again. The 10th concept, and we talk about this all the time, That it's one thing to get wealthy or get successful.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
25 Mantras, Concepts, and Business Thoughts 4-22-25
It's another thing once you climb that mountain to stay successful, it takes tremendous drive. Or to stay wealthy, it takes tremendous discipline. Never lose sight of those two concepts, both extremely important. Getting wealthy, climbing the mountain, God bless. But staying wealthy, not screwing it up, that takes tremendous discipline and willpower. And the same with so many things.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
25 Mantras, Concepts, and Business Thoughts 4-22-25
Let me, that's six to 10. Let me take a pause and give you 11 to 15. 11, and this goes to assets. Allocation of your assets is critical. What you have in equity, what you have in debt, what you have in cash. You know, if you've been investing for a long time, you doubtless have been through lots of swings.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
25 Mantras, Concepts, and Business Thoughts 4-22-25
My punch in the gut came a long time ago when everything in equities and the markets just got tanked. And of course, that caused me to do a ton of studying as to what allocation was right for me. Now, most financial advisors push people into more aggressive allocations. And my own take is you want to live with an allocation that you could live with and you don't have to live.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
25 Mantras, Concepts, and Business Thoughts 4-22-25
You don't have to listen to anybody's take on, oh, my God, you have 80 percent of your assets in equity, 70 percent in equities. You have to have the amount of equities you need to keep up with inflation to grow. But at the same time, be able to assess risk so that if it goes down, if the equities are really struggling, you can live and not panic. So that's allocation is critical.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
25 Mantras, Concepts, and Business Thoughts 4-22-25
Twelfth concept is don't quit your job during a recession. Everybody at some point hates their job. If you're in a recession, hang on tight. The best thing you'd have during a recession is a paycheck. The next best thing is a business that generates money or lots of assets. But don't quit your job during a recession.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
25 Mantras, Concepts, and Business Thoughts 4-22-25
Third concept is every business meeting or meeting of any sort that you're involved in, show up earlier or right on time. And then another caveat is keep those meetings as short as possible. We're the biggest fan of that. The 14th concept, and I think this is true, 80% of success is showing up every day on time and doing what you're supposed to do.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
25 Mantras, Concepts, and Business Thoughts 4-22-25
Whenever you're on the course of a business, if you have to choose to double down on that business if it's going well, stay the course if it's going fine, or abandon it if you shouldn't keep on pursuing it. And this abandoning something is a very hard choice sometimes because periodically you get positive feedback, you get dopamine fixes. And so you want to keep going with it.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
25 Mantras, Concepts, and Business Thoughts 4-22-25
The rest is bright drive and personal skills, but constantly showing up on time. 15th concept, In anything you do, constant and regular communication is everything. And you got to constantly focus on whether it's with clients, with people, with whatever you're doing, the more they know this is where we're at, this is where we're going, this is what we're trying to do, the better off you are.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
25 Mantras, Concepts, and Business Thoughts 4-22-25
Not to put a knock on President Trump, but his communication about these trade wars is awful. So it leaves a lot of us frantic and panicked. Similarly, if you're a leader of a company, a leader of anything, the more you communicate where you're going, how you're getting there, the better off you are. So those are concepts 11 to 15. Let me give you 16 to 20. 16 to 20.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
25 Mantras, Concepts, and Business Thoughts 4-22-25
There's this concept about how you do anything is how you do everything. And I think there's truth to this and there's not truth to that. I'm a believer that you got to figure out the few things in life that you want to be great at. And the other things that you do, you don't have to kill with 100% intensity.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
25 Mantras, Concepts, and Business Thoughts 4-22-25
There's almost nothing worse than the person who's great in business, who then you're playing some sport with and also has to kill you in the sport too. They can't help themselves. I think you have to pick and choose. Here's where you're going to be great. Here's where you're not going to be great.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
25 Mantras, Concepts, and Business Thoughts 4-22-25
Some things could be hobbies, some could be businesses, and really finding out what you do and what you love doing. The 17th concept, I think this is so right on. Life is a game. It's not only about winning. It's also about having fun while playing. You've got to enjoy what you're doing and view it that way. And if you don't, it gets very old very quickly and a real prescription for burnout.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
25 Mantras, Concepts, and Business Thoughts 4-22-25
18, marketing versus sales. I'm a big believer that marketing without a sales team or a sales effort is a huge waste of money. In the ideal world, these things work together. If I got to do one versus the other, we're building a product and building a sales team, then a marketing team. But marketing versus sales, two very distinct things. And I see many people, marketing is easy, sales is hard.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
25 Mantras, Concepts, and Business Thoughts 4-22-25
So many people off-put to marketing versus sales, but sales is what pays the bills. 19th, and this isn't always the case, but don't upset the apple cart when it doesn't need to be upset. When you don't need to upset the apple cart, don't do it. Just relax. You don't need conflict every place. This is not intended to be a message to President Trump, but you don't need conflict every place you go.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
25 Mantras, Concepts, and Business Thoughts 4-22-25
It's a horrible way to go through life. It's a horrible way to do business. It's a horrible way to do families. 20th, again,
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
25 Mantras, Concepts, and Business Thoughts 4-22-25
the clearest way to give value to customers is going to wake up in the morning figure out how can i do something for that customer where can i connect them where can i help them how do i make them pleased you know what can we do for them i think that's sort of what the clearest way to give great value to customers is waking up every day thinking this thinking how can we take care of customers and you're likely to excel in what you're doing so that's concept 16 to 20.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
25 Mantras, Concepts, and Business Thoughts 4-22-25
I'm going to give you at least five more, particularly if my producer will sit with me for another five or so, and if you're not too bored. I can't tell if you're bored because it's a podcast, but tell me by text if you're bored or hating this or liking it, 773-766-5322.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
25 Mantras, Concepts, and Business Thoughts 4-22-25
You're listening again to the Becker Private Equity Podcast, which this week is the top-ranked podcast on the Apple Business News Rankings. The 21st to 25, no new ideas. There's all this concept. There's no bad ideas and that may be true, but there are bad ideas, but there is also this concept that whenever business you're in, there's execution time versus idea time.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
25 Mantras, Concepts, and Business Thoughts 4-22-25
And the two of those often have to be different. There's a certain point in the business cycle where you have to execute on what you're doing. And there's nothing worse than constantly somebody who's constantly coming to you with ideas, but not executing execution over ideas. 22nd digging ditches.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
25 Mantras, Concepts, and Business Thoughts 4-22-25
But at the end of the day, when you realize there's not that much potential or it's going to be so hard to get to that potential, you got to make that decision to let it go. The easier decisions are when things are going well, to pour the coals to it and double down on it. I love that. Or it's going fine. You keep on doing it. You keep on moving along. It's doing fine. It's making some money.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
25 Mantras, Concepts, and Business Thoughts 4-22-25
This is a concept that goes with the flywheel concept and one that I use often, that if you want to dig, that if you want it to be successful at anything, you have to dig a lot of ditches, put in a lot of grunt work till you start to really figure it out and figure out how the ditches will start digging themselves. You have to get enough momentum going to really make this work.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
25 Mantras, Concepts, and Business Thoughts 4-22-25
And that's something that we're a believer in. We use the phrase, you got to dig 10 ditches before they start digging themselves. And the real concept is you really got to get going To a certain extent, there's enough momentum that things will start moving on their own, not just with your personal effort and drive. The 23rd concept, and again, this is the one that's way overstated.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
25 Mantras, Concepts, and Business Thoughts 4-22-25
People often say failure is good. Well, failure is not good. Failure is only good if you're actually learning from that failure and you're not putting so much risk into that failure that it destroys what you're doing entirely. So failure is good within reason. 24th. There's this concept that culture is everything. And I can tell you in my perspective, culture is important. It really is.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
25 Mantras, Concepts, and Business Thoughts 4-22-25
But it's culture plus strategy plus having the right talent and the right people. I could have a beautiful culture, but if I'm surrounded by all people that are morons, it doesn't matter how nice the culture is, we're not going anyplace. I could have culture, strategy, bright people, disciplined people, hardworking people. All those things are part of it.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
25 Mantras, Concepts, and Business Thoughts 4-22-25
And you might say, well, that all defines culture, but I think it's deeper than that. Culture plus strategy plus great people and a great team and ultimately finding customer product fit is really important too.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
25 Mantras, Concepts, and Business Thoughts 4-22-25
25th concept that i like some of these of course have come up with some different readings and stuff like that over time is cautious when right when you're right be cautious don't over understand what you've done great i do believe in doubling down on where things going right and then when things go wrong be curious as to why they went wrong and could you fix them so those are so far 25 of the concepts mantras and thoughts that we're working with you know if you're if you like this
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
25 Mantras, Concepts, and Business Thoughts 4-22-25
Please text me. We'll give you the other 10 that are on our list at some point. But again, 773-766-5322. If you send me a text at that number in your first two to send me comments and texts and thoughts on this, Would love to hear your comments and thoughts. I'll send you a $100 Amazon gift certificate, and we'll get it to two people that listen and work through this.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
25 Mantras, Concepts, and Business Thoughts 4-22-25
Thank you for listening to the Becker Private Equity Business Podcast, and thank you to the remarkable Chanel Bunger for her help every day as the best producer in the world. Thank you very much.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
25 Mantras, Concepts, and Business Thoughts 4-22-25
It's not a loser, not a huge winner, but fine. You stay the course. The second concept we talk about is a business investment concept, and I love this as well, is save and protect yourself like a pessimist and invest like an optimist. So even though... You want to invest to win for the long run.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
Why We Don’t Time the Markets: Part 271.. 4-22-25
This is Scott Becker with the Becker Private Equity and Business Podcast. Today's discussion is why we don't time the markets, part 271. So we always talk about not timing the markets. I joke about this being episode 271 on this series about not timing the market. But let me tell you a quick story. So
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
Why We Don’t Time the Markets: Part 271.. 4-22-25
that while we were talking about these numbers and investments, I am an avid believer that you don't time the market, that you can't guess. People use this language, oh, it's on discount at 20%. Oh, it's on discount at 10%. If you were at Filene's Basement or Bloomingdale's or wherever you shop, that if you could buy something with 20% off, you would do it.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
Why We Don’t Time the Markets: Part 271.. 4-22-25
The reality is we never know what's really off and what's not. I'm a much bigger fan of not timing the market, dollar cost averaging, and so forth and so on. But I can tell you, it's this potential sort of joking bet as to where the market would be in a month at the end of April when I said 6,200. Right now, one, I feel very wrong. Two, I feel very validated in my concept
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
Why We Don’t Time the Markets: Part 271.. 4-22-25
that I don't try and time the market. So the good, the bad, and the ugly, don't time the market. While we don't time the market, episode 271 or whatever number I said, it's not a real number, but we always talk about not timing the market. And again, I was wrong on my guess as to where the S&P would be. I was right on not timing the market. So it is what it is. One for two is not bad.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
Why We Don’t Time the Markets: Part 271.. 4-22-25
Thank you for listening to the Becker Private Equity and Business Podcast. I know my colleagues that have set up this pool as to where the market would be at the end of the month are enjoying how wrong I was, but it is what it is. Thank you for listening.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
Why We Don’t Time the Markets: Part 271.. 4-22-25
About a month ago, when this trade war stuff starts heating up, there's a text thread, you know, one person is very skeptical of the trade war. The rest of us are trying to figure it out and so forth. And one of the things that comes up is who's going to bet on where the S&P is going to be at the end of April? So various ones of us put in different potential numbers
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
Why We Don’t Time the Markets: Part 271.. 4-22-25
I don't want to recall my number because I think I'm going to be way, way off. But it was an optimistic number and how things would bounce back once this trade war got settled out a little bit. And this is, again, why we don't time the market. Now, I'm going to keep my guesstimate confidential as to what I was guessing. I think it was 6200. And my colleagues will correct me or let me know.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
Why We Don’t Time the Markets: Part 271.. 4-22-25
if I'm totally wrong or totally right. But as I look at this today, we'll release this April 22nd, but as I look at it on April 21st, the S&P is at 5,100 and down another 3.4% today. So my guesstimate of 6,200, which I won't point out loud, seems very, very off. Now, the only credit I'll give myself is,
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
Finding Opportunity in Uncertain Markets: Insights from Rick Kes of RSM 4-24-25
Und ich finde es so interessant, weil das, was du sagst, zusammenfasst mit einigen der Diskussionen, die wir hatten. Ich war gerade auf einem Deal-Ausruf, bei dem der Privat-Equity-Fund nicht mehr so aufgeregt war, um Deale zu übernehmen.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
Finding Opportunity in Uncertain Markets: Insights from Rick Kes of RSM 4-24-25
Especially mid-sized deals, not large at the farm deals, but mid-sized deals and trying to grow EBITDA in a tough environment and find ways to do so when organic is not easy. So I think you're right. There are some glimmers of hope out there and there are people wanting to put money to work. There's an incredible amount of...
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
Finding Opportunity in Uncertain Markets: Insights from Rick Kes of RSM 4-24-25
Deals that are teed up to go to market and an insane amount of money to be put to work. And a little bit of caution out there as to getting those two sides to meet because of the uncertainty in the environment and everything else.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
Finding Opportunity in Uncertain Markets: Insights from Rick Kes of RSM 4-24-25
Let me ask you a question there. I was on a podcast earlier today with somebody who's in the med spa business. Und sie sagten, Med-Spa, Plastik-Schutz, Geld-Pay. Aber auch so fühlen sie sich ein wenig rezessionärer, weil es eine der Luxus- und eine der Dinge ist, auf die die Leute Geld sparen wollen, egal ob es um die Wirtschaft geht, ohne dass es so schlecht wird.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
Finding Opportunity in Uncertain Markets: Insights from Rick Kes of RSM 4-24-25
This is Scott Becker with the Becker Private Equity Podcast. We're thrilled today to be joined by one of our most listened to guests, Rick Kess from RSM. Rick, the private equity market, there's an article that kicks off in the Wall Street Journal today saying that it was in a challenging spot prior to the trade wars in tariffs. Now it feels like somebody going under the knife.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
Finding Opportunity in Uncertain Markets: Insights from Rick Kes of RSM 4-24-25
Die Leute wollen ihre Augen machen, sie wollen das, sie wollen das. Und auch das Med-Spa-Stuff ist immer noch sehr populär. Ist da ein Gefühl für das, ob es rezessionärer ist oder nicht?
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
Finding Opportunity in Uncertain Markets: Insights from Rick Kes of RSM 4-24-25
a lot of uncertainty in the air, a lot of pauses going on, but notwithstanding the pauses, there's still a lot of pent-up interest in doing deals, because aside from everything else, there's a whole industry that's been built around doing deals and investing and trying to sell and to buy and to resell and grow and so forth.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
Finding Opportunity in Uncertain Markets: Insights from Rick Kes of RSM 4-24-25
So there's still a lot of pent-up interest in just trying to find that spot where you could find the right... where you can find agreement on pricing with a lot of uncertainty.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
Finding Opportunity in Uncertain Markets: Insights from Rick Kes of RSM 4-24-25
Und nur eine Frage zu dem. Einige davon sind falsche Komfort, andere sind echte Komfort. Die Privat-Equity-Funds sollen sich jedes Quartal und so weiter mit Investoren auswerten, aber sie sind keine echten Zahlen, weil sie nicht verkauft wurden.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
Finding Opportunity in Uncertain Markets: Insights from Rick Kes of RSM 4-24-25
In manchen Fällen ist es sehr schwer, als Privat-Equity-Investor zu beurteilen, wo dein Kapital wirklich ist, im Vergleich zu den öffentlichen Märkten, wo du es jeden Tag siehst. Und ich glaube, es gibt zumindest ein bisschen Komfort, wenn man weiß, dass es privat gehalten wird, dass es nicht getradet wird, dass es nicht wirklich jeden Tag wert ist. So that you can breathe while you wait and hope.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
Finding Opportunity in Uncertain Markets: Insights from Rick Kes of RSM 4-24-25
But it is illiquid. And so you're sort of stuck to that extent. But no, I think your point is so well taken, Rick, is do they prove that, hey, this ends up being a good asset class in a time of uncertainty? You know, how does that play through?
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
Finding Opportunity in Uncertain Markets: Insights from Rick Kes of RSM 4-24-25
Nun, ich sage dir, viele Portfolios werden nächstes Jahr unter den Knopf gehen. Wir sind Theresa und Nemo und deshalb sind wir zu Shopify gewechselt.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
Finding Opportunity in Uncertain Markets: Insights from Rick Kes of RSM 4-24-25
Give us some good news. Tell us your thoughts on where the private equity deal market is going next. the fundraising market. Tell us what you're seeing and give us something uplifting and inspiring, notwithstanding the Wall Street Journal article, notwithstanding the markets today. Give us some good news. Can we ask you to do that, Rick?
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
11 Business News Stories We Are Following Today 4-24-25
This is Scott Becker with the Becker Private Equity and Business Podcast. These are 11 stories that were found today, and thank you for listening to the Becker Private Equity and Business Podcast. First, on the negative news side, top strategist at Jefferies says the best days for U.S. stocks are behind them. That's a bit of a depressing article, and he makes some good points.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
11 Business News Stories We Are Following Today 4-24-25
We own directly some shares in Coca-Cola that came out of my various years of watching what Warren Buffett's investing in and trying to follow him. I wouldn't have better if I followed him my entire life. Nice. I'm just thrilled to interview Coach Nick Saban Monday at the Becker's Healthcare Conference.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
11 Business News Stories We Are Following Today 4-24-25
Also, Holly Buckley will be interviewing Lance Armstrong at the McGuire Woods Healthcare Private Equity Conference. Lots of exciting stuff going on. $10. Tesla jumped the last two days, but remains down nearly 40% year to date. And finally, 11th, 30% of U.S. adults, 42% of households own no equities at all. I think that's a fascinating stat for trying to understand this great divide in America.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
11 Business News Stories We Are Following Today 4-24-25
Just fascinating from my perspective, that huge divide that we have. A couple of PSs. We have a webinar shortly, May 7th, based on the book, The Entrepreneur's Edge, where I'll go through 25 questions. Mantras, concepts, thoughts. We hope you enjoy that. Just so many interesting things going on. Thank you for listening to the Becker Private Equity and Business Podcast. Thank you very, very much.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
11 Business News Stories We Are Following Today 4-24-25
I don't think it's probably true, but he does make some good points. It's really interesting. Second, the markets jumped the last two days. Just a welcome sign of good news for investors. Great to see that. Third, earlier this morning, futures pointed down on uncertainty rate tariffs and negotiations, but now they're pointing up.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
11 Business News Stories We Are Following Today 4-24-25
The markets are pointing up today, midday, and that's fantastic news. IBM is down 7% early today based on the losses of federal government contracts. There is no parties that are going to be happier to see Elon Musk focus more on Tesla than all these different companies, consulting firms that had huge federal contracts.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
11 Business News Stories We Are Following Today 4-24-25
Fifth, Chipotle, which lost Brian Nicole as their CEO, is down about 20% year-to-date and down premarket. Meanwhile, Starbucks is tracking about at the S&P. That's where Brian Nicole went to, where he took the leadership role. They're down 10% year to date. Sixth, Intel jumped yesterday on news of job cuts. It went up about 6%, 5.5%. It's up a few percent year to date.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
11 Business News Stories We Are Following Today 4-24-25
NVIDIA, the biggest winner in the chip sector, is down 23% year to date so far. Pepsi lowered its full-year earnings expectations Thursday, citing increased costs from tariffs and a pullback in consumer spending. Pepsi is down about 6.5% year-to-date. Coca-Cola, in contrast, is up 70% year-to-date.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
Don’t Fear the Judgment of Others 4-24-25
This is Scott Becker with the Becker Private Equity and Business Podcast. Today's discussion comes out of a quote from an author, Sahil Bloom. And I've had a chance to read Sahil Bloom's book, at least one of them. Very smart person. But he had a particular quote that I just loved. And I thought that quote was right on in so many ways. So here's where the quote goes.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
Don’t Fear the Judgment of Others 4-24-25
That's why I love this concept of, again, let me quote the first part of it. Stop fearing the judgment of people who aren't even thinking about you. You know, if I send out a sales email to somebody. and they don't respond, they don't like it, they're not really interested, life goes on. At the end of the day, this is okay.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
Don’t Fear the Judgment of Others 4-24-25
If I send out a request to help somebody on something, or if I send out a proposal for somebody to ask me to give a talk, and they don't like the price, they don't like what I'm doing, they're not interested, This is okay. Don't fear the judgment of it. If I'm on the golf course, I hit a horrendous shot. It's not okay. No, I'm just kidding. It's okay too.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
Don’t Fear the Judgment of Others 4-24-25
It doesn't really matter in the big scheme of things. And what matters is your family's okay. You're okay. You're plugging forward. You're moving along. You're taking care of your mental and physical health. It is what it is. But the fear so much, the judgment of other people. I remember when I first started building a legal practice, people would laugh and scoff at me.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
Don’t Fear the Judgment of Others 4-24-25
And I tell this story to every young person who's trying to build something. The first couple of times you try and build something, you get all this negativity from people of sort of like, oh, they laugh at you. A person used to say to me of my original newsletter. Oh, I use it for toilet paper.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
Don’t Fear the Judgment of Others 4-24-25
What happens is it's not until you do it 10 times, 15 times, 20 times that they move from laughing at you to, oh, my God, they respect the fact that you're trying to be a serious professional.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
Don’t Fear the Judgment of Others 4-24-25
So, again, I think at the end of the day, I love this tee-off point from Sahil Bloom, this concept of stop fearing the judgment of people who aren't even thinking about you, even if they are thinking about you. Who cares? Move forward. Make your life. The sooner you really go after it, the sooner you keep on doing things that are positive and productive,
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
Don’t Fear the Judgment of Others 4-24-25
the sooner that everybody starts to respect, oh, and I saw this very vividly. I see this with young professionals, moves from being like, oh, the person's trying too hard, to that person's a serious professional. I just love when I see that evolution in people. We've all seen it in ourselves, I think, and it is what it is, but I love this concept. Don't fear the reaper.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
Don’t Fear the Judgment of Others 4-24-25
Stop fearing the judgment of people who aren't even thinking about you. Nobody is thinking about you. Nobody cares. They're too busy thinking about themselves. The thing you've always wanted to do, go do it. Go do it now. It's this concept, I think, appeals to me in so many different ways. It's an overstatement that no one's thinking about you. Nobody cares about you.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
Don’t Fear the Judgment of Others 4-24-25
Don't fear the judgment of people who aren't even thinking about you. Go get them. Thank you for listening to the Becker Private Equity and Business Podcast. Thank you very, very much.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
Don’t Fear the Judgment of Others 4-24-25
But the point being, so many people that are scared to really move forward, scared to make that call, scared to put out that effort to try and get a job, scared to network. I see so many people who are young looking for a job by sending out
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
Don’t Fear the Judgment of Others 4-24-25
thousands of applications almost electronically where the hit rate is so low versus picking up the phone, emailing somebody directly, talking to somebody directly, trying to connect directly. And I just think people need to sort of stop fearing the judgment of people or stop fearing that they're going to get rejected. This rejection is a part of life.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
Don’t Fear the Judgment of Others 4-24-25
And I don't know if we're all becoming soft or scared to be rejected. I get rejected every single day. I can't even remember telling you about how many rejections I got at prom. No, I'm just kidding about that. I'm just kidding. I didn't get rejected that many times trying to find a prom date.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
Don’t Fear the Judgment of Others 4-24-25
But the idea of having a thick skin and getting rejected and living with rejection is a part of growing up and a part of resilience. And the overfearing of every encounter, every microaggression, every issue is It is so problematic. It's such a challenge. It's such a paralysis for people that they've got to move past that.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
Learn to Love Your 90 Percenters 4-26-25
This is Scott Becker with the Becker Private Equity and Business Podcast. Today's discussion is learn to love your 90 percenters. So that's the title. Learn to love your 90 percenters. So here's what I find. In every walk of life, there are people that are doing a very good job. They're doing a very good job. And you have a choice with those people.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
Learn to Love Your 90 Percenters 4-26-25
And you better do it in the context of appreciating all the great stuff that they do. And it's not the artificiality of the sandwich approach, something nice on the front end, something negative in the middle, and then nice in the back end. You know, I've been through discussions with people with the method of coaching or teaching, and I'm not a fan of it. It's more that you better overall.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
Learn to Love Your 90 Percenters 4-26-25
We are Theresa and Nemo and that's why we switched to Shopify.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
Learn to Love Your 90 Percenters 4-26-25
Do you appreciate the heck out of them for what they're doing that's 90, 90% great? Or do you focus on that 7% to 10% that you'd like to be done somewhat differently? And my belief is that you almost always are going to focus on 98% and that 90 to 93% that's going great and just appreciate and love those people and be grateful and thankful, even if imperfect and not always perfect.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
Learn to Love Your 90 Percenters 4-26-25
And if you make the mistake of focusing on the 7 to 10% that's not going well, then you often discourage and disenfranchise those great people that are largely doing what the organization and institution wants you to do. If you have a friend that's 90% a great friend, they're probably a great friend.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
Learn to Love Your 90 Percenters 4-26-25
You don't get too mad at them that they missed dinner with you six months ago for something or they made plans with other people, they did this or that. You better love the friend. And it's the same thing with the people you work with. You better love the 90%ers, the 93%ers. Life's too short to not appreciate the heck out of those people that are doing overall great, great stuff.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
Learn to Love Your 90 Percenters 4-26-25
And it doesn't mean that you can't teach or talk about the 7% to 10%. You can, especially if you've got great people and they can excel and be the total leaders of the organization wherever they are or just get better themselves. You can't talk about that other percentage, but you better be careful about how you do so.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
6 Big-Name Stocks That Got Crushed This Year 4-26-25
This is Scott Becker with the Becker Private Equity and Business Podcast. These are six stocks that have plunged over the last year in big name stocks, at least relatively big name stocks. And we're not going to tell a lot of story behind them, but this will give you six stocks that have just really had a tough last 52 weeks.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
6 Big-Name Stocks That Got Crushed This Year 4-26-25
But again, those are six big names, just a couple of big names amongst them, Moderna, American Eagle Outfitters, Jeep, Oatly, Estee Lauder, Acadia Healthcare, that have just got crushed over the last year. Now, the good news is I don't own any of these names directly. And that's not because I'm some kind of genius. As we express regularly,
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
6 Big-Name Stocks That Got Crushed This Year 4-26-25
I do own Astero Labs directly, which I think is in the top number of stocks that are down 60% this year, year to date. So even doing worse than these stocks. So there's plenty of that. But the point is, these are six stocks getting crushed. I'm not an investor in them. I don't know that you should be either, but that's for other people to decide and talk about.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
6 Big-Name Stocks That Got Crushed This Year 4-26-25
Thank you for listening to the Becker Private Equity and Business Podcast. Thank you very, very much.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
6 Big-Name Stocks That Got Crushed This Year 4-26-25
First is the vaccine maker, Moderna, which is down about 74% over the last year, just having a horrible time. Second is Acadia Healthcare, which keeps on seeming to get in trouble from either the government or lawyers and other types of things. They're down about 71% over the last year. Third is Stellantis Jeep. And again, my Jeep Cherokee, which I love, which is about a 21 model.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
6 Big-Name Stocks That Got Crushed This Year 4-26-25
Recently, it had its battery replaced, but overall, I love the Jeep Cherokee. It's their second best-selling car of all time. The moronic CEO at Stellantis Jeep got rid of that in their line to go, you know, to diverge the line some, the Compass being their lower-end vehicle, the Grand Cherokee being their higher-end vehicle, but really screwed the pooch.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
6 Big-Name Stocks That Got Crushed This Year 4-26-25
They're down almost 63% over the last year. Estee Lauder, the makeup company, and the same thing is one of our closest family friends works at Estee Lauder, but they're down 61% the last year. American Eagle Outfitters, and I don't know anybody that shops there anymore. The Bloom is off the rose at AEO, down 52% over the last year. And finally, Oatly.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
6 Big-Name Stocks That Got Crushed This Year 4-26-25
The oat milk people, I almost feel like somebody's oat milk's gone through its greatest phase in the greatness of the oat milk era. Somebody's got to make oat milk great again, but Oatly's down 40% over the last year. And again, really another example of a stock that is struggling and not where people would like it to be.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
Building Prosper Trading Academy, Navigating Market Volatility & Finding Purpose Through Loss with Scott Bauer 4-21-25
So if you look for Prosper Trading, we are the real deal. We are here based in Chicago. We are real traders who have been in the trenches, who have done this. And we are live in the markets, 8.30 to 3 o'clock Central Time, every single day while the markets are open, with our students, just guiding them along the way.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
Building Prosper Trading Academy, Navigating Market Volatility & Finding Purpose Through Loss with Scott Bauer 4-21-25
Fantastic. Scott, I'm going to touch on a subject. And obviously, you'll let us know if you want to cover this in the podcast or not. I'll tee us up and you'll figure out if you're comfortable talking or not. Scott Bauer, für die Leute, die das nicht wissen, hat seine Frau, Lori, vor Jahren verloren. Sie hat seitdem zwei Dinge unglaublich gut gemacht.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
Building Prosper Trading Academy, Navigating Market Volatility & Finding Purpose Through Loss with Scott Bauer 4-21-25
Sie hat eine Charite gegründet in ihrer Ehre und ich würde gerne darüber sprechen. Sie hat auch eine Familie wiedergebaut, sich verheiratet und so weiter. Und sie hat einen liebenden, wundervollen Job dort auch gemacht. Scott, kannst du uns über den Charitable Effort und deine Inspiration sprechen? Und bist du sich zufrieden damit?
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
Building Prosper Trading Academy, Navigating Market Volatility & Finding Purpose Through Loss with Scott Bauer 4-21-25
Absolut und ja. Weil das bin ich. Das ist Teil meines Lebens. So wie du es erwähnt hast, Scott, damals, es war eigentlich genau an der Zeit, als ich von Goldman Sachs verabschiedet wurde, ist meine Frau, Lori, 43 Jahre alt, plötzlich weggeflogen. No prior conditions of anything. She had a sudden heart arrhythmia that obviously shocked our family, shocked friends, the community.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
Building Prosper Trading Academy, Navigating Market Volatility & Finding Purpose Through Loss with Scott Bauer 4-21-25
So we built up a company called Prosper Trading Academy, where myself and other professional traders and educators work with students all over the world, live in the markets during market hours, teaching them what to look for, how to put trades on, risk management, everything. And we've got about 17,000 active clients right now. And we trade everything from stocks to options to futures.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
Building Prosper Trading Academy, Navigating Market Volatility & Finding Purpose Through Loss with Scott Bauer 4-21-25
I had three boys at the time. They were 16, 14 and 12. We all saw live what happened and thought that our world was over. Das, was wirklich von dem heraus kam, ist wirklich eine Geschichte von turning lemons into lemonade. Durch unseren Prozess mit diesem Thema und Grief. Mein Fokus war wirklich nur, um Hilfe für meine Kinder zu bekommen.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
Building Prosper Trading Academy, Navigating Market Volatility & Finding Purpose Through Loss with Scott Bauer 4-21-25
Jedes Mal, wo ich geschaut habe, fand ich nichts, das wirklich auf Griechen konzentriert war. Natürlich, sie könnten einen Therapeuten finden, um ihnen zu helfen, aber nichts, das wirklich auf Griechen konzentriert war. Also, zwischen mir selbst, meiner Familie und kleinen Freunden haben wir die Lori Bauer Foundation für Sudden Verlust gebaut. Und wir wussten damals nicht, was es tun würde.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
Building Prosper Trading Academy, Navigating Market Volatility & Finding Purpose Through Loss with Scott Bauer 4-21-25
Wir wussten nur, dass wir Kinder helfen wollten. Und seitdem, das war 2011, 14 Jahre später, haben wir mehrere Griechenzentren in der Chicago-Region. Wir haben literally geholfen. Tens von Tausenden von schmerzhaften Kindern. Und dieser Schmerz kommt nicht nur aus dem Verlust eines Eltern oder einer Schwester. Es ist Verlust, Verabschiedung, Verabschiedung, Inkarzierung.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
Building Prosper Trading Academy, Navigating Market Volatility & Finding Purpose Through Loss with Scott Bauer 4-21-25
Und die Bedürfnisse für das, was wir bieten, würdest du nicht glauben, ist einfach unendlich. Es ist unendlich. Und wir sind froh genug gewesen, dass wir, genau wie bei der Geschäftsseite, wo ich diesen Nisch von dem, was die Leute wollten, gefüllt habe, haben wir diesen Verlust gefüllt, diesen wirklich großen Verlust, um Kindern Hilfe zu bekommen.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
Building Prosper Trading Academy, Navigating Market Volatility & Finding Purpose Through Loss with Scott Bauer 4-21-25
We help kids ages 2 to 20, one-on-one therapy, group sessions. We also underwrite some children's grief camps, where over the summers, kids that are in the same situation can get together, have a few days or a week and just be able to be kids and not have to deal with the pressures that have been thrown at them. And it's something that I am really proud of. My kids have embraced.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
Building Prosper Trading Academy, Navigating Market Volatility & Finding Purpose Through Loss with Scott Bauer 4-21-25
My kids are now 30, 28 and 26. They have embraced the foundation, obviously not for the reason that it was started, but for what it does. They are very active in it. And then when I say that this was a story of turning lemons into lemonade, given the situation here, I could have just gone on and just kind of lived my life doing what I wanted to do. And I was unbelievably fortunate.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
Building Prosper Trading Academy, Navigating Market Volatility & Finding Purpose Through Loss with Scott Bauer 4-21-25
I mean, you talk about being in the 1%. I was in the 1% because of what happened to me. Unbelievably fortunate to meet the most wonderful person ever. in the world who is my current wife amy and her three kids and we we could actually we could actually create a movie or write a book on how to build a blended family and how things just can go from a catastrophic situation
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
Building Prosper Trading Academy, Navigating Market Volatility & Finding Purpose Through Loss with Scott Bauer 4-21-25
zu einem Leben, das unglaublich ist. Ich bin wirklich, wirklich glücklich. Meine Kinder sind unglaublich glücklich. Ich fühle mich genauso wie Amy. Ich fühle mich genauso wie ihre Kinder. Es ist wirklich das eine Prozent, weil man solche Geschichten nicht hört.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
Building Prosper Trading Academy, Navigating Market Volatility & Finding Purpose Through Loss with Scott Bauer 4-21-25
No, it's really a wonderful thing. We've watched you, we admire it. Again, thank you, Scott Bauer, Prosper Trading Academy, for joining us today on the Becker Private Equity and Business Podcast. What a great pleasure to visit with you. Thank you very, very much.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
Building Prosper Trading Academy, Navigating Market Volatility & Finding Purpose Through Loss with Scott Bauer 4-21-25
I really appreciate the time, Scott.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
Building Prosper Trading Academy, Navigating Market Volatility & Finding Purpose Through Loss with Scott Bauer 4-21-25
We fund people to trade as well. And I still get to have a little fun because I am down on the trading floor several days a week doing a bunch of media spots as well. So for people that don't know that there still is real live trade, just like no one's ever seen it like you may have seen in trading places, that still happens. And I'm in the thick of it.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
Building Prosper Trading Academy, Navigating Market Volatility & Finding Purpose Through Loss with Scott Bauer 4-21-25
So tell us, I want to touch on a few quick subjects before we keep on going. But first, with the recent volatile economic climate, the tariffs, everything else, does that create more opportunities for traders? Does that create lots of ups and downs? Does that have an impact on the trading world? That sort of first. Then I'd love for you to talk a little bit about
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
Building Prosper Trading Academy, Navigating Market Volatility & Finding Purpose Through Loss with Scott Bauer 4-21-25
over the long run, how that trading environment has changed, because you and I know everybody started in trading on the floors 30, 40 years ago, at some point moved to electronic, moved to different ways, not everybody, but a lot. And I'd love to talk a little bit about that evolution too. But talk about how are things looking today in terms of, is there a lot of volatility because of the markets?
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
Building Prosper Trading Academy, Navigating Market Volatility & Finding Purpose Through Loss with Scott Bauer 4-21-25
What do you see?
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
Building Prosper Trading Academy, Navigating Market Volatility & Finding Purpose Through Loss with Scott Bauer 4-21-25
Ja, es gibt absolut viel Volatilität. Und Trader, okay, wir müssen uns separieren und unsere Trading Hat gegen unsere Investing Hat anziehen. Trader lieben die Volatilität. Wir lieben die Möglichkeit, die die Volatilität für uns erzeugt.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
Building Prosper Trading Academy, Navigating Market Volatility & Finding Purpose Through Loss with Scott Bauer 4-21-25
Nun, manchmal kann es so extreme Volatilität geben, dass, wenn es bleibt, und wir sind fast in einer dieser Zeiten gerade, dass es Dinge für Trader schwierig macht. Again, we embrace volatility, but when you get in a situation like we are now, where the market is moving not necessarily because of technicals or fundamentals, the market is moving on a daily basis because of
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
Building Prosper Trading Academy, Navigating Market Volatility & Finding Purpose Through Loss with Scott Bauer 4-21-25
The next news print that might hit the tape, a tweet, whatever it might be. It absolutely makes things more challenging. There's no question about it. Now, would I prefer volatility over not having volatility? Absolutely. Volatility is there because of the uncertainty. And the uncertainty is there right now because of, as you just mentioned, volatility.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
Building Prosper Trading Academy, Navigating Market Volatility & Finding Purpose Through Loss with Scott Bauer 4-21-25
Nobody knows what is the next shoe to drop or what is going to happen. So we do embrace volatility. It is a good thing generally. Excess volatility, the market functions as it should, but it definitely makes things much more difficult.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
Building Prosper Trading Academy, Navigating Market Volatility & Finding Purpose Through Loss with Scott Bauer 4-21-25
Faszinierend, faszinierend. Und sprich, für die Leute, die das in den letzten 20, 30, 40 Jahren noch nicht erlebt haben, die Evolution von dem, was Trading war, zu dem, was es heute ist und wie das aussieht. Ich weiß, die Trading-Desken bei den großen Banken, den großen Firmen sind wieder verrückt beschäftigt. Aber sprich, wie sich das Umfeld in den letzten Jahren verändert hat.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
Building Prosper Trading Academy, Navigating Market Volatility & Finding Purpose Through Loss with Scott Bauer 4-21-25
This is Scott Becker with the Becker Private Equity and Business Podcast. We're thrilled today to be joined by a brilliant business leader and who's built a fascinating financial business. We're going to talk today to Scott Bauer. Scott's had the kind of life, the kind of person that you admire for a whole bunch of different reasons.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
Building Prosper Trading Academy, Navigating Market Volatility & Finding Purpose Through Loss with Scott Bauer 4-21-25
Sure. So, you know, up until, let's call it the late 90s, early 2000s, everybody looked at trading as floor trading, right? There were floor traders, different exchanges in Chicago, New York, Philadelphia, out in San Francisco, internationally. And market makers...
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
Building Prosper Trading Academy, Navigating Market Volatility & Finding Purpose Through Loss with Scott Bauer 4-21-25
like myself individuals would have a seat the right to be on an exchange and trade whether it was a particular stock or futures whatever it was and what happened was with the switch over the advent of electronic trading Das öffnete die Handelswelt für viele mehr Menschen, viele mehr Institutionen, viele mehr Firmen.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
Building Prosper Trading Academy, Navigating Market Volatility & Finding Purpose Through Loss with Scott Bauer 4-21-25
Und die Handelsgröße kam zu dem Punkt, wo der individuelle Marktgeber fast aus der Handelsgröße rauskam. Er konnte nicht mehr kämpfen. anstatt auf dem Boden zu stehen und zu sagen, ich möchte fünf dieser Kontrakte handeln. Nun sind diese Kontrakte 50, 500, 5.000 geworden.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
Building Prosper Trading Academy, Navigating Market Volatility & Finding Purpose Through Loss with Scott Bauer 4-21-25
Was also in der Handelswelt passiert ist, dass die größeren Banken, die größeren Institutionen, die größeren Unternehmen den Raum wirklich übernommen haben. Ich sage das nicht in einer schlechten Art und Weise.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
Building Prosper Trading Academy, Navigating Market Volatility & Finding Purpose Through Loss with Scott Bauer 4-21-25
Ich sage das, weil der Volumen und die Liquidität, die da draußen ist, und die Interkontaktivität, wenn man eine Stockoption, sagen wir, in Amazon handelt, und wie das mit einem externen Verkauf verbunden ist, und wie eine Firma wie Goldman Sachs oder Citibank das händeln könnte. Also viele, viele Floortrader, viele Floortrader, ich bin sicher, viele, die Sie kennen, die ich kenne,
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
Building Prosper Trading Academy, Navigating Market Volatility & Finding Purpose Through Loss with Scott Bauer 4-21-25
Es war wirklich schwierig, diese Transition aus dem Stand in einem Live-Trading-Pit zu machen, zu anderen Marktführern zu antworten, zu Verkäufern zu antworten, wo das einfach verschwunden ist. Und jetzt war alles vor uns auf dem Computer. Also würde ich sagen, dass konservativ 80 plus, vielleicht sogar 90 plus Prozent der Trader
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
Building Prosper Trading Academy, Navigating Market Volatility & Finding Purpose Through Loss with Scott Bauer 4-21-25
that I grew up with and traded with on the floor could not and did not make that transition over to the electronic trading world.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
Building Prosper Trading Academy, Navigating Market Volatility & Finding Purpose Through Loss with Scott Bauer 4-21-25
Talk about, I couldn't agree with that more. I mean, so many people that I know that started in their 20s in the sort of floor trading world 20, 30 Jahre hervorgehoben, so viele Leute und eine kleine Anzahl, die auf der einen oder anderen Art und Weise trainiert haben. Erzähle uns über deine Transition von Floortrader bis Elektroniktrader bis Lehrer bis Geschäftsbilder.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
Building Prosper Trading Academy, Navigating Market Volatility & Finding Purpose Through Loss with Scott Bauer 4-21-25
Erzähle uns, woher dieser Pivot kam und was du von anderen auf diese Art von Pivots hast.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
Building Prosper Trading Academy, Navigating Market Volatility & Finding Purpose Through Loss with Scott Bauer 4-21-25
In den frühen 2000er Jahren, als diese Transition wirklich durchgehend war, eine große Transition, gab es das sogenannte Hybrid-Welt. Das Hybrid-Welt war damals Partial Floor Trading, Partial Elektronik Trading. Ich wollte ehrlich gesagt nichts mit der elektronischen Seite zu tun, so wie viele, viele Floor Trader.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
Building Prosper Trading Academy, Navigating Market Volatility & Finding Purpose Through Loss with Scott Bauer 4-21-25
Und ich war beinahe gezwungen, ehrlich gesagt, des Floor Trading zu der elektronischen Welt. Und glücklich für mich hat Goldman Sachs mir gesagt, hey, wir brauchen noch Floortrader. Wir brauchen sie in der S&P 500-Pit, die in dieser Transition in den mittleren 2000er Jahren
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
Building Prosper Trading Academy, Navigating Market Volatility & Finding Purpose Through Loss with Scott Bauer 4-21-25
We'll talk about that as well, as well as being deeply involved in Er ist auch sehr involviert in Charitäten und leitet einige Charitäte-Efforts. Wir hoffen, dass wir das auch besuchen können. Scott, kannst du uns einen Moment nehmen, um dich zu vorstellen und uns ein bisschen über dein Geschäft zu erzählen?
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
Building Prosper Trading Academy, Navigating Market Volatility & Finding Purpose Through Loss with Scott Bauer 4-21-25
Most of the individual stock option trading, so whether Amazon, Coca-Cola, you know, there was no Tesla at the time, but any of the stocks you could think of, those went away from live trading right to the screens. But the big indices, they still stayed around. So fortunately I was in a position where I was still able to be on the floor, trading live, slugging it out in the pits.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
Building Prosper Trading Academy, Navigating Market Volatility & Finding Purpose Through Loss with Scott Bauer 4-21-25
In fact, when I went to work for Goldman Sachs, it was right before the great financial crisis in, you know, 07, 08, 09. So it was actually a great time to be down there. Und ich konnte an dieser Stelle beide Seiten des Geschäfts sehen, weil ich live handelte, aber alles, was ich machte, wurde elektronisch von Goldman Sachs gehandelt.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
Building Prosper Trading Academy, Navigating Market Volatility & Finding Purpose Through Loss with Scott Bauer 4-21-25
Glücklicherweise konnte ich diese Transition in der realen Zeit sehen. Und das hat mich wirklich dazu gebracht, wo ich jetzt bin, weil 2011 I was fired. And it was the only time I've been fired in my life. And I was fired because at that point Goldman Sachs says, ah, we don't need any more floor traders worldwide. It wasn't just me.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
Building Prosper Trading Academy, Navigating Market Volatility & Finding Purpose Through Loss with Scott Bauer 4-21-25
They were eliminating all floor traders worldwide and going exclusively to online or, you know, the screens. And I'm like, okay, now, you know, what am I going to do? I now have the insight to die Verkaufsseite elektronisch zu handeln. Ich kenne natürlich die Flur-Verkaufsseite davon. Und an diesem Punkt, wenn du zurückgehst, 2010, 2011, 2012, der Wunsch für Wissen, für Bildung weltweit,
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
Building Prosper Trading Academy, Navigating Market Volatility & Finding Purpose Through Loss with Scott Bauer 4-21-25
was just growing and growing and growing for people and institutions and even big banks to trade in the markets. So I saw this niche that I believed introducing people to the ease of being able to trade options um zu verstehen, dass es keine Optionen gibt. Sie sind nicht unbedingt riskant. Sie sind nicht wie die Dicke in Vegas, wie viele Leute dachten.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
Building Prosper Trading Academy, Navigating Market Volatility & Finding Purpose Through Loss with Scott Bauer 4-21-25
Und so habe ich diese Bildungsplattform gebaut, um Menschen zu erlernen, wie man handelt und wie man online handelt. Und das begann im Jahr 2012. Und ich habe das aufgebaut. Prosper Trading Academy. Und wie ich vorhin gesagt habe, haben wir ungefähr 17.000 aktive
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
Building Prosper Trading Academy, Navigating Market Volatility & Finding Purpose Through Loss with Scott Bauer 4-21-25
Studenten und Klienten, die mit mir und unseren anderen Lehrern hier folgen, die instantan den Markt und Profi-Ansatz haben, die sie mentorieren, die sie bewegen. Und glücklicherweise, glaube ich, war ich verabschiedet. Die meisten Leute können das nicht sagen, aber glücklicherweise hat das mich wirklich dazu gefordert, so etwas zu machen.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
Building Prosper Trading Academy, Navigating Market Volatility & Finding Purpose Through Loss with Scott Bauer 4-21-25
Ja, danke, dass ich da bin, Scott. Es ist mir sehr erfreulich. Meine professionelle Karriere, nachdem ich die Universität Illinois besucht habe, war in der Handelsgemeinschaft, Handels und Bildung. I was a trader down on the floor of the CBO, Chicago Board Options Exchange, for a number of years, 20 plus years.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
Building Prosper Trading Academy, Navigating Market Volatility & Finding Purpose Through Loss with Scott Bauer 4-21-25
Und ich hatte die Vorstellung, als der Option-Markt wirklich, wirklich explodierte, um so ein Programm zu bauen.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
Building Prosper Trading Academy, Navigating Market Volatility & Finding Purpose Through Loss with Scott Bauer 4-21-25
Und sprich mal kurz darüber, wie du das Programm gebaut hast und dann Prosper gebaut hast, wo du jetzt 17.000 Studenten hast. Sprich mal über das und wie du das gestaltet hast. Gib uns einfach einen Sinn dafür, wie das passiert und die Entwicklung da.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
Building Prosper Trading Academy, Navigating Market Volatility & Finding Purpose Through Loss with Scott Bauer 4-21-25
Natürlich. Ich bin also kein Marketingleiter. Ich zähle also auf meine Marketing-Team. Ich gebe ihnen so viel Kredit dafür, da rauszugehen und wirklich diese Nische zu finden und die Leute zu finden, die sich dazu einladen wollten. Wenn du jetzt schaust, Scott, du gehst auf Social Media und ich meine, wie viele Ads, wie viele Posts, die du von Trading Gurus siehst.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
Building Prosper Trading Academy, Navigating Market Volatility & Finding Purpose Through Loss with Scott Bauer 4-21-25
Sie sind nur Ad Nauseam und es war nicht so als erstes. Jetzt ist das etwas, mit dem wir kämpfen müssen und mit dem wir kämpfen müssen, weil ich das seit 35 Jahren mache. Ich bin auf den Netzwerken, den großen Netzwerken jeden Tag. Ich habe eine wirklich gute Reputation. Die Firma hat eine wirklich gute Reputation, aber
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
Building Prosper Trading Academy, Navigating Market Volatility & Finding Purpose Through Loss with Scott Bauer 4-21-25
At times I'll get lumped into the same as all these, you know, one off fly by night, quote unquote, trading gurus. So we really built up the business very organically because through the mid
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
Building Prosper Trading Academy, Navigating Market Volatility & Finding Purpose Through Loss with Scott Bauer 4-21-25
know teens or so um that's when advertising on social media advertising through through google clicks advertising through meta looking at your your demographics that's really where things started to build up and i really believe that my appearances on on cnbc fox business bloomberg whatever it is has just really helped my business because it gives me legitimacy.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
Building Prosper Trading Academy, Navigating Market Volatility & Finding Purpose Through Loss with Scott Bauer 4-21-25
It gives Prosper Trading Academy legitimacy where someone can say, oh, you know what? I just saw that guy interviewed with Jim Cramer. I saw that guy interviewed with Liz Klayman just now. He must be somewhat legit.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
Building Prosper Trading Academy, Navigating Market Volatility & Finding Purpose Through Loss with Scott Bauer 4-21-25
So we really built this up organically over time and it just, you know, fortunately snowballed and we took advantage of the want, the need that internationally people wanted to learn this business.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
Building Prosper Trading Academy, Navigating Market Volatility & Finding Purpose Through Loss with Scott Bauer 4-21-25
Fascinating. And talk about this year, Scott. And then I'm going to ask you a question about Charity as well in a second, because I've seen your leadership there. Talk for a second about what you're most focused on and excited about this year.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
Building Prosper Trading Academy, Navigating Market Volatility & Finding Purpose Through Loss with Scott Bauer 4-21-25
So right now the market is tough. And I'm not just talking about looking at the S&Ps, the Dows, the Nasdaq. The market for marketing and for actually getting people to sign in and log on is very difficult because many businesses are going through the same struggle right now where their end user doesn't want to spend any money.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
Building Prosper Trading Academy, Navigating Market Volatility & Finding Purpose Through Loss with Scott Bauer 4-21-25
right everybody's pulling back consumers we know the consumer is pulling back and whether they're pulling back and and not spending on on clothing or or other things we're going through the same thing right now so it has been a little bit more difficult marketplace for us right now getting newer clients i mean we're still you know we're still chugging along we're still doing fine but that has been more difficult and we're looking at different ways to
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
Building Prosper Trading Academy, Navigating Market Volatility & Finding Purpose Through Loss with Scott Bauer 4-21-25
zu nicht nur anbieten, sondern mehr Wert zu geben, sodass die Leute, die auf dem Fenster sind, diese Entscheidung machen können. Sie können sagen, all right, you know what? This is a no brainer. We've got to get to that point. I do believe that the market environment for trading right now is still fantastic. Again, so many people are concerned about their IRAs, their 401ks.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
Building Prosper Trading Academy, Navigating Market Volatility & Finding Purpose Through Loss with Scott Bauer 4-21-25
Wound up building up my own trading firm, went to work for Goldman Sachs and ran their S&P 500 operation down on the trading floor. And then about 10, 11 years ago transitioned from the floor of zu Trading on the screens and teaching people how to trade.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
Building Prosper Trading Academy, Navigating Market Volatility & Finding Purpose Through Loss with Scott Bauer 4-21-25
And with absolute certainty, absolut great reason to be concerned. And early on I said we have to separate our trading hat from our investing hat. What I do is not investing. I am not an investment advisor. I am not a broker. I don't give None of our educators give opinions on what you should do with money for your IRAs, for your retirement accounts.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
Building Prosper Trading Academy, Navigating Market Volatility & Finding Purpose Through Loss with Scott Bauer 4-21-25
We focus solely on trading and the opportunity for trading is very, very robust right now. It's a challenging market, but yes, that's why you need a mentor. That's why you need someone like us to help guide you through it.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
Building Prosper Trading Academy, Navigating Market Volatility & Finding Purpose Through Loss with Scott Bauer 4-21-25
No, fantastic. And just for those that don't know, I will, you know, my disclosures, I've known Scott for 40 years. I'm a huge fan of his integrity, his business acumen. So a really, really good guy. Scott, before we go further, can you take a moment and tell people if they want to learn about trading, how could they learn about your company and where can they find you? Sure.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
Building Prosper Trading Academy, Navigating Market Volatility & Finding Purpose Through Loss with Scott Bauer 4-21-25
So it's really easy. It's prospertrading.com. Name of the company is Prosper Trading Academy. You can go right to our website. You can Google, you can YouTube us. We have thousands and thousands of educational videos that are online, that are free. Anybody can Google or YouTube how to trade, right? But you're not necessarily going to find what you want.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
President Trump & Cognitive Dissonance 4-21-25
Parts of it they like, parts of it they don't like, but certainly they didn't vote for the market going down by 15%. And so watching this, I find fascinating. And I find this text that showed up in my inbox just a few minutes ago. It's just a great example of the cognizance and the challenge that Trump faces. Voters are having as they watch this play out.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
President Trump & Cognitive Dissonance 4-21-25
I saw another discussion this morning where I texted a colleague that said something like, oh my goodness, look at this deal with the market, what a debacle. And the person responds back, you people all wanted him, all you people can F off. So I don't know that that is Elogially stated. But when I hear this from a Trump voter and a non-Trump voter, it might be one bit the mood of the country.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
President Trump & Cognitive Dissonance 4-21-25
The picture changes quickly, so I wouldn't take too much out of it, but it is fascinating to listen to the different thoughts on President Trump and the situation that we're in currently. Thank you for listening to the Becker Private Equity and Business Podcast. Again, ranked number one today in the Apple Business News rankings, the Becker Private Equity and Business Podcast.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
President Trump & Cognitive Dissonance 4-21-25
Thank you for listening.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
President Trump & Cognitive Dissonance 4-21-25
This is Scott Becker with the Becker Private Equity in Business Podcast. Today's discussion is President Trump and cognitive dissonance. So here's the concept. Many people, including a lot that I know, voted for President Trump because they were sort of not excited about the woke agenda or Kamala Harris or Joe Biden or four more years of that.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
President Trump & Cognitive Dissonance 4-21-25
And what I'm starting to see, and I'll read a text I got this morning. I'm starting to think that Trump and company have no blanking idea what they're doing with economic policy, blowing a mandate, and will lose the House in 26. Idiots. Should have stuck to Doge and Borders. So, when you hear that from an Ein ehrlicher Trump-Supporter.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
President Trump & Cognitive Dissonance 4-21-25
Du bekommst einen Sinn, dass zumindest der Trump-Welt, und wiederum, ich bin kein Anti-Trump-Typ, aber ich habe mit der ökonomischen Agenda etwas zu tun, ist es ein bisschen ein Verlust, was zu tun ist, als sie das anschauen und fühlen, dass es eine Art Handelskrieg ist, eine Kampfkrieg.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
8 Stories We Are Following Today 4-21-25
This is Scott Becker with the Becker Private Equity Business Podcast. These are eight of the stories that we're following this morning. It's April 21st, the start of a new week in the markets and not necessarily a good week. First, the markets point decidedly down this morning. People concerned about both upcoming earnings, also about tariffs and trade week and so forth.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
8 Stories We Are Following Today 4-21-25
For first-generation successful families, investing in PE and VC funds may be akin to the dog who chases the car and catches the car. The chase may be more fun than the catch. And what I mean by that is if you're a first-generation wealthy family, you thought, oh, my God, you'd really hit it when you could invest in private equity and VC funds, and then you found it's not as exciting as it seems.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
8 Stories We Are Following Today 4-21-25
Seventh, against the tide, Netflix keeps on rising. I don't know what people are watching on Netflix, but it's up nearly 10% year to date. Finally, eighth, Pope Francis, history's first Latin American pope, passed away on Monday. He was 88. That'll send the, you know, the... Cardinals back at the Conclave trying to pick the next pope. We'll see how that goes. He's a special PS postscript.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
8 Stories We Are Following Today 4-21-25
The Becker Private Equity Podcast ranked number one this week, followed by Wall Street, Your Money Briefing, Bloomberg Intelligence, Bloomberg Daybreak, and the WSJ Minute Briefing. So just thrilled with that. Thank you for listening to the Becker Private Equity and Business Podcast. Thank you very, very much.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
8 Stories We Are Following Today 4-21-25
So just a lot that's not going right at the moment. I do assume there's a decent amount of cognitive dissonance for all of those that voted for President Trump. They're trying to figure out policy at the present moment. Apple's market cap has fallen below $3 trillion after closing in on nearly $4 trillion last year. The stock's down 21% year-to-date.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
8 Stories We Are Following Today 4-21-25
Third, Nvidia's market cap has fallen to $2.47 trillion after once being above $3.5 trillion. A great piece today in Barron's how CEO Jensen Wong is trying to ease trade war fears. Fourth, Microsoft also struggling, not as bad as Nvidia and Apple. Its market cap is down to $2.73 trillion. It's down nearly 13% year-to-date.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
8 Stories We Are Following Today 4-21-25
Fifth, a great article in the Wall Street Journal, Private Equity World Engulfed by a Perfect Storm. Essentially, the article says, PE firms were struggling before the tariff battles, and now deals have moved to a standstill. The three largest buyout firms are now down more than 20% year-to-date, Blackstone, Apollo, KKR. So that's going poorly.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
8 Stories We Are Following Today 4-21-25
Another story that the longer the deal logjam goes on, the harder it's going to be for these firms to get money back to clients. Sixth, and I can empathize with this, investors in PE funds keep on making commitments to new funds and funding capital calls. Yet the return of capital and profits in the last two or so vintage funds is moving very slowly, if at all.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
Creating a Culture of Honest Career Conversations with Amber Walsh of McGuireWoods LLP 4-25-25
teams with no hard assets and no other resources other than our talented individual yeah yeah 100 no i think that's i think that's right on and it just is the constant you know back in the day when we had in-person team meetings all the time it seems so much easier to stay really closely connected to everybody in today's world it is a a real effort by managers to stay closely connected to their people
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
Creating a Culture of Honest Career Conversations with Amber Walsh of McGuireWoods LLP 4-25-25
in a different world, a different remote world, a different everything. And it's like, I'm amazed at people like you who do it so well. But it is more challenging, it seems like, in some ways than it was. And it's not, there's no way around it. We got to do it, even in a different environment, in a different world. But what a fascinating discussion. Amber, anything else you wanted to add?
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
Creating a Culture of Honest Career Conversations with Amber Walsh of McGuireWoods LLP 4-25-25
No, just absolutely fantastic. Amber, thank you so much for joining us on the Becker Private Equity Podcast. Again, Amber Walsh, Executive Committee Leader at McGuire Woods, one of our most listened to guests every single year. Thank you for joining us today.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
Creating a Culture of Honest Career Conversations with Amber Walsh of McGuireWoods LLP 4-25-25
This is exclusive furniture where low prices live and better sleep begins every day.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
Creating a Culture of Honest Career Conversations with Amber Walsh of McGuireWoods LLP 4-25-25
Yes, I think it's a fascinating, fascinating question. And what happens is, there's so many different pieces of this. Let's take an aside. People that have been lifers at the firm, at a firm, into their 40s or 50s, they're likely not going any place without people knowing that they're going someplace and so forth. Und dann kommen wir zurück zu einigen jüngeren Gruppen.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
Creating a Culture of Honest Career Conversations with Amber Walsh of McGuireWoods LLP 4-25-25
Und dann gibt es Leute, die an sechs verschiedenen Firmen gearbeitet haben. Und wenn du glaubst, dass sie in deiner Firma für immer bleiben werden, ist es wahrscheinlich ein schlechtes Wettbewerb, weil sie sich immer versuchen, sich selbst und die richtige Kulisse und all diese Art von Dingen herauszufinden. Dann kommst du zum Herzen dieser Diskussion.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
Creating a Culture of Honest Career Conversations with Amber Walsh of McGuireWoods LLP 4-25-25
Leute, die wahrscheinlich in der, weißt du, früheren Karrierephase, 25 bis 35, sagen wir mal, 25 ist das Jahr, an dem die Leute aus der Grundschule aufgehoben werden, wenn sie gerade durchgehen. Das sind breite Gedanken über die Gruppen. Aber diese Gruppe, die versuchen selbst herauszufinden, ob sie ihre langfristige Karriere machen wollen oder nicht, was sie tun wollen, was ihre Pläne sind.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
Creating a Culture of Honest Career Conversations with Amber Walsh of McGuireWoods LLP 4-25-25
Und viele, wenn sie zum ersten Mal rausgehen, 25, 27, 28, 29, zumindest die Erfahrung für die meisten von uns ist, We're still not sure ourselves what we want to do for the long run, let alone commit to the firm and the team and so forth.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
Creating a Culture of Honest Career Conversations with Amber Walsh of McGuireWoods LLP 4-25-25
But your point on this, the inability of those open discussions, even though it's very normal for somebody in an age group or a younger professional to not be sure what they want to do or they want to do it at this firm, what they want to do. But it's very hard to have those discussions.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
Creating a Culture of Honest Career Conversations with Amber Walsh of McGuireWoods LLP 4-25-25
This is Scott Becker with the Becker Private Equity and Business Podcast. We're thrilled today to be joined by one of our most listened to regular guests, Amber Walsh. Amber lives at the intersection of private equity and healthcare, but more than that, she's a true leader and thinks about leadership all the time. She's going to talk today about a concept related to
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
Creating a Culture of Honest Career Conversations with Amber Walsh of McGuireWoods LLP 4-25-25
And I remember one of our colleagues, when he was 27 or so, said to me, look, I know you're starting to invest a lot of time in me, but I'm likely to move back to Charlotte, no matter what we do here, because that's where our family is, that's where we want to be. And it took him a lot of guts to tell me that, because he knew there was a chance.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
Creating a Culture of Honest Career Conversations with Amber Walsh of McGuireWoods LLP 4-25-25
He sat me down to tell me, because he wanted me to know, in case I wanted to stop investing time in him and building around him. Und ich dachte, es war faszinierend, weil es eine Menge Integrität und Geist genommen hat, um so offen zu sein, dass er nicht hierbleiben konnte, egal was, im Langraum. Es hat wirklich, wirklich gut funktioniert.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
Creating a Culture of Honest Career Conversations with Amber Walsh of McGuireWoods LLP 4-25-25
Aber ich denke, die meisten jungen Kollegen sind sehr schockiert, wenn sie ihren Mentoren oder Senioren erzählen, dass sie über andere Dinge denken und was sie versuchen, herauszufinden, weil sie Angst haben, dass sie negativen Rückwirkungen haben, dass sie nicht mehr arbeiten, dass sie nicht mehr in die besten Übungen kommen, dass sie nicht mehr in die besten Übungen kommen,
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
Creating a Culture of Honest Career Conversations with Amber Walsh of McGuireWoods LLP 4-25-25
is that you tell a mentor or a team leader and the team leader starts to sort of, not necessarily directly, but indirectly or not necessarily so intentionally stops viewing you as core to their team. So you sort of feel like you're out on a life raft there versus embraced because you've admitted to your boss or person you're working for that you might think about doing other things.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
Creating a Culture of Honest Career Conversations with Amber Walsh of McGuireWoods LLP 4-25-25
How do you sort of deal with that? and make it okay so you can do better career planning for both the person and the firm?
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
Creating a Culture of Honest Career Conversations with Amber Walsh of McGuireWoods LLP 4-25-25
Die Teamleute versuchen zu entscheiden, ob das der richtige Fit für sie ist und was sie für ihre Karriere machen wollen. Und die meisten Leute kommen nicht aus der Wunde und sagen, mein Ziel ist, ich sehe mich gut. climbing the firm and becoming an equity partner, doing this, doing that, Rainmaker, Manager, Leader, whatever it might be.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
Creating a Culture of Honest Career Conversations with Amber Walsh of McGuireWoods LLP 4-25-25
It's an evolution for people to get clear about what their goals are and what they want to do. And you have to be careful to live with people through that period of time while they're trying to figure out the level of their commitment. I mean, you and I, I can't think of hardly anybody who's become a leader in the firm where at some point they didn't have some growing pains
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
Creating a Culture of Honest Career Conversations with Amber Walsh of McGuireWoods LLP 4-25-25
und versucht herauszufinden, was genau sie mit ihrer Karriere machen wollten und wie sie es machen wollten. Ich meine, ich kenne nicht sehr viele Menschen, die nicht einige dieser wachsenden Schmerzen hatten. Es ist einfach normal, als Mensch, nicht immer sicher zu sein, dass das, wo ich hin will, das ist das, was ich machen will, das ist die Art von Arbeit, die ich machen will.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
Creating a Culture of Honest Career Conversations with Amber Walsh of McGuireWoods LLP 4-25-25
Es ist einfach normal. Und ich denke, zu deinem Punkt, je mehr du dich normalisierst und diese Diskussionen akzeptierst, desto healthier ist wahrscheinlich die Umgebung und jeder ist. Ja, ich stimme dazu.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
Creating a Culture of Honest Career Conversations with Amber Walsh of McGuireWoods LLP 4-25-25
No, absolutely. And to your point, one of the things you've done an incredible job of, Und es ist schwieriger in der virtuellen Welt, in der wir sind, so hoch verbunden zu unseren Kollegen zu bleiben und so verbunden zu bleiben. Und es ist schwieriger, weil in den alten Tagen sah man und sprach mit Menschen jeden Tag.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
Creating a Culture of Honest Career Conversations with Amber Walsh of McGuireWoods LLP 4-25-25
Und es war ein bisschen einfacher, Körpersprache zu lesen, Qs zu lesen und Menschen zu sprechen, was da los ist und so weiter. Du und ich, ich bin sicher, jeder hat eine Geschichte wie diese. Einer unserer besten Partner, das muss jetzt 10, 15 Jahre her sein, kam in mein Büro und schloss die Tür.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
Creating a Culture of Honest Career Conversations with Amber Walsh of McGuireWoods LLP 4-25-25
Und ich sagte dem Partner, und es ist jemand, mit dem du auch sehr nah bist, ich sagte dem Partner, oh mein Gott, du gehst weg, weil das ist das erste Mal, dass ich denke, dass dieser Kollege, der in Nashville geflogen ist, um einen Job im Haus zu nehmen, jemals die Tür geschlossen hat.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
Creating a Culture of Honest Career Conversations with Amber Walsh of McGuireWoods LLP 4-25-25
Also habe ich mir gedacht, oh mein Gott, und natürlich war genau das, was er gemacht hat, er hat bemerkt, dass er weg ist. Und was passiert ist, zu deinem Punkt, In jedem professionellen Umfeld gibt es eine ganze Menge Leute, von denen man weiß, dass sie nicht so beteiligt sind oder moderat beteiligt sind.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
Creating a Culture of Honest Career Conversations with Amber Walsh of McGuireWoods LLP 4-25-25
Es gibt auch Leute, die wirklich beteiligt sind, die einfach großartige Arbeit als großartige Profis machen. Und es ist besonders eines dieser Teile, die man nicht erwartet, dass man sich überrascht, dass man sich fragt, ob wir etwas anderes gemacht haben oder nicht, oder was auch immer. Und es ist, was es ist. Aber du erinnerst dich an diese Dinge sehr stark.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
Creating a Culture of Honest Career Conversations with Amber Walsh of McGuireWoods LLP 4-25-25
Und als du über die Leute sprichst, die du überrascht hast, die verschiedene Fälle, verschiedene Entscheidungen nehmen, bin ich fast nie überrascht von der Person, die zu unserer Firma kam, von einer anderen Firma. Das waren die letzten drei Firmen, also drei bis fünf Jahre pro Jahr, wenn sie verlassen. Obwohl, da war einer von ihnen mehrfach. Er war hier für mehrere, mehrere Jahre.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
Creating a Culture of Honest Career Conversations with Amber Walsh of McGuireWoods LLP 4-25-25
Das hat mich überrascht. Der andere nicht so viel. Aber es ist faszinierend, um zu versuchen, wo die Leute sind und das Umfeld zu bauen, in dem sie sich zufrieden fühlen, wenn sie darüber sprechen. Du und ich erinnern uns auch an einen der großartigen Kollegen, mit dem wir gearbeitet haben. Wir sehen viele solcher Dinge in den großen Firmen.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
Creating a Culture of Honest Career Conversations with Amber Walsh of McGuireWoods LLP 4-25-25
Sie hatten sehr wenig Zeit, Bedingungen für sich selbst zu setzen und haben sich im Grunde genommen, zu Hause zu gehen. Just because she couldn't figure out how to set the boundaries internally or the firm wasn't good enough about supporting those boundaries. And you see a lot of that as well.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
Creating a Culture of Honest Career Conversations with Amber Walsh of McGuireWoods LLP 4-25-25
People that just like, they're just great professionals, but they're naturally sort of alpha or a hardworking people and can't help but put in the maximum amount of hours, even though it's not necessary for success.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
The Warren Buffett Portfolio 4-25-25
Und hier ist die Lektion in dieser Diskussion ist, wenn ich Warren Buffett mehr folgen würde, wäre ich wahrscheinlich eine viel reichere Person, als ich bin, die nicht sehr reich ist. Aber hier sind wir an diesem Punkt. Coca-Cola ist auf ca. 17-18% jährlich. Es ist ein kompetitiver Stock. Pepsi-Cola ist auf ca. 7% jährlich.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
The Warren Buffett Portfolio 4-25-25
Und für mich, das ist nur noch ein Erinnerung, dass wenn ich Warren Buffett all diese Jahre folgen würde, wäre ich in viel besserer Form, als ich heute bin. Es ist, was es ist. Am Ende des Tages freue ich mich auf mein gesamtes Portfolio. Now it's gone, but I would have done better if I followed Warren Buffett all the way through.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
The Warren Buffett Portfolio 4-25-25
Thank you for listening to the Becker Private Equity and Business Podcast. Thank you very, very much.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
The Warren Buffett Portfolio 4-25-25
This is Scott Becker with the Becker Private Equity and Business Podcast. Today's discussion is the Warren Buffett portfolio. So here's the issue. Over the years, so many different commentators and analysts have said, you know, just copy the Warren Buffett Berkshire portfolio or invest in Berkshire.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
The Warren Buffett Portfolio 4-25-25
Und eine der Herausforderungen, die ich in meinem Leben habe, ist, dass ich... Ich bin sehr diszipliniert bei bestimmten Dingen. Ich habe mit Becker Healthcare seit 30 Jahren gearbeitet. Ich habe mit meinem Wohnzimmer seit 30 Jahren gearbeitet. In verschiedenen Teilen meines Lebens kann ich nach oben oder nach unten gehen. Es gibt einige grundlegende Trends, die ich sehr gut verfolge.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
The Warren Buffett Portfolio 4-25-25
Ich bin ziemlich gut bei meiner Ernährung und Fitness. Ich bin ziemlich gut bei meinen Lebensmitteln. Aber in anderen Bereichen kann ich nach oben oder nach unten gehen auf die Kernkonzepte und was ich versuche zu tun. In der Investition bin ich sehr gut dabei, das Kernportfolio, das konservative Portfolio zu stecken.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
The Warren Buffett Portfolio 4-25-25
Index-Funds und Treasury-Bonds und eine Mischung zu haben, würde einen Geldmanager denken, als wäre ich eine Person auf dem Golfkurs. Und Leute, die die Analogie folgen, ich hoffe, dass Sie das können, das bedeutet, dass ich nicht viel Guts und Glöckchen habe.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
The Warren Buffett Portfolio 4-25-25
Aber periodisch bin ich durch die Phase gegangen, mit der kleinen Teil meiner Portfolio, die ich in individuelle Stocks investiere, habe ich periodisch das Warren Buffett-Portfolio gefolgt und in seine großen Haltungen investiert. Ein paar davon sind ein paar Jahre her, conservative Dickholdings, Coca-Cola und Bank of America. Also Coca-Cola.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
The Brian Niccol Difference 4-25-25
This is Scott Becker with the Becker Private Equity and Business Podcast. Today's discussion is the Brian Nicole difference. So Brian Nicole is a famous CEO that did this incredible job of turning around and strengthening Chipotle. And Chipotle had great, great results under Brian Nicole. Then Brian Nicole went to Starbucks, which has been sort of caught in a slump for it seems like years.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
The Brian Niccol Difference 4-25-25
And it's starting to work as magic there. I'm very encouraged by the signs there. So is the Brian Nicole difference all that it's cracked up to be? Right now, Chipotle's down 20% year to date. Starbucks is down 10% year to date. And you might say, well, if they're down 10% year to date, how good is it going? What you have to look at is the S&P is down about the same amount.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
The Brian Niccol Difference 4-25-25
The retail business is not doing great. So compared to the rest of the sector, I think he's doing pretty well. And again, it's sort of like one of these kinds of things. There's certain people you don't bet against. I think Brian Nicole is one of those people. So I bet with Brian Nicole.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
The Brian Niccol Difference 4-25-25
I'm not really putting individual dollars at Starbucks, so maybe I'm a week better, but I am to have money in my index funds, and I do watch this closely. I love watching this thing with Brian Nicole. The other thing, thank you for listening to the Becker Private Equity and Business Podcast. Thank you very, very much.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
Twitter Poll: How Do You Bounce Back When Your Energy is Low? 4-25-25
This is Scott Becker with the Becker Private Equity and Business Podcast. So one of the things I constantly do is I've become addicted to these Twitter polls where I'll raise a question, offer something on my mind. I don't want to be too vulnerable here or too weak or too anything.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
Twitter Poll: How Do You Bounce Back When Your Energy is Low? 4-25-25
I think everybody has these days. I certainly have them. A couple more responses I got. Some of these are my basics. Hydration, breathing, walking, jiu-jitsu, drink a glass of water. So many great ideas. Somebody else says, I spend all day working outside to exhaust myself mentally and physically. And I think that's great as well. So maybe I'm able to get a good night's sleep too.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
Twitter Poll: How Do You Bounce Back When Your Energy is Low? 4-25-25
I find the regular things I do, I go back to drinking X amount of water a day, doing X amount of steps a day. I go back to making myself more busy than not busy. I'm healthy when I'm busy than not. I will periodically, of course, talk to a therapist. If I'm really anxious, I'll take the anxiety drug that I take periodically, et cetera, et cetera. But I love this topic. I find it very real.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
Twitter Poll: How Do You Bounce Back When Your Energy is Low? 4-25-25
I find it encouraging to talk through some of these issues of what do you do when you're feeling down? I know this might be a little bit too self-disclosure, but it's really just to get ideas for other people, for my close friends, not for me. Thank you for listening to the Becker Private Equity and Business Podcast.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
Twitter Poll: How Do You Bounce Back When Your Energy is Low? 4-25-25
If you've got a suggestion or an idea on what you do when you're feeling down, feel free to text Scott Becker, 773-766-5322. Thank you for listening to the Becker Private Equity and Business Podcast.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
Twitter Poll: How Do You Bounce Back When Your Energy is Low? 4-25-25
But the question we were raised yesterday that we did a poll on is, what do you do when you can't find your motivation, you're a little bit down, stuff like that. And I got a tremendous amount of great responses. You know, one person said, massive amounts of caffeine and a good night's sleep.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
Twitter Poll: How Do You Bounce Back When Your Energy is Low? 4-25-25
And again, and the person went on to say, some days are just going to be bad days and life goes on and you deal with it. And I think that's right on. Another person said, and there are a lot of these, prayer, meditation, high interval intensity training, even when I don't want to do it. So I love that response as well. Again, the massive amount of caffeine I go with all the time.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
Twitter Poll: How Do You Bounce Back When Your Energy is Low? 4-25-25
Another person said creatine and worked through it at the gym. More and more people seem to be crazy about this creatine thing, and at some point we'll have to try that out and see if that's really as good as people say it is, creatine. A couple other suggestions, and I love these. Music, walk, call someone in your inner circle. You know, it's almost phone a friend, and I think that's right on.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
Twitter Poll: How Do You Bounce Back When Your Energy is Low? 4-25-25
Certainly do that a lot. A couple more people said... 30-minute power nap, 30-minute power walk. I think, again, great ideas. Dr. Pescatori said nothing better than a nap. Couldn't agree with that more. Dr. Freitz said, I go for a run. I think that's also a fantastic day. So, so many different options. What do you do when you're doing poorly, when you feel down, stuff like that? And I may...
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
Building Wealth, Abundance & Resilience with Chad Coe of Coe Financial Group 4-18-25
Right. People that have been through this for several years or that are older have seen the ups and downs and probably breathe a little bit better. Wie wichtig ist es, dass jemand, der seine Allokation richtig hat, einen Notfallfonds hat, damit sie diesen Art von Verlust durchführen können, ohne zu viel zu paniken?
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
Building Wealth, Abundance & Resilience with Chad Coe of Coe Financial Group 4-18-25
Und wie oft kriegst du Leute, die nicht wirklich auf ihre Allokation gearbeitet haben und vielleicht nur hochwertig auf die Quote warten, aber dann einen schwierigen Zeitraum haben, durch den Marktverlust zu verfolgen?
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
Building Wealth, Abundance & Resilience with Chad Coe of Coe Financial Group 4-18-25
How often do you hear people, because I hear this so much, and it must be hard to listen to, somebody that, when the market is going up, talks about how they invest in Nvidia, SoundTown, Apple... Und sie sind ein Genius. Wie oft hört man das, wenn der Markt hochgeht, dass alle über ihre Stockpicks und die Picks, die sie individuell gekauft haben,
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
Building Wealth, Abundance & Resilience with Chad Coe of Coe Financial Group 4-18-25
And how do you deal with that when the market goes up and goes down?
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
Building Wealth, Abundance & Resilience with Chad Coe of Coe Financial Group 4-18-25
This is Scott Becker with the Becker Private Equity and Business Podcast. Thrilled today to be joined by a terrific professional who does a ton of speaking and leading and really a good, good person. Chad Koh. Chad, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about what your career, your career and what you're focused on currently?
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
Building Wealth, Abundance & Resilience with Chad Coe of Coe Financial Group 4-18-25
Danke, und du hast etwas erwähnt, das ich einfach großartig fand.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
Building Wealth, Abundance & Resilience with Chad Coe of Coe Financial Group 4-18-25
Es gibt dieses Konzept, dass wenn man sich die langfristigen Ergänze der S&P oder der Dauer anschaut, oder so etwas, es könnte 8-10% pro Jahr über 50-100 Jahre sein, aber die meisten Leute genießen das nicht, genau weil du gesagt hast, dass sie nervös werden, sie verkaufen es, sie kaufen wieder rein, wenn es wieder nach unten oder nach oben geht. Sie genießen diese Erhöhungen nicht wirklich,
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
Building Wealth, Abundance & Resilience with Chad Coe of Coe Financial Group 4-18-25
Ich möchte Sie zwei Fragen stellen. Wie viel sehen Sie da draußen, die Leute, die Sie hören über diese Ausgaben der S&P und der DAO, aber die meisten von ihnen genießen sie nicht, weil sie nicht nur ihre Geld reinhalten, sondern weil sie ein bisschen nervös sind. Ich blöde sie nicht. Und zweitens, hören Sie nach Indexfonds, individuellen Stocks? Wie denken Sie über diese Probleme?
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
Building Wealth, Abundance & Resilience with Chad Coe of Coe Financial Group 4-18-25
Und dann die gleiche Frage auf der Bondsseite, Treasur-Bonds versus Immunis, und wie denken Sie darüber?
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
Building Wealth, Abundance & Resilience with Chad Coe of Coe Financial Group 4-18-25
100 Prozent. Also ETFs, Indexfonds, ein bisschen individuelle Stocks, aber das ist wirklich ein Gambel auf die individuellen Stocks, solange man so viele von ihnen sehr divers ist. Auf der Bondseite, individuelle Bonds gegen Bondfonds, sodass man nicht so viel mit Interestrisken handeln muss. Man handelt sich trotzdem mit einigen Kreditrisken.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
Building Wealth, Abundance & Resilience with Chad Coe of Coe Financial Group 4-18-25
What's the balance between treasury bonds, corporate bonds, municipal bonds? How do you think about those things?
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
Building Wealth, Abundance & Resilience with Chad Coe of Coe Financial Group 4-18-25
There are some well-heralded investors, the Warren Buffetts of the world, there are so many others. Are there particular investors that you think of, not so much to model yourself after, but that you particularly have admired over the long term? Are there anybody that you think of like, yes, that's someone we're really a fan of?
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
Building Wealth, Abundance & Resilience with Chad Coe of Coe Financial Group 4-18-25
Danke, nein, ich liebe das absolut. Dein Bruder ist eine brillante Person, ein guter Investor, er hat viel gelernt, fantastisch. Was hast du am meisten gefokussiert? Chad, du hast auch ein paar öffentliche Reden gemacht, du hast ein paar Mastermind-Gruppen gegründet. Erzähl uns ein bisschen über das, was du tust, wenn du es nicht mindest.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
Building Wealth, Abundance & Resilience with Chad Coe of Coe Financial Group 4-18-25
Nein, ich finde es absolut fantastisch. Welche Überraschung für die emerging business people, die emerging leaders, gibt es? Welche Gedanken würdest du den emerging leaders oder emerging businesspersons geben?
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
Building Wealth, Abundance & Resilience with Chad Coe of Coe Financial Group 4-18-25
And talk to us about CoFinancial Group. Tell us a little bit about the trends you're watching in financial planning. Are people sort of able to manage through the recent market chaos? How much does the phone ring? How much of your time is spent almost just counseling people through the challenges? Talk a little bit about what happens during market turmoil.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
Building Wealth, Abundance & Resilience with Chad Coe of Coe Financial Group 4-18-25
Chad, I want to thank you. It's amazingly impressive what you've built over the years. The intellect, the energy, the common sense, the thoughtfulness. I just love getting a chance to visit with you again. Chad Coe is joining us today. Chad, the name of the company where people can find out more about Chad Coe.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
Building Wealth, Abundance & Resilience with Chad Coe of Coe Financial Group 4-18-25
Wir sind Theresa und Nemo und deshalb sind wir zu Shopify gewechselt.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
NVIDIA, Hertz, United, & Eli Lilly 4-18-25
NVIDIA now is down to a $2.5 billion market cap. That means it's lost in market cap. 2,5 Trillionen in der Marktzahlung. Das bedeutet, es wird in der Marktzahlung etwas wie 700 bis 800 Milliarden Euro über die letzten mehrere Monate verloren. Und das scheint viel Geld zu sein. Nun, das bedeutet nicht, dass ich nicht der größte Mann von Jensen Wong bin. Ich bin es wirklich.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
NVIDIA, Hertz, United, & Eli Lilly 4-18-25
Ich denke, er ist wirklich unglaublich. Aber eine faszinierende Anzahl von verlorenen Dollar und verlorenen Marktzahlungen in dieser Zeit. Wir sind Theresa und Nemo und deshalb sind wir zu Shopify gewechselt.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
NVIDIA, Hertz, United, & Eli Lilly 4-18-25
This is Scott Becker with the Becker Private Equity and Business Podcast. Today's discussion is going to be Nvidia, Hertz, United and Eli Lilly. So these are four of the stocks that are moving a lot, doing interesting stuff, some good, some bad, but let's talk about them quickly.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
NVIDIA, Hertz, United, & Eli Lilly 4-18-25
Eli Lilly hat gestern 14% auf großartige Testresultate, großartige Resultate, Trialresultate für einen ihrer weichgelassenen Drogen übernommen. Sie hatten einen wirklich positiven Tag, Novo Nordisk, im Vergleich zu einem, der in die falsche Richtung ging, als ein Komponist für Eli Lilly. Zweitens, United Healthcare, United Health Group, droppte gestern 22 Prozent.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
NVIDIA, Hertz, United, & Eli Lilly 4-18-25
Das ist der größte Dropp in 20 plus Jahren, mehr als 20 Jahre, als ihre Einkommen verpasst wurden. Und sie projizierten auch viel höhere Verlustratien für den Rest des Jahres. Hertz, im Gegensatz, ist 44 Prozent auf der News gesprungen, dass Bill Ackman, der Virgin-Square-Investor, wie wir wissen, ein Investor, auch in Hertz investiert wird.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
NVIDIA, Hertz, United, & Eli Lilly 4-18-25
Avis ist auch auf diese News gesprungen, also das ganze Rentenwagen-Business, das es möglich ist. Letztens, NVIDIA. Und wenn man NVIDIA schaut, It comes out of me listening to so many amateur stock pickers who brag about, oh, I watch this stock, I watch that stock, I invested in this, I invested in that. And they are so silent when things go solid. But here's the deal.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
Index Funds, Individual Stocks, Private Equity Funds & Investing in Private Companies 4-18-25
This is Scott Becker with the Becker Private Equity and Business Podcast. Today we're going to talk about index funds, individual stocks, private equity funds, and investing in individual private companies. So here's the issue in the discussion. And I think Vanguard's founder and Warren Buffett have said this right, that
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
Index Funds, Individual Stocks, Private Equity Funds & Investing in Private Companies 4-18-25
So it seemed like getting to the Holy Grail and not so much there as much as it was. I used to say about one VC fund, it was harder to get into and be a regular investor in that fund than it was to get into Harvard and Glasgow, which is true. But again, like you catch the car and it's maybe not so great that you made it there. The next thing we talk about is investing in individual companies.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
Index Funds, Individual Stocks, Private Equity Funds & Investing in Private Companies 4-18-25
Once it happens is once you start investing in individual companies, you look like the guy at the, I'm not sure what the right, you know, a good investor to join companies, a someone who looks like they can help and they want your money and all those kinds of things. And what you find again over time is that,
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
Index Funds, Individual Stocks, Private Equity Funds & Investing in Private Companies 4-18-25
that it's again like the dog that caught the car, that it's not as good as it sounds because for every one that goes great, there's 15 of them that, oh, that turned into a zero. Or this one calls and says, you know, we've made a big change to our business plan. And like, what do you mean you made a big change to our business plan after we already put in so much money?
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
Index Funds, Individual Stocks, Private Equity Funds & Investing in Private Companies 4-18-25
But what you find is this holy grail of investing in individual private companies, this holy grail of investing in private equity and venture capital funds, not as much of a holy grail as you thought it would be. And probably closer to back where Warren Buffett was saying, you know, you're far better off just putting most of your money in broad based index funds.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
Index Funds, Individual Stocks, Private Equity Funds & Investing in Private Companies 4-18-25
Now, the subject of individual stocks is. Again, unless you have so much money you could diversify so broadly and follow the individual stocks, you are at such a disadvantage to everybody else. I can assure you that when Nvidia dropped the other day by 7% because of potential impacts and not being able to ship to China, There are a whole cadre of people that knew that before we knew it.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
Index Funds, Individual Stocks, Private Equity Funds & Investing in Private Companies 4-18-25
And that made sure that just a huge distinct disadvantage whenever you're investing in individual stocks. And I'm not saying the whole system is rigged, but I am saying parts of it are less rigged than others. And you're better off sticking to those parts that are less rigged than others. In any event, fascinating to watch this issue of.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
Index Funds, Individual Stocks, Private Equity Funds & Investing in Private Companies 4-18-25
Index funds, individual stocks, private equity funds, and private companies, and where to go. And as exciting as it seems to be able to invest in private equity funds, and as exciting as it seems to be able to invest in private companies, all I can tell you is the grass may look greener, but it's often not.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
Index Funds, Individual Stocks, Private Equity Funds & Investing in Private Companies 4-18-25
And you're going to do just as well putting your money in broad-based index funds, as John Bogle used to say, and quite frankly, as Warren Buffett used to say. Here's what I'll tell you. They were right. Thank you for listening to the Becker Private Equity and Business Podcast.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
Index Funds, Individual Stocks, Private Equity Funds & Investing in Private Companies 4-18-25
Most of us should spend 95% of our investment time just investing in broad-based index funds. But I'm going to take you through the other three investment categories. And as you become a little bit more affluent, a little wealthier, you feel like you've really arrived when you can invest in private equity and venture capital funds. And people actually allow you to when they want you to.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
Index Funds, Individual Stocks, Private Equity Funds & Investing in Private Companies 4-18-25
And this goes back a little bit ago when it wasn't just so open to retail investors, but where you actually directly invest in private equity and venture funds. And I was explaining this the other day. You feel that when that happens, you've really made it. You know, oh, my God, I'm investing in private equity funds, the venture capital funds. I've made it to the promised land.
Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
Index Funds, Individual Stocks, Private Equity Funds & Investing in Private Companies 4-18-25
And I'll tell you what this feels like in real life as an investor, right? In real life as an investor, it feels as follows. You're the dog that tries to catch the car. You're chasing the car, and you finally catch the car and find, oh, that wasn't so great. And I'll tell you, that's a little bit how it is investing in venture and private equity funds over the last five to seven years.