The School of Greatness
The Investing Expert: How ANYONE Can Start Investing TODAY To Unlock Financial Freedom
Wed, 14 May 2025
Leave an Amazon Rating or Review for my New York Times Bestselling book, Make Money Easy!While Wall Street continues to create market fear, investing expert Chris Camillo reveals why economic uncertainty presents the greatest wealth-building opportunity for everyday people. After turning $20,000 into $2 million in just three years and later growing a $4.5 million account to $35 million during the pandemic, Chris shares his revolutionary "social arbitrage" approach that leverages public information from social media trends. He passionately argues that investing - not entrepreneurship - is the true path to financial freedom, stressing that every dollar invested today could become $100 over time. Chris demystifies the investing process while exposing why the coming AI and robotics revolutions represent the greatest wealth transfer opportunity of our lifetimes.Chris’s book Laughing at Wall Street: How I Beat the Pros at InvestingChris on YouTubeChris on XIn this episode you will learn:Why market volatility and economic uncertainty are when you make the most money as an investorHow observing social media trends can help you beat Wall Street at its own gameWhy starting a business is the wrong path for most people seeking financial freedomHow to identify major societal changes that will impact company values before Wall Street noticesWhy the coming AI and robotics revolution will transform global labor and create massive investment opportunitiesFor more information go to https://www.lewishowes.com/1771For more Greatness text PODCAST to +1 (614) 350-3960More SOG episodes we think you’ll love:Dean Graziosi – greatness.lnk.to/1766SCAnthony O'Neal – greatness.lnk.to/1738SCDave Ramsey – greatness.lnk.to/1758SC Get more from Lewis! Get my New York Times Bestselling book, Make Money Easy!Get The Greatness Mindset audiobook on SpotifyText Lewis AIYouTubeInstagramWebsiteTiktokFacebookX
Chapter 1: Who Are the Hosts and What is This Episode About?
If you've ever struggled with money, if you've ever felt like money's been tight, or just hard to make, or you're just not sure how to invest your money, or it's just been a confusing mess ever since as long as you can remember, this episode is for you. We have the investing expert on how to create financial peace and abundance during any economic time on the show, Chris Camillo.
Chris has an extraordinary ability to spot consumer trends before Wall Street does. He's turned 20,000 into 2 million in three years and later transformed 4.5 million into 35 million. During the pandemic, when everyone was freaking out and stressed out, he found opportunities to create financial freedom.
And in this episode, Chris reveals his social arbitrage investing strategy that focuses on observing cultural shifts and consumer behavior changes through social media. Chris's approach doesn't require financial expertise. It's about paying attention to the world around you and connecting observations to investment opportunities.
He also dives in deep on why women are uniquely positioned to excel at observational investing, but often don't capitalize on their insights. And literally when we stopped recording and I walked back into the office from our brand new School of Greatness studios here in the Valley of Los Angeles, the women on my team said, I am signing up and I'm investing right now.
Like this seems so easy to do and it makes so much sense to me now the way he's explaining it. So if you've ever thought about investing or wanting to make more money, but you felt like it's stressful, Chris makes it more effortless and he makes it easier to get started. So I think you're really going to love this.
And if you're enjoying this episode, make sure to share it with a couple of friends who maybe are trying to break free financially or get to the next level. Make sure to follow the show if this is your first time. Say hi to me on social media at Lewis Howes and leave us a review of what you enjoyed most about this episode over on Apple or Spotify. Again, I'm so excited about this.
I hope you enjoyed this episode with Chris Camillo. Welcome back, everyone, to the School of Greatness. Very excited about our guest. We have Chris Camillo in the house. Good to see you, man. Appreciate you being here. You just shared something right before we got on here where you said it's your mission to get every human in the world to be an investor.
Yeah, investor class. Investor class. Every human.
I just saw this stat on CNBC that said just this week the Dow Jones experienced its 11th 1,000 point drop in the Dow's history and four of them happening in just the last month. And also I saw on Twitter this week that the Great Depression has been trending. And for that...
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Chapter 2: Why Should You Invest During Market Volatility and Economic Uncertainty?
But I remember it vividly in our, I'll never forget how quickly we came back from it. And, you know, same thing with, I was like deep, deep in the dot-com bubble crash. Like that was when I was coming out of college in the workforce, investing for myself aggressively and, And it was like my entire world. And that really was scary. That was like super scary.
Because you probably didn't have a lot of money then. So the things you were investing in, if you're losing it, you're like, what am I doing? I can't afford to lose this.
Most of us that were young and investing during that time, we lost like 70% of our portfolio. OK, like 70, 80 percent. Some of us, a lot of the companies we were invested in just went to zero. OK, so that was unbelievably scary. Yet those of us that stuck around and kept doing it. I mean, it didn't take long for the market to come whipping back, right?
And you look back and you go, gosh, I wish I would have went even heavier at the time. Same thing in 2008. That was scary. Remember? Well, you remember that. Came back quicker than anyone would have imagined. Nothing phases me anymore. People, you think about the stock market. Well, what is the stock market? The stock market is nothing more than a reflection of all of our work globally. That's it.
Our human, our human endeavors. It's the product of our human work. So As long as humanity continues to get smarter and more productive and more efficient, whether it's us or the robots or artificial intelligence that we're creating, doesn't matter how we do it. As long as we continue to create more and create better, the product of that will become more valuable.
And our way to participate in that is called the stock market. Like it's not... This crazy complex thing, everyone overthinks it. Wall Street has spent, you know, 70, 80 years trying to convince us that it's this big mysterious thing that only they can understand. That we have to go through them. That we need to be talking to them through these periods, right? It's all complete BS.
I don't think there's anything more important in life other than maybe taking care of your family. uh, than learning how to invest. Like it's actually so insane to me. I think it's the most important thing we should be starting with from kindergarten, uh, every year for your entire life.
A good chunk of it should be focused on reminding you and teaching you how important it is for you to be part of this investor class. And it's just disgusting that it's not.
If you were to simplify for someone in their 20s or 30s who's never invested before on how to invest and what to invest in, what would you share with them? As if you were teaching someone that had no understanding of what investing or the stock market or trading meant, and you could simplify that, what would that look like?
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Chapter 3: What Are the Risks and Realities of Starting Your Own Business Versus Investing?
Almost all of them. That's crazy, isn't it?
Probably like 75% maybe. Wow. So you do a lot of the research, the analytics. You've got a data company that analyzes all these things and the industries and helps predict certain things. And even with all that work, 75% of your investments are probably going to fail.
Yeah, because you're investing in an early stage company that has a tremendous amount of... You're investing in an idea and the person.
Okay. And hope that in five to 10 years, it'll make money.
Yeah. So that's where it gets risky. That's where you could make a case that maybe you should do that. And maybe you should just never do that. Right. I would say for most people, it's insane to go out and start your own company ever. And I've done it. I've done it multiple times. Why is it insane to start your own company? Because you're almost definitely going to fail.
Like when I said 75%, that's 75% of my portfolio that were deeply vetted and I'm pretty good at doing what I do. Almost all companies will just fail. If you go to start a company, it's almost definitely you're going to fail.
Even the ones that succeed maybe aren't making a lot of money. It's just getting by. It's breaking even. It's like 5%. It's not making a ton where you're getting rich.
There are a near infinite number of ways for a founder to fail. Now, put that aside. Being an investor, just generally being an investor, investing in stocks, investing in the market, this is what's so wild. you could actually go out and invest in the smartest people in the world.
Like you could just be like, by the way, complete psychopaths, people that will be like, they don't, they're going to like, destroy their family and or not have a family they will have basically no friends they will work 80 hours a week they're a genius they're a psychopath they are going they're going to do whatever it takes they'll steamroll relationships to make their company a success
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Chapter 4: How Can Ordinary People Leverage 'Social Arbitrage' Investing?
And the people that are, are positioned best to do really well with that type of investing are just normal people that are not financially minded, that are not mathematicians.
Why does it seem so scary, though, for people to invest, especially when they hear stories like, early in your career, you invested a lot of money, and 70% of it you lost pretty quickly with a crash happening?
Yeah, and it all came back pretty quickly.
Yeah, but most people would stop after that and say, oh, this is so painful. I just lost all of this money, which is time, all those hours that I... spent to make that money and put it in here, now it's gone.
Yeah, but that's just a mind trick, right? How do you overcome that, though? It's just not rational.
How do you overcome that, though? You spend five years saving all your money, you invest it, and then it's gone essentially overnight. How do you get over that mental and emotional loss and stick it out and kind of keep going, you know?
It's a great question. And here's what I tell people. Any money that you have invested in risk assets, the stock market is a risk asset. You have to mentally, every time you check your account, reduce it by 70%. Really? Yeah, because that's your downside, realistically. Just realistically, that's your downside. So from the first dollar you put in,
you think your account's a hundred dollar account and it's a $30 account. You have to be willing to live with that risk account being 70% less. Okay. Realistically, that's probably the lowest it's ever going to go in the worst of all worst case scenarios. Now, But if you theoretically go lower, anything is possible in this world. We can disappear tomorrow, okay? So, like, anything is possible.
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Chapter 5: Why Is Now the Best Time for Retail Investors to Beat Wall Street?
But for the most part, your absolute, like, Great Depression style, worst of all, worst case scenarios, I like to think of it as down 70%. So bucketing money is one of the most important things for an investor to do. So I always talk about the fact that investors only really have two decisions to make.
how much of their money they want to have bucketed in risk assets and how much they want to have bucketed in safety, being treasury bills, right, or just a treasury-backed cash account that's paying you 3%, 4%, 5% a year, whatever. You make that decision, and that decision changes over the course of your life. So when you're young, you might have 5% or 10% or maybe even 0% in the safe bucket.
Maybe you have 20%. And when you're old, you might have 80% or 90% in that bucket. Right? Right. Everyone tries to overcomplicate wealth management. Everyone thinks, oh, it's really sophisticated. You go to a wealth manager, they'll hand you an 80-page report that's your personal financial plan. You're like, dude, this is so sophisticated. It's all BS. The whole thing is BS.
Like it's just a printed out load of crap to make it seem like it's sophisticated and you need all that assistance and help. Like for me, I have money that's safe and I have money in risk assets. That's it. And honestly, for most people, if you don't want to play the game of trying to beat the market...
The money in risk assets could just be in an S&P 500 ETF, exchange traded fund, that is basically free to buy and cost you like one-tenth of 1% internal management fee every year. It's the world's cheapest way to invest. And you just put money in there every week or every month and you don't think about it. And then you open it up in 40 years and you're super wealthy. Right?
Like super wealthy. Right, right. And just keep it simple.
Keep it simple. I always tell everyone, if you are just willing to start investing, there will be a moment in your life, more than likely, when you wake up one day and you realize that you're making more money from your investment portfolio than you are from your job. I'll never forget the day that happened to me. And I was like... What was that like? How old were you? So amazing. I was...
It was probably 2000 and... 2008, 2009-ish, because it was right around the time I wrote my book, Laughing at Wall Street. And I had turned $20,000 into $2 million in three years in my brokerage account. And I was making a lot of money from my job at the time. I was making like over $200,000 a year, which back then was a lot of money. I was a sales guy, right? Yeah.
And that for, it just wasn't enough money for the life I wanted to live with my family and the things that I wanted to achieve in my life for other people. I'm like a very, like I have a foundation, like I have like. massive dreams of doing some really big things in the philanthropic world.
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Chapter 6: How Should New Investors Manage Risk and Build Their Portfolio?
That is a really depressing place to be and it's going to cause you to get out and start complaining.
And you see other people living this rich life or posting like they have a rich life, whether they have it or not, seeming like they're happy with this lifestyle. You know, taking trips and ventures and flying private or whatever it is.
And see, that's the issue because everyone keeps talking about the income gap. Like we've heard so much about the income gap the last decade, decade and a half. How are we going to solve the income gap? you're not going to solve the income gap. It's not happening. You can make really small dents in the income gap if you want to, but it's a lost cause. So just stop. Okay. Just stop.
Now the wealth gap, that's a solvable problem. That is 100% a solvable problem. How do we solve it? getting the entire world to invest. Every single person that you're trying to solve the income gap for, just stop and just focus on the wealth gap. Instead of trying to figure out how to make that person earn three times more than they're earning, it's not gonna happen
Make small change, you know, try to help them still to maximize their career. That should all still happen. But teach them how to invest. It's not even teaching. Just convince them. You see, like I even hate that I just had to say the word teaching. You don't have to learn. You just have to be convinced. You just have to be convinced. And every single person has money to invest, period.
Now, I know people are going to hear me say that and it's going to like result in a stream of angry comments because they're like, this guy is just completely out of touch. And no, I don't have money to invest. Yes, you do. You don't have money to invest because you're thinking about every dollar as a dollar. But like, this is a big...
Part of what I wrote about in my book a long time ago, when I turned $20,000 into $2 million in three years, and I'm not saying that people can do that. That was rare. But absolutely, you could turn every dollar to $100 over a much longer period of time as an investor just with compounding. And when you realize that, once you believe that, you'll start to think of every dollar as $100, right?
And so when you start to think of every dollar in your life as $100, it changes everything. So I don't care who you are. There is a point to which you are not making trade-offs. You're not clipping coupons. You might clip $2 coupons, but you're not going to clip a $0.10 coupon. Well, all of a sudden, when everything's 100x, you're clipping 10-cent coupons. You're clipping 50-cent coupons.
You are, you know, I don't know. You're just doing all kinds of things differently in your life. You know, maybe you're mowing your yard now. Maybe you're making your coffee at home instead of going to Starbucks. All the things that weren't quite worth trading off are all of a sudden worth making a tradeoff for. Here's the difference.
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Chapter 7: When Will You Make More Money From Investing Than Your Job?
It's more on spending versus investing. Exactly. It's more on how do I look good or how do I get the next thing that's going to make me feel happy and be socially accepted with my peers instead of how can I hopefully live below my means for a while, use that money to invest.
And then once I start making more of my investments, the profits there, then I can buy certain things if I want to or just keep reinvesting it.
One thing you just said was wrong. You don't need to live below your means to do it. That's the thing. make... To find money in your life to start investing with, I don't care if it's $5, you can open up an account right now with like $5. A lot of these things were not living below your means. It's just kind of doing things like... Clipping coupons is not living below your means.
It's just doing things a little bit differently to find money in your life that you didn't really care about. But now with the mindset change of accumulating these dollars that are actually going to eventually be worth, hopefully, $100 each...
hey you fall short and they're only worth 40 or 50 does it even matter does it even matter the bottom line is these very tiny dollars are going to become very big and you don't have to do anything but literally just do it and throw it in an account yeah and just let it compound
Chris, I know a lot of your audience that you mentioned before we started is men, you know, that are kind of in your system, in your community, on YouTube and Twitter, who are listening to you. There's a lot of women that watch and listen to the School of Greatness. And if there's a man or a woman in their 20s and 30s, let's say, who hasn't gotten into investing yet, who hasn't taken it seriously,
Um, what would be the strategy if someone had an extra a hundred to a thousand dollars a month and they said, I'm going to start going all in, in this strategy. And whether it's $100 a month, $1,000, eventually more if they have more, what should they start doing today to set themselves up for their future success?
Yeah, I've been aggressively trying to bring women into the investment world for 20 years, and I'm almost at a point of giving up. I've tried so hard. I told them, like, when I wrote my book, I exclusively market through mommy bloggers, right? Because my entire investing methodology is observational investing, right?
And the ironic thing is that women are better positioned, way better positioned than men to excel at this strategy. are so, women are way deeper into these sectors, fashion, makeup, like, okay, like I was just telling you, the world has become digital and social, right? The best investments come from change. The bigger the change, the bigger the opportunity, right?
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Chapter 8: Why Is Starting a Business the Wrong Path to Financial Freedom for Most People?
I've literally... Like, almost... Like, most of my biggest trades over the past 20 years have come from female and youth trends. Really? Right? Yeah. Why? Because those are the trades where there is the maximum amount of information asymmetry. Where...
The mostly older, whiter, wealthier men who control most of capital markets on Wall Street, they are slow to pick up on that change that's happening. Like I always tell the story about Jeffree Star when he did a YouTube video of the elf primer putty makeup. This was like, I don't know, 10 years ago.
elf was a drugstore brand it was the cheapest junkiest brand of makeup and he's like this is just as good as the 60 version and i went to walgreens and i just stood there all day and watched moms and kids coming in and they emptied the shelf of elf cosmetics because of this one product And that video got like 11 million views on YouTube.
And I called the Wall Street analyst who covered cosmetics for one of the big three sell-side banks. And I asked the person if they had seen the video. I was like, do you see the Jeffree Star video? And they were like, who's Jeffree Star? They don't even watch YouTube. They don't even know who these people are. They are so out of touch.
um and that ended up being a monster this is when elf was at seven bucks a share right it went up to like 160 eventually and now it's back down to like 50 60 70 whatever um most of my biggest trades i think probably females knew about that information long before any men generally knew about it
Why aren't women in general taking action on the information they see socially, digitally, and culturally? When they see a trend happening, why do you think there's a fear or hesitation behind not investing in that trend?
I think just the field of finance, which is associated with the field of investing, historically, there is a misconception that that you need to be a finance head or a math head to do this stuff. Historically, the men in society have always been over that. So it's just a massive misconception.
And it's just, I thought we would have come out of it 20 years ago when I first started talking about this, but like, It takes a long time for people to break out of it. Like look at what's happened in the workforce with women, right? Like that happened. Like we have now like massively changed like who is in these jobs. Like that's happened, but it hasn't happened yet. in the investor class.
The investor class is still, at least the active investor class, people that are thinking and aggressively pursuing investment accounts, is still majority of men, right, that are talking about this, thinking about it, connecting dots. And it's crazy to me, man. It's just, it's absolutely crazy to me because when I, like most of my insights come from TikTok comments.
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