Making Billions: The Private Equity Podcast for Fund Managers, Startup Founders, and Venture Capital Investors

$400M Fund Manager on Career Hacking - Emmy Sobieski

April 03, 2023 Ryan Miller Episode 54
$400M Fund Manager on Career Hacking - Emmy Sobieski
Making Billions: The Private Equity Podcast for Fund Managers, Startup Founders, and Venture Capital Investors
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Making Billions: The Private Equity Podcast for Fund Managers, Startup Founders, and Venture Capital Investors
$400M Fund Manager on Career Hacking - Emmy Sobieski
Apr 03, 2023 Episode 54
Ryan Miller

Send us a Text Message.

Have you ever wondered how to break into startups or investing? In this week's episode of Making Billions, I bring on my dear friend Emmy Sobieski. Emmy is the author of the best-seller $100M careers as well as the COO of Competitive Story Telling where she teaches founders how to sell their ideas better to investors and other partners. Breaking into an industry while getting into the right doors are all skills we need in our pursuit of making billions

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Twitter: https://twitter.com/_MakingBillons
Website: pentiumcapitalpartners.com


[THE GUEST]: Emmy previously co-managed the #1 ranked Nicholas | Applegate Global Technology Fund in 1999, up over 495%. Emmy’s institutional investing experience includes 25 years working for investment firms representing diverse strategies (aggressive growth, momentum, value), asset size (responsible for up to $6B in assets), and type (mutual funds, RIAs, insurance cos, hedge fund). Emmy is a manager and co-founder of GMR (developer of utility-grade Solar, Battery, and Wind farms), and a former co-founder, executive, and advisor to multiple funds and startups. Emmy is a regular panelist and keynote speaker on Web3, Privacy, Payments, ESG, and AI. Emmy is a Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) and has a USC MBA and a BA in Economics from UCSD. Learn more at www.emmysobieski.com 


[THE HOST]: Ryan is a Venture Capital & Angel investor in technology and energy. He achieved industry-beating placement growth in his first 5 years in the industry. 
                                       

Support the Show.

DISCLAIMER: The information in every podcast episode “episode” is provided for general informational purposes only and may not reflect the current law in your jurisdiction. By listening or viewing our episodes, you understand that no information contained in the episodes should be construed as legal or financial advice from the individual author, hosts, or guests, nor is it intended to be a substitute for legal, financial, or tax counsel on any subject matter. No listener of the episodes should act or refrain from acting on the basis of any information included in, or accessible through, the episodes without seeking the appropriate legal or other professional advice on the particular facts and circumstances at issue from a lawyer, finance, tax, or other licensed person in the recipient’s state, country, or other appropriate licensing jurisdiction. No part of the show, its guests, host, content, or otherwise should be considered a solicitation for investment in any way. All views expressed in any way by guests are their own opinions and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the show or its host(s). The host and/or its guests may own some of the assets discussed in this or other episodes, including compensation for advertisements, sponsorships, and/or endorsements. This show is for entertainment purposes only and should not be used as financial, tax, legal, or any advice whatsoever.

Show Notes Transcript

Send us a Text Message.

Have you ever wondered how to break into startups or investing? In this week's episode of Making Billions, I bring on my dear friend Emmy Sobieski. Emmy is the author of the best-seller $100M careers as well as the COO of Competitive Story Telling where she teaches founders how to sell their ideas better to investors and other partners. Breaking into an industry while getting into the right doors are all skills we need in our pursuit of making billions

WANT TO LEARN HOW THE BEST INVESTORS MAKE MONEY? SIGNUP FOR OUR NEWSLETTER:
https://mailchi.mp/d41cfc90bd9f/subscribe-to-newsletter

Subscribe on Youtube:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCTOe79EXLDsROQ0z3YLnu1QQ

Connect with Ryan Miller:
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rcmiller1/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/makingbillionspodcast/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/_MakingBillons
Website: pentiumcapitalpartners.com


[THE GUEST]: Emmy previously co-managed the #1 ranked Nicholas | Applegate Global Technology Fund in 1999, up over 495%. Emmy’s institutional investing experience includes 25 years working for investment firms representing diverse strategies (aggressive growth, momentum, value), asset size (responsible for up to $6B in assets), and type (mutual funds, RIAs, insurance cos, hedge fund). Emmy is a manager and co-founder of GMR (developer of utility-grade Solar, Battery, and Wind farms), and a former co-founder, executive, and advisor to multiple funds and startups. Emmy is a regular panelist and keynote speaker on Web3, Privacy, Payments, ESG, and AI. Emmy is a Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) and has a USC MBA and a BA in Economics from UCSD. Learn more at www.emmysobieski.com 


[THE HOST]: Ryan is a Venture Capital & Angel investor in technology and energy. He achieved industry-beating placement growth in his first 5 years in the industry. 
                                       

Support the Show.

DISCLAIMER: The information in every podcast episode “episode” is provided for general informational purposes only and may not reflect the current law in your jurisdiction. By listening or viewing our episodes, you understand that no information contained in the episodes should be construed as legal or financial advice from the individual author, hosts, or guests, nor is it intended to be a substitute for legal, financial, or tax counsel on any subject matter. No listener of the episodes should act or refrain from acting on the basis of any information included in, or accessible through, the episodes without seeking the appropriate legal or other professional advice on the particular facts and circumstances at issue from a lawyer, finance, tax, or other licensed person in the recipient’s state, country, or other appropriate licensing jurisdiction. No part of the show, its guests, host, content, or otherwise should be considered a solicitation for investment in any way. All views expressed in any way by guests are their own opinions and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the show or its host(s). The host and/or its guests may own some of the assets discussed in this or other episodes, including compensation for advertisements, sponsorships, and/or endorsements. This show is for entertainment purposes only and should not be used as financial, tax, legal, or any advice whatsoever.

Ryan Miller  
My name is Ryan Miller and for the past 15 years have helped hundreds of people to raise millions of dollars for their funds and for their startups. If you're serious about raising money, launching your business or taking your life to the next level, this show will give you the answers so that you too can enjoy your pursuit of making billions. Let's get into it. 

Have you ever wondered how to break into startups or investing? Well, in this week's episode of making billions I bring on my dear friend Emmy Sobieski. Emmy is the author of The Best Seller $100 million careers, as well as the Chief Operations Officer of competitive storytelling, where she teaches founders how to sell their ideas better to investors, and other partners. Breaking into industry while getting into the right doors are all critical skills we need in our pursuit of making billions. Here we go. 

Hey, welcome to another episode of making billions. I'm your host, Ryan Miller. And today I have my dear friend Emmy Sobieski, and he is the CEO at competitive storytelling and the author of the best selling book $100 million careers. Prior to that she was a stock investing Pro that led to her run $400 million tech investment fund. So what that means is me understands how to raise capital, invest capital and help others to do the same. So me, welcome to the show.

Emmy Sobieski  
Thank you so much for having me, Ryan, I'm a huge fan, especially behind the idea of telling people the secrets, and the tricks and the tips of private equity and venture capital so that it's not just the people in the know, in Silicon Valley, and in Wall Street, that pass these things on that anybody can learn, learn all of the insider tips of these really important industries.

Ryan Miller  
And this is a big intersection where you and I have dedicated our careers into helping other people understand and decentralized a lot of the knowledge and the wisdom to say, hey, what about the main guy, the little guy or girl, we were there at one point, and now we're bringing that love and that knowledge and expertise that we spent over a career, whether we do it through our your book, or my show, or whatever that is, there's a huge movement going on, to help people to unlock their wealth and their dreams. And you and I are gonna get into that today. But before we do, I'd love to learn. I mean, for people who are listening around the world, we've got 100 countries around the world that are listening to our show. I'm sure they're wondering if they're just starting out. What about me? Where did it start for you? And you know, maybe we can go from there.

Emmy Sobieski  
My dad, and this is this is going to date me for sure. But my dad and I used to walk around our neighborhood. And we had we lived in a nice neighborhood. And we would go through other people's trash cans and pull out their aluminum cans because they were 25 cents they were you could recycle them for 25 cents a can and doing that by the age of 16. I collected $1,800 worth of aluminum cans. And so I took that in then my dad says okay, you're 16 you can have a stock account, you should start investing. And he told me about four different stocks. I picked one. And it went up Forex. And then he gave and it got bought out very quickly. And so I basically couldn't keep holding it. And he gave me four other stocks to pick from I picked one which is I don't I suggest that people diversify more than I did. It wasn't really it worked out well. But it wasn't it's not something I think it's a good idea. So that my my 1800 went to 8000 went to 32,000. And then my dad said he he had a couple of other stocks and one of them happened to be a brand new public company were a friend of a friend's son was working there. And it was a really exciting company called Novell bought that that went up 10x such that I was a sophomore in college with $320,000 in my stock account. So I think I'm a complete genius. I'm like anybody could do this. I'm going to parties, all all my account does is go up with literally one stock in it for $320,000. And so I kind of hand it over to my dad, my mother passes away. I'm riding horses as a as a horse trainer as my first career. My dad's in mourning, he puts everything plus I inherited 200,000 from my mom. So effectively half a million dollars, he puts the whole thing into biotech and levers it up and puts it in this one stock. And then we have the biotech crash. And this is computers were not as fast as those days as they are today. And so the stock went down faster than the brokerage firm could sell the stock to pay off my margin. So at the end of the day when everything was counting, it's a little bit like Silicon Valley Bank today. When you're sitting around, they're counting up everything there were no dollars left and 30,000 in debt. And I had a horse that I felt was worth 30,000 And luckily there was a woman that wanted to buy him had been asking to buy him. So I quickly sold the horse for 30,000 went into the head of the brokerage firm who happened to be a firm, or the brother of my dad's. And I thought it was totally badass. But I went in and I said, Look, I know that the brokerage firm only allows 30% margin, but they but NASDAQ allows 50%. And so would you allow me to operate with 50% margin, I'm sure behind the scenes, he just back stopped me because it was $60,000. And he was living in an $80 million home. So it was kind of chump change to him. He's helping out a friend's kid all this stuff. But I think I'm totally badass, because I think like the brokerage firm changed their rules for me. And so then I started trading, and I and I turn that $60,000. So 30,000 debt 30 equity into 120,000. In six months, this happened to be right when I went to graduate school. So the and it was 1992. So it was the beginning of coming out of the 91 recession, perfect time for small cap tech, which was the area I focused on. So those stocks were just ripping up. And then I was doing some great stock picking. So it turned out to be a terrific time. My girlfriend there just you know, who's become one of my best friends. She said, You know, there's people that would pay you to do that. And my background was, you know, I didn't have some planned out career, like I recommend in my book, I was a horse trainer, I was an asbestos litigation, paralegal. And then my horse trainer said, Hey, you should go to grad school. And I went to USC. And this so literally five years after being a horse trainer, I was running the number one fund in the world. And it and so it's it's this weird thing where that tragedy of losing everything in the biotech crash. I of course had talent to make big money, but that tragedy forced me to make big money again. And then it allowed other people to see me doing that in grad school. And then that allowed me to move into the industry that I know and love.

Ryan Miller  
Wow, that's phenomenal. And hats off to your father for exposing you to that I told my children about the magic box is my way of telling young kids about the stock market. We call it a magic box when when you're a little and then maybe I'll tell them what it's actually called when they're older. But the point is, is good for you on that parenting. But also, it wasn't enough. So he introduced you. But look how far you took it. And you went through the highs and the lows that a lot of investors do in the private market and you still came out on top. Now you mentioned that you were running one of the one of the top funds in the world. Maybe we could talk a little bit about that. What was the fund and maybe some of your your battle stories or experiences that came from that?

Emmy Sobieski  
Oh, yeah, in fact, I've got a really funny story off of off of Twitter. And so I so I was actually working in insurance company to build up my to build up my track record. And I had gotten terrific advice from a friend of my dad's who he went to lunch and I said, I want to work at Capital Group or provident, vestment council or one of these, you know, really flashy places. And he said, Look, you know, you have a terrible work history background, you know, like litigation paralegal and horse trainer, you went to, you know, top 20 school, but you're not coming out of ivy league or anything, these place does aren't gonna want you. And he said, what you want to do is work somewhere where you can advance through attrition. And so he said, you want to work somewhere where they pay really little like, low pay, because then anybody that gains experience there is going to leave and then you can get experience way faster. Within I think I was there six months at Farmers Insurance and I was running a billion dollar bond portfolio. And a year in I was running a billion dollar bond portfolio, $350 million tech equity portfolio and a $300 million energy portfolio all at the same time. And that allowed me to build a three year track record, which is what this guy had said I needed. And he said, once you have that you can go anywhere. And it was absolutely true. So I got the job at Nicholas Applegate. And I was there maybe three months and my and the chief investment officer was a big believer and B as well as in women investors as well, but but she really thought I was the smartest. So she said, Okay, we want to launch a hedge. We want to launch a tech fund. And we're gonna have all the tech analysts across the whole firm, pick their best bets a month in we're top 10% in the in the world, and I think that's great. And she calls a meeting and she said, what's wrong with this fund? I said what are you kidding me? We're top 10% in the world. She said I hired the smartest tech analyst in the world you should be number one. I don't know what Problem is, and I said, you can't be number one through consensus. Right now we're we're all picking our best, but you can't get to number one through consensus. So she said, Fine, you run it. And that was how I got to run the Nicholas Applegate global tech fund. And so we're probably a month or two in. And we had skated by some really big pot holes, semiconductor industry we'd had, we'd had the kind of the Asia financial crisis that we we moved out, we basically moved out of semiconductors into services. So we were able to make a lot of moves that were working. And one day in October, there was a stock that had tried to come public twice before and failed. So kind of a dog of a stock. And I actually posted this whole story on Twitter. And I'll tell you that what happened at the end when I posted it, but this company is called the globe.com. And our rule was that every fund that wants to invest with lots of funds at Nicholas Applegate, every fund that wants to invest, you can do your pro rata share. Well, we're really small funds, so we would have just gotten a tiny share of most IPOs. But this one, no other Portfolio Manager at Nicholas Applegate wanted anything to do with this thing. And my co fund manager who was effectively did a lot of the trading and I did a lot of the fundamental analysis, he sent me this thing's gonna be hot. He said, I know it's been a dog before, but this is going to be hot. And he was so good about that kind of thing. And so I said, Great. So we were able to buy up to 2% in our fund. And we were able to do that, because nobody else in the firm wanted any of it. So we're able to take Nicholas Apple gates entire share, and 2% was our Mac so we went to the max, and that stock went up 10x that day. So went from 2% of our fund 20% of our funds. So we actually drove a 20% one day return in our in our fund, considering that the other stocks were up at as well that day. And so when you start compounding off of a daily 20% return, it really helps. And anyway, so I wrote about that I wrote I said George Soros is on Twitter, I said George Soros had the British pound. I because I talk about the fact that these billionaires, they always say, you know, like Buffett, he says, Look, you should invest in the s&p 508% a year. But I'm like that they're not really telling you the truth. Because George Soros had the British pound where he made billions. And Warren Buffett had GEICO and I said that I had the globe.com. And then the CEO, the ex CEO of the globe.com. This happened 20 years ago, I posted this on Twitter last year. He goes, You're welcome and does a little kiss emoji on Twitter was so cool. So, so that was a big moment. And then compounding off of that this fund was up 620% In the first year and 495% for 1999. And so the founder of Nicholas Applegate, art Nicholas personally made $24 million off of my funding in one year. And then I went on to leverage that to work at a hedge fund, where I shorted semiconductors and made that boss 100 million on one trade. So on the good side, I had personally seen with my own eyes that you that some a human being can make 100 million a human being can make 24 million in one investment or 100 million on one trade. So I personally seen that. And yet, for me, I kept saying to myself, well, I like being behind the scenes, I like being a team player, I stayed an employee. And so I didn't. And it took me 15 years too late, that that was the moment when I either right after working at that top hedge fund or right after running the number one fund in the world where I should have launched a hedge fund or moved to Silicon Valley right after the.com bust and gotten equity in one of these one of these startups right or, or even Amazon or you know, one of the one of the tech companies that was trading at less than their own cash on their balance sheet in 2003. That's the move I should have made. And that's a move that may come up that may be available to a lot of people in the next year with the recession. So it's I highly encourage you to think about your life and phases and not keep doing the things you were doing. Like I was

Ryan Miller  
yeah living the same year for 30 years on repeat and you're actually going out and leveling up. So I just you know want to take a pause here because there was a mountain of wisdom that you just unloaded. So. So launching your career when you're starting out for those of you who are listening around the world, launching your career starting in a place where you can climb up through attrition, I've never heard of that before. It's absolutely brilliant. That's good advice. So it's saying we all want to make that 100 or 200, or whatever, a year, right out of college that, you know, we think we're just gonna walk into this six figure job. But sometimes strategically, taking a lower paid position at the right firm can allow you to climb up and get that track record. On this show, we talk about reputation and relationships. And so often that reputation, if you're able to climb up through attrition that builds your reputation. So you're just saying, I'm doing this while I'm transitioning to the real thing that I'm after, which is apparently making your boss $100 million. So hopefully, it kicks your Christmas card every once in a while. So I certainly would, if you got me $100 million, I'm sure I'd find a way to get your Christmas card. So you know, that being said, you've done all this amazing stuff, you were strategic. I mean, you're going since you're a teenager, and you're just brilliantly played all along the way to running one of the largest funds in the world at that time. And so now, here we are, you're writing books, you're on podcasts, you're doing all this amazing stuff, that people are just climbing over themselves to get your advice. And here we are. So maybe we could talk a little bit about I know you're doing a ton of stuff, Angel Investing, and writing books and all that maybe talk a little bit about what you're doing, and maybe how that applies to some of our fans around the world.

Emmy Sobieski  
I finally did make that move, where I've been advising investing in startups, advising startups, as well as working working at startups and collecting equity in those. And backing up, that's kind of one of the things I'm going to talk about a little bit later, which is you break in, you build equity, and then you break out. And so I'll cover that a little bit later. But that's basically it took me 15 years too late to do that. But, but now I'm here and now I'm doing it. So it's also it's also never too, it's never too late. So I'm CEO of competitive storytelling. And what we do, my boss tried 102 jury trials, who's a prosecutor. And he learned that the reason he won was not on the facts, but on the fact that he was telling a better story in a more compelling way. And so he teaches founders to tell their story about their background, about the startups vision, and where with the startups success, where that future is going to be such that they can, these world changing founders with world changing ideas can actually change the world. And with this competitive storytelling, you can compel talent to join you. capital to fund you, and customers to to buy from you. So it's, it's really exciting to work for him. He's an amazing, talented person. And I love seeing I love seeing our founders completely transform and then go out and raise capital. with ease.

Ryan Miller  
Yeah, I love that and just see the twinkle in their eye when they get it. So I actually did the math, like a week ago, sounds weird. But I finally calculated how many years of school I was in, and it was 11 years. And that that's not a brag. That's actually pretty sad by it. But I mean, it's an accomplishment. But the reason why I bring that up is when I started pitching and trying to influence investors. And early in my career in academia, you're very well rewarded for all facts to that comment about the your boss. And it, although it was factual, it wasn't very influential. And so when I was able to learn how to tell a better story, and that's exactly what you know, Emmys company does is they competitive storytelling and encourages you to tell the facts with a narrative. And this begins to investor start to align with you or whether you're in the boardroom or an investor, me, whatever it is learning to tell a story is so key in raising money or just getting your ideas across with your partners. There's so many levels that this matters, that I can't emphasize this enough of learning to tell a story you get good at that you begin to improve on your influence, you improve on your influence, and now you can start to navigate your career, your company, your investors, you can really start to have that latitude to move things. When you master the principles of competitive storytelling. Would you agree?

Emmy Sobieski  
Absolutely. And it gives you leverage. That is not the kind of bad word leverage. We talked about terms of financial leverage, but it gives you true, true personal leverage.

Ryan Miller  
That's right, like multiple to one two to one three to one kind of results when you're able to say, well, here's the facts, but let me give you the context around that. And then when people start to buy in and they get it as we like to say, you win hearts and minds, right? You know, you don't. Or as I tell people, you want to sell the sizzle, not the steak, right? So yes, you got to talk about numbers at some point. But it's how you present those numbers, how you present those facts will greatly determine a place and the direction that you take in your career. Which brings us to the second point is that book, $100M careers, maybe you could talk a little bit about that book and how that ties into the discussion.

Emmy Sobieski  
Yeah, so even going way back to the beginning, when you and I were talking about your podcasts and making billions. The idea is that I'm using my book to mentor at scale. I've had several mentees who started from very modest beginnings, one was an amateur boxer, who could not even afford a four year State College. So he was at community college as an amateur boxer. And now has sold his first company made made a fortune and cryptocurrency then sold a company that was an analytic software company, and I think he's only 31 years old. And and another another is at a top private equity firm, neither of his parents graduated college. So you know, it's true blue collar. And so I see this time and time again. And yet the people that I see making it on Wall Street are talking about making this these this big money are just the people where it's passed on, you know, how do you get onto boards of directors, you typically know somebody that worked in venture capital, or you know, somebody that was on the board? And then you even know that that exists? And so how do you how do you possibly navigate and strategically craft your career so that you will be ready at the age of 40, to be asked to join a board, you need to know what your strategy is by 20 or 30, to be able to get offered that board seat at 40. And so this is the fact that you and I are in the same mind, that the people that learn about private equity and venture capital, or the people that learn about these 100 billion dollar careers should not just be people who are living in Connecticut working on Wall Street or living in Silicon Valley, they could be anyone in this internet age. So 100 million dollar careers, talks about the five careers that I know there are far many more, there are 25,000 US households worth more than 100 million that are self made. And so anyone listening on your podcast could be that next household if they just know the route.

Ryan Miller  
Wow, that is that is phenomenal. And so having mentored a lot of those people, I know, you talked about an example of a boxer and all those things like these are real people whose lives are changing. And this is why I was excited to have you on the show. Because I know that you and I are on the same mind where we really do want to help the little guy and really show that it's like it's not this like secret code to unlock. If you just have a little bit of strategy, and maybe a little bit of guidance from me or myself, wherever you need to get it. There are lots of people who broke through and said, Hey, I've made an opening, why don't you come join me. And now we're kind of democratizing the, I guess this this tightly held knowledge is to say, hey, like, you can do this, too. So with that being said, you know, as we round third base on the show, and you've been very generous with your time and sharing your knowledge and your career, what are some of those, those elements, maybe those last minute pieces of advice that you could share with our audience around the world that you've really seen make a difference in the people you've supported

Emmy Sobieski  
Moonshot your career! And I have seen this time and time again. You we you even listen to people and they say, Well, don't make your goals too, too big, because then you'll get disappointed when you don't hit them. The opposite is true. In in, in the 1960s, President Kennedy did a speech about us going to the moon. And we didn't have any of the technology necessary to get to the moon when he made that speech. But it wasn't about knowing exactly how we're going to do it. It was about compelling the entire United States to get behind this vision. And this is part of like what we talked about with competitive storytelling is to get so excited about the future vision that we make it happen. So what I want everybody on your show to do is do that for themselves do that for their own career, have big moonshot goals. And you and I were talking before about this Dutch rider who had this dream to get an Olympic gold and it was crazy because the Germans had won every Olympics since 1956. They were absolutely dominant. They'd won individual gold they'd won team gold, absolutely dominant. So to win one Olympic gold, away from the Germans would be an absolute miracle. So that was her goal. She not only won one, but she won two Olympics in a row. And I met her one month after her second Olympic gold, then you would think she would be just CLOUD NINE, super excited. Now, she was in a dark room, laying around. And she said me, I don't even want to get up, I don't want to ride I don't want to do anything. She said, I don't have any more motivation. So she had broken every record. And she had not moonshot at her goals. Enough, she her goals were too small. And luckily, she had a little five year old horse there that had a lot of talent, a lot of Spark. And she started writing him. And she went and won two more Olympic goals on that horse and broke all kinds of records. But it takes so much more energy to re energize yourself. And this is part of my problem is I thought, well, I want to run the number one fund, I want to work at the top hedge fund and then I'd done that. And then I had this lull period for 15 years, till I figured out my next move. So I've done it, we've all done it. So have have milestones that you can reach that you can celebrate so you're not getting burnt out, but have massive massive goals. So that's that's my that's my first big big piece of advice is moonshot your career!

Ryan Miller  
Yeah, I love that. And you know, that's, it's very similar. So to my when when I first got married with my wife, so tomorrow is our 10 year anniversary. So Happy anniversary to all of us. When we got married, I said, mark my word. So I was I was not doing great. I was just starting, you know, we got married when I was in grad school, so starving student the whole thing. And I said, mark my words, I will own a portfolio of companies. I like I had heard of funds, but I didn't even connect those dots. And so coming similar background, nobody understands finance. It's funny at Thanksgiving, usually most of my family like Ryan, I don't know what the hell you're even talking about, like some of this stuff, Federal Interest Fed funds rate. I mean, what does that even mean? And so I definitely am an anomaly. And I set my goals to this place to say one day mark my words, I will own a portfolio of companies and little bit and I had no idea how to do it. And your story about President Kennedy, when you talk about moonshot, your career, literally that's that is the moon shot that he is talking about is saying, let's take a shot, we're going to land on the moon, I don't know how we're going to do it. But if we come together and really concentrate on solving this problem, we can get there. And I think that's exactly what you're talking about is saying, like you really need to shoot for the moon. really go for it say one day, I'm going to own a portfolio of companies that are val, valued at a billion dollars and all these wonderful things, whatever that goal is, you don't have to do that. Whatever that goal is, just set it big. Don't mildly do it. And then you achieve it. And you're like, nothing left. And then you're in the dark, depressed after being this huge, accomplished horse rider and winning the Olympics. You can actually moonshot those careers. And I know that's just a small sample of the advice that you give. So that being said with moonshots, and setting your sights really, really high, I always tell people, hey, well, how much money do you want to raise for your investment fund, if someone's asking for my advice, and they'll say $10 million, I'm like, great. Now add a zero. And now times that by two, and people's eyes get big, and you can say the fast track to what your old goal is, is not the fast track to your new goal. So if you 20x, your goal, which is really pushing them hard. And then we say all of a sudden, you start thinking differently, you start to see the problems differently, and you start to solve them differently, you start playing a different game. So if your goal is to make $100,000, you're going to behave like you're going to make $100,000. If your goal is to own a portfolio companies and build it to a billion dollar AUM, for example. You're going to solve things a little bit differently, you're going to approach things a little bit differently, you're going to conduct yourself a little bit differently. And that my friend is the point. I don't have to tell you that but we're speaking to the audience around the world. So this is me is just saying like really reach for it. Do that moonshot. And then hopefully come back and tell me or her of the success that you follow. So that being said, Is there other is there another piece of advice from your book or your career that you would advise maybe some tactical things that people can focus on? Say, when building a career in entrepreneurship?

Emmy Sobieski  
One big piece is I call them the three big beasts because somebody just said look, okay, I've moonshot at my career. I want to make 200 million 300 million I want to make a billion or I want to own a billion Dollar Portfolio, whatever, whatever it is some kind of cyber moonshot in my career. Now, what do I do? Which is a great question, right? Like, you can put a big goal up there and then kind of sit there and look at it like oh, and so what I talk about is the three B's, which is breakin, which is what I did by working at Farmers Insurance because I got to manage a portfolio. And then I'm just competing against the markets. And you know, my my returns on my returns, and I can take them anywhere. So break in, then build equity. So you need to get into a fund where you're getting paid part of the returns of the fund or you're getting, or you're in a company where you're starting to get paid equity as part of working for the company. So breaking build equity breakout, the third step breakout means launch your own fund, launch your own fund company, or launch your own company. So quite a few people can make $100 million with step one and step two. If you want to make $100 billion or a billion dollars, you've got pretty much you don't always have to go to step three. But it really helps if you look at Elon Musk, Bill Gates and people that are worth over 100 million, they all did step three, where they they built our own company, did they the break out? So those are kind of that's the macro of how to do it. of breaking build equity breakout. The micro Yeah, so So do you want me to go to the micros? Or do you want to? Yeah, so the the the micros of it, first and foremost, and you're gonna think this is crazy, because I've been talking about working hard and making money, you're not going to have the stamina to do that, unless you eat while every day, which is Whole Foods, try to minimize or get rid of sugar, and move every day, some kind of exercise. And the third part is mental health, a lot of that is achieved through moving and eating well. And then, but a big portion of that is connecting with other people. And there's some great literature on micro moments of connection. So you can be working 80 to 100 hour weeks. But if I give you 100% of my attention for a minute or two or five minutes on the phone, that means so much more than a grand gesture. So learning how to both connect with people personally, so that you can keep your personal relationships, your friendships, your loved your love relationships with loved ones, as well as being able to network effectively, is those micro moments of connection. So if you have those three things connection, exercise, and eating well, that is your foundation to be able to have the stamina to push through for 20 years at high levels of energy working huge hours. So that's that's one big thing. And the other is to have a personal CRM, that is a contact, you know, customer relationship management, but it's, it's basically when do you want to reach out to people, some people you may want to reach out to once a year you send a Christmas card, some people once a quarter, some people once a month systematize it, it's so easy to forget people when you haven't reached out to them. And yet, studies have shown the most influential people, the people that are going to drive our career to the highest highs are our weak connections, not our closest friends. So that your personal CRM is really going to supercharge your career.

Ryan Miller  
That is phenomenal advice. So as we this is good. I mean, we're getting it and you know, I will say keep the gas on right learn to so it's not enough to launch you got it, you gotta get it, you got to take it all the way. And you know, the analogy I use is, since we hear SpaceX and all these wonderful things in the news is like what would happen if you turn the throttle off to zero halfway through launch, you're gonna crash like you need to learn that, you know, growing your career to these high levels and moonshot in your career is going to require will say some gas and energy from you both mentally, physically, spiritually if you're into that, too. So requiring every ounce of your energy, and you got to keep that throttle on. So when you're ready to launch and hit that moonshot, we got to keep the throttle all the way down so that we get to the finish line. Sometimes we call it a marathon of Sprint's. So learning to rejuvenate yourself. We talked about resilience is more about how you recharge than how you endure. I know there's some studies that are coming out with that. That's what we're saying. We're saying like this is gonna be a big journey, it's gonna be so worth it. But you need to take care of yourself along the way so you don't fall to pieces at the finish line. There's got to be some semblance of you by the time you arrive and there's a little bit of you left to enjoy All this access that you put in all this hard work to do. So as we wrap things up any final comments, anything else that you would like our fans to know?

Emmy Sobieski  
I think it's, I think it's wonderful what you're doing, I feel so blessed to have been on the show. And just don't underestimate yourself. No matter what you think that your goals are, you've got to you've got to increase them. You've got to increase them. Because the human, each and every one of us are capable of so much more than we think.

Ryan Miller  
Yeah, I love that. So as as just to summarize, set massive goals. Learn to follow the three B's and for heaven's sakes, take care of yourself along the way. Following these things that me has said, will give you the skills you need in your pursuit of making billions. 

What a show. I hope you enjoyed this episode as much as I do. Now, if you haven't done so already, be sure to leave a comment and review on new ideas and guests you want me to bring on for future episodes. Plus, why don't you head over to YouTube and see extra takes while you get to know our guests even better. And make sure to come back for our next episode where we dive even deeper into the people the process and the perspectives of both investors and founders. Until then, my friends stay hungry. Focus on your goals and keep grinding towards your dream of making billions


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