Shownotes
Chris Markowski
Bio
Chris Markowski founded Markowski Investments in 1995, which is an SEC Registered Investment Advisory. Chris is a champion for the individual investor and an investor advocate. Chris hosts theWatchdog on Wall Street radio show which airs on about 150 stations (across the Radio America Network). He is a talented and engaging guest that your listeners will love as you explore timely news topics & headlines, financial issues, markets, and more. No one covers the relationship between Washington and Wall Street quite like Chris does! Chris has been a guest on Fox Business, Newsmax, Cheddar, and many more.
Summary
Chris Markowski elucidates the imperative philosophy of investing as one would if already possessing considerable wealth, emphasizing the importance of maintaining composure during turbulent market conditions. He underscores that the true essence of financial preparation lies in the ability to capitalize on opportunities, particularly during economic downturns, rather than succumbing to panic. Drawing upon his extensive experience in the financial sector, Markowski shares insights into the current startup environment, likening it to navigating a perilous and ever-evolving minefield fraught with regulatory challenges. He candidly reflects on the dissonance between the lofty valuations in private equity and the fundamental realities of sound business practices. As he guides aspiring entrepreneurs through the intricacies of building enduring enterprises, Markowski advocates for a mindset oriented towards long-term growth and ethical responsibility, urging them to adapt to the shifting landscape rather than rigidly adhering to preconceived notions.
Conversation
The dialogue between Jothy Rosenberg and Chris Markowski unfolds with profound insights into the intricacies of investment and the nuances of navigating the tumultuous landscape of the financial markets. Markowski, a seasoned veteran in the field, articulates an investment philosophy that mirrors the mindset of the affluent, emphasizing the importance of maintaining composure during market volatility. He posits that true investment acumen lies in the ability to capitalize on market downturns, a sentiment echoed by historical figures such as JP Morgan. This perspective not only speaks to the resilience required in the investment sphere but also highlights the transformative journey of small businesses as they evolve amidst shifting economic conditions. Markowski's narrative is enriched by his experiences on Wall Street and his subsequent departure from its morally ambiguous practices, leading him to establish a firm grounded in ethical financial preparation rather than mere planning.
Furthermore, the discussion delves into the challenges faced by entrepreneurs in the contemporary economic environment, characterized by unpredictable regulatory landscapes and inflated valuations in the private equity sector. Markowski warns of the dangers posed by excessive optimism in the startup realm, advocating for a grounded approach to business that prioritizes sustainable growth over fleeting success. The episode culminates in a powerful reminder of the importance of adaptability and personal responsibility in entrepreneurship, urging founders to embrace the reality of their circumstances while remaining steadfast in their pursuit of long-term success.
Ultimately, this episode serves as a critical resource for anyone contemplating the entrepreneurial journey, offering invaluable lessons on resilience, ethical finance, and the necessity of a long-term mindset in an ever-evolving market.
Takeaways
- Investing should be approached with the mindset of an affluent individual, as it leads to more prudent decision-making during times of market volatility.
- Individuals often falter during tumultuous market conditions, failing to recognize the opportunities that arise amidst chaos, while seasoned investors thrive.
- Financial planning should be reframed as financial preparation, emphasizing the importance of being proactive and ready to seize opportunities as they emerge.
- The landscape for startups is akin to navigating a minefield; entrepreneurs must remain vigilant to avoid potential pitfalls that can jeopardize their ventures.
- Small businesses serve as the backbone of the economy, yet they often face challenges stemming from ever-changing regulations that complicate their growth.
- A long-term mindset is essential for success; true value is built over decades rather than through quick financial gains or trends.
- Chris Markowski | Host of The Watchdog on Wallstreet
- Watch Dog on Wall Street radio show
- Markowski Investments page
- YouTube
- Jothy's TEDx talk - On why those with disabilities tend to overachieve
- The Who Says I Can't Foundation - Jothy's non-profit that helps disabled kids get back into a sport they love to restore their self-esteem
- Our YouTube channel
- Designing Successful Startups — Jothy Rosenberg | Author | Speaker | Podcaster - Site with all podcasts
- Tech Startup Toolkit book
- Please leave us a review
Transcripts
Hello.
Speaker A:Please meet today's guest, Chris Markowski.
Speaker B:You want to invest like you're already wealthy, like a multi billionaire.
Speaker B:They don't freak out when markets go haywire.
Speaker B:They take advantage of the situation.
Speaker B:Was one of JP Morgan's great quotes of all time.
Speaker B:He said, during, you know, bear markets or recessions, stocks returned to their rightful owners.
Speaker B:Meaning that me, okay, I'm going to take advantage of the situation.
Speaker B:And.
Speaker B:And unfortunately, too many people don't realize that, but that's probably without doubt the most rewarding part of our business is watching people grow their business, watching them grow their wealth.
Speaker B:I don't even like to call what we do.
Speaker B:I don't like the phrase financial planning at all.
Speaker B:To me, it's financial preparation.
Speaker A:What happens when you take someone who spent decades on Wall street, give them a moral compass, and let them loose on the startup world?
Speaker A:You get Chris Markowski, a guy who walked away from the big money machine because he couldn't stomach selling garbage to people who trusted him.
Speaker A:For nearly 40 years, Chris has been building his own investment firm, hosting a radio show that reaches a quarter million people, and watching both sides of the money game, the people trying to build wealth and the system that's often working against them.
Speaker A:Today, he's going to tell us why the current startup environment feels like navigating a constantly changing minefield, why those obscene private equity valuations should scare you, and what it really takes to build something that lasts when everyone around you is looking for shortcuts.
Speaker A:If you're thinking about starting a company or you're already in the thick of it, Chris has some hard truths about what it takes to survive when the rules keep changing.
Speaker A:This is one you won't want to miss.
Speaker A:And hello, Chris.
Speaker A:Good to have you on the show.
Speaker B:Oh, pleasure.
Speaker B:Thank you for having me.
Speaker A:Yeah, thank you.
Speaker A:I always like to start with a very simple question.
Speaker A:Basic context, setting, which is where are you originally from and where do you live now?
Speaker B:Oh, I am from upstate New York.
Speaker B:Like, most of the people in the country think it's like that New Yorker magazine where it's kind of like just the island of Manhattan and then everything else.
Speaker B:But no, I'm from way upstate New York.
Speaker B:Grew up right outside of Albany.
Speaker A:Oh, so you spent a lot of time in the Adirondacks, I assume?
Speaker B:Yeah, again, you know, I love to fish.
Speaker B:I have to say the.
Speaker B:My least favorite form of fishing that my father used to take us on was ice fishing, and I had to endure that up at Lake Champlain and some of those places but yes, did spend some time up there, without a doubt.
Speaker B:Lake George and Saratoga, wonderful places up there.
Speaker A:So we.
Speaker A:We go.
Speaker A:We've been like five times to a beautiful cabin up on a huge rock overlooking Lake Osita in the little tiny town of Flower.
Speaker B:I have not been there.
Speaker B:Not been there.
Speaker B:What is that near?
Speaker A:It's really close to Saranac Lake.
Speaker B:Okay.
Speaker A:It's that general area.
Speaker A:It's like.
Speaker B:Okay.
Speaker A:The town we really go to, to, to, like, get things is Sarah, is the town of Saranac Lake.
Speaker B:Okay.
Speaker B:We just love it up there, up there, you know, down towards the end of Lake Champlain, Westport.
Speaker B:I just.
Speaker B:It's.
Speaker B:It's nice, especially in the summertime.
Speaker B:It's.
Speaker B:It's gorgeous.
Speaker A:It's a gigantic park.
Speaker A:I mean, it's the largest state park in the country by far.
Speaker B:Oh, yeah.
Speaker B:And again, if you could endure, like I said, some of the times you go up there, going, skiing, it's a whole nother level of difficulty.
Speaker B:Vermont and Adirondack, skiing.
Speaker B:You ski there.
Speaker B:You could ski anywhere.
Speaker B:They say, you know, you can make it anywhere.
Speaker B:Any.
Speaker B:You know, in New York, if you could ski up there, you could ski anywhere.
Speaker B:You could.
Speaker B:You've dealt with, you know, skiing on glaciers, on ice the whole time.
Speaker A:I skied at.
Speaker A:At Whiteface, which is the.
Speaker A:The mountain at Lake Placid.
Speaker A:I skied there when it was about 5 below zero.
Speaker B:The windshield is probably 20 below 35.
Speaker A:My brother and I decided we had to.
Speaker A:We.
Speaker A:We had to just go out because it was.
Speaker A:We were only there for a short weekend, and we had trouble.
Speaker A:We had trouble opening the doors of the car because they'd frozen shut on us while we were driving.
Speaker A:And.
Speaker A:And then there was nobody on the mountain because it was solid block of ice as.
Speaker A:And we started to see white patches on each other's faces as we came down.
Speaker A:So that was the frostbite kicking in.
Speaker A:So we.
Speaker A:We ended it with one run.
Speaker A:We went back and.
Speaker A:And our wives said, we told you you were idiots.
Speaker B:Don't feel bad.
Speaker B:I had took a big hit to my ego.
Speaker B:At Killington, the same thing happened.
Speaker B:I'm like, okay.
Speaker B:We thought that there was all this fresh powder, but it was fresh powder on ice.
Speaker B:I ended up walking down the hill.
Speaker B:I was, I'm out.
Speaker B:I'm done.
Speaker B:I'm good.
Speaker B:I don't got to kill myself.
Speaker B:I'm too old for this.
Speaker B:And I walked down.
Speaker A:Chris, you're.
Speaker A:You've had this company that you founded, and it's.
Speaker A:It's a.
Speaker A:It's Got a very hard name to remember.
Speaker A:It's Markowski Investments.
Speaker A:You founded it 40 years ago.
Speaker A:Is it like, are you at your anniversary?
Speaker A:Is it really that.
Speaker B:A little.
Speaker B:It's a little under.
Speaker B:It's under 40.
Speaker B:A little under 40 years.
Speaker B:We're getting close here.
Speaker B:My radio show is an anniversary.
Speaker B:My radio show I've had for 25 years, my programs.
Speaker B:So that, you know, that's what's been going on for the.
Speaker B:You know, the kind of really kind of put us on the map.
Speaker B:But when I started this with my brother was this basically kind of, you know, we just didn't like the culture on Wall Street.
Speaker B:We saw a niche that needed to be filled and we kind of hit the ground and kind of ran with it.
Speaker B:At that point in time, we actually, I left New York City, actually went back up to Albany, New York to save money and to get the whole thing going.
Speaker B:And then, you know, we moved on from there, you know, growing it little by little.
Speaker B:And we, you know, again, we're still, thank God, you know, God willing, continues continuing to grow like gangbusters.
Speaker A:You were, you.
Speaker A:In other words, you were working on Wall Street.
Speaker A:You had some experience with what it was like.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:And, and that's what's enabled you to sort of compare and contrast that for, for people.
Speaker A:But what was the.
Speaker A:You said, well, we didn't like how they did things and we wanted to do it differently.
Speaker A:Can you be more specific?
Speaker A:What was it?
Speaker B:Yeah, I mean, a lot of things.
Speaker B:Even when I, when I first started, I, again, I come from, you know, a.
Speaker B:My dad was a schoolteacher, ran a.
Speaker B:A janitorial business.
Speaker B:I grew up working for him, you know, cleaning office buildings.
Speaker B:When I was too young to drive, I'd go with him on the weekends or going with them, you know, after school.
Speaker B:Then, you know, when I got old enough, I had my own buildings.
Speaker B:I go from football practice basketball across, right.
Speaker B:To clean an office building and come home and, you know, I get to graduate college and then moving to New York and saying, oh, okay, basically we're going to take an entire class of people and then basically we don't want to deal do business with them because they're not rich enough.
Speaker B:That struck me as odd.
Speaker B:Also kind of struck me as odd, you know, the sheer volume of people that, quite frankly, in my opinion, had ethical bypasses at birth.
Speaker B:You know, I was involved in a lot of investment banking during the whole, you know, dot com run up and I'd be looking at prospectus and I knew that this company was garbage but it didn't matter.
Speaker B:It didn't matter because it was sellable at the time.
Speaker B:And it's just, you know, think about Wall Street.
Speaker B:They had that line in the movie, the big short, you know, from Wall street, we'll say anything if you're willing to buy it.
Speaker B:And, you know, that, that bothered me, you know, and I, I didn't, it didn't jive with my, my moral set, if you will.
Speaker B:And, and I said, you know, I, I don't want to do this anymore.
Speaker B:So.
Speaker B:And again, I'm lucky enough that I, you know, work with two of my brothers.
Speaker B:And we said, you know what?
Speaker B:Let's go do our own thing.
Speaker A:In that process.
Speaker A:You, you, you don't just work with big companies or rich people and you've worked with a lot of small businesses, is that right?
Speaker B:Yes.
Speaker B:You know, yes.
Speaker B:Do we have our, our clients that, you know, that would, you know, family office type clients that would be handled by like a Goldman Sachs?
Speaker B:Yes, we have them the most.
Speaker B:And quite frankly, to be honest, handling those clients, it's a, it's different than handling people.
Speaker B:We are trying to build wealth.
Speaker B:The most rewarding part of what we do is building people's wealth and watching them go over the decades and watch them, you know, start at one point and then get to that point when they become wealthy.
Speaker B:That's one of the easiest gigs out there, in my opinion, quite frankly, is preserving wealth that's already created.
Speaker B:It's the building part that's hard when you're teaching people to do the right thing.
Speaker B:One of our job is to actually act as almost like a, a financial shrink, keeping people from doing stupid things with their money when markets go haywire and, you know, after being with this right, people understand.
Speaker B:Oh, you're right.
Speaker B:You know what?
Speaker B:Stay calm.
Speaker B:Don't worry.
Speaker B:Yes.
Speaker B:Okay.
Speaker B:Everything's going to turn out all right.
Speaker B:It's one of our rules of the road.
Speaker B:You want to invest like you're already wealthy.
Speaker B:Like a multi billionaire, they don't freak out when markets go haywire.
Speaker B:They take advantage of the situation.
Speaker B:Was one of JP Morgan's great quotes of all time.
Speaker B:He said, during, you know, bear markets or recessions, stocks returned to their rightful owners.
Speaker B:Meaning that me, okay, I'm going to take advantage of the situation.
Speaker B:And unfortunately, too many people don't realize that.
Speaker B:But that's probably without a doubt the most rewarding part of our business is watching people grow their business, watching them grow their wealth.
Speaker B:I don't even like to call what we do.
Speaker B:I don't like the phrase financial planning at all.
Speaker B:To me, it's financial preparation.
Speaker B:It's the same thing like you're training, training to, you know, for a marathon, you're training to be a bodybuilder, you're training to be an athlete.
Speaker B:You're working on the fundamentals all the time so that, you know, whatever presents itself to you, whatever comes in front of you, God's going to give you certain opportunities throughout life, you're able to take advantage of those.
Speaker A:So this working with, with small businesses that you've done a lot of have, have they actually taught you anything along the way about business?
Speaker A:Oh, I'm just curious.
Speaker B:So many, I mean, again, not even just the businesses that the people that are my clients, but the various different businesses that I worked at, small companies, startups, restaurants, paying my way through school and doing all of those things as well, that, I mean, that's what's great.
Speaker B:I can think, unfortunately, a lot of young people are missing out on that nowadays.
Speaker B:Not doing all the summer jobs and things that we used to do when, when we were younger.
Speaker B:That's, you know, that, that's, that's business bank.
Speaker B:You bank all that knowledge that you have and then you've got, you know, various different walks of life from people from different parts of the country, myriads of different businesses.
Speaker B:You're trying to absorb all of that all the time.
Speaker B:You know, college is one thing, but you know, entrepreneurs need to be in a perpetual state of educating themselves.
Speaker B:And even I right now, I said the young people that I bring in, I got my interns coming in this summer.
Speaker B:I need a lot of help with some of the latest tech and various different things that are going on because again, sometimes it gets a little bit above my pay grade for my age and I'm having a difficult time, you know, keeping up and they, they add to that.
Speaker B:So yeah, you always want to be in a state where you're trying to learn from everyone.
Speaker A:In the years that, you know, you've had this company for 40 years, what's the biggest mistake maybe or threat that you had to deal with in, in all those years?
Speaker B:Hmm.
Speaker B:I mean, that's an interesting question.
Speaker B:I get, you know, right now, I, I, I guess to some degree I could, you know, factor this in.
Speaker B:Again, I was, I've had a radio show that's on 250 stations around the country for, like I said, for 25 years.
Speaker B:And over the past several years I had to come to grips the fact that I'm going to have to Start doing vlogs and podcasts and other things to get out to people in a different way.
Speaker B:And growing up that, and beating the algorithms, that being, you know, one of the things that was.
Speaker B:Was very, very difficult.
Speaker B:It's.
Speaker B:It's difficult right now, but it's.
Speaker B:It's working out great.
Speaker B:It's a challenge.
Speaker B:And, you know, we're handling it and we're growing it and it's, I guess, you know, it's.
Speaker B:It's, you know, the one specific thing, you know, and I guess when we started out, too, I come to think of it, we.
Speaker B:We started out too.
Speaker B:And again, it depends on where you're from.
Speaker B:We, we started, you know, like I said, we moved back to Albany and, And trying to start our business back there at home and thinking that, okay, you know, these young guys are coming back and they're going to start their business in their hometown and everybody's going to be really receptive to it.
Speaker B:That most certainly wasn't the case.
Speaker B:I miscalculated there as well.
Speaker B:It's kind of interesting sometimes.
Speaker B:Depends on where you live.
Speaker B:Every, Every, you know, it's a big country, different demographics anywhere.
Speaker B:Albany is a capital of New York and certain mindsets there and the people there were kind of almost like, kind of put off at the fact, again, was one of the things I didn't understand as a kid.
Speaker B:It's like everybody wanted to graduate from high school and get a job for the state, and that wasn't us.
Speaker B:And the extra people kind of like, you know, put off by that.
Speaker B:So again, I basically completely stopped marketing there altogether.
Speaker B:Didn't make any sense.
Speaker A:Hi.
Speaker A:The podcast you are listening to is a companion to my recent book, Tech Startup Toolkit how to Launch Strong and Exit Big.
Speaker A:This is the book I wish I'd had.
Speaker A:As I was founding and running eight startups over 35 years.
Speaker A:I tell the unvarnished truth about what went right and especially about what went wrong.
Speaker A:You could get it from all the usual booksellers.
Speaker A:I hope you like it.
Speaker A:It's a true labor of love.
Speaker A:Now back to the show.
Speaker A:What made you move to Florida?
Speaker B:Oh, I've been down.
Speaker B:This is the second time I've been down in Florida.
Speaker B:Well, right now it's all my kids are in college and they.
Speaker B:Again, my kids are all lacrosse kids.
Speaker B:We moved back in Long island about nine years ago and they were there for, like, their middle school and high school years because that's, you know, the demographic for them.
Speaker B:And plus, I wanted to give them a little bit of that you know, Long Island, New York City, moxie to some degree.
Speaker B:I think it's, I think it's healthy.
Speaker B:And I'm back.
Speaker B:I just get.
Speaker B:I, I hate the cold, love the, the weather down here.
Speaker B:Plus, I also love the fact that there's no state taxes.
Speaker B:Fantastic.
Speaker A:Okay, so one of the things you, you, you said early on in this conversation and also when we talked before is that you like to bridge between Washington and Wall Street.
Speaker A:You're, you're saying, what do you mean by that?
Speaker A:And what is, why is that such a big, important thing?
Speaker B:Well, never in the history of my radio show 25 years on air have I ever given a buy, sell or hold recommendation ever.
Speaker B:That's not.
Speaker B:We do.
Speaker B:James Kramer can do that and, you know, lose people money till he's blue in the face.
Speaker B:You know, a buy for you is not a buy for your neighbor.
Speaker B:I think, quite frankly, I think it's important for people to understand the underlying legislation, things that are happening in the country that are going to affect their pocketbooks and how they need to prepare for it.
Speaker B:Give you example, you know, right now, okay, it's current events.
Speaker B:Everyone's debating over this big, beautiful bill, and we find our country, you know, 36, $37 trillion in debt.
Speaker B: u know, this is going back to: Speaker B:Printing money is inflationary.
Speaker B:And don't pay attention to the government's numbers.
Speaker B:It's nonsensical.
Speaker B:We all know what we pay at the grocery store.
Speaker B:We all know we're paying for cars now.
Speaker B:We all know what we're paying for insurance now and everyday items.
Speaker B:And don't tell me that inflation's been under control for a period of time, because it hasn't.
Speaker B:So you have to have a philosophy where, you know what you're going to have to have, you're going to have to put your money to work.
Speaker B:You're going to have to outgrow inflation based upon the fact that we don't have, you know, either party in Washington, D.C.
Speaker B:that actually wants to deal with the fact that, you know, our, our budgets are out of control and we have to continue to print money to keep working.
Speaker B:That's a killer.
Speaker B:I mean, it's the biggest tax of them all.
Speaker B: oh, okay, we gotta extend the: Speaker B:Which is fine.
Speaker B:That's fantastic.
Speaker B:That's all well and Good.
Speaker B:But guess what?
Speaker B:When other tax, inflation's another tax and until we start acting in a fiscally, you know, sensible manner, that's going to continue to be the case.
Speaker B:That's just an example of something, you know, and how it's going to affect the country or, you know, I've talked over the years, you know, education and the need to improve and all of these issues, societal issues, which I think are important to everyone and how we tie them into, you know, the, the business of finance and the direction of this country.
Speaker A:Couldn't agree more.
Speaker A:And I wor about the deficit a lot.
Speaker A:It needs to be addressed.
Speaker A:I agree.
Speaker B: al Security, I, you know, mid-: Speaker B:I said, listen, do not plan on getting Social Security.
Speaker B:If you get it, congratulations, it's a bonus going to be cut by over 20% in just a few short years.
Speaker B:And we don't hear crickets, we hear crickets about this.
Speaker B:You know, I, you know, last one that tried to reform it was Bush and he didn't have the political capital because he was too busy fighting wars in Iraq.
Speaker B:And we get nothing done.
Speaker B: ial crisis that hit Europe in: Speaker B:Everyone's, everyone's government checks because again, they, they kind of live off that over there.
Speaker B:Got cut, cut significantly is, is a major hit and they've been having to live under that austerity for that time.
Speaker B:And obviously their situation is better and their economy has improved, but the people were hurt by that.
Speaker B:And this is why I say, hey, listen, you know, don't plan if you get Social Security, fantastic, but plan on not getting it.
Speaker B:That's a much more responsible way of handling things.
Speaker B:And then if it gets cut, you're not going to care.
Speaker A:So this, your radio show is, is, it's got a, what is it called?
Speaker B:Watchdog on Wall Street.
Speaker A:Watchdog on Wall Street.
Speaker A:Are you looking at like things that are dark secrets and telling people about them or, or what are you doing there?
Speaker B:Well, like I said, it started 25 years ago.
Speaker B:I originally started, I only had it, I was an hour program and I was going after various different rip offs and scams and things that were being pulled on people at the time.
Speaker B:I mean, prior to having the show, I wrote a column entitled Understanding Enron.
Speaker B: And this was in, in: Speaker B:I was like, I didn't get it.
Speaker B:And you know, this company was five years in a row, Fortune magazine's most innovative company and everybody's talent the thing.
Speaker B:And I'm like, this doesn't make any sense to me.
Speaker B:I.
Speaker B:You're trading bandwidth.
Speaker B:I don't know how they're making money here.
Speaker B:There.
Speaker B:It didn't make much sense to me.
Speaker B:Wrote an entire column on that, kind of got hammered, you know.
Speaker B:Oh, you don't know what you're talking about because the stock went up for like the next 10 months until it didn't.
Speaker B:You know, eventually companies will trade for what they're worth.
Speaker B:They have an intrinsic value.
Speaker B:And obviously it didn't even during that period of time as well, I was, you know, basically railing against, you know, the dot coms and where they were at and, you know, making fun of me.
Speaker B:Chicken Little, you don't understand.
Speaker B:All I did understand, I said, you know, the lie that earnings, you know, it's a new paradigm.
Speaker B:Earnings don't matter anymore.
Speaker B:And all the other nonsensical buzz phrases that were out at that time, again, we had them not too long ago with the disruptor companies during COVID Yeah, On Meat and Peloton.
Speaker B:It's the same thing.
Speaker B:It's the same racket, okay?
Speaker B:Getting people to do stupid things with their money.
Speaker B:And I've been pretty good over the years at kind of identifying that.
Speaker B:And that's, you know, what the show was originally all about.
Speaker B:And still I do the rip offs and scams, not as much.
Speaker B:I mean, I used to really rail against a lot of brokerage firms and the way that they handle themselves.
Speaker B: had like an epiphany kind of: Speaker B:I'm saying, you know what, there has to be some personal responsibility involved with this at some point in time.
Speaker B:Everybody's got to be an adult and understand that everything in life that has meaning, value and worth involves work, time and effort.
Speaker B:And people got to stop looking for shortcuts with their investments because that's a killer.
Speaker A:When I think about what you've already told us.
Speaker A:And deciding this was the way Wall street was behaving was bad.
Speaker A:It needed to be done differently.
Speaker A:You would, you got together with your brothers, you moved to back to Albany to start it.
Speaker A:Then you chose to move down to Florida.
Speaker A:You've done this radio show, writings, and of course on the, on the side, you coach lacrosse, which is not a sport for the faint of heart.
Speaker A:It's a tough sport.
Speaker A:So all of this leads me to ask okay, you've got a lot of grit and so do.
Speaker A:So does anybody that starts a company from scratch and, and builds it up.
Speaker A:Where in your case, where does it come from?
Speaker A:Where does your grit come from?
Speaker B:Again, we're all kind of wired differently and it kind of goes to, you know, I guess a lot has to do with my upbringing and how hard my, my dad worked and you know, my grandparents, you know, half from Italy, half from Poland.
Speaker B:And it's just, you know, kind of how we were brought up.
Speaker B:You know, I've always, kind of always, just every day I get up and I'm like, okay, you know, how are we going to make the business better?
Speaker B:How are we going to grow the business?
Speaker B:It's like a, it's a fun challenge for me and my brothers and I every single day.
Speaker B:And you know, I'm always trying to, you know, find something new and how to go about growing it.
Speaker B:Again, like I said, everyone's wired completely differently and you know, it's kind of our process with financial preparation because again, everyone, you want to have the ability to take advantage of whatever opportunities are going to be presented to you in life and you kind of, kind of pray on it.
Speaker B:And I'm saying, okay, you know, God, what, what do you, what am I supposed to do?
Speaker B:You know, And I think that my, you know, position is to, I think he wants me to go out and educate people and talk about all of these things and try to help people build wealth.
Speaker B:And if you have that type of a mission, you believe that's something that you're supposed to be doing, I think that helps drive, drive me as well.
Speaker A:So you're in a pretty good position to think about what are the conditions in the economy, in the market that could be advantageous or disadvantageous to somebody that's thinking about building a new startup and they may or may not need investor money.
Speaker A:Some do, some don't.
Speaker A:The one I'm running right now needed a lot of investor money because it was a hardware based technology.
Speaker A:People that are building SaaS application companies maybe don't need very much and if they could start off as a service, maybe they don't need any.
Speaker A:So it's sort of a somewhat of a complex question because the answer can't be the same for all the types.
Speaker B:Of companies and it's fine.
Speaker B:Again, I've been yelling and screaming a lot over the past several months because you, for the life of me, you know, I, you know, the whole, not a fan of this entire tariff system that has been put into Play at all.
Speaker B:You know, you know, this.
Speaker B:Small business owners, you know, you look out your window every single day and there's these things, you know, called regulations.
Speaker B:I call them like little.
Speaker B:It's like a minefield, and you want to know where the mines are.
Speaker B:You don't want to step on a mine because it could wreck you and wreck your business.
Speaker B:But when the minefield constantly changes all the time, that makes it that much more difficult.
Speaker B:And that's what everybody's dealing with right now.
Speaker B:You want to have a set of rules.
Speaker B:You want, again, with the tax cuts that they're putting in, why are you.
Speaker B:Why are you, you know, basically making some of them go away over a certain period of time.
Speaker B:If they're great tax cuts, keep them in place.
Speaker B:Just let everybody know what the rules are.
Speaker B:You know, that's why, you know, baseball's been around so long.
Speaker B:I pretty much have the same rules, okay?
Speaker B:It'll change the pitch count or whatever chart, you know, whatever.
Speaker B:But for the most part, it's the same bloody ball game.
Speaker B:Three strikes and you're out.
Speaker B:When the government is changing things all the time, you don't know what up is down, down is up.
Speaker B:You know, who wants to invest in an environment like that?
Speaker B:You know, who's the phrase?
Speaker B:The Yale professor, Schiller.
Speaker B:Animal spirits.
Speaker B:You know, as an entrepreneur, you want to have animal spirits.
Speaker B:You want, you want to hit the ground running.
Speaker B:You don't want the government in your way and knocking on your door.
Speaker B:You know, with that being said, there's been some good things with the Chevron case this, this past year.
Speaker B:You know, the fact that the executive branch of government for, for decades now has continued to, to grab more and more power with all the acronym agencies that act as judge, jury and executioner, that needs to go away as well.
Speaker B:I, you know, I want to get back to a point in time where, you know, Congress is the one that's writing the rules and regulations.
Speaker B: , you know, back in the early: Speaker B:They're not supposed to be dictated by these overlords from these agencies within the government and that that makes it difficult for small businesses.
Speaker B:Small businesses, that the, the engine of this country, startups, is what creates.
Speaker B:Creates job growth.
Speaker B:Took a look at the jobs numbers this past Friday.
Speaker B:They were lousy.
Speaker B:Get what everybody was telling you?
Speaker B:The job growth for, especially for small business, was lousy.
Speaker B:Why do you think that is, they're uncertain.
Speaker A:The other thing that affects a small company is even if they're not going to get investor money right away, once they start to do well and need to scale and want to scale fast, they're not going to be able to do it necessarily organically.
Speaker A:I mean, a great situation for a startup is to not need very much investor money at all.
Speaker A:And then when they do need money, they're already cash flow positive, but they need to grow anyway.
Speaker A:And now they're going to be able to invest, get investors to invest on much, much better terms.
Speaker A:But right now, and it's actually before, it's before Trump came in and did all this stuff, the, the, the, the vc, the investor market had already gotten bad.
Speaker A:That's a, a really worrisome thing.
Speaker A:It was very good about five years ago and maybe even four years ago, and then it started to freeze up.
Speaker A:It was, it was, it was actually good.
Speaker A:So I guess I could figure out the math here because Covid was five years ago.
Speaker A:So, so right after Covid, it was, it was raising money on pretty good terms.
Speaker A:Was.
Speaker A:He was easy.
Speaker B:It's a liquidity right now for a lot of the VCs and a lot of the private equity companies.
Speaker B:And they've changed their modus operandi a little bit to make them more attractive to look to be buying out companies that have already positive cash flow.
Speaker B:The problem is the multiples that they're paying are, for these companies are obscene.
Speaker B:Seen, I get calls every single day wanting to buy us and absolutely obscene valuations.
Speaker B:And I'm like, there is no way.
Speaker B:And I know, I know what my margins are.
Speaker B:I know how my business works.
Speaker B:I'm like, how in the world are you going to make money, you know, paying me this valuation on this company?
Speaker B:Unless one of two things, okay, you're going to either really wreck my clients and do some horrible things to them, which is not.
Speaker B:Yeah, I never, I couldn't live with myself with something like that.
Speaker B:Or you're going to be playing a, you know, demonic game of musical chairs, trying to find some sucker, you know, to buy this at a ridiculous even higher valuation.
Speaker B:That is more ridiculous.
Speaker B:I mean, I've seen H.
Speaker B:VAC companies here in Florida get bought out at 35, 40 million dollars.
Speaker B:Obscene multiples.
Speaker B:Why?
Speaker B:Because they have positive cash flow and it helps to make their books look a little bit better.
Speaker B:A lot of these, you're going to see a, there's, there's going to be a reckoning when it comes to the whole vc, private equity market again.
Speaker B:I would never have to go on vacation in my entire life.
Speaker B:These guys beg me to, you know, put my clients into their various different things, fly here, there and everywhere.
Speaker B:I'm like no, no, first and foremost, I would never sell my company.
Speaker B:Never in a million years.
Speaker B:There's no way I fiduciary.
Speaker B:That's not going to happen.
Speaker B:But I'm also not going to buy your junk and put it my clients portfolios because the way that they price these things, all these so called Ivy league geniuses, not very good.
Speaker B: started going downhill about: Speaker B:Now it's a little bit different, but basically the same gain.
Speaker A:This has been very interesting.
Speaker A:Do you have any, any last words of wisdom for potential startup founders?
Speaker B:I guess the best I wanted I heard this long time ago.
Speaker B:You want to make God laugh, tell him your plans, be able to adjust.
Speaker B:You may go into something.
Speaker B:I like I said we start our company, I got this great idea, we're going back up to Albany and we're going to be welcomed with open arms.
Speaker B:You know, we all played sports there and all this different thing.
Speaker B:No, but I have to adjust.
Speaker B:You got to be willing to, to adjust to the terrain.
Speaker B:You know, it's an old saying but you know, Navy seal, you know, told me, you know, you go into battle and you have your, your plan and your map and then you get there and guess what, the map's wrong.
Speaker B:So what do you do?
Speaker B:You go with the map or you go with the terrain?
Speaker B:You go with the terrain and you adjust.
Speaker A:That's good advice.
Speaker A:There are lots of different sayings that say the same thing, but you know, startup founders need to be prepared to pivot a lot.
Speaker A: n I started out, which was in: Speaker B:It was a boxing move.
Speaker B:People watch boxing back then.
Speaker B:That's why you had problems bobbing and weaving.
Speaker B:Not people watch boxing anymore.
Speaker B:It's more mma.
Speaker B:The pivot probably at the basketball, I'm assuming the pivot move.
Speaker A:Pivot move.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker A:Chris, thanks, thanks very much for doing this.
Speaker A:We've created a nice episode here.
Speaker A:Inform people about something that they might not know anything about, which is great.
Speaker B:Pleasure.
Speaker B:Thank you so much for having me.
Speaker B:It was a lot of fun.
Speaker A:Now for what I call the Startup Founder Toolkit Tool number one the Terrain over map principle.
Speaker A:Your business plan is just a map, but the market is the terrain.
Speaker A:When they don't match and they never will, completely always go with what the terrain is telling you.
Speaker A:Chris learned this the hard way when he assumed his hometown would welcome his new business with open arms.
Speaker A:Smart founders stay flexible and adjust to reality, not their assumptions.
Speaker A:Tool number two the Personal Responsibility filter.
Speaker A:Before you blame the economy, regulations or market conditions for your struggles, ask yourself, what can I control here?
Speaker A:Chris realized that while he couldn't change how Wall street operated, he could build something different.
Speaker A:Focus your energy on what you can influence, not what you can complain about.
Speaker A:And tool number three?
Speaker A:The long game mindset.
Speaker A:In a world of quick flips and exit strategies, the real money and satisfaction comes from building something that compounds over decades.
Speaker A:Chris has been growing the same business for 40 years because he focused on creating genuine value, not chasing the latest trend.
Speaker A:Think marathon, not sprint.
Speaker A:That's our episode with Chris.
Speaker A:Until next time.
Speaker A:Keep designing your success.
Speaker A:The show notes contain useful resources and links.
Speaker A:Please follow and rate us@podchaser.com designing successful startups.
Speaker A:Also, please share and like us on your social media channel.
Speaker A:This is Jothi Rosenberg saying Tata for now.
Speaker A:TTFN.
