Latest / AI for Founders with Ryan Estes / Millennials Will Inherit Trillions

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Millennials Will Inherit Trillions · AI for Founders with Ryan Estes

0:00
Welcome back to AI for Founders. I'm Ryan Estes.
0:02
Most of us were never really taught how money works.
0:05
We were only taught how to earn it, maybe how to spend it, but
0:08
never how to build it. Now imagine the largest wealth
0:11
transfer in human history, somewhere between 60 trillion
0:14
and 90 trillion is happening right now.
0:16
And most of the inheritors don't know what a limited partnership
0:19
is. That's the problem I guess today
0:21
CJ Fellini is trying to solve. CJ is the founder of Noyack, a
0:26
learn plan, invest ecosystem using AI agents to each
0:30
financial literacy and democratize access to
0:33
alternative assets like real estate, fine art and venture
0:36
capital. He's managed billions for ultra
0:38
wealthy families, built an AI called Noyak dot AI to help the
0:43
next generation DIY their wealth.
0:45
And get this, his family once held a $50 million fine art
0:50
portfolio before masterworks existed.
0:53
In this episode, you'll learn how CJ turned his father's
0:56
medical crisis into a 35 year wealth management career.
0:59
Why he believes the future belongs to financial generalists
1:03
and how AI agents will completely disrupt wealth
1:05
management. If you're a founder, investor,
1:08
or just someone who wants to finally feel confident about
1:10
your money, this one's for you. 3 reasons right now to sign up
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2:27
CJ, welcome to the show. Thanks for joining me.
2:30
My pleasure to be here, Ryan. Thank you for inviting me A.
2:33
100% I'm really excited to talk about financial literacy.
2:36
I feel like I always have something new to learn.
2:40
Now begin the conversation. A little context about you and
2:43
your company, Noyak. Well, son of immigrants and, and
2:49
that's important because it, it speaks a lot to our, my DIY
2:54
ethos says everything I do, no one can teach me anything I got,
2:57
I have to dissect it, break it down, reverse engineer it and
3:01
learn it for myself. And I did just that.
3:04
Father had a stroke, had to leave my failed professional
3:07
hockey career and take up the family business, which we did.
3:12
And, and then found out that I had a talent for wealth
3:16
management, specifically alternative investments.
3:19
And I did that for 9 ultra high net worth families for 35 years
3:24
after DIY ING it in my 20s once my, my father had that stroke.
3:31
So that's a little bit about me again.
3:33
I mean, I think that's how, how I got here is about learning.
3:37
But next generation and what they're going to go through when
3:40
it comes to the great wealth transfer and, and the 8090
3:45
trillion that they've made-up numbers at that point, right?
3:48
8090 trillion leaving my old ass generation and even older baby
3:53
boomers to to next Gen. which is millennials, younger millennials
3:57
and Gen. Z.
3:59
And as I mentioned to you in the prep, the abominable, the
4:03
abysmal state of financial literacy in this country.
4:08
How are they going to DIY and what are the tools?
4:10
I love it. Now let's let's take it back a
4:13
little bit. When you're doing alternative
4:14
investments, So what does that include?
4:16
What kind of asset classes is that?
4:18
Well, the big one for immigrants is real estate.
4:20
I mean, come on, what immigrant do you not know that doesn't
4:23
invest in real estate? Whether it's residential,
4:25
whether it's, whether it's commercial, whether it's most
4:28
likely warehouse, industrial logistics, I don't know why I,
4:32
I, I, I don't know if it's coincidental, but for some
4:35
reason we seem to understand, you know, commercial real estate
4:38
better than the average bear. So that's a big one.
4:41
And that's where we started in my history back when I was in my
4:44
early 20s. But then over time we, you know,
4:48
as we matured as a multi family office, we were in over 8
4:52
different asset classes including secondaries and
4:55
obviously early stage venture capital fine art.
5:00
We actually had a $50 million fine art portfolio before
5:03
Masterworks ever knew what a fine, what a blue chip artwork
5:07
was and that's it. By the way, if I, we did a, we
5:11
did a look back over 30 years, our best performing asset class
5:14
was the fine art. Now, not deep enough, not big
5:17
enough to move the needle, but on a per capita basis, best
5:20
performing art class Fine art. Incredible.
5:24
That's cool. Yeah.
5:25
I mean, the I want to hear your take then on the the Louvre
5:28
robbery recently. Did that affect you any certain
5:30
kind of way? Well, no, I, I actually don't
5:33
like old masters. I couldn't care less about the
5:36
actual I, I mean, I do collect personally and my wife and I and
5:39
my wife's on the board of a museum here in New York.
5:42
So we care about, but we're, we're mostly BIPOC, which is
5:45
Black, Indigenous, people of color artists, female artists,
5:49
you know, sort of the unrecognized Canon of fine art
5:52
as well as contempt. Yeah.
5:53
I mean, well, I, I can go into financially the, the cynical
5:57
view of that. We do love those artists as
6:01
well. And contemporary primarily is
6:04
where where we vibe to. As for the Louvre, well if it
6:09
wasn't valuable or going to be more valuable, no one would
6:12
spend their goddamn time and their and risk their ass in
6:15
general if it wasn't going to be valuable and more valuable.
6:17
So I guess they believe in the in the thesis as well.
6:22
Yeah, 100% amazing. OK, let's talk about this big
6:27
wealth transfer that's going to happen over the next 20-30
6:30
years. Maybe I'm being generous 'cause,
6:32
you know, I get, I'm not getting any younger either, but exactly
6:37
what is your position and, and how are you kind of forecasting,
6:40
what steps are you taking for this, this kind of like massive
6:43
wealth redistribution among families?
6:47
Oh, I mean, I again, I'm, I'm speaking my own book a little
6:50
bit here, but but there's a few trends that you can see.
6:53
And before I get to the pain points, I'll just talk about the
6:56
trends. Obviously the facts remain that
6:58
the baby boomer and now Gen. X is the wealthiest, the two
7:01
wealthiest generations in history.
7:04
And they also are compressed in their age.
7:06
So they're all the the inheritance are transferring
7:12
that well faster than any other generation.
7:15
That's an important. It's not just how much and it's
7:17
an insane amount. I mentioned that again, anywhere
7:19
from 60 to 90 trillion. I've heard numbers all over, but
7:22
it's in that range. But it's how fast.
7:25
Normally that would be a 30 year, you know, this is
7:29
happening the bulk of it in like 1012 years, even though we
7:32
measured those numbers over 20 to 25, a lot of it is happening
7:36
in the next 10 to 12 years really quickly.
7:39
That's important because if you're not prepared, and if you,
7:43
if you're not prepared to understand limited partnership
7:47
appraisal and transfer taxes and, and all the latest ways of
7:52
tax mitigation, well, you're going to get screwed.
7:56
And so it's going to be a, it's going to be a serious situation.
7:59
Also, we, oh, strangely, I think that's a lot to say about my
8:02
generation. Again, aside from financial
8:05
literacy, intergenerational conversations about wealth,
8:08
family wealth are at a surveyed low of all time.
8:13
We actually did a 5000 respondents survey and of, and
8:17
we have a millennial audience. This is our newsletter.
8:19
So over 6-7 months, we received 5005 thousand respondents to a
8:23
very big survey. One of those things that we
8:27
surveyed was how much conversation they had with their
8:30
parents about about wealth, transferring wealth, what the
8:33
family does, etcetera. 8 percent, 8% had serious
8:38
conversations with their parents or and extended family members
8:42
about this. That's crazy.
8:44
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code AIFF. Well, I mean, it kind of it kind
12:30
of puts a spotlight on the, the stereotype of boomers in
12:34
general, which is, you know, narcissistic, not letting go of
12:37
power, wanting to stay in the saddle as long as possible, not
12:42
divulging critical information like.
12:46
There's also, so Ryan, I thought we were going to have a
12:49
political conversation here. You're not talking about our
12:51
president, are you? That was that was tailor made.
12:56
I mean, yeah, I teamed that up tuned in right there.
12:58
Like, oh, this is a political podcast?
13:00
Honestly. It is it is characteristic of
13:02
that generation that they they were met probably with a little
13:05
bit of stoicism from, from, you know, their parents.
13:08
You don't talk about money, you don't talk about politics, you
13:10
don't talk about religion at the dinner, dinner table.
13:12
And now they're 80 years old and like, it never changed.
13:16
And so, you know, you have Gen. X millennials are starting to
13:18
look around like, hey, man, like, what are what are we
13:21
supposed to do? Like we, we never got those
13:23
instructions, you know, so I, I know you've got kind of like a
13:26
suite of products and like kind of infotainment.
13:29
Talk to us a little bit about Noyak dot AI because this looks
13:33
really interesting when I'm reading about it.
13:35
A first AI agent for financial literacy.
13:38
So you can ask the agent about taxes, retirement accounts,
13:42
investing. And like I would be really
13:44
interested to hear how you trained this agent and kind of
13:47
who's like the ideal user for for the product.
13:51
Thank you. Thank you for that intro.
13:52
Well, first, in fact, what we are, I'll do a little a little
13:56
background before I jump into Noyack AI, which is a small like
13:58
conversational, small language model.
14:01
What we are two things Noyack Wealth Club is A5O1C3 registered
14:06
nonprofit with the mission of financial literacy for young
14:09
adults. And Noyack Investing Club is
14:12
providing access digital, digitally native access to
14:16
alternative investments, all asset classes.
14:18
Now the and we're building agentic AI, three AI agents.
14:24
You you mentioned the first one, which rests in the financial
14:26
literacy owned by owned by Noyak.
14:29
All the agents are owned proprietarily by Noyak Investing
14:32
called Noyak Inc. And then that's, that's our
14:34
ecosystem name. They are the bridge.
14:37
So they're the bridge from literacy to action from from
14:41
knowing to making choice into and taking action.
14:44
So Noyak dot AI is the first of our agents that we built and we
14:48
built it over. We built it over the last two
14:51
years and we've been training it non-stop.
14:54
The original information really started with our newsletter.
14:57
So our newsletter, which just celebrated this last Sunday, was
15:00
our 100th edition. 100 straight weeks.
15:02
I'm very proud of that. Consistency is everything.
15:05
It's an ex pro athlete. It's not about how great you can
15:08
be on one day, it's how decent you can be every day.
15:12
And so 100 straight weeks and really we used all the learning
15:16
from our expertise, mine and Ultera Investments, others in
15:19
personal finance, debt, debt reduction, estate planning,
15:23
retirement planning, we use these newsletters as the
15:26
training. So we built 2000 words every
15:29
week and that went into the training of the model over O and
15:34
over continuously. And we started with, we started
15:37
with a bulk of beginning information, which we all know
15:39
are the basics that we all learned.
15:42
You know, I, I mean, I learned in Economics 101 and also
15:45
personal finance over the years, a lot of the alternate
15:48
investment general information was trained from experts that,
15:52
that came from my network. So between podcasts and all of
15:56
our content that actually is the training foundation of the small
16:00
language model is all of the content we've created over a
16:03
couple years, which is a ton. Yeah, well, I mean, it might be
16:07
a small language model, but that's exactly what the large
16:09
language models are doing too. They're scraping newsletters,
16:12
social media and podcast transcriptions in a major way.
16:16
Absolutely. In fact, weirdly, one of our
16:19
hyper specific newsletters showed up in in no in Claude in
16:25
Anthropic. And I was, I was using it.
16:28
I'm like, wait a minute, I wrote about this topic and that phrase
16:30
seems oddly reminiscent. And I remember this and I went
16:33
back, it was like a couple months earlier.
16:35
I went, I'm like, holy shit, that turn of phrase about a
16:37
specific alternative investments.
16:39
It was about land. It was about AG, AG tech, land
16:42
investing, farmland investing. And I used a very specific
16:46
phrase, which is sort of an insider jargon.
16:48
And there it was. And I'm like, holy crap, they
16:51
scraped our, they scraped our newsletter.
16:54
That's so funny. It's great though.
16:56
It's awesome. Yeah, no, I all.
16:57
Except they didn't. They didn't credit me.
16:59
So no one knows where it came from.
17:01
They think it came from anthropic, which you did it.
17:04
Yeah, so look, I love this this conversation of financial
17:07
literacy. Do you think there's something
17:10
that exists in the world which is financial virtuosity?
17:14
You know, if if literacy is what you is what I did when I was
17:17
studying Spanish two O 1 and I'm like, Oh, don't they style
17:24
Biblioteca? You know, it's like, OK, I've
17:26
I've I've established maybe a little bit of literacy here, but
17:29
like, can you truly get to a new plateau at some point?
17:32
What? What is that?
17:34
Well, no, actually I, you know, OK, so the virtuosity it, it, it
17:40
assumes that someone wakes up in the morning and says I want to
17:42
be the best at financial literacy.
17:44
I mean, that's really what what you're describing.
17:46
And I can tell you even as a professional investment
17:50
professional, real estate, professional finance bro,
17:53
generally no one wakes up do them thinking now they'd rather
17:56
what they don't do anything else in life rather than become an
18:00
expert in financial literacy. Maybe there's a few.
18:02
I'll find that tribe. But what really is important is
18:05
the media is that bell curve, that center bell curve median of
18:09
people who need to be cognizant enough in order to improve their
18:14
life, manage their life and provide for whatever, you know,
18:18
whatever they choose and like family, home, whatever.
18:23
Retirement, making movies. Maybe they want to finance
18:26
movies. Well, they better work really,
18:27
really hard because as we know, to finance movies you need to
18:30
start in order. You need a small fortune, you
18:32
better start with a large one. And you just.
18:34
Burn them, right? That's what you do burn.
18:36
Burn the money. So they got to become very
18:38
financial delivery if they want, if they want to do that with
18:40
their lives. But the real bridge is the
18:42
action. So a lot of people can become
18:47
illiterate enough. And that word is a little bit
18:49
hackneyed, right? Little cliche it's about how do
18:52
I do all the things that I need to do and do it without 18
18:56
fragmented in professionals. I need life insurance for my to
19:00
protect my family's future. I need second to die policies.
19:04
I need a retirement plan. I need to understand should I
19:07
have a Roth? Should I have a a trag 4/04/01 K
19:10
or my solo petitioner? I need a Sep IRA and, and is
19:13
there a conversion? What are the pitfalls?
19:16
Oh, by the way, I want to increase my allocation to alts,
19:20
to private markets up to 25%. How do I do that?
19:24
Where do I do it? And what is appropriate for me
19:27
given my risk, my risk tolerance?
19:29
I have two kids. Oh, and oh, by the way, I have
19:32
student debt that I just cannot get rid of.
19:34
How do I do that and still maintain an emergency fund for
19:38
those rainy days? So all these things generally
19:41
would take 5-6 professionals outsourced to make happen.
19:45
And then you probably have four or five different bank accounts,
19:49
money market, maybe a brokerage account at TD Ameritrade swap or
19:53
whatever much other one now. And you're like, I can't even
19:58
financially literate. I can't even remember the logins
20:00
to my 5 accounts. I can't even get in.
20:02
I spent during COVID. How many hours did you spend
20:04
trying to login to all your accounts?
20:06
And it's like, jeez, I can't remember the password again.
20:08
I got to reset. So the next step from the
20:12
learning and understanding the choices is that bridge to action
20:16
to planning. And that is I'm sorry again, I'm
20:21
bugging my own book. That's our next agent called
20:23
Profit AIPROPHIT. It is a portfolio optimization
20:28
tool which then takes into account your risk tolerance,
20:32
your disposable investable cash, your your panoply of of
20:38
investments from fixed income to cash to life insurance policies
20:43
to ALS, etcetera. And then makes recommendations
20:46
based on what's called modern portfolio theory, which is
20:48
basically what Yale used for 20 years to become the number one
20:51
endowment in history of my, my mentor Swenson, who passed away
20:56
unfortunately a couple years in the middle of COVID.
20:59
But he was, he made Yale #1 endowment 20 years running using
21:03
Modic portfolio theory and, and, and advocating for alts.
21:06
That's, you know, all term investments and now in doing it
21:09
for the individual. So then you take that and this
21:14
is our third bill quarterback dot AI.
21:18
So you have the the learning of the choices and where you stand
21:21
in financial literacy. You have the portfolio
21:23
optimization and, and realizing some of the investment actions.
21:28
And then you have someone who would normally be a registered
21:30
investment advisor. You're a wealth manager or maybe
21:32
a rich uncle right there. And there's always a rich uncle
21:35
involved. Hopefully he's, he's honest or
21:39
she's honest, then she'd be an aunt.
21:42
And that's what that's what manages it all.
21:45
So as I build and we're still building that one's still
21:49
coming. It's it's tremendous as an
21:50
agent, as I build and conclude, as we conclude the building of
21:56
quarterback dot AI, what I noticed is that the registered
21:59
investment advisory industry is history.
22:02
I I think and the consolidation in the wealth management
22:06
industry history if you talk about at this location, that's
22:11
going to be the next one. Why?
22:14
Well, first of all, fees, second of all, their agendas are not
22:21
aligned. And this is a, this is a 30 year
22:24
history. You can have listen in every
22:27
group, there's great ones, but by and large, the role of a
22:31
wealth manager is to not get sued.
22:34
It's to not lose. So when you're worried more
22:38
about beta, meaning their own risk versus your alpha, your,
22:42
your seeking return in the most optimized risk optimized way,
22:48
you're not going to do well. You're going to you're going to
22:49
be a race to the middle. Mediocrity is really what, what
22:53
the industry strives for. And if you're trying to
22:55
accomplish things that you know you can do better yourself,
22:59
you're not going to strive here. You can accept mediocrity.
23:01
So if if what we're building, and I think it will proves to be
23:06
anywhere close to our expectations, it's going to
23:09
dislocate the investment industry, which is just strives
23:12
for mediocrity and create the individual who can manage their
23:15
wealth better than anyone knowing what their risk
23:17
tolerance is, not striving for me and taking risk, not avoiding
23:22
risk. All right, listen, the wealth
23:24
management is risk avoidance. You knowing what you you should
23:29
and can't do, especially once you become financially
23:31
illiterate. That's taking smart, educated
23:34
risk. Yeah, well, it it's
23:36
statistically, I think, you know, most people would be
23:39
falling to the place where they're feeling insecurity about
23:42
their wealth, they're feeling insecure about their retirement
23:45
options. They're probably insecure with
23:48
their spending and probably insecure about what they really
23:51
want because what everyone wants to like, educate themselves a
23:57
little bit better and have some new opportunities, investments.
23:59
But like maybe that cruise to Mexico is looking good too.
24:01
And that's what they really want.
24:03
So I, I think, you know, alternative investments are
24:06
great because most people are going to come into investing
24:09
late, which means they've got ground to cover, right?
24:11
They, they're not going to of course, Max out your Roth, Max
24:14
out your 4O1K and everything else.
24:16
But you know, ultimately it's like you want to buy index
24:20
funds. It's like D got 30 years, like
24:22
we're going to have to do something a little bit more
24:24
aggressive. Now, obviously we're not giving
24:26
advice to anybody or anything else.
24:28
But when you're looking at alternative kind of like asset
24:31
classes, I mean, are you including I, it's, it sounds
24:34
like you're doing some, some venture type deals.
24:37
What about like crypto? What about like some of like?
24:41
Well, let's stick with those two first.
24:43
What's your take? So there's 14, there's fourteen
24:46
major alternative investment asset classes, real estate by
24:49
and by and by far the largest. And real estate also has subsets
24:53
of you got residential, you got commercial.
24:55
Commercial itself has seven different subsets,
24:58
subcategories, logistics, data centers in the CM, medical,
25:04
healthcare, etcetera, etcetera. Now should everyone be in
25:09
everything? No, not at all.
25:13
The one problem, there's 2 problems with alter investments
25:16
as I see for the individual. I don't like to use the word
25:19
retail. I think that's a a moniker given
25:21
by Wall Street to denigrate the the individual investor.
25:24
I think it's ridiculous actually.
25:26
But there's 2 problems that that hold back the individual
25:29
investor from really getting involved and allocating
25:32
appropriately to alter investments. 1 is due diligence.
25:36
It's hard to due diligence and an individual deal or a fund is
25:40
not easy. I do it.
25:41
I, I did it for 30 years. It took me 10 years to learn how
25:44
to do it well. So I, I can tell you it's not
25:46
easy and you mess up and you make a bad decision based on
25:50
poor due diligence. Well, that's, that's a risk,
25:52
right? That's a decision risk.
25:55
And two, illiquidity. So, and, and they're both bad.
25:59
Illiquidity is probably the tough one to know when you're
26:01
going to need cash is the hardest part because one, you're
26:07
not getting out of ultra investments, generally not.
26:09
That's a little bit of a blanket statement, but generally you're
26:12
not too. If you try and you have to bail
26:16
and someone's going to take you out in a 70% haircut, you know,
26:20
20-30 cents on the dollar, it's going to be a disaster for you.
26:24
So those two issues are about planning budgeting here.
26:28
When budgeting comes in, I think very much everyone thinks it's
26:31
about having a house budget. It's and of course that's
26:34
important. How much should you spend?
26:36
What's really important is to know how much you can invest,
26:39
plan and have emergency fund. So in order to do Ultera
26:43
investments, you have to begin with budgeting and doing
26:47
budgeting with a, with a sensitivity analysis of looking
26:51
at your life, not over two months or six months, but two
26:54
years. You should budget and track for
26:57
two or three years and you can also learn at the same time
27:00
concurrently. But you should not be investing
27:03
this in anything illiquid until you have three years, two or
27:07
three years of your budgeting history.
27:09
Now you can do that manually and we who hasn't done it for
27:13
spreadsheets for the last 20 years, right?
27:15
But there are going to be tools including ours and others that
27:18
are going to take that two to three years of personal data and
27:22
give you, we read a 510 year plan on what to, on what to
27:27
invest and a portfolio optimization recommendations.
27:31
Not advisory by the way #1 people who are asking about
27:35
these tools from this are registered investment advisors.
27:38
And when I speak to them, I'm like, let me just get this
27:41
straight. You want RNA agents to do the
27:43
job that you trained and licensed Series 6363 to do for
27:48
your clients. That seems no.
27:51
No, it doesn't seem right to me. You should be doing the job with
27:54
and should be doing it both with tools but manual manual input
27:57
and subject matter expertise. But anyway, that falls on that
27:59
fears. It's great.
28:02
So, so the tool itself, you know, everyone's got their
28:06
spreadsheet, you know, goes back a couple of years, they loaded
28:08
into the agent and it's giving them recommendations based on
28:13
kind of like their budgeting and spending.
28:15
Yeah. So that's the, so that's
28:17
quarterback AI and that's what's in early beta stage.
28:19
So what we're doing is loading a lot of our own budget
28:23
information over years and it's starting to make for, it's
28:27
starting to forecast now. And that's the forecast.
28:29
How much should you have for your your emergency fund?
28:32
How much do you have for your house fund?
28:34
How much do you have for your children's 529 and college
28:36
education fund? And it's, and it's starting to
28:39
balance all of these needs and you might say necessities.
28:44
And you can, by the way, what's your fun?
28:45
What's your, what's your fun need?
28:47
What's your, your cruise, your trip to Punta Mita and Mexico
28:51
and such, your ski trip. And, and it's starting to
28:54
balance them, which you would have 3 or 4 professionals trying
28:58
to do. Yeah.
28:59
So, and then it also is taking real time, real time changes in
29:03
your portfolio. And say you have a public
29:06
portfolio, it's bringing in data sources from public securities,
29:10
fixed income, your, you get promoted, you get a higher
29:14
salary, it's taking a nap. You go into a higher tax
29:17
bracket, it counteracts the higher salary.
29:19
It, you know, it considers that it's not easy to do.
29:23
And I hand it to those very good British investment buyers who
29:26
have done it well, but those are usually reserved for the Super
29:30
wealthy who can afford to pay the best in the RA industry.
29:33
They're not, they're not coming for us.
29:35
Those managers, they're like, listen, if I'm going to do the
29:37
same thing and be really good at it, I might as well work for
29:40
Bill Gates, not for CJ Bellini. And I don't, I say you're right,
29:43
I'm getting paid. Points might as well like stack
29:45
them up we're. Getting paid points.
29:46
He quits. The same work.
29:48
It's just I might as well get a point on a big mountain bend, a
29:50
little hill. Yeah, and I'm like, I'm with
29:52
you, brother. I I sister.
29:54
I get it. Go work for Bill.
29:56
You don't need me. So I what would you say to
29:58
somebody like me? I'm the kind of guy who.
30:01
I've got all my spreadsheets and maybe I'm a little hesitant to
30:04
put them into the machine because I'm afraid of judgement.
30:07
Which is to say that like once, once the machine looks at all my
30:10
expenses, it'd be like, Ron, you should probably invest in Canes
30:13
considering how much your fat ass is eating that chicken, you
30:16
know? So you know, that's a, that's
30:20
actually a very interesting question, which we had because
30:22
you know, we we, you look at you, you look at technology
30:25
generally and and especially AIII mean, I know there's people
30:29
who are having relationships with AII.
30:31
I'm still wrapping my head around and I'm and and we're
30:34
immersing it every day, but I'm still wrapping my head about
30:36
that. That might just be age specific.
30:39
So I look at it as hyper rational.
30:43
It is. I'm a data, I'm a data nerd.
30:46
That's how I started to do what I did and numbers and numbers
30:51
geek. And I say this is a tool that
30:55
takes us from the Abacus to the, to the HP 13 calculate HP13C,
30:59
etcetera, and keeps going. It's just another one in the
31:02
progression of tools taking in rational data points and
31:06
spitting out a, a, a rational conclusion.
31:09
Now, if you're worried about how you feel about those
31:13
conclusions, that is a question I've never actually had.
31:17
And if it influences your use of these tools, it and maybe you're
31:21
like, I don't want to hear this. I don't, I don't, I know I'm not
31:24
saving enough. I know I'm not.
31:26
I I should be getting that life insurance policy from a yeah, I
31:31
got to be honest with you, that's a tough one.
31:33
And I and I think it also speaks to the ethical use of AI, by the
31:36
way. And I think those questions are,
31:39
and listen, I'm going to be honest, we haven't addressed it.
31:43
We're we're still trying to get the right answers at the fastest
31:47
output possible. But yeah, your personal wealth
31:52
management is brought with the motion.
31:56
It shouldn't be, but there's a motion running through it, how
31:59
you feel, judgements, etcetera. So it's a very interesting
32:02
question, one that makes me think a lot more about, you
32:05
know, next stage, next phase building of our agents.
32:09
But, you know, how does someone feel about the answers they get?
32:13
Yeah, I never even thought about it.
32:14
Yeah, that's a good point. And you know, that's one thing
32:17
that I, I tried and talked to my kids about early, you know, we
32:20
got them some investment accounts and stuff.
32:22
So they can learn about the market and learn about trading a
32:25
little bit, learn about like supporting companies that that
32:28
they use. You know, I think that's
32:29
important, but also like how they're feeling about their own
32:34
financial literacy. And I think a lot of it was
32:37
falling on deaf ears until I started really talking to them
32:39
about like, OK, how do you want to live when you're retired?
32:43
Like how, what do you see yourself doing?
32:45
So really visualizing putting yourself there, starting to put
32:48
dollars around that. And then, you know, with AI, you
32:51
know, GPT, you can create these like little calculators very
32:54
simply to say, like, OK, well, you'll have these retirement
32:57
benefits if you do XYZ, but this is the amount of income you're
33:00
going to have to stack over the next 30 years in order to live,
33:03
live the way that you want to. You know, So then the light
33:06
bulbs start going off because, you know, for kids right now,
33:09
it's really hard to look into the crystal ball and say, like,
33:12
what should I do for a career? How should I approach money?
33:15
Particularly because we don't even know what kind of jobs will
33:17
exist in five or ten years, you know?
33:19
So like, where do you shoot? You know, like when I was a kid,
33:23
the only jobs I really knew about were what was on Mr.
33:25
Rogers Neighborhood, you know what I mean?
33:27
So it's like now all those jobs are different.
33:30
They're all robots, so physical jobs are not actually, if
33:34
you're. Yeah, you were working.
33:35
You may have an HVAC. Yeah, you're an HVAC repair.
33:38
Forget it. You're going to do very, very
33:40
well. You're good forever.
33:41
How old did you, if I may ask? How old are your kids?
33:45
18 and 16. Did you start a while ago on on
33:49
what you just described? Yeah.
33:50
Absolutely. There we go.
33:51
That's great. I mean, listen, that really that
33:54
I love hearing that. I mean, and by the way, it's not
33:57
common. That is not, that's not common
33:59
for, for, you know, parent talking to their 810 year old.
34:03
I, I mean, my, my sons are four and five.
34:06
I, I'm starting to, but they're not, you know, really getting
34:08
the five year old actually he's wants to be an engineer and he's
34:12
getting it. And he's also apparently very
34:14
greedy. I've, I've come to work.
34:17
So I, I, he's starting to understand the power of the
34:20
purse. So.
34:21
You know, my kids have just kind of naturally been drawn to
34:25
finance. Like, you know, they're, they're
34:27
both really good with money, very responsible.
34:29
It was probably about a year ago that my son was like, oh, dad, I
34:33
can't get any more money in my in my Piggy Bank, Piggy Bank.
34:38
It's a little bear, a little ceramic bear.
34:39
And I'm like, oh, that's cool. I was like, wait, wait, wait,
34:41
wait. What do you mean you can't get
34:43
any more money in there? And he's like, he's like that I
34:45
can't push it in anymore. I was like, is that thing full
34:48
of cash? He's like, I was like, let me
34:49
see that. It's like.
34:51
He would disappear in the next coming weeks.
34:55
Weighs 15 lbs. I was like, dude let's make a
34:57
video and smash this thing open and you know put this in your
35:00
your account you should be making returns on this.
35:03
So he was all about he had $3000 you.
35:06
Know, that's insane. That's insane stuff that we're
35:10
getting bigger biggie banks, you know, I wonder if that brings up
35:13
another question. Is there a genetic
35:14
predisposition to being good with money?
35:16
I wonder no one's ever tested that.
35:18
I wonder. I mean, obviously left left
35:20
brain, bright brain, you know, you could say, but I've known a
35:24
lot of very smart mathematicians who couldn't do, they couldn't
35:28
figure out their own finances worth a damn.
35:31
Well, it, I mean, it's almost like a like a cliche, like like
35:35
doctors and lawyers, you know what I mean?
35:36
Just like financial distress because they're like buying
35:41
jewel jewelry. Don't.
35:42
Even get me sorry on I I I I'm alienating so many different
35:45
people on this podcast. We all are doctors.
35:48
Wait, no, I, I have had 23 surgeries without them.
35:51
I'm held together with chicken wire in my body.
35:54
But I, we, we created a large medical office portfolio.
35:57
So I worked with doctors as tenants for 20 years.
36:00
And I can say unequivocally, maybe the worst group of people
36:04
with money that I've ever. And I'm not saying just because
36:08
we were charging a rent, it's, I think it's yeah, I, I spent a
36:12
lot of very funny conversations explaining things.
36:17
Amazing, Cool. Talk a little bit about the
36:20
nonprofit arm for of the company.
36:22
That's a very interesting wrinkle, particularly in a time
36:25
now where it appears that that, like nonprofits turn into
36:29
profits. Yeah, well, yeah, it's funny.
36:32
Oh, but, and by the way, that's you'd think that's what we're
36:35
emulating, not I, we did emulate something.
36:37
We I, I, I, I'm a better editor than I am a writer on.
36:41
And so I like to copy success where I see it versus try and
36:45
reinvent the wheel all the time. AARP when people don't know that
36:49
in AARP that AARP is not only a non profit for the advancement
36:53
of retired persons, right? The Association of Investment
36:56
are retired persons. It's the largest affiliate
36:59
marketing for profit on the planet, most successful, most
37:03
profitable by far. It does a mission, it does it
37:08
very well, but it also does a, it has a very profitable
37:14
business. Now you mentioned about
37:16
capitalism, etcetera and how your children were learning
37:19
about what they want to do, what kind of how they want to do it,
37:23
what kind of companies they want to promote, pursue, invest in.
37:28
Well, I actually think that this sort of nonprofit for profit is
37:32
going to become more normalized and not in the open AI way and
37:36
more on the AARP way because social capitalism amongst
37:41
younger generations, Gen. Z and millennials is a very big
37:45
thing. I've had a lot of conversations
37:47
where I listen, I come from a very transactional generation if
37:50
it and we, we, I didn't care about what they were doing.
37:53
I just want to know what the returns are.
37:54
I do more, I do much more so now than I have kids.
37:57
But when I talk to younger generations, they not only, in
38:02
fact, they don't want to know what the returns are first.
38:04
They want to know what is this social impact?
38:07
What is the mission? Why?
38:10
And then they say, oh, by the way, what are the numbers,
38:12
right. That is the reverse of what I
38:15
was brought up. So understanding that a mission
38:21
can also be profitable, something mission driven can
38:24
also be profitable, I think is the way of the the the younger
38:28
generation's understanding of capitalism.
38:31
Which is really encouraging because, you know, I think
38:33
probably, you know, Gen. Z, they get it.
38:36
Yeah. Like, they want to have meaning
38:38
behind their investments and they want to feel like they're
38:41
contributing to a better world, which is beautiful.
38:44
So, you know, for example, you know, there was like this trend
38:47
or there was this like accusation of green washing that
38:50
was going around, which is to say when they would build a new
38:53
Walmart, they would like use like repurposed materials and
38:56
they put solar panels on it and doing all these like really cool
39:00
carbon neutral things where you would, I think like the, the,
39:03
the, the, the more. You know, I don't know.
39:06
Protest kind of people would be like, oh great, they're doing
39:09
good things, but rather they're like, no, you're just using this
39:12
as a ploy to get people to buy into your concept, but it's
39:16
like, isn't that the best thing you could possibly do?
39:19
They're like, if you're doing good for everybody and making
39:22
money at it, it's like, no, this is like this is the direction we
39:25
want to jump at. It's like, OK, we you know, so,
39:29
so I, I feel like it's really loosening up now where people
39:32
are saying like, Hey, where's the win win situations here?
39:34
We all want to make a buck. And if we can do it and satisfy
39:37
some of our more noble principles, even better.
39:40
Yeah, listen, the the the most altruistic or the most utopian
39:44
says not only do we want them to do good, but we want them to
39:47
want to do good for the right reasons.
39:49
Motivation, however, to really advance and really advanced,
39:53
especially amongst the capitalist society that is has
39:56
been transactional for a very long time should worry about the
40:00
outcomes and and and let the motivations over time with with
40:05
generations taking over the leadership.
40:07
Those motivations will come the the the ones that the more
40:11
altruistic the right motivations.
40:13
But if you're getting the outcomes at any stage and even
40:16
if if Walmart is using it for promotional marketing purposes
40:19
and yet you're still. Getting the benefits, yeah,
40:23
let's worry about that as a step one.
40:25
And then Step 2, let's worry about why they're doing it after
40:27
that. I listen, some might say that's
40:30
an overly pragmatic viewpoint. I don't, I, I think it's like,
40:33
you know, again, I like seeing the actual tangible benefit and
40:37
I'm OK with that. Yeah, 100%.
40:39
I love it. OK, CJ, Are you ready for the
40:42
lightning round? Yeah, shoot.
40:45
Let's do it. OK, You have a a very successful
40:49
career in finance. Congratulations.
40:52
The listeners of this show love business ideas.
40:55
Do you have any business idea rattling around in there that's
40:59
been driving you crazy that maybe you can share with us?
41:02
Jesus, you have someone like me that's another hour podcast.
41:06
Now what I have to do is run through my top three.
41:08
I have like 8. I'm not kidding.
41:09
Yeah, I'll give you something that's very generic retail.
41:12
I'll give you something that's a little bit advanced and I'll
41:13
turn investments. The generic retail is if you go
41:16
to storage facilities and they're not, and this isn't a, a
41:19
real estate concept. If you go to storage facilities,
41:22
we have them, there's like 50% of that of what's in the storage
41:25
facility. That's never going to get used,
41:27
never going to be repurposed. It's just going to get
41:29
ultimately thrown away. So the, the, the old school flea
41:34
markets called the Sioux in Turkey and whatever they should
41:38
happen right at those storage facility and there should be an
41:42
eBay for storage facility, absolutely all of the excess
41:48
material. And, and guess, guess what?
41:50
All storage facilities have a lot of land.
41:53
There should be travelling markets exchanging those goods
41:56
right there like a physical eBay.
41:58
That's one. And that's, and that's the
42:00
franchise. What I get anyone can do now a
42:02
little bit more advanced than one that we are sort of
42:05
pursuing, but it's it's it's a slow, it's a slow burn.
42:09
Similarly, there is a tremendous excess capacity in parking
42:13
garages. I don't mean the ones under
42:14
buildings. I mean the the block full 1000
42:17
unit parking lots, right. Parking garages structure, it's
42:21
called structured parking. There's post COVID, there's like
42:25
60% vacancy. So it used to be an average
42:28
vacancy around Tier 1, Tier 2 urban cities of about 75 to 80%.
42:33
There were cash machines that literally, Yeah, one of the one
42:36
of the areas that people in Rosa don't realize.
42:38
The parking garage is very, very good now, you know, not as good.
42:43
You know, you still, I know there's a return to work
42:45
movement, but there's still a lot of people.
42:48
You're turning those into logistics depots, micro
42:50
fulfillment centers where Amazon lockers, Walmart lockers, cold
42:55
storage facilities because small artisanal grocers, they need to
42:59
be able to ship within 30 minutes and they cannot afford
43:03
1,000,000 square foot regional cold storage facility that they
43:06
can get their goods from like Whole Foods can.
43:09
So your mom and pops places they need 2000 square feet of cold
43:12
storage for, especially if they're especially if they're an
43:15
organic specialist that food has to stay cold all the time.
43:19
So underutilized parking garages are becoming multi purpose micro
43:26
fulfillment centers called mobility hubs.
43:28
And here's the capper. The rooftops for the bigger ones
43:32
are going to be, are going to wear the EV tolls, the electric
43:36
vehicle take off and landing the air taxis.
43:39
That's how they're going to distribute.
43:41
They're going to land on top of old parking garages.
43:44
Oh cool. If we're going to drive away
43:46
right from that air taxi, the two people, there'll be an Uber
43:50
waiting for them and and a driverless Uber.
43:54
So they will go from a driver in a vertical takeoff and landing
43:59
electric air taxi to a driverless Uber out of the
44:04
parking garage and into right in downtown, wherever they are.
44:08
Well, that how how you know some, I don't know.
44:10
How close are we to air taxis? The, the first, the first urban
44:17
flight will take place in the third quarter, September through
44:21
third, fourth quarter of this year, fourth quarter for Q4 of
44:24
this year. There's going to be a New York
44:26
City flight taking people to Kennedy Airport.
44:31
Incredible. Now, the the biggest issue about
44:33
all of this adoption is they need airport, they need landing
44:36
spots and the existing ones that like the airports, they're done,
44:41
they're full and they're also not where you want to be.
44:44
They're not in downtown. So there is a big move and I've
44:48
already spoken to Joe B Archer. They're the leading and toll
44:51
companies, both public, and they're looking at landing on
44:56
rooftops of large park garages. Incredible.
44:59
The there was 3 skyscrapers downtown Denver that were that
45:04
sold like 9 years ago for 170 million and sold last year for
45:08
seven million. Which is just to say that all
45:12
these cities are going to have these gigantic open spaces in
45:14
them. What would you do with those big
45:16
buildings with nobody in them? Well, actually even for a real
45:21
sax, but I mean that's a tough one.
45:25
They don't work as residential conversions every.
45:27
I mean they are just they just say that especially the public
45:30
reads so they don't get hammered.
45:33
Large commercial floor plates, especially the larger floor
45:36
plates, do not work as as presidential conversion.
45:40
And I hate to say this, there really isn't a repurpose, which
45:44
is crazy when you think about how how many.
45:46
Yeah, the percentage of commercial office buildings we
45:49
have, they don't It's I I still think even though there's a huge
45:54
return to work movement and, you know, return to office RTO, I
45:58
still think one of the greatest risks we have in the real estate
46:01
sector is commercial office. I used to think it was strip
46:05
mall, all those malls that no one goes to anymore.
46:08
I don't think so anymore. So who knows, maybe there'll be
46:10
an idea they'll come up and strip malls are becoming game
46:13
game centers. You know, they're becoming
46:15
digital poke, digital Pokémon that you go around with your
46:17
phone using, using AR, right, Using hybrid AR to to play a
46:22
game. Who knows, maybe there'll be
46:24
another idea. They go.
46:26
Yeah, yeah, exactly. Pidel.
46:27
Well, for me, it's battle. I love Pidel.
46:29
Yeah, love Pidel. Yeah, I'm just too embarrassed
46:31
to play pickleball. I'm sorry.
46:33
I'm. I'm still young enough not to
46:34
want to play pickleball. Still got some prize to play
46:36
squash. Nice.
46:39
But but yeah, no, I, I, it's interesting.
46:41
I I am a little, I'm still very concerned about commercial
46:43
office. Yeah, and for good reason.
46:46
Is there any entrepreneur CEO that you follow closely or
46:50
admire? Geez, that's another that's
46:53
another hour as well. Other than the obvious in the
46:59
realm of AI, there is someone who was creating a similar agent
47:05
called copilot dot money. Very impressed with him.
47:09
He's a former Google ML science machine learning scientist and
47:13
he's coming up with this app and, and I, I, I only know him
47:16
from afar. It, it just won a, an App Store
47:19
award, not just for its functionality, but it's for its
47:23
UX brand new. I think he understands.
47:28
And again, it's in our bailiwick, it's in our area.
47:30
I could go on. I mean, Sam Zell, the late Sam
47:33
Zell was my real estate mentor and men.
47:36
So that's that investment was David Swenson, the Yale CIO.
47:40
So I can go on. They're dead too.
47:42
So that's what happens when you're, when you're, when you're
47:44
old like me, all your mentors are dead.
47:47
So I'm trying to give you one that is not only alive, but
47:51
actually young and killing it. Yeah, as as much as we'd hoped
47:57
to. And his name is Andres.
47:59
He is the founder of Copilot Adult Money and I'm very
48:02
impressed with what he's doing. Cool shout out to Andres.
48:05
Amazing. If you pronounce his last name,
48:08
I tell you his name. It's it's, it's a Spanish slash
48:13
Basque Basque name that I can't pronounce.
48:16
Oh yeah, I'm hopeless. I could barely read English.
48:21
Knowing what you know. Now you're entering college as a
48:23
freshman. What?
48:24
What would you study? That's easy machine learning and
48:29
and if you're looking for a quick job, in fact, you coming
48:31
out right now. I told my nephews, my nephews
48:33
just got out of college. I had three, One is still in BC
48:36
and two just got out. Or if you, if you haven't
48:39
studied data science and machine learning, well, it's too late.
48:42
Obviously you're already out and you can always go back.
48:44
That's not true. It's never too late.
48:46
Prompt engineer. Yeah, that is the number one job
48:50
for the next five years. Become a prompt engineer and
48:52
understand how to manipulate the training of every single model,
48:56
know everything there is to know about the individual models, the
48:59
uses and as a coming category agentic AI, what we're doing.
49:06
So there's one thing to build what we're building.
49:10
There's another thing knowing how to use them effectively and
49:13
we're DTC, but there's going to be AB to B component of this,
49:16
right? But and two repair them.
49:20
So imagine the old, you know, Maytag repair person, you know,
49:24
the washing machine repair. Imagine if that is now a digital
49:28
version of AI agent repair. So that prompt engineering,
49:35
which is more of a content play. And and if you're data science
49:39
and machine learning agentic AI repair.
49:43
Those are my 2 jobs for the next 10 years.
49:45
Really, especially as, as the tools for for building agents,
49:49
you know, if it's N8N or it's clod or what, whatever it is,
49:52
those get more sophisticated and you know, all of your agents
49:55
will need to be updated. And as you're building swarms of
49:58
agents and now you have 50 agents working in in unison.
50:01
Yeah, the Maytag guy for your agents.
50:03
I love it. These are jumps.
50:07
So what this is how fast it's moving and I can't even imagine
50:10
it. And again, I, I've mentioned it
50:12
old a couple times, but my head sometimes can't wrap around how
50:15
fast things are moving. So we spent, we've spent six
50:18
months building one of our agents.
50:19
Right now, we now have to go back and rebuild the first two
50:23
months because we've moved the the industry and the technology
50:26
has moved that fast that as we're building it, we're
50:29
actually repairing and rebuilding the beginning.
50:32
Yeah, 100%. That's how fast it's moved.
50:35
It's wild. Oh cool.
50:39
OK, last, last question for you, CJ, I really appreciate your
50:41
time. What is something you know now,
50:46
deeply, that you wish you knew earlier?
50:49
These are great questions, right?
50:51
You really are. We should have prepared.
50:54
I'm usually a pretty big preparation guy and apparently
50:57
I, I think I should have asked you for these questions.
50:59
They're great. The rise of the DIY mentality I
51:12
grew up with, there was a specialist for everyone.
51:14
Again, I've had 23 surgeries for my hockey career, 10 knees, but
51:18
I've, I've gone to 15 different specialist doctors, right?
51:21
Hyper, hyper specialist. I think the future is in the
51:25
rise of the generalist. And, and what I used to think it
51:30
was that the world is the world is won by the specialist people
51:33
who know that one thing and they know it so well, they know it
51:36
better than others. They don't believe that anymore.
51:39
So I wish I saw the rise of the generalist because I would have,
51:44
with that, I would have anticipated better the rise of
51:48
networking. And so digital networking,
51:50
social media, LinkedIn, for example, you know, the, the, the
51:53
6°. And I would have anticipated the
51:57
rise of things like the large language model and the
52:01
conversational models, because these are the, these are the
52:05
realm of the generalist, not the hyper specialist.
52:08
However, that said, we're going back to a specialist way and
52:11
agentic AI is bringing the specialist back to the
52:15
foreground, saying, if you want to know an agent for personal
52:18
health management, an agent for this, an agent for that.
52:20
So I guess what I'm saying is, yeah, I would, I would have
52:23
loved to have seen the rise of the generalist instead of
52:26
thinking that everyone has to be a specialist.
52:28
You got to be a real estate guy. You got to be a, you have to be
52:31
a knee, a knee surgeon. No, you need to.
52:34
You need to know a a a a little bit about a lot of things.
52:37
Interesting. How are your knees?
52:40
They're terrible. They're new.
52:41
Well, they're good. I mean, they're good now.
52:43
They're both replaced. They were terrible for a lot of
52:46
I had AI had a knee surgery every year for ten straight
52:49
years. My gosh, was it was it acute
52:51
injuries or was it just kind of wear and tear from playing,
52:54
playing hockey all those years? One was acute and and a
52:58
trilateral ACLMCL and PCL blow. Yeah, all three, all three, all
53:03
three ligaments just blew to shreds.
53:05
Yeah, that was a pretty bad one. That was that was impact.
53:09
Everything else was degradation over time.
53:11
I'd lost all my cartilage, so I was bone on bone for a long
53:15
time. And they just kept chipping
53:16
away, chipping away, chipping away.
53:17
Finally, like we got nothing left to chip.
53:19
You have to go in for new out there.
53:21
That's another I wish I knew. You knew the new knees earlier.
53:24
Don't replace them way earlier. You don't even need you don't
53:27
even need any of your old knees. Listen, I know there's a wing at
53:31
my surgeon's house called the Fellini Wing.
53:33
He he's driving a Fellini car. You know, 10 surgeries.
53:37
Are you kidding me? Incredible.
53:40
Oh CJ, this has been so much fun.
53:42
Where can people connect with you online?
53:45
Well, let's see we you can find me on LinkedIn.
53:48
Apparently I'm I'm everywhere on LinkedIn, but our website, thank
53:52
you for asking, is we are Noyack, NOYACK.
53:55
We are noyack.com and you can sign up.
54:00
It's a free trial. And we also have a newsletter
54:03
as, as I mentioned, really proud of it, which you can also sign
54:05
up for the newsletter on the website wearenoyack.com.
54:09
And podcasters, financial calculators.
54:11
The website is gorgeous and there's just a thank you, a
54:13
whole host of resources. Thanks for coming on the show
54:16
and talking about it. Right.
54:18
This is great. Some of the best questions I've
54:19
had in the in the speaking engagement ever.
54:22
Thank you. Nice.
54:24
Well, now I feel guilty. I mean, they're pretty
54:26
challenging. I should have given to you
54:27
beforehand. That's all right.
54:30
If I can't think of my feet, I shouldn't be doing what I'm
54:31
doing. That's tremendous.
54:34
Thanks so much, CJ. Thanks again, Ryan.
54:38
Hey founders, let me ask you this.
54:40
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