Money & Wealth w/ Alexander Roepers

This special episode features an interview with Alexander Roepers. 

 

Alexander Roepers is a a 42-year hedge fund industry veteran. He is the founder and CIO of Atlantic Investment Management. 

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome the Money in Wealth with John O'Bryant, a production
of the Black Effect Podcast Network and iHeartRadio. Hey, Hey
is John Hobryant, And this is Money and Wealth. This
is another exciting week of conversation. As you see, I'm

(00:24):
wearing a suit today with those who are viewing this
versus listening to this, that means I've got a proper
guest in front of me and Michael Milkin and my
other friends who I don't wear suits around. You can
interpret that however you like. This is a guy that
I just met and I was impressed with him so

(00:45):
much on an initial meeting, probably the only time I've
ever done an interview with anybody where literally on just
meeting them versus having a long term relationship, I said,
you have got to get on tape like you. The
world needs to hear. And it was a very improbable meeting. Well,
let me tell you who he is first. Alexander Rupers

(01:10):
and he will correct me if I'm not pronouncing his
name precisely correct. Is a founder and chief investment officer
of one of the most important investment companies in America.
He is on Wall Street and a running Atlantic investment
management which has a global impact but based in New

(01:34):
York City. He has forty two years of experience in investment,
thirty six years its founder and CEO CIO Chief Investment
Officer CIO is more important than CEO in his space
chief executive officer versus chief investment officer at Atlantic, which
he founded in nineteen eighty eight. He was private previously

(01:59):
with a couple other corporations and investment houses. Masters of
Business Administration Harvard Business School in nineteen eighty four, a
Bachelor of Business Administration at the Netherlands School of Business
in nineteen eighty It's fluent Dutch, German, French and finance.

(02:21):
It is the fluency in finance that we want to
talk about today. I am honored to welcome someone that
I'm going to call a new friend onto this podcast
platform so he can educate you and how we make
smart sexy. Alex, you're a pretty cool guy. I know

(02:42):
because I read people very well and it's one of
my few gifts. And do you remember the conversation that
we had in the Hamptons that stumped me?

Speaker 2 (02:52):
Yeah, I know, I do. It was part of a
panel for the Mike Milkin Hampton dialogues with the title
Minister as a force for good. First of all, thanks
for having me and great to be with you.

Speaker 1 (03:04):
Well, I'm honored to have you with me. I'm honored
to have met you through Michael Milkin, and I love
the way you lead. And I don't just even I
don't just love your cool house. It is exactly my
style or your very cool wife who is a wonderful
soul and spirit. I loved your energy and soul and spirit.

(03:25):
But I really loved our conversation, not just because you're
normal and being in the world of finance and high finance,
some people are just arrogant, they're obnoxious, they're self absorbed,
they're in a different world because I think they're uncomfortable
in their own skin. That's a whole different podcast on
spirituality we're not going to do today. But somehow you

(03:45):
became reasonably comfortable in your own skin. Maybe we'll talk
about that as it relates to sort of unpacking your background.
But you and I had two separate conversations. One was
briefly at your house and another one was at a
neighbor of yours home, and you laid some philosophy about

(04:07):
the world down to me, do you remember that conversation.

Speaker 2 (04:10):
It was tied to the subject matter of the panel
session that we had at my house in terms of
education to the broader public out there, in terms of
basic finance and basic running your your household, more importantly
saving for the future, and how important that is, and

(04:31):
how that actually feed us right into investment management on
Wall Street and certainly the way the Atlantic investment that
we go about picking our stocks. It's really at the
household level of simplicity. People forget that when they buy
a car, or dishwasher or a home, they do a

(04:52):
ton of research. Actually I do too. I would you
buy a dishwasher for eighty thousand dollars when you can
buy it for four dollars? This is I'm saying this
crazy number because when people buy stocks, they don't do
the homework, and they just fine because somebody told them
it's a good idea because it's going up, and they

(05:14):
hurt some key phrase like artificial intelligence, and therefore they
should be involved and they should just buy it, and
they just fail to do any analysis. But yet we
all are value investors. When you're buying a car a dishwasher,
you have a sense of what it should cost, and
if you don't, you go on you know, on the website,

(05:35):
you go to a dealer or a retailer and you
figure out what do things go for it, take a
look at them. In the end, you compare to the shop.
You be educated, and you can get educated in one
minute or ten minutes or an hour, depending on how
much time you want to spend on it. And then
you make a decision if you need one of these
things based on the quality of the product and the

(05:57):
product you get it. This is the same way you
should have approach selecting stocks. If this is what you
want to do with some of your money. If you
want to be in the stock market, you can do
it through an ETF, which is an exchange traded fund.
Simple way of saying, this is a daily, actively traded

(06:17):
vehicle that can capture the index or a sector that
you're interested in, so you don't have to stock pick.
He just kind of get broad exposure through the ETF.
Or if you want to pick an individual stock, then
you need to roll up your sleeves a little bit
and take a look at you know, what is the
value and do a little more analysis. But that might

(06:38):
be too much time and beyond the reach of a
lot of people and the interest So then an ETF
kind of makes sense to get broad exposure to the market.
But I do recalls talking about this area where you
kind of bring it down to, you know, get basically
educated and do your homework when you buy stuff you

(07:01):
need for the home, for your life, and then once
you have some savings, it certainly behooves you to put
it in inequities in my view, because if you have
a long term view, the return on equities has been
between eight and ten percent on the indexes over a
long period of time with volatility, but that far exceeds

(07:22):
the return you've been able to get cash or on
fixed income investments.

Speaker 1 (07:28):
So I want to back up and as we go
through this, and you hit a little bit about the
magic of what I want to talk about, we're going
to explain as we go things that you never have
to explain. We're gonna explain what volatility means. We're gonna
explain what an intex mean. I mean, we shouldn't assume
there's no home economics class anymore, Alex in school, there

(07:50):
are people who are highly sophisticated advanced degrees PhDs, masters degrees,
white and black Latino women higher high who have not
a clue what we're talking about here because no one
taught them, and they fake it. They they don't admit
that they don't understand how money works. A quarter of

(08:10):
those who make two hundred and fifty thousand dollars a
year a living Patieck to paycheck, half of those making
one hundred thousand dollars a year a living Pagett to paycheck.
Of course, seventy percent of America is living Patchett to paycheck.
But I'm getting ahead of myself. I want to come
back to our conversation because what you just said just
underscores that you're a decent human being. You're concerned about

(08:32):
the least of these gods children. You understand that even
though you know we were in the Hampton's where you
know it is a very privilege. We'd all admit that's
the very privileged environment. If you own a home there,
you even blessed with the American dream and the fact
that you can live in that world. She'll understand another
world and have compassion for it and empathy for it.
Says a lot about you and your character and who

(08:52):
you are. That's the reason that you're on my podcast
is I think you're a great, a cool guy. It's
not a smart one, but is what you said to
me when we talked. You explained to me in mathematical, numerical,
statistical terms, your business philosophy, your investment in philosophy. Do
you remember that conversation.

Speaker 2 (09:13):
Well, I'll try to recall the things we talked about,
but maybe in a nutshell. I mean you already gave
it in your introduction. I came from the Netherlands, which is,
you know, a very nice small country in Europe to
grow up, but I wanted to definitely move out from there.
This is in the late seventies when the country is

(09:35):
quite socialist and tax rates for sixty seventy percent, and
a lot of young folks wanted to get out there
out of the air. My hope was to come to
the United States, which I managed to do by applying
to an MBA program. Applied to a variety of them,
because lucky to get into a really good one. But

(09:57):
I came across I remember one way flight on the
cheap airline fin Air, with two thousand bucks in my pocket,
ended up in Bingham to New York on snowy January
fifth and nineteen eighty one and went to the car
dealership and bought an Oldshmeel Starfire nineteen seventy six. Was
my pride and joy and that gave me wheels. And

(10:19):
I had a job which paide you know, uh okay,
but just paid the bills for the cheap apartment. And
that's how I got started with a nice job with
the company that was an industrial machinery maker that helped automate,
you know, the manufacturing of what made computers and TV
stick you printed circuit boards. So anyway, a nice couple

(10:43):
of years there, went on to business school and from
there I was lucky to find an employee in New
York in the field that I wanted, which is in finance,
and learned a bunch of things during the first four
years in that job that made me come up with
an idea to start Atlantic at a pretty early h

(11:05):
I was twenty eight at the time. Wow had a
good salary in those years after business school, but you know,
nothing outrageous. Certainly didn't have any start capital for my business,
didn't any investment capital from either family or friends. All
I had was experienced six years at this point, two
years before business school, four years after. I learned a

(11:28):
few things about analyzing investments and companies in those years
and decide to take that toolbox, if you will, or
the lessons I learned formulate specific specific investment strategy which
we still do to this day, which is a bottom up,

(11:49):
you know, value analysis kind of what I described earlier
with your dishwasher in your car analysis. I don't know
any other way to getting comfortable with an investment other
than sticking to a known area. You know, I don't
go into areas you don't understand. In my case, all
of technology, I don't understand it. I mean, I like
to use technology products like we all do. But to

(12:12):
invest in a company that sells technology, whether it's software,
chips or high tech products, I'm uncomfortable with it because
I don't know how it will change and how that
will affect the business. So I want to invest in
companies that are very analyzable and understandable, that make products
that we all use and that we see and can

(12:32):
touch and have been around for a long time. And
then you pick companies that are leaders in those areas,
and then you wait until they're cheap enough, and so
I decided to pick a strategy that is very comfortable
for me in terms of competence and experience I've had,
and also to avoid risk areas. You not to go

(12:53):
into areas like biotech and high tech, which for your audience,
there's a lot of money to be made in these areas.
I'm just personally uncomfortable with it, and I think if
you invest in these areas, you have to take that
into account, and quite often it's better to go with
very large companies that we all know, like Apple and Microsoft,
which are very very big names within the universe. But

(13:17):
back to the approach that I started with, it was
basically middle sized industrial products and service companies where we
could gain an edge by doing our investigation, our study,
our review of these companies, meeting with managements, and then
put together a selection of ten or fifteen names that

(13:37):
we liked for our clients. So that's how Atlantic started
with that idea. And the idea was that through our
stock picking and our focus, we could outperform i e.
Do better than the index. We need to because if
we don't, we have no right to exist. You can
simply buy, my clients can buy. Of course, the index

(13:57):
back to the exchange trade fund that anybody who's listening
to this call, if you have some savings, you can
buy an ETF, which is a way to participate in
the US stock.

Speaker 1 (14:08):
Market's an ETF.

Speaker 2 (14:11):
An exchange traded suns. So it's like a stock, it's available,
it's liquid. Does a symbol like sp y? Spy is
the name of the spiders they call them. Is the
S and P five hundred, which is the largest stock
index that most pension funds use and many other players

(14:33):
used just to get access and exposure to the US
stock market.

Speaker 1 (14:37):
So let's go back here. Because I've started, I've introduced
you in a very luminous terms which are appropriate. Youve
gone to the best schools, all that kind of stuff.
It came from the Netherlands and the Nordic region. And
people might assume that you again, you had a trust fund,
you had you had inherited money. And what I heard

(14:59):
is you came here on a cheap ticket. You had
you had a few thousand dollars and you went and
got some The most important thing you got was an education.
Is that right?

Speaker 2 (15:09):
So far?

Speaker 1 (15:11):
So you did not get a hook up, as we
say in my neighborhood. You didn't have a trust fund,
you didn't have daddy's money or grandpa's. It was it
was just hustle, correct number one? All right, you work
for somebody else if you got your education to get
some experience, and then you started in your own investment
house at twenty eight years Oh is that right? Correct? Okay?

(15:34):
And that investment house, without getting too much into your business,
is now several hundred million dollars under management, correct, correct?
So you really built yourself literally up from nothing to
become an American success story. Let's just say again, without

(15:55):
getting in his business, he is a half a billion
dollars under management in a company that he controls, no
complicated management structure. He's the chief investment officer and he's
been running it since he was twenty eight years old.
I get that right, correct? All right? And it's a
very simple business plan. Simpleness is that you're very focused. So,

(16:18):
as I understand your investment philosophy, you've been known as
your concentrated approach, your value driven investment approach. Talk a
little bit about how you developed this strategy and how
it's evolved over the years. And at some point during
this interview. You're going to go start as we say
in music, You're gonna start rapping, riffing, and you're going
to naturally go into that thing. Say the thing you

(16:41):
told me when I mention that blew me away, which
was literally just a mathematical, statistical outline of how you
go about really a science in investing that I thought
was brilliant. But what is your approach and how does
you develop and how's it evolved over time?

Speaker 2 (17:00):
Roaches to first define your investment universe. So I've decided
to be just in public equity. There's many ways to invest.
People can invest in real estate, people can invest in
small or bigger companies if they have an opportunity. That's
called private investing. So I'm only dealing with public investments.

(17:21):
And then within public investments, I want reasonable liquidity, so
I don't go for very small companies. But I also
want access to management in order to talk to them
about the business and to give suggestions where it makes sense.
And so we focus in the two billion at the
minimum to twenty billion dollar sized companies. These are very

(17:41):
large numbers, of course, but within the public equity market
it's considered smaller, mid gap large gap is much larger companies,
as you know, Apple, Microsoft are north of three trillion
dollar market value, so we don't deal with these companies
at all. Also, we like to focus on companies where

(18:02):
we have an understanding of the business and where the
risk factors of the business are reduced, and so we avoid,
as I mentioned before, high tech and biotech because of
the risk of what they're called difficult work technological obsolescence risk,
meaning that new products can come out that make the
old products obsolete. We've seen so many technology changes, including

(18:26):
everybody in the audience, I'm sure we'll be very familiar
with with all the technological advancements we're all enjoying. Well,
those things have tremendous impact on the profitability of a
technology product that is being replaced or being made obsolete
by the next invention. So we stay away from high
tech and biotech for those reasons. That's just us. Many

(18:47):
other people love to invest in those areas, not Atlantic,
and then we stay away from areas where we find
transparency to be an issue. And with all due respect
to banks, there are many many great banks out there
you can invest in, but we stay away from them
because we find that the transparency of a bank is
difficult to assess, and so we don't invest in the area.

(19:09):
So now you have an idea of these areas. So
two to twenty billion dollars in size, enough liquidity, ability
to access management with meetings, and stay away from certain
risk areas. And within that, we want companies with good
balance sheets. A balance sheet is at home. You have
your your assets, you have some cash, you have some

(19:30):
things you bought, you have a house hopefully, and then
you have a mortgage that's a liability. So you look
at the balance sheet. Companies have the same if you will,
with cash and property and receivables and nayables, et cetera.
And so we want good balance sheets. You can evaluate that.
It doesn't take a degree to figure out what's a

(19:54):
good and a bad balance sheet. It's a quick lance
at what's publicly available to see if a company has
affordable amount of debt, not too much debt. And so
we make sure that our companies have good balance sheets
and that they've always been profitable. One way to make
sure of that is you look at a ten year
history of a company. Again, all of this is easily

(20:15):
available online, and you can see if they ever lost money.
A simple idea is, you know, if you take a
company that builds ships or does coal mining, or is
a pure chemical commodity company, they are very cyclical. Cyclical
means that if the economy goes down, their revenues go
down a lot, then they'll probably lose money. And so

(20:37):
we really are avoiding deep cyclical companies because we don't
want the company that ever loses money, even during a
financial crash like O eight or during the COVID disaster
off the beginning of twenty twenty. And so we look
for solid, profitable companies in a familiar area that we

(20:58):
can analyze or a size that we can get our
hands around it and meet with management to do further
due diligence. And then we want to wait, very much
like patient folks looking for a certain target, we wait
until the share price falls down. In our lap, we're

(21:18):
basically tracking a whole bunch of companies. It's not that many.
I mean, it's obviously in our field. With our business.
We have computer models, we have screens. Don't expect anybody
to do that. You can be much more focused than
we are. Even but then you look for companies that
you track for a while that you watch the share
price and what they say, and you look for them
to fall in your lap, meaning they come to a

(21:40):
price level, valuation level that is very very attractive, that
is typically the bottom where they trade. And now we're
talking about valuation multiples, and I don't want to get
too far into it, but ideally we buy something at
ten times earnings, Okay, net earnings, that's a good guide

(22:05):
for our kind of entry level purchase for a company.
Ten times net earnings or one times revenues is about
the area in which we are interested.

Speaker 1 (22:17):
So let me break this down a little bit. So
if the company had one thousand dollars of net earnings
net meaning minus the expenses and all of the overages
that's tied to that particular enterprise, So net the money
that flows to the shareholders and the management team for

(22:39):
the company, that is one thousand dollars, you would buy
it in that case, were as much as ten thousand dollars,
is that right?

Speaker 2 (22:46):
That is correct?

Speaker 1 (22:47):
Ten times net or in that particular case, that business
might have ten thousand dollars in revenue, so one time
one time's revenue, right, yeah, right, correct, And that's part
of your due diligence for those who listening. Due diligence
means that he's basically gonna do his research. They're gonna
unpack this company, gonna un They're gonna they're gonna peel

(23:07):
the layers back. Transparency means he wants to be able
to see through to the other side. He doesn't like
Wall Street, doesn't like fall, He doesn't like a lot
of noise. They want to be able to be quiet
and elegant and simple and you can see through it.
You want glasses that are all fogged up. You know,
it's not good to drive on a foggy day, not fast,
So you want to slow it down so you have
clear view, uh transparency to what you're looking at. And

(23:33):
he talks about this stuff. By the way, this is
all He's been very basic. He's breaking this stuff down.
But they talk about this stuff in such a language
on Wall Streets. People that are there, people are intimidated
to read the Wall Street Journal, for God's sakes, because
it's all these uh terms that no one unpacks. So
I wanted to slow down for a minute now. He mentioned,
he ain't even things to fall in his lap. And

(23:57):
I'm not gonna mention this company's name. Although you can
listeners can probably figure this out. But today a company
that I believe is a good company, he's not a
company he would track us too big market cap wise.
They had a health situation that I think is episodic.
In other words, it was something that dealt with the
public and they had an episode, a little bit of

(24:18):
an outbreak, and the stock price dipped as a result
of that. My sense was this was not the company's fault,
that this was just something could have happened to any company,
And my sense was it was going to happen once
and it was done, one and done. It was just
one of these unfortunate situations the delivery truck or whatever
or something, and the stock dived. I bought it, so

(24:40):
that fell in my lap. It's not the company. There's
nothing wrong with the company. The company didn't do anything wrong.
It's otherwise a great company, great brand. But I was
able to get a fifteen percent discount. I believe it
was because I bought it today, and that stock at
some point will recover because the cash flows, the profits,
the brand, the company itself was very strong. So I

(25:00):
wanted to just sort of give people a bit of
summary wrap of what some of what you just what
you just said. And the one thing I think people
must find fascinating, Alex, is that you say you talk
to management. Now, when people listen listening to this, are
the average American or average citizen wherever they're watching this
in the world. They're thinking about going to the manager

(25:21):
at the retail store or the grocery store, and they're hard.
They can't get by the retail clerk they're trying to
They're trying to get to the manager or a supervisor.
They have a conversation that person is blocking them. We're
talking to when you're talking about management. They might find
it fascinating it here that you literally pick up the
phone and called the chief executive officer, chief financial officer,

(25:42):
maybe a board member or two of the whole enterprise,
and you're able to get these people on the phone
because they want your investment dollars. Is that right? Uh?

Speaker 2 (25:52):
Correct? But we are very respectful of how the people's signs.
So unless we are seriously interested to be a large
investor in that company, we will first go as a
known institutional investor in the market to the investor relation
person and I'll have my handless talk to the investor
relation person. Once we get up to a certain level

(26:13):
of comfort and conviction through our due diligence, and back
to your unpacking of that work. Due diligence is everybody
on this podcast is doing due diligence, just a fancy
wall set work for doing your homework, you know, checking
things out. You all do that, looking at your purchase
of anything you're doing. You check things out, compare prices

(26:35):
on the shelf. So whatever you're doing, that's due diligence,
going to the store, kicking the tires. But anyway, we
get these conversations because we're in in business for a
long time, we're respectful. We go first through the investor
relation side, and once we are in a position to
make this a large investment for us, we will request
for a meeting, first a call, then a meeting with

(26:56):
the CFO, and yes we meet with CEOs as well.
But again you don't We don't want to do that
unless we are a sizeable investor potentially, and also that's
one of the reasons we don't want to go above
a certain size, which is in our case, twenty billion.
I'm not going to call it. Tim Cook from Apple.
I have no chance to ever get a meeting with him, frankly,

(27:18):
because it's a huge company and we're never going to
be any size investor in Apple. So we want to
stay with these companies where we have a chance to
meet with top management. For a normal retail investor, for
anybody in the podcast, you're not going to get these
conversations here with a CEO or a CFO of a
public company, But you don't need to. You can do

(27:38):
a lot of your homework, a lot of hug due
diligence by yourself with your friends. Maybe you make a
little investment group and educate yourself and bring in occasionally
a podcast like this, or a friend or who is
in the business to have a chat to have an
hour long conversation about stocks or the investment world in general,
and so suggest. But you can do a lot on

(28:01):
your own looking online, typing in the name of a
company or incident or the one that you mentioned, which
a lot of people will know if you would mention it.
I guess we're not getting into it. That's a perfect example.
We all know this company, it's a great company, and
something unfortunate happened. They'll iron it out, and I'm very
convinced that this particular air pocket you want to call

(28:26):
that you know where the stock falls like this will
be corrected over time if it is indeed a one
off situation, which I think you're right in your assessment.
But that's the kind of thing where everybody in this
podcast can pick a number of companies where they are
customers in their daily life, where they know the company,
they're inst in the company. Maybe it's five or ten

(28:46):
that you track a little bit, and you'll find, like yesterday,
like wow, if this is one of them, look at
that fifteen percent discount, Just like somebody on the corner saying,
is this watcher you've been looking at for a year,
suddenly we're having a off sale. Do you rush over?
You buy it? Right? Same with stocks, no difference.

Speaker 1 (29:08):
That's right. And uh he mentioned another phrase, folks, He
mentioned conviction that what he what that translates is unless
I know I'm really serious. In other words, I've been
dating you. I mentioned in a dating app we were dating.
You're cute, you know, you're fine, and I we've had
a good time, but I'm not sure I want to
marry you. But if if I propose to you if

(29:31):
I if I give you a wedding ring, an engagement ring,
and we set a date, well, I've got conviction. And yes,
I may not get to the maybe something might have happened.
Two percent of the time you don't get to uh
through the ceremony because something I don't know, something weird happens.

Speaker 2 (29:46):
Uh.

Speaker 1 (29:47):
But most times, when you get to that point and
you got an engagement ring and you got a date,
there's a lot of conviction there. You told the family,
everybody's all invested in this thing. You have a comfort.
So when he's comfortable, when he's got that level of
con fiction, then he might go beyond the investor relations person.
Now I'm gonna tell you each a little bit of
a secret here, and he wouldn't even Now Alice is

(30:07):
so sophisticated in the way he operates, he wouldn't think
about this. But I'm sure you would agree with it.
If you want to have some fun with your kids
at Christmas, about two months to two months before Christmas,
go and try and find buy one share of stock
and get one get one of these these uh, these
companies that give you certificates and they'll they'll frame them
for you and send it to your companies to do that.

(30:29):
They don't. These companies don't don't don't do physicals share
certificates anymore, most of them. But you can get a
company to send you a certificate. I have one and
put it on the wall. Give your kid a share
stock for Christmas. Anyway. The point of that is once
you own one share stock of any publicly traded company.
When you talk about public equities, he mean publicly traded company.
When you have one share of stock, you have the
rights to all their financials. Hello, So you get to

(30:52):
you get to look at into the under their hood
of any company that's publicly traded with only one share
of stock. Now, uh, the investor relations if you want to.
I shouldn't tell you this, but because not only by
writing letters to boards and members and the board directors
you get upset with some company, you have a real
serious issue. Now much about suing them. You just want
them to know that there they could do better. And

(31:13):
you can't find the board of directors anywhere. You can't
find the management level either. It's a big retail company.
Just go down on the website to investor relations. His
investor is something right when you go there and you
open that up. My god, it's like opening the hood
of a Ferrari. Right, everything's in there, including the board

(31:34):
and their most recent financial report. So I just wanted
to he'll so he goes and deals with the investor
relations departments out of respect, and he only goes one
step further if he's got conviction. Did I get that right, Alex.

Speaker 2 (31:49):
It's one hundred percent correct. And again it goes back
to I want to see your personal life. We went
to the dishwasher example, but went through the you know, girlfriends, engagements,
wife example. One needs to in any development in life,
you know, develop conviction that the decision you're going to

(32:10):
make is the right one. And there's no shortcut to
doing your homework. And it's just time and effort. And
depending on how big the decision or how big the
purchase is, if it's something material, the more you need
to roll up your sleeves you have a T shirt on.
You just leave it the way it is. But you

(32:31):
get busy and you talk to people, and you walk
around blocks and you go to stores and or you
in the case of a personal situation, you talk to
more people. You talk spend more time together, you talk
to their friends, meet the family, et cetera, et cetera,
all the obviousself.

Speaker 1 (32:57):
When I first started investing, I would buy what I
what I liked. You know, I like Walmart. I'd BUYT Walmart.
I like whatever the company was, Uh, you know, whatever
I was wearing, whatever I was using. I looked around
my household, like what am I using? What am I wearing?
What do I trust? And you know, Apple was an
easy one. We Alrea talked about Tim Cook. I buy

(33:18):
I buy Apple stock, whatever it is. If I liked it,
my friends like it, and we're comfortable with it, probably
a good, pretty good retail investment. And by the way,
anybody listening to this, if you have a four one
K plan an investment account, if you work for somebody
and they're matching your four one K, get as much
of that as you can because that's free money, right
as as as jay as jay Z would say, I'm

(33:40):
gonna give you a main dollars worth of worth of
worth of advice or nine ninety nine. This is no
ninety nine because you're not paying a dime for it.
But if your employer is matching your four in one K,
that is free money. Now before we get on to
I'm gonna run through the other questions pretty quickly because
I because I want to make sure you have a
chance to answer each one of them. But on this

(34:01):
investment philosophy, which I think is so important, do you
have a numerical statistical numeric? Is there a model that
you use for your investment? Something you wanted to share?

Speaker 2 (34:16):
We use first to find the companies. We use pretty
sophisticated screens that are available. You know, Bloomberg is a
well known terminal we used for screening. But having done
this for so long, we pretty much know all the targets.
We have wake up calls literally on prices and valuation
levels that bring them to our attention once they come to.

Speaker 1 (34:37):
Our What a wake up call, I'm sorry, wake up calls.

Speaker 2 (34:41):
Let's say take a stock of a company that you
just talked about without the name, but that just fell down.
Let's say the stock was at one hundred bucks went
up to one hundred and ten. You're interested, but you said,
you know, I'm really insted at eighty bucks, and so
you put a price limit in your computer. You can
do this actually at home fairly quickly. Of the various
financial websites, and you can put a like a wake

(35:04):
up call. Okay, let me know when the stock reaches
eighty you know, boom. So you don't have to watch
the news all the time. You just look at your computer.
And I said, look at this, it's like motting a
fishing line out and a little bellow went off. I
think there's a hook there. Let's start, you know, yanking
on that line and see what's on the other end
of it. So that's that's it. So you do the

(35:26):
alerts are important, and then once we are alerted to
the situation, we will roll up our sleeves the good
old homework and due diligence we talked about. And yes,
we have financial models. So now we have taken and
downloaded all the financials that you can get from the
company website, from the financials in it, you know, Excel
spreadsheets and out get sophisticated. We do modeling. We look

(35:50):
on we make estimates as to where the business is
likely to go. These estimates are determined based on our
conversations with the management, with other people that know the company,
with competitors, and then we come up with predictions and
based on the predictions and based on where the share
price is. We have very set discipline as to what

(36:12):
valuation level we're willing to buy. This. Back to the
example used earlier, Let's make it a restaurant. They can
relate to a restaurant. Let's say in the neighborhood, a
restaurant that you know around the corner becomes available for sale.
Let's say they do a million dollars in revenues a
year and they make one hundred thousand dollars in profit,

(36:34):
and they say it's available, and you know, maybe you
don't have the money, but maybe a group of you
are inserted in buying into it because it's such a
great place. You all go there anyway, and maybe you
can run it better. And he said, okay, how much
does the seller, the restaurant owner want for this. Let's
say he says twenty million dollars. He said, you've got

(36:55):
to be out of your mind. That's twenty times revenues.
That is two hundred times earnings. It's crazy to go away.

Speaker 1 (37:03):
So this is a great example. Everybody, listen, now, listen,
he just gave you. By the way, everybody's in the
private equity business, if you're investing in your cousin's nail
salon for five hundred dollars. That's private equity, private equity, right,
So he's just doing it at a much sophisticated with
higher level. So if somebody's coming to you and they
want to sell you a business or invest in a business,

(37:26):
he just gave you a formula and he told you
what's ridiculous and what's crazy when it falls outside of
that box. He told you, no more than ten times
net is a net income or net. I want to
share you it is your.

Speaker 2 (37:38):
Times net income and maybe one times revenue is a
good measure for a pretty stable, nice business. I'm not
talking about a high growth business. I'm talking about it.
Say a restaurant business has this good solid has been around,
and if they offer you a debt for sale for
like a million dollars, that's reasonable. Now we can talk
about it. They say twenty million dollars, it's a joke.

(38:01):
Five million dollars is a joke. The funny thing is
in the stock market, people are buying things that are
based on what their friends told them at a barbecue
or what they've heard on TV as something great about
technology or artificial intelligence, and they just buy it. I
mean to put it in perspective, the greatest company everybody

(38:23):
talks about these days is Navidio, which makes the plumbing
for AI. You know the chips that already needs that, Microsoft, Apple, Amazon, Google,
These guys need it for their AI artificial intelligence. So
in the videos, trading at three and a half trillion dollars,
which is about twenty five times revenues. Now that's ridiculously expensive.

(38:49):
I wouldn't touch it. But of course it's done very well,
and it continues to go up because more and more
people want to buy it, and they do perform very
very well. But it is extremely expensive and nothing can
go wrong in terms of the growth slowing down or
anything else. So that is to me speculative. And yet
it's one of the largest market caps in the world

(39:12):
if in fact, it's number two right now buying Apple.
And so I challenge, or I ask everybody, do your
homework when it comes to stock market investing, as well
as you do your homework when you buy a house,
a car, or a dishwasher, or if you're offered an
opportunity to invest in a nail salon or a restaurant
around the corner. Compare it the purchase pride or whatever

(39:36):
they're asking or whatever the stock is, trading it against
the total revenues and against the earnings that they have
and then assess if this makes any sense to you.

Speaker 1 (39:47):
So one thing that I'm going to push back on
Alex and he won't mind it because he's he has
no self esteem problem. What is Alice already knows. One
of the reasons why people are Google gaga about Nvidia
and why it's it doesn't make any sense on the numbers,
is at the moment they're perceived to be the primary backbone.
He already said it for artificial intelligence, which is a new,

(40:09):
the new, the new you know, uh d jure sexy
investment and opportunity for the next five years. And it's
not twenty of them, there's not one hundred of them.
It's not a restaurant around the corner. It's not a
nail saloon around the corner. There's there's there's not even
an attorney. There's hundreds of attorneys, thousands, hundreds of thousands
of attorneys, law firms. It's one of these, so you
can decide whether you want to invest in it or not.

(40:31):
But that's why there's a lot of hype around this
particular investment, which is why he calls it speculative, which
is correct. Bitcoin could be the bitcoin, sorry, cryptocurrency could
be the same kind of conversation. You can get lucky
with a bitcoin, but you might get unlucky with the
thousands of other cryptocurrencies which are completely speculative. So just again,

(40:55):
it comes back to do your homework. You know, I've
about Alex being this very successful guy, and he's got
this beautiful home I was in. He doesn't spend time
in most of those rooms of his house, as I
don't either. We spend time a lot of time in
one room, our office, and it's it's late in the
day in Manhattan. He's in his office. He's not at

(41:17):
I don't know what your perception as a successful people
look at that desk behind them. But those who are
watching this on video, after you listen to it on
the audio, and if you listen to an audio, go
and watch this clip also in video. Behind his desk
is nothing but papers, documents, stacks of analysis and best
I can tell, there's a highlight marks on the different reports.
If I'm seeing this properly, and there's a pen that's yours.

(41:40):
There's a newspaper, there's a Wall Street Journal. You're looking
at the market for today. There's a remote for the TV.
You're looking at CNBC or some are Bloomberg or whatever
to see what's going on in the markets. In other words,
this guy's not relying on other people and sit around
Struggan cocktails, whatever your perception is of highly successful people.
This guy is hustling and he's working. I have that right, Alex,

(42:01):
Are you working today?

Speaker 2 (42:02):
I think so? You got it right? Absolutely?

Speaker 1 (42:06):
So those were those documents behind you. That's not your assistant,
that's not your chief of staff, that's your desk. Is
that right?

Speaker 2 (42:13):
That's correct? And you're looking at a whole bunch of
screens on this side, including the one you and I
are talking on. And when we're done, I turn around
to go back to my reports that I'm reading on companies,
cashw models and papers, et cetera.

Speaker 1 (42:31):
So you don't trust anybody else to do that analysis
one investing hundreds of millions of dollars or even tens
of millions, you make sure, as chief investment officer and
a CEO, you do it yourself. Is that right? Yeah?
So let's now cut to the current situation, the current
environment we we you know, there's there's political, socio instability

(42:52):
and change and environmental and the world's going we perceive
bonkers these days a little bit. But what do you
what's your view on the current economic environment, and what's
your advice for aspiring investors on on opportunities if you
want to call it that broadly defined for the future.

Speaker 2 (43:14):
I think, first of all, we're all very lucky to
live in the United States of America, number one democracy
to capitalistic society. It's the American dream. A lot of
people want to come here. In fact, a lot more
people want to come here then we can, you know,
reset at any given time. But I came here. I'm

(43:34):
an immigrant and I left you know, beautiful Europe if
you will. But also I came here for opportunity. Many
people do the same thing, and so we're all lucky
to be in a country where you can educate yourself,
you can work yourself up, even if you have modest
means or very little means, you can. Really there's a

(43:55):
place everywhere for a job, for learning and for advancing yourself.
The Keith thing is be disciplined, be focused, try to
avoid taking on debts where you can first pay down
debt as much as you can, and then try to
save and always try to put somebody away. When you

(44:15):
get going and things are going well, always say, but
the sooner the better. The younger you are, the better.
And if you work hard and you get the controllable
variables right, So what is a controllable variable. You can't
control you know what the weather will be like, you
can't control what all the others will do. What you

(44:37):
can control is what you can do. You can be
on time, you can be reliable, you can be trustworthy,
you can be hard working. These are the things you
can control. Always control them. Don't mess up, don't you know?

(44:58):
Be reliable ninety percent of the time. Be reliable hundred
percent of the time. The example I use is when
somebody comes for an interview in a nice white shirt
and there's a pizza staying right here. It will be
where the eye of the potential employer will go. Even
though nine your shirt is perfectly white, there's a pizza

(45:21):
staying and kind of wonder the employer wonders, like, why
didn't you remove that? And why don't you change your
shirt before you got there, same with the typo in
your resume. These are controllable variables. You need to get
that stuff right, spend the extra time to review stuff,
to be on time. And once you have a job,
you know, be on time, be reliable, work hard, do

(45:43):
the right thing, and be patient. You know, it takes
three years to get three years of experience. It's that's
very obvious. But people, particularly in this generation, think they
want it all right now, and it takes a while.
You know, if you look at my business started at
twenty eight. The first three years I didn't do very

(46:06):
well at all. I had to borrow money for my
brother after three years in business to pay the rent.
He charged me ten percent.

Speaker 1 (46:13):
Very nice of him, your brother, I love it.

Speaker 2 (46:17):
I'll mind you. At the time industry were about eight percent,
so you figured he needed to charge your premium. You know,
if there junk at Mike Milkine might relate to that.
So I bought ten grant and this is now, I'm
thirty one. I got my MBA. I've been working for
other people and I was to spend whatever savings I
had on the first two or three years to keep

(46:37):
my business going. And the business didn't go well. I
had setbacks, and I just stayed with it and persistence.
You know, if you if you stay with something that
makes sense, whether it's a job or a new business
that you're trying, if you know it makes sense and
you know you didn't get the breaks you wanted or

(46:58):
the tailwind that you're looking for, stay with it, you know,
keep at it. I mean, I'm certainly an example of
that where you know, ten years into it, finally things
started to go my way, and even then you got
to watch it. So stay paranoids, meaning have the fear
of failure as an entrepreneur. Always have the fear of

(47:20):
failure that will keep you from falling into the complacency trap.
Never get complacent unless you step out of the game.
Then step out. And if you've achieved everything you wanted
and you want to just play golf or sit on
a bench or go for walks, that's fine too. But
then you can be complacent. But if you're alive, meaning

(47:42):
like we're live on this podcast, if you're alive in
a business or in a career, never get complacent. Always
have the fear of failure. Be one hundred percent reliable,
one hundred percent on time, and these are the controllable variables.
Then you can still have set backs, but you can
also put yourself with that in a position to suddenly
reap the benefits of your experience, your patience to make

(48:04):
some real good progress and money when the tide turns
your way.

Speaker 1 (48:19):
So I want people as we wrap this up, I
want the audience to listen very carefully, rewind this and
listen to the last twenty minutes of this podcast. In particular,
I really want you to get into this and I
want you to remember what he just said. Now, controllable
variables are things that are within your obviously control. I

(48:39):
would say that this way, most success is tied to
good habits and execution. Good habits and execution execution means
doing things. Good habits is having a set of standards
about things that are consistent and do that consistently over time,

(49:00):
which is another way of what he just said. My
wife Shascher, would say that most behavior is learned behavior.
So you want to be nosy about everything, but certainly
the right things. When Alex and I met, one thing
was obviously about both of us. We not talked about
any of this, by the way, beforehand, we were both
nosy I mean, God gave you two ears in one mouth.

(49:22):
If you listen twice as much as you talk. I
was nosy about his business in his life. He was
nosy about my business's life. He was so nosy about
inclusive economics, inclusive capitalism. We hosted the meeting in his house.
That's how nosy he was. And he didn't hold them,
host the meeting and leave. He holds the meeting a
set in the audience with a notepad to take notes,
because he wanted to learn. Who knows whether he's going

(49:44):
to end up investing in a business that that may
be tied to an underserved neighborhood or community, their huge
market opportunity. But he, whatever his reason was, he was
just passionate about education. Something else that wants you to
notice again, I'm not gonna get any of his business
about net words, none of your business either. Let me
say let me just say this. My man has done
very well for himself. He's very comfortable. Now. If he

(50:07):
walked down the street, you would never notice he's got
a We didn't. We didn't talk about this. We can
talk about our wardrobe. My guess is how he dresses
every day. He's got a powder blue shirt maybe light gray,
light blue. He's got it buttoned up to the second button. Uh,
he probably has no fancy jewelry on, no watch or anything.

(50:28):
I'm sure he doesn't have any fancy rings that stuff.
I want me to see your hands, Alex, I just
I'm just curious. Let me see.

Speaker 2 (50:35):
Okay, here we go.

Speaker 1 (50:36):
No, it's a beautiful if you don't watch it. But
he's got his wedding ring on. What's the other hand
on the other hand or ring?

Speaker 2 (50:42):
This is like, you know, no commercially but uh, a
ring front that's.

Speaker 1 (50:48):
Look at that. No jewelry right now, He's had nothing
and there's nothing. He wants you to see him. He
wants you to focus. If you're an investor, if you
think about coming in his office and giving him some
of your money to invest, he doesn't want you to
focus on that other stuff. He wants you focused on him.
He also doesn't want you to think that if you
give him some money, he's going to waste that money

(51:10):
on stupid stuff. So it's a very simple mestha. So
you don't so the creative class that's listening to this,
you get paid for being loud. It's jewelry it's sunglasses
at night? Is you know broach?

Speaker 2 (51:24):
Is?

Speaker 1 (51:24):
Is you know? Is fancy cars? I get it, I
get it. But if you want to know from cashing
the check to writing it, and you want to become
from a consumer to an investor, if you want a
job at if you're if you just forget the creative,
those are successful and creative, God bless you. But if
you want to go to working at an investment house,

(51:46):
don't walk in his office or anybody else's office with
a lot of stuff on. That distracts people from the
one thing they're buying. Your brilliance, your intellect, your good habits,
the things he just mentioned. He wants to folks he
wants to So you're going to be focused on his
clients advancement period. It's very simple, good habits executed over time. Alex,

(52:09):
Did I get in that wrong?

Speaker 2 (52:11):
No? You got it all right.

Speaker 1 (52:13):
So let's uh, let's wrap this up. Let me ask
as a closing question, people are listening to this now
that they feel more successful. I'm so they feel more
comfortable that they can approach somebody like you, that you're
you're talking the language they understand. You've demystified Wall Street
and finance. And by the way, just for those who
don't know, an investment house like Alex's is not FDI

(52:37):
and CE ensure it like a bank would be. A
bank is the only basically government backed business in America,
backed by the full faith and credit of the federal government.
You don't care which bank you put the money in
is guarantee. When he what he's done is much more
much difficult, much more difficult because he had to get
private capital to invest in an investment house on theoretically
is at risk. And so what he's done is he's

(52:59):
got to be very very precise and very very clear
on the numerical the numbers of the KPIs key performance indicators,
because he's gonna be judge on everything. He can't afford
a moment of mistake. So it's really create what he's built.
As you're looking, Alex at the future twenty twenty five,

(53:21):
twenty twenty six, people here listen. They have become more comfortable,
They feel like they know you a little bit. What
advice do you have for them about are there any
we're the last term we're gonna unpack to day. Is
is it a is it a bullish environment? Or a
bearish environment. Can you please explain what that means? And

(53:41):
if you believe it's an environment that's opportunistic, meaning there's
opportunity in all the chaos. Are there two or three
or four categories areas industries that you encourage people to
look at. And then I have one last question for
you before we wrap.

Speaker 2 (53:56):
Okay, So bullish means everything is looking positive, everything is
looking up, the economy is good. Therefore you know the
stock market may do well. Bearish is when people are
very worried. We trench, companies, hire less people, people spend
less money, the economy contracts, the earnings of the companies

(54:17):
go down, and therefore the stock market goes down. So
that's bearish versus bullish. I'm a bullish guy. I'm always
optimistic pretty much all the time. So I'm looking at
the next couple of years again with great optimism. Why
we have fortunately very low unemployment overall. Of course, there
are pockets where it's difficult as always, but in general

(54:39):
it's a pretty good environment. We have interest rates which
were high recently, but they're coming down as well, so
that's positive. We've had a lot of uncertainties and we
continue them some, but I think they will go and
become less uncertain as time goes on. You know, for instance,
the US presidential election, we'll have certainty on that. Soon,

(55:01):
we'll have geopolitical issues that might bother people that are
and all of us that will suddenly be less of
an issue. These things do resolve themselves over time, So
I'm looking optimistic to twenty twenty five and twenty six
particular areas of interest. Of course, there's a tremendous amount

(55:22):
of excitement in the technology area, but again, buyer beware,
beware of what you pay for certain stocks in these areas.
In general, I think there's going to be an upturn
in housing and automotive from very low levels we've seen
because of the higher interest rates and mortgages. Mortgage rates
decline in existing home sales. People don't want to move

(55:46):
from one home to the next. And therefore, if you
don't move from one home to the next because you
have a low mortgage rate, that was locked in and
you don't want to make the move. So right now,
existing home sales are as low as they were in
the crash of two thousand and eight two thousand and nine,
they pick up. You see a pickup in applying sales

(56:10):
in paint and carpets and all the things that people
do when they get a new house. They renovate it,
they freshen it up, they make it look like their house.
And so existing home sales are at the bottom. They're
likely to move up as interest rates come down in
the coming year. So those are areas of interest, if
I may.

Speaker 1 (56:29):
And the companies and the companies that make paint, and
the companies that make fenses, and the company that make
you know, turf, and the companies that sell that stuff,
those might be might be also moving up with them.
Continue Alex, sir.

Speaker 2 (56:42):
Correct. So as a message to everybody on the podcast,
I think, as maybe parting notes, you're all about education
and financial literacy, and I think everybody needs to take
that to heart and do this at home as much
as possible. Unfortunately, in school, they don't teach kids basic economics,

(57:05):
and we're not talking about sophisticated stuff. We're talking about
the checkbook, balancing, balancing your checkbook, credit card spending, mortgages,
all these basic things. You can just in the words,
get simple educational information that you can discuss at the
dinner table with everybody. With yourself, with your spouse, with

(57:28):
your loved one, with your young kids. Talk about balance sheets.
What is an asset, what's a liability, what's depth? What
is a mortgage? How do we save money? How do
we grow money? Give, if possible your kids when they're twelve, thirteen,
fourteen years old and an account. I'm not saying any particular,

(57:50):
but e trade accounts, some account where you can buy stocks,
and then for Christmas or birthdays, or for whatever holiday
you celebrate, give another one hundred dollars or two hundred
dollars or whatever you can give to this account instead
of another toy, and let them pick their own stocks,
or let's discuss those stocks together. I've done it with

(58:13):
my kids. And at one point, you know, if you
start at twelve or thirteen, maybe at age twenty five,
twenty six, it could be a meaningful amount. And then
you have your job as a young person. But you
also have your savings account. You shouldn't touch that and
keep growing it. And as you said, you're four to
one K, which you might get from the company if
they match it. Maximize it for sure, and then make

(58:35):
sure it's invested properly. And if you have choices, try
to put it into equities. I think those are good points.

Speaker 1 (58:44):
So I'm gonna I've never done this before. I'm honored
when I get a chance to meet a guy like
you who's so successful and so approachable. I have a
book that's financial literacy for all number one business finance
in the country for the last eight months. I'm gonna
say to anybody watch this podcast if you were inspired
by Alex and you're wondering, like, I'll never meet a
guy like this, Like I'll never run into him on

(59:04):
the street. I'll never run into in the elevator. He's
probably got security. Whatever I never run in, I'll never
be in the Hamptons. I just would love to spend
thirty minutes with a guy like him and ask him
questions and be inspired and may and maybe even pitch
him for an internship for me or my son or
daughter or whatever. But I love to just have thirty
minutes with this guy. I'm making a commitment for him

(59:24):
that hopefully he won't hate me for. But if you
write me a note, write it to Senate Bill dot Fair,
Bill dot Fai R at Operation NOPE dot Org, my
deputy chief of staff, and make a case for why
you should have an audience with Alex and his firm.
Why you think that you are worth thirty minutes or

(59:46):
forty five minutes of his time? The top ten people,
but the letters I get. I'll give nine of them
a copy of my book Financial Literacy for all just
to write in the letter at the top ten and
the number one best one I'm gonna recommend to Alex
he actually meets with you for thirty to forty five
minutes and give you, you know, just give you an audience,
one on one, and hopefully that might inspire you to

(01:00:09):
change the course of your life. Alex, would you mind
doing that.

Speaker 2 (01:00:13):
Note at all?

Speaker 1 (01:00:14):
There we go, pleasure closed mouths, don't get fit, as
they would say. And I knew you'd say that because
Alex is a great guy. So we've gone over. Thanks
for your time. Quick question, how'd you get so decent?
It's a quick question, just and I know it makes
you uncomfortable. I know you're a humble guy, but like
you're just normal, like you're just parents. You know.

Speaker 2 (01:00:36):
It's I think if the parents have good values and
teach you all the controllable varials we just talked about earlier,
that you know is something that stays with you from
an early age. So lead by example. My parents led
by example, and hopefully I'm leading by example for my kids.

(01:00:56):
I think picking your friends is important. If you're three
brilliant people or fund people, you're probably going to be
the fourth one. If you're around three really nuts, good
people that are slacking off and hanging out, you're probably
going to be the fourth one. So pick your friends carefully.
You can't pick your family. And if you don't have

(01:01:16):
the values from home, try to get it from somewhere else.
Get it from people that inspire you. Read books about
people that were very successful. There's so many out there
where people who write memoirs or write about them. And
read how these folks started and how they got somewhere,
and you'll learn that most all of them recommended or

(01:01:38):
did the things that we were talking about today about
the values and the variables you can control.

Speaker 1 (01:01:45):
Amen, I tell you Ambassador Andrew Young's as a quote, Alex,
coincidence is God's way of remaining anonymous. And you said
something that you would never know, You would have no
idea that that makes you my brother. You said that
if you hang around four or five successful people, you
might become the fourth or the fifth one, right, third, fourth,

(01:02:07):
fifth one. I often say, if you hang around nine
broke people, you'll be the tenth. And those are the
bookends of our lives. Watching you hang around, watch what
you do, watch your your habits. What these are your
controllable variables, some of them. And as Michael Milk and
our mutual friend who introduced us would say, that we
are all born with even our equal potential and equal

(01:02:31):
intelligent intelligence. For that potential, for that intelligence if you
grow it, but not equal opportunity. Thank you Alex for
being a beacon and a lighthouse for equal opportunity.

Speaker 2 (01:02:43):
Thank you John, and thanks to everybody for listening to
the podcast. And it was my pleasure.

Speaker 1 (01:02:49):
Ladies and gentlemen, this has been Money and Wealth. You've
been listening to alec Roopers, who is a chief investment officer,
effectively that c EO in the investment terms of Atlantic
investment management. Go change your life. It's all in your hands.

(01:03:21):
Money and Wealth with John O'Brien is a production of
the Black Effect Podcast Network. For more podcasts from the
Black Effect Podcast Network, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows, tap tap

(01:05:01):
the deep