YouSaid · the spoken record

Mike Novogratz

On the record 2020

LINES ON RECORD

SITTING OR EPISODE

SOURCE

2020–2020

ON RECORD

podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“It was great. I remember meeting you freaking probably 12, 13 years ago when you were an up-and-comer. And it's been awesome. And just because you went to Princeton, you wrestled. And I have took a special interest. But I've been amazed at the following you've built, the adventures you've been on. I still go back to the, I was telling you this, your first book, The Testosterone Chapter and the Orgasm Chapter required reading for everybody. So proud to be your friend and love that I got to get on your show and congrats on all the success.”
2020-08-05 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #451: Mike Novogratz on Investing, Bitcoin, Ayahuasca, and Running Through The Sahara Desert · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And so for me, it's friendships. You know, they're high school friendships, college friendships, work friendships, friendships, people I meet at conferences. And they're not all, and they need to be invested in. Otherwise, if you don't have new shared experiences, they go kind of go away”
2020-08-05 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #451: Mike Novogratz on Investing, Bitcoin, Ayahuasca, and Running Through The Sahara Desert · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You know, cheeky, I bought a theory when it was one and it went to 1300. I bought a jet like and lots of other things. But I don't think that really. Because that kind of felt a little bit lucky and I was already rich. I actually think investing in friendships. You know, partly I'm a hypersocial guy. And so it came natural to me. But when I think about my life and what gives it joy, it is the circles of friendships I have. highlight to my life as this party I throw every two to four years depending on how I'm financially doing where 300 odd people 350 people from my universe get together and we play sports and listen to music and drink too much and it's a three day event that takes a huge amount of effort to put on but I feel like most complete in some ways like this is my exclamation point on the world on how I want to live”
2020-08-05 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #451: Mike Novogratz on Investing, Bitcoin, Ayahuasca, and Running Through The Sahara Desert · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But so much, I think, is also brain chemistry because like, you know, his brothers and sisters, like we have a whole family of social and we didn't pressure the guy to drink a little bit here and there. But he's like, no. And I'm so impressed at how confident he is with his ability to put up boundaries and just say, no. And then be like, Dad, you're going 90 miles an hour. The speed limit 60. I'm like, oops, sorry.”
2020-08-05 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #451: Mike Novogratz on Investing, Bitcoin, Ayahuasca, and Running Through The Sahara Desert · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Of my favorite quotes is from St. Augustine. It's Lord give me chastity incontinence, but not just yet. You know, I remember leaving rehab and that was my joke. Yeah, yeah, yeah, we had a big circle and everyone's, you know, banging the floor and you had to give us a story. And I was like, what? Part of that is that tension always between doing what you're supposed to do and you know you're supposed to do and what you want to do. And so I do think I laugh at that quote, but I do hold that tension in my hands. Part of being alive is being impulsive and breaking. I take personality tests and I just, I'm 37 out of 40 as a rule breaker. And so I have a son that won't break a rule. If I just keep off the grass, he keeps off the grass. He doesn't drink because he's not old enough to drink. Every high school kid drinks other than my one son. Who's the sweetest kid around? And I was thinking to myself, it's just different brain chemistry because it's just part of its nature nurtured. But part of its nurture.”
2020-08-05 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #451: Mike Novogratz on Investing, Bitcoin, Ayahuasca, and Running Through The Sahara Desert · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Can I put little boxes? And I say, okay, here's my criminal justice stuff I want to work on. Here's my, and like, what are the stress points?”
2020-08-05 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #451: Mike Novogratz on Investing, Bitcoin, Ayahuasca, and Running Through The Sahara Desert · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I think saying no, for me saying no is like been the hardest thing. You didn't want to disappoint people. It comes from my mother wanting me to be a senator. And so learning how to say no and draw a boundary has been really important to me. And it's hard for me. I got to call back three phone calls and finally say no. And so by cutting a couple things out, I think helps me. And actually, the other thing is writing it all on a on a whiteboard. So it takes it out of my stress zone onto the whiteboard. And I'm like, okay, I see it all. It might be a fuckload of stuff, but at least it's up there on the board and I can put boxes around it and I can start attacking it. And so I think that's probably the most powerful is literally getting it all out of my head and putting it. And I'm a very visual person. So like it's different for me like a whiteboard or a big piece of paper is different than writing notes.”
2020-08-05 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #451: Mike Novogratz on Investing, Bitcoin, Ayahuasca, and Running Through The Sahara Desert · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“He wrote the book The Guy Committed Suicide because he just couldn't take the, he had lost his fortune yet again. But every rule that you need to, the discipline side of it is all in that book. And it's a quick read. You can read it in three hours.”
2020-08-05 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #451: Mike Novogratz on Investing, Bitcoin, Ayahuasca, and Running Through The Sahara Desert · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“There's one book that I've given 40 copies away, probably, and it's called Reminiscence of a Stock Operator. And for anyone who wants to be a trader or an investor, this is the Bible. It was written in 1932 by a guy who was at that time maybe the world's greatest speculator, Jesse Livermore is the fictional character. And what's crazy about it is you can read it today in 2020. it literally is still the Bible. And so every great trader annotates it, tears pages out of it. It used to be a tell when people would come to interview to work and they say, all I care about is trading. I was like, well, tell me two books you read about trading. Oh, I haven't read any books. And I was like, okay, here's a book. Go read it and come back when you've read it. But you're not getting a job, you know, because you lied to me because you really didn't care that much about trading if you've never read a book on it. But that's the book. And there's a, you know, anecdote afterward to it is that two years after.”
2020-08-05 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #451: Mike Novogratz on Investing, Bitcoin, Ayahuasca, and Running Through The Sahara Desert · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Which is bizarre. We should have nobody on parole. And so we have a long way to go. And I fear you pass one or two acts and you declare victory and the numbers never change. And so we're working on trying to get like a scoreboard so the whole country can say, all right, this is where we think we need to get, have people agree to it and then work to get there.”
2020-08-05 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #451: Mike Novogratz on Investing, Bitcoin, Ayahuasca, and Running Through The Sahara Desert · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Jarrett Kushner's father spent time in jail. Criminal justice is one of the few things that the Trump administration has been okay on. Not great, but certainly okay. The first step back was a great start. And they've been helpful. And so, but again, to put it in perspective, we have 2.3 million people in jail or prison. And having done a whole lot of analysis on this, I think that should be 800,000. That's a big difference. We have five million people that go to prison every year. It's like a jail every year. It's like a revolving door. They stay in an average of 45 days. Two and a half million.”
2020-08-05 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #451: Mike Novogratz on Investing, Bitcoin, Ayahuasca, and Running Through The Sahara Desert · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You know, Brian Stevenson's TED talk is spectacular because it really gives a framework of where this all started, right? It started with slavery and we've never really dealt with the trauma of slavery. Robin Steinberg gave a TED talk. That's fantastic about Bale and the Bale project. And Philip Goff, Philip Atiba Goff did one about policing. And so we're not anti-police, to be fair. We're like, okay, how do you help the police department actually have data so they can be fair in how they police? And so that's a controversial one because people are like, oh, screw the police. You got to have people all engaged. All parties have to be engaged and try to say, hey, we need to make a better system. And I do feel some optimism. I mean, even Trump, as much as I dislike Trump and would love him at a cage match, criminal justice.”
2020-08-05 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #451: Mike Novogratz on Investing, Bitcoin, Ayahuasca, and Running Through The Sahara Desert · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Of all places, France, right? They're like, okay, should it keep people in prison when they're going to die because of this damn virus? The US is about two and a half percent. And so while that's a lot of people, right, and they've all come out of jails, not prisons. So for those who don't know, jail is one year and under and often pre-trial. And prison is one year and longer. And so we just haven't gotten around to saying, you know, we need to fix this. And we're way off. Our sentences are three times longer than Germany's for this same crime. Just mean.”
2020-08-05 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #451: Mike Novogratz on Investing, Bitcoin, Ayahuasca, and Running Through The Sahara Desert · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And Robert Kraft. And we have participated and funded or partially funded probably 15, 20 different organizations. And really, it's been a big part of my life. I still am a novice, to be fair. I'm less than three years in. And so I'm a good enough storyteller that I can tell the story other people's stories and hear them. But we need a complete overhaul. And the only optimism I see is that, you know, when I started even, there was like only $100 million of philanthropy coming into the space. And four years later, there's $600 million or more. It feels like the ball's starting to roll downhill. This COVID thing is really shined the light on just how horribly we treat the most vulnerable people. I would tell you it's interesting. I looked before I came on. There are 15 countries that have decarcerated by 18%. Italy, Iran.”
2020-08-05 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #451: Mike Novogratz on Investing, Bitcoin, Ayahuasca, and Running Through The Sahara Desert · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And so it just got me angry, you know, fairness had always been a thing in my life. I think growing up middle class, you thought it was not fair that rich kids had a, you know, better start than I did. And you talk about not fair middle class to rich kids. The prison system is just absolutely unfair. And it preys on communities that are already in duress. I think about women in prison. How about this statistic? percent of women in prison have been raped. So we're taking people that have been traumatized and putting them into a trauma machine. Like, who in the fuck thinks that's a good idea? And so anyway, I get angry thinking about it. But so we've gotten involved. I think we're, you know, I'm on the board of this thing called the Reform Alliance, which has been fun because we're doing great work around probation of parole and that's Jay-Z and Meek Mill.”
2020-08-05 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #451: Mike Novogratz on Investing, Bitcoin, Ayahuasca, and Running Through The Sahara Desert · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Mapping out having activists come in, formally incarcerated people come in, visiting prisons in jails. And with every rock, we looked under, you just get more and more pissed off. You get infuriated. It is a system of stupidity. It is a system of spite, meanness. There is nothing rehabilitated at all. It's racially oppressive. It's literally like, let's figure out how we can strip people of their dignity. Oh, let's make them shit in public. That's a very nice, the whole system is just bizarre. And it doesn't have to be that way. We participate on a trip where you took 35 people to Norway and to Germany. And you look at the German prisons and you would give them a 95 out of 100. And you'd give Norway a 99 out of 100. And we're not a 60 out of 100. We're like a 14. Like we're that bad.”
2020-08-05 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #451: Mike Novogratz on Investing, Bitcoin, Ayahuasca, and Running Through The Sahara Desert · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Most people in America don't have $500. Most people are getting arrested, don't have access to $500, so they stay in jail. They're seven times more likely to plead guilty if they're in jail than if they're not in jail. When we bail them out, 50% of the time the DA drops the charges. When you're in jail, 40% of all prison death and prison rape happens the first 14 days you're there. And it has horrific long-term consequences for the person and the city. It just felt so stupidly unjust that I impulsively said I will donate a bunch of money and share this thing, the bail project. And then I woke up and I was like, well, the bail project is going to be the biggest bail fund by a factor of 30 or more in the country. You better understand the criminal justice landscape. And so I hired a guy named Billy Waterson, who's been an A-plus, and a small team. And we started.”
2020-08-05 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #451: Mike Novogratz on Investing, Bitcoin, Ayahuasca, and Running Through The Sahara Desert · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Was a thing called audacious, you know, the year cryptocurrency went much higher. I made a whole lot of money on this thing called Ethereum. And to some of you, it felt like wampum. You bought wampum. It went way up in price and I sold it. And it was kind of a breathtaking amount of money. And I wanted to do something fun for myself. And I wanted to decide it feel so guilty because I kind of thought it would have been karmic justice, give an equal amount to something else. So I bought a G550. I never had a jet, which was extreme. But I decided to take a similar amount of money. And I heard this story about cash bail, unaffordable cash bail that Robin Steinberg told. And it's a really simple story. There are half a million people that go to bed every night in jail cells solely because they can't afford to pay bail. And, you know, the average bail we pay is somewhere close to $1,800.”
2020-08-05 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #451: Mike Novogratz on Investing, Bitcoin, Ayahuasca, and Running Through The Sahara Desert · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The work she did. And I was like, wow, that's what public defense is. And I had made this movie with Nate Parker. When I say made, I didn't do anything other than invest. Nate Parker was a good friend of mine. He was a wrestler, and he had this dream of making this movie called Birth of a Nation. And literally after 15 Jack Daniels, he convinced me to invest because I really didn't want to invest in an independent movie just thinking I'd lose all my money. But Nate was very persuasive and he's a winner. And so I bet on him. And it won every award at Sunday and it sold for more money than any independent film ever.”
2020-08-05 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #451: Mike Novogratz on Investing, Bitcoin, Ayahuasca, and Running Through The Sahara Desert · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's funny, you know, I guess if I'm metaphysical about it, I go back and I think, well, my parents talk, I remember my mother bringing me to head start when I was four or five years old and this idea of philanthropy being part of our family. But the more practical side was I saw Brian Stevenson speak once and was wildly impressed that Ted he gave us kind of seminal speech and so that was in the back of my head. And then my daughter, Anna, got a job at a thing called the Bronx Defenders where she was a 20-year-old summer intern and she was trousing around the Bronx collecting evidence for her lawyer's cases. And I'm like, you're actually the evidence collector. Like, how do you know? Like, she's getting, you know, video from Bodegas. And I'm like, you're the defense team. And I was like, and so I was A, impressed with.”
2020-08-05 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #451: Mike Novogratz on Investing, Bitcoin, Ayahuasca, and Running Through The Sahara Desert · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I did it twice and I got embarrassed by my body type. I literally didn't have the patience. I did try it a few times, but I didn't follow through like he needed me to.”
2020-08-05 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #451: Mike Novogratz on Investing, Bitcoin, Ayahuasca, and Running Through The Sahara Desert · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Of exercises, how to get your back. And his philosophy is if your body's in alignment, you'll be in alignment. Your emotions will be in alignment. And so I went to meet him the first time. It was supposed to be an hour meeting, and we spent like three hours talking. And I'm waiting for my menu. It's my menu, my menu. At the very end, he said, no, no, no. You need to strip down naked, stand in front of your mirror every day for 15 minutes and just accept yourself. Like, well, that's my fucking menu getting back and calling Paul Jones. And he laughed hysterically. You didn't even get a menu. So, I think that's my 20 years from now. Hopefully my telling you, just accept yourself. And that was a little bit the tattoo. I was like, I am a fucking Puma. And so put it on your arm and remember, like, that's part of who you are.”
2020-08-05 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #451: Mike Novogratz on Investing, Bitcoin, Ayahuasca, and Running Through The Sahara Desert · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Say you're okay, like you're doing fine, you're doing great. I have a shrink by my wife calls him the greatest enabler of all time. His whole mission is to say, that's great. I'll make some confession. He's like, that's great. I was like, well, I'm not going to get in trouble. That's just to accept yourself. I have a funny story. A friend, he's not really a friend of mine. I've only met him three times, but I had a great time with him every time I met him. But he's a dear friend of Paul Jones, a guy by the name of Pete Agoskew. And Pete has a famous business where he was like a posture expert. And then it was movement. And he had come back from Vietnam War and healed himself. And then he was literally healed thousands and thousands of people, celebrities, athletes, the Agasku method it's called. And when you meet him, you go through his process. He gives you a menu.”
2020-08-05 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #451: Mike Novogratz on Investing, Bitcoin, Ayahuasca, and Running Through The Sahara Desert · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But for me, listen, it's a work in progress. Like you, it's kind of built into the DNA of wanting to do things right. When I throw a party, I want it to be a great party. And, you know, my poor assistants once bought a tent that was too big. And I literally thought I was going to like, it was like I died a thousand deaths. I saw this tent. I knew we had 200 people coming to the party. We had a tent big enough for 300 and all the energy would be diffuse. Have fun in the big 10 jackass. But I'm trying to learn that. The process”
2020-08-05 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #451: Mike Novogratz on Investing, Bitcoin, Ayahuasca, and Running Through The Sahara Desert · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Scandal behind it, and there's always some backstory. But I remember thinking 20 years later, like looking at my father at 70, now he's 83 and thinking, do you think he gives a rat's ass that he didn't make general anymore? Like his priorities had shifted. He was so happy to be around his family. The work he was doing at the church and how we were all doing that ego piece, he just let it go. And it didn't act like he let it go. He let it go. And so I think there's something about aging gracefully where you let that shit go because it just doesn't really matter nearly as much as you think it does at the time. And I think seeing that has helped. You know, act like dad, don't act like a jackass. That's kind of my internal koan or mantra.”
2020-08-05 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #451: Mike Novogratz on Investing, Bitcoin, Ayahuasca, and Running Through The Sahara Desert · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Just getting older, and I think with success, there's a little less pressure. And some of it is now just trying to have awareness of it and say, it's not that important. But I think I pulled my employees, they'd say you changed little, but not a lot yet. And so, you know, it's certainly a work in progress. I do notice it with my father. My father was this great-looking guy, football star, spent his time in the army, always was nice to people, went to Vietnam twice. And in lots of ways, you know, became a colonel, but didn't make general. And I remember what he didn't make general was painful in our family because, of course, you want your dad to succeed. And the military, it's like not making partner or Goldman Sachs. There's a hierarchy and you either get it or you don't. And it was painful for my parents, for my mother.”
2020-08-05 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #451: Mike Novogratz on Investing, Bitcoin, Ayahuasca, and Running Through The Sahara Desert · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, you know, it's a work in progress. I remember before going down there, like I'm an Lawyer who's been with me for 10 years. I said, of course, I'm an easy boss. And she's like, dude, you're absolutely not a fucking easy boss. You're such a tough boss. She said, you're nice, but you're tough. And I was like, what do you mean? She said, you never give a compliment. You're like, that's pretty good butts. We're having the best party. You're like, ah, but if we only. And they're like, you know, how this disheartening that is. I was like, oh, made me feel terrible. And it was when I was on that ayahuasca thing I realized. You can't be nice to people and you're nice to yourself. And I'm I never thought I was tough on myself. Why? Because I let myself get away with the stuff that set me to rehab or drinking or drugs or breaking the rules. I've been a rule breaking my whole life. And so I thought that's, well, if you could do that, you're not really being tough on yourself. Those are two different subject matters. I did the rest of that stuff because I was so tough on myself. And that was the interesting part. I was like, oh, you should have. Only. And that internal angst, I think some of it was.”
2020-08-05 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #451: Mike Novogratz on Investing, Bitcoin, Ayahuasca, and Running Through The Sahara Desert · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's time at least to broaden the conversation. Now, listen, University of Iowa to the Teachers College might not have been the exact right place, but it was where I was invited to speak.”
2020-08-05 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #451: Mike Novogratz on Investing, Bitcoin, Ayahuasca, and Running Through The Sahara Desert · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Cat analysis in Wonderland. And for her, coming off what she saw on this ayahuasca trip was all the other girls being mean to her because she was getting all the attention. And interestingly enough, her whole life, she'd never put her head up again. She always has been unbelievably supportive of everyone. She is literally our support system and our family. And as she came out of that trip and she was like, I didn't put my head up because of those six-year-old girls that I didn't remember. And so like, again, once you see it, now she's got her own podcast and she's putting her head up. And so I find that a sweet story to tell because it's not so, you know, damningly personal. But there's so many opportunities like that that I figured.”
2020-08-05 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #451: Mike Novogratz on Investing, Bitcoin, Ayahuasca, and Running Through The Sahara Desert · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And so I have a sister to tell her story, but I will, that went down after I did the same place. And I was laughing about being a puma. And she's like, god damn it. Next thing you know, her hands were becoming kind of furry and like a cat. And she hates cats. She's like, I hate cats. I hate cats. I can't believe I want to become a cat. And next thing, you know, she climbed up this ladder and she's looking at it and it brought her back to this high school, not high school, I'm sorry, like little little school theater where she was the Cheshire cat looking out on the audience. And Ivory, she told me the story. I remembered I was the older brother sitting there. She was probably five or six at the time. And she was the cutest kid in the play. Of course, she was my sister. And after the play, I remember telling her, oh, she stole the show. She stole the show. She was so great. I mean, she probably had like three lines, but she was the Cheshire.”
2020-08-05 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #451: Mike Novogratz on Investing, Bitcoin, Ayahuasca, and Running Through The Sahara Desert · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“and that people have shit to work through and that we should help them work through that. And both psilocybin and ayahuasca are, I just think two things in that toolkit, powerful things in that toolkit of how one can process trauma, one can learn about themselves, one can dig into places that they haven't understood before. And it's funny, once you see it, you can unsee it.”
2020-08-05 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #451: Mike Novogratz on Investing, Bitcoin, Ayahuasca, and Running Through The Sahara Desert · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Afterwards, I was trying to convince my sister and brother in law that they should do this. And I really then started thinking barring people that have bipolar or mental health issues. Would an ayahuasca trip not benefit someone as much as it might be tough and scary? Like, should we put every politician in the world through that experience before they're allowed to serve? And I kept coming up with yes. And so I was like, If you're a young college student and you're physically okay to do this, is there anything bad? And I couldn't come up with it. And so I thought, you know, I'll talk about it publicly. And part of this was in a chapter or part of the speech about destigmatizing mental health. Like I think, you know, one of the things we need to do as a society is to allow that people have mental health issues. That depression is real.”
2020-08-05 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #451: Mike Novogratz on Investing, Bitcoin, Ayahuasca, and Running Through The Sahara Desert · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It was my first commencement address, and I worked hard on it. And the thesis was know thyself. And there's so many ways one can learn about themselves. And that journey that I went on in Costa Rica was unbelievably powerful. And I ended up getting different things from it that I thought I would.”
2020-08-05 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #451: Mike Novogratz on Investing, Bitcoin, Ayahuasca, and Running Through The Sahara Desert · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I was like, that was such a genius. I was like, that guy's a genius. It's just, you know when you hear the truth. So I put my forearm down there and I walked home with this giant eight-inch tattoo of a jaguar puma on my right arm. And I love it. I have to say, I love it. It gives me power. I realize your forearms don't get flabby. It's like the one part of your body that stays fit.”
2020-08-05 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #451: Mike Novogratz on Investing, Bitcoin, Ayahuasca, and Running Through The Sahara Desert · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And the guy looked at me and he was like, dude, with all respect, you're old as fuck. And if you're going to get a tattoo, get a tattoo that people can see.”
2020-08-05 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #451: Mike Novogratz on Investing, Bitcoin, Ayahuasca, and Running Through The Sahara Desert · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I have a forearm length jaguar slash puma. I call it a puma, but you might think of it as a jaguar. Big black puma tattoo that goes from my basically the whole length of my right forearm that I got literally. My brother had given me a tattoo for Christmas a few years earlier. And after my first ayahuasca experience where I literally on day three transformed into a puma, I was going to call it Black Panther, but the movie had already come out. So I was like, I'm a Puma, I'm not a Panther, and growled and crawled around the floor two nights in a row and was so moved by the whole beauty of that experience I decided I would get a small tattoo. And I walked into this famous tattoo parlor called Smith Street Tattoos where my brother had, you know, got me the appointment and set it up. And I told the guy to get this tattoo and I was going to get a small one on my shoulder.”
2020-08-05 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #451: Mike Novogratz on Investing, Bitcoin, Ayahuasca, and Running Through The Sahara Desert · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“People haven't gotten beaten up. And so that, I think, you know, again, I have a loving mom and dad. And interesting about them is they've gotten nicer and nicer with each year. So my dad's 83, my mom's 79. And you literally, it's just fun to see parents grow and change. And so I've got nothing but great things to say. But I do think, and I said that in that speech I wrote, that, you know, everyone's journey is to kind of figure out their parental issues. and how their parents impacted them and then to understand it, to let it go and love their parents. And it took me a long time to figure out where that pressure came from. And again, I don't blame anybody for it, but it certainly was there.”
2020-08-05 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #451: Mike Novogratz on Investing, Bitcoin, Ayahuasca, and Running Through The Sahara Desert · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Your little kid, you pick up cues that my parents never meant to put pressure on their kids, I don't think in that kind of way, but you pick up cues and they become your operating system. And I operated with that system. I probably still have a little bit of in me for so long a period of time that I needed to be perfect. So I remember cheating. And then I was like, why am I cheating on a high school test? The smartest guy in the goddamn class because I didn't know the answer and I'm not going to get an A. Like that pressure was irrational. And of course my freaking dad never told a lie in his life. He's another choir boy. They're not going to condone cheating on a high school test. My mother wouldn't condone it. But like, and so it's interesting when I talk to earlier about Big T trauma and little T trauma, like the little T trauma of picking up some story for me was just as powerful as, you know, unfortunately for some other.”
2020-08-05 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #451: Mike Novogratz on Investing, Bitcoin, Ayahuasca, and Running Through The Sahara Desert · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I mean, it's a big yes. And I don't know if it was, I think it was more implicitly, you know, my mother was very good at making us all feel like we were this special one. And for whatever reason from, you know, kindergarten on, like, teachers treated me better than everybody else, my parents. And so I literally remember if I didn't get an A in like first grade on the way home taking the paper, crumbling up and throwing in the sewer. And I'm thinking to myself, now that I've had young kids, it's incomprehensible for me to think that a five or six or seven-year-old would throw a paper away if he didn't get an A. Like I was like, who thinks like that? So somehow at that very young age, I said in that article with Gary Steiger when I was at Rhea, I had to complain my mother because everyone's got to blame their parents. I said, you put so much pressure on me because she used to tell everybody because I talked all the time that I was going to be a senator. And my mother was very quick.”
2020-08-05 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #451: Mike Novogratz on Investing, Bitcoin, Ayahuasca, and Running Through The Sahara Desert · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“What I notice about her, and I noticed about some other leaders, but not many, is that she's never not known true north. Like she's, and most people, myself included, I try to be a pretty good guy and I do a lot of good stuff, but my compass gets out of kilter plenty of times, gets out of kilter for my own desires, it feels pretty good, gets out of kilter because I get excited about something I lose my own focus. I put my sister in a special bucket, you know, Brian Stevenson is one of my heroes from the Equal Justice Initiative, who's really one of our great civil rights leaders. And you meet with him and you're like, after just a few hours with him, you're like, he's probably never not known True North. And so, you know, that's, listen, it's inspiring to be around those people. It's sometimes humbling and frustrating because you're like, but it's good to have morale.”
2020-08-05 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #451: Mike Novogratz on Investing, Bitcoin, Ayahuasca, and Running Through The Sahara Desert · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Sister is one of the unique souls that from like age five decided she wanted to change the world and so she was like a brownie that a girl scout and she started this organization the acumen fund which was really kind of the father of venture philanthropy impact investing and has spent her whole life trying to figure out how to change systems, how to invest in the poorest of the citizens on this planet to build permanent structures around housing and water and education and really to change the conversation to start with the conversation of dignity and you know she developed a huge following in that development world and in the conference world she's got you know branches all over the world now young acolytes that want to be like her and so you know it's interesting”
2020-08-05 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #451: Mike Novogratz on Investing, Bitcoin, Ayahuasca, and Running Through The Sahara Desert · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But, you know, I look at this big family all the time. And the one thing that I'm sure that came out of it was you're willing to take more risk in life when you know if you screw up, there's people that are going to catch you. There's brothers and sisters that'll love you anyway. And they also, on the flip side, when you're doing really well, And so that's, listen, we've all drafted off of each other. I always laughed at it's a pain in the ass to have such a famous sister because wherever I go, everyone knows my sister because she's always trying to save the world.”
2020-08-05 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #451: Mike Novogratz on Investing, Bitcoin, Ayahuasca, and Running Through The Sahara Desert · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“My mom used to always say, You're given so much, you know, you got to give back. And I look back, I'm like, we had seven kids fighting over one brush. But, you know, we were, you know, it was a Catholic family. There was lots of love involved. We come from a big extended family as well. And so we felt special. You know, it was special to be an Overgradz. And my mother made it special to be an Overgradz. And so we ran for office at the student elections, you know, didn't always win, actually. Lost most of the time. But even the confidence to be the third grader running for class president came from, I think, parents that made you feel special. My dad was tough. He was a military guy and he grew up in an Austrian immigrant family. And so we got whacked around a lot. My brother and I. We always complained that by the time my little brothers and sisters who were, there was a seven-year gap between the top three and the bottom four came around. My parents were soft.”
2020-08-05 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #451: Mike Novogratz on Investing, Bitcoin, Ayahuasca, and Running Through The Sahara Desert · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Because you named my sister Jackie and my brother Bobby. We've got a John John. You know, my dad was a handsome football player, a football star at West Point. And my mother thought we should be them, you know, why not us? And so she was the one that kind of drove the pressure to succeed, not in a very harsh way, just in a like, you know, we used to complain about kids. And she says, well, if that girl would jump off a bridge, would you jump off a bridge? It's the same old saying that most suburban parades use. But there was a pressure my mom put of excellence that we could rise. And in the background, my father had been the alignment of the year in college football. He never has once mentioned a thing. He's the least braggadocio guy, very humble, but he didn't have to say much because he had my mom would say it all for him. But we have this sense of excellence from my dad that he had been this star football player. We also had a sense of service.”
2020-08-05 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #451: Mike Novogratz on Investing, Bitcoin, Ayahuasca, and Running Through The Sahara Desert · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Sure. So, for people of my age that used to watch John Hughes movies, like Pretty in Pink and 16 Candles, that was pretty much the neighborhood I grew up in. We were straight up the middle suburban middle class, all-American family. My dad was an army officer, so he was a major. He went to Vietnam twice when I was very young, a major, then a lieutenant colonel for my growing up years. I went to a public high school. We had seven of us. Seven of us had a house that had one and a half, well, two bathrooms, one for my parents and one for the rest of us. And, you know, we fought over the brush and the blow dryer because back then you blew dry your hair if you were a cool dude. My mother didn't go to college. She got married when she was 18 to my dad. They just had their 16th anniversary or 19. She got married 60th anniversary. And she was beautiful. And I think she had this fascination with the Kennedys.”
2020-08-05 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #451: Mike Novogratz on Investing, Bitcoin, Ayahuasca, and Running Through The Sahara Desert · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's been Gen Z and the millennials. It's been bought on Coinbase app or Square or Robinhood. Those things aren't going away. Quite frankly, there are going to be more of them, right? Facebook's Calibra is going to allow you to buy Bitcoin. That'll be $2,000, 3,000 people using that wallet. And so there are so many more avenues of access. I always tell people if it was easy to buy, the price would be far higher already. Bitcoin's been hard to buy. And a year from now, it's going to be that much easier. I'm really bullish. And listen, I don't have. I'm always careful when I say really because these things are recorded and come back later and people are like, damn, that guy was stupid. He doesn't work. And so you're cautious to be that bullish publicly. But I haven't seen things line up as well in a long time”
2020-08-05 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #451: Mike Novogratz on Investing, Bitcoin, Ayahuasca, and Running Through The Sahara Desert · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Mark it down and write it down. We're trading roughly $9,600 per Bitcoin right now. I think we'll take out $10,000 soon and end the year closer to 20,000, the old highs. Once these store of values start building momentum, there's not a lot of supply. We've had this thing called the having where there's half the supply being mined than there was even a week ago. But mostly The story is finally catching broader adoption. And it's not just hedge funds that are going to be able to buy it. You're going to see wealth managers start selling it to their clients through products. We have a Bitcoin fund that's targeted to the 50 to 80 year olds in America that buy their that make their investment decisions through TD Ameritrade or Charles Schwab or Goldman Sachs are registered investment advisors. Bitcoin has been a young man's”
2020-08-05 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #451: Mike Novogratz on Investing, Bitcoin, Ayahuasca, and Running Through The Sahara Desert · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Try to understand how the damn thing worked. And so I became kind of an unofficial spokesperson or one of the unofficial spokesperson for it. They only become stores of value when people believe they are. And so it's a belief system. Bitcoin is not just the code. It's really the social construct. I say it's this. You say it's this, therefore it is this. And so we already have Jack Dorsey whose Twitter handle says Bitcoin and Abby Johnson from Fidelity and Pete Brigger from Fortress that have all bought it personally or had their businesses involved with it. Wences Casares and Mickey Melker. I mean, these are kind of legends in their space. Paul's the first kind of legend in the hedge fund space that didn't just buy it personally, but he bought it in his fund. And so it opens up a whole new avenue of potential participants in that community, which I think is really, really significant.”
2020-08-05 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #451: Mike Novogratz on Investing, Bitcoin, Ayahuasca, and Running Through The Sahara Desert · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So that's a great question. So, the first couple of Bitcoin was kind of a shtick. I was the first institutional grade investor that started talking about it, you know, for better or worse back when it was trading around 100. I was on. And I had promised my partners, quite frankly, that we wouldn't talk about crypto because Fortress was a real asset company and we weren't going to talk about these digital assets. I was at some conference. I didn't know the press was there. I made some witty comments about Bitcoin. And the next day I was on the cover of the Financial Times. And then I got sucked into Bitcoin because everyone would call me and ask me what I thought. And at that point, I didn't even really understand how it worked that much. I understood that it was a thing that was going to go higher. But partly by being forced to publicly speak about it, I got asked to speak at the Oxford Union and I really had to study.”
2020-08-05 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #451: Mike Novogratz on Investing, Bitcoin, Ayahuasca, and Running Through The Sahara Desert · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And not every job, certainly not every investing job, is based on intuition. Quite frankly, very few are because the more intuition based the investing is, the more anxiety there is, right? If you're an arbitrageur, you buy something for $8 on one market and sell it for $10 on another. There's not a whole lot of risk. And so that is just being commercial. And so I always tell people that you got to try to understand yourself and figure out where your DNA, where your personality type fits in into the space.”
2020-08-05 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #451: Mike Novogratz on Investing, Bitcoin, Ayahuasca, and Running Through The Sahara Desert · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT