E367: The Family Office Betting on Humanity’s Future

What if the highest-return investments are the ones that reshape the future—not just the ones that fit today’s market? In this episode, I sit down with L. R. Fox, Managing Director of NEXT Global Capital, to discuss why he rejected the traditional path of “build wealth first, give later” and instead built a strategy around impact from day one. Fox explains why capital is a vote for the future, how the best investments often sit outside crowded sectors, and why frontier technologies with real-world impact can outperform conventional venture. We also explore his “buy, build, invest” framework, how he creates entirely new markets, and why resilience—not IQ—is the strongest predictor of success.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00David Weisburd?

  Fox, you had a major liquidity event, started a family office, you talked to a few mentors, and they advised you focus on building your wealth further, and then at some point, you'll be able to give impact. You categorically disregarded their advice. Why?

• 0:14Speaker 01

  It's very natural to think about life in those seasons, first season of learning, then season of growing capital, and then season of deploying it in a philanthropic way. And what I think people miss in that is really the impact that every dollar has. Every dollar is a vote. It's a vote for the future that you want to create. And for me, this was something that was so core to what I believed. And then I came to the point where I ended up in the hospital with my limbs stopped working. And it was during COVID, there was a lot of craziness in the world. I had a really bad reaction to the COVID vaccine to the point where I was paralyzed. And it was this moment where they told me that my organs were starting to shut down, less than six months left to live. And I realized that if everything that I did only was to build up capital, so one day I could have the greatest enjoyment of actually

• 0:59Speaker 01

  seeing the impact of that capital, then what's the point? And so I want to live in the world, I want to create the world that is ultimately benefiting humans, not just one and trying to maximize gains so that someday there's a big pot of money to give away.

• 1:16David Weisburd?

  Inherent in this advice is that there's a way to maximize wealth, there's a way to maximize impact. There's this implicit disbelief in this double bottom line that you could both have huge impact and also have huge returns. Why is that not true?

• 1:30Speaker 01

  It's a great point, and I'm going to share a secret that's going to hurt me by sharing it, which is I think the best investments are those that are impact investments, partially because people have this belief, and so there's a lot of opportunity. And so I hope that I create more competition in investing in the impact space by sharing this. And that secret is, is that the traditional thought around impact investing has largely been this kind of box checking of ESG of like, how do we look good as an investment firm by checking these boxes or allocate a certain amount of capital towards this? And what you end up doing is clustering investment towards things that are inherently, maybe not even investable. And so then it becomes almost of a write-off. And I think that as we look at like real impact investing and challenge ourselves

• 2:14Speaker 01

  to say, what are the things that fundamentally change the course of human history? Right? And so for us, you know, that's a wide variety of things, things that maybe would fall or that often fall out of the ESG box checking. And so you think of like the non ESG things, the ESG things, and then the things that really matter. And that's where we put our focus.

• 2:33David Weisburd?

  I was speaking to a famous public investor and he told me back in the days of ESG and box checking, some of the biggest receivers of ESG capital in the world were Facebook and Exxon. Yes, it's, it's sometimes the reality is more absurd than than a joke in that when you just go with this box checking exercise, you end up in almost absurd.

• 2:55Speaker 01

  When institutions have put so much focused on this, this ESG approach, it really lacks the, the heart of what is it that the world that we want to create? And what I think's important as we think about impact investing is that I think each investor, especially family offices with a lot of flexibility in how they deploy capital, but even institutions should really like form that mission for the world that they want. Right? And that world that they want, I believe, can be incredibly financially lucrative in creating that. But I think that's a big difference than we're going to maximize simply, you know, the, the shareholder returns or and/or with this like dichotomy of just checking boxes and doing good or bifurcating some of our investment thesis

• 3:40Speaker 01

  to things that we don't expect to actually return any capital. When we raise the bar and say, no, actually, impact investing can have substantial returns. Part of this is hopefully growing out of people's realization that SaaS companies, as great as they are and nothing wrong with them, like this kind of B to B SaaS world really dehumanizes the, the real consumer, right? The human that's behind it. And so when we have companies that are built purely to serve other businesses, of which those businesses are built to serve other businesses, that you get so far abstracted away from the real human. I think this is where ChatGPT as an example, really was a breakthrough in why it opened up the floodgates with AI technology, because it was the first AI platform

• 4:25Speaker 01

  that was directly built for humans, right? For people to be able to interact and receive immediate benefit.

• 4:32David Weisburd?

  People confuse two things, things that are easy and low hanging fruit like SaaS, although today it's certainly not easy and certainly not low hanging fruit. And things that are hard, but could be much more lucrative. I think about a bunch of example, Eric Anderson, who just jumped on for a second time, one of my long-term mentors. He's actually created more drug therapies than anyone in the history of mankind. In this pursuit, he's started all these billion-dollar companies to become magnificently successful and magnificently wealthy. Same with Blake Scholl from Boom Supersonic. He went after a supersonic jet. He's become very wealthy, at least on paper today. You mentioned OpenAI, Sam Altman. He started out, whether where he ended up is slightly different than when he started out. But he started out wanting to change the world, wanting to bring AI in abundance into the universe.

• 5:17David Weisburd?

  So I think there's this misconception that some things are easy and some things are harder, but could be far more financially rewarding.

• 5:27Speaker 01

  Completely agree. And this is where I think people miss that. Like you go back 10 years. I remember when I was raising money for my drone defense company, right? The sentiment in, from investors at the time was that SaaS companies, they grow faster. They take less capital to grow and they have higher returns. And there was this expectation that anything that involved hardware was like the black plague. Like you want to avoid it.

• 5:50David Weisburd?

  Hardware is hard.

• 5:51Speaker 01

  Hardware is hard and the expectation that had lower returns. We have finally, I think, as an investment community, shifted away from that and grown in our appreciation that hardware is hard, which means higher returns because there's much more significant barriers to entry. There's much more specialty that's required. And I think that's where we're betting on and predicting. And one of our, one of our core requirements is that there's incredible barrier to entry and moat that would prevent somebody from easily crossing, which most often means there's a hardware element.

• 6:22David Weisburd?

  Tell me about your buy, hold and invest framework.

• 6:25Speaker 01

  When we look across the investment landscape, most of the time it's seeing what are the opportunities that are coming through the door, evaluating them against each other. We flip that on its head. We say, what is the world that we want in the future? My primary framework with that is what is the future that my children, my grandchildren will live in, that they can take for granted, that to them would feel absolutely inevitable? Like, how does this not always exist? And then we say, now, why does that not exist today? All right. And I want them to look at me and be like, in 2026, you guys didn't have male birth control, as an example, right? Like, they just can't even imagine living or a child. And so our approach is then, well, what company can we invest in to be able to make that happen? And we go through a process to evaluate, we have scouts that go out, evaluate

• 7:10Speaker 01

  the whole market, see what's out there. And if it aligns with our thesis, then we'll back them. And we're not afraid of backing multiple companies that, you know, on the surface would be seen as competitive. I'm a big believer that, you know, outside of like SaaS, there's very few direct competitors in most businesses, right? There's different niches, there's different areas of focus. And often, there's one player doesn't eat up and absorb the entire market. And so we'll invest when needed. And oftentimes, because we're at, you know, the frontier technology focus, there's not something to invest in. And so we say, what can we buy? Whether it's an asset like a company, or intellectual property from university, or even a plateaued startup that's like done well, but hasn't hit it yet, or a thesis that we've

• 7:52Speaker 01

  recently started, which is buying, you know, large companies, you know, in some cases, a couple cases now, household names, helping to purchase those companies that have grown are profitable by all accounts, amazing companies. But we see that this is private equity level risk with the potential for venture level upside. And so it's a thesis that we've been deploying recently, which is been incredible. Because again, it's seeing that potential when others don't. They people look at these companies and say, oh, yeah, it's obviously a great company. But they don't see that this company can easily 10 to 20x with the right thesis. And then finally, if we can't invest and we can't buy, then we just build. And so we assemble a team around that core problem we're trying to solve. And, you know,

• 8:34Speaker 01

  and action against it. The key there is really thinking about the future is something that we intentionally create, not just something that inevitably happens.

• 8:43David Weisburd?

  Last time we chatted, you gave the example of nuclear fusion. Obviously, easier said than done. How do you go about solving a problem like nuclear fusion?

• 8:51Speaker 01

  For us, it was that that process of, is there something we can invest, buy or build? On the investment side, that's always the best, right? If there's people that are already doing it in a way that you believe in, and you can behind them as a team, their technology thesis. And so we identified two companies that we found took totally different approaches. And we believe that both, you know, there's a future where both of them are incredibly successful. And nuclear fusion is important because And this is some if it works, right? Which we're betting and believing that it will, but there is some technical risk still there. Like your future children will look back and be like, Dad, what do you mean? Like you lived in a world without abundant energy, right? Like you had to pay an energy bill? Like we guys were so primitive. And so we say, okay, that is what we want to lean into.

• 9:37David Weisburd?

  A lot of these are memetic. Elon Musk has been talking about solar energy for the last two months. So now everything else is seen as second tier. The reality is even in the most optimistic timelines, it's going to take a while for us to be able to harness the sun's solar power at the scale that's needed to kind of clear these energy hurdles.

• 9:56Speaker 01

  As a family office, you know, we're most often not just passively investing. We're very active in the companies to a wide variety of varying degrees, but still really helping to take something that seems as like, okay, when you think about it, yeah, this seems like a good idea. To really like, how do you make this undeniable that people recognize that the future will include this? That's, that's our core approach. There's to the point where then others can join in and invest and be a part of that upside. But that there's a huge barrier that has to be overcome in frontier technology to ensure that it's not a question of, is it possible? Which fusion energy is an example of one of those where it hasn't hit that threshold yet. There's still, we can debate whether it's possible.

• 10:40David Weisburd?

  You came from very humble means. Tell me about your background.

• 10:42Speaker 01

  And so I grew up in the foster care system. And one of the things that I think, you know, as that shaped me as I was going through high school,

• 10:53Speaker 01

  I remember my, my high school librarian, she, she gave me advice, which is, you know, she knew of the things in my childhood, of the, the abuse and ultimately my, you know, the family situation and eventually led to the death of two of my family members. So, you know, some really horrific, complicated childhood.

• 11:17Speaker 01

  But I remember she gave me this advice, which is, she said, you know, you have gone through so much. And she said, because of that, you have every excuse to live a miserable life. And that really like, you know, hit me like a brick in the face. Like, wow, what does she mean? As he said, you have every excuse to live a miserable life, but you also have a choice. And you have a choice to be able to lean in and embrace the difficulties of your childhood and the pain that you've gone through, and that can be your greatest superpower. And she gave the example, she's, you know, her own story and her own past. And she's, and she shared how because of that, she had the ability to connect with people who had gone through similar things in a way that others can't. Right?

• 12:01Speaker 01

  And she said, this is your superpower, your ability to be able to empathize. And it was really a powerful moment for me because I realized I had a choice. Right? So much of my childhood was, I was the victim, to put it simply. Right? But I could choose, do I live a life of victimhood? Or do I live a life where I get to be the hero? And I was thinking about this recently is with her, the irony of this, you know, her being my high school librarian, and me realizing I have a choice, that led me to drop out of high school, which is probably not her intention. But I realized like, I have a choice and I can, I can like, use my experiences in a way that ultimately benefits the world. So I dropped out of high school and then at 15, at 16, got into college, 17, started my first company,

• 12:46Speaker 01

  which was an aerospace company, that then sold at 19, and then started my defense company, which then is where everything really snowballed and grew out from.

• 12:55David Weisburd?

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• 14:22David Weisburd?

  alongside filings, broker research, news and more than 240,000 expert call transcripts, turning raw conversations into comparable, auditable insight. Take advantage of AlphaSense AI-led expert calls now. The first to see wins, the rest follow. Learn more at alpha-sense.com/HowIInvest. It's fascinating because if you think about low agency and high agency, you think about low agent, the ultimate low agency is victim mode, which I agree you have every right to feel like a victim. And I guess I'm-

• 14:53Speaker 01

  It's powerful when you're told you have that right. Right? Like to me, that was the powerful thing is being told like you have the right. You can be a victim, right? Instead of like, I feel like people often like try to convince people not to be a victim. It's like you're-

• 15:03David Weisburd?

  If you're being punished, you're given that option.

• 15:06Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 15:07David Weisburd?

  Yeah. So you have victimhood, then probably controversial, I would say 80, 90 percentile of employment. You work, you could be a PhD, you could be working as a professor, you could be working at Costco and many things in between. And then you have what I would just call Elon, which is it doesn't break the laws of physics. So therefore I'm going to create it. You are arguably the closest to Elon of almost anybody that I've interviewed in that you're not even looking for opportunities where there's an opportunity, where the customers are there and then they need this product. You're talking to customers. You're literally creating new industries or helping to germinate new industries.

• 15:50David Weisburd?

  How do you go from somebody with that kind of background to that level of agency?

• 15:54Speaker 01

  It's a good question. A few things really helped me, and I think these again are like my superpowers that I was able to gain, which is one,

• 16:02Speaker 01

  there was like, there was no safety net. There was no failure. Like, you know, for a time I was homeless. And so I'll give an example. When my very first like lesson in delegation was I delegated dumpster diving to my friend who was homeless as well. And I said, I'm building a company here. Like you dumpster dive like, and then we'll cook together and this will be good. And so that's when I learned to delegate, right? And I think that process of, also about don't eat seafood from the dumpster, even if it's still cold. I learned that lesson the hard way. They freeze it before something, before they throw it out, but they can still be bad before they freeze it.

• 16:42Speaker 01

  Okay. So all that being said, is that I think that realization that like you can fail epically. Like, I'm not afraid of anything. Like I can be homeless again. I can lose everything. And I know I'll be able to build it back up and build it up 10 times bigger. And so I think because of that, I'm willing to take bigger bets than I think other people and, and not that it's a competition by any means, but I think it's as I look back, I think that gives, has opened the door to things where other people have ran away or have not been willing to take that risk. Like when I started my defense company, I got laughed out of every room. All right. I said, hey, you know, there's going to be a future where drones become exponentially more capable and accessible. Right? Easier to buy, easier to fly, could do more things.

• 17:27Speaker 01

  And that means that we're going to have both malicious use of them in an asymmetric warfare. And we're going to have people recklessly using them, just doing whatever they want. Maybe not even with malicious intent. And I took that to the White House, to the Secret Service when I was 19. And I thought like, they're going to like applaud me and say, oh, you're so, you know, you're such a genius. But they laughed me out of the room and thought it was the most ridiculous thing they ever heard. They said, we, they literally said, they said, boy, we can see every bird that even thinks about flying near the White House. Right? Being figurative. And I thought, and I walked away, I thought, and I literally remember shaking my head and like, they have no idea what's coming. Right? And because of that, I could have easily just given up and said, this is, you know, screw them. But I said, because they're not seeing this, it gives me even more reason why I know it needs to be done, right?

• 18:12Speaker 01

  One of my principles in life is if not me, then who? And if the answer is, there's a whole lot of people that are doing it, I don't need to do it, right? But if no one else is going to do it, and I firmly believe this needs to exist, then I'm willing to sacrifice to make that happen. And if sacrifice means losing everything, then so be it. Luckily, you know, I built up a war chest now where, you know, I'm no longer playing those odds. But there's a, there's a reality when you're willing to, to face darkness in the face. Perhaps a dumb question, but being homeless, being on the street, streets, is it really that bad? Is that what you learn about that it's really not that bad? Being homeless? Well, I think what people miss about being homeless, and I'll say one, there's a lot of different types of being homeless, right?

• 18:53Speaker 01

  And there's a lot of added complexity with different people's circumstances. I was, I was very fortunate in that I was, I was young, I didn't have drug addictions or anything that complicated the process for me. But it was more recognizing like you're, you're missing the stability. Like you, you don't know for sure where you're going, what that looks like. It makes everything more complicated, right? Like even just how you're going to shower, what, what that looks like. Just like not having stable footing. Yes, yeah. And at the same time, for many people are homeless, you know, you have added complexities on top. And you started a business while being homeless? Technically started before. I mean, I, it was unstable housing and then homeless for a bit and then ended up in the

• 19:37Speaker 01

  attic of a fraternity. And does that still make you a better entrepreneur today? Absolutely. Like when we, like what we look for in entrepreneurs is, is the one thing that you can measure in somebody that predicts success more than anything else. There's one quality, can you guess what it is? Put you on the spot? You can measure a child, for example, one quality.

• 20:01Speaker 01

  Grit? Grit, yes. Okay, you didn't know. I'm impressed. Put you right on the spot. So grit, grit is actually 10 times more predictive of success than IQ. You can measure that in a child. Now, what people get wrong about grit, also known as resilience, is they think you're just born with it. There's just some that are more or less no. Grit is a muscle. It's a muscle that's built over time from adversity, the strain and pressure of adversity. Because when you go through hard things, that adversity, now you know, I can take on anything. Right? Like, do you know where I come from? You know what I've had to do? You know what I've seen? And so when you have that, like, that reality that you're living through, you can take on the world. And so that's what we look for in entrepreneurs, is that demonstrated resilience, which comes from grit. Because when you go through, or excuse me, that comes from adversity.

• 20:46Speaker 01

  Because when you go through adversity, you have that choice. Do I become a victim? Do I use this as my excuse? Or is it become my greatest asset? And an asset that's incredibly unique to that person.

• 20:55David Weisburd?

  My family came here as refugees from Russia, came here with $600. And I was thrown into this private school network where, talk about the wealth inequality. And I always saw it as a superpower. And it came through for me when I was in eighth grade. I've told the story several times. I had a barbecue at my place and we ran out of hamburger buns. So now, everybody had to use hot dog buns for hamburgers. And the other students couldn't do, they couldn't deal with that. Their brain broke and they couldn't deal with that. And I was just looking around and I'm like, holy crap, I'm gonna run circles around these guys. And if they're so fragile, that they can't take the shape of a bread,

• 21:39David Weisburd?

  they get basically thrown off and their brain is broken by the shape of a bread. How lucky am I to have grown up in Section 8 housing and all these experiences? And how much of a gift is that?

• 21:50Speaker 01

  Truly. And it stays with you. And those experiences then shape you. And ultimately, it becomes your superpower.

• 21:59David Weisburd?

  I don't think it's a coincidence. I read a stat a couple of years ago. Fifty percent of venture-backed startups are started by first or second generation immigrants. And that's considering how much difficulty first and second generation immigrants have, including just their mere accent. The moment they're speaking, they're already being judged for incompetency or being a foreigner.

• 22:19Speaker 01

  Absolutely. When you abstract out what success is, it comes down to a simple formula, which is you have resilience plus opportunity. You need to have some level of opportunity, some level of resilience. For some people, they can have a very low amount of resilience, but incredible massive opportunity, right? Morning pouring in on them and like they'll often like eventually figure out and make something work, right? But to really get the massive outcome, you need high levels of resilience and a minimal amount at least of opportunity. And so this is the thing that I think is really important for people to realize. As we talk about resilience and the gift of going through pain and hardship, we also need to, as a society, and especially people with wealth and other resources, find

• 23:03Speaker 01

  the ways to give those people the opportunity. Because without the opportunity, it's a waste.

• 23:09David Weisburd?

  Me and my business partner Curtis, we have this thought experiment, the Nepo baby, which is if you take a very privileged woman or man in their early twenties and have them pitched to the top venture capitalists with the worst idea, let's just assume it's a terrible idea, with venture capitalists that maybe want their check as an LP at some point, and they just start giving them feedback. If you do enough of these meetings, you will have a great business. I am totally convinced that this Nepo baby with enough access, you could actually get through that right idea. Now, the problem is the idea is 1% of the business. But I do think that there's something about you have the access and you have the resources, but also obviously the resilience is really 90%.

• 23:47Speaker 01

  And that's the opportunity, right? With enough massive opportunity, the opportunity comes in resources and network and financial capability, like a lot of things are possible. But if you think about the amount of resources that are required to invest in somebody that has a high level of resilience, it's substantially less and will lead to significantly higher returns. And this is our thesis on our philanthropic side as well.

• 24:11David Weisburd?

  You talk to a lot of your family office peers and they're saying 60% publics, 40% privates, and then you show them your portfolio. They probably think you're crazy. What do you say to that?

• 24:21Speaker 01

  I'd say the people who absolutely don't know me think I'm crazy. The people who know that it works. Are often jealous.

• 24:28David Weisburd?

  Tell me more.

• 24:29Speaker 01

  We're doing deals that people wish they could do, even in the, in the family office circles. There's a, you know, people are comfortable and they have families and multi-generations that they're, they're trying to support. And so, you know, I think the, the family offices that I think are going to do the most interesting things and that I personally find the most fascinating are multi-generational family offices that somehow survived past like the whole, you know, gen three, you know, the issue.

• 24:58David Weisburd?

  Very rare.

• 24:59Speaker 01

  Yes, very rare.

• 24:59David Weisburd?

  Less than 5%.

• 25:00Speaker 01

  But when they do do that, it's because they're, they have an amount of empowerment. Or either one, they just don't give anybody any money and they, they retain and have a very organized professional management team, or they empower their family and, and do things like, you know, giving the, like saying they're going to anchor a VC fund that the, you know, gen three or gen four starts. And those are, I think where things become really interesting. Of course, we could say, oh, it's not fair. We can't plain, you know, be victims to it. But like some of those people are my best friends. And I think that they had every opportunity to be lazy and just, you know, live a simple life, but they took the resources they had and said, now, how can I do things differently? Right? And I think those are where the most interesting innovations, just in the financial world, will come out in, from family offices.

• 25:43Speaker 01

  The family offices that are built around, you know, a patriarch who, and matriarch who want to ensure that their great grandkids have money, those are the ones that are most susceptible to the boom and bust of our financial system, even with the diversification that you laid out.

• 25:58David Weisburd?

  I got to interview the CIO, Mark Anderson, Ben Horowitz's family office, Michelle. And I basically had therapy on the podcast and he went through my portfolio and I'm in over 500 startups. And my whole understanding always, since I started making this investment is I want to build a baby S and P 500 where I have access, where I have leverage. Sometimes I'm anchoring a position, I'm getting leverage on that. And that if it was not all in one vertical, if it wasn't all consumer or SaaS or a defense stack, then it in theory was not more risky than S and P 500 portfolio. Obviously much more illiquid, which is another thing. As, as I get married, we're expecting our child. That's definitely a consideration that that's changed. He actually agreed with me, which was surprising to me.

• 26:41David Weisburd?

  I was waiting for him to criticize me. And he said that the modern endowment portfolio or modern portfolio theory, a lot of it is just hyper optimized on capital preservation. And a lot of it is, in some ways arbitrary or dogmatic.

• 27:01David Weisburd?

  And I started to remember, I had in business school, Professor Ken French from the Fama-French three factor model, his partner in Fama-French got the Nobel Prize. And we had an entire class on this, which I had forgotten about the value of diversification. And essentially, you get 90% of diversification when you're in 10 assets. Why? Because it's just 10 divided by 1. It's very simple math. You get 95% of the diversification and you have 20 assets. That's where this 22.5% meme comes. So you want 22.5% assets. Why? Because it's roughly like 96, 97%. But there's nothing fundamentally wrong with being in a lot of startups, given that you're able to deal with liquidity, given that they're not correlated to each other.

• 27:44David Weisburd?

  A whole nother question and not easy question to answer is just, are you diversified? It's like the simplest, difficult question to answer. But I was surprised to that. And it sounds like your portfolio is closer to mine than the typical endowment portfolio.

• 27:58Speaker 01

  Completely. And when people think about diversification, they think of, again, ox checking. When we think about diversification, we think about what are the futures that we want to exist? And are any of those mutually exclusive? And if there's any level of mutually exclusive, like if this happens, then that, then we say, okay, these are things that we want to hedge against. And so as an example, when we think about, like on the crypto front, right? If energy is practically free and like the, our modern cryptographic systems fail, then what does that mean for our crypto investments? Right? On the, on the other side, we say, well, if the world becomes increasingly complex and wars break out and continue to, and continue to grow at an increasing rate,

• 28:42Speaker 01

  what does that mean for some of our investments? Do those die out? And then do other ones become more successful in that? And so it's really designing the future and recognizing that as much as you want to build that future, there are multiple scenarios. And you want to make sure that you're winning in all those scenarios.

• 29:00David Weisburd?

  People just have such a hard time not understanding that the future is not determined. It's probabilistic.

• 29:06Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 29:07David Weisburd?

  Mostly by actors such as yourself that are, you know, these great men in theory that are creating industries. It's very hard to think about these second order effects, most popularized by the butterfly effect. If a butterfly in the Amazon could change the course of history, certainly many other things could change history as well.

• 29:22Speaker 01

  I think the point there that I really hark on is if you look back at like in history books, it's really easy for us to get cocky, to be like, people are so dumb. What were they thinking back then? Like they did X, Y, Z that way. Like obviously it should be done this way. It just feels inevitable. And we realize is when you take a step back, future generations are going to think that like, that we are so backwards, so insane. Right? We think of like open, like, uh, you know, people having open sewage. All right. How could they not have known of germ theory? Obviously, right? But it's like, oh, actually there's like most of the things about the universe. We still don't know, right? Things that are extremely consequential. Like when you think about just, we don't even understand our brain, how our brain works, right? It's like these very simple things that, uh, to your point, I think the, the future that we get to create

• 30:05Speaker 01

  is one in which ultimately we, we want it to benefit everybody. Right? And so what I think is interesting about AI right now is I, from my perspective, it's the first time where humans have in our modern world have took a step back and said, we don't know what the future looks like. It's not this like a linear progression. This is going to be earth shattering and nobody knows exactly in what way.

• 30:29David Weisburd?

  And that's because AI itself is solving itself and everything.

• 30:33Speaker 01

  Truly. And like when we think about like job replacement, this is an area when you talk about like diversification, we think diversification, I think is actually the wrong thing to think about. I think it's really about risk management, right? And diversification is one potential way to solve for a portfolio's risk management.

• 30:53Speaker 01

  And so going into that a step further, one of the areas that we look for from a risk standpoint is what are the jobs that will be replaced by AI? What are their jobs that will be stable? And then what are the predictions others are making that are completely wrong in that space? And so, for example, there's a lot of talk about like the idea of like even, obviously, most people accept that many white collar positions could easily be replaced, but which ones are not going to be, right? What are the exact duties that aren't going to be replaced? And then what are the jobs that are created, such as an oversight layer for AI that don't exist today? And then when we talk about like non-white collar jobs, there's a lot of discussion around that houses will be able to be maintained by robots, as an example.

• 31:37Speaker 01

  Like, we're betting heavily against that. This is part of also coming from, you know, difficult background. Like, I've crawled underneath houses, like, you know, and tried to repair, like, plumbing. Like, anybody who's done that will tell you that there's, there's no robot that's going to be created that's going to be able to have the dexterity, be able to like sense a little bit of humidity, a little like, be able to do and make these fine tune adjustments. Like, that's a innately human action. Like, the world was built for humans by humans.

• 32:01David Weisburd?

  That's Jovan's paradox, which is the things that are very easy for humans will be very difficult for AI and the things that are very easy for AI will be very difficult for humans.

• 32:10Speaker 01

  Yes, and, and right now, we're not in a place yet where we see that bifurcation. But I believe that, or I know that we will, and I think people are going to be really surprised. And so we've been looking at how do we, and actively investing in these like, kind of boring industries. And so like our two, and I think people get really shocked and when they see this and they think it's about diversification, but it's really not. But we invest in like, cutting edge, frontier, deep tech, and then boring industries and industrial processes, banks, hospitals, to these, you know, service providers. And they say, oh, well, you're just trying to diversify. The simple thing that I often is people are like, oh, you know, you're diversifying in a world of, you know, super future world, and then a world that falls back into decline. And it's no, actually, this is, like, these invisible systems that we depend on are always going to be there.

• 32:55Speaker 01

  They might look fundamentally different, but also I want to bet on the ones, I'm going to intentionally bet on the ones that aren't going to change dramatically, and then bet and And then in like banks and hospitals, bet on those, but in a way where I'm the one guiding that process by layering in on this side of the house, all of the frontier and deep tech.

• 33:10David Weisburd?

  You're the one that's providing the value and

• 33:12Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 33:12David Weisburd?

  Growing, growing the value in these old school industries because presumably there's also some of those industries like hospitals, for example, and banks really, aren't gonna be pushing the envelope when it comes to these tech.

• 33:22Speaker 01

  And they won't be able to keep up. And again, I'm, I'm sharing my, my secrets, right? They won't be able to keep up and we'll be able to

• 33:27David Weisburd?

  Is there a principal agent issue there where the people that end up running hospitals and running banks are not the same risk tolerance that would take big bets on technology?

• 33:35Speaker 01

  Completely. And that's what we're, that's our entire thesis, but our approach there is like there'll be a huge consolidation opportunity as we build these, these kind of traditional industrial systems in a way that, that the, the, I'd say, the people who've been in the business a long time and know better, they won't be able to keep up.

• 33:54David Weisburd?

  And when you buy a bank or you buy a hospital, are you investing all your money yourself? Are you anchoring and bringing in co-investors? Talk to me about that, Ross.

• 34:01Speaker 01

  This is something that drives my, my finance team crazy because they're like, look, Fox, if you like, if you're so confident in this idea, then we should just like gobble it up, you know, fully ourselves. And what really pisses them off is that when we, when we make those big bets and then when they work really well, then they're like, okay, now we like, forget all these other crazy like things you're doing, just like double down on the ones that are working. And that's just not how we work because my approach is like, I want to take the biggest bets because others aren't willing to. Like, we're doing this because others

• 34:33David Weisburd?

  You're optimizing on impact.

• 34:34Speaker 01

  Yes, exactly. And it just happens that it just, you know, I'm lucky enough that it works out that that keeps, you know, producing really great returns. And also there's this, there's an effect of being able to be across these different spaces that you have more pieces that you're able to then plug into each other rather than diving deep into, you know, a single focused area.

• 34:53David Weisburd?

  Again, not to compare you to Elon, but when he started SpaceX, I believe his probability was that 10% chance that he would succeed. With Tesla, I don't know, but similar, similar idea. He didn't think that he would succeed, but he thought that if he could put, progress the ball down the field and also show that's an industry, credentialize the space and have other people compete, he would get the same outcome, which is impact. He wasn't actually optimizing on Tesla or SpaceX. He was optimizing on why aren't we going to Mars at the time? Why are we not, why don't we have electric vehicles? He just happened to succeed, which was not something he expected.

• 35:29Speaker 01

  That I think he did really well is he opened up a lot of the patents, right, for others to be able to use freely, recognizing that was ultimately going to help accomplish the mission. And this is, it's a very simple thing when people really take a step back is like, what are you optimizing for? If you're trying to optimize for a mission versus are you trying to optimize for the greatest cash returns? And it's nothing wrong. It's not, this isn't like, oh, every, everything needs to be philanthropic. And we're very intentional and have a strong bifurcation between our, our family office side and our philanthropic side. We expect returns, but we're not engineering towards returns. But when you do the right things and do things that others aren't willing to do, turns out you get great returns.

• 36:10David Weisburd?

  Might not be optimizing on returns, but you're making it inevitable by going early on into, in creating industries. How do you not make money as long as you?

• 36:17Speaker 01

  Yes, that's, that's exactly it.

• 36:20David Weisburd?

  And you're essentially taking majority control or big chunks of companies, but you still are subscribing to the power law aspect. Or do you expect, do you expect every single one of those industries to hit a pick? What do you expect in terms of your loss ratio?

• 36:32Speaker 01

  We expect every single company to work like we're not, it's not a great prey. And most do, the only, the biggest question that we have is there are some things that, you know, like I will tell, most things I will tell you with confidence, it will happen. Right? There's some things that it's like, I don't know, like nuclear fusion. I don't know. I'm betting that it will, but that's, that, you know, all humility and I don't think anybody can tell you with 1,000%. But there's other areas like male, like male birth control, like being able to control fertility. Right? Like areas of being able to eradicate genetic diseases. Like, these are areas that are 100% going to happen. The only question is when? And so it's, so it's not a question like, do our bets work out?

• 37:16Speaker 01

  It's can we bet on the, at the right time? And I want to be, I'd rather be too early than too late is the key is then it's just a matter of capital. If you're too late, that's boring. I'm never going to be too late. But if you're too early, then it's a question of, is it going to cost you $10 million to prove that this is like not a harebrained idea? Or is it going to cost you $50 million? Right? And at the end of the day, my goal is to ensure that there's enough successes across our portfolio that that becomes a rounding error.

• 37:43David Weisburd?

  How do you know when to cut your losers?

• 37:50Speaker 01

  I don't see it as cutting losers, partially because our approach is, I think, inherently accomplishes this. Our approach is to sustain something long enough to the point where it's undeniable that this could happen. And then after that, allow others to be able to come in. I think of businesses a lot as like children. Right? You raise up your child. You get them to a place where they're in school. They're in high school. That's kind of like the high school years. Right? Like you're still there supporting them. If they need you, you're obviously you're there on a daily basis. And at the same time, if they want to like go sideways, like that's on them at this point. And then at some point, the kid gets to college. Right? And it's like, okay, they're out. Right? If they ever need something, of course, you're there. You're their parent, you love them.

• 38:34Speaker 01

  And at the same time, they are completely their own entity.

• 38:37David Weisburd?

  And you're not only letting your kids go and flourish. You're oftentimes selling at the very time that the business is de-risked, which is, which I'm sure also drives your finance team crazy.

• 38:51Speaker 01

  Our secondary strategy definitely, yes, everything I do drives them crazy. But it works out. So part of our process is doing secondaries on them. Because like the difference between recently, like we did 25X, there was clear belief that that could easily do another 2X, so 50X. Right? But at the end of the day, like a 20, like that extra 2X isn't worth it for us. I'd rather create or either give it to somebody who we work with often, or to a new relationship where it's like, hey, like I have high confidence it's going to do another 2X. Will it do a 4X? I mean, and go from that to like 100, right? I don't know, but you definitely have a 2X in here. So I'd rather get out in those moments. And we often, we don't pull all the cards out. We want to, we're still committed and stay in.

• 39:36Speaker 01

  But I would rather take that capital and redeploy it because there's so many, so many problems in the world that ultimately are opportunities. So many things that our future generations will get to enjoy because we intentionally created them today. And I have a long list and we're working through it.

• 39:53David Weisburd?

  There's all these hokey sayings like problems are the opposite side of problems are opportunities and all these proverbs, but in reality, it doesn't get tiring to always be dealing with new technologies that are difficult and doesn't that wear you out?

• 40:06Speaker 01

  I'm a curious mind and I always have been. That's what like I'm like, I was a bad student. My grades were horrible, but, but every single one of my teachers will tell you is I was curious and they still like, when I talk to them, they'll still tell me that because I'd like ask them like, well, why is it this way? Or what is the, the background of that? And they'd often say, you know, and I realize now they were just trying to get me shut up, but they would say, you know, you, why don't you figure it out and write an essay and, and bring it in. And I always took them seriously. Looking back, I'm like, oh, that's embarrassing. But I, but I really was curious, like, why do these things exist? Who decided this? And so when we look at like all of these different fundamental problems, what I realized is they're from like pretty much everything in the frontier tech space, there's so much

• 40:47Speaker 01

  overlap, even in things like that are completely on the surface, separate topic areas from biosciences to defense technology to like insurance regulations. They all on the surface are very different. What I focus on is I partner and bring in art, like our advisory board are some of the world's foremost leaders in this, right? They have PhDs. They've spent decades building either research labs or companies in the space, or some of them have already had a multi-billion dollar exits and they're the experts, right? What my approach is and what the commonality of all of them is that they are most often in highly regulated spaces or spaces that aren't yet regulated, but need to be, or, or I should say, and they

• 41:30Speaker 01

  have a public perception either issue or will have a public perception issue that we need to intentionally manage. And they're most often in industries that don't exist, but need to exist, or that have existed for millennia that need to be completely flipped on their head. That exists across the entire portfolio. And so it becomes this very unexpected, essentially template that you can

• 41:51David Weisburd?

  And your thesis is that impact is downstream of science. So really new scientific discoveries, new scientific application of scientific discoveries directly flows into impact. Therefore, that's why you have these PhD advisors.

• 42:05Speaker 01

  Yes, but not naturally. That's the problem, right? Scientists are really great at asking questions. And there in the entire business models, I've seen so many companies, especially ones that we get involved with, that kind of tried, did some really interesting things, but then they ultimately pandered out, is that people forget that scientists, they're great, they're brilliant. But their entire business model of science is to ask a question, solve the question, and in doing so, ask another question to get more grant funding to then answer that, right? That's the entire cycle. It's not actually solving anything. It's not actually producing anything. And so that's one of, I think, the magic of what we do is we help reorient scientists and help steer them towards a definite conclusion, not this perpetual questions.

• 42:49Speaker 01

  Which, I mean, it might sound simple, but that's, it's an entire different way of thinking, right? It's like being, it's them accepting, like, this is what we're trying to accomplish, and put them in an environment that rewards that, not that rewards an additional question so you can get another million dollar grant.

• 43:03David Weisburd?

  Everyone's heard incentives drive behaviors, but not many people think, at least on a macro level, all the different incentives of different industries, incentives you mentioned in the scientific community. I just sat up earlier today with Nico, who's at General Catalyst for 15 years. And he started a fund with his partner to go after unloved sectors or sectors that are not hot today, essentially no VOD coding, no AI. And the reason for that is something like 75% of all venture capital LP dollars have gone to five funds and 75% of all VC funding have gone into five companies. This happens to be the same number. And one of the reasons for that is that

• 43:44David Weisburd?

  Capital tends to amalgamate into these industries only after there's been a big outcome, a deck of unicorn or a big exit. But obviously, companies are able to get the deck of corn status or the big exit without a bunch of venture funding.

• 43:59Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 43:59David Weisburd?

  So one is downstream of the other one, but the other one doesn't need to be downstream of the other one. So then the next natural question is, how many more of these deck of unicorns can we build in order to create these new industries? And nobody wants to do that job. It's a very difficult job. It doesn't scale. You're going to be wrong for five to 10 years, which is three fund cycles. By the time your LPs are going to abandon you or move on to the next fund. So talk about incentives.

• 44:22Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 44:23David Weisburd?

  You would think, why doesn't everybody invest into scientific projects that could 100x or 1,000x? Because the incentives for VCs are not actually to, once in a while, get 100x on new industry. It's how do you deploy in a portfolio optimized way, a consistent two and a half to three x, vintage after vintage, raise more assets? And that's actually the answer why so many of these industries are not birthed. And it's kind of crazy until you understand how the game is played.

• 44:48Speaker 01

  Truly. And it's a piece of advice that was given to me when I was young, was you can't play the game if you don't know how it's played, if you don't know the rules, right? You got to know the rules in order to win the game. And I think it's one of the things that I share with a lot of my entrepreneurs that I mentor, is like, VCs are not the like, the end all be all. Or I think people just don't understand, it's like, the whole idea of like, an LP, right? It's like, the VCs are optimizing for their LPs.

• 45:14David Weisburd?

  Their customers.

• 45:15Speaker 01

  Their customers. And so this is, and there's a lot of benefit, like strategic benefit, like strategic things that you can do when you understand that. For example, like, one of our companies, they, they had this amazing VC fund that really wanted to invest in them, but they, that VC fund was raising their next, their next round, and so they didn't have enough capital. They legitimately just didn't have the capital to deploy. And so I told entrepreneurs, like, okay, you know, you don't need the money, like, we'll backstop you. It's like, you're like, going to run out of money.

• 45:47Speaker 01

  So what you need to understand is that VC has customers that they need to and bosses. And those are the LPs. And so you want them to look good. And this is a great named fund, right? It's not like a tier one, but this is in this niche. It's a very like known fund. And so I said, you can give them their stamp of approval by getting them to sign docs. Tell them you will warehouse their investment and you'll give them six months to actually write the check. And then you get to have their stamp of approval, saying that they're in this round. You get to go to the other VCs and tell them that this, this fund is in the round. Right? And now this fund then gets to use your announcement. And they had a big announcement that was coming out like two weeks later.

• 46:28Speaker 01

  They get to use that announcement to go, then go to their VCs and say, look, we got a sweetheart deal into this, into this. And now they look good. Right? And so I was like, you need to understand the dynamics here and not just think that like a VC is not just somebody who's like just throwing out capital. They have fund cycles, they have LPs that they're managing and they have dynamics of what their previous funds, like how successful or not successful were they?

• 46:52David Weisburd?

  It goes back to this whole victim versus agency mindset, which is it's that meme where it's on the boss, looking at the sun and looking at dark, which is like, VCs are driven by incentives. But VCs are also driven by incentives.

• 47:03Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 47:03David Weisburd?

  Two sides of the same coin. I think, I think about a couple of other analogies, which is

• 47:09David Weisburd?

  these are all, a lot of this is recursive in that 75% of the money is going in the same five companies.

• 47:16David Weisburd?

  And that means that they're getting that capital from LPs. That means that the 25% is actually not going into that. But by the mere nature of them not going into those companies is why they don't raise the capital.

• 47:26Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 47:26David Weisburd?

  So it's not just one sided. It's not just like, here's the history of venture capital. It's driving itself.

• 47:31Speaker 01

  Yes, but that's also where the opportunity is, right? By leaning into that on our side from investing. That's why, you know, I share a playbook openly because I don't think me sharing this, everyone's going to wake up and say, oh, we need to, you know, deploy more capital into underappreciated sectors. And so that's why, for example, you know, when we invest in biotech, people ask what we invest in biotech. I say, I'll tell you what we don't invest in. We don't invest in heart disease, in, in cancer. And obesity or diabetes.

• 47:58David Weisburd?

  Fully funded.

• 47:59Speaker 01

  Yes, because they have so much money that those are entire industries built around raising money in those spaces. And when we think about the basic things like, you know, we're big in reproductive and sexual health. Less than 1% of 1% of all VC capital in healthcare goes towards reproductive or sexual health. A tiny smidgen, and yet it affects every single human on earth. Everybody's trying to decide and be able to choose when it is to have a child or when it is to have sex. Simple as that, and yet because it's not these big sexy, you know, of those big four that I mentioned, it gets neglected and yet it's something that impacts every single person. So that's where we focus on in biotech. Same with defense. All right, people come to me and pitch me all the time on drone technology. Like, if they did that previously, great.

• 48:44Speaker 01

  They're like, you're the drone guy. Yeah, like you helped create the drone industry. You wrote the drone laws, like this is your thing. And it's like, yes, but there's so much noise and, you know, just ridiculousness in the space now. It's no longer frontier tech, right? It's been commoditized. It's amazing. I'm glad people are still doing that and like we need, you know, advances in drone technology. But it's iterative rather than, you know, these quantum leaps. And that's where my capital is best deployed.

• 49:08David Weisburd?

  Does this help you recruit like-minded people? Or are analysts and other employees?

• 49:15David Weisburd?

  Are you just competing head on with other venture and other family offices?

• 49:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, we don't compete when we hire because we're hiring people that everyone else assumes are unhireable. All right, people who've had enormous success, people who've been the CFO of one of the largest companies in the world. As an example, we have another, another one of our executives. He was built a product, a healthcare product that was selling over a billion years in revenue. Excuse me, a billion dollars in revenue per year. And he retired and everybody thought he was, you know, sailing off in the sunset, which he was, as is often the case.

• 49:46David Weisburd?

  Literally.

• 49:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, he realized that he's got something more in him. He wanted to be able to contribute.

• 49:51David Weisburd?

  Got another at that.

• 49:52Speaker 01

  Yep. And at the same time, he didn't want to start from scratch and he also didn't want to get plugged into, you know, some big corporate company. And so that's part of our secret sauce.

• 50:00David Weisburd?

  Is that part of your pitch? Is that you're optimizing on impact?

• 50:03Speaker 01

  Yes, but the pitch is more, we are optimizing on creating the world that we believe needs to exist. And if you want to be a part of creating that world, then people are welcome to join the team.

• 50:13David Weisburd?

  You've obviously been extremely successful. Why do you think other family offices don't follow this model?

• 50:19Speaker 01

  Most family offices are managed by like a professional CEO. Or if it's a family member, like they're investing in areas that they've worried they've done well in. All right. And so like a real estate family, they're investing in prop tech, right? That's what they know. I don't think that's a problem, but it's very risky when you go outside of your lane.

• 50:37David Weisburd?

  There's a lot of incentives as well. Going back to the CIO, Mark Andreessen, Ben Horowitz's family office, Michelle Del Bueno, he mentioned, he just said it's dogma. Why do people have 60% here, 30%? It's not necessarily bad or good, but it's just one model that's been repeated so many times. There's entire industries from it. There's marketing, there's memes, there's even studies being commissioned by people like trying to prove these, these concepts, which by the way, oftentimes are right, but it's just one view of how things can be done. And also I would argue if 95% of family offices don't make it to third generation, maybe, maybe it's not the best model.

• 51:13Speaker 01

  This is also where I think for some, some family offices that I really respect and that have figured that out, the multi-generational model, it's because they're focusing on impact. All right. It's not just on capital preservation. It's how do we, how do we as a family not sustain our family wealth? But how do we sustain a world that we want to live in, in a world that is, that's healthy and people are happy? And that is like, when you create your family values around that, you invest in things and I think kids see their parents focused on those things rather than being stressed out about the markets up and down in, in the companies that you don't even, you don't even know.

• 51:56Speaker 01

  Right. And I think that's one of the things that's interesting about like on the public market side is like, how much people actually even know some of these companies, what they're doing. Right. And sometimes it's not necessarily that the companies are doing something bad, but it's looking at it purely as abstracted out as like, I think this company is going to go up. We have a loose idea of what they're doing, but to really have an intimate understanding of is that company actually like moving forward your vision of what the world should look like.

• 52:22David Weisburd?

  How do you think about raising your kids?

• 52:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 52:32Speaker 01

  I'll put it this way. So as you know, my, my childhood was very complicated and my wife, she was a refugee and, and came to the US with nothing. And we've built some incredible life together. And so we think, you know, those are some of the things that make us, you know, who we are. And so we often think, how do we ensure that our kids are, are facing these difficult, uncomfortable, uncertain situations in a way that's ultimately safe, but productive, right? And for us, part of our philanthropic, you know, work is going to incorporate our kids and have them very much front and center in that so that they have this, this broad spectrum view of the world. I think everybody can do this. It's

• 53:17Speaker 01

  not a new concept, but there's this realization of this like over coddling of our children. Like kids, you know, should, kids should like do difficult things. They should learn that they can figure things out. My friend's dad growing up, it was, I remember that we were on this like drive with them and the car broke down. And he said, like, how do you think, what do you think we should do? I remember I'm like, why are you asking me? Like, I'm like, you know, I remember I was like, I don't know, nine years old at the time. And, and I remember, and he said, he said, like, we don't, you know, we don't have any place to go. We were driving back to their house. He's like, you know, let's, let's figure this out together. Like, you tell me what you think we should do and we'll do it and we'll see if it works. And it's something that has like really stuck with

• 54:00Speaker 01

  me because, and it's something that I'm excited to do with, you know, with our kids, is to be able to give them those opportunities to realize like, you get to figure it out and it doesn't mean you're going to get it right. And it's okay to be wrong.

• 54:11David Weisburd?

  Me and my wife are also expecting. So I've been asking this question of a lot of very successful people. And obviously some, some have grandkids, some, some haven't had their first kids. And two real hacks that I found, one is you referenced it, which is essentially create these. Almost simulated, but not quite contrived situations where you're going to Honduras for six weeks in the summer and you're building ditches. It is very difficult. You have a shock. You don't have your phone. All these truly difficult situations are not permanent. And two is, and this is something I've known for a while, is send your kids to bootcamp, which is investment banking. Investment banking will beat the entitlement out of a kid after two to three years. It's just so brutal for any kids. And there's a lot of other entitled kids there and there's a lot of very successful kids, so they're not treated.

• 54:54David Weisburd?

  So those are kind of the two, the two solutions I've heard so far.

• 54:57Speaker 01

  It's a great approach, putting them in those difficult situations where they're by themselves. You know, and then on our side, I think it's helping these kids, our future kids to be able to see like the realities of the world. So like on our philanthropic side, we started the Oasis Academy, bringing in these kids from around the world and excited for our kids to see like that, you know, they're not special, right? That there's like a lot of amazing people out there that are worth investing in and just because they happen to be born to us isn't the, doesn't give them any additional

• 55:28David Weisburd?

  You're in your mid 30s?

• 55:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, 31.

• 55:30David Weisburd?

  31, amazing. So I guess my final question, which doesn't take you back that far, but if you could go back to high school, sitting with your guidance counselor, and after that meeting, you could whisper in your ear, a younger Fox, one piece of timeless advice, what would that be?

• 55:51Speaker 01

  It would be the advice that I would give to myself and that I give to everyone is to understand the things that you can control and the things you can't control. Surrender to the things you can't control. The things you can control, the choices you have are much more than you think, right? And focus on, on those things. Again, you have the agency to choose, do you become a victim? You have the agency to choose, do you use the pain and tribulations as something that gives you insights that others don't? And these are the choices we have. We don't always get to choose what happens to us, but we get to choose what we do with what's happened to us. And ultimately, those, the most, the hardest things that have happened to us can be, if

• 56:34Speaker 01

  we choose, to be our greatest superpowers that then can change the world.

• 56:37David Weisburd?

  Chaka Willings talks about this in, in his book, and he talks about when he was in the army and when he was actually in Afghanistan. And there are parts where you're running and the enemies are firing at you. And talk about probabilistic, it's completely probabilistic. You could have the best trained, smartest, most dedicated warrior that gets shot and the laziest, slowest that somehow the bullets miss. And by his summation, roughly 90% of the factors are uncontrollable.

• 57:06Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 57:06David Weisburd?

  But you have the 10%, which is you're supposed to zigzag, you're supposed to stay low to the ground. There's a lot of best practices that control 10%. In that case, you focus all your energy on that 10%. And if Jaco Willings could do that, literally in a, in times of war when being shot, shot at, certainly we could all learn to do that. When we have a bad day at work or we get an email that we don't like, or somebody's, somebody's arguing with us about something that we feel entitled to.

• 57:31Speaker 01

  Truly. And that's, then that's the beauty is that, that level of empathy of recognizing everybody's figuring out their own stuff has gone through their own, you know, their own things. And everybody's doing the best they can. Might not be good as you wish they could do, but they're doing the best they can. And what you can do is the best you can. And that's by making those intentional choices to seize those opportunities that you can dictate your future.

• 57:52David Weisburd?

  Well, Fox, you're already a legend and looking forward to doing this many times in the future. Thanks for jumping on.

• 57:57Speaker 01

  Thanks for having me.