The Cash Flow “Riddle”: Solve It, and You’re Free for Life | Ep. 4

If you don’t solve the cash flow “riddle,” you will forever be riddled with anxiety. 

Most multimillionaires think they’ve “made it” because of their high incomes, large nest egg, or vast investment portfolio. But during every downturn, they’re sweating—the anxiety is taking over, and everything seems so fragile that a single recession could destroy decades of hard work. They haven’t solved the cash flow riddle that is the only path to durable financial freedom.

Investors have been getting it wrong for centuries, looking at “earnings” or “income” as a sign that a business, or their personal balance sheet, is doing well. Yet, time after time, corporate megaliths fall, billionaires become penniless, and aggressive investors lose everything. In short, they never had durable cash flow—the first step in the C.A.P.I.T.A.L. strategy

In this episode, I’m breaking down how we have solved the cash flow riddle, so you can reach unshakable financial freedom, too. I’ll give real-world examples of investments we’ve made with tremendous upside on foundations that even hurricanes couldn’t shake, why Buffett, Munger, and Singleton value cash flow far over earnings, and what you can do to solve the riddle and finally reach financial peace. 

Wisdom of wealth from today’s episode:

  • The cash flow “riddle”: If you can solve it, you’re free for life 
  • A true, real-world example of how to make durable, unrelenting cash flow 
  • Why free cash flow must come before everything else in investing
  • EBITDA and earnings: Why valuing them often leads to massive financial downfalls
  • Why many NOI-focused syndicators went belly up while cash-flow-first Sunrise Capital never paused distributions 
  • The greatest weapon for wealth that will propel your legacy during downturns  

Hear the Full Episode on the C.A.P.I.T.A.L. Strategy

Hear Kevin Bupp’s Real Estate Investing for Cash Flow Podcast

The Outsiders: Eight Unconventional CEOs and Their Radically Rational Blueprint for Success

Recommended Resources:

Are you a high net worth investor with capital to deploy in the next 12 months? Build passive income and wealth by investing in real estate projects alongside Brian and his team! 

Learn more from Brian and listen to past episodes of The Sage Investor 

Connect with Brian on LinkedIn

Chapters: 

00:00 Intro

01:17 The Most Powerful Force for Wealth

03:32 Don’t Trust “Earnings”

06:01 Most Investors Are Completely Wrong

09:51 The Cash Flow “Riddle”

14:13 Your Greatest Weapon

17:33 Real Life Example

24:52 This Kills Investors

26:38 Cash Flow ALWAYS Comes First

Episode Transcript

0:00 – If you don’t solve the cash flow riddle, you will forever be riddled with anxiety.
0:05 – And I want to start there because that sentence, it captures more truth about investing and retirement and wealth than most textbooks ever will.
0:14 – Most people don’t realize they’re anxious because of how their portfolio is structured.
0:18 – They think it’s markets or inflation or politics or bad news cycles.
0:24 – But underneath all of that is something that is much, much, much more simple.
0:28 – Their wealth doesn’t produce enough distributable cash flow to cover their lifestyle expenses.
0:34 – So every market dip, it feels existential.
0:38 – Every recession, it feels very, very personal and every drawdown feels like a countdown clock.
0:44 – And that’s why the very first principle of the capital strategy, the C, it stands for cash flow first.
0:50 – Not growth first, not appreciation first, not legacy first, cash flow first always.
0:58 – Welcome back to the Sage Investor podcast and this podcast, it exists to help really successful people answer one uncomfortable question honestly.
1:06 – How do I convert financial success into durable cash flow, real peace of mind and a legacy that outlives me all without taking some sort of unfortunate, unnecessary risk that I really can’t afford.
1:17 – And in this podcast, we’re going to dig really, really deep into letter C cash flow first.
1:21 – It’s the very first pillar of the seven pillars of the sunrise capital strategy.
1:25 – And it’s really kind of where our strategy stops being aspirational and really starts becoming structural.
1:31 – Because if you really misunderstand cash flow, everything else in your plan becomes exceedingly fragile.
1:37 – Cash flow is the oldest, the least glamorous and the most powerful force in business.
1:41 – It’s not what gets you on magazine covers.
1:43 – It’s not what people really brag about around the water cooler at conferences.
1:47 – And honestly, most people don’t, they don’t even track it correctly.
1:49 – But if you study the world’s greatest founders, businessmen, entrepreneurs, investors, the ones who really lasted,
1:57 – the ones who survived all the recessions, all the wars, all the competitors that have popped up, all the technological shifts over time,
2:05 – and they made it through their own individual mistakes, you notice something strange. There’s a lot of similarities.
2:11 – They all develop the same reverence for cash, not accounting profits, not adjusted EBITDA, real cold hard cash.
2:21 – Cash flow is the life flow of any business. Felix Dennis said it best, right? And he didn’t really dress it up at all.
2:26 – Cash flow is the heartbeat of your company. That line’s not motivational. It’s biological.
2:32 – The heartbeat stops and the story ends. That’s it. And Don Valentine, another phenomenal entrepreneur, investor over at Sequoia,
2:39 – one of the most important investors in the history of Silicon Valley, stripped it down even further.
2:44 – All companies that go out of business, they do so for the exact same reason. They run out of money.
2:49 – Different industries, different eras, different personalities, same exact ending.
2:53 – And once you really absorb that, a lot of business mysteries, they stop being mysterious.
2:59 – Why do great operators obsess over working capital? Why do they negotiate payment terms like their lives depended on it?
3:07 – Why do they track cash monthly, weekly, daily, sometimes down to the hour, dependent on the business?
3:12 – It’s because they feel what Michael Dell described perfectly.
3:17 – It was as if we were driving along watching only the speedometer, when in fact we were running out of gas.
3:24 – Because cash flow is the gas gauge. If you ignore it long enough, the engine is going to die quietly and suddenly without mercy.
3:32 – One of the most dangerous ideas in modern investing is the belief that earnings equal value. They most assuredly don’t.
3:39 – Earnings are an accounting construct, but cash is the physical constraint.
3:44 – You’ve likely heard about Warren Buffett talking about EBITDA, right? Charlie Munger would call them bullshit earnings.
3:49 – Literally, that’s exactly what he says. Because he doesn’t believe in it, right?
3:52 – It’s literally an accounting construct that was conceptualized just a handful of decades ago.
3:57 – But cold hard cash, right? One dollar in, whenever you make an investment, one dollar in, how many dollars come back to you, that’s real.
4:04 – That’s a physical constraint. And Jeff Bezos understood this from day one, right?
4:08 – He said it so clearly in shareholder letters that he repeated it over and over and over year after year.
4:14 – When forced to choose between optimizing the appearance of our gap accounting and maximizing the present value of our future cash flows, we’ll take the future cash flows.
4:23 – And so when Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger are talking about EBITDA and how much they despise that concept, they’re discussing the fact that it’s not an actual representation of how much cash flow the business is actually throwing off over long periods of time.
4:35 – So if you think about how Jeff Bezos just conceptualized that and spoke through that, it really explains the entire history of Amazon in short order.
4:42 – There’s a really phenomenal book out there called the outsiders where a tiny group of CEOs ultimately discuss again how to allocate capital prudently.
4:50 – Warren Buffett would convey that Henry Singleton is the single best capital allocator in the history of the country.
4:55 – And he’s just a raving fan of Henry Singleton. And Henry Singleton is front and center inside of the outsiders.
5:01 – And that group quietly compounded capital better than almost any group ever and they had one simple rule.
5:08 – And it is that cash flow, not reported earnings, is what determines long term value.
5:15 – Markets, they get it wrong. They get it distracted. They’re often trying to find what’s the top line revenue this quarter, what’s the profit this quarter.
5:21 – But the truth of the matter is how much cash flow the business throws off is far superior to whatever the quarterly number is, this particular quarter value always follows cash.
5:32 – If I’m going to break it down in terms of real estate, what does that look like? And what we do, what we’re trying to do is buy safe, predictable, durable income streams over exceedingly long periods of time.
5:41 – And so rule number one inside of our seven pillar framework is ultimately cash flow first period end of story.
5:47 – And it means that you have to have sufficient cash flow to ride out the next inevitable recession, to make it through the downturns, to always be able to survive because cash flows the life of the business.
5:57 – And the minute that you run out of cash flow, the business dies. So you have to maintain that cash flow.
6:02 – And so in terms of real estate, the reason that Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger kind of despise EBITDA and the out of the in real estate is that’s really what most folks track. They track NOI.
6:12 – What is NOI? It is revenue minus expenses equals profit, earnings before interest taxes depreciation and amortization. That’s literally what it is in a way.
6:22 – And around about way net, net operating income is exactly that. And that’s what most real estate operators are really focused on.
6:28 – But the truth of the matter is you should be focused on cash flow because that’s where so many folks get it wrong.
6:34 – I would pose to you that the reason that so many investors believe that they’re investing, right?
6:40 – They believe that they’re investing, but they’re actually speculating because they’re not focused on real estate investing for cash flow.
6:45 – Unknowingly, oftentimes, they’re focused on price appreciation. And really, those are the two main aspects that we’re referring to, right?
6:51 – Income and appreciation, far too often, a huge percentage of an investor’s strategies allocated to how much is this going to appreciate over time, whether it’s immediate over the long term.
7:01 – So when we talk about cash flow, we’re talking about optimizing for free cash flow.
7:05 – The first piece of that is operating cash flow, i.e., you got rents that come in, you got expenses that go out and you have a certain amount of net operating income at the end of the day.
7:13 – But that doesn’t tell the whole story. Why does it not? Because obviously you’re likely to have a pity payment, principal interest taxes insurance along the way, some of that stuff’s below the line.
7:21 – Then you have cash flow. We have to take care of the non-operating expenses. That amount of operating cash flow that you have on a monthly basis, again, it doesn’t tell the whole story.
7:29 – I’ll use a very simple example of a single family residential property. Again, I was fortunate to be speaking in Pasadena a couple of months ago now.
7:35 – And I gave this example that, you know, if you buy a million dollar house and you’re going to rent it out as a single family rental, you’re going to have a couple of thousand dollars, a few thousand dollars of rental income on a monthly basis.
7:45 – And you’re going to have some expenses that come out of that. You’re probably going to be cash flow negative because the purchase price probably about a million bucks, you’re not going to be cash flow positive.
7:52 – But if you are, let’s say you’re net neutral or just barely cash flow positive, folks sometimes think that they’re cash flow positive, but they really haven’t thought through the business model in an, in its entirety and all the myriad of aspects associated with cash flow.
8:04 – Not only do you need to think about operating cash flows, but you also need to think about retained earnings on the balance sheet because feasibly when you buy a deal, you’re going to want to ultimately grow the value of that property over time.
8:13 – It can come from forced appreciation or it can just come from long term macroeconomic tailwinds that increase the value of that property as well.
8:20 – Regardless, you should hope that the value of that property increases over time. That’s the goal, right?
8:24 – Where you’re not only driving operating income, but you’re also increasing the value of the property.
8:28 – And when you add up the operating cash flows plus the long term retained earnings and then you subtract out whatever the capital expenditures are, that’s going to give you the real picture of the free cash flow of the optimized free cash flow of the business over time.
8:43 – And far too often, you know, folks think they’re quote unquote cash flow positive. They’re discounting just how much capital expenditure needs to be dumped back into a business over time.
8:52 – They’re discounting all the water heaters that need to be replaced, all the, you know, the siding that needs to be replaced, the concrete that needs to be replaced, they’re minimizing the roof, right?
9:02 – In a single family example, right, whatever nominal operating cash flow you might have on a monthly basis.
9:07 – Let’s say you’re quote unquote cash flow positive for 10 years, but then you got to fix the roof and it cost you a massive four or five figure discount or five figure.
9:13 – It just wipes out an entire decade of cash flow. So you’re really not real estate investing for cash flow if you follow the logic.
9:21 – Clearly, you need to have sufficient cash flow throughout the entirety of the holding period, not for brief respites, but for the downturns for the rainy days in every way, shape or form.
9:32 – And for the next inevitable downturn because it is going to occur, I don’t know when it’s going to occur because my crystal ball is broken, your crystal ball is broken, the feds crystal ball is broken, they don’t even know what they’re doing.
9:43 – So you just need to ensure that any investment that you make has to have a foundational pillar of cash flow.
9:51 – And this is where I want to introduce the cash flow riddle from a personal finance perspective. The cash flow riddle is this, if your portfolio does not produce ongoing cash flow in excess of your monthly expenses, you will never feel secure no matter how large the number is no matter how big your portfolio gets.
10:12 – I don’t care if it’s $2 million, $5 million, $10 million, $15 million, it doesn’t matter. If you haven’t turned that net worth your portfolio, oftentimes eight figures into income that can provide for your lifestyle, then you’re going to feel anxiety.
10:30 – And that’s the riddle and most people never solve it. They’re told to build a nest egg. They’re told to follow the 60, 40 portfolio. They’re told to withdraw 4% and hope that the math works.
10:44 – But what they’re really doing is they’re slowly consuming capital. Their base is lowering and they’re praying that longevity doesn’t outlast projections. And that strategy guarantees one thing, anxiety, because every single withdrawal feels like erosion.
11:03 – Every market downturn feels like theft and every year feels closer and closer and closer to running out. And if you contrast that with what I like to call the Golden Goose strategy, where you don’t kill the Golden Goose, you don’t sell the Golden Goose and you build a portfolio of assets that lay eggs consistently, predictably and indefinitely into perpetuity.
11:27 – If you don’t solve the cash flow riddle, you will forever be riddled with anxiety. And that’s not philosophy. That is lived experience over time. When I say lived experience, what do I mean?
11:40 – I have the good fortune of having an exceptional business partners, gentlemen by the name of Kevin Bup, started a podcast called real estate investing for cash flow based on lived experience. Why? Because he’s an individual, seven years my senior, who ultimately has been there, done that and got the t-shirt.
11:56 – I like to say that he’s never had a real job started buying real estate in his teens. And by the time that he was in his mid 20s, he was doing exceptionally well, bought about a hundred single family homes was doing well, multi-million dollar net worth by the time that he was in his mid 20s doing exceptionally well, had all the materialistic toys, all the things that you would imagine by the time you’re in your mid 20s. But this was just before the great recession. And unfortunately, he was focused primarily on home price appreciation and not on real estate investing for cash flow. And when the great recession hit, the value
12:26 – of his properties and the prices dropped precipitously, ultimately crushing his portfolio and leaving him in a dire situation, basically lost everything, very, very precarious situation. And so after that, hitting rock bottom, realize that buying assets with the intent to see them go up in value over time is an imprudent way to ultimately manage a portfolio. So what you need to do is be focused on real estate investing for cash flow. It’s why 15 years ago or so we started a podcast called just that aptly
12:56 – named real estate investing for cash flow because the number one foundational piece of your portfolio that you must have to ensure that you will be successful over the long term. So this is lived experience. And after that got up, looked around in the marketplace, tried a bunch of different types of real estate investments, bought some office, bought some
13:13 – mixed use, bought some retail, some self storage, litany of other things, but then found mobile home parks. And we’ve been doing mobile home parks ever since I reached out to him after he bought a couple of different individual mobile home parks and knew that my skill set with partner exceptionally well with his because I knew that I could poor existing fuel on an exceptional business model and scale it significantly.
13:33 – And over the last decade, that’s what we’ve done, but it’s based on lived experience that first foundational piece and it’s not just his story. It is the story of thousands of investors, just like you that I’ve had conversations with over time that are successful in the eyes of society right seven figures eight figure net worth, but still frustrated and haven’t solved the riddle to be able to simultaneously live the life that you want today in a tax efficient manner while still being able to grow up.
14:03 – And grow and build a legacy over time something that you could leave to the next generation. And that’s what the capital strategy is all about trying to help people generate cash flow and build legacy wealth and a tax efficient manner we’ve talked thus far about cash flow in terms of, you know, defensively survival, but cash flow is not just about staying alive. It’s about optionality Warren Buffett his entire posture during crisis can be summarized in in one sentence pretty eloquently by being so cautious in respect to leverage and having loads of liquidity we will be equipped.
14:33 – Both financially and emotionally to play offense when others scramble for survival and that word emotionally really really matters here because cash flow buys time cash flow buys sleep cash flow buys clarity and Charlie monger takes it even further right it takes it even further and makes it unforgettable the way to get rich is to keep $10 million in your checking account in case a good deal comes along, you know, obviously the number doesn’t matter right the point is isn’t the amount the point is the posture.
15:03 – It’s to be ready it’s to be patient and that to not be forced liquidity is not laziness liquidity is a weapon so you have to have sufficient amount of cash flow and a sufficient amount of cash on the balance sheet to write out the next inevitable recession to ensure that your portfolio can make it through the downturn and you can exit and have liquidity events when market conditions warrant as opposed to having forced liquidity events and you could take advantage of the downturn if and when that ultimately arises you could sleep well at night throughout the next recession the next inevitable
15:33 – recession but not all cash flows created equal a Charlie monger had a brutally practical test for business quality said there’s two different kinds of businesses right there’s the first kind earns 12% and you can take it out you actually get 12% cash on cash return in your account and the second business earns 12% but all that excess account must be reinvested all that excess cash got to be reinvested in the business and there’s never any actual cash and we hate that kind of business and that distinction separates compounding machines
16:03 – from treadmills some businesses consume everything that they produce and that’s why EBITDA is one of those things that they despise and I would say NOI can be misleading in the same vein I would post to you that that’s why so many different individuals that have invested in syndications over the last handful of years have had very very difficult times where they’ve had paused distributions they’ve had capital calls and sometimes total loss of capital even if the sponsor is a quote unquote good operator why do I say that
16:33 – because they the sponsor may have actually operated the business model the way that they would have otherwise anticipated let’s say they were a value add sponsor they bought a deal they ultimately implemented the value add plan the NOI have said deal increased rents increase they implemented the value add plan doesn’t matter
16:50 – and a variable interest rate loan based on their imprudent manner of allocating capital they took out too much debt they had a variable rate interest loan all the cash that is is ultimately siphoned and sucked out of the business because they’re focusing on NOI exclusively i.e. this pedometer and not paying attention to the cash flow i.e. the gas gauge and if you’re doing that exclusively right you are a quote unquote good operator you’ve implemented the value add plan the way that you would have thought but now you’ve got market timing risk that’s created a really precarious situation
17:19 – and a lot of those deals have ultimately blown up even with quote unquote good operators guys that did the business model the way that they wanted to but they don’t have a full global view of what is necessary to actually manage capital in a prudent manner from my personal perspective here’s a truth that separates the best CEOs of all time from just average CEOs guys the run businesses the job of a CEO is not just to run operations like we’re talking about here it is also to allocate cash so the outsiders again that book defines it pretty clearly CEOs needed
17:49 – to do two things well to be successful they need to run their operations efficiently and deploy the cash that is generated by those operations most people just train for the first half of the marathon they just train for the first half of the sentence
18:03 – the second half is really where greatness shows up over exceedingly long periods of time i’d post to you the gym columns good to great style scenario of businesses because cash flow is ultimately the raw material
18:14 – and then capital allocation is the the craft right and over long periods of time the allocation actually dominates the operations that fix and flip thing which is it can be good for a couple of few times in a short period of time but over very long periods of time how you allocate capital and look to extract out the most free cash flow over exceedingly long periods of time is a much better way to ultimately invest i’d say that’s true investing
18:43 – as opposed to speculating so try to give you a couple of examples i’ll give you at least one here
18:47 – we got a deal in a clear water beach florida called north beach parking plaza beautiful piece of property it’s not glamorous it’s not residential it’s not headline worthy that’s why we like the capital strategy because it’s not it’s not crystallized to one individual asset class it’s just how to manage capital
19:04 – prudently so in this asset it’s a parking facility from day one it did one thing exceptionally well it generated cash daily parkers monthly contracts low overhead minimal capital expenditures we didn’t buy it because it was clever and it was flashy we bought it because it solved the cash flow riddle it paid predictably reliably and because of that we had a lot of options we can hold we can refinance we can redeploy the capital when the right opportunity appears
19:34 – and that’s what cash flow does it turns investing from guessing into positioning north beach parking plaza is on clear water beach one of the best beaches in the entire world in many occasions has been rated the number one beach in america and on numerous occasions the number one beach literally in the entire world and for that reason it is an exceptional location location location
19:54 – but as a beach it’s obviously a more modest size of land there’s not a ton of land there but it’s attracting so much attention we literally get over a million tourists every single year on this one tiny parcel of land on this one tiny beach okay
20:09 – and there’s only one way in and one way out there’s one road that comes in and one road that goes out and for many many years literally decades
20:15 – the local municipality has tried to solve a problem and the problem is that there’s nowhere for everybody to park when you go to the beach
20:21 – it’s just there’s nowhere to park people circle over and over and over again there’s nowhere to park so after a long period of time the city’s
20:26 – suggested that they enter into a ppp a public private partnership where they said look we’re going to go out and be willing to
20:34 – subsidize and fund the development of a brand new parking garage we just need a developer to come along and partner with us
20:40 – so a developer came in partnered with the city and ultimately the developer is happy because it gets a discount
20:46 – the cost associated with building that parking facility and the city’s happy because at the end of the day
20:51 – they get what they need to serve the tourists and the residents that are ultimately in clear water fast
20:55 – forward a handful of years the 700 space parking facility seven story comes up it’s absolutely beautiful
21:01 – and life is good it’s not a handful of years old but what happens is the city is not in the business of
21:07 – being in business the private partner is what he cares about is driving the NOI driving the cash flow
21:14 – maximizing the value of the property because it’s an investment from his perspective the city
21:19 – they’re not in the business of being in business they’re in the business of providing service to
21:22 – everybody that comes they don’t care to maximize the property at the time that was charging three
21:27 – dollars an hour for paid parking when it literally could have charged six eight ten dollars an hour
21:32 – undoubtedly given the demand that’s in the vicinity all the different other flat lot parking
21:37 – parking lots in the vicinity charged many many many many times what the three dollar per hour rate was
21:43 – and so the private partner was like look can we just we need to increase this a little bit
21:46 – and the city pushed back they didn’t care why because they actually make money from other sources
21:51 – they make money from tourist tax anybody that stays in a hotel downtown they make money from that
21:55 – they make money from sales tax if they buy any sort of trinket from any of the shops in clear water
22:00 – beach the city makes money they don’t make money exclusively from that parking facility so they did
22:05 – not care to drive the NOI to the max degree and so it was a disgruntled partnership and what we did
22:10 – to try to solve this problem is we went in and we bought the private portion from the developer
22:15 – and then we went to the city and negotiated with them to buy the public portion as well and when we
22:20 – did we ultimately took both of these pieces of the puzzle and we took both of them private we took
22:25 – a public private partnership took it fully private and when we did so we unlocked exorbitant amounts
22:30 – of value because then we were able to charge market rates the free market rates and in doing so
22:35 – prior to closing the transaction and this is what cash flow first mindset is okay prior to closing
22:41 – the transaction we went to the marketplace and we sought out a parking operator engaged from
22:47 – them how much they would be willing to pay us for a triple net lease over a 10-year horizon for
22:53 – the right and the privilege to run parking operations inside of that parking garage and ultimately
22:58 – they would be willing to sign a lease to us a triple net lease they’d become our tenant and then
23:03 – they could run any of the parking operations that they would want and in doing so whatever their
23:07 – leases that they’re paying on a monthly basis any of the revenue over and above that would be the
23:11 – margin that they would ultimately keep congratulations but from our perspective it allows us to
23:15 – de-risk the investment take the entirety of the risk and ultimately put it on the operator so at
23:20 – what we ended up doing was the we negotiated the lease in such a way that it was a 10-year
23:25 – triple net lease where the tenant ie the parking operator ended up paying all of the respective
23:31 – expenses including all the capital expenditures taxes insurance and the litany of things associated
23:36 – with that respective property we included a corporate guarantee and we also included 5% annual
23:45 – compounding growth ren escalators on an annual basis so we went when went into that deal at about
23:51 – a seven and a half cap and when you added in some leverage we’re about a 10% cash on cash return
23:55 – over the course of the first couple of years in that respective investment compounding at 5%
24:00 – each and every year so when we bought that deal we knew how much cash flow that deal was going to
24:06 – throw off for the next 10 years recession depression good times bad times boom times busts COVID
24:14 – interest rate increases doesn’t matter we know how much cash flow this deal is going to throw off
24:18 – for the next 10 years and that is a different perspective than what I would say a lot of different
24:23 – other folks come into the marketplace with so it allows us exorbitant amounts of flexibility
24:28 – we didn’t buy it because it was clever we bought it because it solved the cash flow riddle it paid
24:35 – predictably reliably and because it paid we had options we can hold we can refinance we can
24:42 – redeploy capital when the right opportunity appears and that’s what cash flow does it turns
24:48 – investing from guessing into positioning cash loads it’s also a defense mechanism right it’s a
24:55 – defense mechanism against ego against panic against group think and Charlie monger warned about
25:02 – this constantly in his talks it’s difficult to identify and correctly weigh all the possible ways
25:10 – to deploy cash flow which is why you see people chasing fads and following the herd monger would
25:17 – call it the institutional imperative just chasing around what everybody else does and oftentimes they
25:23 – do it at the wrong time right overpaying at the wrong time like lemmings following everybody along
25:29 – to slaughter this is how I feel about the last handful of years when leading up in 2020 2021-2022
25:35 – everybody’s buying and scaling to the moon in the syndication space when we’re just plotting
25:40 – forward buying brewed brewed deals in our humble opinion and you know feeling and yearning that we
25:45 – want to scale in a massive and material way but knowing that the deals don’t really make sense at
25:49 – that respective time fast forward a couple few years and all those individuals that were scaling
25:53 – to the moon based on ridiculous interest rates that were literally the lowest in five thousand
25:57 – years to quote unquote justify making those purchases are actually in very precarious situations
26:02 – right with pause distributions capital calls sometimes total loss of capital and we’re just steadily
26:06 – plotting forward each and every quarter thirty something consecutive quarters on time distributions
26:10 – to partners just don’t follow the herd and Michael Dell he’s you know talked about the exact opposite
26:15 – problem where folks aren’t actually tracking cash flow at all they’re running fast they’re running
26:20 – to the moon as fast as they possibly can growing revenue feeling successful until suddenly you’re out
26:25 – of gas cash flow forces tradeoffs it exposes weak economics and it keeps both fear and arrogance
26:33 – in check cash flow is ultimately the lie detector in a business now let’s talk about sequence and
26:39 – why see cash flow is the first pillar why does cash flow come first before the next pillar add value
26:46 – why does it come before protecting the downside why does it come before everything else
26:50 – because without cash flow adding value feels dangerous downside protection feels theoretical
26:57 – long-term investing feels stressful but with cash flow you can wait you can be conservative you can
27:04 – think generationally the Charlie Munger again the big money is not in the buying or the selling but
27:10 – in the waiting cash flow let you wait and that’s why it’s first not because it’s exciting but because
27:17 – it makes everything else possible this is the difference between speculators and sage investors
27:23 – speculators chase returns sage investors design income streams speculators need things to go
27:31 – sage investors get paid while they wait speculators worry about timing sage investors worry
27:39 – about durability cash flow is not sexy it’s empowering and it’s the foundation of peace of mind
27:47 – once the cash flow riddle is solved once your portfolio produces more cash flow than your
27:52 – life consumes on an ongoing basis once anxiety is removed from the equation the next question
27:58 – becomes obvious how do you grow that cash intelligently without gambling without speculation without
28:04 – needing luck and that’s add value and that’s where we’re going next cash flow first isn’t a preference
28:11 – it’s a prerequisite because if your wealth can’t work without you you don’t own freedom you own a
28:18 – job with a nicer balance sheet i’ll see you in the next episode